LostHalo

First, why do 'casual', solo players need to be unnecessarily stronger? This kind of hearkens back to BackAlleyBrawler calling someone out for labeling themselves a "casual player" and, in a completely straight-faced manner, mentioning their "purpled-out warshade" in a single post. There is a fairly obvious line that separates people out from being considered "casual" and that has nothing to do with how many hours per week they play. Hell, I've played probably less than 5-10 hours in the last month and I would never consider myself casual.

Second, for that matter, why would players need the inconsequential buff in general? Feelings or outright traits of weakness in your character tend to be sourced from issues in meatspace, not the game. Again with the "casual" players, there is no need for such a buff. The basic challenges of the game would never require such a thing and when you're starting to talk about "purpling out" a toon, you're no longer a casual player.

Third, this game is already very friendly to small teams or solo loot acquisition. If you can't get it, you're not trying (and trying does NOT mean hours spent in-game). Period. That said, no, you can't solo the real Hamidon and solo LRSF/STF runs are extremely specialized maneuvers but in all honesty, "them's the breaks".

And I'll just add in that a team of two or three can already conquer any obstacle (outside of large simul-clicks) except possibly the real Hamidon (haven't tried, have built a plan for doing it with a single team though) and the Mothership (smallest team we've done it with is 5 just to see if we could--haven't tried "pushing" it yet), so I really don't see a point for such buffs when the "hardest" challenges can be wrecked with just a little planning and thought beforehand with what we already have.

Your basic argument boils down to trying to define "decent", specifically as it is applied to damage output and how it is balanced by other factors tied to a toon's abilities. Perhaps you would prefer the term "adequacy"?

" [x] as an AT do (not) have adequate levels of [y] to make up for the (dis)advantages applied for (not) having [z] as a [primary, secondary] factor. "

[Scrappers] as an AT do not have adequate levels of [support function] to make up for the disadvantages applied for having [damage] as a primary factor.
[Defenders] as an AT do have adequate levels of [support capabilities] to make up for the disadvantages applied for not having [damage] as a primary factor.
[Scrappers] as an AT do have adequate levels of [defense] to make up for the advantages applied for having [damage] as a primary factor.

Blah blah blah, and so on.

I mean, yes, you go into an inferred (and later directly discussed) red herring about the inability of the game to properly break free of the "go here, punch guy in face, collect loot" paradigm as an attempt to affirm the primary argument, but fail to really go into stronger an argument than:

(1) Damage-heavy, support-light characters solo fast but add less to a team. (Arguably accurate premise.)
(2) Damage-light, support-heavy characters don't solo fast but add more to a team. (Arguably accurate premise.)
(c)Thus, there is a disparity that must be fixed by blurring the distinction between (1) and (2).

You haven't sufficiently defined the "disparity" that makes (1) better than (2) or (2) better than (1) or why both (1) and (2) need to be more of a (1.5) in definition. It boils down to pure opinion in that you have the opinion that (2) is not what you would consider "decent" in terms of soloing and whether others do or don't share that opinion. Or in another direction, that the potential reward teams offer override the potential value (1) will get out of soloing and by extension, are obligated to team but being inferior to (2) while doing so.

Just a side note, yes, this is just fostering the discussion, nothing more--for those of you less inclined to read things in a detached sort-of-way.

In directly answering the title: mainly because that's how DnD did it and a lot of RPG mechanics, and well, tropes, are derived directly from it.

Because it's a different method of playing. Not everyone wants to play the same way.

One close to home example... One of my brothers derives the most satisfaction from his myriad of RPG-style games in the "Cleric" or supporting role (Defender, Corruptor, Tanker, Tanking Brute, Controller, that kind of thing). The other? Well, he likes blasting the hell out of the landscape or in general being a terror to the opposition in some way (Blaster, Brute, other methods of achieving that end result). As for me? Well, I just like to have a gimmick.

No, the real problem is defining "decent". For the capabilities of my Defender's primary, I accept their damage is lower. I don't consider it bad in any way, just lower. The game engine is limited in that we can't just mix&match exactly what we want out of it, that's far and again beyond what these games in general can pull off (except pre-lame SWG but anyway).
Comparatively, someone else might define the Fighter's damage focus as the bare minimum for being "decent".

Because MMORPGs are trying to focus on the MMO part. The RPG part is important as the core function of the game but if your MMO part is ill-conceived, you don't get the desired numbers. The RPG is your car's engine and core parts, the MMO is the frame, seating, and final presentation. And you won't get very far without one or the other. The engine gets you from point A to point B but if the frame and controls are beyond ugly and broken...well, you work with the frame and controls directly on a day-to-day basis. You won't even consider the vehicle if the feel/presentation looks like crap even with the best engine.

Because FPSes are not anything the same as an RPG where balance is concerned. They're not even in the same race unfortunately. Sure, everyone can be boiled down the same exact thing...but then you're not offering any variety and well, Counter-Strike is cheaper.

Ah, but they aren't even in the same league as the damage-focused units are they? They can defend themselves, sure, but that doesn't mean they're anywhere near the level of someone with four chainsaws and a rocket launcher.
In the context of CoX, you can't afford to have that much disparity between the classes, which contrasts with my earlier point about how you can't have too much homogeneity. It's a balancing act outside of explicit "balancing" in the game. In my eyes? CoX has struck a beautiful niche on the line. Perhaps some don't share this but then, I just laugh at them because I don't want to argue something that is a different mindset.

