Darmian

I've been popping up here and there like the mole in Whack-a-Mole, spouting off that Number Six's Last Bastion arc be opened up to Goldsiders who reach Incarnate levels. Others have suggested that needs an in between addition explaining how those Goldsiders got to be Incarnates, and that's doable too with a short arc/mission set. The point being that Last Bastion proves that there are survivors free of the Tellurian Plague, ordinary citizens and members of the IDF, Powers Division and Resistance, still fighting on against Hamidon in an attempt to reclaim their world. Imagine the Magisterium remodelled to include the devastation from the iTrial, and once you hit level 50 that's the only version you can access without going through ouro? Though I imagine the Underground would be mostly intact since those were originally nuclear bunkers anyway. First Ward would be a good template for this.

There's a fair amount of that content that is "go here and defeat the things". Now, let's be honest, it's all mostly "go here and defeat the things", it's just how well the sleight of hand is done to disguise that and give us a decent story. Sadly a good chunk of the early/mid does not do this. And that's why Piecemeal's work is resonating so well IMO, it DOES give story. Not aimed at you, @Puma, but you mentioned it. For this player the entire Battalion thing as originally planned needs to die in a ditch by itself and the very idea rethought and taken in a different direction by the HC devs. And Dream Doctor minced and fired into the sun. Deus ex machina NPCs are death to player agency. Rant over.

It might be old boilerplate, but why is it triggering? 😄

^^Well explained 🙂 And this would be nice!

You literally have to hit 20 and level to get Marchand.* Though if you're up for it you can ignore him and head to First Ward via Underground Imperial and just keep on keeping on as Gold. *Edit. That's for the Rift mission. You should have had him earlier. Curious.

Well, thankfully we didn't get that. Bring on Kallisti Wharf but Battalion and Tyrant as States? No thanks. I'm expecting the current team (when it finally does do something that big) to do better than that lame story.

Well, purely mechanically there are those of us who are playing Incarnate Goldsiders already. How about this then? Along With Cole's doling out power somehow, when his access to the Well is cut during the Magisterium trial it is simply that, HIS access to the Well's power. The Well isn't capped and that has to go somewhere! OR...and I like this one better...the very advent of Portal technology means that power from the Primal Well is leaking into Praetoria, and that would account for other, earlier Incarnates arising, even if mechanically they wouldn't even have an Alpha slotted. Though behind the scenes it is also mentioned that the Wells aren't the only way of becoming an "Incarnate", simply that "Incarnate" has become the eponym for such levels of power. They don't all stem from the Well. the Iron Man analogy is given I think (correct me if I'm wrong) where you spend your time being uber scientist and building your special super power armor, and then being told "it's not you, it's a all a magic puddle", wasn't sitting well with the original devs and they intended to address that.

Why would it be confusing? I'm not trying to be annoying, I'm literally not seeing it. A Praetorian who stayed and is seeing their world over run by DE gets an offer of help from someone mysterious through the Static (or however) (It's Praetoria, they're used to secretive nonsense). So they do! And thanks for the bump!

Yes, I started this thread, yes I'm bumping it 🙂 Because it's entirely doable!

Umm. Curious. "Unlocked content may appear unavailable"? What does that even mean? Either content is available or it isn't. Or content added by HC and not Live? Ah.

Hmm, they COULD link them to currently unaligned plaques elsewhere, like the plaque in Faultline for instance.

Friend of mine considered making an Arachnos Festivus AE for the recent AE competition. Alas, wrestling doesn't work.

Look, trees weren't invented until 1911, so whatever crazy you people are on, I want no part of it. Before that we would chase miscreants through the streets and then tie them up in the town square where they would be pelted with tinsel balls. (Tinsel balls at the time had the consistency of baseballs.)

Well, my badge hunter friend asked me to come to Siren's Call with her, so I did , and we spent the next half hour just shooting each other. Job done. No, it's not the original intent, LOL, but when your'e a badge hunter and you want them all...is it 1546 now?...you do what you have to.

What a nice idea! As a Goldsider Main (Responsibility) there's a mission where you have the choice of pushing on to finish the job OR leaving to save your Powers Division comrades who are under heavy fire elsewhere, and I NEVER choose to go on, I always go back for the team. So in things like that throwing a hidden extra or two in would spice things up a bit.

