New Dawn's Paragon AT is pretty sweet!

[Captain Fabulous]

The ability to mix and match any powers from any set with virtually no restrictions really allows for soooo many unique and themed builds. I gotta admit it's incredibly fun to play and kinda wish we had the ability to do this here (like perhaps one slot per account, but for sure the /powercreep brigade would lose their goddamned minds). It's a shame the population is so low, every time I log in I end up soloing (which honestly isn't too bad because I can crank up the difficulty even on lowbies and it's hella fun, not the slog it is normally). Another downside is that a lot of the new stuff is a bit buggy here and there, but nothing that's game breaking (at least not that I've found so far). In many ways it's like playing on the test server, but even more unlimited.

Anywhoooo, just sharing. Highly recommended if you're looking for something different and new. DO NOT use this as an opportunity to flame ND in any way or it will be locked. Keep it fun and civil please.

[Glacier Peak]

Is there a video or screenshot of the AT you can share?

[FupDup]

What base stats does it use, like for example if I choose an armor secondary do I get Stalker values or do I get the Brute caps? Does ranged primary use Blaster or Corr values, etc. Do they let you pick the inherent too, or is not having an inherent the price for that customization?

Edited Saturday at 04:36 PM by FupDup

[Captain Fabulous]

19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Is there a video or screenshot of the AT you can share?

 

Like the available powers? Or something else?

[Captain Fabulous]

5 minutes ago, FupDup said:

What base stats does it use, like for example if I choose an armor secondary do I get Stalker values or do I get the Brute caps? Does ranged primary use Blaster or Corr values, etc. Do they let you pick the inherent too, or is not having an inherent the price for that customization?

 

It's based off of Brutes. I think ranged sets use the Blaster modifier but I'm not 100% sure. You automatically get all the inherents. Travel powers too. And a ton more enhancement slots.

Edited Saturday at 04:42 PM by Captain Fabulous

[Glacier Peak]

11 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Like the available powers? Or something else?

Maybe the AT selection screen? What does it show or say about the AT?

 

Also, how many enhancement slots does it get?

[Captain Fabulous]

On 1/25/2025 at 11:49 AM, Glacier Peak said:

Maybe the AT selection screen? What does it show or say about the AT?

 

Also, how many enhancement slots does it get?

The beginning of this video I think is what you're looking for.
 

You get one extra enhancement slot whenever you get slots. So instead of getting 2 or 3 you get 3 or 4.

[MoonSheep]

sounds fun but i think it would quickly lead to people not finding the game rewarding

 

like on Age of Empires II when you start mashing out the cheat codes for vast quantities of extra gold, stone and wood - not to mention the cobra car. after 10 minutes nothing is a challenge and the interest wears off

[Captain Fabulous]

10 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

sounds fun but i think it would quickly lead to people not finding the game rewarding

 

like on Age of Empires II when you start mashing out the cheat codes for vast quantities of extra gold, stone and wood - not to mention the cobra car. after 10 minutes nothing is a challenge and the interest wears off

Like everything else it's what you make of it. While you *can* make yourself godly you don't have to (not much different than here TBH). The appeal to me is the mixing and matching of powers to create characters we normally can't make.

[MoonSheep]

20 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Like everything else it's what you make of it. While you *can* make yourself godly you don't have to (not much different than here TBH). The appeal to me is the mixing and matching of powers to create characters we normally can't make.

 

kin / super strength defender, or any melee defender would be something i’d love to see on HC

[Captain Fabulous]

9 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

kin / super strength defender, or any melee defender would be something i’d love to see on HC

Yeah, you can totally make one there.

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The appeal to me is the mixing and matching of powers to create characters we normally can't make.

 

[Clave Dark 5]

Cheating at the game to make it too easy is a Homecoming tradition though!

 

(was surprised to see this thread got unlocked... and that it was locked in the first place???)

[TheMoneyMaker]

I remember playing on Cake early on when you could play with all powers open to you. I made an all AOE corruptor and was raining down fire and ice with storm summoning secondary. It was fun but a little too easy mode I think. I would love to be able to mix and match powers from different sets but I feel like there should be limits, like putting similar powers into groups, so you can only pick one targeted AOE, one snipe, one tier 9 alpha strike blast, etc. You could dip into 9 different blast types or focus on one or two or whatever. Same thing with the melee sets, armors, control sets, and so on. But coding all that sounds like a nightmare. Maybe put AI to work on it and see if it works out, otherwise don't hold your breath.

[Captain Fabulous]

18 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

(was surprised to see this thread got unlocked... and that it was locked in the first place???)

I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy... 🤣

The thing about people saying it makes the game too easy, it's not any different than what you can do in HC, it's just easier and can be done sooner without IOs. You don't need to wait till your 40s and have a billion INF. There's something pretty cool about fighting at +0x4 in your teens and +0x8 in your 20s and it actually being fun instead of a slog. And that's on top of the freeform power picks allowing you to make some very specific themes.

[JasperStone]

Champions Online had something similar.

Had one character built that way.

 

If HC had it, I'd be sure to play it.

...

After I get through all my alts

 

[biostem]

22 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

Champions Online had something similar.

Freeform characters over at CO have all but killed any desire I have to create alts over there - I can pretty much create the exact character I want, and with practically no tradeoffs.  Of course, the kind of grindy nature of gear there doesn't help, either...

[Captain Fabulous]

2 hours ago, biostem said:

Freeform characters over at CO have all but killed any desire I have to create alts over there - I can pretty much create the exact character I want, and with practically no tradeoffs.  Of course, the kind of grindy nature of gear there doesn't help, either...

