Greycat

I'd say the tradeoff of having to go back to refresh those buffs (through time and either salvage or inf - they're not *cheap* at high levels) is enough of a balance. And the Envenomed Dagger is - well, kind of a hidden gem, but at the same time, kind of specialized. Not something I'd even consider as part of a build, really.

I don't know that I'd go for it, personally, but frankly the entire character select screen needs a good working over. Sorting, filtering, customizing what information is displayed. Having this as part of a new set of filters ("DIsplay level range," "Display Incarnates/Incarnate level," (though I don't know if it could accurately do that - maybe, maybe not, depends on what it can look at,) filter by SG, custom filters - there's a lot that could be done with the screen. Having this as part of it? Sure. There have been a lot of suggestions on what to do to that screen to make it more useful. I'd love it if we could see at least *some* of them implemented.

Brain started going down a little rabbit hole on this and just how much of a mess this *could* be. I mean, start with what you consider a "broadsword." For one, the stuff we have as options aren't all.. broadsword-y. A pirate cutlass is going to be used differently than a double edged straight sword, probably used differently than a khopesh was, etc. And right now they're all single-handed - there aren't any two handers (or hand and a half) that are used in two hands. No alternate animations for them, either. Even if we could get *those,* we have to consider that Shield exists... which ties up one hand (and already, as I recall, greys out some powersets.) And kind of cuts out just "alternate animations," because you can alternate (say) SJ or SS animations just fine... but if you wanted to do two handed on some costumes, it would have to realize you had shield (for instance,) so... more spaghetti for the code... Right now, though, it's just "I swing something sword shaped this way."

Yeah. This, as I recall, inspired a "Nope, not doing that again" on the part of the devs.

To get started. (And even a cheap build can be pretty good.) In fact...

They *dropped* the price. The usual price is 25m. Previously they've done a sale at 10m, this year (the last year they're doing this) it's 15m.

Lorewise, though, as I recall, the Restructurist faction (Lineage of War) is the one pushing the invasion, and they'd been hurt (and had to try to control things back home.) The Rikti homeworld is already isolated from our dimension, the Rikti barely managing to (finally) punch a hole through - which we then shut down. *If* anything like this were to happen, we couldn't have it as an "invasion" - we'd have to be aiding the Traditionalists somehow (and them hauling us along might cause problems.) Honestly, I'd say the Rikti storyline is tied up for the most part through the RWZ arcs.

I know on Everlasting they're announced in LFG pretty consistently. (And usually filled reasonably fast.) As for the video... meh. Didn't watch. Just the title and subject sound tinfoil-hat-y, and I neither know nor care who the guy is, so...

I seem to recall part of this was pre-newspaper - though my memory of the timing may be off. While the effect is the same, debt inside missions was what was cut down compared to street sweeping - basically leaning back on the "it's not money, it's influence," because nobody actually *saw* you die ... (Again. I want to say it was pre-newspaper, possibly even while we had a bit of a content gap pre-PI. I know it was a *bear* getting my first blaster to 40, because by 38 or so most of my XP had gone towards paying off continual debt and I was out of content.) Of course, then we have the other can of worms which are merits (which only the arc holder gets) ... which unless you run into a GM to fight, nobody gets outside...

As far as this - I'll see advertisements (typically on the weekend) for ... I think it's the 801 series, "these are built to murder you" arcs, and the occasional test run for something. Non-farm content, in my experience, seems most often to be run by SGs to run RP storyarcs, or with small groups that know each other and aren't going to have someone random just want to rush to the end, kill the boss or grab the glowie, and jump to the next mission - they actually want to *see* what's going on and what the author's done. So, no LFG advertising, but talking to each other in SG chat, private channels or Discord to arrange times to run stuff. It flies under the radar.

Tinpex, typically. I've seen some people try to call it ApeMage, too, though that hasn't quite caught on. :)

If you feel like organizing (not necessarily leading these, though it's not that hard to lead a team - keep the wiki handy,) I'd go to your server's board below, Discord and an announcement or two in game and say you're getting a "newbies run everything" team (or something similar) together. No master runs, no speed-this, +Xthat, just "I want to see this content." Pick a day and time (or talk with whoever's interested,) and just start running them. If you're not a 50/incarnate, you'll need to level for some of them, of course, but again - read through the WIki and plan with that, it should tell you requirements.

I *suspect* this was in the works, in a way, with the Council being one of the groups getting Praetorian tech (the War Walkers,) but not finished. Had the game been alive for another... I'd say three issues, maybe, we'd be talking about how the Council got buffed and X group needs it now.

As far as the comm officers, they're worth extra XP specifically because of the summons. Plus that summon is interruptible, similar to the Sky Raider Engineers. I'm not really for or against the badges - though, for the gunmen and bosses, unless they're silly high numbers, they'd probably be gotten in one good MSR. 20-odd minutes of a constant stream of Magi, Priests, Mezmerists and the like? (And Headman Gunmen, though they die quickly.) The other two could probably be gotten before you're done with the RWZ arcs, even solo, which isn't a bad thing.

