Lord Mayhem

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Nope, Xenocide.

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If they were aliens you might be correct. So you're not

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They come from another planet; sure it might be a duplicate of ours, but it isn't actually ours. That makes them alien enough for me.

Besides, does xenophobia only work if the illegal alien is from Mars?

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It's not easy being green

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You're from Pylea? Or Muppetland?

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Pylea! Do the dance of joy!

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Do the dance of shame!

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hehe

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Is it time for the karaoke yet then?

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A good use of NPC background, and noticing that there would be a struggle for air superiority, ideal for flying battles. I can just see skiffs and chasers flying around dogfighting, maybe a GM event where a Rikti ship and an Arachnos flyer battle it out? This is a great Idea, but if the rikti are looking for tech, then maybe Goldbrickers too?

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I put Sky Raiders in mainly because they have that "airborne" slant to them and could have their skiffs flying around - Longbow & Arachnos could obviously have their chasers and helis buzzing around too, and Crey could have airborne Paragon Protectors.

The Rikti aren't there looking for tech - it's stuff they left behind that Crey and the Sky Raiders are there to scavenge - Crey because they have such a history of researching Rikti tech and trying to acquire as much of it as possible, and Sky Raiders because they're air pirates so scavenging/stealing stuff to sell to the highest bidder (probably to Crey) is their modus operandi.

I would actually intend for the Rikti to have a very small presence in the zone, mainly around the Crey hangars (perhaps trying to recover some of their stuff, the drop ship especially, so that Crey doesn't reverse-engineer it and discover all their secrets). Post-RWZ we face Rikti so much in the game that I didn't want to have them being a major presence here too - at least not outside the lore background of the zone. Also Rikti only appear at levels 30-50 usually (as Lost appear at 1-29 instead) and the hangar district would be the highest level outdoor hunting in this zone.

Goldbrickers really wouldn't fit here - they're basically a small-time gang of tech-thieves that started out so well-equipped because their boss, Midas, is so rich (from selling all those Goldbricker chocolate bars!) - I've yet to find out what he wants with all the tech that his Goldbrickers steal, though - maybe he wants to move in on Crey and Aeon Corp's market sectors But anyway the Goldbrickers only have a presence in Cap au D, so this would be far too far outside of their usual travel range and even further outside their zone of influence and their interests. Plus they only scale as far as L15-ish (similar for Skulls, though they tend to peter out at L10) so they'd basically be getting kicked around by everyone else. I've been having a go at knocking my co-op newbie zone idea into shape, perhaps to post it next week, and that has Skulls in it, though (but no Goldbrickers ).

For this zone I tried to pick factions for the level ranges that they already populate either blueside, redside, or both - and that would make sense in this zone thematically. After all, the Devs put factions at certain levels for a reason - we start off fighting what are basically just street gangs, move on to better-organised/funded criminal organisations and the like in the mid-range, then on to the really powerful factions at top-end which is all carefully planned that way by the Devs. Sure, some organisations scale all the way from 1-50 (CoT, Crey, Council, Longbow, Arachnos, etc.) but only because they are so ubiquitous - most enemy factions have just a tight level range they occupy so players get a sense of becoming more powerful than some/most of them as they level-up.

A GM event would be a good idea though - I didn't think about that. Maybe Crey could take their salvaged Rikti Drop Ship out for test flights at night once per game week - but being damaged anyway it would be easier for players to destroy than actual Rikti ones we see on the raids - that could justify it being of Giant Monster rank.

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Maybe: 'Robot Reaper'
If you take down the council's mech, paladin and babbage...

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And Malta's Kronos Titan?

What is it about Sundays that makes everyone whimsical?

No, I don't think the OP's suggestions are likely, or necessarily a good idea - do you really want to fight more Rikti than we do now? If NCNC were working on a CoH2 and designing it from scratch then we might have something to discuss - that could be set in a post-apocalypse world where the Rikti had taken over - though I still don't particularly like the idea (unless it was done through Ouro as a potential future, or through Portal Corp as an alternate world).

