Lines

Teleport as a travel power could do with a look at, I think. I wonder if it would work as a toggle instead of an active press?

My knee jerk reaction was "god, I really don't need more free power slots that I wouldn't know what to do with." I echo folks wishing the attacks were a bit juicier. I'm taking the Force of Will pool thematically on a stalker and Wall of Force is underwhelming. I've tried it with a complete set of Positron's blast and also loaded with four damage procs, but it doesn't have much kick to it either way.

I'd argue the opposite to that first statement; I think over-simplicity is what makes characters irrelevant. I don't dislike the Apex TF, I think it's cool, but I wouldn't include it as a gold standard of challenge done well. Maybe the right ball park for me, but I wouldn't like to see the same thing often. I think the best example of a cool boss fight is the golem fella at the end of Dr Kane's House of Horrors, who has a pair of nasty AoE attacks that he fires off every now and again and which get progressively worse. You could rush him and get it done with easy-mode, but then you miss out on the extra reward for killing zombies. If you chose to do it the harder way, then you need to start preparing to go in and out of the AoE zone to dodge it, especially if it takes longer to kill the zombies. The challenge is a choice, and it's incentivised by an extra reward. Perfect. I'd like to have options for content that needs the extra attention and gets the extra reward, but not replace the easy-mode stuff.

I think theme should be a consideration within builds. I don't think the p2w vendor should provide character-defining powers.

As it stands, this server can't actively promote itself for legal reasons. A referral scheme like that could be construed as a promotional campaign and may not go down well. In the future, maybe. I don't know what those bonuses could look like, though.

If I see you there I'll give you a high five, friend!

I don't think balance is exclusively the way to go. Players should always win the numbers game, even if by a large margin. Maybe that gap could do with getting narrower in places, but there's no point in punishing less-than-decked-out builds. Rather, I think challenge comes in the form of requiring teams to change up their tactics, players to be alert of their situation and to encourage imaginative ways to solve unique problems. A bit of a nebulous statement, I'm sorry.

I know I bring this up often, but I'm not nearly as militant about this stuff as I may come across. I enjoy most of the game a lot. I do things in my own way and there's still so much content I've not yet done. I'm happy for the forseeable future. There are a lot of great challenges in CoH, particularly the near-sunset boss fights and iTrials. They're few and far between, but they show the game had a direction to start testing its players. Great stuff. I brought this up in another thread that I feel that the game handled the endgame poorly. Or rather, the endgame mostly belongs to a different era of CoH, predating the current level of powercreep. We have a kind of challenge valley right there, where builds and strategies don't matter and we AoE roflstomp our way through. I struggle to get excited about this stuff, it feels like routine rather than playing a game. it always feels like my characters hit 50 in a whimper. Suddenly most of their powers and strategies don't matter much, their strengths are passive and they don't feel powerful when those parts of the game got so sad and tired of themselves. Yet they're disproportionately rewarding. I do that stuff on solo as and when I can, but it's no more interesting than lower level content. But I think that valley is where opportunities for development could get really exciting. I'd love to see a balance pass on all level 50 content for incarnates and opportunities for more difficulty options and diverse challenge settings. I'd also like to see incentive for doing things a harder way - merit bonuses for doing content under debuffs, for instance. Something that might make PUGs think twice about just picking the path of least resistance. Most of the suggestions I get behind are places where challenge is added to places that there currently is zero challenge. AI tweaks to smarten up later-game villains, Street Sweeping and Hazard Zones brought to life and made rewarding and anything that could make support and crowd control powers have more utility.

There are folks out there like Bubblewrap who are deploying their innovations to coxg (I think), simply because it's in-line with the more easily available Ourodev builds. Homecoming's build isn't so available. I don't know if Bubble plays much on Homecoming anymore, but I know they're not averse to their work ending up here once it's in a working state.

I'll be tracking my furthest knockback.

I think its a good thing that we have different servers taking different approaches to how the game changes. Certainly of you prefer the cut of another group's jib, go to them. I'm in perpetual astonishment that we have any changes happening at all, and volunteers happy to do it. I don't particularly need dramatic overhauls of content (pay no heed to my posts in the suggestions forum ...) so Homecoming's slow-and-steady, thoroughly tested approach suits me.

There was really good stuff in the works toward the end of CoH's life. The final arc of Pandora's box was great fun and was the first thing to kill off my main in a long time. The devs got really imaginative with boss fights and it was great to see Market Crash follow the trend. The challenge in these comes from unique strategies and encounters, which I think are great but is a highly demanding act to follow for HC. For me, the dissatisfaction comes from a kind of 'unchallenge valley' that starts at level 47 and ends at iTrials, incarnate content and some of the newer stuff. If you imagine the graph of challenge to level, it grows more-or-less steadily from 1 to 46, then drops dramatically at 47 - 50, then shoots right back up into incarnate content. There's a lot of content that falls into that valley, and which is disproportionately rewarding for how easy it has become. It's endgame content that doesn't feel endgame and I find it hard to get excited about unless I solo it. It's in that valley that I think there is room for improvement. However, that isn't the majority of content. I love lower level stuff and I love the incarnate content. It's just that the older level 50 stuff feels like a mismatch.

