DR_Mechano

I think this is the problem we're having with the two seemingly different development paths between servers. For example one set of servers is adding another completely new AT in The Guardian. Which is a mix of assault powersets and support/armor secondary. I know some servers that never implemented the Sentinel. The other problem is that I, personally, think content development has slowed on HC is because they're going the route of trying to be legitimate with NCsoft. I get the feeling their not adding any content until the talks get done.

It is a shame how much better designed the Strikeforces are. I looked at the mission list for Numia since its the weekly and by god is that second most boring design for a taskforce I've EVER seen. I get the feeling that one was a Jack Special. It literally contains about 13 'go here defeat X number of X' missions. The WORST designed taskforce has to be the legendary Quaterhell. Defeat all after defeat all after defeat all for 22 missions...twenty...two...missions...

It is just a shame that we can't build something more server wide. I do miss the huge group storytelling of Union but alas, it just isn't possible on Everlasting it seems since it does seem to take after the Virtue model of everything being self-contained. Still I guess I shall have to adapt.

Martial Combat is definitely amazing for blasters, loved it. Also found my new love in Street Justice, never played a stalker before but Brawling Betty is already nearly fully incarnated out, set just has so much oomph to it combined with the two awesome ATO uniques for stalkers (seriously why can't other ATOs uniques be that good, Brute +Fury is fun but +resistances is a bit...meh).

I would totally welcome a Brexit based villain group, it would be hilarious.

All fair points by people, it was a thought but I see now that it could be rather problematic and attract very much the wrong sort of attention. Thanks for the feedback.

This was going to be my other major problem. That I didn't want people who actually believed what their character believed. I'm British so the whole American political landscape is something that just confuses me but I understand how much of a problem this could become and what would start out as a villain group for heroes to bounce off of could become a tad...problematic...

Personally I'd kill to get the Snake head (Cobra or Regular) as an option and actually make some kind of proper serpent person but I understand that would be stupidly difficult to do. I second that certain signature pieces be kept purely for major NPCs but Villain groups, I say go the whole hog and convert the parts over.

I noticed a distinct lack of proper 'villain groups'. I've seen a few Arachnos Cells but no, what I'd call, heavy hitters. Villain groups that are server wide known amongst RPers. There's establishments like Joker's Wild which seems to be fairly well known but nothing truly villainous. That's why, my plan is, to form an organized and actually villains Threat Group (seriously, that's what they're called Villainside...what a terrible name). Now I was thinking, something that most people are going to dislike but allows for a bit more nuance. So I settled on the idea of the Storm Korps Reborn. A home for all former members of the Reich or 5th column. Now this does allow a slide scaling. One villain could simply have been working under the Wehrmacht and joining the group to see and fight along side old friends, the cause doesn't matter so much, just to once again be back 'in the war' and a chance to reclaim lost glory. While other villains could be more...extreme...ends of the philosophy, spewing hate speech and the like. Now there are problems...some of these people are going to be genuinely horrible people with beliefs that are incredibly objectionable but that is what makes a villain a villain. They believe that America has been corrupted by [insert minority here] and that things need to change. Now playing someone who has beliefs which you find horrible is incredibly taxing to play, trust me, I've tried and playing someone who spews hate speech at every chance they get is just mentally exhausted, I could see burn out being an issue. There is also the problem that villains, whilst allowed small triumphs here and there, can't win...if they win, it finishes the story. This can upset quite a few people that their character never gets to 'triumph' at anything major. Secondly, who would they fight? Who are the big name SGs on Everlast? They'd have to be involved with multiple SGs in order to come across as a credible threat. Now I've done this sort of storytelling back on Union but I get the feeling it wouldn't work on Everlasting. So thoughts anyone?

This varies on a per character basis. Dr Mechano is from the 'original universe', something happened that caused him to flee and dimension hop for the next seven years. He can't remember what it was since his brain and memories have become kind of scrambled through having been through so many forms and timelines (His theory of 'dimensional scaling' is that the dimension will naturally force your power or form to whatever it deems appropriate upon arrival. Hence why he was a Gnome in WoW and an Asura in GW2 etc.). However Amy Zon, is the 'Everlasting' version of that character, she's a Rogue, not a hero and thus is a muscle or hire.

