Scarlet Shocker

Just happy to have the game back and able to play it whenever I desire. I do like (most of) the decisions the Dev teams have made on HC, but I'd be happy to play it if it was exactly the same as it was on the day before shutdown.

Warum zum Teufel hast du dich für Deutsch entschieden? Fast jede andere Sprache wäre vorzuziehen, auch mit geschlechtsspezifischen Pronomen. Bist du eine Art kranker Masochist? Du hättest Französisch, Spanisch oder vielleicht sogar Esperanto wählen können, nur zum Spaß und zum Gekicher. Aber nein, Sie haben eine Sprache gewählt, die so verdammt komplex ist, dass kein anderer Idiot auf der Welt sie sprechen möchte! Vorsichtsmaßnahme: Ich musste Google Translate verwenden, um dies zu schreiben, da ich im Gegensatz zu Snarky seit 50 Jahren kein Deutsch mehr gesprochen habe und daher etwas mehr als ein bisschen eingerostet bin!

Bit harsh, and entirely wrong about the game dying. I'd suggest that a retcon might cause more problems than it solves. One of the good things about superhero comics is that people are never dead for long. It is entirely possible that if the will is there, Sister P might come back and become stronger than ever. We've already seen it with War Witch and Numina (but that's sketchy, given she was a player creation and is a ghost.) I would suggest that better than a retcon she should be revived in an epic arc that allows her to return and sit slighly above and to the left of the main signature characters as a "guiding light" for future content. Perhaps her deaths (yes, that's actually plural) will give her some prescient insight into how to keep the city safe forever.

Because I like it a lot?

I've been revisiting dark powers and of course that leads me too Dark control, given how much fun that set is. I've just levelled a Dark/Rad to 50 and while I get that fully kitted out I've scoped around for something else to level and came across a thread in praise of Trick Arrow. Both are sets I love, but I've not played either nearly enough, but /TA seems to offer a lot of synergy with Dark, on paper at least. I've been working a build in Mids which seems to offer some high flexibility and useful all-round performance. This looks like it should be great in teams and good to solo in most situations. I elected to take every TA power, but skip Fearsome Stare and Heart of Darkness from Dark - sacrifices needed to be made and on this character my focus is on keeping mobs in one place with a like synergy, so I've effectively got 3 immobs and 3 holds, plus a good confuse and several debuffs. I've taken Sorcery because... well the perennial issue with /TA is how to light Oil Slick if you're not a fire toon and I seem to recall that Arcane Bolt is a good option to light it. I went for science origin which I often do, but I realise I'm probably going to have to swap out the temp startup power to get the one that also works on OSA. (Energy? from memory) I'm struggling to choose a PPP - I want to avoid fire, I dislike Soul, so chose Mace, primarily because of the Def boost it gives, and the accuracy bonus. Every hit counts, right? The numbers look reasonable, and I'm not one for min/maxing but I do like to pull my weight on teams and be able to solo stuff at even level (not trying to solo the world at x8+4) so I'd welcome any thoughts/feedback within those parameters

I fundamentally dislike "homages" I much prefer an original character. I know it's very easy to produce something quite akin to some pop-culture/comic reference because of our amazing costume creator, but it's far more satisfying to me to be able to create my own character, flesh out their back story and raison d'etre in my own mind and play something halfway original. I've always felt that if you build an homage, you're cheapening yourself and the game when you miss out on so much potential.

I gave up on the Phoenix project years ago, despite supporting it initially.

I've never encountered this in game (that I remember) - is this just back story on the Wiki, or is it a significant part of storied lore? I always saw Hero Corps as mentoring newbies but that still seems... less than ideal. It also seems difficult to me to conflate hero and mercenary. Many of your descriptions of them have made them sound more like Vought, which could be interesting. Perhaps part of the issue is that they lack a contiguous arc - a bit like PPD, who we encounter at low level then vanish and suddenly reappear as Kheldians.

No Mind. No matter

It used to be, several millennia ago, that they were a significant organisation, now they've dwindled into... nothing. We used to have to visit them to discover their role as new characters, to adjust our difficulty, to understand their significance in keeping order in Paragon but they've been superseded by Longbow (and to an extent Vanguard.) They seem pretty redundant now, and I find that surprising. At face value they should have a significant role to play in the modern game, from vetting and mentoring powered personnel from Praetoria, to ensuring that Rogues and Vigilantes don't cross the line on the mainland side of Primal Earth. They should be handing out significant missions at high level, even Incarnate level to ensure that the right side doesn't lose the eternal struggle, but instead we get... nothing. Zilch, nada, narry a peep from an organisation that once held huge sway over the city. Is it time to repurpose them or are they so redundant they should be disbanded and pensioned off (and there's an arc or two in itself as disgruntled Hero Corps agents refuse to go quietly.)

one of the things I love about it is how different it plays with different sets. It often feels like a new power set when paired differently.

you should probably (mis)quote this from Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown: "The Ghost Slaying Axe: When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherf***in undead in the room, accept no substitutes."

