Noxilicious

The obvious solution to the problems of an Unlock EAT T/SF is to just make it a story-arc. That way you can solo it and AVs/Heroes would just downscale to EBs, so even the weakest of Defenders should be able to do it on the lowest difficulty with liberally-applied inspirations.

Much as I love more content, though, I think I still prefer the Unlock At 20 approach.

Leaders usually do their own missions. At least I do. If someone asks me if they can do their mission, I'll put their mission up, but generally people join a team assuming I'll make the choice, and I choose my missions.

I get mission completion XP, I get arc completion XP, I get Reward Merits, I get Mentor badges, and I get the XP bonus of being in a team. In the case of the first three, I can get them solo, in the case of the last one everyone gets the bonus and the Mentor badges have no tangible effect. That's irrelevant. All these things add up when I'm on the team.

Some people don't want to lead teams. They like being part of teams, but they feel that leading a team is too much responsibility or too much effort and they just don't want to. They'll join teams if there are any, but generally they don't mind soloing until something comes up. Then there's people that really like teaming, so for that maximum teaming experience, they'll form their own. They'll join a team if one shows up, but if there's none, well, they know how to make one.

Then there's also people that want to team and absolutely refuse to solo but they feel that making a team is too much work but frankly, if they decide to be absolutely at the mercy of everyone else, then they're out of luck.

Ultimately, I doubt this will do much good either way. This sound like something that's there to benefit that last group, the peole who want to team no matter what but don't form their own teams. Leading teams in CoH is already such an easy business that I doubt any form of bribery can change that. If asking people to join your team and then set a mission is too much for you, well, the only thing that'll change is that people will ask for the star on TFs. Everything else will remain the same except leaders will just outlevel the rest.

At first, I thought this might be a good idea. I know some are afraid of a huge influx of jerks, but to me that always sounded more like paranoida and agoraphobia.

But then I realised: This game is based ENTIRELY on instances. Even in the case of World PvP being made, you could go to the other faction's residence and still don't find anyone because they're all inside instances, anyway. There's no reason NOT to be in an instance in CoH. If you really want world PvP, you'd go to a place where such people would gather, and coincidentally that just so happen to be PvP zones.

I'm ambivalent towards the idea, but ultimately it would be an excercise in futility, not because this is a PvE game and because PvPers are evil soulless devils, but because this is an instance-based game. World PvP means nothing because in CoH the open world means nothing.

Count me in the "likes the idea, but sounds like too much dev-effort" camp.

As much as I'd like the feature, we already have sitting emotes for chairs, benches, ledges and such. Sure, there's lots of clipping involved and it's everything but perfect, but sitting is already in the game. The Walk power had no equivalent in the game and so it was a boon to RPers, but with sitting already in the game, I'm not sure the devs would really want to make a new and intricate sitting system.

If you solo a lot, World of Confusion is potentially-useful. As Derangedpolygot mentioned, if enemies stay in your melee range, they'll also likely stay confused and attack each other.

HOWEVER, even then, it's usefulness is dubious. At higher levels, more and more enemies start getting holds or sleeps and stuns and what-have-you. All these powers actually turn your WoC toggle off. Whenever I log into my Psionic/Mental Blaster I turn WoC off, but soon into any gaming session I'll be hit by a hold and completely forget I ever had WoC and forget to turn it on again.

Now, if you team up a lot, you're likely to have meatshields to soak up damage for you. WoC still might be kinda-sorta potentially when-the-stars-align-correctly useful, but honestly, it's a power that I often forget I even had. Really, "fogettable" is a good word describing the power.

As for fixing it? If they made it so that the toggle doesn't get turned off when you're mezzed, that might be a good first step. That might be considered broken, though. I'm no game designer so I don't dare say anything on matters of game balance.

I'm almost two levels away of my HEAT hitting 50. I do say I am entitled to a HEAT^2.

The sad part about villains in this game is that in an MMOs, they can only ever be lackeys. Heroes work perfectly in the context of an MMO because heroes are reactionary by nature. If a villain attacks, you stop them, and by stopping them you maintain the MMO Status Quo. In fact, your victory is predetermined because the Status Quo must remain unchanged. And as far as motivation is concerned? You're a hero, you just do it because it's right.

But the very same Status Quo that is a hero's greatest boon is a villain's greatest curse. Whereas a hero's victories are great because things must remain the same for the world, a villain's victories are either fleeting because Blue Steel just fixes everything ASAP, or you don't win at all. You can never take over or destroy Paragon City because Paragon City must be there for hero players. You can never take over or take down Arachnos because Arachnos must remain there for the villain players (and really, who would want to sit around in Grandville all day, handing out $name Strike Forces?).

City of Villains is a great idea, but it's constrained by the limits that MMOs impose. As a single player game, or a game with a multi-player function like Demons Soul's, it might just be the perfect game, but as the MMO game that it is, City of Villains will sadly have to remain City of Lackeys.

All that said, I still vastly prefer red-side. I don't mind the reddish-brown of the Rogue Isles because I feel it's thematically appropriate, and blue-side has its blueish-grey and I don't feel that's too varied, either. I love the red-side ATs because of the self-sufficiency many have mentioned, simply because it allows me to switch from soloing to teaming to soloing on a whim. I prefer red-side arcs, all lackeyism aside, since you can tell the writers have become more experienced, the arcs (especially end-game) aren't made up of 90% filler missons, and on a personal note I love the EBs or Heroes/AVs at the end because they tend to give a nice climax to these arcs.

