Replacement

You're making the case that Hasten should be nerfed/removed, then, which is not what's being considered for this thread. Simply: which powers are more heavily affected by (lack of) global recharge? I love how you can't even make topics tangential to hot-buttons without people resurrecting the horse just so they can beat it to death all over again.

Domination is the big one, but that's its own topic.

I vote yes to this not specifically for Cimerora, but as part of a larger project to actually remember Gold exists. FACT: Praetoria possesses several TUNNEL portals, none of which the natives can use. FACT: Praetorians have to sneak in and out of Pocket D through the coat closet. Sometimes there's someone back there throwing up on my shoes. ...and also, several Praetorian day jobs are still super broken (I got the caregiver badge by standing in front of a train station!)

I think if I were to improve it (I could be swayed, but I'm not currently sold that it needs it), I'd simply add a small +max HP buff to it.

This back-and-forth feels off-topic. Just to put my actual opinion somewhere: I like the Upgrade button. I wasn't sure it was worth the effort at first, but now 1-2 punch has been revealed of getting us SOs sooner, I think HC has found a really elegant solution to all of this. We aren't going to get past "tribal knowledge" for making the jump to IOs, but at least this a) makes my teens life a lot easier with some investment and b) gives some purpose to SOs even for people who enjoy the IO system. I am still going to need to email myself influence on a lot of characters to get started, I'm sure, but I look forward to this a lot. Thank you Homecoming for being awesome!

Sure. NOTE: I'm not talking about something convoluted like "debuff spec is overall less beneficial to a party than tank spec" or something mired in mathematics like "+2 STR is worth more than +30 Attack under the following conditions" that we would see in some MMOs. Simply: +30% is less than +39%. This is a @Doc_Scorpion Noob trap and a @Doc_Scorpion False Choice because the only reason to choose the +30% is to not know about the +39%. This is the situation with SOs. If someone is slotting SOs because "I don't want to think about it" then that's not fair to that very player. This is strictly development-level -- NOT RP-level. RPing an intentionally-weak character is far simpler: you use few/no Enhancements at all. (you may want to check your attribution on your 2nd quote, that was me; not justicebeliever) First off: prime example - Fiery Aura Knockback hole. But second and more importantly: Just stop. I am using game terms and game theory terminology to talk about system design and you are trying to throw them in my face as moral judgements. Any time the game says "here's +small number" and hides the fact that there's an easily reachable +large number version of the exact same stat, that game has failed its novice and casual users. Note how literally none of this previous sentence is targeted at said players. I'm not telling them they're playing it wrong. I'm telling you the designers of 20 years ago built it wrong. I promise you this isn't controversial. If you still insist on being offended; that I'm making suppositions about how optimized is optimized enough, I will be left with no choice but to think you want to misrepresent me.

I'm definitely a work in progress. In my meager defense, i typed that during multiple "hurry up and wait" phases of a work catastrophe. The short versions of my TED talks are already peppered throughout this site but it's basically me trying to explain: You shouldn't need system mastery to make a decent character. "Intentionally weaker choices" aren't actually choices. As a community, we are bad at discussing this.

I like both, your munitions one and this Grenade one. I think it's a great idea to show the devs different incarnations they could take based on what they feel fits best. Speaking for myself, I think the ideal is to be "all over the place" instead of having a single form-factor. Like 3 grenades, 2 drone powers (one that is more traditional pet, one that is more for spewing out control-over-time like Earthquake), wrist-rockets, turrets, mines... even just a couple of gun-based like net launcher where the redraw is guaranteed and accounted for in the balance. That's probably because I still like "Contraptions" as a set name.

