Chris24601

Not a punishment perhaps, but it should also not be required to turn it off just to not out level the moral choice at the end of a normal single faction playthrough just because you accidentally got too much patrol XP. Which, as a reminder, is the ask… smooth out the level bands enough that you don’t have to resort to turning off XP just to do a complete single faction playthrough. You’ll also note I don’t think it takes a radical shift. 1-12 for Nova, 8-18 for Imp and 14-24 for Neutropolis. Keep the exit missions at 20.

In terms of maps, I just replayed the Last Gasp of Praetoria arc for the first time since coming back and really appreciated the large outdoor and forest trails maps as being really good for some stories I’d like to tell. Relatedly, I would love to see versions of the existing outdoor forest maps wizard the physical war walls removed (just have the usual blue barriers for those edges). One of the most jarring things when doing a number of the Portal Corps mission is when you’re supposedly going into a wilderness dimension untouched by man, but there’s that obvious Paragon City war wall right there. Having versions without those for both the appropriate missions and for AE missions would be fantastic (I have a bunch of post-Praetorian War stories in mind, but it’s a real struggle to find appropriate maps).

I’d like to see some of the melee sets have their throwing knife ranged attack swapped out with some of the shockwave options you see the Knives of Vengeance using.

I’m not entirely sure they have a point. They’re so deep into rant mode they are ranting just for the sake of ranting. I mean, even if they’re right, what the heck is anyone supposed to do about it? Does anything even NEED to be done about it so long as enough donations come in each month to keep it running? It’s literally just doomposting to try and make others feel as miserable as they do. The real bone of contention is likely that they can’t stand that we aren’t playing the way they think we should. How dare we have fun in unapproved (by them) ways.

The rare times I actually did a Mayhem Mission, I always stealthed to the vault door and psychically knocked unconscious anyone who actually noticed with my extremely buff brain before zipping out of there. Zero casualties. Thanks to the “find contact” button and various other contacts you can approach without needing to be introduced by a broker, it’s pretty easy to level up without doing much that is more wicked than stealing from other criminals. With the right power sets/pools it gets even easier to envision a rogue who doesn’t kill anyone executing their plans. Heck, with a psychic powers build I can even justify “eliminate all witnesses” as my toon erasing all memories of my presence there when I knock them unconscious.

If you wanted a real supervillain experience, after leaving the tutorial, Redside 2.0 would dump into a dark room with no obvious exits and an AE interface to assemble your plans and unleash them upon the world. 😆

An issue I've run into repeatedly in the Mind Splitting Headache Rogue tip mission is that the final radio you need to complete the mission has no identifier to find it. If you kill everything in the mission a final enemy triangle appears with '???' as its name, that seems to indicate its location (though if so, three out of four attempts its spawning inside geometry), but a GM has said that's actually something else and it just happens to always be where I've found the radio on the times I've found it. However, this time the GM found the radio 100-ish feet from that marker. So either its dropping far outside the normal distance you'd expect from a tag to find it -or- its spawning with no tag at all and no way to find it but search/clear the entire map looking for it (and its NOT super obvious in the Rikti geometry). Anything you could do to make that be less of a chore would be appreciated.

