Samuel_Tow

Holsters are one big thing, yes, but just general upper leg details would be groovy. Armour pads, holsters, belts and straps, extra pockets... There are quite a few things that could be there.

You mentioned knee pads, and I have to agree with that. The one set of boots we have with sin guards - Justice (or is that two with Sinister?) - make a LOT more looks possible than any of the other boots ever could. Jay seems to have noticed this, as well, as newer boots tend to have at least a little knee detain over just the simple flat circle that divides the lower leg from the upper leg.

Lower leg details would also be really cool, though perhaps only applicable to base boot models like Smooth and Flat. For instance, I see Fins and Spikes as things that would be more appropriate to a detail category, not as separate boot models. As well, things like metal plates, higher shin guards, spikes in other directions or even those pointy star things cowboys wear on their boots to prod their horses as they ride

The fact of the matter is that, while you can have a plate over a bare chest, you can't have plates over bare legs, and that bugs me.

Generally, though, it just seems to me that people don't pay much attention to what they do for the lower body, and even less attention into how it ties with the upper body or what the character looks like as a whole. Obviously not everyone does that, as evidenced by the many, many good designs we have in this game, but as surprisingly high number of people spend all their time on the chest, then slap together a legs combo at the end.

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Maybe this thread should be re-titled: "I'm a Leg Man."

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Possibly, but it's applicable to both men and women. In fact, by far the biggest thing that can turn me off a character is when it seems their pelvis is two feet tall. It REALLY distorts the frame.

On slow days at work - slow days like today - I like to pass the time by going around the 'net and collecting ideas about costumes for my current and future characters. There is a place that I cannot discuss that has a large collection of super hero and quasi-super-hero costumes, all there neatly aligned for my viewing pleasure... Or displeasure, as the case may be. They are all in waist-up mugshots, with an option to display the character full-size. At first I was shocked how a character who looked so good waist-up looks like total crap overall, but over time I began to notice a pattern.

See, I thought people at large just sucked at making costumes. It seems, however, that for the most part they are very GOOD at making half of a costume - the upper half. More than once I've seen a waist-up mugshot and been very impressed. Almost everybody, however, seems to suck at making the same costume's bottom half - the legs. Why I don't know. Maybe I have so mutated, oddball idea of what lower body aesthetic should be, but it has been EXCEEDINGLY rare that I've seen a costume good both above and below the waist. In fact, look at our very own game and how little attention it pays on our lower bodies. Pick just about any upper body type and you get over half a dozen sections: shoulders, chest, chest detail, gloves, belt, jacket, sleeves, etc. Pick almost any lower body type, however, and marvel at the all of TWO sections - upper and lower legs. No ornaments, no details... Not even the BELT is there. Our upper body has holsters and straps and metal plates and so forth, but our lower body can only ever have... Well, boots and one other thing. Tights, panties, pants, armour - the selection of ONE OTHER THING isn't too small, but it doesn't diminish the fact that it's... Well, only one other thing.

I've really had my fill of this, looking at other people's work. For instance, I'd see a woman in a very cool suit of armour with an open-face helmet. Then I'd look at the character full-height and she's wearing a skirt with fishnet stockings over bare legs and strappy high-heel shoes. Or the big, hulking, tank-top-wearing muscleman will inexplicably have bare cloven feet and a single metal leg for no reason. I guess in the spirit of Mighty Mouse's Cow, most people view super heroes as 90% chest, 5% head, 5% legs, but this isn't even related to comic books, but over-exaggerates children's cartoons.

I've worked with characters I wanted to make giant in the past. I asked around and almost everybody suggested I make the legs very short to make the character look stubby and chunky. I went the opposite way, however, giving a heavy-built, tall character longer legs because that made him look taller still, as if towering over characters who were actually taller than him. I've asked and ask, repeatedly and many times, for the addition of at least one pair of boots that was truly big, as opposed to just having bigger calves. At some point, probably for his own reasons, Jay gave us the Enforcer set, granting us the ONLY boots that were truly big in the right places, but they remain the only ones.

The point, I suppose, is that it seems people design their characters from the head down to the waist, and then throw in some legs because... Well, the character has to have something to walk with. It creates a sense of discontinuity between upper and lower body so very often, ruining a character who would have looked perfect if his or her legs were never shown. And it bugs me, because I've been forced to give so many characters I thought I liked just one or two muscle men, when I wanted to give them four or five...

