BasiliskXVIII

I try to stay away from the direct references to comics, but I don't deny that there's a few which are inspired by some of my favourites. Sherd, for instance, my Psi/Shield scrapper found a magical potsherd and gained the ability to make psionic constructs with them. Replace "potsherd" with "ring" and "psionic" with "hard light" that's just Green Lantern. But, his costume looks nothing like GL's, he's a Scottish archaeologist, and in every aspect other than the most simplistic breakdown of the character, there's very little tying the two together. In general, that's where my personal line is - a kind of Watchmen-like reintepretation of the character is fine, but much beyond that I would feel is cheesy. Even a case like Deadpool vs. Deathstroke I feel would be too close, even though they've developed into very different characters since.

batlh Dajatlhta' ta' qol!

You also said, in the big title there at the top, that you wanted is made so that players couldn't buff a player not on their team, so there's more than a little understandable confusion. Wow... There is a hell of a lot of vitriol there for something that the majority of players consider a nice gesture of assistance to others. For one: No, it often isn't possible to not buff you and buff the person next to you if you're in a crowded area. Almost all buffs are AoE now. Second, with the exception of the original Sonic buff graphics and SB, people tend to overwhelmingly appreciate buffs. If you're driven this far into apoplexy by someone trying to help, there's plenty of low pop servers you can go to where you generally don't even need to worry about running into anyone.

And well it should, as a Greek word that's pluralised with Latin rules. (Though I will point out that "octopuses" is an entirely valid way of pluralizing "octopus") So, in honour of the octopus, let's take a completely random-ass language, utterly divorced from any context or origin, and pluralize "Kronos" with that, then. I'm suggesting Amharic. Multiple Kronos Titans are now Kronosoch.

If you speak to the S.T.A.R.T. Vendor either in Atlas/Mercy or Pocket D, there's several options to reject inspirations of certain kinds, whether by type (yellow, red, blue...) or by size (small, med, large) You also get a few badges for rejecting insps. (Unconcerned/Apathetic/Couldn't Care Less). Note that this only cancels drops of other kinds, so if you would get a light purple insp, and you've set to reject it, then you just get nothing.

I'll give you this: I absolutely hate being turned into a monkey. It's the stupidest f'kin thing ever, it takes me out of combat and keeps me from playing the game. It was worth a few laughs the first two or three times it happened on live, and then became nothing more than a "you do nothing for a minute" button. So I don't go get the Secondary Mutation power. I have it on exactly zero of my characters, and I'm fine with that. I have never, and I mean not even once, felt I was missing out on anything valuable by not using it.

In this context, Kronos is being used as an English proper noun and title, not a loanword from Greek. Because of this, it should follow English pluralization rules, even when shortened. Thus, "Kronoses" is the correct plural form—just as multiple Zeus Titans would be "Zeuses" rather than "Zēnoi", and multiple Hercules Titans (from the Latinized form) would be "Herculeses" rather than "Herculēs." English doesn't retroactively apply foreign grammar rules to proper names used in English, and Kronos is no exception.

And everyone always complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it!

It's a well-known Easter egg that most of the detectives in the game are references to famous and law enforcement in media: Freitags and Becktrees are Friday and Streebeck from Dragnet (1987) Martins and Rogers and Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series Sluggitt and Westbrush are Frank Bullitt (Bullitt) and Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry) Kowaccio and Frasenbacker are Vecchio/Kowalski and Fraser/Diefenbaker from Due South Basinns and Coquette are Tubbs and Crockett from Miami Vice Davids and Hutchinson are David Starsky and Ken Hutchinson from "Starsky and Hutch" Junkers and Murwell are Rick Deckard (Blade Runner) Alex Murphy (RoboCop) McLord and Selnum are Steve McGarret (played by Jack Lord in Hawaii 5-0) and Thomas Magnum (Played by Tom Selleck in Magnum PI) (Detectives Fish and Miller are named for Sean Fish and Matt Miller, former devs for City of Heroes) I like to believe that somewhere in Kallisti Wharf there isn't a police station, but just a little detective's office. And there, if you could get inside, you'd find two men, eager for work. An older, rumpled-looking man, slumped lazily in his chair, beige trench coat hanging loose over his shoulders like he has been wearing it for decades. His expression is casual, even absentminded, as he stirs sugar into a chipped coffee mug. Beside him, another man sits, perfectly poised—immaculate three-piece suit, gloves still on, a glass of bourbon untouched at his desk. He leans back in his chair, watching you enter with an amused glint in his eye. You see, you've found the office of Detective Falk and Detective Craig. Their methods might be unorthodox, but the streets of Kallisti are kept clear, because they know what's going to happen before it even starts.

