Rudra

It also wouldn't affect cultists like the Banished Pantheon who are trying to bring about the destruction of the world by bringing their gods back. What is money to those who are trying to destroy society/civilization in the pursuit of the power their gods are offering/giving them? For that matter, zombies wouldn't care either, so it wouldn't affect BP zombies (again with the BP) or Vahzilok zombies. Proteans and beasts wouldn't care how much money you throw at them either. Neither would monsters (such as minotaurs, cyclops, the various giant monsters, the Hive/Abyss monsters), ghosts/spirits, turrets, similarly wealthy foes like Countess Crey and some of Crey's other mobs, or supernatural entities like the Talons of Vengeance and their subordinate faction devotees. And speaking of minotaurs and cyclops, it wouldn't affect the Cimerorans either. "What is this? Money?! How is this money?! It isn't gold or silver. Just a floppy piece of... what did you call it? Paper money? Worthless." (Which is why infamy/Influence is such a good form of currency in the game. it can be used fairly universally.) Just to point out the other groups that come to mind from your post. Edit: And if you really want to dig into it, there are the groups that will see the player just throwing money around like it's an infinite supply and double down on their attacks to get everything the character has.

There are several groups in comics and cartoons that are themed around spiders or snakes and don't have spider or snake powers. It happens. That said, there are other web powers in the game. There is Web Spitter (a single target non-grenade web grenade), Web (a non-grenade web grenade), Entrap (a single target hold), Cocoon (a single target hold), Web Cocoon (from Mace Mastery), and Web Envelope (from Mace Mastery). Though the last two admittedly are basically just web grenades.

I tried last night, but could not find a way to get an unslotted TO to upgrade to the next level. And you can't slot a red enhancement. (I removed my generic IO from Rest on my main MM and tried to work a level 20 TO to be slottable. I couldn't do it.) So probably the best way of doing what the author wants is to ahve a vendor and an Enhancement storage in their base, plan out their character, and then buy all their TOs before level 21 (or 31 if there is a vendor in Talos/IP), and upgrade all the pre-purchased TOs as they go. ... which will require a lot of unslotters....

I don't remember any of my characters actually being in that cut scene. To the best of my memory, it was always Washington and Cleopatra talking to each other in the cut scene, and then you get the choice at the end of the cut scene. I may be mistaken, it has been a while since I dealt with Washington, but I'm pretty sure our characters were never actually in the cut scene itself.

No, per the AH they go up to 53. They stop at 20 when bought through the base vendor though.

I'm not sure, but I think the Team Transporter only takes you to the door. And not the contact even if the contact is technically the door....

Don't know how I missed them. Though technically they use magic artifacts as well. Anyway, good catch.

You can make a SG just for yourself. You don't even have to build the base. Just plop a vendor in the entrance room you get by default, and then you can use /altinvite to get any character you make into the group to buy the IOs up to level 20. You can also make an AE mission/arc and every time someone plays it, you get 5 tickets. Just tell others about it and hope they play it.

That's fair. However, I would counter with you are still doing a tutorial, and some tutorials require you to perform some tasks more than once. Either way, the mission says to take the ferry to Cap au Diable, not just to go to Cap au Diable. Usually, when a mission sends you to another zone, it just says the mission is in that other zone. When the task specifies something, it is coded for that something to happen. Whether through waypoint marker or specifically provided instruction. (Kind of like the ski slopes. The objective is to get to the bottom as fast as you can. If you don't go the way the game requires though, then it doesn't count.)

Talk to any vendor in your SG base. They sell them. (Edit: They cap at level 20, but they are there.)

Except your MM is not defined as being a hive mind by the game. (You are free to do so for your character, but it does not work for all MMs.) And outside of AoE holds, even if your MM is held, your pets still fight. And if you are caught in an AoE hold that also catches your pets, as long as you are in Bodyguard Mode, the pets still protect you. (Edit: While you can define your MM character as being a hive mind if you desire, the basic premise of the MM is a character that has authority over and so commands a group of underlings. No hive mind involved.)