The main problem is that Union did have server wide story arcs BUT it also had a much lower population and RPers were 'raised' in that enviroment. Virtue, by contrast, was very insular in that story arcs are limited to 1 or 2 Supergroups. For example Dr Mechano was a well known villain who went from grumpy old man with robots who shouts at clouds to major player in the villain game. He became a 'known face' with villains and was someone they could turn to for all their mad science needs. He once orchestrated a huge attack on all the major villain and hero supergroups at once just to cause some chaos and to do a few 'trial runs' of things he needed to test. He was smart enough to merely...annoy...the Villain groups (things like freezing their computer systems with just a picture of him giving them a thumbs up). This event became 'server canon'. Now there is no way I could have pulled the same thing off on Virtue because each group effectively has their own version canon. I spent all the prep time contacting all the supergroups involved, getting their permission, working on what happened to who etc. Myself and Britannic aka Big Game Hunter, were going to try something like this BUT sadly family matters got really in the way of things and I couldn't continue until now, when I've got more time to devote to such things. The other thing this allowed was heroes to be recognized for their 'out of costume' time. Amy Zon, my giant SS/Invuln Cat girl (based on big cats, not house cats), spent some time away in Japan (I was on holiday for three weeks) starring in a magical girl show called Mew Mew Awesome (that was the translation name) as 'Giant Strength Catgirl'. Other heroes recognized her from this and she even got some fans (randomly played by other players I never asked to do it, they did it just to world build and be cool :D) coming up to her and asking her to sign stuff.

I still vote Crashless but no stacking. However if SS got its numbers bumped up so it didn't NEED Rage to actually be a viable set that would be kind of good too, up the damage numbers across the set, lower the rage buffs, remove the stacking and the crash.

If you've got a slot at the 4th tier, it can't be replaced since it's not used in the creation of other slots. So no, you've still got your alpha slotted. However the abilities can only go in those slots. You can't slot an Alpha slot into an Interface slot for example if that's what you're getting at. All that happened is you've just created another Alpha slot power from what I can gather.

Guild wars 1 and 2 were unique in that the quest content leveled with you. In fact that was one of the major selling points of Guild Wars 2 that the world, and its content, remained relevant (and if you wanted the Legendary weapons, had to be done). However you still had level minimums for each zone. Like 1-20, 20-40 etc. So yeah MMOs do this stoof all the time. It's only really single player western RPGs like Elder Scrolls that do the 'the entire content levels with you' schtick.

Get your JoCat references outta here!

"He's rolling another Alt...another one..." "It's just another Titan Weapons, Willpower brute...he has like 3 of those already and they've never made it past level 15.."

I will point out that VGs worked on Union mainly because, unlike Virtue, Union had a lower population that meant it could be combined into communal story telling. Dr Mechano was a well known villain who went from grumpy old man with robots to head of a major science corporation whose products even Heroes were purchasing (The Walkie-talkie toaster to be precise...for toast on the go!) and that came about because someone mentioned, off hand, in an RP story that they'd bought one and then it kept cropping up in other peoples stories til eventually it seemed like it was agreed en masse that everyone bought one. I remember VEAT focused groups lasting quite some time. My favorite was always a group which was the sort of 'suicide squad' of Arachnos. It was all the cast off that's made it through basic training, so they were still useful but all had some quirk that made them not fit into other Arachnos units. For example we had a Narcoleptic wolf spider who, nobody knows how, made it through basic training AND flight instructions to be the groups Flyer pilot (since he was the only one trained). Two cat girls who were the results of Arachnos Scientists doing what lonely nerdy scientists do then trying to explain why they'd be useful for Arachnos by shoving them into this reject bin of a unit. We had a long suffering Arbiter in charge of the whole unit who was on...sketchy..terms with the rest of Arachnos and this was her last chance to keep her post and her head by making the unit into something actually useful. The most successful VGs were always based around Merc companies or the like though.

Fix Rage then also give Scrappers War Mace and Battle Axe...not sure why those two aren't available to scrappers when Broadsword is..

Having had a Bots/FF MM back on live, especially when the shield buffs were single target, I'll be honest, I didn't take them. Thankfully the protector bots got me covered and would buff allies with their shields and people would think it was mine... ...most of the time I just ran my toggles and kept with the group...it seemed to work because...well FF masterminds...I distinctly even remember being thanked for the buffs... This is a post to prove that I'm not above making a sub-optimal build and weird power choices. I do think my time away from this game and playing MMOs where Builds REALLY matter (a sub-optimal character pumps out like 200k DPS, which is HEALER DPS levels, healers who spend very little time DPSing. Meanwhile an optimal DPS character pumped out over 1.5 million DPS (this was back in Legion before the numbers squish) has altered my attitude in a way for the worse. And most bosses had DPS check phases where if you didn't have enough DPS you simply couldn't beat the boss. CoH is clearly more forgiving in that regard. Finished a Ms Lib TF with a spines/fire brute as the main tank...it was messy but we blitzed through it in the end.

Personally I prefer the crashless option but without the ability to stack. It's a simple solution. The option presented here with the whole 'if you double stack it, it crashes' seems to overtly complicated. I get the 'thematic' natures of it since the idea of it stacking effectively means that your pushing your limits so far that you can't maintain it. This still means that defense sets get more overtly screwed than Resistance sets since the -20% crash isn't a massive deal if you're already capped for smashing/lethal etc. So Resistance heavy sets like Rad armor can push to constantly double stack, especially since they've got the recovery to soak the end crash. Meanwhile mixed sets or pure defense sets still suffer the penalty. So yeah, I say, keep it crashless but disallow the ability to stack like Hasten or AM or a number of other buffs that cannot be self-stacked.

