Keen Stronghold

Ice/Ice Tanker - Spiritual, for an extra +Max HP in Hoarfrost. Recharge will be nice too, the build is already recharge-oriented. No purples though.

Shield/Fire Tanker - probably Musculature for the +damage, as the build focuses on it.

"IF we decided to do that, what would be your top choices? Also, if given the choice, would you consider this a priority over, say, brand new costume sets, 'lost' costume pieces, and other alternatives?"

Top Choices:
- PPD Hardsuit set(s)
- Praetoria Police pieces/sets
Priority over *everything* for me

Other choices:
- Wyvern boots
- Kheldian sash

I agree about keeping signature items to NPCs only (Maelstrom's "heart") but disagree on the general view about NPC spoofing. Zombie's post said it all. This reason shouldn't be a hindrance to get applicable NPC pieces/sets to players. Take it as "players joining factions," like Arachnos. It should be possible to copy their exact looks, or most of it, to look like they're really part of them.

[EDIT]
Not sure if it applies to costume pieces, but NPCs have face textures and hair not available to players. For example, Romans have a very short hair that players don't get. (I can't get a picture right now, but will as soon as I can). They probably don't belong to factions, but it would be nice to have them available to players. After all, shared face textures and hair are not signature looks.

Wish they could fix Virtue's problems for good now. Didn't they change the hardware in one of their Virtue-only maintenances a while ago?

It's like listing the animations we dislike the most and would like to see alternates of them... for me, those would be:

Melee animations:
- Energy Melee/Barrage...
- Claws/one of the claws attacks that look like Barrage...
- Ice Melee/Frozen Fists...
... in other words, give me an alternative to that ugly one-two punch
- Fire Melee/tier 1 attack
- Fire Melee/Incinerate

Ranged animations:
- Radiation Blast/Cosmic Burst (that's the animation I despise the most for a blasting attack)
- Fire Blast/Snipe
- All Dual Pistol animations, as others have said, give a less gun-fu feeling to it
- Blasting from eyes, chest, or feet (with kicking animations to go with them)
- Blasting from props (staffs, weapons, etc, with themed animations to go with them)

Buff animations
- Regen/Integration... ugh.
- Shields: the "Weave" animation is odd.

Movement:
- Hasten, for some odd reason
- Combat Jumping/Super Jump: new jumping animations
- Hover/Fly: permanent, custom animations for them, without the need to input emotes
- Teleport. I'd like an effect similar to shield charge, without the current "portal" effect. Without any effect to be precise, maybe a trail of something just to show the notion of a super fast "snap" move from one point to another. What kills this idea? The fact that the end of the power currently leaves the user hovering for a couple of seconds. Maybe an option to turn the Hover effect off, but keep the rooting in place (I suppose it's there for balance reasons?).

Subjective Feedback:

Likes:
- the overall content of the costumes.
- the new (?) chest geometry/texture used for the Bioluminate pattern. Hoping to see it in other patterns, old or new.

Dislikes:
- the pointy boots for males, they look like female shoes.
- absence of belts to go along with shoulders/gloves/boots.
- absence of tails, see above.
- the new face. I think it should be a mask instead of a whole face, which would allow us to mix-match.

Awesome topic. First the nitpicking, things that annoy me:

1) the alternate animations of MA currently on game aren't as smooth as the original ones. Going into more detail, the windup animation is okay (if not a little slower than I expected), but the blow animation is so fast that it has no strong impact (looks like a quick poke to me). Notable mention is the uppercut: the amount of time the character winds up going back to deliver the punch, only to *snap* forward during the hit, looks very fake, not powerful, and in fact, silly, just because it goes off so fast. For comparison, Knockout Blow has adequate windup/hit times, and I would like the new animations to be more fine-tuned, to have a better flow.

As for new ideas and suggestions...

2) I've been thinking about this just the other night: ability to choose our standing poses. I would like my characters to stay idle in stances like when you do the /e donut (eatdonut?) emote, but without the donut. I think that would be a great stance animation. But not just give us a new emote, but actually give us the ability to set a "default" stance animation, so every time the character stops running/jumping or after coming back from combat pose, the new stance would be triggered.

