Lord Mayhem

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Both are wrong and right actually.
"Did you know I can create a force field inside someone's body and expand it until they explode? "
Is what she said.

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Fair enough - I almost re-watched the DVD to check, but I couldn't be bothered

I was probably getting confused by one of the Ultimate FF comics series - I'm pretty sure Reed said at one point in it that you don't argue with a woman who can open up a force field bubble inside your brain. But maybe I'm wrong again - it does happen occasionally

I hate to say it after you've put so much effort into your post, but I feel the need to do so tactfully before someone else comes and shoots your post down in flames in a single curt sentence - almost every single thing you suggest has been asked for at least a dozen times before and many of them are just not possible in the game's current engine without completely replacing it (i.e. basically writing CoH 2).

I did want to comment on your Teleport stuff though:
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1) Let me ask a question, why is it that all the other transport powers allow me to get across a map with full endurance and this one does not? This power is extremely unbalanced, have you noticed that no-one uses it? My suggestion is simple, lower the endurance cost drastically.

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It lets you get across a map and arrive with full endurance if you slot it for that - with IOs you could probably get away with just 2 slots (same as I usually put in Fly) with EndRdx IOs - with L50 IOs that would give you 84% EndRdx. But yeah I would like it if Teleport used less end - the need for slotting to make it useable and the fact it's not so good "out of the box" are the two main reasons I hardly ever take it.

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2) I also find that teleport is too slow moving and almost frustrating at times . Yes, I am talking about the 4 sec hold, and yes it is absolutely necessary.... in the air. On the ground we don't need to be held for 4 seconds.

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I agree that it would be nice to not have the auto-hover when near the ground - no idea if it is possible though in the current engine. Even with it I can't accept teleport as slow though - maybe across short distances because of the auto-hover, but over long distances it is easily the fastest travel power in the game.

On my L50 MM I have TP ED-capped for endrdx and range (over 90% on both, 5-slotted with IOs, basically every IO from both TP sets except the stealth - it used to be 6-slotted with SOs to achieve the same pre-I9) and I was doing a mission in Nerva once. The team had all 4 travel powers present with me as the only teleporter, all starting from the ferry at the same time with the mission door on Thorn Isle (around 2 miles away). Not only did I reach the mission door before the next fastest player (a superspeeder) had got halfway there, I actually managed to reach the mission and Recall Friend the entire team (all 7 other players) to the door before any of them reached Thorn Isle under their own power. You can't call that slow.

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3 )Maybe a small speed up on the activation time as well, it's teleport, it should be the fastest mode of transport in the game by far

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It is - see above. Are you using a teleport keybind btw? If you're not then I can understand you finding it slow - the speed you can get with teleport can be somewhat dependent on your own reaction time and the speed of your PC/connection.

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You also need to find a way to disincentive high level toons taking out other toons that are substantially lower levels just for the "lols".

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Code addition: If a fight is not in the same Status level, the winner gets outdoor XP debt, no cap.

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You honestly think this would deter L50 griefers (to whom debt would mean nothing anyway) from killing lowbies? I don't. If they're doing it for the "lols" then why should they care about debt? If you allow high levels to attack lowbies then there's pretty much nothing that will deter a griefer (well, nothing short of the threat of permadeath or account/gameplay lockouts - and some probably wouldn't even be deterred by that). Seen it all before.

Sure, I'd love to see world pvp work, but some people just get their kicks from disruptive behaviour and to people like that world pvp is their own personal nirvana, no matter how you package it.

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You can prove anything wih facts and accurate figures, but I still prefer scrapping to bruting. So nyer

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That's pretty much what it comes down to. Some people just aren't going to like the Fury-building playstyle, no matter which AT is better in certain circumstances (and it's usually the brute ).

And like I said there are still powersets you can get on one and not the other so that will influence your choice too as to what to play (though hopefully proliferation will sort that out - I have a crazy idea for a Spines/Stone Brute )

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Just out of interest - What missions does Mako appear in ? (hero and villains side) I think i've only seen him once in a mission to either rescue or kill (i can't remember) 4 different notable named bosses.

