Violet Sorceress

I enjoy ITF, Posi, STF, LGTF, occasionally a Citadel or Synapse. Honestly if you ask me to join any TF I am more likely to say yes than no. I do participate in MS and Hami raids when I need Vanguard merits or a Hami-O. I will do a trial or two occasionally, I'm not in a hurry, and will wait a week or two until the Live bugs have been addressed.
Story arc wise I love Croatoa simply because it looks so different from the other zones. I'd like the story to be a bit more resolved and I think the levels should be higher as the Red Caps are difficult and can be impossible on some AT's without a good team. I really enjoy the Vanessa Devore story although I'd love a reduction in street sweeping carnies. The story itself is nice and I was feeling a little sad when I had to defeat her at the end. I liked running Crimson and Indigo on my natural MA scrapper the enemies and story worked for her in an interesting way not being super powered herself. I love the variety of stories and ability to run stories and fight enemies that make sense for the hero or villain you've created.
I also enjoy inventions, marketeering, playing with builds, and badging on occasion.
I really love the new costume pieces from the boosters especially the magic bolero and steampunk skirt. The animal print patterns found in the animal pack are great too.
Customization is fantastic and the new auras, costumes, and animations look great. More like this please.
I love making alts. I am really into making alternate universe versions of my favorite characters on different servers. They have similar back stories but different powers and leveling experiences.
It pleases me greatly that, while writing, I keep coming back to this section to add stuff I enjoy.

Do Not Like: FX spam! The visual pollution is muddying the visual parts of storytelling in some content. I would love to have some old Fx retired or last briefly. Hasten, inspirations, leadership pools showing up briefly to let you know it's been completed and then Fx going away. I know people want options for these things but I think the art team needs to carefully look at the visuals with an editing eye and figure out ways to keep the game looking good and avoid Fx soup. Maybe having particle count scale down with team size is possible although I think that could prove to be very difficult to get it to look right and may be just more load on the server. A true no Fx option for all powers would really help. It would also be awesome to play an invisible hero who shoots invisible energy blasts. That would be cool.
We have enough female options for stripper clothes, would prefer more superhero and sexy yet elegant options. I love the new steampunk skirt but am not needing more tops with cutouts at this time.
DISCLAIMER: The following is from an ease of play and professional objectives perspective. I am not invested in the current forum battle. I would also say that some serious concerns like these have been raised before by other players and buried under a mountain of trials make me Leet vs. trials are unfair. Please give room for perspectives that are not about Trials are great/NO they suck crowd. There are some issues and ones that are solvable to the betterment of the game and player experience of the game. Thank you.
I don't like that I feel it's wise to wait to run the trials until multiple fixes have been put in place. That being said; if I look at them critically in comparison with some other games I've played and not emotionally invested in end game vs. solo; the final fixed products will probably not help much with retention of premium players going VIP. If latency issues at their current level, client crashes for consumers running at default settings, and unclear visual cues remain I can't see a returning player thinking it's worth their time and money. I personally need to be able to see my team and league mates buffs while I'm playing support and do not think I am effective in my controller and defenders when having to do without that info. I think the end game has enormous potential for trials, TF's, and small team arcs and trials but currently implementation is not at near the quality level of the newer TF's. I think our dev's need to address these issues first before any changes to the current system occur. I understand there is a learning curve here and vast improvements have been made. Trials need to be runable on default settings by players running at minimum system requirements for maximum retention of new and returning subscribers. The closer we get to this goal the better off we will all be as a player base and the more likely we will be to get even more new cool stuff in all areas.

I like this idea. In fact I'd say have an optional slot unlock arc prior to running the trials as well. It would be an excellent opportunity to explore the story around the trials and give the developers more room to show us why the trial is important and players to experience it. Having us sneak in on a mini attempted rescue of brainwashed prisoners or disabling horrifying weaponry intended for use in Cole's war could tighten things up nicely story wise.

