Retrogression

Exciting news, the above. I think that clarifying this in game would help out a lot. Then the tf leader if they are lower level than the max would know to pass the star before starting the tf.

Also, I will add, that for some reason the first mission of the tf is not affected by this. At least in the case of the tf I just ran - for the first mission we were all the TF level, then for the subsequent missions we were at the original level the leader was when he started the TF, even though he leveled up.

So, it's really confusing and misleading to have one mission at what seems like the right level of the TF, only to have the later ones be much harder...

Fortunately we did finish. Unfortunately it took twice as long as it should have!

so which? cold or kin? you can't make a defender with both cold domination and kinetics...

The wrongest thing I've read on here is that support caps early.

That is true in other games maybe. In this game - support does not cap at all, mostly.

This is because support not only protects by enhancing defence, but "defends" by enhancing offence as well.

Some of the individual power sets do cap out - certainly forcefield, when the 4th one doesn't add anything really. But most keep adding on without cap... teams of 8 empaths can do rolling nukes with stacked fortitude and adrenaline boost that kill everything in sight with nary a scratch... and they're one of the few without -resist. (unless they're emp/sonic )

I think most errors like the "goto" name have been removed, but I remember seeing quite a few early on in the game. There was one name - I think it was Target - that worked fine but when the hero joined your team, his name was changed to a row of asterisks in the team window...

Some strange bugs

The previously mentioned things (CoP,Vault) are the things that got closest to being released - that were previewed - that were maybe even live for a brief time - but then canceled (Vault) or indefinitely postponed (CoP).

As a software developer myself, I know this just happens by the nature of some things turning out to be more difficult than they seem to be worth to the guys in charge.

There were a few earlier things that were suggested were on the plans but then never panned out.

- Epic ATs that would be opened by some other method than getting to 50: hinted names were given as well, "blood of the black stream" and "avilan" and so on.

- The whole "super secret out of combat system" fiasco where the result was something like "It turns out it's not fun, so it's canceled" (though remnants of it became IOs)

- Bunch of costume parts shown, then revoked, in CoV beta... fur shoulders like the Tuatha have, open necked blousy pirate shirt being the two I remember specifically

And, give them some credit, Devs did recently add something (I think.. correct me if I got this wrong) that they had promised years before, back in Issue 4: The Arena contests that gave the "weight class" badges.


Some years back, I made a list on here that had all the things asked for on the boards that made it into the game. There had to have been hundreds of items on that list. At best, I bet this list will make it into the teens. Way, way shorter. Credit where it's due: our devs do a good job.

To my idea of adding 7th IOs to sets to add enhancement to aspects that are only used in some, not all, powers taking that set:

There's no accurate defense buff set either - to go in the powers that buff defense and require accuracy - one in Katana and one in Broadsword (and in Ninja blade? I can't remember if there's any more).

I think what should be done is add an EXTRA IO to various sets. For example, add an Acc/Dam or Acc/Dam/Def to every Defense set, instead of creating Accurate Defense sets. You don't need to add any new bonuses, because no power can have more than 6 enhancements slotted anyway.

Similarly, a Damage IO can be added to all the Stun, Hold and Immobilize sets, to account for those Stuns, Holds and Immobilizes that really need Damage.

For "uncommon" sets the new ones should go in pool A drops probably. For "rare" sets they should go into pool B till enough drop to satisfy pent-up demand, at least... pool B can use some dilution as nearly all its drops are too common already.

I see nothing wrong with sets having 7 different IOs It would make customizing easier too!

I like the Accurate Healing sets, but it would've been simpler and a better idea to add Accuracy IOs to the existing heal sets, I suspect...

The "token" idea is a very good one that Arcanaville suggested.

But it could be very frustrating to longer time veterans if newer players get a choice they not only didn't get at the time, but have to wait another year or two for.

