Rikmach

It's kind of funny that the power that has heavy synergy with the tech-themed control set is from the magic-themed power pool.

I've noticed this, as well as similar issue when targeting other objects.

Exactly how does that work? Hover's faster than I remember it being on live, but not *that* fast. What am I missing?

Max is a contact in the Incarnate Dark Astoria storyline, His story arc is structured in an unusual manner, there's several missions you can complete that make the final mission easier- but they're all optional, and you can choose to complete the final mission without ever doing them. However, this causes a problem: If you do this, Max stays on your list as an active contact, even though he no longer offers missions, and should be put on the inactive contact list.

When I was doing the Flashback mission "Hunt Down Colonel Duray", Blood Widow Dahlia has a masculine bodytype. In all other missions she appeared in the arc she had the female body type.

That's kind of funny- Like, I don't *like* Bobcat, by any measure, but I find her antics amusing in that "Watching a train wreck" sort of way. She's pathetic and scheming, and ultimately, all she really wants is attention, and is willing to casually resort to murder to get it. She's like a cat if it were a person, appropriately. If you talk to her about what happened to her villainside, after the Tin Mage Task Force, she *almost* comes across as sympathetic when she goes over Neuron attempting to sacrifice her to Hamidon to save himself. She murdered him for it, of course.

Generally, the limited-use ones you get from missions I hoard, because I'm a collector at heart. I just like having a long-ass list of temporary powers.

No, there isn't, really. Yellowside was designed with the idea that you'd have already played the game as a hero or villain already and thus know you way around the game. As such, the content is significantly harder.

To answer “How are Trial Zones different from Hazard Zones?” It was originally fairly simple: 1. More Dangerous than Hazard Zones (Larger and more dangerous spawns). 2. Intended to contain a Trial. However, due to technical and Developmental difficulties and changes in philosophy, this became a confusing mess. I’ll go over it in chronological order, with the caveat that information about the Beta is based on my memories. If anyone has corrections, please share. Back in Beta, there were five Hazard Zones: The Sewer Network Eden The Hive Terra Volta Faultline However, something interesting happened during the Beta: The Sewer Network became a popular option to travel between the Low-level zones it connected to (The trams originally only brought you to the next stop in line, and you could only board them when the tram arrived, meaning if you knew the way, the sewer network could be much faster with fewer loading screens), However, since it was restricted to level 36, it was usable at the levels it would be most useful at. So the devs created a duplicate zone- the Abandoned Sewer Network- to hold the planned Trial, and lowered the level of the Sewer Network to level 1. As for the Trials themselves, two of them were tested: Faultline and Terra Volta. Terra Volta’s tests were successful, however the respecification system itself was not completed, so there was no reward, therefore it was decided to not include it in the initial release. As for the Faultline trial, apparently it was incredibly buggy and testing was discontinued during the beta, and the trial was shelved, planned to be released later like the other trials. For the curious, it was supposed to function similar to the Terra Volta Trial: Heroes were tasked with defending the southern part of the Reservoir (The area that was off-limits before the Faultline revamp) from waves of Clockwork, Vahzilok and Circle of Thorns. Plot-wise, it was the culmination of the Positron Task Force, the actual assault upon the Dam that was discussed in that Task Force. That said, there *was* one functional trial in Beta… technically, depending on what you consider a trial: Hamidon was present in the Hive since day one. Most people call it a Raid, but it was a big Climatic battle that is situated in a Trial Zone, so it might technically count. As for Eden and the Abandoned Sewer Network, No Trials were present in Beta, nor was there any testing on them that I am aware of. The first actual Trial came out in issue 1. The Abandoned Sewer Trial was released, bringing the number of functional trials to two. Issue 2 was eventful: The Eden Trial, Terra Volta Trial, and The Cavern of Transcendence trials were all released. Also, two new Trial Zones were added: The Rikti Crash Site and The Storm Palace. Both lacked Trials, but presumably it was planned for ones to be added in the future. This also led to one of the first inconsistencies (besides the Trial Zones lacking trials): The Hollows was a new Hazard Zone- But it contained a Trial. Issue 6 was City of Villains. It added Nerva Archipelago, which contained a Trial: The Tree of Thorns. It was the first City Zone containing a trial, once again introducing an inconsistency in the meaning of Trial zones. This is presumably because City of Villains did not initially have the "Hazard" or "Trial" zone distinctions initially, only having City and PvP zones. (Though a Trial and Hazard Zone was added later) The PvP Zone, Bloody Bay was added, which will be relevant later. Issue 8 resulted in something interesting: Faultline was revamped, changing it from a trial zone to a city zone, and presumably the plans for the Faultline Trial were shelved forever. I spoke with the people who have access to the code, and they say there’s no sign of the Faultline Trial in the code anymore. Likely it was removed at or around this point. There was also a Trial added in this issue: The Cathedral of Pain. This is the first instance of something interesting: Trials that are disconnected from their Trial Zones. Story-wise, this Trial takes place inside the Storm Palace, but it’s Accessed through the Supergroup bases. That said, there was a Game-Breaking bug found in the raid, and it was quickly removed. Issue 9 Added a new Trial Zone to the Rogue Isles, the Abyss, which contained a Duplicate of the Hamidon Raid. Issue 10 contains the second Revamp: The Rikti Crash Site is replaced by the Rikti War Zone, and the Rikti Mothership Raid is added to it. Issue 12 is interesting. Cimerora is added, and is listed as a Trial Zone, but no trial is ever created for it. Presumably, it was planned to have a Trial, but those plans never came to fruition. Issue 18 sees the return of the Cathedral of Pain, with the game breaking bug gone- but due to the associated superbase raid system being scrapped, the Items of Power are no longer rewarded. Issue 21 adds “Death from Below”, a Trial set in The Sewer Network, but accessed through the new Looking For Group system. Finally, Issue 22 adds “Drowning in Blood”, a Trial set in Bloody Bay, also accessed through the LFG system. In summary: Trial Zones that contain trials directly: Eden Terra Volta The Abandoned Sewer Network Trials Zones that contain Trials indirectly: The Sewer Network The Storm Palace Trial Zones that were revamped before ever containing trials: Faultline Rikti Crash Site Trial Zones that contain Raids: The Hive The Abyss Rikti War Zone Hazard Zones that contain Trials: The Hollows City Zones that contain Trials: Nerva Archipelago PvP Zones that contain Trials Indirectly: Bloody Bay Trial Zones that do not contain Trials: Cimerora

