EmperorSteele

Well, -technically-, Praetoria IS another dimension, so you could lump it with the other "Extradimensionals" for 10 teleport destinations in one teleporter!

Damn! So close, but I'm ALSO in someone elses shot, does that count?! =P

Did... did Charlie just use alt accounts to make his suggestions seem more popular? Three accounts with minimal post history posting all at the same time seems a little weird!

Yeah, I just figured it'd be a decent compromise, IF it was workable. If not, oh well.

Those are temp versions of existing accolades. You want those powers in normal play? Earn 'em. The PvP/Arena versions are probably for the sake of parity and equity within that specific segment of gameplay. I gotta disagree. The entire POINT of those badges is "I worked my butt off and risked getting pwned by other players". Badges are something that are earned, some easier or harder than others, and some are supposed to be frustrating. Removing the only real barrier to collecting them makes the entire endeavor meaningless. We're not owed these things for free (well, minimal effort, anyway) on a silver platter. Because let's face it, while the AVs put up a decent fight, they aren't super challenging. Having PvE versions of PvP zones also just makes it "safe" to get otherwise overpowered abilities. The only thing that makes getting a Shivan, LB Heavy or a Nuke interesting is the idea that an enemy player might be hiding around a corner, or invisibly tailing you. And let's face it, unless you're in RV, your chances of seeing an enemy player in a PvP zone are usually pretty dang low anyway. THAT being said, I wonder if there's a way to tweak the anti-incarnate mechanic so that those powers initially work in RV, but are disabled once you engage or are engaged by enemy players? It would at least let people more easily hunt the AVs, at least until the inevitable happens. These changes were made to make PvPers lives easier in their preferred environment, but there's no harm in letting non-PvPers use the powers when Enemy Players aren't around.

I think 50 is the total PvP population... I kid, but seriously, it's nothing to be surprised about.

Badge Name ideas: Combatant Commendations Demonic Mind's Eye Force of the Unkind Ones Mezalomaniac (Mez + Medal + Megalomaniac) Last-Ditch effort. Seriously, why did you buy this? Call for Victory Feral Anger As an aside, what about the Vig and Rogue alignment powers?

Yeah, check out the Base builders FAQ and the Base Builder's Cheat Sheet, stickied at the top of this forum! But, I'll link them, too! Other than that, it's a simple matter of just looking through all the base items and figuring out what you want to put where! I suggest using a character with Flight to build with, it's much easier to get around that way!

So, some post-play afterthoughts: The end of this arc feels like it's just the begining of something bigger. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I love it, and it makes me eager for more! On the other hand, I had an initial feeling of "wait, that's it? I just spent 3 hours making a super Freakalokst army, and dont even get to use it?" I had an idea, that maybe the mission can reward a temp power that summons a Freakalok ally or two? That way we can have some fun with them while waiting for the next chapter! Loved seeing all the baddies I had put away during my hero career! Though there was one I didn't recognize, and now can't even remember the name of. I'm gonna hafta look into that on my next playthrough. Really neat detail all around, though! I also wanted to reiterate that I loved the writing, especially the humor! Looking back, though, it seems like MOST of the characters were either cracking jokes, or were a self-parody, or were just plain not meant to be taken seriously. Which is fine, but humor works best in moderation, or in contrast to more serious things. Just think about pretty much any sitcom or buddy movie: Usually, one character is the "funny" one, the other is the straight man (or woman or whatever), and the humor comes not from the funny one's jokes, but the contrast and reactions with their "normal" counterpart. I don't think you need to re-write anything here (Cortex and Dr. V. were well done as the comedic foils), but going forward, maybe keep this in mind. Either way, I loved the ridiculous pettiness of validating someone else's parking ticket! Heck, I pretty much loved the entire arc! Looking forward to the fixes, and more Piecemeal-style debauchery in the future!

I was running at0/x8, and I only got one spawn of them, and the counter read "10" at the end. Maybe I missed one, but not a whole group! And yeah, mission resets, though that's harder to do in TF mode than running it at-level.

RE: Womp Womp By my calculations, I have to do the new redside arc 10 times to get this badge, as the "Immature" PPs only spawn as an ambush during one fight. It doesn't seem to include 7th gen PPs. That's... a bit much. Unless they're gonna be making appearances elsewhere, I think "forcing" badgers to farm out the same mission 10 times is a bit redonk. Like, all the other enemies can be found elsewhere and you can gain the badges naturally. But this one? UGH. Not looking forward to this one on Live!

