SurfD

Completely irrelevant, but hey, you do you.

Would that even be possible, given that i think all instanced content is basically constructed on the fly from a huge selection of basically pre-fab chunks? Like, there is no "cave map A", rather there is a a preset list that builds cave map A out of a bunch of pre-made cave section blocks. So you would basically have to figure out a way to add geometry barriers to all the individual pre-fab dungeon segments for every possible tileset. I can only imagine what kind of a nightmare it would be getting that to work properly on something like the Oranbega tileset.

In order for this to work properly, it would pretty much have to be handled like an Epic Archetype, rather than a universally selectable power set. A proper "power armor" power set would require too many unique animation hardpoints (shoulder guns, wrist lasers, chest beams, custom rocket launchers, etc) that simply wouldn't play well with being universally available to people with costumes of near infinite variety. It's basically the same reason the Arachnos Spiders have basically nothing when it comes to diverse costume customization options. Now, if you wanted to make a "power suit" epic archetype, sure, then you could go hog wild. You would just have to make sure that it doesn't end up drawing the ire of someone like Marvel because it ends up looking too close to IronMan / WarMachine for comfort.

Personally, I would love to see a "Spell Pets" MM. The Night Ward living spells practically SCREAM "make me mastermind pets", and the thematic possibilities are practically endless. Fire/Ice/Lightning spells as the tier 1 minions. Healer Light Spell/Debuffer Dark Spell as the T2. Animated Staff or Animated Tome as the T3 Heavy Hitter. Lots of potential there, and having a cool "wizard" themed magical Mastermind would be pretty sweet. Heck, if you wanted to get really unique (though I am not sure the MM pet code would allow it), giving them a set of abilities similar to the DP Ammo selection that allowed you to swap your T1 pets for utility would be an awesome route to go. Something like allowing you to chose between all Fire Spells (more damage), all Ice (control through slows) or all Lightning (end drain or something) would be neat.

It does. Infact, in Incarnate specific content, your pets are brought up to your level. On my Bots MM at +3 incarnate, my Battle Drones all get a +5 level shift when in Dark Astoria, effectively making them the same level as me.

Except that they do. The problem is actually that Praetorian Contacts DO function exactly like normal contacts: They stop talking to you if you outlevel their pre-defined quest range. The issue is that praetorian "story arcs" are multi part, handed out by multiple contacts (lets call them "Super-Arcs"). Ie, the first "Power" story Super-Arc is not a single arc, it is 4 or 5 individual short arcs, handed out by individual contacts. And if at any time during the overall Super-Arc, you outlevel the range, the entire arc stops dead at that point because all the remaining contacts stop talking to you. Since there are 4 individual "super arcs" in each of the 3 level range groups for Praetoria, it is trivially easy to block yourself out of a Super-Arc you already started if you aren't paying attention.

