Lazarillo

I think this is one place where some of the "help text" could fixed up a bit. When the screen screams at you "NOVA FIST, BACK AWAY FROM MARAUDER" you basically know what's coming and what you need to do about it. When it tells you "DIMENSIONAL BREACH DETECTED", that is decidedly less helpful, especially when there's another "DISTORTED DIMENSIONS" that fires around the same time. It's, like, playing tells me that one of those is probably warning me that those one boss types is about to do the whirlypool thing, and the other is telling me that the whirlypool is already happening, but neither really queues me in to whether it can be prevented or how to stop it (and once I'm spinning around said NPC, it's kind of pointless to tell me I'm spinning around him). In fairness to whoever wrote these, it's not like we didn't already seen these unhelpful help texts in things like the Sutter TF, so this is practically tradition now. But it does leave one wondering why they bothered, just as it did before.

Apparently I am not familiar with this option, as I misunderstood what you meant. If that's the case, it sounds like it'd be perfect?

Yes, from what I recall of the post the OP is referencing, this was made in the Thunderspy community. It's also why, if you look closely, the Think Tank has a fish in it. I'm pretty sure we don't have that here, either (though to be fair, I haven't checked the Think Tanks lately).

The analogy I once heard on the old forums, I think it even came from Positron himself, was along the lines of "The Well is not what made Peter Parker into Spider-man, the Well is the reason you can be bit by a radioactive spider and become Spider-man in the first place." Prometheus gives a similar explanation of it in the game, IIRC, if you point out to him that you're of Natural origin and he'll comment that, yeah, nice claws you have there, ain't it funny how they're enough for you to go toe-to-toe with a thirty foot mech, or for Kheldians that the Well is the reason you're on Earth and not some other planet, essentially. The Well is the source of superpowers existing at all, but is not (or not necessarily, at least), the reason any given character has superpowers.

This is a neat idea, but won't the "flee, FLEE, FLEEEEEEEEEEEE!" AI kick in at some point?

Yeah, Mizz Libby (and the villainous counterpart in the LRSF) both do this TF-style storytelling reasonably well also. Not quite as well as the ITF, in my opinion, but close enough to keep them engaging.

This is more less incorrect with regards to the ASF as a matter of the facts, because a not-insignificant amount of dialogue is tied to talking to NPCs who despawn/change their dialogue after the first person speaks to them. Also, demanding your team stop to take time for you to read is at least as much an infringement upon the playstyle of others as them moving on before you finish reading. And this doesn't even get into scheduling conflicts or outright emergencies drawing people away from the game. In a story arc, you can put it on pause at pretty much any time. You might have to replay part of a mission but you don't lose out on any story just because you can't do things in one sitting. TFs, not so much. Or would you propose that TFs now not advance missions if a team member quits or DCs? That would certainly ensure that people didn't rush content that their teammates might want to see, too. TFs should have TF-oriented delivery. Story arcs should have story-oriented delivery.

Yeah, simplicity is a big part of why ITF works, don't get me wrong. That's kind of my point, in a way. There are stories that are "right" for TFs, and stories that better for solo arcs. You can also have it the other way around (see the Maria Jenkins "A Hero's Epic" arc, which is the opposite...a solo-able arc that would actually be better TF-oriented storytelling). And certainly, for the ITF, there's some context behind things that explains more...but it's in solo-friendly story arcs! But I think moves in "phases" pretty well. You're told to "Consult the Oracle" in the first main mission directive. Okay, you get there, and because nothing goes as planned (of course!) bad guys have taken her and her followers hostage. So you save them and what happens? A bunch of angry Nictus come at you saying you can't speak of them. So now you know they're connected. Building off the first mission, the Nictus obviously failed to stop you from learning about them, so because you know about them because of the future they tried to prevent you from learning about, you can know you need to go after them. You take down the Nictus and now Romulus is vulnerable, so you can attack him. Oh, whoops, the 5th are here, too! (Speaking of visual storytelling, that reveal is still one of the game's coolest moments as you round that corner...okay, yeah, I gushed about that already). It's a little weird but if you have the context from the aforementioned story arcs, it makes some twisted amount of sense. The fourth mission is probably the worst transition, since it's not clear that Romulus "gets away" at the end of the 3rd mission, granted (this actually gives me an idea on how they could make it even better...give Rommy a unique death animation where he gets teleported away by a Warshade-style Shadow Recall power!), and you now go confront him and his Nictus backer directly, who, thanks to the cutscene, you know have merged into one. While it certainly hopes to know about Requiem's connection to the Nictus and that "Romulus" was the name of the first human/Nictus hybrid (both from the Path Into Darkness arc, FWIW), you don't need that, really, to follow the story in terms of what you're doing and why, to my mind.

