Lord Mayhem

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The Devs have already said finger claws are not possible/likely, because there would be horrid clipping issues
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hehe

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Hehe that is pretty funny and I didn't even intend/notice it

<slaps self for not realising it>
<pats self on back for subconsciously writing a good pun>

Ok now is someone going to suggest a manicure-themed powerset?

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I never use hide_search as I don't not want to be found. I often solo, but will always join teams when asked generally.

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Why not use hide_search when starting a TF and turn it off afterwards? You could always write yourself a post-it note to remind you

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It just bugs me when people can't use the search function properly. I have lost count of the amount of times I have received a PM from a player asking to join my team, when I am soloing.

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It used to bug me too. Hiding solves it, but then I'm pro-active about joining teams when I want to, rather than passive, so that wouldn't work for you.

What I'd like to see is everyone on a team except team leaders being excluded from search queries, but leaders also being excluded when the team is full. That would help.

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Re: Lavantera, Really? I presumed seeing as she was a contact, she would give the 'You're too busy, leave me alone' spiel. I'll give her a try next time.

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Actually forget I said that - my brain must have frazzled when I posted that - normal contact stores do get locked out while on a TF. The way we had to do it on one LGTF was that the leader logged in another character, bought the insps and gave/traded them to TF team members (he'd parked both a hero and villain at Levantera iirc) - because you can log-out and back in without dropping from a TF.

What bugs me is that I save large insps in my SG bases each side for our use on TFs, but of course you can't zone into your base while on a co-op TF without dropping from the team. And of course the other places you can buy insps while on a non-coop TF - such as arena stores, Pocket D bartenders, Ouro store - are also not accessible on a co-op TF without being dropped from the team.

So yeah, insp vendors in RWZ & Cimerora - definitely /signed - or just make it so you can zone to Pocket D from all co-op zones and we could buy there at arena or bar stores.

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Presuming that the devs subscribe to the same Philosophy as Valkryst, you can be damn sure that they'll want to avoid that scenario at all costs.

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I do hope so - I realise I might seem somewhat zealous about this, but there really is no other MMO out there AT ALL that is as casual-friendly as CoH/V, but there are tons taking the more hardcore path.

I want CoH to keep its level 50 cap, keep the multi-alt focus, and keep the casual innovative gameplay - and I'm willing to fight to keep it that way! There are very few MMOs I'd want to go to from here... ok, none... if this game became just another WoW/EQ/EQ2 clone.

Anyone who wants raiding, level-cap raises, constant paid expansions, and (dare I say it) more involving/widespread PvP (yes I dare!) has dozens of other MMOs that can serve them better without trying to change CoH/V to fit. Most of us like CoH/V just the way it is.

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To guarantee a Dev views your suggestion, send them a PM over these boards. I know War Witch checks her inbox regularly for the EU forums, she told me so at Omega Sektor.

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I considered doing that, but I thought it would be somewhat immodest of me to do that myself and I figured Dev inboxes would be full anyway from players pestering them. I wouldn't complain if someone else sent a PM on my behalf though

(Btw, I'm almost ready to post my co-op newbie zone ideas, but the text is rather long so I'm trying to cut it down - I'll do it as a new post, but I may link it here)

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A Dash To Target system could, in theory, go a long way to improving the viability of Melee AT's in PvP.

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It would, but how would you give out such a power? As an inherent at a set level? Or as part of a new power pool so that it could be slotted for range/endrdx/rchg etc, but would take up a power choice?

Levantera in RWZ opens up her insp store very quickly if you've done even a few missions for her - that's where I buy insps while on co-op LGTFs.

So basically you want an insp vendor in Cimerora? Me too. /signed

Actually it might be a good idea if Senator Decimus Aquila had an insp store, opened up by that lore-heavy mission he gives where you chat to people all over Cimerora - it would be a good reward for doing it and it's close to where a lot of the ITF mission doors get placed.

A great idea that nobody would use, just like all the many LFT systems different MMOs have tried and failed with.

