Excraft

I understand this is purely subjective and my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but I'll take those 20 BAF runs over 1 ASF at relentless difficulty any day of the week. The pace is much quicker, the action faster and it's 24 incarnates running through the content vs 8 potential non-incarnates under heavy debuff fighting buffed enemies. That's not to say the ASF isn't fun because it definitely is so don't take it that way. You all did a great job with it. I personally am more into the faster pace of BAF/LAMBDA/Tinpex. Running a trio of those wouldn't feel as long to me as an ASF on max difficulty.

Have to say this was a lot of fun. I want to give props to whomever designed the new maps. Beautifully done. This runs a little too long for my taste on higher difficulty though. The Council AV fight can be very overwhelming. Hero 1 seems buggy to me as well. Beyond those things, I liked it. Nice work. Definitely something different. Still going to be significantly easier/faster to farm these in BAF/Lambda than running ASF on higher difficulty.

This assumes there will be a large group of people who want to run higher difficulty settings. If it's going to add significant time to ordinary TFs/SFs without the reward table being increased significantly, personally I see this being more for bragging rights than anything else.

Ran it this evening. Overall I enjoyed it. We had a pretty well balanced team with regard to melee/damage/control. Whomever designed the new maps needs commending. Very beautiful work. As far as the difficulty settings go, I do like that it's encouraging a more mixed team without being overly punitive about it. The higher stats on bosses and AVs is nice. Not sure I would say that they are tougher, just last longer/more tedious. Overall nice job on it. Definitely seems like a rather large fib to me as well. There are definitely some 1 hit wonder auto kill you powers in there either as part of the higher difficulty or baked into the NPC design.

Sorry to be blunt, but this is utter horse shit. This ignores what several people have already pointed out - depending on the content, it is far faster to complete the mission objectives by splitting up. See the Shadow Shard TFs that were brought up as an example. Maybe you have 4 or 5 hours to waste on a play session, but not everyone does. Splitting off into separate groups to complete objectives faster is helping the team, no matter how much you want to deny it. The same lie can be repeated over and over again as many times as you want, it will never make it true. This statement is also purposefully disingenuous in that it doesn't take into consideration any number of possibilities with team makeup with regard to level, slots, enhancements, AT makeup etc. If I'm on a team of lowbies with minimal slots and enhancements (if any at all) running a Positron TF and I'm on my fully decked out level 50, believe me, I'm doing more damage than they are at a faster rate than they are. This can happen all the way through the game. And what happens when that mob is defeated so fast I didn't even get a chance to fire a shot or apply a mez? How is that me helping the team? Because we're arm and arm? It's not helping at that point, it's leeching and isn't fun. I'm guessing you missed the last part of my post? If you did, please go back and re-read it. And being considerate of others goes both ways. So long as someone isn't running off and doing stuff to intentionally grief others, there's nothing wrong with what they are doing. This thread and others like it are very superficial, thinly veiled attempts to define the "right way to play." They're getting old to be honest.

Your argument doesn't work either. Many if not all of those written examples follow real life behavior. People work collectively without needing to be attached at the hip. Where I work everyone has their own phone, laptop and other office equipment at their desks. We work collaboratively with people in other offices all over the country every day. Projects are broken down into various tasks and people will go off and work on their piece. If we were to be expected to be huddled together in a room all day working side by side, we'd never get anything done. To sell more comic books.

Depending on the makeup of the team, their builds, mission settings etc it may very well be faster to solo a mob than it is to wait for the team. Threads like these never once can explain what exactly is the benefit of huddling together to go from mob to mob. They also neglect that sometimes if groups are wiping out enemies before an individual can get a single attack or hold in, that isn't fun either. No matter what anyone tries to say, dividing and conquering is a perfectly reasonable and viable tactic and it is helping the team to complete objectives. People don't need to be arm in arm skipping from mob to mob. If you want to play a game where you need a complete team to cross the street, there are plenty other MMOs on the market for you. City of Heroes never was like that and never should be in my opinion. As others have said here, communication is key. If you want everyone to huddle together and jump from mob to mob, make that perfectly clear when forming. Otherwise let people play as they like and enjoy themselves while contributing to the team.

Well buddy you're more than welcome to go back and read whatever you want. You're certainly entitled to your own spin on things and to be wrong. Sorry, I can see you're sensitive and got triggered. Feel free to read things however you like.

There's a difference between disagreeing and pretending to speak for what the development staff can and cannot do and should or shouldn't be doing. They're adults and can do that themselves. I understand you want to be anal retentive about definitions of words and that's fine, I'm just pointing out this is a common thing on forums for various communities. Sorry if that triggers you.

