ForeverLaxx

Considering the track record of games trying to be the next "Dark Souls of [Blank]", I'd be worried were someone to attempt this. City's mechanics just aren't conducive to this kind of gameplay which I'm sure you were well aware. I don't min/max here, at least not to the degree others seem to. That said, I do min/max just about every other game I play, particularly RPGs, and that includes Dark Souls. The trick with challenging content is to make it worth your time to overcome, whether that be personal satisfaction or some other reward. For Dark Souls, that's generally "personal satisfaction" only, beyond being allowed to advance in the game. Considering how City showers people in drops, influence, and exp already I don't think making harder content for *more* of that is what's going to get people to do it. That leaves mere "personal satisfaction" as the only reward for slogging through brutal enemy spawns. Is personal satisfaction enough? For some people, yeah, probably. Dark Souls 3 became immensely popular, but almost half the players quit the game before even getting to one of the easiest bosses. That boss is also one of the earlier bosses. Personal satisfaction doesn't seem to be a driving force for most of the game's playerbase, even when that game is catering to the demographic that specifically enjoys it. "Bragging rights" only seem to be a motivator when said rights are relatively within reach of the majority of a playerbase. Now I, personally, have the Platinum Trophy for Dark Souls 3. I play the hell out of it and enjoy the challenge of doing so. Considering how many people gave up on Dark Souls 3, a game series notorious for it's "tough, but fair" gameplay, how many players of City do you think came here for that experience? I like City because it wasn't like other MMOs -- I didn't have to farm, I didn't have to grind, I didn't have to rush. I could play at my own pace and complete all the content with a superpowered character that fit a concept I liked. I could play it to relax. I'd wager much of the playerbase is in the same boat. Ask people in General Chat about what makes City so great and you'll get a variety of answers, though most of them boil down to how "casual" the game is and how "helpful" everyone is compared to your standard MMO experience of needing to eek out another 0.5% efficacy to maintain your raid spot in a guild that isn't even on bleeding edge content. Adding another difficulty setting just seems like dev time that can be better spent on other things. City isn't billed as that "hardcore experience" and I'd hate for it to edge ever closer to that precipice personally. I have so many other games for that; it's good to have a game or two that are just relaxing and fun with big explosions.

Because taking things out context is easier, right? That's why people get mad about words, by the way. In case it wasn't clear, my point is people getting mad about words is silly. "Fire" isn't a bad word, that is until it's shouted in a crowded theatre or near a group of people waiting for the command to pull a trigger. Context matters. I'm also aware that in the scope of the game, the (volunteer) dev team doesn't have the time or manpower to consider context and choose instead to blanket-ban specific words/terms to make things easier on themselves. That's their right as it's their server. We're adults (I think), so we shake our head at the innocents caught in the crossfire and move forward because there's worse things to worry about. We follow the rules of the place we choose to spend our time. We don't have to agree with them all the time, but we have to follow them all the same.

You're free to think what you want. I'm free to leave the conversation and this thread because it's clear you don't understand and aren't interested in understanding. I can control the difficulty for content that I do solo. That's it. If I want a team to function as a team, with everyone covering for each other's weaknesses and levering our strengths, half the team will quit because half the team doesn't need anyone else. Why you specifically have such an issue with seeing this only speaks to the fact that you only think of yourself and want to believe the rest of "us" are "nerfherders" trying to interrupt your fun. If you have to ruin my TF to feel like you're having fun, then maybe you shouldn't team. That "play what suits your level of fun" blade cuts both ways. But I'm through here. Anyone who doesn't crank their build up to 11 and overrun old content is always "doing it wrong", and people on the outside pointing out they aren't having any fun like they used to when grouping are just trying to nerf everything. I'm out.

