[Dev Diary - Spring Flings & Wedding Things]

3 hours ago, ChallengerYura said:

 

I just wanted to comment as a new player, Pocket D on Everlasting is very well behaved and as someone that's roleplayed in a variety of MMORPGs it actually feels like I've traveled back in time to when MMORPGs actually had decent communities. I wanted to comment since this thread is likely being watched by the devs. My first impression remains the same: Roleplayers in Pocket D are friendly, polite and anything you might think of as ERP just doesn't exist in public channels. If actually you specify you're new player in your bio, half the bar will essentially baby you.

 

For what a stranger on the internet commenting is worth, this is honestly the most laid back and courteous scene I've seen in years. And I do mean years. If you thought Virtue was bad check out XIV, WoW, or any other FOTM MMORPG with an RP scene, the younger generation take hedonism to levels that make me nauseous. Everlasting in contrast to that is absolutely idyllic.

 

My experiences with the City of Heroes RP community on Live were generally very positive (and again, I have no objections to ERP being a thing - to be completely honest, I did a little bit of it back in my Virtue days myself - as long as it stays out of the public channels), but... there were definitely times back then when it got pretty out of hand.

 

So, I'm pleased to hear that isn't happening on Everlasting.

[Rename/Rework Dual Blades: Dual Wield]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

I'd love it if they could take the existing weapon models and give us tintable, translucent wireframe versions, to represent energy/hard-light constructs...

 

This would be pretty cool.  I'd like that a lot.

 

Another thing I'd wish for (but which is admittedly a less realistic possibility than your idea) is to have an alternate redraw animation where your weapon appears in your hand with teleport fx (even though it would need to take just as long as the conventional redraw to not be unbalancing, it'd still look cool).  Mostly because as a Phantasy Star series fan, I like the whole idea of nanotransitors and being able to just have your weapons appear in your hand when you need them.  Unfortunately, I suspect that the amount of code that would be required to do something like that would be even more than was required for sheathed weapons (which is still one of my very favorite additions HC has made to the game).

[Bat Lore Pets]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

to be clear, i am not asking for more powerful lore pets.  no.  you could take the weakest lore pets, reskin them as Dark Armor fear aura ghosts, or bats, make the damage lethal and/or dark and i would do dances around my coffin all night.

 

Agreed.  Speaking as someone who frequently takes Robotic Drones on certain characters for concept even though mechanically they are not great, I just want more concept-fitting options.

[Pool power: Fighting (rework)]

10 hours ago, Dnyd said:

 

I have a EL/MA tank that does have the whole fighting pool and they are slotted and used. I love playing him. That doesn't mean I like having to take both kick and punch when I only use kick/brawl/cross punch. 

 

Having to take powers to progress deeper in the pool is part of the intended cost of the later powers in the pool.

 

And Cross Punch is specifically balanced so that to get the most effect from it, you need both Boxing and Kick. 

 

If your second option (removing either Boxing or Kick) was eliminated, this would have two negative effects:

1. It would break builds that use all three Fighting attacks, since one of those attacks would no longer exist.
2. It would weaken Cross Punch, by removing part of the synergy that strengthens it.

Also, some characters take Boxing or Kick for concept reasons, and the option of taking whichever one suits a character's concept should not be removed just because you want to free up a power slot.

[Bat Lore Pets]

On 3/24/2025 at 5:15 AM, Snarky said:

Yep.  Lore pets that are bats.  Or real ghosts.  Like the ones in auras or Dark armor.  Really, we need ANY Lore pets that Magic and/or Dark power users can look at and say "yes, that fits my theme"

 

Magic is one of 5 Origin types.  Looking at Lore Pets you would almost think it was not in the game.

 

If anyone suggests unicorns so help me I will....

 

Bats would be good, yeah.

 

Speaking of magic origins, I want Fairy/Pixie lore pets, too.  They could even use the existing models from the Fairy pet prestige powers.

