Oneirohero

I haven't played this change yet, but my Scrapper will be happy not having their combo ruined by missing the first or second attack in a chain. Obviously missing the finisher is annoying, but a miss is a miss regardless of powerset. Honestly this change is the highlight of this patch for me. I am sad to see Empower no longer stacks, though, although it kind of looks like the combo effect is the one that can't stack. Hopefully that means the power's actual buff remains intact, especially since it's a smaller boost than the combo effect.

Increased duration for Rune of Protection (at the cost of a higher cooldown, exact ratio however) is welcomed, I feel the power is finally at its peak utility now. The lowered endurance cost and cooldown for Spirit Ward as well as the 50% absorb potential upon casting also has the same feeling as before, though I'm not exactly sure how the AT modifiers might affect things, as a Tanker it'll be interesting to check out the numbers and see if it's still useful. Can't wait to hop back onto my Tanker to try these changes out!

I'm so glad that the recharge time for Rune of Protection got reduced instead of just having its duration nerfed. The T5 Power Pool recharge times all need looking at to be honest. What was the worst part of the patch has now become one of the best, along with the other powers. At least for myself. Spirit Ward being a toggle to protect a single target with Absorb is actually pretty neat, now I can set'n'forget on the weakest team-mate in need of some indirect tanking. Arcane Bolt getting a cast-time reduction is also a major plus too, it often feels like the enemy dies before I'm able to finish firing the projectile most of the time in teams.

So why isn't this choice prevalent in any other aspect of City of Heroes? Why isn't there any other feature that negatively impacts performance due to a choice you make? Boosting aspects far beyond what is needed never has a downside because it pads against debuffs, No other enhancement type has these issues aside from Recharge, the game was balanced around having a limited number of slots to enhance with, not 'how' you choose to enhance with. Saying that people should know 'not to use too much recharge' is just a intuitive as someone saying it's not 'legible' and requires looking through guides to figure out it out. What you're smelling isn't poor design, it's inconsistency. I don't know what you have against proc-monsters or whatever, but considering PPM is controversial, that means there definitely is a problem here and should be addressed at some point in time.

I'll admit that when it comes to powers with radius/cones the system is way beyond me, but legibility is no reason to abandon the system outright. The game could really do with calculating the chances for the player and display it in the description text of Proc IOs/ATOs. Why it wasn't done earlier is either a complete mystery or due to development being cut short before it could be resolved. Placeholder values are already present in many enhancement descriptions, particularly when it comes to percentages; extrapolating the actual proc chance and putting it into the description text is definitely possible if the game itself uses it during calculations. Ideally it should also calculate as you hover over powers so you're not having to trial and error with unslotters just to find out the odds of each one.

The old way allowed faster-charging powers get a massive advantage in procs per minute whereas PPM at least gives slower charging powers a chance to activate as much as faster ones. It makes sure Procs are more effective on fast and slow recharging powers instead of just fast. Not sure what is currently controversial about PPM, I will have to wait on your response on that. Procs are used by many players who have any interest in optimizing their character's power, so it is an issue when two Alpha slot trees negatively impact it when no other trees do. As recharge affects PPM in ways that other buffs do not.

If what I know is correct, the calculations for Proc PPM is determined by the modified recharge rate of a power plus its activation time, therefore the greater the recharge enhancements applied to the power, the more negatively it is impacted in PPM chance. The only exception to the rule is Global recharge given by set bonuses and powers such as Hasten. Now I'm not against enhancement recharge affecting PPM in this way, what I am against is the idea that the Alpha slot does, it makes such sets as Agility and Intuition (I may be wrong on that) PPM breakers since they count as enhancement bonuses. And I am not a fan of options functioning as secret downgrades to character performance. The solution seems simple: Change the portion of recharge that ignores Enhancement-Diversification into Global Recharge instead of an ED-defying enhancement bonus. The function is exactly the same since Alpha affects all powers that accept recharge and still ignores ED like it too. And since the recharge bonus is global, it will affect PPM much less (especially at Tier 4),

According to this thread, the issue could be there are no default binds for gamepads, which would explain why nothing worked. If it's true then it's still possible my friend can use a gamepad, but we'll have to look it over and try setting up the controls properly. Thanks for the link all the same.

