Steampunkette

And none of that matters 1 entire Damn if my narrative doesn't hold to their standards of power. If my "Street Level" heroes are PL 16 then my "World Heroes" are 18s and my "Cosmics" are 22s. Or I could make my Cosmics 16s and just run that story instead. The game facilitates the storytelling. It doesn't -force- you to follow the Developer's recommendations on how strong different characters or concepts are. Mainly 'cause how many power points you spends means nothing if the enemies are at the same level of power. Again, I'll point you to Paladin and Jurassik, Deathsurge and Rularuu. All are "Giant Monsters". Your level 50 Incarnate IOd out superbad "Cosmic Superhero" character hits Paladin like you're level 19. Your Judgement? Hits like you're level 19. All your high tier attack powers? Like you're level 19. Meanwhile he hits you like he's level 50. He's not a Cosmic entity here to destroy our world. He's a big psychic clockwork manipulated by a guy who got beat near to death by a Superhero Cop. The Joker, Batman, Superman. All of them hit Paladin just as hard, regardless of their "PL" Now stop trying to use Mutants and Masterminds to justify City of Heroes. Not only is it an apples to oranges situation it's also people trying to put DC's characters into a system they weren't created with. It's always going to be a Square Peg Round Hole situation at best.

Narratively Rularuu is a cosmic entity. Doesn't matter where you fight him, he's still going to eat our reality. But a character like, say, Paladin is not a Cosmic Entity. It's a giant Clockwork. Mechanically they both con Purple regardless of your level. They both function by the same rules of Giant Monsters. Narratively they're wholly different beings for how dangerous they are and what their goals/existence is. Paladin is a scary robot that terrorizes Kings Row once in a while, while Rularuu wants to get out of the Shadow Shard and eat our whole reality. But they're both 'Just Giant Monsters' as far as game mechanics go. You're level 50 with 4 level shifts and Tier 4 everystuff and IO sets to hell and back? Paladin STILL cons purple to you. Even though 10 level 20 characters beat him the last time he spawned, you're not going to be able to Thanos Snap him out of existence with all your Incarnate abilities. (You'll still beat him if you're built really well, but it's not going to be a 10 second fight) Game Mechanics do not -have to- define the narrative.

Game Mechanics don't have to define the story. I could develop a M&M game where Superheroes have 150 Power Points to spend on their characters and put them against appropriate challenges and limit the narrative to one city or one neighborhood of a city. Maybe all their adventures happen only in Brooklyn New York. Guess what? They're Street-Level Heroes. If I turn around and have those players make 150pp characters and then tell a sweeping cosmic narrative where they're piloting starships and fighting aliens, they're cosmic heroes. Even with the same power point costs. Narrative does not have to be tied to game mechanics, instead game mechanics can support the narrative.

The Tanker/Brute thing is a big problem. Right now, Brutes can have about as much overall durability as a Tanker but dish out -way- more damage. But knowing that's a thing, we can make sure the Instigator -can't- get quite as much durability as a Tanker. Maybe cap their Resistances at 75% and give them HP closer to a Scrapper so that even if they do get Softcap Defense the shots that do slip by are -REALLY DANGEROUS- to ensure they don't just hang out in melee and play like a Tanker or Brute. It won't -fix- things for Tanker/Brute, but it doesn't need to make it worse!

Definitely not a 'Defining Feature' of any given comic book archetype. I'll give you that. But, honestly, none of the archetypes as presented in City of Heroes actually line up with Comic Book characters perfectly... At least until you add in some powersets. But Captain Marvel, Nova, and soooo many other characters fit an "Energy Assault" powerset just beautifully, but don't fit a single Control Powerset at -all-. Instead it would make more sense to give them a Defense Secondary. Similarly, there's a lot of "Fire Assault" and "Ice Assault" characters who use elemental powers in every situation. And let's not forget characters like Ghost Rider or Spawn who will lash you with flaming chains and then punch you with skeletal, or metal-reinforced, fists in melee. When you really look at Comics -hard-, Assault style characters appear a whole heck of a lot more often than 'Dominator' characters.

"Melee Focused Twin" Would be a Scrapper. An Instigator would be more of a split between Melee and Ranged and, personally, I'd prefer they had inherent Taunts in their attacks to make them into aggro managers who use Sentinel defense values and thus can't just hang out in melee. Spider-Man. Ranged attacks, melee, and defensive capabilities. Captain Marvel: Same thing Shonen are fine and dandy, but come on! There's dozens of comic book heroes that use their powers at range and in melee, mixing it up based on their needs and their enemies.

