AlwaysAPrice

While I wasn't stressed enough about the vet XP removal to post on that particular topic, I greatly appreciate that the feedback on it was considered and a less broad method of addressing the infinite merit fountain of AFK-farming new alts is being tested. I love having the option to farm my Alpha level shift out of the way in a few levels, but if the change had gone through I'd be fine doing that via the many other perfectly sufficient methods of grinding out XP solo or teamed that already exist; I have almost never used Empyreans for Merits, the ability to stockpile the remainder of a character's vet level Empyreans after they T3 or T4 everything through a mix of farming and trialing and other play to jumpstart the next build's incarnates is far far more valuable to me. That said I definitely understand people's concern for those who may have been stockpiling merits with the option to convert them if they had no other use for them in mind and who may miss this change coming down. One idea I have for that would be the granting of a special one-use power to all existing characters via the Character Mail inbox when this goes live that, when claimed with a confirmation message, converts all Empyreans in the player's inventory to Reward Merits (at the 1:10 exchange rate of course). Could even keep that around, add a version as a Super Pack drop that can convert 10 Emps to 100 Merits with each charge. There's also the option of just slowing the influx of Reward Merits and allowing those with stockpiles to continue to convert by putting Emp-to-Merit conversions on a daily timer like the full value Shard:Thread conversion. Straying into suggestion territory I realize but just musing on how the change could be made with the least disruption possible to those it might affect adversely. Otherwise I welcome the change.

Very general feedback: pages are boring, make this Issue 28. It's got enough.

Got curious about this and tested on both Everlasting and Brainstorm, using a level 28 character to fight a level 28 minion in non-DC AE and one in Croatoa, tested with and without DXP boosters and with and without patrol XP. Everlasting AE: Patrol XP, No Booster: 146 experience, 102 influence. Patrol XP, DXP Booster: 292 experience. No Patrol, No Booster: 73 experience, 102 influence. No Patrol, DXP Booster: 219 experience. Brainstorm AE: Patrol XP, No Booster: 109 experience, 102 influence. Patrol XP, DXP Booster: 182 experience. No Patrol, No Booster: 73 experience, 102 influence. No Patrol, DXP Booster: 146 experience. Everlasting & Brainstorm Croatoa (no change): Patrol XP, No Booster: 219 experience, 102 influence. Patrol XP, DXP Booster: 365 experience. No Patrol, No Booster: 146 experience, 102 influence. No Patrol, DXP Booster: 292 experience. So what it looks like, to me, is that "bonus XP" wasn't calculated based on the amount of experience rewarded to the player after a kill, but on the normal experience value of the individual enemy defeated. In the first Everlasting AE test, Patrol XP's +50% adds half an enemy's normal XP to the halved XP rewarded by AE, resulting in 100% normal XP while patrol lasts. Likewise with the no patrol + DXP test, the DXP Booster may not actually be tripling the rewarded XP but adding 100% of the defeated enemy's XP to the halved XP rewarded in AE. In which case it isn't giving triple XP, it's giving the equivalent of triple AE XP, which is still only 75% of normal double XP. Only having both a DXP booster (only available to sub-50s and eliminates inf gain) and patrol XP (something that builds slowly and goes away rapidly without charges of the very expensive to acquire Experienced power) increases AE experience to equal doubled non-AE experience, which is still only 80% of normal double XP + patrol XP. I'm like...well maybe 55% sure at most that it's supposed to be working this way. That the ability to use boosters & patrol XP to bring AE returns back up was known and explicitly highlighted to mollify the disappointed at the time Homecoming went to half AE XP, but I'm not digging around old threads at the moment to confirm. I just bring that possibility up because that it could have been WAI or perceived so may help explain the mysterious mystery of nobody reporting this in three years, given the boosted numbers would still come out lower than non-AE play in all comparisons using the same boosts, and the logic in play for both styles of XP boost being consistent if someone did test for it. Either way, looks like there's also been a change to how Patrol XP is calculated (in AE at least, which would be the only way to see it in action if it's universal) that could use a patch note, as now on Brainstorm it looks to be working the same way DXP boosters are, applying its bonus as a percentage of the received/AE-adjusted value rather than the base value. So there's that if anyone was interested in something that wasn't vet levels.

I doubt they're linked in any way besides both concerning toggles, Suppression wasn't included with this thread until it started getting feedback in the general thread.

