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I don't know if the current devs have any tricks up their sleeves, but historically this has been labelled impossible. But damn if it wouldn't be the best change to ever come to CoH.

Oh boy did I ever. In fact, of the nine characters I've rebuilt, only my Bots/FF MM, Machinesmith, has stayed the same. In the dark days of no CoH, I had a lot of time to redecide how I felt about those characters. They've had their Mary Sueness cut away for more interesting personas. My old main, Reep the Barbarian, is gone. Partly because he belongs to another time of my life and partly because I can't stomach the idea of BS/Dark again. He has now become a Nictus, devoid of his own identity, called Eidolon. He has the old costume as one of his alternatives, which was a nice nostalgia hit to do. But he's very much his own thing now. My main villain was Naazkorath, who was a... um... Dark/Fire brute maybe? He had a Pharaoh vibe to him. He's now an elusive, reality bending, Thugs/Time mastermind, Mister Grim, the immortal, faceless CEO of Grimcorp, a metahuman organisation that pretends to better humanity but has a dark secret agenda. It's been so good to be able to have these old characters back, and to have the opportunity to refine how I feel about them.

The command is /t <their name>, <message> but as frostbiter says, clicking their name in the chat window is a little speedier. Backspace will reply to the last person who sent you a tell.

I guess this got posted to Reddit. Really good to hear a wider range of thoughts on the subject. I'm definitely getting the vibe that leaving the balance of the player characters themselves should be left more-or-less alone. Difficulty should be (1) extrinsic to the character and (2) not ubiquitous. The tweaking that's happening is good, because it done with the intention of bringing more life into certain ATs/Powersets rather than making things any more difficult for them. I'm very pro adding more difficulty, but in the form of variety, unique encounters and improving opportunities where the game is currently neither challenging nor rewarding and are largely underplayed bits of content. Adding +5x16 only really makes things slower. Having done Synapse a couple of times this week (which is in dire need of the Posi/Yin treatment anyway), it's so underwhelming that the Clockwork King is just some matey boi stood in a corner at the end. I think this is an opportunity to add some drama to the game. There are several examples like this, but that's a familiar one. Streetsweeping, too, is an opportunity for more varied encounters, for interesting gameplay and for new rewards. There could be a lot more life and action in the streets. But I'm like a broken record at this point bringing this up. A big goal for difficulty is giving value to support/control powers towards the endgame, particularly in that lvl 50/pre-incarnate valley. For control, I think smarter AI is part of the solution here, where there's value in someone keeping the enemies locked down and unable to spread out to mitigate AoEs, run for help, get to cover, etc. I'm interested to know how folks feel about difficulty : reward.

I'm always talking about how streetsweeping is one of the weakest parts of the game. But it could be one of the best bits. It definitely needs a looking at.

I think Sailboat is making an absolutely fair point and significant contribution to the idea. This thing does have the potential to shape the game culture, possibly in negative ways. So it's valuable to discuss those circumstances and how this idea could mesh as well as possible with the current culture of game.

My guess would be it isn't included because it isn't in itself an arc. The badge is awarded for a series of loose missions. At least as I understand it. The missions could be tied together into an arc (even though there is no story connecting them) and the badge awarded for the arc's completion. The big change would be that the missions would no longer be granted in a random order. Can't see that being an issue.

Just checked on AH and found some for sale, so apparently so.

Frostfire does appear in a tip mission. I can't remember which one exactly. The original is definitely a mission to be savoured at a good pace. I'm sorry someone jerkghosted it.

No personal response at all, and happy to be proven wrong if there's something out there to show it. It's just an impossibly OP feature to have existed, particularly for CoH's early game design philosophy. Folks would have been up in arms had it existed and then vanished, like with ED. As for the cost, it would be 9000 inf to fill your inventory with tier 3s if you could combine to the next tier. Quick glance at tier 3 purple in the AH right now is 100,000 for one tier 3 inf, making it currently a 2mil cost to do the same. That's a very substantial difference.