[Rename/Rework Dual Blades: Dual Wield]

Honestly, I don't think the rename is even needed.  Just expand the weapon customization options.  I once proposed on Live bokken and shinai options for Katana and those were rejected on the grounds that they aren't the correct damage type.  Which, at the time, OK, that was in line with the devs' rules for weapon customization, but even then I thought it was ridiculous that a Katana scrapper couldn't fight with the training version of their own weapon.

 

But somewhere along the way, those rules got thrown out, and now we have plenty of weapon customization options that don't match the damage type.  So there's no reason blunt options shouldn't be available for bladed sets if they fit with the animations.

[Proc DMG for Rad and Regen armors]

5 hours ago, Dnyd said:

As some of the armors don't have a DoT power (SR, Rad, Regen, ETC), what if there was a damage proc effect applied to all other damaging abilities similar to the Bio: Offensive Adaptation or Stone: Brimstone. I was thinking how it would be applied and what DMG it do would be based on the concept of the power. 

 

E.G.:

Rad: Gamma Boost - Proc toxic DMG

SR: Dodge - Proc psi DMG (Melee attack for melee Def)

Will: Rise to the challenge - Proc psi DMG

Invul: Invincibility - Proc Smash DMG 

Regen: Integration - Proc energy (heal for % of the proc) The heal might bring the set back into viability

**Shield . . . already has a damage buff**

 

Most of those powersets have no conceptual justification for a damage aura.  That's why they don't have one.

 

For example: Adding a damage aura to Dodge would mean that suddenly my Natural Martial Arts/SR scrapper who is merely a very skilled martial artist and has no superpowers whatsoever would suddenly be doing damage to enemies that just happen to be standing there next to her.  This would pretty much break her character concept.

 

Also, from a balance perspective, the sets that have damage auras are weaker in other ways to compensate.

[Pool power: Fighting (rework)]

4 hours ago, Dnyd said:

I believe the Fighting pool powers need a little love.

 

Most people who take fighting ONLY take Boxing/Kick to unlock Tough/Weave. Some will mule slot Kick for DMG. I think they are often dead powers. I will give 2 concepts of what I think could be done

 

1. Remove the requirement of Boxing/Kick to take Tough.

 

 

 

There are builds out there that use all three of Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch, and some even use all three of them in the attack chain.

[Accolade for playing the game.]

For the record, if there were account-wide Accolades, I could actually accept the idea, on the grounds that:

1. A player would only have to earn it once
2. It would solve the existing character problem.
3. You'd only be able to get the (way too good) reward once.

I still think it goes a bit against what badges are supposed to be, but I could live with it.

 

If the devs ever implement account-wide Accolades, then perhaps this idea could be revisited in that context.  Though, there is still the problem of the amount of code that would be needed in order to actually track all of those conditions.

 

However, I don't see that happening anytime soon based on other comments on that subject.

[Accolade for playing the game.]

15 minutes ago, lemming said:

Badges tend to be for doing stuff, not for avoiding stuff.

 

This is also a very good point.

[Accolade for playing the game.]

20 hours ago, branefabricator said:

Accolade Name: True Grit
 

Description: Awarded to those who rise through the ranks with nothing but their own strength and determination. This accolade is granted only to heroes and villains who have never taken shortcuts—no AE missions entered before L50, no P2W XP boosts, no enhancement trades, and no outside financial assistance beyond a modest 10 million influence. True perseverance earns true power.

Effect: Unenchantable 3% +Res and +Def upon obtaining Level 50

 

Reward: One full set of choice in UNTRADEABLE Superior AT enhancements upon obtaining Level 50

 

Here are the problems I see:

1. The effect is very overpowered (3% def OR 3% res would be too much.  Both is vastly too much).
2. The reward is also far too much.  No accolade in the game offers anything remotely like this.
3. The requirements to earn it are extremely problematic:
   1. First, it's pretty much designed to punish players who have already done all the hard work on previous characters and want to have a bit easier experience playing through the game.  Note that I am saying this as someone who does not PL.  But I do send my new characters some seed money when I create them, and they of course have access to my enhancement storage.  That's the privilege I've earned by having already gotten characters to 50 the old-fashioned way.  Trying to deny players this privilege by stacking extremely overpowered rewards on a condition of not exercising this privilege is just punishing players who don't play your way.
   2. The game does not have any way to track these conditions.  It would require an immense amount of new code to implement.
   3. As @Rudra has already covered, this creates significant problems with existing characters not being able to get it (and your suggested solution for this creates fairness issues).

