Greycat

Someone else mentioned this before, and I was able to log out instantly. Tried a few spots, too, to see if it was near AE or what, and I didn't get one.

When you actually needed the respec... yeah. On more than one team that all piled out the door dead in the olden days.

Yep. You used to have to go to one of the Vault Reserve buildings to get to it.

There was less content and (depending on when you're referring to) more debt, so yeah, there were definite grind points. My first 50 was an elec/elec blaster. Hitting the old debt cap and running out of my own contacts - and a friend's - in the late 30s? SLOOOOOW last few levels to hit 40 and get contacts again.

As mentioned - *both are ridiculous.* Longbow's a little more grey as they're not any nation's military or police force (supposedly a UN force, as I'm recalling. Which is problematic in different ways.) Arachnos *is* their military. It doesn't matter - as you state later - if they managed to sneak into Faultline (and I'll note, if you go to Echo:Faultline, there's a badge at the far south that mentions spiders... whether that was added post-opening-zone-update or not, I can't say.) We wouldn't stand for - say - Pakistan or Libya sneaking in and setting up a military base in Idaho... or taking over part of New York as a military enclave. But that's what we're handwaving Arachnos doing. For either side... what they had before? Agents sneaking in and doing whatever? Sure. And that's something that can be dealt with with small forces. *At Most* what either side should have, territory-wise, is an embassy type compound (which is about the only way I could fit the Longbow enclave in Nerva and have it make the least bit of sense) for a physical presence. Have agents, have safehouses, sure. But the (I agree with "hamfistedly implemented" here, too) military *occupation* of another nation's territory? No. It's annoyed the hell out of me since it was done. The Isles are, as the name states, islands. Their first defense is "Ocean." They obviously have airpower (and submarines.) That's not an insignificant hurdle. Ask the UK. Hell, Cuba's 90 miles from FL and if the US wanted (for whatever reason) to invade, it'd *still* be a substantial task. Even if we had something like a real life Portal Corp to help, it takes time to move people and things. To get to that main entrance walkway, you have to get *to* Mercy Island, survive defenses on the way, land troops (under fire,) etc. The troops that were there were plenty to drive off the Skulls, Hellions, Snakes, etc. that were there. What's the population of the Isles? Even if we went "some small percent are metahumans," and "some percent of *those* have useful abilities and decide to become heroes," yes, Arachnos is getting steamrolled. Especially given how often Recluse and the patrons get smacked down - by heroes *and* villains. Honestly, it's the only way a Longbow occupation *would* make sense. The US (and allies) drive Arachnos out of the US, then invade this obvious hostile nation, topple the government, and stick Longbow in as an occupying peacekeeping force until a new government is in place. But that's not what's happening. Instead we're doing the equivalent of "Durrr, look, the Russians took over Los Angeles and Miami? They've got troops stationed there and they're kidnapping and otherwise threatening civilians? That's nice. Wonder what the sportsball score is." It's ridiculous. Same with "sneaking into Faultline while it was sealed off." Agents? Sure. Safehouse? I can buy that. Built up military base? No. I don't care how "sneaky" Arachnos is, that would *not* be something that could be done with nobody noticing. (Oh. And I have to go back to the point about progression the OP made, which has been echoed. When you started at Fort Darwin... yes, the progression made sense. Starting off beating on low level mobs around the fort, eventually getting down to the city... where you find yourself at the ferry to go to the next zone. It was, frankly, rather nicely laid out.) Did it *really* "progress" the story? I'll grant redside you at least thwart Longbow somewhat. Blueside? You ... rescue Mrs. habashy and out one mole. Arachnos is still there. And as far as players "enjoying" the story? I don't think I've ever heard anyone ask to team to do those arcs. (Or Twinshot or Graves, who are utterly unrelated and would work regardless of the invasions.) I don't think either would end up on the majority of "top ten favourite or memorable arcs." Or even *remembered* arcs, for that matter. If they were popular, DFB wouldn't be three of the most typed letters on either side....

