Features I'd Love To See

[Tortuga]

I'd like to see them add Hero-type epic power pools to the villain side, as an additional choice for players who don't want to use the patron pools. They could also simultaneously throw in heroic patron pools, as well.

Heroic patron powers and arcs would be a great way to solve the lvl 40+ tediousness.  Since levelling Bravebird playing only TFs, trials, and special missions I've realized that I love having an alternate route throughout the game.  CoV is really lacking in that department, especially once you hit St. Martial/Grandville.

For missions in which you need to find information from hunts, I'd love to have the chance to find the information earlier on.  If the 20th Council minion that I defeat has the info on the base, why don't I just find him and defeat him right away? :)  So I'd like hunt missions have an increasing chance of finding info earlier -- let's say that when I need to hunt 20 I have a 5% chance of finding info within the first 10 defeated, then a 15% chance for 11-15, a 30% chance for 16-19 and 100% chance on defeat #20.  Mission bonus would remain the same.

[Tortuga]

Why do Mercs (and their henchmen) and Bots MMs get awesome looking guns, yet AR Blasters still have the oversize, ugly as sin watergun? I really wish they'd change that weapon's design. (I have an AR\Energy Blaster alt)

The AR rifle does a lot more than MM guns do.  It's a shotgun-sniper rifle-flamethrower-grenade launcher-beanbag-automatic rifle-freeze gun-rocket launcher all in one.  Design wise, it makes perfect sense to not just be a simple gun -- not saying it's not ugly -- but it at least makes sense.

[MyndVizion]

Note: I'm a total noob when it comes to CoX. I've never leveled a toon past 30 and I've activated my account on and off over the years.

1. I would like to see more slots for missions.  I feel that I'm very limited when it comes to deciding what to do when I log into the game.  As it is now I basically have 2 options if I'm going to solo.

2. I would like the ability to set the difficulty of a mission at the beginning of a mission rather than finding a guy to up it for me.  This way if I happen to have a mission that I got 3 levels ago, and I enter the mish with a team and they say, "Weak," that we can exit and up the difficulty. Most of the time we head to another mish and my missions become stale causing me to progress through story arcs extremely slow.

3. I'd like contacts to tell you where to go if they don't have something for you. If you're experienced in the game this isn't so much of a problem, but sometimes the contacts tell you nothing, and there's no direction from the game and you run around wondering - who do I talk to?

4. I'd like an option to turn on health bars for everyone in my party and have it displayed abover their heads with their party number along side. As an Empath I spend 99% of a mission staring at the party window. I'd love to be able to watch the battle and still see the health of my teammates.

5. More archetypes/powerpools.  I think we can all agree that making toons in CoX is a lot of fun.

6. The ability to set keymapping for all my toons. As it stands now everytime I create a toon I have to redo all the mappings. As a keyboard player it's a tad annoying.

7. A comprehensive list on the CoH site of *ALL*, everysingle one, emotes.

8. Temporary powers attached to costume pieces.  When you find one you can equip the power and the costume piece is auto attached to your toon.  Similar in fashion to the jetpacks you get in the game.  Not sure if I9 does this or not.

9. This won't happen I know, but combine the Yellow and Green train lines.  I don't know how many times I've run to one train line only to realize I'm at the wrong one.

10. Add more incentives to things like PvP and base raids.

11. The ability to bring up a macro/keybind list of what I've created. I have one toon who has superjump. She has a keybind that auto presses the "jump" feature. That key combined with "run forward" is great because I can type to my team, etc and still be 'en route'.  However, I can't remember the keybind I've set for her!

12. In game ability to mail "things" to other toons.

13. More soloability in the game.  I have a controller and I would rather suffer through a root canal then solo with her.  Even fighting grey mobs is beyond tedius. Not every mob in the game has to come in packs of 1 to 2 reds or 20 blues/greens.  Since the player base of the game is significantly smaller then other mmos, sometimes I find it extremely difficult to group up.  I've spent close to an hour trying to get in teams only to log off in frustration because I can't further my own toon.

