Triumphant

I feel you on both of those, my friend. Whenever I read a well constructed forum post and see the confusion reaction, I always think to myself that the person who reacted that way must simply be too dim to understand the topic, or else they're just a very poor reader. 🤷‍♂️

Given how rancorous this topic is becoming, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have simply asked for a "thumbs up" emoji if you want enhancements to be free and a "thumbs down" if you want them to stay the same. Granted, this would only give us a metric for how people that visit the forums feel on this topic, which I suppose is probably not representative of very much of the player base. But it would serve the same general purpose without all the feather ruffling. And now, having written this, I've contradicted myself in my reply to Tenmix's post on disabling reactions on the forum. Ah, well. 😁🤷‍♂️

I actually do empathize with the OPs general sentiment here, even if I have to admit that the responses are pretty funny. 😄

The highest praise I've heard of this film thus far, was from a BattleTech gaming buddy of mine. His kid asked him to go see it. He'd seen the trailer, and thought the dog wearing a cape looked stupid and had very low expectations. He told me, after he got back, "I was wrong. I was SO WRONG. This movie is everything a comic book movie should be." He's really picky about that kind of stuff, so now I'm sort of stoked to see it (will still have to wait until it comes out on streaming, though).

Great. I hope your base never gets wiped out. I'm not willing to take that gamble, and neither are most people who put a lot of time into their bases.

What do you mean by lower levels? Or rather, what do "lower levels" mean to you (i.e. what level ranges are you thinking of?).

Well, to be fair, I don't know that this has ever been tried before (if I'm wrong, do tell me, please. I'm curious to see what the results were.). If I'm right in my suspicion that it's never been tried, I would interested in trying this innovative approach by adding a regular server that offers this choice, and then see whether it succeeded or flopped. Yeah... no. This argument has been forwarded perhaps dozens of times over the years. And we always explain that, no, actually having your Supergroups base deleted everytime the server is updated, is not a good option. Figure out how to update Brainstorm without erasing stuff and then- yeah, for me, that could actually would be a great option. I'm pretty sure it's not possible though, or they would already have coded it that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4amWTwO1GM

I'm a chronic alta-holic, so my "main" changes from month to month. Having said that, a lot of my characters probably would fit better as supporting cast, as opposed to starring in their own books. As far as recommending writers, artists, publishers... I'm so far removed from following the industry these days, I really wouldn't know who to suggest. Also, many of my characters are humor-based, and probably only seem funny to me. I'm doubt they would be well-recieved as a commercial product. I guess the OP's question doesn't necessarily assume that the comic would be made for mass consumption, though.

Snark, personally, I think you're missing a real opportunity here. You should be asking for faces with longer fangs and more evocative sneers. Perhaps several more "corpse-like" shades to add to the skin color selector. The night-sky is the limit, here, buddy... 🧛‍♀️

My Top 10 reasons for playing CoH (in no particular order): Best character costume creator ever invented (if there IS one that is better, please let me know! I definitely want to see it). Tons of people availabe to RP with, if I want that. I can do pretty much all content solo, if I don't want that. The massive number of power sets and things you can slot them with allows for near endless tinkering and experimentation with builds. Grinding is orders of magnitude less painful compared to most MMOs. It's free to play with all available content. It still runs on my creaky, old rig. After graphics updates and content additions it STILL works on my creaky, old rig. Player community is much cooler (and kinder) than pretty much any other player community that I've interacted with. Movement Powers (Though I could still wish for a way to implement wall-crawling and swing-lines. Oh, well. Nothing's perfect. 🤷‍♂️).

So, I don't play tanks as much (which is the focus of this topic), so I won't opine on the tank changes too much and leave that to the more experienced tanker players. However, I do play a great many brutes (one of my two favorite AT's these days) and I have to agree with tidge and others above, who say that Brutes (despite the somewhat lackluster ATO) are in a pretty good place right now and don't really need to be buffed (again, this is just my opinion). So, if tankers do need a little more tinkering (and I don't know if that's true or not), I say give it to them. Just don't be too hard on our hard-working Devs. Adjusting an AT's balance is no doubt a delicate process, and regardless of what you change, you aren't going to be able to please everyone (or to put it differently, what ever changes one makes will be guaranteed to offend some players). That's just plain fact. 🤷‍♂️

