Steampunkette

I'm earnestly curious where Gen Z and Gen Alpha are getting $120 to blow on a game they don't even want to play but feel like they "Have to" in order to not be a loser. As a Millennial staring down a $60 price tag on a game I -want- is rough enough... The disposable income the aforementioned people have is impressive!

Instead of leaving at 20 you'd leave when you complete the arcs and choose to leave? *shrug* And yeah. People are going to continue powerleveling to 50 and not bothering to slot a single enhancement 'til they get there because that's the game some people like to play. Do I think it's fun or healthy? Not really. But whether or not Praetorians start at level 1 or level 20 they're still going to do it so what impact does that actually mean? That some people might make a Praetorian to skip the fastest 20 levels of PLing to 50? Oh no! If people are going to play that game they're going to play that game. And short of making PLing impossible, which the Devs have shown no inclination towards, nothing is going to change that. This line of thought is just fearmongering and pearlclutching.

Attuned IOs make everything post level 27 a cakewalk except iTrials... Mainly because you have to rely on other players in iTrials who may or may not have issues with latency or knowing what they're doing.

From what you're saying it's a cakewalk at level 30 so what's the difference? 😛

Wow that'd be a lot of work... but I suggest it for several reasons. 1) Praetoria's enemy groups were designed with IO Set bonuses in mind to handle players in Incarnate Trials, so even the "Low Level" threats in the Going Rogue starting areas are painfully overtuned since they were just scaled down by level. Yes, it allows for some players to enjoy "Hardmode" runs, but I don't think this change would severely impact that. Giving players access to more powers (particularly more controls/defense for the majority of ATs) would make things a bit more fair. 2) Praetorian characters are presented as stronger/tougher/more resilient because of the dystopian world they were forced to grow up in. Starting them at level 20, or even just level 15, would help to reinforce that idea. 3) It would give new and returning players a good and solid reason to do the Praetorian content since they'd be able to start out at a higher level than characters in CoH. And let's face it: The zones look amazing and the storylines are written with a more focused narrative voice than the older CoH and even CoV content. 4) Making First Ward and Night Ward levelless would allow the higher level Praetorian characters to leave the initial Going Rogue content and move on to the First Ward without having to boost First and Night Ward content up separately. Though I would suggest having the "Auto Grant" of First Ward/Night Ward contacts still happen at or after level 20 for Primals and after leaving Praetoria for Praetorians. Alternatively, you could make all of Praetoria "Levelless Content" which scales with the player and then set it to grant level 20 to characters that leave the Praetorian Tutorial or make a new character in Praetoria. That would also allow Primal characters to "Infiltrate" Praetoria at any level and do the Praetorian content, as well. Making that expansion far more accessible to the playerbase. It could also be a lot of fun as a CoH character to get up into the 45 range and do the Portal Corps arcs before transitioning to Praetoria to help the Resistance... THEN move on to Incarnate Trials. You know... I had one intention at the start, but now I just think Levelless Praetoria and Praeto characters starting at 20 is a better idea by far.

As you can see I'm not in an AE Arc. That's just a regular radio mish directing to the pillar.

Ohhhhhhhhh Yeah. That's never going to happen. The whip isn't a prop object like a sword or axe, where you can specifically replace it with something else, it's specifically an effect, like the blast from fire blast. S'why it always looks exactly the same every time it comes out even though you'd think the flames would be "Random" Creating the whip powers took as much effort for the original game developers as animating 8 separate powersets. Like all 9 powers in 8 sets for 4 powers in 1 set. Colin Brown, one of Paragon's animators, did a whole dev diary post about it for MMORPG.com, though it's since been lost to time. In it, he discussed how incredibly intensive the efforts were and how it was kind of ridiculous the amount of effort that was put into getting one set -just- right. But the Going Rogue brass wanted Desdemona to be the coolest character they could manage soooo.... Even if using the physical animations of the character moving could shave off 3/4 of the time of creating an electric whip alternative you're still looking at 4 powers for the cost of the animation development time of 18 powers. Maybe if the dev team, here, got paid a lot of money and were able to get some more artists and animators on staff they could do that. But it'd cost 2 potential full powersets to just move over the 4 current animations. And if you wanted a full attack set (with build up or aim taking a 0-effort time) you're back to looking at 8 full sets of animation effort for 4 more powers, -plus- the 2 sets time for the 4 powers that exist. 10 powersets worth of effort for 1 powerset. I just don't see anyone involved thinking that's a reasonable use of time and resources. It's why I suggested the plasma whip instead. It'd be a new damage setup and give the designers some options while just recycling the 4 powers animations we currently have.

At what point did I say that plasma was electricity? I said "Energy Damage" which is right there with Radiation which works fine with Plasma. You're the one who said it winds up looking like the plasma from a star and not electricity. I'm confused by the goal, here.

Plasma that is in the sun and plasma that we make on Earth is the same thing. It's a higher state of molecular and atomic excitement than Gas. Nothing more, nothing less. The Plasma-ball (electro-orb) from Spencer's Gifts doesn't -actually- contain plasma, just low amp high voltage electricity passing through a noble gas (Usually argon or neon, but krypton and xeon are also options)

Keep it like it is, color it blue-purple, and call it Plasma. Fire/Energy damage with a -Def function.

Sentinels are Stalkers who trade Crits and Assassin's Strike for larger AoE range/shaped but not bigger target counts. When well built they're incredibly durable and do decent damage. They're particularly good at taking out one enemy through using their Opportunity button to weaken their target. Especially bosses which melt when the team is all also hitting the same target. Their big "Claim to Fame" is throwing off their T9 blast power every 30 seconds or so once thoroughly slotted for recharge. For DP that means doing the gundance every pack.

Fair. Though the tech for auto-power suppression also exists: In the AE buildings. All powers, including autopowers, cease to function there. You'd just need whatever object is there copied and tweaked to only disable one autopower. But it still doesn't fix the bridge problem. And with places like Skyway in the game... well. Then again. You've got Snow in the tunnels of Atlas Park so is it -really- that big a deal? Not my place to judge. Just brainstorming a way to have 'weather' in the game.

That is a -very- good reason, yeah. You'd have to put in some kind of auto-power suppressor within buildings. Like they do with the Zombie Apocalypse Spawning while you're inside an Icon. Wouldn't help with Bridges, though.

In what way would this put unneeded strain on the servers? It would be an autopower and a skybox change triggered by a zone event. The tech for both already exists. Any "Strain" would be just as "straining" as any other zone-event.

... in Atlas Park, we can have snow thanks to an overlay setup that basically makes the snow tied to your camera. It's not an actual thing moving around the zone, which would probably cause just -so- much lag, but a graphical effect... Can we do the same thing with Rain? On a separate note, the skybox and lighting can be set to various options during events. Can we set up an 'Event' where the skybox turns grey and stormy and the light becomes notably dimmer? ... and can we combine the two? Have the event trigger a zone-wide 'Debuff' which shows rain in your vision and makes the skybox and environment darker? Could we then make "Weather Events" a random thing that hits EVER ZONE with rain as the main Weather Event replaced by Snow in winter?