Honestly there's no substitute for a healthy global friends list or SG, access to several busy global channels, and not being too timid to start a group yourself if nobody else is running one.

I'm a rather low-profile player - perhaps even anti-social - in that I duo a lot, and if not doing that I'm solo or on a TF. But when I need/want to get a team/TF together I rarely have much trouble using just global channels and/or my far-too-small gfriends list (it was much larger pre-I8 before the global bug wiped it /sigh). A player who wants to PuG most of the time should have no trouble.

Those Atlas/Mercy whiners - and btw I've never heard much complaining of this issue (but admittedly I never go to Atlas/Mercy often) - are probably just whining because they're lazy and want others to do everything for them.

My brother is just the same - if he couldn't whine about being bored (which he does often) he'd be whining about something else - which is probably why I've not tried to get him into MMOs - the last thing we need is more whiners

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Having not really played other MMO's I don't really understand the concept of 'Raiding' in the context you are using it could you clarify for me please?

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The simplest version is...
Do the same instance/cave/whatever over and over to beat the final boss for loot/to get a certain item.
Thats about it. We are ofcourse talking about extremly rare loot and usually a very powerful boss.
And usually you need the rare loot to be considered worthy in other players eyes... Creating elitesm.(hi WoW)

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That's very vague and sounds rather like dungeon-grinding (which admittedly raiding is just a large scale version of). This explanation may get kinda long so Alphane fully appreciates the “horror” of raiding. I know more about raiding in other MMOs than I want to anymore, but these observations are mainly from EverQuest (I did raid in EQ2, but not seriously, and didn’t bother in WoW - they both made raiding much easier/shorter and more interesting than it was in EQ).

The key thing with raiding is it takes multiple teams/groups - if proper raiding were even possible in CoH/V then it would involve, say, 16, 24, 32 etc players - i.e. a multiple of the existing 8-player teams. The closest we get to raiding here is Hamidon and the Rikti Mothership, but it's not really a formal raid because the teams are not linked together in-game, just through common consent to follow a leader, and everyone gets rewarded.

Raids are:
<ul type="square">[*]Multiple teams joined together by the game to create a "raid" force. In EQ it went anywhere from 18 people up to 72 (3-12 groups) but you could take as many people as you felt you needed. In EQ2 it was mostly 12-24 people (2-4 groups) while WoW used to be 40 players (8 groups), but has dialed that down to 10-25 players now (2-5 groups).
[*]Doing zone content created purely for raids, whether instanced or not, that single groups cannot do at all (well, not at same level range) - some MMOs lock you out of raid instances completely unless you have multiple groups - you’ll never see them without raiding
[*]Random dropped loot, and not enough of the best stuff - most people on the raid get nothing for their time - it promotes people raiding the same content over and over and over again until everyone gets what they want/need
[*]Raid content is usually intended for guilds (i.e. supergroups) who can work out ways to divide the limited loot fairly between raid members without trouble, and are likely to stick together to do the raid again and again and again to equip everyone.
[*]Raid calendars - guilds that raid often have to plan in advance as the raid will not be possible without full numbers and certain key classes present - if you don't show up to a raid you were meant to turn up at you could be penalised or even kicked out (depending how serious your guild is)
[*]Raid loot systems - the above leads to meta-currency systems like DKP (dragon kill-points) where you earn "points" with your guild by attending raids, that you can then use to "buy" loot that drops in future raids - but if someone else has more DKP (i.e. better raid attendance) and really wants that same drop then they can outbid you for it, but by spending DKP it makes it less likely you’ll get something again for a while (unless something dropped that no-one else needed/wanted).
[*]Raid loot far superior - a level 60 in full top tier raid gear is so much stronger and more capable than a level 60 in normal group gear, it's almost like the gap between a L50 granite tanker tanking Honoree/Romulus here and then a L25 fire tanker trying it...
[*]Definite raid progression - raid content is divided up into "tiers" - if your raid force isn't more-or-less completely equipped from the previous tier then you don't have a hope in hell of being able to defeat the content in the next tier - this is what creates the elitism and leads to guilds trying to be "top tier". To imagine raid progression here, it would be like not being able to do the ITF until you'd done the LGTF 20+ times to get everyone the invention drops they needed to do the ITF, then having to do that another 20+ times to get the Inventions everyone needs to have a chance of completing the LRSF/STF, then having to do that another 20+ times to get the Inventions everyone needs to have a chance at defeating Hamidon.
[*]Massive time investment - your guild will expect you to raid with them as much as possible and some raids in other MMOs can take a loooooong time, e.g. 6+ hours all at once (I even had a weekend raid in EQ1 that went on for 18 hours once - and my guild and I once took 12 hour shifts for a whole week just watching for a raid mob to randomly spawn that we desperately needed a piece from, then had to race the other guilds who also needed it to get a raid force assembled). Then there’s all the time wasted sat around doing nothing - an hour or two before the raid for transporting everyone there, making up the teams and making sure everyone knows the strategy - an hour or two every time the raid wipes to recover corpses with everyone’s gear (the now-naked monks/necros/rogues would drag/summon those out to a safe place) so clerics can resurrect everyone to try again (fortunately WoW/EQ2 did away with corpse loss).
[*]Useful classes and abilities - only certain classes in other MMOs are seen as raid-essential - usually the very specialised/focused ones that are best at a certain thing (tanks, nukers and healers/buffers - basically like tankers, blasters and defenders here) - hybrid classes are usually not wanted unless they have a specific skill/power that is useful.
[*]Limited gameplay - the previous point also leads to raid gameplay where you might only be needed for one of your skills/spells/abilities and the raid-leader will want you to ONLY use that single power constantly so you don't “waste” mana (i.e. endurance) that you need for it.

