Scarlet Shocker

Personally I found Widows really difficult, but on live I made an Arachnos Soldier and I went middle path, basically a Bane Spider and he rocked a sea of orange numbers. I've recreated him on HC and he's still good - but I think XEATS are rather overshadowed by the powers creep we've seen in game over the last decade They aren't bad, they're just left behind but bringing them up to date makes the spiral worse.

truly impressive. Well done to all participants. Excellent stuff. Again, this is a thing that even two decades later, other games still cannot do.

I'm not sure what the big takeaway from this thread is; Dominators are shit? Joking aside I love that there are still some significant challenges in the game that require thought, strategy, temps maybe and sometimes a bit of good luck... and in extremis, help from other players. I know that's a pretty unusual concept especially in an MMO but it's something that is often worth remembering. I'm a firm believer that not everything should be capable of being soloed, that's not good design or gameplay. Nor should everything be able to solo all the things. One of the great and lasting strengths of this game is that often we have to rethink how we plan objectives even after two decades, and that's a very good thing. Long may it continue!

I used to play for literally hours on end I was so invested in the game. Now, usually a couple of hours tops. I do sometimes find that I'll get a scheduled activity down but after that's done go off and PUG somewhere on a different toon, just for gits and shiggles. If I play for 3 hours even on a weekend that's quite a bit for me these days

Well each to their own. If not playing the game whilst playing the game is what floats your boat who am I to argue?

Good question. My personal preference is for Controllers. I've played both, several iterations and I always prefer Trollers. @Maelwys is pretty spot on with most of his assessment but I find trollers much more versatile. I find Dominators pretty meh until you're in the Domination phase - as @Snarky has pointed out you have to constantly manage that. But there will be no substitute for you playing them both and deciding for yourself. You're not on any kind of timeline, after all. Play what you fancy and stick with what feels good. If I could suggest a couple of variants for you to try. For a Dom; Earth/Rad would give you very strong CC and good debuffs whilst for one of the most fun Trollers would be Plant/Storm Either way, have many funs!

Dailies have their place but I do love that we're not immediately faced with FOMO if we log in or not. We can log in and take time to just stand around and admire the scenery without feeling we need to do a thing. That's probably one reason why the RP community has been so strong here

I have this hangup from Live where Temp Powers, such as the Clockwork pets and the witch from Katie Hannon were unreplaceable. Once they were gone, they were gone. But I also tend to hoard even Insps until I'm in serious trouble - but that's part of the beauty of any game in that knowing when to use temp powers is part of knowing how to be successful in your gaming endeavours

Because Carp have scales and would therefore also need balancing!

I've been thinking about this a bit longer in light of this thread. After due review, I actually need two billion. My global is @Riff kthxbai

Open questions to be answered in a way you saw fit and, hey it worked and you almost weren't @Snarky about it either. Almost

One of the issues I have with this question is what is meant by homogeneity? Powersets could be almost exactly the same across the board but that isn't really the case and often sets have a few unique characteristics, and not just in signature powers. Personally I think variety is good and I don't mind playing a set considered to "under perform" if it's interesting and fun. If it engages the user. In this context, "under perform" usually means it doesn't do as much damage as another power. I think one of the truly unique things about this game is that similar power sets actually have very different looks and feels and that's one of its strengths. Often I have found that somewhat unlikely pairings make great combos - and there's a tonne of fun to be had experimenting.

