FFFF

That’s too bad. I was hoping for plug and play from AE to live.

I'm using crowdsource referring to labor/effort, not monetary contributions. Just so there's no confusion here.

So I concede that developer resources are scant, and there are many things that may need to be fixed/updated before looking at old contacts, missions. I think new power sets and costume parts will be the priority for much of the current player base, along with bug fixes. However, the old (think prior to City of Villains / Issue 6) missions feel really dated compared to other parts of the game. Compare a mission arc you get from Tunnel Rat in Praetoria versus what you'd get from say Tristan Caine. It leads to a bad player experience, particularly new players. You go from the exciting mission where you infiltrate the Skulls from Shauna Stockwell to Rescuing hard to find physicians from the Vahzilok. The disparity is jarring. Is it possible we can help in some way? Is it possible to use AE to create new updates to missions, old story arcs, old missions, and have these made to replace the old stuff in the game. There's a lot of talent in the player base, and I think it would be great to see those talents applied to changing something that may never receive dev attention. I'm not particularly good with Mission Architect, but I'm willing to QA and play test. Also, given the fact that many contacts give out the same story arcs, there may not be as much to replace as we think. Further, I would love to see updates to certain contacts in the game. Among the most I'd love to see replaced: Steven Sheridan, Serafina and Unai Kemen. Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback for this idea/suggestion.

Edit: commented on the wrong AT

I'd only be up for increasing aggro limits if the associated penalties for it were increased. It's silly to see a tank herd up dozen of supposed supervillains completely scot free. This is just an idea but why not introduce some sort of scaling debuff that occurs when you aggro more than a certain limit? This would be something like a larger number of foes being able to hit gaps in your defenses just because of raw numbers. Probably not realistic for a game of this age, but an increase in aggro without a corresponding increase in risk seems like a bad overall idea.

Really agree with the OP. Fighting overpowered god-like beings just feels overdone. I think the X-Men fight against the Sentinels is more engaging than fighting against Dark Phoenix. I prefer fights against the Legion of Doom versus fights against Darkseid. I want to play a superhero, not a godling. Fighting a supervillain group to prevent them getting their hands on a super weapon that can use to extort a nation (good); fighting a planet eater so the earth doesn't become the appetizer on his 7-course meal of galaxies ...ehhh. If a lot of your new content is at that scale, fights against the Rogue Isles, Praetorians, Malta, etc. feels trivial, and sort of meaningless. Why stop a Praetorian conspiracy to replace key individuals with their Praetorian double if Rularuu is just going to end all dimensions next week? With that said, I think a great example of where a global threat is realized and dealt with appropriately in-game is the fight against the Rikti. You have heroes and a whole division (Vanguard) formed to counter it. I think the story line is engaging and you really feel a part of something bigger without trivializing your contributions. Just my opinion but I'd love to see a lot of new content in the sweet spot of level 35 - 49. This is when your character has almost all of their core powers and their build feels complete. The villains here are great and, in my opinion, underutilized. So more Malta, Carnival, Nemesis, Crey, etc. I'd love to see the game incentivize playing through these levels and not zipping past them as a road bump to incarnate content.

Had a female character on live, a former priestess from another galaxy named Three Holes. I had this elaborate backstory, even a fairly detailed religion based on the concepts of fullness and emptiness. Made it to level 24 before I got my first snarky tell full of sexual innuendos. OMG! I had completely missed the trees for the forest. I logged off and just deleted the character out of sheer embarrassment.

So I dropped COH back in the day, around issue 19. Incarnates were just announced, inherent fitness was not a thing and mez effects would instantly drop toggles, mostly meaning a swift death sentence on most squishies. Annoyed with this, I played only characters which either had mez protection or where it wasn’t as large of a factor (i.e., Masterminds). I hadn’t picked up a blaster for probably 15 years. For some reasons my current scrapper experiments weren’t working out so I decided on a Fire/Martial character. Wow. Blasters just rule. It’s been such a silky smooth leveling experience that it’s causing dissonance from what I remember. I remember blasters being fun but frustrating. Mez effects seem not as bad. My character is almost always fighting from hover and even slept or held, no problem. She stays up and then keeps shooting (hover is even decently fast!) Having stamina at level 1, access to SOs right from the beginning, etc. has largely mitigated most of the early blaster issues. Sure, I’ve been defeated a couple of times but in each case, completely avoidable if I decided to play more conservatively. I’m eager to try another blaster, but after I get my current one to 50. I wonder how many old vets still retain their old biases from Live. I know I do. The game is the same but it’s not.