Yes! ... kidding, obviously. But something I hope the dev team keeps in mind while creating new content in general - I'm not sure how hard it is to add NPCs to these "buckets" for things like safeguards/mayhems, but yeah, it'd be worthwhile.

5 servers, 1000 slots each. That's the "full reroll."

Farming wasn't the intent of any mission, AE or normal content. yet they were used for it. Still are. Short of having every mission unable to be repeated once someone's run it (theirs or not,) and put on a timer, if something's able to be farmed, someone will find out how and do so. As far as "allowed" and the devs "caving?" I believe the phrase "pushing back the ocean with a broom" is relevant here. There's no way they could *stop* farms being created without punishing everyone or gutting the entire system, and they flat out knew it. All they could do is keep an eye out for the real outliers as far as exploits and handle those as they came up. Which they did, to greater or lesser extents (specific mob farms, like comm officer farms, and ... whatever mechanic the CEBR farms used, I think that was the "INSP up before diving in" leading to inspiration buffs getting stripped on entry, but may be remembering wrong.)

Absolutely not. I've had SGs where AE was heavily used to create and play through storylines - and that was well before the players were 50. No reason they should be punished despite fighting right alongside everyone else. All this would do is encourage PLing. You've added irritation for no benefit.

Well, two things on that - First, the *game* obviously tracks both how much INF we both have and make already - it's got to display it to you for the first, and it awards badges for the second (and the two are not the same.) So this as an option (one of many that have been requested) on the character select screen shouldn't be *that* big a deal to dig up. The login screen has to talk to the server to show whatever the last costume was, after all. Second, I suspect the information's already in there able to be accessed. I know we had to rely on CIT (external) on live, but they were looking at an internal tool and trying to develop something simliar (though they dropped it due to the load it put on the server or the speed or some such) - I'd be really surprised if that wasn't available somewhere in the spaghetti to reference.

Side note, you should always be careful of saying "Nobody likes X group," because you will inevitably get the answer of "I love fighting them." ;) Plus there are ways around most all of those, especially on today's teams. Protectors? Throw holds on the ones using energy attacks, since those are the ones that MoG, or hold on to your *big* hitting attack 'til they're at about 1/4 health or so since they can't MoG if they're dead. (Alternately, KB/KD plus another attack.) Heck, if you're running a control set and have a moment, right click and peek at info and it'll tell you what sets they run. If it mentions energy, get ready to slap holds on them. Sappers? Easy to target. Blinded? Pop a yellow (if you're not on one of the sets that has a +perception buff or Tactics built in.) Or if you've got a PBAOE, well, that will hit things whether you can see them or not. Honestly, the most dangerous thing about Carnies (besides a fair bit of psi, which is often a weak point) - especially if you're melee - is getting into a group and having multiple END drains hit you when they die. If you're not watching, you can have toggles drop. Besides, by the time you're fighting these, you've got most or all of your powers and slots, plus you *should* have experience with dealing with problematic enemies from the last 40-odd levels. There's a reason they're tougher, after all.

Yeah, I pretty much ignore them, honestly, and wish they'd just get folded into threads. ITF used to be "the thing" to farm for them, as I recall.

Seeing this again... I'll say I kind of *like* having two powers I can kind of ignore slotting with. The way MMs were initially back on live, as I recall, we were *having* to slot them as the upgrades were pet by pet, not AOE. Having two right now that I can mostly ignore slotting means I have two levels where I can dedicate those slots to getting my pets fully slotted faster - I really look at them as "free slots next level" instead of another power splitting up an already limited supply.

There's no romancer like a necromancer, don'cha know. ;) As far as the OP, generally (I can't speak for specifics on carnies, right this sec) the summoning enemy gives more XP than normal for their rank to make up for the summons. I *will* agree Carnies are more annoying, *especially* when rescuing something, because they can summon a phantasm, which then *itself* can summon a decoy phantasm, and if you're doing a rescue you need to wait for *both* to go away. Since the decoy can't be damaged and the phantasm itself gives no XP, having that vanish sooner would be nice. (As far as the phasing, it's a pretty quick cycle, and as far as I recall if you have them in some sort of hold it stops the phasing in its tracks - and there's not really a shortage of holds out there, even for non controllers/doms.)

It really depends on the character and powersets. Some of my Kheldians have triform and human only or biform builds. VEATs? I'll alternate a bit. (Though that also has the annoying "forced respec at 24" when building up a second or third build.) For some sets, especially support sets that are more team focused (Emp, FF) I'll have team and solo builds with different power selections. Some I just use to mess around with other build ideas without doing a respec. On live, I'd sometimes have PVE and PVP builds - not so much, now. Though you can build a farmer with a "farm" build and a "non farm" build. It really varies.

Alpha is basically this, though more general. And really, "all powers six slotted" is kind of ... much. With what we have now, we already have perma-everything, capped-everything, challenge-what's-that characters running around for the price of a bit of inf and a copied MIDS build. I don't think making that any easier by adding slots (even if that didn't mechanically break the game given the way the code is, which is a possibility) would really be healthy for it.