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I'll start (with a few). 1. There a number of mobs that go through the long Total Focus animation where they jump up volleyball player style and try to pound your character via an overhead, double-handed smash. I love interrupting that, putting the mob on their butts, preferably with a power that does knock back. Bonus points if the mob cons blue and the mob gets knocked far away. Worth at least a grin, but mostly a cackle. 2. Anyone remember Hellion golf? Take a power with knockback on a higher level character and punt them across Atlas Park. 3. Going parkour style across a vertically challenging zone like Steel Canyon or Skyway City. Typically this is done with super jump, and unfortunately I remember there were gaps where combat jumping couldn't reach far enough. Anyways, it's always amusing to see how far you can get without touching the lava (street level). Bonus points if you manage to bounce around the tram tracks until you slide off. 4. Burn patches / ignite on gatherings of Circle of Thorns on the rooftops of King's Row. I love watching them flee and fall off the edge of those super tall buildings.

So I left the Live servers (issue 20 or thereabouts) before getting too much into the Incarnate system, and really sort of re-experienced them recently. Wow, it's a hot mess in my opinion. It feels like there was a unified vision of what is should be at one point, but changes were tacked on that made it worse. I sense at one point, they wanted to both a) reward people who played their characters post level 50, and b) wanted a way of progression where you could achieve your incarnate powers by achieving in-game milestones. This way you wouldn't just sit in a farm gaining levels to get more powerful. The implementation of that vision is rather bad. There's two base currencies - shards and threads. And recipes where you can craft the salvage needed for each power from each type. It honestly took me a while to find this out, simply because I just didn't notice you could scroll down for each power for alternate recipes. What's weirder is shard and thread recipes are exclusive - the salvage you craft for one can't be used for the alternate recipe. Given how many threads drop versus shards and the exclusivity of each recipe type, it creates a false impression that you need both. It vexed me at first there wasn't a thread to shard conversion when there was a shard to thread conversion button readily available - this adds to the confusion in my opinion. The interface for the powers leave a lot to be desired. You click on the interface and are first presented with a 5 slots which are locked. Okay, that is straightforward. As you level, these become unlocked and there are mission-based ways to unlock these. So far so good. However, after that it's a mess. You are then introduced to a variety of salvage that you must acquire in order to purchase the powers for each unlocked slots. The interface shows you a cost conversion in shards/threads and other prerequisite salvage in order for you to purchase your powers. Further, as you move up power tiers the subsequent power is often consumed in the creation of the higher tier power. This feels odd. As a player you are immediately left wondering if you need to re-purchase the consumed power again or if the new power has all the capabilities of your old power with additional benefits. I'm assuming the latter interpretation but the interface honestly makes this confusing as the highlighted lines to the lower level power disappears. It would just be cleaner if the lower level power was just locked (i.e., marked as permanently purchased) so it would leave no doubt. The overall experience is just rather odd. If you have a lot of threads (my highest just reached veteran level 24), the interface with the first tab for power slots, a tab for power creation, a tab for salvage creation/conversion just feels like thumbing through a poorly designed web catalog. I realize that games like Path of Exile, Diablo and similar have elaborate skill trees, and it feels they could have implemented something like that. This is an old game, running on private servers, so please put down your pitchforks, as I'm not suggesting that. I realize dev time is precious and from what I've seen they prioritize well. The interface is just underwhelming/confusing and it doesn't feel like character growth rather closer to buying upgrades for a computer.

So when kids are young they often don’t interact much together instead engage in parallel play. Largely because they haven’t developed the skills that compose socialization. As a mature adult, and a mostly solo player, it’s funny to me that I do the same. So I’m one of those weirdos that play a MMO but plays by themselves. However, I like seeing people around. I love flying through Steel Canyon and seeing another hero fly past or watch a super speeder veer up the ramps. I even have a chat tab up for that’s dedicated to the Looking for Group and Help channels, I have no intention in joining a DFB or Katie Hanon, but it’s neat seeing teams being formed. I’m always pleased to see how helpful people are in the Help channel - that hasn’t changed since Live. I really missed being around the activities rather than partaking them myself. It’s nice having no FOMO in this game as I played a lot on live and just do what I want instead of feeling compelled to do anything or prove something to others. Anyways, it’s nice to be back and just soak up the atmosphere.

That was a fun time. Largely because I was playing so casually and my highest hero at the time was a level 16 fire/fire tanker. My mind was absolutely blown that they were going to raise the level cap to 50. I hadn't even made it out of Steel Canyon so to me, it was incredible you had players who had chewed through the content and had a number of characters at max level. What I didn't know at the time that players just had a tank bring like a hundred Freakshow into a dumpster and leveled instantly. There were no caps on the number of mobs taunted so this was abused mercilessly. This was just a different era in the game. Characters struggled until level 20 when you could get stamina. Everyone and their uncle 6-slotted hasten because how overpowered it was. Regen hadn't been nerfed yet (I regret I never played one of the ridiculous early versions), and then nerfed again and again. Haha. No one really knew how most powers worked. I remember a lot of manual testing to actually find out whether or not attacks were properly balanced against other similar primaries (haha, spoiler - they weren't. Remember how pretty and awfully slow the early martial arts powers were?) You also had things like fire controllers being able to summon 9 fire imps versus that sad solo pets that ice and earth controller got. There were so many balance holes. I think the devs had always planned to raise it to 50, and did it when their metrics showed that a significant portion of the player base hit max level. I think the APPs were really enticing at the time. Armor for a blaster? Fireball for a tanker? Sign me up! Also with fitness pool and hasten being near mandatory, a lot of players looked forward to additional power choices and slots.

