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Moonscribe

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Everything posted by Moonscribe

  1. 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...)
  2. 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...
  3. 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".)
  4. 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:
  5. 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!
  6. 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.
  7. 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.)
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. Old favorite from Gaussian's arc in the RWZ (but spoilers for anyone who hasn't done it):
  11. 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.
  12. Given that (as per the Wiki) Kelly Graham volunteered at a soup kitchen and at one point was torn between her life as a hero and her work in charity, deciding to end her hero life after Protean attacked her soup kitchen... I'm not sure if I can view panhandlers next to her statue as being "disrespectful" to her, at least not in terms of what she might have thought about it. I could certainly see the Kings Row PPD feeling differently, though.
  13. Well, Moondream now has his progress toward the badge restored just as you say (100/500, which is what it should be since he hasn't killed any more since the last time I copied him over). However, a new bug may have been introduced. It appears that Overseers now count double toward this badge (10 points each); also, Watchers still count double (2 points each). Below is Moondream's resulting badge progress after defeating one of each kind of Sentry in Firebase Zulu:
  14. As of tonight, I can get all the way through Pierce's former-hero-who-did-Graveyard-Shift dialogue in mission 2 without having to manually close the window (though I did not test all five choices at the very end, which in retrospect I guess I could have done). The inconsistent Dr. Vahz dialogue in the last mission is also fixed for me. (I can still take Bile to the exit and complete without talking to Vahz though.)
  15. For the record, I just tested Womp Womp, and it does seem to work correctly. 1 Immature Protector Clone = 1 point of progress. (Also confirmed that the Visionary progress bug is still present on both Brainstorm and Shadow as of this evening.)
  16. I agree that before adding new incarnate powers, especially new tiers of incarnate powers, we should really have some more content for existing Incarnates to do to be able to challenge themselves. I also like the idea of having new difficulty settings, perhaps some that spawn elite bosses as normal mobs for x9 and higher, to give more levers to pull for incarnates who are finding everything too easy. (I don't team much so I don't have this experience, but I'm sure I would use such settings solo anyway for added challenge.) I'm also in favor of new Incarnate-powered storylines, Coming Storm-related or otherwise, to give us more to do with our godlike abilities, but it seems like new difficulty settings might be an easier way to tide over those with no worlds left to conquer, though with the spaghetti code, who knows if that's true or not. If there are new storylines, I hope they will include more soloable Incarnate content like Dark Astoria in addition to iTrials and TFs. I see no reason not to have extra difficulty settings on Ouroboros arcs, TFs, and the like to turn off incarnate powers - there are settings to turn off enhancements, after all! Anyone who wants to use their incarnate powers can just join a team that allows them, and surely many, probably most, teams will continue to do so if such an option is added? And of course then there can be new badges, for doing high-level arcs without Incarnate powers... "Mortal", perhaps? But I don't see a reason to nerf incarnate powers in general, even outside of official Incarnate Content (TM); I'm never going to be interested in joining a team of 8 incarnates and murdering gobs of Council that I could probably solo, but if others prefer to do that, it doesn't really affect me, and besides, I like being able to solo all the Shadow Shard TFs. 😛 It might be good to make sure doing the harder content comes with appropriate rewards, though... more XP, better drops, perhaps a small chance to get actual incarnate components rather than just threads? That way, picking the easiest possible missions to do won't automatically be the most efficient choice. I strongly dislike the idea of consolidating Lore pets. I like the ability to pick thematically appropriate pets for each of my characters, and it's the slot I most look forward to unlocking for that reason. Indeed, I would be in favor of adding more Lore pet options to the game - Freakshow, Crey, Family, Council/5th Column (maybe as a single option with power customization to determine their faction), the Night Ward factions, Awakened, the new Freakloks coming in i27, etc. Whatever balancing, nerfing, and/or standardizing is necessary to accomplish that is fine with me, but just getting rid of Lore pet options seems to me to be against the spirit of this game in the same way that getting rid of powersets would be.
  17. Some minor bugs from the Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok arc (tested solo via Ouroboros): In Mission 2, if you previously completed Watkins' arc heroside, clicking on Dr. Pierce after you rescue her opens a special dialog in which she recognizes you from before. However, the last dialog window (or at least, the last one I was able to access) does not have an option to respond to her or close the conversation at the bottom, and you have to click the red X to close the window: In the final mission, it is not necessary to talk to Dr. Vahzilok or fight Cortex to complete the mission; you can ignore them and simply lead Bile to the exit. You can then come back to talk to Dr. Vahz and fight Cortex, if you so desire: Finally, if you talk to Dr. Vahzilok in the final mission and you don't have the Positron TF badge, he doesn't recognize you in the dialog window, but he still says out loud what I assume must be his dialogue if you DID fight him at the dam: There's also a typo in the above dialog window - should be Dr. Demetrios Vasilikos, not Vasilokos.
  18. I moved Moondream to Shadow and tried it again, and confirmed that the bug exists there as well (both that Overseers count 0 points, and Watchers count 2 points).