Example: Clerics in EQ in Complete Heal rotations spring to mind - this spell took 10secs to cast but completely healed the tank, so you’d have 3 clerics casting it 3.3 secs apart for the entire fight on that tank to make sure he was totally healed after each attack by the raid mob - as Clerics ran low on mana another standby cleric would step into the rotation to take their place, allowing the low-mana cleric to sit out and regain mana (most of my raids ran with 5-10 clerics in total). Some fights were impossible without CH rotations - 10 hour raids could get very boring for clerics , yet they were essential to raids so people played them to feel wanted. The Clerics would get to use their buffs too before each fight, but otherwise the other 50+ spells they had would go unused.

Example 2: Shamans in EQ raids were needed mainly for their buffs before the raid, but only for their slowing spell during it - if they couldn’t get “slow” to land on the raid mob (due to a resist/miss) then the whole raid would pretty much wipe (i.e. everyone dies), but it caused so much aggro that even when it did land the raid mob would kill the shaman in one hit first before the warrior (tank) took aggro. Shamans were expected to just suffer this mandatory death for the good of the raid because there was no way the tank could survive that raid mob un-slowed. And that was back when you LOST experience and maybe even your level on death - it might take hours of dungeon grinding in a team to get back the xp from one death.

Example 3: Warriors in EQ were the only class that could tank the top raid mobs, and were judged purely by how many max hitpoints they had - most top raid mobs hit for more damage than 99% of warriors in the game had - this is why raiding tanks needed raid equipment to up their HP - it was quite common for a L60 raid tank to have double the HP of a L60 non-raid tank. If another warrior in your guild overtook you on max HP then you’d lose your “main raid tank” place, regardless of other factors.[/list]And yes, some guilds took/take raiding very seriously, and to reach top-tier you really do have to treat it like a job - some players like that - even I did at first - but it really grates on you after a while and lots of players burn-out, feeling as if they're just being treated as a cog in a machine by their guild.

I never made it past 3rd tier in EQ1 (I was offered a place in a 2nd tier guild, but didn’t want to leave my friends in my guild behind), but still we were pretty much raiding every night for 6 hours - the last straw in EQ for me was spending every night for 3 months in Temple of Veeshan to gear up our entire guild of 50+ players for the Luclin expansion raids - I got so bored of that place and then when I got just about the best chestplate in the game for my rogue and felt relief rather than happiness, and everyone else seemed happier for me than I was for myself, I knew it was time to quit.

