Sakura Tenshi

oddly, it wouldn't violate the 'signature costume piece' thing if it were just the antlers. Woodsman's antler's are attached to a helmet.

1.Broad 'Themed' Powersets Have you ever wanted an AV to provide a challenge just not possible within the scope of TWO measly power picks? Is it too hard to code a third power selection? Well with this choice we can have our enemies and they can kick our asses too! The idea behind this would be to make some new powersets with every power that could be thematically appropriate all lumped into one mega powerset. So a 'Ice themed' Powerset will include a list which comprises of Icy Blast, Icy Assault, Ice Melee (including stalker version), Ice Armor, Cold Domination, Ice Control, and even Storm Summoning (there could be plenty of overlap in these sets allowed), and miscellaneous things only covered in ice-themed epic pools, ice manipulation, icy assault, and possibly even a special version of Spines locked into 'crystalline' customization that deals cold damage. Not all powers would have 'broader themes' that could be tapped into, but you could still, in theory, merge Assault Rifle, Arachnos Soldier, and Mercenaries sets and throw in Aim for good measure. At the end of the day this could promote much stronger or just more interesting enemies in AE. For some examples of of these broad powersets and what would compose them... Ice Themed (As mentioned above could include Ice Blast, Ice Melee (including stalker version), Ice Assault*, ice armor, ice control cold domination, and storm summoning from just existing things) Fiery Themed (Fire Blast, Fiery Melee, Fiery Aura, Thermal Radiation, Fire Control) Psionic/Timelord Themed (Psychic Blast, Psionic Assault, Mind Control, Psychic Melee, Empathy, Leadership pool, Willpower, Super Reflexes, Temporal Manipulation, Time Manipulation) Martial Arts Themed (Martial Arts, Street Justice, Martial Assault, Kinetic Melee, Energy blast, Super Strength, Fighting Pool, Super Reflexes, Willpower) 2. Mastermind Minions as their own AE Mobs Basically let us flood a damn map with robotics drones or mercs, or generic ninjas. Please? (Relatedly: include the Rogue PPD as a selectable mob) 3. Allow us to add Cutscene Captions. I imagine for this you'd just need to add some special optional dialogue boxes and tag them to specific event triggers like finding a certain clue, entering the mission, finishing the mission, X-boss at Y health Percent, and so on. 4. Outdoor maps with express 'start', 'middle', and 'end' spawn points. I know it's theoretically possible, and I'm not asking for exact control over spawn locations (which would be very nice but I get why that could be a pain) 5. Relatedly: new Warwall/Tramless/Lore-free maps Probably the hardest one to pull off, but I'm talking about things like taking the ruined city maps and removing aspects of them being in Paragon like the warwalls and tram tracks, or making removing the golden glow from some of the Croatoa outdoor maps and replacing the entrance with a more generic entry instead of the faerie ring, and lastly just removing warwalls from many outdoor maps in general so they can feel like they're set in places that aren't paragon. 6. 'Generic' EBs/AVs for each faction Another hard one to pull off, but basically going through existing mobs to take some of the existing bosses, maybe giving them a few new powers and upping them to 'elite boss' or 'av' status for a bit of extra challenge without needing to go through and try to make a custom character that often doesn't look a thing like many of the canon gang members.

I may or may not want fiery orange eyes for something with the spectrum body and black colored slime aura to create a filth creature from The Secret World.

And regardless of how impassioned things have gotten, I stand by that we don't need to do away with the Cottage Rule since there's no need to. As I mentioned the Cottage Rule can effectively be seen as "as long as it does not effectively invalidate the IO sets someone has already slotted into the power, anything else can be changed, even the name"* How could we change time bomb? How about we make it into a 'Volatile bomb' which you 'throw' as a ranged locational AoE and then, when hit by any friendly damage source detonates in a massive explosion with a firepatch DoT? Confront? Make it 'Mark Foe' and give it a -Res and -Def component to add to a scrapper's DPS (I feel AoE taunting is a perfectly legit thing for brutes since, even if MMs are theoretically the Redside tanks, brutes actually have aggro management). Detention Field- okay, this one I'm a little stumped on because foe intangible sucks. But to rehash my summary: in theory, the nature of the cottage rule actually means is that you COULD have build up create a small cottage. It just would have to do that in addition to it's +Damage and +toHit buff. *it should also be noted live devs were willing to redo powers in such ways that it would invalidate normal enhancement slotting, such as removing the use for end reduction enhancements on things like Cauterizing Aura or Field Operative.