Mission 1: When speaking to Cortex, he mentions that you fought his "cohort". I feel like this should be plural, as I assume he's talking about the other baddies you fought on the way to him. Mission 2: I really wish the Police cars were destructible! Mission 4.2: Only 10 "immature" Protectors? I gotta do this 10 times to get a badge? ugh.... Mission 4.3: The "Sneaky" Freaks were fun (liked the callback to them having Skyraider tech!) but the Tanks didn't look sneaky at all. Or is that the joke? Buuut... If you want me to talk to a dude, don't THROW INFINITE AMBUSHES AT ME WHILE I'M TALKING TO HIM! It's my own fault for raising my diff and forgetting to turn it back down, but SHEESH! Make one ambush at half health, then that's it. Not like, 3-5 on defeat, that's just dumb! Mission 5: The defeat clue for the Shining Stars says: "You HEAD them say Clamor was the priority". I'm 97.8% sure that's supposed to say "heard". Also, I appreciate the Counter-Strike meme =P The "Return to drop zone" pip appears at the sewer door when you exit. Luckily, I knew where to go, but that might be a bit confusing. Overall: I REALLY enjoyed this arc, but it took THREE HOURS! Granted, I was looking for stuff and writing this post as I went along, also upped my diff for shizzles and giggles, but even so, Yikes! Feels like it needs to be worth more than 20 reward merits

Yeah, whatever you do, you're gonna have to diversifiy. Heck, even some things with a poor merit to inf return (like purples and ATOs) might be worth pursuing, just so you you can sell SOMETHING. Of course, once your kid opens all those packs, you're gonna have the same problem all over again!

As a Mind Controller, I absolutely LOVED confusing a metric farkton of explodey enemies =D None of whom were ever able to touch me anyway, because I was hovering the whole time. That -might- be an issue to look at: once the "zoombies" have their mind set on exploding, they don't bother with their ranged attacks. All the spawns seemed set at +0/x2 (or sometimes x3), even though I was playing at -1/x0. Again, I didn't mind (no pun intended), but I'm forced to wonder how I would have fared on a fresh level 25 with no set bonuses. I WAS exemping and in task force mode. so maybe that's why the -1 wasn't working? The Vhaz zombies were oddly... eloquent, throughout the arc. Maybe the lines are meant to be said by the reapers and surgeons, but for me, all I saw where the zombies carrying on like intelligent, sentient people. Kinda off-putting. The rafters of the bar is a nice effort, but there's some upside-down hanging lamps in there, kinda distracting. The bar itself looks good, but, might need a QA pass. I understand Piecemeal had to do like 90% of everything himself, so I'm not knocking the effort, but I think maybe it might help to give one of our top-tier base-builders a crack at the editing tools to spruce up the joint (Dacy comes to mind, but with the base competition coming up, I'm sure other names will be in contention, too)! I had a ruined moment of glee at the end. I thought Cortex said "May the best mentalist triumph!", but instead he just said "metahuman". One thing that's always cheesed me off about this game is when someone says something like "We need a powerful psychic!" and I'm like "hello, high-level Mind Controller, right here!" and they're like "Quick, we have to find Penelope Yin!", "...@#$%^!" If there's any way for the game to detect if someone has Mind control, Illusion control, Psi Blast or Psi Melee as powersets, I think it'd be really cool for an NPC to recognize that! Otherwise, it was a fun fight! Someone else here mentioned disdain at the use of multiple zones and running around, emulating 2004-era gameplay, when "traveling" was considered "content". I personally didn't mind at all, buuuuut on the other hand, I do see where they're coming from. This arc is level 20-25 (29 when exemping), so I kinda wonder why it wasn't designed from the get-go to take place more in Talos and IP, and instead we're spending half our time in lower-level zones. I mean, I GET it, this arc is technically a sequel to the Positron TF, so starting in SC makes some kind of sense, but, I dunno. My one big gripe is how the contact text assumes you're speaking to Dr. Watkinis face-to-face, instead of calling him (until the last mission). Especially when you're in Skyway, and the text says that he gets a message on his phone and he shows you a video on it. It's like, uhm, I'm a few miles away, talking to him on MY phone. Maybe this can be changed to him sending you the video instead? On a related note, when speaking to him in the 2nd-to-Last mission, I picked the 3rd choice, not because of any intent on my part, but because I thought that was the most relevant information for the contact. I didn't expect to get chewed out as if I was gonna go on a rampage. Just because I chose to inform him that we were duped, doesn't mean he's gotta treat me like a jerk =/ Overall, I enjoyed the arc! Some of the branching options aid in replayability, which is really nice! Though it also kinda feels designed around wanting people to replay the mission, rather than just giving them options? Maybe that's just me, though. My only gripe there is that the mission took well over an hour, almost two, I mean yeah, I was reading the clues and everything (all of which were well-written), but I'm not exactly in a hurry to repeat it. So, TLDR: Pros: Good story, well-written clues and dialogue, cool custom mechanics, nice use of branching dialogue and trees to shake things up. Cons: Rusty Rivet map could use some work; Arc has some "old-school" flavor that, while welcome, also feels a bit misplaced. Misc: Enemies are pretty verbose, kinda hard to read NPC text when kicking their butt/getting my butt kicked. Certain responses seem "keyed" to certain alignments and change how people react to you, even if you don't mean it "that way".

