Forager

The Idea Police forgot to post that they see no problems with it.

I've always envisioned GC as an extremely volatile hazard zone. The skies, rooftops and main streets full of dangerous level 50 enemy groups fighting, while the poor and underprivileged are left to fend foe themselves in the neighborhoods and side streets which are around level 25. The Galaxy Tutorial kicks off with Statesman and Recluse smashing the building your little level 1 is. People are dying while those two idiots fight for the news cameras. I thought the zone could be commentary on that divide. Every war usually has at least one other war going on underneath. A lot it lines up with your ideas, but I've got Skulls inside the War Walls, not Clockwork. Low level players are forced to deal with them to travel to the zone, which is supposed to be restricted to Security Level 50. I have put some of this in AE arcs, but I have a little pipe dream called "City of Heroes 2: As Above, So Below" which splits the players by "street level" and "global threat level" rather than by alignment.

Kinda like how everyone remembers Iron Man's sacrifice in Endgame, but only a few people think about how that Soul Stone got there.

That's fine. I definitely am. I have stated that explicitly, multiple times. A player. The GM said they want players to trust the system. If they want players to trust the system for reporting harassment, players have to know what happens when they report harassment. This is a few times that you have returned to this talking point of people arguing, and assigned it to me. You care if they argue. You keep bringing it up. I don't care if they argue and neither should anyone else. It's fine. Offenders getting their feelings hurt because people know they got in trouble is a non-problem. Victims being uncertain about whether or not they are being protected is a problem.

Yikes... I was surprised that some are arguing against accountability, but I didn't think anyone would make any arguments for overreach.

You can prohibit spam, abuse or harassment... but you shouldn't ban someone from just discussing a thing that happened to them with willing listeners. That would be a huge reach, even for a private entity. One of the common objections are these hypothetical tough conversations that a GM might have to have. If there was a rule against discussing it, you are guaranteeing more GM work. Evidence that the rule was broken would be flying all over the place, but finding enough evidence to take action would take a ton of legwork. I just need someone saying "I heard you got banned" and a GM would have to track down the rest to actually stop it. The solution is for GMs to enforce the rules fairly and consistently, tell the victim what actions they took, then close the case. People can think what they want and say what they want. If someone involved breaks the rules again, or in retaliation... repeat the process.

Or maybe they give it to Manticore and the costume is all baggy.

Some people struggle with a single boss, some can solo AVs. Some people think if they need to use inspirations, it's too hard. I wouldn't worry about satisfying everyone, especially considering the number of people who will play your arc. But adding a few armor/hp powers to bosses sounds like the closest thing to what you're looking for. My personal feelings about it? Don't sweat the xp. It's broken and wrong. Make something that tells the story you want to tell. Make something you enjoy playing.

One usually follows the other.

What happens if you kill the mob that is attacking you?

I went in solo with a pretty tough Blaster at +1/x2. I don't know if it was the power selections or what but the AV ran ALL OVER constantly, jumping on top of containers and even up into the ceiling rafters... so the repel + the robot summons turned that into a wild time. Whatever the phase or "only affecting self" power was made keeping up with the heal tough too. It was a challenging fight and I did need my Lore pets. We fought for quite awhile. I'm not sure how long the second AV went, but I never put him down. He was tearing apart the gun drone too fast and healing. If I ran, not enough damage. If I didn't run, melee death. I think could have got him with a full inspiration tray and a little more discipline, but I gave up. If the first guy was just Robotics/Force Field, that's a pretty cool combo for an AV fight. I don't know what the second guy had other than Rad Melee, but both AVs were very interesting fights.

This reminds me of this PUG strike force I was on a couple months ago. There was a guy who was ranting about this. He couldn't find the TT and had a meltdown, spamming the chat about how stupid we all were and how none of us knew the $loc command. He kept posting his coordinates and was like "I bet none of you know how to do this!" Like 20 times. It went on for a crazy long time. He also sucked and died a lot. Anyway... I like "here" better. I'm not sure why.

Oh, ok I get it. You're talking about as "3 options." In that case, yeah number 2 would totally be possible. It should be possible, because the GM should tell the victim what actions, if any, were taken. That's fine.

Whoops. Laucianna is not detailing 3 options. She's giving 3 example outcomes if players DO find out what happens. The first one is the GM telling the complainant that no action will be taken. Right. She is saying it should be possible and that they should tell someone what actions they took. Umm... she does think it lol. That's exactly what she is suggesting. That's exactly what we are arguing should happen. It's not an option. It's an example of how it should work.

My stance is "make the punishments known to ensure fairness and give victims of harassment peace of mind."

Whoops. They want players to trust the system. That's what the GM said, at least. If they don't want that, then of course there's no reason to be accountable.

That's fine.

The players. The people in charge.

Yikes. We are talking about fairness, accountability and a host of other ethical considerations. Maybe you personally think it's ok to keep people in the dark for their own good, or your own good or a greater good... or any reason at all, but that is an ethical choice. Maybe you don't personally think it's unethical. We are talking about an authority with an interest in people's safety and trust. That's... lol... sorry there's no gentle way: that just is an ethical issue. To suggest that it has "nothing to do with ethics" is objectively false. Ethics is a broad and complicated subject and at a certain point it becomes open to interpretation, but like I said... this is pretty basic stuff. Good luck, buddy.

Businesses hide the results of their internal investigations because investigating their employees is essentially investigating themselves. It's inherently unethical. If you made a complaint about Homecoming staff, it would make sense for them to do this to protect themselves. But we are not employees of Homecoming. We are users, so this should be more akin to a justice system than HR policy. When you report a crime, the authorities are legally required to notify you whether the offender is charged or not, when their court date is and when they are released. This is fairly basic ethics. "Offender privacy" is a laughable concept in real life, and even funnier in an anonymous online game. The only reason to avoid accountability is so that you don't have to enforce the rules consistently and fairly.

That's fine. If the rules are enforced consistently and the decisions are made based on evidence, this is a non-problem. Anyone who is unhappy with the rules being enforced fairly is unhappy with the rules, so it's ok for them to be unhappy. Peace of mind for the victims of harassment. Faith in the system. Transparency and accountability for the people enforcing the rules. A safe and fair environment.

I see the ROGUE in there for sure. It sounds like dominator assaults as a primary and secondaries with a combination of debuff and weaker controls, similar to Blasters' /devices would be the ticket. The other blaster secondaries would have to be Devicified.

Someone write this script!

I think that's certainly how a lot of people play... Others just play their character through the task forces, slot with SO's, convert to IOs as they can and only buy what that character can afford. Some bankroll their new toons, some don't. Who are you trying to slow down? Any reductions in influence gain or availability of enhancements would hurt the traditional player exponentially more than the farmers. TL;DR Raising prices hurts poor people more than rich people.

The Roman and Greek customs were awesome. You put a lot of work into populating those enemy groups. They integrate into the game so well that they didn't immediately stick out as customs. The river god AV was badass. The Stygian Soldiers were... interesting looking lol. I love that there was a story-based reason for them being bosses. They made the last AV fight pretty tricky. I had to combat TP all over.