Honestly, I think the cottage rule isn't a bad rule because there's a lot more leeway in it than people think. I'm going to use Healing Triage from Traps as an example: What the cottage rule says you basically cannot due to Triage would be to remove it's healing aspect (note: just the healing aspect, not if it's regen or a heal) to turn it into something like a damage buff, or a defense/res buff, or anything like that. Up the regen Turn it into a HoT Make it a locational AoE drop Turn it into a following heal pet Add a +recovery. damage, tohit, defense, resistance, or any other number of buffs Also make it into an immobile gun sentry that shoots incoming enemies while healing teammates Basically, as I understand the 'Cottage Rule', the reality is that as long as you keep the core elements (like retain the enhancements/IO sets that can be slotted into it) you can make all kinds of changes. So Build Up could build up a cottage, it just has to do that on top of it's existing function.

You know, I've always felt the intent with the launch MM pets was for all of them to have sort of their own roles. Bots were supposed to be a tanky MM set, Zombies were control/debuff/exotic mechanics, Ninjas should be highest DPS, and Mercs would have been 'the jack of all trades, master of none'. I mean, they don't function like it but that's how I imagine the original intent was. they are good for AV crunching, admittedly, but all their -regen is solely from the assault bot, along with a nice DoT patch to go on top of it, but in the end, that assault bot goes down and you just have to pray the rest of the bots' defenses are high enough and the AV's been smacked with enough tohit and damage debuff from seeker drones. I dunno, I've heard some people come up with effective combos with serum, like using the poison tier9 and possibly sonic resonance.

I wouldn't call 'the live devs are willing to do it' as a greenlight, Mechano. It's pretty clear with as much passion as they pursued for the game in it's final days, they clearly were throwing stuff together in desperation. Need I remind you of the office buildings that got retextured with base assets in the Malta Arc? Especially the 'monastery' that was just hirano and miyuki textures and all the stairs removed.

Wait, I'm thinking of Banished Pantheon Shamans, not Talons.

Didn't stop the live devs from giving it to the Talons and Knives of Vengeance without the belt piece.

Totally random on the note of of uniques to NPCs: I really freaking hate that Talons of Vengeance have copies of scirocco's sword. Bugs me that weapon that's both signature to scirocco and has exspress lore related to what it is... Is apparently standard issue to any ToV snekgurl.

Okay, so I had an idea for a possible difficulty increases, some of which could be mutually exclusive or combined. First one, as i mentioned, is that 'mission objective bosses' that come up in content should have an option to be upgraded into EBs, this one sticks out to me from playing a Citadel TF where we had to defeat a boss. A regular old boss for an objective and I thought to myself "there's no way in hell that was a challenge for an eight-man team even before IOs". The challenge would come from needing to basically make new 'generic' EBs and the coding options. Nevermind if you want to be fancy and give them some special attacks. Still, I think this could be, if nothing else, a way to let soloers have bigger challenges and big teams actually have time to notice a mission boss. Second one that could be tied to this would involve giving standard bosses, EBs, and AVs a +5% accuracy boost (and thus +10% to Incarnate content bosses, etc.) A large part of 'runaway surviability' is how easy it can be to softcap the defenses of many builds, such a change would mean builds would either need to give up other functions like recharge boosts or recovery for more defense or accept a loss of survivability and focus on their other functions. Now, just doing this means that powersets geared towards defense (SR, Nin, Energy, Ice, possibly shield, SoAs can take it dry though.) would need to be boosted so they don't get screwed over, allowing them to basically continue on as somewhat normal, if not laughing much more heartedly laugh at minions and Lieutenants. The second one though is really just a rough idea, I know the 'ease' of city of heroes is a much more complicated situation than just runaway survivability, but it could be considered as one facet of a larger difficulty rise.

Thanks, bossk, also, damn I want the antlers so freaking much. Also, the 'across the body' sashes.

Not mine, look up 'Centurii-chan' on facebook. they do some great stuff.

