And the mask comes off.

[LaughingAlex]

its like a guy that joins the team but tells you he is nonviolent so his blaster cant use any attacks. he will just follow you and counsel the enemies you defeat. I dont think that would go well with many teams.

Certainly, like the time I litterally was in a team with an attackless empath who's theme was "person on probation and cannot use any attacks".  Sadly we also had not one but TWO force fielders, myself and someone else.  Said empath roleplayed as being super super bored constantly to a point of being very, very annoying.  Especially since said empath didn't have fortitude, I think because she was to low a level, resulting in even more boredom.  I think it was also made to be a deliberate shot at attackless empaths though, thinking back on it.

[srmalloy]

MMORPG players are equally as narrow minded in that extreme way.  If healing vs resistance buffing vs defense buffing were presented, they only saw healing and then drew a conclusion "THATS THE ONLY WAY AND THATS FINAL!".  Every "tactic" I see in mmorpg forums are built around a trinity and the terms they often have are about as primitive and backwards as a person who thinks warfare is entirely on sword fighting and surround tactics.  You never see them use the term force multiplier.  You never see them use the term flank(it's adds instead).  Or reinforcements even(adds is used interchangeably for that).

WoW did the trinity. WoW has been hugely successful. Therefore, the way WoW did it is the right way to do it, and doing it any other way will compromise your potential success, because people you're trying to lure away from WoW won't understand what you're doing with the other roles.

And yes, it's that narrow-minded. It's the same reason why we'll continue to see variations and spinoffs of successful TV series, and sequels ad nauseam for successful movies -- it's easier to convince people that doing something the same way as something that has already succeeded is safer and more reliable than doing something different.

[srmalloy]

Unfortunately - from where NCSoft sits - that type of epic 'swimming-in-a-pool-of-money' blockbuster gold that the superhero franchise sees in other forms of media didn't exactly translate with COH as well as NCSoft was hoping it would.

This is all very much my own opinion, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt - but I actually think this is a HUGE reason as to why NCSoft choose to pull the proverbial plug. I think they saw how ape$hit crazy their western market gets over any and all things super heroes...and I think this was why the bar was set so high in the sky for COH. And please don't get it twisted - I think COH was absolutely profitable. I'm just giving my own personal reason as to why NCSoft thought it wasn't profitable enough.

There was some advertising in comics in the early days of the game; I remember seeing two-page spreads for CoH back before CoV. I think NCsoft decided to let the game run and see if it would spawn a huge success on its own, then when Paragon Studios took the game F2P and opened the game store, NCsoft looked at it as if it was going to be able to use the store as a cash cow for an endless stream of microtransaction consumables and throwaway cosmetic items, as they did with their other MMOs, but the basic structure of CoX didn't lend itself to that kind of monetization. Faced with the fact that the game was a success, but not a big one, on its own, with the inherent loss of face that would result from closing a profitable venture, NCsoft management loaded Paragon Studios down with a development project that would suck up all of the profits from CoH and more, which gave them a convenient bottom-line loss to point at as justification for closing the studio and the game.

[srmalloy]

Something only old timers could have ever seen was that there used to be this thing where radiation defenders would lock their toggles on a mob in Perez, then fly around the entire park trying to herd literally everything, and then would announce (or sometimes not announce) that they were bringing them to a gate.  Whereupon an entire zone of baddies debuffed to the floor would swarm a gate and literally turn into a shooting gallery.

Or, in the 'wolf farm' mission from Unai Kemen  (jeez; it's May 2015 and I still remember the name of the contact?) on the 'alternate NE corner of Boomtown' map, if you were too near the dumpster when the trip mines went off, you'd get a pop-up window with the message "too many effects to render". You know you're pushing the limits of the game when you overload the game engine.

[[EDIT: Fixing quote tags. ~Agge]]

[Ohioknight]

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

I frequently did builds using Dark Melee because I liked the fast fist-striking power sets -- used it to build most of my speedsters, but I used color customization to remove the "dark" elements and never took that netherworld tentacles thing or a couple of other powers in the set because they didn't fit the concept.  But then I also never used AE because it wasn't "real".  I suspect our play styles wouldn't be a good match for teaming.

[ivanhedgehog]

I frequently did builds using Dark Melee because I liked the fast fist-striking power sets -- used it to build most of my speedsters, but I used color customization to remove the "dark" elements and never took that netherworld tentacles thing or a couple of other powers in the set because they didn't fit the concept.  But then I also never used AE because it wasn't "real".  I suspect our play styles wouldn't be a good match for teaming.

I have seen a team invite a "kin lfg tf"..the team had a stone tank and the kin refused to use sb. kicked the kin and stated over. you choose what powers to take, but I dont have to wait around for you. I have waited for someone that didnt take a travel power. they pulled their weight in missions, just took a little longer to get there.

[Noyjitat]

My favorites:
Emps that only take heals and skip the buffs
Debuff sets that skip the -regen and -resist powers (the av melters)- Met alot of cold domination and traps users skipping those awesome debuff powers they had
Forcefield users that skip the two click bubbles and only use the toggle
Dark Miasma users that only use howling twilight to revive - it's like you're expecting your team to fail or something? Call me crazy but that aoe -regen is far more useful during a multipe boss or av fight.