14. A hospital in the Hollows - or at the least a clinic.  Lowbie toons always die when trying to cross the hollows for missions only to find themselves rezoning and doing it all over again.

15. Server wide events. An alien invasion in all zones for example.  Depending on the zone level, mobs of appropriate level/difficulty could spawn so everybody could participate in the event.  An alien attack in Atlas Park would be awesome!

16. New cities!  Paragon is a nice place and all, but The Avengers, X-Men, and JLA were world travellers.  It would be really cool if these new cities were available at, let's say, 40+. And a new city actually combined players from across servers.  So you'd still be "on your server" when in Paragon.

[Alaric]

13. More soloability in the game.  I have a controller and I would rather suffer through a root canal then solo with her.  Even fighting grey mobs is beyond tedius. Not every mob in the game has to come in packs of 1 to 2 reds or 20 blues/greens.  Since the player base of the game is significantly smaller then other mmos, sometimes I find it extremely difficult to group up.  I've spent close to an hour trying to get in teams only to log off in frustration because I can't further my own toon.

You know, it's funny- my Controller soloes very well, and has since I started playing him (he's level 33 now). In fact, I enjoy soloing all the aTs, although Defenders, as they increase in level, definitely become less fun (and less easy) to solo. I do agree that most of the heroic ATs should be a little more solo-able- the villain ATs are overall much easier to solo, which, in my opinion, is one of the major advantages CoV has over CoH. On the other side, I find the heroes are usually more fun on teams...

15. Server wide events. An alien invasion in all zones for example.  Depending on the zone level, mobs of appropriate level/difficulty could spawn so everybody could participate in the event.  An alien attack in Atlas Park would be awesome!

There have been game-wide events. The entire city's been invaded by snow creatures, for example, and then there was the war between the 5th Column and the Council... and the Rularru Invasion... and the Trick or Treat Event...

[captainspud]

4. I'd like an option to turn on health bars for everyone in my party and have it displayed abover their heads with their party number along side. As an Empath I spend 99% of a mission staring at the party window. I'd love to be able to watch the battle and still see the health of my teammates.

You can do half of that. Go in Options, in the first tab, and somewhere under Display there's a thing for "Display Teammate Health". I think it's On Mouse Over by default, just move it to "Always". No luck on the numbers, though. I agree, that would be really handy.

6. The ability to set keymapping for all my toons. As it stands now everytime I create a toon I have to redo all the mappings. As a keyboard player it's a tad annoying.

You can do that. Go on the CoH boards and look up a tutorial on saving and loading a bind file. It lets you create a text file (which you can also do from scratch once you learn the Syntax) which you can load up to "snap" all your binds onto a toon.

11. The ability to bring up a macro/keybind list of what I've created. I have one toon who has superjump. She has a keybind that auto presses the "jump" feature. That key combined with "run forward" is great because I can type to my team, etc and still be 'en route'.  However, I can't remember the keybind I've set for her!

Two solutions here. First of all, the aforementioned Bind Dump will list all of your binds, so you can dig through and look for where you bound it.

Second solution is to always bind similar things in the same place. I always have Sprint on left shift, my main travel power on F, heals on T, Dull Pain or Recall Friend on P, etc. If I make a new toon and he has the same or similar powers to another toon, I always make an effort to put his powers where I'm used to them so I rarely "lose" a bind.

12. In game ability to mail "things" to other toons.

That's coming. With Consignment Houses, you'll be able to put items up for sale with one toon, log out, log in another character, and go buy the item with the second character. There's a chance you'll be undercut by another bidder, but as long as what you're transferring is a common item (a random SO, for example) I doubt anybody will buy it.

