Take One

I think the damage buff should be removed from Rage, along with the crash. The tohit buff can remain. The damage should be directly added back into the attacks of Super-Strength, to make up for this. Rage should instead provide a huge Recharge bonus, which lets you use your heavy hitting attacks more often. The fact that you use your heavy hitting attacks more often will drain your endurance faster, so there is a drawback built into the power already, if you want to call it that. There, I think that would fix SS and Rage and make it work satisfactory for both Tankers and Brutes.

I wish there were recipes added so we could just pay threads and empyrean merits straight up without having to convert them, because that's a completely unnecessary step nowadays.

There is an Agent G in Faultline, inside the dam, but he has nothing to do with Mr. G

People have asked for the "finish" to the Skulls storyline, and now there's people begging for a BAB Task Force. Naturally these two things should be combined into a KR Task Force set at level 10-20. It can be quite short. Maybe 3 missions will suffice. No reason to outlevel all the other task forces at that range. First things first: hunt down Deathlok, make him talk. Find out about the Lords of Death and a huge shipment of Dyne the Family is supposed to deliver to them. Draw out the Lords of Death. Take out the Dyne delivery. Fight some Family goons along with the Skulls at the site of the deal. This draws the ire of the Lords of Death, who now will look weak to their minions and to their Family overlords, if they don't react. Finally fight the Lords of Death in a suitably scenic place, perhaps around the old Kings Row garment works, or drop an old cemetary in KR and place their HQ there. The fight could go from on the surface against Superadine-hopped up Skulls, then underground, where we face undead forces that the more powerful Skulls have learned to create. Finally the Lords of Death themselves, and a horde of their Skull minions. There, thank me later. And BAB should of course be in Kings Row, in the seedier northern end so people can find a trainer up there while street sweeping. You still street sweep, right? It's not just me? OR! If we want to make things really interesting, BAB's TF could handle the whole Superadine food chain, and start with taking down the Lords of Death, and then move on to take on the Family. It would then be a level 20-40 TF, with the Lords of Death and their minions at the lower end as new updated high-level skulls challenging the Family, who naturally will have none of that and mobilize to take down these upstarts. BAB sees a chance to strike against the whole bad lot at once, and puts the heroes on the right track take them on, while he recovers from his encounter with Deathlok (if that is his name, I can't remember at the moment).

"Story Focused" I believe it was originally but I can't really remember. It's been so long. As for thinly veiled farms under that tag, I can't say that I have seen any, since I've been playing through all the arcs I could find marked SFMA (except a few). I have an explicitly marked farm with the SFMA tag, because it is still telling a story but can be used for farming with a typical fire farm build, if desired. It's not a great farm but I like it.

I like gimmicks. They make things interesting. If I don't want to mess with gimmicks there are plenty of powersets without them, and many with gimmicks so insignificant that they can be ignored.