I'd kind of like to take a stab at this. I don't feel it is exactly one issue... but they all revolve around a singular notion of "false choice." #1: Eventually, IOs do become superior in every way. I happen to IO at 22, when the benefits outweigh the negatives for me, but any SO purchased above level 30 is objectively a worse decision. #2: The community subtext that the game doesn't tell people about IOs - doesn't specifically tell you when it becomes superior. Sure, there's a tutorial mission but it doesn't explain a lot, like how to fill Invuln's Psychic hole, let alone the levels where one enhancement is better than another. I think this creates a lot of the zealotry where people feel they need to bury SOs in a communal overcompensation to make sure no one thinks they're the correct choice. The notable exception continues to be people who run the numbers themselves. No one gives them crap, but there has never been a movement to realign community ideals to their observations. We keep to our general rule of thumbs. #3: I think you may be coming at this question from the angle of "it's up to people to play how they want and they are free to make their own decisions?" Begging your pardon if I'm misreading that. But the fact is, an RPer who simply slots what seems effective and doesn't want to think about math doesn't deserve to be objectively worse. If someone wants their character to intentionally be weak, they should eschew enhancements partly or entirely -- not be punished for not knowing the intricacies. At the most basic level, this means using IOs over SOs. At the most advanced levels, it means having set bonuses memorized (which is a nightmare of game design). I think most discussions lack nuance on this point, with people trying to assign moral high ground to playing unoptimized, but it misses this critical point that the player shouldn't have to worry about being optimized, and so the developers should remove "noob traps" when possible. Failing that, the community will fall back to point #2 and shout it from the rooftops. #4: Early levels and weak IOs. This is itself a doubled-up item: the first 22 levels are often skipped/sped through, and they also correlate to when Enhancing is not worth the cash. Even those of us with sugardaddy farm toons sending ourselves gobs of influence don't typically bother enhancing at these levels because it feels like flushing money down the toilet. We know if we just hold out until level [insert your personal threshold here], everything gets better. Everything feels like an investment. It's like asking someone in Business why a mortgage is superior to rent. Personal anecdote on #4: I spend about 80% of my playtime solo, 18% duo, 2% trio. My PUG experience is so small that it doesn't even register on the pie chart. I enjoy leveling, I enjoy being middle-level, and even I dash through the first 22 levels as fast as possible. The game "starts" for me at 22 when my IOs come through, and I happen to be thrilled that these SO changes are going to mean the game might start for me sooner. Well crap. That turned into a wall of text.

Let's be clear: that's me requesting that part. ScarySai is being reasonable and just wants an invisible shield. I, personally, just think it would be easier to disable the animation states altogether - as well as fix other issues. If it's like Rathulfr says and you could end up with shields clipping into folks, that would imply the engine allows us to paste objects to characters arbitrarily. And if that were the case, we could slap a Beam Rifle in my hands while I was using Temporal Manipulation powers. And if that were the case, "redraw" wouldn't be an issue.

I invite you both to page 1 of this very thread. What you're actually arguing for with statements like this is removing MinimalFX options and Power Customization in general. @Rathulfr I don't think you quite got what I was saying. My assumption is that by choosing an "ignore shield" power option, the shield you selected for your costume would be ignored. There would be nothing to clip, because you would be telling the game you aren't even using the "Shield" animation states. If I'm wrong, it's still not the end of the world. I would love to see unimpeded versions of my Kin attacks even with my shield attached. The only animations that would be truly impacted would be the ones already disabled for shield defense.

Yeah, I was imagining more a selector in the "powers" portion of character design of "ignore shield" which would simply treat your character like you had any other armor power selected when deciding animations. This would likely come with the limitation of not being able to draw (as in display) your shield, making it functionally invisible (which is the part ScarySai is after, best I can tell). It just happens to be an implementation that satisfies many parties simultaneously.

You mean typing /ah from wherever I am and filling out my kit with IOs and never touching SOs or under? These arguments just don't hold water, for me.

