macskull

Raising the Sentinel damage scale is only part of the solution - they'll still have lower target caps and far worse nukes. A bump from scale 0.95 to 1.0 is cool but it needs to come along with something else that makes having a Sentinel desirable from a teaming standpoint. As it stands Opportunity isn't particularly useful except for short durations on single targets (if you happen to have the right power and use it on the right target at the right time). Opportunity should be divorced from power picks and should be available more often to provide a more consistent benefit.

Converters and changes to the way the market handles certain enhancements and salvage make it way more difficult to sustainably manipulate the market than it was during the game's retail run. You can do it short-term for some items but more often than not you're left holding onto inventory you can't offload.

This take is as bizarre now as it was the first time you posted it and I'm still not sure this isn't just Poe's Law at work. At its peak (issue 5-6 timeframe) the game had 180k subscribers and was down to 125k by issue 13 which is the last time I've been able to find data for. It almost certainly continued falling off over the last four years of the game's retail run. Number Six's post from earlier this month reveals there were 18,588 unique user agents over a one-week period in late November/early December. Keep in mind that's not a direct measurement of unique players since it's only measuring unique pings to an update server but it's probably a fairly accurate estimate. Also keep in mind that it was a weekend immediately following a major update which as we've seen results in a population surge which lasts a couple weeks before waning off again. TL;DR: The scenario you describe wasn't happening with a playerbase ten times what it is now. On the list of things which pose a threat to this game's existence "an influx of players" is probably well below "drone strike takes out every OVH server and a black ops commando team simultaneously infiltrates every location where backups of the game are stored."

In that case, it's a good thing everything in this entire game is only done as someone "intended" and no one ever does things the game designers never thought of. While some characters will still be able to earn the badge solo with the new settings, there now exists a subset of characters who were previously able to but now will not. I think that's because bigger spawn sizes just slow soloists down and the non-AV/monster mobs were never the challenging part. Is your enter key broken? I have to edit your posts to remove all the extra blank lines or it feels like I'm trying to read a CVS receipt. Aside from a very few specific builds which usually rely heavily on inspiration use (including emailing inspirations to themselves to get around the inspiration storage limit) these challenges have not been completed "swiftly and easily." People weren't loading into an MoRSF or whatever going "I want to run this with temp powers disabled and no deaths," they were going "I want the badge." Sure, if all you cared about was being able to run the content with those specific difficulty settings then this change is functionally irrelevant... but I don't think that's what anyone cares about.

Let's try this a third time. The "Master of" badges have been around since Issue 16, which launched more than twelve years ago. For the last twelve years, the requirements to earn those badges have been "complete task X with zero deaths and temporary powers disabled." That's it. I have no issue with new "Master of" badges which have additional requirements since those would have by definition been impossible to obtain on any character prior to their introduction. We now have a situation where character XYZ who was previously capable of earning an existing badge solo is no longer able to due to an arbitrary design decision. This change takes away options from players and that's never a good thing. The no-brainer choice here is to revert the requirements to what they were before the update and add a new series of badges with the new requirements. As for your point about incarnate powers trivializing content: sure, a full team loaded up with incarnate powers will trivialize most things. A solo player loaded up with incarnate powers will trivialize some things. Aside from a few very specific builds, a solo player loaded up with incarnate powers is not trivializing challenges like MoRSF and MoMLTF. EDIT: As a reminder, I do not personally care about these badges. I understand there's no benefit at all to these badges except bragging rights (at least prior to the last update which added additional rewards for Mo* badges). At the same time I'm also capable of feeling empathy toward players whose fun is being hijacked by poor design decisions. As a general rule I'm opposed to things being made more difficult through mandatory means.

Doesn't seem like I'm the one confused here.

Yes, this behavior is intentional. Rooted was changed during the Stone Armor overhaul as part of an effort to make the set not totally suck until you get Granite. At this point you basically have two options - run non-Granite and potentially be a bit squishier but get some cool side bonuses, or run Granite and be tankier but lose those bonuses. The only benefit Rooted gives you that Granite doesn't by itself is a small regeneration bonus, so there's really not much reason at all to run Rooted and Granite at the same time. If you want to stack that extra mez protection and get the regeneration bonus, you get to deal with even slower movement speed. I don't know how long OP has been playing but from a historical standpoint Rooted slowed you to a crawl whenever it was active before the recent updates.