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Good way to look at it. In all honesty, I'm not even that personally invested in getting color customization for powers. Sure, I would use it if available but it just isn't something that will drive me conceptually. I'm sure that if it hits it will be nice for a player with the name Purple Reign to actually have his power effects be purple in color but I generally avoid color-oriented naming schemes because they are limited (at present) to be represented in costumes and the pre-existing colors of powers only.

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Given that this is the only unrealistically realistic addition we can hope for, I would be beyond ecstatic if we got this. The first thing I'd do is go change my Energy/Energy Blaster to blue Energy Melee, and the second thing I'd do is change my Fire/Fire Brute to rancid green fire to match his eyes. Then I'm going to start thinking and see what else I can change. ANY change which allows me to instantly upgrade existing characters in this profound a way scores major points in my book, and that'll all come into play when eventually. Seriously, there are a few things that I believe are possible which could get me subscribe for life (even though that's not possible). First and foremost is more masculine women, and second in the list is this.

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The kind of customization I would be jazzed about is more like firing-point choices (hands, eyes, chest, mouth, etc.) and the ability to use a focus item (gun, staff, wand, etc.) to create your power effects. I could see the former possibly happening in the life of this game but the latter would introduce weapon redraw issues into powersets that don't currently have them. With that in mind, I don't think we'll ever see the kind of power customization I would want in City of Heroes.

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This, obviously, would be the holy grail of customization. Add that and we can just take all other games off the market for all they'll matter There are a couple of things I'm worried about with this, however. For one, most games I've seen do this recycle. Like, a LOT. Don't matter if you're shooting a bow, a rifle or a crossbow, you shoot much the same way, and most stuff you shoot out of it is shot with the same animation. BABs' take on City of Heroes has always been to have good, sharp, unique animations as much as possible to make each attack visibly distinct. Such a thing, then, would either require great uniformity, or an ASSLOAD of work.

For another, the developers have always expressed a preference in investing their animation resources into making NEW powersets, rather than reworking or adding to the old ones. Granted, that's a statement from when there were 15 people working on the game. Such a feat would require not only redirecting efforts onto old powersets, but no less than tripling the animations for at the very least each buff, blast and control powerset - one for bare hands, one for staff, ring, wand, etc., and one for pistol. At least. Maybe even one for a rifle, quadrupling the number. Given how fickle the animation system is, and BABs has commented to this effect, it's quite possible that keeping them all in check and working properly might prove to be a nightmare.

'Course, we're all hoping for an engine upgrade that won't happen, but if it did, that's the one thing I'd like to see come with it

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I guess it would be possible for all of the attacks in question to simply check for the Dual Pistols Fire/Cold Mode 1/2. They'd just need an extra portion of damage on them that only activates whenever that toggle is up. The problem with this is that it makes the toggle itself simply activate the capability but the power itself actually modifies the damage. Slotting the toggle itself wouldn't really do anything to increase the potency of the round (which I think is part of what's being asked), especially if there are any debuff type rounds (Freezing rounds).

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Yikes! Completely overlooked that. Yes, since this toggle would activate effects written into the powers, it wouldn't be able to AFFECT the... Effects in any way other than activating them. There really isn't much to slot a toggle that doesn't have any power stats for. Endurance, possibly, or maybe recharge, but for something like this to truly be balanced well, it would have to have either instant or short recharge and a low cost. Certainly nothing on the level of a damage aura.

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I guess one way to work around this is to make the actual +dam portion small enough to be nice but not incredibly powerful. There's no reason why the additional damage has to specifically be on par with another attack. It could simply be 5-10% extra damage. Another option might be to create a pseudo crit capability that only activates whenever the toggle is on. (5% chance for another however much damage If Dual Pistols Mode 1/2 is on). That's just an issue of pulling the numbers down a bit in order to keep it balanced. It's nowhere near the problem of Super Strength with Rage, which, thanks to +dam, requires that every power except Knockout Blow be pathetic to account for the huge +dam Rage provides.

