aethereal

There is nothing you aren't seeing, and I thought it was weird to introduce sonic manipulation when its most obvious pairing is perhaps the most underperforming blaster primary. Seems like a recipe for convincing players to try something they won't like.

Good thing I didn't suggest complex categorizations or formula to address a problem! I suggested that categorizing the names in this way would help people understand a few things: 1. Why you might find that the name stuff is relevant to HC even if HC has 1/20th the population of live. 2. Why finding an example or two of "good" names does not mean that "good" names are not mostly mined out. Everyone who cares has read your proposal, dude. If there are people who are persuadable but not yet persuaded, repeating it ten more times is not going to persuade them. But helping them conceptualize what's going on with names, you know, might.

You really need to let go of your assumption that everyone is commenting on the fairness of taking names from people. I'm not (and I wasn't the last time you replied to me, either). And repeating your point for the fiftieth time on this thread probably isn't changing a lot of people's minds. (For whatever it's worth (nothing), I'm fine with essentially any of the definitions of inactivity proposed in this thread and also agree that taking names from people who are inactive is fine).

Nobody's asking you to rate someone's name. But if anyone suggests that the overwhelming majority of CoH players would be just as happy with HawtIce7631 as they are with Hot Ice (or whatever), that person is flat out lying.

So I think this is important and while probably most people have the general idea in their heads already, we should maybe make it explicit. Let's categorize names into three buckets, with the acknowledgement that this is a simplification and tastes will vary. Good names are pithy, well-themed, do not substitute letters for numbers or l's for I's unless that's part of the theme, and generall "cool." Okay names are a little long-winded or esoteric (not in a well-themed way), obviously a bit of a stand-in for a simpler name, or smack of trying too hard, or use various hacks to try to duplicate good names Bad names are just stupid, not well themed, incomprehensible, or just straight up dumb like CoolGuy4723 So insight one: There are many fewer good names than okay names -- for example, a small minority of English words are well-themed to superhero stuff, while a much larger number of English words are sort of "meh, fine." Hacker symbols allow a single good name to be duplicated into several different okay names, etc. So there are probably something like 10x-100x as many okay names as good names. And there are effectively infinite numbers of Bad names -- you can generate billions of versions easily. As the Good names pool gets more taken, more and more players will switch to okay names -- before the good names pool is entirely mined out! For example, Unlawful (which I would agree is a good name) won't be taken by some players whose characters aren't, you know, unlawful, or who want ice-themed names or whatever. And of course even someone who might be perfectly fine with the name Unlawful simply won't think of it. In general, when a pool is relatively filled, it will be slower and slower for people to stumble upon the last few names in it. Similarly, though much more slowly, people will get shunted from okay names to bad names before the pool is mined out. One upshot of this is that the comparison between HC and Live in terms of good names may be much less lopsided than you might imagine, even if live had 20x or 30x as many characters made as HC. For example, you might've found that on live 98% of the pool of good names was mined out (or 99%, or 99.9%), while on HC 95% of it is mined out. Where you see the difference might be much more in okay names, where in live it might've been 80% mined out and in HC it's only 10% mined out (because it's much much larger than the good name spool). WoW, I'm given to understand, basically only has bad names left, I don't think that HC is realistically ever in much danger of coming close to mining out okay names.

Building new powersets is primarily about: Conceptual work about what the powerset is even supposed to be, man. Finding animations for the powers. Inputting data into the binaries. Balancing them. With #2 being a huge blocker to any really new powersets, and #4 being extremely slow and costly of time. None of those things are writing code. The coders on the HC team are not needed for any of those tasks. If a powerset involves an entirely new mechanic, it is possible that some coding will be involved in the creation of the powerset. However, almost certainly, writing code is the smallest component of creating a new powerset (and similarly, it is not a large component to creating new story arcs). The people who could write up a small check for name creation are not likely to be the long pole in the tent of content creation, and thus it is a mostly false dilemma to ask whether we would prioritize a slightly nicer renaming system vs adding new content.

It's extremely unlikely that those two things meaningfully compete for resources.