All That Glitters 3.1 Revised: I won't go into detail for each mission since I've played it before but here are some things I noticed. Mission 1: Clue: Praetorian Tech Weilding Pirates ConDev, as a seperate company was absorbed by Langston long ago and renamed Langston Labs. Clearly they are reusing the name for these new force of Praetorian-armed pirate units. Langston Corp. really has used all the tech they can get their hands on. I might write this as: Praetorian Tech Wielding Pirates ConDev was absorbed by Langston long ago and renamed Langston Labs. Clearly they are re-using the name for this new force of Praetorian-armed pirate units (or "for these new Praetorian-armed pirate units"). Langston Corp. really has used all the tech they can get their hands on. This new mission feels more vigilante than it used to. I'm just going around punching people I think might be bad to find clues. Very vigilante! Mission 2: Let's prepare to blow up this place, just in case. Again, the vigilante methods are there. Good! Clue: Consciousness Uploader Prototype "The scientists were discussing how they can't get it to work." I think this should be "why they can't get it to work" or "how they can get it to work". Clue: Consciousness Installer Prototype "The scientists were discussing how it should work but that they will need Crey Revenant Technology, to make it work." I suggest "The scientists were discussing how it works, and that they will need Crey Revenant technology to make it functional." or something like that. When I upload the Doctor's program, the interact bar says "Downloading hacker's program" - seems like it should say "uploading" or maybe "installing". The popup after I leave the mission still talks about finding a safe place in a leaning tower in Eden. Mission 3: In the mission sendoff text: "I am imprisioned here" The popup at the start of the mission still mentions Eden. Not sure how the Gaians made it all the way to Primeva but maybe it will be explained later. Ah, they escaped from the Crey compound zoo? Nice touch. Mission 4: The Friendly Daemon doesn't seem to lead to the Doctor. I don't see anything in the compass or on the map anyway. It also doesn't seem to do anything else, but that's fine. Mission 5: Dr. Wainwright was a much harder opponent than Hopkins. Not sure if this was on purpose but it seemed weird. The whole "set doctor free > punch tube > free the doctor" sequence seemed weird. Maybe not weird enough to change, but perhaps it could work if the text indicates that her tube opens "off-camera", but she is immediately caught by Crey security, so you skip the "punch the tube" step, and don't need the awkward "a woman spills out of the tube and then disappears and re-appears some distance away caught by Crey security" effect. Conclusion: A more vigilante feel than some of the other arcs in the series, which is a good thing. I was killed by random Gaian bosses and Dr. Wainwright in the last mission but my character was just level 28 so not fully within the level range. They seemed more powerful than anything else in the story however, so it caught me by surprise. I like this change to the arc, setting it in Nerva makes much more sense than Eden.

Another Vigilante-To-Villain tip mission, has Sidewinder mentioned as male but presenting as female. The name of the mission is "An Unreturned Phone Call".

A vigilante to villain tip mission exit popup seems to have the wrong text. I'm not quite sure what it should say, but probably the real mission title, whatever that was. Here's a screenshot, and in case that gets lost somehow, it's for "Vigilante To Villain SL6-7 Five" which also appears in the title of the popup.

There is no reason to remove an Echo map. Just add another Echo map. "Hostile DA" or whatever, where people can PVP. Make up some IC reason for it. "The mists and Mot's influence have fogged the minds of all that enter the area, and they are now hostile to each other." Make it like Warburg, where it's a free-for-all. Similarly, Echo: Warburg and Echo: Bloody Bay could be PVE maps "before the hostilities began" where there is no pvp. It's moments after Blitz's defection / the meteorite strikes, and nobody has yet figured out that there's gold in them thar hills. Thus, villains are there trying to figure out what is going on and how to take advantage of the new situations. Only later do the heroes show up to fight them for the resources.

I see that I am late with my suggestion. So I'll just agree with this.

You wouldn't have to remove the existing Striga or change any of the contacts. You can have a separate instance of Striga for villains, with new contacts but otherwise identical (or updated to another level range if you prefer but that would be a lot more work, and I for one would love another place to go from level 20-30 than Sharkhead). So you don't have to remove any NPCs anywhere else, or anything of the sort. Just come up with stories for villains to enjoy on Striga. For inspiration, I suggest my own modest AE arc "Fear And Loathing On Striga", which I only recently learned was the official name of one of the actual Striga arcs. The egg on my face!

If it's that simple, why not create pvp versions of all or many more maps? I don't even know if Villains can get to Echo:DA. But even so, wouldn't it be "easier" to create PVE versions of Bloody Bay and Warburg, and then let people choose whether to enter the pvp or pve version of the maps when going there?

In honor of the year we've had: Masked Virulent Quarantined Distant

Prodigal, as in the prodigal children have come back home.

In the AE, the Civilians faction contains both "ordinary" nameless NPC civilians, the likes of which we see wandering around the world, and lots of "named" NPCs like Amanda Vines and Tsoo Tattoo artists, Baby New Year and other such creatures. The problem is that there is a "Random" selection which picks from all of these entities and uses it to populate a Rescue objective, for example. It is much more likely to grab a named entity than one of the unnamed generic ones which usually is the ones you actually want. I suggest the creation of a new Civilians group which only contains the unnamed NPCs, and a random selector, so we can have random civilians show up in our missions without having to face the risk of seeing Tsoo tattoo artists or Baby New Year where they don't belong. I don't think changing the current group is a good idea, because that would possibly break existing missions, so the creation of a new "clean" group is probably best.