Not having such options are by design. You're not supposed to be able to be an Arbiter (terrible Barracuda SF writing aside) for story reasons. Otherwise Recluse would have to personally smack around every single NPC who messed with you.

Nobody in-setting does it legally, at least. Arguments could be made that certain factions such as Crey or Longbow will give you a super serum as a signing bonus, or as others have mentioned, certain gangs deal in artifacts or drugs that can grant super abilities. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't make something up and do a character concept or AE story arc based around a more above-board service doing it, though! They sell the heroics, but won't perform mutation surgery on a non-powered person.

Can I just say @Vanden I don't think I've seen your proposed changes before but I think they'd be pretty danged close to perfect at maintaining the feel of the set and bringing it up on par for both ATs. I regret that I have but one thumbs up to give!

Mind Control could be better. In general, it has problems compared to other control sets for Controllers because of a lack of maintainable, consistent sources of containment. Thus, while it seems to have been intended as a more "direct offense" set (and probably was, before Containment, but that was well before even I joined the game), it ends up falling behind. I also feeling like it's lacking on a Dominator because I find myself thinking when I play my Mind/Dark, "anything I can do on this character, I can do better on my Fortunata, who also has a nuke, and mez protection, and team buffs, and defense, and....". That said, I am firm believer in ye olde cottage rule, and wouldn't want to see the set get a pet. Buffing Mass Confusion would be a good start. Maybe making Terrorize flag for Containment (although from what I understand, that would be...difficult), and boost up Telekinesis to make it more broadly useful (it's a neat power, but mostly only works as a gimmick right now). Take the tools the set has and make them better, essentially, don't replace.

I don't think all the blame here can be assigned in a "kids these days!" sort of way. Everyone has a different reading pace, things like that, and teams can't necessarily compensate for that. Doubly so when some of the content like Becky or Psicurse in the ASF, speficially, only converse until the first person to talk to them is done. Plus, even if teams were more tactically-minded as you described, that's still time that those players are going to be spending on working together, not going off on their own to read story stuff. A lot of it is in how the story is told, I think, too. ASF is extremely wordy and info-dumpy, and filled to the brim with fairly complex stuff showing up even in captions or talk balloons that can disappear quickly or get hidden under various system text (or even under the next round of captions/NPC chatter!). It's very "tell" over "show", for lack of a better way of putting it. That's not inherently a bad thing in a game like this, but it doesn't fit the teaming experience. Compare it to the old ITF, for example, where the story is much simpler and told through visuals and through actions. You learn about the Nictus involvement through the mountain of ambushes in the first mission, and the 5th Column causing trouble when you turn that corner for the first time and get that maiden-run-magical "wait, what!?" when you see the mech. Of course, the reasoning behind the story is also much more straightforward. It can afford, more or less, to tell the story that way, because the inherent issue of "Cimerorans good, traitors bad" is pretty much the whole driving force. The ASF by comparison involves the Goldbrickers doing something involving alternate dimensions but what they're doing, what you're doing, and why, gets buried deep within text blocks that some team members won't even have access to when playing with others.

Stick the Councils on mounds of trash so when we flatten them they can land comically under spoiled banana peels or the like?