1 - What would be the point of that, other than skipping a few steps inbetween? Like, if i have a level 20 contact, and out-level them to level 40, all they currently do now is give me a level 25 contact, who then gives me a level 35 contact, who then gives me a level 40 contact. Your suggestion would actually ADD more spaghetti code then it would fix, since all contacts have SPECIFIC lists of who they can potentially pass you on to. Bloating those lists up to include every potential contact for every leveling bracket that follows that contact isn't needed, when the contact system already handles it fine as is. 2 - So being able to organically talk to a contact you have never met without an introduction is "bad", but being able to hop back in time and talk to literally anyone, regardless of if they would have ever met you or even talk to you given that you are a completely random stranger is "ok" because "Ouro".... Never mind that being able to "collect" old contacts functionally changes nothing about the game at all or gives anyone who does so any kind of advantage of any kind. 3 - This already happens. If you are too high a level running a severely out leveled mission arc, you get nothing. No EXP/INF for killing mobs, no EXP/INF for finishing missions, no drops because the mobs are grey. 4 - If that's the case, every mission should have a timer on it. Why should you be allowed to pick up 7 different missions and then ignore whichever ones you want for hours, or days or whatever? Ooo, look. I have a mission to save a hostage that has been sitting in my quest log for several days. Chances are the hostage is long dead by now. I also have a mission to stop a bombing, but I put that off to run two taskforces, fetch something that Azuria lost, again, and rescue Percy Winkley for the 15th time. Why isn't that location a smoking crater by the time i get around to doing that mission? Besides, the contact's aren't designed around the condition of "when" you meet them, but rather "how influential you are" when you do. You outleveling a contact in the meta-game context isn't about coming back long after their problems might have been dealt with by someone else, because the first time they meet you is THE FIRST TIME THEY MEET YOU, and their issues are assumed to be being presented to you for the first time at that time. Them passing you on to another contact is never a matter of time, but a matter of "you are now so influential that they feel their problems are beneath your notice". Which is literally what like 90% of their dialogue is when you talk an outleveled contact. I mean, their "pressing issues" can't be very pressing if they will just tell you to bugger off to the next person up the chain while still clearly having missions available to give you. It is also patently moronic, as nobody is going to look at Batman and go "sorry, I know you just rescued my brother from a gang of Cybernetic Sociopaths, but you are now too influential to be wasting your time saving my sister from a cult of Psychotic Murder Mages, be on your way while I wait for Robin or Nightwing to show up so I can have someone less important do it". Contacts stopping giving you missions and passing you up the chain exists in the game PURELY as a mechanism to force you to move on to an "appropriate" leveled zone so you keep leveling. That is it. Finally, merit rewards are fine. Considering that you can only do any given contact's story arcs once organically, it's not like people are going to be able to abuse it for easy merits. Never mind that merit rewards are basically the payout for spending the time to do the whole arc, which they will still have to spend the time running through. If someone wants to spend their time slogging their way through a grey mission arc that rewards them ABSOLUTELY nothing for their time other than the merits at the end, then more power to them. I would consider it a fair tradeoff for the fact that basically the only thing they get out of the mission is the merits.

Would also be nice if hitting Enter actually cleared the "you typed an incorrect password" dialogue box, instead of instantly bringing it back.

Oh god, forgot about that. Had that happen to me on the "Find Percy's Soul" mission in the nightward arc, where it took the wanker a good 4 minutes to figure out how to navigate the lone, 40 foot long staircase leading down to the Tram area in the CTA building.... Entire building can be crossed in like 10 seconds, but noo, percy was just incapable of figuring out a single staircase. I'm not talking about "literal" pet code. There is some kind of code for NPC helpers that makes them behave like a "pseudo-pet" (ie, they never lose you due to stealth, and are always able to find you/follow you once you have picked them up no matter how far away you get from them). But only certain NPCs seem to use this code, as opposed to the ones that lose track of you at the drop of a hat if you so much as look at a stealth effect.

Honestly, It would be nice if they just straight up made EVERY npc that is ever supposed to follow you use the "pet" code instead of whatever they use for half of them. Basically, from what I understand, some NPC (especially the Combat Types that tag along to help you in missions) become pesudo-pets when triggered. It's basically impossible to lose them once you have activated them. Even my Stalker under full Hide+Stealth can run half way across a warehouse and they will follow with no problems. Doesn't work with every one of them, but some of them do act this way, They use some other type of classification for for people like "hostages" (either the ones you rescue or the ones you kidnap) where they lose sight of you and stop dead if you get more than a few inches away from them while under any kind of stealth effect, and it's annoying as hell. Heck, I can turn all of my stealth toggles off on my Stalker and still lose the guy who is literally looking over my shoulder because I stabbed a goon and the ATO Hide proc went off.

I would probably say "yes". The game was never really properly balanced to take IO sets into account, and when it is entirely possible to build basically every AT in the game to the point where you have at least 1 positional defense capped + capped defense vs most of the common types (smash/lethal) AND high resists to most stuff, it means it is entirely possible to nearly trivialize practically everything in the game. Now, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and a bit of context, in regards to the fact that the current "end game" we have is basically incomplete. The current game was balanced around SOs. Then the devs rolled out IOs and Incarnate bonuses, but before they had a chance to balance the game around IOs or actually complete what they intended to do with Incarnate content, the game shut down. Which leaves us in the state that the Homecoming team resurrected it in: We are basically demigods, in a world where the actual "god level" content was never fully implemented.