Too late for that. However, they've given us several replacement options, all of which require some level of investment. The problem was that the ease of the TP macro actually let people subvert actual gameplay (cheesing out of dying in PvP and Master runs, for example), so it had to go away. Synapse will no longer take hours again. Everyone can buy or earn ways to get to and from various zones quickly. Though I guess this is the kind of thing we can directly test now. Maybe I'll run a few TFs on Test later and see how much longer it takes compared to Live.

So, here's a thought: You guys made SG portals intangible, right? Could this have possibly fixed the issue that doesn't let us rotate them in our base? That is, the ability to rotate sg portals, and thus have you emerge facing any direction except south, was removed because rotating it broke bases some how. But, since you've been working on the portals, is there a chance this issue got fixed?

The Dayjob base TP is affected by Global Recharge. Dunno if this is an issue, as it only has recharge to prevent accidental double-usage, but I just wanted to report that and make sure. ALSO, The changed icon for the Praetorian market: Does the old icon exist anywhere still? I was using it for my personal base macro, since it looked like a house 😃

Ah. I knew damage was subject to AT modifiers, but It never occurred to me that mez duration was subject to AT modifiers, too! Makes sense; thanks!

General question: On a lot of the powers that have mez effect, the notes mention a change in "scale". Near as I can tell, this doesn't affect Magnitude, and I'm sure you would have called it duration if it were that, so, what is meant by "scale"?

I don't label mine, since I'm the only one who uses my base. Lets me keep things "simple" The CoH game is the main Paragon City Maps (Atlas, Kings, Steel, Talos, PI, etc). CoV is the Rogue Isles, the first pinball machine is co-op zones, and the furthest pinball machine is hazard zones. Also in this picture: the computer can be clicked to let you shop online (aka a vendor) and the treadmill will let you "train" (ie, level up trainer). Both required NPCs are hidden in the wall. As an aside, your list will have to be updated when the next patch comes out (because they'll include Praetoria and the Shadow Shard)! There's still only 38 zones, so you can still get away with 4 telepads, but I think the letters might have to be tweaked (more zones start with P than any other).

What, they can't take five to ten seconds to jog to the main portal in the middle of the club, or drop their own base portal? Like, if the most used social zone was insanely huge and we didn't have pocket teleporters, I'd agree, but... PD is tiny, and we do have pocket porters. So, I don't really see the need for this? I mean, I don't know what code changes had to be done to facilitate all this. Like, if it just involves turning a 0 into a 1, then sure, it's harmless enough. But if the devs just spent the last year hardcoding the command to not be usable except near a portal, then it seems like allowing PD only would be more trouble than it's worth. Especially after they just bent over backwards to give us all a bunch of new teleport options to make up for the loss of the command, when it probably would have been so much easier to just remove it all together and bring us back closer to the retail version of the game, when the passcode didn't exist (well, not for players, anyway), and people had to, you know, actually find base portals, which afaik, no one ever complained about. They'll be fine 😃

HUB-93 All zones (though the order is a little janky), plus amenities. Kinda bland and ugly right now, but functional.

Soooo.... The "defeat 100 Incomplete Paragon protectors" badge: I've never seen an "Incomplete" P.P. Do they only show up in a specific zone or mission?

Read the post/patch notes. Changing the way levels are displayed is exactly what they're doing! But, good idea, I'll go test it out right now! EDIT: Yup, tested, it changes the level.