Eleven. My Widow (which went Rogue ASAP after creation) is gone once I’m done with Hardcase’s “make money protecting St. Martial from demons” arcs (basically the highest level villain-exclusive arc I’ve found) and run through all the Rogue tips at 40+ once each (John Houston, while technically Rogue content, is positioned Blueside). Fortunately, there’s a number of Rogue-ish arcs in the earlier levels and access to First/Night Wards, RWZ and the Blueside rogue-to-hero tip missions can be a good palate cleansers across the 20-40 range. Ultimately, once you hit Grandville all the content there leans heavily villain. If you’re merely a Rogue it’s time to get out of dodge at that point. And that makes sense in terms of the alignment system’s original intent. Rogue and Vigilante were meant to be transitional states… an extra two days of grinding to get through with just enough content to carry you through to full-hero or villain. If you were going Rogue at all it was to transition to being a Hero. That’s changed a bit in Homecoming with the effort to put in some legit rogue and vigilante content, but it will realistically take more work than the current Dev team can really afford to meaningfully change that. I would say though that the John Houston arc being set in Paragon City is the model that should be used for Rogue-focused missions in the 40+ range. If you’re not out to be an Arachnos lackey then you have no business being on Grandville so placing future Rogue arcs in Paragon (and Vigilante arcs in the Isles) justice makes sense. Paragon City is the alternate zone for Rogues uninterested in Arachnos villainy. In lieu of massive original content for rogues and vigilantes, I’d suggest parsing through the existing contacts and arcs of the respective sides and opening ones that are “close enough” to rogues and vigilantes respectively. I’m betting you could find at least one arc per level band that could crossover (ex. a vigilante might not like Arachnos proper, but Marshal Brass is a pretty “reasonable authority figure” just trying to keep his city from exploding due to Aeon’s nutty schemes and “the enemy of my enemy” can justify it). Similarly, any of the arcs that reward you with cool temp powers because you held onto the artifacts/devices afterwards are probably justification enough for a rogue to be interested (if they’re being paid they’re good). The idea is to fill in that middle ground with more options for as little effort as possible.

Recluse is a social Darwinist who believes in survival of the fittest. If Longbow is more fit than the villains of Nerva then the villains deserve what they get. But yes, Longbow in general often comes off like a “villain with good publicity” both due to ill-considered unfortunate implications and the limited AI of mobs. My favorite unintentional war crime was that my character, a Widow so no criminal record in Paragon City, while dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, comes across a cowering woman being threatened by Longbow troops (for having psychic visions she can’t control) and they immediately turn and open fire with flame throwers. Yeah, the mission is CoV launch old so the threaten and cower was all they had for such mission objectives back then, and the AI has no idea what costume you’re wearing, but it’s still unintentionally hilarious to have it look like some scrawny girl walking around the corner and getting hosed down with napalm because she’d witnessed them threatening an innocent woman. Then I went and did Bane Spider Reuben’s arc where Longbow is using mind control to brainwash people into being a private army they plan to conquer a sovereign country with… because mind[bleep]ing people into fighting and dying for you is exactly what heroic organizations are supposed to be doing… said no one ever. So at this point, I justify Recluse allowing Longbow’s presence on Nerva as Recluse accepting them (and his grandniece who founded them) as the true villains they really are (I’m kidding… mostly).

There’s also a fourth repeatable contact; the guy by the distant zone portal to Cascade that you talk to briefly before going through. He’s unlocked by doing enough missions for the General that he introduces him as a standard contact. Further, while it’s quite long, Quarterfield is a task force (ergo repeatable) with no AVs in it… so it’s soloable (and will be scaled according to your difficulty settings). That said, if they wanted to put resources into revamping it I’d be quite happy (replace the generic soldiers with Vanguard troops), drop the rock with the Nemesis base on it (the models exist from the RWZ mission) somewhere in the Cascades or Chantry (and add some 40+ rocket troopers for Nemesis with the retro jetpacks on their back). Heck, since it’s technically run by what was Vanguard before there was a Vanguard, make it accessible through the RWZ by all alignments and drop a few unscrupulous type contacts in there for a few villain/rogue repeatables (akin to the repeatable alignment contacts in First Ward). That way the effort of updating it would be of benefit to everyone and not just blue side or red side.

