Meagen

I'm on the "characters are not me, I play whatever makes sense for the character" boat. I do end up with female characters more frequently because male models tend to be kinda ugly.

@(Unverified) I see your point, I just think you're wrong.

"Because as long as the goal is killing, whatever class kills best (alone or in concert) is the one everyone's going to play. Whatever skills best support that goal will be the favored skills." - wrong, in CoH the goal is to kill mobs, but there isn't a single build that's 'best' at it. There are some that are really good at one thing, but the best at killing large crowds is different from the best at soloing single targets. And any combo of 8 well-played characters can completely mow through content.

"In fact, the 'trinity' only exists because that's the only model out there." - the only one that people keep copying maybe, but not nearly the only thing that can be done.

All your ideas are basically just ways of distracting the dps. Also, some of them have already been done in Incarnate Trials. Hardly need an entirely new game for that.

@(Unverified) Here's the thing, through a combination of luck and incompetence (massive, massive amounts of both) on the part of the original devteam, CoH has already gotten away from that model. In the GW2 development blog, in the article on healing and death, you can read about how they're working from a much broader "control/buff/damage" trinity, and the way it's described is pretty much how CoH already works.

Basically, in the tank/heal/dps triangle, the three points are both necessary and insufficient on their own. In the control/buff/damage triangle, the three points are sufficient and complimenting. You can have classes that can do various amounts of each, and more of any one thing is always better.

And the result? Well, if you're teaming up in CoH, more people is always better. "We need heals and a tank!" is a newbie mindset that people quickly grow out of. In absolute terms, some powersets are better than others, but since every combination improves the group's overall effectiveness, nobody will hold out for a Fire/Rad Corrupter when there's a perfectly fine FF/Energy Defender right there. No class can be actively *deterimental* to the group's success to the extent that a DPS taking up the spot of the Tank in another game would be.

You don't have to force variety on your players! Most of them already like different things. Just make sure they can do the things they likein a group and variety will happen.

CoH 2 will not happen, and even if it does, it will not be everything you love about CoH and with all the thigns you dislike fixed. It will be far too different, with many changes made for reasons you can't fathom. It will abandon many of the things you feel made CoH great and unique and still not have that one thing you really, *really* wanted. Also, there will not be nearly as much content, the controls will be weird and alien, the graphics will look unfamiliar, and you won't be able to re-create some of your favourite characters ideally.

It will still be a great game once you get past that, but you will only be able to enjoy it if you let go of the old one.

I see all the pretty Elven dresses and I kind of want to go play it again, but then I think of the 8GB download and the 320 FREAKIN' SALAMANDERS and no. Never again.

No such thing as a classless MMO. Some MMOs just have only one class.

For me it's white, blue, purple, gold, green. Who needs anything more?

@The Ogre Participation in the Incarnate raids doesn't determine your level of reward - it's only designed to give you a booby prize if you afk the whole time. (Sadly, it will also kick in if you crash and have to reconnect/rejoin one time too many, especially in very short trials like speed Lambda.)

The cries of players wishing for new sandboxes will be answered with a new AAA MMO, Endless Desert. Players will pay $10/month to walk around in a procedurally-generated desert that stretches infinitely in all directions. There will be no levelling, no NPCs, no static quests, no loot and no raiding - actually there will be no mechanic at *all* besides walking and hearing-range chat.

It will be the most successful MMO *ever*. WOW and SWtOR will go F2P within a week of its launch, and announce closing by the end of the year. By mid-2013, all other online games will have shut down. Even Facebook and Flash ones. Nobody will care, or remember them.

@Wolf of Thorns I'm sure once you've found (or come in with) a large group of people of similar interests, carved out a place for yourselves and ran a few storylines to establish backstory, the RP can be very good in a sandbox. But if you can't find a group, you find yourself with nobody to talk to and nothing to do except wander around and marvel at all the player-created stuff (which is probably empty because you don't know which times or places are when people gather).

If there's any sort of cliche hardcoded quests available, not only does that give you something to do while you search for fellow RPers, it pushes everyone towards one mid-level gathering location, and it gives you common ground for when you finally get to interact with someone else IC.