So it needs this extra expansion:

- create and offer two new "melee attack powers" similar to ghost axe and sands of mu
- give a 'token' for one of these powers as a veteran reward for 80 months or something like that. Also give a 'token' for one of these powers in place of the original 'ghost axe or sands of mu' power and, in place of the veteran reward for 'pick another of the unselected ones' offer a choice of token for a melee power, or the untaken ranged power.
- when that starts being available, also offer a 'veteran power respec' that lets people re-choose their veteran powers, in case they want the new one instead of the old one they had before.

The same thing can't be done for costume selections, unfortunately. People might already have them on characters; you can't easily revoke costume options... I like the idea of making all future veteran reward costume parts also obtainable another way on a per character basis by invention recipes or the like. Another option is veteran costume options being very minor variations on existing costume parts - slightly different pattern of rocket boots, existing hats with variants of the hair styles, belt/tail combo options; or (she said half kidding) costume options that are already veteran only because of their ancientness of availability, like the Malaise pants pattern or the Longbow costume pattern

This has a better chance of succeeding in going through doors/elevators if you do the following steps:

- Once you have the tech, everyone dismiss all dismissable pets. This makes it tough if you have a lot of masterminds on team. But it's just a short time period...

- The person leading the tech should go through doors/elevators alone. No one should go through at the same time as them.

We saw the same bug with baby new year missions, and it almost always occurred when the person leading the baby year was a mastermind or controller with multiple pets out - or when such a person was on team and came through the door within a few seconds of the person leading the baby year.

I think it's pretty reasonable to expect your future romantic interest to share other of your interests, including your gaming interests.

Not sure why they have to be 32-46 though. They can be 14 years younger than you but not one year older? This is a double standard that women gamers will not like much and might make them dismiss you as a possible boyfriend.

I am a woman in my early 40s who plays MMOs and married to a gamer husband who is 2 years younger than me. So I know of what I speak

I got the hero collectors edition at big lots, last one left at that store, over a year ago I think. The code was scratched off already when I opened the box.

But, I contacted customer service and they said it was fine to use - I did so - and it worked fine...

Positron said as much as it should be equivalent, whatever BABs jokes about "alternative" not meaning equivalent. He said they were giving the same XP reward in MA as in dev content because of this. He said that the ticket rewards had been calculated to be the same as what you'd get in drops because of this. Several times and places and ways he said this.

That said, it *is* equivalent as long as you use dev developed enemy groups. You can make most of the mission use those, and have your custom group for a few ambushes or spawns for variety and story if you're careful about storytelling. Since you can recolor the standard minions and there's quite a few varieties of them, along with the ability to put in a short mission or few spawns of custom enemies, I think that the lower xp of custom enemies per their difficulty is a reasonable compromise to make the system harder to cheat.

I think that was the intent and I also hope they put in a bit more effort to make it less difficult to make enemies that are about the same difficulty as dev enemies, but with whatever costume you pick. I think a good way to go about this is to have dev selected power combos added as options to the custom enemies.

SUGGESTION FOLLOWS:
- Powers devs spend some time to come up with a bunch of thematic power sets that give minion appropriate, lieutenant appropriate, boss appropriate challenges, for the basic custom enemy power types. Like for fire, for ice, for darkness, for electricity, for broadsword and shield, for plants, for stone/earth, for radiation. Then if you make custom enemy groups use one of those thematic sets, they get full xp and are not as difficult.

With this suggestion, creators would have another level of flexibility to make fully custom costumes, have a theme, but not be able to pick and choose individual powers so there is less room for making it too easy. But it would not be as hard as a whole group of full XP custom enemies are now, which is usually too hard for the hero/villain to fight on their usual settings... unless they have their usual settings to "no challenge for me" which most tend not to do

I very much enjoy teaming with strangers. I even sometimes like forming and leading teams. However there are times that I do not want to team with strangers, but instead am teamed with close friends or being antisocial/doing something that is more fun solo. Even when I am interested in teaming with strangers, however: I don't ask strangers who I know nothing of what they are doing beyond seeing them in a search to invite me to their team.

