Powerhelm

I got on virtue around noon the other day and it was 3 bubbled red and barely connected after 3 attempts. I honestly think Cryptic hasn't improved their servers at all since launch of CoH...they obviously have trouble handling even 2-3000 simultaneous players on a server....whereas at one time I remember them saying the servers should run fine with 4+ thousand on at one time. Not to mention that a year or two ago they altered the method for determining the color code of activity level for servers. They reduced the numbers required to show a server as being in the yellow and red for usage because there were fewer players...

We see the same issues whenever there's a new issue or an account free-weekend or a double xp weekend. The servers get swamped. There's tons of lag, tons of login problems and no explanation as to why in 3 years of seeing these problems they seemingly haven't upgraded their servers to be able to adequately handle more players on at one time. The technology has improved but they haven't invested the money into getting it apparently.

And it's not like it takes a genius to know when it's gonna happen...new issue, free-weekend, double xp weekend...sigh

I'm gonna have to agree with an earlier poster, between the absurdly high cost of IOs and Set IOs to craft let alone the recipe or the rare salvage going for millions on the CH inf is an issue now.

It's obvious IO pricing and the CH jacked up fees were planned in order to drain some of the inf heroside but really now it's hurting SGs and players as a whole.

Unless you play a lot and I mean a LOT you can't both contribute a reasonable amount to your SG and get IOs. Not to mention that things like Pangean Soil (on Virtue at least) are going for 3-5 million or more each. Now add in the occasional 2 rare recipe or the jacked up price of common items like luck charms (again on virtue) and you've got serious pain.

"Rent" and "taxes" on bases need to be looked at yet again, either that or lower the prices of recipes to purchase and produce across the board.

After buying the rare hard to find salvage and crafting 4 sets of IOs (one full 6 IO set and the others 4 IO sets 2 of which are "uncommon" and therefore cheaper to produce) I went from 100 million to 20 million and still have numerous sets to go, and I was being as cheap as possible.

The CH was never meant as a place for us to swap items with people, if it were there'd be little to no fees and we could just place an item on there then link it to a desired item(s) list...as it stands the CH was meant to be an Inf sink and it has done its job well though why an abundance of Inf in the game would matter (at least before now) I don't know.

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What are we waiting for? Looks like all we need now are for comics to start getting submitted.

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You're absolutely right. I guess if the people getting paid to do community work aren't doing their job we should.

Anybody wanna set up a website? If we submit stuff to these guy's it'll take 6 months to get on the freakin website...

Also the problem is finding reliable artists and enough artists...most of the good artists won't do anything for free anymore now that they've got community people willing to pay to have their toons drawn...

Actually Lemur Lad it's entirely possible, even two thirds of a year later, that they ARE related. You don't seem to understand that for them to shut down their own comic they probably had to wait and not renew any agreements with Top Cow which I believe they said initially would have a 20 issue run or was a short term agreement to see if things worked out between the two companies.

So it's entirely possible, in order to avoid legal issues, that they had to wait 8 months. Not to mention they also could have been working on a deal with marvel and didn't have it set so they didn't want to cancel the top cow one til they had a set agreement with marvel...

I dunno if that's what happened but if it's entirely possible that they're related events...

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No, Sexy Jay wasn't working on it (in all likeliness). Nor were the other Red Names, I'd bet. Those are not, however, the entire staff of Cryptic or NCSoft. There are more. Many more. Gaggles more, I'd wager.

The inner workings of this company, such as any company, are too complex to judge solely on what we see on the outside.

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Yes well...I seriously doubt Cryptic had many/any one working on the comic...they're a game company and wouldn't hire a comic writer or artist, as said Manticore (whose job doesn't seem to be that vital to begin with in the dev end ) was essentially adding dialog to what was already supposedly fleshed out in the story bible...

Plus if they'd kept with the comic maybe even the original characters they created early on, they could have hired someone to do the comic and paid these people out of the profits even if it meant a minimal profit...I doubt any money they save from this will come back to us ever...just like NC soft cut those jobs and didn't cut our subscription cost. They'll probably use the money they save (if there was any) to work on Marvel Universe.

