Lightfoot

GASP!!!!

You mean that MM boss pets awarding too much experience for the ease of their defeat couldn't possibly have been exploited by players looking for the next MEOW?

This change is less "telling you how to play" than it is them making sure that the things you fight award XP appropriate to how easy it is to defeat them.

If you want to continue to create farms with the MM boss pets because you think it is fun to plow through them, feel free. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so. However, you now will only receive the XP you deserve for the effort expended and risk endured instead of the mega-XP you previously enjoyed.

I think I see the problem.

Raising the level cap does not equal adding content. Presumably, if they raised the level cap, they would need to add content to fill the level gap. However, they do not need to raise the level cap in order to add new content.

This game has consistently added new content even after the villains got bumped from level 40 to 50. The Menders and Ourobouros are new content. The Midnight Club and Cimerora are new content. The Rikti War Zone is new content. Revamped Faultline is new content. The Khan and Reichsman Task Forces are new content.

The Dark Mirror villain group and the four new story arcs introducing and exploring them will be new content in Issue 17. Going Rogue will introduce at least two completely new leveling paths from 1-20, in addition to the promised level 50 end game content and the side switching content.

New content is coming. We don't need to be able to go up beyond level 50 in order to gat new content.

I take it by posting this you are attempting to point out some kind of contradiction?

At first glance, this might be so.

However, when you are talking numbers in excess of 100,000, not so much.

"The majority" can mean as many as "over half." For argument's sake, let's say that 80,000 of 100,000+ players are veterans of two years or more. A majority would be more than 40,000. A significant majority would be 60,000.

If 20,000 of that 80,000 still don't have a 50 yet, I think that still qualifies as "many," don't you?

For the record. I have Kheldians and Soldiers, gotten the hard way. I fully agree with the Dev decision to unlock at 20. I now how I got mine. How somebody else got theirs is no skin off my nose. The point raised earlier that increased numbers of players playing the ATs will increase the chances that that the ATs will get the serious consideration from the Devs that they deserve when they make balance passes outweighs any arguments against this move.

I meant that the Void Stalkers are assassins. The aliens they hunt (Peacebringers and Warshades) are seeking asylum on earth, are generally peaceful and willing to help Paragon City.

I can see where my prior sentence construction could be construed as "Void Seekers are aliens seeking asylum, are generally peaceful and willing to help Paragon City."

My apologies.

The Void Stalkers are assassins hunting aliens on earth who are seeking asylum, generally peaceful, and willing to help Paragon City fight the crime that infests its streets. If my hero hears about an assassination plot, why should it be below me that it targets a Kheldian rather than another human?

And, as I understand it, the Nictus are trying to take over the world through the Council, but the only time we encounter a Council base with a Nictus in it is when we are teamed with a Kheldian.

Wow, misinformed much? Zookeeper was never supposed to be 10,000 monkeys. Somebody added an extra zero, and they let it slide. After a long while, they realized that a lot of people were engaging in behaviors that were not fun (dull, boring, pointless grinds, in fact) in order to get these badges. Rather than encourage people to pointlessly grind, or leave their characters in a zone overnight for three weeks soaking up damage from lowbie mobs, they decided to lower the requirements so that people who obsessed over theses kinds of badges could get back to the business of having fun.

The level restrictions were removed from zones to enable the new sidekicking feature. Beforehand, if you had someone sidekicked to you who was level 15, and the next mission was in Dark Astoria, you either had to find another mission, or kick the lowbie out of the team.

I haven't seen any news about relaxing costume / weapon unlock requirements, so I don't know which orifice you are pulling that statement from.

Overreact much? I don't see any of this happening in the near future, but if you want to nerdrage over it, be my guest.

The Dev's job is to make a fun game. Are you seriously telling me that grinding out 10,000 Rikti Monkeys was fun? Or running the same AE mission over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again was fun?

The Devs want these badges to be achievable over the course of normal gameplay. A lot of the Epic, and now reduced, badge requirements encouraged aberrant, pure grind, boring gameplay. You want grind? You are welcome to go to WoW, Lineage or CO. You want fun? Stay here. That is the simple choice that is put before you.

The long term, and short term goals of the Paragon Dev team are to make the game fun so that we will keep playing. Aberrant gameplay and endless grinding are not fun. They are boring and repetitive. If you want to, you can go to Atlas, look down your nose and sneer at every character with the Zookeeper badge, or the Epic Healing badge, or the Epic Damage badge, or the Epic Debt badge, and send them tells and broadcast about how they should all worship you because you got them "old fashioned way." Expect most of them to ignore you, but if it makes you feel more special that you did something boring and pointless to to get an inconsequential reward in a video game, more power to you.

