MHertz

If you take a set with armor, or have an armor power, sure. And as long as you’re not exemplar’s below the level when you took the power. A Mind Controller doesn’t get psionic protection at all until epic power pools, which always seems wrong to me.

Then use dummy names with generic themes (Greek letters, maybe). It’s the same mechanic and I’m not married to the idea of fixed, descriptive names. The part I find annoying is that the classic superhero trope of a hero being slightly more immune to her own damage type, or even to be recharged by it, isn’t really viable here (nor is the trope that their power actually is their weakness — fighting fire with an even hotter fire). My elec/elec blaster should have a small amount of resistance to electricity, and I would take a weakness elsewhere to represent that. Yes, I know, that’s what Charged Armor is for, but such things don’t exist for every theme or damage type, and thematic stuff like that shouldn’t take you 40 levels and a power slot.

Hey dere, dis is Stickbonker, da Mayor of Parakeet City. I been seein’ a lot by lookin’ around, an’ dere is some stuff dat is real populist, an’ other stuff dat we ain’t been doin’ enough of. Da popular stuff: Runnin’ around an’ jumpin’ on stuff in Hatless Park Wearin’ super cool costumes dat make you look like stuff Hangin’ out in dat Pockety place drinkin’ all dat imagilicious beer Da stuff we ain’t doin’ enough of: Stickbonkin’ Talkin’ about stickbonkin’ Playin’ dat mission I made dat has hot dogs in it Den dere’s all dat stuff we doin’ too much of: Not stickbonkin’ Waitin’ in line at City Hall for a stickbonkin’ permit because dem beercats keep pushin’ people around wif pencils an’ steppin’ on da small business guy Lookin’ for dat boot I lost in da sewer in Underpants Port Playin’ other guys dat ain’t really you for tax purposes We gotta get on dis list of stuff, everybody. Especially da one about da hot dogs.

Spoiler alert: posts contain explanatory text.

I am on board with this. I’ve tried to figure out specific strengths and weaknesses but I too run into the problem of defining a category so it embraces everything. There’s at least four different kinds of undead I can think of — corporeal undead like zombies, skeletal undead, ethereal undead like ghosts and spirits, and superior undead like vampires and liches. They shouldn’t all have the same strengths and weaknesses. Not only that, but people will come up with concepts that defy categorization: a plant vampire alien in a suit of body armor; a mage with a cybernetic exoskeleton; a spirit possessing a stone statue, etc. However, it really depends on how the “body type” is implemented. If the type is merely a label for the buff/debuff set and is never referenced on the character sheet, then you could pick the “Robot” type without fear of the game thinking you are an actual robot. You could label the body types “Doc” and “Sleepy” and “Dopey” for all it matters; the label is just for players’ reference. On the other hand, if the game started to use the body type as an actual reference for what the player is made of — “Greetings, fellow robot!” says the Clockwork — then we would need to divorce the name of the buffs away from the type of buffs. I think it’s too late in the game’s lifespan to imagine they would start to modify the existing text and NPC behavior within all these prior missions.

I don’t think your logic tracks here. The poor design of and insufficient controls over AE content, and the inadequate discipline when it came to appeasing AE users with equal XP, does not invalidate the idea of any checks and balances of any kind in game design. AE was a monstrosity and it should never have been approved in its current state; it has become far more central to the game than it was likely ever intended to be (partly because in some ways it wallpapers over bad design decisions that predate it). In D&D terms, AE isn’t just getting XP from the Monster Summoning spell; it’s choosing which DM will run the encounter so the monster does not fight back effectively. Checks and balances are still one foundation of good game design.

I didn’t say that. You said that. I said the minimum graphics card that the system is designed for. Yes, there are events where lots of players gather — I specifically called out Trick or Treating in my post. MSR is another, as you observe. So is AE, when it is filled with custom enemies. People can avoid those specific things if their systems are not capable of running them smoothly. (Some do, I’m sure. I know I’ve teamed with people whose systems are so old that they zone in 1-2 minutes after everyone else. I’ve also noticed that large costume contests don’t even attempt to draw all the characters present — so there is a hard-coded limit of some number X beyond which no new player models are drawn.) For those highly-attended events, think how much worse they’ll be when duplicating MMs massively increase the number of complex models on screen. MSRs could become unplayably slow. I remember the days when people weren’t allowed to summon pets during Hamidon raids due to lag. We don’t want to do that to ourselves again. But if we are now saying ordinary door missions could potentially be more complex than some players’ systems can run, or that duplication MMs could bump against a hard-coded drawing limit, that’s a more sizable chunk of game content that could potentially be affected. Nobody wants to be in a mission with enemies or allies you cannot even target due to graphics limitations. So we tread with caution. That’s not to say this problem is insurmountable. Heck, it might not be a problem at all. I have no data on polygon counts, particle counts, draw limits, or graphics card specs to point to. I don’t know how many users would be flushed out of the game for having older gaming gear, if the devs decided to say “screw it” and raise the bar a little. That’s for the developers to figure out. I’m pointing to it because player models are a different animal from pet models, and it’s a thing we must at least remember when we propose drawing up to 24 more complex player models than a team of 8 can now produce.