I managed to bring back a friend who was into City of Heroes, but after I discovered the recent issue added enhanced gamepad features to the game. He says that he would actually play City of Heroes a lot more if he could just play it with a controller instead of keyboard/mouse (I prefer keyboard/mouse but that's not the issue here). We got into the game and tried to test out our gamepads but no matter what we tried, our characters wouldn't respond at all, not even so much as a bit or movement. The game certainly detects our pads, my friend who has three connected to his PC said that the game was able to detect every single one. Even when we 'Apply'd the option none of the buttons or sticks would do anything, and holding down the triggers didn't even enable virtual mouse mode. So the game knows what controllers we're using but there's either something missing or we have to bind the buttons ourselves? There are no tutorials anywhere that we could find, and if there is I'd much rather someone 'uh, acksually' me a link to the guide so I can help my friend set up, I would like my friend to enjoy the game as much as possible with his preferred input type. A quick summary: Me and Friend got into game, both tried switching to our detected gamepads, pressed 'Apply' just in case, tried all face buttons, tilted and clicks in sticks, tried all shoulder buttons and triggers; ultimately nothing happened. Tried to find a tutorial somewhere, found nothing, looked up problem threads, found one with up to two people confirming that virtual mouse mode doesn't work, sounds broken, made a thread about it in relation to me and my friend.

Are those Rikti boots on that Huge-looking Freakshow?

Is this the issue where somehow the chance for secondary Interface procs being reliant on the first one passing before it would allow the second one to check? For instance if there's a 25% chance for proc 1 to trigger and 75% for proc 2 (so a lot of the Radial versions) if proc 1 failed it would not check proc 2? I'll be happy if it will allow each proc to activate individually instead of being reliant on the first one if that's the case, especially since a bunch of people said the former was intentional but the wording implies otherwise.

I only have one Tanker and he's my first 50 since Homecoming, he's the one in my avatar (circa Febuary 2020). Invul/SS. Since hitting 50 I played with other characters and was absent for some time waiting on the changes, thankfully the changes went through and I notice the increased damage and areas of effect, especially with [Hurl] and [Force Bolt]. Feels even better to play than before and I already made him into a clicky juggernaut as it is!

I keep Brawl on my tray1-slot1 even up to Lv50. At zero endurance cost it's perfectly good to use alternating between my normal powers and Brawl, especially on characters where Endurance becomes an issue. Lower DPS but better endurance management without having to idle as much. The fact that Scrappers get Critical hits on everything but Brawl seems weird considering how much I use it. As for whether it taunts, I'm not sure, there were Gauntlet changes recently and I'm not sure how that works yet. If it's global it should but otherwise non-Tank/Brutes might not get taunt with Brawl.

Very simple suggestion this time. [Inherent.Brawl] doesn't seem to count for the Scrapper's AT inherent Critical Hit, even though practically every other power including power pools benefit from the proc. Solution: Make Brawl count for Critical Hit! That's pretty much it.

I like this idea! That's all I can really say about it.

As someone who has a Crab spider, I definitely want this as well. If anything, a sweep to check that all weapon-based sets have no-redraw options should be made to solve the problem once and for all. There's still gaps here and there.

Oh! I suppose it was good she tried to do /something/ after the Sunset. I kinda drifted off into the ether (or rather, latched onto the next closest thing, Star Trek Online). Making a game is incredibly hard by yourself unless you are a multi-talented genius like TobyFox. I suppose that solves one personal mystery of mine, thanks for telling me Solarverse!

The only meme I remember from the old CoH forums was Golden Girl's obsession with animated hair. Especially since a couple of specific NPCs had the cape-physics applied as a hairstyle. I wonder what happened to her...

