Luminara

Converters weren't in the game at all when I stopped playing near the end of '11, so I had to learn that from scratch. Merits weren't useful for buying anything but recipes when I left, but all it took for me was to see converters offered by the vendors to know that I could use them, to make what I needed from garbage and make a profit. And market prices are right there, in plain sight. I had that figured out within 15 minutes. I can't understand why anyone presumes new players will find it any more difficult. There is no knowledge gap. It's not even a crack on the sidewalk.

Then don't enter the cage. You've got plenty of other damage/mez mitigation tools at your disposal. You've gone from stating that staying out of melee range was preferable to asking for a mobile Faraday Cage attached to critters so you... still have to be in melee range to benefit from it... That, or you're asking for a PBAoE Hold emanating from critters, which is just... way over the top. Game breaking over the top. If you consider the actual impact of those changes, you might. I'm an exclusively solo player. I disagree with your assessment. EMP Arrow has always been a crutch for players to lean on, propping up a set that was so bad at debuffing that only enthusiasts bothered to play it as a defender, corruptor or mastermind, and so heavily reliant on controls that it allowed controllers to almost completely reverse the changes which prevented the game from being City of Statues. The beta changes to TA have removed the need for a crutch, the need for EMP Arrow to compensate for the poor performance of the debuffs in the set, while simultaneously adding new utility and versatility to the power. Solo or teamed is irrelevant, beta TA as a whole is leagues ahead of where it stands on the live servers. Your suggestions ignore that, disregarding the set entirely and focus on one power. You're not looking at it within the context of the set. TA doesn't need the changes you're asking for, and EMP Arrow doesn't have any glaring issues which would justify those changes.

Sounds like you already had a lot of support on the team. Not much that can be done to TA to fix that... if anything, these going to make the problem worse. People might actually ask for TAs on teams now, instead of everyone mentioning that their cats are on fire and logging off when a TA joins, and you'll have to endure this situation frequently. Oh, well, at least you can blast! 😄

It is.

It's really not. I had more than that before the end of my first week when I started on the HC servers.

Isn't every luxury? No it isn't. A pay wall would restrict players from entering certain bases or zones at all unless they paid for the item. That's not the case here.

I hate being cold, but I love winter. The view outside of my door is like a Christmas card when it snows, young pines covered in snow, the ground white and shining. I wait all year for the snow, every year, since I built my cabin. It's glorious to behold. It's worth the discomfort of wet socks or having to ride a motorcycle in December, as far as I'm concerned. Remembering the beauty and wonder of winter is what makes me a happy person, keeps Christmas in my heart year-round. They can get around to turning on the snow in-game whenever. I want the real thing. I need my Christmas postcard fix.

Part of the goal of the changes to TA is to move it away from being reliant on controls. In the last attempt to address TA's problems before the original servers were shut down, the one notable change made was to turn PGA's Sleep into a rapidly pulsing control, which pushed the set into being completely dependent on controls to compensate for the weakness of the debuffs. This development team is taking the other direction, making the debuffs stronger, weakening the controls and firmly focusing the set as a defender primary. You're always free to PM @Captain Powerhouse and ask him to consider your proposal, but I can save you the time by telling you now that he's not going to make EMP Arrow work like Volcanic Gases or Distortion Field, because it would be a step backward, and because it would require further balance adjustments across the set. Defenders buff and debuff, first and foremost. They can control, but that's not their primary function. The HC team is realigning TA to more accurately and fully exist as a defender primary, partly by removing some of the overabundance of control in the set. Yes, that's actually how almost all ranged AoE Holds work. Whether they're location-targeted or critter-targeted, they affect whatever is in their radius when the activation time ends, they have a base duration (which can be enhanced of Power Boosted), then they end. Ranged AoE Holds which reapply their effect aren't the norm. It's the same mag 3 as everything else like it. And unless something else was changed, it should also still have a 50% chance for +1 mag, allowing the potential to Hold bosses. You really should test it to see what it does. If you're guessing at the mag, it means you haven't tried using the power. Please, do. If you don't know what's actually going on, your feedback risks being interpreted as noise. If you choose to, you can enter the field to gain the buff, but you don't have to. It's not mandatory, nor even necessary for every play style. TA having Holds which controllers can stack with their primary powers is a bonus, not a requirement, nor do those Holds need to conform to any specific play style preferences simply because they're available to controllers. That is the whole point of archetypes having access to more than one primary or secondary, so players can choose different sets to fit their needs for different characters. If you want Distortion Field, play */Time Manipulation. If you want EMP Arrow, play TA. Differences like this allow us far more opportunities to explore the potential of different set combinations. That's what made this game memorable for many of us. There are two controller primaries and three defender secondaries which support the play style you're asking for. That's 59 possible combinations without repeating any specific set/set combos. If I were looking for another way to meet that goal, lobbying for a new controller primary might be a better path, considering how comparatively few of those there are.