I'm not opposed to badges for "doing it the hard way".   That's fine.  I'm not that much of a badger to begin with.

 

I am opposed to extremely powerful abilities being attached to those badges.  And I'm opposed to spending enormous amounts of developer time and effort on something that is targeted at only a small portion of the player base with a very specific playstyle.

[Gun Bunny - Dual Pistols/Martial Combat/Force Mastery Blaster - looking for feedback]

Thanks for all the suggestions.  I'll look into my options.  If I take slots out of Ki Push, I'll lose my ranged soft-cap, but if I drop Throw Sand, take Suppressive Fire, and steal a slot from something else where I can, I should be able to 5-slot Suppressive with Overwhelming Force or 3-slot Artillery and add two pieces of something else (to make up for Artillery's limitations as a set) and get that ranged defense back.  Should work out, I think.

[Gun Bunny - Dual Pistols/Martial Combat/Force Mastery Blaster - looking for feedback]

So... this build is a little outside of my usual realm, and while I feel like the performance on it will meet my expectations, I also feel like there are probably some things I can do to improve it that I haven't thought of because Blasters are not my strong suit in terms of building (though this build is definitely better than some of my old ones!

 

Looking for any specific feedback.

 

Concept:

Gun Bunny is a mutant bunny-girl whose powers included enhanced reflexes, superhuman coordination and precision, enhanced speed, enhanced leaping (she is a bunny-girl, after all) and local space-time manipulation.  She can use the space-time manipulation to do things like make her bullets curve in the air, teleport short distances, and deflect solid objects (in a manner that behaves very much like a forcefield, but technically is not), and bend light to disguise her presence.  She wields a pair of carefully-tuned and extremely precise automatic handguns for combat, though she could be deadly with pretty much any weapon she chose to pick up.  Gun Bunny is highly intelligent, but she is aware of stereotypes around bunny-girls and will frequently obfuscate stupidity to exploit those stereotypes for advantage.

 

Note: The spatial manipulation was not originally part of my concept for her, but as soon as I took Bullet Rain and saw the way the bullets curved, I realized I would have to revise her concept to justify that.  That said, I like what it enabled me to do with the rest of her powers, so it works.

 

Powersets:

• Dual Pistols: She's "Gun Bunny" for a reason.
• Martial Combat: This partly represents her training, and partly her use of her mutant powers.
• Leaping: She's a bunny-girl, it's a given.
• Speed: She's superhumanly quick.
• Fighting: She has excellent coordination and has been extensively trained in combat
• Concealment: She can use her spacetime manipulation powers to bend light and create an optical camouflage effect.
• Force Mastery: She can use her spacetime manipulation powers to deflect and repel physical objects

 

Build Goals:

• Soft-capped Ranged Defense: The goal was to obtain this without using crappy sets like Thunderstrike or Artillery
• Decent Melee and AoE Defense: Enough that with a single purple insp she can become very difficult to hit from all positions when needed.
• Strong S/L Resist: By blaster standards, anyway.  Taking Force Mastery made this almost automatic.
• High Slow Resist: She's not at 100%, but 80% feels pretty solid
• Respectable Offensive Output: Achieve all survivability goals without excessively compromising offense.  There is no procbombing here, but most of her attacks have 1-2 damage procs set. 

