ThatGuyCDude

That's incorrect, you can do two blueside tailor missions and two redside tailor missions and unlock all four slots. I've done so on many characters. I've never once had to use Halloween salvage to unlock Slot 10.

You can also go Redside (Rogue/Villain) and run Facemaker's and/or Glorious Glenda's mission(s) in Cap au Diable, or Lovely Linda's in St. Martial, to bypass having to collect Halloween loot at all. You still can only have ten slots, though, regardless of how many extra unlock conditions you meet. Building on UltraAlt's post, using $$ in a macro functions as a line break (as demonstrated in some of the examples), and will let you add another command as if you typed it into the chat box as a second input. You can have as many of them as you like, though you can only run one emote at a time and/or activate one power at a time. The other day somebody was helping me in chat and told me about the macro command "select_build <#>" which lets you switch your power setup just like you were talking to a trainer. You can add that to the end of your macro with another $$ if you want the different costumes to also utilize one of your different build profiles, but keep in mind it will put EVERYTHING on max cooldown.

My solution was to run the game at half the resolution of my desktop (1920x1080 instead of 3840x2160). It cramped the UI a bit (I suppose I could scale it back down if it really becomes a problem) and it makes tabbing out to look at other stuff very difficult, but it made MOST of the text legible. I still struggle to read text on glowie progress bars, though. The smaller the resolution, the bigger the UI font will be; as far as I know that's the only solution currently available.

I mean, it's just applied phlebotinum to justify Primal Brandt suddenly gaining control over the Praetorian Clockwork tech. As justifications go, Metronome isn't even necessary for that: Brandt's the most powerful psychic in the game and that technology was designed by someone with his exact same mind. Yes, it was a version of him who had access to more resources, but both of them still *think* in the same way. It also doesn't have to be a sudden gain of power, since by that point we haven't seen him in thirty levels (could even swap the fight with him in Lady Grey's Task Force to match the 'new and improved' Clockwork King) Scratch that, the timeline doesn't line up there. Argh, CoH, why don't levels = time passed across the board?!. So if the Metronome part of the suggestion doesn't work, consider it severable. It was a dart at a board justification anyway and not the core point of the topic.

Sure, he could control the War Works BCUs and what-have-yous too. I figured Longbow would be more appropriate because Kallisti's part of Paragon City and not the Isles and the whole Blackwing arrangement would cause significant bureaucratic whiplash if another enforcement agency like Longbow suddenly had its resources deployed where they're restricted from enforcing (even though they're not actually controlling them). As for a Last Cry, that's a bit of creative license on my part because of the whole psychic storm thing with the Awakened and Penelope Mayhem. As the last psychic not a member of that puddle of rage, I'd imagine Praetorian Brandt would himself be driven mad (or further mad) before giving into despair and submitting himself to the madness... or maybe he projected his consciousness through a portal connection to join with his other self upon seeing the power of such a merger. There's very little reason for anybody but Hamidon to stay in Praetoria at this point of the narrative, after all: even Last Bastion is mostly a lost cause.

A standing mirror. You look into it and see everything you could be as leader of Arachnos, if only the Freedom Phalanx weren't in your way. Granted, all of the mission text would have to be rewritten as introspection, but it would be much more satisfying as a villain if you seized the shattered pieces of Arachnos for your own aspirations instead of those of some OTHER villain. The tougher problem to address is Miss Liberty's Task Force. Do you leave Recluse there and make that the canonical point of his death (so it would correspond to St. Martial in the timeline) or do you replace him with a swarm of villains... fight the four patrons AGAIN under the grand tower with each getting a buff from one of the beacons, and with their subordinates popping out during the fracas? Either way, the other versions would get bumped into Ouroboros which might get a little silly with LRSF 1 and LRSF 2 Electric Boogaloo.

Given that Kallisti Wharf is bringing the 'street level' threats back up to relevance, it might be fun to revisit the Clockwork King. Perhaps Brandt's psychic powers got boosted by the last cry of his Praetorian counterpart Metronome, and it inadvertently granted him control of the Longbow Menders because they're the alternate-reality counterpart to his own psychic technology? Maybe he even upgrades his own chassis to a Praetorian Clockwork case (with his brain jar in the belly), to increase his combat prowess and make his visage 'less frightening to Penny'. Being that he's a giant nerd (albeit a dangerously unstable one), he doesn't intend any deliberate harm, but Longbow's loss of control of their mender units would have them understandably pissed off.

