EggKookoo

Funny. NCSoft killing CoH was the best thing to happen to it.

I don't know if I'm repeating myself, but to me it feels like CoH was made by people who love comics and superheroes and made a game where they could express that. CO feels (felt) like a game made by people who realized they could cash in on peoples' love for comics and superheroes but didn't really love that stuff themselves. Which is weird since by all accounts Emmert was a big superhero fan.

I'm still not quite on board with this "combat in CoH is slow" thing. I mean, I get that you're locked into your animations in a way that you might not be in other games. A Blaster is stuck with an attack once triggered, while a WoW Mage can move mid-casting and interrupt it. But at the same time, you can queue up an attack in CoH (either while another is happening or if your target is out of range). Then, while it's queued, you can move or even run past your target, and the attack will trigger. As soon as that animation starts, you can queue up another attack. You can't queue attacks in WoW. In fact, if you try, the new attack will interrupt any non-instant attack that's currently running. I suppose that could be considered a feature, but I always found it more of an annoyance. I feel like I have to watch my attack icons like a hawk to make sure I'm attacking quickly enough but not so quickly I get in my own way. I realize this thread is about CO and not WoW, but I don't have CO installed so I can't go check to remind myself how the attacks work. I'm mainly just addressing the notion that CoH's combat is slow. I think the queuing mechanic allows for very fluid and smooth combat, which to me feels "faster" than it might technically seem based on the animation times.

Possibly the only workable solution is to make Ms. Liberty only work as a trainer for levels 1-7 (or something) and add a bunch of other trainers to AP, scattered about. Like how Back Alley Brawler is off by himself.

Ok, I'm an idiot. All these years playing this game, I never realized there was any difference between the Icon employees. I would just run up to the one at the main counter. Thanks!

Is there a code-based reason we can't change our overall body scale or type at the tailor? I mean not just switching male/female/huge, but your overall height. I made a huge Brute, as big as I could make him (even gave him the AB7 Afterburn backpack to emphasize his size). It's fun having him so big, but now that I'm getting into the various tunnel missions he's actually a bit too big. I thought it would be cool to give him an alternate costume of himself, only smaller (he's mech-based so I'd flavor it as him transforming into a "compact" mode). I was disappointed to see I couldn't do that. This might have been brought up before, but I didn't see any recent posts about it.

I suspect it's not power-effects-related, though, as (at least in theory) any of that stuff that's offscreen shouldn't be eating GPU/CPU cycles. And it happens even inside City Hall if the zone at large is very crowded.

So, inspired by this, what Mercy Island represented the high-level mission content for heroes, and Atlas Park represented the high-level mission stuff for villains? So if you're a hero you're doing your 45+ missions in Mercy, and vice versa for villains and Atlas. Of course since this is CoH2 it wouldn't be those zones specifically, but the idea is the heart of each side represents the endgame for the other, and the two sides kind of cross each other as they level. Considerations would have to be taken for PvP -- we don't want people ganking the lowbies just starting out in their zones. That could be handled via phasing, or off-limits PvP beyond a certain level, or any number of ways.

MouseChord "+forward"

Whenever AP is even moderately busy, I see serious rubberbanding issues throughout the zone. It's not my computer -- my wife and I play together and we'll both see it at the same time on our two machines. Does anyone else see this during busy times? I'm trying to determine if the problem is my network, which is possible but doesn't seem likely, or if it's the servers. It happens once in a great while in other zones, but AP becomes predictably (almost) unplayable once above a certain number of players. If it's the servers, is that addressed by spawning more AP instances sooner?

Interesting. That suggests the color limits aren't just a UI thing but are somehow vetted by the game code at runtime.

Actually, I very much agree. Balance is used to justify all kinds of things that probably shouldn't exist. But that doesn't mean some balance isn't essential. And balance can mean a lot of things. When I talk about it, I don't really mean in a PvP sense. I mean in a "every player can make a character that feels significant to the party" sense.

Good luck in those underground tunnels. I think I lost an alt down there somewhere. If you find him say hi.

So maybe what I'd do is put something under Prompts in Options like "Prompt on team zone" (or something phrased better). Disabled by default. If enabled, then when the first teammate exits the mission, you get a prompt that says something like "So-and-so has traveled to Steel Canyon South 2, do you want to follow?" If you click [Yes] it zones you to Steel Canyon South 2. If you click [No] you stay put and can zone on your own. So it will take some team communication to maybe pick a designated "zoner," but it could be done.

