mechahamham

I've been playing a newish katana/psi armor scrapper. I usually play characters that are much more damaging or much more about control, but the katana/psi has been a nice change of pace. I went lengthwise through the 'Oh yeah. Trolls run. Trolls always run,' thing as I was leveling through Skyway. My darling spouse said to me, "Trolls are the runningest punks." I picked up Mercedes Sheldon's arcs after I hit 20 and have been slowly working my way through them. Tsoo Sorcerers, of course, teleport away like crazy. What really stood out to me, though, was the Warriors' 'Elite' bosses. Every last one I've engaged has run from me at around 25% health. Almost none of the minions or lieutenants run, but of course they go down more quickly. It's not like I'm not taking any damage, either. So far, Psi Armor is about resists and health regen. It stands out as odd and unusual to me. I've done the arc on non-taunting melee characters before, and it just seems different this time through. Different, and maybe wrong, or even out of character for 'Proud' warriors to run away so much. I don't know if this should even count as a bug or even if I'm imagining it. Maybe there's something about Consume Psyche that causes enemies to run that I haven't run into on other characters. Have you noticed more runners than usual? Does it stand out as unusual?

I've noticed her hitting harder as well, especially if you happen to be in the cone radius of one of her attacks... and there are usually multiple people taunting her, so it can swivel to where you THINK you're safe RDQ. She also seems just a hair quicker to switch agro to people who upset her... high damage blasters and stalkers.

Montague I give quite a bit of slack to because of the implication that he's... a) A mutant doing a mage's job. b) TRYING to keep the lid on the whole Lost/Rikti... connection. Even though it's been WELL blown out of the water by that point in the game's story. c) Working with a team that's been repeatedly slaughtered despite doing important work to keep the entirety of the dimension from collapsing in on itself. (You'd think some of those other magic-oriented heroes and groups would be just a little more vigilant about keeping the research team out of mortal peril.) d) Attempting to keep Darrin Wade from absconding with the entirety of the Midnighter Vaults. and, most damningly: e) handicapped, crippled, and gaslighted by the Dream Doctor's idiocy. The Dream Doctor I absolutely cannot forgive for his pain-inducing credulity, breathtaking stupidity, and downright AWFUL writing. He's the worst part of the Dark Astoria stuff BY FAR.

This is what makes me despair of ever revisiting Mission Architect. Not only will most players never play your stories, the vanishing few who do care won't even be able to find them. I tell players to search for 'SFMA', and explain its origins on the Live servers and inevitably hear at least one 'yeah, nobody wants anything to do with stories. We're here for the farms'. I really, really, really want to think that those players are in the minority of AE-goers, but I know that's just not true.

That's some Super Smash Bros. level cheeze right there.

In the real world, with handful of standout exceptions, pure metals tend to be greyish to silvery white. It's the compounds and alloys that are colorful. For example, when people make 'Blue Steel', they're usually using electrical current or heat to very carefully oxidize the outermost layer of a steel alloy object. Copper is one of those standouts. Rather than grey or white, it has that characteristic orangey-red color in its pure state. Then, when it reacts with any other chemicals, it turns that bright Statue-of-Liberty-bluish-green shade.

Oh, I *like* that. Especially if you are tasked with relaying information to the Oranbegans prior to their deal... and they consider what's going to happen and still choose to make the deal. "Millenia of corruption for us, or complete and utter genocide for our pursuers? We've opted for corruption. There's no choice, really, at least as we see it. The council's vote was unanimous. Millions will die either way, but *we* have to at least be present in spirit to oppose not just Hequat, but Mot as well in your time. The children of the Mu will survive. We will be well deserving of every damnation they heap upon us. It is a small price to pay if that's what's necessary for humanity to survive into your future." There's one huge problem with this. Ouroborous can't send us back that far. They're bound by the 'Carbon Law'. Any further forward or back than about 5700 years, and you start dissolving into the time stream. Mender Lazarus, supposedly a survivor or defector of a fascist regime from the far future, is right on the edge of his 5700, and hallucinates because of it. Mender Silos mentions that the Crystal of Ice and Fire is only one time travel method among several known and others possibly unknown, so we'd need outside help to get as far back as the Fall of the Mu.

These would make me happy in that it would make contributing to zone events and league events easier for non-incarnate players. The various defense and resist shields suddenly become a lot more valuable in invasions when there aren't 20 level 50s dropping Barrier every time it comes up. BUT, it ain't EVER gonna happen, no matter how much I want it to. People just love their incarnates too much. They build around their incarnate abilities and will refuse to do content that restricts them. Despite this being a purely speculative thread, I can already hear the angry screaming starting in the distance.

