I have time traveled from Ouroboros from the year 2005...

Actually I just haven't really played in over 2 years... but lets take a look at some things:

1) Power Customization, people said it was impossible back in 2005. Now for some powers you can change the animation and all powers the colors.

2) Inherent Fitness Pool: Did they nerf this at all by making it inherent? People were screaming for this since issue 0 and now its finally inherent. No longer do you have to waste 3 power picks on this.

3) A good friend of mine named AtomicTermite used to always message me on these forums and in game. We would often discuss the best min/max builds and what AV's or Giant Monsters I was soloing. Last time I spoke to him was 3 years ago and he was asking my opinion if Brutes were going to get /Regen. I said no and gave reasons why I thought it would be overpowered (Even though I really wanted it).

I now stand corrected, as I read the Brute forum and read the patch notes, Brutes are getting it. (Installing the beta client to see this for myself) -- I even sent the guy a PM stating 3 years later I have eaten my words.

4) Brute damage cap nerf -- Ah, I predicted this way back in COV beta. However, back then people weren't worried because it was very rare for a Brute to hit the damage cap but I math showed they out damaged scrappers when both were capped. .75 X 8.5 (Brute brawl index of .75) and Scrapper Brawl index of 1.12 or 1.2 with criticals factored in with 1.2 X 5. Essentially 600 scrappers vs 6.375. I suppose with the combination of Going Rogue Castle (If he even works as the powers guy) decided to change it. -- I wouldn't be surprised if the res cap / defense cap is nerfed for them too at some point.

5) Incarnates: I don't know much about this so I can only touch lightly. However, people always wanted a way to advance past level 50 because it was "too easy" to reach the cap. (Thats opinion of course, especially with the days of people doing behemoth farms or the old school tanker dumpster dives). Anyways, with the IO system put in place (Or the super secret alternate advance system or whatever it was originally called) people would farm for those purples day in and day out. (Granted these came much later)

Now at a quick glance the Incarnate system reminds me of something inbetween the Talent Point system of World of Warcraft and the Alternate Advance system of Everquest. (Original Everquest, Planes of Power / Luclin Era).

6) Soloing -- I am not sure how exactly the incarnate system plays out but I wonder how it effects things in terms of soloing. The most powerful soloist character I created was a Bots/Traps Mastermind that took down giant monsters with ease. I don't know if things have changed in terms of soloing. (Is there a new AV class? Or GM class?) -- I still remember the days of when I was just starting out and Ill/Rad was the best soloist in the game with Perma Phantom Army... I am trying to remember the guy's name but I can visual his avatar having like a Peace symbol or something but I remember he was the guy that soloed Lucca (The giant monster in COH world port city... has like 6 tentacles and a head you take down... as you can tell my memory is a bit faded) and that took place in like issue 3 or 4. Maybe earlier.

7) Veteran Powers -- I remember the big complaint on these when they were first launched. As I logged in to claim my 81 or 84th month veteran reward I scrolled through them to see what there was. The ability to slash command an auction house? Free exp? Etc. Very nice... which leads me:

8) Combined Auction Houses: Oh I remember people debating how this would destroy the economy of COV because Infamy was much more valuable then Influence... etc etc. We stand here today with a combined auction house.

9) Familiar faces, at a quick glance I saw Arcanaville and EvilGeko still posting. I also remember that Zombie guy that I think really hated me because I would start a new topic on everything -- Also saw a poster named Serrate that I remember (And that avatar).

10) Unique Dragon has 37 posts... hmm

...and finally:

10) Free to play -- Well I have always been a subscriber since the game launched in early 2004. I've always supported this game because I thought they did something right with bringing something fun and new with the combat system and the communication the developers employed with the players. Do I cancel now once it goes free to play? I doubt it.

Now if I could find a way to time travel back to 2005 to report all this but according to Einstein's Theory and Stephen Hawking you can only time travel forward...

*******

Oh and if any number crunchers or people that like to min / max want to share some nerfs that have occurred or power set changes please share them. I am curious whats been modified.

