twozerofoxtrot

You can like something without it being perfect. Kinda like HC in general. Or people.

Overall I really liked the Story Arcs a lot. But I've enjoyed all of the Story Arcs from the HC team so my experience might be 💯 % different fundamentally from Burt's. My going-in expectation in every story arc is that it's best consumed as a solo experience. I feel this way with with pre-i24 story arcs and continue to feel that way. If anything, devs have made the arcs more team-accessible by pushing some of the windowed text for the team leader into local npc chatter. Older story arcs never did that and often dumped a wall of exposition about Vanessa DeVore or Malta or different dimensions in your face. So I don't mind that they were wordy. It's sort of what I expected and show up for. A story, in my story arc. That may have read as a little condescending but I just wanted to beat the point to death before I go on. Because... ..none of these are story arcs. They're trials and task forces designed to be played through by a team at a relatively fast clip. They're not the place to build on pre-existing lore but rather to exploit that lore established in story arcs for a mutual understanding of what's going on. On the flip side, outside of the badge mission for Frostfire how often do people form a team to run through the Hollows arcs? How often do we see teams forming for World Wide Red? Dean and Vincent? Which, for my money, are some of the best "original" story arcs as far as writing and gameplay. All that to say that you're not wrong for how you feel about the arcs Burt, but you might be expecting something from the experience that it's never been designed to offer. Moving onto something else now... Depending on what you click, it does change what happens in the final mission and who you have to fight and who helps. Besides that, if you choose the exact right sequence of options you can get 2 badges. I had beef with that but I've already put that out elsewhere on the forums. I wholeheartedly agree here. I've felt like HC has needed a dedicated editor for not only their written content but their patch notes as well. I also tried to provide input into the writing for the Striga arcs during their open beta, and while I think my geometry errors feedback was noted the comments on writing were ignored. Which did nothing to incentivize me to do the same thing for the KW arcs in the last open beta.

Spines/Regen seems like it'd be a challenge to build for on a Scrap. I think based on what you've written here you're on solid foundation, and yeah it would need to be expensive to be strong enough to keep up with other hitters. I'm guessing Crit Strikes Proc is in Spine Burst in the hopes that it might generate more chances to proc with more bodies around? I think this makes sense but I'd personally probably try it in Quills instead. I know that might sound like a terrible idea cause it'll floor the proc rate, but there's two things Quills has over Spine Burst: The activation time on Spine Burst is really long, and the time before effect (and when the Crit Strikes proc would trigger) is half of that. Crit Strikes proc only stays up for 3.25 seconds, and the rest of Spines is a likewise very slowly animating set. This could lead to your friend very likely never getting a chance to see the benefit of the proc'd buff before it wears off. Spines does not have this issue because as a damage toggle it's always running. Though the proc rate is floored, your net opportunity to proc should be much higher because it's rolling on every enemy in melee range. This is the same logic why people put Might of the Tanker proc in their damage toggles and end up with an effect +6.7 Res any time they stand in a group of enemies. It's going to go off much more randomly, but more frequently, if that makes sense. That said, I've no experience with a Spines Scrap so this is purely theory on my part. But something to consider, I hope, based on how I've laid my thoughts out.

Skorry hit the nail on the head. Some if not all the names were direct references to Nintendo games. Blazing Blade and Binding Blade inparticular were English titles of two different Fire Emblem games.

I have a fire×3 dom that flies and excels at what you are mentioning. The only time she goes into Melee is if I need to top off End with Consume. I also have a very tanky FF/Elec Defender that... wasn't supposed to end up as good as she is. But very survival without much effort and thanks to Shock does pretty decent damage.

Love: Everlasting RP community. I may not be in your Discords, and I may not be around for your events, but I still love you all. Hate: Certain windows that can't have their internal frames resized, like the email window. You can't even scroll down if the message is too long, lol.

If you know the keys that are bound type: /bind [boundkeys] nop Hit enter. That will clear the bind. Spelling is correct. N-O-P.

