@Ghost

Biiiig same. I've already got a floating tray filled up as it is, and screen real estate is at a premium. Scaling the UI and keeping text readable while still finding space for a dumptruck's worth of powers is a heeefty challenge I've been trying to navigate lately. Before you even start considering the heaps of temporary powers, I've got 27 powers from my primary/secondary/ancillary/pools/incarnates that need tray space. A floating tray isn't a bad idea, but it's a band-aid for a bigger problem imo.

Just some quick thoughts after a pair of Borea mission runs on beta with my TW/Bio Scrapper just copied from live. I didn't time them, but I tried a +2x8 and a +4x8 just to get some ~actual play~ experience. - Damage reduction is really noticeable all around, but really noticeable at +4. Safe to say that it feels like everything's kinda gone up in enemy rank (lieutenant kill time feels like old boss kill time, etc.) - Whirling Smash's usability feels much worse and the radius doesn't really seem to line up with the animation anymore? - Titan Sweep's damage/animation timing feels off in the fast version, probably because of the animation time change. - I didn't really notice the end/recharge with Momentum. I guess this is mostly for the low end of builds but it didn't seem to impact my playstyle much at all. - The redraw mechanic works really well from my bit of testing. It also seems to fix some damage timing issues with redraw during Momentum, which is great! - Whiffs still giving you momentum is a huge QoL boost and I really like that, but... The one change that threw me off more than anything else is the Crushing Blow change. It's non-momentum time is significantly faster and makes the whole set flow much better. I don't know if the change is intended or not since it's not listed, but if it isn't? Yikes. If it is, I find it pretty restricting that it's basically "use CB first or you're doing it wrong." Requiring a hit for Momentum to activate meant it could be smarter to use Titan Sweep to avoid whiffs and "guarantee" Momentum by rolling against a bunch of targets. Now there's not really any thought in the matter. I dunno if giving Titan Sweep a faster activation too is the solution, but right now it feels like you just might as well wait for CB even in AOE situations. edit: and while it's on my mind, I'd really appreciate AoD being usable while flying. At the very least while near the ground like similar powers.

This is what I really wanna know, since the bug fix notes didn't mention it. Shifting towards those long casts when anything will break them is gonna be a headache.

Yespls. It'd make the set 300% more usable.

I'm not sure if you're taking requests, but I'd adore a replacement pack for Dual Blades. I dunno what it is about that set in particular, but it sounds nothing like actual swords to me. Some powers have a weirdly... "crunchy" sound to them that feels out of place, and the whole thing is too loud/grating for my tastes. fwiw, I actually like Katana/BS/TW's sound design just fine and none of those bother me. I was planning on rolling a DB character so I'll definitely be using the lightsaber mod just to get rid of the noise, but something more neutrally sword-y would be super appreciated.

W e a t h e r. I want to bless the rains down in Astoria.

Somebody smarter could probably explain this better, but I can try my best. I'll use TF2 as an example, since it's a shooter I've sunk a lot of hours into. For something like 120fps (or higher), you can feel that difference even on a 60hz monitor. Your responses are registering quicker, even if you can't actually see the screen updating as fast as your computer's rendering it. For CoH, I cap the framerate at 60fps just so my graphics card fan doesn't make a ton of noise. When I tried capping TF2 at 60fps, I could immediately feel the difference from it usually running around 120 or so - I was so used to the gameplay that even the tiniest change felt really weird. For a 120hz (or higher) monitor you can actually see that difference in real time. The trouble with CoH is that it's a pretty slow game. A high framerate would mean your power activations and stuff would be faster, you'd see immediately when it starts and when the server registers it... but then you're locked into an animation. Same thing with enemies moving, you'd see it happen much smoother and maybe ever so slightly faster, but the game's not really built on those split-second decisions like a shooter is. Server lag is also a big contributor here - Homecoming is much more responsive than the live servers were, but MMOs in general send and receive information slower. Someone playing at 30fps might see the enemy a liiiittle bit slower, and their reaction might be a liiiittle bit slower too, but server lag could eat up all the difference. The biggest differences in feel I can guess that you'd notice are things that don't rely on the server: menus, typing, the way the camera moves. Obviously everything will look better, too.