Though I could see a future expansion where we go to the Rikti homeworld - perhaps even in a future issue as just a single zone - but I can't see the Rikti war ending completely (as either their victory or ours) because the Devs would have to rip too much Rikti content out of the existing game.

I would hope all MMO Dev teams would have learnt from SWG's example that making wide sweeping changes to an MMO (whether to the gameplay like SOE did, or to the content itself, like we're discussing) is a very bad idea and likely to push away more of your existing playerbase than it pleases. Sure, progressing the storyline is good - I'm all for that - but that should happen gradually, not all in one fell swoop.

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Nope, Xenocide.

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If they were aliens you might be correct. So you're not

With base improvements coming in I13 I wouldn't be at all surprised if we all get personal apartments then. Why would the Devs bother revamping bases when so very few players actually get to use the base editor? Makes sense they'd open that up by letting everyone have personal apartments.

Your second suggestion is basically competitive PvE which has been suggested before - I'd like to see that as well.

Your third suggestion is in-game now in a very limited way - obviously the stores blueside are like that and redside has several "lobbies" in each zone that you can enter with mission doors inside and usually lifts up to the roof - beyond that I'm not sure what you'd use them for. Oh and of course RWZ has that in-zone base where you can walk into the ground floor lobby of a building, down some stairs and be inside a non-instanced Council bunker (albeit a small one).

And yeah I'd definitely like to see the giant mech turned into a GM - good idea.

Very good idea - should definitely be done for the base storage tables and for vendors too. /signed

"I'm Al Pacino and I'm a Shouty/Shouty Dominator"

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seeing owlong GGs been about the forums and almost never said anytihng bad or bothered anybody in any major way well apart from never letting up about animated hair i would prefer some people give her the benifit of the doubt on this one

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OH MY GOD! So you think we should go easier on people who say daft and potentially abusive things just because they've been playing the game longer, or registered earlier, than others? That's just about the most ridiculous...


Sorry, just messing with you

Sidestepping the melodrama express train to modsmack town for a moment, I'd just like to say I agree with Dr_Mechano that Vernon von Grun is a fantastic contact too - I wouldn't call him evil - more ambitiously misguided - but his briefings/debriefings are utterly hilarious and do more to make me feel like I'm playing a superhero game than anything else on redside or blueside by a country mile.

The superhero genre needs mad scientists and Vernon, along with his old mentor Dr Creed, do us proud for that on CoV.

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the only suggestion i would make is that you mention that hero's and villains yous it to take on freelance missions so what about some contacts from other groups and even some non aligned types. I realise it would probably work more for villains but missions could be worded like tips when given to heroes or something.

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Not sure what you mean really, but I'll try and guess.

The last thing I wanted was to spread the missions around lots of different contacts and potentially divide up the playerbase further - not when co-op zones are about bringing both sides together so the servers feel less empty.

This way heroes have one contact to go to and villains have one to go to - nice and simple for implementing the matchmaking system - if you had to run around half a dozen or more contacts to find one that actually had teams forming to do a certain mission that contact offered then it would get annoying fast - I didn't want any extra barriers in the way of players getting together.

I actually toyed with the idea of having a single contact that both villains and heroes used, but I really couldn't think of which group to use as the neutral to offer it - we only really have 3 completely neutral factions who don't particularly care if you're a hero or villain: Vanguard, Ouroborous and the Midnight Club - each have their own quest hubs/areas and have narrow agenda/focus (Vanguard are anti-Rikti, Ouro is time-fixing, Midnight Club have the magical focus) - I needed a contact that could have a much wider remit to send players against potentially every other enemy faction in the game - and Longbow/FreedomCorp and Arachnos just work well for that.

I toyed with the idea of using Crey for the neutral contact, but that would be morally objectionable for a lot of heroes, plus it would prevent the Devs using Crey for any international missions.

Basically don't get fixated on the word "freelance" - in retrospect I probably shouldn't have used it.

