Seldom

Frank: Yeah, so I was telling Joe tha...that Mother Mayhem is the greatest, most awesomest EvAr!
Ed: Um, that's great frank..
Frank: She's so hot! ..And I like wearing a two-piece when I swim! I'm a little teapot...Eheehheheheee..these things are so fun to play with. Er...I'm a cop! I order you to feed me your donut, no hands! Ahhahha...whoops, Cole's coming. Uh...what was I saying?
Ed: ......

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

This could be interesting for radiation blast...so many of the blasts come from the right hand.

Huh. Besides the hero mez protection click for the psychic controller app and the oft-mentioned physical perfection power, I've seen the patrons pools as overall much better than the heroes' options. They get AoE damage attacks easily, good shields, AoE immobilizes, (compare to the many hero ST immobilizes) and some darned fine utility/boost powers.

(See: darkest night, waterspouts, soul drain, shadow meld,power surge, etc.)

An addendum to the above, this brings to mind something I've always wanted to see: multiple team SF/TF arcs. The trick being that one team's progress may be dependent on another, so there's that problem to mitigate. But they've shown with the winter event that they can do multi-team instanced maps. Doing such would be a kick.

/derail

Sounds cool. The only problem with specific tasks is this: Different builds varry wildly in ability. Your FF/dark defender will be a different animal than my DP/TA defender. MY IO'd to the gills DM/SR scrapper can do far differently than someone else's DB/FA scrapper. You get the idea. In the end, you're basing the task on powers...powers a player is not guaranteed to have/have in supply to the task.

The other route is to base tasks on temp powers, as those you'll know how they work. It may be a safer approach than AT. (Especially when CoV/H's archetypes define ability so minimally.) As such, the player that clicks a console with a healing/shielding unit is tasked with protecting the scientist. (Or the player that agrees to protect the scientist gets said powers.) That way players can decide what they'd be best at, and take on those duties.

I see the side-switch limitation being the result of perhaps a couple factors:

The 'Why not before' thing. Sure, they could have had villainous controllers as of Issue 6. But they didn't. Why should they now? As a player, the archetype has far less to do with a character's alignment and costume than their powers, but a changeover is now explained via the side switching mechanic, rather than being discarded.

I know it's minor, but the AT descriptors are often very faction based. Heck, some are functionaly leaning one way or the other. (See scourge vs. vigilance.) Though there are odd ones: containment always seem villainous to me. I know a text change would be simple enough, but it's there.

As to what I'd desire?

For the most part, I'd have no problem with all but khelds/arachnos selectable from level 1, either side. While You can say your tanker is the pinnacle of heroism, protecting as many as he can, I can make a big monster that's nigh indestructible that terrorizes the populace whilst drawing their ire. Don't get me started on blasters.

ooooh, I think I see strawberry frosting.

I'm at work, but somebody else may get it.

I finally got my /poisoner up high enough to see the set as a whole, my experience certainly made me think there were some tweaks needed.

Alkaloid: the toxic toss makes timing tricky, but as it 'looks' right, I don't see this changing. A slight endurance reduction may be nice. Heal over time? It seems overcomplicating.

Elixer of Life: It's fine enough as-is, honestly.

Paralytic Poison: The developers cannot/will not move powers. The ST Hold is helpful, but limited. As 'limited' seems to be the name of the game for poison, this seems to not be changeable. While this is one of the 'good' powers of poison, -damage would help poison pull ahead in it's supposed specialization, heavy single debuffage.

Poison Trap: The lead weight of the set. The devs have stated, however, that they will not completely replace/remake powers, however. This seems to be the only dependable-ish AoE mitigation, but is not dependable...apparently on purpose. The trouble: all pets have AoE's, and cannot be told to stick to single target attacks. Sleep is thus a very bad pairing with masterminds. It's also a bad pairing positionally: ALL of poison is ranged. Planting a trap at my feet is an issue. Though this was made for 'out of combat' use, it's really just a pre-combat power. the close positioning is hard to leverage, and the 'trip' part of is is quite small.

I'd submit this suggestion:
Give the power a 40 ft. cast distance. The caster prepares slime (interruption period) then tosses it to the location, where it sticks to the floor. When tripped, (using a larger trip area, 7ft radius) the smoke goes off, putting foes to sleep. The gas causes deep weariness when inhaled, doing a pulsing -end to all targets in its area.

So, any enemies in its area will eventually be drained of all endurance. This makes them unable to attack; however, the power does no -recovery, so between drain ticks they may have a chance to fire shots. this make sit reliable, but slow, AoE mitigation. It also uses a present power attribute, the -end, and gives an effect more potent when stacked with other players' draining abilities. Without other players, it still works as an effective reduction to incoming damage.

Noxious gas: the ally toggle suggestion has been made before, and I'm all for it. The power is good, but seems overly reduced, considering the size of the AoE and the lateness of the power.

As to the whole 'redside being empty' thing, it is odd. I have 33 characters on Champion, 3 are blue alts. The rest are red, with two or three name holders. There was a while where red was busy, but that fell off about the time that a bunch of major VG leaders left.