As someone who LOVES KM at all levels (But particularly at high levels) I have to say it would pair pretty well with Radiation Armor... -initially-. I say initially because the Repulsing Torrent power, while solo, can help make Alphas easier to eat. Radiation is a self-healing set, which is great, but it means Alphas can be rough. But a lot of people feel like the set is too slow-paced for what it gives you and I really can't fault them for that opinion (Smashing and Energy are ridiculously resisted in the end-game) I've played SS to 50 and it was a blast. Could never get into TW. I think SS might be your best bet unless you're willing to mess with Street Justice which is -also- a lot of fun but gets more engaging animations, for my money.

I'd rather see a separate Assault/Defense Archetype created (And even suggested one in the Instigator as a new Tanky-Type character) But I'd still love to see this.

Oh my god. Seriously? Just let it go. The point is that not every "Street Level Hero" gets to arrest Nemesis or any other "Kingpin of Crime" character 'cause they're not written for Street Level Heroes to fight. They're written for every character to start out punching gangbangers on the streets and grow in power 'til they can tangle with the biggest and the baddest characters in the game. You can write your own reasons for your own character to be able to ignore the massive disparity between "Thug with a gun" and "Superstrong Supervillain" but that doesn't mean everyone feels comfortable ignoring that disparity. The fact that the Batman V Superman argument is still going strong after 40 something years (Not to mention Superman v Goku, -jesus-...) is perhaps the single greatest indicator of that. And if City of Heroes were a better game than it is (And it's already a pretty freaking great game) it would acknowledge that disparity in the writing by continuing the "Multiple Paths Through Leveling" trend all the way up to the End-Game by including end-game storylines that don't rely on your character being able to punch out supervillains empowered by freaking GODS. Does that mean I want the current Devs to rewrite the incarnate arcs? Hell no. Does that mean I'm going to ask the current devs to redesign the incarnate system? Hell no. Does that mean I want the current devs to consider a wider variety of power-levels in continuing content? Sure, who the hell does that harm? But maybe, -just maybe-, for some players it might be worthwhile to have a P2W Vendor Flag that disables Incarnate Drops the same way as any other drops get flagged in the system that -already exists-. You don't have to use it, -obviously-. But for them it might be better than constantly getting 'INCARNATE SHARD BONDED' in the middle of their screen.

Nazi Statesman doesn't get beaten when you show him a green rock.

Can't be done. The bartender is part of the game world. They'd have to remove the barkeep for every server or no server. That said, moving her off to the side would work great.

For literal years. Take a look at the three encounters you can fight him on, Heroside, and tell me which one fits street level heroes and involves arresting the dude: 1) Going to an alternate reality created by the Midnight Squad to destroy his base in the Shadow Shard, Prison for Rularuu the cosmic entity who wants to destroy our world who got imprisoned in the 60s. 2) Save the world during the Rikti War arc which, by the way, involves fighting Hero1 himself and generally SAVING THE WORLD AS IT SAYS ON THE TIN. 3) Dealing with Nazi-Alternate-Reality freaking STATESMAN as a superheroic top tier fight. 'Cause, y'know, nothing says "Street Level Kingpin" like only being found in a bunch of Cosmic Level Storyarcs. Don't be insulting, Darkgob. It's not conducive to conversation or constructive at all.

Oh, absolutely! If you're writing. But if you're in a shared world with other people who did the writing before you ever arrived then you are limited by that world's writing. As PaxArcana noted previously I could just stop playing the game after a certain point, or only play it within certain limitations. I could also rewrite the narrative for my personal character however I wanted to do it. But as far as everyone else is concerned my character is still in incarnate chosen by The Well of Furies. My fire blast still does fire damage instead of hellfire damage. Etc. It's up to the writer of the world to create the structures that we exist within and in many cases strain against.

Why not have all three? therein lies the conundrum that I'm having here is that no one understands that you can have more than one. You can have more than three! If you wanted to create a national level hero or some similar thing that would be cool, too! But they would all kind of have to be built for from day one.

One more time... This is in regards to a hypothetical City of Heroes 2. In such a game you could design this stuff from the ground up to accommodate different concepts while learning from the mistakes that City of Heroes made. Nemesis being behind everything is a great meme! But until I can arrest him it doesn't really mean a thing. It's the Xanatos Gambit which works great in TV shows for kids but terribly in video games. Meanwhile I can punch both Nazi and Conflicted Emperor versions of Statesman... And used to punch real Statesman and can even punch a Statesman Stunt Double...

