Sakura Tenshi

Bleh, all the pity, honestly. I mean, don't get me wrong, the new vulnerability mechanic is nice, it's just that some of the debuff seems incredibly anemic in many places. (-15% regeneration? that wouldn't even do anything against a minion. don't get me started on a -15% debuff to control resistances) And the lackluster oomph to it would feel a bit more understandable if it could be piled on by at least a team of sentinels. Especially since the 'perma' thing isn't an issue for even one sentinel.

Does thje debuff stack from separate sources? I know from testing it out it doesn't stack from a single source. (which is a bit of a shame)

Not as sophisticated as the inspirationals you all posted, but I did throw this together based on a character inspiration chart from the FFXIV community. And here's a blank version if anyone wants to mess with it themselves.

Void Sanction Arc was the live devs' first attempt at Vigilante content not a tip mission, and honestly, I don't think it was too too bad, if a bit repetitive and uncreative. But there are some glaring flaws to it that could stand to be addressed, and some of them might be fairly simple. Remove the 'deliver the dead drop orders' mission, mostly because these make no sense at all as you're the one who is going to be going through those dead drop orders. If anything, maybe replace it with one where you put some unknown package at a dead drop site for another agent to pick up. (implication being that it confirms your acceptance into working with Void Sanction) Change the order of some of the door missions/sub chapters of the arc to something like this: Wrong Number/Void Sanction: Spider From Within/Void Sanction: Candlelight Total Recall/Void Sanction: Washboard No Witnesses/Void Sanction: Castle I Love It When A Plan Comes Together/Void Sanction: Orders in the Clean King of Pins/Void Sanction: Amendment The idea of this order of missions is to basically have your hero do increasingly questionable actions, the confrontation with Holoman might need to be moved around as well, but by the end, you go from dealing with terrorists to executing a shopkeeper who, honestly, is little more than a petty crook than a death row inmate. All to leave the player to question if they did actually did the right thing or if Void Sanction manipulated them into murdering people. Naturally any followup would include a bit more of the same though the extremity of the actions taken and orders accepted would increase, presumably. But focusing on the here and now, I think those changes of mission order would help the flow of the arc significantly.

I feel terrible to suggest this reality, but, I'm pretty sure those girls are just sort of trophy girlfriends for Odysseus. Like some mobsters like to have lots of pretty girls hanging off them at all times, small time gangs like the Warriors would be liable to do the same thing.

Just the praetorian refugees slapping the signage on because it reminds them of the hospitals back home.

@GM Impervium oh, yeah, I know that. First thing I did was build an unkillable AV just because I could, and it is nice, don't get me wrong, but I hope I'm not being too greedy that I'll always hope for future improvements to the custom critter power system. Especially adding EAT powersets, preferrably wolf spider weaponry to assault rifle so we can have enemies that just spray lead everywhere instead of dumb frankengun stuff.

I don't know if I'd count this as a sin per-say so much as a bit of oversight and/or side effect of a necessary limitation: the organization of powers for custom AE critters. Two powersets which are often heavily abbreviated due to AIs lacking comprehension of how to do certain things (like place traps) or because reasons unknown (removal of snipes from blast sets. Notice SCORE didn't seem to have trouble with this, why did paid professionals go 'dur!'?) it might have been better if powersets had not been confined by AT and analogous player set, but rather based on theming. Why can't I make the pyromaster have a power from every fire related set, Paragon Studios? I'll even trim to avoid the AI from derping too hard with attack chains. But, no, a master of flames must accept being stuck with a limited variety of powers. The team has certainly mitigated this with the ability to hard write in new powers, but it'd be nice if in the future we got broad themed powersets including things like Assault rifle getting SoA attacks tossed in.

@Krimson Okay, details, but that's still seriously interesting. I had no idea Oranbega was a 'real legend'. Kind of wish City of incorporated a bit more of the myth though and had all CoT wear pearl jewelry on their head and the columns on CoT maps be gold.

