Iannis

Recluse suffers the same fate Blue Steel does. He was penciled in later, long after the Story Bible was written, so he doesn't have alternate dimension versions of himself in it. And they haven't bothered to write in characters created later into the old stuff...maybe Robocop will be retconned into Praetoria as an experimental independent-minded Clockwork police officer. You know, an inquisitor put in place to police the Clockwork King's mental network just to make sure the King is staying honest in his subservience instead of plotting against the Tyrant. If Clockwork servants are used and trusted throughout Praetoria he would have a loooooot of well-placed minions if he rebelled.

What if there was a dimension where Recluse killed Statesman at the Well of the Furies? I mean, besides for the fact nobody would want to play in The Rogue Isles v2.0, how would that dimension play out? Lord Nemesis in the Americas, Lord Recluse with a power bloc taking up the middle of the world map, and Asia is run by a metahuman Emperor (maybe whatshisname, Foreshadow and Mirror Spirit)?

Quality of Life improvement.

I always wished they'd go through and set some of those merchants that vendor ALL origins in separate tabs or something and they could go further and have tabs for the level if they wanted to go the extra mile. But, I kinda sorta think that it would be a hassle and they figure more people are using IO's than SO's these days so why bother.

I still can't identify Science SOs without the color coding. "Blarghium Bombardment"? Your name hints at nothing! I always figured they just ran out of time so they lazy named the Mutation SO names.

The Trials were timed. They were called a trial because they were just that--a kind of nerve wracking experience where you fight against the clock. Eden Trial? Timed. Sewers Trial? Timed. Hollows Trial? Timed. If I remember right they originally wanted a timed Faultline Trial that would've consisted of multiple groups protecting the back portion of the Dam (Arachnos City) from being overrun with Circle of Thorns mages but they couldn't code for multi-group encounters (likely the exact same thing that grounded the Cathedral of Pain, although the SG PvP raiding aspect was another just as likely a hurdle they couldn't get past.)

Granted, Eden's timer was pretty long and you probably had to really suck to fail it. Maybe they expected you to FULLY CLEAR the cavern network. The TV Trial just hides the timer and you're fighting boredom while those timed waves spawn against you in the Reactor room...and you're fighting against vine respawns in the Treespec which is a kind of clock.

Task Forces, on the other hand, weren't timed. They were designed to be time consumptive. Since you didn't actually have enough content in some ranges to level up into the next Contact bracket before XP curve rebalances, difficulty slider higher Debt cap, yaddayadda you could easily exhaust Story Arcs and be stuck having to groundpound for XP...TFs were nice and long guaranteed group content rife with copy+paste missions intended as an alternative to street patrolling with PUGs (bwahah pulling literally 1/4 of Brickstown and then AoE'ing so many dead at once the game client crashed)

As far as I can tell that was basically the intended difference between them.

MMs haven't had any Customization put in for them, but I'm really hoping it'll somehow let you customize a pet's appearance. Demons are the ONLY ones that allow any degree of customization. If not allowing you to actually use Custom mob replacements AE at least lets you re-color critters in existing factions--could we at least play with tints? Even if mercenaries wearing neon pink or ninjas wearing orange would be eyesores....If we could start to do that maybe you can pretend they're a uniformed team of Sidekicks you have instead of guys for hire from the Henchman4u supplier.

/Sidekick would be a funny secondary, though.

the previous red widow was IO'd out and her perma mindlink was totally sweet for Lord Recluse's Bane army and he still talks about how much they pwnt. but then castle nerfed her and she quit the game.

I think it was just dumb they moved Hopkins out of Crey's Folly.

"beat up crey in crey's folly. oh, turns out Hopkins is waiting for you in Atlas Park."

I can't remember at what point they did that, probably when they went back and yanked out the bulk of Hazard Zone doors that everyone hated because of the travel time involved.

but yeah, Hopkins stands beside Vandal as one of the biggest chump AVs in the game. SS/Wuss tankers. Vandal should poop out Mek Men, Hopkins should have a blue-tooth phone that he uses to call in support because he's such a big sack of wimp.

Mercy should've started inside the walled city and delved down into the ruined rotten mercy island we all know and dislike. Early doors INSIDE the walled city, 5-10 missions down in buttsville. No more running across Mercy 5 times (with no travel power--they should've had little arachnos scooters in Fort Darwin!) to do your very first Story Contact. And since it's all ruins and junk it's natural the enemies are a bit stronger than what they have up topside. Or you could've gone straight to PO after dinging 5 and get your CoV newspaper from your broker. (what I do--screw Kalinda and Burke's missions, I just fight my way towards the ferry and hopefully had dinged 5 by the time I get there). Not to mention the SG registrar could've been moved out of PO and live in the completely unused Fort Cerberus or something...used to have to answer "where do you make VGs?" a lot on the help channel and explain how to get to the TALLEST BUILDING with the Arachnos flags hanging off it in the middle of Marconeville over in PO, you can't miss the thing...