Why not call it stealth, and call the new power invisibility? Or vice versa? Infiltration isn't exactly descriptive, since it's not tricking people into thinking you're on their side.

My understanding is that coding user interfaces in City of Heroes is unbelievably difficult for some reason (Not a coder, so I don't understand *why*, just passing on what I've heard), which is why Null the Gull exists- apparently, creating an NPC you can talk with is easier than coding an user interface option in a menu. Wild. Either way, my guess is the "Uses existing costume slots" is their initial, hacky way of implementing the pet customization option using existing interfaces. IE, get it working at all. I'd be willing to bet they'd implement a seperate interface, or slightly more hacky options to mitigate this (IE, Masterminds getting more costume slots that other classes) We'll have to wait and see. As for Enemy models, well, hopefully people will add NPC costume options to the character creator so you can make them for yourself- for humanoid models, at least. And I'm sure you hiked through the snow to school, uphill, both ways, and liked it. Sorry, naysaying QOL changes "because that's the way it's always been" holds zero water for me. Because Ninjas aren't the least effective Mastermind set? They're the strongest Single-Target set that exists. This isn't to say it's crackers, though, it's pets have garbage survivability, and if you don't have a secondary that covers that, it's hard to let them actually deal that damage. Merc's problems wasn't *just* low damage. It was low damage- both single target and range, low survivability, and almost no utility/debuff/control, and the stupid AI constantly putting itself into unnecessary danger by running into melee to brawl or rifle butt, despite being designed for range. If you look over the changes, you can see that most of them are focused around ensuring they can survive, giving them AOE damage, and adding some control/debuff options. Is that a complaint or a compliment? :) True, that's one way of doing it. That said, I've also seen success in making big changes and paring back afterwards.

