Heliphyn34u

Hmm, thought of a few possibilities . . . Cherry Picker #1, Blastroller Dark Grasp (Darkness Control) Temporal Mending (Time Manipulation) Fire Ball (Fire Blast) Propel (Gravity Control) Moonbeam (Dark Blast) Build Up Earthquake (Earth Control) Ground Zero (Radiation Armor) Geyser (Water Blast) Cherry Picker #2, Armor Spectrum Charged Armor (Electric Armor) Healing Flames (Fiery Armor) Impenetrable Mind (Psionic Armor) Indomitable Will (Willpower) Evasion (Super Reflexes) Glacial Armor (Ice Armor) Cloak of Fear (Dark Armor) Ground Zero (Radiation Armor) Atomic Blast (Radiation Blast) Cherry Picker #3, Chaos Blast Lightning Bolt (Electric Blast) Fire Ball (Fire Blast) Aim Glittering Column (Pyrotechnic Control) Psionic Lance (Psychic Blast) Haunt (Darkness Control) Bitter Ice Blast (Ice Blast) Life Drain (Dark Blast) Neutron Bomb (Radiation Blast) #3 is less chaos-y than I initially intended, but it looks fun to me. For this experiment, I stuck to Primary powersets only, even though that wasn't a requirement. Waiting for someone to post an all-AoE KB set.

I actually like the graphics -- they're not too cartoony, but they also don't fall into the uncanny valley. I enjoy the gameplay, and the community, and the customization -- unlike many other games, the cover need not match the book. Having abilities untethered to loot means you can have a tiny girl or medium-sized bird person or huge muscly dude with the same power levels. There are so many possibilities! You write your own backstory (if you want), choose your powers and look, and grow those powers over time. And you don't have everyone show up at top level with the same exact armor sets unless it's a group of players who have chosen that as a uniform. Base-building is fun too! Another thing I really like is that there's no competing for loot. Occasionally you'll find someone has cleared an area in a zone of the mobs you wanted to hunt, but those respawn fairly quickly, and arguably the Market is a competition, as is PVP by definition, but you're not forced to compete with players for everything. If you're on a team, when mobs are defeated, everyone gets something. Keep what you like/need, sell what you don't, no squabbling over who needs it more. (Can you tell that I did not enjoy WoW? Because I did not.) Additionally: The current player-run environment that accepts donations but isn't trying to turn a profit is great because monetization tended to make this game very grindy. Some grind is fine, but who wants to be constantly goaded into spending real money to add little tiny QoL upgrades and status-y bs? Plus, CoH travel powers are primo.

Doing TFs (especially the WSTs), completing missions arcs, GM defeats, joining Hami Raids, all good ways to get reward merits. Couple other things: 1. Get all the exploration badges in a zone. Yeah, it's a piddly 5 merits per zone, but it doesn't take long, and it's easy enough to do some of this in between TFs/arcs/etc. 2. MSRs, aka Rikti Mothership Raids. Once you've taken down the pylons, planted bombs, and punched many many Rikti in the bowl as part of a league, you should end up with a bunch of Vanguard Merits, which can then be converted into Reward Merits. Plenty of ways to acquire Reward Merits, but the upshot is, it's easier when on a team or league.

I just want Babbage to dance too, is that so wrong? Having map markers for the Troll Rave locations would be nice, and/or some graffiti on the pavement that could be seen from the air.

Literally!

If you haven't already, I do think it's worth playing with the new deep sleep mechanism on the test server to get a feel for how it works before making changes to the toons you're playing. Try it out, see if you want to incorporate it into your gameplay. Improving previously "skippable" powers just adds to the number of possibilities in terms of character build, which I think Seed22 was getting at. Go against the grain! "Oh, these powers are essential? Let's see about that..." Might even be interesting to make a very sleep-focused toon, though I'm sure the name Mr. Sandman is taken...

I mean, fair.

Layer cake room, of course -- really, all CoT caves, including the Oranbega ones with the raised yet interrupted poop walkways, always with one hostage tucked into a cranny underneath. I'm not actually a big fan of the Underground in Praetoria, but that's more due to the dang ghouls dropping onto my head than the design (gonna get me a ghoul-proof hat someday, I swear). Also this: That mish is a giant pain in part because searching all those nooks and crannies is so boring -- "I've been over this building three times, but there's a civilian cowering in a far corner under a bunch of pipes that I can't target unless I drop down into the roof crevice and stroll the length of the building? Cool, super-fun."