Happy birthday

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The current load screens are so common I end up losing attention while waiting for a map to load.

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Now that I do agree with. Perhaps instead they could do a different loading screen for each TF/SF, with a comic panels giving some of the highlights but trying to limit spoilers? It would still be the same screen for the whole TF but would differ from the standard ones.

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It's still too much Dev time on something I'd guess most people don't give a frak about.

I alt-tab and browse the forums or other websites when load-times are likely to take over 30 seconds - it's also a good opportunity to channel-flip the TV or change the track/CD on/in my hi-fi, get a snack or take a few sips of a tasty beverage

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Neither of them are for a particularly big milestone ... I think you'll all be quite happy when the 60 month (5 years) reward is announced .

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Free lifetime subscription?

That would solve the problem of what to do with vet rewards after 60 months - just not bother and say that continuing free access to the game is your loyalty reward

Thanks muchly for the compliments.

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And, however they do it, the game could do with a low level co-op zone.

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It's funny, I had another idea for a pure newbie-level co-op zone (L1-15) all ready to post a while ago and I didn't bother because it was getting so long I didn't think anyone would bother to read it. I may have to dig it out and see if I can turn it into something readable, if I can find the time.

Oh, and for Mother's benefit, I was going to place that zone on the peninsula north of DA and east of Talos (but with transport links to other newbie zones on both sides and a land-link to a revamped co-op DA)

I actually wish the Devs would let us have a map showing where the Rogue Isles are comparative to Paragon City - all we know is that they're about 50 miles off the coast. I had a go at making a basic zone-connection map, that was also close to being geographically correct, ages ago when I was teaching myself how to use layers on the GIMP art program, but my PC art skills are a bit lame so I pinched most of the graphics from in-game or off the incredibly useful VidiotMaps site.

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BTW - Even though they're only 1-2 line idea I liked that you're obviously trying to put some effort into rationalising why heroes and villains may be in the same mission.

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Yeah I didn't want the post to get ridiculously long - I type so fast and waffle so much that my posts have a tendency to overrun most attention spans anyway. I've been consciously trying to fix that so I don't get ignored so much

Writing the missions would be the Devs' job - I wouldn't presume to do that for them - I just wanted to chuck out some ideas for flavour so you'd all understand what I meant - although tbh I still got carried away because CoH/V lore just begs to be expanded upon.

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You are reading way way to much into it.

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Yeah, but speculation is fun and I still don't think it's beyond the bounds of plausibility.

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1) If hero ancilleries where available for villains, you wouldn't need a respec (unless you had already started on a patron) you could just pick them.

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Not if they make them only available through respec, which is possible. Villains already get an extra earned respec (that heroes don't) for completing their first patron arc (the same way they open up their patron pool) - this lets villains put it to use if they wish.

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2) They are balanced around the AT they are designed for. You can't just copy them across and expect them to be balanced

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Sure, some tweaks would have to be made to certain pools, but in other cases a direct copy would be perfectly feasible - if, say, Psychic Mastery is balanced for a Rad/Rad or Sonic/Sonic Defender then what would be the issue in giving it to a Rad/Rad or Sonic/Sonic Corruptor?

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3) Castle hates Power Boost and Power Build Up, he certainly isn't going to let them spreed, he wants to kill then dead.

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Very true. But if he's making changes to ancillary/patron pools in I13 then maybe he'll change (i.e. nerf) those powers at the same time - it would be as good an excuse as any.

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4) No mention of the corrolory: Heroes getting patron powers. You can't have one without the other

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Why can't you have one without the other? As aforementioned villains can get 4 earned respecs instead of 3 like heroes so there is precedent for not having balance in the exact same area of the game (without going into all the imbalances in content).

Also I don't see many hero players on the US forums crying out for proliferation of the patron pools to blueside, not like the hundreds of calls for getting Focused Accuracy and other ancillary powers redside.

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5) Nothing can balance PvP

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Absolutely true, but from what I said in context I was speaking about ancillary pool imbalances. Giving both sides access to the same thing is the easiest way to provide balance in that single aspect.