The warning signs had been there before though - I’d burned-out a few times - leading 72-person raids made up of 3 guilds was horribly stressful (glad I only did that once), and like a fool I once led a 54 person raid while also dual-boxing as main tank (warrior) and main puller (monk), while also running DKP for the raid and transporting everyone there and back afterwards with my druid

WoW and EQ2 really were super-casual compared to original EQ, but they all seem rather hardcore compared to our beloved CoH/V - so now you see why I’m here - I wanted a pick-up-and-play casual MMO, rather than a life-eating second job that gives you regular nervous breakdowns if you want to see/experience the best story content

And that explains the kind of game you get/need if you’re going to consistently raise the level cap. Anyone still up for doing that?

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Oh and on topic, I added my first ever player to Global Ignore a fortnight ago and I've been playing almost 3 years. So, in my experience abusive players are few and far between. Maybe it's because of this that they really stand out when you do come across one?

[/ QUOTE ]Likewise, only had 1 until recently, now have 2.

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I don't recall ever putting anyone on /ignore in CoH/V in almost two year's worth of playing (I5-I8, I11-now) - I am quite tolerant though. Sure, I see more arguments on globals now since I got back from my year break from CoH/V (I9-I11), but there are still a lot less aggressive idiots here than in any MMO I've ever played with the exception of EQ2 which had a very mature/polite community (for the first 8-9 months I played it post-beta, anyway - that may have changed when they added PvP ).

In fact I'd never put anyone on /ignore since I started playing MMOs in 1999 until I played WoW last year - I think I filled my /ignore list there inside a month

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To add onto FFM's point, I also think that PvP sucks IMO

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I don't like PvP here and despised it in EverQuest, but I've enjoyed PvP in other MMOs such as Planetside, Dark Age of Camelot and the betas of Pirates of the Burning Sea and Auto Assault. When I see someone say "PvP sucks" my kneejerk reaction is to disagree because it's such an overly generalised and abusive statement - then I wonder if the speaker is having a go at all PvPers in all MMOs or just the ones here - then I wonder what their motives are for bothering to say it at all...

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I think the OP needs to look at how they approach the game, as well as the reactions they get. It takes 2 people to argue, so you can't be 100% innocent.

This thread would have been locked long ago, had Ghostraptor been around.

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Very true on both counts, but I haven't given up all hope that we might get an apology or a slightly less aggrieved admission of guilt from the OP yet - I think it would do his image in the community the world of good.

1) Not sure that's possible without some major programming work by the Devs for what is basically an RP option that most players wouldn't use.

2) If the Devs are going to make up totally new animations (which is the majority of the work in creating new sets from what BaB has said on US forum) then I'd rather the Devs made a new "Grenades" powerset rather than simply cloning TA.

3) The Devs have already said finger claws are not possible/likely, because there would be horrid clipping issues with different hand costume items.

4) Good idea, I really want these too, but they've been asked for hundreds of times before, usually in the correct place (the costume suggestions sticky for the mods to send to SexyJay).

5) /signed

6) /signed - I've seen this asked for before, though - probably in the costume suggestions thread for SexyJay, which is really where all of your costume suggestions belong

7) I just think they should be granted powers like Inertial Reduction from Kinetics (which is basically a PBAE 1min SJ click-buff) - BUT you'd have to let players click them off if they didn't want them, and you can't grant toggles so they'd have to be always-on for a duration which could be rubbish for Fly if it still carried the debuff. Also most people don't have TP binds set up to make TP useable. Tbh this suggestion has more issues than solutions, so probably best leave things as they are now.

