GastlyGibus

I'm gonna have to say no to this, I don't think it should be allowed. As others have said, this game is all about creating alts. Furthermore, for some players it can be a detriment. The whole point of leveling up at a steady pace is to learn all the ins and outs of your character; how the powersets work, what scenarios to use which powers in, how effective they are, etc... Being able to just respec into a completely different set throws all that learning out the window. Some folks might be really knowledgeable about how sets work, but others aren't. Even from me, having played this game since live and having rolled literally hundreds of different characters over that time, there are still power sets I've never even touched, and I have no idea how they function. If I were to respec my Trick Arrow defender, one of my main, most played characters that I know inside and out, and change him to, say, Thermal Radiation (a set I've never played) I'd be totally clueless and slot him all wrong, not to mention having all of my enhancements and IO sets rendered useless. It's why I've never powerlevelled any of my characters and why I always advise against it. The leveling process is there to help you learn your character. I was there on live to see the scourge of the AE babies, the new players who skipped straight to 50 and had no idea how to play their character. Even though a lot of us here are vets, there are still new people joining the servers who are just learning the ropes, and I'd really hate to see them accidentally ruin their character by switching to a totally different set. Just roll an alt. It's as simple as that.

I could be wrong on this, so any other users, feel free to correct me on this. From the way I understand it, the First Ward is a dead zone. Tyrant and Anti-Matter virtually nuked the whole place to contain the Devouring Earth, and killed most everything inside of it. As such, it's basically used as a form of exile for particularly troublesome individuals, or an escape for people trying to get away from Praetoria proper, not including the few people who managed to survive the initial destruction. The way I see it, it's basically like the Fallout world, if you've ever played the Fallout games. Everything is destroyed, and the only people left have formed their own little pockets of civilization, all just trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There doesn't seem to be any way for them to go back to Praetoria even if they wanted to, and thus there's no real interest or concern from Tyrant to control the region like he does with his own city, so he's basically abandoned it and left it for dead. As such, the conflict of "Resistance versus Loyalists" doesn't really exist, because the Praetorian "government" doesn't really care about it. The D.U.S.T troopers use it for target practice, and the Mother of Mercy hospital is there to keep all the seers away from prying eyes. For the denizens there, it's a battle of survival. The Talons, the Carnival, the Compound, the Midnight Squad, and everyone else there are pretty much engaged in a never-ending turf war, fighting each other for food and resources. I imagine nobody there has a particular love for Emperor Cole, but given that First Ward is completely shut-out from the rest of Praetoria proper, it's not much of an issue to them. Like I said, imagine it like the Fallout series, like New Vegas in particular, where you've got the New California Republic, the Legion, Mr. House, etc, all just trying to survive in a wasteland.

All of my original screenshots were destroyed when my hard-drive got fried a couple years back, so I can feel the pain too. But I think I found a little workaround from a roleplaying perspective, at least for myself. I remade my original Tanker from live, Smash Zone, on homecoming, but I tweaked his costume a bit from what I remember making. Toned the colors back so they looked faded, made him look older, and I'm basically playing him as Smash Zone, but aged and pseudo-retired. I'm kind of playing him like Back Alley Brawler, as in he doesn't go out and save the day as much as he did, but he sticks around to show the new heroes around and teach them. Just an idea if you're into roleplaying with your characters. Maybe they're older and their costume has aged with them, or maybe someone new came along and took up the mantle ala Miles Morales from Spider-Man, so their "new" costume is altered slightly for their own wants. That's the way I'm handling it, at least.

I absolutely love it! Thank you so much! I took the costume and made a few little modifications of my own, and this is the final look.

So I'm here with another request. I would like to fall in love with my Beam Rifle/Time Blaster again. xD The theme I've got for him is he was a former member of the Praetorian Police force, and an avid tinkerer who was promoted to powers division after inventing a non-lethal beam rifle and a "temporal displacer" for his time powers. I have him on heroside now, level 35, Technology origin, and I just can't get a good look like I do with my other toons. I'm looking for a good "protector" kind of costume, if that makes sense. Something that would inspire a normal citizen, since that's kind of his whole schtick. I'm roleplaying him as having a difficult time reconciling his desire for peace and safety with the fact that his former dimension of Praetoria was basically an authoritarian dictatorship. If you need more info, I can gladly provide. This is his current costume, and it's not bad to me, but I'm struggling to come up with additional looks. Thanks again in advance!

For all of the (totally deserved) flak that the VEAT arcs get on redside, I always liked Jenkin's quote when you have to get the list from him. "Hey, it's [Player]! How's things going? Why are you looking at me like you want to beat me up?"