How often does this realistically happen in high end content though? There are only really two scenarios where this happens: - You are sidekicked to someone running content at +4 when no incarnate related bonuses apply. In which case, yes, your tier 1 pets are going to be basically useless as the mobs will be like +7 to them (you are already -1 due to sidekick, and the t1 pets are -2 to you, so yeah.). But this isn't really a "high level" issue so much as a "side kick + +4 boost don't mix well" issue. - You are running Incarnate level content in a group and do not have your full set of incarnate level shifts yet. In which case, that is more of a "you" problem, as you are already running at a handicap even before adjusting for mission modifiers like +4/X. Also worth noting, Incarnate level shifts actually shift your pets MORE in + environments to bring them up to your level: For example, my MM is +3 incarnate. In Dark Astoria, if I target my Assault Bot, it lists as 50+3, and my Battle Drones list as 48+5. Meaning that in Incarnate content, ALL of your pets are always shifted to EXACTLY your level. The issue you describe is mainly a I am sidekicked in a team runing +4 issue, and not an "high level, end game content" issue.

Not entirely sure I am parsing this correctly, but what you seem to be asking for is the capability to "pick up an arc in the middle after abandoning it" through Ouroboros flashbacks, and to be honest, I am not sure that is even possible without potentially breaking a lot of stuff. Under normal circumstances (picking up an arc from a contact), you can "pause" the arc at any time, because the game tracks what arcs / contacts you currently are running on a per character basis. If you are half way through World Wide Red and decide to bail out of one of the missions to join a TF or do a different mission, you don't lose the arc, because it is an "active" mission string that the game is tracking related to your character. Even if you change sides half way through an arc, that database of "contact interactions/mission flags" is still there for each character, and when you change sides again, it just picks back up where you left off. Task forces are coded completely differently though. I'm not 100% sure how the game handles a task force, but the task force isn't "owned" by any given character. It's more like temporary container that holds the progress of the group. If you leave the task force, that's it: you are done. Because the TF isn't recording/tracking info about your character specifically at all. All "progress" you made is lost and you need to re-start from the beginning. There is no way for you to just start up a task force half way through and "pick up where you left off". Likewise, if the temporary container that is the task force is ever empty at any point (Ie, everyone leaves), then it is just gone, and can not be recovered. Since ALL Ouro flashbacks (even the single mission ones) are done using the Task Force engine code, what you are asking for would basically be impossible in regards to Ouro unless someone was willing to overhaul the ENTIRE task force engine code. The only possible solution without doing a complete, massive overhaul of the way Ouro handles missions entirely would be to break every arc down into a full list of individual missions, and allow selecting individual missions from an Arc anywhere in the string (basically allowing you to chose your starting point anywhere along an arc), and that would be horribly exploitable. Why do you think that Ouro only lists "the Arc" in it's entirety as a single point of entry? Why do all 4 parts of Heather Townshends arc over 15 minutes for the reward, when you could chose to start directly on part 4 and get the reward in 1/5th the time? Unless there was some way to flag check that every mission in the arc had been completed before handing out the rewards, people would just fire up the last mission for easy Merits / Incarnate components, etc. The only way to realistically achieve what you are asking would be to directly change Contacts themselves, so that you could get the Arc from a Contact any time (even after you had outleveled them), as then the Arc would be being handled by the Contact Mission system, rather than the Ouro/TF mission system, and would behave like any normal mission or Arc string. Making it impossible to out level contacts is something a number of us have discussed in other threads, but the usual answer we get is "Just use Ouro", which obviously suffers from the issues you have already pointed out.

The complete lack of Male Seers in public facing Praetoria is kind of interesting. Especially when you get into first ward content and the couple of arcs that deal with the Seer Networks. You run into a lot of the "Awakened", who are referred to as either Ex Seers or people who failed the Seer program conditioning, and there is a good balance of Male/Female among them. Entirely possible that sweet, loving Mother is simply intentionally breaking the Men and preventing them from ever being complete Seers deliberately.

