Lord Mayhem

Two things:

1) I'd like all hero-side story arcs rewritten so that they were as engaging/interesting as the ones on villain-side and mostly used mission doors in the same zone as the contact. To do this I think they should start by cutting down how many contacts there are blueside - hard to write mission text with colour/style when it has to be delivered by 4-6 contacts in the same level range/origin - and also if two players have identical missions/arcs it's annoying they can't auto-complete off each other's missions just because they were given by a different contact.

2) I'd like to see all Hazard Zones on CoH-side turned into either co-op zones, or into competitive PvE zones i.e. heroes and villains both doing PvE, but competing against each other to complete first (with the end of mission bonus going to the victors), with the number of mission victories each side earns in a certain period affecting the zone in some way (opening up contacts/rewards for the side that is winning).

I don't really care about farming or PvP - if other players enjoy that then more power to 'em! I would rather the Devs focused on adding more PvE content though - more powersets, more contacts/missions, more zones, etc.

Having played both ATs to 50 I'd have to say I prefer brutes. Brute does more consistent damage over time IF you can keep Fury high - in a poor stop-start team scrappers will have an easier time and do more damage, but if you can keep the momentum going as a brute then you'll easily outdamage the scrapper over time.

My problem with scrappers is that criticals are purely based on luck (fury is far more predictable/controllable) - so often my critical comes on the final hit, where a non-crit would have been enough to finish the mob, so the crit is effectively wasted - but a brute on almost full fury (not hard to get/maintain) is effectively getting a critical on every hit guaranteed.

I can't really talk about survivability as my L50 brutes are /fire and /elec (my /dark brute at L35 seems more survivable than them), while my scrapper is /wp - so the scrapper feels more survivable most of the time against large spawns and because of HPT has as many HP as my brutes (although I hope to level my lowbie /wp brute more soon) - though when my /elec brute uses Power Surge he's the most unkillable of any of my brutes/scrappers for 3mins.

But in a like-for-like comparison with the same powersets the brute will have more HP and, fully buffed in a team situation, higher resists too (same 90% cap as tankers, while scrappers/stalkers are at 75% like all other non-epic ATs), so is the more survivable archetype. And of course in most situations a /stone brute in granite can out-survive most brutes/tankers/scrappers with the obvious exception of a stone/ tanker in granite. The powersets you pick really have a huge bearing on which brute/scrapper will suit what you want.

My recommendation would be to try a brute - if you find you don't like the pressured gameplay of keeping fury up then play a scrapper instead - I find scrappers much more "laid back" and unhurried, which can appeal to me sometimes (I'd argue that brute-lock is more pervasive/persuasive than scrapper-lock ). But these days if you like teaming and love to crit a lot on bosses/EBs/AVs (usual scrapper-fodder in teams) then tbh you may want to consider a stalker - sure, scrappers have better area damage, but stalkers should outdamage them in a full team against a single target.

But if you really want to kick out major damage then you want a blaster

I find the Sands of Mu more useful at lower level, but I rarely use it past L15ish on any character except my MM - its damage tails off once your attacks get slotted and it's annoying when you miss.

On my characters that do lethal damage I always tend to take the Axe instead - less useful at lower levels, sure, but once you start running into ghosts that heavily resist lethal damage then the Axe makes them a little easier.

I rarely veer from this, but with my characters that were already L50 when the vet rewards were added I just took what went with their concept (Mu for the MM, as he was /dark - and Axe for my fire/fire brute because he's a demon and I just wanted an Axe for him, for fun).

The small cramped caves bug me, especially the purple ones where the walls just blend into one another and become disorientating, but mainly it's because I have a lot of tall characters who get stuck on those ceiling supports - being in first person doesn't help that. A others have said it's particular bad if you're a WS/PB nova or a crab spider (your tentacles/crab-arms get stuck on the supports).