As far as the lackeyism is concerned, I admittedly jump through some mental loops. To justify it to myself, I just tell myself I'm not really working for them, I'm just using them as informants. They got info on a good gig going on, and because they're too pathetic to do it themselves, they relay the information to you. They might benefit from your actions, but ultimately most of the infamy goes to you, not the guy who tells you there's stuff.

All that said, though, it's a good thing that blue-side and red-side feel so differently. If blue-side isn't your thing, you can go red-side, and if red-side annoys you, there's always blue-side. Why try to make both sides more similar if they appeal to different people as they are?

If anything, Kheldians will benefit from this.

As others have said, more Kheldian players means more attention will be given to the Kheldian ATs.

Furthermore, as much as experience is needed to play Kheldians, the best way to gain said experience is to PLAY Kheldians. With a Kheldian's ability of filling any role, you could argue that you don't just need one toon at 50, but you need a Blaster and Tanker for both, as well as a Scrapper for Peacebringers and a Controller for Warshades at 50 just so you become familiar with all the roles a Kheldian can and often must fill. Me? I got a Blaster to 50 but never even played a Tanker, and yet I still find myself using Dwarf form a lot.

And let's not forget that the normal ATs don't really prepare you for such an oversaturation of powers Kheldians have, and the sheer slot-drought that is a tri-form Kheldian. These things were overwhelming for me, even with a fifty under my belt. Sometimes you just gotta get your feet wet if you want to learn to swim. On that note, even if this does mean an increase in inexperienced Kheldians, aren't we known to be a particularly nice and helpful communities? Why fear "bad" players flooding the game when we can just show them the ropes?

And on THAT note, it's not that it's just newbies that'll be getting Kheldians now. This game pretty much wants you to develop altitis. You may take six months to get a toon or two to level 50, or you may take six months to get a dozen or two toons to level 20. I already heard several stories of vets from the earliest days that have only hit 50 in the past six months. So with the lowered requirements, it's not that only a bunch of newbies will start playing Kheldians now, many experiended vets will now get the chance to try Kheldians as well, probably make their own mistakes and learn to play their Kheldians.

The way I see it, aside from some people who feel this diminishes the accomplishment, the only "drawback" would be bad/inexperienced players, but really? That's an occupational hazard when it comes to MMOs, so that doesn't bother me much, anyway. Plus, I reiterate, the best way to learn to play Kheldians is playing Kheldians.

On the topic of EATS:

Getting to 20 is no more or less an accomplishment than getting to 50 is. Getting to 50 simply takes longer.

That's actually the whole problem behind making EATs unlockable at 50. I think most of us will agree that CoH is not the kind of game where getting to the highest level ASAP is desirable or even that good. I think most think of CoH more as an "enjoy the ride" game. In fact, with the number of character slots you get and the ease at which you level, the game practically wants you to develop altitis.

Getting to 50 to unlock EATs is only an accomplishment in so far that you suppress the urge to make new toons just to unlock EATs. Hell, I heard about enough long time Veterans that have been playing for far longer than I and still haven't unlocked EATs simply because they love having alternate toons so much.

To reiterate: Getting to 50 is not an accomplishment, and it is not hard work. It simply takes quite a bit of time if you stick to it and it takes half of forever if you have altitis. I mean, let's face it: In the last few years, the game went a long way to make the player-experience as convenient and pleasant as possible, with things like patrol XP, adjustable difficulty settings and the Super-Sidekick system. Lowering the requirements for unlocking EATs is just following this design philosophy and I for my part approve of that.

Some people may say that EATs now lose some of their "meaning" because now you don't have to "work" to unlock it anymore, but I say that the only meaning of those ATs, as well as any other AT, is as a vehicle to having fun, and I'm paying NCSoft just for that purpose, to have fun, and not to work towards some arbitrary number.

Well, there was talk about Electricity Control, so maybe that'll come with I17? My guess is Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning get special attention because they're unique among powersets, kinda like how Dual Blades has the whole combo thing going?

And yes, being able to do Viridian without a horrible grindfest first would be so many kinds of awesome. When they changed badge requirements in I15, it rather irked me that all the badges required for Viridian stayed the same.

First post after War Witch, if only because I can.

I curse you with every fibre of my being, KAKTOS.

Me, I go through cycles. I'm playing for one to three months, then I get bored and have my subscription run out for one to three months.

This game is just extremely easy to pick up again compared to other MMOs that just seem to expect you to make a lifetime commitment. There's no content that requires you to be part of an active guild attend every weekend or you'll be kicked out and have no chance of doing that juicy end-game content everyone loves. Instead, you just say "hey guys, I'm doing a Task Force, and everyone's invited!" and you get going.

That's what makes it so difficult to get completely burned out off City of Heroes. I just play when I feel like it and I get to have fun with no strings attached.

I also heard that people use the last mission of Operative Grillo's last arc to farm Snake bosses, creatively called the Snake Farm.

I'm not a farmer myself, so I can't say how that one compares to those in mac's list.