Freaks are another one. Literally the only Female Freak I can ever recall having encountered is Clamor, an arch villain with a unique model. I don't think I have ever seen a "generic" Female Freak Lieutenant, Minion or Boss, with the sole possible exception of the "Meat Doctors" who I think all use the same Female model.

Problem is that while this works in other MMOs that have fairly hard/strict "rules" regarding things like the Holy-Trinity Tank/DPS/Heal roles baked into their concept of team building, it's basically a non-starter in a game like CoH, where everybody is supposed to feel heroic and almost everything is intended to be soloable without much problem. Especially where basically ANY team comp is valid for practically everything. It's also going to be a complete nightmare to thread that line when we exist in an environment where IOs are a thing, and every AT can be built to be able to solo +4x8 on their own. Any changes you make that make content "hard" for tanks and "challenging" for people who are capable of soloing Taskforces is going to utterly CRUSH people who aren't playing at that level, unless all of those changes to the difficulty sliders are completely optional. Currently there really is only 2 difficulty sliders in the game as far as general groups go: Increase target level, increase number of targets. Increasing number of targets really doesn't actually increase Difficulty much, unless your team is entirely comprised of Single Target Damage, as 5 targets with 100 hp each are still going to die exactly as quickly as 15 targets with 100 hp each under any kind of AoE. Increasing their bulk isn't going to make them significantly more of a threat either, unless you are just making them massive damage sponges, which only really increases how long it takes to kill them. Increasing Target level DOES add a decent amount of threat, as increasing their level ups their damage slightly, increases their chance to hit YOU, and makes it harder for you to hit them. Main issue is that the Purple Patch causes a massive ramp up in difficulty in hitting stuff in only a few levels of increase. Maybe what we really need is instead of a 1-4 level range for the "purple patch" effect, extending it out to 1-10, with the ramp up in enemy Accuracy/damage/hp occurring steadily across the curve, but the ramp up in difficulty to hit being much more pronounced at the end of the range? Also, as mentioned earlier, proliferating the Ouro "Under buff/Debuff" difficulty toggles into all instanced mission content would likely be a very good option as well.

Wait, really? I don't thin I have ever seen it drop anything but a Common. Maybe just bad luck on my part then. Nice to know, which bumps the potential payout up even more.

The thing is though, speed running the Heather Townshend arc is still going to be less involvement for more reward than running a BAF. It takes me about 15 minutes to run my MM through the arc (which is FAR from as efficient as i can be if I try really hard), which Guarantees 1 common salvage, and a shot at the full range of Common/uncommon/rare/vrare salvage tables. I can do that twice, easily, in the time it usually takes for a BAF to form and complete a run. And I can do that at any time I want. It's also a lot faster than relying on Vet Levels to gear up. Especially once the Emp Merits start dropping off. Yes, vet levels are awesome in the early stages for helping you fill out blank spaces in your build, but threads are basically useless past t2. Nobody except people with shitloads of money to burn is going to spend 25mil INF to create a Rare component using threads when they can just run a few Heather Townshend arcs and hope to get lucky. It's entirely possible that the early payout for Vetran Levels in regards to Threads / Emp merits is a bit on the heavy side, but it's kind of hard to say.

The only IOs you should ever occasionally need to purchase with Merits are AO sets, and even then, buying them with merits is always going to be a massively inefficient waste of the merits. An AO set IO costs 100 merits. - For most sets on my server, they go for between 8 and 10 Mil each per AO. 3 Converters costs you 1 merit. - Converters sell for between 80k and 100k each. Even lowballing it at 80k: - 100 merits worth of converters (300 converters) auction for ~24mil (minus ah fees) (Sell 100 merits worth of Converters, buy your AO for 10k, pocket ~12 mil profit). If you buy an AO IO for 100 merits, you are essentially saying "It was worth paying 24 mil for something I could have bought for 10". Unless there are literally No AO Sets of any kind, for any archetype available on the market, there is almost never a reason to buy them with Merits. And even if there were literally no AO sets of any kind available on the market, it still would probably be a more efficient use of your merits to sell 10 mil worth of converters, buy a Hero / Villain pack off the AH for 10 mil, and use the remaining converters to convert any AOs you get to what you want than it would be to just buy the AO for 100 straight merits.

