MHertz

Inasmuch as D&D borrowed everything from everybody, regardless whether it was thematic or sensible, yes. Whether a superhero game should go out of its way to become “City of Warcraft,” and replicate every medieval weapon set with magic powers before we make it a superhero game, let’s not. The absolute worst set in the game is Super Strength. It’s the one damn set that should stand head and shoulders above the rest as being “super.” But it isn’t. Powers like Super Speed are … pretty lame compared to comics. I don’t think more weapons are the right direction.

Why do so many people want to add D&D-style or WOW-style medieval weapons to the mix? I don’t object to the idea that there could be a few here and there, but we’ve got mace, axe, katana, staff, and dual blades, plus shields and archery. How much more like Warcraft does this game have to get? Where are all these superheroes wielding flaming swords that we need to emulate? If we demand flaming swords today, tomorrow it will be poisoned daggers and plate armor and Bows of Frost +3 and Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Come on, if we want to add things to the game, let’s add superhero things. Wall-crawling, webs, grappling hooks, shapeshifting, size changing, chameleon powers, power stealing, secret identities, vehicles, that kind of thing.

Hmmm. A choice of animation for power activation. An inmate “entity type” for players that grants certain advantages and disadvantages (eg, robots weak to Electricity and Smashing but resistant to Cold and Lethal; undead weak to Fire and Positive Energy but strong vs Negative Energy and Psionics). Alien worlds at the highest tiers that are more than just “ruined future city where X took over.” Level 50s face currently universe-level threats, but it all feels very grounded on Earth. Tier selection. You can go from 1-50 as a street-level hero, a mid-tier hero, or a cosmic-level hero, and each path has its own worthwhile storylines. Sometimes you want to create a noir detective guy with bat ears and a cape who solves ordinary crimes, without being forced to go to alien planets and stop a revolution against the king of the Grapnex people. What’s your detective guy going to do there? Secret identity. It would be nice to have the option of a secret identity with customizable features: family members, profession, and missions that relate to those things. Arc-altering storylines. You get a magic ring, or your powers are disabled, or you get body-swapped with another hero. Sometimes heroes develop in unusual ways. Maybe it’s only temporary, or maybe you can choose to make it permanent. It becomes part of your story. Dynamic city zones. If you defeat too many of X villain, another group moves in. Spawns change to the new enemy.

If we're talking about added animations for other sets, I'd go with staff magic wand ray gun casting with runes pushing buttons on techno-gauntlet eye beams breath weapon sword that shoots stuff But then I realized that most of those just turn City of Heroes into City of World of Warcraft. If there's going to be a staff set, it should be a powerset, not an animation.

This is a false dichotomy. There are many ways to level up that allow a player not to know basics about the game, without implicating newbies doing AE-related farming. Running trials and task forces over and over again. Trick or treating. Council missions in PI. Letting other people choose the mission content. Auto-exemplar to lower-level teams and never experienced the late-game missions. Skipping the Task Force content entirely in favor of solo street sweeping. Not playing red side/gold side Avoiding whole zones of mission content Avoiding hazard zones There just isn’t a “normal way” of playing the game where everyone ends up with the same baseline knowledge of the game systems, missions, TFs, contacts, Incarnate content, and so on. One time through the game isn’t enough. I’ve played the game many years and there is content I’ve never bothered with. Does that mean you should assume I was PLed in a fire farm?

As do I. As I’ve said before in this thread, every player (other than a level 2 pure RPer) seeks advantages, not disadvantages. Labeling one kind of advantage “farming” while excusing others with the label “the normal way” is arbitrary at best.

I interpret the post that way also. However, I question whether the problem (“I met a player who doesn’t know how to XYZ”) can attributable to that cause (“because they got power-leveled or fire farmed to 50”). Take a basic skill some veterans complain about: familiarity with the city map. They’ll recall a time when someone didn’t know where Steel Canyon was. But that’s not just an artifact of farms. AE, mission teleporting, team teleporting, Ouroboros portals, Task Force max-level auto exemplar, the combining of the train lines, base passcodes leading to free citywide teleport stations, and other features of convenience have contributed to a game where the perception is that travel is dead time, and travel powers should be evaluated for their combat advantages. I can’t believe that all the players who can’t navigate to Steel Canyon are fresh-off-the-boat newbies to a 15-year-old game with no advertising presence, who logged in the first time and fell into a fire farm on accident. Even if that is the problem, destroying fire farms does not push toward the solution — maybe instead require players to visit a level-appropriate trainer, instead of going to Miss Liberty for everything.