What makes you say that? Why are you so certain of that? Have you ever tried it? Heck, I'm sure there might even be people willing to let you tag along and watch while they solo a task force. (Well, technically, it'd be duoing, but if you don't do anything, it's mechanically the same thing) You're stating this as a fact, without anything to back you up. Well, yeah, they can, but do you have any evidence that the videos presented *were*? On top of that, /Demorecord has multiple flaws- one important one is that it can't follow past loading screens (So if a character loads a mission or changes maps, it stops), Glowies often don't spawn, Kheldians often end up stuck in shapeshifted forms, defeated enemies will sometimes stand up- so if you look at the videos, you can tell pretty reliably if it's a /Demorecord or not.

Uh. How would you propose they do that? Incarnates aren't just at a higher level, they're granted entirely new, incredibly powerful abilities intended to allow them to triumph over Incarnate-specific content. I mean, outside of the Trials, the only Incarnate-specific content we have is Dark Astoria, and that functioned by completely revamping the enemies involved, creating incarnate-specific versions with new powers, not just "Scaling them up", remaking every bit of old content to become a new, revamped Incarnate version if the person playing it is an Incarnate is wildly impractical in terms of developer resources- plus, it'd be kinda silly in-universe. Not to mention that, Incarnates aren't the only power boost the playerbase has gotten over the years. Hamidon Origin Enhancements let you functionally cram more enhancements into fewer slots. Invention Origin Enhancements did that, too, *and* gave you bonus stat boosts on top if you slotted sets, and that's not even mentioning procs. The game does not, and has never detected these and "scaled" the game to take them into account. The only scaling it does is based on level, and level alone. HOs, IOs, and Incarnate Powers make you objectively stronger than an otherwise identical hero that does not have them. And you're right, it *can* make things ridiculously easy- that's why there's a difficulty slider- you might not be aware, you can make the game harder when it's not challenging enough for you? I don't think anyone is claiming that Task Forces can be easily Soloed, Rial, just that they can be soloed. Like, Soloing Task Forces has been a self-imposed challenge for the playerbase since pretty much day one- I remember the old days when people would debate back and forth on optimal builds and strategies on how to do it. And this was back in the days before a lot of the stuff I mentioned before existed! Honestly, because of all the edges players have now, it's almost mundane when people say that they've soloed a Task Forces- That's probably why you're getting so much blowback here. People soloing Task Forces is old news and common knowledge. And I'm not entirely following you on why us talking about the well-known fact of Soloing Task Forces is detrimental- like, your worst case scenario is a noob might get killed. Like... Yeah? Noobs get killed a lot, by things a lot easier than a task force. They're Noobs. They die a lot, for a lot of reasons. And like, that's not much of a problem. Like, sure, they get debt, but so what? It's pretty much one of the least punishing death mechanics I've encountered in online games. I don't think the fact that people factually state that they've beaten a task force solo because they're highly skilled and have a well-built characters is going to have a significant impact on noob mortality one way or another. And if they want to try to solo a Task Force without bothering to try and understand *how* someone accomplished such a feat? Well, really, that's their own fault. It's not like we're on this thread sneakily attempting to convince the noobs that might stumble across it into racking up a bunch of debt. That's just silly.

Well, remember, Sustain is new. It wasn't added in until near the end of the game's lifetime. As said, Blasters Started out having ranged primaries and melee secondaries, only to have the secondaries given control/debuff powers, and when *that* didn't solve the issue, they got Defiance 1.0, and when *that* didn't work, they got Defiance 2.0, and when *that* wasn't enough, they got Sustain. Blasters have had a bit of a hard time of it.

Well, this was prior to Defiance even existing- Keep in mind, the only Archetypes that had their Archetype abilities when Beta was complete was scrappers and Tankers. Defiance 1.0 was an effort to *fix* Blaster problems even after they added the control/debuff powers to the secondaries.

