Adeon Hawkwood

It's a new currency. You see Paragon Studios is trying to get into the Guinness book of records for "Most Simultaneous Currencies in an MMO" so they created a special currnecy just for ZombieMan. Vindication merits can only be exchanged for other Vindication merits but it turns out that's still counts for the record.

Well Dechs covered most of your post so I'll just chime in on these three powerset suggestions.

Angel Summoning - I, personally, don't really mind this however I doubt we'll see it. The devs are generally very careful about creating anything with Religious implications/iconography. It's not impossible, it's just a huge potential mess that I don't think anyone wants to deal with.

Animal/Beast Summoning - The devs have stated in the past that due to the way the animation system works creating animal models that worked and looked good would be a HUGE amount of effort. So while this is possible it's not something that we are likely to see just from a development resources point of view.

Police Back-up - As Dechs mentioned above any new MM powerset needs to work for heroes, villains and praetorians. Police Back-up is a very specific theme that doesn't really work for villains. I could see a variant where the summoned NPC changes depending on your alignment (i.e. Heroes summon a PPD Hardsuit while Villains summon an Arachnos Crab Spider) but that seems to me to be a lot of work for a set that basically ends up as a very similar to Mercenaries. I also generally advocate making new powersets as generic as possible to facilitate the maximum number of concepts (i.e. Assault Rifle says that you have an Assault Rifle but that's it, you can choose how and why it works). I think a better option here would be a PPD Epic AT that has a "Summon Reinforcements" style power.

Lord Harrandeous would disagree with you there. Sure, he and his crew are extra-dimensional and do look similar to demons. However, while he doesn't particularly agree with Heroes like Statesman on a number of issues (such as obedience to civil authority) at the end of the day he firmly believes that it is the duty of the strong to protect the weak.

Yes, Demons and Zombies are not traditionally heroic, but that doesn't mean that they can't be. There are many, many ways to make them in a way that is heroic. I went for the Proud Warrior Race Guy option with mine but there are plenty of other options out there as well.

Thugs are even easier, sure they aren't pretty but the story of a group of hoodlums fighting to defend their neighborhood from something much worse is an classic story.

I would generally oppose having that as an option for the current sets. While it would be cool I think that from a balance point of view it would be better to make new sets that are designed around a single pet rather than trying to shoehorn it into the existing sets. I'd also leave BG mode unchanged and balance the new sets around the idea that they have less effective BG mode.

The way I see it, with a single-pet style MM set you only have one Summon power so even if they keep the three attacks you have a total of 5 powers to play around with for doing pet upgrades and special moves. It makes sense to leverage that and design the powerset so that the MM can differentiate their pet based on what powers they choose from thier primary.

Indeed, which is why I have to focus on mentally convincing myself that E Merits cannot be used to buy Very Rares at all lest I compulsively start calculating how many trials I'll need to run, causing me to freak out and stop playing. In fact I'm having to fight the urge right now to calculate that value for inclusion in this very post (bad brain!).

That being said my post should really have said said "Trial rewards should not be solely deterministic" I only used the wording I did to reference Snow's post. In reality I think a mix of deterministic and random works the best (which is what we have). The deterministic portion serves as a minimum progression level for the desperately unlucky while the random portion serves to keep my brain in check.

If trial rewards weren't random I would sit down, calculate how long it will take me to get one I want, get depressed and quit running them. Maybe I'm weird that way but deterministic rewards always end up depressing me. I have to very, very carefully avoid thinking to much about the Empyrean Merit cost of Very Rares since if I do then I start planning how many trial runs I'll need to get T4s at which point I get bored and wonder off.

Instead I'm able to take an attitude of get T3s (which is quick and easy) then run trials when I want to and it would be cool if I got a Very Rare component. If my only method of getting Very Rares was deterministic I'd never want to run a trial ever again (especially if the number of trials to a very rare was the 20+ indicated by Arcana's 5% estimation).

Trial rewards should not be deterministic.

It depends a bit on the Blaster in question. My AR/Dev Blaster revels in fighting large groups of weaker enemies as opposed to single tough enemies however I do have three things going for me there:
1. I have one of the few secondaries that does scale up to groups (Caltrops FTW)
2. I have an AoE heavy primary
3. I have good ranged defense

As a general point, unless the AT needs a new inherent power I would think that it would be possible to just do it as a MM powerset. Yes, the current MM powersets have a certain power convention but it's not completely impossible to make a new MM powerset that lacks that convention. The only issue I could see is someone who skips the pet summon power but then people already do that with MMs.

