UpandAtom

superhero mmos are bizarrely underrepresented for how the market for superheroes exploded I read somewhere the real problem is Intellectual Property claims that Disney and DC/Marvel will throw out at you, and that's probably the real problem devs hit

Cryptic took the idea of Wolverine as a Scrapper to heart. Then Regen proved to be such a problem powerset they wanted to forget about it, and by the time Willpower rolled around everybody went 'well this is just Regen, but better' and never asked for it again.

The zones themselves were pretty amazing looking when they came out. That was from early WoW era MMORPGs, and I thought that the Shadow Shard managed to do what EQ's Plane of Sky tried. Shame getting around was such a hassle and they really could've had more of those super secret mole-hole caves to set up a network of them for faster travel. It was terribly utilized. All the high-level Hazard Zones were badly used, honestly; at least a lowbie heroes could be seen patrolling Perez Park or the Hollows back in the day, but like nobody would just go visit Eden or the Abandoned Sewer Network unless they had a reason to. And the TFs have some horrible ctrl+v mission structure. QoL updates have made them much less painful, but those were 8-12 hour long and you had to hope no one lost connection, or just fell asleep! They must've been planning to place some Incarnate Content in the Shard to put it to some use, but then shutdown shut that down.

They're all silly imbalanced, but they were supposed to be breaking the game (both mechanically and meta-wise) to lead up to a City of Heroes 2 from the sound of it so...mission accomplished. I wish that Masterminds didn't have to cludge around with that one incarnate power so much. If that bit of code could be fixed somehow to not make you have to 'prime' the pet summons so they actually benefit, it would be nice.

Obviously, the eternal war between Anti-matter's clockwork and Neuron's clockwork must be waged by PEAT clockworks.

Yeah, being able to select one of the fly poses or use one of the p2w vendor powers (rocket board/sky skiff/void skiff) whenever you toggle a Flight power would be neato.

Revisiting AR could conceivably bleed over into improving Mercs, as their ARs would be improved. Synergy! But the super-long recharges on half of the commando's powers (which he doesn't use particularly smartly, and he can't hasten unlike a player) is one thing that could have some emergency treatment. One thing they do surpassingly well is behave, I guess. You can order them to just stand back and they rat-tat-tat away without getting in anybody's way (they benefit from Group Fly pretty well. Maybe they should steal some Wing Raider jetpacks in-set :)) Commando's LRM reminds me, that blaster ancillary pool he stole the power out of is sort of wimpy itself. I have a flavor-themed blaster who took Munitions but it's not exactly a great app set.

I think it was supposed to be a Mot's magical netherworld miasma spread out everywhere, but Mot waking up congealed it into Mot's physical body. Most likely the devs just decided they were going to get rid of it for whatever reason. Wanting to lift the veil so you see Mot's big body erupting out of the ground? Players smacking into buildings? Maybe some kind of technical reason to remove it? Dunno.

I WISH you could yank escorts around like that. Sadly I think Cryptic's devs thought that would be exploitative since you could stealth and TP escort VIPs right outta harm's way, like some kind of smart cookie or something.

This'll be...interesting for new alts to experience. A lot of stuff only really started to shine when SOs opened up in the 20s. Then again it's so quick to level to that point nowadays that TOs and DOs had already become stuff you blew past anyway. Those poor Freedom Corps merchants all out of jobs, though. The interiors of those shops should be turned into Amazon shipping locations.

I think that adding some extra AoE into MA might've could've been been a change to, say, Crane Kick? Since it's so totally samey to Cobra Strike aside for one stuns and the other KBs. Adding it onto EC seems a weird choice. Keeping the aoe potential loaded in the back?

Being able to vacuum enemies up and plop them directly in the path of the PAIN TRAIN sounds heavenly. Squishies MAY wish to avoid it (some squishies are still pbaoe or cone based and could benefit, I figure) but hey it'll make it easier for the meatshields to keep enemies over at them and not over at the squishies, too. I swear i remember some powerset that hoovered up the enemies but turned them Intangible that was just terribad. in Gravity, right? Maybe that one should get the same treatment--or rather a more precision control: suck up the enemies and deposit them where you ground target them to get plopped out.

Serum has just terrible numbers. Improving those values and also maybe just outright making it an AoE that hits every henchman so you dope up each merc in the squad, would be a good start to salvaging it. Obviously would probably want that t9 godmode debuff crash at the end of it removed. That never made sense to me, as you could just dismiss that pet and ditch that debuff'd minion anyway.... I imagine adding in Swap Ammo isn't such an easy proposition as they use Rifle attacks and it would be a lot of fiddling around to change everything around to add an ammo type proc onto them. It would be like adding Swap Ammo mechanic into AR. *which would be pretty cool, too.

Here it comes, the Impromptu Teammates! [for maximum fun make each summoned model just a generic model that hit the Randomize button] 1. Random Muscle: A melee pugilist joins the fray on your side! With some mild resistances and hard knuckled punches, he charges heedlessly forward into the danger! 2. Random Blaster: A ranged trigger-happy blaster joins the fray on your side! He stays in the rear, popping off shots with a firearm. That's one office worker who got tired of being taken hostage! 3. Random Defender: An enthusiastic healer joins the fray on your side! He's getting experience handling his shiny medical tricorder, providing assorted injections & serums! 4. Random Controller: A smug controller joins the fray on your side! He vaguely annoys people by holding enemies in place, irregardless of positioning considerations! 5. the ULTIMATE, the AMAZING, the TRAVEL POWER we almost forgot! You bought a van to haul your impromptu teammates around! [literally transform the player into a van and move at superspeed]

I think they added costume tailoring to the trainers specifically because back in ye olde live days players would complain about how they had to dare the dangers of the streets to get to the Icon or Facemaker shops. That was also when trains and ferries weren't consolidated so a new hero had to scamper across the length of Steel Canyon if they wanted to change their tights.