The only way to really balance PvP irrefutably on a factional level would be to let both sides have access to all archetypes and powersets (which may happen one day if "going rogue" ever happens - I can't see it, though).

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Yeah that is a nice evil arc. Its evil allright in th old traditional evil way. A bit petty of course for someone about to clobber Lord Recluse but it fumes evilness. Though the Dr. Creed arc is nasty as well.

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Peter Themari is somewhat detestable... err I mean admirable in his purity of motive too - especially once you do Vernon von Grun's superbly written missions and find out just what happened to that poor little poppet in the end

I’ve been working on this idea on-and-off since being disappointed by the lack of co-op content in Cimerora (besides the TF & repeatables). I’ve also been trying to think of ways to evolve both PvE and PvP while providing content that could be used for both by heroes and villains. Let me know what you think.


[u]Rabinowitz International Airport[u]
Level 10-50 co-operative zone

Description: North of Independence Port, west of Baumton (Boomtown), east of Salamanca (Croatoa), is Paragon City's main airport, named in honour of Spanky Rabinowitz, the four-time former Mayor of the city.

The airport was devastated during the Rikti War as the invaders used it as a staging ground to re-arm their drop ships and disembark troops. Now the area has been mostly liberated from the Rikti and a major rebuilding program financed by Crey has managed to re-open one runway, build a new main terminal (near the old highway heading south to Independence Port), and also renovate the old green line station. Flights have recently resumed to many major cities around the world.

NPC factions present & zone layout:
Longbow (L30-50) - new airline terminal southwest of runway
Arachnos (L30-50) - the heli-port terminal northeast of runway
Rikti (L30-50) - minor presence around hangar district southeast of runway
Crey (L10-50) - all over the zone (L30+ around hangar district southeast of runway)
Sky Raiders (L20-30) - disused runway to northeast of the restored main runway
The Family (L10-30) - old airport terminal, hotels and nearby warehouses
The Tsoo (L10-30) - old airport terminal, hotels and nearby warehouses

Freedom Corps’ Longbow Division is providing security for the civilian construction staff and airport workers at the new airline terminal as they don’t trust Crey to do it. Arachnos have taken over the heli-port to the northeast, rebuilt it, and their black helicopters fly in regularly from the Rogue Isles; Longbow cannot touch them unless the spiders cause trouble as apparently Lord Recluse has made a deal with Countess Crey to lease the site.

Crey’s own agents provide security in all other areas, acting as a buffer between Longbow and Arachnos to head off trouble before it starts. The Paragon Protectors have a heavy presence around some of the old airline hangars to the southeast and rumours say that Crey are storing large pieces of Rikti technology in the hangars and even have a damaged drop ship, scavenged from the site after the Rikti vacated it.

The Sky Raiders are making use of one of the overgrown old runways to the northwest of the site, having also moved in soon after the Rikti were beaten back to scavenge what technology they could.

Both The Family and The Tsoo have recently moved in from nearby Independence Port; violent clashes have erupted between them as they contest for the right to run protection rackets in the area once independent businesses return, and also to expand their smuggling concerns beyond shipping to air freight as well. Crey’s agents try to push both of those groups out to defend their corporation’s legal interests in the area, and more importantly their profit margins.

Zone access:
Heroes - from any green line station (i.e. Steel, Skyway, IP, Talos, Croatoa, Bricks, FF)
Villains - from any black helicopter line (i.e. Mercy, Cap au D, Nerva, St M, GV)

Facilities:
Stores/Quartermasters and Analysts/Fortunatas are available inside the Airline Terminal for heroes and inside the Heli-port Terminal for villains.

Spark Blade is the hero trainer outside of the airline terminal, while Rose Star (never far from his side) stands nearby to hand out international mission assignments. On the roof of the heli-port terminal villains can train with Arbiter Heathwick and get their international mission assignments from one of Viridian’s most trusted Arachnos Operatives, the mysterious masked female agent known only as Amethyst.