I've always thought that Jack and Lupin need to give you a tutorial on how respecs work, how to obtain them, etc... "After selecting the level order for your powers, you will then be allowed to allocate slots.' For bonus points, they could encourage players to install the Beta client, copy characters to Brainstorm, and test their respecs there before committing to a build on live. A problem I see happening with this is that Jack is often hard to find for people who think that they have to be holding his hand to do their respec. Moving him into the Omega Team memorial was perhaps unkind without better directions. "THIS WAY TO SEE THE OMEGA TEAM'S TIME CAPSULE and Jack Wolfe." For extra fangirl points, you can also have Jack and Lupin facing off against each other in Pocket D, as if dancing, but quietly trading biting quips just traced with the tiniest hint of belligerent tension and innuendo: Okay, this goes way beyond 'Innuendo' and straight into 'We know our fanbase' territory.

You need make sure Stoney is set to Attack Aggressive, just like mastermind pets. You can also command him to go completely passive or attack a certain enemy. Controllers have been lusting after MM controls since issue 6. HC has made those a reality!

I've been going through arcs on a lower-level character the last several days. I often (read: 'almost always') keep exp turned off, but this was extra important for this character because I didn't want to outlevel the Hollows contacts. Is the Atta mission at level 13 with no exemped-in goodies as bad as I remember it? Well, it helps that I wasn't doing it with DOs and TOs. I defeat-all'd it, and didn't regret the experience. I managed to get Karsis unlocked and actually did a CoT trial *at level 16*, which crossed all my ts and dotted all my is for the Hollows. I did a few other arcs and then started looking at what else I wanted to accomplish before level 20. "It seems like I heard someone mention doing Shauna's arc at level 19. That must be interesting." So I went through her and Eagle Eye's arcs at level 18, and they WERE interesting, but in the best possible way. I expected the Skulls to be kinda broken, either far too hard or far too weak. They had just the right difficulty. The extra attacks they had from being level 18 and 19 were just perfect to make fighting far more exciting than simply wailing on the level 5-10 Skulls you find in the open zones. Then you come to the Rave mission in Eagle Eye's arc, where Veles is entertaining Atta and promises him a tour of his Superadyne lab. Atta that I beat into a mush at level 13. It's always been pretty ridiculously easy to out-level the Hollows arcs, even during the Live era. Everyone wants to do that +4x8 Frostfire mission, which generates a TON of exp, no matter how you slice it. Finishing Julius' and Talshak's arcs via Ouro is often the only way to do it unless you do what I did and keep exp carefully turned off. Both have an upper limit of level 14. Talshak is doubly odd in that his acceptable level range is 12-14 rather than 10-14. Given that all the enemies in the Hollows arcs, with the possible exception of the Igneous, scale to 20 or well past, I really feel like the level ranges for Talshak and Julius should cap out at 20. At this point, it's far more difficult to arrange to do them normally than it is to revisit them with time travel shenanigans. It would not only make it easier to do the arcs without resorting to Ouro, but it would give players another reliable '+4x8 Frostfire' opportunity with the Atta map. I don't think there's any pressing need to adjust Karsis' level range since the trial implicitly has TF exemplaring built into it. It couldn't hurt to do so, though, even if it means giving the Igneous another couple attacks to make the Cavern trial more interesting. Difficulty: Easy-Medium. If this were Mission Architect, it'd be a one line change for the missions involved. If the Igneous get new powers, they could be taken directly from the various stone and fire sets. Lots of players don't have much in the way of defense, even at 20, so it might be kinder to hold off in that regard.

I've heard others use '500m' as a ballpark as well, but I usually assume they're talking about making a perfectly boosted/purpled-out build.

500m is probably a ridiculous amount of overkill in a *lot* of cases. But, yeah, the level curve now is ludicrously fast compared to the live era. I keep /optiontoggle noxp turned on MOST of the time because it's far TOO fast for my taste. You really should remake at least your favorite characters from Live. In most cases, they won't just be as good as you remember. They'll be better. (Holey moley did blasters get a tremendous amount of love with the i27 changes.)

I use a solution similar to Starhammer's. I keep a custom popmenu that contains several pre-made keybinds and macros that I tend to use across multiple characters. The section for that goes a little like: Title "Binds" Option "F7" "beginchat /bind f7 say <scale 1.50><color #FFFFFF><bordercolor #000000><bgcolor #00A000>F7!!" Option "wdwsavefile" "beginchat /wdwsavefile namegoeshere" Option "wdwloadfile" "beginchat /macro W wdwloadfile namegoeshere" Once I've got a UI set up how I want it, I do the wdwsavefile option to save it off on a per-character basis. This way, each character can have their own bespoke layout. The wdwloadfile option creates a 'W' macro button that will reload the UI should it get hosed, or, more often than not, zoning into a mission makes my inspiration window jump into the middle of my view. I can also use that W as a one-off to load another character's UI if I think parts or all of it will work, and then save it for the current character. No, it's not ideal, but UI code work is hard... harder than it looks by a lot.