I play the trials occasionally and enjoy them as something to do in addition to my normal game play. That being said there are some reasonable criticisms of the trial system that seem to get buried under the doom crying, strawmen, and we have to have end game to increase status posts being spammed to the boards. This style of gaming doesn't appeal to everyone and that's expected and OK. Diversity of play is excellent when the content supports it and CoH mostly does. However there are some serious technical issues with CoH that these new raids exacerbate and are a cause for concern. Firstly latency issues are a problem in some areas of trials and normal game. My understanding is that technical upgrades are ideally going to improve our experience in this area and i sincerely hope this is so. I also participate in MS and Hami raids and would love to see any improvement in this area.
Client crashes is something I've experienced a couple of times and have run into with other league mates in nearly every run. Players cannot enjoy the trials unless they are able to actually play them. For me personally this has really improved but I still see chatter and teammate warnings about this issue.
Visual Fx spam is a nightmare. I had no idea that we received warnings before being sequestered as I couldn't see the warnings. I found out about the warnings from reading the forums. I personally cannot keep track of the blue instructions, league chat, team chat etc. and play. It's too much info for me to process at once. I just learned to do the trials from reading posts about successful runs. The Fx need to be looked at with an editing eye IMHO. The newer stuff is great and has some obvious and clean design and I would say it's time to retire some of the older effects that you can't differentiate from all the visual noise anyway. Even scaling down effects wouldn't necessarily help as there seems to be effects for every game action we take.

Since crafting and marketing are important mini games that keep a healthy chunk of any mmo's player base playing I doubt this will happen.

I currently buy costumes and auras so I don't see that changing. I'm hoping that the impression I've gotten of more of these coming and faster is the correct impression. I will happily spend my points and money for these things. I would say add alternate animations and Fx for powers too if we can get more faster.

I'd add a jack of all trades AT that could select powers from all the available sets based on a skill point model. I'd limit the selection for pools to two or three picks from each AT's available sets to keep the AT as a little bit of everything but not the best at one particular thing.
I'd also like shape shifting and power cloning abilities either as a unique AT or a selection for the various current AT's.
More hairstyles for men and women.
I'd like the sprites from the origin pack used as alternate animations for powers.
I would get rid of most of the FX for things like hasten, will power, regen, inspiration use, and really any powers that are happening internally to the character. It's never made sense to me that concentration and the like make the characters blow up or glow etc..
more auras with the ability to pair activation with specific power use as another element of customization.
Small scale surgical strike incarnate missions. Assassinations or sabotage missions would be great for villains and rescues or assisting resistance forces works well for heroes. This would be a nice way to move the story forward while appealing to a large variety of play styles.

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I think making some of the same top options we have now with less plunge to the neckline would address some of the concerns raised. Giving a breast reduction to the female model would help even more.

Personally I would love having the geometry and silhouette of some of our current garments with less assets on display. Currently the composition of a total costume can be exactly what you want but the sexy level can exceed the players comfort level and what they want their character to visually say. Arcanaville's example above is very pretty but the neckline is problematic even though the v-shape itself really works well with the other pieces.

I don't think they'll ever do a CoH2. I can see paid expansions as being a good idea generating interest without splitting the base. That other game has multiple expansions and it seems to keep people subbed that way.

I actually think the trials are fairly weighted against some power combos. My Mind/Kin has been eating floor and was getting nothing but threads but my blaster has been doing great with a real difference in rewards. The frustrating thing is my kin is still as busy as ever and I can poke along on the blaster with the kin getting commons at best and my blaster has gotten uncommon and even a rare as drops not counting the reward table.

I'll second the magical type effects for themed characters. Currently I have the runes combat aura on my magic characters. I would love it if the sprites for their powers were runes also. Really any of the origins aura effects like leaves, tarot cards, sparks etc. would be great as alternate animations for the powers effects. I'd also like a no FX option for everything. It would be great to have an invisible themed character with invisible powers.

I doubt we fight the Well at all. I think we'll probably end up becoming the new champions of the well after successful completion of trials and do the coming storm thing.

Same thing happened to me tonight. My Hero gets dumped into a mayhem mission and attacked by confused longbow. It was odd.

I think it would be super helpful if the "metal" bits were shinier than the rest of the outfit. It may be not so terrible if the fabric were matte. Shiny and tight is the easiest route to cheap tart. Also her lipstick should be a bit redder and darker. As a look it really says "escort" more than super heroine

My understanding is that currently we don't have some costume options like the full length skirt because of animation issues with certain power sets. If we had limits on powers but were able to have certain options in the CC I'd be for it. It would actually be more options in the CC for a lot of power sets.

