GastlyGibus

Why fix the pothole in the road when you can just take another route to work?

Now imagine if we, the audience, had to sit through Batman's 20+ hour flight to Japan. Imagine if in The Dark Knight when Batman goes to Hong Kong, Bruce Wayne packs his things, gets on his private jet or Batwing or w/e, flies the 18+ hours it takes to get to Hong Kong, scouts out the buildings, climbs to the top of one, and finally begins his little extraction, and we, the audience, had to sit and watch the entire 24+ hour affair with no cuts or edits whatsoever. How many movie-goers in the theatre would have walked out within the first hour? Yes, I am aware it's not nearly that severe of a problem here (thank God). I get that it's "realistic" for a hero to travel all around the city to stop crimes, but from a gameplay perspective, it's annoying having to travel to so many different zones. And honestly? The whole "but you get to explore!" aspect is not accurate, and let me explain why. This might be long winded, but bear with me. Let's say I'm a brand new player; I just installed the game, make my very first hero and get dumped in Atlas Park. "Wow!" I think to myself. "Look at that statue! This place is pretty!" My very first contact is, of course, Matthew Habashy. So I go talk to him, and he sends me on missions in Atlas Park. By doing his missions, I get to travel all around Atlas, explore the city at a nice, even pace, I get to street-sweep and stop random purse-snatchers and drug dealers, and I'm feeling real cool. By the time I've finished the whole Atlas Park contact line, I've gotten to explore a good chunk of Atlas Park. I'm level 8 now, and I've had fun, but I've been in Atlas Park for a while now. I've seen what it has to offer, and now I'm eager to see more. So, off to the next contact, Shauna Stockwell. Now I'm in Kings Row, a brand new city with brand new sights and brand new villains for me to fight. Awesome! All of her missions keep me in Kings Row, and as I'm stomping about the city, going from mission to mission, I'm exploring the whole zone at a nice pace, maybe fighting more street mobs on the way, having a ball and getting to explore and find my way around Kings Row. So now I've explored two cities pretty thoroughly. I finish the Kings Row stuff, and now it's off to the next zone, Steel Canyon. I go into another new zone, this one all bright and modern like New York. And once again, there's brand new enemies for me to fight and a whole new city to explore! Look at these Council and 5th Column guys! And those Outcasts! New stuff, super cool! So I grab myself a police scanner, go beat up some baddies, and get my next contact, Wes Schnabel. I go and talk to Wes, eager to repeat my previous experiences in exploring a new city. "I need you to go to Atlas Park and beat up some bad guys." .... Atlas Park? But I've already been there, and I wanna explore Steel Canyon some more! "Nope. Atlas Park. Get to it." Okay, I begrudgingly accept. I take the tram back to Atlas Park, go do my thing, ignoring all the street mobs because they're all grey and not worth the time, and eventually go back to Wes. Cool, now I get to explore Steel Canyon, right? "I need you to go to Kings Row and retrieve this stolen thing." What?! Kings Row? I just left there! Come on, Wes, you're in Steel Canyon! Don't you have something for me to do here, so I can see the sights and explore a brand new city? "Nope. Kings Row. Get out of my face." And this is how the rest of the standards contacts will treat you from here on out. Every time I go into a new zone, instead of being given tasks in the zone and given the opportunity to explore a zone at a nice pace as I travel from mission to mission, getting to fight street mobs appropriate to my level, I'm instead forced to constantly backtrack and go to places I've already been, and since I've already been to these places, I don't feel like taking my time and exploring the zone. I just want to get the mission done and get it over with. And this problem only gets worse as you get higher in level, as every new zone contact keeps forcing you to leave the brand new zone and go back to old places where you're horrible over-levelled and there's no incentive to get on the ground and get your feet wet. Being constantly thrown around from one zone to the next with no rhyme or reason doesn't let you take a breath and really explore. As soon as you get in one zone and finish a mission, it's off to a completely different place. No time to explore, no time to see the sights, no time to smell the roses, and no time to fight street mobs. It doesn't make sense to have a contact in Bricktown, which is a level 30-38 zone, with missions for level 30 heroes, to constantly keep sending you back to places you've already been and where the mobs out on the street are beneath you and not worth the effort. Sure, in some instances it might lead me somewhere I've never been, but the majority of the time, it's just constantly throwing me from one zone to the next. Having contacts stay in their zone would only naturally lead to exploring more of that zone at a nice, even pace, being taken on a tour of one zone at a time, compared to sporadically throwing darts at a map of Paragon City and letting that decide where the mission is. Admittedly, it is a minor inconvenience, but it's one that should be pretty easy to fix and has absolutely no reason to exist. The whole reason blueside even does this is because of the old MMO mindset of inconveniencing players by arbitrarily padding out game-time. After all, if you have a player running from zone to zone, that's more time spent playing the game, and that's all that mattered. In addition, the fact that these changes were added later, the fact that new contacts added later didn't have this problem, and the fact that they were actively working on revamping and improving the "dead" zones that nobody went to just goes to show that the original developers knew this was a problem and were working to address it. They realized it was unfun and boring being constantly shuffled across the entire city for no reason, and actively began taking steps to remedy it. The way I see it, making this change only continues that goal of making the game just a little bit less inconvenient and more fun to play. And finally, to bring an end to what is my longest forum post to-date, it doesn't even make sense from a roleplaying perspective. All of the standard contacts on blueside have in their description that they deal with specific villain groups. Kong Bao, a standard blueside contact, has in his info "The recent and terrifying rise of the Tsoo is of particular concern to Mr. Kong. He has redoubled his efforts to curtail the gang's recruiting among Hmong youth, with some success." So tell me why Kong Bao, a guy who mainly is concerned with the Tsoo, is hanging out in Skyway City? There are no Tsoo in Skyway City. Wouldn't it be more appropriate from a roleplaying perspective that a contact who resides in a certain zone would give you tips and clues on happenings in said zone?

