Megajoule

Capes at 20, in fact, is literally from those days - Issue 2.
These days, you get EATs at 20.

I would like Global Unlocks.
That is all.

Absolutely. I offer one of my characters, the Watchmaker, as an example. He's your classic mutant psychic, a telepath and telekinetic.

"I want a new model added to the game just for me, but I'm willing to compromise if the Devs will change model scaling just for me."

That's a bit like saying I want [supermodel] but will "settle" for [actor].

I'm not at all a PvPer either. I'm just pointing out what I've been told on several occasions when I've had to swallow nerfs to PvE gameplay that were mostly or entirely the result of PvP issues. (I remember when Phase Shift was a power worth taking, for example... years and years ago.)

The first issue that comes to mind is that being that small would have consequences for targeting in PvP. (As if anyone PvPs in this game anymore.) So, probably not.

People don't do sewers because the Atlas/Galaxy content sucks. They do it because they don't care about that content, and just want fast fast levels, without any running to and from contacts and mission doors. Fast fast grind grind.

Ditto AE farming. People don't AE farm because everything except the one mission that they do (over and over) sucks; they do it because they don't care about anything but fast fast levels.

You will never come up with content cool enough to make these people do it, because they don't care about content. At all.

I only buy Hasten on characters who have it as part of their concept. That makes two so far (one of whom is a classic speedster), out of over a dozen.

As a disappointed author and player, I really don't think you want the same kind of treatment that the Devs gave AE.
In fact, it could be argued that's pretty much what bases have right now.

With regards to existing Dev content, each of my characters has followed different paths through it. I pick my arcs carefully and make sure to do some and avoid others, depending on the character. (Naturally, I have to explain or ignore why Dr. Vahzilok or the Tsoo are at it again, but that sort of thing comes with a static world.) Sometimes my characters will have reactions to the scripted events which go beyond what's assumed in the briefing and debriefing text. Some parts, I ignore completely because I think they're poorly written and/or stupid (e.g., the Origin of Power arc, the canon justification for Architect Entertainment, etc). And there are some things that I've written into their stories that aren't and can't be supported by the game engine, like keeping the whole city Vahzilok-free for just one day, or retiring to become a resistance fighter in another dimension.

Any new content added to the game, if it's to be taken seriously and integrated into characters' stories, is going to have to meet a very high standard. It has to cover a wide range of choices and respect them all. It also has to be "epic", something which no two people seem to be able to agree on. In all honesty, I don't know if the current writing team is capable of managing this; and so, rather than do it badly and forcing me to ignore and/or rewrite it for my characters, I'd rather they just leave it up to us and not try.

If I'm given four choices and none of them happen to fit my character, what can I do? Either I don't do the arc or I ignore what's there and substitute my own choice. Either way, the story content "you" put in might as well not exist.

As an aside, most of my characters are going to be sitting out the new endgame entirely because they aren't archetypical embodiments of some concept or whatever. All of them are "super" in some way, but only a few (out of over a dozen) have the potential to take that next step beyond.

Here's the thing:
Look at everyone who's upset that if they want to play the Heroic Epic Archetype, they have to play them by the Official Kheldian Backstory, or get tarted at by others for "doing it wrong."
Multiply that by everyone who wants to use the new Incarnate system, ever.

Sure, the non-roleplayers won't care. But they wouldn't care about your "story paths" suggestion, either. So for purposes of this discussion, they don't exist.
That leaves all the people who do care about story... and who probably want to tell their own, about their character, not have you or the Devs or anyone else dictate it to them. You cannot possibly satisfy all of them, and so I strongly advise you not to even try.

Slytherin.

Upward of 20, 30 people of various ATs - everyone that was in Skyway at the time. The lifebar didn't budge.

We didn't have IOs yet. That should provide both a timeframe and possibly an explanation.

I was particularly amused by the assertion that because the EU deregulated their broadband industry early, The Invisible Hand of the Market would surely come down and make it so much more efficient (rather than, say, creating a squalid mess of companies that don't have to follow any rules or provide any minimum level of service for whatever they feel like charging you).

I need enough lore up front so that I can create characters that expand on/derive from it, without fearing that they're later going to be contradicted.

I have a pretty specific example for this one. Back in '04, when the game went live, the only information we had on the Clockwork and the Clockwork King himself was the text in a couple of 10-20 arcs and the second TF (plus, as of Issue 1, one mission in the 40-45 bracket). There was no villain group article for them, no background except what was in game, and of course all of the Faultline stuff was years away. I and at least one other player made some guesses and assumptions and off we went.

In 2006, someone finally gets around to writing that article - and among other things, we find out that the canon proto-CK was basically a punk kid rather than an older man. Oops. Cr*p. Gosh, it would have been nice to know this two years ago. What now?

I recently soloed EB Recluse on a brute of mine. Since the whole point of that arc is to show that you are capable of defying and defeating Recluse yourself, mano a mano, teaming would have cheapened it for me.

(I ended up almost having to anyway, because Recluse summons a potentially infinite number of bosses as adds if the fight goes long enough. Which is sort of justifiable, in the sense that "commanding the legions of Arachnos" is part of his resources, but... well, put it this way, I was THIS close to asking some folks to come along just to keep the adds off me so I could have my one-on-one showdown.)

I would never try to solo an AV or GM, and I vaguely don't think it should be possible, but I'm not going to force that opinion on others. (Unlike some of the ones I have.)

I actually have a somewhat different problem with GMs, in that they're set up so that they simply can't be defeated by any amount of force if you don't have a debuffer on the team. I still remember an incident shortly after GMs were buffed, because the Devs wanted to make defeating them a "zone event" - we had an entire zone's worth of players beating on Babbage, just like they wanted, and it didn't matter - his health bar didn't even flicker for ten minutes. When I finally gave up and swapped to my Rad, he went down within two. "All or nothing," "bring a (X) or you just can't do it" is bad game design, IMO.

After reading the followup post:

Just wait until after Halloween, then people will be doing stuff that isn't trick-or-treating again. Problem solved.

Dark/Pistols, with Flight (so far). Magic origin.

(actually, I should have said alpha. If you look at the first dual pistols footage, in Praetoria, there are sometimes doves. They took those out, though. )