 

Questions/Concerns:

• I'm not at all sure about my slotting in Reaction Time and Inner Will
  • I'm not really sure what proper slotting for these powers is.
  • Reaction Time seems significantly different from other blaster sustains I've used.  Is it worth slotting for Slow or Absorb?  Is the gimmick of turning it off for a recharge boost worthwhile, or should I just leave it on?
  • How useful of a heal is Inner Will; is it worth significantly slotting?
• Should I take Suppressive Fire?  At a glance it doesn't seem worthwhile, since to make the Hold useful I'd need to switch ammo types.  Plus, finding slots for it would be difficult.
• I put in Throw Sand largely because it looked like I could get some use out of it with only one slot.  Is that worthwhile?  I'm not high enough level to have this power set so I haven't tried it.

 

Here's the build.  I'm interested in your feedback.

 

Gun Bunny - Blaster (Dual Pistols - Martial Combat).mbd

[Henchmen Cosmetics for MMs]

44 minutes ago, biostem said:

FWIW, the issue seems to be, (from what little I know), that MMs were kind of kludged together to get them to work on whatever timetable the OG devs had to add the AT, so the issue isn't necessarily about whether you're using 4-legged models or humanoid ones;  It's not that your or the OP's suggestion doesn't have merit - it's that it'd be a huge undertaking...

 

Yeah, my feeling on MM henchman customization is that it's such an obvious win that if it were easy it would already have been done.

 

However, the devs may certainly feel free to prove me wrong if they want to, because I'd love to see it.

[Forum Moderation - give me suggestions and feedback]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

Accepting responsibility for what one writes or how they address another in civil discourse is a pretty low bar (just my opinion).

We agreed to adhere to several agreements when we signed up.

• "Do not abuse or harass others" -Code of Conduct
• "Enforcement of these rules is based on intent." -Code of Conduct
• "Anything an Administrator or Game Master says overrides anything else in this document" -Code of Conduct

When using tongue-n-cheek, sarcasm, or 'banter' a poster risks moderation.

 

 

 

To put this in other terms... the more difficult you make it for the moderator to determine your intent, the more likely you are to be moderated.

 

If the moderator has to think, "Was this an insult or not?" there is always the possibility the moderator will come to a different conclusion than the person making the post.

 

If nothing else, it's safer to avoid posting something which requires the moderator to make that determination to begin with.  And speaking as someone who has worn the moderator hat before (albeit not here), my job was much, much easier when I didn't have to make so many of those judgements because people were clearly being respectful.

 

TL;DR: "Be excellent to each other", or in its much older form, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

[Henchmen Cosmetics for MMs]

44 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It's the only reliable way for anyone, the MM or their teammates, to know.  But "alternate forms as visual cues" aren't nearly the problem that "lacking the appropriate model and animations" is. 

For example, the Clocks don't have the shoulder mounted missile pods the Assault Bots get (and use!) from Upgrade Robot.  Fir Bolg don't have the ice sword that the Demon Prince uses.  Etc... etc...  It's not just a simple reskin.  (And it will look like crap if you do simply reskin it.)

 

I pretty much agree with you here.

 

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see some henchman customization options, but I think you're correct that this would be more complex than simply reskinning them with existing models.

[Hats...]

19 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I was just thinking about this again, and, yes.

It would be great to have hats without hair.

 

If someone has the tools to edit the costumes, this shouldn't be that complicated as - I'm assuming - it only requires erasing/removing part of the costume part versus creating something new.

Just start with one body type first. I suggest male or huge as this hat issue is more likely to be utilized by one of those two than by female characters. 

Maybe narrow it down to trying it one or two of the hat styles that would more likely go with no hair ... whichever ones the person doing this would be interested in doing.

 

I can see adding hair to hats that are already without hair to be more of an issue/problem/time intensive.

 

The main problem seems to be the editing software to be able to create new parts or modify the existing costume parts (which may be much easier to do).

 

 

I can't speak for CoH as I've never worked with editing CoH models, but in other games I've modded, adding hair wouldn't be too difficult.  Probably only marginally more effort than removing it.

 

That said, CoH is old, and old tech always seems to complicate things.

