Steampunkette

I'm all for 1, 2, 3, and some of 5. The rest is very "Meh". Particularly number 7. Rularuu is something we should only really get back to if and when the current devs bring the Battalion down on our heads as we unleash him on our enemies. As to 5, I feel like the capstone mission should be a more general "Bank Mission" style where you're trying to save a bunch of refugees from a Natterling attack or whatever. Then separate side-missions around the refugee camp itself where you're fighting Nemesis, recovering Kora Fruit, or other similar stuff.

It is an annoying aspect. But there's actually a second layer to why it's so frustrating: Character Flagging. You ever make an AE Arc and you get to choose whether to make a given ambush (for example) an "Enemy" or "Rogue"? That same flagging exists in the open world of CoH. It's why the Council will fight the Fifth Column in Steel Canyon, or why Arachnos units fight against Longbow in Faultline. One of those groups is set to "Rogue" and placed in such a way that it will wind up fighting another specific group. Players have a similar flagging setup behind the scenes. But it only becomes relevant in PvP Zones, because you're flagged as Hero, Enemy, or Rogue (for free for all PvP). Currently, to exist in a zone with the other side, either everyone is flagged "Hero" and can team together in the standard co-op style, or characters are flagged differently and you can't team... but it also institutes open world PvP. To create a cohabitating zone where heroes and villains share the region without teaming up the game needs a "Hero2" flag or "Villain" flag separate from Enemy/Rogue. That said... it's possible that flag has been created and we don't know anything about it, yet. In which case the "Co-Op" zone title might still be applied because no one thought of the "Co-Habitating" term on the Dev team (Stranger things have happened in production companies!). But it is likely that, yes, it will just be a Co-Op zone where everyone, Hero and Villain alike, is trying to stop the Warrior or whomever from achiving big power and bringing down destruction with it.

You'd probably have to do it as a separate radio setup with unique Ad-Lib missions. Just because of the way "Boss" is coded into them. But that could be really cool, actually. Radio Missions where you explicitly hunt down AVs? I'd play the heck out of that.

Well I can certainly understand the need for granularity in order to avoid it becoming too watered down in one direction or another, I still feel like it's the wrong decision. However the decision has been made and the suggestion is thus no longer relevant. Sorry to have wasted people's time.

So Kallisti Wharf's entire population of NPC Villains, Cops, drones, Etc, are -all- going to be Incarnate Level threats at all times? 1) That makes no sense in relation to the way the game hands out "Incarnate Power" to only a handful of characters (Of which the player character is one) 2) How is Kallisti Wharf even -standing- if everyone is god-tier superpowered as even street-level mobs? How can cars traverse the streets without some Incarnate-Jacked Warrior (Or Hellion, or Freakshow, or Knives of Vengeance, or whatever) yoinking their car up and yeeting it at whomever happens to be nearby? Like, I get it. You want the narrative to be big and cool and powerful. But that doesn't mean the random street mobs in a clear city-zone where perfectly normal people make it to and from their office jobs, hospital shifts, and gardening of the immaculate parks have to be god-tier powerful. Again, I'm not talking about the Missions, here, though I'd love for them to be written as broadly as possible for characters of a range of levels rather than only Incarnated out 50+ characters with at least 20 vet levels. I'm talking about the Street Trash. The generic thugs who mug hapless civilians in the streets. For them to be level 54 incarnates across the entire zone would break any kind of logic regarding the power levels involved, wouldn't it?

While I understand your position, @Cobalt Arachne I find I fundamentally disagree with it. John Stewart, the Green Lantern, was not a street-gang fighting Superhero when he first started out. He was the Green Lantern, with all the weight of responsibility that it carries. The Question, similarly, will never be strong enough to stand toe to toe with Darkseid and fight him. I think the fundamental idea of giving all superheroes a leveling progression reflected through narrative scale was flawed from Day 1. Some characters just -are- Cosmic Scale Heroes. Some characters just -are- Street Heroes who fight gangs. And I sincerely feel like those stories are horribly underserved by a game which presumes every player must make the progression from Street Tough to Cosmic Badass. I'll also point to Sidekicking as a major hole in the "How can we do narrative with level 1 and 50 heroes beside each other?" the answer is: Who really ultimately cares when they can put together a team of eight people ranging in level from 1 to 50 with two characters over 40 and still have a grand old time, together? Doesn't matter if Superman is there, The Question will still get lasered to death by Darkseid. Further: We have the leveling content that already exists if someone wants to enjoy the "Leveling from 1-50" path to superherodom (Rather than just getting PLed to 50 or whatever). And finally: That first time player starts in Atlas Park, with contacts in Atlas Park. And a boatload of other characters milling around in Atlas Park. That player will know nothing of Kallisti Wharf or any other level-scaled options around the game and will just play the game normally. Preserving the "Thrill and Engagement" of the new player growth experience. I'm not saying "Write all new content as if all characters are level 1, level 50, or somehow both simultaneously!" because that would be obnoxious. I'm not even saying "Write all the content in this specific zone to be level 1-50" I'm suggesting that the zone -itself- contain level scaled NPC Mobs, rather than 49-54 mobs. And that the missions be scaled as widely as possible, For some of the content that might be 45-50+. For other content maybe it would reach as low as the 30s or 20s. But probably no level 1 missions fighting Warriors.

