Sakura Tenshi

here's a major example of NPC groups we need at the higher level, namely for villains, though some would need more work than others. PPD - Just have powered armor guys and psicops also scale up to 50 so the PPD isn't a boring bunch of laser shooting mannequins and soulless machines (which do look pretty cool, except for the PPD drone which should not be in the group as a normal spawn). Once again, there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to limit the level ranges on these guys, Council and Nemesis have less attacks or resistances than PPD shells and even less damage diversity but they go up to 50. with the psicops, if they do need additional powers, it'd be easy enough to add them in theory. Legacy chain and Wyvern - No denying these guys would need more attacks, and in the case of the legacy chain, possibly new helmets for new elements, but in general it's really frustrating that villains were set up to fight heroes and the only heroic organization they consistently fight is Longbow who are basically a cross between Council and Crey. (if you don't do newspaper missions or do arcs that stay entirely in the rogue isles, you can even avoid PPD). It's like the live devs started to work on these groups and went 'eh, we've got other factions villains can fight' and tossed them aside. The Legacy Chain, most frustratingly, doesn't even cover the elements of wind, water/ice, or darkness. Nevermind how the Legacy chain also only lets you fight two branches at a time when the Legacy of Steel should be protecting the mages throughout the faction's appearance (nevermind giving them shields at higher levels or even titan weapons)

I do agree that high level enemies need more variety than less. What's strange about the Circle of Thorns' case is that a lot of their lower level mobs do show up in the form of the possessed scientists, powers unchanged and ranks much the same. There's really no reason we shouldn't be fighting Air, Earth, Fire, and Ice thorn casters filling out the minion ranks, nor why Succubi and Hellfrosts can't go to level 50 and add some good variety to the CoT bosses alongside the additions of madness and ruin mages. Sadly, with Nemesis troops, not much can be done there was their entire mob in general is kind of small, only thing that could add variety is making sure some of the dudes with the smaller rifles and the medics remain in the ranks and that is pretty much it, every other change to them is the minions getting those gatling guns, or a new name and color scheme if that. Admittedly though, I can see an in universe reason the CoT stop using Ruin and Force mages to fight heroes. Their descriptions mention Ruin and Force mages are the mages used to protect Oranbega from cave ins, so they might realize it's a bad idea to send their most important civic workers to be beaten up in droves and put out of work.

This is a very good question since, at the heart of the Cottage Rule is "don't remove any function that would effect IO set slotting" as I've seen. So basically the Cottage Rule is less "build up cannot be changed so it builds up a small cottage" as it means "Build up CAN build a small cottage but it must still be capable of slotting all the same enhancements and general functions" meaning somehow residential contracting will boost ToHit and Damage in this scenario. The rule's a lot more flexible than you'd think, like the only thing the blaster changes altered to one of the powers tends to be 'adds on +recovery and/or +end and possibly also restores HP in some way or another' along with all original functions sans usually the removal of being able to slot non-set endurance cost reduction powers. (as normally +recovery and/or +end powers do not have end costs)

Much as I think on this, the more I realize I'd be more about building who new sets and maybe ancillary pools than pool powers. I feel like existing pools cover a lot or at the very least I can't think of what could be added that hasn't already been said or isn't in the works, and I'd personally just want to see existing pool powers maybe get some changes, buffs, etc. (It's silly, but I'd love it if the fighting pool attacks were just as valid choices for a character as picking up tough and weave, or maybe tough and weave had synergy that made the attacks more viable.) That said, my big feeling on pool powers is that I'm not quite a fan of the limitations on how many you can take, especially the origin pools, I understand the reasoning for this, especially the origin pools, but it would be nice if there was another way, or even just a way to get more pool powers. Maybe, since I feel the tier 4 in origin pools is the biggest breaker, have a sort of 'cross power lockout' where instead you can only pick one origin pool tier 4 power and once you do you could no longer select the others? A total hot take and really imbalancing, but it might even be cool if once all the origin pools were released, your origin also meant you got that origin pool basically for free, each power unlocking at a certain level and freeing up a chance to pick another. Admittedly, this in of itself runs into the problem of 'one origin has better powers than the other'.

How about just letting incarnate shards and threads be acceptable alt currency for certain things at the P2W vendor? Or some special version, like 100 threads/20 shards for one of the Buff Amplifiers?