I have experienced players like you describe, those who are obsessed with speeding through content as a group as fast and as efficiently as possible; I’ve had people criticize my build because I didn’t min-max every available stat (although I haven’t been kicked off a team for it, nor ever seen it happen to someone else that I recall). I sympathize with the idea that other players can ruin the game experience in an MMO. What I am not seeing is the connection between “people are bad” and “therefore, this XP bug should not be fixed” or “this playstyle I enjoy should not be disfavored.” What you describe could equally be a justification for literally any other play choice: market profiteering, PVP, jerk hackers dupin’ rares, etc. Yes, people can behave badly. But this is an MMO, so the devs’ focus has to be balancing the game for multiple players. People critiquing your build happens because powers aren’t balanced properly. People build to speed through missions and Task Forces because rewards aren’t balanced properly (making that behavior itself a kind of farming, the very activity you wish to shield from criticism). I’m sorry you have negative experiences in a multiplayer game. I don’t think that alone is a reason for the devs to build the game around a solo playstyle you prefer and to make it equally good as team play.

I don’t think so. I have a SG of what are essentially clones, all named Wild Willow (using capital i and lower-case L to create the illusion of the same name). Four are green, one is red, one is brown, and one is blue.

When the "individual name colors" setting is on, each name is converted to a fixed color — some hash process, I suppose. Is there any way to show which color the name is while we are building and naming the toon? It would be helpful to match the color of costume pieces to the name, or to tweak the name to produce a specific color effect. Maybe if you have a cold-based hero you want your name to be blue, instead of neon pink. Or whatever. Is that possible?

In my view, the original Corruptor sets should have been modified to be more like Sentinel secondaries. Defenders are mostly about helping others; Corruptors should have been designed to help themselves more (and if allies are helped also, so be it). Unfortunately, the limitation of the code against self-targeting really hurt the design possibilities.

I mostly do silly bios rather than punny names, but I have a couple. An elec/elec blaster dressed like a dominatrix named Mistress Hertz. A gossipy Arachnos agent who can’t keep her mouth shut named Widow Bird.

The nerfed Blasters by taking away debt and face-planting.

A set with no visuals at all would have an advantage in PVP as well. A person might not realize they had been affected by a debuff. I suppose it's also possible that being invisibly buffed could also be an advantage in PVP — the enemy doesn't know what your status effects are. The minimal solution is that buffs and debuffs from this set have effects in PVP, so both sides are aware of them. I should also point out that the OP never said "no visuals." That was me, making a possibly unwarranted assumption.

No, I get that’s what you were going for. I just don’t know how well that would work in an audio-visual medium. The advantage to gear and powers is that they provide a context for visual feedback. The animation shows a character doing something; the action has a persistent effect (smoke, bubble, glow, patch on the ground; a buzz or hum); when the effect is no longer visible and/or audible, the buff is gone. A “no powers, no gear, no theme” set would essentially be invisible to the user. You’d have to watch the buff icons like a hawk to see whether any effect was in place on your teammates.

I really like the idea behind a Batman-type set. I’m not sure this is quite balanced. Part of the reason is the obvious benefits to the Defender (or whatever), which isn’t in line with the way other Defender sets work. This set gives the character continuous +Def, continuous +Res(All), +to hit, +damage, +recharge, and Stealth + sneak attack damage bonus, in addition to granting additional combat effectiveness from enemy debuffs. This does have some holes in its self-defense, such as no self-heal, no self-protection vs status, and no self-recovery boost, but that’s about all it lacks. It’s kind of a hybrid between a defensive set and a support set. Also, there is only one bonus in the set requiring a to-hit roll (4: Reveal Weakness). This puts it above even Radiation, which has only two (Choking Cloud and EM Pulse) but it’s auto-hit e enemy-targeted toggles draw a fair amount of aggro, as I recall. Kinetic’s main heal is to-hit, as is that of Dark; FF has aggro-inducing knockback. Thermal has two enemy-targeted debuffs. This Defender set gains all of its benefits while drawing almost no enemy aggro or even relying on having enemies in mêlée range. The third thing I’m not crazy about here is that it’s just … a list of buffs and debuffs. There’s no theme. What kind of animation is there for any of these? Effects? The Defender just talks to his teammates? It’s a very meta set — seemingly built around the advantages it gives rather than a concrete heroic concept. I would revise it as such: Caltrops (click, targeted AOE, -Speed) Smoke grenade (click, targeted enemy AOE, -To Hit, -Perception) Tactical support (toggle, PBAOE self+ally + Def) Hallucinogen Grenade (click, targeted enemy AOE, Fear) Laser Targeting (click, targeted enemy, debuffs) Inspire (click, PBAOE, +Speed +Recovery, +Recharge) Smelling Salts (click, defeated ally, revival; +Def, +Damage) Distraction (click, ally, +Stealth, +Damage) Always Prepared (click, PBAOE, Res(all), high values for a short time, can be clicked while mezzed) Or something like that.

