LordAethar

I know the feeling well. I've had a few characters I've rerolled for similar reasons, and with Convergence, I have a few toons I am considering remaking.

I have a Invuln/MA Scrapper I've had fun with, but never levelled her past 30, partly because her concept was more of a "tank" concept, but Tanks couldn't do MA - just SS. Now that tanks can do MA, I will be remaking her as a Tank. I just have to decide if she'll stick with Invulnerability, or go with Super Reflexes.

The other situation is more of a dilemma - my Broadsword scrapper. She was made originally back around Issue 6, long before Shield was even hinted at. I rolled her as a BS/Regen character, and had a lot of fun with her, but since I made her Natural origin, I had some concept issues with her for a long time.

When I came back to the game earlier this year after a 2-year Hiatus, I decided to make a Praetorian version of her as a BS/Shield scrapper, to fit some of the original concepts for her. Even though conceptually, I had an easier time envisioning the BS/Shield character, mechanically-wise, I believe I enjoy my old BS/Regen scrapper more. BS/Shield is a HORRIBLE Endurance Hog, but can be very potent in a group of several other Shield characters.

I never deleted the old BS/Regen scrapper, and I just started playing her again and forgot how nice Regen can be (a very hit-and-run type of character). I since have resolved her concept issues saying that she uses a combination of both magical and technological items in her work, so now I'm not sure what I'll do with the BS/Shield toon.

Finally, I recently made a new Temporal/Dual-Pistol Defender. So far the temporal power isn't doing much for me concept wise, but I like the idea of a Defender with DB. I'm thinking of rerolling him with a different primary, but I'm debating which one. I'm probably going to do Traps (I really enjoyed Traps with my Merc/Traps MM), but I'm still undecided. I could switch and make her a DP Blaster or Corruptor, but I already have an Assault/Devices Blaster and thus conceptually-wise, would be a little too similar.

O.k.. done rambling for now

Last night I finally got around to levelling one of my older toons and picked-up Spring Attack, and I must say, that's pretty handy - decent damage and a targetable location instead of an enemy. The recharge on it is a little slower than I think it should be, but tolerable. I'm still debating how I'll slot it out.

As for Burnout, there's a lot of combo possibilities, but the long recharge on it keeps it from being something usable very often. I forget, does Hasten reduce the cooldown on Pool Powers & Incarnate powers, or is it like Burnout that only affects Primary/Secondary powers?

As much as I like seeing new things, I currently would prefer to see certain older content revisited, repolished, and redesigned as needed.

I'm a base-builder, and I'm in favor of starting my base over from scratch if it'd be necessary. The biggest problem I can see would be emptying-out all of the storage shelves and tables, but perhaps in the process of overhauling the base, a new, easier-to-use storage system could be introduced too?

As for Costumes, there's a number of little tweaks that can be made here, from old pieces being brought-back, to revamping existing pieces. There's a lot of older pieces that simply need a higher-resolution texture to bring them up to today's standards.

Aside from Bases and Costumes, there's a number of little systems in the game that could use fine-tuning. Some improvements to the e-mail system, for instance, so I can e-mail stacks of items (i.e. salvage) to myself would be a huge benefit. Maybe revamp the entire salvage system a bit to curtail the sheer number of salvage pieces. Even just going through all of the IO's themselves and fixing the large number of naming inconsistencies would be nice (as in how a recipe has one name, but the crafted IO from that recipe has a slightly different name).

Finally, with the precedent of Galaxy City's Echo being accessible from Ouroboros, I'd like to see some of the other, older zones also available, just from a historical standpoint. See Faultline, or the Rikti Crash Site, or the Hollows as they used to be (and be thankful for the revamps).

I haven't used LRT on all locales yet, but most of them drop me off right at the Train Stop (at least Blueside), while IC dropped me off at the trainers. The Hollows and Faultline dropped me off at or very near the zone entrance, but First Warden did drop me in the middle of nowhere (at or near the center of the zone).

Overall I feel that it's just a mediocre power - not terrible, but not useful-enough to warrant taking it. If it's utility was improved (the ability to teleport to more zones) or the requirements reduced (change the 2-power requirement to a single power, decrease the activation time, and/or reduce the recharge time), then the power may be worthwhile.