I like the more wide-open caves though - the ones that are more common on CoV side, but also used in The Hollows for the troll tunnels, and that were obviously used as the basis for the re-skinned cave tilesets used by Arachnoids and also the new I12 one mostly seen in Cimerora. I wish all caves were like those - they just need a bit more water and maybe some boulders strewn around, but otherwise they present no mobility annoyances.

But what bugs me more is the game freezing to load the big hangar/jail rooms in Arachnos lab bases. Really, it's been 6 issues now, please fix it Devs!

I love co-op zones and co-op TFs, but hate the idea of existing hero-only or villain-only TFs/SFs being changed to co-op without a story rewrite. Are you seriously suggesting that heroes would want to go on an LRSF to take down the Freedom Phalanx? That kind of thing would get your hero licence revoked by Freedom Corp

We just need more co-op zones/TFs - and really there is no major stretch of logic needed if the Devs do it right. Just like heroes/villains combine forces in the Marvel universe to fight off Galactus and similar planetary threats, we just need more global threats here that threaten the existence of Earth (i.e. both Paragon and the Rogue Isles under threat). I'm sure the "Coming Storm" storyline will culminate in such a threat, and the Rikti storyline does too, but the lore of the game has several factions that both heroes/villains would be eager to stop and willing to co-operate to do so (and no, I don't just mean Nemesis):

1) The Banished Pantheon gods could be brought back (Dark Astoria co-op revamp)
2) Merulina, the Coralax's alien goddess, could awaken (new underwater zone)
3) Rularuu could escape the Shadow Shard,
4) Reichsman, the Nazi Statesman from an alternate universe, could be brought back with a world-threatening scheme (Boomtown revamp, as he's supposed to be in stasis under the rubble of the Freedom Phalanx base there)
5) The Devs could invent new world-devouring/destroying threats from space or other dimensions

Like Praf says, the historical inspiration for Romulus is definitely Romulus Augustulus, as Cimerora is at the end of the Roman era.

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Who was the chap talking to Romulus before he got his Super Zoanoid Form with silver trimming and personal purple fluffie entourage?

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It was the Nictus that then actually merged with Romulus, hence why the black & red "evil" text bubbles went from being offscreen (the Nictus without a host) to coming out of Romulus' mouth afterwards (the Nictus had taken Romulus as a host).

It does make me wonder if it is still that Nictus inside Romulus the Warshade in CoV (and thus now seeking redemption for the terrible things it did back then), or even if Romulus the Warshade is still the same host as the Romulus in Cimerora (i.e. both host and Nictus might be seeking redemption).

We know Nictus/Kheldians are functionally immortal once they are inside a host (as long as they don't go more than ten years without a host at any point), we just don't know how long the host can actually last beyond gaining an extended lifespan (Dirge of Entropy's host, Rudolfo Uzzano, has been knocking around since the 1920s as Requiem). Shadowstar's Nictus (who created the redemptive Path of the Warshade) has been kicking around since Ancient Egypt, yet in the warshade arcs she reveals that she will pass on the role of hosting the Nictus, and thus the Shadowstar name, to her daughter.

The Nictus inside Cimerora Romulus may have taken over new hosts throughout history, but decided to keep the name "Romulus" for their combined host+Nictus form, eventually taking the current Warshade Romulus host (which may have been the host that persuaded the Nictus to redeem itself by following the Path of the Warshade).

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Greek & Roman mythology has always provided half the storylines for modern tales of heroism. At least cimerora seems to be taking us closer to the well of furies and the established backstory of CoX rather than being a total rush thrown together since one of the devs got 300 on DVD...

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Emphasis mine, but that's a really good point and one I'd not considered. I also noticed yesterday that there's a whole shipyard out of range in there presumably available for future forays

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While I think Cimerora will get tied in with the Well of the Furies storyline, it actually ties in directly to the "Path of the Dark" story arc in CoH which tells of Nictus being active in the Roman era (and the expanded text of which can be read as one of the Midnighter Archivist clues in the Midnight Club).