I like this a lot, and I don't think it would significantly impact the in-game economy, adversely or otherwise. Making everything free would alter the game too much. There are consequences for what we do in-game, and the economy is part of that -- whether you got a toon PLed to 50 using boosters and are now staring at a bunch of empty slots in your powers and no inf, or you played the market so effectively for so long that now everything feels effectively free to you, you made those choices. The choices we make do affect each other, and some things can still be a struggle for some of us, but no in-game challenge is so insurmountable that it would justify throwing out the entire economy. Look at the bright side, in-game we have free housing and free healthcare! (Just imagine if we had to pay inf to tp to the hospital.) And yeah, things are cheaper than they were on live. If I was going to tweak anything, it would be to make a couple more QoL things available for free via the S.T.A.R.T. vendor, specifically one resurrection power, the base teleporter, and possibly the mission teleporter. I'm not expecting that to happen, but it would be helpful for lowbies. Alternately, granting a temp rez power at the same time the temp fly power is granted (level 2?) would be a nice little QoL upgrade for people just starting the game.

I don't enjoy doing respecs, but I do them when I need to. For toons that I level up to 50, I might respec them twice, maybe three times, depending on how the powers feel at different levels and whether or not I've borked the slotting. One improvement that would be great to have would be the ability to move slots around after placing them, like using Shift-Click in Mids. Not sure that's actually possible, but it would be so much nicer to not have to hit the Back button and undo all the other slotting just to fix a misclick. There are probably some toons I'll want to respec after the new changes drop. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. It'd be nice if everyone was granted a freespec per character just to ease things along. I take a screenie and just paste it temporarily in Paint. I've never had an issue doing a respec in my base, which is how I usually do them -- I don't want to lose my progress via afk logout if I have to step away.

Huh, cool thought experiment. The backstory for my main involves a portal accident resulting in her arrival in Paragon -- along with several alternate selves. So Heliphyneau's Patron Pool would probably be portal-based. As a Grav/Kin, she already has Wormhole, though not all of her alternates have Gravity powers, but maybe a Patron Pool version of that. It'd be fun to summon a portal that flings a random object out of it to hit your enemy, like Propel but with a swirly effect (or maybe it could fling a defeated enemy at your enemy). Then there could be a version of Mark and Recall where you place a marker on a map and then open a portal in a different part of the map so that anyone who passes through it will land at the marker -- not sure what to call it, Portal Back? Next would be Portal Implosion where you open a portal, it drags nearby enemies into it, and SQUISH, no more enemies. Last would be Portal Alts, which spills multiple alternate versions of your toon to assist you in combat.

Coming soon: Cottage Rule armor set! Each armor power in the set builds a little cottage around you -- log cabin, gingerbread house, stone cottage, though the most skippable power is the thatched roof cottage (vulnerable to fire damage). Just imagine fighting enemies while looking like a literal brick s-house!

I don't understand the rationale behind changing Gravity Distortion Field to a location-based AoE. Does employing a pseudopet simplify the coding somehow? Adding damage and/or reducing recharge duration would be great improvements to utility, but it's weird that the trade-off is making GDF location-based. It's clunky to use against flying enemies -- I was initially concerned that it wouldn't be usable against flying enemies at all, but through testing I learned that if you are far enough away from the enemy, you can place the target in the air. If you're too close, the target defaults to the ground. Fiddly to use on a moving target. Very much agreed with this. ^ Adding a trawl effect to Gravity Distortion Field would fit well with the powerset in general and this power specifically.

I did think of this ^ too, but I settled on: Thumbs Left: THIS eff1ng guy... Thumbs Right: I'm outta here. Finland: I touch Sweden, Norway, and Russia, and I don't like it. (Seriously: no idea.) Moose: WTF Banjo: SOMEone's riffing. OR Go off, King/Queen! Staff of Aesculapius: First, do no harm. Microphone: Mic drop. Pepperoni Pizza: Denotes someone is of the "No pineapple on pizza" tribe. Pineapple Pizza: Denotes someone is of the "pineapple on pizza" tribe. I mean, we could reach a consensus on the definitions and codify them, or we could just continue to free jazz them. It's all good.

Both? Both. *nods* Just because it is easy to get the Ouro portal blueside (enter City Hall in AP, enter Recluse's Victory, tada), and possible to get it redside if you don't mind Naruto-running through the zone, and . . . well, sorry goldside, doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have an actual perma Ouro portal be a placeable item in bases. To address what Snarky was asking for, I do think it would be nice to have the Ouro portal animation available for use as a teleport portal. Even better if it were available as both Tech Teleport and Arcane Teleport items, AND if it were tintable. You could use the default gold color or tint each portal to match which sort of destinations the portal serves, or whichever color coding you want for your base. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be for the devs to add any of this, and I know they've got their plates full, but somewhere down the line, these options would be cool to have.