13. More soloability in the game.  I have a controller and I would rather suffer through a root canal then solo with her.  Even fighting grey mobs is beyond tedius. Not every mob in the game has to come in packs of 1 to 2 reds or 20 blues/greens.  Since the player base of the game is significantly smaller then other mmos, sometimes I find it extremely difficult to group up.  I've spent close to an hour trying to get in teams only to log off in frustration because I can't further my own toon.

Any toon can be made soloable. What's your AT/powerset? I can help you figure out a solo build.

15. Server wide events. An alien invasion in all zones for example.  Depending on the zone level, mobs of appropriate level/difficulty could spawn so everybody could participate in the event.  An alien attack in Atlas Park would be awesome!

The stuff Alaric mentiones is good examples... plus, the exact alien invasion you're discussing was done at the end of Beta. Flying saucers appeared over all zones. You can find screenshots still if you dig around.

[GhostMachine]

Why do Mercs (and their henchmen) and Bots MMs get awesome looking guns, yet AR Blasters still have the oversize, ugly as sin watergun? I really wish they'd change that weapon's design. (I have an AR\Energy Blaster alt)

The AR rifle does a lot more than MM guns do.  It's a shotgun-sniper rifle-flamethrower-grenade launcher-beanbag-automatic rifle-freeze gun-rocket launcher all in one.  Design wise, it makes perfect sense to not just be a simple gun -- not saying it's not ugly -- but it at least makes sense.

Oh, I know it makes sense. I'm just saying I can't see why they don't re-design the AR to make it look cooler. As for multi-use guns, there are real assault rifles that are two weapons combined and look cool, such as an M-16 with a grenade launcher or shotgun attached. I don't see why they can't come up with something that looks more like a real world weapon or something high-tech instead of mismatched weapon made up of parts that look like they were cobbled from a junkyard.

I'd also argue that the AR uses the grenade launcher to fire the beanbags and that there are no visual representations of the CFR or LRM weapons, as they both seem to fire from the assault rifle's barrel, so there'd be no need to add those weapons to a new gun design.

So they really just need an assault rifle with a sniper scope, grenade launcher and flamethrower attached.

[MyndVizion]

Good tips everyone!  I'll have to look into some of the advice you guys mentioned.

On a related note, one thing I would like to see is a modification to when somebody gets disconnected. If you're in a team and somebody gets dc'd they immediately get dumped out of the team. It's very confusing, with the team typically wondering, "Who left?" not to mention 'why'. Were they dc'd, did they just decide to drop the team?  Not only that, but if I get dc'd I'll be lucky enough to remember the exact name and spelling of one of the team members so I can ask for a reinvite.  I would prefer to see the player still in the team with a symbol denoting they've lost connection.  Other games have this implemented so it is feasible (of course the infrastructure must be in place).

[BlueBard]

Good tips everyone!  I'll have to look into some of the advice you guys mentioned.

On a related note, one thing I would like to see is a modification to when somebody gets disconnected. If you're in a team and somebody gets dc'd they immediately get dumped out of the team. It's very confusing, with the team typically wondering, "Who left?" not to mention 'why'. Were they dc'd, did they just decide to drop the team?  Not only that, but if I get dc'd I'll be lucky enough to remember the exact name and spelling of one of the team members so I can ask for a reinvite.  I would prefer to see the player still in the team with a symbol denoting they've lost connection.  Other games have this implemented so it is feasible (of course the infrastructure must be in place).

That's the best idea I've heard yet.  The leader can still kick the player if need be, but it would be nice to be able to stay in a pickup team through a d/c.

[El Condor]

Not very sexy, but one that might be very-low hanging fruit and (relatively) easily doable:

How about having the search window eliminate player names more logically when it has to truncate? I've noticed that when looking for players to fill out a team, the search window randomly cuts out available players and leaves in already-teammed players when the relevant "hits" are too many to list.  A more systematic coding, like "grayed-out names truncate first" then "players not taking invites" etc. would make the recruiting time quicker and result in less thumb-twiddling for the team.  Just a little quality-of-life kinda thing.