My point is if you are a new player (or even a returning player with a fuzzy memory of how the game works) and follow the breadcrumbs that the game lays out for you on how to play, it's very possible for you never to receive an introduction to any of the contacts with story arcs which were in the game at launch. You start with Habashy, who sends you through an intermediary to Thiery. At 5, you also get pointed at Twinshot. Neither introduce you to anyone, but you get Shauna Stockwell as a popup at 7 or when you enter King's Row as part of Twinshot's arc. So you run Stockwell and then Eagle Eye, as well as the Shining Stars Arcs. Finally you stop Veles and let's suppose you finish Eagle Eye at level 15. You're out of Vic Johansson's range, so Eagle Eye doesn't introduce you to him, and Twinshot's arc finishes up, and you're not introduced to anything here either. So you "Find Contact" - you get Jim Temblor, and you do that arc up to 25. Agent G doesn't introduce you to anything, so you're stuck. And in this whole time, nothing is introducing you to the older contacts, so you don't even know they exist. As far as you're concerned, there are two levelling paths through the early game - this one contact chain, and the TFs. (Three if you include farms.) So what I'm saying is that having people calling out in LFG "Hey, I'm running the Mind of a King arc as a TF Lv. 15+, LFM" is potentially beneficial as a way to direct peoples' attention to the fact that those arcs and contacts exist at all. This isn't "I want everybody to do all the content", this is "hey, did you even know this was here?" Because the way that the game is laid out right now, I am quite certain that there's players out there who have absolutely no idea that there's hours and hours of content in the game that the game almost hides from them. And yes, it is possible for players to form TFs through Ouro to do these task forces now. I just think people would be more likely to advertise to do it, if the option to do so was presented naturally to them as they played. Right now, the Ouroboros flashbacks arcs are kind of out of sight out of mind.

No, I mean at higher level. Eagle Eye doesn't pass you on to anyone if you outlevel Vic Johansson before completing his arc, so unless you specifically know to go contact hunting, even if you don't accidentally outlevel them, you will very easily miss out on contacts like Wyatt Anderson (Mind of a King Arc), Kong Bao (Tsoo Shenanigans arc), and the various contacts that were in the game at launch unless you know to do radio missions. The only contacts that the "Find Contact" button actually finds for you are the ones that are open for anyone to start at any time, like Montague Castanella or Jim Temblor.

I'm thinking more as a separate option - you get the mission arc offered to you, and then when you click it to select the mission, there's an option to run their arc as a task force. You can choose to accept the arc as normal, or you can put together a TF to run the arc together. I'm primarily a soloer, so I wouldn't want the option to run the mission in non-TF mode removed, but for the times where I do have a mission arc and a lot of free time, I might put out a call to do it as a group. Obviously, the biggest challenge to this implementation is that it becomes necessary to have a sort of interim state where you've accepted the mission, but it hasn't started yet, like the alignment tip missions have, which is why I say there would probably need to be new systems added to contacts as part of this. Which, admittedly, is potentially more effort than the Devs would find worthwhile. I do think, however, that having the option to run the arcs as TFs on-the-fly, and especially having the merit rewards shared, would make them more appealing to players, and would offer a bunch of content to teams that is currently kind of "out of sight, out of mind." Especially since it's actually really hard to get access to some of those arcs as you level now, with the "old" contacts not being offered unless you either don't follow the Matthew Habashy>Shauna Stockwell>Eagle Eye chain or you make an effort to do enough radios to get a safeguard mission if you do.

Somewhat related, but what I'd love to see is for contacts to give you the option to run their story arcs as a task force. You can already do the arcs flashbacked through Ouroboros, but it seems pretty lame that if I'm running a story arc and I have people joining me for the entire thing, then the only way for them to get arc rewards and credit for completing it is if they happen to also have the story arc and are running it parallel to you. Admittedly, this means messing around with adding a new system to contacts, which I could see not being a very exciting prospect for the devs, but it would be nice if there were better incentives for people to experience the mission arcs, cause some of them are pretty neat.