I'm crossing my fingers thinking the power is bugged somehow - that it's supposed to allow teleports to Hazard Zones but only the Hollows and First Ward got included.

I've not seen a lot of chatter yet on the new Tier V Travel Powers - Afterburner, Long-Range Teleport, Burnout, Spring Attack, and the Kheldian equivalents - Shadowslip and Quantum Acceleration.

So far, I've only used LRT, and I'm rather disappointed with it. It doesn't permit teleport to Hazard Zones (except for The Hollows and First Ward), or any co-op zones. Nor does it permit crossing the Hero/Villain/Praetorian line even if you're a Vigilante/Rogue and capable of doing so normally. Implementing the latter I think is difficult with how they coded Hero/Villain crossovers, but I'm confused at the former. Bluezone characters especially have a large number of Hazard Zones, afterall.

Thoughts anybody?

I just did my first experiments with Long Range Teleport (LRT) and here's my feedback:

As it currently stands, I'm very disappointed with it. It currently only allows teleport to City zones, and only one two Hazard Zones. With how easy it is these days to move around most city zones, the requirements to obtain the power and compared to the usefulness of the other new Tier V travel powers, I'm very disappointed in LRT. At the very least, LRT is misleading in it's description, especially Heroside and the large number of Hazard zones there.

LRT needs to allow for travel to Hazard Zones. Currently, only The Hollows and First Ward can be reached with LRT. I sense a bug, but I'm not sure which way it's supposed to be. If they feel it's OP'ed to visit HZ's, then toss in a requirement of some sort - i.e. you have to have visited the zone at least once.

LRT needs to allow for cross-alignment travel, but as I understand things, that's more difficult to implement. That said, it should at least permit travel to co-op zones such as the Rikti War Zone and Midnighter's Club.

Can it be argued that LRT can allow for cross-time and inter-dimensional travel, as long as the teleporter is familiar with (i.e. has visited) the locations in question? I'm thinking of teleport to Cimmerora, and the Primal<>Praetoria crossover. The former should be easy to code and justify, whilst the latter I would imagine being harder.

Another thought in regards to Praetoria - shouldn't LRT allow for teleport to the Praetorian underworld? That's almost a complete city alone, along with the various Resistance safe houses scattered through there.

So, thoughts?

Yea, I'm not keeping my hopes up too high, but I've heard some rumblings that the CC is getting tweaked a bit for I21/Freedom, so we can hope

I saw with the new info about Freedom, that we'll be able to unlock up to 10 costume slots for our characters. This is a Very Good Thing(tm) in my book.

However, how will this effect VEAT characters. Specifically, will Widows/Soldiers finally be able to make more than one costume with access to the VEAT-only costume pieces?

I agree (and have commented in the past) about the number of currencies in the game. I feel the same about salvage and components - they do little but add unnecessary complexity to the game. For instance, I really don't like how they've been handling the whole Incarnate system, in terms of currency and components.

I feel that the Incarnate system should just be distilled into XP and Threads. Shards are mostly useless after Alpha, especially since all Alpha abilities can be bought with JILD (Judgement/Interface/Lore/Destiny) Components. In fact, Incarnate Components don't even make sense to me from either a flavor standpoint or a mechanics standpoint. Also, why did we need to have 3 new currencies introduced with JILD? E Merits could have just been distilled down into large number of A Merits. For that matter, why do we even need A Merits? It all converts down to x Threads anyway.

However fixing these problems is not easy, now that they're part of the game. As much as I've love to see things streamlines and simplified, I doubt it'll ever happen.

If memory serves, this is a type of sync issue that has cropped-up in the past. I don't recall when I last saw it - sometime around i11 or i12, although even then it was uncommon. Since i20.5, it's been (for me) rather frequent. Eventually the player in question will show-up on the team list.

I haven't played my Fire/Therm Corrupter since this bug has hit - I wonder how much this may affect Healing and non-group buffs?

I have a several-year-old Sonic/Sonic Defender, and a two-month-old Fire/Therm corruptor, and I've been anxiously awaiting the 20.5. Unfortunately, now that 20.5 has hit, my altitis has been making me restless to play one of my other toons again.