If this were the only thing that the NGE contained, Star Wars Galaxies would have lost only a few grumbling little snowflakes who were upset that they weren't as unique as they thought.

NGE also changed every single class in the game, significantly, changed the way combat worked and changed the way skills worked. They basically created a new game (hence, "New Game Experience") and invalidated every existing character.

Epic Archetypes unlocking at 20 is not a "New Game Experience." Not by a long shot.

Voids and Quantums are only a significant threat to the Kheldians themselves, and the cysts are only a big threat until you figure out how to fight them. Sorry folks, I don't buy the "but we'll have Quantums and Cysts in missions more frequently" as an argument against this move. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing more of them in the regular game. Why is it that an entire enemy group is reserved for only one archetype? Surely other heroes see the Void Seekers and Nictus as a threat to the city.

It is worth noting that a Nemesis system was first suggested by Positron before the Dev team got slashed to 15 developers, and that Jack told him to work on something else.

Champions online may have "higher end" graphics, based upon the fact that their minimum specs are about the same as those required for Ultra Mode. On the other hand, having experienced those graphics first hand, I have to say that "higher end" does not mean "better." In my opinion, City of Heroes looks better than Champions, right now. Ultra Mode will push us over the top and way beyond CO.

Still, the fact that CO is in the market is a good thing, as it accelerates us getting things that might have been lower on the priority list, like emote stances.

If you tend to do most of your work in one form or the other, then most of your power usage will be from the set that contains the form (Luminous Blast if you favor Nova form, and Luminous Aura if you favor Dwarf form). This would be my best guess.

You aren't supposed to be hoarding this stuff. You are supposed to be moving it through the market so that the huge piles of influence that are sitting out there can be used up. This is why there are those "silly limits on vaults and bins." Regardless, if you must leave, the stuff will still be in the bins for when you come back.

Considering you will be able to get all of the CoV exploration, History, Giant Monster, Defeat, mission, and SF badges if you switch sides, it is a lot more than 3 Badges you stand to gain.

The Prestige isn't yours, it belongs to the SG. They will still have it if you are forced out by switching sides (which, I might add, has not been set in stone). If you need to quit to switch, it is possible that when you switch back and rejoin the group you can pick up where you left off in your SG tallies (which, as I recall correctly, can only be viewed by members of your SG, so it only REALLY matters if you think that your friends will forget your contributions the moment you start to go Vigilante.)

If you want a Dev answer, PM a Dev. The Player Questions forum is for us Players to help other Players with their questions.

If you are going to return to the group after switching sides and coming back, the only thing you stand to lose is your Prestige tally. Everything else, and I do mean everything, should be just as you left it if your SGmates are your friends and as trustworthy as you say.

Your point is that you don't know, and that we don't know, and the possibility of it being some way you might not like is making you angry.

Never post angry, because I'm pretty sure that the above was not your real point.

Our point is: We don't know, and we won't until the Devs tell us. Until we do know, all the things you are getting angry over are just supposition and guesswork. Positron said, when this question was asked at HeroCon, that they were going to do their best to make as many people as possible happy with the sideswitching mechanic. Since nobody will be happy with having to quit their supergroup in order to explore the new content, I took this to mean that they were going to try their hardest to make SGs neutral. Obviously, your understanding of the same statement was different.

We'll know in a few weeks when the Beta starts. Hope to see you (and me, for that matter) in there.

Lady Mastremind, Mystique and Sabretooth have joined the ranks of the X-Men without being reformed (Mystique and Lady Mastermind for personal reasons, both eventually betraying the X-Men when it proved advantageous, Sabretooth "joined" under duress twice.). The X-Men and the Avengers have also played host to a number of rogues (who, in CoH terms, are still villains), Juggernaut, Gambit, Empath, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, etc. The first time the Fantastic Four met the Inhuman princess, Medusa, she was one of the Frightful Four and a villain. She later joined their ranks while Sue was pregnant with Franklin.

Technically, anyone calling themselves an Avenger who isn't working with Norman Osborn (this would be the New Avengers AND the Mighty Avengers) is a villain, at least in the eyes of the law.

It also works the other way around. White Queen and the Sub-Mariner were both in Norman Osborn's inner circle for a while. Sentry and Ares are both part of Norman's Dark Avengers, and both have been heroes before (and both have been villains before their Mighty Avengers membership, too).