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I'd like to contend that they do. The makers of this game and the community coordinators have been working on multiple projects, including the City Scoop and the PvPEC.

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You don't have to care about the community to throw them a bone. City Scoop is a half chewed bone. Copy and Paste a community member's work then post it (apparently judging by the months it took to get them to post a pdf of issues 17 an 18 posting is an arduous task in and of itself).

And the PvPEC is more for their benefit. PvP is far from popular in CoH. There's still alot of work to be done and they made some very basic bad calls regarding PvP. They continue to neglect the Arena which if improved would get me into PvP and I hate PvP most of the time. But rather than admit that they wasted alot of time and money created PvP content that is barely utilized (even after a majority of the community was saying they had no interest in PvP prior to implementation) they're trying to desperately recruit people for PvP. Best of both worlds, make it look like they care AND cover up their mistake.

Apparently Community Coordinator jobs mean posting on the Forums and little else. Maybe once every few months post a couple PDFs to the site and when new issues arise or news post about that on the site...though important polls like melee powerset polls currently going on aren't even mentioned on the front page...

I could do a better job and probably for less than he's getting paid.

Well aside from the issues with the Korea launch characters the comic was pretty good....those Korean launch hero issues sucked hard.

How is this comic taking so much of their time? I mean give some writers the opportunity to work with the "bible" and o their thing, it doesn't HAVE to be a CoH related person writing it...

Not really a good explanation. 90% of the issues were entertaining and well written especially the first arc I really loved. It's a shame more energy wasn't devoted to the comic it coulda been very good especially if they'd stuck with the artists they had for the first 2 arcs, the art just sucked after the first two arcs or so...

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I mean, without it, how would we ever have found out that the canon/in-game Statesman is such a collossal jerk?

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You haven't paid much attention to some of the posts made by Jack "Statesman" Emmert then have you?

What exactly is the data that they could have gotta from a forum poll that warrented being taken down in less than 24 hours?

I mean it's a freaking POLL? You click one choice in category A and one in B... The computer counts up the totals and that's that. Least they could do is leave it up for a couple days, not like it's sucking down server bandwidth to let people click two buttons and submit...

As has been said, without telling us what the heck you're imagining when you say Density or Vibration or Psionic Weaponry we have no way of voting for what COULD be much cooler sets than Shields or Ball an Chain or whatever that sounded like something we can see in our heads.

Totally dropped the ball on this one, guess those late nights and having the "A" team on Marvel Universe Online are starting to take their toll.

So wait you had a very important poll that wasn't announced on the game launcher til late afternoon or even maybe today by which time you'd already closed the polls?! I seriously doubt you got a good sample from the community with a poll that wasn't open more than a day (if that).

I think it would also help everyone if we knew what Cryptics idea for each of these powersets is. Quite often in the past Cryptics ideas of what is "right" for the players or what makes sense for a power have been very different from our own.

Really what the heck is Willpower and Vibration as a defense?? Please elaborate because from what I can imagine Willpower wouldn't be a whole lot different than Invincibility, just with new names and maybe a different goofy looking sparkle effect. Same for density control and FF...

Electric Hammer? Mace with energy damage? Ok a little different. Street Fighting? Martial Arts with less kicking basically?

The only ones that don't sound like the same old hobo with a new coat are the ones you say would take forever to implement (makes sense since it's something totally new).

Some idea of what you think when you imagine these powers in practice would be helpful.

edit: Aett I coulda sworn the Energy Auras and Ninjitsu were already in CoV at launch...porting Energy Aura over to tanks an maybe even scraps would be a great idea and should have been done long ago.

Another solution would be to create an ingame editor/submission method for ideas....only accessible to people with 300+ badges and only after completing the STF and/or LRSF along with a specially created TF/SF just for unlocking the submission system, and make it horribly long and tedious such as the Shadow Shard TFs that you guys keep saying you'll look at That way only the people who desperately want to submit an idea will be able to.