It's deliberate. If players had the ability to TP one critter after another without aggroing the entire spawn, they'd do exactly that, and diminish what little challenge Cryptic was capable of creating. The Alert mechanic is the specific counter to player tendency to find the easiest way to "win" with powers like TP Foe/Teleport Target or snipes. The HC team could change it, make it a more realistic response, basically causing critters to start searching in different directions when they're Alerted that a buddy has gone missing, but that would lead to entire spawns scattering all over the map. Is that what we want? Fears were changed precisely because they did that, caused entire spawns to flee in different directions. Most players avoided Fear powers so they didn't have to deal with that. I suspect that creating the same situation with TP Target would probably lead to very few people bothering to use it, and be viewed as a sizeable step backward. We do have spawn leashes now which could be used to limit scattering, but then, we'd have players leveraging TP Target to pick off one enemy at a time, staying beyond the scatter/search range, essentially negating the purpose of the Alert mechanic, and aggro altogether in many scenarios. That's not a very balanced approach, so it would require reducing the enhanced range of TP Target to something inside the distance of the leash, diminishing its value and limiting its usage, and probably reversing all of the work by causing spawns to aggro on the player almost immediately anyway, since they wouldn't be far from the spawn. As unrealistic as the interaction between Alert and aggro may be, it's probably the best way they can work within the confines and context of the balance decisions made and the way various powers work in conjunction with these mechanics.

The Hold is a one-shot application. The cage is a separate, player/pet-only effect that doesn't affect critters.

Very few critter-affecting powers are flagged not to aggro. Perception debuffs (Smoke, Smoke Grenade, Flash Arrow) and Confuses are a couple of examples. Teleport Foe, and its replacement, are treated as attacks, thus causing aggro. If a critter is far enough away from the spawn point, and not near other critters, and nothing is looking in that critter's direction (critters have visibility limitations (specifically, the general AI underlying basic critter behavior has a cone of sight, outside of which it's coded to ignore players and their actions completely)), it can sometimes be attacked without aggroing the rest of the spawn, but that's not a guaranteed result. When performing what counts as an attack with any power not specifically flagged to prevent aggro, expect the entire spawn to bring the party to you. Yeah, it's been fiddly since the game went live. Teleporting repeatedly as quickly as possible (queueing teleports by selecting a destination before the current teleport activation has completed) tends to cause it to occur more frequently. They're working on it. Of course, so was Cryptic, then Paragon, and it's still wonky, so... *shrug*.

New players also won't have several dozen or hundred characters, and since they're new, they won't have the sense of ennui toward exploration badges that comes from having played for years, nor a feeling of not having the time to collect them for all of their characters. If anything, being new, they're going to pursue those exploration badges like slavering saltwater crocs at a migration ford, eager to sink every 5 merit bonus into their IHASAFIDDY fund. And you know what else they won't have? A reason to complain about not having a slash command to instantly warp to their base, specifically because they're new and won't have ever used it, or even know it existed unless someone mentions it. They'll have the free zone/base/hub teleporter, and quite satisfied with that, they're definitely not going to storm the forums or quit the game because it's not /enterbasefrompasscode. Then these changes are extremely positive for new players, since it gives them free teleportation to explored zones, bases, social areas and transportation hubs in addition to the merits they'll be saving. They have their fast travel options, they feel even more rewarded and incentivized when they find exploration badges, and they're saving merits and inf* they otherwise might have spent on an over-priced P2W luxury. Oh, and they won't have to worry about a dangerously exploitable command, which someone could use to seriously mess up their day, being left active. That sounds like a win all around for new players.

