Chris24601

An interesting mechanic for Chaos would be a random roll for damage type/rider. Ex: Bind is an immobilize, but when activated it rolls to see if it’s fire (dot), cold (slow after immob ends), electric (energy/-end), darkness (neg/-tohit), stone (smash/-def), spikes (lethal/-res), psychic (-recharge) or webs (toxic/slow). The immobilize and base damage mean it’s predictable enough in the control effects to do the role of controller, but it will look like you have a whole array of effects it’s generating (sorta like propel, but with a bit of mechanical heft).

Counter-proposal; we need a “Player2 Blast” set; nine identical powers that deal psychic damage, a huge debuff to speed and recharge (representing the complete waste of time involved) and flashes “You’re Wrong!” in big red letters (like Freem!) when they hit.

Apparently, Necromancy for Scrappers is a thing. 😄

Easier would be to jus add SO accs and end reducers of all origins (the only truly essential ones to avoid frustration at 1x/+0) onto each drop table in fairly large numbers so it’s possible to slot just from drops without too much hassle.

It’s also basically what radio/newspaper missions are… just slightly more targeted. You hear on the radio of a crime in progress and respond. You read in the newspaper of the prospect of a rewarding crime and make plans to carry it out. The only thing really needed I think would be an expansion of those systems; - Add more varied one-off missions to the rotations (consider mining some of the more interesting non-arc missions from various contacts… particularly if they use unique maps). - Allow them to work in any zone regardless of level.

Honestly, some days it’d be fun to just snag some grey-conned missions and do a flex, even if there’s no xp/inf involved. Some days you just wanna see your sweeping cross send half-dozen mooks rag-dolling across the room with zero threat. I mean, seriously, who would actually say this? Superman: “I’ll stop that gang attack on a civilian office building!” Police Sergeant: “No, that’s beneath you. Go check in with the Chief in uptown to see if Metallo’s crew is up to something.”

Just add Acc and EndRdx enhancements of all origins to all drop lists and it’d probably be good enough. Extra damage and faster recharge (more damage by different route) is NICE, but in terms of frustration factor nothing is worse than regular whiffing and needing to use Rest after every spawn. Make usable enhancements to alleviate that drop more often and a lot of the store issues handle themselves.

My biggest issue with Graves, and why I feel it needs more than just a power/wealth/status label is the Lackey mission (and anything involving Crosscut really). I just saved this guy, he promised loyalty to you, and the mission makes you turn him over to a serial killer to be tortured and killed and presents it as you betraying someone who was loyal of your own free will. That is SICK and makes you a soulless psychopath. But you’re well locked into a storyarc by then so frack whatever sort of concept you had about your character; you’re the sort of asshole who will turn an ally over to be tortured and killed just for your own gain. In a game where the core experience is teaming up with fellow villains for mutual gain. Frak that! That’s exactly why you need a Rogue/Villain tag in addition to any sort of “what is being gained” tag. That mission alone led to me completely rerolling a character from scratch and never touching that arc again.

Is this a “mapserve” crash where it just locks up and eventually dumps you to the login screen or a hard crash back to windows? The reason I ask is because the former is almost always a network connection issue and not a graphics one. Back when Homecoming first launched I was having that come up consistently. The only thing that fixed it was running a VPN with my location set to somewhere on the East Coast… because apparently some switch somewhere on the default route (either through Chicago or Detroit to Canada… I never figured out which) was causing enough lag to cause a fatal mapserver error… but the alternate routing by forcing my connection to go to NYC or DC first avoided it and made it run flawlessly. Anyway, the better you can describe HOW it is crashing, the more easily the issue can be diagnosed. Don’t presume it’s necessarily a graphical setting issue when there are so many other things that can potentially go wrong.