Oh and that "whole shipyard out of range" thing you mention, you're not just looking at the island beyond the zone boundary near the Midnighter cave where you enter Cimerora, are you? The one with the temple on top and the ship in the cave underneath? If that's the one you mean, then it's actually the destination of the very first mission on the ITF - you zone-in on that ship and gradually work your way up through the island to the temple.

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I cant help noticing that VEATS and HEATS have to stick to a natural origin

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Maybe I could help you to notice that Warshades are Science origin, not Natural

There are very good story reasons why Peacebringers are all natural (those powers are common to every single member of the Kheldian race who hasn't undergone the Nictus process) and why all 4 VEATs are natural (they all begin as un-augmented humans given training/equipment - Fortunatas/Widows don't get psi-powers until they branch, and Banes/Crabs don't get their arguably sci/tech powers until they branch, but at the beginning of the character they are all natural humans).

I'd like the power to completely vapourise enemies with a single look, compel them to be my permanent minions, and to be able to destroy planets.




What?

Oh ok, X-ray vision, teleporting attacks (like the aforementioned Nightcrawler ones), wallcrawling/webslinging and shapeshifting into the exact form of an enemy faction so you could infiltrate them, would be my (reasonable) choices.

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From a few films/series'... 50p for anyone who can correctly answer what films/series' theyre all from...


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Fantastic Four (though Invisible Woman said inside the brain, not the stomach, didn't she?), Kill Bill and Heroes?

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I'm inclined to agree with the OP here (indeed I suggested it myself on the keldian board). Sure, there are ways to fight mezzing mobs for keldians, but since just about every late game enemy type has some kind of mez, it makes nova form virtually useless without and endless supply of purples, and most importantly, makes playing a keldian UNFUN for a lot of players.

Giving nova form mag 2 protection to sleep, stun and hold would make it a lot more fun, without being a massive buff.

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I also agree with the OP. Players who haven't taken a WS/PB to 50 simply have no idea of how bad it gets - when every single ranged attack from a faction like Freakshow, Malta, Carnies, Rikti, etc has a 20-30% chance of applying a short (usually less than 1 second) sleep/stun then you only need 4-5 of them shooting at you before it's guaranteed that you'll be dropped out of your form. At high level you can spend more time form-switching back into nova than doing anything else.

Passive mag2 protection to sleep & stun really would be enough for nova (and maybe human-form too) to stop the annoying form (and toggle) drops - but would still let you be controlled by 2 lieuts or a single boss. You can't call a sleep/stun that lasts under a second a "control"/"mez" - it's just a toggle-dropping annoyance. Actually it might be preferable if the Devs just removed any stun/sleep from the game with a duration shorter than 3-4 seconds anyway.

Unsuppressed travel powers for VEATs but nothing else would probably kill PvP balance - was this really worth wasting a suggestion post on?

Lots of NPCs get Super Jump (mainly for if they fall off a high area where the players are, so they can get back) so I had been hoping VEATs would get SJ as their inherent travel (hopefully by means of a permanent jump-pack power), but sadly it was not to be.

Or, going with the natural origin, it would have been nice if they had a "Black Helicopter" travel power - basically they could call down a black arachnos heli to take them to the central point in any Rogue Isles zone, including the one they are already in (could animate a black helicopter flying down out of the sky, but then bring up a load screen and place the player in the centre of the zone they select from a drop-down menu - it would just be a fancy teleport, in gameplay terms).

Or maybe I'm just bitter because I skipped travel powers on my Crab Spider (had too many important combat powers to take) and had to put up with 2-slotted Hurdle + CJ for 30+ levels

Great idea and I'd love to see this. Brass Monday only gets mentioned on history plaques inside the game, but it's such a core event in the game background. I'd love to be able to do an Ouro TF back to this time, and also to Nemesis' takeover of the USA in 1946 too.