I guess I need to be more clear since it seems no one gets it. It doesn't matter what the difficulty is set at because they're all treated the same by min/max builds. I and 3-5 others sit back and do functionally nothing while 2-3 players blow everything away. Only the AV at the end survives long enough to grant the illusion of contribution. No one is going to join a TF advertised as "SO-Level only, I want to be a contributing member for once". I've tried. Normally I'm a min/maxer myself, at least in other games where min/maxing is actually worth the effort. Having a build that can take on group content solo just makes the group you're in pointless and those players are going to feel pointless. You might feel amazing seeing that build you put so much money in stomp a crater in everything, but I know I don't log into this game to watch other people have fun at the expense of my own. Again, I'm not advocating for change; just pointing this out. "More difficulties on the slider" isn't really ever going to be the answer unless the person running the TF is exceptionally restrictive and willing to bail on a group if someone is doing all the work themselves.

Yeah, sure, no problem. I either run at "speed" tier or "max exp" tier or I don't run it at all. Funny thing is, "max exp" tier isn't much slower than "speed" tier with the power levels of the people joining so I'm still stuck being a 6th wheel to the 2-man party. See above. I'm not advocating for change. I'm just bringing up that players like me exist since the rest of you seem to have forgotten about us from your towers.

Sure, I'll make my own TF and watch everyone quit because I pick the "wrong" difficulty settings. This is why I solo.

My only issue with the "just add more difficulty settings" is that whatever the new hardest setting is will become the baseline setting much like +4/x8 is currently. When I'm leveling I'm almost never at this setting because I tend to afk a lot and don't want to spend my whole session slowly moving through a single mission, but when I get put on a team for a TF/Trial or whatever I'm at the mercy of whatever the leaders' setting is. Since many of these TFs are being ran at the maximum settings with people who are using min/maxed builds, I tend to feel like I'm being dragged along as a weight since I don't even come close to that power level. My being there does nothing to help because by the time I get a single power off the next three spawns are already defeated. I don't play this game to have my eyes glaze over for 45 minutes and come back to reality with a badge in my hand. This is why I almost exclusively solo. From the perspective of a soloist, the "just add more difficulty" is perfectly valid. For team content though, I'd rather *the team* trivialize the content than just two members of that team. At that point, it's just 2 people doing a Task Force while 6 others watch, and that's boring.

I think getting uppity about words is just silly. Context and intent matter, and few words automatically fail that test (and even some of those are "acceptable" if you're in "the right circle", whatever that means). Chances are, it's not worth dev time/resources to check context and intent on all uses of a word, so it's just disallowed outright. Unfortunate, but if you can't convince the people making the decision that it's worth their time to care, they aren't going to,

I didn't necessarily mean they should get crits or have controlled crits like a Stalker, but rather, have a system in place that can be manipulated to more effectively bring them in line (just as what happened to Stalkers). This probably means an overhaul of Opportunity to remove clunkiness or consolidate its effect into a single power, then introduce Sentinel ATOs that can ratchet up the potential DPS. Just straight giving them crits I think would make them fall even harder into the "ranged Scrapper" camp, so rather than comparing them to Blasters they just get compared to Scrappers and we're back where we started. How to go about a change to their inherent I haven't given much thought to, though. What I can say, however, is that I still think it's silly they have reduced range and lower target caps for seemingly no real reason. If anything happens to Sentinels, it should start there.

