Scarlet Shocker

SoonTM

19 is no age at all. Such a tragedy and my condolences to everyone close to Punchy

never saw that coming! in a manner of speaking

Allegedly!

I'd have untuited the same, but then again, if you play a pet heavy character and don't get a benefit from that, then it's a bit gimped. So in-depth analysis suggests pets should be part of its conditional trigger as indeed they seem to be. Otherwise you'd reduced by 5 attacks on your primary as an MM

Agreed!

Tough glove! 🤣 That aside, I do not understand why we cannot all have fingers given that VEATs actually do.

It's not a project I've followed in any detail for exactly that reason. But it can be interesting to wonder how great this game would be with the existing content and a brand new, modern graphics engine.

Are you thinking of SEGs? I don't know what's happening with that either.

I think there's an important point we're all missing (or at least leaving unsaid) The successor projects set out to give us back something we'd all lost. When we got the actual game we'd lost back it must have taken a lot of wind out of their proverbial sails and made them collectively wonder what to do next. I also think that whatever stage they are at currently, I never ever felt that I was being ripped off or scammed, and I contributed small amounts where I felt I could help. I didn't ever feel like there was a lack of intent and I made my choice knowing that it was very unlikely I'd ever get a meaningful return on investment but that was ok because maybe one day we would and if nobody helped out, we definitely wouldn't. So I think we should all be a bit careful and not be too harsh on those guys. If they've made missteps and failed to deliver, well, I am willing to cut them all a lot of slack and I appreciate them trying even if we don't have a finalised product. At least they put our money where their mouths are!

Valiance Online... that's the one I just did a very quick search and came up wtih this https://massivelyop.com/2021/03/09/whatever-happened-to-superhero-mmo-valiance-online/ but if you try and get to their website (I won't link to it here) Firefox gives a security warning and it seems to be down. There's something in my mind that makes me think they really refocused a lot at one stage turning the game from a successor to something totally different. I may be misremembering however.

I think GG's Heroes and Villains kind of faded away a couple of years after sunset. Ship of Heroes had a live demo on Steam very recently. It looks mostly ok, but I felt the play was clunky - and the base idea did very little for me. Apparently the environment is a giant space ship and you're a hero on it fighting various aliens. Kinda like an Avengers/Babylon 5 crossover. I think they were a team of modders who enjoyed CoH on live and decided to have a crack themselves. There was another successor the name of which escapes me - they had to also radically alter their game but I don't think they got far after that. Valiant or something? I may be doing them a disservice but I haven't heard from them for an age either.

I already have a couple of Dark trollers that are more optimal. I'm trying to do something slightly different to the "norm" here.

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.