I honestly rather agree with the OP, frankly. I find Longbow in Mercy island as - frankly - ridiculous as Arachnos *taking over parts of Paragon.* (Which should pretty much result in the ROgue Isles being steamrolled by the US military.) Plus, while it's true I'm not fond of backstories being forced in certain ways (like the whole Zig breakout thing,) starting in Fort Darwin made sense for you. You were just yoinked out of the Zig, stuck in a flyer - where did you start? In an Arachnos base, in front of a flyer (where there are Longbow doing calisthenics now.) I think both starting zone changes were just ... not improvements. If they wanted new contacts, they could've just added Twinshot and Graves "extended tutorials" arcs without it. But, reverting it would take a *lot* of work, I suspect. I doubt we have the old map setup - physically it's the same, but messed around with. Which comes to the echo zone suggestion... If you look at what we have as Echo zones, they're basically other *zones* - Galaxy, obviously, Atlas is the old version, Faultline has old geometry, even the RCS is different in many ways. (Plus, even if we *could* get it as an echo, you can't get contacts and missions in Echo zones... which is part of what the OP is talking about. And you have to ask for an Ouro portal to get there.) So. Yeah. You know, I miss the original Mercy Island and found it preferrable to what we have now, but I don't think it *is* revertable, or even easily made into an echo. And that rather sucks.

I suggested a while back having a "note" space for characters, honestly. Some of the notes I don't need publicly available (not stuff that would be publicly known, little quirks i just want to remind myself of nobody else needs to see, specific plot plans for that character, etc.) and while you can do that in the playernote section- that doesn't move between computers, and I *do* (older system, newer system, laptop.) 'til then? Yeah. Notepad or something on a NAS or something like google docs.

Heh. I do know the Steel Canyon fires - at least the explosion - hits with (as I recall) three ticks of "Yes, you ARE dead, no you are NOT resisting this" damage. There are also spots you can stand in occasionally that just ignore the boom. I've had it explode and just miss me.

Eh. Personally I think there should be one pack granted per account - not character, account - at the start of the event as a "Hey, look, these exist, and now you can see inside!" thing, and drop as an *extremely* rare drop doing winter stuff. But, eh. Don't honestly care one way or another.

We really need to have some limit to necroing threads. 3 months and it's locked, say.

"Explain it to a duck." Doesn't matter if there's no real conversation. You can explain a problem to a rubber duck and suddenly get ideas... since you're having to start from the beginning and explain everything, including what you're assuming.

Mm. Looks like one I was planning on answering but never did. I kinda-sorta like most pets. (Mind you, I'm keeping the "Pet vs Minion" divide here - Minions or henchmen are the commandable MM ones, and have their own issues.) I'm not fond of the one in Symphonic. It's not visually distinct, has a weird effect and just has not clicked with either of my Symphonic control characters (one Controller, one Dom.) I'm probably most annoyed by pets, in the form of Phantom Army, on Illusion. I don't try to build for all the recharge, but - at least controller-side - it always felt to me like you were forced to for Illusion because of PA. Not spectacular hard control - but whee, you got two invisibilities for whatever reason, and were leaning hard on PA. Which - unless I was making an emp in early days and was using the invis to keep a power pool free - was part of what made Illusion my least favourite control set. In short (and to the relevance,) pets should not force the rest of my build a certain way. (As far as other pet changes that have been made... I *still* hate having my blaster's Voltaic Sentinel as a toggle. I hate it. I've tried to play it, but I just solidly *hate* it now. I *really* do.) Lore pets - I don't care about numbers, I pick whatever seems best matching the character. If I can't find one, it's usually polar lights or robotic drones. I want more options, frankly - I have a character, for instance, that has ties to the Family. I'd love to have Family as a Lore option. Or Mastermind's Robotics minions as Lore pets. (Or, really, any of the MM minions as pets.) And... that goes to masterminds. I get the level shift thing - and it works (kind of) up to 50, then gets broken because Incarnate shifts aren't "real" levels. That aside, the shifts (to me) hurt *worse* in the 18-25 levels, when you get your last tier 1 minion - so they're *all* down -2 - and you only have one T2 that might hit... and, when MMs were only redside, you'd hit a fair number of AOE-heavy enemies, or so it seemed (frigging Demolitionists) so the T1s were just getting slaughtered - and there wasn't a heck of a lot you could do to offset it with slotting. It really felt like you were getting punished for playing a MM, or playing redside. (MSRs can be a bit like this, too, though I often will just not summon my T1s.) I don't know if getting rid of the level shift would help - I think it'd be a bit *too* much, really - but it could use some help, or Incarnate-shift-awareness.