@Krimson While I was indeed griping about the absurdity of it, I was in support of pointing out that with all other things out the door in terms of accuracy and meaning, why not let Surgeons teleport at that point? Though I also admit, part of why I gripe on the livery is that it meant we as players were denied these things. Also, while the Cimerora Pennisula never existed in our world, based on approximate landmass and the sheer vastness of the Roman Empire, it is small enough it easily could easily fit in about anywhere in the Mediterranean, unlike Paragon being nearly twice the size of the Los Angeles metropolitan area with eastern facing coastlines while pretending it can fit into Rhode Island. Though even with that there is actual evidence in the lore the super powered population, up to and including the existence of the CoT/Oranbega reshaped the geography of the New England coastline more than just a bit.

The curvature is too shallow, it's too short and doesn't cover the body properly for testudo formation, none of the patterns in the shields are accurate. Let's not get into how many Cimerorans are using round shields, the shield style is even less accurate to the 6th century Roman soldiers, nevermind the rest of the armor, when Cimerora supposedly takes place according to the live devs. (We don't even have tall, ovid shields).

not to mention that these “Roman soldiers” are running around dressed like literal tourist Spartans, have “centurion” every three dudes, no signifers or aquilifers, don’t carry proper Scutum, and that’s not even going into their inability to form up their ranks (though that’s also a limit of being an action video game)

Question: does AE character creation/costume data also in a separate sort of database meaning one could theoretically add costume pieces to one without it being added to player costumes?

Oh, another thing I'm annoyed about with the live dev choices: I'm not happy with the Skulls revamp. It hypes them up, makes them feel way too powerful with giving assault rifles to the basic minions and all that and breaks the parity with the Hellions (also don't like Girlfriend from Hell. Not because I'm against female members in the Hellions just the idea of them casually summoning legit demons). I mean it's all personal opinion, but I would have rather updated both Hellions and Skulls visually (also made sure they could keep the emblems on the back of their jackets) and powerset wise together and it would have probably looked a bit like: New underling tier that basically fight like Thugs gang war dudes. These are basically random guys from the street out to prove themselves and rely on brawl and throw rock Minions largely stay the same, slammers, sluggers, brawlers, slicers, hackers, etc. Sometimes they'll use hand crossbows instead of pistols. General idea is just to depict these low-tier street level gang thugs as using stuff they were able to grab from home or order from a BudK catalogue. Lieutenants now include Gunslinger (DP, uses thugs MM animations rather than set DP) and 'Sniper' that uses a bolt action rifle (again, weapons grabbed from home. I figure the 'gunslingers' would be defined by having two ST attacks, the sniper wouldn't be a true sniper enemy, but would have increased range and higher accuracy than normal. Otherwise their attack would basically be single shot from SoA) Damned and Bone Daddies/Mommas stay the bosses with a new boss that appears in both groups: The Darkfires. Basically wielding both dark and fire powers and represent high level members of one gang who then jumped ship to the other.

Most of the sins I feel are story ones and nitpicking world details Statesman and Sister Psyche's death being done largely to spite Jack Emmert (Also declaring Positron the new leader of the FP felt like self-wank and still doesn't feel as interesting when you rescue him or ask him about incarnates) A lack of care with continuity because Matt Miller didn't want to impose on new writers About everything to do with Serafina, namely CURSING SCIROCCO TO BE VILLAIN AND BEING UPSET WHEN HE DOES VILLAINOUS THINGS Malta having operatives standing around and in the open of Peregrine island The Live devs clearly had zero grasp on Celtic Mythology when coming up with Croatoa (The Tuatha DO NOT consider Bres a hero) Many of the vehicles such as cars, boats (especially cargo ships), Longbow Chasers, Arachnos Fliers, etc. Are ridiculously tiny for their function Likewise the exteriors/footprints of many buildings are way too small. Incorrect coloration on the bouys. Skyway City's whole "Freeway" system makes no goddamn sense! As I've said many times before: the structure of Cimerora's armies show the Live Devs gave zero @#$% about how Roman Armies were structured and couldn't be assed to do a single internet search. They gave us an emote that used tea bags, why not one that let us drink the damn tea?! F@#$ING RAIN OF BULLETS ANIMATION! I freaking hate it and wonder why the Live Devs made so many DP animations awful! Devil May Cry shows more restraint with its firearms animations!