Forgive the weird grammatical errors, text-to-speech really sucks.

All functions of city of heroes are based on magnitudes. A magnitude one attack deals a specific amount of damage to a character based on the level of the character using it. When the game determines damage taken it takes in the purple patch to determine how much damage that magnitude one attack does. When an NPC has no level it deals damage based entirely on the target's level. My magnitude one attack at level one deals 8.3 points of damage. So I will hit the level one character for 8.3 points of damage. If he then turns around and swings at the level 50 character that character will instead take 53 points of damage from the exact same attack. It is really an ingenious system.

You're not wrong, Uun. But the Devs announced they'll be doing stuff with Kallisti "Soon". Which is why Echo Plaza exists, now.

What it says on the tin. Set all the NPCs in the zone to scale based on player level, so whether you're 50, or 1, you can enjoy the very cool zone. Similarly, make the Missions in the zone scale to the widest possible margin. I'm not gonna ask you to make level 1 Warriors, obviously. But let's not lock it all up as 50 content or anything. This could actually encourage players to level in and enjoy the zone as something new to do at any level range!

So... I've been playing Dark/Martial as a "Blappy" type character. And so far? It's pretty great. The AoE Immob holds enemies in Caltrops which I've budgeted 4 damage procs to, though I might swap one for knockdown. The fear slows incoming damage, but if it's still too great, Heart of Darkness stops it altogether. Add in some ninja-star ricochets, leg-sweeps, and a cool spinning kick, and it's pretty cool. I'm RPing the character as a D&D Roguelock. Grabbed Infiltration and slapped a Stealth IO into my sprint for near-stalker levels of sneakiness. On Teams I can rush ahead in stealth, pop Heart of Darkness and Caltrops, then pop out of melee to fling the Immob before diving back in for kicks and stuff. Only 28 so far. But I put this build together for her. Mistmourne - Dominator (Darkness Control).mxd

Rikti -are- Earthlings. Woops! Spoilers. >.>

At the time, global suppression was the only way they knew to make it work without the animations breaking in relation to movement. Specifically: Swift. Because Swift is a globally active power that always increases your movement speed the walk animation would have you gliding too far in relation to how fast you were actually going. At the time of Walk's introduction, the ability to change a character's Movement Speed Cap on the fly hadn't been invented, yet. So everything was managed with speed increases and decreases. Part of why Hover has a massive fly speed penalty tied to it (Largely 'cause the Engine understands "Fly 1" as a defined value of speed and they had to lower it for hover to not just be flight since it is all based on Magnitudes) Now that we have the ability to just set a defined speed cap (Through all the work done to create Afterburner) and use the Walk "Animation Priority" in the same way Hover has a higher animation priority than the standard flight pose... It's possible we'll see it in time. But it's gonna take a lil' while.

Etymology Time! "They" comes from Old Norse. "Sa". "Sa" was gender neutral and referred to one or many people. It became "They" in Old English, that is to say: English old enough that Shakespeare would've been like "Thy speech is most strange 'pon mine ear. Whither came thy mother and father?" Along with "They" came Their, Them, That, and The. That's right. THE came from Sa. Again, this is -OLD- English, which was really more German than English as you'd recognize it, today. Remember that "Thy" from Shakespeare? They became super common in use because the nordic Thin (Pronounced Thine) meant "Yours". And that became "Thou" which eventually became "You". "They" as a pronoun is older than "You" as a pronoun. Ain't that somethin'? Don't get me wrong. "He" has existed for almost as long as "They", in various forms. But the idea that it was the default "Person of Unknown Gender" for a thousand years ignores that They has been around just as long and is still in active use and has been THE ENTIRE TIME. It would be linguistic revisionism to pretend that "He" is and has been the default.

Buff powers are not like armors. There's a reason you can't put invisible thermal shields on somebody, or invisible force fields, or invisible ice shields. It's so there are visible indicators that a character is currently under the effects of your buff. Leadership is no different.

For two reasons. The first is as follows: And the second is: The game has no way to track "Overhealing". It's just not something the engine does. When you're healed, you gain X amount of hit points. If you're at the cap, you gain X amount of hit points but nothing happens. It still just tries to give you those hit points and a separate function keeps them from applying beyond a certain point. It doesn't actively track how much was or wasn't applied.

Damn. You're right. Back in September of 2019 he stated we wouldn't see more exclusive power choices for the Forseeable future. In fact Master Brawler was an experiment that was supposed to be reverted 'cause it's a bit of a hack job in the code, but they didn't, and now people love it, so it's remaining. Well... still! There's always hope for the unforseen future from 2019...