Thanks to trick or treat badges I finally got enough at one time for a common costume, which I’ve decided will go to my Widow so they can have a helmet on and off look (in addition to all the other slots). Yeah, the drop rate is low enough and the return on the auction house high enough when you’re funding your toons off regular gameplay (I don’t have time for farming or playing the market) that nearly all mine are up on the auction house along with all the converters I buy after I hit 30+ merits. But that’s going to make actually using them on a costume for a fresh toon actually a special treat for me… something I probably wouldn’t appreciate if they were dropping often enough that I wasn’t always tempted to drop them on the market for the inf infusion (10 aether is and 20-ish million… or 2-3 archetype origin enhancements; about your only early source of good set bonuses before level 27+ and always really nice to have in the lower levels… especially recharge and recovery bonuses when you’re power and slot starved). So, yeah, their present drop rate is annoying for the instant gratification part of my brain, but the “special treat” reward center of my brain I think will provide me a lot more enjoyment in the long run, so leave it alone.

I’d be happy if they just raised the cap of stacks of things you’re selling past 10. It can be quite the pain when that 72 merit award drops and now you have to drag confirm stacks of converters 22 times over just to get them all on the market (yes, I am the other side of the converter to enhancement market; dropping all my merits into converters and selling them and all my uncommon, rare, and very rare recipes by dumping them for a few credits each for whoever the current highest bidders are). Even if it was just 15 (which keeps the binary of the number at 4 digits; 1111 instead of 1010) it’d shave a third off the number of times I have to drag and confirm. If possible though I’d prefer a 99 to 100 cap on the slider.

Eh… those choices don’t feel terribly thematically evocative except Ninja + Katana. What does Martial Arts have to do with Robotics? Why isn’t Savage Melee going to the Beast MM? This is what I meant about it being an issue. I’m sure your choices made sense to you, but they make little sense to me. So, in the spirit of helping out, let me share my thoughts for the associations. - Ninjas getting Katana attacks is so sensible I don’t think it even bears discussing reasons, but I will note that this choice does influence some of my other choices. - Demons get the Flaming Whip animations with melee attacks. There’s already significant enough changes that would be needed from the original power set that taking the whip animations and attaching them to some new melee powers wouldn’t be adding any more to the complexity than you’re already doing with a whole new AT. - Necromancy gets Dark Melee. I get the idea of Broadsword to line up with the Death Knights, but Ninjas will already be getting a blade with virtually identical powers and two Lethal blade sets would be a bit redundant. So giving the Necromancer Dark Melee attacks still fits it’s theme but will offer something different from the rest of the powersets. - I’ve got no objection to Dual Blades for Mercs (though I don’t think carrying over the combo system makes any sense), except that it really doesn’t fit their Pet capabilities at all (they’re absolutely the most ranged of the MM pets). My suggestion would be that these Merc Pets also get Dual Blades representing them as more like Spec Force Assassins. One alternate thought though would be make this the set that say, gives a ranged attack (burst), along with a rifle butt and a leg sweep to better fit in with his Mercs. - Robots paired with Martial Arts feels completely non-sensical to me. Maybe if the bots had a more anime mecha look to them I could almost see it. Instead I’d focus on Bots existing energy damage with a reddish energy color scheme and give them “power gauntlets” i.e. Energy Melee and pink/red pom-poms of death as the coloration and energy type matches and has been used with a number of tech-based foes (Crey, IDF) for powered melee attacks. - I sorta see the idea of Thugs and Mace attacks in the sense of a billy club or improvised weapon, but given the rough and tumble nature of the Thugs I think Street Fighting would align better thematically, particularly if the set keeps the top tier pet as your Melee Battle Buddy. - I’m torn with the Beasts. On the one hand Savage Melee makes some sense… limited shapeshifting matches the rather D&D druidic themes of the set, but we’ve already got two MM sets giving Lethal Damage attacks so instead I’m going to suggest Spines/Thorn Melee for some toxic damage added into the mix. That said, if you want to let it be more universal, give them Staff Melee since it could be a magic staff, but could also be used by someone with the “natural” or “tech” (see the tech staff options) origins as well. But those would be my suggestions (and my reasoning) for matching melee attacks to the MM sets.