EC

[BlueBard]

Not very sexy, but one that might be very-low hanging fruit and (relatively) easily doable:

How about having the search window eliminate player names more logically when it has to truncate? I've noticed that when looking for players to fill out a team, the search window randomly cuts out available players and leaves in already-teammed players when the relevant "hits" are too many to list.  A more systematic coding, like "grayed-out names truncate first" then "players not taking invites" etc. would make the recruiting time quicker and result in less thumb-twiddling for the team.  Just a little quality-of-life kinda thing.

EC

I like that idea, too.  I find the Search window fairly cumbersome to use and not as effective as it could be.  There should be a filter (default on) that automatically excludes 'unavailable' players (not taking invites, already on a team, already in a mission).  I'm constantly getting bugged 'in-mish' to join a pickup team.  If the filter was on by default, I wouldn't get most of those.  You should be able to turn the filter off to get a full search when you're looking for someone in particular, though.

[Tortuga]

Ooh almost forgot one idea I've had for awhile that REALLY needs to be added:

-Hostages/Rescued Citizens become temporary Pets - you know where they are, you can direct them when stuck; but can't do any attacking, etc.

[BlueBard]

Ooh almost forgot one idea I've had for awhile that REALLY needs to be added:

-Hostages/Rescued Citizens become temporary Pets - you know where they are, you can direct them when stuck; but can't do any attacking, etc.

What?  You don't like your rescuees getting in the way?

[Stopman]

Regarding the issue of skipping through lvl 1-14s, how about that as a veteran award?

So someone who's had an active account for more than 2-3 years can auto level any of their below lvl 14 toons up to lvl 14? That seems fair enough.

[Verfall]

Why do Mercs (and their henchmen) and Bots MMs get awesome looking guns, yet AR Blasters still have the oversize, ugly as sin watergun? I really wish they'd change that weapon's design. (I have an AR\Energy Blaster alt)

The AR rifle does a lot more than MM guns do.  It's a shotgun-sniper rifle-flamethrower-grenade launcher-beanbag-automatic rifle-freeze gun-rocket launcher all in one.  Design wise, it makes perfect sense to not just be a simple gun -- not saying it's not ugly -- but it at least makes sense.

Oh, I know it makes sense. I'm just saying I can't see why they don't re-design the AR to make it look cooler. As for multi-use guns, there are real assault rifles that are two weapons combined and look cool, such as an M-16 with a grenade launcher or shotgun attached. I don't see why they can't come up with something that looks more like a real world weapon or something high-tech instead of mismatched weapon made up of parts that look like they were cobbled from a junkyard.

I'd also argue that the AR uses the grenade launcher to fire the beanbags and that there are no visual representations of the CFR or LRM weapons, as they both seem to fire from the assault rifle's barrel, so there'd be no need to add those weapons to a new gun design.

So they really just need an assault rifle with a sniper scope, grenade launcher and flamethrower attached.

Thanks to TJ my AR rifles show up as a nice gun metal black :D

But anyway, one thing I want to see, and what I think the damn 3 year reward should have been, was more slots per server. Atleast another 4. Those pets are cute and all, but 4 more slots would have been much more worth a 3 year committment.

Also, and it may have been mentioed here,I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis from 1 to 50. Maybe setting it up as a 40-50 thing though. Do a TF at 40 that lets you earn an arch-enemy, then it sends you to power selection and costume creation and bingo, for the next 10 levels you can be randomly ambushed by him, have him show up in any missions you take on, excluding tf's of course, and when you reach 50 he contacts you for a final showdown with, say, the ability to pick one of the powers from his powersets or something if you whup him. Brings the 2 games together and adds a sense of immersion to the game that it can often lack in the doldrums of the last 10 levels.

Bloody hell I wanna play again! Aimee's halfway to and I can't manage stairs....

BLAST!!!