Mender Remedial! "All right class, let's go over this one more time. The order you pick your powers is important, because they'll be locked in certain time-streams!" Okay, maybe that name's not a good fit (It's too close to Remiel anyway). Mender Herodotus?

I think Recluse and the Arbiters are the real problem. The Redside 'capstone' arc where you pick a patron and help them with their nefarious plots gets decapitated when the Arbiters go "Neener Neener I know everything you're doing and you're going to do this instead or I'll cut your head off". If I had the power to do so, I'd erase all of the Arbiters from Redside (replace the trainers with the various generic villains from the Safeguards, and the quartermasters with more generic-uniform Arachnos), kill Recluse like Statesman, and make the capstone arc about the power vacuum. Then, the betrayal at the end becomes a matter of player agency, where they've outgrown their patron and they're making the move to overrun Arachnos.

I'd like all of the 'lead to exit/objective' NPCs to be swapped out for invincible combat versions of themselves, so that every objective of this category type is equally susceptible to teleports. Bonus if all NPCs, both the currently 'object' variety and the combat allies, would be added to the Pets window so you can track their health, target them quickly, and tell them to wait or not attack. Of course, Dominators should get that functionality for their pets as well. On another tangent, I'd like to see Striga Isle and Kallisti Wharf moved to the top of the long-range teleporter list and put in the neutral green color, since they're co-op zones and the 'blue wall' in that menu is annoyingly long. It might be fun if there was a "Hard Mode" setting on ALL the Task Forces, so that they could be run at max level/power with enemies boosted up to 50+ to match. OH! They could use Labyrinth's rank upgrade! Seas of bosses!

I think that Mini Mode has a big head not out of deliberate design but because it works by setting the body scales to their minimum values (beyond what you can even achieve in the costume editor), and that's the way the head looks at those values. A proportionate head would require a model scale shift, which would probably also mean a model swap based on how the game seems to work. So, it's probably in the same category as custom henchmen models; some groundwork needs to be in place to allow a player-crafted costume to be loaded during a model swap. If it were implemented, specifying which behavior to use through the Tailor would probably be the clearest and most consistent implementation, rather than two separate hologram powers. *shrug*

Destiny's the T9 heal. Ageless, Rebirth, Clarion, and Incandescence all fit that function and are fun to use without being too broken. The problem is... Barrier. Barrier's too powerful, and thus is the only one anybody sees or uses in 90% of Incarnate-viable content. Why is it such a problem? Well, Ageless and Rebirth are reactive powers and Clarion and Incandescence are preventative powers, but Barrier is both. It's not only a preventative that renders Clarion and Incandescence unnecessary in virtually every situation (because defense also typically prevents you from being hit by debuffs and mez), but it eliminates the need to replenish Health or Endurance because characters under its effect are virtually intangible in team situations. It's even reactive, too! The Radial version is the only Destiny power with a team rez! Why isn't that on Incandescence? It's the teleport power, which is more practical for a team rez. It's a tough scenario to fix, because it most certainly would require a nerf to make the other Destiny powers more viable as an option, and nerfs are universally reviled by players. Do you make Barrier boost only Defense or only Resistance? Defense is on-point for the Force Fields power set it is supposed to represent, but then whoever has Resistance Armor gets only a negligible benefit. Do you reduce the values it increases these properties? That's probably the safest approach, but it's one that widens the gap between casual players and min-maxers, since the latter will still find ways to use Barrier to become invincible and thereby negate the other four Destiny choices (and the ability to introduce more powers). Can't increase the recharge time: it's shared for the slot... and making a good power inconvenient to use is not a valid balance tactic. I suppose affected targets could be capped to prevent 'rotating' Barrier cooldowns, but that's in the same headspace as making it inconvenient to use. I too would like to see a Control slot, a self-Rez slot, a wide Debuff slot, a Snipe, and a Travel power added down the line, to flesh out the multiclass premise. Right now, though, there's no room (and not just because we'd need a new second tab for these later powers). More incarnate power slots can't be addressed before Destiny's invulnerability issue is addressed.

