Biostem

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Pain Dom = Empathy

Anyways I would like to see some proliferation sometime as well.

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Pain Dom = Pain Dom.

Empathy = Empathy.

They are not the same, dont try to act like they are.

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Empathy is to Pain Dom as Katana is to Ninja Blade

They are mostly the same, but differ in a few key places.

Villains will not be getting empathy, so don't hold your breath...

I just feel that dual pistols fits the thug concept better than a blaster. I'm not saying all blasters are like this, but a single pistol always felt more "professional" to me. Dual pistols has a wilder feel.

I was also thinking how you could have the user of the single pistol default to a rested stance w/ the gun in 1 hand, and make a sword of knife secondary that used the off hand - that would save w/ redraw and be a cool combination.

Honestly, I'd like to see a single pistol blaster; I just see a character holding and properly bracing 1 pistol as a whole lot more dangerous and skilled than someone wildly firing 2 pistols.

I would treat that set a lot like the Malta Gunslingers; different ammo types that have different effects, and perhaps a silencer to give you a special attack that doesn't generate aggro.

You would set it as an escort that is required for mission completion, and set the rescuee as passive so he or she could not attack, but be attacked.

Another question: does anyone know if you set them to passive, will they use defensive powers, like armor toggles?

A few notes on /devices:

1. By using TD, you can remove 1 acc from powers, and add another recharge or such instead.

2. CD can save you from having to pick stealth, and combined w/ a stealth iO, gives you a nice edge in picking and choosing which battles you want to start and where.

3. Caltrops is a very effective tool to control the flow of combat; you can lay down a patch to cover your tracks or to steer enemies elsewhere.

4. Web grenade, although it doesn't do damage, applies a decent -recharge which reduces incoming damage. The immob, -fly, and -jump is good too.

5. I don't like taser; it is a stun, but it's got a pretty long recharge and a short range.

6. Timbomb needs work; it needs to be changed into a command-detonated bomb.

7. Tripmine can be devastating - though you have to pull and lure enemies into it...

8. Gun drone isn't horrible, but the summon animation needs to be shortened, and it needs another attack to chain better.

9. Smoke grenade is skippable, IMO. If you don't have or can't wait to get a stealth IO, then it can sort of do the trick. The tohit debuff is kinda small, but it's main purpose is so you can sneak past enemies or position yourself better.

An even easier way to fix it would be to allow us to pick pool powers for enemies; being able to pick fighting as an enemy's primary would help a lot.

Or just allow us to choose only 1 set (one w/ attacks) for enemies...

The best I have come up with is war mace/regen. As a minion, they get 2 mace attacks & throwing knives. From regen they get fast healing and quick recovery.

It's too bad we can't just take powersets from pre-existing enemies and assign them to a custom model (with limits, of course - no rularuu netterling powers on custom mobs, etc).

In other words, let us take a hellion thug's powers and apply them to a custom model...

You must be very careful with how you use the word "challenge". The game was never really that hard. Sure, it could take a long time to level up certain builds, and if you make a bad power pick it can frustrate you for a long time. The key thing here is time. Time is quite possibly the only commodity players really lack. Real life basically takes up so much of people's time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - just that being able to "enjoy" your character, (which IMO is usually in the 30+ game), can simply take longer than many people are willing to wait.

I was thinking - what if they made or changed one of the servers into a 'flat leveling' server? You cannot, under any circumstances, get more than Z XP per hour or somesuch. You can rest assured that NO PL-ers will be on this server.

Apart from that, people will always look for the fastest route to what they want. I don't believe you can stop PL-ing and farming. All you can do is curb it or restrict it to certain parts of the game.

General reply:

I'm just back for the Reactivation Weekend, and I've found the MA to be both a great asset to the game and a sign of things to come.

I was able, in the course of 2 days, to get my level 8 scrapper to 32 and a newly made controller to 42. For me, this was great, as I always view my characters as "complete" only once they are in the 30+ range.

This is bad, too, as I had a lengthy conversation with a person playing a WS, who not only didn't know how to use/create keybinds, but he had only just joined the game a week or so ago.

In some ways, the ability to quickly level a character is great - I can try all those builds out that I would of never had the patience for. It does worry me, though - those experienced in playing CoH can pretty much pick up any character and get the hang of them in a few minutes. What about anew player? Even if they are familiar w/ MMOs, how good are they going to be able to play a PL'd controller, or defender? Scrappers and tankers are fairly straightforward, but others I'm not so sure of.

It's too bad there's no middle ground - where you have to level up at least 1 character the "old fashioned way" before you can PL. Get an appreciation for playing a controller through the teens, understand why getting that status protection power means so much on your tanker. Learn the joy of getting a full attack chain on a blaster...