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Hero-side he pops up twice as an enemy - on the final missions of both the Statesman TF and the Mender Silos TF - one of those is probably what you're thinking of.

Villain-side he only shows up once as an enemy, on Mako's own patron arc (a mission you actually get from Mako himself in Grandville), but he also pops up as an ally (that admittedly does nothing but stand still) on Black Scorpion's patron arc. For some odd reason he doesn't show up as an ally on the villain version of the Silos TF (only Ghost Widow and Black Scorpion do out of the patrons).

In fact Mako has become my favourite patron character-wise (his dialogue on his patron arcs is rather apt and fun... if by fun you mean totally psychotic, hehe).

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Mine isn't. If this game were changed so that a player villain could attack me in King's Row then I'd quit right there.

That's not the game I pay for or enjoy.

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I'd echo that - my first experience of World PvP in an MMO was EverQuest on the free-for-all Rallos Zek server - made a troll SK, went out into the newbie zone, entered my first PvE fight, finished it with low health and BAM a level 25 player one-shotted me. Headed out again, went to loot my newbie weapon from my corpse and BAM dead again. Only one way out of that city and I couldn't do anything without my newbie weapon so out I went again, trying to be cautious, but again he got me. Logged out, made something different, ran into a similar issue, came back 30mins later and that L25 was still hanging around in the newbie yard by the city entrance/exit killing lowbie characters who had no chance against him and camping their corpses - just because he could.

Tbh it wasn't that much different in WoW - on my mainly PvE server one night a player kept killing the hand-in NPC for a popular quest over and over again, non-stop for 3 hours, despite the fact he was getting no reward for it, just because there was a line of newbies of the opposite faction waiting to do the hand-in and he knew it. Nobody from our faction came to sort him out (not worth it for just one guy, somebody said) and he couldn't attack us without us being flagged for PvP first, so he found this other way to grief the opposite faction.

That's why I only do my PvP in pure PvP games purely designed for it (usually FPS games) - trying to do PvE in a world PvP environment is just giving griefers open licence to be idiots and annoy the majority. And mixed PvE/PvP games rarely find a decent balance between both playstyles - they always lean heavily towards one or the other.

If you want to be wanted on TFs/trials/teams then you're looking at 3 options really:

AE damage: Blaster is king here, but Corruptors scourge quite nicely too - Fire Blast is probably best primary, but Rad, Archery and AR are nice too, and the other choices aren't too bad. If you already have a L50 each side then Warshades can do immense AE damage in short bursts (after double-miring) and Crab Spiders do nicely consistent AE damage too (yes, you'll see from my sig I'm an AE-junkie) with some -res debuffing and while also buffing the team with their leadership toggles. Sure, you could do an AE-focused Brute, Tanker or Scrapper (Spines, Fire or Elec favourites), but their AEs lack the radius/range of Blasters/Corrs/WS/Crabs so you won't be killing quite as many enemies.

Debuffing: Rad Emission and Kinetics are always the ones I hear teams/trials shouting for the most, but Empathy too, and any of the mini-bubble buffing sets (Sonic/FF/Therm/Cold) are very popular as well because few play them as they're mainly team-orientated. Dark Miasma is very underrated by teams, but has a great heal, two powers that debuff -regen (good for AVs - and one of those "debuffs" is the heal and the other is the game's only AE rez), some control for normal teaming, and the most -ToHit of any set to keep your team safe (just drop Dark Servant next to the AV and stick DN on it). You could go Corruptor, Defender or Controller - but tbh, taking into account the need for AE damage, Corruptor or Defender is probably the way to go with an AE-heavy blast set as above.