I think one of the elements muddying the waters a bit as well is that it’s one thing to discuss issues, it’s another entirely to come to a consensus on a direction to take to solve them, and a third thing to account for the resources available to accomplish a significant change in direction. My focus on labels (whether they be Rogue/Villain or Power/Money/Sadism) is largely because it’s low-hanging fruit. It requires no new tech and minimal rewriting of existing content (mostly just adding the correct label). Re-sorting the contacts so competing types aren’t locked behind other types is more effort, but still fairly low-hanging compared to other things; changing which contact they introduce if in conflict (most of them don’t already; this would be more of a fidelity pass). Beyond that though you start getting into actually rewriting mission content, and beyond that into writing new missions. * * * * In terms of the latter I think the best use of time for both the agency and morality concerns would be to expand the number of Rogue/Villain Tip missions. Presently there’s 10 Rogue and 10 Villain tip missions per 10 level band (along with one each alignment confirmation mission for 20-29 and 30-39 and two each for 40-50). They’re also locked by level so once you’re 40+ you’re just seeing the same dozen tips repeatedly. Even just 1-2 new tip missions and one extra confirmation mission per level band would do wonders to freshen up that content. That’s basically 18 missions; about the same as the number added for the new Striga content.* It’s also content where you’re choosing to investigate and whether to go rogue or villain (so choosing how to take advantage of the tip)… which fits the agency concerns and keeps those who just want to be rogues from accidentally choosing a villain option. A related assist in that regard would be to do something similar to the Mayhem Missions at 50… unlock the 20-29 and 30-39 tip missions (to the extent enemy level scaling would allow it) and add them to the rotation of tips you can find. A final tip mission improvement I would suggest is to make a contact (call them Tip Brokers) out of the base item that allows you to grant yourself any tip mission you qualify for at a cost of 1 merit each and place one in every zone. I’m not sure how many people are aware of the base item, but adding the equivalent out in the open world would be a way to provide even more agency to the characters. If you wanted to make Redside appealing you could even limit them to the Redside zones/alignments to distinguish between reactive heroes and proactive villains/rogues. * * * * Unrelated to that, but in the broader wheelhouse of cleaning up content. I feel like the Mayhem Missions should be their own reward separate from contact access. Make all the general contacts into ones you can just use the contact finder for so characters are free to associate with other lowlifes. Then add a merit reward to the Mayhem Missions (you are doing 3-5 missions to unlock it); perhaps instead of one lump sum, you give a modest amount for the robbery (say 5 merits) and then each completion of a side quest on the map grants a few more (such that completing all four side quests and the robbery might net you 10-12 merits). Then put a little more weight on the mini-heists (i.e. the bank missions before there were MMs) so they come up in the rotation more than once in a blue moon and maybe see about adding a few other mission types to the rotation (ex. kill alls, destroy object, and rescue/collect multiple (the kind where you don’t have to escort them out). * * * * The feeling I’ve teased out from this thread is that Redside would be best served by adding to the randomized/semi-randomized content options like Tips and Newspapers more than they would from trying to make dedicated story arcs. The need for story arcs largely hinges on the merit economy, but between alignment confirmation rewards and adding merits to Mayhem Missions you could provide access to the merits needed while allowing Redside characters to largely chart their own course in terms of mission selection; freeing them to only run the specific story arcs that make sense for them instead of needing to run some they’d dislike just to keep up with the Blueside merit rewards. * * * * As a final suggestion for both tips and newspapers; expand their access down to even the starter levels. Put a broker on Mercy Island who unlocks at level 5 to get players used to the system before they even leave the first zone. Just use the same missions from Port Oakes and 5-10 is already the level range for the Atlas Park MM (I can’t tell you how easy that one is to miss if you’re running the current starter missions and contacts in Mercy). Similarly, a set of 5-19 Tips would let Redside characters start to have agency over the type of crimes they’re committing (as fast as you level the usual 10+1 number would be sufficient for the whole band). * * * * That would be my “least amount of work for most value of result” proposal for what to do to improve and draw interest in Redside; expand on the two areas where the players already have the most agency (and with that agency comes the ability to avoid missions you’d find distasteful). One advantage to that approach as well is that, because they’re all individual missions, you don’t need to worry about connective tissue or how the missions connect to a bigger narrative. I have to think that, at least from the storyboard side, designing 18 “random” missions would be less effort than needing to figure out how to tell a story across 18 interconnected missions. * * * * Realistically, this is something I would expect to be added in stages across several pages. But it’s also divided into some bite-sized pieces already (labels, tip revamp A, newspaper revamp, MM revamp, low-level access) instead of demanding an entire elephant be choked down all at once. So that’s my pitch. * * * * * though if it were me; I’d not divide that as evenly as that would suggest. Instead, I would leave the 20-29 tip set alone since you outlevel that so quickly, add one alignment confirmation mission to the 30-39 range (just the one confirmation mission can get very monotonous once you hit the mid-30 slump, but there’s still a lot of content in that level band to occupy you). I’d put all six of the new tips (12 missions) and two new alignment confirmation missions (4 total) into the 40+ range band. It’s still 18 missions worth of design (2 at 30-39, 16 at 40+, but weighted for where you’re hoping to have PCs spend the bulk of their time and increasing the tips by 60% and doubling the alignment confirmation mission options.