Much though I don't think highly of power levelling, I don't believe charging for it is a slippery slope to real monetary transactions. That distinction, I'd like to think, is clear enough. I also appreciate that charging for powerlevelling at a fairly high price is actually a deterrent for PLing as a noob trap. I think it would be exactly what prevents level 50s who don't know what they're doing. My only real reservation here is the opportunity for scammers. But I just encourage folks to be careful with their inf, record their transactions with screenshots and try to find farmers with good repute.

If the community ever got to that sort of culture, I'll be long gone.

I'd be down for this, for the sheer numberphilia.

This is exactly where my approach to all of this is at.

This is one of my favourite arcs in the game. I love St Martial.

I want this so much for all the wrong reasons.

Fair; let me rebuke thus: Currently there is no incentive to street-sweep anywhere. You almost may as well not have mobs out there, were it not for hunt missions and badges This aims to make street sweeping a good levelling activity that could be done in entire leagues and sustain itself as a levelling method for a broader band of levels. DA isn't the right place for levelling regardless. With a wider level range for hazard zones, more people can get involved. Currently the max levels for Perez Park, The Hollows and Boomtown are somewhere between 10-20, which are extremely quick levels to pass through and would often exemp characters to levels where their build isn't so fun. A range of 1-30 would mean higher level characters have access to their level 32 powers, while low levels can still enjoy the zones at their intended level. The best way for that huge range to work would be for the mobs to be unlevelled. It is more development work, but I think that Paragon City outside of the missions has so much opportunity to be so much better and rewarding to spend time in, that just an auto-exemplar feature would be a long stretch from its potential benefit to the game. I'd even want to add extra incentive with a street sweeping merit currency to the game with its own rewards, a bit like vanguard merits, but I also think that too many currencies are a detriment to MMOs... So a bit torn on that one.

My view on this is that we're trying to give zones value for longer, give street sweeping value and yet not disrupt the balance of the game. How about this for balance: The safe city zones get an optional self-exemplar mechanism so you can enjoy them at their own level and get some reward, but they're still largely safe. The hazard zones get unlevelled invasion mobs split into two types. 1-30 30-50 Perez, The Hollows and Boomtown would have the 1-30 variation, where mobs will equal your level (+x for neighborhood difficulty) up until you hit 30. You then sustain a mandatory* exemp to that level. *I know mandatory would ruffle feathers, but i can foresee some gung-ho incarnate running ahead of street sweeping groups OHKOing the mobs and ruining the whole point. Also so that hazard zones retain their hazardousness. Crey's Folly, Eden and the RWZ will all con purple and provide no reward until level 30. After that, they match the player's level + x for neighborhood. This means that streetsweeping hazard zones could be a legit way to level in the early game without it turning into an incarnate-powered AoE rush in Perez. But that kind of gameplay will still be available with more level-appropriate enemy groups in Crey's, Eden and RWZ.

This is a huge amount of work, but the bulk of the artwork isn't the sort of thing that HC need commit time to. These sorts of models and animations just need an independant hobbyist model maker and animator with a bit of time and know-how. It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility. Afaik, the collective community wisdom hasn't cracked the process of making new assets like this yet, though I've not had my ear to the ground recently. I know there is a 3DS max plugin for CoH models in the works, however, which would be an excellent step towards this sort of thing.

You're not entirely wrong that there's a dissonance in the game design, where it encourages teams of 8 to do content that 1 person, or at least much smaller teams, could do. At least I find it to be so. It's great that the game is a fun challenge solo, but I think I'd team a lot more if team content were harder, or at least required paying more attention. The game was starting to develop that way towards the end, but that sort of stuff is scarce and exceptional, with older endgame content being a bit left in the dust. I can only roflstomp so much, but that's just me.

This typo needs to be a whole powerset.

Katie Hannon and Virgil Tarikoss both prompt a zombie event on their respective sides.

The market for this seems niche: they'd need to have played the game enough to have the money to spend. They've not powerlevelled another toon, else they'd know plenty of folks will let you doorsit in a farm. They wouldn't have many 50s, else they'd know it can be easy to 1-50 even with regular content. At least I don't think it's 30 mil worth of effort. I dunno how many people out there fill that niche, but since the price is a little high to be a complete noob trap, I guess it's mostly harmless. Maybe a little predatory, and hopefully nobody is scammed out of this.