Well, there's the problem. Cave Johnson bought all of the moon rocks.

Yes, characters are stored on the servers. Everything will be as you left it when you finish re-installing. Note that binds, saved costumes, saved power customizations, window positions or customizations, or third party mods will be gone, as those are stored on your computer, but your characters will not be naked, or in different costumes. You'll need to redo your bind files, your UI in the game, things of that nature, but again, I emphasize, your characters will still be there, just the way they were before you wiped your HDD.

That actually traces back to the Prohibition era. Making and moving alcohol illegally was a ticket to big payoffs in that period. Moonshine makers/runners used it as a means of getting by, criminal organizations in cities used it to amass wealth and power, and the government blundered on, unaware of the mess they were creating (organized crime and political corruption reached incredible highs due to Prohibition). When and where government officials found liquor, they'd smash barrels and bottles, destroy stills and arrest/fine everyone they could charge with an offense. This led to people referring to government officials as G-men or Feds. They were more hated and feared than tax collectors, who were already considered "the bad guys" by many. The Roswell incident, which all evidence indicates really was just a weather balloon, did help cement the idea of men in black being secretive government officials, but the foundation for the idea was born during Prohibition. ... I did mention that my interests were diverse. >.>

*ring ring* "Hello?" "Hi, I'm with the IRS, we'd like to audit your filings for the last seven years." *terrified screaming ensues*

Squirrel Girl.

Super baking, super knitting, super kissing, super ventriloquism... I'm still 99% convinced that Crisis on Infinite Earths was really a cover to retcon some of the goofiest powers Superman developed over the decades. George: "And then, he uses his super kiss to defeat-" Marv: "That's it, I'm destroying the universe."

Jessica is very intelligent, and easily spooked, so she's cautious about spiders. She doesn't display the same ferocity with spiders as she does harmless insects, and as far as I've been able to tell, she hasn't eaten one yet. Usually, if it moves, it's going down the gullet. May... she's still so young, she doesn't know what to do with bugs, including spiders. She stands back and watches her foster big sister deal with crawly things.

I didn't program it, I just tested, manipulated and abused it.

I can grow more onions, and my neighbors are always giving away eggs.

All three whip attacks in the Demons mastermind primary, Sleet, Freezing Rain, Tar Patch, Melt Armor, Slowed Response, Acid Mortar... these are all external, so I'm not seeing that precedent. Some powers, like Enervating Field, Sonic primaries and secondaries, other powers with sonic effects, would cause internal damage, but it would be very slow, taking hours, days, typically months or years. Even the most acute doses of radiation poisoning ever experienced by human beings, weakness and frailty didn't set in instantaneously. A massive microwave transmitter, a sonic cannon, nothing actually causes this kind of debilitation right away, or within seconds. By the very nature of the game, we're stepping outside of the boundaries of real world effects and pretending that they can be devastating in an instant, so Entangling's -Res doesn't need a special explanation or bending of logic, nor does it need to comply to anyone's imagined rules for what can or can't cause an effect. That's what our character bios and individual imaginations are for. I covered this exhaustively several pages back. The horse is dead, let's move on.

Clay has been eaten for thousands of years. Or, it has by several animal species. The minerals supplement their diets. At least one species of monkey has been seen and filmed eating charcoal and/or charred wood to aid digestion and ease stomach ailments.

Sauté the Spam/Treat/whatever in a skillet. Flip, sauté the other side and remove when both sides are slightly crispy. Lightly caramelize some rough-diced white or yellow onion in the same skillet. When the onion is nearly finished, push it to the side and fry up a few eggs, over easy. Serve the eggs over the Spam/Treat/whatever, top with the caramelized onion. Season to taste. I recommend going light on the salt, the canned meat is already going to be pretty salty. The caramelized onion will counter that with sweetness, both flavors complement the egg.