Adding the second quote because it kind of touches on the problem of the first - We have the codebase we have *now* because someone essentially smuggled the code that was going to be the next issue out of Paragon. (Technically, we *already* have a split because we have the "Paragon code" and "SCoRE modified" code, that has tweaks and things like the Sentinel in it with all the changes made there.) We *don't* have allllll the backups going back to (*pick issue here*) to pick and choose from. I don't believe it'd be possible (or reasonable) to actually MAKE an "Issue 3" server, for instance. Yes, you can rip out stuff like P2W, make the market non functional (just don't stock it, I guess) and start getting "Not quite current issue" functionality, but ... well, just the laundry list of things you'd have to figure out (how do you replace the Atlas shard with Echo:Atlas? How do you make Echo:Galaxy active as a starting zone? How do you reopen the gates to it? How do you stop bases from being created? - remember, we had SGs, but not base building, at the time. You'd have to remove all Villain ATs and zones, remove the Kheld story arcs and do a *lot* of power tweaking. You'd have to backtrack *all* the changes made to power values to what they were then... ... I mean, depending on just how accurate of an "issue 3" you want.

Congrats. You've now forked the codebase Homecoming has to deal with. Which makes all future work harder. And as far as "just move the people there already?" Hell no. People go to the (let's use shard instead of server for clarity) they want to go to. They've built up bases, they have their characters, names, maybe they like it JUST where they are. Why should they be forced to move? There are other servers that already do this. If that's the gameplay desired, people can visit there - or even spin up their own. (Getting it started, honestly, is quite easy. Modding, I don't know.)

The ones who care about feel and lore vs "GIMMEMERITSTENMINUTESORLESS," yes. If a threat is supposed to be city wide, if the infighting is supposed to be across multiple groups, then yes, sticking everything into one neighborhood (zone) diminishes that feel. The point about the council made earlier? That's something that could be looked at, sure. (Especially when you rush to get there and find the Council you've targeted has just been smashed by the 5th column that don't count.) But isolating everything (or even most things) to "just that zone" just makes things feel choppy and isolated. Maybe if you're looking at mission arcs, sure, but task forces should feel more epic than just another arc and involve more than just "The bad guys have bothered these five city blocks."

I'd argue (and I suspect I'd have quite a bit of agreement) that it's most certainly *worth* the work.

Little thing I realized: For all the blueside I've played, my elec/elec blaster I made in i3 is the only one who's ever had Virginia Hoffman as a contact. Only real *arc* she gives is the Tsoo Shenanigans one, which a few others give, so I'm not missing *content,* but with literal hundreds of characters from then to now... I'm fairly sure she's the only one who's ever gotten Hoffman. (And they get raced past even without double XPs, DFBs - which I don't think i've been on in months - and the like.) Just something that, for whatever reason, has stuck out for me..

OK, so what's the "fun" of the character to you? Is it just powers? Are yours not *characters* you play with others - or solo - to get their own story, reactions, etc? Is this lower-level "finished-ness" a problem to you? Or are you just musing? Just for a different perspective - Those of mine that get to 50 are the ones that "happen" to, basically. I enjoy them as *characters,* not powersets or numbers of slots or whatnot. Some stall out because they sort of belong in an area, or aren't just brought out as much. (More "guest stars" to the main storylines I have going. Or remakes of older characters that I already "know" and am redoing mostly for nostalgia, but since not everyone they were tied to are here, they level much more slowly.) Basically, for mine, 50's just a number they'll eventually reach. It's rare I have any sort of drive to get there (one was getting concentrated on *specifically* to do the incarnate mission arc in Cim, because who and what's fought there just fit her.)

