ThatGuyCDude

I think the problem lies in the animations, and not in the way you might think. Shield Defense has WEIRD interaction with other animations... make a Shield-er and try to use Long Range Teleport while your shield is out, you'll get stuck in a two-second loop of starting the cast motion and stopping it until the power activates. But that power has a fixed time until it activates, whereas attacks activate when their animations *end*. I worry that if a Shield were paired with a two-handed weapon, those animations would likewise be blorked by the shield trying to override them. The power doesn't execute until the animation finishes, so you could potentially run into scenarios where the power will fire too early, too late, or never at all. The two solutions are either to remove the shield-raising component from its animations (so the shield is at rest on the arm and the character moves their arm as normal), or to make new animations suitable for the combination of shields and two-handed weapons. I'm not sure how feasible either of those are, though: one involves repositioning the shield relative to the model or fixing it to their arm position like a glove, the other involves creating new animations entirely and making Shield Defense bypass the original animations accordingly (at that point, might as well make it a separate powerset 'buckler defense' to avoid complications that might arise from tweaking the system).

Perhaps this is a situation for more badges? If progress on the split were tracked as two separate badges, with the original reflecting completion of both subordinate badges, then players could track those subordinate badges separately. I for one would certainly like a system like that to track things like the Fire Fighting progress; I could see it being equally appreciated in terms of the crafting badges. "Apprentice" and "Journeyman" <crafting badge title>? ...although... ...progress on subordinate badges wouldn't exist before they were created, so badgers would have to make the stuff again. Hrmm... well, it increases the badge total, which I guess they'd like, and the benefits of crafting without recipes would be tied to the superior badge they'd already possess. I dunno... adding more badges at least seems like an easier approach than creating context-sensitive badge progress text, especially since some badges already struggle with their associated text when switching alignments (granted, crafting isn't a category that faces that, but it's a related issue).

I mean... I got a bit of a Battalion vibe from the Void Hunter arc in the Wharf, so it does seem like the story is still moving in that direction. We just have more grounded stories of the smaller potato gangs escalating, too (like the Freak-lok). I'd like to see more entities coming up with alternatives to combat Incarnate powers, though. Like... the Trolls, for instance. We need some Level 50 supatrolls running around Kallisti or Peregrine jazzed on an incarnate mix of their favorite steroid. They call it... I-o-dine *snigger*. As for Praetorian Hamidon, I can't imagine a conflict with it being any more succinct than the push back to form Last Bastion. While some radial missions in a hazard zone would be nice (a 40-50 shared zone Praetorians can also venture to after Night Ward), you can't really BEAT Praetorian Hamidon because it's basically the whole planet at this point. It's like a dozen ants trying to topple a human being, or in CoH terms it's like trying to beat Mot after it already ate everybody (come to think of it, I bet Dr. Hamidon ate or absorbed Mot in Praetoria... the Hamidon's vast power and reach seem to suggest that).

Saturday Night Synapse is relevant insofar as it generated enough simultaneous encounters with Babbage to make the problem apparent. Other similar activities in the game are deliberately level-less (the Giant Monster scaling method), such as the Brickstown Jailbreak or the St. Martial Robbery. This is content that is intended to be attempted by players of all levels, even those who are not teamed together. The fact that certain Giant Monsters can be a source of griefing--albeit unintentionally--because somebody spots a big thing on the horizon and runs in to help and score some merits is what needs to be addressed. Not everyone playing the game will understand or even be aware that the entity in question has minions that will not behave as expected. When it does, the offending player can't even join the team to sidekick their victims up to level, as they are in TaskForce mode. It's a pointy edge that could use some sanding, and I believe the best way to do so is to set up separate entities with the same power profile and locked giant monster leveling, so that the situations both you and I have described never have an opportunity to happen. As for SNS and its rewards outpacing the effort, I have to disagree. The yield for the amount of time and effort arranging, coordinating, and completing the event is comparable to any other weekly strike target, or a round of zone-to-zone monster hunting. A correction like this also would not benefit the max-level players participating, as all spawned entities would be conning blue to them instead of gray until they've intervened. The people who would benefit are those actually running the task forces (locked in at a low level as they are) as well as those running Synapse on other nights who happen to catch the attention of a high level player as they try to claim their own Giant Monster ambush (not to mention random players who might be victimized by stray level 50 minions in Skyway before the reset cleans them up).