[Funeral-Pyre]

Also, and it may have been mentioed here,I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis from 1 to 50. Maybe setting it up as a 40-50 thing though. Do a TF at 40 that lets you earn an arch-enemy, then it sends you to power selection and costume creation and bingo, for the next 10 levels you can be randomly ambushed by him, have him show up in any missions you take on, excluding tf's of course, and when you reach 50 he contacts you for a final showdown with, say, the ability to pick one of the powers from his powersets or something if you whup him. Brings the 2 games together and adds a sense of immersion to the game that it can often lack in the doldrums of the last 10 levels.

Bloody hell I wanna play again! Aimee's halfway to and I can't manage stairs....

BLAST!!!

Wow, Ver!  Great idea!  I vote you get a job as developer for this game.  I love the idea of an arch-enemy.

[Lord Elcorion]

They already reversed the ATs, its called CoV!

not quite, but close. some of the ATs are already very close to "revearse" of certain other ATs.. revearsing tankers would be basicly creating heroic brutes, and reverseing scrappers would make them too similar to tankers to be worth it, i think..

[Alaric]

and reverseing scrappers would make them too similar to tankers to be worth it, i think..

I strongly disagree. Scrapeprs have entirely different power choices than Tankers (well, mostly different), and "reversed scrappers" would have a completely different special ability than Tankers. To me, at least, these sorts of changes would make them "feel" very different.

[Lord Elcorion]

you may be right, since i'm largely looking at the fact the tankers are Def/melee and scrappers are Melee/def. i suppose with the right tweaking, you could make the revearse classes fairly different.. though i still think reversing tankers would end up most likely having a strong resemblance to heroic brutes.. not that that's nessicarilly a bad thing.. i just don't know if it'd achive the true diversification feel that you're looking for..

[Tortuga]

For a PI zone event, I'd love a Monster invasion of Portal Corp.  Add some destructable objects to that gathering area that need to stay protected, or else just have Monsters from the northern island attack for the sake of attacking.  The reason for the attack could be that a powerful and evil being takes over the monsters' will in an effort to stop heroes from doing their heroic thing in the alternate universes...blah blah blah.

[El Condor]

I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis

What a sweet idea - love it!  :thumbup:

EC

[BlueBard]

I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis

What a sweet idea - love it!  :thumbup:

EC

I like it too, but consider...

If every toon has access to this arch-nemesis story arc, that's one extra 'character' that has to be stored on the server.  It could get out of hand pretty quickly.  Limiting it to high-level characters is one option.  Another option is making it so that a player has to give up a regular slot to build their nemesis.

Then too, it opens up possibilities for abuse where a player designs a nemesis that they can easily beat and reap that much more XP and influence from.

It would probably be more effective to give players a stable of 'stock' nemeses (pl?) to choose from.  The benefit of this would be that a nemesis could naturally have minions that already exist in the game, though not all of them would or should.  The choice of nemesis could be evolved through a story line, perhaps a sort of personal Trial mission, and limited by factors such as AT and Origin.  It would also open the door for recurring missions featuring the nemesis, rather than one who just shows up from time to time.

[Stopman]

For a PI zone event, I'd love a Monster invasion of Portal Corp.  Add some destructable objects to that gathering area that need to stay protected, or else just have Monsters from the northern island attack for the sake of attacking.  The reason for the attack could be that a powerful and evil being takes over the monsters' will in an effort to stop heroes from doing their heroic thing in the alternate universes...blah blah blah.

That does happen to help clean out the riff-raff of low-level PL-ers, when some heroes lead the giant monsters over to Portal Corp courtyard.

Another way to clear out the riff-raff would be to automatically spawn snipers and ambushers (say level 40 villains) to take out the lowest level hero in the zone, under level 40...i.e. so it would take the effort of higher level heroes to defeat the ambushers for that lower level hero (call them sponsors or mentors). 37-39 heroes may have a chance against them...but forget the lvl 1 toon who sits in Portal Corp courtyard b'casting for a PL. The storyline for that would be the villains are closely watching PI, looking for vulnerable heroes to prey on.