Wishing him the best of luck and a speedy recovery!

forgive me for bringing anime into this but Saitama, of all his powers, explicitly does not fly. He jumps good. Speaking of, debatable he's a super hero but Samurai Jack learned to Jump Good.

Serious question: do you have a private server and tried to rig this up yourself? I'm really not sure any suggestion should ever be prefaced as 'easy', because what seems easy for us might not be so easy from the code side.

Warning: this gets kind of dark. Despite being a weaboo with only secondhand knowledge on Japan, I've kicked around some ideas over the years for what Japan as a whole has become in the city of heroes universe, particularly as my live namesake was a 'too old' magical girl brought out of retirement and a traumatized Rikti War veteran. I don't have a specific zone in mind (I had a pitch on the live forums for a trio of zones, one hero, one villain, one neutral) which were purely ficticious locations, more recently I thought about Urayasu in the Chiba Prefecture in the Tokyo Bay since that area does have this stark divide of 'the traditional Japanese settlement Circa Tokugawa Shogunate' and 'Shin-Urayasu' which is expressly a modern area and includes the freaking Tokyo Disney park. But the general ideas I've had were: Japan outwardly presents itself as 'Animeland' and it's not far off from the truth, the JDSF remains on high alert since the Rikti War and have cooperated with the Vanguard making extensive useage of salvaged and reverse Engineered Rikti assault suits creating a mecha-nized national defense force, there's government trained mages who are inducted from an early age when they show potential and at taught in specialized occult schools in places like Mt. Osore. The hero scene in Japan, in truth, is highly bureaucratic and commercialized (think a cross between One Punch Man and Tiger and Bunny) in which even a hero capable of fighting off certain crimes will be forbidden due to it not matching their public image as well as it simply not being what they're registered to do. This in part was started due to metahuman warriors and even full lords of the the Sengoku and Edo period causing flareups in power discrepancies and civil unrest and by Meiji the Emperor sought to keep better control on these individuals, further compounded by WWII surrender agreements which brought the Super Hero Registration act to Japan and brought a hard cap on how many registered heroes were allowed to be active. Unlike the limits on Japan's military, the 'legal hero' limit would remain in place until the Rikti War. This, along with various injustices in the Japanese Justice System (IRL reference point: Japan has a 98% conviction rate and judges have confessed to knowingly convicting innocent people to save face of the system, crime in general is also not 'non-existent' so much as under reported due to societal pressures and police not wanting to bother) have led to a rise in Japanese Vigilantes who dub themselves 'Shin-Ronin' (New Floating Men) and operate outside the system to dispense justice as necessary. They're often reviled by the Japanese populous at large and commonly associated with Yakuza (which for some isn't always baseless) and are publicly hunted by both local police, heroes, and JDSF. (in private many have their sympathizers whether to Shin-Ronin as a whole or individual vigilante heroes) Despite this, many 'Shin-Ronin' are under trained, often minors, and suffer from a high mortality rate. As magic became a known weakness of the Rikti, it's estimated that young girls as young as 6 years old wielding basic magical powers were killed or captured en-masse by Rikti 'mage hunters' who could dispatch with these unprepared magi and were able to crush the more centralized hero agency of Japan at large. However, Shin-Ronin both magical and otherwise proved indispensable in the Rikti War and restrictions on hero registration were (largely) lifted and heroic associations were (mildly) decentralized, and in other cases, public and government opinion softened on Shin-Ronin, both as a result of the Rikti War and their aid in situations such as dismantling the Yakuza and various disasters which racked the country and the world since the start of the 21st century. Because of all this Japan is reluctant to accept the aid of non-Japanese heroes, though those that manage to break through the redtape and/or win over the populous are viewed