Drastic

Badge names have been dead to me ever since I discovered that the badge for veteran level 69 is not, in defiance of all sense, "Nice."

Main problem with the April Fools Baby New Year model is that the little creature isn't smoking a cigar, and occasionally emoting listlessly shuffling cards or looking at a pixelated magazine's centerfold.

Direct vendor pricing is absolutely something they should consider. Multiple overlapping-converting currency systems are there to obfuscate game-time to game-resources over time commitments (it's why any f2p game tends to have comical numbers of golds, gems, supergems, platinum crystals, glowing platinum crystals, superduper glowing platinum crystals--buy 99 for $99, best deal!--etc in them; to keep players confused and opting to just shovel money at the game for a dopamine hit), and this here's a dead (but delightfully zombie-lively!) game without any profit motives anymore. So start peeling away the obfuscation. That then makes setting rewards per activity and time a more straightforward question. As it stands now, when you grasp the inf-to-merits-to-merit-vendor shuffle, there's a theoretical ceiling of 6.7 billion-ish inf to a "complete" build (67 slots, 100 million for exactly the enhancement you want in each. Not counting enhancement boosters and such things, also not counting incarnate stuff layered over top of level 50 base builds. EDIT-add: oh, also not counting base slots. So add those too!). Average pricing overall in the consignment house has a much lower practical ceiling (purples ~20-25 million, most non-purple stuff much lower, and that's without doing converter roulettes). So it's probably safe to assume the HC devs see that no-market ceiling of a 100 million per to not be what they want for players (if it was, there'd be no reason to take any steps against inflationary pressures in the game, because they wouldn't see it as a problem if simple market pricing approached and even exceeded the average cost of buying "direct" via merits). Presumably, they "want" it lower, whether that's about where it is now using markets, or some other level. I certainly think it's a lot better where it is now at average market costs than paying 100 million each would be!

I cheerfully stole this popmenu, thanks! After having a couple Banished Pantheon fights in the Dark Astoria arcs go south real fast on a Bio brute, I've added in: Option "&4 Elder BP" "target_custom_near enemy elder" To quickly acquire the lieutenants in the DA groups--the floating face underlings they summon up throw a lot of debuffs (defense especially) that can quickly stack to overwhelming You (me!) Melt Now levels when running solo at higher group # settings. (The non-DA BP groups can also be an issue for that particular toon, but the margin between staying on top of things and a hospital trip isn't as tight!)

My nostalgia partial re-create (switched from katana/SR scrapper to staff/SR for monk theme-reasons) just got into the 40s, and I like the look of this! Also in the choir that finds adding absorb a little odd. (He also hit a fluke brick wall reset-and-drop difficulty-and-team-size down against some Devouring Earth who somehow all had 95% chance to hit him, which really didn't seem right, but it really also felt like a severe fluke edge case.) It would take significantly more rebalancing because of weirding the probabilities, but I also like the idea mentioned earlier about making to-hit rolls pass the defense values twice--could be what Elude does instead, because of the superfluousness of how easy it is to get the defenses softcapped without.. And of course firm agreement that AOE defense comes stupid-late in the stock design.

I was only very vaguely aware there were some private servers of some sort out there, but never much looked into them--my assumption was things were at the level of pipe dreams and at most people being able to stand around an otherwise unpopulated Atlas Park. Which mostly seemed like unhealthy grieving by digging up a corpse and putting it in new costumes! But my standing assumption was that the game I loved was dead, period end of. Then a couple months ago now something got through my Assumption Shield (probably due to reality's built-in streakbreaker effect) and yeah, familiar story. I am nothing short of delighted and amazed the game's not only alive again, but in its niche way thriving. I'm very thankful to everyone who's sank their free time and effort and skills into making that happen and continue to happen.