[Verfall]

I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis

What a sweet idea - love it!  :thumbup:

EC

I like it too, but consider...

If every toon has access to this arch-nemesis story arc, that's one extra 'character' that has to be stored on the server.  It could get out of hand pretty quickly.  Limiting it to high-level characters is one option.  Another option is making it so that a player has to give up a regular slot to build their nemesis.

Then too, it opens up possibilities for abuse where a player designs a nemesis that they can easily beat and reap that much more XP and influence from.

It would probably be more effective to give players a stable of 'stock' nemeses (pl?) to choose from.  The benefit of this would be that a nemesis could naturally have minions that already exist in the game, though not all of them would or should.  The choice of nemesis could be evolved through a story line, perhaps a sort of personal Trial mission, and limited by factors such as AT and Origin.  It would also open the door for recurring missions featuring the nemesis, rather than one who just shows up from time to time.

It shouldn't be that big of a server problem. Hell, the idea alone could be an entire issue itself. And to compensate for the powersets somehow being setup to be "weaker", you just give them the boosts EB's and such get. Solo on a low difficulty the nemesis shows up as just a boss, as you go higher it can go up to EB and even AV depending on team makeup. I would limit it to the 40-50 range though. By that point you should be skilled enough and have the powers to handle one. Plus before that you're really not considered all that powerful storywise.

If space is a problem, the idea of using a villain of ones own is a possibility. Perhaps letting you select any villain/hero that you have on the server and that is atleast level 40 to be the nemesis. Lets the role players who have worked the arch enemy idea to actually use it within the game. Harold could annoy Gday, Spud could Harass Spood, it'd actually make playing both sides better.

[Alaric]

I want a career based story arc where you design a villain or hero and he becomes your arch-nemesis

What a sweet idea - love it!  :thumbup:

EC

I like it too, but consider...

If every toon has access to this arch-nemesis story arc, that's one extra 'character' that has to be stored on the server.  It could get out of hand pretty quickly.  Limiting it to high-level characters is one option.  Another option is making it so that a player has to give up a regular slot to build their nemesis.

Then too, it opens up possibilities for abuse where a player designs a nemesis that they can easily beat and reap that much more XP and influence from.

It would probably be more effective to give players a stable of 'stock' nemeses (pl?) to choose from.  The benefit of this would be that a nemesis could naturally have minions that already exist in the game, though not all of them would or should.  The choice of nemesis could be evolved through a story line, perhaps a sort of personal Trial mission, and limited by factors such as AT and Origin.  It would also open the door for recurring missions featuring the nemesis, rather than one who just shows up from time to time.

It shouldn't be that big of a server problem. Hell, the idea alone could be an entire issue itself. And to compensate for the powersets somehow being setup to be "weaker", you just give them the boosts EB's and such get. Solo on a low difficulty the nemesis shows up as just a boss, as you go higher it can go up to EB and even AV depending on team makeup. I would limit it to the 40-50 range though. By that point you should be skilled enough and have the powers to handle one. Plus before that you're really not considered all that powerful storywise.

If space is a problem, the idea of using a villain of ones own is a possibility. Perhaps letting you select any villain/hero that you have on the server and that is atleast level 40 to be the nemesis. Lets the role players who have worked the arch enemy idea to actually use it within the game. Harold could annoy Gday, Spud could Harass Spood, it'd actually make playing both sides better.

Personallyt, one thing I'd really like to see is NPC versions of actual player heroes/villains appearing somewhat randomly in missions as enemies for villains/heroes, but with a greater chance of encountering characters created by you or in-game teammates/friends/global friends. For example, I could enter a mission with crazy Kate and find myself having to fight an NPC version of Tortuga or something. Yeah, it would probably be very hard to implement, but it would be fun.

