Oklahoman

It used to really bother me when I'd log in and see a big green character wearing only cutoff pants (purple, of course) with a name like "Incredible Savage". Now I just tend to play the game and enjoy it. Someone else can report them if they feel like they need to. If it bothers you, report it and move on. We have no guarantee the game will be here for us past today under any circumstance. Enjoy it while you can. Bigger fish to fry.

Search is OK, but it could be much better. For what OP is talking about, I can search by name for a player who is in another zone and see what level they are, what archetype, what origin (which doesn't matter), where they are, and whatever comments they put in which most usually is nothing at all. I can't read their bio until they get in zone. I can't tell if they have a certain power I'm looking for, or if they have lore and destiny unlocked, or if they have a certain badge, or if they are level shifted, etc. Not that it's super easy to get some of that info even once they are in zone, but at least you can quickly join the queue and see if you get an error (thinking specifically of MAG trials). If they are in the same zone as you, then when you right click on the search results you get the option for "Info" which is what I would love to see be universal to all search results. Search also limits what zones you can see based on your alignment, and if you do something wacky like search for everyone in The Abyss on Excelsior at 5pm Central on a weekend you get some mix of everyone in Abyss 1 and Abyss 2, limited down to about 50 people. Plus the coding may help you see if they are already on a team... but also maybe not, but chaos is fun. Back to OPs suggestion, some kind of slash command (/showcharacter "Superhero Dude") that pops up with the character window would be great. Better if search could show every zone regardless of alignment, everyone in that zone (and numbered spawned zones), and give you the "Info" option no matter where they are.

You did what now?

I've often wished I could just TP their happy ass to where I need them to be.

I'd love to be able to pull up their character window no matter what zone they are in. Not so much to read their bio, but to see what archetype they are and sometimes even what powers they have. It's not uncommon for people to join an iTrial I am forming, and as I'm structuring the teams I really need to know that info, but have to wait until they get in zone. Or, I guess search their character name, but that's too much work. 🙂

It's always been odd to me that we have this great costume creator, then in-game you get slammed with buffs that covers it all in ice, vines, etc.

An option from Luna in Ouro that pops up AFTER you've unlocked Alpha that rejects incarnate shards. Fight me.

Here's my screen:

A tanker, or potentially another character with incan. My early Hami runs have a pretty steady group now, but the overflow runs are still very much a work in progress and probably where I would need the help the most. If you are in league, don't hesitate to shoot me a tell saying you have taunt or incan if needed - that helps me a lot. After I fill my 3 taunter and 3 incanner roles I sometimes have an extra space in team 1 for someone to just be there and observe and see the chatter that goes on, so even if I can't use you that day I may have you on team 1 to get a feel for how we work so you are better equipped to step in when needed later.

I recently started a channel just for those who've helped on Team 1 for my early or overflow Hamis. Since I don't have a lot of "regulars" on those just yet, it's a way for me to advertise to that group that I need a taunter or an incanner from the group who's done it before. If I can't get what I need that way, I get it from the league that does show up and then they get added to the channel afterwards. It's terribly exclusive.

I like the direction you are thinking in, but I think I would rather it not be an automatic increase. Instead, I think maybe having access to different inspirations and temps via Luna. This could create a way to spend those extra threads, emps, or even Transcendents on things. As an example (thought up on the spot here, so not necessarily advocating for these specifically): At vet level 100 you can buy an inspiration that reduces the recharge time of your incarnate powers by 25% for X number of seconds At vet level 200 you gain access to purchase PBAoE rez inspirations, which you can use even when not dead At vet level 300 you gain access to purchase a rechargeable temp power that... I don't know, does something that's cool but not overpowering. Maybe turns on your Destiny power for 5 minutes if you are playing sub-50 content? Again, don't hold me to those specific examples, but that's the sort of thing I think I'd like to see.

By that, I mean that an MSR is great for XP, but for 40-45 minutes worth of playtime you could almost certainly get more in terms of reward merits, etc. doing other things. A quick example I've mentioned before - we tend to do 4 (or more) Hami raids at a time these days, which could net you 200 reward merits if you just selected that from the table, and a set of Hami runs will take about 30 minutes. You'll get a little XP and other drops from the GMs as you are gathering EoEs, but not a ton. A single MSR will probably net you in the neighborhood of, let's say, 50 reward merits if you choose that conversion, and will require a little more of your time. You do get influence, salvage, and recipe drops during an MSR, but it's not going to make up the value of the 150 additional reward merits you would have got in a Hami. Others can point out even quicker ways to earn reward merits, influence, etc. than in an MSR, I am sure. Outside of AE, though, I don't think you can beat an MSR in terms of XP. In my mind, the non-reward incentives to participating in an MSR versus, say, a Hami is the interactions that happen especially in the bowl. This is an example of where our community gets to hang out and just have fun while playing the game. Hamis have that, but in my experience it is much different than just hanging out and blasting away at bad guys leisurely.