Did not know we could do that. Mind blown.

tl;dr - Playing Going Rogue solo and reading all the dialogue was fun and memorable So back when the game was live, I left around issue 19. That was well over a decade ago, so my mind is a bit fuzzy whether I remember inherent fitness and alpha slots being available before I left. One of the things I really didn't explore back then was Praetoria. Sure, I took a character through it once, but I quickly reverted to playing heroes and the occasional villain. I wasn't really into stories back then and just clicked the missions, figured out what the objectives were and did just that. That was just easier to do as a hero. Further, if you teamed, mission dialogue was just something that faded into the background. So over the last three weeks, an hour or two at a time, I took my Storm/Dark Corruptor, A Dark Stormy Night, from the tutorial to the portal leading to Talos Island. I played solo and took the time to read all the mission texts, the in-mission captions and watch the cut scenes. Wow, that experience was so fulfilling. It truly felt like reading a book with your character as the main character. One of the things that Going Rogue got right were the memorable characters. Everyone from Tunnel Rat, Seer 1381 to Penelope Yin. I loved that I was invested in saving Tunnel Rat, freeing seers from the Seer Network and that the actions of both Loyalists and Resistance members left a bad taste in my mouth. This is probably the experience that original devs intended. It's a bit of a shame that player expectations and the in-game experience both work against this. When teaming, everyone usually wants to beat all the baddies, click the glowies and move on. I understand that. Reading a big block of text for a mission dialogue isn't what a lot folks are into, especially on a team. Further, team members, apart from the leader, often don't even get to see the main mission dialogue text. It feels that there are a lot of implementation issues here and mission designs aren't team friendly from a story telling perspective. Anyway, I really enjoyed the play through experiencing Praetoria. There are quite a few contacts and missions I missed, so I plan on playing as a Loyalist next play through, probably as a stalker (hopefully mitigate all the ambushes, which was surprisingly the hardest part of Gold side).

So after abandoning a Staff/SR scrapper (see here), my newest experiment has been a Savage Melee/Radiation Armor scrapper. I already have a Psi/Radiation Armor brute so I figure since Rad Armor was so good just about any new primary would be good. Well, that hasn't worked out how I planned. Let's leave aside the fact that I'm beginning to think that Rad Armor is just better on brutes because of higher caps and a larger hit point base, but it's the Savage Melee side which has been the most disappointing. So far I picked Maiming Slash (good), Shred (ugh, what a tiny cone and slow animation), Blood Thirst (good), Vicious Slash (good) and Rending Flurry (jury's out). First without boxing (which I took for Tough), I don't think I have a smooth attack chain. Feels like Savage Strike needs to be taken. I generally don't like tier 1 powers in general, but it feels otherwise; the attack chain has too many gaps. No problems with Maiming Slash and Vicious Slash, it's Shred and Rending Flurry that seem awkward to use. How exactly do you chain an attack together with this mismatch of attacks? 2 x single target, 1 cone, 1 PBAoE. I've also heard mixed reviews on both Hemorrhage (a DoT?) and Savage Leap (a teleport power with a long recharge). I love the concept character I've made - she's bio-engineered mutant who became a savage after escaping, but the attacks feel awkward. And I hate the Exhausted message that shows up. I'm looking for advice and the viewpoint of folks who have brought up a savage melee character to 50.

Honestly, that's an amazing portfolio of characters! I had a few (around 11-12) characters who were fully built during Live, and just a bunch of characters in the teens to late 20s to goof around. I wish I had built more teaming characters as for a long time I just built scrappers and blasters (who were solo oriented). The most fun I had was when I started building tanks and assembling teams around my tanks. I probably clocked the most hours on an Ice/SS tank who was modestly IO'ed but I could always build a team around. She was fun largely because she ran so beautifully even exempted down. By no means was she the toughest tank, but probably my most fun character from a teaming standpoint.

It’s amazing to see you finish one of the hardest TFs in a game on a blaster! You did something that was considered undoable during Live, and then only by rads or poisons due to the immense amounts of debuffs needed. I’ve had to resize what is now considered possible on Homecoming several times already. Thanks for expanding that boundary once again.

So back on Live, I used to have purpose built characters that I used for specific circumstances. Hard TFs? - My Fire/Shield Scrapper. Teaming/support? - Sonic/Sonic Corruptor or FF/Sonic Defender I never got around to build a GM killer though I had a build worked out for a Rad/Psy Defender and a Thugs/Traps MM. And while I had a Fire/Kin Controller who I used for occasional farming, she mostly became my AV soloer. However despite that, I felt I had a rich variety of characters to play to suit most situations. I had a lot of concept characters too, some of which became surprisingly powerful, but most were just quirky. Right now, I have a single level 50, a farming character who is completely finished, decked out in the finest IO sets, but whom I'm already bored with. I miss having my tool kit, but I'm having a flight of altitus trying out power sets and even whole ATs (Sentinels) that I've never tried on Live. I don't have anything close to a complete variety of characters and am hoping that inspiration will strike at some point. What's your "tool kit" look like? Or maybe it's better to ask, what's your portfolio of characters look like?