L(onger)TL;DR: some players enjoy playing hyper-optimized endgame-facerolling builds and are irritated that there are, in their estimation, very few available hyper-optimized endgame-facerolling builds compared to the availability of non-hyper-optimized endgame-facerolling builds. This is framed as a Very Concerning Direction with Troubling Implications for Transparency and The Community, which the some players know their concerns represent a huge swath of despite what any statistics might appear to show. This Very Concerning Direction With Troubling Implications should not be construed as indicating that it is also a Very Concerning Direction With Troubling Implications that there are many available hyper-optimized endgame-facerolling builds because there is too much focus on balancing around such at the expense of non-hyper-optimized endgame-facerolling builds Additionally, this ("this" will vary based on every individual post and poster) is a horribly unfair portrayal which passes far beyond mere inaccuracy. Its breathtaking uncharitability is not to be merely disagreed with, but in fact indicates terrible things about your ("your" here will apply, varyingly, to every poster participating, reacting to, and not participating to or reacting to) intelligence, moral character, moral worth, and that of your ancestors, any descendants, and any related or non-related people who may have at any time had or have the possibility of having at some point in the future, a favorable opinion of you.

Super Speed can sometimes get glitchy, so technical limitations on that upper bound does make sense. Plus-and-minus balancing across the travel powers; flight being slower because of how flexibly useful it was for hitting rooftops without any troubles, the extreme safety of it for zone-crossing, etc., that all made much more sense back in live days when travel was more a deliberate-design time-consuming pain in the butt in general. But now since travel and pseudotravel is trivial from P2W freebies and cheapies, not to mention SG transit hubs, I think the speed of pretty much the whole lot could be allowed to be equaled out. That might even be a nice way to make travel powers proper an appealing choice compared to just getting by with using p2w jetpacks and ninja runs and such.

I'm positive I'm just reinventing the wheel here! But I've been doing some base-touring and seeing the amazing work folks have done with the existing base-building system, especially in constructing objects out of carefully clipping random pieces through each other/walls/floors just so. Stoves out of counters plus flipped over trash cans and lampposts and npcs turned upside down so just soles stick above, etc. The kind of stuff that makes me feel badly about my own creativity in a good way! And I had this thought: I think everyone could do even better work along those lines if they had pieces available that were simple geometric solids, ideally at a few different size-ranges (I know re-sizing pieces would be even better but is probably a long-range recoding nightmare goal), and color-tintable. Spheres and cubes and cones and tetrahedrons and such--a variety of those available would really open up the possibilities of what builders could do with clipping objects through each other.

The important question on this one that made me doubletake is, what IO sets can Flying Disc take, and should it be nerfed for being too powerful?!

Random incentivizing idea: add a few more things into, or similar to, the Weekly Strike Target approach. In addition to taskforces, maybe on randomized/rotating schedule add in specific or general redside/blueside/goldside arcs, have them double merits or a reward merit per mission, that sort of thing.

It probably doesn't even occur to a lot of MM players how much their derpy goons block others--since after all, we walk right through them all the time. If that could be extended to all friendlies, that'd help matters. The point about giant hulking pets also sometimes being a team problem makes me picture tying pet size to team size. Full eight player team? Your zombies are puking on ankles! Adorable and gross!

A gravity controller was my first level 50 back in live days. Big nostalgia energy solidarity vote in favor that there should be a way to overcome the level resist.

When I discovered Homecoming existed, one of the many little things I was delighted by was finding out the auction house was accessible everywhere (with instance-restrictions) via /ah. I'm sure it'd have all sorts of hilarious (from a distance!) jenga effects, but I'd also be delighted if vendors in general would work that way. Not in base or instance, type /vendor and you're in the vending interface. (Feed it a /p2w per topic! Or /rewardvendor or whatnot for the merit vendor.) Scattered vendor NPCs were a relic of live servers pre-IO issues, where just slotting up enhancements while leveling up was a matter of scrimping and saving; sell your Natural enhancement drops to the Natural vendor here, sell your Science ones over there, etc. After the consignment house existed, none of that really mattered anymore as the inf differences weren't worth worrying about. But as a next-best-thing, base p2w vendors would be a good addition.