Sif

Having a public roadmap will be seen as a public promise by some, resulting in a "deserved backlash" for their "unprofessional" and "irrational" decision if they ever deviate (including: not doing something on it, doing something not on it, changing the order, doing something on it differently than someone assumed). Plus, they'll also get flak if someone's pet change isn't on the list. Alternatively, the list will have to be super vague (people will still decide that their interpretation is correct though), or be a very short term roadmap (in either of these cases, it's providing little information to anyone). If HC wants to try to commit to a public roadmap, it's of course their decision. One they might regret greatly...

🤔 Moving on, how about some examples of transparency you think they should do? In your mind, what sorts of things do you think they should do to be more transparent?

I'm a software engineer that does both professional and open source work. I speak from experience. 99% people will be fine, but 1% being assholes is more than enough to ruin your day. Hell, back on live I wrote a few programs for CoH, and, I still recall clearly, the first response for the first one was shitting on me for not filling their need. It was also used by a fair number of people all the way until shutdown.

And if the devs don't blindly follow what the votes say, there will be rioting. Regardless of any disclaimers made. There's nothing worse than the people get something for free, and feel that you owe them for you giving them something for free. Part was shelved because they were intended to be a quick fix, but instead ended up dominating time and discussion (just look at thread sizes). Scaling back to do what they could in the available time was a wise decision, which people voting would have tried to overrule and foam at the mouth assuming they were dictator and could decree that volunteers had to do whatever they wanted. This is why most MMOs try to keep the player base as far removed from testing as they can, because they know people don't understand development nor planning.

IMO, instead of focusing on min/maxing anything new for the current endgame meta, it would be better to work on fixing the current endgame meta to not be "only X and Y matter, forget the rest of the game" Also, a lot (if like live, the vast majority) of the playerbase doesn't spend much time on the endgame, so solely focusing on that is ignoring the rest of the playerbase. Voting systems for steering the development of projects is a pretty horrible paradigm IME. Even worse for volunteer projects (massive burnout!). End users/customers tend to be very short sided and lack a grasp of the big picture when it comes to projects, it quickly becomes a train-wreck that spirals out of control, as what they say they want is, in fact, not what they want. Add to that massive ADD as priorities will be constantly shifting around depending on who's currently being loudest on the forum (also, not all the players are active on the forum).

The Tequila issue is known (from the Discord, not sure if there's a forum post):

All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

People still street sweep (I often do when I don't want to invest the time in a mission, or start a new alt). What'd you suggest to change to make street sweeping more appealing in general? I don't think doing things like boosting xp/inf/equivalent would necessarily be a great plan, so is there some sort of alternative reward that'd encourage it some but not just swing the pendulum? Street sweeping is already fairly decent for badging, but that has limited appeal.

What version of Tequila (or alt launcher) are you using? Tequila says the version in the title bar What's the path you have set for the Manifest (right below where the Play button would be/above the screenshots + options buttons) Which item in Tequila do you have selected when you click Play?

I developed a parser for the game's pigg/bin files, and can process all the power related data. I've been using it to build Index Obscurum, which I intend to be a City of Data-alike site and possibly more. To get the information above, I scanned through every power and printed out any that had more than 1 positional flag set.

She's not the only one that's in both Fort Trident and out in the world handing out task forces. Also, teleporters. I also completely forgot Fort Trident was a thing until this thread. It just feels so... badly done.

These changes were meant to be something fairly quick, but ended up dominating time and attention. Continuing on DM would mean Electrical Affinity, Experimentation, and the new sets would suffer and be delayed.

They are, the Shadow Maul changes are staying in (disclaimer: still in beta, subject to change).

That's only one word, let me fix that for you: Shotgun Melee

Scythe melee. For the t9, it would be a massive boost range to all Scythe attacks:

Actually, I decided to be not lazy, and out of every power in the game, these are the only ones that have more than one positional tag (all of which are ranged + aoe): Power: Missile Launcher (5thColumn.Fifth_Column_Minion_Soldier_Heavy.Missile_Launcher) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Musket (BanishedPantheon.Banished_Minion_Ranged.Musket) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Sleep Gas (Crey.Crey_Lt_Boss_Armored_GrenadeLauncher.Sleep_Gas) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Musket (Event.Zombie_Ranged.Musket) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Grenade Launcher Sleep Grenade (Guns.Grenade_Launcher.Grenade_Launcher_Sleep_Grenade) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Missile Launcher (Portal.Axis_America_Missile.Missile_Launcher) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Particle Cannon (Temporary_Powers.Temporary_Powers.Particle_Cannon) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Smoke Grenade (V_ParagonPolice.Grenade_Launcher.Smoke_Grenade) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Venomous Spray (V_Snakes.Boss_Low.Venomous_Spray) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Venomous Spray (V_Snakes.Elder_Cobra.Venomous_Spray) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Venomous Spray (V_Snakes.Stheno.Venomous_Spray) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true Power: Venomous Spray (Vahzilok.Facemaker.Venomous_Spray) has ranged: true, melee: false, aoe: true So there are a few, but they're quite rare (I wouldn't be surprised if they were accidental as well). Like the BP Musket, while it's tagged as AoE + Ranged, the display help doesn't mention AoE, and it's not an AoE either.

The raw game data is viewable on Index Obscurum, here's for example a Blaster's Fire Ball. Under Attack Types, you can see it's listed as AOE and Fire, but not ranged. For comparison, Inferno is tagged exactly the same, despite being a PBAoE (rather than a targeted AoE). Edit: Whoops, you asked about enemies. I don't have enemy attacks on IO yet, but checking my local data, it's the same set up after examining several attacks, they aren't tagged as both. If they were, AoE defense wouldn't be considered worthwhile to build towards.

Yes, very much yes. I've never had a character where Soul Storm would actually be a particularly useful ability, but I've taken it just for that animation multiple times.

1.) Statesman just didn't have much of a role in the game. He was on a lot of the marketing material, and in some late game stories, but that was really about it. It would be like if DC had used Superman on a lot of covers/logos, but he was only an occasional minor character in a few rare stories that most people never read. That tiny role is even smaller for anyone that played mostly on villain side. 2.) Comics, for a lot of people, have a bad reputation for every death being a fakeout. CoH hasn't really gone down that path yet, so doing that with Statesman will likely worry a lot of people that dislike that aspect of a lot of comics 3.) Flashback missions are a way to further explore dead characters, without going "lulz nvm!" Deciding to bring Statesman back (I don't consider Tyrant having to take up the mantle to be the same thing) just feels like lazy writing to me. Comics do it because it's profitable, not because it makes good stories.

Easy solution that everyone will like: Dr. Vahzilok nabs Statesman's body, and reanimates it. Now you've got a zombified version shambling around, that will mumble zombified cliche heroic lines.

Nope

You can't tease us with such interesting ideas, and then not include any screenshots! That's just cruel.

With varying amounts of insps, temp powers, and IO investments, lots of characters can solo the DE Monsters. They're not really designed to be soloed, but that's not stopped people in the past from soloing many team-centric enemies. Less so Hamidon.

As a heads up, the bin format described there is for Parse6, which is used by the i24-based servers. HC uses Parse7, which is mostly similar, but primarily treats strings differently (I'm not sure all the differences, since what I know of parse6 is only from the time I spent accidentally working on pre-sunset pigg files instead of the HC files!)

IIRC, if you have the pistol drawn (don't recall what happens for DP) and use brawl it'll be basically a pistol-whip. DP "melee" PBAoE proposal: you've tied strings to each gun, and you spin them in circles around you. Would work both as a click and a toggle! 😄