Just want to echo two things I've seen and weigh in on a third. 1) A rename to Symphonic Control would indeed be nice just to both echo "sonic" and feel less conceptually locked-in as it provides for the term to be a more metaphorical catchall for however players plan to interpret the nature of the abilities for their character. 2) For the same reason, a note-less visual theme would be very boss. Not something I think the set needs to have at its launch, we've always made do with conceptually versatile sets' default graphics until more flexible options were introduced just fine, but should definitely be considered for the pipeline. 3) I think the set's Confuse doing damage is good. Even as in favor of allowing for conceptual versatility as my previous two notes show I am, I still like sets to mechanically realize their basic concept, and it makes complete sense that a sound/music-themed powerset's Confuse would not go undetected by hearing enemies. It's not intended to be a subtle psychic manipulation like most other ST confuses are framed.

Feel like the improvement to healing of pets/NPCs is something that should be more of an overall improvement to all healing in the game or just all Mastermind & maybe Controller healing, Pretty good way to give Empathy's rez some character, also adding an Absorb element to the power with Absorb in its name is just a nice sensible update. I do think it should still self-damage on rez, and while I like the idea of removing the general heal prevention I think it would fit the concept of the power better if it still prevented you from healing yourself just with Healing Aura for a time (outside healing/insps still fine), at least after using its full potential of resurrection. 40% recharge is pretty damn strong, especially given it affects the caster. Even half that would still be great. And then I realized that's probably meant to be "recharge resistance and movement slow resistance" Overall I like this rework. It's not overhauling the set with some late-game-style resource mechanic (though it did give me an idea for one to noodle on), and it addresses what I consider the main design failing of Empathy: having zero interaction with the character's offensive capabilities (except perhaps for pet sets). Even just the addition of Valor would be enough to make Empathy a set I don't dismiss out of hand as uninteresting because it has zero effect on how I use the other half of my powers.

I'm having a lot of fun with an AR/Dark corruptor lately, and my main is a rad/dark one. I played a dark/rad defender version of that main to 50 back in the day but when Going Rogue dropped I deleted it and brought the corruptor blueside almost immediately. Numerically speaking the defender was absolutely stronger, but Rad (and AR/ for that matter) both work really nicely with Scourge, while Dark Miasma's whole shtick has always felt like a better fit to a villainous AT for me.

"Specifically and intentionally" left at 2 I don't know, but specifically gotten to at least 2 just for the sake of having Walk is very common. Probably have some like that on my roster but unless I needed to get them somewhere for a scene right away I probably leveled past 2 just because it's always fun smacking Hellions around for a while and/or the character justified a powerset combo I wasn't likely to otherwise try. In my own experience, these are generally not something a "desirable" name gets used for, usually just ordinary name names, maybe including a title ("Nate Carver" or "Huntsman Reynolds" being two of mine).

A cushion like this would solve my main concern. I'd prefer something fully automated for the sake of player privacy over making people "justify" their difficult situations, something like: you can request this lock and once you've done so your characters are protected for 365 days (the maximum of the release system), but as soon as you log in again that lock is lifted and your account can't request another lock until that 365 days has passed. Sure someone could always have two bad things happen to them in a year and still end up vulnerable but this much would be a nice consideration to include to help mitigate against unexpected life circumstances.

It is way easier than you'd think to lose the ability to log in for a year or more at a time. Like I'm not saying it's going to happen that often, but things will happen to some people with or without warning that will prevent them from having the ability to log in. When things are going bad enough, one might also be amazed how low a priority logging in to a game to do fiddly maintenance tasks becomes, even when that game is something you've previously invested thousands of hours and oodles of creativity and effort and time in. Again, it's not going to happen to a lot of people, but the general use-it-or-lose-it crowd could stand to keep in mind that it's going to happen to some.

It's a niche enough case I imagine the possibility is seen as acceptable collateral, but it almost definitely will happen. Speaking as someone who had to deal with someone preemptively camping the names of my and several friends mains after new server openings. Twice. That said, it seems like something that must qualify as some form of actionable harassment to report to the GMs when it does happen, though that would require them to have some standard by which to determine whether it was harassment or just "I thought you were done playing, I took the name when the server's policies allowed me to, mine now".

