Cancrusher

@Shadowlith I COULDN'T SAY. WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT AND LET US KNOW?

City of heroes is like in the old G.I. JOE cartoons from the 80's. Everybody is using guns and bombs and flamethrowers and so on, but you just get blown into the air and knocked out when you hit the ground. There's a few story arcs where villains make the heroes take a dirt nap (Darrin Wade/Statesman, etc.) but, other than that, it's cartoon/golden and silver age cartoon violence.

It is true, and has been thoroughly addressed by the Devs as to why it is true. Ah, nevermind, I see Shardwarrior has covered the essentials...

Mainly applies to demons, but to all MM to a lesser extent: Dozens of pets running around, obstructing my view of the battlespace and generally distracting me. Of course, this applies to when I team with MM's, as well. My solution to the first problem? Don't play Masterminds. My solution to the 2nd problem? Suck it up. If I were going to name a second thing, though, it would be what @Neiska ^ said.

So, you're a masochist? 😁

That's actually Luke's older cousin, Puke Lars. He falls in with a speeder bike gang very young and comes to a bad end. Most unfortunate.

I gotta go with no on everything you just suggested. I hate social media drek like facebook, twitter, etc. and certainly don't want the game to become mainly about that. Although, you're right that we aren't going to see a lot of players that don't have a special attachment to this game. It's old, and there's a lot of new games that will always attract the lion's share of players. 🤷‍♂️ So, promote CoH as a social platform and virtual chatroom with a game side-gig?: No. That's not what is. That's not what the dedicated player base wants it to be. Even dedicated players use Discord for the communication aspect (barring in-game, text-based RP, of course). And pretty much everyone uses Discord these days, so that suggestion is a non-starter. Civilian mode: Toggle the walk button. And you get 10 action trays, already. While, as an avid RP'er, I would never veto the idea of adding more emotes, the idea that this will draw in more players is just not realistic. More Neutral Areas: There are plenty of neutral areas in the game to chat (which people do, frequently), not to mention the 100's of player-run clubs and other places.

Today I was chasing passive accolades with my Stj/Shld scrapper. I'm doing that Maria Jenkins mission where you go to Praetorian Earth to fight Malaise and Mother Mayhem. On the first level of the asylum we meet the initial group of scryers and such. Shield has somewhat poor defense/resist to Psi, so I'm really being challenged (set to +4/8). We defeat all the enemies handily, though I'm quite beat up in the process. I cursor-hover over Penny and notice (after destroying about 8 enemy psychics) she is completely uninjured. Out of morbid curiosity, I lead her through the rest of the mission, let her draw aggro, then disengage and hide once the battle is joined. Occasionally I'll get a bit of aggro spillover (a Ranger, or something, which I put down with a single crushing uppercut to the chin). Long story short: Penny solos the rest of the mission. She crushes Malaise. She crushes Mother Mayhem. She sends their mind slaves fleeing in terror like whipped dogs. When the battle ceases, she is unscathed. Friends, do not #$*! with this kid. Ever. And pray she never decides to work for the other side. 😬

I mean, the ebil character names are mostly my villainous rogues, doing nasty shenanigans in the blue guys territory (okay, I do have plenty of heroes, too.). 😁

Yeah, just aim for the middle. You'll usually get a fair number of them. Sometimes you may just trim the edges of the herd. Whateves. Keep hammering those buttons and they go down eventually. Also, over time you'll get more of a feel for how to use them. Do a lot of solo radio/paper missions to practice, if you're feeling self-conscious about it. You'll get the knack, eventually.

@oldskool I do enjoy the class, oddly enough. I have an nrg/SR, BR/nrg, fire/inv, and dark/dark. Thus far, I've only levelled the 1st two to 50, though. The Sentinel was designed to be a sturdy, ranged combat AT, but the damage output generally makes it feel more like a fire support AT. The other pure combat AT's in CoX are such highly efficient DPS, though, that fire support simply isn't needed (and often not very impactful) in team play. I actually enjoy the class more in solo play, I think, where it provides an interesting and challenging play experience. I would like to see a little bump to the AT's damage, though. Either that, or a major improvement to the opportunity mechanic to make it much more effective. Obviously, you don't want to bump the damage to the extent that it makes blasters irrelevant. I think that concern is probably why the devs originally erred so strongly on the side of caution. That's generally the right attitude, they just took it a bit too far (IMO). Regardless, for certain character concepts that I have, Sentinels (underperforming, or not) are sometimes the only things that will satisfy me in exploring that concept.

In my experience, my Sents don't primarily die because their mitigation up close is inferior to other combat AT's. They die, because the Sentinels damage output is too low to thin the herd fast enough to prevent the incoming damage from chewing through their armor. That's anecdotal, of course, but that's been my experience with playing Sentinels, so far.