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In order:

Making the damage "small enough" is what I'm afraid of. Blasters have enough toggles to run as it is, at least some powersets, so saddling them with another one from their primary with a "small enough" damage boost could potentially do more harm than good. Specifically, I'm worried that this will end up replacing Aim, because you can't have Aim and two toggles in an attack set, because that would only give you 6 other attacks. I just don't see that happening, which means we'd lose Aim - a 62.5% damage buff, and I don't believe a small constant damage buff would make up the difference. I've seen how many worlds apart Archery/Devices and AR/Devices are all thanks to Aim, so it makes a difference.

A critical hit is an interesting idea, but even at double the base damage, it's still a relatively minor contribution to the overall raw damage, and a more minor one still to actual damage delivered to enemies as its uncontrollable nature means it tends to activate on almost-dead minions and triple overkill them, yet doesn't happen against hard targets most of the time. A 5% chance for double damage on a Blaster damage mod with a big Build Up attack would be GREAT! Except Blasters don't have heavy-hitters like Scrappers do, which is where the damage matters the most. Some Blasters have ~2.2 scale damage short-ranged blasts (Power Burst, Blaze, Bitter Ice Blast, Blazing Arrow), but even those fall shy of Scrapper big hitters which are in the neighbourhood of ~2.6 scale damage, only shy below Snipe damage. And we've already said this will replace Dual Handguns' Snipe to begin with, leaving the set with fewer still heavy hitters.

All that is to say, I'm not sure running a toggle that costs endurance is worth that.

On the subject of Super Strength - it's not Rage that causes other powers to be pathetic. As a matter of fact, they're not. They're standard 0.64 minor, 1.0 moderate and 1.64 heavy, the same as Blaster starting blasts, in fact. The reason they seem pathetic in comparison with Knockout Blow is because that single power is vastly overpowered with a damage mod of 3.54, that's 50% more than a Blaster Snipe. Because both Tankers and Brutes, the only people with access to Super Strength, have low damage mods - 0.8 and 0.75 respectively - most Super Strength powers seem weak and the one overpowered one very strong. But that's not the powers being weak, it's the outlier being too strong. All Tanker sets that aren't copies of Broadsword are like this, if you look into it. Energy Melee used to have Barrage, Energy Punch and Bone Smasher at 0.64, 1.0 and 1.64, respectively, though Barrage is a lot stronger now. However, Total Focus is at 3.54 and Energy Transfer at 4.5, together stronger than all the rest of the set put together. Hell, just Energy Transfer used to do more than Energy Punch, Barrage, Bone Smasher and Whirling Hands put together, and because it would usually go with Build Up, the difference was even more pronounced. Something like Battle Axe, on the other hand, is balanced more consistently, with the lower powers doing good damage - Beheader starts at 1.0, I think - and higher level powers not doing stupid amounts, capping with Cleave at 2.76, I believe.

Blaster blasts are already balanced on the low side of scale damage. Most Blaster sets have a 1.0 and 1.64 damage attacks, a couple of ~0.9 area effect attacks and an assortment of other odds and ends. Some have a ~2.2 scale damage 40 foot blast, most have a ~2.7 scale damage snipe and most have some sort of control. There really isn't much room to reduce Blaster damage below that and still make them viable at what they do. In fact, they specifically raised Blaster damage by 12.5% with the Defiance changes to save them from being pathetic. Since the proposed Dual Handguns will lack a Snipe, that puts it even lower, which frankly scares me.

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My preference for Dual Pistols has always been to make it the ranged Dual Blades: combo attacks for all the special effects. The effects could be all over the place, they could even be similar (1 control, 1 debuff, 1 buff, 1 damage), or they could be a bit more specialized (4 additional extra types of damage). I just think it works well for concept and playability.

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I can't say I'm a fan of combos for Blasters. Combos, by their very nature, rely on a "stand and fight" type of approach, with effects staggered until the end of the combo, giving enemies the precious few seconds they need to hold, sap or outright kill you. For a Scrapper, that works out anyway, because Scrappers are built to stand and fight. Blasters, however, are not, and shouldering them with such a playstyle would do the character a great disservice. The strongest, most effective Blasters are those who can deliver a lot of effect up-front before enemies have much of a chance to retaliate, taking out or incapacitating the biggest dangers. That's one of the reasons why Fire/Fire, despite having little control, can be so effective when done right and why an AR/Dev can use Trip Mine + Full Auto to essentially auto-kill a full spawn.