+1 I agree that it should be an option in settings, for folks who want to use zoning as a way to see if a given instance has opened up. Or perhaps some kind of alt-click thing. Also, perhaps related, but if there are multiple viable options, perhaps a setting so that the entire team goes to wherever the team leader selected? That way we don't have the cascade of "wait, which zone are we going to?" while half the team is stuck on loading screens.

I'll check it out, thanks. Regarding the portrait, I'm not sure why. I suggested it years ago on live and got some enthusiastic feedback...

I'm saying that a la carte builds require the player to put on their "game designer" hat at least to some degree. It puts the burden of balancing those builds into the players' hands. That can work if your game audience is into that sort of thing, or perhaps with TTRPGs where a GM (a role that it at least somewhat designer-like) is involved, and that GM is only dealing with a half dozen players at most.

I don't know if you'll ever get a good game that lets players function as game designers. Most players don't have the interest or aptitude for that. Hell, some actual game designers don't...

I don't argue that classless systems always fall into preferred builds. I just think they tend to, and more so than class-based systems. They're also harder to balance. I also think that the freedom gained with a classless system is ultimately an illusion. While classless systems might not invariably result in one optimal build, they usually result in a handful of really decent builds, plus a one or two very overpowered builds, and some number of gimped builds. Those handful of decent builds essentially become classes, but you still have a larger problem of the OP and UP variants, and all the complexity of balance that is less of a problem if you just have actual classes. Classless builds work better for TTRPGs where there's like 4-5 people sitting around a table. For an MMO, more structure is better.

Some random stuff: Allow us to click on the monorail doors and select a destination even when the doors are open. Would it be possible to go through various maps and revisit collision boxes? Why do I get stopped dead in my tracks by an 8" curb? And maybe reduce or eliminate collision boxes for wall torches, overturned chairs, and other various things that my character would really just step over. Allow us to set contacts to inactive ourselves. I have like ten First Ward and Night Ward contacts cluttering up my contacts list. On the minimap, when we zoom out to "city" level, let us zoom into a zone that we're not currently in. Specifically, let us see mission location markers on those zones, so I know if I want to go to Independence Port North or Independence Port South. If a zone instance is full and therefore inaccessible, hide it from the list of zones in the monorail and similar popups. Or at least maybe provide an option to hide it in the game settings. I know this will be contentious but I would love a character portrait up by my level indicator, a la WoW. I dunno why, I just want to see my character's face. Maybe less QoL and more Feature Request: Keybind request: Add a distance condition to all target_x binds. This condition would select the target if you don't already have another target selected within that distance. For example, target_enemy_near_10 would select the nearest enemy if you don't already have something selected within 10 feet. If you have something else selected and it's within 10 feet, the bind does nothing. Allow us to target map waypoints with a target bind. Like target_map University would drop a pin on the university, if there is one. Not sure what to do if there's more than one of a thing. Find a few cheap voice actors and record some jump-grunt alternatives. Why does my hulking Brute sound like my svelte Scrapper? Or at least allow us to silence those per character.

I typically don't have a problem targeting that special enemy, it's keeping target on him. With my Scrapper, I have most of my attacks prefaced with target_enemy_near so if one of my allies knocks my current target out of range, I can just keep fighting and automatically select whoever's closest (and that's usually someone else in range). But often I'll target a boss or lieutenant and start working on him, only to have one of his minions edge closer and "steal" my targeting despite the boss still being in range. I wish I could flag target_enemy_near with something that tells it to only do it if my currently selected target is no longer in range.

TBH I'd /JRanger about half of these...

You just described Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

Second seconded! For 1, there's no need for all volunteers to use any particular software, just software that can output whatever basic file format CoH uses (JPG? TGA?). The HC devs just need to provide the specs, or even sample textures. For 2, it's not easy to embed malicious code into an image file. It's fairly easy to pull out the pure pixel information. Heck, I do that all the time with images people upload to web sites I produce for work. You can certainly encrypt data into the byte sequence (Al Qaeda was suspected of communicating this way) but that's not the same thing.