I'd love so many things from the NPC only section of icon (which, I can't access anymore, how do I unlock it again?) But I do recall hearing some of these costume pieces can cause crashes in the game proper, on top of that there might be some reluctance due to a hefty dose of 'high gender gate' in NPC costumes which we can even see now. (notice only women have glowing yakuza tattoos, even though there's dudes with it in Dark Astoria's Tsoo)

Closest I can think of is the Signifer who was sort of the unit to unit version the Aquilifer. (two others roman units absent from Cimerorans.) Also, you wouldn't believe how annoying it is that none of the shield options are an actual, full length squared Scutum or that the only thrusting attack with Broadsword is the Assassin's strike for stalkers.

Playing an ITF again since this game's closure, I've learned a lot about the historical roman army, and now looking at Cimerorans, my inner history nerd rages at the number of Centurions and camp prefects in a mob. (also that they erroneously are using the title 'immunes' which is supposed to mean they're non-combatants when those are more Auxillia). And so if I could make some dumb changes to this game, I'd be renaming the Cimeroran Traitors as: Legionarii (is fine) Centurions now become Prima Pilus or Prima Contuburnium (a made up rank and still not numerically accurate but one more accurate than having a centurion every third dude) Preafectus Castorum are changed to Legio Praetoria (explanation being that Romulus has 'promoted' his best fighters as praetorians and though has assigned them as part of the regular legions, likewise they'd also get purple instead of red) Immunes Engineers are now just Auxillia Engineers Immunes Surgeons are also fine. And that's an example of a dumb, pointless change I'd make.

The debuff resistance I brought up as one of it's strong points (especially having played /nin), I did neglect to mention most of the other things, and I did say SR does what it does well, but when it doesn't, that scaling damage resist honestly is going to feel more like a joke than some saving grace. When the RNG stops favoring you for a moment, or god forbid if the enemy has a lot of auto-hit attacks (like the Talons of Vengeance have with their damn prophetess) you really really feel SR's limits, and I'd go so far as you say you're going to feel it more than with Shield Defense which has +max HP and actual resistances it can fall back on, it's going to be felt more than Praet Clockwork against a willpower character. In otherwords: SR's only sin is specializing a bit too much in a game where some of the better performing sets are more well-rounded. I should also note I'll only argue SR would underperform on tanks because of their built in role, scrappers, brutes, and stalkers aren't married to being unkillable but rather killing other things quickly, a tank doesn't necessarily have that option (at the moment) and with SR, the more you have piled on you, the bigger the chance you're going to start bleeding is. But, it's been ages since I've played my SR scrappers and brute from live, and my only example on this server is an BS/SR scrapper I have on redside. So, maybe things are different even outside of IO set availability. (which, I sincerely stress against focusing on as I believe this game is still balanced around SO builds)

>mfw unrepentant weeb especially as a 16 year old >Loved kenshin I'll just let you figure it out from there what my first character was.

Having played an SR character from live, the big thing with SR is that his has a lot of positional defense and... Actually, that's honestly it. Even other issue 0 sets offer more in terms of survivability options like Invul, dark armor, stone armor and ice armor offering resistance, defenses, AND a self-heal. Fiery armor offered more offensive options along with resistences and a a self-heal and a self-res. And having branched out from SR to /nin, willpower, shield defense, rad armor, and bio armor, I can tell you SR does what it does well. It's defenses don't fold like a paper tiger when looked at funny by anything with -Def, it has +perception and -perception resistance which, ho boy, lemme tell you: try tanking when you can't see anything to taunt, and it has confusion protection (my bioarmor guy tried to run the Villain Side New Praetorian arcs. Fighting Awakened was a freaking nightmare). But I do feel SR could be better as a powerset, and especially as a tanking set, because others just... offer more.