Now I never kicked anyone for skipping powers unless I specifically broadcasted for a kin, empath or debuffer. In which case I would send them a tell asking them if they had another character with needed powers or I'd try to find another player to join us and keep them. But if someone say looking for a kin, a debuffer or a empath in broadcast / channel chat it only makes sense that they need the key powers.

I wouldn't run most taskforces without -regen debuffs or those av fights are next to near impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time.

[Twisted Toon]

My favorites:
Emps that only take heals and skip the buffs
Debuff sets that skip the -regen and -resist powers (the av melters)- Met alot of cold domination and traps users skipping those awesome debuff powers they had
Forcefield users that skip the two click bubbles and only use the toggle
Dark Miasma users that only use howling twilight to revive - it's like you're expecting your team to fail or something? Call me crazy but that aoe -regen is far more useful during a multipe boss or av fight.

Now I never kicked anyone for skipping powers unless I specifically broadcasted for a kin, empath or debuffer. In which case I would send them a tell asking them if they had another character with needed powers or I'd try to find another player to join us and keep them. But if someone say looking for a kin, a debuffer or a empath in broadcast / channel chat it only makes sense that they need the key powers.

I wouldn't run most taskforces without -regen debuffs or those av fights are next to near impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time.

I recall, once, getting an IM asking if I could heal. I was playing my Dark/Dark Defender. My reply was, " I have a heal. " I wasn't invited to the team that the guy was building for some reason. I mean, with acc debuffs, you'd rarely need heals. But, I think, that was back in the times before it was understood just how awesome Defenders could be on a team.

[Noyjitat]

Lol yeah, dark/dark was pretty damn insane at times. It's one of those debuff sets that's so freaking universal it's unreal.

[Vee]

I recall, once, getting an IM asking if I could heal. I was playing my Dark/Dark Defender. My reply was, " I have a heal. " I wasn't invited to the team that the guy was building for some reason. I mean, with acc debuffs, you'd rarely need heals. But, I think, that was back in the times before it was understood just how awesome Defenders could be on a team.

'my single target regen debuff has a secondary heal effect' would have been a fine answer for either dark or kin 

[ivanhedgehog]

'my single target regen debuff has a secondary heal effect' would have been a fine answer for either dark or kin 

there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   

[AlphaFerret]

I was running a rad/rad on an 8 hero team, and the leader told me to concentrate on heals and quit throwing that green stuff around...
I did what I was told for a few mobs...then he understood.

[Aggelakis]

there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   

I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it. A) The enemy targeted heals were bigger, B) The enemy targeted heals had an acc bonus, and C) The enemy targeted heals had debuff(s). Additionally, the enemy targeted heals came alongside some nasty buffs/debuffs. I would take a Dark or Kin (or pretty much anything) pretty much any day of the week over an Empath or PainDom who mainly focused on their heals.

And I'm saying that as an Empath. My heals were not the biggest bang in my basket - my buffs were. If anything, my heals were *under*slotted...3 Golgies and call it good. My buffs were what kept my teams on their feet. They're the powers I slotted to the nines. They're the powers that my teams appreciated. ("Fort! Oh boy!" "Dos Auras! Oh boy!")

[HEATSTROKE]

I was running a rad/rad on an 8 hero team, and the leader told me to concentrate on heals and quit throwing that green stuff around...
I did what I was told for a few mobs...then he understood.

LOL same here... Leader didnt understand what my debuffs were doing.. and said just concentrate on healing.. and I did.. and they died.. fast...

[Vee]

there were a few cases where you needed a heal heavy set. places where you couldnt count on enemy targeted heals to hit. the heal heavy sets could do the trick.also,if you needed cm.   

keyes and...

[Arcana]

I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it.

I can think of a few cases where the targeted heals would be problematic unless you also possessed significantly higher levels of tohit than most players did.  If you were facing off against DRMs in Carnival of Shadow missions, for example.  If you're running any of the Black Swan missions full of her shadow minions targeted heals could be problematic at higher densities.  Fighting various incarnations of Antimatter would also be a problem.  In the old days, he also had a ridiculously broken hover that basically buffed him to Elude.  And at lower levels, the Skyraiders could be a real pain in the butt with shield generators.  Particularly if you fought them before the generator patch which prevented them from spamming shield generators.  Before that patch, every engineer on the map was eligible to spawn a shield: after the patch they would only spawn it one at a time.  Before the patch, a three engineer spawn cluster would all but nullify targeted heals.  But even with just one, targeted heals were problematic for the lower levels that tended to fight Skyraiders, because a lot of tohit bonuses were not common at those levels.

[ivanhedgehog]

I can't think of any cases off the top of my head unless you created an AE arc for it. A) The enemy targeted heals were bigger, B) The enemy targeted heals had an acc bonus, and C) The enemy targeted heals had debuff(s). Additionally, the enemy targeted heals came alongside some nasty buffs/debuffs. I would take a Dark or Kin (or pretty much anything) pretty much any day of the week over an Empath or PainDom who mainly focused on their heals.