To my eyes, Blasters play a lot like Stalkers - put all your eggs in one basket, buff up as much as you can, then take out the biggest threat before the battle even starts. This requires strong self-buffs for damage and big attacks that can deliver them. Dual Blades, for all the respect I have for its innovation, plays exactly the OPPOSITE way. You start out with your weakest attacks and without your buffs, then build up from there, finally culminating into something relatively big when the enemies have already taken multiple shots at you. What's more, Blasters lacking the big hitters that Scrappers do (even Sweeping Strike is 2.0 and does an additional 1.0 in DoT from Attack Vitals), that would be seriously problematic.

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I asked him in a PM if he ever thought Power Customization would actually happen in this game and he didn't respond. I even said I would keep it between us!

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Last time I kept asking a question like that (in public) and the development team kept dropping into threads and answering everything BUT that question, was back when Dual Blades were being introduced. I kept asking if adding customization to them wouldn't be possible, as it would appease the masses of "No More Swords!" people, but got no response. A month later, we got weapon customization

That said, while I REALLY REALLY want powerset customization, I'm not going to assume we're getting it, like, ever, until we actually get it.

What have I done!

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I usually don't run Malta missions, but I ran three or four recently with my Brute, and I came across a total of two Sappers.

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I'm not sure when that happened, but yes, something changed a LOOONG time ago. Say, a couple of years ago, there used to be a Sapper in every spawn, it seemed. Getting my Stone Brute to 50 in I7, that was quite literally the case. Getting a Blaster to 50 a couple of months ago, however, saw barely a Sapper per mission.

Which is all for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

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When I1 rolled out, Sappers were a minion just like any other Malta NPC. That meant any number could show up in a spawn. It was not unusual to get 3 Sappers in a spawn if you soloed. Imagine getting 6+ Sappers in a spawn when running with a large team.

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Unfortunately, I didn't have a character into his 40s until I3, so I only heard about this change, but even with the change to only one per spawn, there seemed to be one in every spawn you faced. I got a hero to 50 and spent the next couple of years getting villains to 50 and playing lowbies, so I missed whatever change occurred. However, looking at Malta now, Sappers almost never spawn. You'd see maybe a couple per mid-sized mission, if that.

I suspect this is the result of the spawn changes which returned lieutenants to solo spawns and got rid of the "two white minions standing side by side punching their fists" bugged spawns that kept cropping up even on high-number difficulties (Levels 2 and 4), which should have been spawning between three and five. As I believe Castle put it, everything introduced after Launch had been introduced with bugged spawns. That means everything in CoV that wasn't carried over from CoH, as well as Malta, the Carnival of Shadows, the Soldiers of Rularuu and so forth. For what it's worth, I was seeing it in high-level CoT spawns, as well. If you look carefully, you can still find missions in CoV bugged with the old spawns. Custom maps from more rarely done contacts tend to suffer the most. Many of Scirocco's missions tended to have this.

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I don't think I've ever said anything is "hard" to do or even intentionally implied it.

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*cough*powercustomization*cough*

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I've never said it was "hard" to do. It said it would be massively time-consuming.
Not even remotely the same thing.

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I have to side with the big man with the metal gloves on this one. As something of a personal ultimate dream of mine, I've been following official commentary on Power Customization, and that's pretty much what BABs has said in the past. Technologically, the solution isn't very difficult. Powers currently draw off static effects files and use sprite textures draw in colour. That's why Dark Melee can be black AND not transparent. Changing those isn't as much about reinventing the wheel as it is about digging through all the files and reworking them by hand, redoing coloured textures in monochrome and at the same time making sure not to mess up how powers look in the process. I believe he mentioned it was at least two Issues' worth of work.

But then, BABs, now that you have a minion or two... Maybe?

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Toggles can only affect character wide attributes, not power specific attributes. In fact, afaik, they can't do anything to interact with power specific attributes. Procs are all power specific attributes.

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Toggles can also set character modes, as most heavily evidenced by Kheldian transformations. These modes can then enable or disable powers and even activate specific, mode-dependent secondary effects. I looked at the power set-up of Dual Blades in Red Toamx's City of Data a while back, and if I remember correctly, each combo attack landed shifts the character into a different state, with each next attack in the combo having one mode-dependent stat and each returning to normal mode.

Theoretically speaking, these toggles could be set to put the player in specific modes that powerset powers would then be able to have specific additional secondary effects activated by them.