I personally feel that damage, particularly area-damage, is too high across the board anyway. I understand everyone has superpowers and it feels good to throw out two AoEs (or one T9 Nova) and decimate +4/x8 spawns in a matter of seconds but this leaves behind everyone else who is running a set that can't realistically do this or opts for a build that doesn't. Sets known for their single-target damage numbers (or formerly known, say hi Energy Melee) only find a home now in PvP, which is an area of the game that even now is pretty ignored from the development side of things and was never talked about much on the Live servers unless someone wanted to blame another for balance changes. If you're running one of those sets or builds you often feel like you're just along for the ride in a group; being there or not has no effect on whether your team succeeds. This might be why I solo a lot. I know this shift in focus was pretty gradual and Set IOs are so ingrained into the system with builds set to razor-thin edges that would crumble if any changes were made to them, so I don't think this is going to change. While the game is "balanced around SOs", it's completely broken with IOs and Incarnates. It's going to be next to impossible to balance a system whose players have decided that cycling 3 high damage area attacks every 5-8 seconds, with the "occasional" (30 second) Nova, is how the game is meant to be played thanks to how IOs work. Plus, this isn't considering the defensive aspect of set bonuses completely pushing out "once great" team sets by causing their buffs/debuffs to be rendered null, replaced instead with the almighty -res/-regen debuffs. If you don't have good sources of those last two, you aren't considered truly helping the team. The only thing you could do about it at this point is to make attacks have a portion of their recharge unenhanceable and I don't think anyone wants that either. The game is in a rough spot when it comes to balancing ATs against each other so that everyone has options to feel like they matter. Back when the top end of the spectrum were SOs, teams of Defenders/Controllers with heavy debuffs and a Kinetic would mow down everything but no one felt like all teams had to be that in order to succeed because nothing in 99% of the game required that level of overkill. But now that everyone has access to that level of overkill thanks to IO set bonuses, powersets and ATs that are completely fine on their own are suddenly shoved to the wayside because they don't compare to the bigboys. The advent of IOs and a relatively small, dedicated playerbase that is very efficiency-focused have sort of created this situation where Sentinels are considered "not good enough" by any metric. Blasters do more damage and have better defenses once they've slotted their sets, Scrappers do more damage and have better defenses overall baseline even before sets are included, Corruptors/Defenders bring buffs/debuffs for their team as a force multiplier which Sentinels don't really do, etc. Due to how the game evolved, Sentinels just feel like they were tacked on as a missing AT I kind of went on a rant about the state of the game as a whole, so to bring this back to what I would do regarding Sentinels, maybe they need the Stalker treatment. Stalkers are considered good due mostly to their changes to Assassination and the ATO that recharges their Build Up power. Perhaps Sentinels could use something similar that boosts performance in a unique way without fundamentally changing what a Sentinel actually does. How to do something like this, though, I haven't thought much about.

Yeah, not really sure why this set got voted for conversation, but since it's here... The Haunt spirits don't seem to function sometimes, as another said. They'll either hang out at the last spawn you used them on and go nowhere, or follow you but not attack unless you drag them directly into the face of something. My biggest complaint echos the others: the Umbra Beast. It kinda fits in the sense that it's a shadow hound, but it's also kinda jarring considering the set's overall theme. It also howls way too often. Whatever may happen to the set, I don't want it to lose either of these pets or the confuse power. Part of what made me pick the set was it had a lot of pets and the confuse power's animation/effect is really cool.

Mobs generally run if they miss too many attacks in a row or have their powers recharging so slowly that they have none ready after a seemingly random amount of time has passed. This ignores more regular "flee" behavior such as running out of damage zones or scripted runners.

Champion main here. Haven't ran into anyone from Heroes Inc yet. Feel I'm the only one left.

I think it's just the general idea that more people seem to be of the opinion that you need to overlevel, overprepare, and overpower everything from the word GO to even have a chance at completion. Many MMOs will have people like this. Memories of WoW and my being disallowed to do the lowest tier old raid because I didn't have the highest tier new raid gear despite outgearing the old raid anyway.

Sure, but in my experience, many people like to make a show that they're ignoring someone. My favorite is when they mischaracterize the person they're ignoring so they can justify ignoring them. Sometimes, this means other people ignore that same person, even when they otherwise wouldn't, because the guy making a show of it put words in their mouth. Disregarding that though, rather than ignore the obvious racists/pedos/whatever I'll just report them and go about my day. Let the people in charge of the space decide if they get to stay or not. Whatever they're saying in chat doesn't bother me directly and putting them on my personal ignore list doesn't "remove their platform" either. Sweeping dirt under the rug might make my space look cleaner, but I still know there's dirt under the rug. For what it's worth, I'm not taking sides here, just pointing out an observation. In particular, an observation that I've personally been victim of on more than one occasion for having "the wrong opinion", and it wasn't even close to controversial (being group ignored).

