Zhym

It works out really well IMO. ETA: BTW, I really appreciate how the mission objective text highlights where those objective should be (i.e., [back], [front], [middle]). It makes hunting the objective so much easier. Well, usually, anyway. In the mission in the ship, the generator that was supposed to be in the back was closer to the front (and hidden behind a stack of shipping containers). Again: AE gonna AE; not much to do about it. But it's helpful to know where the objectives are supposed to be, anyway.

Oh, right! We just don't see it in action (then again, I guess we usually don't). Am I right that the meteor hitting Atlas Park in 1966 was also part of the plot because of the AE map choices?

I just wish AE gave us the option to experience some of the things first-hand that can only be described. I want to see the repurposed Arachnos Flyer, physically visit the Meteors' makeshift base in the Geneva Hotel, etc. Ah, well. AE is what it is. I've been impressed with how @Darmian has used various maps for different purposes (although I think I've done ITF too many times for me to see the final map from that trial as anything else).

I just ran this (prompted by @TerroirNoir's excellent and hilarious reviews) and was likewise wondering what was going on with the lawyers. I assume they're custom hostiles with no attack powers, so they just follow you around with no way to hit you. Clever. The mission intro text says something about trying not to hurt the lawyers, which added kind of a TPN-trial flavor and made the mission interesting for my AoE-heavy blapper. I think I managed to avoid killing any lawyers, but I'm curious—does anything happen if you do lay waste to enemy and civilian alike?

Correct on both counts. I wonder if there's anywhere that archives what the level progression looked like in Issue 18, when Preatoria rolled out. ETA: Looking at Paragon Wiki, the level progression seems to have been the same since 2004. So what makes leveling go so much faster now?

It's not an unreasonable expectation, but it's not one that's going to be satisfied in Praetoria. The Praetorian content wasn't really written with the idea that players would do all the content on both the Loyalist and Resistance side—rather, it seems to have been designed for replayability, with players able to choose different paths each time through. And that was with Retail's much slower level progression. Add in the faster level gains in Homecoming, and I've had to pause XP just to do all the contacts in one faction (e.g., Loyalist Power), much less all the missions in all four factions. Note that although you can do the missions through Ouro, you won't always have the option to check in with the contact for your "true" alignment that way. As you probably know, many of the Praetorian missions prompt you to call either Calvin Scott (Resistance) or Provost Marchand (Loyalist) when you're working undercover with the opposite faction. If your character isn't of Praetorian origin, you can't do either of these in Ouro missions. If you started life as a Praetorian, you'll always have your "true" alignment contact available, even in Ouro—but you have to go to them in person (you can't call them because while you're in FB, they won't show up in your contacts). But the opposite alignment contact will never be available in Ouro missions. And at some point Calvin Scott disappears from Praetoria, even in Flashback missions, so my Praetorian Resistance character wasn't able to contact him for secret instructions, either. (To be clear, though, Calvin Scott is available as a contact in the arc for which he's the main contact; he just doesn't appear on the map otherwise). tl;dr: You can do all the Praetorian content through Ouroboros, but you won't have all the options in that content that you have if you run it as you level.

Is that...@Snarky?

Where is that? Is there a base access code for it?

As far as I know it’s always been that way. That’s my recollection from last year, at least. So if you’re level 50, Peregrine Island or Kallisti are the places to ToT. If you’re lower than that, check the level ranges at a tram. You can also exemp/sidekick to the appropriate level, which is part of why everyone tends to ToT in PI—after joining a league. And it’s why PI teams that end up with lower level team leaders (usually, when a 50 team lead drops) break trick-or-treating. ETA: The Paragon Wiki archive’s description of ToT door knocking mechanics includes the requirement that the zone be level-appropriate: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Halloween_Event/Trick_or_Treat

Once "Chase Manhattan" bank is in Pittsburgh, all bets are off.

FWIW, I ran this solo with my tricked-out DP/MC blaster and found it surprisingly challenging. But this was the first thing I ran since the aggro changes hit and the incarnate Cimerorans got buffed, so that may have been part of it. I agree, though, that this arc didn't quite make the impression that The Graveyard Shift, The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok, and the Aeon Strike Force did. Honestly, I ran it once and couldn't tell you what it was about. But then, I find that most of the Cimeroran story arcs and missions seem sort of the same.