There is no reason why supergroups can't be neutral, and then be choosy about who they select to join. For some groups, there are things that are more important than which side of the law someone tends to walk on. Right now, the X-Men are concerned with survival of the species, any mutant is a potential member at this point.

edit:BTW, Reed Richards has invited Doctor Doom into the Baxter Building. Doctor Doom was the only one Reed could think of with both the scientific and magical expertise necessary to deliver Reed and Sue's second child, Valeria, due to complications in the birth stemming from Valeria being conceived in another dimension and the mixture of energies from other dimensions with Reed's super science. The fact that Doom did indeed betray Reed by placing a magical curse on Valeria during the birth doesn't change the fact that Doctor Doom has been invited into the Baxter Building after he promised not to break anything.

I'll grant that it would be possible.

It would also look terrible.

What the OP is asking for is that selected animations be replaced by an animation with a nunchaku that comes from out of nowhere, and returns to nowhere until that power recharges.

And then the OP picked the absolute least appropriate power to use as his example. The only nunchaku technique that could conceivably do what Crane Kick does is a technique that has none of the visual flair that made the nunchaku famous. (The technique is basically holding the two sticks together, one hand over the other, and pushing them into the midsection of the target. The technique is meant to strike the solar plexus and knock the wind out of the target. It would be extremely difficult to put enough force behind it to significantly knock the target back.) This would actually be the easiest nunchaku animation to do, but it would also look the worst (I will note that I have never seen this technique used in a movie, and I have seen a lot of martial arts movies). If a budoka wielding nunchaku wants to knock his target back, a la Crane Kick, he will execute a kick.

What really makes the nunchaku visually appealing and a threatening weapon is the flow of its use. A person skilled with the nunchaku can make the attack seem to come from any angle with minimal telegraphing of the move. From the standard over the shoulder hold, I can attack from seven different angles, same with the behind the back position. I would hate to see nunchaku mishmashed into Martial Arts with a appearing and disappearing weapon.

Yes, the OP's idea would be possible. It would also look awful.

/unsigned

Welcome to the boards. Search can be your friend (or even the stickies at the top of this very forum, you know, the Lady Jade's Powers Suggestions Thread). None of these ideas are new, in fact many of these ideas have been talked over to death so much that the horse doesn't have any flesh left to flay.

If you want support shown for powerset ideas, you need to flesh them out, preferably with all nine tiers and a basic description of each of the powers. This shows that you have put some real thought into your suggestion, and aren't just spraying ideas from the top of your head.

Energy Blast was originally meant to be Water Blast. If you use a little imagination, it still can be. They had difficulty making the effects of the power truly look like water under the orginal graphics engine. The graphics have been upgraded once for CoV, and will be upgraded again for GR, so Water Blast may be back on the table. We won't know until we see the expanded graphics capability.

BTW, Ice is a water element power, if you want to get even slightly technical

Umm, what is sorcery? If I use my magical powers to summon winds and storms to buffet my enemies, aren't I using sorcery? If I use my magical powers to summon fire to engulf or blast my foes, aren't I using sorcery? If you mean that you want a powerset that uses spellbooks and wands, how do you explain that my Technology origin hero needs to use a spellbook to work magic when he really manipulates magic through his iPhone. Powersets should not pigeonhole origins or be restricted to origins.

Claws now available for Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes, as of Issue 16. Wish granted. Super Reflexes can be explained this way as well.

I'm not really getting what you want here. This is a perfect example of needing to flesh out the idea if you want support for it.

This may be being worked on already. Paragon put out a job posting a while back for folks experienced in animating non human skeletons. There are several issues. One is that animal skeletons are much harder to animate than human skeletons. Every single type of animal (dog, cat, raptor, lizard, snake, arachnid, insect, etc.) moves differently than every other one. This means that a Beast Mastery set that encompasses more than one animal type requires as many times more animations as different types. So if dogs are first tier, big cats are second tier, and a bear is third tier, that is three times as many, completely new, not recycled, animations and skeletons that need to be created than any other Mastermind set.

Unless you want the set to look like garbage.

That, and, now that I think about it, a Beast Mastery set would kind of suck for Masterminds. You would have pets with zero ranged capability. What is a wolf's ranged attack? Or a lion's? Or even a velociraptor? While we do have pets that prefer melee range, they all at least have some ranged attack for when their target is flying or otherwise unreachable. A Beast Mastermind would need to rely on the offensive capabilities of the Mastermind himself in order to take down flying foes.

see: Jay's costume request thread. Jay will not consider any costume request that has not appeared in that thread. He does not want ten billion "I want parrots" threads clogging up the forums, so he created one place where those suggestions will go, and he completely ignores costume suggestions in any other location.