You have some solid points. In the wooden literal sense, I guess Snark wasn't asking for a fix to the terrible rooms. But, then, if a thing is a terrible design, my feeling is always, "Why not fix it?". Of course, as you very sensibly point out, it's pretty likely this either may not be possible, or is simply too much effort for too little reward, even if it is possible. While I do dislike the caverns and some of the other rooms mentioned, it's certainly not an issue that I feel strongly enough about to push hard on having it addressed by the Devs (Hey, don't let me discourage you if you can figure out a relatively pain free fix, though!), particularly as there are other tweaks and changes that I would rather see them lend their attention to. Despite my tongue-in-cheek comments (humor generally, and my humor in particular, don't always translate well to a forum discussion 😝), I actually have experienced nostalgia for at least one game in my life (Neverwinter Nights, playing on various persisten worlds, if you know what I mean by that), and certainly enjoyed a special and unique experience playing that game, that I have never experienced since. But for me, nostalgia is not induced (or dependent upon) keeping the game always looking and functioning exactly the same. It's about the worlds and players that I lived in and interacted with, while playing my characters. Recently, I bought the Neverwinter Nights Enhanced edition that was rereleaseda few years back, and tried to play again. The game had not really been changed in any significant respect (much less change than Live CoH, as compared with Homecoming, for example), but I simply did not enjoy returning to the game. There were so many things that could have been improved in the intervening years (Control interface, camera view, character models... I could go on, really) and having played better designed games since (CoH being one of them), I could not bring myself to enjoy playing it again. Honestly though, I can still relate to and understand players having strong nostalgic ties to a beloved game and not wanting that experience to be damaged. It's just odd (and, I guess, a little funny) to me that the numerous major changes the devs have made to the game (huge changes to costumes, a new archetype, many new power sets, lots and lots of alterations to legacy AT's and powersets, switching an entire neighborhood- galaxy city- for Atlas as the starting area, free base building with not pvp base assaults, easy (and early access to movement powers and telporting quickly via LRT, and so on), but this one thing- making some maps less annoying to traverse, is the thing that is the breaking point for you. But again, as you correctly point out, we don't need to agree. Your feelings on the matter are just as valid as anyone elses and I always enjoy reading and learning more about how player's enjoy this game (which is one of only two that I play these days), even if I don't enjoy it and appreciate it in precisely the same ways.

Legit. But this game has already had vastly more dramatic changes than fixes to crummy maps. Has none of that ruined your nostalgia? And on that topic, when does this nostalgia thing finally happen, anyway? I'm almost 54 years old. 🤪

I resemble that remark. 😁

Well, no- of course not, Snark. My opinion is obviously the bestest opinion. But I was trying to politic. 😁🤷‍♂️

What can I say? I prefer straight-talk to sugarcoating. But if it makes you feel any better, it's only my opinion and has no more or less value than your own (or anyone else's) opinion.

I don't agree with any of this but, to be fair, I wasn't there during the "Live" days, so maybe that has something to do with it. Having said that, one thing I CAN say confidently as a new player (well, "relatively" new. I started here in 2019) is that I couldn't care less about the games history, legacy (whatever that is?) or feeling nostalgia about anything that annoys me in the game (if it's annoying, I say fix it. Again, though- that's just me).

Sentinel (and its inherent power) are one of my favorite ATs (perhaps eclipsed only by the Brute- yes, I know, another controversial choice. I don't know what to tell you. I like what I like. 😝)

Those all seem like cool variations. Keeps the overall theme, but offers little aesthetic and conceptual 'tweaks', here and there, to give them more variety. 👍

This topic is subjective to each player, so only speaking for myself here... Plusses: I love to build characters and play them. I don't like spending time on grinding for inf to buy the items to build those characters (i.e I would rather just get down to the parts of the game that I enjoy and skip the parts that I don't enjoy. And no, test server play will never be a viable solution to that for me, b/c 1) Bases and 2) Server population. Minuses: For me? None at all. Now, having said that, I think this idea is a non-starter. Why? Because a lot of people (so it seems to me, at least) view working the AH as an enjoyable sub-game within the game itself. Like a lot of you, I am unable to see how anyone could derive enjoyment from this tedious activity. But that's not the point. The point is, many people do seem to enjoy it, and they would have that thing removed forever, if this were to be implemented. The only way I can think to get around that, would be to have a live-play (not a test) server that has the test server options on it, and I think that might require adding a totally new server, because folks that enjoy the servers that they already play on would probably not wish to change them in so dramatic a way. So, in theory, I vote yes to this suggestion. But, in reality, I just don't ever see it happening. But hey, I could always be wrong about that. 🤷‍♂️

Absolutely. It's interesting how this can breathe new life into an old character that I've got a bit bored with. Keep everything the same, just come up with a different name and concept and then rework the costume into something reflecting the new concept. Suddenly old character is fresh again! Huzzah! Nothing wrong with it, IMO. YMMV, of course, such things being subjective. 🤷‍♂️

I'd have to take it for a test drive, before I make a judgement (everything deserves a fair shake). But that's if it would even run on my janky, old computer. CoH runs like a top on this thing, which puts it pretty much head and shoulders above everything else that I play. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, that's pretty much my main gripe, as well. I could wish that they would go back and revise these to make them a bit more open and traversable. It's why many people will skip caves altogether, as they're more irritating than fun.

I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope you are recovering and do better these days. Be well!