Lazarillo

Fighting a Pylon is pretty different from real combat in this game anyway. Most of my Scrappers have to move around a lot, if for no other reason than because they tend to fight large numbers of enemies, not all of which like to walk right into the place of the previous one to be beaten.

I'd like to see Boomtown get a revamp...as a villain zone. It'd balance things out a bit more, and give an area to work as a sort of "staging zone" for villainous attacks on Paragon, letting them be more focused on anti-hero villainy than just rampaging around the isles. Make it a 30+ zone, and include a 30-35 Villainous SF, and you'd fill some of the general gaps of villain content.

I used to PvP sort of casually. I even won a tournament on Protector back in the day, though I've never been part of the crowd that's really concerned with building for it, dueling, etc. The revamp got such bad reviews that I sorta lost interest after that, and while I did try again a few issues later, it just...wasn't fun. I put my Fortunata against a Brute and we literally couldn't kill each other. Just sat there trying to put each other down in Warburg for a good five minutes before we just got bored and went after separate scientists.

I'd almost use the word "unbalanced" based on that example...not in terms of powersets, but in terms of execution. Actually, it's probably balanced too well in some ways. A fun PvP match is close enough to be intense, but should be over fast. We fail at that.

It'd also help if there were concrete rewards for it. PvP recipes are nice in theory but so damned rare that they fail at what they're designed to do. I realize that the devs don't want people farming them, but I think the Reputation restrictions are probably enough for that; if they dropped more frequently, and/or with no Rep restrictions going into effect unless a drop happened, it'd make PvPing for reward much more worth peoples' time.

I'm looking forward to both, but I'm looking forward to Batman more. I don't really care which "wins" per se, though from a personal perspective, I just hope my own expectations of both are met.

Meeeeeeeehhhhhhhhh

Psi melee is one of the great "missing" sets along with Martial Arts for Blasters that I'd really like to see. Here's hopin'.

Thumbs up on the "Vanity Pet". Got a good laugh out of me. Same with the "Who Hasn't Clicked the Button?" power. I could probably get some mileage out of that one, really...

Seems weak mechanically and the pets are too uniform to give the set any pizzazz in the style department too. This is the first new powerset that I won't be purchasing.

Give them content! That was supposed to be the appeal of the gray alignments in the first place. Let them run contacts on both sides of the fence, and let them reinforce their own alignments as tourists.

Good ol'Umbra Beast.
Good ol'DXP, getting me to Umbra Beast much quicker'n I would've otherwise.

But by whatever darkness fuels him, the thing just won't shut up! If I'm idle it's "ruff, ruffruff!" every couple of seconds. If I'm fighting, it's "woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo". This just redefines "infernal racket".

Okay, vent complete.

Thanks for the hard work!

I'm of a mixed opinion on this. On the one hand, conceptually, it just seems like certain armors need certain visuals. It's "fire" armor, after all, not "heat" armor. On the other, I can certainly see the lack of desire to have a massive cluster of different effects covering the body, which a lot of the elemental looks have.

The "right" thing to do in my mind would be to require at least one mandatory FX power from the elemental armor sets, but to let all the rest be turned off, though I'm not sure that's technically feasible anyway.

This may sound unnecessarily confrontational, and it's really not meant that way, so if I come off like a jerk, let me apologize in advance.

That said, I'm not sure I'd want a "realistic" dino-pack (even assuming that it's dinosaurs, and not, say, cave men; I haven't seen the hints, but that was my first thought when I saw the thread title). The thing about is that this game is sort of a giant pop-culture mashup, and that's part of what I like about it. And to that end, when I think "cool dinosaur looks", yeah, my first thought is something out of Jurassic Park. It may not have been "real", but it is, I think "the look" from a pop-culture perspective.

Now, personally, I think the current science that suggests dinosaurs were feathery is kinda neat. But I don't think it's the right default for this game. Now if it were an alternate extra (like the skull patterns on the Baron jacket, say)? Yeah, I'd be fine with that. But I'd rather sci-fi Dinosaurs to realistic ones, personally.

This is the sort of thing that really should be part of the package, but it's pretty clear that it'll never be done that way, and under the current marketing system, if we see it at all, it'll be for a sizable extra fee.

And because I'm a sucker, I'd probably pay it, yeah.

The most fun challenges for me are ones that demand playing with strategy a little bit. Battle Maiden's an example. Reichsman in Barracuda would be another, if it weren't reliant on specific ATs to carry things out. A few things that I've liked as examples, with maybe a little bit of what could be changed or added:

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Every once in a while during a boss fight, the boss will retreat, and there will be a phase of other attackers, or traps that go off, requiring a change of strategy. Like I said, we've seen this a little in the team content that's recently been added to the endgame. Malaise in MoM and Battle Maiden in Apex both do this (and Reichsman sort of, though he doesn't leave).

However, rather than just changing enemies, there's also the possibility for "traps", maybe? Take Battle Maiden's blue-death patches, for example. For a challenging bit of content for even solo players, have the boss teleport out, then a 15-second or so phase of dodging a large number of patches that move quickly.

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Another, using the Barracuda example, it's neat in theory, but horribly unfun in practice because of the AT requirement (and Reichsy's really high HP making the fight just tedious when you do actually do it right), but the idea of having to jump away from the fight to deal with an incoming threat by clicking a glowy or activating a temp power can be fun as well.

Marauder's a better example of how to make this work, but is still a little too cut-and-dry. As an example what I'd change would be to have gates randomly open and shut on their own at random points, with the Acids offering an "instant close" to one that's open. The much hated Trapdoor was, in my opinion, another great example of how to do this right, though the nerfing of "alternative strategies" was annoying.

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The last idea I'd suggest, though I don't know how feasible it is in a tech way, are mobs that don't necessarily wait for players to be "ready". I'm not necessarily talking ambushes here, but something sort of similar. The idea, in my mind, would be invisible, phased out enemies that would attack if a character went for some unspecified period without using a power.

That way it wouldn't really be some of the "endless ambush" missions in Praetoria that can get bothersome when you're having to deal with other enemies, but would still force players to stay active and keep up their guard.

Unlike ambushes, though, these enemies would attack more or less without warning. An ambush has a text alert and then you see them running down the hall at you. The idea here would be more of a Stalker-NPC that appears suddenly right behind you and hits with something. Or is that too mean?

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Anyway, s'what I got.