I only ask global friends to invite me to their team, and then only if they're on a team of size between 3 and 7. And if they say no I am nice about it... and don't ask them again for at least a couple weeks if they sounded at all irritated...

The only way I ask to join teams is in broadcast or global channels, otherwise. Not with tells. I feel as though it's too risky of being an imposition to ask a stranger to invite me to their team. I also feel it's especially rude to phrase the question in the form of me offering to do THEM a favor... as you seemed to with "can your team use a hand" though that is fairly neutral, it could be worse. But I recommend to avoid phrasing as 'does your team need a corrupter' or etc and instead be more polite by saying 'I am a 41 corrupter looking for a team, just in case you were looking for a teammate' kind of like that... making it less of a burden on them to demur or simply not answer.

I do not think his reply to you was polite, but it was especially rude to respond to him that way... and you weren't even funny (being funny makes up for being rude, doesn't it? Of course there are exceptions, but in general if you want to be rude and get away with it, be funny).

I am a 66 month veteran and started two or three weeks after the beta ended, due to a friend who'd been in the beta encouraging me to join.

My first character created was a blaster, I don't remember his name, fire/fire or maybe fire/ice, I never actually played it, just made it to try out the costume creator and learn the tutorial. Then I made a bunch of catgirl characters all called [part of an atom] Lynx... Proton Lynx, Neutron Lynx, Positron Lynx. The only one of these remaining is Neutrino Lynx, who is now level 50 (empathy/dark defender on Infinity). The only other one I recall playing is Neutron Lynx, who was a stone/rad controller on Champion. I have a vivid memory of having great fun with her on a Perez Park street sweep team - pretty salt crystals! - then a Hydra team (possibly the same team, leveling up).

Neutrino Lynx went into hiatus as I joined that friend's SG on Champion and I made several characters there, choosing one (Crystal Siren - storm/dark defender) to be my "main" in his SG. She was based on a previous character Iciss who was a storm/elec defender; I thought storm was tons of fun! But Iciss wasn't on Champion, I can't actually remember what server she was on. Similarly, I made a rad/psy defender on I believe Freedom named Curie - I still have her - and made the same power choices for a character on Champion (Gamma Radiant). These are my longest-played characters.

Then I discovered Kinetics! I liked it so much that my kin/rad defender, Retrogression (I let a friend design her first costume and name her... this friend then joined me playing coh and also still plays) who became my first level 50.

At some point I began to play on Infinity nearly as much as Champion, so made a claw/inv scrapper to play in a duo with my friend's ice/storm controller. We quickly got this pair to the early 30s and my friend lost interest at 33 because Jack Frost was insufficiently impressive. So I was playing my claw/inv solo and got her close to 50, but held off till Retrogression hit 50, then the same day I had my 2nd 50 with this scrapper.

Then, finding Infinity had some fun left in it, I picked up again playing Neutrino Lynx and she got up to the mid 20s in a binge, only to stagnate again for a year or so...

Eventually Villains came out. My friend discovered a love of masterminds and fire/rad controllers that finally got one of each to 50, the mastermind dragging my corrupter along for a spate of Cimerora grinding to get our VEATs unlocked.

Anyway I have dozens more characters than those, but those are my longest played/enjoyed. Most are defenders, next most are scrappers, then corrupters and brutes, then everything else of which I have a couple of each...

I think of it as an altered Praetoria. Something that changed because of all the time travel maybe - Oroboros - you knew something was going on there. After so much time travel and so many people traveling back in time to fight all the Praetorians, things there changed... we'll see it in weird order because time paradoxes do things like that.

Reasonable enough of a reason to retcon things.

And anyway, Tyrant Cole is not at all being given that much of a "good" makeover. He's just being portrayed as evil in the Countess Crey good-PR-at-all-costs sort of way. The loyalists are equated to villains and the resistance to heroes in Praetoria gameplay.