Maybe I'll play one of my 50's.... my Fortuna never did unlock her Lore slot... or maybe my Assault/Devices Blaster... or maybe my newish BS/Shield scrapper, or my old MA/Invuln scrapper... or maybe one of my lowbie Calamari... Argh! Can't... make... up... my.... mind!

Oh, and for the record, I too am not a big fan of the visual aspect of Ice Armor - it obfuscates my character too much, not to mention I'm not a big fan of running-around as a glorified snowman.

I almost made a new post saying almost the same thing, but found this one at the last moment.

I've been noticing the dwindling quantity of Common salvage. While the price certainly is eye-raising in many instances (I saw some Demonic Blood Samples selling for 5mil a pop), but just the availability of them. I've seen a few common pieces of salvage where there's barely 20 units for sale, yet there's hundreds of bids for it.

While there's both good and bad points to the salvage shortage, I am of the opinion that it's an issue that needs to be looked at closer. So far the shortage hasn't hurt me, but it has been a bit annoying needing just a single piece of salvage to build X enhancement for one of my newer toons, but having to either pay through the nose or waiting until I get it as a drop before being able to make said enhancement.

There's already checks in the game to prevent heroes or villains from crossing into the wrong zone, it should not be hard to add those checks into the base teleport system either. The easiest way to do so would have separate Hero and Villain teleporters, each that would check for any zone/alignment violations (or better yet, but possibly harder to code would be to have the beacon's attached to a teleporter determine the teleporter's "alignment").

In addition to this, it'd be really handy if teleporters could handle more than 2 beacons at a time.

It'd also be handy if the teleporters dropped players in a logical location, as opposed to some out-of-the-way location. Same could be said for the Oroboros portal.

A portal to Cimerora, Shadowshard//Firebase Zulu would be handy, but I don't agree with portals to Praetoria, at least not yet. The Portal to D's doesn't bother me at all - Zero's abilities can easily make that possible.

There's not a lot I would change with the current Incarnate system, but it's not to say I think it's perfect either. Specifically, I feel the Incarnate system has a lot of needless complexity - and I say this as a player that usually likes complexity. Here's my thoughts on it so-far:

• Tier 4 abilities across the board should be revamped. It makes little sense that Tier 4 requires that Tiers 1-3 should be repeated. This is especially true in the case of the newer abilities. Oftentimes building the first couple tiers is the easy part - the hard part comes from the end-of-trial lotto and hoping you get that Rare or VRare Component, or grinding trial after trial to get the Merits to eventually buy it. Wouldn't it just be easier to just increase the costs of the Tier 4 abilities instead? Same result, with less needless complexity.
  
  
• I would not have introduced another system of currency, nor even more salvage to confuse and confound players (more on Incarnate Salvage later). I'm not a big fan of needless new currencies added into a game (usually it's a sign of poor game design), but what bothers me more is:
  
  
• Pointless Currency, or in the case of the Incarnate system, Incarnate Salvage. What is the point of Incarnate Salvage? All it does is add an unnecessary level of complexity to the system. This is made even worse as the Incarnate Salvage really makes no sense what so ever. How would a Worn Spellbook aid my Tech Mastermind, or an Superconductive Membrane aid my Magic defender. If I had designed the Incarnate system, I would have distilled all costs to just simply use shards for the abilities. No Incarnate Salvage, no Merits

In closing, there's a lot that could be simplified with the Incarnate system without any major impact on the rest of the system.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid

What I would like to see is the trend of Booster sales. How many do they sell in the first day? What are sales in the first week? Then the first month, then the next 6 months?

Is there a point in the life of a booster that the sales diminish to a negligible amount? If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to offer an alternate method of unlocking said booster(s) without the need for money?

Doing so would serve many purposes. It would be good advertising. Furthermore, it's new "free" content would help retain subscribers, just like the "free" issues have retained subscribers.

ps: In response to somebody's earlier estimate on active subscribers; It's estimated that CoH has around 120k active subscriptions, possibly more since the last data I saw was pre-GR.

As I've said so many times in the past, I don't support the Boosters, for multiple reasons:

A) This is a subscription-based game. I don't support microtransactions in a subscription-based game, especially of core mechanics. Costuming and customization is a core mechanic. CoH has always used the vast amount of customization as a major selling point, and is the biggest aspect of the game that's kept me playing as long as I have.