3) Alternate animations for other powersets, as others have already mentioned, would be awesome. Additional animations for powersets that already have them... would be too.

4) Maybe for a more technical suggestion... I'd like the "ragdoll" system to animate the hands and feet as well. Currently, when the ragdoll system triggers, the hands and feet are locked into a default position. The hand, specially, locks in a position where it's always holding a weapon, and when the enemy is not holding one, the result looks weird. Animating the feet would add more detail to the falling poses and such. Suggestion: would it possible for the enemy to *drop* his weapon, whenever the "ragdoll-death" animation kicks in? Would be a very cool detail in my opinion (weapons lying on the floor, next to a defeated enemy).

5) Minor suggestion... I've been playing a few other games, newer than CoH, and I am surprised that they do not surpass the animation quality of this game. In special, CoH has hit-reaction animations, something I almost never find in other games. Both in gameplay and for some realism factor, I like to know when my character is hit, or then my attack hits the enemy. That said, I would like to see extra, alternate animations for hit reactions. There are some emotes out there that have them (when NPCs are punching each other, for example, the reaction animations are different). One touch of detail would be animations that don't hit full-force, let's say, when a Tanker has resistance armors up, their animations when hit would not be so intense, as they are resisting the blows.

5a) Following the previous idea is one for an alternate, stronger KNOCKBACK animation, where the hit character flies back, spinning on his heels. It's pretty common in fighting games, and for some reason, it makes me go "Whoa" every time it happens. This new animation could be used for powers like Hurricane, Tornado, Water Sprout (does it do KB still?), and melee blows that are swings (I don't remember if there's any that does KB... hopefully that will sprout ideas for new animations :P ).

Thanks for the topic!

Awesome pack. I have many Ninja characters, so I'll be busy for quite a while.

Suggestions for Sexy Jay:

• I've seen ninja with tucked-in robes. The Terra versions would look specially nice with that option.
• A Warrior top version for tights in the same way you have pants (tights)? The texture for the Warrior tight pants is nifty, and the first thing I looked for after seeing it was a top, that wasn't a robe, to match with it, but couldn't find it. It could also be an interesting option as an under layer for the sleeveless robes.

And I found a minor bug:

• When switching builds and dragging Ninja Run and Walk powers to the tray, they won't work upon clicking them. I've dragged them to a floating tray and haven't tested dragging them to one of the 1-3 trays. Relogging fixes the problem though.

Just chiming in to report my experiences since Issue 16 hit Live.

Log in, do two Hamidon raids in a row (usually 2 or so hours of gameplay). Go to WW after they're over.

When I click the WW representative, my game freezes up for about two whole minutes. Before Issue 16, it didn't happen.

It doesn't crash my game most of the time, probably because of my computer specs, but I've seen it crash under the same circumstances or after I played for longer times.

Chilling Embrace animation also changed since last patch. It used to be the "spread arms a bit and concentrate" one, but now it's a "grrr!" one.

I've got a friend telling me that Rise of the Phoenix animation changed as well.

I hope it's a bug, and I wonder if it's related to the code bug above.

Just would like to report that Google Reader just offered your site as a suggestion for my feeds. Your work isn't going unnoticed!

Great job.

Thanks for the quick change.

[ QUOTE ]
They payed and played this game for OVER TWO YEARS, without ANY VRs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd think that Veteran Rewards were not designed to be a "consolation reward" for those who haven't enjoyed them before the system took place. It's just a matter of played time, not a reward for "struggling all that time without benefits" as the above quote makes it sound (to me). As small as most VRs are, there was no "struggling" involved — in regards of the enhanced gameplay experience VRs provide.

[ QUOTE ]
For each 3-month period, a user can choose one valid reward for up to one year in that timespan. Once the 12-month period has been reached, they are then eligible for rewards, per milestone, for up to one year following, and so forth.