It's quite possible, but I'm not a fan of the idea. The notion of ammunition is completely absent from this game, as is the notion of switching rounds. Gunslingers don't reload each time they need to fire a Cryo Round or an Incendiary Round. They don't even spin their revolver drum. They just point and shoot. Assault Rifle users don't reload to switch from low calibre rounds to deer slugs to scatter buckshots to high-calibre sniper rounds, even though they all come from the same barrel.

I'm also not a fan of toggle damage or effects buffs. If it's a toggle, it has to be balanced on the low side, because it will provide a consistent performance increase. We end up with something like Targeting Drone, which, while good in itself, isn't nearly powerful enough to actually replace slotting, and as such ends up as only a boost. Such a damage buff toggle would do precious little, and even if it increased a Blaster's damage over time, it will lack the insta-punch that a traditional Aim + Build Up combo carries. I'm REALLY not looking forward to getting another Assault Rifle, but for an entirely different reason - I don't want a set that's so mired in utility, theme and over-specialization that it becomes badly ineffective in many very common situations.

There's also the distinction to be made of buff vs. base damage increase. Dual Blades' combos are an excellent example - where just adding a bit of damage buff goes into the same pool as enhancements, inspirations and other people's buffs, adding base damage actually adds this damage, times whatever the buff is. Because Dual Blades' damage-dealing combos - Sweep and Attack Vitals - are actually power effects and not buffs, they benefit from damage slotting and damage buffs, making the additional punch of the combo that much more powerful. A Blaster with the potential for close to doubling his base damage numbers, then, is going to suffer BAD from being overbalanced. Either regular damage will SUCK to allow the additional damage to be meaningful yet not overpowered, or the additional damage will suck, allowing the Blaster to perform but not break the game. Given that this will be a toggle, the balancing point is likely to be very low, adding to the problem.

Personally, I'd rather the set were designed for quick, hard, deadly strikes, rather than for prolonged tactical battle. Both in reality and in fiction, handguns are not tactical weapons suitable for heated firefights. Ignoring the realism of them largely being reserved as side arms, when the rule of cool badasses brandish their guns akimbo, they get done fast, one way or the other. For that reason, I'd rather this were a badass set about hitting hard and hitting fast, rather than relying on whatever benefit a continuous toggle could provide.

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I believe they looked at it for earth or ice at one point, but yeah, mostly plant. Fire will run across something similar with hot feet.

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Four years ago, a Fire Controller was complaining about a "Target in air" bug on... What was that AoE stun power in Fire Control? He was showing me a veritable hold with that and Fire Cages, but complained it didn't always work

That said, you mean the target has to be on the ground for the power to be effective? Thematically, I can agree, but... Why, they, does Tremor activate on targets in the air? I mean it's a power that causes the ground to shake, how am I doing that to a flying Goldbricker 10 feet up into clear airspace? and just how am I sending a crack in the ground up into the air?

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he is the eb that you have to fight at the end of black scorpions first arc that gives you your patron power villian side.

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Right. Been meaning to try Black Scorpion for the past three years. Well, that answers that.

You know what should really happen? The game should drop its subscription down to $10 a month. That way we could all spend $5 a month more on gambling.

What are you people talking about? Who is this Dr. Quat-whatever and where is he faced?

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I usually don't run Malta missions, but I ran three or four recently with my Brute, and I came across a total of two Sappers.

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I'm not sure when that happened, but yes, something changed a LOOONG time ago. Say, a couple of years ago, there used to be a Sapper in every spawn, it seemed. Getting my Stone Brute to 50 in I7, that was quite literally the case. Getting a Blaster to 50 a couple of months ago, however, saw barely a Sapper per mission.

Which is all for the best, as far as I'm concerned.

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How are you even comparing Lightning Clap and OG? They're not even remotely close to being related to one another for comparison's sake.


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The are both stun effects.

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Then you may as well compare Resist Physical Damage to Unstoppable. Or even Power Push to Power Burst, because they both do damage.

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Tier has nothing to do with a power's importance or potency.

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It has to do with when you get the powers, and obviously, you don't want to get the good powers first. That's why fire imps are last on a fire controller. Saying there isn't a relation between when you get a power and how strong a power is is crazy.

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You're under a misconception that, say, "more damage" means better, when in fact powers are balanced such that higher damage powers have recharge and cast such that their damage over time is WORSE than the first attack you get at level 1. Because the cost of most powers is balanced at around 0.192 scale damage per endurance point, they tend to also cost less as they're used less often.

