Blastit

What is Gale's actual place in the power set? If you want push enemies around, isn't Hurricane generally better? It requires fewer slots, doesn't need a to-hit check and applies a handy debuff as well.

I voted for Electrical Blast, Assault Rifle, Empathy, Stone Melee and every singe Blaster secondary. Some for the sake of discussing improvement, sure, but a coupla things just because they're fun to talk about. Some sets just feel right, even if they're "only" average performers.

I've got a concept of a yeti/mountain-based stone/ice stalker and it would be great. I'm working on some costumes and a name so I'll be ready for if it happens.

The worst that will happen is that I'll have to change it, yeah. Sometimes that's hard, sometimes it's easy and sometimes you like the new name more. Never mind navigating around names that are already taken. If the GMs made this claim in as bad faith as you currently are, the overall HC team would have a pretty big problem on their hands re: mantaining a player base.

I don't care if something is or isn't "truly original", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. I don't care about squabbling over whether or how "creativity" or "originality" are different. I'm just making super heroes and super villains, not creating and destroying entire new art movements. We're playing with building blocks, anyway, not forcing matter into existence from thin air. So all I'd ever expect from someone who wants to play as Batman on a server that prohibits an actual copy of Batman is that they, idk, give him a green cape instead of blue and name him after some kind of lizard perhaps. Not like there isn't a huge wealth of "caped crusaders" that use martial arts, their wits and possibly simple devices or weapons to draw from. Moccasin Man or The Avenging Ape aren't more or less silly than "Bat-Man" anyway.

If you believe that two characters are too similar because you reduce them down to "they're green" then go invent new colours about it.

I think that character has the plant hair piece. Beast Boy, iirc, does not turn into plants nor is he plant-themed other than being green. But I could be wrong. So do contact the moderators about it, if you believe you have cause.

Okay. You're perfectly able to do that. Let's see what the moderators think.

If you act in good faith and accidentally make a costume that gets deleted, the worst that will happen is that you have to make a slightly different costume. There's no algorithm, no flowchart you can follow.

Oh, that sort of Mike. They would delete your account for it. That you are trying to argue the case of an intentionally maximally ambigious hulkalike is precisely why it's good that the GMs don't have strict procedure to follow and can simply read the mood and come to a decision. If they get the vibe that this person accidentally got close to the line then they can just tell that person to add boots and a belt or w/e, and if they get the vibe that they're dealing with a rules lawyer they can delete the costume.

Obviously it would depend on the execution. If it's the huge bodytype, Mike has short shaggy hair, only wears a tattered pair of purple trouses and the bio is in broken English and mentions radiation and anger then you'll get clubbed. If instead the costume is just a big green dude then that's not a problem. Trolls are in the game and they're big, green, strong and speak clumsily but they're not an issue. A character that is inspired by the Hulk and by super mutants from Fallout isn't inherently a problem either. It's all about how much they look like either.

Why don't you try it and find out? It's unlikely that the people who own the Green Giant will send assassins after you.

"Don't copy characters" is pretty clear already, though. Not writing multi-paragraph Laws of Character Creation is a good idea because the GMs can then simply exercise their judgement and won't have to bother with rules lawyering.

Sonic blast is a much more straightforward sonic set, though. Most people who think of a character that superscreams thinks of one that directly blows stuff up by doing so, not one that makes a scream bubble for another person to wear as a suit of armour. Additionally I'm not sure if the sonic buff set ever got rid of that whole "giving people migraines" deal and that has stopped me from making anything with it.

I believe the /AH command was first introduced as a veteran reward, and since HC doesn't do subscriptions they've just straight up given out most of the veteran rewards. That's what P2W is for and why a freshly made character has so many costume slots.

I leave them alone if they're just hanging out or selling eachother drugs.

It'd be better to just make ancillary power pools of the missing themes. If the HC team can make an electric support set then they are certainly able to throw together some APPs. The biggest hurdle is appropriate animations. I'm pretty sure we could make electric apps for everyone at this point since we have melee, control, support, blast and armour to pull from. Same goes for ice and fire. Radiation has melee, blast, support and armour so there might be some ATs that would have to settle for some less conventional choices but not too badly. Earth has control, melee and armour plus an assault set which admittedly does have a unique ranged attack. Energy has some disparate sets to pull from so it might be a little less coherent but if blasters can settle for a "force" APP so can most others. So the big themes are decently well covered. The various weaponry and martial arts are maybe a little trickier but really only in deciding what you're even going to theme the pool around. More esoteric stuff like sonic and bio could be doable although for fewer ATs.

I do like the emotional bonding idea, because the Empathy set could do with a bigger chunk of empathy mechanics. Connecting people so that damage is split between them or damage is reflected to enemies are also things to look into. I have no personal opinion on the RA's other than that I did selfishly think that turning them into toggles would be great fun, so I agree with at least that. Empathy wanting to be close to people makes sense. I also thought that I would enjoy Clear Mind as a PBAoE but that might be a bit greedy.

Fast-sniping on HC is now tied to being in combat. It no longer has anything to do with accuracy levels.

By "a step back" I of course mean in the sense of metaphorically taking a step back to gain some wider perspective on a thing. So again I ask: why is it more sensible for the designers to jump through hoops to accomodate overpowered characters than it is to retune the IO system? Why is it more sensible to create and maintain two different difficulty modes?

If this is the case then there's no problem. After all, what I want is an honest assessment of the game's framework. If the framework is fine and dandy then there's no major hurdle for making future stuff and there's nothing to particularly worry about. The attitude that you aren't prepared to take a step back and objectively assess what the game does and if this could be counterproductive for the long-term playability of the game. Critical analysis of assumed good things is very valuable. Otherwise you won't have a good model for what is good and won't know how and why something is good. That would leave a designer without very important information.

You're not a developer, so obviously not. I've even specifically said that players are not at fault. If I am unhappy with anything here it's less the game and more this attitude. I want an honest assessment of the state of the game and what can actually be done in the future. I'm not asking rhetorical questions here, they're all genuine. All you've got is lazy dismissal.

No, I am referring to the whole IO superbuild situation. Hasten may or may not contribute meaningfully to that but it's certainly not the only thing I'm referring to.

More that when everyone is overpowered, no one is special. Anyone remember the Champions Online comparison thread? How one of the big things in favour of CoH was that while the freeform powers were cool it led to homogenisitation and CoH's AT system just had way more crunchy variety? That sort of thing is what I'm getting at. Every AT and powerset combo feeling different is important for the kind of game this is. The sheer difference in feeling between just swapping set combos around on the same AT, nevermind different ATs, is perfect for CoH. If there are things that diminish this then those things should be looked at.

Can the HC team feasibly do that? What level of IO'd out character should be targeted? If enemies are created that threaten resistance- and defence-capped Tankers and Brutes, what will they do to other ATs? What kinds of mechanics can be used to threaten overpowered characters? Auto-hit damage? Unresistable endurance drain? -400% resistance debuffs? Mag80 mez effects with minute-long durations? Should rewards be increased in proportion to the difficulty of the content? If so, how do you make sure this doesn't just become the new baseline that everyone "should" build towards? Why is it more sensible to create a small amount of extremely hard content that can only be accessed by overpowered characters than it is to depower these characters to sensible levels and create content that a far broader range of level 50 characters can engage with?