Yes. If I were lead dev, my prime directive would be, "No powerset changes until the respec system is revamped." I am getting a big hit of nostalgia, and not in a good way. It's taking me back to the days of the forums complaining about each round of changes and Jack Emmert saying, essentially, "This is the game design I want; deal with it." It would be great if the process of making changes to the game involved the players more. Beta seems lately to be purely testing to see whether anything breaks; maybe it's only my impression, but feedback about planned changes seems more likely to lead to minor tweaks than big changes. Maybe we need an Alpha server where the devs can have players try things out and see what we think before committing to them. The actual Page 5 changes mostly look good to me at first glance, FWIW. But it would be nice if the dev process were more, "Here's what we're thinking of doing, what does everyone think?" and less, "This is what we're going to do."

I'm not sure, but this may be a limitation with Wine that it will only show full-screen on the primary display.

That would actually be about the right price, IMO—if not still a little overpriced. Because the only thing Aether can be used for at the moment is to buy permanent versions of Halloween costumes, we can actually do a really primitive comparison: It takes four pieces of Halloween salvage to buy an NPC costume that lasts for 14 days. At the moment, Halloween salvage is going for 30k-100k. We're in the Halloween event, so salvage is probably cheaper now than it would be in, say, May. So let's use the high end of that range: 100k at that value, the price of a 14-day costume is about 400k. For about 10M, you can have that costume all year. It takes 10 Aether to buy a permanent costume. Aether looks like it's currently around 3M. So that's 30M inf to buy a permanent costume right now. Spending 30M to dress up like an NPC seems insane to me (so you can imagine what I thought of spending 200M to do it when Aether was at 20M—not that I didn't do it for the badges), but at 3M for Aether the cost of a permanent costume isn't ridiculous if you plan to wear that costume full time for three years. I'd maybe peg the "reasonable" price of a permanent costume at 5M-10M inf, which would put Aether at about 500K-1M value. Of course, all that assumes that the only thing you can buy with Aether is costumes, and that people care about how much costumes cost. I suspect that if the costumes had been rolled out in Page 4 at a cost of 200M each...well, we might have thought harder about it. (On the other hand, we had a way to get the equivalent of 600M inf from one 4-star Aeon run, so wealth was rushing into the economy as fast as it was getting spent. Possibly faster.)

That's not looking like a great gamble right now. With the new ToT badges giving out 2 Aether each, there's been an influx. The last price I saw was about 3.1 million, and that's before everyone's had a chance to get the new ToT badges on all their alts. IMO, the initial price of about 20M each was inflated due to (1) extremely low supply (at the time Page 4 dropped, no supply) and (2) high demand from badgers who needed 150 Aether each to get the new badges. Both situations were temporary. But there's also an argument that prices are going to be artificially low for the next month, since (1) supply is increasing from the ToT badges, and (2) demand is low because (a) most badgers have their Page 4 badges by now, and (b) temporary costumes are plentiful, so why pay for a permanent one right now? What will happen after that? My guess is that the price will dip back up in November after a big drop this month but stay fairly low. As the game goes on, the supply of Aether will increase. The big question is whether there will be enough interest in the things Aether can buy to use all the supply. Aside from the badge factor, I'm guessing there won't be. And if the pricing ends up what was used in beta—1,000 Aether for the mini-me costume, for example—that might actually be so high that most people won't even bother trying to save up that much. So, personally, I see increasing supply and decreasing demand. I personally wouldn't bet on it increasing in value. That's just my guess, of course.

To be fair (to...us?), it's not an illogical decision. You have to be a zone-appropriate level to go trick-or-treating, so it makes sense to run ToT in a level 50 zone. That limits the options for heroes to PI or Kallisti. Kallisti might be better since heroes and villains could both play in the same zone, but it would also be a damn big zone to hunt for GMs. Plus, in PI the hospital is right next to the motel, everyone knows where the GMs spawn, and the base portal is close to the motel. Lag aside, it's set up pretty well for the event. I do think there are some people who prefer to ToT in Kallisti, but for the most part, players have decided that PI is THE place because it's, well, pretty much THE place.

BTW, “lag” means something specific—it’s latency between your computer and the server. It usually shows up as rubber banding. What's happening in PI seems to be good old fashioned server-side slowness. There’s too much going on in the zone for the servers to keep up. So you get things like powers taking a really long time to activate. It’s not a network thing and it has nothing to do with your processor, memory, or graphics. It has everything to do with the mayhem going on at the motel. Basically, if the slowness drives you nuts, avoid combat in the streets of PI for the next month.