Most TFs are like Posi rather than DFB. Many players have run these TFs so many times that all interest and novelty have been wrung out of them and they are only interested in the reward, and there's a process which has been standardised to get through the TFs as quickly and efficiently as possible. If it's your first time running a TF, I would advise letting your team know when you start so that they can give you guidance on what to do and where to go next. I've never had any problems with this, there is typically someone who is willing to guide the newbie. Avoid any TFs which advertise themselves as "speed", because tearing through the TF as fast as possible is the intent of those, while KM tfs (Kill most) are generally going to be about killing enemies.

Two arms is the limit. You can't find an option to make a multi-armed character because one doesn't exist. The "Circle of Thorns" backpack option looks vaguely insect-leg-like, so you might be able to play around like that. Or if you create an Arachnos Soldier, you can eventually get the option for a Crab Spider Backpack if you choose the Crab Spider path, which has big spider-like legs over your head. Neither option will let you use these as regular arms to hold a weapon or something with though.

If I'm honest, I almost kinda wish that they'd break down the way that origin ties to the enhancements altogether. I kind of hate that I feel this way, because I do feel like Origin should be relevant at least in part, and the SOs are one remaining vestige of this remaining in the game. But basically the only thing it's really contributing is determining how annoying it is to buy SOs if you go to IP. I do like the thought that magic-type characters check out the neat baubles and charms in the magic shop and that techy characters visit the Radio Shack for the bits and bobs that they need for an improvement to their toys, because that's a very comic-y thing to do. But at the same time, a magic origin "Fury of Joule" and a tech origin "Portacio Ind Internal Munitions" are the same thing, given that as Stormwalker said, nobody pays that much attention to the enhancements they're slotting anyway. If all stores just sold a Damage Enhancement equivalent to an SO (don't really know what to call it given that it wouldn't be tied to an "origin." AO, maybe? All Origin?) and you could decide whether you want to pick it up from the Magic shop or the Mutant shop, it seems like that would eliminate an annoyance with SOs.

The problem with this is that when you start looking at SOs, there's some really extreme things that you're supposedly doing to yourself. There's a lot of tech-based heroes who aren't cybernetically enhancing themselves. You tell a reasonable Science-origin character that he should irradiate himself with Radon to boost his defensive abilities, or Alpha particles to make himself faster, then they will, very justifiably, treat you like a lunatic. And while my tech characters may be comfortable replacing an eye that's been lost with a cybernetic, I doubt many would go under the knife for the sake of being more accurate.

I appreciate the insights. I did a respec with some of this feedback in mind and it's feeling a lot less useless and disjointed. I am finding the KB in powers like Buckshot still annoying, but they also make a home for Sudden Acceleration sets, so at least the KB will be mitigated when I can afford the multiple KD>KBs. Since I am playing this character on Victory, I'm building under the assumption that I will be soloing a lot, so my new current build is more of an interim one as I work towards permadom, and then it'll get another rework to account for the faster recharge cycle. But at the moment, I'm definitely wishing for a better ST attack chain, because it's feeling pretty anemic ATM compared to my Symphonic/Savage dom. This one's become a pet project, though, so we'll see it through.

Claws gets unstoppable, Spines gets Elude, and Energy gets MoG. Elude and Unstoppable aren't too bad to deal with. For Elude, throw enough attacks, and eventually one gets through their defence and they go down, since they're already at low health, it's even easier if you have autohit powers or big -def debuffs. Unstoppable is likewise not too tricky, since it usually just means landing a few more hits. MoG is really the only one that's bad, since the combination of the two means that you can't hit them and when you do, it does no damage. Then, they also go into "afraid" mode and proceed to haul ass away from you at fly speed, buzzing around the entire map like a directionally-challenged housefly, only to eventually saunter back, and there's still entirely too long left on MoG.