The easiest I think would be to just add (Villain) or (Rogue) after each of the contact names; Ex. Peter Themari (Villain) or Hardcase (Rogue); based on the nature of the missions they give. Particularly important is to include it when you’re given a choice of contacts. Something like that would give casuals (those who don’t want to go research missions on the wiki to see what they call for) assurance that their criminal career will be limited to robberies or smacking down those who deserve it (and those who want to kick puppies will know which contacts to take as well). The next step would be to re-shuffle contact access so that rogues aren’t locked behind villains and villains aren’t locked behind rogues. Perhaps for contacts who do a bit of both (Diviner Maros’ stopping the Cult of the Shaper is roguish to even heroic, some of his later missions like breaking Dr. Theron’s spirit in the name of “destiny” is villainous) maybe label the individual missions/arcs.

One thing I would like to suggest for the resetting the vertical camera position is to actually bring it back to true level. Presently the reset is angled slightly down, which means when you fly, you slowly lose altitude instead of hold at level while moving forward. It is precisely this difficulty getting back to true level that causes me to NOT use free look on any toon with flight, since I don't use the mouse to steer (or do anything other than click on interactables or in windows).

RP-wise, I’d say that “murdering gang members” character is a Vigilante as the game defines alignment (villainous ends justify means, but still nominally with altruistic ends in mind). The biggest problem with Vigilante in CoH is their tip missions mostly require you to either hold the idiot ball or RP as an already high-functioning psychopath to choose it over the hero choice its placed next to. By contrast, the Homecoming original vigilante mission has a much greater degree of nuance to it in terms of, is it justice to let the villain get away with murder (he’s still going away for other lesser crimes, but it’s a slap on the wrist compared to his true crimes)? What this thread has really helped me realize is that you can actually lay out CoX’s alignments on a pretty basic grid of means and ends; Hero = Altruistic ends, ends do NOT justify means. Vigilante = Altruistic ends, ends DO justify means. Villain = Selfish ends, ends justify means. Rogue = Selfish ends, ends do not justify means. It’s also worth noting that, in terms of external observed morality, the means used (immediate impact) are often more important than the ends (long term impacts) as far as how an audience views things and their appeal. That’s why the dashing rogue is even a trope. Objectively Danny Ocean is a criminal who’s robbing a legitimate business to get back at the guy who took his girl. But he’s charming, he’s targeting a business in a field widely regarded as virtually legalized crime with strong ties to organized crime, headed by an asshole victim who chooses money over the girl, and he pulls it off through a clever plan and his wits rather than violence. So when he ends up with both the money and the girl the means used make his entirely selfish goals feel justified to general audiences. If he’d organized a crew of killers to go in; shoot up the customers, kill security guards for just doing their legitimate jobs, and took his ex-wife back at the barrel of a gun after blowing the casino owner’s brains out… well, he’d be the villain of the story and normal audiences would be left wondering where the hero of the story is who’s going to stop him. How many members of the audience would be okay with that story? The criminal gets out of prison, organizes a team of murderers who rob a casino, kill a bunch of bystanders, kidnap the criminal’s ex-wife… and get away with the money and the ex-wife scott free? That’s the main reason Red Side is 20% the size of Blueside… and would be only 10% without enough rogue content to keep some of the more general audience satisfied. Lack of agency is, I think, a convenient excuse. There are plenty of stories of roguish characters being swept along by events and having to use their wits to keep from meeting a sticky end. Some of the worst villains in history were “just following orders.” The biggest turn off to Redside, at least in my opinion, is that human nature includes a sense of justice. We don’t like injustice. We want to see people get their just deserts. Most people just don’t enjoy stories where injustice is allowed to stand; where the bad guy gets away with it. Which is why in fiction intended for mass consumption so much effort in stories with a less than heroic protagonist is spent on justifying their actions; to satisfy the audience’s desire for justice. It’s why the target in nearly every heist story is an asshole or unfeeling corporation at best (and often a worse criminal or corrupt corporation than the one pulling the heist). It’s why stories where the protagonist is an assassin focus on some wrong the target has done to deserve getting put down. The big problem Redside is a lot of content is you getting away (or being materially complicit) with crimes against people who don’t deserve it and those no clear labels for which content does or does not comport with that sort of minimalistic standard of a target who “deserves it.” Sidebar: one thing CoV did get right in this regard was make Longbow overall just enough of an asshole/international war crime for violence against them to feel justified (ex. using miniguns against civilian targets/in areas packed with civilians, using flamethrowers period, invading a foreign country as an NGO for purposes of instituting regime change, deciding their hurt fee fees make it justified for them to overrule and attempt to destroy a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force… and this is before you get to some of the rank hypocrisy and corruption of individual members). Part of this is indeed due to the lack of agency. The game’s structure just doesn’t allow you to begin and engage in schemes at your whim. You only have the choice of accepting or refusing contacts. Heck, you even lack the agency to back out of story arcs if you find yourself tasked with kicking puppies and giving cancer to children. The worst case for a Blueside character is you end up fighting a boring or too difficult enemy group, but you never have to worry that your actions will be justified by the mission/arc. For a Redside character there’s a chance with each mission, unless you’ve played it before or went to research it on the wiki, that you’ll be locked into something you might consider to be crossing the moral event horizon and essentially ruining your enjoyment of the character thereafter. So you’ve just added an extra burden to the normies who wanna be the charming rogue if they wanna avoid accidentally becoming Homelander… or they can just make another hero and not have to worry about it. Which, again, is why I think the least labor intensive way of getting more people to try out Redside is just provide clear indications of whether a given contact/arc is going to be geared for Rogues (acceptable targets) or require you to be a Villain (harms innocents). Remove that extra effort needed to not have your character turn into someone you’d hate and you’ll likely get more people willing to give a shot at a charming rogue.