Nicely thought out too - good job!

/signed

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Normaly always do that, but problem is where im doing it in notepad i dont get the "bib bib" sound when i wrote to much..

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If you have MS Word, or any other word processor program, use word (re)count often and make sure you don't go above 1,015 characters including spaces - that's what I do and I rarely have problems.

It's not 100% reliable because the in-game bio uses non-proportional fonts and gauges the limit by actual space and not number of characters, but 99% of the time with my bios the limit seems to kick in at 1,016 characters exactly.

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I acturly have my binds set kinda like that, but it would still be nice if we just had to use 1 button to go into and out of the form

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I also have binds set to change trays automatically when I shift form, though sometimes lag conspires to make the bind fail or I get mezzed out of form and have to do a double-switch to get back in synch.

So I'd like to see the OP's suggestion happen because of that, but also because I think one of the main reasons Kheldians are not that popular is because the majority of the playerbase don't know about, or bother with, keybinds and so find Kheldians fiddly to play because of this issue.

I know I couldn't play my Kheldian at all - not as easily, anyway - if it wasn't for the form-switching keybinds I wrote for it (I use the two buttons on the side of my mouse to switch to/from nova & dwarf and to switch in the hotkey tray for the form I'm going to).

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I was going to do that, but then I remembered that none of the existing newbie zones have events/GMs so I didn't - I figure the Devs don't want new players getting mown down while they're still new at the game.


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That's not quite true - the Kraken is in Perez Park.

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True, it is a hazard zone though, so I discounted it as a newbie zone (by which I meant "starting" zone - nobody starts in Perez - I doubt many new players even go there). The Paladin thing in King's Row I totally forgot about, though - at least that has a nice build-up before the GM is unleashed. Really I'd rather see more inventive zone events than just a big sack of hit points standing around waiting to be defeated (like most GMs basically are, e.g. Kraken, Adamastor, Jurassik, Deathsurge, etc.). At least Paladin, the Grandville Flyer and even Ghost of Scrapyard differ from the norm with their spawning and/or patrol routes.

As for Dark Astoria, I'm thinking about it, but work is getting kinda heavy this week - also I'm somewhat lacking motivation because it would be using an existing zone rather than inventing from scratch (which is what I find fun). Tbh I can list in one paragraph everything I want to see in DA: 1) make it co-op (I'd like to see ALL hazard zones go co-op), 2) add 4+ contacts with a linked series of mission arcs (just like Faultline/Striga/Croatoa/RWZ have), 3) add a couple of TFs, maybe one at the zone level range and another at 35-50 like the ITF/LGTF (I like TFs that scale to L50 because I hate losing powers when I exemp down). Other than that I don't want the spawns or zone layout changed in DA because I love them as is.

I'm also put off doing a DA suggestion post by how fast things have fallen down this forum lately. So many ideas are getting re-posted that we've seen hundreds of times before (just because the poster couldn't be bothered to use "search") that I'm not even sure my zone suggestions got seen by many people, not considering all the effort/time I put into them. I am very grateful for the feedback I got from you guys, but I didn't do these posts for forum plaudits, I did them because they showcased a few ideas I'd really like to see in the game (notably: a co-op newbie zone, competitive PvE, international mission locations accessible from an airport, moving the city rebuilding storyline forwards, etc.) that I was hoping a Dev would get to see (or a Mod pass it on to them) and maybe take inspiration from it.

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Right okay, thanks for your responses. I think I'm going to concentrate on new characters, levelling those will mean I'll get a lot of inf and salvage and will be learning as I go in that respect, so I don't need to kit out older characters with IOs which I know little to nothing about.

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I quit in I8, came back in I11, and was in the same position as you - not sure whether/how to re-slot my old pre-I9 L50s with IOs. I played new characters for the first month to learn the basics of inventions and see how they had changed the game (a lot), but in the end I learnt more about set bonuses from the forum and especially from playing around with Mids Hero Designer.