A few things to mention: IOs (Invention Origin) Enhancements can not be "out leveled". That is to say, they never turn red and stop granting an effect when you exceed the IOs level by 3 like DO/SO enhancements do. So in this sense, ALL IOs will "last till 50" once you slot them, as they never stop working or must be replaced. You could slot a damage IO at level 10, and the effect will continue to work all the way to level 50. That being said, the "sweet spot" for Generic IOs (non set stuff) is generally around the level 25 range. A level 25 IO will generally almost always give you an enhancement bonus that is superior to an Equal level SO enhancement all the way up to 50 (ie, at level 45, a level 25 Damage IO will still give you a better bonus than a level 45 Damage SO.) So most people usually wait till level 22 and then slot out with level 25 generic IOs or better from that point on. For Generic IOs, you can either buy them off the AH, craft them yourself from recipe drops, or buy the recipe off the crafting interface and craft that way if you don't get the drops you need. For the Advanced IOs (the special stuff with Set bonuses) you craft those from drops, or can buy recipes from the AH or just buy them directly from the AH. They will usually be SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than Generic IOs, so don't expect to be fully slotted out with Sets very easily as a new player unless you are willing to play the market for a bit to build up some capital first. lastly, in regards to "Last till 50", there is the advanced option of using "Attuned" IO's for sets. While you can't "out level" an IO, the IO will normally be fixed at its given level of effect. Obviously, a level 10 Damage IO is going to give you much less of an effect than a level 45 one. "Attuned" IOs level up with you, always giving you the effect of the IO as if it was your current level. Note: Only Set IOs can be attuned. Generic IO's can not. Hypothetical Made Up Numbers Example: At level 10, your Damage IO gives you 9% increase. When you level up to level 25, a non attuned IO still only gives you 9% bonus (though you never out level that bonus). An Attuned IO however will give you the appropriate bonus that IO would give if it was level 25, so it improves from 9% to say 22%. If you have the money to afford Set IOs, and are using them for leveling purposes, ALWAYS buy them in their attuned versions off the AH if you are buying them off the AH, as the cost is the same as the non attuned versions on the Homecoming Servers due to some AH tweaks that were made. Final note, it is almost NEVER worth it to buy anything IO related using Merits (even the Archetype Specific IOs) as Merits are MUCH better spent on things like converters, but that's an entirely different discussion, and you really should check out the guides to making easy money for more info on that topic.

Feels useful to who though? For any "real" tank aggro is never going to be an issue . Aanything other than an AV is never going to live long enough for someone to possibly pull aggro off a tank once they have grabbed it's attention, even if you did buff their health significantly. And in the world of IO, even a moderately geared tank is barely going to break a sweat soaking up damage, and that's not even factoring in things like proper Sets. It's far too easy to hit really good defenses on a "tanky" type Archetype once you move into any kind of IO. In order to make tanks feel properly challenged, you would be threading a VERY fine line of making stuff way too dangerous if the tank doesn't pick it all up.

Maybe paste the actual build into the post as well? Not everyone has time to fire up mids and import it before offering a critique.

Pretty much. The heavy level shift bonuses are already restricted to what is basically intended as incarnate level content anyway, so I am not really seeing an issue here. Being +1 everywhere else in 50 content isn't exactly gamebreaking (especially compared with the fact that your T4 incarnate powers are still fully functional basically EVERYWHERE until you exemp far enough down to lose them). Running as +1 in radio missions in Peregrine Island or the like is nothing compared to being able to obliterate crap with Ion judgements and the like.

A good chunk of the issue probably has to do with the fact that sidekicking people automatically applies a +1 difficulty modifier to everyone who gets sidekicked as they are effectively always 1 level lower than you, which makes things like Radio/Paper missions tricky, as finding full groups of people who are same level or willing to exemp down to your level isn't easy. Which means that if you are running at +1, all your sidekick buddies are basically fighting against +2.

If that is the case, the badge is badly worded, as the badge text makes it sound like you fought the Sentinel at Full Power, instead of rescuing the heroes to weaken it.