And I'm saying that as an Empath. My heals were not the biggest bang in my basket - my buffs were. If anything, my heals were *under*slotted...3 Golgies and call it good. My buffs were what kept my teams on their feet. They're the powers I slotted to the nines. They're the powers that my teams appreciated. ("Fort! Oh boy!" "Dos Auras! Oh boy!")

try getting an enemy targeted heal to hit on recluse in the STF when the towers are still up. good luck with that.

[Sinistar]

Here's a question for you all:

The defeat and achievement badges could not gain progress from AE missions, the premise for that was that people could setup custom farm missions and farm the appropriate targets to get the badge.

Yet we also gained the ability to set regular mission difficulty and spawn size, so someone could set a mission to -1 difficulty and 8 spawn size and farm it to achieve the desired badge.

So...does it matter whether it comes from a regular mission or an AE mission?  We could customize mission difficulty and farm any old skull or troll mission for those badges or whatever defeat badge you were seeking, or custom build a mission in the AE to achieve the same thing? Either way it is farming for the badge

So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?

[Arcana]

try getting an enemy targeted heal to hit on recluse in the STF when the towers are still up. good luck with that.

Since he could essentially one-shot anything short of a really well-built tank when all the towers were still up (since some of his attacks had dot it would bypass the one-shot code) I'm not sure heals of any kind were really all that useful against him at that point.  Although the biggest problem with targeted heals was not that they wouldn't land, but that if they did land you could generate aggro (because the tank also had trouble hitting LR through his defense, and taunt without damage is extremely fragile).  That's why the critical tower to take out first was usually the red one (which buffed his damage) rather than the orange one (which buffed his defense).  In fact except for a tank grabbing aggro or a really crazy powerful team attempting a blitz run, you probably shouldn't be shooting at LR at all until all the towers are down.

Incidentally, I took a peek at LR's paragonwiki page just to doublecheck my memory on the tower color, and I noticed there was an editor's note about using toggle powers to constantly interrupt Recluse's ability to summon his spider minions.  Missing in the editor's note and the tower capabilities is the fact that one of them (I've forgotten which) had a toggle-breaking power.  Basically, it periodically rendered Recluse "untargettable" for a split second.  Doing so would cause all toggle powers to break off of him.  If you tried to lock toggles on LR, you'd have to keep reapplying those often.  Players that didn't notice this would lose their toggles and often not realize why.

Figuring out what the towers did was one of the first serious power investigations I did after Iakona retired.  In fact, testing the STF was the first and last time I ever did anything in-game with Iakona.  We did some testing of Lord Recluse's abilities in the STF on the beta server right after that very first successful beta server Hami test raid.

Going in reverse, I would often tell STF teams I was on that were having trouble completing the STF that the key to the most difficult parts of it were lucks.  Just a bunch of purples.  Purples would render Ghost Widow - one of the more nasty of the AVs - almost impotent.  Lucks would not neuter LR directly, but it wasn't difficult to render even the blue tower worthless and force LR to get more than a little lucky hitting you.  There was one STF I was on that the entire team was about to give up and the tank literally dropped and gave up, and I convinced the team to stick it out, Ouroed a tray full of large lucks and distributed them to the team, and we promptly dropped GW with the scrapper tanking her, and then two towers down (red and  blue) before they ran out, which was enough for the team to drop LR.  They practically thought I performed a magic trick.

[Arcana]

Here's a question for you all:

The defeat and achievement badges could not gain progress from AE missions, the premise for that was that people could setup custom farm missions and farm the appropriate targets to get the badge.

Yet we also gained the ability to set regular mission difficulty and spawn size, so someone could set a mission to -1 difficulty and 8 spawn size and farm it to achieve the desired badge.

So...does it matter whether it comes from a regular mission or an AE mission?  We could customize mission difficulty and farm any old skull or troll mission for those badges or whatever defeat badge you were seeking, or custom build a mission in the AE to achieve the same thing? Either way it is farming for the badge

So once the game returns and changes can be made, should the AE be allowed to give progress on defeat/achievement badges?

Whether the AE *should* grant defeat credit is a matter of opinion.  But whenever this type of question came up on the official forums, I always had the same thought, which I often expressed.  The question "does it matter" is obvious: yes it matters.  It obviously matters, because you're asking the question.  If it didn't matter, if there was no difference, you probably wouldn't be contemplating the question.  You almost certainly would not be implying it was worth any amount of effort to make happen.

More specifically, in this case it matters because its a lot easier to farm the architect, and there are defeat badges difficult to achieve through farming repeatable standard content missions.  Whether it should be easier is a separate question.  "Should" is a judgment call (mostly).  But it is objectively different.

In general, I always think people should try to avoid suggesting that there's little or no difference between the status quo and a hypothetical change.  Because every change takes effort and resources, there always has to be a reason *to* do something, not an absence of a reason not to do it.  For some reason, many people appear to think the reverse: that it is important to note that a hypothetical change will not disturb the status quo.  But all changes worth working on, do.