[QoL request for TF]

Seems like a reasonable suggestion, at least when no TF challenge settings are in place.  I don't know if it would be possible to use something like this to bypass challenge settings somehow; someone who knows more about how those things work than me should probably weigh in on that subject.

 

I'm also not sure how difficult (or not difficult) it would be to implement.  I suspect it would be somewhat difficult, but it depends on how the TF features themselves are coded, and I've never looked at the actual source code.

[Forum Moderation - give me suggestions and feedback]

3 hours ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

 

I generally agree, but there is a nuanced difference between insulting the poster and insulting the idea.  I think it depends on the context and the wording.

 

That's definitely true regarding there being a difference - there is a difference.  But, well... I kinda see it like this:

• If someone tells me, "You're stupid," I'm just going to completely tune them out and not have any interest in anything they have to say.
• If someone tells me, "Your idea is stupid," I might listen to what they have to say, but I'm definitely not going to be very charitably-minded toward their opinion (on account of viewing their response as extremely rude), and probably won't give it all that much credence.
• If someone tells me, "These are the problems with your idea," then I might be a little bit annoyed over their disagreement, but I'll also feel like I should take their comments seriously and at least give due thought to what they have to say (and even if I still disagree with them on the whole, I may take bits and pieces of their thinking and try to incorporate it into refining my own idea - this is something I do quite a bit).

 

Obviously, the third case is a lot more conducive to constructive discourse.

[Forum Moderation - give me suggestions and feedback]

15 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

In my experience, there are a group of players that view themselves as helpers. And quite frequently the "help" is about explaining why an idea is bad in their opinion. 

This is wholly unnecessary. Ideas sink off the page fairly quickly. If you don't like something, don't engage. All these individuals are doing is making the thread tedious and contentious for people who may actually be interested in the topic. Furthermore they tend to bring the same litany of objections to every discussion and then complain about repetition. 

 

If you post an suggestion in a thread, and I post that I disagree with the suggestion and give my reasons why, and you then argue with my reasons why, and I am not persuaded by your argument, I am obviously going to express that I am not persuaded.  Otherwise I am effectively conceding the point, at which point my objection is no longer a matter of record.

 

Now, if we start going around in circles about the same point, then eventually I'm just going to say, "We're at an impasse.  You see it this way, I see it this other way, and we're not going to agree," and stop responding after that.  But I'm only going to actually do that after I feel like I've said what I have to say.  If the argument you make against me either 1) leads me to believe I haven't adequately expressed my point or that I need to clarify something I previously said, or 2). causes me to realize other important factors that I think need to be raised, then I'm going to keep arguing until I think I've fully expressed what I have to say about it.

 

Now, if the other person says, "We're at an impasse.  You see it this way, I see it this other way, and we're not going to agree," then I will probably stop as well, unless their description of how they think I see it doesn't actually match up with how I actually see it, at which point I'll try to clarify my viewpoint.

 

I'm not arguing just to be argumentative.

 

I can't speak for everyone else who participates in these threads, but I imagine that many of them feel the same way about it that I do.

[Mask opacity]

Try doing a white "Tops with Skin" on a female character and you get basically the same effect.  I'd like to see this fixed, too.

[Time to give scrappers super strength]

8 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

It's not a huge task to rebalance the damage aspect - assume ED capped damage slotting in the attacks and Single Stacked Rage, then lower the damage buff on Rage whilst raising the base damage on the attacks.

 

As long as you end up at the same final damage figure then the only folks that lose out will be those that double stack Rage, which is what makes the set so problematic anyway. And you can help counter those complaints by lowering the Rage crash. Frankly, if it was me I'd eliminate the crash entirely but make Rage overwrite itself instead of stack. Too many edge case shenanigans otherwise.

 

Oh, I agree with you entirely that this would be an appropriate course, and probably even the best course.   But I've seen some of the other arguments that have resulted from similar suggestions in the past, and am therefore not hopeful about coming to consensus on it.