I'm not disruptive with it either. I even use the KB->KD IO for the AoEs. I just think it's funny that people have an aneurysm when it comes to any amount of knockback to the point that they're willing to put them on their ignore list to avoid playing with them again. I'm surprised you went with a Defender instead of a Corruptor though since Corruptor's hit harder and if you're turning most of the KB into KD, the higher KB value of the Defender doesn't matter. Though in PvP you'll have a stronger Force Bolt I suppose.

The constant flickering of Fade is honestly a bit annoying and slightly messes with my eyes if I've been playing awhile. If nothing else happens to the power, at least get rid of this aspect.

Two things: first, most of the sounds seem fine to me barring one glaring elephant in the room: Stone Melee. Every hit sounds like I'm crashing a battering ram into the wall of a castle. I have sounds set to an extremely low value and Stone Melee still manages to be loud enough to be heard across the hall. It wouldn't be as bad if every sound wasn't the exact same audio clip, either. Second, if you do make more alternate animations make sure they don't overwrite other animations in the set. For reference, I have the alternate animation for Snipe in the Energy Blast primary and under conditions I can't seem to replicate (ie: it appears to be random), ALL my other single-target blasts will inherit that chosen Snipe animation until I somehow "reset" animations by using either the Nemesis Staff or Blackwand power. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this happens, but I do know it's exceptionally annoying to see my character stand up straight, palm out, and a blast of energy explode from her navel at a perpendicular angle to the target.

Oh, I don't think you're judging anything about me or my character, so we're fine there. I'm just wary of changes that could fundamentally make null particular character concepts that aren't someone's super-niche or rare pick (like a petless MM. Yes, I have one, and until they make Whip Domination a set I'll continue to have one). I think the deal with Dark Armor is that they wanted to put in the effects other Dark sets had that made them stand out. The devs of yore decided that "darkness" was nebulous enough to encompass a bunch of different effects. Damage over time, stealth, lifesteal, fears, stuns (minorly), and tohit debuffs seem to be what they wanted from a theme perspective, so the OG devs put as many of those into Dark Armor as they could. This does mean that the set has a bit of an identity crisis and sometimes seems to work against itself at times. But that mishmash of parts can create interesting synergies, like my Dark Armor/Stone Tank being a melee-ranged stun machine that can lockdown bosses forever. Cloak of Fear can be combined with Touch of Fear to affect normally resilient foes, though admittedly fear has far fewer in-AT synergies to leverage. It's unfortunate too since I think Cloak of Fear is more thematic to what Dark embodies than Oppressive Gloom is, but CoF is just not useful. The ToHit debuff isn't that great, even if you're using it as pseudodefense and I've never liked the graphic effects of it (though I know plenty of other people do love being a mass of screaming faces). I'm not sure what to do about either of these powers, be that a removal or overhaul of what they provide or how they work. If I had my way, I'd probably move the ToHit Debuff to Death Shroud. I doubt many, if any, people skip their damage aura and this would just be a flat boost to DA's survivability. Spines has a damage aura that has soft survivability in the form of -recharge, so having some survivability stats on a damage aura isn't out of the question. Doing this also opens up more set possibilities, which is neat. The immobilize protection could probably be moved to one of the other armor toggles. Not everyone likes Combat Jumping or having to take a Stealth power just to not get rooted, and even as a tank, Cloak of Darkness comes in pretty late for a very common mez effect resist. Otherwise I think the power is fine -- it lets people who want stealth for sets or concept keep it. Now I'd like to keep Oppressive Gloom for reasons stated above, plus I like the "drain health" aspect (it's not even that much; will basically never get you killed). It's boring, but a chance for increased mag is probably warranted so even those who aren't leveraging synergies can justify trying it, and I'd look into maybe seeing if they can apply a slow to targets as well so they don't stumble about too far. For Cloak of Fear, I'd redesign it into a click power rather than a toggle. Perhaps something like Fiery Embrace, where it adds bonus Negative damage to your attacks with a mag2 fear on each attack, duration scaled with the base recharge of the attack power in question. Not sure if that'd be possible, but it would keep people who take it for the fear satisfied (I hope) while giving the player control over when it's active, limiting how much the set steps on its own toes. Yes, you'd "break" your fear just by attacking in order to stack it, but a boss getting off one attack instead of 3 is still worth it, I think.