  19. On Live, my villain Moondream has 20 points of progress toward the Visionary badge: However, on beta (Release Candidate 2), all his progress has been lost, though he should now have 20*5 = 100 points of progress toward the new version of the Visionary badge: To test whether the progress was actually still there but just not showing up for some reason, I Null the Gull'd him into a Rogue (he's a villain in both the above screenshots), took him to the Shadow Shard, and beat up an Overseer and an Observer. This resulted in only one point of progress toward the badge: The point of progress only appeared after defeating the Observer - nothing changed when I defeated the Overseer. So it appears that on test, defeating Overseers no longer counts toward this badge. In case it's relevant somehow, he defeated most or all of those 20 Overseers in the Shard while Null the Gull'd into a Rogue on Live, as well. (And apparently just LFG-teleported right into the Shard, since he didn't even have Cause for Concern!)
  20. Some of my numbers (all on Torchbearer): Total Characters: 68 Incarnates: 2 (one fully T4ed) Characters at exactly level 41: 9 Characters at exactly level 25: 10 (what can I say, I level my alts in clumps) Characters at exactly level 4: 20 (all others are higher) Heroes: 33 (note that some will become vigilantes later, as I only permanently change alignments the old fashioned way with tip missions) Villains: 14 (ditto for some later being rogues) Vigilantes: 3 Rogues: 6 Loyalists: 3 (not counting ex-Loyalists who have now left Praetoria) Resistance: 9 (ditto for ex-Resistance) Characters who started in Praetoria: 17 Magic: 33 (includes both Incarnates) Mutation: 7 Natural: 11 Science: 11 Technology: 6 Arachnos Soldiers: 1 Arachnos Widows: 1 Blasters: 6 Brutes: 5 Controllers: 7 (includes both Incarnates) Corruptors: 6 Defenders: 8 Dominators: 6 Masterminds: 7 Peacebringers: 1 Sentinels: 4 Scrappers: 3 Stalkers: 5 Tankers: 7 (one will become a stalker if Stone Melee is ever proliferated to stalkers) Warshades: 1 (Well that was a little surprising, I didn't realize I had more defenders than controllers! Maybe I should make another controller... 😛)
  21. This appears to be fixed in build 3. When I try to do this, I can no longer use the radio again after choosing to knock or sneak. (The "Radio in to Watkins for more details" objective still doesn't clear until the mission is over, but that doesn't seem like a big deal.)
  22. As of build 2, this appears to have been fixed. I can now view the info for Experimental Immune Booster normally.
  23. In the "Investigate Pathogen's Warehouse" mission from Agent Watkins' new arc heroside (build 2), it is possible to turn off the sprinklers before corrupting the data stream. If you do so, the timer stops and you have an unlimited amount of time to find the computer used to corrupt the data stream. (I assume this is all working as intended.) If you then contact Agent Watkins by radio before corrupting the data stream, and choose to quarantine yourself (the Hero option), the "Radio in to Watkins for more details" objective does not complete even after going through all dialogue. If you use the radio again, you can repeat the final bit of dialogue, in which you choose whether to enter the next mission by roof or by the front door, any number of times, and choose different options each time. As a result, it's possible to have both the "Choosing to Knock" and "Choosing to Sneak" clues at the same time, as seen in the screenshot. As far as I can tell, whichever option you choose last is the option that is actually used for the next mission, but I didn't test this extensively. After doing all this, corrupting the data stream immediately completes the mission as normal.
  24. A few thoughts on my experience with this arc: Firstly, I second a lot of other sentiments in these comments, such as: Doc Buzzsaw's dialogue is the best (and feels very true to her character, though maybe those are redundant); there are probably too many ambushes; overall good arc, good story, interesting mission maps, a bit on the difficult side. Other things: Crey is interested in moving to Kallisti Wharf? Ooooh, foreshadowing?! I definitely don't want this to be a strike force, for purely selfish reasons - if it's made a SF I'll be unable to solo it with all the AVs and so will probably never do it when it goes live. I'd much rather it be a fakey-fake TF/SF like the Ouroboros arcs, most things in First/Night Ward, etc. How exactly did we get to the Abandoned Sewers? Didn't seem to say (or I missed it), though I guess through Boomtown is the most obvious route. Also... will we get to have Freakloks roving around the Abandoned Sewers if that's where things are going down? (I almost want it to become a co-op zone though I'm not sure whether that would work out story-wise...) Speaking of which, I was disappointed we didn't get to see a lot of the Freaklok given how much they've been teased... I know more is coming, but can we have a Freaklok boss or something to come along with us on the final mission, so as to get more of a taste? I assume in the future something will go horribly wrong and/or right and we'll be up to our Detail 1s in hostile Freakloks, but I'm impatient I guess!
  25. On the mission "Investigate Pathogen's Warehouse" (from Agent Watkins, part of the new heroside arc), there are several destructible objects called "Medical Research" which, when destroyed, give you a buff called Experimental Immune Booster which briefly mitigates the Viral Cocktail debuff you have while inside the mission. This all works fine for me unless I attempt to open the info window for that buff, in which case the game immediately crashes. (Simply mousing over it to see its effects or even right clicking on it doesn't trigger the crash, only when I then choose Info from the dropdown menu.) I've replicated this crash several times on two different characters, and it seems to happen consistently. If relevant, I'm on Windows 10, using the new Homecoming Launcher beta to run the game.
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