The same is true of control and support powers, with AoE control coming with further limiters on native accuracy and recharge. Higher level powers aren't "better" than lower-level powers. As a matter of fact, they're typically worse over time, but offer the tradeoff of front-loaded effect which our system of quick combat benefits from in a lot of cases. But a power that comes later isn't always "better" than the powers that came before. If that were true, then Blazing Bolt would have to be many times better than Sniper Blast because the former comes at level 26 and the latter at level 8. Or you could argue that Fast Healing is better than... Fast Healing, because Willpower's Fast Healing comes at level 4, yet Regeneration's Fast Healing comes at level one. Or that Regeneration Quick Recovery which comes at level 4 is better than Willpower Quick Recovery which comes at level 20, even though the powers are identical copies of each other. Or you can look at Head Splitter vs. Cleave - for all intents and purposes identical powers, yet the one that does slightly more damage - Cleave - comes at 26 while the one that does slightly less - Head Splitter - comes at 32.

That's no a good way to compare powers given how many sets are pretty much jumbled copies of each other.

P.S. Blasted network connection causing me to post this four hours after I typed it.

I know it's pointless, but I have to comment:

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Brute:
Electrical Melee: Lightning Clap -> Dark Armor: Oppressive Gloom
Lightning Clap is tier 8, deals damage, and has a long recharge
Opressive Gloom is tier 8, a stun toggle, but deals damage to the user.
These are balanced.

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Not even close. Lightning Clap may stun, but it also scatters, has below average native accuracy (.8 to Oppressive Gloom's 1.0), has a very limited duration with a rather high cost and doesn't really cover all that well. Oppressive Gloom is a toggle without a cost that does only token damage per tick in a set with a massive self heal, is constantly on, so you can keep minions perma-stunned, and hits at base 1.0 native accuracy. About the only thing it can't do is stun lieutenants, but at THAT cost and THAT power, if it could it would be a game-breaker.

Look at Hand Clap vs. Fault if you want more apparent discrepancy.

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Blaster:
Archery: Stunning Shot -> Energy Manipulation: Stun
Stunning Shot is a ranged, so it's tier 8, Stun is melee and forces a blaster in close, so it's tier 6. Both do the same thing, and it's balanced.

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Not quite. Stunning shot has a native accuracy of 1.155 native accuracy, which is SIGNIFICANT in hitting more stuff, and also has SERIOUS range. Stun may have the same duration, but it it is melee ranged and nowhere near as safe. What's more, Stun is part of Energy Manipulations primary strength - Disorient effects. Together with Total Focus, you can stun a boss for a LONG time.

If you want a more accurate comparison, go with Tazer and Beanbag, and you're still going to be met with the same effect - the longer-ranged one is vastly more useful than the closer-ranged one in most situations.

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Many blaster primaries: Aim -> Devices: Targeting Drone
Aim is the same across most blaster primaries, either tier 4, 5, or 6 and does the same in each set. 37.5% to hit base and 62.5% damage bonus.
Targetting Drone is tier 4, and inceases To hit by 13.875%. It also increases perception and resistance to debuff and it's a toggle.
I have a fire/dev blaster, and the damage increase on Aim is a huge bonus, and because Targetting Drone offers less ACC and no damage buff and is a toggle, I feel it's balanced.

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That's the worst comparison I've ever seen. Targeting Drone is good for what it does, but it doesn't even BEGIN to compare to Aim. Aim has a 62.5% damage buff, which you can't get anywhere near with Targeting Drone even if you use Sniper Rifle. What's more, Targeting Drone's to-hit buff isn't all that much, even slotted. Certainly not enough to replace even an accuracy SO. Aim's buff even unenhanced can punch through just about everything short of Moment of Glory.

What's more, Targeting Drone replaces Build Up and damages the Aim + Build Up + death from above combo that most Blasters can level armies with. They're not balanced against each other. They're not even comparable in the slightest. That's like discussing the merits of Nova vs. Head Splitter.

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Scrappers:
Dark Melee: Dark Consumption -> Fiery Aura: Consume
Dark Consumption is tier 7 and consume is tier 6. The recharge is the same, and consume deals damage. Again, These powers do the same thing, and they are only seperated by 1 tier. IMO, this is close to balanced.