I'm ranting away tonight, apologies! It does boil down to what can be done to leverage what we already have into new, interesting and challenging things? Moving away from harder vs content for a moment now. Zones. Entirely new zones? That's a lot of work. Especially when we have quite a few zones simply underused and oftentimes just plain empty. Kallisti Wharf is top of the list to get stuff, no question really. Once the geometry is fixed that is. The hazard zones need more in them for people to simply go there. On other threads (for various reasons) I've advocated doubling certain zones to add content and lore to Redside, and those are Bloody Bay and Warburg, with the copies being PVE versions with different badges and new missions and contacts. Similarly for Siren's Call on Blue side.* @TalonBlue's suggestion of utilizing the floating islands around Ouro proper is a lovely idea and each island could have its own crystal and Mender. (NOT DEREK!....although...a Derek island with a crystal full of weird stuff might be interesting!) More later. The last few posts have just been me rabbiting on and typing as I think. *Why doubling? Well, why should PVPers lose those zones? Ok, to be fair almost all the PVP seems to occur on Indom in RV, and while I'm not a PVPer myself I see no valid reason to take those away from them, along with no PVE player wants to get ganked simply doing normal missions. So the zones exist, simply double them. You'll get PVE players using the #2 and the #1 will stay as is.

Welp, I'm going to stand up and say no, it isn't what this particular "most of us" wants, and having read most of the content on here I'd posit at best 50 % might want it, at best. And while I wouldn't complain if we got it I see it as a another dead end if it isn't accompanied by across the board, 1 to 49 level content to sit right behind it. This has definite legs to stand on. Many votes for this please. And a thing I mentioned on the Discord version of this topic, but I've been thinking about it a little. Stealing a little from the Kheldians here. Suppose missions from level 45 to 49 had a trigger added to them (oh, the pain I will bring to coders!), where if say a team with one incarnate starts a mish then the enemy will have at least one incarnate NPC opposing them. And then two for two, three for three and so on? Actually if the doppelganger mechanic were recoded for incarnate powers then drop those in! Face yourself at full power! This is very nice. Much approve. With one important caveat. Dream Doctor should be immediately killed and removed from the game. As a deus ex machina NPC he negates player agency and that's simply bad. So, maybe another character to hand out a dreamspace set of arcs.

So, making stuff harder, or making stuff more tactical? Which some see as the same thing, while plenty others don't. I still say it comes back to, essentially, new content. I've mentioned and gone around in circles a few times earlier, the entire "tip missions from AE to fill the gaps" thing, so let's park that to one side, though we may come back to it. What about content (dangerous word) aimed at each AT? Taking a leaf out of @CrudeVileTerror's post earlier, suppose you had a mission that is simply easier if you're a certain AT. (Yeah, "harder", I'm getting there!) Infiltration style missions that Stalkers and Widows would excel at but scrappers and brutes would finish on the red? Horatius on the bridge missions where you gotta be a tank to hold off the wave after wave of ambushes in the pass while your squishier buddies do their thing? (Basic tanking I know but how many missions are actually built to do that, as opposed to you've learned that this works for you, ie tanking Recluse in MLTF?) Missions where you get your full XP and drops at the end because you fail if you kill MORE than a certain amount? Bring on the Controllers and Dominators. The enemy killing each other doesn't count. Sentinels? Well, you got me, I only have one and haven't got the hang of those yet. This is just late night spitballing, so I've only thrown a few ATs out there. Feel free to tear holes in this.* *Because my main interest is still in the tips from AE thing!

Goldsiders? Spare? GRRR.

Nicolas Cage plays Cortex in the movie version? Yeah, I can see that!

DOPPELGANGERS! Because I was chatting to Norse Wind in the Winter Forest at exactly the same time! DUM DUM DUM!

Well, I'm not talking about power sets and so on, I'm just talking about dropping more maps and more NPCs that already exist. I really should clarify what I'm talking about more often. And Faultline has said the following about maps: "This is not difficult but it is very time consuming. Every enemy spawn, hostage and collection location has to be placed by hand. Older maps had generic spawns that translated easily to AE, newer maps are heavily scripted and don't have generic mission spawns. Slices of the city zones obviously have no mission spawns. It takes several hours to place and test the spawn points for a single map, and that's why you don't see a lot of them added to the AE. For the Arena you only need to drop a few player spawn points and call it a day, that's why eight maps could be added in a week." Several have volunteered just to help add maps, never mind actually write anything for the AE as well! So, some time consumed but hardly the work that Piecemeal has turned out! Yeah, Holy Mittens' Vig/Rogue work was...September 2019? Maybe October. So definitely a year. And as a dedicated Goldsider, I WANT those maps. How else am I going to provide tip missions for Praetoria? Since outside of following my other notion of porting Number Six's missions (via radio or static and moving a door) to Gold side, they're not seeing anything new for a while. (Will be delighted to be proved wrong on that!)

In order for any of this to even get a shambling start the options in the AE need to start matching the available options in the game proper. At least then we can see what we can do when not hobbled by some of the tools' currently imposed limitations. Admittedly the current limits push you to think laterally so as to get around them, so in a sense that's good.

Modestly leaving yourself out of the loop as usual!

Oh, "coloring between the lines" has a LOT of latitude! And I also do include new new new! I really mean I don't want to see a bunch of things that couldn't possibly exist in the game world, rather than "thou shalt only use Council!". So, no thinly disguised Orcs and Elves thanks very much, to throw a generic example in there.