I honestly couldn't care less about the villains we face or heroes for that matter. The PvE story is just a showcase for how awesome my Hero or Villain is. That may be why I feel like I'm fighting to have my characters be more important than the Praetorians. I don't care about Tyrant or his dumb plans I just want to look cool while I defeat them. It does seem as if the Canon characters are trying to steal the show from the player characters. I like the more vague story lines where I have to fill in the blanks on my characters motivations for doing things instead of having my moral options spoon fed to me by the arcs. IMHO a great many players are far more interested in their own creations than game canon. I'm more interested in player created characters than game canon.
Also when villains team with heroes they need an option to screw the heroes over for their own aims. It's a huge part of the genre and the villain usually aids the hero in order to further their own super secret plans.

I mostly have green villains oddly enough. Although Doctor Lady, the world's most nefarious cross dresser, only wears pink.

Average Human on Virtue my little Martian invader MM with a terrible disguise.
Justice Song on Virtue and Victory. Sonic somethings since deleted.
Doctor Lingerie my tongue in cheek Hero from planet swimsuit also deleted.

I find the LFTF flag very useful especially with the WTF's going on. If I'm doing something else I'll just use the chat channels. I suspect some AT's may have a harder time joining than starting. On my scrapper I might as well build my own on one of my Kins I'd better set my flag to not accepting if I don't want to get harassed to join a PUG.

I skip carnies on my mind/kin controller. Swapping mez's with a master illusionist who doesn't seem to be able to hurt me much beyond my heals and I don't seem to be able to get her health bar down either isn't fun. When it got too tedious I pulled some strongmen with TK just so i could die. I died from boredom induced suicide. So yeah, no thanks.

This thread wanders a bit but there are a couple of things that don't work for me. This is a MMORPG so you must team to advance your character! Why? I don't have to RP to advance my character. That seems a bit hypocritical to decide that we all have to team to advance because the definition says so but leave half the definition out. I personally think they should allow solo toons to attempt the TF's solo. There are some very experienced players who would enjoy trying with a small team or solo. It might actually make the game challenging for our vets and give soloists options. Honestly having eight alpha slotted toons doesn't seem necessary to complete these TF's or what folks asking for challenge or soloists are asking for. So maybe if you have your incarnate enhancement the requirements for starting this stuff should change.

I'm actually really happy about this. As a new player who likes TF's I was pretty thrilled to actually get to finally do the STF. Sure I face planted multiple times but I had fun and for folks who haven't done the old content it makes getting a team to do them easier.

This thread always gets the Love Boat theme song started up in my head. With visuals of Statesline flying over Fantasy Island.

I would have to agree with this. I would add we need some new content in our empty zones. Dark Astoria is an awesome zone that doesn't even need a change in look just some stuff to do there.
I would also like to see story arcs that are consistent and in-universe logical. I did the Roy Cooling arc recently which mostly gets thumbs up cool idea points. However when fighting the rogue police portion of the arc I kept thinking "geez, why does Paragon need super heroes with cops like these? Why is my character even helping?" that's not a good thing for a player to think in a game about super heroes. Honestly if it had been sky raider's or something I wouldn't have even blinked. That would have been more "Where did they get these weird new weapons?", "What is this foreshadowing of a link between sky raiders and council? Cool!" etc..
I'm just hoping we see the caliber of writing that's in Vanessa Devore's arc- maybe minus the kill fifty carnies grind. I just want our narrative to grow and be well written and thought out. I would be happy with less new content if it was great stuff.

I think the original poster is a good example of a console gamer not being informed on just how expensive their console games are. I used to play console games regularly and didn't want to pay a subscription fee either. I tried CoH on a free trial and heard on chat channels about the previous content updates and some speculation about the upcoming Going Rogue. I actually think NCSoft should be blowing their own horn a lot more about this games constantly evolving content. When console gamers understand their 15$ is really buying tons of games and new ones are added all the time they're much more likely to subscribe. I know I was, and it was player chatter that sold me on it. Maybe the marketing department could really trumpet that accomplishment. Comparing the 50$ for every new thing or 15$ a month for constantly new and fun stuff to do is easy math for anyone.
In order to better fit this post in with general forum content DOOOOOMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!
*Begins Google search on designer tinfoil hats*