As far as 'I don't play on red because it's dead'...it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are a living player. If you venture over, invite somebody else, or link up with other players, there will always be warm bodies.

Currently it's having the downside of social momentum; people go where people are. Where people are not, people don't go, so there are fewer people in that place that people don't...you get the idea. Of course there's a threshold, and there's a point where there's TOO many people, and people look for 'roomier' spots. With a small population, though, this isn't currently the case. But if there's a big influx with GR, it may come up.

The whole 'grey' thing puts something new into the mix, too: with the lack of a red/blue dichotomy, people will play content all over, wherever they feel like at the moment. Rogues may head to Paragon, but vigilantes can visit the isles when ever they please. ...And the redside has same darned fun arcs, so where there's fun in a game, there are players.

It's a fair enough response, hardly 'policing.' There are certainly other self-proclaimed forum cops, but the individual wasn't brow beating anybody, just stating we can't say, and why.

As to the powersets, they get tweaked a lot in betas, sometimes simply, sometimes significantly. They don't tend to post details until they get a bunch of people using it, and are happy with the result. After that, we can hope they add details to the Going Rogue site like they did for demons and such. Since there's a bit over a month left for testing, we should have details in a matter of weeks.

For me, it's a gave and take. It helps to know the sets and powers available...and the power customization has greatly increased the possibilities for cohesive concepts. As far as knowing the sets, you'll know if your character's idea will be realizable. If it's too far from the abilities you are giving them, it's time to revise.

Case in point: I had a AR/devises blaster who's supposed to be a psycho nurse that got fed up with what crooks were doing to her city, and used all her money to buy the highest tech rifle she could to fight crime. She's still capable of practicing medicine, but her main objective is to shoot stuff.

So, the concept has 3 elements:
High-tech assault-rifle based
Medical side ability
No super-powers

At first, I was AR/devices/medicine/flight...but it didn't work, even with jetboots. She skipped her gadgets, as she was more a gunner, less a gadgeteer, the flight made no sense. (even with jetboots) So, I remaid her: AR/EM/medicine/tp. This has worked better. She skips all energy manipulation melee, so she just has the gun boost powers, and has powerboost for better medicine. The teleport works, as her work in paragon's medical system involved teleporting, and she retains access.

The power customization was a big one as well...I made a blaster who uses mental spells to create darkness that burns away at reality, specifically the enemies and areas he focuses his mind on. To feed this power, he must absorb thoughts and desires for destruction from his foes before releasing them back at them. The best fit was a fire/mental blaster...but without colors, it made no sense. A dude sucks up minds with pink rings then shoots stuff with fire. Huh? But with all tweaked to a similar dark tone, it looks and feels right.

On the other hand, I had an idea for a pacifist widow: she was forced into/through training due to the need for recruits, but she had only team buff/medical powers/control powers. In the end, it didn't work. ...And it sure wasn't fun. As such, the concept went bye-bye, the character remade into a new one that used the actual abilities of the powers.

You can make a concept character, but I've found you concept has to gell well with the game. If it doesn't it's a square peg in a round hole. On the other hand, if your character is just a consortium of abilities that are chosen to make stuff die and the team succeed without regard to what the thing IS, I have to scratch my head. The interaction of the powers are pretty straightforward. The costume editor, bio, and customization all alows you to make a character all your own...why wouldn't you? About every game has its protaganists, here yours looks and acts just as you please. ...And you skip past that to become the biggest, best, faceless generic orange number generator? Generating it the same way as the other super damage generators?

Boooring.

Dark/Dark corruptor/defender, gold (sand) toned powers.

Millenious

Heh. Let's not forget that 90% of villain content is versus...well....villains.
Seriously, the last 9% of that is against vigilante groups that are actively violating international law. Any time a villain sees an honest-to-goodness hero, they look for flying swine. It should be no difficulty for heroes to go red, or villains go blue. They'll do what they always did, bust COT/ Malta/ Arachnos/ Family/ Tsoo/ Crey/ etc. heads.

I dunno, I just don't get it. I hear a lot of folks say "With GR, I can finally play a brute/corr/mastermind!!" Um, guys...CoV's been free for COH accounts for some time. You can play them right now. GR will take out the biggest complaint about the isles, the lack of market supply/activity. What you're left with, then, is a place with fewer fetch quests/hunts/'filler' missions. The only downside is a lack of many strike forces. Go grey, you get those too.

Oh, well. to each their own.

With the coming of the 'grey area,' and the way villainy is oft relegated to arachnos affiliation, I'll be letting some villains go neutralish, play on some task forces they couldn't before. That and get some new badges...but I certainly won't be re-making any into 'new' archetypes. Out of curiosity, what would necessitate deletion of a character to change AT's? If you wish to play brutes/corruptors, such has been possible for quite some time.

Sooo....you want to play a 'dominator.' That 'physically assaults' people.

<_<

>_>

I'm thinking such terminology might make a hard sell for the 'new powerset' discussions over at Paragon studios.

Discussions that I'd pay to see.