Babbage likes to drop Sprockets. These Sprockets are identical to the kind that spawn everywhere else Clockwork are seen. There's a problem with this: they have a bad tendency to jump up to the level of a taunter while the Babbage is being engaged. Suddenly there's no hope of a low-level character or team joining the fight against the giant monster, because the Sprockets are now spawned at level 50 instead of a scaled state relative to the player fighting them. Other entities in the game spawn adds relative to their level at the time they're spawned. That's fine. But Giant Monsters are different, because they're not instanced content and they're intended to be faced by leagues. Entities they spawn should be a separate variant of the basic enemies, set level-less so they can be fought as blue or white threat minions/lieutenants/et al. regardless of if the player is Level 1 or Level 50. Yes, this is a response to Torchbearer's Saturday Night Synapse (Babbagefest). Yes, I imagine the Sprockets spawning without a level is a technical limitation because of their leveled presence elsewhere. The solution? Make a copy of the Sprocket enemy that is specific and exclusive to Babbage and Paladin and always spawns unleveled. Giant Monsters with spawns that would need to be inspected: Jurassik (Rubbles on death) Paladin (Sprockets - can share enemy data with Babbage) Babbage (Sprockets - can share enemy data with Paladin) Jack in Irons (Red Caps, though I think he's fixed already) and possibly the Arachnos Flyer (though given its zone's average threat level this is probably unnecessary)

Debuffs don't track who they're from (Seers will stack their progressive Mez on you if there's two of them attacking at once), which means stacking Broadsword players would accelerate their Sever rate but only the last one to hit would get the benefit. I'm not entirely sure that's a problem (it's still the same number of triggers total), though it could be frustrating if one player has a better damage enhancement rate than the other. What other mechanics could be considered as a means to handle this problem, I wonder? Sentinels don't share stacks of Vulnerability but they do share the benefit. A second Sentinel is prohibited from applying their inherent bonus to the same target. This seems like it's a similar situation with Broad Sword, but it doesn't really work out. Moving on. MasterMinds have abilities that affect their own pets. That's more promising. ...Eureka. You make Broadsword spawn an invisible, fast, flying pseudopet that follows the target. IT gets stacks of real Laceration (the target gets 'fake' stacks for player monitoring). When a Sever is proc'd, it feeds through the pseudopet which then detonates on the target as bonus damage (removing an equivalent count of 'fake' laceration stacks to convey to the player that the effect has triggered).

YES! I freaking hate those guys! I hated Carnie Illusionists until I had a flash of inspiration: their strategy is a brilliant mitigation tactic. Now I take Phase Shift on all my heroes, get a pack's attention, and then stand there and laugh as their alpha strike passes harmlessly through me.

A MasterMind's inherent--Supremacy--pulses a leadership-esque wave to all henchmen within 60 feet every .75 seconds. This pulse grants those Henchman a flat 25% boost to damage and another flat 10% boost to hit rate. What if the MasterMind inherent were to broadcast other stats as well, scaled to their own combat attributes? 25% of their Regeneration Rate 25% of their Recovery Rate 10% of their Personal Hit Rate 10% of their Personal Damage Rate 10% of their Defense 10% of their Resistance 75% of their Travel Speed and Stealth 50% of their Status Resistance Inspirations cannot automatically affect pets because of engine limitations. Only Team Inspirations work, and while proliferating that system to the entire inspiration mechanic is intriguing it would vastly shift combat balance. So, the MasterMind must inspire their henchmen one at a time. But... with a buff like this, a MasterMind could also use an inspiration on themself and splash some of the benefit onto their minions through the Supremacy field (instead of having to dedicate their whole tray to henchmen inspirations). It would also mean that buffing the MasterMind through other means (like a teammate's support, pool powers, and clever enhancement slotting) would also benefit nearby Henchmen. The biggest complaint I see about the archetype is that the henchmen are too frail. This doesn't exclusively apply to the players, either; the Kallisti Wharf Skulls who spawn minions through the MasterMind mechanic are equally hampered by this weakness. As Henchmen are a remote appendage of the MasterMind's total body (like individual worker bees in a hive), it seems logical that they would share in the MasterMind's enhancement. Thoughts?

For me, part of the problem is that certain power sets--by virtue of touching several different aspects of enhancement--are more viable as 'proc bombs' than others. Got a power that can take a slow? Hurray, you can throw another damage proc in there! It also bothers me that the proc damage is fixed instead of based on the triggering power: if my T1 punch procs did T1 damage, it wouldn't matter that they proc just as frequently per activation as my T9 procs doing T9 damage. Heck, they could trigger every activation if their damage/effect were comparable to the power being used (well, most of them, Mez and knockdown procs are not so granular)! The other counterintuitive point of slotting procs is that they're supposed to be a small bonus on top of other enhancements, and yet they end up being the most important thing you can slot. I suppose diminishing returns on proc rates after the second proc could help with that, but how might priority be determined? Slotting order? Would make unslotters much more popular I suppose. ...Oh wait, that's drifting off-topic. I'll say that proccing with a Brute is loads of fun because they scale with Fury and the damage gets goofy; the attack itself does basically nothing but then 'crits' four or five times from the procs. Honestly it's a huge draw for me to play with them, and I wouldn't even mind if the weaker attacks proc'd for weaker damage bonuses or lessened/shorter effects. As for slotting for mez/range, the former has an interesting but opaque system in Dark Armor's Cloak of Fear: slotting for mez increases Magnitude instead. Now granted, I'm not sure HOW that works... is it the number of fear enhancements that increase magnitude? The percentage over 100% of the Fear rate as a chance to boost it? City of Data was unclear on these points. ...But, one wonders how more control powers would play out if slotting for magnitude instead of or in addition to duration. ...It would reduce the need for magnitude-up procs, too, which could be replaced with something else. Range doesn't have a power that plays with it in this fashion (as far as I know), so can't really make a comparison there.