It's just part of the Halloween event and PI having room for all those leagues, monsters, pets, etc. Learn to love it (or, y'know, go hunt somewhere else).

With the new Ancient Vampires all over the place, I keep thinking Peregrine Island is being overrun by Snarkies.

Gotta work on your priorities... FWIW, the new badges are quick to get. Hop to Spookygon Island, join the mob at the Motel of Horror, and you'll have defeated five of each Halloween EB in no time. I was able to top off my badges in a standard 15 minute break period. Win!

How much does it cost to run an individual shard? The October donations thread shows a payment of about $4000 to OVH last month. Would shutting down one of the five shards actually save 20% of that cost? I'm not saying we should shut down any shards. But since saving money seems to be the only reason to shut down a shard, I'm wondering how much that would actually save.

Yeah, I do this a lot. Thus, I have ended up with: Captain Kangaroo: MA/SR scrapper. Lots of fun to play. Was my "main" on Live and one of the first characters I recreated when I joined Homecoming. 70s Man: DP/MC blaster. He was an AR blaster on Live, but DP is so much better. This toon redefined what "lots of fun" could be and quickly became my main on Homecoming. Splendidman: SS/Inv tanker. 'Nuff said about this one. Crystal Cannon: Ice/Ice blaster. The name is a play on "glass cannon." Tomcat: Claws/SR stalker. Teal Ninja: Ninja/Ninjitsu stalker. A great powerset combo for soloing. Canned Heat: Fire/Fire Blaster robot cop (okay, technically it's "Canned.Heat" because I joined Homecoming too late to get the name, but I had it on one of the Live servers, so I'm going to pretend I have the real name) Pippi LePew: BR/Devices blaster. This is also a fun combo. Siouxsie Tsoo: Kin/Sonic defender dressed up like a Tsoo. Kin/Sonic is a great combo, of course, and this is a fun toon to play in groups. Gort Mk. VII: Time/Rad Defender. I had a couple of versions of Gort on Live, since I'm not sure what the canonical power set would be for the movie version of the robot. This combo works pretty well, though. I also have Gort Mark XII, a Rad/Atomic blaster, but that combo hasn't quite grabbed me. Mediocre Fred: Claws/Regen scrapper. Based on a Smothers Brothers song, he's a normal looking guy (or bicyclist) who turns into a werewolf. I like the character concept a lot, but he's not at the top of my list of fun characters to play. The Bureaucrat: AR/Invuln sentinel. This was totally a concept build, and it didn't quite work. Worked well enough to get him to 50, and even play some after that, but it's not my favorite. Which is a shame, because I love the concept. Dr. Pierce: Emp/Arrow defender. Modeled after a certain TV army doctor. As a playable character, he's...fine. Subordinate Claus: Ice/Time controller. Santa in bondage gear. Pretty fun to play, but I only bring him out in the holiday season. There are a whole bunch of other names that I rolled up characters for but haven't leveled much for various reasons: Statsman (Kin/Regen brute—don't do this), Human Trampoline (SS/Shield brute, with the idea that I'd pick lots of knock-up powers as he leveled, but I never leveled him), Andromeda Brain (BR/Mental blaster), Seismogram (Seismic/Earth blaster), Ninja Pirate Robot (DP/Ninja blaster), Sound Blaster Pro (Sonic/Sonic blaster), Laddie Liberty (Broad Sword/Shield scrapper), Celery Stalker (Savage/Bio stalker), Major Weakness (Mercs/Poison MM), and OVH Tech Support (Robots/Time MM). I also have one or two characters with power sets I like, but who I don't play much because I can't figure out a good name to go with them. I must have changed the name on my SJ/WP stalker three or four times now.

I’ve done both. Usually, I come up with a character concept and then try to fit an AT and power set combo to it. But sometimes I want to try a power set combo, so I try to come up with a concept that fits. I’d say I’m about 50/50 on how that works out. I’ve had concepts I loved where the powers just sucked to play. And I’ve had power sets that worked reasonably well but the character concept didn’t grab me. It’s the characters where the concept is fun and the power set works that I really enjoy playing.

Like that woman Madeleine. How does she know the exact number of hours my character has been online? Is she a stalker? Is there some deep level of surveillance going on in Paragon City, and Madeleine is our only tiny window into this hidden world? It doesn't bear too much thinking about, really.

I'd try it out myself, but I'm on a Mac, so I'd have to rewrite the whole thing in Automator or something anyway (I almost said "AppleScript"; that's how old I am).