If a single spark can ignite a gas leak, then I think it stands to reason any kind of explosive attack, whether it's a grenade, an arrow, or an EMP, should ignite an oil spill. First off, as others have pointed out, if you DON'T have Archery, you don't have Blazing Arrow. Blazing Arrow is an Archery power, Oil Slick is a Trick Arrow power. Two completely separate power sets. It makes no sense why Trick Arrow wouldn't have a native ability to ignite its own oil slick. With that said, I agree with giving TA the Electric Net from the Tactical Arrow set, or even giving EMP Arrow a tiny bit of energy damage to help ignite it as well. My main is an Archery/TA Defender, and while I love him to death and will never stop playing him, I'll also never say no to giving TA a little more love.

Alrighty took the day off from work to help out with the festivities. Looking forward to seeing you folks there!

Hey man, I appreciate the interest, and I'll definitely check it out sometime, but remember you need to review the last story posted before requesting a review of your own. Check the post I made for the rules and the story I posted there, and then we can get to reviewing yours next! 😄

Been meaning to make this thread for a while, so without further ado... Welcome to the Mission Architect Review game! The goal of this thread is to encourage the community to play and "review" each other's created stories. The catch is that, in order for your story to get reviewed, you must play and offer a short review of the last story posted. This way, everyone gives, everyone gets, and everyone wins! Here are the rules: Rule 1: If you are requesting a review of your story, you must play the last posted story in the thread. While playing the arcs posted here is encouraged, and the goal is to get more story-driven content, you may only request a review by reviewing the last story posted. Rule 2: You must offer a review of the story you played somewhere in your post. Keep in mind, it doesn't need to be excessively long or intricate. You don't need to write a 10,000 word report on every last detail of the story. In that same vein, refrain from very short, vague reviews. Simply saying "I liked it" does not count as a review. Here's an example of what a review can be: Rule 3: Keep criticism constructive! We're all different people, and we all have different things we like and dislike. Inevitably, someone is going to come across a story they probably didn't like so much. Your review can be negative, but you may not directly insult or belittle the author or the story. In addition, when offering criticism, try to suggest a solution to the problem! Here's an example of a negative review that stays constructive: Rule 4: No farm arcs. This is not a thread for you to advertise your latest farming arc. I'm not bashing on farmers here, but this thread is dedicated solely to story-driven content. Rule 5: This isn't really a rule, but I'm putting it here regardless. You do not have to post a story of your own in order to review another one. If you just want to peruse the stories posted and play them at your leisure, you are more than welcome to do so! Keep in mind, though, that if you are posting your own story, you are still required to review the last story posted. See Rule 1. Alright, now with the boring, unfun rules out of the way, here's the format you can use when submitting a story for review. Arc ID: (We need an ID so we can find your story, of course!) Length: (Let us know how many missions are in your arc.) Level range: (The minimum and maximum level for your arc.) Morality: (Just helpful for those of us who want to pick an appropriate character to play as, for those of us roleplaying.) Warnings: (Post any warnings for your story here. Please let people know if there are any of the following: Dark themes, difficult mobs/bosses, custom characters, or timed missions.) Description: (A brief summary of what your story is about. It can be directly taken from the description in the Mission Architect in-game, or you can summarize it differently here.) That's it! So, in order to get this game started (and at the risk of looking like a shameless self-promoter) I will post one of my own stories here to kick us off! Arc ID: 19492 Length: Five missions Level range: 1-20 Morality: Villain Warnings: One timed mission, two custom boss-class enemies. Description: Attention, all "destined ones;' Due to the rapid influx of prisoners freed from the Zig, Arachnos has deemed it worthwhile to construct a test of your abilities. These missions are designed to see if you really have what it takes to serve our great Lord Recluse!

On the topic of statesman and the LRSF, maybe they can have Miss Liberty (not her daughter, Ms. Liberty, because you already kicked her butt) and she rallies all the Freedom Phalanx to get back up and you have to fight them all again, but this time with a suped-up Miss Liberty to deal with. Just have her show up at the end and be like "Statesman is dead and you have the NERVE to attack the city? Not on my watch!" And have a more proper "final showdown" akin to the STF.

This, please. Have Statesman's death actually lead to new story developments. Maybe Manti goes on a Vigilante crusade to eradicate evil and we have to go stop him. Maybe Recluse takes a moment and goes "Huh, my ex-best friend is legitimately dead..." and we either take advantage of the opportunity or maybe reflect on things. Have the story GO SOMEWHERE instead of just saying "Well, States is dead, Ms. Liberty is leading his Task Force, and nothing else changes with the world."