For the longest time we heard similar explanations as to why we couldn't craft from the start and here we are with Inventions. What would it take from the fanbase to get custom powers put at the top of your list of things to do? I mean most of the pwoers are the same exact animation as You've said BAB but with diff FX and the same basic power with small side affect differences (blasts for example one debuffs enemy def another drains stamina etc)

So really just the color even being capable of being changed would create a hundred new possibilities per power for customization and players to say "plasma bolt" or "grease lightning" is what they're using instead of every blaster using blue energy, etc...

Add in ability to pick from a handful of other animation options for origin (sapper gun for energy blasts anyone?) and those two combined add hundreds of "powers" w/o ANY of the work of balancing new game mechanics and power powers...

It's just as much if not more the look of the powers for some players that determine the choice as it is the type or side effects...

I'd absolutely LOVE to see priorities goto more invention sets for high levels (and all levels really), bug fixes, QoL, and Power Customization, even if we needed to do a TF to do it. And maybe a new trial.

Issue 10: Dreams Do Come True...
-Power Customization
-New Trial
-QoL Improvements
-More Invention Sets

There you go, just added 2,000+ regular subscribers with that issue.

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Dude, read before you post. This ENTIRE THREAD is about what compensation is coming. From the OP:

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You should re-read it as we.. please note they used words like hopefully and "planning to" as in they don't know if they even CAN do that. Which is why I was asking if they know for sure that they can atleast see if and who lost what...

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Its just a game and there are going to be bugs in this new system.

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And if you pay 15 dollars a month for something and it doesn't deliver as well as it should you should just be a meek little drone and move on is what you're saying?

This kinda stuff has happened before but not on this scale. And again if this weren't admittedly their fault, if it was just a snafu or something, I wouldn't be nearly as annoyed by this but this is flat out negligence.

You guys can come to their defense as much as you want and keep that childlike hope that they'll come sweeping down from the heavens with All the lost Inf an items for everyone but it doesn't change the fact that this was a terrible human error. If they are capable of a screwup this massive once they're capable of it again. What happens when they screw up and can't fix it? Or they screw up and Your character is gone?

Yeah, it's a game and it's also a service and this has to do with quality control regarding the service we all pay for.

We appreciate that you guys are sorry but if this was as you said, preventable, then this is a monumental screw-up on your guys' part.

I mean probably one of the biggest screw ups in the last year in any major MMO I'd say if not the biggest...the entire heroside loses large amounts of rare items and inf...

Conspiracy buffs must be going nuts considering you guys always talked about how too much Inf was floating around then poof now it's not thanks to a roll back. I sincerely wish you luck on dealing with THOSE nut jobs.

Back to seriousness, Sorry doesn't compensate anyone for grinding through TFs over again for a rare recipe just to have it lost because of a Cryptic error. The 4+ hours people lost out of their gaming lives to gain those rare (in costume piece cases all too rare) recipes is unacceptable.

Considering the sheer scale of this screw up maybe adding a single day of gameplay for free to every CoH player's account would make up at least a small bit, sorta gives them the gaming time back even if they don't get the goods and inf they lost back...though in many cases it might have taken several days of grinding through missions an TFs to get what was lost...once again, what was lsot due to your company's error.

It'd be nice if there was some accountability for the time lost to us, influence lost, nerve fraying that we've gone through waiting each day for our items to maybe be returned...but we'll get a "Sorry we've recovered what we could, thats all we can do. Don't forget to renew your subscriptions, bye!" And life will go on, some people may, MAY quit over this. Most of us will continue on, and you guys know that so there's really not THAT much motivation to totally satisfy as many people as possible. So you'll just sorta satisfy a bunch of people maybe half maybe 2/3rds...and billions in Influence and Billions worth of recipes will be lost to the wind.

As long as we're willing to settle for you guys "mostly" fixing things or temporarily fixing things that's all we'll ever get and unfortunately not enough people are willing to push for more than "just enough" to make a difference. As will be evident here and as is already evident in persistent bugs and redeveloping bugs that seem to continue...