Mission content:
Both heroes and villains can use this zone as a jumping-off point to undertake freelance missions around the world (all instanced). Some missions could be co-op, others could be competitive (e.g. hero team competing against a villain team to be first to complete their conflicting PvE objectives), and the competitive missions could also be combative (PvE competitive mission, but with PvP enabled if desired by both team leaders). It should be possible to develop missions/instances that could be used for any one of these three possibilities.

The matchmaking and mission selection interface available through clicking Rose Star and/or Amethyst can pit hero teams/individuals against villain teams/individuals, but can also aid in putting co-op teams together inside the zone to tackle global threats. Both Rose Star and Amethyst are pragmatic enough not to be judgemental about the reputations of whoever they hire for their tasks, because it seems rather irrelevant when you’re desperate for more super-powered operatives to deal with a global threat.

Each instanced mission/arc would have destructible terrain like in mayhem missions. The non-TF ones would be soloable. All missions/arcs are repeatable and auto-exemp higher level characters down to their level range.

Ideas for mission/story-arc instances that could be accessed from the airport:
<ul type="square">[*](L10-20) some Spetsnaz Commandos have gone rogue and taken over a nuclear missile silo near Moscow to hold Russia to ransom - Rose Star wants heroes to stop them, but Dr Aeon just wants the warhead’s plutonium for his next experiment.
[*](L10-20) in the hills near Athens some ancient ruins have been unearthed, but from long-buried tunnels the daughters of Medusa (Snakes) come forth to protect their relics; the Mu of Arachnos want the relics, but so do the Legacy Chain.
[*](L15-25) Sebastian Frost, Guido Verandi and Emil Marcone have each flown to Sicily for a meeting with the capos of the Mafia - see to it that they, and any other members of The Family with them, miss their appointments. If done as a competitive mission then the team that defeats two or more of these three Family leaders is the winner.
[*](L20-30) Vanguard wants some super-powered operatives to go to London to aid the Dawn Patrol against a Lost infestation on the streets and in the underground/tube system. There are bonus rewards for the team that deals with the infestation at its source first.
[*](L20-30) the Banished Pantheon have been sighted in some ancient Inca ruins in Peru, but what are they seeking? The Midnight Club has requested that someone go and find out.
[*](L25-35) the Coralax are enraged at the environmental damage caused by pollution to the Great Barrier Reef so are laying waste to Sydney Harbour as an example to all human despoilers that the sea is not so forgiving. Show them that surface-dwellers won’t tolerate Coralax belligerence.
[*](L30-40) the Tsoo have muscled in on the ancient relic trade in Beijing and Tub Ci has gone there in person to oversee operations; Statesman wants heroes to arrest and extract Tub Ci and return him to The Zig, but Lord Recluse wants Tub Ci protected from arrest so that the Tsoo leader will owe him a favour
[*](L30-40) The Circle of Thorns have besieged the Temple of the Four Winds high in the Himalayas and the monks have sent out a mystic call for aid. Levantera and Borea, concerned for their mentors’ safety, have asked heroes to step in; Scirocco and Ice Mistral, seeing the chaos as a good opportunity to steal relics and secrets from the Order of the Four Winds, have sent villains in their stead.
[*](L35-45) W.I.S.D.O.M.’s leader Foreshadow has requested that all available operatives head to Tokyo to defeat some battling giant lizards intent on wrecking the city (shameless Godzilla reference).
[*](L35-45) The Carnival of Shadows have gone to Giovanna Scaldi's home city to stake their matriarch's claim upon it - will you let them take Venice without a fight and thus expand their powerbase?
[*](L40-50) there is a rumour that the Prussian Prince of Automatons has his sanctum in an ancient stronghold in the heart of the German countryside; go there and discover if it is the true Nemesis in residence, or is it just another fake copy?
[*](L40-50) The Malta Group and their Knives of Artemis allies have kidnapped Aurora Borealis and Barracuda for reasons unknown and have taken them to a military airbase they control in central Africa. Captain Mako and Sister Psyche both want their sidekicks back, but at the same time would also happily keep the other captive held prisoner - who will get rescued first?
[*](L40-50) battle The Council in their Italian heartland on a TF to take out the original Nicti Cyst in Ravenna, which is guarded by an ancient minotaur that acts as host for one of the most powerful Nictus in the universe[/list]It would be relatively easy to add new mission content to this zone in future. At first it seems like a lot of new art would be needed both for the airport and the instanced missions, but parts of existing tilesets could be re-used (parts of Founder’s Falls for Venice, parts of Cimerora for the ruins near Athens, etc.). Mission doors would be either departure gates inside the terminal/heli-port or on the airliners/helicopters themselves.