Muck around making IO’d up builds for your L50s in Mids and you’ll learn all about sets and their bonuses and find what’s best for you - focus on one theme per character, whether its fixing end issues or low accuracy or gaps in attack chains, or getting capped defences, or lots of global recharge, or whatever, and work towards that - see what’s possible and it will help you decide if your L50s are worth re-slotting.

Most of all learn how to use the auction house. Making enhancements yourself is usually cheaper, but not always - check the historic prices for pre-made as well as recipe+salvage cost, and for a couple of levels either side of what you want, and see which is cheapest - there are bargains to be had. Don’t be in a rush to pay the prices you see - prices fluctuate a lot, weekly and even daily - impatient/lazy players with more inf than sense will pay high prices to get something NOW which will trend prices upwards for a while, but if you bid lower and wait a week or two you can get better deals.

Just take your time, there’s no rush, and it’s easy to waste inf and make mistakes if you don’t understand what you’re doing. Don’t spend more than you’re willing to, but be aware that inf is much easier to make now than it was pre-I9 - most of my new L50s have made well over 100mill inf just levelling normally 1-50. Though if you need inf quickly just play your existing L50s for a while - the right purple recipe drop can get you 50+mill inf in one shot.

Personally I spent 3 months buying IOs for and re-slotting my pre-I9 L50s one at a time - and also making the inf to pay for their builds. Mine were approx 125mill inf each (my mastermind cost less because debuff/control/pet sets are so cheap compared to attack/armour sets), but I did set a personal limit of not paying more than 10mill for any single IO. Those L50s are all noticeably more fun/powerful now than they were with SOs and I’m glad I IO’d them up, but I only use them occasionally for TFs/GMs/raids so it’s arguable if they were worth re-slotting - consider if you’ll actually play your L50s enough to justify the expense/hassle of re-slotting them.

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Also, VEATs... yay or nay?

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Very much yay for Crab Spiders and I'm looking forward to playing the other 3 VEATs too.

Six +2 bosses on Villainous is certainly a bug. You shouldn't have had bosses at all at that rep level and nothing higher than +1.

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I noticed the first mission for the villain Midnight Squad spawns a huge number of bosses solo. I assumed that was simply Ashley McKnight trying to kill off villains by sending them on a suicide mission.

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Yeah I've done that arc about 7-8 times now redside, always solo or duo on Ruthless, and the first mission in particular has had at least 1 boss in every spawn, sometimes 2. The sole exception for me is when at the weekend my Mind/Psi dom mistakenly started the arc on Villainous (hadn't played him since I7 and forgot what his rep was set at) and of course the bosses spawned as lieuts instead.

Infernal and Calystix were two of my three most hated EB opponents when soloing my Bots/Dark MM (the other was Lilitu, but only because I ran into her around a corner once and she AE held my pets and I, then owned us). And my MM had a cone fear to control the summons so I can only imagine the nightmares you're having with /Poison's lack of AE control and meleeing pets. Even without their summons, Infernal in particular is easily capable of wiping out several pets with one Pendulum attack.

Don't be afraid to run away when it starts going bad - on one of my soloing successes against Infernal I actually went through 4 sets of pets, running away between each pet wipeout. Using lots of Lucks and trying to take aggro yourself (turning Infernal's attention away from your pets so his cone attacks don't hit them) can work too, but it can be dicey - he'll still have a 7.5% chance to hit you and can easily take most of your meagre HP with one hit.

But yeah Infernal and Calystix are horrid for MMs - if it just proves too tough just drag in a friend to help - a brute (to tank them) or a dom (to control him/them) would probably be best.

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My question is, can anythign be done with these single square spaces?

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Nothing can be done with these single square spaces except to delete them (providing the room has another door to the rest of the base so it doesn't get cut off).