I finally got around to doing one yesterday, though I was on a /Willpower character. But amusingly(?) I ended up having to deal with both of those at once! There was a situation where the tank kept getting Confused against Ripplesurge while taunting, so I had to spend half that fight limited to a PBAoE because I was being forced to attack a teammate I couldn't actually attack. Got the badge for that fight on my maiden run, though, so can't complain too much.

Hrm, that definitely didn't used to be the case. Out of curiosity, were they the old Elites (Fire, Dark), or the new ones that HC added last patch (Rad, Psy)? If it was only the latter, then it may be the new mobs just aren't properly flagged. If it was the former, or a mix, then that sounds like a bug.

That's actually a neat idea, I feel like, though I don't think Dominatrix has the...discretion necessary to pull off such a ruse. Maybe Chimera? Manticore rubs everyone the wrong way anyway, so it probably wouldn't be difficult (and he's also one of the few Praetorian AVs who IIRC we never got the final fate of).

My man Scirocco really deserves this. It'd be frustrating not to still get to be all judge-y of all the "heroes" who nonetheless sold their soul to Black Scorpion for a defense boost, but I suppose I could live without that for a good redemption arc.

Wasn't BaBs the original alt-Statesman for the endgame Hero TF? I seem to remember they did that to give him something when Galaxy got destroyed (and so Mizz Libby wouldn't have to be in two zones simultaneously). Not sure if that was something the original dev team never implemented or HC changed it back or something, but I distinctly recall that being a point of discussion in the old days.

I joined one for the first time earlier today and it was a lot of fun. My only notable beef (but it's a big one) is "Why is this a Strike Force?". Seriously, it's so heavy on story and dialogue and when you've got seven teammates rushing forward, to borrow a phrase, ain't nobody got time for that. But soloing it is also infeasible because as a SF, it's filled to the brim with AVs (and worse!). My villain's inevitable kingdom for an "SSA" version or the like that lets me actually enjoy all the story, the dialogue, and the Becky.

Something vaguely Widow-centric would make sense, given the 20+, 25+, and 35+ SFs are connected to minions of Scorpion, Mako, and Scirocco, respectively. So GW got left out. I'm not sure what sort of story would really fit her side of the organization in that range. Something DE-ish like Vanden mentioned would be a cool bit of lore, but I don't know that it would fit. Or, ooh, rather than that, another bit of background lore to maybe touch on is how in the Rogue Isles, everybody just kind of knows who/what Malta is, even though they're supposed to be super-secretive even through most of the first arc that actually introduces them heroside (never mind Roy Cooling's terrible, retcon-y arc please). Given that Malta takes an interest in Wretch during Scirocco's patron arc, maybe something that could "introduce" them to the setting and give an explanation to the public awareness of them, while also giving a little bit of background on what sort of special interest they might have in Widow/Wretch in the first place?

The thing about that aspect is, though, that even if the absorb gets used up, the bubble stays, so it doesn't quite fit that aspect. You'd have to make it a ticking absorb which would lessen (a)the purpose of power-boosting it anyway, and (b)be kind of annoying out of combat.

I have a Thugs/Traps who's very similar. She took down a gang too "minor" for the heroes to do anything about, and decided to reform them rather than arrest them.

I honestly like Infiltration a lot and would rather it mostly stay as-is. That said, the toggle being mutually exclusive with other Stealth-granting powers is, while reasonable, also pretty annoying on a travel power since it detoggles other stuff that might considerably more...build critical. I wonder if there would be a way to suppress just the stealth part while other similar powers (Mask Presence, Arctic Fog, et al) are in place.

Well, I know I'd play the heck outta this sit with it like this. I feel like the HC team prefers to rebalance with gimmicks (see Energy Melee, Electric Blast) though this is more along the lines of how I'd want things to be done. Keeps to the cottage rule and makes it a solid set. If anything, it might be a little too strong with the changes to Repulsion Field. The ticking-KD would have to be pretty infrequent to make it not effectively hold enemies in place while close to you, which isn't quite up to snuff with the current form. I think maintain it as KB would keep the area denial (while still allowing a KB->KD enhancement that could reduce the rate but eliminate the KD, a la Bonfire, rather than Hot Feet).