Ideally, our devs should take some time to finish off all the MinimalFX and NoRedraw powers that currently don't have them yet. MFX may be purely cosmetic but NR weapon sets can lose potential actions per minute because of animating delays.

Island Resort zone, preferably with a genuinely sunny disposition instead of the gloomy 'ugh' that is the Rogue Isles. A part of the island for tourists and holidaymakers, another for those who live on the island, a part with natural wonders and unnatural dangers. Maybe a Volcano, maybe with other islands in the distance for that 'stranded on an island' sub-theme, no doubt with plenty of caves and instance doors of bad guys inside. Accessible via any place with a ferry/sub, entrance to the zone would begin at the Resort's port with cruise-ships and fishing boats docked. No war-walls but understandably there would be invisible walls if you fly too far out to the edges of the zone. Geographically this Island Resort could be located between Paragon and Rogue Isles as to give each locale fair distance from each other. Random heroes and villain NPCs to find as easter-eggs, maybe they have their own dialogue box where they explain they're on holiday and you should stop ruining theirs. A story arc that probably involves some kind of Island God awakening and trying to stop it from wrecking havoc on the world. Or for villains, trying to use this Island god's power for their own. Or for something completely different and novel, an arc that's dedicated to having your character's own holiday, that ends turning up to be more work than the brochure advertised.

Generally the reason why 8-man teams tend to be easy is because the powers system relying on the fact that all/most effects including debuffs and buffs stack. Any team with enough buffs or the enemy with enough debuffs can end up making any fight rather easy. The reason that folks who are in 4-6-man teams finds more challenge is because there is potentially 1-3 less buff/debuffers in a team to skew the odds. And yes, even if a team is mostly made of melee/non-(de)buff types, the fact there's more people to beat on singular targets also makes it easier to wittle down mobs of any size and thus minimise the danger of the numbers being against you. The example I always used was in an 8-man team four were going to be the ones carrying the fight, 2 would be around for support and 2 would end up being stuck with clean-up including stragglers. 8-mans are good for XP but hardly the way the game was meant to be played. I would say that 5-6 is about as many people you can fit into a team before people start feeling superflous, six being a magic number for role distribution (divides neatly into 2-2-2, 4-2, 3-3, 3-2-1...ect). But considering randoms are in it for the XP, you're most likely not going to find <8-man teams unless it's with friends or an RP team that isn't stuck in the 8-man mentality as well.

I felt the Staff-wielding Tsoo was amazing but then the Lt Ancestor Spirit was hella fragile and weak in comparison despite its size. I found that the Lt actually has less powers than the true incarnation of the mob, losing a lot of its CC which could have made it better overall. I think the Ancestor Spirit LT needs a buff and a fix.

Usually you will have a month or three wanderlust getting back into the game again, but you will find it passes and you start playing less if only because there are other needs and you can always try more moderate methods between the City and your 'Dayjob'.

Granted, this was easier to notice before Galaxy turned into a tutorial and even more so as a base builder part, but the Galaxy branch of the FBSA has three toilets by sex. Male, Female and 'Gigantic'. Gigantic has a male-looking symbol except larger and broader and the door itself is actually about a quarter larger than the other ones (that last detail not emulated in the base builder version). Considering it's the only instance of the game featuring it there's two things that can be implied. One) CoH was ahead of its time by acknowledging Huge as a gender, and two) Because Galaxy is now exploded by Shivans, those poor huges have to settle with undersized bathrooms. Oof.

A slightly unhelpful but in-universe explanation is no criminal with some intelligence is going to stick around while a super beats on their friends and subsquently them and then getting teleported to the PPD station/Zig. Running is the smartest thing they can do. As for what causes it, I have no solid answers. Does seem like one of them has a random chance to start running regardless of what group you're fighting. Sometimes one will start running mid-fight only to come back around the corner when you've finished their buddies off. So as much as they do run, they probably get second-thoughts and go to finish the job. It's more annoying when the runner does it near the end of the encounter though...