Not true. I have multiple characters go into BB and do the mission to get the Shivan Decimator just for those times I need the extra power. (My main MM has 10 temp pet powers including the RV and BB pets so that if I am on a SF and it goes sideways, like the technician being in Hell Room in the Binder of Beasts SF, I spawn my temp summons and eat everything while the team grabs the tech and runs.) As for your faster options comment? Great! Then they have the options they need to deal with whatever and don't need the Shivan Decimator. Grab the Envenomed Dagger and the Signature Summons. Like you said, START already provides ample means of a character buying what they need to devour their opposition. So why should yet more be added when that more will be taking away an incentive to do the content that already provides it? In a game where players are calling for more content, the OP is basically asking for a way to not do the already available content. Yes, START provides everything the old Veteran Rewards program gave without having to wait for years to get them. START offers temp flight powers? Temp flight powers were available for purchase from vendors as far back as the Shadow Shard. You just don't have to find a way to the (previously level-locked) Shadow Shard to buy them any more. However, START does not offer mission rewards for sale. Because if you want the mission reward, you have to do the mission. The Shivan Decimator is a mission reward. The mission is located in a PvP zone, yes, but it is still a mission reward. And if you start offering mission rewards in START, then you're going to need to make all the mission rewards available. So being able to buy mission rewards? No. If a player wants a pet to make tough fights easier, they can buy the four Signature Summon powers. Or if they want other options they can get the Envenomed Dagger. Or both and make things stupid easy. So no, there is no justification for a mission reward pet, even if it is in a PvP zone, being added to START.

Let me try phrasing this a different way. The Shivan Decimator pet is a mission completion reward. Just like the Wailer Queen summon power (which is instead a Tar Patch for non-magic characters). So the OP is asking to take a mission reward and make it directly purchasable. Why even have the mission then? And how many other mission reward pets will be asked to simply be purchasable from START? START is the place where players can go and get the powers they had as a reward for up to 7 years of playing the game. So that players would not have to again play for 7 years to get what they used to have, START exists and provides the means of getting those powers quickly. As far as I can tell, what START does not do is grant mission rewards. So why should the devs add a mission reward to START?

Like you said, players could get a temp fly power from other sources than just PvP. However, the only way to get an Arachnos or Longbow mech, or the Shivan pet, was to go into a PvP zone and get it. Unlike the Shivan Decimator from BB or the Arachnos/Longbow pet from RV, anyone could get the PvP IO sets without ever setting foot in a PvP zone. Even back on Live. They just had to pay a lot to get them. However, you could never buy the pet, only earn it. So your argument is flawed. Edit: And as has already been pointed out, there is very little PvP on HC, so running into BB to complete the mission and get the mission reward pet is not exactly a huge ask these days.

Except for MM and Controller pets, mob pets remain after their summoner/creator is vanquished. It's not just the Master Illusionists. You will also see it on things like Rain of Fire when used by mobs. If a player makes it and is defeated, the rain immediately ends, as does all other summoned effects from the player. From mobs though? They persist until they time out.

Certain things are only available in PvP zones to draw players into them. The Shivan Decimator summon is one of them. So are the pets you get for having max reputation in RV when the zone goes to reset for enough pillboxes being taken. So if we want those pets, we have to go risk ourselves in PvP. Not somethiong I particularly care for as a dedicated PvE player, but I do at least get the idea behind it.

The plotline is based on the contacts you work with. (THough the overarching plotline is you are proving yourself to Arachnos as their Detined One as explained by Kalinda and Operative Kuzmin at the start, and by the Arachnos pilot and Jenkins in the Breakout tutorial.) You're a villain. What is it you intend to do? Go do it. Hey, if you want to dance and socialize instead of gathering wealth, power, and prestige, that's fine. Everyone deserves to have fun. Either turn off your aura toggle or ignore them. It's not like they're ever going to actually hurt you. If you like smashing -10 mobs though? Go for it. Radio Free Opportunity is a pretty good contact. It helps you gather a ruthless reputation if that is your preference. And if Radio bothers you? Wait until you meet TV. As has already been said by others, there are various ways to get contacts red side. You can use the Find Contacts button on the Contacts window to be teleported to those contacts that have no prerequisites. You can run paper missions followed by the Mayhem to prove you are someone the broker is willing to talk to, and the broker will then introduce you to a contact. At certain levels, if you meet the prerequisites, contacts get added to you automatically via popup. You're a villain (or rogue) in the Rogue Isles. There is no central goal of protecting the city like there is blue side because the Rogue Isles are a proving ground to weed out the chaff from among the villains. So get out there and prove yourself so the contacts will talk to you.