I just want to have my cake and eat it too...

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mission completion should award merits.story arcs need to award at least 20, all recipes need to be for sale for merits, 5-10 yellow , 10-15 orange, 15-20 purp. my opinion. haters will be ignored.

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Here's my main issue: just how rare do the devs think IOs should be? Should a single character be able to "IO-out"? How many common/uncommon/rare/purple IOs should a person playing 20 hrs a month be able to get, and in what timeframe?

Let me pose a related question - what if they just made it so you could get that -kb/+regen/+recovery for completing a certain TF/SF? Would it be game breaking?

The devs need to accept that people will lean towards w/e gives the max reward for the minimum time investment, and if option A is made undesirable, they will find options B or C.

Just my opinion, but I think most TFs/SFs should be broken into 2 or more "mini-TFs" which grant some merits upon completion, and unlock the next "mini TF" in sequence, which in turn grants a slightly better merit reward, and so on.

Allow people to team for an hour or 2 for a single mini TF, then meet again next week if they choose for the next one. The whole concept of a 4+ hr TF just excludes a large portion of the playerbase, and every required hour of play has a greater chance of something coming up and someone having to leave.

On another note, I *do* find myself looking over the list of set IOs and saving my merits up for the one I really want. One plus side of this is that it has resulted in me turning in merits on a lvl 50 to buy a lvl 10 -kb IO for my next alt, which is something I likely wouldn't have gotten...

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It seems like there's plenty of arcs and content to get to 50 a couple times without doing the same things unless i'm missing something; I see no reason to focus more on 45-50 content that doesn't apply to other level ranges such as 1-10 or 35-45.

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The key phase in your comment is getting to 50. Once there, there is nothing else to do. Some of us like playing our 50s and want more to do or do not want to play an alt. To keep folks paying to keep playing, they need to have more content at the end of the game. If I have a lvl 50 hero or villian, I should expect some new content once in a while to play with out flashing back to the mission at a lower lvl of play to play the new content.

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Here's the problem; many players are so proficient with running through content that they can complete any new stuff the devs put out in a matter of days, if not hours.

How do you create new content which has the ability to stay fresh for a decent amount of time, and how do you put out new content frequently enough w/o getting repetitive?

What is this "Magic Man" arc you folks are mentioning? I did a search for "Magic Man" at Paragon Wiki and couldn't find anything. Who gives the arc, or what zone are they in? Thanks!

On the general subject of i13, I find that the devs seem to dislike using or altering maps too much. I wonder why there aren't more or varied maps used - either in layout or tileset. I mean, there's the waste processing tileset from the early infected mission for villains which is never seen again. There's the drug lab tileset from, IIRC, a Troll mission which we never see again.

I really want to see our heroes bust into a room and see a bunch of Council troops sitting at tables in their mess hall. I want to storm into a Carnie shower What about a Nemesis production line?

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For a game that has for the life of its existence encouraged alts, the cost of the badges and costume items does not do so. The Winters Gift set should remain expensive.

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Wrong. The winter event is something put in place for fun. Remember that little word, "fun"? If something in this game ceases to be fun for you, stop doing it. If YOU are forcing yourself to do something to fulfill some "need" you have, then whose fault is that?

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Total count for this year:

Toy Collector x2
Winters gift Complete set x2
Winters gift Slows (additional) x7 (3 for SG mates)
2005, 2006, 2007, Gifted/Holiday Flight Pack x4
Given away candy canes to SG mates: 100+

That's way too many BNY missions. I have done the winter event steadily the entire time it has been live and spent 14 hours doing them on Saturday. I leveled a character (solo) from 14-24 on them, and nothing else, while getting enough CCs for everything she needed, and yet another from 17 to 26 (also solo).

And that is not even close to what I would have liked to have achieved.

In the name of mercy, why is it so hard to get the old badges and costume pieces?

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You don't "need" any of that stuff. YOU chose to keep doing the mission over and over again. Would it be nice for there to be a way to get CCs reliably in other ways? Sure. Do you "need to" or "have to" keep grinding the same mission over and over again? No.

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BNY mission and in general, fix the escort AI. Escorts should follow like pets and stop when they encounter mobs. 'Nuff said.

I avoid escort missions like the plague and drop them whenever I can because of the garbage AI.

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I don't understand the problems people are having with the BNY escort. I've done this mish a few hundred times this year and haven't had a single problem.

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In my experience, the "problem" w/ NPCs that have to follow you only occurs when people want to just free the NPC, then run off back to the goal at full speed. They don't want to make the frequent stops to let the NPC catch up, since it's slower.

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I wonder if they could create a "hockey stick" temp power, and use the ragdoll physics to allow us to actually play ice hockey.