Thought I'm sure most will see as defeating the purpose, since it would leave plenty of names with accounts that are just inactive out of indifference/moving-on, but just putting it out there in defense of those who will lose names due to life circumstances beyond their control preventing them from being able to log in: Consider not making an account eligible to have its names released until they've logged in after Page 4 launches. (Twice, ideally, so the second time they can actually see any relevant warnings on their roster after becoming eligible, if account info can't be checked between login and roster display.) Though personally, I'm starting to think a better approach would be to drop the windows altogether and just mass-flag names under a certain level on accounts that have been inactive for X amount of time once a year. Or once a day to trickle out releases rather than have everyone slamming creation to try for their favorites on the same day. Some kind of name release system is absolutely necessary, this one's just currently on course to be a nuisance for people who have cool names not because they're hoarding them but just because they had cool ideas they maybe don't want to play quite as often or level quite as fast as some rando who envies them thinks they should. Testing feedback: tested a hunch but /altinvite does not reset an invited character's timer, presumably as intended. Related and something else I did a limited test of: 10 days ago on Everlasting I was reorganizing an SG roster and promoted a character that had been offline for a few hundred days. When I did so, the character's "Last on" was updated to "Today". It only happened with that one character (that I noticed). So that was another thing I tested for myself on beta but I only tried it with my own characters. Someone else may want to test having someone else altinvite some characters with time offline to their SG and promote/demote them while that player is online, offline, and online hidden.

This was exactly what I encountered when I copied over a /Dark Corruptor for a test. Ran a Borea or two and let Clarion drop here and there to see how it went, and in particular stood around for a bit after whittling a spawn down to two Mentalists to see just how a mez-heavy scenario went. After one mez got through, I basically never wasn't slept or held longer than one or two attacks after that. In normal play, I could potentially slap Darkest Night back on in that window of opportunity and maybe get the next incoming mez to miss, but this way I don't even have the option. While this isn't any threat to that specific build that also has Fearsome Stare, a ton of IOs, and T4 Clarion anyway, anything that's still levelling or SO-based that relies on an offensive toggle to mitigate their vulnerability to mez is going to have a much chancier time of it when up against multiple mezzers or a mez-heavy boss.

What's the use case imagined for /speak_range? Listenrange I get, and I like that the tech exists and it would be great to be able to set a default speakrange for an SG base eventually, just...how is it useful for players to have control of their own outgoing chat range everywhere they go? So far I'm coming up with more unpleasant/uncomfortable uses than constructive ones myself, just hoping someone can point something out that's gone over my head.

Reposting my comment from the general feedback thread since this thread didn't include Suppression at that time: On the topic of Toggle Suppression, which is a wonderful/overdue change in concept, a still-suppressed period does make sense - prior to this change, you wouldn't have been able to reapply the power's effects until both the power was recharged and the reapplied toggle had animated. 8 seconds sounds right in the range of default recharge + animation time for most offensive toggles. ...but global recharge and recharge slotting in those powers reduces their recharge. So if my built-out Dark Miasmist gets mezzed, it'd be better for me to detoggle Darkest Night myself before using a break free if I want that back in effect asap. Can this delay be made to take the power's actual recharge + animation time into account instead of being a flat value? Admittedly there is still some benefit to not full-retoggling since I can be using that time on additional attacks and my toggle will come back into effect on its own eventually, but after how long should still reflect the actual time being saved as determined by my build.

On the topic of Toggle Suppression, which is a wonderful/overdue change in concept, a still-suppressed period does make sense - prior to this change, you wouldn't have been able to reapply the power's effects until both the power was recharged and the reapplied toggle had animated. 8 seconds sounds right in the range of default recharge + animation time for most offensive toggles. ...but global recharge and recharge slotting in those powers reduces their recharge. So if my built-out Dark Miasmist gets mezzed, it'd be better for me to detoggle Darkest Night myself before using a break free if I want that back in effect asap. Can this delay be made to take the power's actual recharge + animation time into account instead of being a flat value? Admittedly there is still some benefit to not full-retoggling since I can be using that time on additional attacks and my toggle will come back into effect on its own eventually, but after how long should still reflect the actual time being saved as determined by my build.

I appreciate the intent behind this feature, having some method to free up camped names is necessary with the effectively unlimited character creation we have by necessity of being unable to base one's roster size on subscription/slot purchase so that name collecting has an actual expense as it did on Live pre-F2P, but it really ought to just be account login based. If you're playing anything regularly you get to keep your stuff, nice and simple. Activity levels have dropped drastically from when this started, just hitting inactive accounts will probably free up a ton of names. Otherwise people with limited playtime get stuck spending some potentially significant portion of that limited playtime cycling through a roster of they already don't have time to play up to high levels, sitting through loading screen after loading screen just to be sure in case their next playtime doesn't come around for a while.