Tanking: few TFs/trials like to move until they have a tank of some kind - obviously tanker is favourite, and Stone Armour is always very popular (because of Granite) on TFs/Trials, but for that reason a /Stone brute tanks very well too. Just bear in mind Willpower tanks struggle somewhat to hold area aggro (Ice Armour is best for aggro-holding I hear) - having a damage aura toggle really helps for that. Peacebringers/Warshades in dwarf can fill the tanking role in a pinch, especially against AVs, but Warshade ones in particular struggle to hold aggro against multiple targets for normal spawn tanking (Peacebringer dwarfs do have an AE attack they can make quite spammable to help with that).

Control is useful, but when you have a team that is really rolling with serious AE damage it becomes less important.

Probably the most team-friendly builds would combine two of the above aspects - a non-WP tanker or stone brute with an area damage set (Fire/Elec Melee) or a Corruptor/Defender with a solid debuff/buff/heal set plus an area-damage blast set. I wanted to level my Fire/Rad Corruptor specifically for TFs and it's perfect for them (heavy AE damage for spawns, debuffs and good single-target damage for AVs, buff/heals/rez for the team, and an awesome AE hold for when things go wrong), even moreso than my Blaster.

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Being able to pick up 'defeated' enemies and use them as shields or projectiles.

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I do genuinely worry about you.

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You missed a doozy of a conversation late last night on Union Chat (actually it may have been on SBH, but I don't want Sal to kill me ) - human shields came up, car doors as shields came up, then we got on to using the whole car as a shield and having members of the family hanging out of the car windows screaming And as I said then, I'd pay for an expansion that solely had that powerset in it.

But then I also recall saying I'd pay for an expansion that solely had a Blast powerset based on Propel-like powers too. I think we decided that the T9 nuke would either be dropping the Moon on their heads, or just using a skyscraper instead

I think I better go and take my medication... "Nurse!!!"

Everyone likes a different challenge, that's why I wish we could tailor the mission difficulty a bit better than we can at the moment. I'd rather have more control over the difficulty settings than any kind of "hardcore" event/weekend. The challenge I tend to prefer is larger spawns and more bosses/EBs, not higher level mobs (+1/+2 or +2/+3 is fine by me - I usually stay on Ruthless/Unyielding tbh) nor slowed progress through xp penalties.

With more adjustable difficulty settings most of my characters could face larger spawns. My teams, and my stalker solo, could get more EBs/Bosses than Minions/Lieuts (because minions/lieuts often melt away too fast to be a challenge). My Warshade and Crab Spider could have had significantly larger spawns (with fewer bosses than you usually get in big hazard-style spawns) to suit their AE natures. And my poor old Mind/Psi dom could avoid EBs altogether (I spent 15mins taking down a Ballista with him the other day - then confuse missed twice in a row and, with a sliver of his life left, the Ballista two-shotted me and I had to do it all again, heh).

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Val, you haven't played with me, have you? I can turn any AT (regardless of powers) into a Squishymon...

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I don't think I have - I don't recall teaming with any suicidal Hares/Rabbits - and you're not exactly convincing me that I'd want to

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Do we know that it is the same Nictus that talks and then merges with Romulus? I've always thought of it as some kind of Nictus Overlord who speaks with Romulus and then gets one of his Nictus underlings to merge with Rom.

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I guess it's possible, but I tend to prefer the simplest explanation (Occam's Razor, and all that). We've actually run into the area when the cut-scene triggers - before that Rom has no Nictus around him, but when the cut-scene ends he has 3 Nictus with him without hosts, as well as the Nictus inside of him.

If it was the senior Nictus that was speaking (and Rom did call him Master, iirc) then it makes sense that he'd take Romulus as host - remember, Nictus only live ten years without a host (same as Kheldians), and the bonding process makes them more powerful - it makes sense to me that the Nictus leader would want to bond with a mortal host who was also already the leader of the region they were in.

Again, it's the simplest explanation.

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So it keeping the name mght be a bit like the Mark of Cane, only voluntary? It chooses to bear it as a reminder of it's guilt?

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I like that idea, but really we have no clue.