Personally I just like to see more endgame content that isn't fighting off Rularuu or Hamidon or whatever. Lemme fight against the Family and Tsoo and such, just on a grander scale. Introduce some Kingpin style characters who are trying to manipulate the whole city, make Supervillain freaks like Rhino, and who are overall presented as real threats. if you're going to have an incarnate system for characters it needs to be accessible to all of them, though. Maybe introduce different ways to opt into the system. They could have used origins for that with magic people getting super awesome spells and mutants exposing themselves to something that mutates them further without it all being tied to Greco-Roman myth in a singular narrative that excludes all variation. Same drops, same recipes, same crafting method, different narrative.

One more note? I was not suggesting the devs rewrite this game with that post. You actually cut out the part where I was commenting that in a perfect City of Heroes 2 such narrative distinctions would be included and then you suggested to me, like I was some kind of idiot, that I should just turn off XP at level 15 to 20. which is also hilarious in the fact that it would be more appropriate to cut off the XP somewhere around level 36 when you're still fighting the warriors and the tsoo who are both very street-level enemy groups... I mean the character I used in the example was Daredevil and you're basically suggesting barely getting high enough in level to fight The Hand or a gang from a 1970s movie. Quite humorous in retrospect!

You completely misunderstood my statement... You can have two level 50 characters who represent completely different levels of super heroing by having street thugs that go all the way up to level 50 for the "street-level hero" to fight rather than just having a whole bunch of aliens and super psychics at max level. I'm not talking about the individual power level as regards game mechanics I'm referring to narrative power level. how's the game world describes your strength compared to the strength of another character or to the world itself. A level 50 blaster will have their tier 9 nuke whether they are street level or cosmic, it's just the story that would be different. And yes having multiple endgame scenarios is possible! It just means doing different writing. kind of like the entirety of City of Heroes but it's multiple different zones which have different storylines in them. You just have some storylines stay street-level and some storylines go cosmic. Hell you could start the game with cosmic storylines and instead of Atlas Park have Atlas station where your cosmic heroes are working for alien cops beating up whatever street gang works on the space station. The game has different story lines for people who follow magic tech science mutants and natural enemies. Just carry that forward into cosmic and local I guess would be the easiest way to describe it. As to the end game system itself using incarnate threads and such? Do that same system for the street level hero and just change the writing so that it's not about The Well of Furies picking the biggest and the baddest. Let them take that secret stuff twosome scientist who explains it all in more human terms and helps them to build stuff for their powers. It is all dependent on what the studio decides to do with their time... They decided to handle the entire game as an advancement from street level to cosmic while acknowledging character origins as one of five things, when instead they could have gone from low-level to high-level while instead of acknowledging characters motivations or relative power levels or any number of other things. In short: levels are in abstraction of advancement for game mechanic purposes but do not automatically have to define the story being told. I apologize for the grammatical errors and random misplaced words, I'm on my cell phone at work using speech to text and it sucks.

Oh, wow... I didn't know that's how Purple IOs worked! Thought they worked like regular IOs. Learn something new every day!

Honestly... Incarnates were a bad idea from day 1. Not because more power isn't great or anything. Just the way they designed it, narratively. Superheroes inhabit different narrative power levels. Whether they're Cosmic Silver Surfer types or more a neighborhood guardian Daredevil sort. And City of Heroes has never respected that both those characters inhabit the same world. Instead everyone starts street level and then grows to cosmic through the same kind of ridiculous and arbitrary method... In a perfect CoH2, characters would have different methods of getting to "End Game Content" that support different concepts, y'know? There'd also be different narrative end-games. Sure a Cosmic hero could do the Street Level end game content, or vice versa, but they wouldn't be forced to do it.

Heh... Interesting throught: Scaling Damage Buff based on how many pets you have out. No pets? Full bonus! Tier 1 pets? 1/3rd smaller bonus. Tier 1 and 2 pets? 2/3rd smaller bonus. It'd be like the Defender Vigilance inherent. 30% more damage with no pets, each set of pets you summon reduces the bonus by 10%. Well. 30% at level 20+. At level 1 it's 6%.

Lemme go roll up a whip corrup- oh. Seems I can't. 😛 And until Hellfire Assault gets made, that's the only place to get whips.

It's not entirely true that attuning purple IOs is worthless. When purple IOs are attuned you get the full benefit of the set bonuses every level. If your only goals are PVP. And end game content then attuned purple sets are a bad idea. But if you spend a lot of time exemplaring with lower-level Friends or supergroup members it can still be worthwhile. It depends entirely on what you do with your time.

Just what it says on the tin. Give Mastermind attacks, but not Mastermind pet attacks, a little bit more damage. It won't have much effect on overall DPS of masterminds but it would allow players to make petless or few pet builds that are slightly more effective than whispering violence to NPCs. Yes I know, masterminds are supposed to have pets. And blasters aren't supposed to blap, but we do anyway!

I introduce: Supernaturelle! My Whip-Only Pain Domination Mastermind.