AerialAssault

I don't believe that inherent Hasten, or Hasten in every travel pool would be productive for the balance of the game. I also strongly disagree that it is 'mandatory' to play the game. I have more characters without it than with it, and they're just fine. Even at the highest tier of play, Hasten isn't a requirement. It's only really of use to characters who have long cooldowns. A Claws/Willpower Scrapper definitely does not need Hasten. I don't know what kind of missions you're doing, or who you're playing with, but I've never been questioned or challenged on my use (or lack thereof) of Hasten. As an aside, there are plenty of characters with Hasten that still suck. Hasten isn't a flipped switch between 'Good build' and 'Bad build'. I just do not believe it is the wonder weapon people say it is. As much of a meme that Regen is, in my own experiences it isn't nearly half as bad as people claim it to be. Sure, it's not close to it's glory days, but those days were always numbered. Could it do with a brush up? Yeah, sure, I won't say no to that. But I feel that if people gave it a genuine chance and see it for it's own worth, they'll find something fun to play.

The Cottage Rule should always be a taken as a guide and not absolute law. Homecoming can be considered under active development. This means things will change, and anything could be subject to change. As some things are changed, new issues are discovered and brought to light. So it goes, so it goes. Homecoming is not a time capsule, nor a snapshot of the game as it was at Shutdown. It's more and better than that. It means some people are going to be happy with the changes that are made, and some people won't be. The Titan Weapons rework upset a lot of people, but it is ultimately for the better that a wildly overperforming set be reined in. If you want no-holds barred, balanced be damned gameplay, that's what WeHaveCake is for. In the end, Homecoming have an idea of where they want 'The Balance' to be. Not everyone will agree. That's fine. That's life.

I think expanding pools to 5 rather than 4 could be a good experiment at the least. Making more pool powers inherent? I can't really agree on that, especially with some of the more powerful pool powers. I also agree that some of the pools need a little extra something, but I think we have to be frank with ourselves; some pools are simply going to be more desirable than others, and without severely tipping the scales of balance it would be impossible to make them all equally desirable.

Talons of Vengeance also have some kind of earth upheaval power which does considerable damage and debuff. If you pull multiple groups you better hope you steamroll them fast otherwise this and the lightning power you mentioned will start overlapping, and then you'll get flattened.

For existing sets? I can't really argue with a straight up buff but I can see much twisting of teeth. New enhancements however? Now we're talking!

Counter-point: NPCs aren't players and shouldn't be treated as such.

Pass on this one. Giving everyone 9 points of KB protection is a criminally bad idea. I don't buy "well don't use it" as a counterpoint when the original post makes out that it's 'too good not to take'. If it's too good not to take, then why not use it at any given chance? You have to assume that if it is given, it will be used. At that point, you may as well remove KB from enemies altogether. If you're struggling with KB I'd suggest slotting 1, maybe 2 Steadfast Protection enhancements (you can also use Blessing of the Zephyr. You're probably not multi-slotting your travel power unless you're making a meme build). You do give up two enhancement slots, but compared to three power slots that's an easy deal to make. If you need more than 2 then your build is probably not cut out for taking on harder difficulties.

Hell yeah. I'm always down for more enhancements.

Paragon Protectors are one of those enemies where, if you have the right counters available, you can trivialize them. Not everyone has those available, but that's the case with just about everything. One team's steamroll is another team's brick wall. If I were to change something, I would probably change the duration to something less mind-numbing.

Expand the Titles so that any title may be put into any slot, as well as remove origin and alignment exclusivity. The title screen would likely have to be changed to a drop-down menu rather than a list, which is what I imagine would be the hard part. Suggestion over.

To add on to this, a lot of the feedback given during the open beta on Brainstorm did make it's way into the final cut. And a lot of it didn't. That's the nature of game development. If you want to get more involved, I would highly suggest doing some testing when Page 2 goes on to open beta and test out content using less-than-optimised builds so that this can be studied before it hits Live.

Perhaps a Min-Max Buy Price option? It would require some dreaded UI work to do but y'know.

It is said that if Regen were to be buffed an ancient and powerful evil would be unleashed upon this cursed land and usher in an age of darkness. So sure 🙂

Really good discussion all around. I'll share my thoughts. The Live game was, as we know, balanced with SO's in mind. Even the newer arcs are perfectly doable with only SO slotting. They might not be easy, but certainly doable. This should not change. All content that we have now should, in effect, be frozen in place unless there is a compelling argument for a total overhaul. Newer content provided by HC, I suspect, might not be balanced around SO's. I'm talking about the two new Story Arcs. This is only my theory, based on my own experiences. If any of the Dev team have said, or are willing to say otherwise, I'll stand corrected. On the test server, I tested the Hero-side arc with a fully tricked out build on a challenging setting (+2/x4) with a friend who was not tricked out. And my character had no issues except from the rave segment, which has since been tweaked. However, on the villain-side arc using only non-set Common IO's, I found it suitably challenging that I had to knock the difficulty down two notches. Does this mean anything? Maybe that I suck at the game, but I feel that this newer, post-Live content is generally more difficult than any of it's peers, that I believe it is balanced with Common IOs in mind. To be honest, if that is the way newer content goes, then I am in favour of it. But only for newer content or any revamped Task Forces.

