McNum

You're a couple of pages late with that prediction.

As I see it, this IO is two things: A pretty neat quirky IO, and a bullying tool.

The former, I have no issue with, there are several IOs that do some odd things. Some are good, some are... eh. It's the second part I worry about. There's sort of an uneasy truce between people who are good at knockback and melee types where everything has to be herded up into a tiny little ball of death. This IO does not help keep this peaceful, at all, as I hope this thread is beginning to show.

This IS a problem, and one that really needs to be addressed before this IO makes it to Live. Otherwise, things risk getting ugly. This genie cannot easily be put back in the bottle. In fact, now that we know this tech exists, it may already be too late.

So before this IO goes Live, the devs really should ask themselves this: "Are we okay with giving in-game bullies another way to harass other players?" Because that is what this IO is.

At the expense of others? No, never.

No, you're not. *points to wall of text above*

EDIT: Yeah, I might be a little too harsh on it, but this is exactly what I do NOT want to happen to the game.

Knockback is a tool, one that has been nerfed repeatedly in the last year or so. Every time it becomes useful in some way, it gets nerfed. You notice that lava doesn't do damage to anyone anymore? That's because knockback became useful, even somewhat powerful. Can't have that. So bye-bye verisimilitude, lava is now harmless.

And now this abomination of an IO appears. If I had the Inf, I'd buy every single one that came on the market and destroy it. The fewer of these that exists, the better. It unbalances several powers that were dependent on their knockback to be allowed to be that much more awesome, like Tornado and several AoE attacks.

But the worst part is, if this IO becomes even slightly common, it becomes a "requirement". Not officially, of course, but as you said, why not slot it in Crane Kick (except for losing the awesome "Kick badguy off high building" finishing move)? It's the "optimal" strategy. And that is terrible. Especially if it becomes a widespread idea. There's already too much unjustified stigma against knockback, this will not help that, at all. It will only make that problem worse. Much worse.

What we need is MORE knockback. Useful knockback, though, none of this "chance to" stuff. And stuff to knock enemies into, other than the Scrapper. We need knockback, a standout feature of CoH, to be awesome. The ability to affect Archvillains would be a nice place to start. Knockback is the only status in the game where a mag 10,000 protection exists. Why is that? It's not like there's anything dangerous left to knock anything into. That's nerfed already.

Frankly, I'm sorely disappointed that this IO even made it out of concept stage. It's such a bad idea, it should have been rejected outright. So many balance issues coming up...

And the worst possible thing? That this means that knockback will never get looked at properly, and turned into what it could have been. Knockback is a superheroic staple. It should have been front and center from the start.

The solution to the knockback "problem" is not to be able to switch knnockback off, it's to make knockback useful and desirable in several situations.

This is already one set too many.

I wish this set didn't exist at all. If I'm EVER asked to have this set one any of my characters by someone who thinks knockback is the devil, I'm giving serious consideration to cancelling right then and there.

This is a mistake and will only cause more social friction in the game.

It's the obvious choice for a Red Riding Hood type character. Possibly with Pain Domination for a secondary. She's followed around by wolves and lions, and has the power to make your pain go away... or cause a worse pain.

And yes, the Dire Wolf should be named Granny.

A proper Alpha Male would have asserted his superiority without invoking death by robot army. You know, posturing, talking big, belittling the poor chaotic Primals. You know, doing the whole evil dictator thing right.

To reach "DESTROY THEM ALL!" you have to go way beyond Alpha Male to extreme paranoia. Which, granted, when you have giant monsters trying to eat everyone, a resistance movement that try to destabilize the only thing keeping the monsters out, and a firm belief that the only one powerful enough to rule everything is yourself. Really, Cole's downfall is he believes himself a benign dictator, which makes him dangerously unstable. Anyone in power can do scary things "for the greater good".

The proper response, as far as I can see, would have been to recruit help. Tyrant vs. Hamidon was a draw. Get Statesman in for a 2-on-1 and beat up Hamidon. And, no, kidnapping him to siphon his power is not what I meant. The Power of Zeus doubled... But why stop at double? There are several Coles, although most of them evil, in the multiverse. Get enough and stomp Hamidon.

Actually, it's kind of worrying in itself. Name one GOOD Cole apart from Statesman. Statesman could rightly have been a bit paranoid himself about that...

I wouldn't reject one if offered, but I'm more in the pony camp than the teddy bear camp for my weekly dose of adorable.

Oh, sure, place the giant statue of the guy who was an incarnate of Zeus in the middle of Prometheus Park. That won't make Prometheus absolutely furious in any way whatsoever. Talk about a mythological error in judgement there. They could replace that statue with one of Prometheus, though. Just run it past the big blue guy first.

As for where to put a Statesman Memorial, what about Independence Port? It's where he was hanging out for most of the time in the game, anyway.

A Mecha is what you build when you want to show just how vastly superior your technology is to the opponent's. Simply to tell them that, yes, we did just tear up your conventional military with a giant humanoid target of a robot, and you were powerless to stop us. It's a scare tactic.

Of course, what we get in CoH is powered armor in the shape of Mecha. Now human-sized humanoid robots is a whole other thing. That could actually be useful in a conventional army. More lifting strength, more carrying capacity, ability to carry heavy weapons easily, and still be able to go anywhere a human could, and even drive vehicles. And be painted hotrod red. To draw fire from the camo-wearing normal soldiers.

Beam/Rad does sound like it could be fun, and I don't have a decent Corruptor.

Jehuty might disagree. Lots of firepower on that one. It also does melee, of course, but it's mainly a ranged platform.
Ooh, I never did have a Radiation anything that got anywhere. If I make it into a support-Mecha type, you know, the one clearing a path for the super prototype with a sword, it could work... It's certainly flashy enough.

I'll need to see the pieces and powers all together, of course.

Maybe I should split up the ideas, since Retro Sci-Fi will come at some point. Now that's something that warrants a a zappy gun.