toolbear

"Gold Farmers" is a sufficient description.

The pictures are simultaneously creepy and fail to do it justice. Wait to you see them moving around, folks. Nightmare fuel, that.

Bumblebeast aka Deputy Commissioner Harris Kinetic/SR Brute Sufjan Harris idolized Mohamed Ali as a kid. Never in a million years did Sufjan think *he* would be the one to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. "Rumble, young man, rumble" Mid's Build (courtesy of @Werner) Edit: the same post on Reddit (higher resolution image if you click through)

But even more recently created content by the original CoH team had better graphics. And they were in the process of redoing older zones. So your PC should be able to handle at least that level of refresh. While maybe true, we don't know what their aspirations are long term. Either way, it's really for the HC team to decide and prioritize based on player feedback, their own capabilities, and likely their own interest (especially if it remains a volunteer/non-profit arrangement). That said, I think what you wrote was realistic. I've tried to include a mix of complexity/difficulty in my list of suggestions. My biggest asks are probably modern graphics and Lua scriptable UI. But I included things that are just changes to NPC conversation text as well. And even a pretty big ask (fixing claustrophobic maps); a map retrofit is somewhat easier than creating a new map out of whole cloth.

Adding to my list... Fully Scriptable UI Popmenus are nice, but limited. Replace the current in-game 2-D interface with a Lua scripted UI and backend API. Allow players to extend, compose, or replace these UIs with custom, user-created addons. Replace Immersion-Breaking "Stores" with Something Else Having NPC contacts, especially heroic/villainous contacs, offer to sell you things on the side -- while convenient -- is very immersion breaking. It's like Eagle Eye or Glacia are heroes down on their luck, reduced to trying to sell me fake Rolex watches. Or that every NPC contact is desperate to sell me some Amway rubbish or a gaudy LuLaRoe print. A small improvement would be to replace "Ask about the store" with an NPC-specific, cannon-appropriate call to action. Another would be to replace influence-based NPC "stores" with a resource economy; bonus this provides an alternative use for salvage. So it feels less like the person is a stand-in for a store, and more like someone who's helping me out by crafting something useful after I bring them the raw materials. Sure, some contacts would naturally be peddling something in game; those would remain influence based stores (though a better call to action would be nice). An alternative way to address the convenience of having "stores" everywhere would be to redesign one of the city zones to have a market district with every origin store, Icon, Wentworth's/black-market all in the same few blocks right next to the transit. Talos Island for heroes is a great candidate as it's already accessible from Ouroboros. Perhaps this is a good use for Kallisti Warf at higher levels (if made accessible from Ouro as well). The contacts who -- after getting in their good graces -- offer you enhancements, those enhancements are rarely beneficial, making it a pointless achievement. If instead they were unique or beneficial beyond what you could get otherwise, there would be a purpose to improving your reputation with certain contacts. This seems to be the original intent of the system, but it isn't successfully realized. There's a spectrum between convenience and making it feel like you're doing MMO chores. The pendulum has swung too far to the convenience side. It's eliminated a worthwhile activity I could be doing in the game. Gangs and other immersion breaking mobs The random clusters of mobs in the streets of a city filled with heroes feels ridiculous to me. It's one part West Side Story, one part absurdist dystopia. While it's fun to imagine the residents of Peregrine Island have become so accustomed to weird shit happening all the time, that they just blissfully walk down the street past clusters of Nemsis or Rikti just chilling in a parking lot, it just feels silly and immersion breaking when you stop to think. With some good writing this could work for Peregrine, but almost all the zones from Atlas Park onward suffer from this. Even the zones intended to be overrun by mobs it feels silly with factions haphazardly thrown on the map with no particular in-game reason to be where they are or even in that zone. There has to be a better way to satisfying the competing needs of having mobs to farm/street-sweep, not having to travel too far out of one's way, and preserving immersion. Successful, well maintained parts of a city zone wouldn't have random thugs in it. Neglected and industrial maybe so. Areas overrun with baddies that are barely kept at bay, yes. There should be a logical transition from one type of area to another. Part of the problem is the linear, flat feel of most city zones. With WoW, Blizzard designers make excellent use of vertical terrain to create horizons where transitions from safe zones to combat zones make sense in the game world. The world of CoH needs to be less Manhattan and more San Francisco in terms of its terrain. Drop the war walls, eliminate loading screens, shrink some zones, and leverage terrain variations to make the transition from bustling city to thug infested backwoods make sense. The parking structure under the PPD HQ in Kings Row is overrun with Skulls. The parking lot would a) be filled with police vehicles (it isn't) and b) have cops coming and going so frequently that crime would almost never happen. This lack of intentional design is a recurring theme throughout the game. Add Undo to Enhancement Management Until I leave the enhancement management screen, there's no reason anything I do -- from filling a slot, deleting an enhancement, to combining -- should be a permanent decision until I commit my changes by "Saving" or "Committing" and leaving the management UI. The "are you sure" dialog boxes aren't the solution; everyone immediately checks the box to make them go away. Confirmation dialogs are always a sign of failed UX; usually an indicator that you didn't implement some form of undo. On a similar front, irreversible operations like attuning a +N enhancement are terrible traps that frustrate and cost the player significant amounts of influence and time. Undo as I described would do a lot to solve this. Flight Poses & Travel Power Improvements Fly poses should either be a sticky configuration instead of emotes, or the fly emote system needs a rework. You can search google/reddit for the kludges players are required to use in order to have a custom fly pose. As mentioned in other posts, whether it's through a pose system or by making travel special effects more customizable, there should be more options: fly upright, on a hover board, in a personal chopper, running on a magical tiled walkway that appears in front of every footstep, etc.. I don't want my arcane themed character flying around like superman (and the purchasable flying carpet cannot be boosted and turns off toggles). Minimal FX Option for Everything Outside of PvP I should be able to disable effects on almost every power, certainly every toggle and travel power. Color Options for Everything Most powers allow you to choose Bright/Dark color palettes as an option. Those which don't, should. Those which do, but ignore one or both of primary/secondary color should be made to honor them. Lethal Falling Damage Lethal falling damage for NPCs/mobs. If I'm fighting a super, they should take damage. If I just launched a prisoner off of the Zig, they should be dead/incapped. This should be true for some heroes, too. Maybe certain secondaries make you immune (e.g. Invul, Super Jump), but it's appropriate even in comic books for falls to be lethal or take a hero out (War Machine's fall in Civil War, for instance). If you cannot fly/hover before landing from a high enough fall, this should take you out.