Erin West - 'Cutting Back Old Growth' Renamed the Alpha Team members. 👀

I mean, we can talk about doing something about Rage but it's not just Rage in a vacuum and we see that already in the first few comments. Super Strength is Plant Control before there was Plant Control. Personally, thematically, think Rage is megastupid. Sure, some Super Strength heroes and villains "rage" (Hulk, Bane, etc) but they're the exception, not the norm. I don't want my main Inv/SS to be "raging" when she fights. I just want a strong as heck villain, Apokolips/Thanos style. But what does that mean mechanically? Didly squat. Procing out KO Blow and Foot Stomp in all their glory and riding the +40 ToHit from Rage (you didn't think it was the damage that mattered did you?) and then doing the same for Crosspunch and Gloom, so that the -9999% damage means effectively nothing; that's Super Strength being super strong. I like the suggestions of improving under-picked powers, and buffing the damage in the first three single target attacks. I'd prefer a slightly different modification to the powers themselves (a 270 arc cone for Hand Clap + damage/vectored KD and Hurl basically getting the Dominator version from Earth Assault), but as a long time SS player, that's the general direction I'd like to see. And as long as those powers hit like a mack truck? I don't care what you do with Rage. Dumpster it. Turn it to Build Up. Make it a Defiance-like Auto. It doesn't really matter. As long as the rest of the set feels good and it's not just Carrion Creepers and Seeds of Confusion carrying the rest of the dead weight along at mach 10.

What they say in GW2 (only half jokingly) is that fashion is the true endgame.

Might be a shard-specific thing. Doms are really common on Everlasting. It might have to do with the damage/speed meta, which Doms can keep up with but never excel at and don't enable (the way a /cold or a /kin troller might). It might also have to do with the tightness of a good Dom build. When I build a Dom, there's always at least a certain challenge in balancing recharge, end use, and damage (often with some powers being proc bombed). With a Controller it's a lot less stressful because your secondary often brings the tools you need to enable your goals. Just some thoughts. But much the same as Uun, I love Doms.

And in fact HC has implemented a lot of Horizontal Progression via new badges, non-combat summons/weapons, and the Prismatic Aether costumes. I imagine that they'll continue to do so with future releases since they've been generally quite popular.

DP/Ninja is a combo that I loved, and love seeing other people try. I've been meaning to try a DP/Tac Arrow but the recent patch has me crazy for Regen and Psi Armor.

I'm with Kaizen I've found it really strong on Sents. Especially flying Sents. The cone devour works exceptionally well with flight. After that? I'm toying around with a brute and a scrapper. Early days but so far so good. I did do some tests with Tankers in open beta and overall it's good but nothing I felt over the moon about.

I also agree with Thraxen that he's the archetypal Energy/Invul Sent. But if you want to avoid the disappointment that is Energy Blast, are flexible with your interpretations of his powers, and use color tinting, I think a Fire/Inv Sent with the fire colored to your tastes works really well. Flares looks like a flurry of micro rockets. Blazing Blast looks like a powerful energy beam. Fire Breath with the alt animation looks like a palm mounted flamer. Rain of Fire looks like it shouldn't be taken so skip it. 🙃 And so on. Sonic is another option, especially with alt animations. But the sound effects might wreck your immersion.

Mids lists the lower of the two values for SL resist in Psi Armor currently. The smash value should be (baseline) 7.5% higher in game than the lethal, due to Psychic Wall.

Rave Ninja - Katana/Psi Scrapper

Just to add to the pile you get a sample of what you're asking for with Shield Defense. Do you dislike anything at all about how SD restricts certain character customization options? Consider that. Also, a lot of suit of armor type characters take SD. For the Armor.

Not as a critique of your review but rather to inform, Alexander is introdiced to the player in the original version of the game as an anti-Hero for the Redeemer badge and then during John Houston's arc as the deuteragonist we see more of him and he's somewhat characterizedby his reactions to the Warriors and the player. My assumption going through this arc was that they didn't flesh him out more because we've already experienced the character throughout the game.

The power doesn't operate in a vacuum, it's part of a set. It was suddenly nerfed after the set overall was suddenly buffed. Gaz already laid how how it was was being affected. Troo, give it a shot first and see how it plays before going down a spiral on this.