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mechanically, should be pretty simple.

spawn an NPC named "Hockey Puck" that has 100% Resist Damage and 100% Resist Immobilize and 100% Resist Knock Up. (the last so it stays on the ground, in a rink.)

Hockey Stick melee power has a stick animation, the same effect of a snowball (ie: does nothing), plus "Special vs Hockey Puck: Knockback"

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I suppose you'd have to be very careful w/ how you handle the status protection & resistances of the "puck" - it'd have to have to be immune to holds & tp. It'd have to be immune to slows & repel. Would you just let people use force bolt & foot stomp to knock it around, though?

I wonder if they could create a "hockey stick" temp power, and use the ragdoll physics to allow us to actually play ice hockey.

I don't really mind the whole "rescue baby new year" thing - I just would like to see the map changed up every once in a while.

Since this all has to do w/ saving baby new year and your contact is father time, it'd be kinda cool if we met soem signature characters at other periods in history. Like, what if we were actually at 1920's Croatoa and encountered Statesman from that period.

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Out of curiosity, does anyone else think that the Zombie Apocalypse would be fun on any Friday the 13ths that come up during the year?

I think it'd be a reasonable way to bring the event back, but it wouldn't happen so often that it'd feel less special when it comes for longer on Halloween.

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I'd be for this!

Speaking of which, they definitely need to give one of the larger zombies either a hockey mask or a machete...

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Yeah, the griefing get's pretty bad. Had it done a few times last night by someone (name removed to protect the stupid) and finally after the last kill I recieved I called him out on it on Broadcast. His response was, "Well they keep doing it to me". My response was, "... so do unto others? Very Heroic." After that I just put him on ignore and moved on.

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They should just use the "level-less" system for zone invasions w/ the ToT spawns - that way they'd never be purple to anybody...

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Id like to finally be able to get the Power Slide !!!!

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IIRC, that's from the collector's edition, and if so, won't happen.

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Personally, I see all Vet Rewards as small bonuses for having played this long. Therefore, I look forward to some, and not so much to others. I have no complaints about them, the Devs never needed to give them to me, and they don't effect any of my characters so much that if they were suddenly gone I'd be lost.

On that note, I'm also glad I didnt spend $200 on amazon.com on the preorder CoV, and tho I may never even use the helms, it's great to have the option. For the temp powers, oh well, another range attack for me. No complaints there either.

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Don't confuse the preorder w/ the collector's edition - they are completely different things w/ different bonuses. The colelctor's edition had the arachnos cape, the special chest emblem, the badge, and I think yet a different arachnos helm. It's only the preorder helms that being given as vet rewards...

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Hopefully, the helmets will be male and female.

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No.. Only the Widow helm is available for females.

Also, I'm a little disappointed the vet rewards are starting to be recycled. I'm surprised they didn't let you choose one of 2 other temp powers given out - like the holy shotgun or the bow & arrow from Croatoa...

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Wanna be the greatest single hero in a world? Go play a single-player game. Or go find an MMO that does have one-off events so you can either participate and then smugly hold it over the heads of those players who missed it, or likewise complain when you miss an event and have it held over your head by the players who were there for it.

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This is exactly what I got out of his diatribe, also.

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Just sort of a general question: how can you be "THE HERO" in an MMO where the devs have to create long-lasting content for 1000's of players?

The only thing CoH could do would be to create a system that randomly generates unique named enemies, with a random costume, of a random AT and having random powersets from that AT, and shovel some prefab story arc the players' way. Then, they could truly put an end to "Generic Villain 1234's" scheme to destroy the world. The next player would get "Generic Villain 12345", with a different look and powers, and put an end to his reign of terror. No one else would ever get "Generic Villain 1234 or 12345" as opponents, and then you could say you saved the world from X while no one else ever can...

That system may not be as satisfying as you hope, though.

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Helpless?
You're a hero. Get out there and save the city.

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sry but when you can only apperhend foes it gets kinda dull and yeah hero yadda yadda blah blah Villians are better sence we can smush you and the invasion...

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Actually, the developers use the term "defeat" so as to leave the fate of your enemies ambiguous. I could see my stone melee tanker subduing enemies simply because all he's using a blunt force. My dual blades tanker, though - he slices the baddies up, and if the emergency teleporter system manages to extract them in time to save them, great. If not... oh well.

My dm scrapper literally sucks the life out of his foes - I'm pretty sure his intent isn't to *just* stop the villains. My /rad blast defender is shooting them with F%#@ing radiation! All he cares abotu is stopping the villains. In fact, of all my characters, my mind/ice dom probably is the most concerned w/ limiting fatalities - after all, too many deaths in your wake and someone's bound to notice.