Necroing my own thread a bit, also because I realize I never posted the other half. Some mission maps that would be nice to see which could still probably run on existing assets would be: -Nemesis Tech Labs/Factories. We have a Nemesis base thanks to the RWZ arcs, but surprisingly it never really comes up again, and admittedly, the textures and such are limited, so assets might need to be drawn from the Clockwork maps and even the Antikythera mechanism chamber from the Signature Story Arc 2, both of such things would need a slight retexture to match the aesthetics of Nemesis. Also some bits from the older warehouse tilesets could help, mostly the conveyor belts. Otherwise I think this could all be a reskinned Praet Tech tileset making full usage of the bio experiment pods, prisons, and possibly retexturing some of the power sources. -Longbow/Arachnos/Council/Fifth Column/Nemesis/Generic Paramilitary/Science Submarines I think this could theoretically be pulled off using some of the smallest versions of the Cargo Ship interiors, remove a lot of the cargo and place individual levels of roughly Office height to give more area and floors to explore (separated by elevators/doors) and change up the spawn entrance location using an upside down sewer hatch door. The useage of load doors would be needed since to do the top rooms and give a sense of a rounded space, we could flip a cargo ship map upside down so the rounded portions become the ceilings. (at least the rounded portions we can see). And finally from there it's just filling it up and texturing with the appropriate factional assets and perhaps a few taken from the Frigate interiors. If a 'viewport' were to be included, perhaps a special observatory room(s) (which would need all new map geometries and such) could be made to provide a limited view outside, which could be as simple as a blue-tinted abyss with bubbles floating up past it or as elaborate as a mockup sea floor (though that might need new assets) These last ones would call for new map geometries to be rigged up, and potentially some new texture and object assets. -Council/Fifth Column/Nemesis Airship Biggest trouble with this one would be that the actual navigable mission space would only be a small portion to something set within a skybox high above the 'generic cityscapes' seen outside of the warwalls. Though it could be simplified by just making a 'cloud layer' floor with glimpses of a distant land texture map below (see Bioshock Infinite for example) or even just open water. -Proper space station It annoyed me to no end when the Maria Jenkins and Tina MacIntyre missions were redone and Anti-Matter's space station was still just a generic praetorian tech map. This one would hopefully be simpler as it would involve using existing tech maps but the tricky part, would be creating new geometries where you could plausibly look out and see the skybox from the Shivan meteor or Space Island maps. It wouldn't need to be all rooms, just a few key ones that plausibly would be on the outermost points of it. If one were to go allout though, a proper space ship could be done though would likely be done similarly to the Airship suggestion. -Apartment Complex/Hotel Interiors The biggest issue I can see here would be lag from a lot of small assets, but the basic idea would be to make a few interiors of multiple stories surrounding an open foyer with some off shoot spaces and odd accessible apartment/hotel room. I think the assets are there, we have them in the base editor, but, once more, geometries. Relatedly -Generic Mansion maps Once more, we have the assets now, it's just a manor of making some mansions feel large (like the Dr. Kane trial) and are not either run down or lead into some weird lab or cave. That's all for now off the top of my head that I can give some elaboration on. Maybe I should see if I could learn to map edit for the team if only to put my money where my mouth is.

I think this could mostly be mitigated in that you can only choose primary, secondary, pool, and ancillary powers, but not which powers specifically. Alternatively, instead of specific powersets, we could only choose a broad theme (naturally with power overlaps) and from there they can even get power combos normally impossible as a player. So if you pick a 'fiery powers' theme you could start with them only using a bit of the fiery assault mixed with fiery armor, but come incarnate levels they're laying into you with every single possible fire power in the game. Such could even be a way to not necessarily need to give them a full suite of incarnate powers down the line (maybe just the judgement). Drawbacks with this could include the obvious fact that not all powers are as broad as fire, such as Assault Rifle, even assuming we can throw in SoA attacks like Single Shot, Heavy Burst, and so on, they'll still have less than others, and then there's just those powersets that would need all new powers given to them to keep them in the running like Katana or broadsword.

Honestly, this would make papers and tips become pretty damn awesome. Coding nightmare aside. I'd love to give my heroes and villains their own foes and even their own lackeys outside of AE.

*JINJYO NI SHOBU INTENSIFIES!*

Sadly, i'm not sure if this is possible without either giving all lethal attacks something like Savage melee's bloodlust which is an external boost of +recharge or reducing their damage output. I remembered hearing from somewhere once damage and recharge rates are hard coded to be basically inversely proportional to eachother. Why the live devs thought that would be a great idea remains a mystery. Maybe a time saver on balancing?

So, what it all boils down to is that basically all factions that predate issue 18 probably need to be looked at for massive update in powers and such. It sounds utterly insane and impossible but holds so much potential! I've always thought Rikti should get some version of Phalanx Fighting and mentalists and Priests should have leadership buffs since they're supposed to operate as a psychic network and thus read incoming attacks. Then steal the IDF's generic '30% resistance to all' since Rikti Battle Armor is supposed to be some of the most advanced on earth.