8) No - for the reasons already posted. I very much want a way to move recipes and invention salvage between my characters on the same account (to avoid constantly hassling my mate to do it for me), but your idea is not a good solution - why not just have a "shared" area in each character's Vault in addition to the existing space where you could put say 10-20 pieces of salvage that would then be accessible from any character's vault on the same account. Or just add SG-based Recipe and Salvage storage for bases. Or a way to mail recipes/salvage between characters on the same account.

9) Sounds like a bug to me - maybe you should report it as such - I've never seen that happen, but then I'm rarely in the tutorial that long.

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It would be to Super Strenghth like nerfing PSW or Fulcrum Shift would be to Psi Doms or Kins.

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I'm sure that will happen, probably a few weeks before/after I go back to playing my /kin controller and /psi dom and get to L38

Admittedly my SS/Dark has had Footstomp for at least 18 months with no nerf yet, but then I haven't played him much lately - maybe I should tempt fate and start levelling him again...

Seriously though, the Devs have made it clear with the ET change that they don't consider it acceptable for a powerset to have an overpowered/unbalanced power late in the set just because the set is sub-par at lower levels. Back Alley Brawler couldn't have been any clearer about that when he said: "Going through any number of leves as being 'sub-par' is never going to balance just suddenly becoming uber....leveling is a finite amount of time. Once you're uber, you're always uber."

On that basis I'd expect PSW and FS may well get nerfs at some stage, and possibly even Granite too, in exchange for their powersets getting buffs to their lower-level powers (as it seems EM will get with a Barrage buff).

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These rants I go on about ingame (The EA sucks one makes my Blood boil because I've been scammed into there crappy buggy games more then once) And the PVP sucks one was only 2 sentances

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But if you make snappy statements when you admit to being in a bad mood at the time ("makes my blood boil"), are you surprised that other people might see you as volatile?

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and I actually proved my point by going to RV's Last night and I got killed by some Troller who then proceeded to gloat in Broadcast
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most of the time It's some 13 year old kid that dropped out of school to perfect his l33t ub3r pvp skills and then gloats afterwards" (Note, that's not the *exact* line I posted at the time, but it's more or less got the same overall picture)

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But really you proved nothing except that yes you'll run into some egotistical braggarts sometimes in PvP - &lt;shocker!&gt; Taking that and spinning it into a hasty generalisation that "PvP sucks" is equivalent to, after your bad ITF experience, coming onto global and saying "all TF's suck" or "all PvE player's suck" or "PvE sucks". What kind of response do you think those statements would have on a global channel?

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Last night when I typed that I was in abit of a hasty rush, I wasn't thinking to clearly about what I was typing and hit the first thing that came to my mind

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You can rationalise these things all you want, but when you speak on a global channel or a forum you have to accept that some people will see your initial antagonistic statement, but then might not get to see (or if they've already judged you, not bother paying attention to) the rest of your "explanation", or when a day or so later you might (try to) explain yourself on a forum.

If you type ill-judged things out, with no thought as to how they'll impact others, on a global channel then you have to accept that others may form a negative opinion of you. It wouldn't matter if you and Biscuits were best bosom buddies from way back, most people wouldn't know that even if it were true, and you can't use (assumed) familiarity with one player to excuse anything you say on a global channel - in /tells yes, maybe even in /team or /guild, but the more people who are reading/watching, the more people there are that can judge you based purely off that one sentence.

We've all seen what happens when players try to use global channels as their own personal playground and it's rarely pretty - sometimes it can reflect poorly on a whole supergroup or even a section of the playerbase (yes, that was a dig at the Arena channel ). But then there are players who thrive off confrontation and if you're not one of them, as you're protesting here, then you have to be aware of what might happen if you start feeding others with antagonistic statements and how that can reflect what others think of you.

Your ITF just sounds like a total clusterfrak - sure, they take a lot of the blame if what you said is true (but I'm sure there will be bias in there - how could there not be?), but from your own words you don't come off as entirely blameless either. Unless you know a powerset intimately well, through having played it to top level, then you probably shouldn't go around chucking out advice about it as gospel truth.

I'd just chalk up that ITF to experience (we've all had bad TFs) and move on.

