ThatGuyCDude

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).

Vorpal Judgment is awesome. Part of what makes it awesome is how it acquires targets: it is 'self targeting' and then fires like a PBAoE in its cone direction. I absolutely love this power, because it's way WAY easier to aim than other cones. Why can't all my cones work like this? Well, I understand there are players who would prefer their cones retain a target so that they don't have to worry about facing, but it'd be nice if there was the option to have cone attacks aim the same way Vorpal does, a point-blank cone (PBCone) as it were. There are a few ways this could be implemented... a setting with Null the Gull (or Naught the Ocelot), an enhancement... but honestly the easiest implementation would be to fork existing cones into mutually exclusive picks, one aimed at the target and one aimed at the player.

The Fury generation proc for Brutes and the Opportunity generation proc for Sentinels do not produce enough of the resource to make a difference; their proc rate would have to explode or the amount generated would need to be quintupled (which would make the archetypes damage-spiky and thereby force them further onto the toes of the archetypes they're thought-space-fighting with). I say dump 'em. I... suppose the Sentinel one wouldn't be so bad if it were global, as you (the OP) suggested. For the Brutes... Brutes are proc monsters. This is because their proc damage is scaled up by their fury damage boost. Replace the fury ATO with a copy of the Arachnos Soldier ATO effect, wherein all of their attacks have a 12% chance to do a psychic damage proc. Replace the Regen/Recovery ATO with one that gives a 12% chance for attacks to inflict range reduction; it leans into Punchvoke and makes Brutes better at kiting enemies (a lateral survival shift, letting them use distance as mitigation much more often than a Tank would). On the same tangent as Bionic Flea, Defender's Vigilance should also boost team Regen rate, so that their support heals (and the team's own) are more effective the more people are in the party and so that they are further distinguished from Corrupters as the "healer" archetype (even if their power set doesn't have a single heal, the party will notice their green bar is better off for the Defender being there).

Rather than reduce the number of missions, what if they were made more interesting with the prospect (but not necessarily the guarantee) of faster completion? The problem with Defeat All--explicitly with the Clockwork--is that inevitably one of their gears will hide beyond a box and pester the team as they sweep over and over to find it. What if... The three powerstations were "Rescue <X> hostages" goals (NOT "escort to door", but "defeat the group attacking them", like how the later warehouse mission works)? The first being city workers, the second Arachnos Agents who were plotting to detonate a bomb, and the third being Crey employees who were on-site for... unclear reasons (laying groundwork to distrust them in later zones and task forces). 5-6 hostages are going to be spread out enough in those maps that it's still reasonable for experience-hunting teams to clear the building, without the added frustration of missing ONE spawn and being stuck in the mission. The abandoned office had crates full of clockwork parts that needed to be destroyed in order to hinder their production? Again, 5-6 crates to locate throughout the map would leave sweeping as a plausible strategy, while making stealth or divide and conquer a viable option and again bypassing the frustration of missing a single Cog or Sprocket. Crates have the added spice of exploding on destruction, which makes the situation dangerous if the players haven't eliminated the enemies around them before trashing the box. Citadel could certainly benefit from that same kind of rework approach, although Council don't leave danging minion spawns like the Clockwork do.

Yes you can. I've got a fire fighter sentinel with Water Blast and Fire Armor and I was able to get the second badge much faster through use of Water Blast. So long as the attack has cold damage (and NOT fire damage, which will heal the fire), it will work. The fire object is immune to everything else, though, so you can't stomp it out with Super Strength or starve it of fuel with Energy attacks, for instance.

Null the Gull is overworked (Null's text tree is overfilled). We need a new ridiculously overpowered incarnate animal NPC for new settings. I recommend a new Pocket D character Naught the Ocelot, and this can be her first setting! "Can you tone down buff graphics on me?" "Can you reset buff graphics to default on me?"

I've found the fires on the rooftop to be just out of reach from the Hellions, provided you haven't gotten the attention of one and had them follow you up there. Still, getting the count to earn the full-fledged "Firefighter/Fire Stomper" badge is a slog, as you might get three fires down before the building goes boom. It's definitely much easier if you have other Cold powers, though... might even be worth it to hold off and do it with the frost Judgment after getting some Incarnate salvage... I'll have to try that sometime.

This is an excellent idea; it eases the Praetorian character into the Primal setting in a way that makes logical sense instead of dropping them on their head with a bunch of factions and notions they haven't even heard of before. When I moved my Praetorian from Night Ward to Paragon, he got dumped in the middle of a Nemesis plot, with no context about what was happening back in his home dimension. Got a little further and the plot just skips past all the iTrials, assuming you've beaten them before and had the opportunity to follow what they were all about (instead of being lead along by somebody who's run them eight hundred times). Emerging at the Vanguard Base or the Portal Corp would make the narrative transition MUCH smoother, and having mission versions of the iTrial content so that you can follow what's going on instead of tripping about with hearsay would be fantastic. It breaks the disconnect that occurs when you're made to leave Goldside and it renders the future Primal content as Praetorian content as well. Again, excellent idea!

What about a START prestige toggle under "Utility" or "Just for Fun" that gives the character a global knockback magnitude distance of -10000% (like how Overwhelming Force converts Knockback to Knockdown)? It can be cheap like Reveal is and players who are annoyed by somebody's knockback can just say 'Run to the START vendor and get this, I'll front you the inf'. It'd also be nicer than the enhancement approach because players can easily turn it on and off as the situation demands. Since it's global on the character's combat attributes it doesn't interfere with existing knockback to knockdown design, because you can still slot for the powers you absolutely never want slapping anybody around. Since it'd be a toggle buff, it'd also show up on the character's effects and be easy to check for... certainly a lot easier than asking about all their enhancements. I know it still places the burden of controlling knockback on the user and not the person complaining about it, but isn't that part of learning how to play your character anyway?

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.