Assuming the technical issues of how pets are hard-coded into MM summons could be overcome, this could still create problems. As previously mentioned, Masterminds can summon lots of simultaneous pets. However, I think the above posts missed the point here, and that is that player models are far more complex than most MM pet models. They have more elaborate costume pieces, requiring more polygons; they can have body auras and path auras requiring more particles and light effects. A team of 8 MMs, each summoning 6 pets + themselves, could put 54 player models into a mission at once, which might be too much for the lowest-level graphics cards the system is built for. If you’re one of the players who avoids Trick or Treating because of poor frame rate, this would make it harder to play on certain teams. Yes, Illusion gets the same ability, but not all the time, and not with quite so many models at once.

That is correct. As a long-time GM for tabletop games and as a hobbyist game designer, unfettered player-led design leads to power creep and munchkin builds. Arguably the game already has that with power pools. That is why the features would be a bundle or pair of traits: something you get as a bonus, and something that hurts you as a weakness. There would be no option for “take a free bonus and skip the penalty.” In the same way, power pools grant abilities with a bonus and a cost (Endurance, recharge time). If combining them results in too easily reaching absurd and unintended levels of power, then don’t let them combine. If changing the body type during live play is too easily abused, make it a fixed part of character creation (like Origin or AT). My current thinking is that the penalty will reduce the player’s cap in that field (speed cap, resist cap for a damage type, stealth cap, etc) in addition to a flat –% penalty to the stat itself. Lowering the cap hurts archetypes who can easily reach the cap; applying the flat penalty hurts archetypes who cannot easily accrue enough of that stat to worry about the cap. The trick is to give a bonus that is worth the penalty and vice versa. Could somebody use the system to build the perfect farmer vs one specific damage type? Sure. But they can already do that.

Of course. Every game mechanic does. If it is done right, the penalty would be something that actually hurts a little, which would make your selection much less frivolous. What that might be could depend on your AT. A blaster might not care about the resist cap vs smashing as much as a brute; but a brute wouldn’t care about –5% resist vs smashing as much as a blaster. The blaster doesn’t get many opportunities to max that resist anyway, and the brute can easily overcompensate for that minimal penalty. It might have to give both as a true penalty for any AT.

As a temp power, it could be an Auto temp power that is exclusive with others of its type; or it could be like those powers where the first one is free, but additional ones cost money. If each power were balanced with benefits and weaknesses it would be harder to game by combining them. Then you could say “I have a fire weakness because I’m undead, but my fire resistance from being a dragon cancels that out, so now I just have the bits that remain.” The player would still have a bonus for being undead and a weakness from being a dragon to contend with.

One thing I’ve often wished for was a system in COH that allows players to choose a “type” for their character that comes with associated strengths and weaknesses. This would be analogous to the ill-named D&D “race” category, but with many more categories available. Each type would have some small associated bonuses, like +RES to some damage types but –RES to other types. After all, it makes some sense for some fire-using characters to resist Fire damage (eg, salamander, demon, fire elemental) but others not to (eg, a wizard who simply uses fire, a guy with a flamethrower). You could also throw in some additional small bonuses or penalties to other things (global speed, global recharge, global accuracy, etc) or possibly raising or lowering the caps on things (capping RES to Energy 2% lower, perhaps). Obviously these would be tricky to balance, because there would be a great many combinations and synergies with different archetypes and power sets, but I think they could still be fun. Some ideas: Demon (+RES fire and negative energy, –RES energy and psionic) Corporeal Undead (+RES cold and negative energy, –RES fire and lethal) Power Suit (+RES smashing and lethal, –RES energy and psionic) Avian (+DEF smashing, +FLY speed, –DEF fire, –RUN speed) Or something like that. You could have a ton of variations, like skeletal undead, angelic beings, ghosts and spirits, androids, elementals of various types, fae (or fey) with resistance to magic-based powers, aquatic beings, plants, animals, various aliens, lycanthropes, and all sorts of beings that give the players a good shot at finding something suitable. Unless you want to be a demon rocket monkey in a magic space suit, then you’re out of luck. Edit: Obviously this isn’t going to happen. It’s complicated, damage isn’t typed by Origin, it’s a lot of dev time, etc. It’s still fun to discuss.

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.