I made the thread after running Sister Psyche through Ouro on -1x1. Clamor spawned as an orange Elite Boss. Enemy groups consisted of 2-3 minions or a minion and a lieutenant; no bosses. I didn't use a special contact: just the list from the crystals of fire and ice. Active taskforces don't respect negative level shifts or boss restrictions. Soloing Posi 2 or Synapse will still spawn bosses as bosses and archvillains as archvillains, even if your notoriety settings would dictate otherwise. I'm also not sure if some of them actually pay attention to team count or not; I know Synapse does but I could swear Posi 2 does not. Ouro on the other hand appears to respect them, hence the thread.

Sorry, I should have stated in my post that I believe increasing scarcity would be the only way to change how much INF the game costs to play. Increasing the cost of enhancements simply buffs farming because players vendor them off. Decreasing INF gains has no effect--as demonstrated by XP boosters--because most INF is generated through vendoring and farming (and reductions don't make farming go away, they just make it happen more). If the goal is to get the players out of the farms and back into the game, honestly the suggestion to go with is decreasing or removing the cost from DO and SO enhancements and IO recipes (the 'everything is free' model contested in the original post). It indirectly harms farming because players will not be able to profit from vendoring, and it facilitates players gearing with SO enhancements as they level (the model around which the difficulty of the game is balanced). Demand for crafted enhancements would thus go down (but not much), dropping prices there, but INF would be harder to come by so the market would quickly reach a new equilibrium. Still, any change to the game's economy would be met with a tumultuous period of instability and with community backlash, so the question really becomes is it worth the strife to change the balance? Honestly, I think not. Torchbearer has a user posting 100 mil 'bounty' raffles for players who participate in the two rounds of Hamidon raids; players are thus encouraged to participate and the winner can take that windfall to the market to get enhancements or prismatic aether for cosmetic rewards. A lower level of INF generation would put the mockers on incentives like that.

TaskForces play differently in Ouroboros (see Sister Psyche's flashback about Clamor) and that's an interesting and novel gameplay pivot. Let's talk about it. While in a flashback, the TaskForce content is subject to notoriety limits. You can run them solo and not face x8 packs while doing so. Struggling to beat that archvillain (or archvillains? I'm looking at you, Aeon!)? Well, in Ouro you can knock them down to Elite Boss, AND you can switch to -1 if that's not enough. Ouroboros mode also gives you the opportunity to stop and read the text boxes, something that never gets the opportunity to happen when you're running in a team. So maybe the other active TaskForces (or rather copies of them) could be added to the corresponding Ouroboros level categories? They don't even have to give the same rewards or badges as the regular versions... just let players flashback/solo them for the content and/or practice.

Increased scarcity of item drops (salvage, recipes, and I assume enhancements), as well as the removal of enhancement conversion items, will make the game cost more INF to gear up. This is because the drop in supply will consequently result in an increase in demand, raising costs and subsequently raising prices to justify the time and energy to create said items. Suddenly what you would expect to pay 3 million inf for will cost 300 million. The removal of conversion items will make the values skyrocket even higher, as important enhancement pieces are further rendered scarce by the inability to roll them from less important ones. The auction house will empty out as the players who already have that kind of INF to throw around clear all the listings, and that would be the end of it. As many others have said, it would also drive off new players (even veterans from the live version of the game) because the investment of both time and virtual currency to set up a build would be too high for the benefit. It would cause cascading collapses as group activities drop off to make time for more influence and salvage and recipe farming, and a large percentage of the already quite small population of the game would drop out.

Hmm... Homecoming Hotfix thought: make duplicate copies of the contacts [like Tina McIntyre (Hero) and Tina McIntyre (Rogue)], plop them next to each other, and phase them based on team leader world state (like Dr. Stefford in Praetoria... though he probably needs to be adjusted too since he breaks a mission when he's removed). It'd mean players could run the same arc twice for double rewards if they switch alignments (and manage to stay in the level range for both), but players can rerun arcs anyway in Ouroboros.

Yes indeed. Assault (the Dominator Secondaries)/Support (the Defender Primaries) performs quite well as boss sets in Architect Entertainment... there's room for something interesting for players to come out of that. I've also seen suggestions for Melee as the primary with a mashup of Control and Support as the secondary. I could see Blaster Secondary/Defender Primary making for an interesting power assortment, too, though it's not a combo you can test in AE (pity). An inherent that echoes the support abilities back on the user, perhaps with a proc rate based on 'Peril', sounds like a good fit.