So is this your way of admitting you're a mad scientist?

Alright, fair enough, I get your point. Still if the person doesn't listen to simple instructions and goes off in a huff then that's just them being a bit of a babby. If they can't listen to 'Ok hold back, we're going to try to single pull the Archvillains so we don't get all four at once' and proceeds to dive in and die, costing the entire team a Master of badge...then they're being a douchebag. That isn't being a control freak, that's planning but some people treat planning as being a control freak.

Here's the thing, unless I am in the same zone as you, I can't see your powerset choices and would YOU do the common courtesy of letting me know you're playing some strange 'healing only' Empath? No you probably won't...most of the time people don't, they just assume it's all going to be sunshine and roses and then throw a hissy fit when questioned. THIS WORKS BOTH WAYS, stop pretending that people don't do this, that people don't join teams with these awful meme builds and then get upset when the team leader wonders why they're even bringing you along when they could have picked someone else with a more balanced approach who would help out the team more. Like I said I honestly couldn't give a rats ass during regular content, I DON'T CARE what your build is, 9/10 we're steam rolling stuff anyway because 1 incarnated level 50 whateverthehellitis can solo most content. Hell they can often times solo most Master Of content if they're really full built. Also you're misquoting me, I said HALF WAY THROUGH THE FIRST MISSION, a Petless MM is incredibly hard to hide, the weird 'took no support powers' type builds are much harder to notice and if we have made it halfway through the taskforce and I haven't noticed...eh sure we'll keep going at that point but I've seen people kicked from Taskforces for a lot less to be honest. As for Munkilord, I spent my time away from this game in WoW and Guild Wars 2, I'm use to being a tad more picky in forming teams for the tougher content, if you don't like that, so what? Its tough, you don't have to team with me or like what I'm doing, you can make your own taskforce with blackjack and hookers. Like I said, I'm going to make damn sure that its obvious from the off that's what I'm doing.

Good for you on wasting peoples time, good job, have a clap. Now they get to spend more time recruiting and probably about 10 minutes of actual mission running just because you signed up to a Master TF run and the leader had a plan which involved picking ATs, they're a team LEADER, they're the one recruiting, it probably would have been obvious from the word go that was going to be style of team they were forming and you still joined just so you could disagree with the team leader and storm off in a huff. Nicely done. Lets face it, if a team leader is worrying about ATs and Powersets, he's going to be advertising for specific ones from the word go, it isn't hard to avoid those sorts of teams. It's less I care about peoples powerset choices (seriously I usually go on a first come, first served basis, I mean I might get more picky towards the end once the team is filling up and be like 'looking for tanky melee with taunt' Brute, Scrapper, Tanker, whatever, hell I'll even take a stalker with power pool taunts), whatever they want to run they can. I care when they're playing some meme build and they hide it knowingly gimping a team, if you're a petless MM, just tell me from the off, being honest I'd more than likely ask the rest of the team first if they want you along on the run, if they think they can carry your gimpy weird build through it, then fine, we'll try our damnedest to make this work. I will point out this is ONLY for content like the Master of badges and stating specifically that is what the run is for. Regular content I could not care less what your build is, we're steamrolling mobs anyway, hell that one level 50 blaster can probably solo this regular ITF so what does it matter.

See here's the thing, people seem to be thinking that people like me would be the sort that says "Defenders should only buff/heal and not attack..." nah. I want you out there dealing damage, slap down those buffs/debuffs and join in the damage, build a BALANCED defender. If you want to sacrifice buffs for offense...like I said, Rad is RIGHT THERE. All you have to take are four power picks (well five if you include the forced one that some ATs get) Radiation Infection, Accelerate Metabolism, Enervating Field and Lingering Radiation (with Radiant Aura being forced for some). These powers help you survive, help you deal more damage but are also useful in a team setting. Heck I'm sure there are other support powersets that have just as low power choice picks. Or if you want to be a Defender who also deals damage...why not play a Corruptor...that is LITERALLY their thing. For most content...lets be honest...nobody is really going to remotely look at what you're doing, as long as the team is steamrolling, nobody cares. However if people do have these 'weird' builds, join one of the more difficult to achieve TF badge runs but refuse to mention from the off only for someone to notice halfway through the first mission that the MM isn't summoning pets because 'lol Petless MM but I haz buffs/debuffs guiz!' means they've just wasted 7 other peoples time since we now need to start ALL over again and recruit another 8th person. If you're going to do freaking meme builds do NOT waste peoples time by trying to keep them a secret if they're trying something difficult. You will get found out and everyone will be even MORE pissed off with you because you've wasted their time and now causing even more time to be wasted.