Well the war walls obviously fulfil a far more important role for the game engine than however they've been explained in the lore. Other games use mountains, water and other impassable natural features to block off the edges of discrete zones - obviously most of those wouldn't have worked here thematically.

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They used to, until Rikti found a way to turn them off. Which means they're quite unnecessary now, and may get removed eventually.

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I can't see it happening, not before CoH2 (arguably just as unlikely) - for the Devs to make the Paragon City gameworld seamless would take a completely new game engine, not to mention a lot of work to fill in all the gaps between the discrete zones we have now. Geographically, if you look at maps of the city (the in-game one, or the one from GvE), only about half of Paragon City is present in the zones we have now, if that - hence why we sometimes get instances (like that ancient graveyard one) that don't actually exist in an existing zone - they're assumed to be between the war walls in areas we can't usually get to.

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Weston Phipps isn't *that* evil. I only giggles in glee as i did his story arc. Tho i will say his was the most evil i've found yet in CoV... but being a villain is much being evil-lite imo, feel more like a schoolyard bully than a villain.

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Yeah, I didn't find him that distastefully evil - what makes him seem worse is that he enjoys his role a little too much compared to other manipulative contacts like Kelly Uqua, troublemakers like Viv Verandi, institutional tyranny like many Arachnos contacts practice, or the stone-cold assassins like Captain Mako and Mage-killer ZuhKara - Phipps never flat-out orders you to kill anyone (unlike the latter two - Mako actually instructs you to "rip out" a target's heart), even though he has inventive ways of getting others to dispose of his problems (poor Fortunata Millia...).

But then I even found myself cackling with glee at Mako's briefings/debriefings (he's my favourite patron now for dialogue, and I've only done half of his arcs) so maybe there's something wrong with me

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And I have nothing more to say to you, You aren't much better then me when it comes to attacking people, I said "Pvp sucks" the other day in SBH, and you attacked me quite harshly, so I'll kindly ask you to remove yourself from my thread.

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I must admit I witnessed your "EA sucks" rant and your "PvP sucks" statement and they both struck me as rather inflammatory - whether ill-judged, or trying to bait others into an argument, I don’t know you well enough to say. I said nothing both times because it’s not my job to police global channels, nor would it have helped the situation, plus I was teamed and busy. But I do think you may need to be more aware of how others perceive your "statements" - those two certainly coloured my perception of you negatively.

But I always try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, because text speak between strangers often raises ambiguities and misunderstandings that are too easy to jump on and criticise if you're in the wrong mood (or looking for an argument…). But firing off curt absolute statements of opinion as if they were fact is always going to wind someone up. Just try to imagine how you'd feel seeing someone say "PvP sucks" if you really loved PvP - perhaps try "I don't like PvP" instead.

Just last night when, after you described all non-S/L damage as "magic", you seemed to have another kneejerk snappy reaction when Biscuits tactfully pointed out that most people wouldn't see non-S/L damage as "magic" (there are 4 other origins, after all...) and might misunderstand what you meant.

Oh and telling people how to play their characters in front of other players, that never ever goes down well. Of course the other player(s) would get defensive, especially if they were all existing friends and you were the outsider. And especially if your criticism was based on not understanding how their character's powers actually work (like you didn’t with Rage). If you’ve played their powersets to high level then sure, telling them how you use that power can be useful advice - even better by /tell (they feel less admonished, you don’t open up your advice for team ridicule if you’re wrong). But there are players, as inept as they might be, totally unwilling to hear advice (they always think they know best) - you cannot change a player like that into a good teammate with a few quick comments - pressing the point just creates animosity.

You also need to accept that not everyone plays to maximise efficiency - some players prefer to play casually - they’re not right/wrong and their playstyle is not better/worse than yours.

If a player is horribly ruining a team I’m on then I send a /tell to the leader saying that I’ll leave if they don’t kick the problem player (or kick them myself if I’m leader) - sure, that’s not always an option on a TF, but on other teams if the leader won’t kick them I just leave - I’ve done that before, and cheekily even sent /tells to the good players on that team and poached them away for a new team I was forming and been thanked for it But I’m quite tolerant so players have to be pretty bad to evoke that response from me.