I think what he’s saying is that the Captain concept would replace the personal ranged powers in the MM set with melee options (so the ninja set would get two katana single targets and an AoE). The secondary would be an armor set scaled to MMs numbers that would extend the set’s defenses at some level to the pets. So if you took Super Reflexes your Ninja Pets would get some fraction of the personal defense bonuses applied to them as well… or if you took Regen a fraction of the better regeneration would apply to the pets, etc.). I’m not convinced it’s viable myself. Pets are generally so glitchy that just making them tougher won’t do nearly as much for their survival as a good support set and situational awareness will. The MM’s own damage numbers would similarly be so lackluster as to make the armor set largely redundant for them (they’ll rarely catch enough personal aggro to need that level of mitigation) and, unlike the MM, would not have the ability to support non-pet allies with their secondary. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think it works well mechanically as is. I think for a melee MM to be truly viable you’d need to do some considerable reworking of the pets so that the MM can be a greater percentage of the AT’s total DPS… maybe more like a “Three Musketeers” (2 pets plus the PCs) than the MM’s “Seven Man Band” to allow a greater percentage of the damage dealt to be via the character of themselves (say half with two pets accounting for a quarter each). Fewer, but individually stronger, pets would also make an armor set affecting them more effective (the lowest tier MM pets are so squishy that even 75% resistance wouldn’t add that much survivability) and might make that concept viable. Another major factor is determining which melee set should apply to each MM set. Ninjas is strait forward enough with the katana, but what’s the weapon set for demons? Mercenaries? Robots? Basically, the thread title isn’t really an idea… it’s the seed of an idea that needs a ton of fleshing out to make it into something potentially actionable.

My two big asks for the bases would be… 1) complete Nova Praetoria/Imperial City/Kallisti Wharf buildings. They look gorgeous and placing them around the edge of a large open to the sky base plot would just be *chef’s kiss.” 2) more non-vendor heroic/villain NPC options. While my ideal would be fully customizable NPCs, a practical level would be having NPCs akin to the civilians currently available for say… Arachnos, Vanguard (I know there are the vendors for those two, but I’m talking purely cosmetic ones), Longbow, and IDF (the latter just because their uniforms are so spiffy)… bonus points for having other groups like Circle of Thorns, Legacy Chain, Council (perfect for generic faceless villain minions), Freakshow, and maybe all the MM pet types (because MMs clearly have a legion of backups given how often their pets fall in battle). It wouldn’t need to be the whole roster for them either… just 2-3 really iconic ones (ex. a Freakshow Juicer, Metal Slicer and Tank… or IDF Ranger, Seer, and BCU) and could probably just be in the neutral/idle pose.

Some of the “take out 20 Carnies” missions can be accomplished with a radio mission, but there’s at least one that counts only Carnies on Peregrine Island who only spawn at night in a couple of places (most regularly fighting another group on the two cargo ships on the SE side). If you’re very quick you can typically get all 20 in a single “night” (i.e. ten minute window), but it’s a bit luck of the draw and requires you to make your hunt loop in a wide enough area that they’ll respawn in the main locales for them). Completely seperate from the radio request, I would not mind a bit if they allowed the Carnies to spawn day or night in at least a few spots on Peregrine (like the cargo ships… unlike the other locations they’re in a fight with someone else there and it’s not like you can pick the time of day for another faction to jump you).