The question is in the title. I’m curious how many people divide their time between different servers.

I was on Everlasting with a level 20+ Shield/Broadsword Tanker, exemplared down to level 2 in missions in Atlas Park. As a level 2, Battle Agility was not available (I had taken it later, prior to the adjustment of power availability). When the lowbies gained levels, my Tanker’s power Battle Agility came back with a new icon, in addition to the existing icon. I could not move this secondary icon because it kept saying the power was already in the tray.

I'm not sure how this bolsters your argument that more absurdity is the solution.

Story-wise, when you’re level 50, you are facing cosmic level threats, aliens, invasions from other dimensions, time travel, stuff like that. Threats from outside Earth. It cheapens the idea of beyond-max-level enemies if they’re just loitering around city zones. There may also be technical or design reasons why the incarnate content is segregated: gating the content from under-50, setting up the level shifts for incarnate content, adding to the zone load-in with additional mobs, or whatever. I wouldn’t assume it’s just a matter of tossing some guys on the map and calling it a day.

What’s wrong with that? Characters with that level of power should be looking for extraterrestrial forces to do battle with, not fighting random thugs on the street who also happen to have godlike powers.

I used to be against farming, back when I was young and foolish and I thought I knew what it was. Today, it’s really hard for me to define some bright line in the sand that says “this behavior is farming and is not acceptable” and “that behavior is not farming and can be condoned.” Lots of behaviors in this game point toward players trying to gain rewards at a faster pace, or with less risk. Designing a mission, creating a build, and/or writing scripts to acquire game rewards while AFK Running missions in AE to reduce travel time altogether Using zone-teleport powers to eliminate travel time between missions in an arc Running radio missions in a zone so you don’t have to travel very far Setting your notoriety to higher level enemies and larger spawn sizes to gain XP faster Abandoning a story arc when you outlevel the enemies Speed-running a task force for the merits and badges Always running with teams of 8 when possible Skipping powers in a set that do not offer as much advantage; taking power pools which balance your weaknesses Skipping to the end of certain missions in an arc or TF Running radio missions in PI (as long as it is Council) Going AFK in a mission while the team fights on Forming leagues for special events Avoiding enemies too difficult for that level (eg, Vahzilok at 10, Tsoo at 15) in favor of enemies against which you can more easily succeed Back on Live, trying to get exemplared to the lowest-level person on the team for maximum XP gain Back on Live, herding whole swaths of Perez Park into a dumpster to be burned if you’re honest with yourself you’ve probably done many of these things. But somehow they are not all considered “farming” despite occupying a space somewhere on the “advantage-seeking” continuum. The more I thought about it, the anti-farming rhetoric was really about anointing certain kinds of advantage-seeking behavior as approved, while denigrating other kinds. What’s the point?

I don’t think this implementation works. The devil is in the details. ”Normal” play: you get 50 levels worth of XP, influence, and drops; you try to fill your slots as you go. Assuming you start slotting at level 10, and change all your slots every 5 levels thereafter, that’s a total Enhancement demand of up to ~475 slots. 2XP play: you get 50 levels of XP and drops and have a total demand of up to ~475 slots to fill. PL with 2XP: you get 50 levels of XP and drops, but your demand is only ~95 slots (total slots at 50). Instant 50: you get 50 levels of XP and demand ~95 total slots filled. Instant level 50s do not contribute to the available pool of money; they only contribute demand for slots. If they are bankrolled by another 50, they take cash out of the economy. This isn’t completely a bad thing — there’s a lot of money sloshing around and nothing to spend it on — but it would greatly accelerate the pace of hoarding names that cannot be reclaimed. The effect on prices would probably be to make them rise as excess cash is flushed into the economy (especially considering the insta-50s would be generating no drops). My solution for an insta-50 button is to get 1 token for deleting a level 50 character. Spend 2 tokens to have an insta-50. This will eat into the supply of hoarded names, rather than build it up to ludicrous levels.

It should really be renamed altogether. I propose we call the set “stickbonking.”

And here I thought complaining was the most popular activity on Homecoming. Are they nerfing complaining now? My God, won’t somebody think of the Stalkers? What will they do? And the Sentinels! Devs, don’t nerf complaining!