Parabola

If i recall correctly, the same flag that makes a mez's duration ignore purple patch also makes the mez's magnitude now be effected by purple patch and by extension enhancements. That means either you make the mez not be effected by enhancements at all, and have a static mez that is reduced by purple patch, or you make it enhancable. Otherwise its duration is effected by purple patch and you don't get the clean switch over between mezes every 4 seconds. Edit: This is how Cloak of Fear works as well. Hang on. So these two powers react differently to enhancement than every other mez power in the game? I get not wanting to be constrained by precedent but is this not going to be just a tad confusing?!

The best form of control is knockdown/up since there's no real limit to how much it loops especially if you have stacking sources like an Earthquake/Bonfire on a Frenzied Tide Pool. As much as I've disagreed with everything else Championess has said I have to agree that confuse has to be considered the best control effect. It's hard to argue with a control that makes the mobs kill themselves and buff you. That's not to say Seeds is where it needs to be, just that given the straight choice between holding, stunning, fearing, confusing, etc a mob I'll choose confusing every time. Many enemies even tend to herd themselves when confused if left mobile.

I've realised I really dislike random mez effects. Two main reasons. Firstly they can't be easily enhanced (hamis being expensive and end-game). Secondly working out how to stack enough mez magnitude to shut down bosses is an enormous part of my character building these days. There are more and more bosses that do something deeply annoying if they aren't mezzed. A random effect mez is unfortunately almost completely useless for this.

In general I like the sound of this - it's clever and solves an obvious problem. My biggest concern is that it's introducing another mechanic to the game that isn't going to be immediately obvious to players who are not well versed in what is going on under the hood. It's always been recognised that the interaction between global vs local recharge and ppm isn't an ideal situation because of exactly this issue.

I've long thought that the problem with confusion in this game is that there's nothing confused about it. Enemies affected by confusion know exactly who their enemy now is; it's exclusively their former friends. If confusion lived up to the name enemies would select targets at random from everyone on the battlefield, both friend and foe. That would make confusion a much softer control and it would also have addressed some of the power imbalance between seeds and mass confusion (seeds aggros so you'd always get random return fire, mass confusion doesn't so you wouldn't unless you attack further). Anyway, that's all very pie in the sky thinking now. I haven't had a chance to do any testing (and might not) but I'm very concerned that these changes seem to go too far. Creepers in particular is integral to the feel of plant and if it isn't a high damage patch of chaos and fun fx, then plant loses a big part of its usp.

Well... This is certainly an ambitiously sized collection of changes. No wonder it took a long time to get out of closed beta. I can see how some changes are effectively bundled up together but in all honesty I worry that this patch is too big for effective testing. New content obviously has the potential for a lot of bugs but my bigger concern is the number of changes to existing mechanics and powersets. The bar should be set very high for sweeping changes, as characters with significant player investment in them are being affected. The simple fact that there are two pages of feedback threads suggests that it is unlikely each change is going to receive enough focus. To end on a positive though, it's good to see the developer notes outlining the thinking behind the changes. Big thumbs up for that.

Sorry I don't recall. Lately I've given up trying this sort of run in favour of just completing everything in ouroboros. It's easier and there's no need to shut off xp so you are always progressing.

It never fails to make me laugh that the first arc, unlocked at level 5, has a 'this is what a trainer is' mission.

Among other balance reasons for not allowing set enhancements to be slotted in free auto powers this prevents the noob trap of slotting a stealth IO in a power that cannot be turned off. IIRC this was allowed once upon a time and it caused no end of problems on escort missions.

But can't you then just pick any low FX armour set and the science or mutation origin? Radiation in this case is backstory rather than power.

I couldn't agree more. I've always thought having reactions is a bad idea and I believe they contribute to many of the problems we see on the forums.

Not at all. As you can see it was a while ago and didn't exactly gain a lot of traction. I only brought it up because I mocked up what such a set could look like. I really think this is a gap in the IO landscape that would be worth filling.

I agree that this is a bit of a gap in the current IO line up. A while back I suggested the same thing:

I solo 99.99% of the time and a small proportion of that is spent dual boxing. If dual boxing was banned I would simply continue to solo 99.99% of the time without it. Dual boxing isn't a replacement for teaming, it's another form of soloing.

They could just instate a forum rule that says 'if you are asked to leave a thread, do so' and the outright bans follow if this is not obeyed. Going straight to the ban would indeed be too strong unless other rules had been broken.

Such as . . .? At the moment moderation seems to roughly escalate as follows: 1) Play nicely everyone, don't make me come in here. 2) Hid some posts, seriously cool it everyone. 3) Ok we're done, thread locked. I suggest an extra step between 2 and 3 where appropriate: 2.5) Ok X and Y, you were asked nicely and this isn't on. Do not post again in this thread or bans will follow. Again, I appreciate that this isn't as simple as the complete threadlock and it does require moderation being more publicly direct but it would be fairer to other posters in the thread. At the minute it can feel like everyone is punished for the actions of individual posters.

