gameboy1234

Same, my character Maxine Pain tried to load into Cimerora about an hour ago (around 6:15 pm Pacific Time) and the loading screen froze. An hour later I'm still getting "The character Maxine Pain is still logging out." I assume the zone has crashed or something, just chiming in to let the devs know. The Cimerora instance on Brainstorm is borked.

This basically mirrors my own ideas for late game content. MMs should have their powers nailed to their backs and cart them around with them personally, treating the Henchmen more as a visual SFX of the powers rather than autonomous critters on the server. Probably a lot of work for an edge case, but would be really really nice for MMs. Might require an optional "power" to toggle on during, say, any incarnate content, or anytime level shifted up to 50+1, otherwise the "power" is disabled.

I've been asking for this since live. Even if the Recharge bonus was capped at say 100% to 100% damage bonus, it'd still be something to help out. (100% recharge should halve your recharge timers, meaning at least in theory you should be doing double damage, the same as a 100% damage bonus. The recharge formula is non-linear but 100% "feels" like it sits at a good break point. You could slide the cap up or down to tune it pretty easily. There's also animation times and network delays, but it's still close. And most players I think have well beyond 100% recharge late in the game, so capping it at 100% "feels" like it should provide something without being totally game breaking.)

Just thinking out loud here, but I'm sure back on live MM pets had a much larger recharge time. Like 1 minute for the tier one, 1.5 minutes for the tier two, and two minutes for the tier three. If that prevents a "zerg rush" and allows us to have passive pet upgrades, I'd be all for it. This was certainly a thing back on live, I remember having to break a few hot doors by exiting to allow pet powers to recharge. This was in reply to Captain Powerhouse talking about allowing the pet upgrades to be passives:

Maybe add inspirations to that? Keep it at 40%, but let me pop inspirations and the henchmen get 40% of that (each!). Basically inspirations on a MM work like team inspirations, just only for the henchmen. (Which I don't think makes using inspirations on a MM overpowered.) Would make inspirations easier to use on a MM and also more intuitive for newer players.

This is my biggest concern. The idea behind having pets be lower level than you was to always give you one pet tier that was even level, and without the power reductions we have now. Leveling Bots on Live was a slog until level 26 or so, and the past buffs to MMs were much needed. Now it feels like we might be taking a step back for new players. I haven't tested, and finding the time to do so is difficult. But as others pointed out MMs are not close to "the meta" so it seems like the reduced to-hit and damage shouldn't be needed.

I tried it with Bots/Time, and basically couldn't do Arachnos at +4/x8 without heavy use of incarnate powers on the live server. I certainly wouldn't call it "easy". I'll tone it down, test it, and then compare it with Beta later.

What content are you testing on? Actual question, I'd like to test it out myself.

I shall guess... 1. Something in Cimerora. Maybe new time traveling enemies showing up, maybe an invasion of Nictus. 2. New base items. 3. New Stheno map and arc with snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Further thought: you might actually be getting weaker. There's a mechanic called "Beginner's Luck" that fades as you level (link). Slot Accuracy to make up for this. Again, buy low level generic (common) Inventions from the Auction House, they're very cheap.

Also: inspirations can help a lot. Don't wait until you're in real trouble, pop these often for even just a little help. Inspirations drop fairly regularly, so there's no reason to save them, just keep using them up so that more will drop. You can right click on any inspiration that you have a lot of, and combine three insp. of that type into one different one. This is really handy as you'll often find that you need mostly one or two types, depending on play style. Insp. are also cheap on the auction house, don't be afraid to place bids on groups of 10 of insp. that you use a lot of so you always have some available. Insp. will all stack. Don't be afraid pop more than one of the same type. Popping two or three orange (damage reduction) or purple (defense) in a tough situation is normal. Do this proactively before things get dicey.

"Depends on how you want to play." Personally I like doing missions and checking out all the stuff I may have missed back on live. Don't forget to hit Ouroborous if you want to check out the full list. The leveling might seem slow but you actually might level past contacts, base XP gain is much higher now. There's an option to shut off XP gain if you need it. I'd at least consider playing this way as you get to actually see the content. OTOH it's not like I won't blast past level ranges if I don't feel there's anything left there that's interesting to me. Leveling groups in PI (Peregrine Island) seem fairly regular, there's TFs (Task Forces) run often, and MSRs (Mother Ship Raids) are also often run. As mentioned don't forget to grab an XP booster from the START vendor in Atlas, Mercy, or Pocket D. BTW, what classes do you have, what server are you on, what level are you? It might make difference what answers we give. Yeah that's an income issue. At very low levels (less than 20) you can buy cheap generic IOs (Invention Origin) on the auction house and just slot those, it'll help (those are the ones with the hexagonal shaped border). (I said "generic IOs" but the wiki article calls them "common IOs"; same thing.) Put at least one accuracy enhancement in every power that will take it. Put at least one damage enhancement in every power that will take it. If a power takes an effect like hold, heal, slow, confuse, immobilize, etc. slot one of those. Then start adding one endurance reduction and one recharge reduction as slots become available. Slotting big numbers first will help: slot damage enhancements in attacks that do the most damage, slot endurance reduction in powers that have the highest endurance cost. Having two damage in your strongest attack--as well as one accuracy, one endurance reduction and one recharge reduction--while your weakest attack still has just one accuracy is normal. Also the START vendor in Atlas/Mercy/Pocket D has Prestige Enhancements for free. They will give you some basic power boosts until you get better ones. As mentioned, you can convert merits into Converters and sell on the Auction House for a bit of coin. You get Merits for doing mission arcs so keep hitting those contacts and finish those completely before moving on. Sell everything else you get. Most prices on the auction house are fair, so if you need to buy something you'll just end up paying the same price for it, there are very few "rip offs" going on. Too many things for me to think of right now. There's a menu right next the chat line where you type things in with emotes on it, but also sets your "Notoriety", how difficult the mission are. It's far more convenient than going to a Hero Corps or Fateweaver. Rikti War Zone has no level restrictions, any level can now join an MSR. Null the Gull (in Pocket D) has lots more functions, you can switch your alignment instantly (Hero/Villain/Rogue/Vigilante) as well as disable Group Fly and remove that annoying travel pop-up tray some powers have. You get an Ouroborous portal now for just entering the Ouro zone, just pop in and you have the power. The START vendor has all the old prestige powers, most of which are free and can also boost you a bit. You can access the auction house from nearly everywhere with the /ah slash command.

I think we need more context. Are you talking about leveling up? Like for example, are you currently level 22 and feeling a bit under-powered? Or are we talking level 40 using IO sets with bonuses? How much Inf. do you have and how much could you get without getting bored? Or are we talking about level 50 and with Incarnate powers? Those are the main phases of growth I think for this game. What you do at each level depends a lot on how you play and what sort of challenge you want, and what sort of resources and effort you want to spend. If you think you could explain your situation a bit more I think we could give you better advice.

Hmm, I just re-read the first two posts, and that's not at all clear to me. It sure sounds like Flea is talking about ToT, and not the invasions. Seriously, I think it needs to be clarified. Sorry for the drama, I was unclear on what was being discussed myself. But it sounds like folks are conflating two different things and it's spreading weird ideas how they work.

The "number of players in a 30 radius" for starters. The entire rest of Flea's paragraph was incorrect because it was based on the idea of a "radius" being considered. It's just team size (and not league size, which is what I would have guessed). All of this is wrong: Basically the only part he got right is that individual difficulty settings have no bearing on the equation.