Tsoo Sorcerers, Rikti Guardians, Prophetesses, and anything "of Sorrow". Sorcerers for the nuisance factor on three fronts as teleporting Hurricaning healers. Guardians, Prophetesses, and Sorrows because they're generally the thing that, if left unchecked in sufficient quantity, will actually lead to my death when I'm running max diff against their groups. With Malta it depends on what build I'm playing - if I'm solo and have a bunch of end drain resist or soft-capped defense, I'll risk letting the Sapper get a shot off in favor of eliminating an Engineer first, just because turret clean-up is a chore. Though Rikti Guardians get a pass when I'm on something with an AoE confuse, because flying through Boreas picking up a couple bonus AMs from every spawn is a hoot.

Regeneration & Force Field. Only thing I think they both really need to be back up to snuff with their peers is something that provides an offensive benefit, as that's the main way I feel they've been left behind - they're both great at the things they're meant to do, that are central to their concept, but there are just so many alternatives, ones that provide +damage, +recharge, or debuffs or control tools while also meeting or exceeding their standards of survivability, that the classics have become a real hard sell.

I rather like this AT concept just because if it existed, I think it would actually shore up the Mastermind's "class identity" rather than detract from it. The Mastermind's Support secondary means it doesn't just empower its minions, it enhances its whole team's performance, treating other players as additional minions in a way. The Commander would provide a nice contrast to that with a focus on individual offense (I like the set-up of Assault Primary/Pets Secondary with the attacks in the pet sets changed to thematically appropriate defensives), and conceptually fits the different pet-centric role of lieutenant/elite henchman/squad leader that Mastermind isn't that good a fit for. The only thing I would want not to be overlooked is having Assault options that mesh with the themes of the pet sets, which could be a good bit of extra work since most MM attacks use weapons, which no current assault sets do (except for Martial, somewhat, which could take the place of archery powers to provide an Assault match to Ninjas).

This seems simple to implement, barring the complication I used to hear that the UI code is in a particularly deplorable state nobody can/wants to work with (this is an old thing I heard, no idea what the state of UI manipulation is in Homecoming). We have statuses already in the form of search comments, we have a friends list. Add a column to the expanded friends list that displays current search comments, done. Until a conventional "status" implementation like that exists though, setting a search comment does provide the same functionality, it's just a matter of educating your friends that the search window is even a thing they can use (I really don't think most players know it is a thing since /lfg makes it pretty obsolete).

I've only got one concern about the snipe changes, which is to recommend their endurance cost be lower when fast sniping. Something that became apparent really quickly on my corruptor when I first rebuilt them for fast snipes is that having a snipe in your normal attack chain is brutal on your endurance, which might come as a nasty surprise to everyone who'll now have their snipe ready for instant fire from the moment they pick it up (admittedly it won't be a huge impact until they've slotted up their recharge). If the end cost can be scaled to match the damage changes, that might be more forgiving.

The movement debuff is a pretty minor inconvenience that suits the power concept of just...moving stealthily (though in fairness the character with it I've played the most is SR and has Quickness to offset it). Why not remove Stealth's suppression of half its Defense bonus in combat instead? I imagine there's a concern about having too much Defense available but builds are still limited to 4 pools, one of which almost always goes to Speed for Hasten anyway. Having one more option for a small but consistent chunk of Def alongside CJ, Hover, Weave, or Maneuvers would increase build flexibility, give people more room to build for concept while chasing mechanical performance. Though, wording question about the Invisibility change: does 'most of your Defense will suppress' mean it'll suppress your overall Defense when you attack with Invisibility on, or just most of the Defense granted by Invisibility itself? If it's just the latter and some of it remains in effect on top of whatever else you have, then that could make Concealment a viable contender for build space anyway, albeit at the cost of an extra power pick, especially if the unsuppressed value falls between CJ's (1 power pick) and Weave's (3 picks).

Name policy's goofy, but better than nothing. It's the 1000 slots that enables hoarding and making people sit through a few load screens a month to keep their camps isn't that much of a deterrence. Just drop the cap down to 50 so camping a name actually takes up some of a limited resource and make +1 character slots a reward for level 50 and/or purchasable for several hundred merits.

Excelsior seemed more fitting to me, being named in tribute to a storyteller (and doubling as a reference to an in-lore drug), but I'm also just fine only using it to make a bunch of "Stan Lee Presents" over-alliterated AU versions of my characters.