Moonscribe

True, I guess the dependencies are more narrative than game mechanical. Well, in that case, Eagle Eye and Marchand have even more reason to be at the top of my list!

Hey, this is something I have opinions on! I agree that making heroes do a Vigilante arc to get the "true-blue hero" version of this accolade doesn't make sense, so thank you for considering this change. Tl;dr, I think the best option would be EAGLE EYE, the final contact for the i24 Skulls arcs. I don't think it's a slam dunk, though. Here's my thoughts on some of the best candidates in approximate order of most to least recommended, but I can see why you picked Shauna Braun in the first place, because none of the options are ideal: EAGLE EYE Pros: Hero/vigilante only; pretty heroic, involves protecting Paragon City from the Skulls; has badges already; decent writing and mission design; Issue 24 content unreleased on the retail servers Cons: Requires Shauna Stockwell's arc to be completed first, so perhaps some other requirements should be removed from the badge if this is chosen, or it will take even longer to complete (alternatively, require Shauna's arc instead, but it feels odd not to choose the last one in the series) PROVOST MARCHAND (PRIMAL EARTH) Pros: Arc doable only by heroes and vigilantes; very pure heroic tone; involves protecting Paragon City from the Council and Calvin Scott; has many badges already created; Issue 24 content unreleased on retail; high production values, well-designed missions Cons: Actually 3 arcs (plus a personal story), so if this arc is chosen either it should be the first arc only (which feels weird) or some other requirements should be removed to balance things out; very questionable writing, IMO HELDENJAEGER (SSA2 FINALE) Pros: Technically hero-only and was clearly designed with heroes in mind; involves protecting Paragon City from a classic Nemesis Plot; high production values; decent writing/design, if you like Nemesis Plots; Issue 24 content unreleased on retail; no need to do any of the previous chapters to run the arc Cons: No badge currently exists for completion, so one would have to be created; villain version exists and is not all that different ASHLING CORLETT Pros: Doable only by heroes and vigilantes; in-house Homecoming arc; badge already exists for completing the arc Cons: Has a bit of a vigilante tone to it; tragic/cliffhanger ending in which you fail to protect Paragon City from Crey; overall bad writing/design, IMO I don't recommend anything not on this list (unless I forgot about it; I think I looked at all the i24+ arcs). I was going to also list pros and cons for some co-op arcs like Valeria or Infernia, but it sounds like those aren't up for consideration (and they're worse fits than most of the above anyway). Hope this is helpful!

The recent-ish Dr. Stribbling arc tries to make sense of the "50 miles" version by saying it means 50 miles outside of the EEZ, not literally off the coast: "It's not very far to the Rogue Isles, Character. Only about 250 miles from Paragon City; or 50 miles outside of the United States' exclusive economic zone. It's unlikely that you'll be able to catch up to a ship before they arrive." -- Dr. Stribbling

They're also in the Pay Phone arc (but you have to fight them as Piecemeal) and John Houston (which might be the best option if you don't insist on level 50, they're in the very first mission).

At least four, even, the unicorn herd has been growing! I have an Ice/Dark too, who hit 50 a while after these stats were posted - Mistysky on Torchbearer. It's a really fun combo, very control-heavy which I like... and it really mops the floor with Malta! (My first 50 stalker, so maybe that's just a stalker thing...)

From the i27 Agent Watkins arc: [NPC] JuNK5h0t: This music is off the chain! Out of bounds! Unctious! [NPC] JuNK5h0t: ...Unctious? Yeah why not! And from the same mission in that arc, there's this clue, which I'm guessing is a callback to Westin Phipps's Miss Francine arc...

It's a pity Indigo's missions are mostly "and here's another map full of Malta!" because she has some great quotes... (Presumably it's meant to read "...and I must assume that they know that I know it's a trap".)

Haha, I experienced this for the first time solo on Homecoming a while back, and wow, I knew it was supposed to be bad, but I was not prepared. I'm not sure if I could have been. I laughed out loud when Dr. Q said "If it were a snake, it would have bitten me!" because that does such a great job summing up all the "revelations" in this TF that you probably figured out multiple defeat-alls ago. But I love the Shard despite its many issues, and I had plenty of thoughts about how Dr. Q could be better when I ran the thing, so here's my suggestion for what the Dr. Q task force could become:

Actually, merits definitely are an option for a solo player - I solo almost exclusively, but my characters are still swimming in merits. Task forces and the like are probably the most efficient way to get merits, sure, but you can also get plenty of them by running story arcs, which give out merit rewards at the end, and if need be you can repeat the most profitable ones as much as you want after you unlock Ouroboros. Tip missions (which you start getting at level 20) are also a good solo merit source - you can get a morality mission by doing 10 tips for the same alignment, and you get 40 merits (more than you get in most task forces) for each morality mission completed, whether or not you actually used it to change your alignment. So, don't give up on the Merit Lifestyle, you're not locked out of it solo!