Lol. You don't know me. I think projecting someone's motivations for an idea is silliness at best and somewhat ignorant at worst. My current play consists of leveling a staff/sr scrapper. She's badly built, and the animations are pretty but slow. I still enjoy it. I don't power game not because I don't know how but because I feel I've been there, done that. With that said, having modes where milestones for reaching difficult to achieve tasks and being acknowledged for that in game would not be bad for the game. I say that even though I may never partake in them myself. I forgot how fussy these forums can be. I should know given I was somewhat prominent on the old ones back in the day (no desire to repeat that here). For those of you who were constructive, I appreciate it.

Would love to an option for a hardcore mode. Basically, a bright red title or similar above your character that signifies you haven’t died yet. You lose your special title if you happen to face plant and the character just becomes a standard character. Perhaps a tiny star or similar symbol by the title for every souvenir you’ve collected. Might deter the PL folks a bit but I’m well aware you can get around a lot of that via multi-boxing. Would love to see someone solo a fire/fire blaster this way. And it would add a bit of fear / challenge into this game. Maybe a way to get true bragging rights.

This is a great change. DOs + inherent stamina makes the early experience so much better. I'm glad the Homecoming folks did this.

Shrugs. Given the fact how easy it is to get to 50 (PL, team up, play certain AT combinations, etc.), there's not much prestige in having a character at max security level. Has zero effect on me on, and if that makes them happy, well okay, cool. With that said, I derive enjoyment on trying out different power combinations (it's been years since I played actively and a lot of the sets were introduced after I left) and seeing a character grow. That's just me. If you derive enjoyment by just watching a character sit at the entrance of a mission as you ding levels every few minutes or so...okay. I'd find that as enjoyable as watching paint dry, but I've discovered there are some people who actually enjoy that kind of activity.

Probably a combination of being able to overcome challenges solo (elite bosses and troublesome mobs like sappers come to mind) and efficiently level at an adequate speed. I assume that most players at worst expect to take on challenges at their security level equivalent to a single player.

Ooh, that's definitely a contender. What about ice/empathy? I think mez protection would arguably be better than a self heal.

I'm kind of thinking some variant of defender. Emp defender maybe? Perhaps a sonic defender? I've soloed a FF defender (FF/Sonic) during when the game was live (non private servers) and while it was annoyingly slow, it was decently solo capable. Just about any defender with Sonic attacks had plenty of damage. I'm asking because I'm unsure of the newer (post issue 20) combinations.

No one willing to team with you with a teleport power? Maybe teleport you over to the Tunnel portal so you can get to Atlas?

Oh I had several 50s / Incarnates during live. And most were heavily enhanced - soft capped defenses, res cap, high recharge, high regen, all that jazz. Though I think most of the lurkers here can say the same. I'm very familiar with the old power sets, just nothing that was introduced post issue 19-20 or so. So Staff Fighting, Water Blast, Rad Armor, the new MM sets, etc. no experience. It's what makes this time around so fun. It's fun to be ignorant again.

Hi Denizens of the New Forums, I'm a player who started day 1 back in 2004. I think I played until the introduction of the Incarnate system. Real life caught up in a hurry, with the birth of our kiddo and a career reboot. Anyways, this game still slaps! Been here for about 3 weeks or so. Built a bug-themed Psi/Rad Brute (bug named "Pshoo"), probably the worst farming character ever (a Titan Weapons/Fire brute), and an all-natural MAN build (if some of you remember the old school, no travel power, no supernatural powers type of characters). Some impressions. The game is super easy. I remember reading that they made the fitness pool inherent, and boy does that throw off your build. You can actually have a full attack chain before your teens. I think you can experiment a lot more and gimp yourself less. I used to host Terra Volta trials for really gimped characters back in the day so this is a good change. Really enjoy female Skulls and Hellions, equal opportunity evil; and the new boss types. No idea when those were introduced but they weren't there when I played. Excelsior is rather busy, enough so that Atlas Park actually lags a bit. I play on a pretty underpowered computer, and so when about 20+ characters gather around Ms. Liberty powers going off, it's noticeable. I don't mention this as a bad thing; just surprised at the activity. I tried to donate, waited a day and they already collected enough for May. Nice! Don't make a female character wearing a leotard and pick staff fighting as a primary. I had no idea my character would flash the room as soon as you activate Eye of the Storm. I promptly gave her a costume wearing pants. Anyways, just wanted to drop a word and say hi. Oh, and here's my character, with pants. Oh, and what percentage of lurkers here are old players? Any new-to-COH folks lurk here?