You can't place anything in the doorway square itself, nor change the style/lighting/colours of the doorway - it just inherits half of the style/colours from the room one side and half from the room on the other side - and it doesn't even do that well because ceiling/floor trims don't show up in doorway squares.

It's a bit rubbish really that we have to waste so much space in our bases on both doorways and the gaps between rooms, but it's a limitation of the base editor - if the I13 base revamp doesn't change it then we're probably stuck with it.

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A General Discussion thread being derailed into self-congratulatory forumite back-patting? No, you shock me!

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Derailed? You mean that's not the entire point of this forum? No, you shock me, sir!

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Spectral Pirates appear in Bloody Bay

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Ahh, I couldn't recall if they were just ghosts in BB or actually part of the same faction - I rarely go there.

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Spetznaz are extremely rare either side and are the one I believe probably best fits the OPs questions - that is if you don't consider them to be Malta faction. Don't they appear rarely on some of the PI mishes.

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I'm 99.9% sure they don't appear on Tina/Maria/Unai/Harvey's arcs. And they're not Malta - they're Russian special forces. In CoV they only exist on Dmitri Krylov's arc. But I don't spend as much time on blueside as I used to. If they are there then it's a mission I've not done yet and I'm curious where it is.

Admittedly I've not done Crimson's missions and he'd probably be the logical place for them - I'd go check Paragon Wiki myself, but I don't want to read the whole pwiki page for Crimson yet and spoil any story surprises, because he's one of the few incentives I have to level another CoH hero to 50 one day. Maybe you can confirm whereabouts Spetsnaz are in CoH - are they on Crimson? Can you provide a pwiki link to just that mission?

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Wyvern appear in RWZ mishes

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Do they? I didn't even know there were instanced missions in RWZ. That's interesting. And I didn't even realise that Wyvern scaled that high - I presumed they were purely a mid-level faction (the level range 20-35ish would probably cover most of the times I've seen them). Live and learn.

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How about Contaminated or Infected and for something slightly different
GM is dying - fast - and the players need to save him - rationalle for Heroes is straightforward but would need some good reason for Villains.
Need to get him up to full health before his Infection can be cured. A bit like a reverse Paladin Construction Site. Healing powers are the obvious way but buffs could slow the degen and other ATs could apply bandages, salves etc given out from a nearby ambulance - a bit like the Fire Chief in Steel, could also have other mobs that need to be kept back - Vahzilok, Infected, Contaminated would be the obvious choices here.

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Doesn't really tie in with the lore I've set up for the zone though.

Best I can think of is outbreaks of minor riots - not as widespread as the one in the TF - but what if one street in the zone at random occasionally had fortified barricades spawning at each end and a couple of gangs having a shoot-out from behind the barricades (like Family and gang spawns in Oakes do from around building corners), with possibly each side led by a boss or even an EB. A hotspot could appear on the minimap to mark where a riot breakout was in the zone.

To quell the trouble you'd have to destroy both barricades (possibly make them take more damage from fire & smashing, but less from everything else) and take down both leaders, but reinforcements could constantly spawn from nearby buildings when you start attacking each boss/leader until he's defeated.

Or alternatively the Council could just land a tank and some soldiers on the beach and have them gradually make their way to the centre of the zone. If you destroy them before they reach the centre then you get a badge for it, otherwise the tank sets up in the main square and tons of Council soldiers spawn around it. This would make the central area with the contacts a bit more dangerous until the "GM" tank was taken down (though I'd probably make it a "Monster" at most rather than a GM).

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*Releases the catgirls*

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All of them? But you haven't given me enough time to organise the cull. I haven't even picked out a nice weighty club yet!

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Or you can end up insulting a load of lesbian girls with retractable cat claws and be hunted down for the rest of your short-and-fear-filled life.

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What a way to go!

And at least you're dying for a good cause

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I would like a plushie or LEGO version of my character for 48 months please.

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You'll get a Lord Recluse plushie and like it! Just be careful you don't poke your eye out with the extra arms when you cuddle it