The teaming dynamic in City of Heroes is still among the best out there. I remember starting WOW (in its very early days) and not seeing as robust of a LFG system. Sidekicking, 8-person teams (which was large for its time) and exemplar/flashback were all so revolutionary. My absolute fondest memories were joining some random mismash of ATs and levels just having everything work out. It's so fun, and I've met some great people through that. It is addictive. I say that knowing the same source of the game's strength is also its greatest weakness. You just need to run into one bad egg to ruin it other people. The AFKer, the guy who will just solo off on their own, and simply the unpleasant. I think all of us have enough of these stories to fill a small tome. I still enjoy the game. I'm pleased to donate to this effort (and other COH efforts), but I've become just a bit more thin skinned than in the past. I stay solo unless it's to help out someone for a few minutes. I find that better.

Is this new? Position defenses (melee/range/AoE) not defend against Toxic? As I understand it, there's a check on position and then a second check on type? Is that not how it works anymore?

Well, hit level 34 and couldn't beat an even leveled Silver Mantis elite boss. I've had scrappers in the past that treated this mission as a speed bump. I had hope because she narrowly beat Nosferatu earlier this evening (probably because SR made it difficult to hit his heals) but this is as far as I can take her. I ended up with 41% positional defenses but the offensive output was just too poor. Oh well, back to the lab...

Nothing stops you from playing that way. The game still has merchant-purchasable SOs and DOs. Invention salvage actually makes it easier. Get 2-3 pieces of orange salvage and you’re pretty much set, since you can insta-sell them for 500k each. I have a character who runs on mostly common crafted IOs, a few SOs and crafting a few useful, found recipes. Once you get around 50-60% level 25-30 common IOs, you have no influence worries. The character is absolutely fine solo and quality of enhancements are largely irrelevant in team settings anyway since buffs and debuffs are so powerful.

Mine just hit level 30 and I love both her concept and how stylistic everything looks. A+ on form over function. It’s the function part that bothers me. She’s Staff/SR and easily the weakest scrapper combination I’ve ever played. With mostly common IOS and a couple of cheap sets she has 33% positional defense so it’s not like she’s easy to bring down. I think the SR secondary is holding up. But staff… Feels like every battle is whap-whap-whap-whap. There’s a fair amount of AoE but everything is damage over time. And the feel is whittling down everything instead of the ‘crunchiness’ (big hits) I’m used to on scrappers. I can see this as a great tanker set as the sustain is great, but feels weak on a scrapper. Lots of long fights and rarely is the character able to 1-hit a minion.

Part way through them. Just jarred seeing them as random spawn in the zone.

So I ventured out to the new (to me, at least) Dark Astoria and saw zombies, the Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, etc. What I didn’t expect were the Tsoo! The same Tsoo who are running protection rackets, gambling, and petty drug rackets in Steel Canyon? That Tsoo? I nearly laughed out loud. This is Daredevil vs. Galactus levels of mismatch. I mean come on, CoT are ancient undead magicians from a powerful civilization. The Banished Pantheon are devotees of an undying god of death. The Tsoo have um magic tattoos? I realize that the Tsoo were chosen by the live devs, but it just felt like a miss. Feels like a missed opportunity to add a new magic-based villain group, or re-use the Mu civilization, maybe Carnival of Shadows? Are there no other high level magic threats?

Will be a while until you get there, but Ghost Widow’s patron arc. One that is both more readily accessible and entertaining is Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by Peter Themari. Note it may make you feel like a total scumbag or a true villain.

Yay, saw the link in time. Donated for the first time!

I think this is absolutely right. Many years ago, I used to work at a company where there were people of all sorts of political leanings. You'd get a sense of who they were because they'd note that they attended church (might be a conservative) or they volunteer at a homeless shelter (progressive maybe?) However, political discussions and opinions were actively discouraged, and people generally respected that. Discussions were either about work or family-safe topics like sports, school or plans for the weekend. I worked with people of all sorts of political affiliations for years and politics just didn't come up (very often), and to this day, I'm not positive about the political leanings of some of my former coworkers. Advance to 2023 and you have (in the US at least) a subsection of the population who not only can't shut up about politics but actively tries to engage everyone around them about politics. It's like they can't help themselves and are totally oblivious that it's exhausting for everyone around them. This is a game, so for me, it's a quick click of the ignore button for offenders. Don't pollute my escapist fantasy by bloviating opinions I don't want to hear.