Thanks,

Ultimus

Edit: And let me add Samuel_Towe, Memphis Bill, Steelclaw to that list of names I recognize.

Welcome back. I remember your name, though you might not remember mine. I don't think I posted as much. And I still stay mostly in my corner of the AE and Fan Art forums. It's kinda surprising to hear that you kept your subscription up even though you weren't playing for all this time.

Lol well do you remember that guy up there?

A few off the top of my head:

Defenders do Corruptor lvl damage when solo thangs to Vigililence giving a reverse scaling dmg buff.

Ultra Mode = shiny water and reflective windows (you have to make at least 1 metallic character)

Beast Pack offers animal costume parts like Wolf head, bird head, bull head...and you can run on all fours.

You can e-mail stuff to yourself and others like inf, inspirations and enhancements. No more asking someone to help transfer funds from one character to the other...

When you log into beta, it'll feel like a whole new game...it did for me. Give Preatoria a try.

Yes I recognized both the names... usually the avatars remind me.

1) As I understand it, BaBs was working on this in secret since 2005. He's no longer with us. The system isn't perfect, isn't complete by any means (epics and pools are still not customizable) and isn't as fully featured as the customization in another super hero MMO.

But it's still great we got it.

2) No, if fact you get an extra power. You get both Swift and Hurdle. Usually people would only take one on the road to Stamina.

4) Brutes are still in an extremely enviable position. They still have the same resistance caps as Tankers, and even more ways now to get closer to those caps. There's an Incarnate power that'll essentially cap a Brute's Def and Res for like 15 seconds before slowly fading/reducing over two minutes. And it can be used every 120 seconds. And anyone/everyone can have it AND it stacks/staggers.

Tankers meanwhile, have the same low damage caps. In terms for maximum theoretical performance, the only thing Tankers have on Brutes is 10% more max HP (the value was upped for Tankers not long ago, Castle did it I think. He's no longer with us either). So, Brutes are only 10% weaker defensively at cap, but do something like 1.8 times more damage at cap.

Needless to say, I've been ranting about increasing Tanker damage cap to make it fair.

5,6) Incarnates are broken yo. Giving a Tanker the equivalent of Phantom Army, Fire damage afterburn on all his attacks (regardless of his power set) a 40 target crash-less nuke that can be used every second spawn and an AoE self/team heal that buffs regen 200% and you'll see why Kraken and Paladin now have a typical life span of a couple minutes even with one person in the zone.

9) Arcanaville had a psychotic break a while back. Too many numbers. Sad really. Just smile and nod.




.

And did BABS just disappear or was there a post made? How exactly did it go?

Welcome home!!
Yeah, the years have been pretty damn kind to this game and to us players!

Nice post!

Oh, hey, welcome back!
When i saw your name i was wondering if it was you, and when i saw the avatar i was certain.

i had a different name and avatar last time you were here, but that's probably for the best.

As for BAB... Not much was said on the forums.

Is Manticore gone?

Manticore's been gone as an actual active CoX dev since before the Cryptic buyout--he left to work for NCSoft. If you're talking about the long-distance story consulting he was doing after NCSoft bought CoX, I don't think he's still actively doing that; his last post in the lore thread was in 2009.

As for Incarnates, the highly abridged version is that we get ten incarnate slots, each of which can be slotted with a different type of power. Only the first five have currently been released. Alpha slot "powers" actually function as a global enhancement, part of which ignores ED softcaps. Judgment powers are big damn nukes. Interface powers add various proc effects (mostly debuffs, but the Reactive line also includes DoT) to most damaging powers. Destiny powers are big PBAoE buffs that start off insanely strong and degrade over time. Lore powers summon various pets, with roughly 33% uptime.

Within the past couple of days I was thinking about the state of brutes in regards to farms and for some reason you popped back into my head because I believe you were one of the guys soloing AVs I believe with a Fire/fire back in the day. FYI, Burn got fixed and is now back to being awesome.

I remember I liked your posts, I think it was you.

Oh and CoP trials came back...sorta.