with a certain awe and inspiration to the local heroes, though they are quick to try to talk to these foreigners in what is often mistaken as 'helpfulness' but rather is done in desperate attempts to avoid international incident or the high property damage western heroes are stereotyped as causing. Rose Star is a registered Japanese hero and on the up and up, her partner Spark Blade however is a Shin-Ronin and perhaps one of the most well-known in Japan, which, to the consternation of authorities and even his partner, means he can avoid much of the Shin-Ronin stigma on pure popularity. Spark Blade avoids registering both because it would violate his own persona as a cool, loner-badass, but mainly because he genuinely dislikes the commercialized and regulated system that could stop him from helping others. Mecha, piloting, and combat are done very carefully in Japan, with such heroes only being called into an urban area (or populated areas in general) if conventional hero forces are exhausted or if a 'kaiju class archvillain' has appeared within population centers with no forewarning. Engagements are urged to be taken away and dealt with outside these areas. Also regulations stipulate Mecha models are not allowed to be built higher than 7 meters (or 23 feet). Enemies in the country There are dark rumors circulating that hidden circles in the Japanese government is in cooperation with Malta. Urban legends persist of independent 5th Column cells who sought sanctuary after the fall of Berlin or even settled in as early as Japan and Germany's initial alliance. More rumors still haunt the country of a remnant faction of the Imperial Wind, and relatedly experiments of Unit 731 smuggled back to Japan and having subsequently broken loose, or the dark research continued. Not all Shin-ronin are necessarily Heroes, sadly more than a few can best be summed as 'villains with a cause' and end up fueling public sentiment against vigilantes. likewise, more than a few modern 'villains' seem to be nothing more than exaggerated performance arts actors who do wild and absurd stunts for attention, meeting their favorite heroes, and generally just to act out their (hopefully non-sexual) fetishes in public, at worst they might be petty bullies and thugs with a flamboyant streak. Naturally these types of 'villains' ended up dubbed as Chuunibyou. (Japanese authorities advise heroes deal with these people with a public unmasking and calling their parents or completely ignoring them, robbing them of their power.) A lot of scientific disasters can, with deeper investigation, be traced to the Crey rival: Kasa Pharmaceuticals*. Yes, there's also oni, other youkai (just not that weirdo that has an eye in it's butt) And an obligatory J-horror mission Oh, yes, can't forget the most important type of enemy to fight: SHOKAH~! (Or rather kind of kitchy and cheesy senair baddies.) *Yes, it's a reference. Just count yourself lucky I didn't make it Orochi Corp. So, it's a rough idea that could probably be focused down into a zone, my ideal would, again be making a zone where there's that divide between the new and the old. Heroes would probably be brought in as 'Shin-Ronin' by Spark Blade to help with maybe the Fifth Column ("primarily a Paragon problem") then a storyline would continue to reveal the various forces tugging at Japan. The options of the story would focus on whether you would deal with these threats yourself, opening Japan up to the idea foreign aide better or merely serve as a guide to help the Japanese people fight against these threats on their own, encouraging independence. Villains meanwhile would be brought in to assist a remnant of the Yakuza (which you would have the option to betray and take over/wipe out) and build them back up by corrupting Shin-Ronin into a life of full crime and disrupting Japanese Authorities, ultimately culminating to robbing either a warehouse of JDSF Mechs/Drones (either to keep for yourself or unleash on the populous) or going on a heist to steal one of the Imperial Regalia, specifically the Sword of Kusanagi. (Either to keep for yourself or force the Japanese government to pay up). man, I came up with those storyline synopsis on the fly, but I kind of like the choices I managed to give to them. I do admit that maybe this all seems like I'm being a little too hard on Japan as a country, but it made for some great trauma sources for my magical girl back in the day.