The Shadowstar name and Nictus passes on to female bloodline descendants, but probably only started doing so once she/it became a Warshade 5,000 odd years ago and had to find willing hosts rather than just taking by force. With Requiem we don't know who Dirge of Entropy's previous host was before Uzzano, just that Dirge is a particularly powerful/respected Nictus. With Arakhn I don't think we even know what her Nictus is really called (except that potentially her Nictus might be the leader of all Nictus, from hints in the Warshade arcs) and the same with Romulus (both of them, if the Warshade and the Cimeroran fake Emperor aren't linked).

It could be that every Kheldian and Nictus just follows their own naming scheme - I mean Nictus take hosts by force, so some Nictus might think so little of their hosts (just a meat vehicle, right? ) that conceivably they could go by their Nictus name all the time.

We really don't know enough named Nictus (nor all 3 of their potential names) - redeemed Warshades or otherwise - to really know if they all follow a similar naming scheme, or even if the Kheldians (which they all once were) do the same.

I don't think the Devs really want to nail down too much lore in advance, so they still have some leeway when planning future content/storylines. The only place it's probably written down is in the game's story bible, and you'd have to kidnap Hero 1 (the Dev) to get at that.

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PC Fixed for you.

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Thanks, Lost... Martial Artist of East Asian Descent.

Sorry, you do realise Ninjas aren't PC, right? That's why we had to put up with the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Can't have the kiddiewinks thinking assassination is cool or acceptable now, can we?

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Well at 50, I can almost two shot a +1/2 mob on my Brute when I've got everything rolling nicely, which really only takes a mob or two, and she'll become far more effective when I get round to getting some IO's in there.

My Scrapper, however, is lucky to two shot a +2 Minion without a Crit, I'd need some more +Dam from IO Bonus' for that.

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Yeah - my fire/fire brute used to two-shot all the minions in a spawn often (and the second shot was a tick of Blazing Aura after the FSC!) and my EM/Elec can go around one-shotting several minions in a row on full Fury. I'd like to think a Broadsword scrapper could two-shot or even one-shot minions with a crit on Headsplitter, but I never got mine that high - besides it still wouldn't be reliable - not like you can get crits to order like a Stalker can (my stalker has no trouble 1/2-shotting stuff - he can 1-shot lieuts ).

The only reason I'd play a scrapper now was for a powerset combination that I couldn't play on a brute/stalker (and there are precious few of those left) or for concept reasons.

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Early levels yes, later levels no.
Where as scrappers just keep getting better and better

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Stop bragging about Focused Accuracy - it's not big and it's not clever

I doubt you're being serious, but just in case... I fail to see how a scrapper gets "better and better" but a brute doesn't.

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I suppose it could make a temp power, but I dont think theyde make a cattle prod powerset unless the cows were possessed by demons, we already have a taser

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Hmm cows possessed by demons - you might be onto something there <has flashbacks to the cow level on Diablo 2>. Yeah, we definitely need cows possessed by demons as both an MM pet set and a new faction

Good job on coming up with an original idea that I haven't heard several hundred times before

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XP and Inf as normal. triple debt, no inspiration drops, all missions are shifted two degrees of dificulty up, all enemies count as if they were two levels higher than they are, prestigue and salvage drops are increased by half.

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You forgot to put an AV/GM in every spawn. I mean if we're going to be fighting stuff well inside the purple patch then we might as well have AV/GMs too

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Another thing I'd like to see would be "double XP in [zone]" weekends -- particularly for the Rikti War zone -- and "double XP for Task and Strike forces" weekends.

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Honestly playing around with hiking up rewards is an incentive for people to play (or to play in a certain way, in the case of your latter 2 suggestions), which is what the Devs want - but they're not about to run events that make the game significantly tougher for everyone - there are still people who struggle on Heroic/Villainous (yeah, it surprises me too, but there are - I've met them).