Specific to COH, I don't think your experience is wildly different from the norm. I've had a few stalk me in COH, but I've put them on ignore and move on with life. I really have no social media presence outside of the tiny one in I have in Discord. There's one other social media platform I use regularly, and I never post there "Hey, find me in City of Heroes @Oklahoman!" so there's no link between that account and my COH account. There are 3-4 people who play the game and have known me in real life, so it's a bit jarring when they call me by my real name in game, but I've seen them all in tights so there's the threat of mutually assured destruction there that keeps us in line. Other than that there's a small handful of people in game who know what I do for a living, and specifically what town I live in, otherwise I enjoy keeping those parts of my life separate. Makes it a little harder to stalk me outside the game, I think. Though, I think most people know what state I live in.

That's been what I've seen, too. It's been a good long while since I've had an MSR fail in any way, shape, or form. It probably has some small effect on rewards, but if you are doing an MSR for rewards you probably aren't getting the biggest return on your time, anyway.

True, and especially when that happens with trials where you have carefully constructed the makeup of each team before going in it can be extremely chaotic. With an instanced MSR it doesn't have to be that way - you just have a delay before you get the star back and add any new people into the league. Last time we sorted this out while we were working on pylons.

That sounds like a lot of work, especially when there is a non-zero chance you won't be able to get enough people to form a successful raid at all. It's rarely happened to me, but I have had to call off a couple raids in the past due to lack of interest.

One thing about the second run is that I still had people in the league from the first run. It may not have happened if I had completely dumped and reformed the league between runs. Next time I do a back-to-back run I will try that and see what happens.

I just finished running back to back instanced MSRs. For the most part, it went smoothly. On the first run, for some strange reason, after we got into the instance I could no longer invite to LEAGUE, even though I had a lot of open spots. I emptied Team 1 to the other teams and then invited to TEAM and everything went well. Some told me they couldn't join via LFG, though. The second run was worse. After we zoned in, I was suddenly the Team 4 leader and we had a heck of a time getting the star back to me. Once I had it, same sort of issues as before. Then, even though I had 1 spot open (and it was on Team 1) there was no way I could invite anyone, and they couldn't join with LFG. In both cases, invites would go out normally and with no error messages, but when they accepted they said they were immediately kicked. We know LFG is still messed up, but it seemed moreso with this. Still, it was a smoother run overall and I'll probably change to doing instanced, even with the bugs I ran into.

I don't disagree with this. Not long ago there was a guy really wanting to get the REALLY HARD WAY badge, and he had absolutely no clue what he was doing. I, and several other regular league leaders, joined him on 2 or 3 runs. We gave him a try, and I think others should, too - it's possible he could have tried a novel solution the rest of would have liked to have learned. The end of that story is I got him to join me over on Everlasting for a run, where they have it down solid, and he got his badge. But, if that same guy decided to try again under an alt, I'd rather skip it. REALLY HARD WAY can be an expensive attempt. And if I could see his global in the chat, I would.

I asked in the Market subreddit about something like this - like, is there a secret slash command I'm missing? Someone mentioned that the pain is part of why this works for us. In other words, if it was easy more people would do it and prices on some things may plummet. I get that, but I also like what you are suggesting.

I've had a lot of people join my TPN badge runs lately who said they've never done one before, and are only doing it because they've enjoyed running with me on other things. It can be a way for players to try something new. Conversely, I may be quite interested in joining a POSI but because I enabled the setting to show their global name in chat I can tell it's being organized by someone I had a negative experience with recently (while they were on an alt), I might choose not to. I am all for an option to show globals in chat that is defaulted to off, like timestamps and character name colors. I am against an option that let's you define how my chat looks - whether it's a setting you can turn on that forces timestamps for your chat to not show up on my end, defining your preferred color for a chat name, disabling my ability to log any of your chats, or hiding your global in my chat.

Not just here but in this entire forum, we have got to stop assuming what the devs are capable of. We can't simultaneously sing the devs praises with each new update, then assume they are absolutely incapable of making a suggestion mentioned here work.

I run on a laptop, but I plug a second monitor in above via HDMI sometimes. On that second monitor I run OBS for streaming. But, I've always wondered if I could have the game spill over both monitors and move some of the lesser used windows up - thinking specifically of the map, target, nav, and maybe the level/health/end window. I don't reference those much but still want quick access to them.

On Excelsior, I've seen some new globals leading iTrials recently. One global I wasn't familiar with at all led multiple Triple Threat attempts (sans Discord, no less) last night, which was great to see. (In fact, I think I've seen fewer ads saying Discord is required, which warms my heart, having a deep hatred of it myself.)