FFFF

I have a couple things that are true only in my head, but obviously isn't in the lore. These two (Janet Kellum and Maxwell Christopher) are totally dating. Janet always considers Maxwell grumpy because he can't ever establish a proper separation between his work and social life. The bartender messing up your Martini is not a Nemesis plot! Meanwhile, Maxwell is both attracted and terrified of Janet because big sis is Valkyrie and she carries a big frickin' spear. The FSBA is both an efficient operation and a scene out of Parks and Recreation. Also, Azuria secretly moonlights as a hero. She's pretty bad it, and you have to constantly save her in the Rescue the Fortune Teller mission. She always gives a false alias (Lady Rose, Mistress Camille, Mystira, et. al.) because she's embarrassed about her incompetence, and doesn't want folks to know. I think it's leaked because her reputation is somewhat in tatters. I think Montague Castanella, her old friend, knows her secret and hopes that she sticks to her day job.

Because I hate using inspirations so I use the cheapy/small ones first. I get this strange idea that the bigger ones are harder to come by when they're really not. And yes, they have to be sorted by size, lol. At least for me.

That would actually kind of kill me because F1 through F4 would all activate a flavor of Respite and I'd have to manually mouse click something else.

Ugh, they are not! The Acc/Dmg enhancement is in the second spot! What was I thinking?!?

Must color coordinate power tray!

This bothers more every time I look at it...

Only one has a dish named after him so therefore he must be the most superior.

This is all self-rated, so yeah pretty relative. What prompted this was a recent TF I joined and there was a DM scrapper that was just amazing lining up his cones. Also had really good situational awareness. Used a ranged attack to pull a mob off of one of squishier teammates. And seemed to beat everyone to the mission door using only super speed. I think I’m pretty good, but I wasn’t as good as that dude. Edit: ratings are just for funsies

So first off, I think City of Heroes is a pretty accessible game and has a low floor for being proficient at it. Reading the tutorial information gives you most of what you need, and experimentation plus Google can get you the rest of it. However, there are definitely areas of skill in this game. Movement skills - this can be everything from perfectly landing a super jump to avoid the "lava" to being able to line up mobs so that AoE cone can hit all targets. Some players are very good a this. Leading task forces/raids - I'm not talking about just getting them done, but doing them rather efficiently or at the various challenge levels. Sure, familiarity can compensate here, but I think an understanding of game mechanics, how certain encounters work, what powers are needed, etc. is skill based. Character builds - some players are really good at min-maxing builds, some are not. It's interesting to me that the meta for this has changed somewhat. With access to pretty much any IO and with the full incarnate system available, players build as much for damage (heavily using procs) as they do for various defense caps and recharge. Badging - getting exploration or plaque badges require almost no skill, but some of the defeat and achievement badges requires a pretty good understanding of where to make headway in that badge efficiently. Key binds - there are a lot of binds and macros that make the frustrating into the simple. Mastermind binds by themselves can elevate an entire AT's effectiveness. Binds for finding hard-to-find glowies or hostages make frustrating missions potentially a lot easier. In-game knowledge - most of this feels like familiarity instead of actual skill, but knowing where things are and what can be done in certain situations is definitely skill. For someone like me who left several issues before the live game went end of life, I'm amazed at the pieces of information I don't have (e.g., I had never seen Kallisti Wharf until yesterday). This also shows up in the ability to make innovative and original costumes. So how do I rate myself? Movement - 3/5 (still stymied by CoT cake layer cave) Leading task forces/raids - 1/5 (I've forgotten too much, and am completely unfamiliar with newer content, challenge ratings, new power sets) Character builds - 4/5 (I build mostly old school style circa 2012, but I've adapted pretty nicely I think) Badging - 2/5 (mostly owing to Google) Key binds - 0/5 (sadly I'm too lazy to use key binds on most of my characters to my obvious detriment) In-game knowledge - 2/5 (anything issue 19 or older, no idea; I've also forgotten a ton)

Save the Fortune Teller (Spelunker badge). It's a badge that is necessary for the Atlas Medallion accolade. It's super easy to miss especially if you're teaming a lot on low levels. It's not so annoying anymore due to Ouro.

I'm not telling anyone how they should play. I'm simply pointing out one of the reasons why the game feels unbalanced to some. No game goes out of its way to provide every player the top of the line gear this easily. With that said, this is a nostalgia game so who cares, right? I agree with Yomo above that the djinni has been let out of the bottle already.

I like Inventions. I think they add depth and complexity to an otherwise bland itemization system. I also appreciate that they allow for further customization of your character. I've seen a number of threads stating that IOs break the balance of the game. In its current implementation, I would agree. However, the game breaking part of them is how easily they are acquired. Back on live, the Miracle proc, the Numina proc would be tens of millions of influence. The Gladiator Armor Defense / TP protection was around a billion influence. PvP IOs were also extremely scarce due to them being loot that fell when in PvP zones. In other games, your character doesn't have access to legendary gear at the ridiculously low cost of 5 million influence (the price I bought a Luck of the Gambler / Global Recharge IO yesterday). In an extreme example, in classic WoW, you may have to wait weeks and constantly raid to get a specific piece of gear that would allow you to progress. Scarcity, cost, progression are all barriers in other games that limit access to the most powerful gear. In our current state, the most powerful gear in the game is so easily available that we see complaints about how it trivializes content. In addition, because you can buy the very best, why settle for second best? There are some invention sets that just go completely ignored because your average player can afford to go top tier immediately. Many of the second tier sets don't have the game-breaking bonuses top tier ones do. Would anyone object to someone getting 4% regeneration or 1.5% endurance recovery? On live, I remember waiting on the availability of certain scarce IOs/recipes but mostly settling on builds that factored in affordability as much as function. I don't think it's a bad situation to have some more second tier sets get more use. I think like many of you, I'd like to see game difficulty better balanced. At the highest levels, support ATs are often unneeded and the availability of top-tier IOs + Incarnate abilities have made tank-mage characters more prevalent. However, I think balancing discussions that don't factor economics, scarcity and perhaps gates on certain materials are not the way to go. It's not enough to simply add higher difficulty modes. Nor do I advocate raw global changes like buffing all enemy hit points or damage. I think scarcity made the live game more balanced and the current economic implementation broke it.