This is an odd thread. I was around from somewhere about issue 2 or 3. I always right click and use the interface to combine my insps, always have, not used a macro. If this was a feature I'd have used it all the time. There's merit in the idea, but the ease by which someone could head to a hospital, fill their inventory with tier 3 purples between every map and never die would totally mess with the game. We're talking to the point of making IO set bonuses obsolete. If any way to purchase insps were removed and they were obtained totally randomly, the idea could work. But since they come at a cheap price, you couldn't justify their value.

The event mobs are unlevelled, like invasion mobs. I'd never noticed this before. It's very strange to see this one particular exception.

Why stop at 3? You think so small. I'm thinking a five minute quicktime event.

Possibly, only that Bolas is supposed to have an extended knockdown effect. There's no precedent for that and may need a little more technical input.

No. It was one of the planned Origin poolsets, along with Sorcery and Force of Will. So far, only those two have been completed by the HC team, so we may see it in the future.

I replaced some of the sounds with ones from Reichsman's powersets. They match up excellently and are far less intrusive.

These are all strawman arguments.

1024 letters in our bios makes some people's backstories OP. There should be a 512 character cap.

Absolutely behind this. I'd love to be able to enjoy the iTrials at my own pace.

I'd also suggest giving SWTOR a try. It's got a huge amount of very well written story to enjoy. As others have said, though, it is a single-player game in MMO's clothing. It suffers from symptoms that many old MMOs have like obsolete mechanics, a confusing, inflated economy and an elite playerbase. I really enjoyed the PvP, including the space PvP. I sucked at it, but found it a lot of fun.

If this is how you feel, then you make the meaningful choice to slot KB to KD. If it improves the power, how can you also call it wasteful? If you're unwilling to use a slot to improve your power, then I suggest rerolling your nrg blaster as a rad and colour the powers blue. That too is a meaningful decision. In about the same timeframe, the only characters I've ever thought this of have been a few tanks and healers. I've certainly never thought it of scrappers, blasters, stalkers, dominators, kheldians, VEATS, brutes or masterminds, but I'm always pleased to see them. Why the high expectation for knockback classes? My second main is a Tank, I've been significantly more inconvenienced by more AoE immobs than knockbacks. I've asked more controllers to take note of what they're doing than storm supports or energy blasters combined. I've had knockback do a very good job of keeping mobs near me. I appreciate that damage mitigation for squishier characters happens with knockback, especially if I'm over the aggro cap. So I expect to see a few mobs fly around. It's no biggie, and nor is having to dash around a few inches to keep the immobbed enemies aggro'd on me. I usually slot KB to KD on my own AoE powers. I appreciate that the slot use improved the power in a way that meaningfully improves my gameplay. I do not want to be pandered by the game, nor be defaulted to a meta-decision.

Because the difference between knockback done poorly and knockback done well is the quality of our decisions as players. It's in dynamics like that where players have the most agency and make the most meaningful choices. Outsourcing these things to a meta-toggle cheapens our decisions and lessens our role in the game as players. The game has decided for us 'thou shalt be efficient'. Longer is not worse. And I'd take a badly placed knockback over an impatient teammate.

If speed is the game design goal, let's lower all enemy hp to 1, remove city zones so we just have missions, uncap movement speeds and set every map to the asteroid. As you said in your earlier post, Sudden Acceleration solves things. And I agree it's great; it's solved in such a way that players have the agency to play their way and can make a minor sacrifice to optimise. But the game itself still sometimes has to be an antagonistic force. We need inconveniences like high enemy HP, travel time, a variety of settings and indeed knockback. These things give players decisions, enable us to become better at it and keep the game interesting. It shouldn't be obedient to our comforts, solve our scruples for us and conform to the metagame, else there wouldn't be much game to play.

There's the issue of character names, of course.

I was very much a perpetual 'have-not' on live. I was never barred from content, just a little slow. The easy availability of enhancements is a feature of Homecoming, not City of Heroes. I think this could be neat, but requires extremely cautious implementation.