Tips require them to drop randomly (I’ve run out while soloing and had to run something else to get one to drop) or spending a merit using a base item to acquire a specific one. They also have specific stories attached. Stories that can get repetitive as there’s only a dozen-ish in the 40+ band. I know a few RPers who attach their own fluff to radio missions with their friends because there are no special mechanics past Defeat, Rescue/Capture, and Get Item (personally I wouldn’t mind “rescue 3-5 hostages” that don’t need escorting and “click/destroy 2-4 items” being added to the rotation, but that’s a different request). Tips are fun, but they are not the end-all, be-all either. I’m so sick of the 30-39 Doc Quantum morality mission while grinding through the post 30 xp slowdown that I completely skip tips in that range now. Once I’ve run the two alternate morality missions at level 40+ I rarely touch them again because I’ve already done them all at least once and many of them multiple times. Yeah, there’s no merits or story arc XP bonuses, but not everyone is playing for those once they’ve reached Peregrine Island. My character is typically fully equipped with IO sets by my mid-30’s so I only need 3-6 million at levels with slots to fill them in and you can get that just from 40-50 enhancement and generic recipe drops along with the occasional rare salvage and prismatic aethers. Post 50 threads drop from everything and if you’re sick of grinding the first Dark Astoria arc for Emps/Incarnate salvage, have already run all the main story arcs and iTrials at least once then radios are as good as anything. So yeah, more variety to the radio/newspapers (and more tips and repeatable non-Oroboros solo content in general) is a good thing.

Instead of a car, I’d suggest a Vehicle Support pool out of it. 1) Motorcycle. The pose for riding one already exists thanks to the Thugs MM. there’s also a section of the slide in where the bike is at an angle while the rider has his leg on the ground. For attack animations the bike drops off once they start (use the last bits of the MM summon) and then gets re-summoned once combat movement suppression ends. Functionally, it’s superspeed right down to the improved jump after building up some speed. 2) Chopper Pickup. A zone teleport where a Helo appears overhead, a rope drops, and you use the Spec Ops summon animation in reverse to go up off screen. Once the new zone has loaded a rope drops and you use the Spec Ops summon animation normally to arrive. 3) Ambulance/EMTs: Self-rez that also teleports you back to the map entrance (instead of back at a hospital). 4) Turbo-boost (must have motorcycle): toggle that adds significant +jump to the motorcycle power. 5) SWAT Support: drops a SWAT Van in any outdoor location that functions as an inspiration and possibly temp-power vendor for a short time. All of those should be doable via existing assets and would cover the “I don’t have innate travel powers” hole with a few extra options to round out the set.

You misunderstand. I mentioned it as a NEW option (i.e. not from the radio or newspaper), particularly if our devs don’t want to mess with the existing radio/newspaper code. Set it up as a “Portal Corp Volunteers App” or “Archanos Dimensional Testing Opportunities” uplink (i.e. a contact). This would be a way to implement something like what the OP suggested without having to touch the Radio Mission spaghetti code directly if that would be impractical.

One thought I had about level 40+ radio missions would be adding a “Portal Corp Radio” category that sends you to explore various worlds where you could run into many of the one-off mob groups like Council Earth or Psychic Clockwork or Warrior Earth, and so forth… in addition to ones so close they match the existing groups. Redside has a few Portals that could function as their mission doors for Arachnos missions seeking opportunities to exploit from other dimensions. If the spaghetti code of the existing Radio/Paper missions is too delicate to futz with directly, maybe a semi-clone with new options enabled in it would be a safer way to build.

That’s part of what would need to be balanced out… enough damage and hit points, and tweaking the buffs that can target themselves (or debuffs to enemy attacks) to provide sufficient mitigation relative to the attacks coming in to avoid face planting in whatever the dev’s define as reasonable content. As a baseline I would expect base melee damage and hit points to be ahead of either the Defender or Corruptor ranged damage (depending on if Melee is primary or secondary) due to the increased risk in close combat relative to range. That said, it’s also worth noting that without some type of mitigation (immobilize, stun, etc.) in their blast set, range is only a temporary advantage over being in melee and Defenders/Corruptors are perfectly capable of soloing, so it IS a solvable problem for some set of numbers that aren’t too much above those of the Defender and Corruptor.