You’re overthinking it. April 2005 = 1 year, and 19 more years brings you to 20 years and 2005+19=2024. or we can literally just count it… April 2004 = launch April 2005 = 1 year Anniversary April 2006 = 2 year Anniversary 2007 = 3 2008 = 4 2009 = 5 2010 = 6 2011 = 7 2012 = 8 2013 = 9 2014 = 10 2015 = 11 2016 = 12 2017 = 13 2018 = 14 2019 = 15 2020 = 16 2021 = 17 2022 = 18 2023 = 19 April 2024 = 20 year Anniversary

I think you misunderstood what they’re asking for; multiple characters has no bearing. What they’re asking for is “what percentage of players have ANY character that is Redside aligned?” What percentage of players have never even tried Redside? What percentage have a Redside character above level 10? Above level 20? 30? 40? How many have Redside 50’s? That’s useful information to have.

Last night ran the level 30-40 rogue tip mission where you go into the Rikti base to get a cure for Psimon. The first time through I defeated the base commander and couldn’t find the radio to call Psymon until I killed everything on the map to get the last spawn indicator which revealed it 38’ into the wall (beneath one of the narrow tunnels that runs up the sides of the room). Couldn’t activate it to finish the mission. I exited the mission, reset it, went in again and finally found the radio after another kill all 12 feet under the center podium in the boss room. Still unreachable. Third try it FINALLY appeared where I could click on the radio to finish the mission.

Honestly, so long as the scalars matched the other pool powers, I feel like “weapon sets” would be fairly low-hanging fruit for an expansion. The main limiter I can forsee is the same one that hits a Dual Pistols/Tac Arrow Blaster… the system only supports two “costume-based” weapons… the third is invisible in animations (which I leveraged for said blaster as being “missiles”). This means they would probably need to either be coded like shield defense to not be selectable with certain power sets (i.e. you could add an assault rifle to a broadsword scrapper, but not dual pistols… and couldn’t use either with dual blades; you also would probably want to lock out the assault rifle pool from characters who already have an assault rifle powerset). -or- The pool powers would need to built with specific fixed models in their animations akin to the temp powers that have weapon draws as part of them. Of the two, I actually think the second is the better way to go and, further, to keep it from becoming basically a third power set (once you’re to five related attack powers you’re basically a set in my book) I would suggest that instead several weapon options be grouped under the same power pool to make them interesting fillers, but not something you could completely define your character with. Example: Medieval Weapons Pool might be Knife (fast), Sword (heavy), Throwing Knife (must have one power), Bow (must have one power) and Weapon Mastery (must have two powers, buffs the powers you have). Modern Weapons Pool might be Pistol, Rifle, Dual Pistols (one prior pick; leaves both pistols drawn if you use pistol), Rifle Burst (one prior pick), and Grenade (two prior picks). Eastern Weapons Pool might be Katana, Throwing Star, Katana Slice, Star Spray (cone), and Caltrops. Basically, enough to mix some type of weaponry into your build without overwhelming your build or stepping onto the toes of the builds that actually have a weapon-based primary or secondary.