Yes you can get the badge and yes you keep the power. However, when you return to Hero side you cannot actually USE the power.

However, if you do not have Archmage then when you return to being a hero you will be automatically granted that accolade and the associated accolade power when you switch back. So the important thing to take home is that once you earn the accolade power (on either side) you will always have access to it but you cannot have access to both versions of an accolade power at the same time.

What about the mallet used by the Carnival Strongmen?

I have no clue. Presumably they will still be valid for a free month + whatever goodies came with the box but I have no clue how they will handle existing stock.

I'll also point out that's a different situation from releasing a new "CoH: Freedom" boxed copy. The point to the boxed copies prior to Freedom was that you need to purchase an account before you can pay the monthly subscription. With Freedom that will no longer be the case, starting an account is free and you can start a subscription for it without needing to pay to upgrade it to a full account.

To that end a CoH: Freedom boxed set is pointless, you aren't actually getting anything other than a DvD copy of the freely downloadable software and NCSoft isn't getting anything other than the $15 you pay for a subscription. What I could see them doing is releasing a new line of CoH: Freedom themed Game Time Cards although since NCSoft has the combined time cards for all of their games I don't know if they'd go for that. Now there is, potentially, some demand for DVDs in order to avoid the time to download but I doubt there's enough demand to make a box release profitable based solely on that.

I suspect download only. Selling a box would defeat the point of going F2P in the first place and doing a freely-distributed DVD would probably cost more than they'd make from the extra micro-transactions it would generate.

Well they are very different genres. TF2 is a War-Themed Hat simulator and CoH is a Superhero-Themed Clothing Simulator.

I don't (I'm a slow typist) but I do tend to imagine what they'd say. Especially with my MMs where I tend to imagine the interplay between the MM and his minions.

I'm not sure if there is a way to do ti right at all within the context of a video game. However, I KNOW that there is no way to do it right as an add-on to the current game. 2 Minutes looking through the Defender primaries is enough to show that. For example (using the power must remain at the same tier rule):

1. Twilight Grasp
2. Tar Patch
3. Darkest Night
4. Howling Twilight
5. Force Field Generator
6. Sonic Dispersion
7. Disruption Arrow
8. Oil Slick Arrow
9. Fulcrum Shift

There you go. One absurdly tough high damage defender. Even on SOs it would be pretty tough due to FFG, Sonic Dispersion and Darkest Night, add in an epic shield for more resistance and some IOs and it's insanely tough. Meanwhile the other powers really boost damage and it has HT for some -regen (not my first choice for -regen, but in terms of power locations it's the best fit and it has the advantage of having some other nice abilities).

Personally I would also like this, however I think that there are just as many people (if not more) who would not like it. Some people (especially RPers) will have different characters in different SGs that are suited to the different types of characters. The Repeat Offenders network is a good example, the different SGs within it have different AT/Powerset requirements (for example T.R.I.C.K only accepts characters with the Trick Arrow, Traps or Devices powersets).

I think a better solution would be to setup a system for offline invites/promotions and maybe increase the maximum SG size.

Most Mac mice only have one button. That being said I believe that "Option Key" + Mouse Click serves as a right click in most situations (no clue if that's true in CoH).

On the subject I use the same overlay that Nox recommended, makes it sooooooo much easier.

Actually, I would say Dark Assault is not quite as low hanging fruit as Dark Manipulation. The problem is that the Dark Set's "shtick" has always been that they are control heavy. That means that the design of Dark Assault ties heavily into the design of Dark Control (which in turn is heavily tied into what happens when Controllers get Dark Maisma).

Dark Blast is already somewhat control heavy and you can bet the devs took the powers there into account when designing Dark Manipulation. Unfortunately, since Dark Control does not currently exist so the devs probably want to design that before locking down Dark Assault. There are a number of existing Dark powers that could potentially be used in either Dark Control or Dark Assault (Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, Dark Pit, Fearsome Stare, Tenebrous Tentacles etc.) so designing one without having at least a basic plan for the other is a bad idea.

Apparently the same ones that I haven't played .

City of Heroes is not a FPS but the control scheme and interface is heavily influenced by them (as is true for most games with an "over the shoulder camera"). This isn't really to surprising since when CoH was released the MMO genre was still pretty new and a lot of the standard conventions had not really become "standard".

How many games can you list that were released before CoH and used that control scheme? Looking at the most well known pre-CoH MMOs Ultima Online was Isometric used the mouse for movement (I think), Everquest did not have a default WASD control setup at all and for Asheron's Call I cannot find the default control list online so I have no clue.