People don't need to be developers to be gatekeepers. There's forums and communities for various IPs all over the internet that have rules against this and don't allow members to gatekeep. You see this a lot in the Trek, Star Wars and Tolkien community forums. STO has gatekeeping built into their forum rules. See item 22 here. The forums here could use a similar rule in my opinion.

Yep I know it has, no matter what the gatekeeping brigade tries to say. Hopefully this is something that's a simple fix to just move the spawn point a little to the left or right of the portal itself.

You can already create your perfect trinity team for any existing content in the game with the extra benefit of playing on a well balanced group.

As the title suggests, I've been meaning to try a Dark/Dark Brute, but will admit I'm clueless when it comes to Dark Armor. I've no idea what to pick, skip and how to slot. I'd like to build something that's all around tough and can handle whatever I throw at it. I'm not big on taking tons of pool powers just for IO mules so I'd like to see what can be done with IOs and set bonuses. I can afford pretty much anything. Anyone have any advice or preferably builds to share? Much appreciated. Thanks.

A game that launched 17 years ago using outdated code is going to have a very, very hard time attracting new players. I'm sure there will be a few to check it out here and there, but in my opinion it's never going to draw in any large crowds. There's way too much competition now. No thank you. You can already create your classic trinity teams and run whatever content you like. This is yet another thinly veiled attempt to incorrectly define the "right way" to play and the "correct" team composition. From what I've read, it sounds like the Homecoming people here are approaching this hard mode the correct way. "Proper" team makeup may be encouraged, but in no way mandatory. I'll reserve judgement for when it's on BETA as we have been burned before with changes that sounded good, but turned out to be real steaming piles.

We know you have a sandwich.

Same. A temp hold power that can help in a pinch isn't game breaking no matter what the gatekeeper brigade says.

This is another thinly veiled attempt at incorrectly defining what is the "right way" to play and the "correct" team composition. 8 blasters being able to complete a TF on hard mode is not wrong and is highly dependent on the circumstances. Did it take them far longer than it would have with a tank and support? Did the team wipe repeatedly with every mob spawn? Hard does not and should not mean impossible and people should not be prevented from playing like this if that's what they choose to do with their free time.

I did do something about it. I made a suggestion in the suggestions and feedback forum, which to my knowledge is encouraged by the developers here. You're welcome to disagree with my suggestion, however the "I have a sandwich" and "suck it up" don't work and isn't helpful at all, nor is moving to another server or any of the other "solutions" you mentioned. I would appreciate it if what is or isn't a lot of work for the development team be left to the real development team instead of the gatekeepers like yourself. Gatekeeping isn't helping anyone and is more a detriment to these forums and community than it is a help. Thanks for your comments. Your solutions aren't helpful in the least and quite frankly aren't worth my time or effort to respond to anymore.

That's absolutely correct which is why I'm asking for a simple QoL change to have people zone in a little further away from the portal so it doesn't get cluttered with bodies and pets. People could also have some degree of courtesy for their fellow players and move off the portal when they zone in. I know having to move their character a little when they come in is a big ask.

The old "I have a sandwich, so you can't be hungry" excuse never works. When I'm on Excel it's a problem not just for me but for my family, friends and SG mates as well as others in the leagues I run with for iTrials and such. I get it, you don't see the problem. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Bumping this. Can this please get added to the list of things to do and addressed? Oro is basically becoming unusable because of this since it's where iTrial leagues are being formed. People are just zoning in and camping on the portal. Add in pets and its literally impossible to click on the portal to exit.

The answer is play more, get more levels and better gear so you're all on par with each other as equals, not crying for nerfs because you can't keep up. Expecting everyone regardless of level or gear to be on even ground is a fantasy. The Devs are handling this the correct way by adding options, not taking stuff away. This hard mode they are talking about adding is more than likely to increase that gap between solid endgame IO builds and not.

Exemplared 50s with full sets of IOs or even SOs really are always going to outperform lower level characters using minimal slots and lower tier enhancements. Same thing goes for a sidekicked lower level character. There's actually quite a big gap there.

I'll reserve my judgement until this is on BETA and can be thoroughly tested. We've been burned badly before with promises of one thing that gets replaced with another thing that isn't at all desirable or welcomed. This sounds interesting, however I'm extremely cautious of the implementation. What you all define as "unfair" or "playing poorly" can be very different than what others consider it to be. I'm leery this is going to try and corral people into a specific, scripted style of play with specific team makeup to handle encounters. That isn't fun and it's what WoW is for. Also, parroting that support and control has no value at higher levels I think is an over exaggeration and always has been. I see a lot of bickering about setting TFs to hard mode or not coming with this.

Super super annoying to try and exit Oro when there are piles of others just loitering around on top of the exit portal. Can we please have players zone in a little further away from it as they come in? Would be a super helpful QoL improvement. Thank you.