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These are balanced against each other, and they SHOULDN'T be. Dark Consumption is a drain in a melee set, and as such suffers all the drawbacks associated with that - long recharge and to-hit checks. Consume is a drain from a defensive set, and as such it should be balanced after Energy Drain, not after Dark Consumption. That's evidence of bad design, actually.

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If power push were in tier 4, or 5 and were only a 1 or 2 tier spread between the two I could probably let it slide, but it's a 4 tier spread! And Force Bolt is STILL better than Power Push. There is no reason that there should be a 4 tier spread between two powers that do exactly the same thing.

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Powers are not based on a power-by-power basis. If they were, there would be no reason to allow Inferno to do more damage than Nova, or any reason why Sniper Blast activates faster than Ranged Shot. There would be no reason to have Golden Dragonfly do less damage than Headsplitter, or for Shield Charge to have a longer recharge than Foot Stomp. Forcefields is a support set, and as such it is favoured for buffs, debuffs and controls. Energy Blast is a blast set, and as such is simply not.

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Of course, that doesn't change the fact that Sharkshead is between Bloody Bay and the rest of the former Grandville, and the other geographical inconsistencies.

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SPOILERS
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Sharkhead Island largely being composed of debris that's accumulated on a fitfully-slumbering sea monster, I'm prepared to accept that it swam into the empty space after Bloody Bay drifted far enough off.

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Given that the Leviathan is supposed to bring about the end of the world and the world hasn't ended, I'd say it hasn't moved for a LONG time. Calystix the Shaper has been trying to wake it up not just for centuries, but for millennia, and he hasn't succeeded, most recently having his followers shot by the US navy for crimes of cannibalism and piracy, if I recall correctly. If the Leviathan swam where it is, it did so LONG before 1883.

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Well, there's a reason a lot of missions involve coming to instanced Paragon City and trashing it.

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I think there should be a lot more. We have 9 instances - one Mayhem per 5-level range, except 1-5 that doesn't have a Broker at all. All the other instances supposedly in Paragon City are indoors and don't actually FEEL like it for the most part. Sure, the City of Heroes offices are sufficiently different, but the warehouses are very similar, the sewers almost the same and the blue labs and pink caves are identical. There ought to be more instances OBVIOUSLY in Paragon City in the game.

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At the time, the 'expanshalone' idea was innovative, meaning players could have an entirely different experience if they wanted while saving the developers making a new engine. Of course it didn't work that way in practice, but it was an idea. Either way, it's far too late to change it now.

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And I wish it had worked, but it was both derivative and embarrassingly small. When CoV launched, it had not a third of the content of City of Heroes and borrowed pretty much all mechanics from it, including such that made no sense in a villainous context, like "leading" kidnapees out. Hell, the whole contact system is inappropriate for the supposedly "proactive" villains, but to saddle them with mandatory Mayhems which tend to grate after a while. I don't think there ever was a chance in hell that City of Villains could have made it as a standalone, for which we're seeing the evidence now with "both games" being treated as "the game."

Frankly, I think if they'd stuck with an expansion, then villains could potentially have gotten a lot more.

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CoV's zones are made with an entirely new design philosophy from Heroes, to be more self-contained and require much, MUCH less zone-hopping just to do regular missions. They also show a different side of the world than Paragon City- they're not in America, much less one big sprawling half-ruined city, and you really feel like you're in a different place. That, and I think having Heroes and Villains essentially invisible to each other is kinda silly.

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Heroes and villains ARE invisible to each other even now. Villains come to rob Paragon City banks all the time, but if you were a hero, you'd never know this. Heroes protect banks all the time, but under completely different settings, and never meet the actual villains. This is a system that's perfectly applicable to a hero-villain shared zone (that's how Ouroboros currently works) where villains meet NPC heroes and police while heroes meet NPC villains and gangs.

Far as the CoV "improvements," I find most of them to be for the worst, such as zone-locks and the world half empty settings. There's no point in being a villain if there are only other villains around to be evil to and there's no point to steal, plot or destroy when the world has already been stripped down and destroyed. Plus, there is the whole "servant of Arachnos" overriding mechanic which wouldn't have had to exist were these villains in a real city, rather than in a sci-fi/fantasy ghetto ruled by an evil overlord.

