Luminara

No. When Ouroboros was being designed, the developers needed to ensure that the system retained a degree of challenge and enjoyability without sacrificing the flexibility it was intended to offer. That it wouldn't be boring, and as evidenced by the distinct lack of multiple Perez Park instances throughout the entirety of the game's life, players find mass obliteration of grey-cons to be boring. There were two possible approaches to preventing Flashback missions from being boring. The first was to make every NPC in the game "level-less", but that entailed a unique problem: NPCs don't level up. They don't grow stronger in the way player characters do. There is scaling of the effects applied to their powers so they're always dealing an appropriate amount of damage, or debuff strength, or status effect duration, but they have very specific, hand-picked powers assigned to them and no ability to grow beyond that. THey don't have power sets, they don't select powers from pools, they just have a few powers and that's it. Consequently, exceeding an NPC's level by even a bit typically renders them non-threatening, as their limited repertoire of powers present less and less challenge to a player character. That level 1 Hellion might seem like a real challenge to your level 1 character, but it's not even remotely difficult when you're level 6 and have three more powers than you started with, or level 12, or level 20, because that Hellion still only has a gun with one bullet and a knife or fist. That Hellion isn't "fun" to fight any more, even if it's scaled up to your level, because that one bullet is far less dangerous when you have piles of Lethal Resistance, that fist or knife is far less threatening when you're 33.96% likely to dodge it, and they don't have another attack to throw at you. So "level-less" NPCs would never pass the "fun test" in Flashback content. That left only the use of number two, exemplaring. Having previously implemented a form of that mechanic as a means of curbing TF abuse, it was readily applicable and very appropriate for use in Flashbacks. Players could fight critters at the proper level, with a few extra tricks up their sleeves but not enough to render the entire experience so easy as to be a joke. It wasn't an arbitrary decision, they did it because all available evidence indicated that players didn't want to fight combat dummies, and the purpose of Flashbacks was to permit players to experience content the way it was designed, not as tank-mage runs through missions filled with greys. As to why they used the TF locking code, that was necessary because the character has to be locked at the exemplared level for the duration of the Flashback. Without that lock, character level could vary or be loopholed in some way. The TF lock also prevents players from inviting a higher level character after beginning the Flashback specifically because it would be possible to SK to that higher level character (the TF abuse previously mentioned), thereby utterly nullifying the purpose of being exemplared to the mission level. Merits had nothing to do with how Flashbacks work. Merits weren't even in the concept stage when Flashbacks were being created, they were added several issues later. None of the restrictions in Flashback mechanics were designed to prevent players from garnering rewards of any kind, only to ensure that those rewards were obtained within the basic expectation of meeting some degree of challenge. Not necessarily the same degree challenge as it would have been if experienced at native level, but reasonably close. Flashback mechanics are a complex web of intertwined systems all working together, and sometimes against each other, to create a usable framework. Remove one and the whole thing collapses. The locks on Flashbacks will likely never be removed unless a development team redesigns the entire system and/or all of the mechanics it uses. It is what it is because it has to be what it is, or it doesn't work at all.

Well, critters beyond the aggro cap can use ranged attacks and Taunts no longer entice enemies to attack the Taunter, so NPC allies' gruesome suicides are all but guaranteed. You could call that "fixed", if you look at it from certain perspectives. Of course, you still have to wait a year or twenty for the last couple of enemies to return to the spawn point after they run away, which artificially keeps them alive, but many of them can be killed by AoEs going off near them before they're freed, so there aren't actually that many you ever have to deal with.

Add free 10 minute (real time) versions of every costume. Gives players enough time to run outside and hit a few things, grab a scanner/paper mission and try it out in an instanced map, see if they like the costume. A test drive before they buy the car. The costumes are already separated in the vendor interface, so 10 minute temps wouldn't clutter it up.

I'm glad I don't do anything like trials or *Fs. I don't need robot upskirt shots in my life.

The Halloween vendors who only accept Halloween salvage, which is only available to new players when the Halloween event is running or at high prices on the market between Halloween events? Yeah, that's more accessible for new players.

Fringe events.

New players aren't going to know they can buy a temporary version at the P2W/T4V vendors, or wait for a Halloween event to see them, or know which ones will have female/male/huge models. Hell, I've been playing for years and I don't remember what half of the costumes look like, which ones I might like, which ones I would avoid, which I might consider worth spending PAPs to buy. And if the player doesn't like the costume, there's no refund, no exchange. Find a way to make the holographic vendors show the selected costume so players know what they're paying for, perhaps?

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_defense.invulnerability.tough_hide&at=tanker Is Invincibility the only source of Defense available to Invuln/* and */Invuln characters? Do Defense buffs from other players fail to work on them? Are they locked out of powers like Combat Jumping, Stealth and Weave? Permanently laboring under the burden of Luck inspirations being disabled? If the answer is no (which it is), then DDR benefits Invuln beyond simply keeping Invincibility's Defense from being completely nullified. That DDR applies to all sources of Defense the character is using, which makes all of those sources of Defense more effective, more efficient and more reliable. This is especially important now that critters well beyond the aggro cap can attack an aggro-saturated character and potentially stack significantly greater amounts of -Def on him/her. ~23.5% (tanker value after slotting)/17.5% (scrapper/brute value after slotting)+Def to Lethal/Smashing/Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative isn't "a big factor"? Could you clarify why you don't consider a Defense buff that sizeable to be important?