We believe this is also being worked on. At issue are two obstacles. Apparently, the game only has room for two more anchor points on the current engine. With only two possible anchor points left, they want to make sure that they are used properly. This leads to the second issue. As it stands, back attachments are designed with the default male model in mind. If you look closely, you will see that the temp power jetpacks actually float about 3 inches off of a female model's back, and that they sink into the skin of a large model. Once they figure out how to get those back attachments to conform to body of the host, we will probably see backpacks and other attachments.

There are belts that look buckled in the creator, there are belts that appear to be strapped in the creator. Not all belt styles will work with a buckle, and not all belt styles will work with a strap. I think you are going to need to spell this one out for us, cause I'm not getting it.

This is the another issue. Currently, the weapons exist in "hammer space" until needed. The problem with having scabbards and persistent objects within them is that they will always be there. The game will not be able to alter your costume to show the weapon drawn. You will draw your sword from your back, and it will simultaneously still be in your scabbard and in your hand. Nor will the game recognize where your scabbards and such are for the draw animations. Dual Blade Katana / Wakizashi wielders who want their characters to look realistic will have both of their scabbards on the left hip. Dual Blade draw animations draw one from each side. Some archers keep arrows on their hip or on their bow. The draw animation will still assume the quiver is on the back. These are some of the issues the Devs need to solve before implementing scabbards and holsters.

In order to avoid redraw issues in a set that has zero redraw, they could not be alternate animations for Martial Arts, they would need to be their own set.

While I would love to see nunchaku in the game, as a martial artist, I recognize that animating them, even semi-realistically, would be a nightmare.

They have yet to add anything to a Booster Pack after it has been released, with the exception of adding a tintable front panel option to the Science Jacket (Jay began work on this before the Pack's release, but it did not make it into a build until afterward). I, and many others, happen to think that the new costumes and Ninja Run are well worth the $10 for the Martial Arts booster. The only way I see them adding something to a Booster Pack post release is if the sales on it tank. Sales on the Martial Arts Booster did anything but tank.

BTW: We already have alternate animations for Martial Arts. All you need to do is go to a tailor, click the "Powers" tab, and then pick you alternate animations for each offensive technique. This goes for Super Strength, as well.

So: Nunchaku? Probably not anytime soon. Alternate animations for Martial Arts because you get bored with the default ones? Wish granted.

Next suggestion?

My impression was that the average Praetorian citizen hasn't seen a Devouring Earth outside of a propaganda reel for years. While the Devouring Earth may be the big threat for the world, it is a threat that Emperor Cole and his Praetorians are handling. The fact that Praetoria is probably virtually free of the Devouring Earth is part of the reason the citizens have accepted the loss of freedoms that come with that security.

It looks like the great majority of the conflict in the Going Rogue content will be the interplay between the Loyalists, the Resistance and the Syndicate.

There was no Rikti invasion of Preatoria. Thus, Hero 1 and Lady Grey should still be in England, defending her from the Devouring Earth.

Part of the utopian propaganda is that, since Praetoria and the surrounding area are relatively secure due to the efforts of Emperor Cole and his Praetorians, the new and upcoming supers in the city who don't receive posts are sent out to other parts of the world to aid their efforts at repelling the Devouring Earth.

This may simply be a convenient excuse for what happens to supers who wash out of the training program or who prove to have "questionable loyalties," but there may actually be some outreach. I wouldn't expect to see Hero-1 and Lady Grey in Praetoria, but we may hear about them.

I don't think I understand what you are asking (either that, or you don't).

You can have completely different looking armor, and different weapon models within the same powerset on each of your costume slots and have no effect on your performance. You can already do a lightly armored and a heavily armored version of your character. You can have the impervium katana on one slot, and the legacy katana on the other.

If you have the science booster, you can visit the tailor and make your brother / sister duo. Choose a name that is not gender specific, and then have one costume slot be the man and the next the woman.

Wish granted?

I don't know about that. 20 levels of Resistance content. 20 levels of Misguided Sheep content (sorry, Loyalist content). Plus whatever story arcs, badges and other rewards that come with side switching, with unique side switching content for Villains to become Rogues, and finally Heroes, and Heroes to become Vigilantes, and finally Villains. It may wind up being roughly the same amount of content as Villain launch.

I'd like to see the Praetoria content expanded beyond level 20 on a gradual basis, which would increase the value, over time, of owning the Going Rogue Expansion.

The benefits are purely cosmetic. For years, people have asked for the ability to walk instead of running everywhere. Almost as long as people have been asking for animated hair, backpacks, or holsters / sheathes. Just think of the Walk power as another costume piece, and you'll have the proper frame of reference to understand it.

I won't use it much, but, after Ninja Run, even Sprint is too slow for me. Lots of my characters will be using Ninja Run until they get their real travel powers, even the ones who have no business ninja-running (my Stone / Stone Tanker, for example).