I'm going to echo what a lot of people have already pointed out here. Coming back from the dead is such an overused, cliché, boring trope of comic books that every "death" in a comic book loses all the impact it would normally have. Someone dying in a comic now is almost a joke because the readers know that some meta-physical super MacGuffin is just going to bring them back anyways. Think about some of the most impactful deaths in storytelling, whether it's a book, or a movie, or anything, really. Take, for example, Boromir dying in Lord of the Rings. His death is tragic, and sad, and tears your heart out, why? Because you know he ain't coming back. There's no magic spell in the world that can resurrect him, no ancient artifact, no sacred pledge to be made. He's dead. Rest in Peace. Death is so impactful because it's meant to be permanent. There is no coming back from it. Coming back from the dead completely ruins and destroys any significance death might have on the plot. Something I truly despise about comic books is how many important characters will "die" only to be brought back a couple pages later, and it's been done so much and so often that it doesn't have any meaning anymore. "Oh, Batman died? That's fine. I'll just dump him in a Lazarus Pit and he'll be good as new!" I really don't want to see City of Heroes go down that path. I'm fine with him coming back as a ghost or a spirit, or maybe some kind of vision or whatever, but that is the extent of how far I would go with it. Statesman should stay dead, not because I dislike the character or what he represents, but because it kills the entire drama of the whole situation (no pun intended). What I would love to see, however, is something like what happened with Sister Psyche and Penelope Yin. Someone dies, have someone new and cool take their place. That makes it feel like the world we're living in is way more realistic, as not only do people actually die but things change and adapt around the person's death. City of Heroes especially isn't short on NPC heroes that could easily fill in the hole of Statesman. Imagine if Jim Temblor was made a member of the Phalanx, fighting a level 54 Hero with Granite Amor. That'd be pretty cool to me.

I'll try to get a recording of what exactly I mean, but it's fairly simple to understand. Whenever the Ghost of Scrapyard spawns and you get close enough to trigger his dialogue, he begins rapidly cycling through all of his voices lines one immediately after the other. This quickly floods the chat-log and it doesn't end until either he is defeated or you walk away.

Kind of a simple one for me, but I always get a chuckle out of this one that you see in a lot of radio/paper missions with a boss. Bonesnap: "Did you see that news report on Positron? What bull. I could take him. The whole freakin' Freedom Phalanx too!" Ah, yes, you, the level 10 Bone Daddy, are going to take down the whole freakin' Freedom Phalanx. Sure thing, pal. 😉

Now listen, I know what people are going to say. "But why? There's stores that sell enhancements and money is so easy to make." And yeah, I get that. But at the same time, what with all the contacts telling you what they sell when they are introduced, only to have them sell nothing but basic inspirations, and THEN having them go on to say "Look at my best enhancements!" while not actually listing any enhancements, seems just kind of silly to me. One of the things I always liked about this game was how vague the money system is. "Influence" is such a generalized term that it can be used to represent whatever you want. Maybe your character builds their own gadgets and enhancements, maybe you learn more powerful spells, maybe you're like Bruce Wayne and you do have a trillion dollars in your bank account. Or, maybe, your heroic/villainous deeds carry weight with them and your contacts offer you their gear/magic/training to help you out. I'm looking at this from both a roleplay perspective and a practical one. Newer players (and yes, new players still exist. :O) don't have the expertise to just dive right into the invention system straight away, and people like me as well who don't play the market constantly to make fat stacks still use DO's and SO's on their lower level toons until a certain point. I think it'd be neat if contacts actually sold things again, but unlike before where they were 300% base cost (which was honestly the most baffling design decision in my opinion) have them at slightly cheaper than regular store-bought enhancements. Maybe a 25% discount or so? After rolling several alts it occurred to me just how expensive store enhancements were. (Seriously, 5,000 influence for a level 5 TO Accuracy enhancement???) and how annoying it was (for me) to be sending all of my alts 1 mil in starter cash just to buy basic DO's and SO's. My first idea was just to adjust INF generation at lower levels (because honestly, if you don't play the market in this game, INF generation is an absolute joke until level 40) and maybe that does deserve to get looked at, but then I just thought "what if contacts sold enhancements again, but for cheaper than regular?" It'd be neat from both a practical and a roleplay perspective.

Can we get an all Trick Arrow ITF soon? I'd be down for that. 😉

I always liked the lore regarding the Rikti. The Rikti War being arguably the single most important bit of lore in the game, they obviously got a lot of screen-time and sub-plots, even trickling down into other groups like the Lost and the Hydra. The whole "Abandoned on Earth and secretly trying to subvert the country through underhanded means" was always really cool to me. Made them a much more dire and real threat to the world. In contrast, I always hated the Family, or more specifically, how they were handled. Or, perhaps even more specifically, how they weren't handled. Maybe I'm missing something, but aside from their little lore page on the website, the Family always just kind of.... existed. You saw them everywhere, they were always referenced as the premiere drug-dealers in the city, but they never had their own story arcs. No special task forces, no plot threads, no events at all. They were just there. Existing. Roughing up random NPC's on the street and not much else. The Family always struck me as some guy at the studios having just seen The Godfather and saying to themselves "hey, we should have Italian mobsters in our game," and then just throwing them in there with no real rhyme or reason to it. Why are Italian mobsters so heavily focused in one city? What's their connection to every other gang in the lore? Who is leading them? These questions and more will never be answered, and the one thing I dislike the most in stories and lore is unfinished plot threads.