And that's precisely my point. The old guard realized that it was boring and unfun, and the new content reflected that shift in attitude as it was added. The only problem is the old content was never brought in line with the new, and it gradually just fell out of favor instead of bring fixed. The issue of hazard zones being virtually deserted is pretty well established. And besides, the problem of hazard zones and what to do with them is another topic for another day. The issue here is that hardly anybody runs standard contacts because they send you out to a bunch of random zones. The overwhelming majority of teams I see being advertised blueside are running radio missions, because they're more convenient and don't send you to twenty different zones to arbitrarily pad playtime. Does literally everybody run radio missions? No, of course not. I'm one of the players that likes to run the Issue 0 contacts, but I dislike being sent on a giant tour of the city as a consequence, and I don't like forcing my teams to do it with me because not everybody has the SG teleporter macro handy. Hazard zones need their own unique content to draw more players in; having a contact force me to go to Boomtown for a one-time mission isn't going to make me stop and enjoy the zone.

Nobody ever goes to hazard zones anyway save for the occasional giant monster. Hazard zones are a dead relic from launch. Even Paragon Studios was aware of this, which is why the old devs were steadily working on revamping and repurposing them until the game shut down.

This is a change that I believe is long overdue. Every blueside team I join ends up just doing police scanner missions over and over, and the reason why is obvious. It's far easier to just get an endless stream of missions all conveniently in one zone than it is to deal with hero contacts sending you on a giant Paragon City road trip. Contacts for villains learned this lesson, and it's one of the many reasons I prefer redside over blue. If I get a contact in Sharkhead Isle, I can be reasonably sure that 90% of that contact's missions will be in Sharkhead. Contacts for heroes, on the other hand, do not do this. I swear every single mission they give me is in a zone other than the one they're currently in. I'll get a contact in Brickstown and they'll be like "Hey, go to Perez Park and do this thing." "Hey, go to Founder's Falls and do that thing." "Cool, now go talk to this guy in Independence Port so he can send you on another mission in Terra Volta." No wonder people constantly run radio missions. Even with the SG base macro, it's far more convenient to just stay in one zone and run missions. And honestly it makes me sad, because radio missions are boring, and I'd love to see teams run story arcs again, but nobody wants to because it's just such a pain having to travel all over the entire city twelve times over. Make hero contacts stay in their zone wherever possible. My legs are tired, I'm running out of money for monorail passes, and my supergroup is wondering why the electric bill is so high because I keep using the teleporters. 😛

