Triumphant

No. I got it.

I tend to somewhat agree with you actually (certainly, I personally would NOT want to give up the P2W vendor). But having a separate server where people who don't like those things could go to find like-minded players, does not strike me as a particularly bad thing (though, of course, something bad might come of it that I'm unable to anticipate. That is true with any new thing that one introduces to the game, though). But If it could be made an option, I see no reason to object to it. If you don't want to play on such a server (I don't think that I would like it, but I'd probably take for a test drive once, just to be sure), just play on one of the others.

That also would be my view of this particular anecdote.

First of all, thanks for offering some context for why you would give it a thumbs down, instead of just giving it a thumbs down. Cause I really hate when people do that. It adds nothing useful to the conversation. But, to address your own question, the reason is so that people that think the game is most readily enjoyed a certain way can have access a pool of players that share their preferred play style. It would make for a more enjoyable play experience for players with those preferences, particularly regarding PUGs. As to how would make an new or "uniformed" player understand the differences? That is a more difficult problem to address and certainly worth considering, I agree.

I should probably not opine on this, as I don't have SR tank (But hey- when have I ever refrained from giving someone bad advice?😝) I do, however, run a lvl 50 (T4 incarnate) Savage/SR Brute. I've used this character to solo the entire Maria Jenkins+Tina McIntyre arcs at +4/8 (the baddies are set to elite boss, not archvillain, though) and only died twice throughout all of those missions. My Defenses and Resists look like this: Defense: Ranged (57%), Melee (67%), AoE (55%) Resists: S/L (49%), F/C (32%), NRG/NEG (20%), PSI/TOX (11%) EDIT: Also, to weigh in on the comments above about self-heals vs resists, I do run the Rebirth Partial Core Invocation, so with SR characters I sit firmly in the "Heal" camp. this is really just because I feel there is a limit to what you can do with resistances on a SR toon, and you're going to get more mileage out of squeezing more heals in for those instances when something gets through your defenses.

I typically watch any new Star Wars thing and then judge it on its own merits. I've enjoyed most of the Disney series (with the exception of Obi-Wan) a great deal. The Mandalorian and Ashoka hit all the right notes for me. Book of Boba Fett was too "flashbacky" for my liking, but once we got to the meat of the story, I really loved it. Maybe the Acolyte will be great. Maybe it will be another Obi-Wan. I'll reserve my opinion until I've watched it in its entirety. One thing I won't do, is form my opinion based upon the legion of youtube videos posted by whining man-children who have already passed judgement on it because the show producers or lead characters are women and/or brown people.

I know I'm going way out into dreamland here, but what would be cool is a giant monster attack causing a rail collapse and some of the team has to stop the train car from plunging off the rail, while the rest of the team battles the giant monster causing the destruction (would give the non-control/combat focused AT's something to do).

I've never actually managed to knock down a pylon solo. Nor have I ever been able to take down an archvillain solo. I do have several characters that can solo +4/8 content pretty reliably without dying most of the time. I totally get the feeling of accomplishment one would get by successfully doing the first two things (this is the sole reason that I've attempted it myself. Can I do it? Let's find out! The answer is no. Ha, ha). But I do wonder, once you have a character that has achieved that level of power, is there even any point to running +4/8 content any more? I guess you just move up to doing all 5 star stuff at that point, and then that's the new benchmark, and the old content just becomes boring? But skill-wise, I consider myself a mid-tier player, at best (and that is merely with regard to PVE content, as I don't PVP on any games that I play), so there are probably elements I'm missing here.

No idea how doable this is, but it's a cool idea. 😎

It's kind of you to offer this, but the quick travel macro button only takes up one slot in my power tray, so not really an issue as far as I can tell (though, possibly someone does fill the slots in all nine power trays. Hard to imagine that, though. Maybe with emote macros or something? 🤷‍♂️).

Don't feel bad, my friend. I did the same thing, initially (I imagine many of us did). It's not intuitive and there's no explanation of "start here and work your way up" anywhere.

Well, in all fairness, the mobs are never going to be "tricky", because the mobs A.I. is dumb as a brick. If you don't increase resistances, controls, debuffs, etc. how do you make them tougher? More hps? Hard combat AT's chew through those like a buzzsaw. Give the mobs a massive to-hit and damage boost? Maybe, but the players that like squishy AT's would moan about this. I mean, I'm no Dev, so I'm talking out of my wazoo to a large extent here, but it seems to me that you've got a limited number of tools to work with, unless you just want to leave the mobs as the ridiculously easy faceroll that they have been- which for endgame play, seems completely unsatisfying to me, personally. I know people say they want to feel "super" and yeah, I get that. But there's (IMO) a qualitative difference between being super (sure, gimme some of that) and an automatic "I win" button (no thank you).

No specific build advice here, but just keep two things in mind: 1) If you're having fun playing the character, then regardless of build stats or power choices, you're doing it right. 2) You have no reason to feel obligated to play the game with difficulty set at +4/8. If you're deliberately making a sub-par build for funsies, then also give yourself permission to dial the difficulty level up or down, until you hit that sweet spot of exciting/challenging but not overwhelmingly frustrating/futile. Also, on a good, well-rounded team, even a sub-par character can do okay in a high-difficulty PUG, assuming you've had enough practice at the game to get relatively competent at play (i.e. the game is very forgiving) and your teammates are sympathetic to your build choice (And I would say 90% of players I've teamed with are very laid-back and easy going about this).