I must admit one of the things I do like about CoH/V is being able to pick your own challenges - outdoors you can find mobs up to L54 (and a +4 is a pretty good challenge, especially in a hazard size spawn), and if you mainly duo like me or solo or any small team then you can pick difficulty based on spawn size/content too when in hazard zones - so we can already pick our own risk to some degree, even over and above the mission scaling.

Although talking about the mission scaling, it definitely needs at least 3 more difficulty/rep settings - one for Invincible/Relentless with larger spawns, then a couple at +3/+4 level settings beyond that (one of them with normal spawn sizes and the other with the larger "+1 player" setting again).

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That'd be quite possible - if you're a Villain, then you can easily betray the Midnight Squads trust when they let you use their crystal to travel back in time.

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We actually have the option to betray them even before that, but of course you wouldn't know...

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Real sci fi, the truly great Sci if, follows this rule.

the idea is the hero

the setting, the trappings, the era, all irrelevant. the idea is what's important. this tends to propose a setting of the contemporary with a twist, that one thing that is different. but it is not necessary.

everything else like it is science fantasy, or low fantasy, high fantasy (not counting straighter fiction of course) i would say in many ways super heroes are high fantasy.

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I'd agree with that - pure sci-fi used to be written by actual scientists like Asimov, or at least those with a heavy scientific bias like Clarke - now it's written by authors instead - and I'm happy with that, because I'd rather have a well-written story than a hypothesis masquerading as a story

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I can see where sci-fi (science and technology origins) and fantasy (magic and natural origins) fit into CoX and comics, but can anyone point me to a modern comic that involves mutants??

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Umm, how is Natural origin "fantasy"? Natural can be used to represent basic humans, and last time I checked we weren't a fantasy race (yeah, species, I know).

Ok, we're all mutants too, but that's besides the point

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Is the pet AI that bad?

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No comment - though there are good reasons I haven't played an MM since I7 and you're getting fairly close to one of them

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No, I mean more how people of the time would interpret someone like Nemesis if he showed up - his armor makes him look a bit like a knight, and his machines would be thought of as some kind of magic or alchemy.

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Which drags us back around to Clarke's often quoted 3rd law "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - that's a sliding scale according to what level of tech you're familiar with. Taking a torch (flashlight, if you're GG ) back even just 500 years and shining it around would probably have you being labelled a sorcerer/witch.

"There's no place like groan" - that's not an issue, just my response to your puns, Mother

As to sci-fi or fantasy, well the superhero genre clearly has elements of both - pure sci-fi needs to have a basis in actual science by its very definition (that's the proper definition, not the narrow one gamers and movie-goers use as shorthand for "it has spaceships in it") - and from what I've heard if you expose yourself to gamma radiation something worse happens than your shirt getting ripped and your skin turning green.

Fantasy is a very wide genre that pretty much encompasses most of what we think of as modern sci-fi (especially as far as most mainstream publishers are concerned, where sci-fi is just a subset of fantasy), but again we gamers and movie-goers often use it as shorthand for "it has magic and elves in it".

CoH, like all superhero franchises, and like Dr Who and Lost and Star Wars and tons of other things, is sci-fantasy - a bit of both - and that's great, because anything goes.

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Dagnammit Valkryst you stole my I4 pun!

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Speaking of time-travel I just went forward a couple of years and found that all of GG's dreams come true in I17 - truly "there's no place like comb"

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Ok, I'm lost, from what point did we go from Polearms to shields then to abandoned hereos?

POLEARMS PEOPLE! POLEARMS!

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I think you took us off topic when you asked me why I had taken so long to pick up on your atrocious spelling

Ok, Polearms... once they're in does that mean it would be easy to re-use the animations to give me a cattle prod powerset?

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I thought Issue 12 taught us there was no place like Rome?

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Actually Golden Girl, If you recall your history you'd remember It goes way back to Issue 2 when the Circle of Thorns taught us that in fact; "Theres no place like Tome"

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Now you're really stretching it - don't even try and suggest that Issue 4 taught us "there's no place like the Dome"