I love every mission Phipps offers - I finished his missions last night with my Stalker and he's usually the first contact I do in Grandville.

As to how evil his arcs are, they're not that bad - the real crying shame is that I didn't get to [SPOILER]beat up the Freakshow's teacher a bit before handing her over to Arachnos for torture, see the effect my poisoned food had on the orphans first hand, and I'm gutted that Hugo and Gally escaped from what was planned for them *shakes fist at Blue Steel* - nothing wrong with a bit of exploratory brain surgery[END SPOILER]

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Although, as I posted above, the haiku seems to be about respecing patrons, I'm confused about the 3 line "Lets you pick from all". Now, we already can pick our patron from all the patrons, so I'm unclear as to what he means by this. Of course I may be reading far too much into a haiku thought up in 30secs to tease the community with titbits of info! ... I probably am aren't I?

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I don't think you are. I think it's most likely that this will be a change allowing us to respec patrons at Arbiter Lupin.

What if "Lets you pick from all" is a hint that villains will be able to access hero ancillary pools instead, if they wish (e.g. brute getting tanker pools, stalker getting scrapper pools, corruptor getting defender or blaster pools, dominator getting controller pools, and MMs getting ... oh I don't know, maybe defender pools too).

Now I'm probably the one reading too far into it, but it would be the simplest and quickest way for the Devs to sort out PvP balance concerns with the ancillary/patron pools.

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Check out the fog in 'Dark Astoria' people.

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Why? Has it turned into candy floss?!

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With pets and players running round like crazy fools ( like most do) popping that and then having everyone run out of LoS or the AoE would be fairly annoying, unless of course there's a stupidly high range put on it.

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You haven't played the Rad Emission powerset, have you? Accelerate Metabolism is a PBAE buff with radius 25 (same as Controller/Dom's Ice Slick), yet I don't seem to have much trouble buffing a whole team and their pets (or even most of a mothership raid) with it on my fire/rad corruptor, so they could set the radius to the same as that.

I don't even bother telling teams to gather for AM anymore - it's a needless hassle and a waste of time - easy to just pop it on everyone while they're mid-combat clustered around a spawn/mob. And if someone keeps running off from the team to go solo stuff then they don't get AM - if they're not going to pitch in and help the team then I don't see why I should bother to help them (though obviously if they were away from the team for a legitimate reason I'd do my best to make sure they were around when I rebuffed).

I guess they could even stick radius 60 on this mass buff power (like the Leadership pool toggles) or even 100 (like Vengeance), but that might be overkill. 50 feet might be a good compromise.

And how about instead of just giving this new power to everyone the Devs put it into a new power pool of self-buffs so that it cost at least one power-pick (or maybe more) to get. In fact how about this:

Power Pool: "Support"
6: “Protect” - PBAE buff, 60sec duration, 360sec rchg, mag4 protection from Phasing/Caging, Placate, Taunt, Fear/Terror &amp; Confuse and also adds some +Perception (enough to cancel Blinding effect from two stacked NPC Night Widow smoke grenades)
6: “Extend” - Self-buff, 60sec duration, 360sec rchg, any buff/debuff used while this is in effect has its duration doubled
14: “Mass Enhance” - Self-buff, 60sec duration, 360sec rchg, any buff cast while this is in effect will be applied to every friendly player within 50 feet
20: “Make Ready” - Self click, 3600sec rchg (yes 1hr, but can be reduced with rchg enhancements), all powers currently in cooldown are immediately recharged ready for use

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No one strives to stay loyal for them anyway, nor would they if the 6th year reward was an "instant i win" button.