Ok, kids, let a veteran weigh in on this one. Back, far back in the deep mists of time, there was the City of Heroes Beta. After their initial attempts on a more flexible power system (Basically, imagine having no primaries or secondaries or even archetypes- just power pools) failed (People either built unstoppable tank mages, or disorganized, unplayable messes), they created archetypes to help guide people into more cohesive builds, one of the archetypes they came up with was the Blaster- the idea behind them was they they were *all* about damage, giving them ranged damage powersets (Many of which they shared with defenders), and melee damage powersets (Many of which they shared with Tankers- efficiency is key when you want to get a product out the door and a good chunk of your development time ended up wasted). Keep in mind, these powersets aren't the ones we have now- some weren't invented yet, of course, but more to the point- they were *identical* to the Tanker melee sets they were copied from. Though, back then, they liked to make sure that each archetype had one unique set, so Electricity Melee was unique to Blasters at that time. Now, you might guess, this didn't work out too well. Blasters back then and now didn't operate well in Melee where everything hits harder. If you could imagine, Blasters faceplanted even more back then than they did in live, because they had an entire half of their archetype urging them to do something that didn't work great for them. Live was approaching rapidly, and the devs rapidly attempted to cram utility powers into the secondaries, grabbing them from controller or tanker primaries or making them from whole cloth- Ice melee got Chilblain, Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch and Shiver, and got redubbed "Ice Manipulation", Energy Melee got Power Thrust, Conserve Power, Power Boost, and Boost Range and became "Energy Manipulation", Fire Melee got Ring of Fire, Combustion, Consume, Burn, and Hot Feet and became "Fire Manipulation", and while I don't have records of the original powerset, I'd guess Electric Melee got Electric Fence, Lightning Field, Lightning Clap, Power Sink, and Shocking Grasp and became "Electricity Manipulation", and lastly, because they realized they had no options for Natural or Tech heroes, scraped together Devices right before live. We have, of course, have had powersets added since then- Darkness Manipulation, Martial Combat, Mental Manipulation, etc- You might notice that they're somewhat different than the originals, largely because they were made under less time pressure and with lessons learned from their initial attempts.

Yes.

If I recall correctly, if you have a very large team containing Kheldians, they have a small chance on showing up on *any* mission, similar to Quantum Gunners.

It does make sense: from the perspective of the person who gave you the mission, you did fail.

Super-simple summary is "Can do a little of everything, and can be very good at one thing if you focus on it."

Well, if you're going to do support/defense, and there's already a proven, functioning concept, why put in the effort? especially if they're freely going to release them? Seems like a bunch of unnecessary work for a payoff that might not be any better.

I'd argue the point, but even if it's true, Regen is still one of the weaker of the older defensive sets. and I'm still baffled by a dev mindset that adds contrasynergy to a set that's still not particularly strong in the first place. It's not like Reconstructive Healing has the old-school Instant Healing toggle.

Except the Pineapple gets juice all over the rest of the pizza, ruining it for non-Pineapple eaters. Source: true life experience.

When it comes to the *concept* of Pineapple on Pizza, I have no problem. People eat weird things all the time, and more power to them. The problem I have is that Pizza is usually a *social* food, often bought for a family or a gathering, and anyone insisting on pineapple almost always means people who don't like pineapple always lose out. To explain what I mean, let me give you an example: Say there's a small party with four people, and they order two Pizzas: One Hawaiian, and one Pepperoni. Two of the party goers don't like Pineapple, but the other two are fine with both pizzas. What happens if one of the Pineapple-eaters decide that they want a slice of Pepperoni? Now it means that's there's less pizza for Pineapple-haters to eat overall- they can't eat any of the hawaiian, and they now have one less slice of Pepperoni they could eat. In short, people who order Pineapple pizzas, and eat *any other* kind o pizza before theirs is all gone are unfairly taking food away from other people- and they do this all the time, often without even thinking about it or realizing what they're doing to the other people there. Like... be decent. Just stick to the pineapple pizza until it's gone, okay? It's just polite.

Right, but you don't pick up Regeneration Aura until level 28, (And adding more regeneration on top of regeneration isn't as great a benefit defensivelly), and Fortitude Aura until 38, meaning at low to mid levels, your only personal defense powers area Resilience (Weak Resist all), Healing Aura (Expensive on the endurance), Pain Absobtion (Has Contra-synergy with Healing Aura, Integration, and Regeneration Aura), and Integration (Moderate Regeneration boost), none of which are superstars on their own, or particularly effective together, or much comparable to the defensive powers in other sets. I suppose the cost of being an amazing team booster is weak personal defense.