You can point the finger squarely at Creative Labs. Their approach to dealing with competition was to bankrupt competitors with legal fees by filing false patent violation suits in rapid succession, buy out the companies they ruined and bury their technology. The only choice anyone was left with was to use onboard chips or put money into the pockets of greedy, corrupt, dishonest shit-bags peddling an over-priced inferior product. That was what caused the audio chip segment to collapse. Aureal's Vortex was the most innovative audio chip ever created, and because CL was incapable of competing honestly, it's gone. No, I'm not still angry, I'm just bitter and vengeful.

I have an honest question, directly relevant to this topic. If "AE babies" are so prolific, that means there's either a sizeable permanently resident portion of the population which fits that profile; or there's a massive amount of turnover as players join, PL to 50+, leave shortly thereafter and are replaced by more new players who do the same thing; or this is all overblown drama. So the question is, which of those is correct? The first possibility confuses me, because it doesn't make any sense to pick up a game like this, blitz to "the end", then leave without ever actually doing anything, going anywhere, The second disturbs me, because it implies an enormous amount of traffic and interest in the game, potentially tens of thousands of players, but there's no other evidence supporting that possibility. The third just means I need to break out the popcorn ostrich, and I'm cool with that.

Upon zoning into a Personal Story Mission, all of the character's toggles are deactivated and all powers locked out when the character is transformed into whichever NPC is featured in the mission. The game seems to be trying to cancel active buffs as well, but... well, it really just screws it up in the worse possible way. What happens is, the game cancels the effect, and immediately reapplies the effect. For buffs with long durations, such as Hasten or Dull Pain, what this means is the power's activation sound continues to play continually for the remaining duration of the buff. With bad timing, that means a player is subject to as much as 119 seconds of activation audio spam. It doesn't take 119 seconds to become intolerable, it's a nightmare after a few seconds. Could you folks maybe poke the engine so it cancels buffs correctly (or, much better, enact a suppression system instead of full toggle drop, so we're not left utterly naked when the mission ends? really, really hate turning 10 toggles back on just because some Paragon developer thought it'd be cool to make us plod around as Tyrant or The Center)?

Laptop master volume is generally at 20-24 (unless it's raining. no insulation or ceiling between my ears and the roof (roof is thin corrugated steel over 1/2" OSB), and rain sounds like someone shooting cymbals with an assault rifle on full auto. have to increase the volume to 66-75 to hear over the rain). I'm not hearing impaired, the Realtek chip and speakers in this thing just aren't very good.

That's what she said.

Exploration is the first thing I do. New world, time to go walkabout! Must see what there is to be seen, find what there is to be found, aggro EVERYTHING... that last one happens despite my attempts to prevent it.

We'll both die of old age before that happens. I'll own your ass on rep in no time flat, though. STEP IT UP!

I don't know... I suspect just about every player alive would be at risk of head explodey if they encountered nothing but spawns of healers healing each other, making them nearly impossible to defeat. I know I'd have a serious meltdown. They'd probably hear my screams at the most distant point in the universe.

Doing so would imply that changing the names of a few powers is a complex, difficult task which would require an enormous investment of time and effort, rather than the simple and easily executed alteration that it is, thus indicating that they have little regard for or faith in our development team's intellectual capacity.

We have office maps with 17 elevators, floors with nothing but an S-shaped hallway connecting elevators (no rooms, no spawns, nothing but the two elevators on the floor), caves with empty rooms at x8 team size, office buildings opening into caves or sewers from the front door, sliding glass doors closing off empty 10' square rooms... proper map design wasn't one of the strong points of the original development teams.

Here's a short selection of possible names: Garbage For Animation Only Joke's On You Set Mule 1.848 Seconds Of Life You'll Never Get Back Idiot Identifier Tits On A Boar As can be seen in this screenshot, Provoke hit. Twice. The critter was Taunted, kept running, Taunted a second time, and it not only didn't stop, it ran right out of visual and targeting range. Here it is again. Provoke hit, critter just kept running. This one didn't stop running until it reset and moseyed back. These powers don't work any more. People have been complaining about excessive panic flight behavior in critters for a couple of years, and nothing's been done to fix it. It's reached the point of obviating an entire game mechanic. Clearly, there's either no desire to address the problem, or no capability to do so. The solution, then, has to be to change the names of Taunts so players aren't deceived into taking them for combat purposes. Give them names which appropriately reflect their ineffectiveness so it's clear that they're no longer intended to be functional, useful or serve any purpose other than filling a space in a set or pool.

There are 5 prisoners, not 3. You need to go to the south and free the other two.

I just replayed Long Jack's story arc (Striga chapter 2 in Ouroboros) because none of this sounded right. No "Forlorn Tunnel" in Striga, no missions to select one hostage out of three, nothing of the sort that I remembered from the last time I played through this zone's content. This isn't in Striga, it's in First Ward. Anna Palatine's arc. I'm out of time for testing this morning (farm to tend (real farm, not game)), so if someone else wants to step in and try to find the issue and a resolution, it's "Abused and Scorned Tho' We May Be (First Ward, Ch. 2)" in the 25-29 Flashback bracket. If not, I'll try to get to it in an hour or three.