If exiting Supergroup mode fails to work, quit your SG, but only after you've robbed all the salvage.

In a way, I get Jack's philosophy that games should be challenging. That said, his idea of challenge seemed to be to put you off gaming for life. He seems, from what I've read and seen, to have little understanding of human psychology and had he been more forgiving at launch, CoH might have been wayyyyyyyy more successful than it actually was. I also think he loved the attention of being the boss. That was his ego trip above all else. He'd come out with a few controversial statements (when Champions Online launched) he claimed that a game would only be as good as it was on day one - something many games have consistently disproved. Some of you may remember when he played to the gallery telling the audience "tell NCSoft to give me a call" after sunset, when he presumably would have been in a far better position to quietly negotiate a resurrection than the player base that had been consistently ignored.

Malta Group

I think we need to be a bit careful here because we can spiral into a "I hate the devs" thing (it's the internet, it can happen) - there are some deeply unsatisfactory things in the final arcs of the game but as others have pointed out, they are an unfinished project. We never got to the grand finale, so we cannot see for certain what the Devs had planned. It may well be that it would have turned into a big pile of fecal matter, but like Pandora's Box we can retain some hope that it would have been far better than it appears as it currently stands. Maybe, just maybe, we will get something akin to the conclusion at some time in the future but that would take some fortune and serendipity, so I am content to just have our game back.

As for Darrin Wade, he drowned off the coast of Sharkhead Isle, giving Ramsey Lewis his greatest hit

I think you need to play it and decide for yourself. I think any comment I make could colour your own perception.

Thanks. I'm tempted to do something like it myself - but I might choose Dark instead of Rad to reflect the "blinding of evils" so they cannot see to do harm.

Symphony so you can imagine Tubular Bells used in the Exorcist perhaps... or Mace if you want to be like a D&D cleric, because bashing peoples heads in is so much more holy than stabbing them.* Bell, Book and Candle were the traditional tools of the Exorcist - the bell because it was a holy church instrument, and resonated around the community, the book because that's the holy scripture and the candle to shine light on the darkness. I'd suggest if you went with that theme a Sonic/Rad defender with fire as an APP. Sonic to represent the chanting, Rad to be the holy light that weakens the evil and fire to cleans their soul. Make the colours bright and bind some chants and use the CoT "Floatbooks" emote wherever possible. Also hang out in the universities and look very scary. *Bishop Odo of Bayeux is alleged to have used a mace instead of a sword at the Battle of Hastings, and is portrayed as such on the famous tapestry but that may be a poor translation/interpretation of the notion. However many Holy men are known to have eschewed edged weapons to set them apart (and above) mere knights. Knights might swear service to the Lord, but Bishops had his ear.

that's fucking brilliant that is! 🤣 to the OP; I'd suggest you might be confusing their level with Veteran Level, which is something I do often (it is really confusing and needs work but first world issue) but I'd posit they were a level 22 veteran with a shit tonne (metric) of set bonuses and had the big stuff

In a way I can understand the creative urge to remove Statesman as the big hero, to make the others stand up and be counted without their great leader. That could have been a great story but was handled poorly. What was utterly reprehensible was killing off Sister Psyche - there was no reason behind it, and so poorly executed (pun intended) that it defies logic. It was as though the Devs sat down around a table and said "ok the fans know we're gonna kill of Statesman and they mostly hate him anyhow, so let's throw them through a loop and kill somebody they like off too" Even at a basic level, we already knew Sister P could mind-ride - she'd done it with Aurora for some years I believe, so why she couldn't do that again is very unclear. As Ambassador KuiRehkt might put it: Plot:atrocious, writing: shoddy, outcome: unnecessary, conclusion: stupid Statesman did not have to die, it was a political decision but perhaps it was guided by the notion that had he remained alive the game might have degraded into the Statesman vs Himself show with Emperor Cole about to loom over the horizon as Tyrant in Going Rogue. Hard to think they could have done with Praetoria what they wanted to do if somebody approaching Coles equal in raw power remained on the scene.

Stop duping rares