This isn't about "fairness" to the people who are losing names. It's about "fairness" to the people who are getting them. I'd like it if there was a bit less of a temptation for whoever follows the forums most obsessively to login and try a hundred names and grab all the ones which free up.

Here is a serious suggestion: I think there should be some currency involved in taking a name that has been "freed." Each account gets two tokens or something, where if you choose a name that duplicates an existing, but "freed" name, you get a prompt asking you if this is something you want to spend a token on. Try to prevent a rush to find and seize "good" names after the script is run.

For villains, you can take the name of any other villain but if you do you're permanently flagged for PVP from them in all zones. 😛 (This is not a serious suggestion. Though it would be hilarious.)

I think what I'd really like is some allowance for name duplications, only if a character is retired. Like, where you could "take" a name that someone else has, only if they meet some metric for inactivity (and I think that all the various metrics for inactivity that people are proposing are all basically fine, and splitting hairs), but when you "take" their name, they don't lose it, you both have it. How exactly that would look, I don't know, and it doesn't seem super important because this would almost certainly be a total nightmare to implement and not worth the effort. But it would be a nice nod, I think, to how it typically has worked in the comics.

No, they come to you. There is no targeting.

Fold space is a pbaoe, isn't it? I thought it worked on everyone in a radius, within los, until it hits its target cap. EDIT: I looked it up in the patch notes, and that's certainly what the patch notes say it does, quite explicitly.

They did it for the other two buffs in Energy Manipulation.

To indicate... what? Ah, that its buff is still active. Sure, sounds good!

I never looked into it during live, but this wiki page makes the claim that there was a name release system on live. https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Character_Name_Policy It seems like a lot of people on this thread are assuming that there was not.

There may be some work to extend some tables, and of course the level 54 limit may be implicit in lots of places, but there's no fundamental reason why the system is unable to handle 55's. Like, exactly how much work is it? Don't know. Is it impossible? It's surely not.

I'm not proposing a change there. Just like at level 49, with a level shift, you'd be fighting +3's and +4's, under this scheme at 50, with a level shift, you'd be fighting +3's and +4's (instead of just +3's).

If you play a +4 mission at level 45, you'll see a mix of level 49 and level 50 enemies. If you play a +4 mission at level 49, you'll see a mix of level 53 and level 54 enemies. If you play a +4 mission at level 50, you'll only see level 54 enemies. Why are we making level 50 play a little easier than the rest of the game? Allow level 55 enemies, so that a level 50/+4 mission will give you a mix of +4 and +5 enemies, just like +4 missions do for the entire rest of the range of the game. You wouldn't have to create any new enemies or change their powers.

Incarnate alpha shift does help. But remember that if you set your difficulty to +3, you see a mix of +3 and +4 opponents. So with an alpha shift, that would be a mix of +2 and +3 opponents, and you would be able to pull half the bosses, roughly. (I think that the tendency of some people to play at 50/+4 makes them not to remember this, because there are no level 55 opponents, so they don't see it. But if you play at +4 on level 49 or lower, you will see a mix of +4 and +5 opponents!)

Lack of LOS would have some pretty potentially unpleasant surprises in things like office maps -- you might pull a spawn that was through a wall and you didn't even know about.

The problem with changing the crashing godmodes into better powers -- of whatever form -- is that do armor sets really need buffs? Do we really need scrappers and stalkers to be yet more unkillable? The armor set classes, except sents and maybe brutes, are in great shape, even with bad and eminently skippable T9s.

Wait, medical research buffs? How do they buff you?

For whatever it's worth, Scorpion/Mace Mastery is I think only universally beloved for people who get access to Scorpion Shield. For armored melee classes, you'll see Soul Mastery for either Gloom or Moonbeam and Shadow Meld, or Mu Mastery for Zzap and Ball Lightning. Sentinels like Psi Mastery. That isn't to say that we shouldn't address the dominance of Scorpion Shield compared to the other epic armors, but it's certainly not the case that the only villain epic pool that matters is Mace.

Paragon wiki shows only one arc for Montague.