Others have said it here, and I concur with them. Mace Mastery is popular because low-health archetypes benefit more from defense than resistance, and Mace Mastery is the only epic power pool that provides a defense toggle rather than a resistance toggle. That being said, it is by no means a necessity for anybody. If you're trying to farm +4/x8 on a squishy toon, then sure, you'll want all the defense you can get. But for players like me, and the majority of folks who don't farm, it's not needed. I took Mace Mastery on one character only, my TA/Archery Defender, and only because it fits thematically with the character (Mace Mastery is the only weapons-based epic for Defenders) and because it pairs well with Flash Arrow's ToHit debuff. My Crab Spider went with Leviathan Mastery, and my Night Widow doesn't have an epic pool at all. Both of them perform perfectly fine both solo and on teams. Min-maxing is not a requirement whatsoever in this game. The overwhelming majority of the content in-game is balanced around SO enhancements; using IO's and building "the perfect character" is something people do for fun, and not because it's a requirement.

T'was a joke, friend, not a serious suggestion. I would never genuinely advocate for making costume choices alignment-restricted.

Male Face 1 should be restricted to villains only. No super hero would ever have the kind of shit-eating grin that Male Face 1 has. 😛

During the mission "Steal data and decryption key" from Golden Roller. Chief Cryo Scientist: "Hah! Without this decryption key the research data is useless! ..... I think I said too much..."

Guess I'll show mine. The only thing that confuses me is the 35,000 points of healing done... considering my Defender is TA/Archery and hasn't taken either the Medicine pool or the Rebirth Incarnate ability. O.o

Any kind of effect seems to interrupt the summon. I'll have to double check this, but I recall glue arrow from TA interrupting the engineers. I do know for sure that any kind of taunt effect will cancel it as well. If you're a Tanker or Brute, simply running in and taunting the engineer will suffice.

Technically they would be science, since they were normal turtles until an experimental chemical changed them. My Bio/Claws Tanker is a giant mutant lobster, but I made his origin science since he was created by a mad scientist out of desperation. This is kind of the beauty of the origin system, in my opinion. The fact that it has virtually no impact on gameplay and is purely a roleplaying tool, and we can sit and have fun discussions on what each origin means and how it plays into our characters. Like, as an example and a question I pose. I made a Fire/Fire scrapper, and I'm playing him as an angel fallen from grace. Would such a character be considered Natural, since his powers are inherent to his being? Or Magic, since he's technically a mythological creature? I made him Natural, but I've met a couple players who pegged him as Magic.

Vigilance is the first one I think of when you say "inherent powers that need attention." As others have stated already, with so many Defender primaries revolving around prevention of damage and being a force multiplier for your team, many Defenders will get absolutely zero use from the endurance discount. If you're a Force Field Defender, for example, an endurance discount on your bubbles isn't going to be helpful if your team is dying, since they presumably already have a field cast on them. I'm no game balance guy, and I couldn't really say what would be more helpful, but I do think a good inherent for Defenders should reward you for keeping your team alive, not the other way around. Another inherent that I think needs tweaking is Critical Hit for Scrappers. It's nice, yeah, but doesn't really do a whole lot. The only thing I would add to make it useful would be increasing the odds of a critical hit for stronger foes. I know it already does that, but it maxes out at 10% with bosses and never goes higher than that. I think it should go higher for Elite Bosses, Arch-Villains, Giant Monsters and the like, and it would totally fit with the Scrapper's theme of being tenacious and fearless. Seeing a bigger, stronger enemy only encourages them to hit harder, and thus they'd fight even more ferociously than normal. Finally, Conditioning for SoA's could stand a buff. It's a neat concept, but it's so underwhelming that it's like it's not even there. Honestly, I think you could just boost the numbers for Conditioning a little higher and it'd be solid, or maybe even just give players the ability to slot enhancements into it.