The short version is shut off xp at every level ending in a 4 or a 9 and do everything you can. There is a bit more to it if your OCD is very strong though. When I've tried this I've been aiming to get all my contacts to confidant status (full bar) but that raises an issue blueside. A lot of the old origin contacts share a pool of missions alongside those specific to them individually. So, if you tap out one origin contact before moving onto the next you can find there aren't enough missions left to get the new contact to confidant. Unfortunately, even bearing the above in mind my last attempt at this was spoiled by a contact I couldn't get a full bar on. I'd been cycling through all five origin contacts in each level range but I still ran out of missions. Other than that the main dangers are forgetting to do something (the atlas park safeguard is easy to miss) or just simply not shutting off xp soon enough. You have to be very careful of mission and story arc completion bonuses, particularly early on. Something I've been enjoying while doing this kind of challenge is to try to get field crafter more or less through drops alone. It gives some purpose to all the enemies you are wading through with xp turned off. You still don't pick up enough lv10 recipes though. It's also quite satisfying to pick up the exploration badges and history plaques as you go too. It's a different experience doing it when the mobs are still a threat.

Chapeau! I've had a few tries at this and given up every time. I'm settling for doing everything in flashback but in level order for my current run - it's going well, nearly finished 25-29. As well as missing out loads of hunts it means you get to keep levelling and can use a much more fleshed out build. Of course there are a load of missions that aren't part of a story arc or have a badge so these are out of reach doing it this way. I don't like playing on anything other than the highest settings I can manage though so it's still taking a long time...

This is a good point. I'm still smarting a bit about a suggestion thread of mine (years ago) that was locked after two posters took it upon themselves to get into a massive argument that wasn't even on topic. I get that from the moderators point of view a thread that is blowing up into arguments is a headache and locking it is a simple option but it doesn't feel very fair to those not directly involved - particularly the OP. Perhaps the moderators could look at removing problematic posters from a thread before resorting to locking it (assuming the opening poster themselves aren't the issue)?

Othering as I understand the term is the assignment of labels to people, I don't see how calling out such behaviour in the abstract can be considered the use of this? But I appreciate that all this is very much a matter of perspective which is what makes this such a tricky topic.

I've often thought the moderation here could do with being more heavy handed rather than less. Too much antagonism and 'othering' is being allowed; the derogatory labelling of groups of posters in an effort to undermine and dismiss their opinions should not be acceptable.

I've attempted different versions of completionist characters a few times. Something to decide up front is whether you are going to try to do everything at level or settle for doing everything you can as flashbacks. The former is the greater challenge and takes some organisation, the latter is frankly a lot more achievable. If you are going to try to run at level you need to turn off xp at every level that ends in a 4 or a 9, and then work through all the contacts until they are out of missions. You can also do radio missions for the various safeguards and tip missions etc. Be warned, this is a slog, particularly blueside. There are a lot of filler missions including copy/paste hunts which test the patience. Using flashback and working your way through the story arcs is a more pleasant ride. You get to keep levelling and can bring a much more fleshed out build to whatever you are running. I'm currently running a character in this way and just doing the blueside story arcs I'm vet level 4 with most incarnates unlocked while still running the 24-29 content. Either way my top tip for choosing a character is pick something you enjoy. You are going to be spending an awful lot of time watching one set of animations. I personally favour brutes as they are unmatched in the early levels but my current run is a storm sentinel. Some form of stealth can be a useful time saver but it is perfectly possible to just bull your way through a mission to the objective if you are tough enough. You are also going to have to fight everything including the more irritating enemies. Some form of boss level hold or stun is very useful against certain enemies and it's worth having a plan for heavy debuff situations. I'd also seriously consider having built in mez protection. This is all assuming you are going to turn up the difficulty as you go, at +0x1 you can face roll anything but where's the satisfaction in that? Good luck with whatever you go with!

The safest thing is to target an enemy in the middle of the back of the group. I tab target and for speed I generally target the nearest guy and position myself for the best coverage. After a while you develop a mental map of cone dimensions and get a fairly good idea of where you need to be to hit most of a group. Something I always find really useful for Seeds in particular is some form of stealth, it gives you a bit more time to line things up. Be aware that if you have Audrey and the creeper patch following you they will aggro mobs for you though. Just so it's clear all cones originate from your character and extend out to their range. They will extend to this range regardless of how close you are to the enemy you have targetted (with very long range cones like Umbral Torrent it's easy to blast right through the group you are fighting and aggro the group behind),

This just occurred to me - I wonder if it would make runners slightly less annoying if they could be flagged as 'defeated for the purposes of mission objectives' when their morale breaks. So, in a defeat all you wouldn't have to worry about tracking down every last enemy that has fled from you, and any enemy guarding a hostage wouldn't count as still holding the hostage while they take to their heels (which also strikes me as more realistic). I've no idea how the coding for fleeing works so this could well be a complete non-starter but it just dropped into my head (as I watched an enemy guarding a hostage run out of the room while the hostage continued to cower in place). Avoid effects and the like would need to be excluded of course, this would only apply to enemies fleeing due to low health.

I'm wondering if a system could be coded that would allow multiple auto-fire powers but only certain powers. Basically long duration buffs such as hasten, domination or the click mez protections could be on a list that would allow them to be set on auto-fire together. But if you set a power not on the list to auto, such as healing aura or an attack, then you are only allowed that one. That would allow the devs to fine tune the level of automation they are happy with. That being said I play using keybinds to trigger powers and it's all too easy to keep queuing powers, preventing an auto-fire power from going off. Having a power set to auto doesn't guarantee it will fire as soon as it is recharged and that would be more pronounced with multiple powers set in that way.