Not sure if this is the case for other blast sets, but using the Instant Snipe from Energy Blast with the alternate animation for it (not the wide stance charge, but the standing straight, right arm out version), this animation is sometimes applied to the other blasts. Since I haven't selected that animation for those attacks, though, the energy comes out of the character's belt instead of their hand. It's difficult for me to pin down exactly why it does this because it doesn't always trigger, but it triggers more often than it doesn't. I can reset the animation by using one of the prestige "staff" attacks or by waiting long enough for the game to realize it's calling the wrong animation.

I never put anyone on ignore. Not only is it not worth my time, but sometimes I get enjoyment out of watching the argument unfold. Besides, I'm not a fan of only having half a conversation. I'm sure some people have put me on ignore more than once because I tend to be very blunt and to the point about things, but I don't ignore other people with a command. If I don't want to interact with someone, I just use my own willpower to resist sending them messages. Sometimes this results in gold as they think I've ignored them and they start getting braver. Reading through the section about the knockback hate, I made an Energy/FF Corrupter that spends her time knocking things down instead of putting defensive bubbles on her team. You're welcome.

I ignore the Reveal power but still insist on revealing the map manually, especially with elevator rooms.

Removing Oppressive Gloom's stun would completely destroy one of my character's niches and I'd rather that not happen.

My Dark Armor character is a Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank that tries to lean into the notion that DA wants to be a "controlish" armor and combines that with Stone Melee and its plethora of low-mag area stuns. To do that, though, one has to run Oppressive Gloom and someone touched on the main problem with this -- the power works against itself due to how stuns cause enemies to wander around aimlessly. Very often, they'll split entirely and now the mob is split with only some of them stunned. It's fairly annoying and I can only manage it somewhat due to SM's stuns also coming with knockdown. I've also tried fixing this with a Chance to Immob IO proc in OG, but it doesn't seem to ever work or I'm very unlucky. Anyway, the set itself is mostly fine barring the stagger and oppressive endurance costs. In a game that's supposed to be balanced around SOs, feeling like one needs multiple IO procs to manage your endurance if you pick the "wrong" combination feels bad. Even with IOs for recovery, I still find myself toggling the energy resist armor off and on depending on what I'm fighting, and while I'm not necessarily against this sort of thing it feels like only DA really has to do this anymore. DA's resistances really don't necessitate this level of micromanagement just to keep yourself afloat on endurance, and woe unto you should you take on Tough and Weave to further your survival. To me, it feels like the set was originally designed to be paired with Dark Melee in a world where everyone was expected to only run "relevant" toggles. We left that world a long, long time ago and I feel either the costs of the armors need to be looked at, the resist values need to be looked at (to justify the overall cost), some kind of recovery bonus be added to an existing power where it thematically would make sense, or maybe even consolidate the armors to free up a slot for a brand new power to manage endurance. I dunno. Seems like most everyone is saying the same thing here: the set is mostly fine but has endurance issues that aren't really balanced around SOs correctly.

I only ran into two major issues with my Elec Affinity character. The first is that the powers recharge too quickly for buffs that last awhile, so the set feels like it's extra clicky when it doesn't need to be, as those buffs often don't stack with each other. I'll forget to "rebuff" often just because the cooldowns and buff durations are so far apart. 5 second recharges on buffs that last 1-2 minutes just makes the set feel weird unless they hit everyone 100% of the time (and it doesn't). The other issue I kept running into is admittedly narrow overall, but since we can't control who the buffs bounce to, Illusion Controllers can be your worst enemy when trying to buff/heal multiple people at once. Phantom Army, pets that can't be buffed or healed, will take up a bounce (or more), often wasting your use of the power. This is the only time I find the short recharge helpful and it may not be possible in the game code to exclude these targets for one reason or another. I just know that I was on a TF with an Illusion Controller and was getting increasingly frustrated with being forced to use my multiple heal/buff powers as single-target ones despite them being balanced as an AoE.