From what you’ve said the only things I can fault your ITF teammates for was not offering to invite you to their voice-com channel, or if they/you didn’t want to do that then not using /team channel out of respect to the players without voice-coms. In that respect I’m not surprised you felt like an outsider.

Other than that, while I’m sure you’re a good player and a decent person (I like to assume that of everyone I don’t know until provided with evidence otherwise), from my own experience of your in-game communication on global channels I’ve started forming the impression that you actively seek confrontation - your posts here have done nothing to dispel that. I’m hoping that future posts/statements by you will be more positive and reverse my possibly ill-judged first impression of you.

This wasn’t meant as an attack on you, simply as friendly advice that hopefully many people could benefit from - I apologise if you take it any other way.

Hope you feel better soon.

Just don't do what a stubborn friend of mine once did - start training for a half-marathon only a month after leaving hospital after collapsing his lung and collapse it again. Once he learnt his new limits and took an appropriate amount of convalescence he was fine though - pretty much a full recovery, except that he had to give up the marathon running

I hope your recovery is trouble-free.

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I don't really know any other MMO's well but surely the 278 powerset combinations on heroside alone (not including epics) has perhaps more to do with the rampant altitis than a lvl cap has.

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Sure that plays a part too - even moreso that you can completely customise your power choices and slotting here for even more variety, when class progression in other MMO’s follow more linear paths - but EverQuest 2 has 24 classes multiplied by 18 races (15 when I played) - plenty of variety to encourage altitis, yet most players that I knew stuck to one main character (as did I), with maybe a lower level alt for mucking about with occasionally, because there was still plenty of raid/group content you wanted/needed to do when you hit L50 to “keep-up” with your guild.

Level cap and class/archetype variety play a part, but we also level much much MUCH faster here in CoH than in any other MMO I've ever played - hitting the level cap so quickly and easily encourages altitis too - as does the relative lack of much endgame content. Raiding especially in other MMOs persuades you to stick with a single character as not only would it take ages to level-up another alt to raid-level, but equipping them to acceptable raid-standards would take even longer (while your guild carries on moving forward - and you don’t want to fall behind!).

That's why other MMOs are so top-heavy, with most players at the level cap or doing their best to reach it, and not playing alts. I still think CoH's way is better, funnelling the veterans back into the levelling system through alts - and it fosters far less community-dividing elitism than raiding MMOs have.

I'd love to see all of the things you've suggested.

Many of them have been suggested before, but for ages the Devs totally ignored bases because they said that it was part of the game that very few players were actually using so it wasn't a good use of their time.

Now that we've heard base improvements are on the cards I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes in I13/14.

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By the dawn of the 24th, Paragon City had been effectively divided into a patchwork of human and alien controlled neighborhoods, with constant combat raging at every border. Both sides began to erect walls and other static defenses to secure their territory. Many of these border defenses eventually became the walls that currently divide Paragon City into its many neighborhoods. (Source)

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Thanks again all for the compliments. Hopefully War Witch or another Dev will notice this post and get some inspiration from it.

I've rarely posted suggestions before because I'm not sure what value they have (i.e. if the US devs even check these forums regularly), but thanks all for inflating my ego a little - you've certainly provided an incentive for me to post any strong ideas I get in future.

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use /hide to block tells, if it's frustrating you

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This is what I do and I pretty much never get hassled by total strangers whether I'm soloing, duoing, grouping, on a TF or leading a TF.

I stay hidden from searches, but my global friends can see me - I join TFs that are advertised on global channels, or if none are being advertised then I start one myself and ask channel members to send me /tells if they're interested - pretty much never fails.

Admittedly I spend most of my weeknights online in a regular duo/team and only do TFs at weekends (or rarely late at night if I feel like it and someone is running one). Works for me.