This is all off the top of my head on my lunch break so pardon the stream of consciousness. Psi Armor is one of those sets that really wants you to take all the powers; pairing it with Fire is a good call since you can realistically get by with like 5 or 6 picks in Fire. You can maybe skip Memento Mori if you don't think you'll use it. You don't need Hasten to make it work well if you're building with sets that have recharge bonuses. The absorb is perma out of the box and the resists it offers only stack 3 time. Put the Absorb on Auto to keep it up at max stacks all the time. I like slotting the Drain Psyche cone with a 3pc Prev Optimization set that focuses on Acc and Recharge. You can go for more but if I slottwd more in there it would probably be heals. The first 3 armor toggles I went with 4pc Unbreakable Guard but you can basically do anything that gets you to ED Resists (for the Mez Prot toggle I put the 7.5% HP unique in there and focused on End redux). I just like this set for the End Redux and SLM Def. The Auto Def power is a great spot for a Kismet Mule. I recommend a flying Sent for this set so you can angle the cone for Drain Psyche best; use that thing off of cooldown, the recharge is really short if you're only hitting one or two. I always put 5pc Coercive Persuasion in the Aura. 6pc if you want the Ranged Def. When the proc goes off it's mayhem and really helps if you're in the middle of a mess. EPP is definitely user preference. Personally I'm a fan of the Mace Pool Coordinated Targeting since it buffs your team with ToHit debuff protection, but you need to grab something before that you might not care about.

I was going to say just that. Singy's atracks are mostly either autohit or baseline 1.2 accuracy on CoD (only lift is at 1.0). So it could be an oversight in copying over from Singy. BTW Checked Symph's Reverb and it also has that -25% ToHit debuff; I would imagine for the same reason.