For me, the only AT concept that seem like they’re actually “missing” vs. just “expressed with different priorities than you’d prefer” (ex. the defender support/blast and corruptor blast/support or tanker armor/melee and scrapper melee/armor) and wouldn’t require a LOT of powerset working would be the Melee/Support option. Melee/Control is already fairly doable with the Dominator. It doesn’t get the full raft of powers thar a Melee set gets, but it gets a fair number in its assault set. Just don’t take one of the ranged powers and it’s there. This is a “already doable but with different primary/secondary priorities” AT. By contrast, a Melee/Minions set has the opposite problem that the Minions set is where the MM’s ranged attacks are actually found. So you either need to swap those out with three melee attacks and give a different secondary (probably still support since MM minions actually need that support to really thrive) or you have to replace those three attacks with three support powers that are specific to each power set so the AT can get a full melee set. The first is a fair amount of work and rejiggering just for a three power difference between it and a standard MM. I think some Pool sets with various weapons would be easier to implement for that concept than a whole new AT. The second would probably see a lot of grumbling since you’d have to thematically match the support to each Minion set and that might not match the concept very well. Say Bots gets three picks derived from Force Field (to match the Defender bots), but many would probably prefer it be pulled from Traps or insert your preferred pool paring here… and you only get three so there’s probably some real holes in that support. Again, a lot of work and probably a lot of people not happy with the paored limited support choices. It’s basically a No Win for the devs to even try. Melee/Support (or Support/Melee depending on what the AT’s concept favors) though requires little actual redesign of the respective sets (both set categories run mostly independently of the other category in each AT that has melee or support) with the only tricky bits being coming up with an interesting AT mechanic and balancing the numbers appropriately. It also is NOT something we really have elsewhere in the game (outside of custom AE mobs) because, to date, melee has exclusively been paired with armor sets (and sorta with control as part of Dom Assault set) and the risks of melee vs. being able to stay at range is a different playstyle. That makes it far more plausible an activity for a small volunteer dev team to tackle and different enough to be worth tackling. As to a potential AT gimmick; I would suggest something akin to the Brute’s Fury Bar (or Blaster’s boosts) but instead of boosting their damage as it grows with each hit, it boosts the strength of their buffs/debuffs, creating a playstyle where the AT must keep up its melee attacks to boost the power of its buffs/debuffs which again makes it play very different from the other support sets which are pretty “steady state” and operate virtually independently of the other power set in their AT. That is the bar for me and making another AT… does it offer a new play experience compared to what is presently available (while remaining feasible to implement for the devs)? Melee+Support I feel has that potential that other options either don’t without a much more extensive inherent or could, but would require far more work to implement than is reasonable.

As a compromise between no control and MM-tier control, I would suggest pets come with two exclusive toggles (meaning you can only have one of the two active at a time like Dual Pistols ammo or Bio-Armor). Make the default state Defensive Follow (pets only attack what attacks you or them), with one toggle for passive follow (pet ceases attacking and moves to your side) and the other for aggressive (pets attacks anything in its perception range and returns to following you only if nothing remains in its perception range). This leaves MM “Attack My Target” and “Move to this specific place”, plus their advanced commands (arguably the most useful commands overall and their version of Defensive Follow has added bonuses to themselves while MM just get base command) as commands exclusive to the MM while giving just enough control to non-MM that their pets aren’t actually detrimental to them.

Honestly, the valid part of this suggestion is the second one. I’ve noticed a lot my missions lately are basically “duping” spawns… ex. an entire floor of nothing but Nemesis snipers with a Lancer minion. A room where every spawn is a Galaxy, warwolf, and marksman. I think there could well be a glitch in how mobs are selected that’s slipped in somewhere in the spaghetti code and it might be worth at least giving a cursory look at it or the RNG it calls upon. It could be that I’m just in the middle of a very repetitive section of the random seed (it can and does happen) and it’ll go away eventually once the RNG checks roll past that section. But if it’s not, it’s something I would appreciate being looked at.

I approve, but only if using it causes a poof of smoke and Null appearing standing on your head for the duration the window is open.