ranagrande

I am currently going through everything mostly solo on a petless pool power only mastermind who isn't allowed to buy anything. I wouldn't recommend it, but it should serve as proof that literally anything can work.

Yeah, I don't really trust the level ranges on the wiki. Like the lowest level origin contacts outside of city hall are listed as 5-14, but I remember them capping at 9. Did they change that sometime? I'm not doing everything at the minimum level on my current run, but I did do Shauna's and Eagle Eye's arcs at 7.

Agent Phil Coulson is a good example of a mastermind hero.

In the code, I think Loyalist are Villains and Resistance are Heroes. But couldn't it be made to work with Null to switch back and forth between all of them?

Null is far too useful to remove, and I would very much be against removing his alignment ability unless alignment tips and their associated missions became available from level 1. If anything, I would want to see Null's alignment powers extended to Praetoria so that it would be possible to do a full blue/red/gold playthrough on one character without needing to use Ouroboros.

I'd like to see Praetorian epics be unorthodox power combinations. Maybe something like Aggressor - Defense/Support Protector - Melee/Ranged

Villain merit rewards are all over the place. In the 5-9 range, if you do all of Mr. Bocor's missions, you get 2 merits. At the same level, if you do all of Billie Heck's missions, you get 28 merits.

You should make S.T.A.R.T. stand for something different in each location.

My current project is a strong candidate for the worst build ever. I am 100% certain that it is not properly slotted.

Good change. I still have the same concerns about the role diversity list, but a once-per-character badge should be much less disruptive than a daily reward. Hopefully you can find another way to award aether that isn't tied to team composition for those who feel slighted by this change.

This is true. However, I believe that accomplishing the goal of this bonus would have a detrimental impact on the game. So replacing it with something that does not achieve that same goal would be much preferred.

It would not be difficult to implement. I would not be opposed the five different ATs idea (I may even have been the first to suggest it) even though I would prefer not to have discriminatory team-building mechanics in the game at all. It would certainly be better than the proposed Role Diversity Bonus.

Here's what I'd like to see if you really want to get more people playing villains: a huge amount of new content. Specifically, I want a set of mutually exclusive story arcs in the endgame that culminate in your villain becoming the leader of one of the major enemy groups in the game. Then make that actually matter. Have people comment on it. Have NPCs of your chosen group no longer be hostile to you. Have repeatable missions where your minions are begging their boss to save them. It would be a massive amount of work, yes. But it would be awesome.

I'd just like to see defensive be the default for Follow. That way the starting MM commands would have one for each stance.

The second round is complete. At level 7, I now have 59 badges and 142 merits. I didn't mention it last time, but I took Stealth as first pool power at level 4. It saves lots of time and makes outdoor travel much safer. At level 6 I decided to solve my geometry problems by taking my first travel power, Super Jump. So my attack chain was still just Pistols, Dual Wield, and Throwing Knives, with the occasional Caltrops and Brawl thrown in. I'll start picking up more attacks and transitioning to melee soon. Blueside was much, much more difficult than red this time around. The first annoyance was a mission to hunt Vahzilok in King's Row. You can get that mission starting as early as level 5, and most of the Vahzilok there are around level 12. I did eventually find some 8s and 9s that let me complete it. The Skulls/New Regulators arcs have some tough boss fights. I was doing hit and run tactics against Chernabog, hitting one or two attacks and then running out of the mission to heal up. After my third such re-entry, another mastermind with the same mission asked if I wanted to team up for it. I'm not one to ask for help, but I won't turn it down when offered; this is a team game after all. After that it was easy with two masterminds and two pets, both hers of course. Veles I did solo with the hit and run technique. I only had to enter the mission a dozen times. I did have the timer run out while saving the guy afterwards, but as I mentioned in the other thread about timers, it didn't affect anything. I was still able to complete the mission and I still got the badge for it. The last thing I did on blueside was Frostfire. He should have been much more difficult. He was the first enemy to really stack mezzes, and my goto hit and run strategy wasn't working as well because he has higher regen. I was beginning to think I might be in trouble. But then Frostfire got stuck in the tree in the center of his room. We didn't have line of sight, but if I jumped, I could shoot him. And he could do nothing but run in place in his tree. It felt like an exploit. It felt like cheating. But I won. Redside was comparatively easy this time around. The only difficult fight was 3k Kelvin, but I only had to re-enter that mission twice. I had another mission that said I would need at least 4 villains to do, but the only hard part about that one was finding the target. Now I get to double up with the most leveling I ever get to do at once. Next stop, level 14!