It may be the simpler route, though I've always thought the option of going the other way had more potential: expand the difficulty options to let people apply shifts to enemies in regular content. +4x8 too dull for you? Try +5x8, or +6x8! Presumably with better rewards, too. It's almost certainly more work, but fine tuning a custom difficulty is (I think) one of CoH's coolest features. Plus, expanding on it would feel much better than taking away what people have already earned and are used to with their characters.

iirc by default there isn't any FPS cap. You can set one with /maxfps # and /maxinactivefps # up to any 3 digit number, so it should technically work fine with a high framerate if your computer can pull those numbers. You can also use /showfps 1 to enable a counter if you wanna gauge your performance (replace the 1 with a 0 to disable it.) I don't have a lot of experience with high refresh rate monitors, but I know in general that it's not exactly going to make any difference on CoH's gameplay like it would with something like CSGO. It'll probably look a little nicer, at least.

Then I would have set aside some time after page 5's release to put the change up for testing so it could get that focused window. I disagree heavily with that sort of rigidity, but even if it were only a few days (to minimize spread) and mostly a formality (because the changes were mostly solid), the transparency of forewarning for something you know is going to be a big change is just good PR. I respect that this is all volunteer work, but the people who are still sticking around and playing and giving their time and feedback do it because they're passionate and invested, too. Don't trample over that investment in the rush to do what's "healthy."

Of course, but I still feel like the impact of word getting around to however many didn't know (and would bother to use the exploit) is less than the impact of making big changes without discussing them.

Stop for a moment yourself, because my comments weren't at all about the content of the change. I think they're well reasoned and fine for the overall health, seeing as I'd just said: (to which, I still maintain that not having that extra incentive for exemplaring is something that needs reexamining later on, but this is besides my point) I was commenting on how the change was stealthed in, specifically. Which is why I was asking, "what part of this exploit wasn't public knowledge?" If anyone who cares to know, knows... then who cares? Hiding the change until the moment it's out there just feels like a way to dodge pushback and get it done. Skipping those testing and feedback phases just misses the point of having 'em to begin with. I assume all the changes are being done with the game's health in mind, and I appreciate the work being put, definitely. But I don't think it's good practice to just dump out major ones without consulting the community.

Which part of this wasn't already public knowledge? Getting more inf with XP disabled at 50 was so far widespread that most people assumed it was intended. The level 49 missions were maybe less so, but widespread enough that I'd heard of it through Help chat and because there's a guide on these forums (with nearly 50k views) detailing exactly how it works. All in all the reasoning feels particularly disingenuous. Odds are, anybody who was liable to "exploit" this situation was most likely already doing so. The value of transparency over changes people are going to find sensitive, I feel, is worth much more than whatever amount of people who didn't already know learning about a publicly documented behavior.

Not terribly perturbed about the change, even as someone who dabbles in farming. I feel like no longer having the extra incentive to exemplar is a mistake that's gone unaccounted for. Primarily I'm mystified about this sneaking into a patch without collecting prior feedback under the guise of it being an exploit fix. This feels far more like a "we know better than you" type of situation, where it's unlikely to be looked at after the fact and threads like these are just containment. Given this game's, uh... recent history, with obfuscating things via a few people who thought they knew better, that's a very uninspiring precedent being set.

I think there's a surprising wide variety. I've played with people brand new who absolutely struggle (often from lack of knowledge/poor tutorializing,) I've played on teams full of veteran min-maxers, and I've played with more casual groups that fall somewhere in-between. On the whole, things might scale a little too easy and I think that's absolutely fine. I would like to see higher difficulty options and rewards for "traditional" content, though. iTrials can be challenging at times, but I think that's more of a "herding sheep" thing that's inherent to raids in pretty much every MMO.

The body proportions and art style always wigged me out about CO, though the faces bothered me the most. Infinite customization to bolt on as much junk as you could possibly imagine to a vaguely humanoid shape, but unfortunately the face budget was misallocated to yet more lootboxes.