Hi @Velvet Violet, thank you for taking the time to ask and solicit our feedback. I think @Zhym and @JKCarrier very succinctly summed up my feelings on the matter so if you just want the topline, that will do it. But if you want my detailed, organized thoughts, then I'll provide them here. --------------- Context: I did this arc with my main, who starts every page or issue fully "content complete" since about mid-2020. This means my character has every badge, has run every arc, task force, or trial available. Why I bring it up is that my running assumption going into a fresh page is that if there is prerequisite content that needs to be done for a badge unlock, that won't be an issue. This was a faulty assumption in the case of Erin West. —----------- Specifically with regards to the badge implementation versus the rest of the bonus badges offered on HC, again I think it’s more or less been identified but the method of implementation for Erin West deviates from what we’ve seen before. Obviously arcs like Bobby Curtin or Shauna Bruan are a bit of a throwaway, since all you need to do is run the arc and make choices, one or the other. The patch notes more or less dial you into what you needed to do but even absent that, getting the one badge for Shauna Bruan for example might lead you to wonder what might happen if you made a different choice? There are a few other cases like this and it’s not quite a challenge but it does set a baseline for expectation. Moving up the chain, you have something like Dr. Stribbling’s, which force repeats through the Ouro arc system but the mission progression and very nature of the characters you are dealing with may entice the player in that direction, anyways. Again, absent any context clues from the patch notes a player might reasonably assume there was something special if they ran through all of the possible ways to handle the final confrontation. Or at the least, their curiosity would be satisfied. But the way you can shortcut options in the first Ouro run certainly provides enough of a signal that there’s something special going on. There’s no wrong answer to the test other than to give up. Possibly the closest example to how challenging this badge could be to get would be Tarnished Star, but as I said up top, in my specific case it was a non-issue because I was already “content complete” when the badge came to Open Beta and Live. However, for players who were just looking for the badge and don’t have a near-psychotic desire to 100% the game, it was probably a frustrating slog. I can now empathize. But the fact remains that if you know that you need to put some bad guys away, you can knuckle-down and do all those pre-level 30 Ouro missions. Eventually you’ll get there. —------------ I’m going to put a pin in that and move onto an observation I’ve made about your arcs: you want to push the limit of what the game allows for player agency through the choice and dialog system. It’s the case in a lot of your more recent arcs but specifically with Erin West, I’ve noticed a trend more towards something like single-player CRPG dialog choices. Generally speaking, I’m a fan of this idea and your implementation (if this is indeed your intent), but there’s a glaring issue with it: we’re not playing a single-player CRPG. If you bolo a choice, you own that choice until the arc is done. There’s no save-scumming. You can quit the TF if you're doing it via Ouro, but by then you might be 30 minutes in, for nothing. Who wants to do that? Forget if it’s even fun or not (it’s not), is that even acceptable design for this type of game? If you were trying to find the envelope for what CoX can offer as far as narrative choice with consequences, I think we found it here in Erin West’s arc. Gating rewards behind certain choices when there are this many choices is a dubious call in my opinion. This is markedly different from, say, getting the achievement for learning the Necron language or wearing the Halo Device in Rogue Trader, where a quick reload gets you the achievement and you can move on playing how you wish for the rest of the experience. Forgive the specificity of the examples, but IYKYK. So my takeaway here is that having a lot of choices that provide roleplay agency: good. Having achievements or other prestige rewards gated behind them: bad. It effectively eliminates that agency for players wanting to collect badges. —------------ A few other thoughts on this arc which may help provide more context to how it’s challenging to pick up these badges: There’s absolutely a massive clue that says “hey if you have a contact that’s worked with Crey, hit them up for some extra detail.” And that’s great. It’s frankly necessary and rewards people who are engaged with the content. I love that. What I don’t love is that Crey is quite ubiquitous throughout the game and this is max-level content, meaning it takes into account the full breadth of the game. Not just the pre-level 29 blue side arcs, all of it. Case in point, I went to Tavish Bell on my first playthrough because of course I did. I thought getting clues got me what I needed for the badge unlock, but by the end of the arc nothing had materialized. Later playthroughs I tried Kelly Uqua. Then I tried both. Then I tried, in no particular order: Timothy Raymond, Black Scorpion, Protector Z-958, Doc Buzzsaw, Synapse, and Mynx. Obviously all of those would be fast flops, but it didn’t narrow down my frustration. Despite knowing Dr. Orts was affiliated with Crey, he didn’t come to mind. Maybe because I associated him with Incarnate content that’s outside the span of the “normal” game? I honestly couldn’t say. But he wasn’t the only one I didn’t think about, because another player who shared frustrations with me on the badge said they considered Fusionette and Manticore and those options for contacts flew right by me. I’m sure you see what I’m getting at here. It’s not immediately obvious who you need to talk to, much less how many clues you need to gather up, and in what sequence. These criteria in combination are very problematic. This was outlined by others but I wanted to really excavate the context here so you understand I didn't just run this once or three times and sit down with my arms crossed and pout. I ran this arc for roughly 8 hours, scooping out every little hint or clue I could find or think of. If I hadn't picked up Uncomfortable Truths on naturally on my second run, I would have thought the arc was legitimately bugged. —------------ I close with this: I feel Petrograd thanking help received from the arc writer and a GM on advice and feedback for picking up the badge should have been a red flag during the Open Beta when they posted it. I’m not casting any shade at all on Petrograd, (to whom I’m deeply thankful), but if players couldn’t figure the Truth Seeker badge out short of getting input from the actual game staff who had the answers, then that should have been seriously evaluated and corrected during the Focused Feedback phase.

I know I was on the cusp of this because I saw the option to respond snarkily about Ravenstorm on my 1st playthrough* and didn't take it because I was too busy "roleplaying" my character and completely unaware how I was going to spend the next cumulative 8 hours of my free time re-running this arc trying to figure out the badge unlock criteria. But if I recall correctly, you need to tell Erin before you meet the team something about her getting her first pick and she counters that you weren't, and you have to probe once more to find out Ravenstorm was. Then bring up Ravenstorm to the team mates when you first talk to them, and get their reactions. Then at some point... I want to say just as things are starting to turn south, the option will appear for Erin for you to snark at her (never let go of that rage). There might be more, and I might be slightly off, but those are the breadcrumbs I can offer. It'll probably be another 3 months easily before I attempt to figure this out because I'm way too burned out by my recent experience with it. I'll literally need to keep a running log of all dialog tree options to cross off through the whole arc to nail it down (something I was starting to do for the badges before I was told of Petro's guide).

That's where pet messages will go if you have them enabled. Are you sure they're turned on? Options > Windows > Pets > Pet Response Text