I was interviewing a couple of guests on my local radio show last week and they raised a really important point about positivity and the value of good feedback. We're used to being told what's wrong whenever something goes to shit; complaints are easy and cheap and an unhappy person is often very vocal. I know this from personal experience several times over. Many decades ago I worked for a major motorcycle importer in the UK in their customer service team and to deal with customers and dealers you very quickly got the impression that ever single thing we ever did, every product we ever sold, event we staged, everything was a complete bucket of shit from start to finish. Our staff, products, value proposition, sales and marketing & customer service were completely crap and we should all resign and go do something that people might appreciate like become refuse collectors or somesuch. Truly, it was the most demoralising job I'd ever had and I fought to get that job because I was a genuine fan of the product and range. It put me off desperately and in some ways was life changing. This interview reminded me of something - that when something goes well, when something is truly excellent, we often forget the value of telling the powers that be how good it is, how much joy it gives, why we like it, and even just saying a simple thank you. There's also a very important secondary point; when folk complain, often the business responsible for fixing it take a sledgehammer to it because they didn't realise that whilst people hated fault A) they loved positive B) and inevitably bork positive B) in giving fault A) a minor tweak that doesn't fix the problem but makes it less painful. Overall, they give the end user an overall worse experience bit nobody is aware of it until they suddenly realising their fighting a compltely differnet fire. (I'm feeling a bit Rory Sutherland all of a sudden.) We're getting a bit like that here - there's a lot of product negativity (not as bad as some places but nowhere near as good as we could be) so let's turn this around. Enough pre-amble just a simple enough propositional question: What in your opinion makes this game great to play with a completely new team of volunteer, unpaid devs? What works amazingly well, why is this game's management so well respected? What keeps you coming back day after day to punch bad guys in the face? Let's get some positivity out in the open and say it loud! Personally speaking my main joy is that the game is not simply recognisable but enhanced from live. I think our devs have taken a very sensitive line keeping it true to its origins but also adding much new content without erasing or breaking or clean-slating what came before. It's been a fine line and they have done an excellent job of it. That was a big concern of mine when I first learned the game had escaped into the wild and some other rogue servers turned the game into a gross mutation that was barely recognisable but HC devs have stuck true to the original game. Their enhancements, modifications and additions have been very well considered and fit the game well. They deserve a tonne of praise for that, Bravo! Your turn, have at it!

It seems to have fixed itself automagically when I logged in this evening. and dis browser: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/128.10.1/releasenotes/ In Debian

you make an excellent point of which there are many real world examples we can call upon even now! 🤣

The background for the forum page seems to have changed - previously it matched the forum colours now it's simply black. This is a purely aesthetic change but it's annoying and I cannot see anywhere to change my forum appearance preferences. Is this a bug and where should I look to change my forum prefs? TIA!

when I was a kid the same jokes were called schoolboy jokes. I guess they've just gotten older at the same pace as me!

Crypts are assigned their gender at first creation so unfortunately transcrypts are not possible.

The only powerset that must be balanced by its nature is Symphonic, because that has scales

I need a billion too!

Also; who in their right mind would think RIP would have any future given their obvious and abject incompetence at level 1?

Thinking a little more about this because I find the question interesting. If we assume (which seems sensible to me) that as we join the game as a new PC, the enemy groups have reached their natural place in the pecking order of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles there is no reason for those relationships to change dramatically, except and unless some great change upsets that ecosystem. That can be change wrought by the Players (via the Devs of course) - for example the impact that PCs have on the Outcasts and Trolls during the Hollows arc leaves space for other groups to fill those gaps. Then there's storied change -- imagine that the Trolls were able to make stable, intelligent SupaTrolls who could be utilised to take Skyway and then other city zones, forcing the Lost, Clockwork and other groups into retreat. Just a "for instance" but the relatively minor change has the potential to become a game wide change. Our Devs have experimented with that a bit I believe but I'm less familiar with that content so I don't want to speak too much about it but they've introduced "semi-new" factions as well as brand new groups. That could have become a much bigger story arc in itself over several issues, let alone pages - but that then becomes very resource intensive so the economics might not stack up - especially for a relatively small volunteer team. But let's take a silly hypothetical for a moment: The Council are struggling - they are effectively fighting a war on two fronts vs Paragon's heroes (us) and the Fifth Column. So their feeling the beat down. They need an ally - which might be considered difficult but choose the Trolls as relatively easy to manipulate, good footsoldiers, tough at lower level and once equipped with Council weapons much more lethal than previously encountered by players. That then gives a huge array of possibilities moving the story forward but the point there is that change must happen to maintain credibility. You can of course develop it any other way you choose too; once the Fifth find themselves under pressure they also seek allies... who would they choose to align themselves with? etc etc Possibilities are endless... but making it happen credibly takes a huge amount of effort

Four Street Specs... you know what's cumming. Oh of course you do. It's one of the most famous skits ever. Don't believe me? Oh alright then...

I almost always respec at 50, because I've got an error-filled build, some powers are useful on the way to 50 but I get less utility from them after and also I just want to optimise for my budget.