Can you tell us this: Do you at least have the ability to see WHO lost something even if you can't tell WHAT was lost?? Could we maybe all be compensated w/ X Influence and X recipe(s)? Something? Anything?

Soo it's not a certainty that we'll get our stuff back just a "hopefully likely" thing? Grrr...Piston boots an Numinas Convelecense both gone plus others

I have no concerns about debt (lvl 50) and I LOVE a good challenge whilse LRSF is hard and I have yet to be on a team to beat it I know it's possible because I've heard it done though I think it's still a tad too hard...

I've also been on many a Hami raid as a hero. I led many of them back in the day when PS allowed me to be the targeter of Mito for everyone else attacking.

I have no trouble with a challenge but there's a challenge then there's way too challenging. If they intend us to beat it a certain way then I'd appreciate they tell us instead of us finding an alternate way and them buffing Hami even more to prevent that method and then keep teasing us with a mythical solution that they won't reveal. As they've done in the past.

Also I would like to see one successful raid on each side on each server before I hear people saying it's fine and beatable. Test is far from Live in quality of testing, player demographics on one server might be heavily Corruptor or some other AT compared to another so unlike test any one server might not have the magical mix that test did with it's access to all servers and all players...

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However, it's simply not what this particular encounter is. As others have pointed out, in order to make a single entity that can be attacked by 50 players at the same time we have to step outside of the bounds of 'normal' rules in order to make it challenging.

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I was on a villain hami raid last night and it failed miserably. The whole PA/PS thing is bogus. "We were worried about PS/PA becoming required"

No disrespect but it's not like a solid 50% of trollers aren't Illusion already AND Not like PS isn't a pool power open to anyone thereby making it not AT limited. It's not like you guys had similar concerns for PvP and Leaping or TP or Acrobatics all of which are considered mandatory for PvP...

If you think we should beat it a certain way then fine TELL US WHAT THAT WAY IS. A challenge would be if it were tough enough to not always beat even using the "right" tactics not just ungodly strong and us shooting in the dark.

During the last Hami we always heard about how the ways we came up with weren't what you guys wanted and how YOU wanted us to do it a certain way. First of all YOU may have made this game but WE are paying for it and playing it and some of us have been with this game as long or longer than many of the Cryptic staff! It's as much our game as it is yours how about you let us beat it our way? Nope couldn't have that.

Now the New Un-Godly Strong Hamidon 2.0...this is a crazy encounter...Mitos that can do no wrong, holds an KB that hits through even the most stalwart of Defenses and anti-KB powers...we had Grounded, Acrobatic Brutes getting KB'd 60 yds.

Give us an example of a valid Hami beating tactic...or come on live sometime and get a Hami raid.

It went from predictable and too easy, cue Trademark Cryptic Full Pendulum Overreaction Swing, to terribly difficult and not fun at all. At least with easy Hami we could have fun and socialize with other players even if it WAS a bit too easy.

The best thing you guys did in I9 was STF. Its fun, difficult but not impossible. You don't need 4 team wipes to pull an individual Recluse Lackey AV like you do with pulling AVs in the LRSF and it's not frustratingly hard like Hamidon.

STF is the perfect balance to CoH/V of fun and difficulty. It's just a shame that's not present in LRSF or the new Hami raid.

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I cannot release those numbers. That would have to come from someone above me!

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Then could we get some PvP numbers. Not even badges but maybe number of different accounts accessing PvP on a daily basis and how many minutes each spends or total time from all people spent in PvP (ie total occupancy time of each PvP zone)

When you say "Sorry that's gotta come from above me" then we never hear it it's often interpreted as being the same as saying "I can't release that because it would totally validate the opinion that PvP is a wasted venture".


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A large percentage of end users would balk and simply stop playing BF2 at that point -- since there would still be other free alternatives with similar game play styles.