Yeah, pretty much, and I don't think it's ever too late to update a mission, but if you're going to update a mission it might be better to give the zone a bit of an update overall. Still bugs me that the Cabal is the only Croatoa mob that has more than three critters.

@Eva Destruction I probably should have clarified that the army would be in a massed formation on a set part of the map than scattered to the ten winds.

thank you.

yeah, I tried to remove the 'continue watching' but it breaks the damn link.

Fun time I've had on Titan Weapons with all it's knockdown is to smack someone to the floor then follow up with Arc of Destruction, going from a shockwave attack into a coup de grace on a floored opponent. Kind of like this Thanks @VileTerror for fixing For Honor wiki trying to take too much after ubisoft.

I do agree that Croatoa as a whole is a nice break, but the missions and so forth do need some massive revamping, and on a personal level I feel like all the mobs need tweaking and the zone and mission maps could use some updates. Off the top of my head, I'd say if I were to remake that last mission, I would have three mages already at the stone circle and the ritual started, counting down from 15 minutes (sorry), enemy mobs are already ambushing in earnest, but throughout the town you (or preferably a splinter of your team) can split off and find hostage mages, they don't need to be escorted, they will teleport to the hedge, but each time you free one the ambush size scales up, but with this the timer drops down. With all six mages (who are, by the way, unkillable) the ritual will only be 90 seconds and the three will cast a tripled stacked HoT on the Stone Hedge objects. The downside is that with all six mages an EB snaptooth and Jack-in-irons spawns in. Now, I imagine the initial wave of ambushes would be pretty manageable and spaced out, maybe even leaving the exploit where you could leave one alive and the next ambush wouldn't spawn, this is meant to give the player a chance to grab the first two mages (who shorten the time down by five minutes each) while activating two independent ambush spawns that will spawn enemies at a timed interval in contrast to the first one needing mob completion. Another idea for the 'Stop 30 Fir Bolg' mission is pretty simple: instead of necessarily waiting for each group to spawn one by one, the whole army starts spawned in on the map, in formation and 'protected' by a trio of bosses. So you can take the more preemptive and aggressive approach to smash the army before they start sending squads in (and also if you listen into some dialogue and explanation why only so many are going in at a time) and face a whole army, or you can wait by the gates as the come in squad by squad. Or try something in between where you wait for the army to weaken to a certain point before diving in. Would you like to know more?

One thing to also remember is that even if the servers were on good terms with one another, the fact is each one has a different vision of how the game should be developed, cake does not equal thunderspy does not equal homecoming, and it probably would reflect poorly between playerbases if one were to blatantly copy the other without some express permissions, even the perception of it can mar the image to both communities and foster further bad blood. This is, sadly, a prime example of politics not even confined to games like this. All I will say also is that I personally disagree with various choices Cake and Thunderspy make for their servers with ATs and powersets, a lot of it feeling very rushed. Some of the things I personally do like that they've done are not related to player powersets so much as making it possible for all mobs to scale up to fifty and opening up some of the NPC costume options. (and maybe Empathy could use something to help is stand out further from others)

@Vanden Well, that's sort of what I'm talking about: it makes sense to not be able to freely buff so many stats with set bonuses, but if you build and really focus down on +damage, you're not gonna have much +recharge, or even +defense. And silly as it might sound to say +damage only is going to benefit the damage powers, but +recharge basically benefits everything, especially survival tools.

I wouldn't complain too much, though I haven't had much end trouble once a character is kitted out, I often do begin with sets with some end management means usually, so my case is probably unique, and something like this could free up from having to always pick out physical perfection for melee characters. Personally, I think that +damage is in much greater trouble, I once tried to make a hypothetical blaster build with as much +damage as I could cram into them and only managed +35%, which, while not trivial, still seems quite laughable compared to how much +recharge you can get and how +recharge can double your damage output. Alternatively, if we are so concerned about end management, maybe a buff to +max end? That's kind of a rare bonus.

Another idea occurred to me a few days ago, a map idea I’m amazed was never a mainstay on live given this game is built around cape comic book tropes. we need some proper construction site mission maps. They would probably need to basically be outdoor maps revolving around a single building framework with floors in varying states of completion. Could even have multiple building projects. The tricky part is of course the spaces surrounding the buildings which would need to be generic low res cityscape, or possibly take an existing outdoor city map, wipe a building or three from it, and then shrink the boundaries a bit. Alternatively or in addition to this we could have under construction interiors using the office map geometries with best assets to make it look like it’s under construction or renovation.

My lala exists to PUNCH.

Funny thing is that if you look close enough, you realize Paragon city's major buildingers are supposed to be Art Deco, but the graphical limitations made it impossible to properly render. I understand this feeling, it's kind of straining to imagine such a flagrant terrorist organizations running a whole country and not get nuked to the stone age, not to mention as well put together as Arachnos is in terms of unit tactics, they're still a lot of the same 'big, giant, even army' we see with The Council, Nemesis, and Malta. Their style is also kind of ugly and painful to look at, which I guess is the point since they're EVIL and it distinguishes them visually from the more conventionally military looks of the three mentioned. And lastly there's the fact that from the start of your villain career until Incarnate, everything you do will swing around Arachnos. But I am willing to play a devil's advocate and say I'd personally like to just have Arachnos' presence massively reduced. Make them a little more 'the man behind the man' in the Isles. There's a legit government in place, but Recluse pulls the strings, though sometimes said government is fully capable of pulling back. Make them feel like a mysterious benefactor who intervened on the villain player's behalf to get you the isles, then backed off, lets you build up your career, but leaving bread crumbs for you to follow. Not hard to figure out who they are, they're a big name, but working out the why and learning the depth becomes the interesting part.