What happens when the population of this quarantine shard (because that's what this suggestion is, let's face it) are upset because new content isn't made for them? Do we make a new dev team specifically for them? What happens if this 'power-gamer community' has a split over a proposed change? Do they make a new server for those people as well? The second we start tailoring for people's preferred playing style is the second the flood gates open, and people's entitlement spills over.

In what way are they accommodating the crowd you speak of? You said yourself this thread was made in response to a suggestion. I haven't seen any evidence that the Homecoming Devs have cow-towed to this 'crowd'. We don't have unlimited aggro cap, we don't have Mez Protection on every AT, and we certainly don't have all travel powers unlocked. If anything, the opposite is true, with the removal of the /enterbasefrompasscode command and de-scaling of Blaster secondaries. The Homecoming devs shouldn't be accommodating for anyone. They run a server in accordance with their own design philosophy. Our suggestions here are merely that, suggestions. They're not beholden to do, or even entertain any of them.

Personally, I don't think we should be making servers tailored for a specific type of player. That's what other places like Cake & Thunderspy are for. In any case, I could only imagine this dividing an already small community even further.

I'm generally against the homogenization of the game, so sorry, giving this a pass.

I could get behind increasing the aggro cap on Tankers to 24 or something like that. But unlimited? Hard pass. In a lot of these threads there's usually a few people reminiscing about how 'cool' and 'awesome' it was to wait 10 minutes for the Tanker & their pocket healer to round up all the mobs, then everyone wails on blob of enemies with no chance of retaliation. I can enjoy mindless, risk-free violence myself from time to time, but an entire meta-game based around that? Snoozeville. One thing that always sticks with me with City of Heroes is the dynamic combat. In other MMOs, enemies tend to stand in one place until they die. In City of Heroes, when the team starts combat, everyone is engaged in their own battles. The Tanker is keeping most of the attention on themselves, while a Defender & Scrapper mop up the stragglers. A Blaster snipes away at fleeing enemies, while a Controller locks a boss down to stop them from attacking. If another group of enemies gets involved, that just adds to the mayhem. Contrast that with the above, enemies standing still, unmoving and unflinching while they sit in a nice, risk-free kill box. It's just .. so boring to me. And I don't want to see the game become as stale and sterile as other MMOs.

Tbh my MM seems to draw enough aggro just standing around, doing nothing. No taunt necessary.

Why suggest something if you're not at least partly serious about seeing it implemented? If someone has so little room on their hard drive that they can't even find space for City of Heroes then they have issues that no amount of optimization on our end will solve.

City of Heroes, according to my PC, takes up 5.38GB. Removing a few maps might shave off a few MB at most. And what do we really gain in exchange? Well, nothing really. It's a lose-lose situation.

My problem with this is that sooner or later, it stops being an 'option' and starts being a 'requirement'. I'd rather we explore making KB more useful before implementing drastic measures like this. Look at what powers are most often slotted for KB->KD and think about why people feel the need to slot that enhancement. I think enemies taking additional damage for being thrown around would be a step in the right direction.

While I would like to see more Range increase bonus sets, if I were truly invested in increasing the range of a power I would just dump two non-set Range IO's into it and get far more use that way. I've done this on an AR/Eng Blaster, and having 142ft Grenade Launcher is truly hilarious (without Boost Range, with Boost Range it can go up to 195ft. Yelling "Yeet!" is not required, but encouraged.) But, I am an absolute sucker for more Enhancements, and I would definitely like to see more proliferation of less used set bonuses, Range included among them.

Let me explain: If you are not at soft-cap, let's imagine the dread scenario that you in-fact have no defence, then there is literally nothing stopping another enemy from applying another Mez, probably of the same type, and then you're Mezzed. Now, if you're at +0/x1, this is probably not an issue. But if you're at x4, it's not a matter of If, but When, you get Mezzed, then you're back at step one. Since this is at level 41 (or 35, if you're evil), most, if not all enemies, have some form of Mez. Let's imagine you're facing Malta, and you have Mag 4 Stun Protection, but no defence. You are hit by a Taser, that most Malta minions have. Now, if any other stun hits you, you are now stunned. Malta use a lot of stuns, so if even a single minion, lieutenant or boss so much as tickles you with a stun, you may as well never have had that protection in the first place. Funnily enough, not getting Mezzed on the first attack would be really helpful to, you guessed it, use a Break Free! We've come full circle! Hooray!