LittleDavid

It would be great to have added variety. Even if all they can feasibly do is provide powerset customization options that make the henchmen take on different preset appearances, I'd love to see it.

Though, for Steampunk bots, repurposing Nemesis content would be great. Nemesis guns (when held by his troops) have pretty awesome effects.

Dude.

If we get that pack, and if it has a Rock Band primary for Masterminds, you are now obligated to make a glam metal Mastermind ...

*dons sunglasses*

... With /Poison.

"I'm farming Hami-Os, I think I'm farming Hami-Os, I really think so ..."

Dang! I shoulda used /em alakazamreact when he did that! Haha!

You got better though, right?

Naw, I'm on Guardian.

Lorenz Ansaldo, though, he's always got Family hanging around on the street right next to him, often loitering on his side of the sidewalk, too. When that happens, they aggro anyone who isn't stealthed.

And it can get pretty bad if the group spawns above your level, with a Boss. (Which has happened. Ugh.)

Dude, there was absolutely no need to be this hostile and patronizing.

None whatsoever.

I freely admit I have no intricate knowledge of network design and I know next to nothing about how neutrality in Going Rogue works.

In the past few years I've played this game, I've only gotten 15 months of veterancy. I've been around on these forums for a fraction of that time. I wasn't reading these forums when Going Rogue was in the pre-launch phase, and it's been half a year since the expansion came out.

Since I rarely visit these boards, I know almost nothing about what the devs have or have not said.

So, I would have thanked you for informing me why it can't be done, but I could have done without all that hostility.

How does situationally neutral groups make the game less dynamic?

I have some questions, then, because I have never played a HEAT before.

1. Do Voids and Quantums spawn for you even when the zone cons grey?
2. Do they spawn for you when you visit Praetoria?

I couldn't resist.

AHEM! Okay, putting serious hat on.

I think Praetoria deserves its own lovin', since it doesn't have any EATs of its own. Yeah, you can make a character of any normal archetype there, but still.

I'd like to see an EAT for the Loyalists and the Resistance. The AT for Loyalists could probably be IDF or T.E.S.T. Rangers, and the Resistance could be some kind of commando that uses a melange of Heavy Barrel and Heavy Hands powers.

You're comparing apples to oranges there. Primary/secondary powersets aren't the same as Incarnate powers.

Ultimately, what Anti Proton is asking for is more thematic compatibility in Incarnate powers. Why is that so bad or hypocritical to you?

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--

SOMEONE CALL STATESMAN'S VOICE ACTOR AND PAY HIM TO SING "THE CANDY MAN CAN."

EMPEROR COLE SELLING CANDIED ENRICHE. YES

On the surface, yeah, I agree.

I for one don't mind the fact that the new free stuff is gated on principle, but the things that bother me are twofold:

1. Some of the new stuff seems more like general superpower themed things which don't make sense as gated endgame content. The Ancension costume parts and auras, and the stuff that's directly tied to Incarnateness, I think, are just fine as unlockables to Incarnates. To me, that's the whole point.

But the stuff like the other non-Incarnate auras and emblems only available to Incarnates (such as Pixie Dust, Binary, Pixels, etc.)? Doesn't make sense to me.

2. Compared to the stuff that's buyable with other forms of merits, there's not enough diversity in what you can do to earn the Empyrean and Astral Merits, which are what you need to buy this stuff.

A lot of people don't like and don't want to run the same two/three trials over and over for them, and much of the appeal that's kept City of Heroes from being a grind (to me) is that there is a lot of diverse ways to go about earning merits and inf, and the myriad story arcs help distract you from this (suspension of disbelief, as it were).

If you're made to keep running the same one or two things over and over again just to earn a specific reward, the fun turns into farming, and then the farm turns into a grind.

I appreciate that we're getting a third trial to help expand on that, but I think people want something different from a trial altogether. Some alternate way to earn at least a few merits. Maybe I'm naive, but I think the uproar wouldn't have been as bad if the methods for earning Empyrean and Astral Merits were as diverse as other merit types.

Well, why not give negative defense as a special power to static objects? I mean, it's just a different mean to the same end.

We get a negative stealth power when we're escorting an NPC, after all.

Same here! Although in my case, I'd taken meticulous screenshots of each option in the costume editor to document the settings I used to make characters and costumes.

A single character took, like, 15+ screenshots to document. I'm *really* glad they've made it possible to save costumes as files!