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What gets my goat is the way the company go about it which IMO is abysmal community relations.

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Umm, is this your first MMO?

The Devs and mods here are far more communicative than in most of the other MMOs I've played (and I've played most of the major ones from the last ten years). Usually it's very rare for MMO Devs to ask for that much player feedback on balance changes at all, because obviously the playerbase is very biased - hard to be objective when one of the things you play is up for a nerf.

Heck, in EverQuest 1 &amp; 2, DAoC, even WoW, there was almost no dialogue whatsoever with the community about balance changes - the first you knew about a nerf was when you saw it in the patch note on the day it was applied - you were lucky if they even explained why the change needed to be made. And Devs pretty much never posted directly on forums except in beta.

You should count your lucky stars that the playerbase here has any direct communication with the Devs at all, and far beyond that they even ask for our advice sometimes.

Extremus is probably right that BiB and Blaze will get an animation-time nerf at some point - probably Fireball too - they’re certainly “outliers”, as the Devs call over-performing powers under Castle’s new power balance equation (which places more emphasis on animation time than recharge time like the old system), just like EM’s ET was - and the Devs are aware of that. Obviously melee powersets are getting all of the Devs attention now, probably to make sure some of them integrate properly with Shields in I13, but I’d expect Castle &amp; BaB to carry their rebalancing and animation work into the ranged sets eventually.

We also know that Castle hates Power Boost (from previous posts), so expect more nerfs to that - and probably to anything else overly popular and overly powerful (especially if it unbalances PvP, as we know Castle likes that too from previous posts), which is why I think Super Strength will catch some nerfs somewhere (Foot Stomp and/or Rage would be my bet).

One of my two current levelling projects is an EM/EA stalker (the other is a Crab Spider), so yeah the ET nerf hurt and made him less fun to play. The next character I seriously focus on levelling will be an Ice/Storm Corruptor - am I put off playing him because BiB could get nerfed? Heck no. Any power in the game could get a nerf next week - it’s not always the strongest powers that get negative changes.

You can’t be 100% sure what will happen until the Devs say so, or until it appears in a patch note, so I say play what you want to play now - worry about the future when it happens. Or you could just play powersets perceived as weak/subpar, adjust your expectations downwards, and try to be happy that you’ve done the best you could to avoid nerfs.

A level cap rise would destroy this game. This isn't a grinder's MMO (like Lineage 2) or a raider's MMO (like EQ), it's a casual MMO - we need more content and more powersets, yes, but what we don’t need is more levels.

Level-cap raises only keep power-levellers busy for a few weeks (/days…) then they’re crying for another cap raise - it also cheapens/expires existing end-game content and focuses both players and Devs only on the most recent endgame content: The Devs struggle to produce content at the rate the fastest levellers consume it, to provide as much raid/dungeon content at the new cap as there was at the old level cap, while at the same time making the next expansion to raise the cap again - this means that the current highest level areas of the game receive 90% of the Dev team’s attention and the low/middle levels get more and more neglected.

I’ve played MMOs with regular level-cap raises (like EverQuest) and generally the low-end game becomes dead very quickly, few players have time for more than 1-2 alts (and they don’t play those that seriously) in addition to their main character, and the strong focus on raiding/grinding means that casual players get treated like second class citizens if they can’t keep up. Eventually the bulk of the playerbase is at the high-end too and the lower levels are dead because nobody has time to spare to play alts anymore - all too busy levelling in the next expansion, and because the cap eventually goes up so high it's not worth making new alts as they take too long to level to where 99% of the playerbase is (at the level cap).

For that reason I think CoH's fixed L50 level cap, and the strong encouragement to play alts when you get there, is largely responsible for the strong friendly community here and the game’s strong subscriber retention - by pushing players into creating new alts rather than sticking with one character you feed a lot of veterans back into the lower levels, where they meet new players, pass on in-game knowledge, form new friendships and strengthen the community - this doesn’t happen much on the raid/grind MMOs that constantly raise level caps annually and most of them have terrible communities.