[Ganymede Zero]

I myself have never put much effort into the game like my brother has, but I would still like to see them transfer some of the cool power sets from CoV to CoH and vice versa. Also They should add two new powers like Light-based for blasters and stuff, and Shield for defenders and tankers.

[GhostMachine]

I myself have never put much effort into the game like my brother has, but I would still like to see them transfer some of the cool power sets from CoV to CoH and vice versa. Also They should add two new powers like Light-based for blasters and stuff, and Shield for defenders and tankers.

If you mean a shield like Captain America carries, I'm all for it. In fact, that's one of the powers I most wanted and was disappointed that it wasn't in the game when I first got CoH.

I'd like to see a Shield powerset that has maybe 3 different attacks and the rest of the powers are defensive. They could do maybe two different shield throws (one ranged, one an aoe or cone attack to simulate bouncing to hit multiple targets) and a bashing attack, with the throws doing knockback damage and the bash doing a stun. However, I'd rather see it as a Scrapper powerset than a Tanker powerset due to Scrappers getting critical hits.

[Alaric]

Well, Positron listed both offensive and defensive shield sets among the ten powers he most wants to see in the game, so it wouldn't surprise me if eventually they're in there- probably as both Scrapper and Tanker sets (at least for the defensive version). However, a while back, one of the devs (can't remember who) posted that they were having some sort of serious problem implementing shields- I'm guessing that was specifically defensive shields, and that the problem had something to do with having a draw-able weopon that was defensive rather than offenive, but I could be wrong.

[Dweomer Knight]

It honestly never occured to me that they would have the shield be drawable.  I assumed the shield would always be out.  Having, potentially, both a weapon and a shield as drawables would make for some pretty irritating animation times.  First strikes will have already hit or miss while you're still drawing the shield; not to mention you're weapon.

My hope, assuming they come out with this set, would be to have the shield always out.  And if you make a Shield based toon, the colors and symbols on the shield will be customizable in character creation (unlike current weapons).  Unfortunately, that works fine defensively, but if you have something like Shield Throw it becomes more difficult.

DK

[BlueBard]

It honestly never occured to me that they would have the shield be drawable.  I assumed the shield would always be out.  Having, potentially, both a weapon and a shield as drawables would make for some pretty irritating animation times.  First strikes will have already hit or miss while you're still drawing the shield; not to mention you're weapon.

My hope, assuming they come out with this set, would be to have the shield always out.  And if you make a Shield based toon, the colors and symbols on the shield will be customizable in character creation (unlike current weapons).  Unfortunately, that works fine defensively, but if you have something like Shield Throw it becomes more difficult.

DK

The problem with having the shield 'always on' is of course that it might interfere with certain animations.  I'd imagine the worst problem would be with shield clipping.  I bet there would be some really bizarre looking animations.

On the other hand, 'drawing' a shield seems like it would look pretty silly too.

And customizable shields is a really great idea, but if the devs won't pursue customized colors for powers I'm not sure they'll spend much time on custom shields either.

[GhostMachine]

Does anyone remember what Posi said about the possibility of more Pistols powersets a while back? All I remember is, I was disappointed and he said they'd be villain-only powersets.

Someone seriously needs to set the developers down and make them watch a few of John Woo's Hong Kong movies (specifically, Hard-Boiled and The Killer - although, The Killer may be a bad choice since the protagonist is actually a bad guy, more or less) to see some examples of heroes packing heat. Because I want a hero, NOT A VILLAIN, who can dual wield pistols. If its the `guns are for killing' crap....a. They've obviously not put much thought into the idea of anti-heroes *, and b. they can always make the powerset akin to Trick Arrow, where you have specialized ammunition that has various effects but is an offensive powerset.

* Although....is it just me, or does CoV seem more like you're running a hero who just happens to rob banks instead of a real criminal most of the time? The only time I feel like I'm really playing a bad guy in CoV, aside from Mayhem missions, is if I'm doing a mission that involves Wyvern....

CoV-wise, I only want one thing: the ability to kill civilians during Mayhem missions.