Don't you have to manually claim those per character, though?

I only discovered I had the one-year Veteran's Award Powers awaiting me in the past month (although I started playing in 2008 I haven't been playing this entire time). On the characters where those powers were thematically appropriate, I claimed them; I didn't bother on the others.

Same deal goes with the Magic pack. Even though all my characters have access to Mystic Fortune, I don't bother with it because I don't have a character the power would thematically fit. Since it's not made clear to others who has Mystic Fortune I don't see it as a problem; I've never seen anyone demand to have a Mystic Fortune cast on them. It's always been a thing of generosity by the characters who use it.

Oh ... Well, I've learned something new today, at least! I need to go take my foot out of my mouth now.

Only if you wear the "Army of Me" badge!

Wow. People really said that? That's pretty offensive ... and lacking in perspective to boot. All I'll say on the matter is, "the micropayment trend is not, nor was it ever, uniquely American."

And trust me, I have seen far worse.

Anyway, as far as the Incarnate costume stuff goes, I don't necessarily agree with the idea it should all be free and available to players from the get-go, or that people should be able to buy it. My reason being, this is Incarnate stuff. Superpowers are one thing, but in City of Heroes, being an Incarnate is something that is attainable in very specific methods. And the methods available to any superbeing require them to be at the top of their game.

Well ... strike that. My opinion depends on the costume part in question. Some of the Incarnate stuff sounds more like general superpowered stuff that would be better as something generally available or available through micropayments.

Fairy dust aura, for example. Do I really have to drink from the Well of Furies to get that? Could I just drink from the Well of Fairies instead?

Some of the other stuff, I don't see much of a problem in it being available only through Incarnate salvage. I don't really know about those prices since I still don't have a single 50, and thus haven't run Incarnate content to experience first hand.

Here's where I see the problem, though: consider the other merit types.

We get Reward Merits for completing contact story arcs, of which there are oodles that appeal to every flavor of player.

We get Architect Entertainment tickets for doing stuff in AE missions, and there are no shortage of those. Even though it's hard finding the kind of AE mission you want to play (another thread unto its own), it's not hard earning the tickets.

Vanguard Merits can be earned only in the Rikti War Zone, but they are given out as rewards for raids and contact missions, of which there are several. There's also a day job that increases the amount of Vanguard Merit awards you get, and there's also a chance to get one from defeating Rikti in the zone.

Alignment Merits can be earned only by doing Morality Missions, but the way Alignment Merits work are like the gold piece to the Reward Merit's silver. You don't get many Alignment Merits, but one or two can buy you something you'd need to spend 100 or 200 merits on.

For Incarnate stuff, well ... Astral and Empyrean Merits can only be earned by running Lambda or BAF. All the other Incarnate goodies are unusable outside of the Alpha Slot, as far as I understand it, and unfortunately only the Alpha-slot salvage is obtainable outside of BAF or Lambda ... and I've heard quite a bit about BAF and Lambda that it's made me in no hurry to get to 50.

Most people have been saying "don't make me grind for this" and I gotta agree. One way to lessen the grind is to simply make more diverse Incarnate content available.

I'll be honest. I've never really paid for anything with merits or tickets yet. I've racked up hundreds of the stuff, and only recently discovered how useful they could be. I've been so enamored with the contact story arcs in this game that I just didn't care. Even though a single rare recipe would set me back for half the reward merits I earned, it's never felt like a grind simply because I'm not always running the same mission over and over.

If I had to farm the same contact's missions for stuff over and over, then it would feel like a grind to me.

If you give people more diverse Incarnate content, then they probably won't see it as much of a grind anymore.

Admittedly a goodly chunk of my costume files are like this, too. I make sequential backups and name them "v1," "v2," and so on.

With costume slots I tend to use them as "sequential backups" too, or did at least, before we could save costumes as files. I still tend to use up a costume slot to "save" a version if I want to make some tweaks.

I read your post, then I clicked your signature link.

I cower in awe before your army of alts!

There's a major difference between a character who prefers using arcane skills over personal technological gadgets, and a person with a "simple living" lifestyle that abhors all forms of technology.

I'm actually kind of surprised there's people who are opposed to more thematically arcane stuff, though. City of Heroes already has a lot of arcane equivalents to technological stuff. Just look at Supergroup bases; all the major features have Arcane and Tech flavors.