I wish they had copy and pasted some snake tunnels to be the villain's sewers. It wouldn't need to be large--Paragon's sewers are just stupidly huge. As are the Troll Caves beneath the Hollows...actually, they could USE the troll caves and fill them with Snakes and nobody would be the wiser. How many people even know the Troll Tunnels are down there, existing only to be an irritating troll-infested maze you have to traverse during the timed Hollows Trial?

I figure Tyrant has just been retconned out of being the overt MWAHAHA evil of Lord Recluse (Tyrant was a warlord standing at the top of a totem pole of warlords, whose belligerent expansionist imperialist Praetorian forces are constantly fighting each other for his favor and the worlds they touch are transformed into ruined wastelands a la Mercy Island?--sure sounds like Arachnos to me) into a "I KNOW WHAT'S BEST" overlord like that simpsons episode where Ned Flanders was supreme leader of the earth and Homer had to get re-Neducated.

He was turned into a superman that inflicts his own politics, his own sense of morality, his own sense of direction onto all humanity and vigorously weeds out any rebellious or opposing viewpoints....I guess all the Praetorians will have "official" names retconned in, like Emperor Cole and the Mother instead of wandering around calling themselves the Tyrant and Mother Mayhem. I hardly think anyone would be fooled if their boss' name was DOCTOR EVIL. But, hey, it works for Latvaria.

Tyrant eliminated free will to create a utopia for humanity. Nice place to live if you don't mind being a drone of the state.
Recluse allows free will--it just so happens that free will paired with a corrupt unrepresentative government uninterested in regulating the powerful, self-interested entities running around led to dystopia on the Rogue Isles.

New idea: Mystic Fortune is a self-buff now. This self-buff yourself for 20 minutes (very fire and forget it) and there will be no more people whining "nooooo that guy buffed me and i'm a robot and i can't roleplay a robot if i have a magic tarot card buff!"

Removing the prompt was the best thing ever with mystic fortune. It got so annoying having to click it whenever someone threw it at you I had gotten to the point of not throwing it at anyone (because I figure other people are as annoyed by a random pop-up box as I am. it's like browsing the internet without having noscript/adblock to filter out all the trash advertisements webmasters pollute their pages with)

There are two Reichsmen.

One Reichsman is the guy the team with overkill debuffage fights. This Reichsman dies in like 30 seconds and the team says, "lol reichsman is overpowered?" (had been on that kind of team when I did Khan last, just because I felt like pounding on some nazis!)

The other Reichsman is the guy a pug team has to fight. This Reichsman is overpowered and tedious to fight. I remember my first (and only) Barracuda run we pounded on Reichsman for 40 minutes. Stupid, lame SF. Only hate Recluses' "enjoy your 8 level 54 AVs " final mission more, mostly because it was designed wholly around using meta-gaming tricks to beat 'em. It should be redone to be more like the Jade Spider one where the Freedom Phalanx attacks in waves, with Longbow support. Just not..."ok everybody stand waaaaay over there out of Line of Sight, and i'll try to single pull one and hope they all don't come charging along".

Hydra and Eden trials were done eons ago. Hydra is a hoot because it's so easy to fail if your team isn't coordinated enough to take out the generators all together. Abandoned Sewers Network really is the only *challenging* TF in this game, forget what the stupid loading screens say about Statesman/Recluse's. Eden has a *really cool* map. But you could cheese the Crystal Titan by just eating purples instead of the super special anti-Crystal Titan One-Shot hit Ambrosia inspirations the DE bosses in the map drop. And a Fulcrum Shift utilizing all those crystal monsters surrounding the Titan? pfft, forget about it, i think one footstomp could cause an earthquake. I think Eden is only about 2 merits because Speeden teams dominated that trial so easily, for the rapid Recipe rolls it used to provide. Sadly, that Synapse guy probably can't rebalance the merit reward upwards or it'll just get farmed to death again.

The only thing I hope is it doesn't end up playing like Champions. Just update City of Heroes.

i had been poking around and saw a DCUO gameplay trailer on youtube, and I honestly thought it looked like it was footage from CO...except the evil clown avatar the person was playing had some kind of wall-clinging ability that let him stick against a building. Which, granted, was pretty awesome to think about and something I hope a CoH2 would have.

Hamidon is a really lame encounter. I've not done the "new" one where you DON'T have 150 leeches show up to steal credit for the hours of boooooooring preceding hamidon raid, and don't really have much desire to. Oh, and d-bags could grief the raid by causing a yellow dawn or just training GMs into the jello to try to wipe your raid. And i seem to remember HO's used to be stronger than they are now, back in year 1. Maybe that was just me remembering how the game was before ED, though.

Jack didn't want endgame. Hamidon is the outcome of Jack's distaste for endgame.

Please use RWZ rikti raid as your basis instead of dull, lousy encounter where you beat on a big blob of jello and most people have no clue what they're doing besides staying in the heal bubble the emps rocking the aura provide while the main targ picks out mitos and a few /Regens or whatever that are tanking Hamidon's core. RWZ raid = everyone moving, everyone having fun, not BORING BORING BORING BORING BORING thank god it's finally dead LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG. Weakened Hamidon is the only FUN hamidon, and that's because it doesn't take hours and you get the help of the Rikti zerg to melt that big gelatinous cube.