Just wait until you've figure it out enough to get to T3 lvl incarnate powers. THEN, you have to figure out how to go up the ladder twice in the same set to get your T4's. Took me forever to figure that out and there's no clear instructions on how to do it. I love this game, but the way incarnates were implemented was, frankly, utterly confusing. It's reasonable that it's hard to get the powers. That's the whole point of end game content. The over-complexity of the system itself is poor game design, though- if I may be so blunt as to say so. Anyway, just stick with it and keep asking for help. You'll unravel this knot, eventually. Or like myself, you'll grow frustrated with it, give up on it, come back and try again a few months later, grow frustrated again, come back again a few more months after that, get frustrated again, rinse and repeat a half dozen times until you finally manage to figure it out. Have fun. 😄

Regarding new players: I think the most important thing is just to be as polite, patient, and non-judgmental as possible. When new players go into the help channel in-game, or the HC Discord, or here to the forums, and they ask questions or make a suggestion about something that they experienced in the game, don't immediately dog-pile on them and j/ranger them (they won't know wtf that means, anyway- other than someone is trolling them) and give them the benefit of the doubt as a new player trying to learn the ins and outs of the game. I think a lot of us that have years of play time invested in this game forget how many moving parts it has, how many unusual quirks (combined with changes that the devs have made over the years), that are either undocumented, unobvious, or a combination of the two. This can be quite confusing to new players. As with many MMO's, a new player may join a PUG to start experiencing the game and to learn the ropes. If they struggle and do noobish things, don't give them a ration of you-know-what by berating and start criticizing them. There's a learning curve to this game, and if we want to draw and retain new players, we need to be aware of first impressions and how they affect player retention. This bunch (meaning our collective player population) is pretty good in that vein, compared to other MMO games (IMO, at least), but it still is something to bear in mind.

Or, it could be a choice slice of hell. 🤷‍♂️ Enjoy. 😄

Sounds like an exercise in masochism, to me. It does make me want to design a custom AE mission for you though: Max Toggles vs the Malta Sapper horde. 😄

Shapeshifting: Take the forms of the different S.T.A.R.T. vendor travel powers (panther, wolf) + different creature types from the game (Spirit Panthers, Lions, Wotans, Hawks, ect.) and each power in the set changes you into one of these things, which in turn gives you different melee attacks and defense/resist modifiers, movement types/speed boosts, etc. Like Beast Boy or Changeling from DC. I like this idea, too. I feel like the various shuriken powers could be mated to new animations and repurposed for a set like this. I'm all about using existing powers, animations, and game models by mixing them in new ways, to add more power sets in the game. Seems like it would be less work than trying to build completely new things from the ground up (not that I'm opposed to the latter, but I recognize that the Devs have lives outside of the game).

This is a really tough question to answer, as there are so many different tastes, play-styles, and just different variables in the game itself. Knowing nothing about your play style or personal interests, I would say that either controllers or dominators allow access to the most toys (i.e. different kinds of power sets), which can make them the most interesting to play because there are so many different things you can do with them. Both are brittle AT's at baseline, though, and might prove frustrating for a new player to learn on.

I have to agree. It's a largely pointless currency, at the moment. The Devs have some freedom to really tinker with the game now. I imagine they will get around to addressing that at some point in the future.

@Seed22 I'll agree that you've got some bad apples here. I will also agree that General Chat can be a toxic mudhole, where other muckrakers' go to find one another and, for this reason, I typically edit/remove general chat out of my chat box whenever I make a new character. But general chat seems to be where most of those types of players gather in pretty much any kind of game, so that's where you are going to find the most abrasive players. That's true of anywhere you go on planet earth and an unavoidable side-effect of interfacing with other members of the human species. But a great many of us play here on this old game, even in preference to playing on newer games, because we feel the player base is of a completely different kind than those we encounter on other games. That's a statement of subjective personal experience, sure- and you're perfectly entitled to have a different opinion about it (your experience is your experience). What makes this game notably different for me, is that when you get the General Chat bozos causing trouble in a PUG, other members of your team will typically take them to task for their douchebaggery and have your back if they give you any trouble. Team leaders will often not tolerate such behavior and will kick abusive players from the team. There is (IMO) a spirit of 'we look out for one another and take care of each other here' that I just haven't found in other gaming communities. I mean, it could even be a sample size bias thing. Maybe games with a larger player base have a correspondingly larger number of jerks that make the players of those games seem more unpleasant, when they really aren't. I don't know what the actual explanation is, I just know that people have (over all) a very different vibe here than they do on other games that I've tried. Now, having said that, don't misunderstand: There are some forum members here that can occasionally push my buttons (And sometimes, I may have that effect on others myself- albeit unintentionally. Personalities are personalities. Sometimes they clash). I try not to let that distort my view of the player base as a whole, though (or, for the most part, even those players that push my buttons. Maybe they just have a very different personality type than I do. Maybe they're just having an off day. Etc.).

I'm not gonna downvote you, but you're dead wrong on that. This community is one of the best of any game anywhere. You've got bad apples anywhere. This topic (however you feel about it), doesn't make the players worse than WoW players.

Very strange. Maybe try asking on the Homecoming Discord, as well? Might be someone on there that could check into it for you.

I say that, because I already essentially said everything in your reply in the second part of my post. So, the only two real possibilities are either 1) You didn't read the 2nd half of my post or 2) You lack the mental acuity to understand it. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt on the second one. Thanks for erasing all doubt.

Try these: /bind lshift+lbutton powexecname combat teleport /macro Bamf! "powexec_location target Combat Teleport" /macro Back! "powexec_location back:max Combat Teleport" /macro Up! "powexec_location up:max Combat Teleport" Combine with tab-targetting nearest enemy and/or specific enemy target macro's, this will change your life as a melee combatant. 😎