[Time to give scrappers super strength]

7 hours ago, Apogee said:

 

 

Back away from the keyboard...breathe...find your happy place

 

Well, what I should have said is I won't be arguing further on this.

 

In this case, I was expressing agreement with someone else.  So I allowed myself that.

[Time to give scrappers super strength]

2 hours ago, Gobbledygook said:

What if we rebuilt, as mentioned, from the ground up?

I think that if Super Strength was redesigned combining some of the comments made by @venetiasilver, @Warshades, and @PeregrineFalcon, it could be amazing.

 

As mentioned, almost all of SS is about getting Footstomp, KoB, and Rage.

We're going to put Rage in the corner for now, and ignore him.

We should bring all of the crappy powers up to a decent level, and then look at Rage again. Nothing too crazy.

I'm not a numbers guy, so I'll leave that up to someone else.

Looking back at Rage, with the adjustments we made earlier, it's no longer a crutch that we use to keep us on our feet.

Now it's something fancy that can be brought out at a dinner party.

Now, it only gives around 50% damage buff. That's ok though. Remember, we buffed the other powers.

It still gives the same tohit buff as before, but now it_______!

These are just some random ideas.

(-recharge in foe and +recharge on self, -res, +damage proc, boosts secondary effects of all powers)

 

 

 

Now that I actually have a high level Inv/SS Tanker, I have a better grasp of the Rage problem than I once did.  I always knew that the SS attacks were underpowered, and that Rage was overpowered.  But I didn't realize just how true that was.  Now I understand that Rage is hilariously overpowered.  And that without it, the SS attacks are... frankly, terrible.

 

So, I think you have the right idea here.   The tricky thing is, many Tanker and Brute players will scream bloody murder if you touch their version of Rage, because they are accustomed to it.  It's been the way it is for so long that there's no way to avoid that reaction.

 

Which means that, if we don't want Scrappers to get the current version of Rage, but do want to give them Super Strength, then the Scrapper version of Super Strength has to be different from the Tanker/Brute version.  Substantially different.  Now, there is precedent for this.  Scrapper Energy Melee is quite a lot different from the other versions because of its unique mechanic for TF critical hits (in fact, I prefer the Scrapper version of EM, personally, though I still enjoy my EM Brute).

 

What I'd personally like to see is for a Scrapper version of SS to have improved DPA across the board, but a weaker Rage (with a correspondingly weaker crash), so that the overall performance is about where a Scrapper version of SS should be (which is to say, DPS when factoring in the Critical Strikes proc should compare favorably with Brute and Tanker SS damage to a similar degree that the other shared attack sets do), but where it's not entirely driven by Rage.

[Quality of Life suggestion]

17 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

The only reason modern games are trivially easy to port to consoles is that modern design and build tools (Unreal, Unity, &tc.) are set up to do that. And it still takes extra work.

A game built without the benefits of those tools will be very difficult to port.

 

On the other hand, it runs well on Linux, so should work fine on a Steam Deck.

Captain Fabulous even helped me get it running on my phone.

 

This is pretty much the correct answer.

 

When I first read the original post, my initial reaction, honestly, was "wait, what?  That's a trivial ask?"  And I had that reaction because I'm an old guy.  And once upon a time, porting games between PC and console was extremely difficult, especially if you didn't plan to do that from the outset of designing the game. 

 

But then I remembered what DoctorDitko pointed out here - that modern game development tools are designed to produce games which are inherently portable, limiting the amount of work required to port them from one platform to another.  So what would have once been a downright comical ask seems much more plausible these days.

 

Unfortunately, City of Heroes hails back from the older days of my memory, before those tools existed (or at least before they were fully mature), and back in those days the only company that made a console-portable MMO* was Square-Enix with Final Fantasy XI... and that game was designed from the ground up to be console-friendly.  Even then, there were still significant issues related to console support over the history of the game.

* Before anyone mentions Phantasy Star Online, that wasn't an MMO, that was a co-op action game with chatroom lobbies.  Lots of fun, though.  I spent a lot of time playing that.