Requoting myself in case you missed it the first time: In addition to this, there is now a subset of characters/builds which would have previously been capable of completing these challenges solo and are now unable. I take specific issue with the disabling of incarnate powers here. The P2W/temp power disabling is kind of whatever, temp powers haven't been allowed on Mo* runs since the beginning of Mo* badges and the temp powers which did still work should not have.

I have no horse in this race because I don't go out of my way to get badges unless they're required for accolades. That being said, if someone is capable of building a character and playing it well enough to do a solo Mo* run, what's the problem? Greater difficulty should come through harder content, not mandatory nerfing of players. It's all well and good to add new badges with increased challenge levels but I've never been a fan of making existing badges harder to get since it goes against the trend that's been established during the game's post-shutdown development.

The bug with Burn was fixed on the beta server at some point in late 2019, I believe, but the fix so drastically reduced Burn's performance the fix got reverted and pushed until a later date. I remember doing the math and seeing it was doing something less than 1/4 of its current damage. CPH has already stated Burn's going to get fixed for real this time when the entire set receives a balance pass. I'll miss it on my Blaster though, that's for sure.

Big /jranger on this one. Sure, the arena interface and swiss draw being horribly broken make some of these a nightmare, but if anything that should be reason to rewrite the arena interface rather than make purchasable badges. I'm cautiously optimistic about this happening in the future, especially given Faultline's comment upthread. IMO the only badges which should be purchasable are badges tied to a specific time-locked event, like the old anniversary badges are now.

Only if it stays off in PvP. On the other hand, I'm not sure why PB needs to boost knockback anyways. Knockback enhancements are already on their own schedule with an ED "cap" that's roughly twice as high as anything else for no reason at all. Knockback is so binary in this game that you're either going to fail to knock a target due to high amounts of KB protection and resistance, or you'll easily KB them regardless of how your powers are slotted. If you reeeeeeeeeeally wanna eke out some extra distance, SG base empowerment stations give 90 minutes of 60% knockback boost.

The recent buffs to cast time (assuming you're talking Devices and not Traps here) mean you can run into a mob while stealthed and start casting it and it'll go off right as the rest of the team jumps in.

Looks like they got themselves into a box of Cap'n Crunch Oops All Swords over there.

So the game basically has four melee DPS ATs right now. Sure, you could make the argument that Tankers aren't melee DPS but the Tanker damage scale and target cap/radius buffs suggest otherwise and prior to those buffs Tankers struggled to find a clear role in the context of the game. At least in the case of the melee ATs the similarities can be excused because there are clear and obvious playstyle differences due to AT inherent powers. Sentinels unfortunately get stuck with a downright awful inherent power and give up too much for what they gain. It's like the developers set out to make a new ranged damage AT and then kneecapped their ability to deal damage at every possible opportunity (haha pun!).

I'm not at all worried about HC's population as long as the monthly donation window closes as fast as it does. There's been a definite spike in population since the last update but that's pretty typical - steady decline of players once the "new shiny" wears off which bumps back up again when new content is released. HC releases major updates at a slower pace than the other CoH servers so it's no surprise there's a population decline but when HC's lowest populations are orders of magnitude higher than other servers' highest populations it's not particularly worrying. That being said, HC can't advertise due to agreements with NCSoft (so we are told anyways) so relies entirely on word of mouth to maintain its population. Old-time players who haven't heard the game is back over the last two and a half years will sometimes find it and trickle back in but getting new people involved is important for the health of the game too. Streaming and videos are probably the single best way to promote the game in the current environment - whether people understand it or not is irrelevant.

Slog through a series of missions in which none of your powers work like they're supposed to, all buffs on your character are subject to diminishing returns, and performing any action triggers unavoidable travel suppression.

Anecdotal evidence here, but the streaming ban really put a damper on my desire to play as often as I used to. It also hurt the PvP community quite a bit because players were relegated to having to watch private, invite-only streams for PvP events and as a result there's very little PvP footage out there from the period when streaming was banned.

Keep in mind that's only really useful in a "something is actually broken" sense if you have a whole lot of entries. A few dozen - hell, even several hundred - entries may still not be enough to prove anything.

Yeah, I'm over here like "I didn't realize it went anywhere."

Temporary powers are disabled in iTrials?

You can slot it at level 7. Totally worth the slot if you have a power that can take it.

I must have missed this, where is this in the patch notes?

Sorry. My post wasn't directed at you, just at the existence of this thread in general.

(This is how this proc gets nerfed)