So, one of the common complaints heard about the Villain Epic Archetypes, the Arachnos Soldiers, is that their special story arcs kind of suck. And honestly, I agree with them. IT's pretty sub-standard writing, and a really boring, forced way to try and explain why everyone is calling you a "Destined One." With that in mind, I had an idea, and I'm sure others have had it before. Why not use the Mission Architect to create a new, better story for Arachnos Soldiers to play? So that's what I did. The first part is published and ready to play, looking for any kind of feedback at all. The arc title is "The Arachnos Insider" and the ID numbers is 31187. My global is @Warning Shot, if you need more help finding it. I'm eager to see what people think about it, and what ideas or directions you might see this story arc take! The level range is from 1 to 10, to simulate what this arc would be if it were an actual in-game arc. As such, it's meant to be the starting of your Arachnos career, and thus the level range is appropriately low. Needless to say, I've made sure the missions are perfectly capable of being run solo, so there are no custom bosses or overly-challenging objectives here. The main intent here is the story, and how it fits in with the rest of the world and canon. Let me know what you think!

I try to play the game with the limitations that existed on live. I'm grateful for Homecoming, I really am, but sometimes I feel like the Homecoming GM's are a little bit too generous with what they've given us. I don't give myself capes until I've completed the cape mission at level 20. Same goes for Auras. No Auras until level 30 and completing the Aura mission. A more recent restriction for myself is not sending money from my main to new alts. My new character all have to earn their own INF and buy their own enhancements. I very rarely use Double EXP boosters. Less so for restriction reasons, I just like to take my time and enjoy the scenery, and that's really hard to do when you've outgrown your contacts within the first two missions. No farming. I refuse to join level 50 teams running +4/x8 content until I'm within the level 40-50 range. I have no issue with allowing lower levels joining my own teams, but when I run my groups, we're going through and smashing everything in our way, and you're expected to contribute. That's about it. I honestly enjoy playing the game the old fashioned way.

During Operative Wellman's mission "Destroy Statues in Steel Canyon" there's a random Tsoo boss hanging around the map berating his lackeys. [NPC] Dragon Fly: You fools! What do you mean you could not get protection money from Icon?

Been running a new villain, encountering some old redside dialogue I forgot about. During the "Recover Amanda Vines" mission from Marshal Brass: [NPC] Amanda Vines: I don't suppose any of you, uh, 'guys' would want to do an interview? [NPC] Shivan: Blurble [NPC] Amanda Vines: If you get me out of here, Femme Flare, I promise not to do an expose on you for a year!

I could honestly post the entirety of The Radio's dialogue here, because I love every last bit of it, but I'll just settle for this little snippet that I enjoy. "... we've been seeing loyal listeners sent back to the Big Zig in Paragon through the efforts of a mysterious group of vigilantes who call themselves Wyvern. Now, you're probably thinking: 'But Radio Free Opportunity, this doesn't matter to me because I'm not a loser.'"

I wish I could relate. My FF/AR Defender hits about as hard as a wet noodle. 😂

Technically yes, you can attune them at any level, but Enhancement Catalysts will only drop from level 50 content. You can get them from winter packs and merit vendors at any level, but those are both pricey options.