I'd think it would make more sense to flag each of them as a Unique IOs but make them reclaimable on demand, myself. It's not like you can trade them. That way if you want to shift around how you have those procs slotted later you could (without burning a Respec, that is)

Or people could just drop every darn one of them in their quickest recharging power and make it a little proc buzzsaw. BRAWL FTW!!!!11

Mr G.

Mysterious Infected super-powered Ghouls in the sewers that are protecting something, or someone.

Cloning supers to create a glorious clone army to stand against the Tyrant's robot army.

It's like some kind of ultimate weapon.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Doctor_Geist

I kind of figured it'd be Nemesis and Requiem slugging it out. Requiem goofs around through the time continuum using his own personal crystal. It wouldn't be surprised if he managed to become the Nictus Galactic Emperor in some timestream like he wants to be. Turn his Columnists to radioactive goo monster shock troops capable of space travel and turn Shadow Cysts into a fuel source. Burn those nictus blobbies in the war engine. Nemesis stands against it because only Nemesis is omniscient enough to run a temporal war until finally they screw up the universe so badly Rularuu EATS IT. The Langoliers are everywhere!

Mother Mayhem's new look is sluttier looking than her old one. This gives me high hopes Dominatrix won't lose her leather-suited Gimp army.

A Seers network...ehh. Praetoria really is ripping off Arachnos pretty hard. But, Arachnos was probably built gutting Praetorian stuff from the story bible. I guess the difference is Recluse has his constantly peering into finding the future to find one where he's victorious instead of more intelligently using them as a massive mind control matrix to MAKE him king of the world. Goofy temporal war crap is Recluse's biggest weakness--and he's not even on the same playing field as Lord Nemesis fighting Emperor Requiem across space and time.

Perma-eclipsed Warshade is a tankmage. Massive resists, blobs and pew pew nova form and can suck the souls out of the heaps of bodies to refill their bars instantly. It just takes all that money and IO sets to set up your perma eclipse floating nictus storm of death. Oh, and bodies...sucks if you're fighting ghosts/other nictus that don't leave one. Can even lobster up if you get mez'd.

VEATs are just really cool teammates that overpower your team rapidly the more of their leadership buffs you get. I remember when SoA were new and you had 8-man veat teams with all that insane amount of maneuvers/assault/tactics going. Everybody's Endurance was the only issue...but it would fall apart really hard if half your team faceplanted and stopped providing their buffs.

Basically, yeah, evolving gangs. You're going up the food chain from dumb street punks to the organized criminal syndicates they're working for.

The Skulls are a lowbie dumb nihilist gang that sells Dyne to the Trolls for the Family. Pretty straightforward.

The Hellions steal magic items because the Tsoo gave them magic idols that makes them dumb and sell the magic weapons to the Warriors (who are a dumb street gang themselves, but higher level because...they are). The Tsoo are getting their Rage drug out on the streets, too...but I don't think that's ever much addressed besides for being a lethal combo when the Trolls mix it with their addiction to Dyne. Or the Freakshow might use it in addition to their drug of choice (Excelsior?), I forget. It's been years since I've run a lot of the archaic CoH story arcs.

I don't remember either side dealing much with the Circle. Because the CoT would just stick them with one of their crystal thorns and swap the original soul out with a trapped CoT mage (as is done in a CoV arc).

Cathedral of Pain was supposed to be pvp raid junk that Jack promised and never delivered on. Not surprising--he talked about a LOT of stuff. Super Secret Out of Combat Skills System and Incarnates were things supposed to be 'next issue' up until I quit for a long time (lolpvp Arena Issue until I saw a CoV box on a store shelf later and remembered CoH was a fun game).

SuperGroup stuff in general has just been shoved off the plate, though.

It would be interesting to see it brought in as a new multi-group PvE thing, but considering the zones start to lag bad when you've got a lot of heroes pounding on dozens or hundreds of enemies...Rularuu were pretty nasty enemies, which means more fun. Eyeballs would eat all these softcap defense-based tanks, brutes scrappers and stalkers alive. Hax accuracy.

As a superhero MMO it's better positioned to take the lazy man's route of "alternate universe!" than any other MMO; CoH1 takes place in Earth-1 and CoH2 takes place in Earth-2. They don't even have to bother with skipping into the future or having to keep consistent lore between the two games. They could have special Badges or Titles that are tied into your old CoX account, maybe.

And clean up all this messy, messy lore. Council become Requiem's Imperial Galactic Forces with emphasis on creating UNIQUE FACTIONAL ENEMIES--they only real Council enemies are the Council's Galaxies and Ascendants. Everything else they stole from the Column. And the 5th Column stay the old 5th column everybody knows with nazis, werewolves and vampires. That, or turn the Council into a shadowy cult of demon worshiping kooks run by an ex-Vatican priest that was seduced by the power of the Dark Path and just happened to also run the 5th Column because he's the Dirge of Entropy who seeks to bring chaos.