B) Because, I feel I've been lied to on two different occasions. A long time ago (because Costume Customization is such a core aspect of the game) it was said they would never make purchase-only costume pieces. Then when they did start making the boosters, they said they would still make free costume options. Aside from a couple miscellaneous pieces, there's nothing new that's appeared. When I returned to the game recently after a 2-year hiatus, I was very disappointed in how few new costume pieces had been added into the game.

If the game was ever F2P, or if there were non-monetary ways of obtaining the boosters, I would not have a problem with them. One suggestion would be to have them pay-only for perhaps the first few months, then after that make them available through in-game methods.

Most of my characters are female as well, simply because of the costume options. It's *much* harder to realize costume concepts with men than it is for women.

For instance, I have a Nordic Broadsword Scrapper wearing chainmail. Because of the female-only Skirt options, it looks like a proper chainmail hauberk, but because men don't have any skirt options, the best I can pull-off is a chainmail shirt that just doesn't look as good.

I personally like the idea of having unlockable costuming options that don't require money to buy. I also had no problems with auras and capes being unlocked at certain levels. The first time I ran the "Cape" mission back all those years ago, I very much enjoyed the experience. Auras were not quite as spectacular, but still, it didn't bother me that I had to work for them. It gave me something *to* work towards.

I also liked the costume recipes that occasionally drop from mobs. I don't use many of them, but they're not too hard to get a hold of if I need a particular piece for a particular character or concept. I felt more could have been done with that system, TBH... but then they came-up with the idea of charging extra currency for costume options, and we haven't seen any significant free additions to our costume options since.

I hate booster packs, I have always felt they do not belong in a subscription-based game. I have no problems if I have to work long-term for something... it gives me something to work for. Perhaps the costs of the new costume pieces can be tweaked a bit, and yes have some solo-means of acquiring them.

If the devs decide to make this pack it's own booster pack, then I challenge the them to do the opposite: to make all existing booster packs obtainable with in-game means. I refuse to ever buy a Booster pack. Partly it's the cost - to buy all of the existing Boosters, you'd have to spend over $100 (US Currency). Mostly it's the simple principal of the matter of micro-transactions in a pay-to-play game. I quit for two years because of my feelings are that strong on the matter, and I wonder how long I'll play this time around as things in this regards have only gotten worse.

A lot of folks are agueing that having these costume options are difficult to obtain and will yield a culture of Haves and Have Nots? That culture is already here - in both Vet Rewards and Booster Packs - one tied with how long you've played the game, the other for how much you've paid on the game beyond the subscription price.

Merc/Traps MM here, with no stealth power (I used to have +Stealth in my teleport ability, but I specced out of TP not long ago, and haven't replaced that +Stealth IO yet).

The first few Lambdas I did with my MM was with a team that actually took it's time and squashed everything in our path. We stayed together, defeated many enemies, got a lot of iXP, and easily accomplished the objectives.

However, every run after that I was always left in the dust by people that knew the maps better than me, or had a character more suitable to hit-and-run tactics. I would try to keep-up with the team, but invariably it worked best if I simply just crawled-along on my own. It wouldn't have been as bad if I could ever have gotten Lore up to T3 (and thus the +1 incarnate shift), but I've only gotten 2 Rares ever with this toon (one of which came from a MoBAF run).

I also found the acid run would usually go better than the crate run. Things were a little more open, so I could maneuver a little easier.

I finally did get Destiny unlocked, and I don't plan to ever run another Lambda with my MM. BAF's on the other hand, my MM absolutely dominates on, so I'm not *too* bitter about how rough Lambdas were.

Now if I can just get those damn Rares.

There's already been some speculation that Positron and Numina were hooking-up. It would seem there's some substance to those speculations.

Otherwise, this should be fun. I wonder if my new little Praetorian Resistance Fighter will be in good-enough fighting shape by then to help give Cole's forces a whipping

Yep, I've just run into the same but, and I've had to file a petition to proceed. Unfortunately, I had to auto-complete another bugged mission from Luke Larson yesterday.

Hopefully I'll be able to proceed when I get home from work tomorrow.