You can still show a different side to the big city by having villains occupy some of the most run-down zones, even outside the war walls, and it wouldn't have required kicking villains off to their own little island. I will say, without a shadow of a doubt, that making City of Villains into a standalone was a mistake, because that is what required the two games to be entirely separate.

I strongly suspect this was done on purpose. If you'll notice, the exit markers don't display signs when you mouse over them, they disappear. You can still tell which leads where if you enable marker names, but I'm seeing a conscious effort to conceal them. In fact, if you'll notice, all the exit rooms, both hero-side and villain-side, are identical but for a few subtle differences. I'm more than positive the idea was to create the sense of an illusion, that no matter which door you went in, you would always end up in the same room. That's why I think they should have put Mercedes Sheldon in the round table room, because otherwise she's a dead giveaway to the Steel Canyon exit room.

I'm also going to take the elitist stance here, because I believe KNOWING where to go, rather than BEING TOLD where to go is exactly in keeping with the Midnight Club's philosophy. They are essentially keeper of secrets and knowers of secrets, existing in a world of the unseen and unknown, traversing it through knowledge and experience by using the hidden secrets normal men aren't privy to. It would make sense that their club would be a veritable maze confusing to the uninitiated, but blindingly simple and straightforward to its members. So while an interloper or a new member would get lost in the corridors, ending up always in the same room, which is not the same room, a veteran member would simply know where to go and his trip will be short and successful.

As has been said before - left is Steel Canyon, middle is Croatoa, right is Founders' Falls. That's actually how I originally assumed they were arranged, because it made sense for exits to be arranged from left to right by ascending level range. I'd still like to see the exit markers display the name of the zone they lead to, though. I like the illusion of obscurity, but I don't like obfuscating game mechanics making it simply more irritating to find out information that's already there. Hiding the text is the height of such silliness, and I would very much like for it to be rectified. You still have the puzzle of which door leads to which instance of the lobby, but you don't have to fiddle with the map drop-down or, even worse, load into the wrong zone to find out.

I'm still not a fan of catering to the lowest common denominator, as mentioned before, because it waters the game down too much. The dreaded zone-lock that City of Villains experiences is probably one of the biggest reasons I don't play it more, and that's squarely at the shoulders of people who hate travelling. So I would be very much against adding road signs to the Midnight Club, but I would be FOR letting the markers display their text like they do everywhere else.

Always felt Time Bomb and, I suppose, Omega Manoeuvre, should have some way to remote-detonate them. It's just really, REALLY hard to use on a team and I've only ever managed it, like, twice ever.

That brings up a good point: not all characters make sense to simply slump over when they are defeated. Some really WOULD evaporate (and reform later on), my ghosts would probably simply fade away (but still leave a transparent body behind), robots might blow up and be reassembled and so on and so forth. As always, I'd like to see it as base animation customization - meaning being able to pick how I drop at character creation - but I will be ecstatic if I could pick from an emote AFTER I go down just the same.

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The problem with making the Rogue Isles like what is probably planned for Praetoria (except for isolated instances like Aeon City or the Golden Giza) is that it would have been too similar to Paragon City, which is what they were trying to avoid.

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That's the big thing - Paragon City, but with villains, is exactly what most people were expecting, and I dare say what most people wanted. Not merely a city LIKE Pagaon City, but villains IN Paragon City. Simply put, if you play Batman, you're in Gotham City. Wouldn't it make sense that if you wanted to play the Joker, you would ALSO be in Gotham City?

I stand behind Rick Dakan - it is silly to have one city that's all heroes and one city that is all villains. You can STILL have the villain-side and hero-side separate in different instances of the same zone to avoid open-world PvP, but being a good villain requires a strong sense of good in the world. It's no fun being a villain if everyone else is a villain, too.

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Grandville was broken into four islands now known as Cap Au Diable, Port Oakes, Bloody Bay, and Grandville.

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You know what's sillier than an island being broken into four islands by a volcanic explosion?
1. Two of those 'islands' are in fact *not* two separate islands, but are together still as one island.
2. Two completely different islands somehow leapt into the open waters in between the now fragmented islands.
See here.


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Someone was putting together a history of the Etiole Islands and stated it something like this: "A giant volcano explodes and splits Grandville into four islands. So powerful was the explosion that it hurled Bloody Bay OVER Sharkhead Island. Wait... How does that work?"