Like @CrusaderDroid said, if you run an electric set, you can floor the enemies' endurance bars with almost no effort. And you can keep their endurance bar floored for the entire fight. So all mobs can do is use Brawl on you (since it has 0 END cost). As for your comment that they aren't supers? Either you have only been fighting the starter mobs or you think that only PCs can be actual supers. Because there are a LOT of full on supers among the enemies' ranks. From Captain America style villains among the 5th Column and Council, to the Batman style among the Malta and Knives of Artemis, to the Cyborg style of the literal cyborg Freakshow, and so on. (Edit: In fact, I think the only group that is all strictly just normal humans are the Contaminated from the hero tutorial Outbreak.) Your reasoning is flawed.

MM pet customization has been requested repeatedly. However, I am against using my character's costume slots for my pets. (Most of my characters use all or nearly all their costume slots. I choose what appearance I will use based on what even is going on or what I feel like being at the time.) Also, if I recall correctly, the devs have said they won't use Thunderspy's method and prefer to find their own way. We keep hoping.

When you are given a task by a contact, you are expected to perform that task. In this case, you are specifically told to take the ferry, so you are required to take the ferry. Dr. Graves' arcs are tutorials, so they are rather stringent in how you complete those tasks. (You will see the same thing in First Ward where you are told to go talk to Mistress Nadia. You are given a mission marker at a door of the skyscraper she is on the top of. And if you just fly to her on the roof, you are not fulfilling the assigned task of using the door and so cannot progress the mission until you go use the door.) So if they say to use a specific conveyance or they provide a mission waypoint, you have to use the directed means.

Yes. So the Circle of Thorns as a magic origin faction will drop magic origin enhancements as example.

Given how powerful the Shivan Decimator is, prior to Lore pets and even now alongside Lore pets, Shivan Decimators were used by players to make seemingly impossible fights easy, I doubt the devs will agree to just let us buy them. They are a reward for risking ourselves in a PvP zone and successfully completing the mission.