Long time gamer, but new to CoH. I'm grouping with some veterans, though. I bring a different perspective since CoH offers no nostalgia for me and I'm judging it as I would any other game. In no particular order... Modernized Graphics Higher poly count models and the textures to match. Both player/NPC models as well as world. Optimized graphics to take advantage of modern hardware. Improve Existing Map Designs Most map/levels seem to have been built before original CoH team learned how much space/scale is actually required for an MMO. That is they are too cramped and convoluted. The worst of these (all variants of caves, even the new ones) and Oranbega are motion sickness inducing. But even office maps are terribly cramped. The more natural or fantasy themed areas this should be easy; you can imitate WoW design techniques. The more realistic office / city settings this will be more challenging. For instance, Imperial City is what I would call "MMO scale", but it's wide streets and openness feels a little off. The Underground is also MMO-scale interior, but feels monotonous and empty. But I think that's a different level design mistake in CoH that I'll get to later. Eliminate or make no-clip extraneous map geometries. Contributing to the cramped, busy feeling of levels is the immense amount of architecture embellishments intended to make interiors feel more real, but also make the visual field cluttered and are constant sources of players getting "stuck on world geometry". Computer racks, boulders, catwalks, sewer pipes, etc. Many techniques should be used here. Move some geometry out of primary movement paths. Make some no-clip. Remove some. Make dead ends more visually obvious (certain knots of sewer pipes is what I have in mind). Surround some with smooth, invisible barriers so that players kite around them without getting stuck. Etc.. Level design should contribute towards telling the narrative of the story mission. CoH levels, by and large, and cookie-cutters maps to spawn mobs in seemingly randomly decided locations. Good level design (again, comparing to WoW) is intentional with each corridor, each turn chosen. Each mob encounter intentional with the map itself naturally guiding players along the narrative. It's possible to avoid linear feeling (e.g. on rails) missions while still preventing teams from inadvertently beating the final boss and completing the mission objective before fighting mini-bosses or encountering most other mobs. Doors should make sense. Offices building doors shouldn't lead to sewers. Ship doors shouldn't lead to caves. Etc.. More Inclusive Body Types & Costumes I would like female models and costumes that don't make them look like bimbos. I would like options for stocky or obese female and male player characters that go beyond the "Huge" body type. More Variation in Ability/Power Special Effects Powers across different powersets are often visual clones of other powers in another set. Sometimes the powers are outright clones with a different name. Keep the existing visuals, but add alternatives that are substantially different and unique. Take advantage of modern graphics cards particle and shader effects to improve existing visuals and design new ones. Be wary of the visual noise in a large fight, however. Fix Hitboxes of Large Bosses There are several large bosses (Wade in his final form in signature story arc, giant robots, others), that melee heroes cannot hit despite being as close as possible. If the engine knows I'm close enough that the boss is blocking further movement, then I'm close enough to hit them. This may effect heroes with Hover more than those which fight on the ground. Rewrite Some Existing Dialog The quality of writing is hit and miss across the board. Some of it is insulting tropes: the obviously flamboyant gay, the materialistic and stupid woman. The introductory story arc for heroes in Atlas park has offensive characterization and writing for Flambeaux. Hire women writers. Only let them write female character dialog. Have them write 50% of the male dialog, too, while you're at it. Eliminate Loading Screens Moving across city zones should be seamless. Entering some door missions should be seamless. Door missions should have at most one loading screen Size Matters In any one group of mobs, lieutenants should be bigger than minions, bosses bigger than lieutenants, elite/av biggest of all. There should be an obvious visual hierarchy. TAB-ing through every enemy to find the boss is an anti-pattern. This also ties into level design for mini-bosses; the placement of mobs should also make it immediately clear who the boss is and who the adds are. Miscellaneous * don't pop up dialog boxes while I'm in the middle of combat

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