How about this for a change... Dull Pain and Durable Regeneration as mutually exclusive options. Durable Regeneration is a Toggle which increases Max HP by half the value of Dull Pain and provides a 20 second duration Absorb Value equal to the other half of Dull Pain's max HP increase every 20 seconds which dissipates if the toggle is removed. The Absorb Shield is not enhanceable, while the HP Increase value is enhanceable. There is no heal effect of the toggle. Then a player could aim to take alpha strikes with their small absorb value (267 at level 50) while losing out on a portion of the max HP buff which decreases the effectiveness of all of their other regen-centric powers and gain a small cyclical absorb shield to slow down their HP's drop to the tune of 13hp/sec which is about equal to +115% regeneration as an up-front value. For reference: Dull Pain on full power increases your HP/S from Regen by about 10 outside of Instant Healing and by about 50 during Instant Healing. It would lose about 1/3rd of it's overall power. So Durable Regeneration would cost you about 3hp/s regen from Fast Healing and Integration, and a further 15hp/s regen during Instant Healing for a constant 13hps. Lose 18, gain 13, but those 13 function as a shield... ... I think it could work.

OH! Yeah. That doesn't work at -all-. No way for it to function in the CoH Engine without designing a whole new system.

There is nothing that you can ever do to encourage people not to farm up incredible amounts of Inf or to PL characters up to 50. It's too simple and attractive for people to be like "Mmm... No. No. I can use Purples at 22, now, so I don't need to be 50!"

If you're fighting an AV, GM, or other superpowerful enemy (The Incarnate Trial bosses, for example) a single Sentinel can mean a -lot- more damage from the team during specific burst windows, since the debuff affects proc damage and is unresistable. Unfortunately it's plagued by 4 important problems. 1) It charges based on attacks, meaning you often can't pull it out on a spawn without "Wasting" it since many enemies are dead, or badly wounded, leading the Sentinel to hold it. 2) While holding it, you cannot use two of your baseline attacks, often cutting into attack chains and making the character feel syncopated rather than smooth. 3) When you do use it, it doesn't feel -strong- or -powerful-. It honestly doesn't feel like much of anything, even though the rest of the team is hitting harder. 4) Damage values feel universally low, making the archetype feel like it's floundering. We already know that Sentinels are Opportunists, so how about Containment? Containment, specifically doing extra damage to targets that are currently stunned, held, asleep, immobilized, or under a Fear effect, could make them feel stronger without significantly altering their overall damage output, and give them an explicit role on the team: Taking out controlled targets before they break free. An the narrative role of taking advantage of openings and opportunities. Combine with the current Sentinel Mechanic and you'll have a Sentinel and any control characters attempting to nuke AVs while the Purple Triangles of Doom are down. Further, outside of Dual Pistols, Energy, Fire, and Water Blast, the other blast sets all have the ability to randomly, or specifically, apply stuns, sleeps, or holds to targets, usually while doing very nice damage. And each of the Epic Pools has one or more Control Powers for Sentinel characters, ensuring every Sentinel, whether Solo or on a Team, has options to benefit from this aspect of their inherent power. Give their AoE attacks a 25% chance to do +50% damage and their ST attacks a 50% chance to do +50% damage to controlled targets and I think you'll have a winner.

When it launches, it will be dramatically Unreal. As in the Unreal Engine. For all the good and the bad that that entails. Here's a Procedurally Generated Office Mission Map. It is clearly something they're still working on, but they undershot their production schedule estimates by an incredible margin. MMORPGs are not something that takes even a full time Studio 2-3 years of effort to put out, unless it's going to be Shovelware. Amazon, owner of so much money it isn't funny, -announced- that they were working on New World in 2016. That game had already most likely been in production for a couple of years by that point, judging by the presented materials. It won't be released until August of this year. CoT is probably going to reach release. And it's probably going to look like an Indy game, no matter how many years the team puts into it. But no one had any understanding of just how -long- an MMORPG takes to create when they started. Much less as a purely Volunteer studio of people putting in passion-efforts in their spare time.

This kind of powerset would inspire me to make a "Savage Lands" team. Savage/Bio Stalker, Shadow/Savage Dominator, Plant/Nature Controller, Savage/Bio Brute, Wild/Sonic Defender, and a Beast Mastery/Nature or Beast Mastery/Wild MM. Tun everywhere we fight into a Jungle and prowl in it.

Yeah. Right now Combat Flight uses the same pose as Fly or Energy Flight or Mystic Flight or one of the Jetpacks. It just looks kind of doofy. Granted, it's how the Hover Power originally looked before they put the hover animation in. But we're beyond that!

I'd like to have the option to do a PB who flies around in the Hover Pose, rather than VERY SLOWLY leaning forward like I'm flying at 90 miles per hour, cape flowing in the breeze. Pls.