Honestly, let's just go for "Big selection screen revamp." There are so many ideas with so many things people want to see (and customize) - more filters, sorting, having actual "pages" (which the current screen, to my understanding, doesn't really understand,) various sorts of data on the character and more. (And maybe the *option* to share character data or export it.)

... complex? It's as complex as a simple recipe. There's no guesswork. Get this recipe, get these pieces, pay this much, and it's all spelled out in the recipe itself. There's no element of chance in what'll come out, if you have X pieces, you'll get Y result. As far as explaining crafting to a newbie? That's what the tutorial in the university is for. Walks them through it, even gives them the salvage, and they end up with a common IO at the end, too. Frankly, I'd hate to see the various salvage go away for generic "Common, uncommon, rare." How utterly bland. The salvage often has some flavor to it, as well as progression of what it is. It'd be like going from story arcs to mission collections, where instead of investigating this, then that leads to a rescue, you just get nondescript "Defeat everyone. Rescue generic hostage," with no flavor at all.

Well, hold on now. Do you know what the original setting was? It's quite possible he had room to lower it from the setting it was at - down to -1, after all. (Also, you should be able to tell, IIRC, by looking at the mission menu what the difficulty's set at so there's no surprises, even on a TF.)

They've been tweaked, as I recall - but mostly to deal with the long pauses between ambushes. Other than that? The game's much different with IOs (and just *familiarity*) versus doing this with, say, DOs and a few SOs being all that was available. As well as issues upon issues of tweaks. (Inherent fitness = 3 more power picks by 20 for many if not most people, for instance.)

Me. Because I don't care for how it looks. Either from players or NPCs.

I'll run the Kheldian arcs on pretty much every one I roll. I just wish there were a bit more separation later on between Peacebringer and Warshade, to get different views of what's happening. (Also, honestly I like the fact the world reacts to "Hey, a Kheldian" when playing them, spawning specific enemies for them. I wish VEATs had something similar going on.) Croatoa, I'll run on every magic character. And anyone else it fits. I love the little challenges in it (like the "Prevent 30 fir Bolg from escaping" - I try to keep on my 0 escapes run) - though I think the last mission could use some tweaking. On several characters it's "trap one NPC, go for a light lunch, come back 15 minutes later." Similarly, the Keith Nance/Jenny Adair pair I find fun. Redside... they keep saying "has better writing." But way too often, it's a selection of being railroaded along a line of things you wouldn't actually do, being a lackey, being pants-on-head stupid, or suddenly finding yourself slammed far over into the psychopath zone without really knowing ahead of time (unless you've done them before) which you're going to get. Granted, villains are typically *pro*active, not *re*active, and so much harder to write, but it makes me enjoy redside far less unless I'm with a group and we're writing our own AEs and plots and such. And I'm not in that sort of group here. And I've run the VEAT storyline once. And, frankly, hated it after the first few arcs. (Maybe level 15-20?) Might have changed, but I vaguely remember in the 30s or so getting one which was *very* short and basically going "Ha-ha, you're being suckered into thinking you're getting away with something but we've been watching the whole time, idiot. What a loser. XOXO, Recluse." Forced myself to finish the rest of them, haven't had the slightest interest in playing them again... *since they were introduced.* They felt rushed, they were annoying... and as mentioned, haven't touched them (past the level 10 costume mission) since.

Well, if you're using AE already, you can use that to get rares at a "regular price" as it is. Eh. I think if this were put in, it'd have to be at a somewhat higher price than the recipes, to make up for the lack of crafting involved. Either that or recipes would have to stop dropping all together in favor of crafted, and I don't see that happening.