Indeed, Borea in the RWZ does something radio-like already, though you also get some hunts - haven't done her missions enough to know if those can be reliably avoided. And actually, Dark Astoria also has Ephram Sha (for heroes) or Maharaj (for villains) who give an endless stream of missions as well - plus bonus threads, merits or super inspirations as mission rewards. In fact, there are hardly any zones that go up to 50 that don't have a contact for repeatable missions. Cimerora has Marcus Valerius; the Shadow Shard has General Hammond, Dr. Boyd, Lt. Volkov, Lt. Col Flynn and Dr. Huxley (more like the Radio Shard); I thought Night Ward had several, but I guess the repeatable mission contacts there only go up to 39, so that's something that could be expanded. But based on that, I'm guessing the reason people don't do more radio teams in those zones is less because there aren't any radio-style mission options there, and more because they prefer the enemy types (and/or presence of solid ground) available in Peregrine radio missions.

Fair point that evacuating the natives would probably be top of the list when it comes to helping them out, but that doesn't seem incompatible with any of the arc concepts I floated, or with the general idea of having natives give new arcs in the Shard (maybe after you complete their arcs, they vanish from the Shard and show up in Peregrine somewhere). There are probably going to be a few others like Sara Moore who don't want to get out until the rest of their people are safe, and given the stubbornness of human nature, there will probably even be a handful who don't want to leave at all, despite everything. (Actually, that could be another arc idea - a small group of natives doesn't want to be evacuated and forcibly resists attempts to do so, and in the end you have to decide whether to leave them there to their fate, or beat them up and take them to Paragon by force for their own good.)

I love the Shadow Shard and have some ideas for what to do with it that don't seem to be in the threads linked above, and this is the more recent thread so I guess I'll put them here? First of all, the Storm Palace is the setting of most of Faathim the Kind's task force - he's in the Chantry, but he sends you to the Storm Palace and you go to most regions of it in the process, including storming the Palace itself at the end. That said though... in general, old "trial zones" and even many hazard zones that have nothing to do in them except hunting and a single trial or task force or something seem silly, especially given that the trial itself is often done in an instance anyway so it's not like the zone needs to be reserved for it. Much better to have something like the Rikti War Zone, where you have numerous solo arcs, repeatable missions, special rewards for fighting the enemies there (for the Shard, maybe something like the special salvage suggested in the second thread above), Task Forces, and a big raid event you can do in the zone (which can even be done in the zone itself, sharing space with all the other content just fine). So far, the Shard has repeatable missions and Task Forces, but that's about it. I'd like to see more native contacts added to the Shard. Even if the Primals haven't explored or colonized most of the place yet, the natives are already living there; they're friendly to Paragon's heroes and even seem to revere them as legendary figures, and they live in a shattered hellscape that makes their lives very difficult. Surely, they must have no end of tasks a hero could help them with. Adding these as regular contacts, with actual arcs rather than just repeatable content, could give us more insight into Shadow Shard Native culture and lifestyle while also not really advancing the overall plot of the zone very much (which is likely to be more of an endgame sort of thing). Just traveling around and helping people in need, like heroes do. There could be a Firebase Zulu arc with Crey attempting to enslave and brainwash the natives for free labor, say, or a Cascades arc involving the Circle kidnapping natives for fresh bodies, or a Nemesis plot to trick the natives into thinking the heroes are actually their enemies, or the Reflections carrying out some bizarre scheme on behalf of Rularuu that they don't understand any better than their victims do. And these arcs could be pretty self-contained, filling things out without the need for a grand new storyline that might take a ton of planning and resources, and not getting in the way of big new stuff either. Making the Shard, or parts of it, a co-op zone would be cool too - what about the villains retaking Mole Point Bravo? It's been a while since You the player villain and Technician Naylor failed miserably at capturing it and turning it into an Arachnos outpost, and maybe now that the heroes are distracted and have given up on trying to recover it, the time is right for Arachnos to try it again with more intel, better resources, Praetorian tech and a higher-level player villain. I feel like Firebase Zulu should remain a hero-only zone, but Mole Point Bravo could go in the Cascades somewhere or become the center of a new villain-only zone of its own. Then Zulu can make an uneasy truce with the villains because there's enough danger there already and they need all the help they can get, and then the villains can go exploit some natives themselves. 😛 Or maybe help stop the world from being devoured too if they feel like it.