I had a build I'm not really happy with, and as I'm levelling the character up, the less happy I'm getting. I'm trying to rip the thing back to bare bones and start from zero, but the more I futz with it, the less I feel I even know what I'm doing. I'm not really sure I can even identify the stuff that's worth taking. Part of this is that I don't really play control much. I have an Earth/Martial up to 45, but in general I stick to Corruptors, Tanks, and Brutes. Some things I'm not sure about: The Disorient/Immobilize combo is a common soft control pairing to make into hard control, but dark's Heart of Darkness as a PBAoE doesn't seem to play nicely with the Cone Immob. At the very least it needs a lot of repositioning comparatively. Should I not be relying on it, in favour of other soft controls? Trip Mine? Lot of damage, but a long animation. Is it worth it? My /Traps corr loves it, but here I'm less sure. Ignite initially struck me as a bit of a lame T9, but then I realised that keeping stuff in the patch shouldn't be a problem. I'll include my current build, but I realise it's a trash fire that isn't even getting permadom right, Please help. Gunsmoke - Dominator (Darkness Control - Arsenal Assault).mbd

Yeah, that's just North American urban planning. /s The map from the Wiki does at least show that the zones we play the game in aren't the sum total of the city. The war walls surround specific neighbourhoods, but there's significant areas outside the walls that are still just kinda doing their thing. There's an airport between Skyway and Talos, for instance, but you're right that it's weird that they'd put a Baumton Airport in an area that it's pretty apparent that there isn't an airport in and couldn't have been one before it was ruined. But it does, at least, seem fair to say that there's probably suburban development happening outside of the parts of the city that we see.

I tend to think that SS isn't really a particularly "scrapper"-y powerset. Any character doing the things that a SS character does in a comic would typically fall under the purview of a Brute or a tank. SJ "feels" a lot more like how I envision super strength from a scrapper. Which means I wouldn't make one. But the limits of my imagination are not a fair restriction to impose on others. I also tend to think that Fire Armor and Radiation Armor are absolutely stupid concepts as armor sets. But I don't begrudge their presence in the game. Now, if there's a balancing issue with rage, then yeah, that should probably get sorted before getting translated, but it would hardly be the first time we see a power set change in being adapted to another AT. My /Regen stalker deeply resents the loss of Quick Recovery, for instance. Other than that, though? Let the Stalkers have SS.

I feel like the worst part of this aspect is how obvious it makes it that Paragon City isn't a city but a city-themed video game level. Skyway City has all of these big elevated roads and almost nothing there for the roads to go to. Even zones that are more reasonable, like Kings Row, have weird overpasses and things that seem pretty clear that the only reason they exist is because someone in the design phase of the game was like "Oh, and you'll be running along and see a group of villains threatening someone below you, so you can jump down and be like Batman" Except, who does street sweeping? The only saving grace with Grandville, I find, is that at least they decided to build a zone with a lot of verticality and didn't fall back on "roads" as the driving force for it. What we got still doesn't make any damn sense, but at least it makes no damn sense in a decidedly Arachnos way.

This actually reminds me of something that I was thinking this morning while running a new character on Victory. What the heck is up with Twinshot's arc? I decided to run it just because I had no one around to do a DFB, First off you're getting a tutorial in an arc you can't access until level 5 or later and it starts with finding out how to level up? It also brings you to the hospital, as if you're ever going there without being teleported, and the police station, as if there's anything to do there. The only one that makes any sense at this point is maybe the auction house. But then there's also the plot. Graves gets a lot of stick because it's... just so bad.... But Twinshot's just falls apart if you think about it. You get attacked by Arachnos, You track Arachnos down to Justin Sinclair, and then he reveals that the Arachnos you've fought are a bunch of actors? Even ignoring the fact that I'm tearing through the enemies with an Arsenal Assault Dominator, and you need to have a lot of faith that I'm using that thing nonlethally, you're still recruiting people to intentionally put themselves in a position to get the living crap beaten out of them? And this is a test? Manticore's supposed to be CoH's Batman. He can't just tail us fighting Skulls, or even point us in the direction of a REAL Arachnos operation somewhere? By the point I was running this, I'd done Thiery's arc, so it's no surprise that Arachnos is there... Just the idea that Manticore's idea of a test is "hey, beat up a bunch of actors in costumes"... why?

This is about it: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Rogue_Isles_Villains Some of those characters do have their own page, which is linked from there, for those who take a more active part in the morality missions, such as Stardusk or Mangle. Most do seem to be blank slates, though.