Freeform in CO was great in the beginning, but over time as they introduced combos, dependencies, and secondary effects it actually became a hindrance. You were essentially penalized for diversifying. It makes sense considering over 90% of the playerbase are F2P and using fixed ATs, but it definitely hurt freeform builds. That being said I had a lot of alts and nearly all of them were pretty fun to play.

It was never as good as CoH, but was entertaining enough that I played for many years. I stopped once they started wiping all event tokens at the end of the year. Pretty dumb move.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Freeform in CO was great in the beginning, but over time as they introduced combos, dependencies, and secondary effects it actually became a hindrance.

For me, the issue was that the slotted/passive abilities weren't quite as character-defining as armor sets are in CoH, (while serving a similar purpose), and since only some powers actually have a cooldown, once you get that "best attack", there's virtually no reason to use anything else, (besides your energy builder, a self heal, or perhaps another utility power that might be able to do stuff at the same time you are attacking).

[Clave Dark 5]

11 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

The thing about people saying it makes the game too easy, it's not any different than what you can do in HC, it's just easier and can be done sooner without IOs. You don't need to wait till your 40s and have a billion INF. There's something pretty cool about fighting at +0x4 in your teens and +0x8 in your 20s and it actually being fun instead of a slog. And that's on top of the freeform power picks allowing you to make some very specific themes.

I mean, that's kind of my point: if you ever find parts of the game a slog, imho it's time to stop playing.  Losing at blackjack in Vegas might be a slog too, but that doesn't mean the solution is to let me pick my cards when I play, that's not playing the game.  Just rifling thru the deck so I can pull out an ace and a face card every time would get awfully boring awfully quickly.

[Captain Fabulous]

46 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I mean, that's kind of my point: if you ever find parts of the game a slog, imho it's time to stop playing.  Losing at blackjack in Vegas might be a slog too, but that doesn't mean the solution is to let me pick my cards when I play, that's not playing the game.  Just rifling thru the deck so I can pull out an ace and a face card every time would get awfully boring awfully quickly.

 

In general I find soloing to be a slog, especially at lower levels. It's slow, it's not particularly enjoyable, the rewards and XP are minimal. Just not fun. I can sometimes make it a little bit better by setting the level to -1x2 or -1x3 which gives it a little bit better of a dynamic. But all in all it's not all that enjoyable. Which is why we do everything we can to skip over those levels as quickly as possible. The whole 1 hero = 3 minions or 1 lt + 1 minion was always a craptastic baseline.

 

But with a boost to damage and defenses this no longer is the case. You can easily fight larger groups at higher levels with little difficulty. To me, it's a significantly improved play experience that's actually pretty fun.

 

It's like the difference between Wonder Woman jumping into a room full of Nazis and cleaning their clocks versus the Greatest American Hero landing next to three common street thugs and getting his ass kicked. Which feels more super?

 

And yeah I get that not everybody is going to enjoy the same experience. But this goes back to what I've said twice before in this thread, you have the flexibility to build your character however you wish. You don't have to take all the T9s, you don't have to take the best bits from three or four different armor sets. You don't have to necessarily build yourself to be omnipotent if that kind of play doesn't appeal to you. Which is no different than here. You don't have to use IO sets. That's a choice you make. Fundamentally it's no different.

[golstat2003]

It makes the game stupidly easy. I have multiple characters on New Dawn/Cake that pretty much run through AVs and the highest difficulty levels with ease. It would be impossible to balance such a thing here on HC.  And HC team has said they actually DO try to keep things balanced. While fun as heck I can’t recommend it for here. At that point you might as well give everyone a button that lets them insta level to 50 and call it a day.

 

i should also mention that Nee Dawn is pretty much empty at most times of the day. Being all powerful all the time with no actual barriers to anything got pretty boring pretty fast.

Edited Tuesday at 11:18 AM by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

Case in point I just made this on New Dawn. There are no limits to getting the same power again.

 

And once I use one of Drain Psyche I can use the other. Same for Psy Shockwave.

 

This plus the Force Field powers plus the kin powers. . . .

 

Tankmage here we are. LOL

 

EDIT: My point is that HC's focus has always and will always be about trying to BALANCE the game or at the very least not making it more unblanaced than it already is. They've said this in multiple betas (closed and open). So yeah, no, I don't see them implementing something like this here on HC. They have enough trouble trying to balance the game without issues like what's pictured below.

 

I've also made combiniations with Paragon AT that are even more broken than this.

 

It's fun on New Dawn, as that is what that server is about. That is NOT what HC is about.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:07 PM by golstat2003

[SuperPlyx]

7 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

But with a boost to damage and defenses this no longer is the case. You can easily fight larger groups at higher levels with little difficulty. To me, it's a significantly improved play experience that's actually pretty fun.

 

...snip....

 

And yeah I get that not everybody is going to enjoy the same experience. But this goes back to what I've said twice before in this thread, you have the flexibility to build your character however you wish. You don't have to take all the T9s, you don't have to take the best bits from three or four different armor sets. You don't have to necessarily build yourself to be omnipotent if that kind of play doesn't appeal to you.

What an interesting concept, gotta gimp yourself just the right amount......to little and not fun,to much and not fun....you need a balance of sorts.

[Skyhawke]

Every browser I use to go and check out this server's site lights up like DefCon 5. Push past and try to download the launcher and it too throws red flags everywhere. Are we sure these guys are 100% legit/safe?