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Sorta like if Cryptic learns a lot from CoH and uses that to make Marvel U Online a superior product people will leave to play MUO? I wonder if NC Soft will start letting Cryptic use a little more money to get more staff and make CoH better before MUO goes Beta/Live and they start leaking customers? All this is assuming MUO will be superior to CoH but you'd have to be pretty stupid to not be able to improve on what is essentially a Non-NCSoft CoH sequel using the Marvel license

Auction houses I don't think = Player VERSUS Player.

In PvP someone loses. Always. No matter what, you lose prestige/inf/rankings or a pillbox or a launch code or something.

In the auction house everyone wins. The buyer gets an item they want or can resell for a profit and the seller gets the money they wanted.

Auctions don't = PvP. Sorry.

Am I the only one that already has a headache from Inventions?

Sounds far too complicated to be fun or exciting to work with at all.

Read the guides and still lost, none of them were particularly helpful but given what we know that's not unexpected.

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I hate to play DEV-il's advocate, but that's the reason they put in the auction houses: so you don't have to run the TFs/Trials to get what you want.

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Yeah instead powergamers and people of the appropriate level can just make 10 million inf a pop on those things instead. Basically jacking up the prices to bone the high level people that just don't want to go through the TFs again...

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Pools C & D: TFs and Trials. Im lumping them together because they are similar. Some people hate this idea because the investment of time, claiming some TFs take upwards of 8 hours. The real truth is that Heroes and Villains have Access to some fairly quick TFs and Trials. The LRSF with a proper team can run it in under an Hour.

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Well of course trials aren't the issue. LRSF...I've never heard of that being run in under 2-3 hours by anyone except the powerest of powergamers. Of course most TFs can be run in 3-5 hours maybe quicker if you spend 1-2 hours getting the "right" group and then none of them leave and no brakes are taken. I would like to know what the Shadow Shard TFs give none of those is faster than what? 7-8 hours? The longest averaging 9+ hours in length.

And it's not just speed its quality. I can run the villain SFs over and over. They're well designed, interesting and usually doable with a team of 4-6 people within 3-4 hours or less...

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The Eden Trial hero Side has been completed in 10 Minutes with an Optimal Team (No, Im not kidding my Server had a Race and they burned the entire TF in 10 Minutes). Villain respec can also be completed in relatively short time.

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I don't think I'm a casual gamer by any means nor are my teammates but we aren't powergamers either. The times your listing are powergamer times if I HAVE to go through these I want them to be fun and not just grinding for a reward...fact being most hero TFs are grinds...at least after the first time. Some villain SFs I've run 3+ times and still find fun.

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People might want to reconsider complaints about 50s not being capable or rerunning level 1-25 content. It is unlikely a level 50 would utilize a level 15 recipe considering the %enhancement. It is more likely that established 50s would place this material on low level alts. The devs have not been very encouraging of 50s bank rolling lowbies in the past. I don't see that changing.

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You make a good point. And Story arcs don't award costume piece recipes right? Because if they do that totally voids your argument but if they don't your argument is valid and I am proven wrong.

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Now I hear you guys... you all seem to dislike the Story Arc aspect of this system.

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Actually I totally hate the idea of Pools B, C, and D.

Honestly, making a level 50 have to go find people with story arcs from level 10-15 etc or redo the horrible 8 hour Positron TF or one of those multi day SS TFs is pretty crappy.

This really comes off as more of creating a time-sink for lvl 50 characters rather than real, interesting, high-end content.

And for those of us with 30+ souvenirs in our bag from Story arcs we've previously done, can't the system auto reward a component to us? What about those with the TF/Trial badges? Obviouusly the system knows we've completed those at least once (since it checks at least the basic TFs for Task Force Commander) can't we be auto-awarded those?

We'll be spending plenty of time fighting mobs as it is, there's no reason to make us trudge through a long, annoying TF again. At least not to get our first pieces...If we wanna go do it again then cool but those of us that can only bare to do the Hero-side TFs once (or however many times til we got badges) we shouldn't HAVE to do them again to get a piece for doing them...