I had always heard the stories that it was meant to be a Marvel MMO, and I had always thought it was extremely weird that the game had these random locales as their earliest beta zones. It took me ages to put two and two together. The radioactive desert for Hulk, some remote place in Canada for Wolverine/Weapon X, Monster Island for the Savage Land. I suppose it could all be coincidence, but it definitely feels like they repurposed and reskinned things on a shoestring budget and just did the best they could.

I think when you hit the point that you’re dampening the interactions of archetype and set mechanics, it feels like you should reconsider the basic design of the power instead. I’d much rather have “crits do X instead” or “damage boosts are lesser but also do Y” than just... not having those interactions. Or just having the power in a place where those extras aren’t necessary.

The majority of Dominator playstyles will intermix melee and range, jumping in and out. Overall though, I think their damage is competitive in most scenarios, but they get a whole bonus control powerset for absolutely free! Or, at least, that's how it's felt in my experience so far. A lot of teams seem to move faster than the need for control could reasonably be appreciated. Might just be mid-level woes, since everything I've heard suggests Doms shift into a 13th gear once you really start factoring in set bonuses. I think Soldiers and Widows are more interesting to compare to, though. I haven't taken any to 50 on HC yet but from my memory, playing a Night Widow was just Stalker But Better (before Stalkers were buffed to the stars, anyway.)

As far as I’m aware, the unique titles for some badges don’t change at all for Praetorians. So I don’t think there’s any way for a Primal Earth character to change their VIP/Destined One badge to Praetoria’s Son, or vice versa. It’s the same badge for collection purposes, but you’re just stuck with the earth-specific names on character creation. (unless there’s some private server magic that I’m not aware of, anyway)

Kinetic Melee, at least to me, is pretty far away from "subtle" as long as you're focusing on the thematic angle of the character. Revving noises and waving one's hands around to spew out brightly colored energy doesn't exactly give me hard-boiled vigilante vibes. /WP and /Bio are both incredibly good sets for your listed needs and I don't think either would treat you wrong, but /Bio's visuals (even on the minimal FX settings) are still a bit loud. The Adapation powers will coat you in a very... spore-ish cloud of inky crap, you'll have a damage aura with a ring around you that will pick up every physics object and put it into a personal orbit, and the click powers will still give you that strange exoskeleton. Willpower can be set for 0 visual impact and has a much more "set it and forget it" playstyle, which is up to personal preference if you'd prefer that. It's almost certainly weaker overall, but... just about anything is when you put it up against Bio Armor. Don't let that detract from you enjoying it. So, really, whichever suits your concept better is the real choice, and that's entirely up to you. You're not losing out on playability in any combination.

This is one of those weird quirks of the basic power descriptions where it can be downright misleading, yeah. Similar to the listings of "Damage: High" being... not particularly useful in the slightest. There was never any particular standard that the descriptions were written to, and it can be difficult to separate flavor text from real function. One of the more veteran tendencies is to always look at the detailed info for a power. It can be a little overwhelming if you're not used to it, but the actual numbers will prove much more useful in the long run than trusting the far more vague basic descriptions.

Break Frees would work, but you'd need a whole lot. A small is only 5 points of protection, and a large is 10. Given that the tower might be boosting that mag 40 even higher, it seems way more efficient to just pack a few purples (12.5% on a small, 33% on a large) and not get hit in the first place.

Yeah, in terms of preserving the "flavor" of what being a tank really means, I feel like the ideal direction would be to build more around the idea of mechanics like bruising. I think the damage boost is really relevant as well, but I like the concept of "having a tank on the team make's everyone's life easier" being expressed through the taunts, native res debuffing or some other soft control, etc.

Just a special note for Storm Kick, that it has a 5% higher base crit rate, so you can actually wind up above 100% crit chance immediately following a proc with EC. In that sense, it's might be worth it to queue Axe Kick first, since your best case scenario still gives it that 99% crit chance and the follow up Storm Kick would have a 71% crit chance.