I absolutely love the CoX market and always have. It's legitimately one of my favorite things about the game, and I don't really enjoy marketeering either - but it's so easy and painless to interact with the market that I don't need to become a professional marketeer to get value out of it, I can just make some bids or dump some items and then go on with whatever I was doing. I love the double-blind system - I think I pretty much stopped using the market on WoW after somebody actually contacted me to complain about how my price was lower than theirs (just wanted to sell the thing and move on). Here, no one can see which prices are mine or even really which prices there are, and that's great. And on Homecoming, the market is far, far healthier than it was on live - I remember the days of Luck Charms selling for millions of influence and grinding lowbie Ouroboros missions just to get "common" salvage, and I definitely don't miss it. I love the converter economy and the way it lowers and evens out the prices of IOs large and small so that I can afford pretty much anything I want with some work, rather than just giving up on ever getting the top-tier enhancements as I did on live. So in general, I think the HC devs have done a fantastic job in this area of the game and am generally willing to go along with their intuition as long as that continues to be true. I do have complaints, but they're pretty much all points that have already been made here. But I guess I should make them anyway so the devs have some idea how many people have them: -- The market bugs are bad, and should be fixed soon. Not getting the history to display, or getting complete lies to display in the history, are confusing and off-putting for new or even returning players, and just plain annoying for vets. Of course, since these haven't already been fixed, I'm guessing doing so is not easy... but I agree it's one of the most important things to do, maybe the most important. -- But, what's also really bad and impenetrable is basically everything about the converter economy and enhancement transactions for new players. Nothing in the in-game tutorials tells you that converters even exist, let alone how useful they are (though the latter became pretty obvious to me once I realized that they did exist); nor does it explain to you that all levels of enhancements, plus attuned, are all merged together in the market. (When I started on Homecoming, I didn't even check this for a long time because I just assumed that OF COURSE attuned enhancements would cost more than other varieties, and I only learned otherwise because I was reading the forums, something most don't do.) I think it would be a terrible idea to get rid of these systems, because they do so much good economically speaking and without them we'd go back to the bad old Luck Charm days... but I think there absolutely have to be tutorials in-game - not just out of game on the forums or YouTube or something, because not everyone uses those or even knows to look for them - explaining the way in which items are merged on the market, explaining that converters exist and are important, explaining that attuned enhancements even exist in the game at all (I didn't know this, either, until someone randomly gifted me an attuned enhancement while I was crafting at the university)... Honestly, this all ties into the larger problem of: there's not nearly enough up-to-date tutorial content in this game just in general. During the SCORE days, everyone playing was someone who had played on live and had plenty of experience doing so (or so I gather, I wasn't there), so they didn't need their hands held. The lack of tutorials was fine then - but it's not fine now, and can make introducing new players to the game a frustrating experience, especially if they aren't comfortable just jumping into the Help channel.

Old favorite from Gaussian's arc in the RWZ (but spoilers for anyone who hasn't done it):

Miscellaneous defeat badge ideas... Gotta Crush 'Em All -- Defeat one of each type of Longbow Warden Mixed Martial Artist -- Defeat one Tsoo boss of each type Spider of a Different Color -- Defeat 50 Rogue Arachnos Fortunatas Ringleader -- Defeat 100 Ring Mistresses or Dark Ring Mistresses Ain't Afraid of No Ghost -- Defeat 200 Circle of Thorns ghosts Self-Defeating -- Defeat 25 doppelgangers of yourself Lady Killer -- Defeat 100 points worth of Knives of Artemis Storm Chaser -- Defeat 100 points worth of Lanaruu Existential Crisis -- Defeat 200 points worth of Shadow Shard Reflections Marcone -- Defeat 200 points worth of Mooks Employee of the Month -- Defeat 200 points worth of Nemesis Automatons Disturbing the Peace -- Defeat 500 points worth of Wailers Slime Warrior -- Defeat 500 points worth of Hydra Thinking About Retiring -- Defeat 500 points worth of Security Guards Stellar Collapse -- Defeat every current or former member of the Shining Stars (well, except yourself, I guess) Binder and Namer -- Defeat the Envoy of Shadows three times Champion of the Mu -- Defeat Lilitu Detective -- Defeat the final version of the Madame of Mystery Clown Hater -- Defeat Vanessa DeVore Soul Musician -- Defeat Johnny Sonata's Soul Consumer Advocate -- Defeat Countess Crey The Butler Did It -- Defeat Hopkins Requiescat In Pace -- Defeat Requiem Bringer of Dawn -- Defeat Nosferatu Roll Over Beethoven -- Defeat Maestro Anti-Fascist -- Defeat every 5th Column/Council archvillain Nemesis of Nemesis -- Defeat a real(??) Nemesis Also, how about some badges for completing the Signature Story Arcs? I assume they originally didn't have them because they were DLC content and putting a price tag on badges isn't cool, but that's not relevant anymore.