IOs were a response to enhancement diversification, arguably the most drastic nerf implemented in the game (though the lesser known global defense nerf may actually been worse). In my experience, IO-based characters still had to rely on support characters from when they were introduced (issue 8?) all the way to issue 19 when the Incarnate system was introduced. At least that was my experience during the live servers era. Would you say that pre-Incarnate teams in the game today still don't require support characters? I suspect it's the Incarnate system that ultimately tips the scale. Though there's a lot of things that make the base Homecoming character way stronger than when they were on live. At the top of my head: SOs available at level 1 Mezzes not dropping toggles Inherent fitness (more power choices, and stamina/health at level 1) All the P2W items While I agree with your premise that there is a material increase in character strength without commensurate increase in game difficulty, I don't think the issue is strictly an issue with Inventions.

I'm in Portland, home of Salt n Straw, and able to partake some extraordinary flavors: Salted Malted Chocolate Chip Cooke Dough Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper Honey Lavander Pear and Blue Cheese While I like all of the above, I usually settle for Double Fold Vanilla (their house vanilla) or their Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons (their house Sea Salt Caramel)

Agree. In fact, in many situations, it was suboptimal. You would really miss that rad defender if facing a tough AV.

Back in the day, I used to go out of my way to avoid players advertising themselves as a "healer". It told me that you didn't know how to play your AT. After multiple team ups with Empathy defenders who only took their heals and skipped out of Fortitude and Clear Mind, I only played with Empaths who I knew personally. It wasn't just Empaths either. Worst was a Rad defender who only had their area heal and the full medicine pool. I like that you can use a lot of different combinations of ATs to put together a successful team. I like you have hybrid ATs like Warshades, Masterminds, Fortunatas, etc. Some of my best experiences (and I think this goes for a lot of vets) is when an oddball mishmash of characters synergizes so well that they smash through content. I think you have some points that the game difficulty needs to be adjusted to create more utilization of support ATs and that power creep has trivialized what used to be hard content. However, where you and I disagree is that I don't think bringing back dependence on the trinity is the solution for the problems you mention.

Great topic! Respec missions used to be so hard! The mission itself wasn't that tough, but the folks who often showed up on that mission often had gimped builds. I had a Force Field Defender with Medicine pool which I used to help a lot players through that mission. And even with that I think I still failed about 20% of the time. Hami-Os used to be the bees knees. True end game gear especially since Hami raids early on would fail a fair amount of the time. I remember when capes were announced! For the graphics capability of the day, I thought they looked great, clipping issues aside. Pre-travel suppression / non-diminishing returns PvP was really fun. It was completely unbalanced and had it's very own meta, typically blasters with an emp defender. It was obvious that many powers, range vs. melee, hit points, defense, tohit, debuffs, etc. were mechanics that were never devised with PvP in mind. It was flawed, but fun. Should have never been introduced in the game in that state. Putting badges in PvP zones...probably the most drama inducing thing that old devs could have done. A terrible idea that pitted two fervent communities against each other. Sappers were really fearsome back in the day. Pretty overpowered and could single-handedly cause entire team wipes. I loved manning a tank or a /rad controller and helping someone past the AVs in the Tina Macintyre or Maria Jenkins missions. Really felt like a hero. I loved the utter domination of all defender or controller teams. I've always liked that CoH didn't adhere to the strict tank-healer-dps trinity. I remember when AR/Dev blasters and Fire Tanks were meta. Then people discovered regen scrappers and fire controllers. Invulnerability used to be awful causing a character to be rooted in place. People still picked it because they wanted it to pair with Super Strength and be Superman. Post-ED blasters were really bad. I remember respec'ing one of mine and discovered that blasts wouldn't one-shot most minions. Post-ED tanks were almost as bad. Early game, the devs purposely obfuscated how powers actually worked. Frustratingly you only saw descriptions of high or severe damage, stuff like that. I remember the grassroots efforts to start cataloguing activation times and to better understand attack chains. How defense really worked (no one understood that 45% soft cap until player testing revealed it), resistance caps, stealth, tohit, or other significant game mechanics. I can say with certainty that most of the early players essentially played blind, picking suboptimal powers because a lot data was just hidden from us. I was blown away how popular badges became. I think CoH was one of the first games to implement them. I couldn't understand why some players obsessed with this particular metagame but I noticed that accomplishments/badges had proliferated and had become normalized in many other MMOs of that era. Sidekicking and Find Team functions, even at launch were pretty amazing. I remember being a level 16 fire tank who was invited to a level 30ish team mission. It was great to immediately access high level content. Fighting Crey with training and DOs though wasn't as great of an experience. Thanks for indulging this trip through memory lane.

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.