@Troo has it exactly right. To the game stream junkies, City of Heroes is the old janky and the latest, greatest is the new shiny. I'm not saying that streaming won't garner ANY interest or bring in ANY new players. It's just that you're a little like Sisyphus trying to push his boulder up the hill here. 🤷‍♂️

I like several of these suggestions, for the most part, but I don't play any of them unless the set comes with serious regeneration debuff protection. 🤷‍♂️

What do we call the power? Close quarters hot rubbin'? 😂 I'm just joshing ya. I don't really give a hoot about this, one way or the other. 🤷‍♂️

My NRG/SR Sentinel and BR/NRG Sentinel boost the morale of any team they are on, because their wimpy dmg makes the rest of the team feel like conquering gods by comparison. You're welcome. 😁👍* *Except for the knockback crybabies, with regard to my NRG Sent. To you guys, I say... oh, wait. Nevermind- You're welcome. 😁 👍

Not gonna lie: Snarky's curmudgeonly commentary is at least 1/10th of the reason I keep playing COH. 😁 For those of you really worried about this issue, I'd like to point out the following: The continued existence of this game is not at all tied to the number of players in the first place. It is not a for-profit enterprise. It's a hobby ran by the developers and the game and servers will remain for as long as the devs are interested and enjoying the task of hosting the servers. To ensure the long term existence of Homecoming, I would suggest that it's far more important to just keep enjoying the game that we have, while expressing to the devs how much we appreciate their good efforts. Also, keep our suggestions helpful and polite without too much bitching and moaning.

No, guy- look. I LOVE this game. But, yeah, it's old. Pong isn't old- it's a historical artifact (just like me, who played it shortly after it came out).

Such a clever use of stance posture to make the jet packs look like shoulder mounted energy cannons. Sir, I salute you! (Frankly, the cool factor of this compels me to steal it for one of my own power armor ideas. I hope that doesn't offend you).

The suggestion of new body types has been made before. Myself, and many others, have often lamented the fact that there is no huge body type for females. I believe the Devs have said that the amount of time and effort involved in making a new body type and then making existing costume pieces compatible (not to mention powerset animations, etc.) is simply not practical for the small team that they have and the time that they have available (they all have regular lives and full-time jobs, etc. Homecoming is a labor of love/hobby). Should this ever change, I fully approve of the suggestion of adding fat body types to the mix. 😁👍

Maybe it could be done. I'm not against it being done. However, I would rather see that development time and effort focused on shoring up existing content (of which there is much) that needs some TLC, and adding new challenging mission content for high lvl players. New AT's and powersets should be considered after attending to the other stuff.* *As with all my posts, this is just my opinion. I'm not trying to be dogmatic, here.

You are correct. I've played on all of these servers. I always come back to Homecoming (well named, isn't it? 😉). The population problem is due to the fact that this is a niche game that is almost 20 years old. It has die hard fans and a certain number of them (a fairly large number) will always love and be devoted to playing it, for as long as it remains available to play. But those hard core players are the ones who remain (us) after the initial thrill of the announcement that COH was back. Probably, the total number of players does not support the number of shards that we have available, and those playing on the small population servers will have to make the very hard decision to migrate, regardless of how much of a PITA that may be (I do sympathize, particularly with those that have spent considerable time building base, but it is what it is). I play on Everlasting and there are many active supergroups and always people to team with day and night. I consider the population to be satisfactory (even more than adequate) and continue to have a great time. I think, with regard to player population, active players need to be practical and realistic about their expectations regarding this beloved (but very old) game. I know there will those who continue to beat the drum, insisting that we can attract a whole new legion of players to this game. If you're right, swell- more power to you. By all means, do recruit them. I have nothing against more players. However, I think you'll be disappointed in the payoff for your efforts. Just one guys opinion and all that jazz. YMMV. Etc.

Well, if you're just introducing someone to the game, you're probably going to be playing at +0 notoriety. In that case, any AT choice is mostly fine (although Melee and Sentinels are simpler to train on, IMO). The game is easy enough at base difficulty that you can play missions with pretty much any pair of characters.

I don't like dice-pool systems, so that was a no-go for me. Also, I love the old 80's FASERIP system, which already has a ton of supplements for it, so I've got my Marvel gaming covered. Haven't actually played the new game (and have no incentive to do so), so I cannot give it an in-depth review. Sorry. 🤷‍♂️

@MHertz So, after reading your replies, I think your question is (to put it succinctly) why do people sometimes (perhaps often) fall into powergaming/munchkinry when engaging in roleplay in online games? I don't know if anyone can really know- or if one blanket answer can apply to most of the people that do this. However, if I had to guess, my guess would be that they do it because they feel powerless in real life.