Felis Noctu

I'd second this, and it's unfortunate. Evolution and change is the foundation for improvement. Hasten is so incredibly powerful that it's considered to be required in practically every build that's considered to be "competitive" in the end-game. In any other situation, that would indicate it's a problem, not a good thing. However, re-balance doesn't necessarily have to be a hard nerf, or a removal in drastic cases. For instance: I like the idea of that first one for Hasten, but not the second for the fitness passives. Removing the necessity to select Hasten as a power means one additional pool available to builds, which can increase diversity. Removing slotting on the fitness powers (and by implication Hasten as well) would reduce diversity, impacting what those powers represent. It's a cliche example, but look what over-simplification and homogenization did to World of Warcraft: It feels soulless now. Providing everyone with those benefits in some form I think is an excellent move, but re-balancing Hasten it due to it now not requiring a pool selection (thus 100% a buff to everyone), and keeping the slots across the board for all of those passives, is essential to allow people to set themselves and their builds apart. Having and being able to make those tough decisions (do I want a faster recharge or faster endurance recovery?) is the spice of life!

Both of these strike a cord for me. From a hopeful, realistic side of things, seeing the game's future safe and in the community's hands is the most important thing. The original sunsetting was extremely emotional for me. I felt like I lost a family. One of the biggest reasons I've been hesitating to devote much time to playing here is because I don't want to deal with that loss again. ----- As for a development future, as others have mentioned, new powersets would be awesome, as well as implementing the pool powers that never made it originally. New archetypes are OK, and I do like the concept behind the Sentinel, but I'd rather see more powers and additional proliferation for the current ones. New appearance customization options would also be awesome. If I were to narrow down my hopes and dreams to something specific, there are two in particular that cross my mind. The first is something that I'm unsure is even possible, but we're desperately missing a muscular "amazonian" female option. Males can range anywhere from skinny nerdy types to massive beefcakes, and that's not including the alternate "huge" body. On the other side of the fence, there's no good way to make female characters in CoH actually appear like anything other than some variation on runway model. The number of examples of bulky females in comics is sadly lacking, yes, but it would still be nice to have the variation. Something slimmer than "huge", with a feminine angle on it. You know, to be able to make characters like this. Though, without knowing how current costume parts are designed, I have to imagine the worst and believe that it would require a new version of every item shaped to the new body type, which is no bueno... The second, which I'm sure people will think "typical" given my namesake and icon, are improved beast parts, primarily the heads. Let's be real here, the "Monstrous - Beast" heads are hideous, and not in what I'd call the "intended" way. Good lord that lower jaw! Not to mention the sizing difference between regular and monstrous heads: they're too small. Yes, including the lizard head, though it's better. The separate beast heads outside of the "monstrous" category are a little better, but feel like they're missing a proper neck and the head is jammed into the shoulders. It's a bit better on males, but I'd still call it iffy. Minotaur is the closest it gets to almost-right size. Actual beastly hand options such as avian talons would be cool, but I imagine that could be a rigging nightmare. The tails are decent, not really any complaints there, other than a non-flaming avian feather option. I think the monstrous legs are pretty much covered as well, though maybe a "monstrous" model for feet similar to what's available for the hands (claws and such) would be cool. On the not strictly beast related side of things, I've noticed some costume options are missing from sections they have no logical reason to be missing from. I'd assume they were just forgotten. At some point I'll probably make a list to post. ----- Really though, you guys are doing an absolutely fantastic job! Honestly if you just keep doing what you're doing we can rest assured knowing Paragon City is in good hands. 💕

Honestly, unless your character has a reason to be directly tied to the in-universe timeline, you don't really need to force it. There's definitely an advantage of having an overarching concept of what happened of course, but it doesn't necessarily need to be directly referenced in every case. Most of the "main characters" in my collection have seen casual RP outside of CoH since everything went kaput, so my interpretation and personal approach so far has just been that the time happened, but nothing else was set in stone. WHEN that time happened is a somewhat sliding case. Basically, 6 years or so of semi-canon side stories happened that filled them out a bit more, and then I'm just going with the flow from there. I never really based my characters around actual in-universe as a hard foundation: they were always just "there" and would react as necessary, but generally had their own thing going on. A large part of that is because I rarely chose to actually care what was going on unless it was a HUGE event of some kind. I'll probably continue that habit now and, even if some consensus is reached amongst the community as to how everything's gone down (time-skip, no time-skip, alternate reality shards, whatever), it's unlikely to really affect my characters all that much. The advantages of playing outside of a hard timeline. :P