My god especially not Shadow Shard TFs which on more than one occasion you guys have even noted they were a bit extreme in length...

The Hero-side TFs just aren't as fun as villain SFs and are usually twice as long. That doesn't help this any, maybe if we were told hero TFs were getting updated in I9 this wouldn't be an issue...

That still leaves story arcs, something we no longer have access to in many cases since we've out-leveled them...How about opening all the story arcs to us? Make it so we can't out level them and can fight grays if we so choose. I'm cleaning out a couple story arcs now that I never knew I had and they're gray clockwork to my lvl 50...and I'm loving it. I actually feel super now...

I'd be fine with the mekman if he were sporting different colors and lost the Nazi group logo...

I just wish the freakin Mekmen didn't have a 5th column emblem on their chest...

I mean come on why would a hero have a Nazi bot? And when the 5th returns that'll raise some questions with people in your SG I imagine....

"Hey Super Sam, umm me an the guys have been meaning to talk to you about your robo-buddy..."

"Shamus? What about him?"

"Well since the 5th returned we're kinda freaked out about having a mekman running around the base."

"Mekman? He's not a mekman he's my pet robot..."

"He has a 5th emblem emblazoned on his chest..."

"Um...so?"

"He attacked me last week when I had my yamacha on."

"That was just a hug."

"With second degree burns?"

"It was a very passionate hug."

"Get rid of him."

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I want to stess this:

We are NOT working on a Marvel-based CoX-Killer game. Oh wait we are!

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Wanted ta fix that pesky quote heheh :-p

Starsman mentioned this a few pages back but I'll re-mention it...

One other aspect of Bases we hoped for/expected/requested was the ability to teleport to them from anywhere in any zone...

This shouldn't be a Vet reward this should be an inherent when you join an SG.

A look at bases:

Decorative items that do nothing cost 100+ prestige and can take up space needed, needed, for functional items.

Influence cannot be traded for Prestige at a rate better than 500:1 reducing this by 100+ would be excellent for base constructors.

Bases are controled by the minority in an SG. If you want your own corner you either have to treat the game like a job so you can rise in the ranks of said SG (assuming they allow leaders personal space) OR quit your SG then start back with 0 Prestige and create a very small functionless base. Aka no customization for 99% of players.

What can bases do:

Require you to zone into an entirely seperate "zone" from where you died in order to resurrect with almost no HP or endurance.

You can buy 2 types of Tier 1 inspirations after spending tens of thousands of Prestige on a room and the inspiration dispenser. In order to gain access to MORE tier 1 inspirations you must heal millions of points of damage...or you could just fly to one of the half dozen contacts you have in almost every zone and get them much sooner and cheaper...

Telepads depend on the Architect to actually place those lil monitors above/below/next to them so we get atleast a hint of where they go w/o clicking on each one...

Ways to improve these things:

Increase the conversion rate of Inf to Prestige.

Have one telepad that takes up more than a standard Telepad but less than a Raid Teleporter and allow it to goto more places. Instead of 6+ Telepads in a hero base we only have to check two or three... Or even better make a Teleporter that is Raid size or larger and capable of teleporting to any zone you have a beacon for...then you can just click on that single pad...

Give all Tier 1 inspirations as the default starting for the Inspiration Dispenser. Make 2 upgrades one to upgrade to add tier 2's to the list and one to add tier 3s. Have the dispenser convert all influence used on it into Prestige and put at least 50% of that into the SG fund.

Remove or drastically reduce base rent...as said before why are we paying rent on something we bought? Perhaps a yearly "tax" on the property that can be paid all at once but also still less than the current Rent would be...

Make the base Hospital heal us at 50% End an health or atleast have it buff our Regen/Recovery for a couple minutes after being sent to it say 5 minutes...

Make a teleporter that is cheap that allows us to TP to our active mission door.

Make decorative items free. However, to prevent someone from surrounding anchors or vital equipment with massive amounts of free decorative items to block invaders, you simply add a radius around functional items within which non-functional items cannot be placed. At least certain sized non-functional items...