It just comes back to how you define "decent". I think it's fine in all honesty. The game isn't hard enough to force anyone to be any stronger than they currently are.

Stupidity is and always will be a constant. The Internet is just an unprejudiced mouth piece.

And they've been named wrong since the change to the other direction was made. I seem to recall the issue was two-fold: magnitude couldn't be stacked and if the magnitude was high enough, it was laughably easy to make a Cage last somewhere in the area of a few minutes. (In fact, I seem to recall that the AoE Intanges had a base duration of 60 seconds. Now just imagine that at say, 300% enhancement value on Black Hole with perma-Hasten.)

It should be noted that purple patch is in effect and AVs seem to have a default of "boss" level protection against Sonic Cage/Dimension Shift's phase. You have to slot two of the relevant (acc/mez) S/HOs into both of the ST cage variants in order to have high enough magnitude for the STF's +4 AVs.

It's one of those things that's kind of frustrating because the necessary Intange magnitude is just out of Black Hole's reach (and that includes doing something like 6xEnhancement towards it).

I'm usually pretty lenient on even gratuitous grammar failures but there's just something about those six words that is like cancer to my veins. There was one arc with...let's just say he had as many commas as he did words, maybe more. He didn't screw up the obvious six, which got him 2 stars!

Oh, and "assasin" is WRONG. "Asasin" is WRONG. "Asassin" is WRONG. "Azassin" is ******* WRONG. EASY way to remember: There are two ways to make an *** of yourself in this word! *Weak, censor, weak. Well, the meaning should be obvious at least.

Corrupt'e'r and Corrupt'o'r are troublesome too but I let that slide because a lot of spell checkers (including the one in Firefox) are actually mistaken in labeling the latter as incorrect.

Sums up my opinion on a bio requirement for costume contests.

It also potentially eliminates a lot of the "Skank Trophy" issues. Although, I have given out Skank Trophy consolation prizes just to be, I don't know, ironic or something, I guess (when the aforementioned skank doesn't win in someone else's contest--"Here's some spending money: Go move that chest slider to the MAX and remember, less is more with clothing, even in a setting that supports skin-tight leotards!"). There's also Darkenstein for heroes and The Wangst for villains. There are others but those are the most notable since they are fairly easy to identify without my explaining them.

I rarely host CCs but if you can't handle sarcastic commentary at your expense for a prize, well, too bad. That's how it works when you fall into one of the obvious clichés. That said, there are a lot of ways to "win".

Physically (or virtually) transcribed? Less than 10% on my "played" characters.
Mentally stored? All of them. Just a limitation of time and patience to get them written as some of them are a little more "ambitious" than others. One in particular has a 40 line humorous narrative poem for its origin story (which I have written down due to its size but yeah). Obviously, that doesn't really work well with the space limitations imposed in CoH.

My characters are all based in gimmickry. They have to fulfill my desire for some analytical silliness (an AR/EM Blaster with a 641' range Teleport and Full Auto at a longer range than a Snipe's base range). If they don't have that, they're boring and I can't bring myself to play them.

I then build the role to suit its gimmick which is finally applied to the character. Comparatively, if I don't have that gimmick, successfully building a role still means the character won't be played to completion. One key example is my forum namesake, a DM/Regen Scrapper. It was made before I discovered what was needed for me to enjoy a toon so it sits uncompleted at 42 after more than 5 years (although it has granted me other benefits in toon creation so I can't bring myself to replace it...that and I don't want to lose the various anniversary badges), despite having a fully fleshed-out backstory and web of intrigue surrounding it.

After that, time constraints dictate whether a toon gets played or not.

The character windows uses html encoding, so putting in a line break, or hitting "return", actually means you're using four characters for "<br>" rather than the one you think you're using according to the character counter (although I don't recall if this still applies, it certainly does in AE still though). After that, I understand there's apparently an overall text box bug hanging around causing problems.

There will always be errors of various degrees in any writing anyone does. That's something you'll have to live with, it's just par for the course. It's part of the reason I've always hated a lot of the..."goofier" rules because you can take the same piece of writing, have it proofread by different people...and get different recommendations outside of core mistakes (at one point, I actually tested this idea on a lark and pissed off one of the "editors" by comparing the results I got to Feng Shui when discussing them...anyway).

That said, good proofreaders won't fall into the trap. *And I should mention that yes, it is also quite highly probable you ('you-niversal', not you in particular, Grinning) fail at writing, it's generally a bad place to start assuming your proofreaders are wrong/bad.

Decent fur, rather than the painted-on, patchy stuff they have going right now (think Beast from X-Men). And as somebody already mentioned, monstrous heads that aren't quite so astonishingly ugly--and with adequate color support. I probably wouldn't use them per se but I'd like having the option available.
One other avenue that could be explored are different face options given to unusual characteristics but granted, that's getting down to some rather specific details. If they opted to do that, I'd honestly prefer for an overall game update that gave me full facial control without the need for painted textures (which seems the natural evolution, should improvements on that scale ever be possible). Alas...

Honestly though, when I think "Mutant", I end up picturing X-Men and they aren't particularly...given to a unique costume set beyond what we already have.