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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.

I absolutely agree. As players we can create efficiencies within our means - it's a significant aspect of gameplay in CoH -but we should not expect the game itself to become efficient so that we don't have to. Efficiency and convenience are good decisions for players to make, but not always good choices for game designers to make.

The power can act as a click self-rez. You do not need its effects to be active when you die for it to work.

I'm more than happy to see this thread turn into a convoluted metaphor contest.

I think this has been changed to just advance the objective if the hostages die. RIP the old speedrun strat.

I can clarify my position a little bit - it comes from somewhere a lot more fundamental than 'who can fly and how'. I thiny any pay-to-win is a violation of the integrity of a game, and the Paragon Store was a significant violation of that integrity for CoH. The veteran rewards, at least, were gimmicky. The P2W vendor is a vehicle by which that monetarily gated content can be made available. It's a bit of a sledgehammer solution to a problem and now that problem is solved. I don't think the P2W vendor should be the way to solve further, minor scruples that people have. I'd like to see the P2W inventory dispersed across less 4th-wall-breaking NPCs - there could be a jetpack vendor, a weapons master, npcs to teach the travel modes, and XP modifiers given to the Fortunas/Hero Corps Analysts. I concede that nothing from the Veteran Rewards and Paragon Store should be gated - that would be bruising. But I don't think the inventory should be expanded. That, plus the status quo of character-defining travel being within builds, is my opposition. If it did happen, I'd not be up in arms about it. I'd probably just mutter something to the effect of 'there goes the neighborhood' and be on my merry way.

I love Praetoria, and I play it through the low levels often. I die a whole lot more, for certain, but it's a gteat way to get to know my character and feel rewarded by getting them right. Ambushes (across the whole game) are a bit cheap for breaking two game rules; seeing through stealth and often not being tauntable. I don't think it's ok for a game to suddenly have a particular circumstance have its own rules in contrast to everywhere else the game operates. I think this is one of the many opportunities for AI changes, to give players a few more options for dealing with ambushes. It would be great if players could cleverly set up a stealthier 'divide and conquer' strategy.

There's something really neat in this idea for stategic, burst damage gameplay, and it's something I'd need to feel out by playing it to know how much I like it. There are some circumstances that could be tricky though. For instance if you fire off Total Focus just as someone else fires off an AoE stun, your attack will only do half damage. And I think it would need to be ironed out according to Siolfir's point as well. You might end up with a sort of diminishing returns for your attacks. A low-to-mid level may struggle that bit more against a boss, when there are no other targets to turn to. The other thing, from a more centric game design position, is to wonder why this is the case. How come a superhero is less effective against a defenseless foe? The setting still needs to play a role in these decisions, gameplay mechanics can't exist in their own numerical vacuum. Perhaps the idea would work better for a psionic set, where the stunned minds of enemies are less impressionable. 100% agree, though, that this is a wonderful field to freely discuss these things. I love the ideas that come out of threads like this.

These are great options! I could see Lunge being a really cool mainstay for melee characters. I'd flesh it a little bit in such a way that it doesn't cause weapon users to need to redraw, which might be a bit of technical thought. Throw perhaps needs something to set it apart from the inherent origin powers, though maybe it being slottable is enough. Perhaps a stun or knockdown for some slight cc?

There was a fairly recent idea for a danger sense pool which could have some powers that affect what can be seen on the map. It could throw in some mild defence autos (which aren't present in pool powers), so it isn't just a load of throwaway powers and maybe a mez resist at tier 5. Maybe that's a touch unbalanced... The origin pool powers have a nice shape to them so far.

I think this is a pretty wild contrivance.

You're a brave man. I have a speedster but I just cannot bring myself to pick Whirlwind.