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I have to agree with Londoner in one respect - I can't believe anyone who became thoroughly dissatisfied with the game, and was going to quit for good, would be persuaded to stay on and continue their sub purely because of a few in-game bonuses.

BUT with the number of people who leave this game temporarily to try another MMO, then always come back here when they get bored of it, the Vet Reward scheme is probably a good incentive to stay subscribed to CoH/V even if you're not actually planning to play it. People who might have considered stopping their sub for the 6 or so months they were going to be away, to save some money, might be persuaded to keep it going so as not to fall behind on vet rewards.

Sometimes I regret not keeping my sub going for the year break my friend and I took away from CoH/V (to try WoW and a few beta tests) - I'm reminded of it every time he uses his Nemesis Staff or Base Teleport - but on the flipside he didn't play much during that year so I remind myself that I did save roughly a hundred quid - I'm not sure a base TP and a Nem Staff are worth that

But I can believe some people might be persuaded to keep a sub going even while they weren't playing (much), because my friend did.

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Maybe an old pirate galleon for the Rogue Isles instead rather than a cargo ship as it's more appropriate for the place. Possibly spawning near the the haunted pirate base.

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Yeah that's a great idea - it could spawn those pirate ghosts too, instead of the normal ghosts the spectral Moraine chucks out.

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I want to (hopefully) be able to create a story arc along the lines of Kheldians and VEATS - ie one which gives you missions every 5 levels and will last for your whole heroic/villainous career.

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That would be very cool.

On a similar but different tack I've been rather unimpressed with the VEAT storyline so far (L35 atm) - it has certainly been one notable area where I prefer Kheldians over SoA. Though maybe the whole Destined One schtick is just starting to grate on me because I've spent so long on redside.

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Probably not. The VRs have always been at least 75% tat though. Greek letters anyone?

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But some people may have found those useful. The Devs can't give away a game-changing temp power or a completely new costume piece (not texture, but piece - like boxing gloves, trenchcoats, etc) for every reward. That would be a good way to hack off people who haven't been around from the start. As the reward months increase, the further away those rewards get from a new subscriber, so they can’t be too game-changing.

As it is any new player (or new account of existing player) who wants to make a boxer character has to wait 3 years and 3 months before they can do it properly - you can't even get shorts on a male/huge character currently without that 39 month reward. Is that reasonable? Imagine the uproar if the Devs made it so that the only way you could ever get a backpack/jetpack costume piece was to be a 57 or 60 month veteran. Would that be fair?

Sure trenchcoats are easy to get - just 3 months - but why couldn’t the Devs have given a plain cloth texture trenchcoat (like Columbo wears) to everyone and then had the cooler leather texture (the “Neo/Trinity” look) as the 3 month reward? Why couldn’t shorts have been given to everyone, but just have a nicer texture/pattern of shorts on the 39 month reward? That would have made both of those costume pieces more like wings (available to anyone via Invention system, but arguably the best looking wings are only available with the 15 month vet reward).

There are tons of things other than tailor/respec tokens that the Devs could put in as vet rewards that wouldn't hack off non-veterans much.

- Variant emotes (e.g. drinking beer instead of tea - eating pie instead of a hotdog/donut)
- Variant costume textures (e.g. new patterns for spandex/skin/clothes/capes, new textures for existing pieces like the aforementioned non-leather trenchcoat, new aura variants)
- Variant base items (e.g. wall pictures and furniture items culled from existing art from zones/maps)
- Variant powers (like the prestige sprints)

Though I do think the Devs were overly generous with the early rewards - offering several things on a single reward badge - because now all the long-term vets expect that kind of generosity for every single new reward.

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FIGHTING DUDES HELL YEAH

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No fighting girls then? Awww