Agreed and seconded. I think a generic “face target and extend both hands” for the animation/interrupt time of Aid Other and that sorta “foerarms arms up flex” when you activate Aid Self would be sufficient for 90% of builds that don’t want a green medical tricorder. If it has to include drawing an object for some reason, I’d suggest a wand/staff or medicine bag as an alternate to the tricorder would probably cover most of the use cases where a tech-ish option makes sense.

It’s still a datapoint, particularly in relation to the ratio of heroes to vigilantes. Speaking from personal experience, I have many straight heroes in my roster and I have a few rogues. I have no villains or vigilantes; the latter specifically because I see no advantage to the alignment’s access to redside over just being a hero. I don’t have any straight villains because I find the villain options; including villain tip options; repugnant enough that I’ve re-rolled redside characters over getting stuck on a repugnant mission chain… I’d rather redo 30 levels than have some stains on my PC. And I don’t know how fine grained you could get on a database query from the dev side. Maybe you could filter the ratio through the presence of certain badges (ex. Rogues with TF completion badges vs. those without… rogues with or without badges or soveniers you gain from specific villainous arcs) that might better indicate whether a character is rogue for playing with friends convenience or out of some content preference. Speaking again personally, I find the Rogue tip options in the Isles to consistently emphasize your character’s wits and cunning along with avoidance of unnecessary cruelty. The villain and vigilante options remind me consistently of the SWTOR darkside choices; i.e. let’s be petty or blind to broader consequences. They’re like choosing to play the character the Graves’ arc writes you as. As stated by someone here previously, Imp-side might be the preferred faction over there, but most of those players make mostly lightside choices. The devs over there have gone so far as to say the ratio of light to dark choices over there is essentially 90% light. This tracks with some other media preference data as well, which is that something like 90% of general audiences prefer traditional story construction with the protagonist as the “hero of their own story”, while only about 10% of general audiences was interested in choosing to experience subversions (which would include the protagonist being an outright villain who gets away with harming innocents). Basically, the main thing holding back Red-side is natural human preferences. The only reason it’s closer to 20% than 10% Redside is probably that it IS possible to, with work, play a more traditional protagonist over there (the Danny Ocean or Deadpool taking on people who are even worse than them). Avoiding the Peter Thermaris and Westin Phipps type contacts, deliberately failing Marshal Brass’ mission, working with Hardcase, LOTS of Rogue tip missions when content gets thin, etc. What a lot of people probably don’t want to hear is that if you REALLY wanted to increase the Redside ratios, the devs should go with my “Pick A Side” and make it “The ROGUE Isles” with an express focus on being a witty/charming rogue who’s getting ahead by sticking it to “The Man” while dodging the corrupt military government and its RIP lapdogs.* ** A step along the way would then be to go into all those arcs where you’re required to be a monster to complete them and add either deliberate loss conditions (a la Marshal Brass or many of Phipps’ arcs) or outright moral choices to thwart them (ex. a way to NOT go through with Peter Themari’s plan to break Pyriss… that one is failable, but only in a way that’s arguably worse). The hardest part would be supplying such options to the Patron-tier missions where you’re working directly for Arachnos’ top people. That might almost require completely new alternative content; maybe even initiating some sort of “Grand Theft Country” where you seek to actually break Arachnos’ hold over the Rogue Isles (i.e. Arachnos is still around as an evil organization, and might even still hold Grandville, but YOU are the one deciding the fate of the Rogue Isles going forward… just in time to run into the Praetorian invasion and other incarnate wackiness where what you chose for the Rogue Isles to become could be handled with a couple of dialogue flags). I dunno, I’ve only just started thinking about it. * Similarly, really play up Longbow as gung ho idiot vigilantes who are making things worse by invading a foreign country on the pretext of liberating it from “evil” while employing miniguns and flamethrowers against civilian populations. They’re basically the Captain Hammers (from Dr. Horrible) of Superheroes. ** Yeah, I know that’s not what those who genuinely love playing the Dr. Doom’s wanna hear, and I’m not even sure I advocate for it because it would be swiping something away by essentially making that type of play fairly vestigal. But I’m answering the question of “what could be done to increase the Redside population” and the only genuine answer there IS make the content there a lot more “lovable rogue” and way less “despicable villain.” Playing a true villain is always going to be niche. Even the Grand Theft Auto franchise falls behind Mario, Tetris, Pokemon, and Call of Duty (and nearly half of it is just GTA5) and has way more play options than just being a cackling villain regardless. So you either accept it as a niche that only a small percentage of players will ever find interesting and make the best of that small percentage while staying true to that niche… or you compromise the niche to give it the broader appeal to grow it.