I have, that's why I mentioned the Void Hunters heralding what sounded like Batallion's invasion. Evidently I missed the bonus objective connection to the Valeria story, perhaps because I did Ziegler first (I read about it on the unofficial Wiki just now; I've been thinning out the contacts list blind and CoX has this problem where contacts are dumped into your menu with no context). That's part of my point, though, the Homecoming narrative seems to be reinforcing this premise that the Nictus advance *is* Batallion. And I'm getting this unsettling vibe that the Well of the Furies is itself an ancient Nictus (and all these incarnate fragments are what gave it the material data to do what it does in Remiel's future). But I'm also getting the feeling that the dots I'm connecting are a mirage, so I'd like to discuss it more. @Snarky, I absolutely agree that MMO plots singling out a solitary character are frustrating and annoying. We're playing as a crowd, we absolutely should be a member of the crowd. Redside bothers me in that regard with the whole "your battle with Recluse destroyed the world" plot; I much prefer stories where we're but one cog in a complicated plot, rather than our solitary character being the lynch-pin. @Scarlet Shocker, while I appreciate new content taking on the flavor of a new writing staff, I'd hate for existing content to just be disregarded moving forward. I'd rather the whole Batallion plot rot on the vine than twist in a direction that's inconsistent with what's already been established. But that's what I'm talking about here; the direction the Homecoming content is taking feels very consistent with what was present at shutdown, which is why I want to know if I'm reading it correctly or seeing things that aren't there.

I was playing through Mot's storyline again, and Dream Doctor said something which made me pause. The gist of it was "Twilight Son sold out his own race to Batallion". Is Batallion the Nictus Fleet? Mender Lazarus has you subvert the 5th Column to help the Council grow, which leads into Arakhn being able to manufacture her devices to siphon energy out of the Kheldians to feed the Nictus (Moonfire TF). That sounds an AWFUL lot like what Twilight Son described as the Khelds being fuel for Batallion's fleet. Then you've got the whole deal with the Void Hunters disappearing, and they too herald what's to come as if they're talking about Batallion... but they're Nictus agents, too. Finally, in the flash forward to unlock the Alpha Slot, the player is confronted with echoes of adversaries they've fought in the past... something a Nictus would be able to do after having a fragment in such a host (that's the whole deal with the Nova and Dwarf forms, after all). These factors are well-correlated with the goals of the Nictus, and it feels like Ouroboros is facilitating it. So again, is 'the coming storm' actually the Nictus invasion and is Ouroboros actually working to facilitate it? Or am I overlooking something obvious? Is it simply Dream Doctor mudslinging because he's magic and Ouroboros is tech?

The real question is what would the remaining incarnate slots DO? We know that there were plans for the one slot to be a ground patch (the slot that would have been 'advanced physical' next to Hybrid, I think it was called Psychic?) But the real question is, which gaps do Incarnate slots not already cover? Alpha is a general improvement. Interface represents Scrappers, applying soft control with attacks. Judgment represents Blasters, it's a nova. Destiny represents Defenders, it's a wide buff. Lore represents Masterminds, it's a pet power. Hybrid is also a general improvement, targeting roles. So... what's missing? An armor toggle (to represent Tankers). Instead of a Ground Patch, some selection of pulse auras centered on the character. A self-rez (to represent Brutes). No, Destiny Barrier's team rez does not count. The slot could vary based on what it does for the character after the rez, paralleling Destiny buffs I suppose. A travel power (to represent Stalkers). It could be some kind of booster toggle that modifies other travel powers (including Sprint/Power Slide), granting additional effects like league-wide stealth, speed, jump height, temporary flight (errr, not that one, considering group flight is such a pain), or what-have-you. A snipe (to represent Dominators). A control (to represent Controllers, of course). A wide debuff (to represent Corruptors), think opposite of the Destiny slot. A rotation filler (to represent Sentinels), possibly as a toggle modifier to Brawl. We were joking about this in an Instanced Rikti Mothership the other day, how an incarnate power could add procs per minute to brawl that do goofy things like Freem (think April Fools when Brawl's effects go crazy). The capstone, Omega, would simply be a repeat of Alpha, level shift and all. Double down on your strengths or fill your gaps. It's also funny, the whole Alpha-Omega equivalency. As for threats to deal with that extra power, well... just increase the maximum level shift beyond +4. We've already seen that work in the Labyrinth, being able to set that notoriety anywhere (or shift the enemy ranks up one each like the Labyrinth does) would fit perfectly with more incarnate power. Endgame zones could also be duplicated as incarnate variants, accessed through Ouroboros, with all their entities to 54-60 and with the assorted Incarnate shifts applied like Mot's Dark Astoria (or with enemy ranks promoted like the Labyrinth of Fog).