That's what I do, but it doesn't solve the following problems: Walk animation override Emote incompatibility Awkward over-reliance on the right hand (my Shield/Kin just looks like she's casting a spell with all the one-handed gesturing) - to be clear, sometimes you want this. It would be nice to have the option to ignore the "lock left hand" component. Awful taunt override (jungle drum scream)

I think something implicit in work like this is the current contact levels. What you're asking for sounds like what Ouroboros was supposed to do, when they introduced the self-imposed challenges. The obvious difference: those bring you to the quest's levels, and you want them to come up to yours. I cannot shake the feeling this was done because the alternative was actually adding logic and option paths to literally every supported story arc. But yeah, definitely, wouldn't turn it down. I still think most contacts need at least 5 levels added to their availability range for their normal modes, so maybe that could be done (along with some other old content refinements...) while adding NG+ versions of the arcs. EDIT: what about street-sweeping portions? If each mission needs to be an adjusted copypasta of the original, these could just auto-succeed, but if implementation is more system-level, these would still be a thing, and there would be a surge of incarnates murdering all of King's Row (and fighting over the 3-4 decent Lost spawns).

First off, I think you need a tl;dr. People are going to respond based off of what they think you're saying. Second, I don't think the Master Brawler logic is what we're looking at, here. Not to say this is all doable but I could see something being worked out. Here's what I could see: No bonus attack for being purely petless. This is already a big undertaking and that one detail at least doubles the work. No other petless incentives directly. That doesn't make sense for the AT, and is only a thing because Whips. It would be smarter long term to port whips elsewhere (Hellfire Assault, and I've been meaning to mention that I want to see Aurora Pena's psychic lash become an Epic pool). Removing the Endurance tax directly from powers (this would be a lot of work) and re-implementing through a check on currently active pet tiers. Example: gain a debuff for as long as you have a pet out of a particular tier, which adds x% negative endurance discount. Likewise, you could auto-grant passives at certain levels, like 12, that suppress while a given tier of pet is active. I don't particularly understand the desire to make it build-level. I think it would be easier to implement changes based on currently-active pets, and wouldn't meaningfully impact standard pet builds anyway.

Specifically, Manipulations have received a lot of love. We really need more Blast sets (and Controls even more).

This is quite awesome, guys. As an interesting fallout of this change, I think a lot of folks might target Shop Keeper early on (especially those of us who regularly park characters under level 10 for a week or 2 to build up some patrol XP). The QOL around SOs, paired with the Upgrade function, will really make the low levels a lot more accessible. Kudos, good stuff.

Well, I'll accept this being moved to the bug reports but ONLY fix it if it's causing memory leaks or something! it's too good!

The Floor Is Book

I can't be the only person that occasionally gets this. If I hang out in the Steel Canyon University, sometimes a random book object will appear and start growing. Is this a bug or an easter egg? Whatever it is, it cracks me up. Same shot, about a minute later:

@SwitchFade Specifically, I meant the suggestions to trade out an arm-mounted shield for a personal FF. The other thing is, while I agree that it's ideal to telegraph what you are doing to your allies, it's not really accurate to today's game. My dark blasts are bright red, my fire looks like a viscous ooze, and my katana is currently invisible to my allies anyway. So I would say "it's a force field that's used more actively than EA's passive field" or whatever, but we don't need new fiction to justify it. Finally, I would frankly view it as a workaround for female toons walking wrong.

You should consider some of what was said in probably half the posts that came before yours...

I don't even mind keeping the power set restriction (especially since maybe I want my shield to show in some costumes but not others). The worst part about a shield is also the thing that will likely make this request so hard: how much it messes with. Shield overrides your run animations, turns women into men, it fixes what animations can play for your primary attacks, and mucks with many emotes that can't tell if you're in combat stance or not. So basically, whatever animation hooks shield already has would need revisited and even more behavior switches added.

Does it even boost defense? Pretty sure it doesn't, because the duration is over 15 seconds. I think this stuff is good to keep in mind, but ultimately it's still the best plan to wait for everyone to get over this new set. Once we all have a few and the Christmas Joy has worn off and we can see how it settles into the meta, then it will be safe to start adjusting it. It's the nice thing about a community server -- they don't have Paragon Studio's moneyed incentives to make sure a new set is shiny AND powerful (which leads to massive game health issues if you refuse to nerf your game). HC gets to do things right: make sure it's just about middle-of-the-road performance, focus instead on the "fun" factor, and then tune the set later when we understand its impact.