What I would be very interested to know is the ratio of Rogue-aligned to Villain-aligned (and in relation, the ration hero-aligned to vigilante-aligned). The reason I bring it up is because, in my experience, a lot more people wanna be Deadpool or Loki or Danny Ocean (yeah, he’s charming… he’s a also a career-criminal) or, at worst, late-season Walter White, than wanna play The Red Skull or Homelander or Obadiah Stane. Nor do many wanna play the sorta guy who beats up/kills old ladies to steal their wedding rings and releases plagues on cities for kicks. The biggest problem Redside has is that there’s a much greater divide between the Rogue and Villain alignments than there is between the Hero and Vigilante alignments when it comes to tasks and motivations. Rogues are selfish, but they have lines they won’t cross. Villains don’t have lines. The result is there exist entire red-side arcs that players with a Rogue-like mindset are going to avoid. One of the biggest issues I have with the new Striga missions was the choice to make the new contacts sequential with working for a literal neo-nazi required to get to the more “roguish” arcs there. By the same token, those who DO want to play The Red Skull aren’t going to enjoy being a mere rogue in those arcs. By contrast, thwarting a villainous plot works for both heroes and vigilantes with the only difference being maybe a kill or imprison option after you beat them down. The result is that Redside has a schizophrenic identity crisis where whole chunks of what content exists is unpalatable for your concept just because the Villain and Rogue are so different from each other. Solving this isn’t going to be easy, but like eating an elephant, it can be done if you take it one bite at a time. The two most viable routes as I see it are; A) Pick a side: Decide whether you want it to be the Rogue Isles* or the City of Villains** and start tweaking and adding significant content for the chosen direction. Leave the older content that doesn’t fit for those who want it, but focus on presenting a more coherent story. If you went “Rogue Isles” for example, it would make sense to rejigger the Mayhem Mission dialogue so you’re not robbing the bank to steal the working stiffs’ savings; you’re after the safety deposit box of someone who “deserves” it (ex. The CEO of Cage Consortium or Countess Crey). Similarly, while you COULD cause mass destruction, arson and kidnapping on the way… if you wanted to be more Roguish; offer a mission bonus (say one of the temp powers you can get from the raiding sidequest) if you complete the mission WITHOUT triggering any bonus time from destroyed objects or side objectives. By contrast, if you wanted villainous focus… offer influence for each object destroyed during the Mayhem Missions… the more destruction, the more civilians you take out, the more infamy you score during the mission. B) Make the divide clear: Run down the available contacts and label them as “Rogue” or “Villain”… so when they come up it’d say “Hardcase (Rogue)” or “Westin Phipps (Villain).” Then rejigger introductions so doing a rogue arc isn’t required to unlock a villain arc and you don’t have to do a villain arc to unlock a rogue arc. Then continue to follow this guideline for future content. While B doesn’t solve the lack of content issues, but it at least steers you clear of starting story arcs where your selfish, but wouldn’t hurt a child, rogue leaves you wishing you could beat your contact into paste instead of saying “yes, I’d love to infect children with a flesh-eating virus for you.” Sidebar: a way to completely drop a story arc without completing it so it doesn’t count against your active total would be much appreciated in this regard. Players shouldn’t have to go read a Wiki just to avoid having their character do things they consider reprehensible when being able to just quit a story arc at the same point your PC would “nope” out of continuing to assist could prevent it. More options to deliberately mess up the contacts’ plans via mission failure or adding a moral choice (ex. instead of waiting 90min to fail Marshal Brass’ mission, you could just add an option like “(Lie) Sure, I’ll take out those generators (deliberately fail mission)” to make the feeling of agency more immediate and less passive. Adding a similar option to screw over many of the more reprehensible contacts like Peter Themari would also be appreciated. * i.e. the default assumption is player characters are selfish, but not completely immoral, rogues trying to get ahead in a nation ruled by a superpowered despot… your crimes are mostly directed at Arachnos and the elites of the Isles who ally with them and other “even worse” criminals. ** i.e. the default assumption is you’re a hardened criminal willing to do anything to get the notice of and rise through the ranks of Arachnos to become, in essence, another patron of evil.