Just a few of mine. I've got too many alts and not enough time to screenshot them all, so I picked my favorites. Serpent Kiss, my Night Widow when not in her Arachnos uniform. Warning Shot, Trick Arrow/Archery Defender. My current favorite toon. Shatter Point, Beam Rifle/Time Blaster And finally, Mr. Info, a Mercs/Poison Mastermind.

Yeah, admittedly, it is rare (thank god) but it's happening enough for me to notice it. Those two examples I posted happened within the same hour, and it happened a third time but I lost it in the combat logs before I started keeping track. I'd say it's around 1 out of every 100 Assassin's Strikes I make suffer from this glitch.

So I've got two stalkers I'm playing now, and I can confirm the bug happens on both of them. One is Savage Melee, the other is Street Justice, if that helps at all. I've noticed that, on rare occasions, using Assassin's Strike from Hide will sometimes play the sound effects, play the hit effects, break hide and draw aggro, but deal no damage at all. Even stranger still, the few times when it does this, the attack doesn't even appear in the combat log, as if it never even happened. I started monitoring the combat log, and I got some examples. This is what it looks like when it works normally. I'd say 95% of my Assassin's Strikes work as intended this way. However, rarely, my assassin strike will behave as stated previously. All of the sound effects play, the visual effects play as if I successfully hit, hide will be broken and I'll draw aggro from the mob I hit, but no damage is done and the combat log shows nothing. Please note that the "Initial Strike" power is from Street Justice and is not related to the issue. In both of those examples, you see it says "You start Assassin's Strike" and then afterwards "You activated the Assassin's Strike power" but then it stops. It doesn't miss, it doesn't hit, it doesn't even exist according to the combat logs, but it draws aggro anyways. This happens on both my Savage Melee and Street Justice Stalkers. This isn't the same as a miss. When I miss, it shows in the combat logs, and hide isn't broken. This breaks hide but doesn't even appear in the logs. Again, it's as if the attack never happened according to the game, but it will draw aggro and break hide regardless.

They're supposed to talk like that. Praetorian clockwork speak in coding language. It's one of their gimmicks. Translated, they're saying "If Clockwork serve Anti-Matter, and Anti-Matter serves Emperor Marcus Cole, then Clockwork serve Emperor Marcus Cole." "If the Resistance is not alive, then Praetoria is safe."

Found this thread. Figure I'd give it a whirl. So I've got a character, happy with the build so far, happy with what costumes I have, but I feel like I need a little inspiration for some more. (You can never have too many costumes. ;)) He's a Savage Melee/Regen Stalker of the Mutation origin. I started him out in Praetoria, an idea for the uglier side of Cole's bright and shiny little city, a child born with lizard-like mutations which led to him being ridiculed by most during childhood (yes, he is very edgy. :P). Recruited into Power Division when he was able, but quickly went to join the Resistance as part of the Crusaders, if only to strike back at the authorities for not giving him what he feels he deserved, i.e, a decent upbringing. These are the costumes I have for him so far, and I'm looking for expansions on the current concept for filling up those extra costume slots. My only requirements are that the "lizard" motif stays (that is his origin story, after all!), so the use of the "monstrous" claws and head are highly encouraged, but not necessarily mandatory. I currently have him on Redside now, though thinking of having him become a Rogue, as a way of him realizing that not everyone is out to get him. And finally, here's the Bio I have written for him in-game. "Billy Hurr never had the chance to live a "normal" life. Even at birth, Billy was born with a mutation that left him with hardened scales and a gruesome appearance, causing his parents to abandon him shortly thereafter. He was passed around from various foster homes, his status as a mutant turning him into a violent outcast who frequently engaged in vicious altercations with his peers. All of this contributed to his grim outlook on life, and as soon as he was able, he fled from the care of his foster homes and took to the streets, finding his mutations provided excellent opportunities to take what he wanted, when he wanted. With deadly claws and an even deadlier attitude, Savage Strike has vowed vengeance on the world and any who dare to cross him." Costumes linked below. Thanks in advance!

Just a heads up, the game has been republished and the NEW arc I.D is 21953. Enjoy!

If I suddenly have to go AFK during a group or task force, just know that, 90% of the time, it's because of this little gremlin. I love him to death, but even still, he's a little monster. 😛