Actually, after having thought of it, if I could do a major overhaul of one thing, technically two because they'd be tied, probably: the cities themselves and possibly the graphics engines. I wouldn't try to make the cities look next gen or anything (except MAYBE the forestry stuff?), in general a new engine would more to let it handle more of the present stuff and allow for bigger zones. And now here's where my idea would become really unpopular: A lot of hero zones would get mashed together and the geography of Paragon would be overhauled to look like it's part of Rhode Island instead of some weird Massachusetts, lore would be altered to accommodate and while technically the neighborhood zones would exist individually, the idea would be that the warwall layout wasn't as clean as we see now. A rough overview would be like: Paragon onna grid Crey's Folly/Boomtown/Eden (merged together for a 'Nature Takes over vs. industrial neglect' theme with a shattered cityscape caught between) (unused space, could have Boomtown here instead) Faultline/Hollows (the nice neighborhoods destroyed) Terra Volta (Isolated from most of the city for safety reasons, but now caught between villain haven wasteland and the rest of the city) Atlas Park/Perez Park Founders' Falls/Brickstown (Old town Paragon basically) Skyway City/Steel Canyon (now with actual, city-spanning freeways!) Skyway City/Steel Canyon Skyway City/Steel Canyon (fills multiple cells with it's scale, also visual representation) Independence Port/Kings Row Kallisti Wharf/Talos/Peregrine Galaxy City (gets to stay it's own place) Additional Paragon changes that would go beyond just the city include: Croatoa and Dark Astoria merged and now set in Maine. Really, I'm just robbing Solomon Island zones from The Secret World The Zig is moved out to the US Southwest as the centerpiece of it's own zone, and yes this is stealing from Champions while I'm at it. Rikti War Zone is now moved out the US entirely and the Vanguard HQ proper (heroes and villains get there through a Vanguard outpost that involves a 'super jet' transport) is set in Puerto Williams in Chilie, the Southernmost city in the world with the actual warzone being set in the Antarctic Peninsula Changes for the Rogue Isles would be a lot less extreme, a majority of it runs along the lines of: Make the 'main islands' of each zone bigger so it's a bit more believable as an independent nation rather than just city state. Also lets zones have more details Make the cities a bit cleaner and better maintained looking. Tourism is an industry. Inter-island highway or even submarine transport tunnel. Because Recluse, The Family, and plenty of other major villain groups still give a damn about logistics. (plus, toll money) Relatedly: make it so you can go from Port Oakes to Cap Au by crossing the mountain or going through the damn traffic tunnel. And fix their orientations so the maps are properly angled as shown on the Rogue Isles map. Probably move the starting position on Mercy Island to have you get dumped in the water (it's Arachnos, literal sink or swim) just outside of an impoverished-but-functional fishing ghetto. More Kingsrow than outright ruined wasteland the rest of Darwin's landing is. Point is to let you have a functional starting point but still feel accomplished when you get up to Mercy city proper. Some Misc,. details I'd change to the overworld of the game: Hospitals and Tram buildings now each have unique building models (though remain clearly labeled) no more copy and past stuff. Ships will be realistically sized and no longer laughable tiny More car models! We need pick-up trucks, RVs, Minivans, full-sized vans, and vehicles that don't look like they're from Circa 1977! oh, and one more thing: Single Family houses and other such residential buildings. We see (poorly made) Farm Houses in Croatoa and Row Houses in Praetoria, so maybe we could get some Ranch, Tudor, and New England Colonial houses? Oh, also Victorian styles since we do have the Midnight/Dr. Kane mansion.

Honestly, I'm all for adding more strike forces redside, especially because about all the present ones with the exception of Mortimer Kal and Tarikoss involve you working for Arachnos in some capacity. I think an alternate chain of SFs should focus around villain players doing things to gather resources, influence, and people for later schemes. Like doing the ultimate bank heist where you take on a Swiss Bank vault and loot tens of millions of dollars to start up an evil empire, then you gather people by subverting the armies of unstable countries and gather things to get them from ragtag formerly state officialized terrorists into a legitimate minion force. That sort of stuff.

I mean, all the radio detectives are police show references though plenty of liberties are taken in terms of looks (presumably to avoid copyright issue), for example there's a Detective Murphy in Brickstown or Founders, though rather than being a cyborg, he's just a PPD in a hardsuit shell.

Edit: wow, forgot my own thread and was thinking of AE maps. I mean, I'd love to see these map ideas in AE too, but I just remembered part of this was hoping to see such maps also being used in main stories or even to spice up radios/newspapers and tip mission maps. Or really really old TFs.