I knew the “last witch” would be Ms. Peebles just from the title. I’m holding off running until I get a confirm on whether or not there’s a morality option to not kill her. I felt a bit of mood whiplash running through the new Striga material, particularly that it was gated in order so you can’t, say, skip working with the Nazi/5th Column if you want to the heist against the Sky Raiders or the dealing with the Banished Pantheon’s curse. I always go rogue immediately (I’m already hitting Null to turn off the movement power popup bar… it’s an extra two seconds) and have a rather curated list of “merc”, “strike it rich schemes” and “going after worse guys” arcs I pursue since I loathe playing straight-up cackling evil villains (it’s also ultimately why I end up just going hero eventually… once you hit Grandville there’s a real derth of Rogue morality content; the Vanguard arcs and Rogue tip missions can only carry you so far).

What it says on the tin. I noticed it during the new Orpheus arc since I had been working on the badge ahead of going hero for the Atlas Medallion. Got into the mission and none of the vampyri kills were counting. Looked closer and realized their faction was 5th Column instead of Council. Dunno if that's intended or not, but did want to report it.

I’d like an option for all the chain wrapped leather gloves to use any of the “smooth/bare” texture options instead of just leather. The base texture is already available under smooth/bare as one of its options so that suggests they use the same UV maps. I’ve got a couple bruisers who’d look a lot better with something other than the leather or wrap underneath (ex. fingerless gloves). My other request would be for the Organic Armor over skin texture that some of the Awakened have.

See… my first toon all the way back on live was a pre-IO-era magic blaster. So, not knowing any better, I deliberately sought out all the magic contacts and soon had memorized the layouts of all the crystal cave and Oranbega maps, including where all the hostages were likely to spawn. I had no idea the other maps were so much more open and easier to navigate and other mob groups so much easier until after I’d mastered mob-pulling without mez-protection (except via inspiration) against the Circle of Thorns on Oranbega maps. After that EVERYTHING was easy.

Eh, I think finding out she’s also Sister Psyche’s protégé if you happen to bounce over to IP for a TF would be a nice surprise, but the whole “when you first encounter her she’s surrounded by non-hostile clockwork” (the Psynapse TF is also in the 15-20 range and by then it is known that the Clockwork are psychic constructs not robots) is alreaekinda a big clue. She’s also friends with two other supers when you first meet her and gives you Clockwork pets as a temp power. That’s another big clue. So her also being in IP as the pre-WWD Sister Psyche’s new sidekick (Aurora being both a married woman and member of the Vindicators) isn’t THAT big a spoiler. So, yeah, I’d say have the Penny in IP either use the same model as Faultline and Lady Grey TF… or make some changes to the newer or older Penny Yin* model to make it so that it’s plausible that Faultline/LGTF is just Penny in her off-duty clothes (sorta like Ms. Liberty in Pocket D right now is chillaxing in her off-duty attire) would also resolve some of the temporal weirdness. And that’s the main thing I’m suggesting, really. The new lower level content that arrived with the shift to Freemium was all geared for rushing players past the other content up to the new Incarnate Trial grind and was designed to feel like it was going on in the same timeframe; not the years before that the low level zones initially represented. The result is a sort of asynchronous feel to different parts of the Blueside material as newer NPCs drop plot bombs for older material like it’s common knowledge. I think it could almost entirely be solved with some text passes and, maybe, a few more asset-related tweaks (I bring up Penny mostly because she is the most obviously “not in same time frame” character standing around and it’s largely because her new costume is a Rob Leifield-esque hot mess of over-design that draws your attention because of how awful it is). * if they’d just give costumed Penny long hair (or younger Penny the club hair of her newer model) it’d at least not be quite as obvious at a glance that the costumed one is intended to be years older than her original model. Instead we could just dunk on her tragic teen hero fashion sense as God intended.