I can definitely still see him, as a non aging old guy, succumbing to the overtures of his taboo-defying, beautiful, appearing as his age descendant. Without it impacting his public image at all

seems super busy to me - not like in 2004 but definitely on an uptick

hi lol!

Happened to me once when we were able to enter the mission through the architect data stream door and to a friend when they were not able to enter there. We both bugged it at the times.

I believe they were both CoT missions. In both Founders and Brickstown.

My view on the copyright issue:

By putting the character into the game, as a newly created concept, you're giving the copyright to NCSoft, because NCSoft does not allow characters copyrighted by anyone else to BE in their game.

If you previously commercially or otherwise made up the character, and therefore it is copyrighted, the terms of the EULA forbid you from putting it into the game.

So, technically, really, if NCSoft sued you and said they owned your character, you could say they're mistaken, what you did was break their EULA by putting a copyrighted character into the game, and their relief is not ownership or money from your copyright's income, but instead, genericizing your character or banning your account. Which is also what would happen in RL if this was done. They would not care that the player is the owner of the copyright or not; if it's a famous enough copyright it would get genericized.

If you want to keep your character un-genericized, don't exert your copyright on it. Sure, you can legally do so, as Arcanaville explained; and sure, they might sue you in some conceivable reason later for doing so and have a chance of winning if they spent enough or at least making you give them money to settle (rather like the infamous software company who sued over open-source code, can't remember the name, but it was on slashdot for years) - I can envision a time, long after CoH is gone, when some law firm makes a shell company to buy all the former CoH intellectual property, then has researchers go see if any players went on to make successful hero movies or comics or tv shows etc, and if they find any worth any money, find a character that person played that resembles one in their valuable IP and sue over it. For a nice settlement probably that is less than what it would've cost to successfully defend their rights...

Another myth from this thread:

Myth: It is possible to choose Katana and Shield together.
Fact: The choice of either of those powersets rules out the other.

short answer: They are both powerful.

long answer: Dark is flat out the best general purpose protection for a team that there is. If your team is dying, get a dark, they will then survive.

Storm helps you more solo and is also pretty nice for a team, and furthermore, complements Dark very well too so if you have both it's maybe even better than 2 of one.

As for comparing to pain, well - I have, let's see... a 35ish Storm defender who was my main way back in the 2nd and 3rd months after release, still lot of fun and finally I found a build where she is really effective solo as well; a high 30s Dark defender who I made around 2006 and is a great team support, not at all effective solo (he can just muddle through a heroic mission solo as long as no EBs are in it) though could be his build; and a high 20s pain corrupter made just after they came out who is a lot of fun as team support but not nearly as effective as either of the other 2 (but defenders are more effective by modifier type than corrupters in their buffs and debuffs anyway).

I also have a recently 50 empathy defender who is about equally effective to the Dark solo (slightly better since she has air superiority) and about equally effective to the Storm on teams. Worst of both worlds, but I like her concept and she's awesome in duos which the other two are not; Empathy and Pain both shine most in duos/trios, I think. Which is why a full team with 3 or 4 Empaths is so awesome, it's like 3 duos ish with the full team xp bonuses - synergy!

Storm and Empathy both make up for their lesser defensive buffing than Dark by having greater offensive buffing, especially (in the latter case) if you're on a team with people with less than perfectly IO'd for recovery builds. Storm really can put out some decent damage, and add that to having an area effect offensive-debuff that is a little better than Dark's in effectiveness (freezing rain approximately same resist debuff and slow movement as tar patch - and freezing rain wins by having the defense debuff as an additional offensive bonus, and some knockdown too). Empathy does not do damage but it has a damage boost buff, an endurance recovery buff, and one that does both.

Dark has *nothing* for offense but Tar Patch. So the fact that it's the most effective defensive set is pretty balanced. Only Force Field is similar in effectiveness and lack of offense. If you had a FF and a Dark... and still died... ROFL