Sure you did. That's how you know nothing about the Lost. Here is the link to the wiki page: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/The_Lost Here is their background copied directly from the wiki: Overview The Lost are an insidious villain group hidden between the ranks of the poor and the homeless. With all the misery caused with the Rikti Invasion, the group has no lack of hideouts nor potential recruits. Beware: despite their weak, harmless appearance, the group has powerful connections, access to untold weapons and, more importantly, a perfectly drawn goal. This group can be fought in City of Heroes between levels 5 to 30 and is present in City of Villains as well. Background Lost official info ( Copied from the City of Heroes official website [1]😞 The city's heroes did not overlook the rising jobless and homeless rates. Hero organizations opened their doors and turned their training halls into soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Heroes accustomed to using their strength and speed to smash villainy found their powers equally valuable when it came to building new, affordable housing. Tens of thousands who would otherwise have spent hungry nights sleeping on park benches made it through the crisis and eventually found work, thanks to the efforts of Paragon City's heroes. Unfortunately, it proved impossible for even the combined efforts of heroes, city government, and local community charities to provide succor to everyone who needed it. Even more unfortunately, there were other, less civic-minded groups out there waiting to capitalize on the situation. A variety of evil-minded organizations took advantage of those in desperate straits, a fact that explains the sudden swelling in membership of villain groups like the Freakshow and the Fifth Column, as well as the steady supply of experimental subjects rumored to have disappeared behind the walls of Crey Industries research facilities. And then there were those poor souls who just got lost. Paragon City's ancient labyrinthine subway and sewer systems had long been a refuge for those with nowhere else to go. During the invasion "those with nowhere else to go" also included the Rikti. The extra-dimensional invaders made their staging areas beneath the city, carving out caves or using the existing sewer and subway tunnels for their own purposes. Much of the war was fought in these underground chambers, and to this day Rikti still lurk in the dark depths. Naturally enough, the city has sealed off the old subway tunnels entirely and embarked on a constant battle to keep the sewer lines working. Although well marked as incredibly dangerous, numerous homeless people have returned to the underground in spite of the danger. For those who have nothing left in the surface world to comfort them, it sometimes proves difficult to abandon the safe places of old. There is no accurate way of counting how many of those who went underground were lost to the horrors below and how many just wanted to disappear of their own accord. Most of what's publicly known about this chthonic world comes from the reportage of a single, intrepid social worker named Shannon Price. Ms. Price was once a minor hero known as Starlight, and she had fought with distinction during the war. A long time advocate for the homeless, Price hung up her tights for good once peace had returned and focused all of her energies on trying to make Paragon City a safer, healthier place for its poorest citizens. Through her volunteer work, Price became quite close with much of the homeless community and was soon tapped in to all their circulated rumors and stories. She heard repeated tales of people going down into the underground and disappearing for weeks or months. This, she knew, was not surprising. She'd fought in those tunnels and knew how dangerous they still were. What was interesting was that these lost folk would then turn up again sometime later, often different than they'd been before. They were brusque and almost business-like, always moving with a purpose and never stopping to chat with old friends. They stuck together in tight cliques, and were rumored to have moved beyond simple foraging to armed robbery and other crimes. Price decided to investigate further, and calling in a few favors from her Dawn Patrol friends, she managed to wrangle an interview with one of these "mole people" (as other homeless called the underground dwellers) who had been captured during a bank robbery. Although at first silent and defiant, the prisoner became more and more anxious and unsure with each hour he spent separated from his cohorts. He began to babble incoherently of magic mists and green gods. He claimed that he was part of a new underworld order, a troupe of the touched, that he referred to as The Lost. Price could not make much sense of any of this, but when routine blood tests showed that some sort of mutagenic chemical was present in the man's blood, it became obvious that there was more to this problem than met the eye. Together with a her old friend Quint "The Fist" Velasquez from the Dawn Patrol, Price once again donned her costume and set off into the sewers, looking for some answers. It was three months before she was seen again, this time without Quint at her side. The Dawn Patrol sent several more teams into the sewers to search for the missing heroes, but they found no trace of them or their fate. When Shannon Price appeared once more, it was crawling up through a manhole in the middle of rush hour traffic. She was rushed to the hospital, since she had obviously suffered a great deal of punishment and pain during her absence. The intrepid social worker never achieved a mental state that one could call sane or even lucid. Lab tests showed that she had the same mysterious mutagen in her blood that investigators had found in captured members of The Lost. When questioned, she readily spouted forth a largely unintelligible tale. Dawn Patrol investigators were able to eke out a few solid facts from the garbled narrative. According to Price, The Lost seems to be a loosely organized confederation of the mentally ill, street people, and anyone else who has become desperate enough to find their way underground. The group has a transforming effect upon it members, not only by providing leadership and a purpose, but by actually changing their bodies. This was obviously the work of the mutagen found in Price's blood stream, although how exactly it got there is unclear. She spoke of a group of elders, or leaders who bestowed the changes upon the Lost. Price referred to these leaders only as The Lost, implying that perhaps they were the actual "Lost" and that their new followers had taken the name from themselves. Price was at her most deranged when describing these mysterious figures, referring to them alternately as "gods," "demons," and "artifexes." Beyond these rather colorful appellations, she offered no real clue as to The Lost's true nature. Analysis of the mutagen in her blood provided little other valuable insight, except the chemical composition of it defied every effort to pinpoint its origin. Since Price's doomed expedition, The Lost have begun to make their presence felt in the city. No one knows for sure just who they are or where they came from (other than underground), but everyone agrees that they are a tremendous threat. At first it was just organized bands of seemingly normal homeless individuals. Then, larger, decidedly less human-looking creatures were spotted terrorizing parts of the city. In addition to perpetrating crimes like robbery and murder, the Lost also engage in frequent kidnapping. Apparently they increase their own ranks by snatching poor citizens from the streets and transforming them into monsters. Every time a prisoner is captured he or she claims to be one of The Lost and refuses to speak until, within a few hours, utter madness sinks in and the prisoner becomes totally unintelligible. Recently, the Dawn Patrol managed to capture one of the more terrifying humanoid creatures that had started showing their faces above ground. This particular hulking beast attacked a Dawn Patrol headquarters, along with a cadre of only slightly less fearsome members of The Lost. The "champion" who seemed to be leading the attack was killed, and his autopsy revealed some shocking information. Although his DNA, dental patterns, and fingerprints had all been mangled by the mutagen, together they provided enough information to identify the beast as having once been Quint Velasquez. The former hero who had accompanied Price on her initial exploration hadn't been as "lucky" as his comrade. She had escaped with her body, if not her mind. He had lost them both. So yeah, sure you read the wiki. Or even any of the Lost mission briefings, debriefings, or comments. (Edit: And around level 23 or if you do the Vanguard arcs, particularly Dark Watcher's, you learn how the Lost and the Rikti are connected.)

Try rebooting the game. (Not the PC.) Edit: If you are using the HCLauncher, open your settings for the launcher and choose to have it reset your graphics. Your scale bar is way too long in the pic. *shrug*

Were you by chance on a level 41 character at the time? Because it still goes up to 50.