A million times this. It's happened more than once, and I don't understand it. I saw a player advertising a Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force, and so I grabbed my low level villain and sent him a tell. No response. I figured maybe he has a different tab open, so I go right to Virgil Tarikoss, and he's there with about four other peeps, still advertising that he had 3 spots left. I sent him another tell, nothing. I walked right up to his character and said in broadcast "I'll join your Tarikoss SF!" Nope. Still nothing. I sat there for another five minutes, wondering if he had me on ignore and couldn't see me. I didn't recognize him, I didn't have him on ignore, didn't know who he was, but whoever he was, he was 100% intent on pretending I didn't exist. His SF filled up in that time, and then he and his whole team flew away, leaving me very confused and a little bit upset too. Does the game tell you if a player is ignoring you? I can't think of anything I might have done to be ignored by some random player, and all of my tells, to my knowledge, were getting through fine.

I play redside more often than blue, so these are some of my favorite contacts for villains, in no particular order. The Radio in Port Oakes is fun, plus it gives you the Plague Carrier badge for completing the Outbreak mission, so that's nice if you're a badger. I've always liked Dmitri Krylov in Cap Au Diable. He has a fun little story arc involving holdover soldiers from the Soviet Union. I mainly like all the custom enemies, though the arc itself ends rather abruptly without much fanfare. Still like it, though. As others have pointed out, Dean MacArthur is a contact I consider essential, since his dialogue and his missions are just such a joy to play through. If you complete his arc, then he appears later in the game in Mr. G's arc, and you can get a badge for saving him there, "Honorary Bro." St. Martial is a fun zone all around with some pretty good contacts, chief among them are Johnny Sonata (requires the Obsessed badge) and The Slot Machine (requires the Gangbuster badge). Johnny Sonata's arc is a fun little exploration into the ever-popular trope of making deals with the devil, and the Slot Machine punches you right in the feels with that ending. Just make sure you read the clues you get from the Slot Machine, and make sure to read the souvenir you get from it afterwards, "A Letter From Poughkeepsie." Doc Buzzsaw in Sharkhead has some amusing dialogue and a fun arc with a custom Elite Boss at the end. Unlocking her requires the Bling badge. Willy Wheeler in Cap is also a fun one. You can't help but feel a little bad for the poor guy, but his missions are fun and you get to exact a bit of good old fashioned revenge at the end. He also has a badge mission, which awards the Paragon of Vice badge when completed. Westin Phipps is a must. People around the forums either love him or hate him, and it's easy to see why once you do his missions. He's about as evil as they come, and his missions absolutely make you feel dirty, since a lot of them are just being evil for evil's sake. If you really want to feel like the moustache twirling villain who steals candy from babies and kicks puppies, Westin Phipps is the contact for you. One contact I enjoyed that I haven't seen mentioned here is Ambassador Kuhr'Rekt in Grandville. He gives you a little bit of insight into the Rikti and their ways, and you get to beat up some signature heroes while you're at it. Those are all the ones off the top of my head. Villain-side content is far better than blueside, in my honest opinion. There's very little of the problems that plague standard blueside contacts (e.g endless street hunts, getting sent to twelve different zones, constantly being asked to talk to the security chief...). The arcs are short, sweet, and to the point, and the writing is just better.

I've been running full 8-man Redside teams on Excelsior for the past week. I'm hoping that, through doing it enough, I can encourage more people to play redside. Come to the dark side. We have cookies. 😄

No, it was on Excelsior, actually. Looks like we've got a copy-cat on the shard. 😛

I told this story in another thread, but it's worth repeating anyways because it made my day for sure. I write bios for all of my characters. All of them. Every single character I have has a biography, whether it's short, comedic, dramatic, serious, whatever. It's something I find fun, regardless of whether people read them or not. Anyway, one day I saw an impromptu costume contest going on, and I'm playing on my fresh, new level 20-ish Blaster, so I decide to go stand in line and hope for the best. I didn't win the contest, but during the contest, a player came right up to me, sent a trade invite, and just gave me like 5 million INF right there, sending a PM saying something like "I hardly see people write bios anymore, and I want to encourage the practice. :D" Sure, 5 million isn't a lot, but it was still really nice, and this guy was just a participant in the contest, not a judge or the one running it. Since then, I've made it my mission to pay it forward. If I see a cool bio that I like, that person gets some INF from me, free of charge. 😄