For example: A new player, who starts today, can choose one reward from the 3, 6 or 9 month reward milestone pool, up to but not including the 12 month mark. So, at the 3 month mark, New Player can choose the "Trustworthy", "Faithful", or "Dependable" reward pool. Once chosen, the remaining two are available until the next milestone; and so forth. At the 12-month mark, they will have the 12, 15, 18 and 21 months rewards available for their annual pool, and so on.

Benefits: Flexibility in choosing what rewards matter more for you in a given year. It maintains a sense of controlled progression while accommodating specific needs for the player.

Disadvantages: It would require a rebuild of how the rewards are disbursed on a player. Asking the Devs to reinvent an otherwise-functioning wheel would make this a low priority option. But since we're assuming the Devs can "just write this" to appease our needs, this is my calm and controlled submission to accommodate all players, both old and young, without completely gutting the design concept.

[/ QUOTE ]

I like it. However, while it's a good thing to get rewards "one year ahead of time" (mind the quotes), it still doesn't fix the problem of never-reachable rewards.

I'd still add a hard limit.

Given your proposal, I'd add that, if a player has more than, say, 5 years of subscription, they could choose *any* reward available at any milestone, even the newest ones. This way, newcomers who get dedicated to the game by playing up to the hard limit are able to get the newest rewards (otherwise unreachable), and the veterans still have the advantage of having MORE rewards, quantity-wise. With this, VRs could be added forever.

[ QUOTE ]
So you suggest that the players who have been playing and plan to continue, should no longer be rewarded for their dedication to the game? So that newer players, whom may or may not stick with the game can get the rewards we have had to wait for? In what way is that fair to the dedicated Vetrans?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are disadvantages both sides.

In the current form, the VR system can be disheartening to new players.
If VRs stopped at some point, veteran players would lose a benefit for their dedication to the game, although that would incentive new players to stick to the game.

However, you said "newer players, whom may or may not stick with the game can get the rewards we have had to wait for." New or old player, the waiting time is (or has been) there. Think about a new player that may not stick to the game because, since VRs keep being announced, there's a time window that will never close, and with it, dozens of rewards they will not reach. This can be a turn down for this new player, and that could make an impact on his decision to stick with the game.

On the other hand, a veteran player who would stop earning rewards (if VRs stopped) would stop playing the game? I do agree that the VR system would lose some of its appeal. But even to me, a 3-year veteran, I'd like to see new, dedicated players being able to get all rewards at some point. The current system doesn't make this possible.

Don't we want more players?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

No. But if you played since first beta and had to stop playing for some periods for reasons against your will, once you'e back to the game you'll never be able to reach some of the high-end rewards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only true when the game comes to an end. And at that point... who cares?!?

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't it also true since rewards keep coming? If someone joins the game today, they will never be able to reach the [u]last[u] 5 years of veteran reward content, no matter how long they stay subscribed. At least if VRs stopped at some point and someone who joins today plays for the 5 next years, they would be able to get all rewards. As a new player, I'd find that much more encouraging, rather than knowing that there will be stuff I'll never get no matter how many years I play.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm mostly disappointed because I was hoping that vet rewards would eventually stop at some point. 5 years seemed the best place. As it is, there's no way I can ever catch up to get the new rewards. I've been around since release, but I had no way of knowing at the time that if I stayed subscribed I'd be able to get stuff.

[u]Makes it worse when new stuff comes out and there are rewards I actually WANT, but I can't get, and will NEVER be able to catch up to.[u]

[/ QUOTE ]

This, emphasis mine. This will sound bitter, but can VR stop already? For many people, there are only so many years they can spend in a game, also for different reasons other than growing tired of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

And you should be rewarded for that?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. But if you played since first beta and had to stop playing for some periods for reasons against your will, once you'e back to the game you'll never be able to reach some of the high-end rewards.

But as galadiman said...

[ QUOTE ]
In that case, I guess you'll either have to make believe they don't exist, or you can drive yourself nuts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Making believe they don't exist drive myself nuts enough already. =P