For Mercy, I think I’d just give the gag story that someone turned off safeties for their fire farm in hopes of increasing rewards before changes to the “Architect Achievement Awards Program”. The end result was the simulation burned down the building. for Atlas, I feel like the reason they gave was well enough: Freedom Corps bought the building from Architect entertainment who were trying to recoup some financial losses from the “mysterious” destruction of the Rikti War Zone, Salamanca, and Mercy AE buildings.

I mean, back on live I had actually heard that be an issue with people not knowing what the hell the tram was and all that. That aside, personally, with an AE accessible to Mercy and Atlas without straying too far from the safe starting area, I kind of feel like those should be removed as well but that's just a personal view. And/or level lock entrance to Pocket D until level 5. Also kind of wish they kept the AE building design in Atlas and just had the 'Architect entertainment' signs removed and generally converted it into a Freedom Corps building. I mean the AE building design is pretty nice. And now to wait to be ratio'd into oblivion. /em salutes all

Well for scrapper and tank katana, they draw the sword from the hip with most customizations, there are two exceptions to this: The Rikti Sword and the Apocalypse pruner. I speculate this is because their size and shape would make it awkward looking to hang from the hip like the others. Interestingly, it seems their sheathed state has these two placed on the back but with the handles down so it's still theoretically plausible for the draw animation to work, though it would imply the character has to reach further and draw it in a larger arc. Meanwhile, Blaster ninjutsu secondary and stalker ninja blade (and I believe sentinel ninja tools APP) draw from the back as the default ninja blade is... A ninja blade than a katana and is a straighter, shorter sword with the default model. There's a whole thing about the difference between the samurai sword and the ninja sword, why they draw from different positions, yadda yadda. But does boil down to in this game things that are based in the stalker powersets draw from the back meaning tank and scrapper are the only ones who use 'true' katana style and draw from the hip.

*Excalibur added to katana* FOR THE GRACE FOR THE MIGHT OF THE LORD! FOR THE HOME OF THE HOLY! FOR THE FAITH FOR THE WAY OF THE SWORD! GAVE THEIR LIVES SO BOLDLY!

I mean I’ve wanted a “shield less shield defense” because shield defense has a lot of awesome stuff going for it mechanically: Solid mix of resistances and positional defenses (good if your character is tough and actually evasive) Grant cover is honestly a better team defense buff for melee characters than maneuvers The charge is awesome and does decent damage unlike spring attack its one of only three armor sets that give total mez protection coverage. (and in /nin’s case only for scrapper and sentinel versions) speaking of sentinels, this could let us have “shield defense sentinels”

@Wavicle and @arcane Awww... I'll deal. Just always had driven me nuts, ever since live.

It’s a total side note, but perhaps positional defenses should be a little more common in future sets which use defense? As is, most defense buffs we get that are not from full power sets (so really just Nin, SR, and Shield) grant bonus defense to all types, which makes sense as they’re supposed to be a decent choice regardless of your AT and power selection. That also being said, can Heightened Senses in Willpower become positional defense based? It never made any sense that it was typed defenses when “heightened senses” implies you’re dodging rather than are so tough hits glance off you harmlessly.

mom pretty sure that’s how they’re supposed to look. If you look at the weapon models Lost and Crey use those things pulsate with light, as do the player beam rifle/robotics mm pulse rifle versions. That said, it is a bit of a weird thing to have on ballistic weapons but we already have a ray gun with no discernible barrel opening but rather the classic sci-fi needle tip or bead surrounded by floating rings.

Honestly, if we’re adding ports, two models I’ve always wanted ported to Katana is Excalibur and the Barbarian Longsword. Though I do think the latter would need some model adjustments to work for Katana. edit: *liked by CA* *DEUS VULT INTENSIFIES!*

I always found it weird how the live devs would say “long skirts will look awful with martial arts animations and similar ones!” and meanwhile, about every melee power set possible was used by the Tsoo and more than half of them had long robes. This included them doing Martial Arts animations and many others and while it looked rough they still didn’t look half bad. Also still jealous of the Tsoo Sorcerer hats and the Hanya masks, also that only females got the glowing tattoos.