Now that's a man with a beard another man might be proud to follow into battle.

The mobs that don't have bows/crossbows could have spears, like the Cimerorans. A higher ranking archer mob could use some trick archery to debuff, reaching nearly Tsoo Sorcerer levels of annoyance.

I could definitely see them using trained dogs and even lions.

What? No! We hate when enemies have unique costume pieces that we can't use!

It doesn't really have to be much. I recall all the times I beat up some scientist lady she kept asking if I really knew what I was doing, and insisted that I was being stupid. I figured it was just normal villain banter, but it was hinting at this upcoming take-over, I think. So the clues were there, they were just too vague to be understood until you reach the end. Maybe having some of the Langstons mention their love of Cap au Diable and their dislike of Arachnos, in private of course, would make it clearer. But I wouldn't say that you must change anything.

All That Glitters 4.3: Mission 1 Briefing: "Longbow is finally taking the threats seriously" - I think it's just one threat, but I'm not sure. Action: Nice map, seems suitably epic. Debriefing: "Longbow is part of Freedom Corps" - I must confess I don't know much about these organisations. I thought Longbow _was_ Freedom Corps. Like, all of it. Are they two separate entities? What is Freedom Corps and what is Longbow? Not a slight against your writing, just me being confused. Mission 2 Briefing: Indigo and Crimson are Longbow agents? I thought they worked for a shadowy government org above the FBSA or something. Again my ignorance about these things becomes apparent. However, I am fairly sure they aren't "Agent Indigo" and "Agent Crimson" but just Indigo and Crimson. Action: Epic action, again. The agents were called Agents here too. Maybe it's something you have to do to get them to work in the AE, and in that case I suppose you are forgiven. 😛 Mission 3 Briefing: Well I did not see this coming. 🙂 Action: More epic action. I'm impressed. I'm having a hard time finding all these enemies that spawn in however... stuck on Ghost Widow. Okay, she was hiding outside on the beach in an obscure corner. All done now, and it was pretty awesome. Very easy with all the allies but I also played on an incarnate scrapper on regular difficulty. Not complainng, I could have made it harder if I wanted to, so it's good that it's playable for weaker characters. Mission 4 Briefing: A good little relaxing mission here after all that action. Action: I have no idea how I've never seen this map before. Guido Verandi has a broken $guygal in his text. Bloody Vicious says "you have done us a great deed" - sounds weird to me, "done us a great favor" or "done a great deed" perhaps? Man, this is a long map. Clearly I am going to have to play this again to try the second option and find out what happens... Anyway, I expected a clue after this, but there was none. Maybe it'll be come clear why. Mission 5 Not much to say about this mission. It's a nice ending to the series. I noticed a "though" instead of a "thought" in one of the npc chatters: "I never though he'd go all modern Blackbeard". I almost missed that there were clues to find here, you might want to make that more obvious in the briefing. Also, the clues could be numbered 1 of X or something, so the player knows how many there are to be found. Summary I had to suspend a whole lot of disbelief to buy into that Arachnos and Lord Recluse would be tricked like this by a bunch of small-time (comparatively) businessmen. It feels like you could have had this entire series of arcs be about the secession that plays out in three missions during this arc, and it still wouldn't be too much. I mean, I suppose it was, but it only became obvious in the very last arc of I don't know how many , 10 or 12 or more? If the true goal of the Langstons had been revealed around half-way and the rest of the arcs had all been about bringing about this end, it would have felt less rushed and perhaps more believeable. I feel like the bulk of the stories have focused on setting up the different Langston organisations and their dealings, in very great detail, and then the actual meat of the story is finished in half an arc. Even if it makes sense that it all happens in one fell stroke, it really stretches my imagination, as I said. Even so, great fun ending to this, and you make the AE do things I don't know are possible. I think that this would be a fun change to bring to the Rogue Isles, and it would make red-side feel more interesting if different groups ruled different islands. I have been thinking along the same lines myself.. So I'm not against the idea at all.

How would being able to pick more underperforming powers make you more powerful?

The latest announcement from the GMs said that they are not going to be holding them every month but rather 4 times a year from now on.

Here's a specific map that seems like it should be easy to port: OUTDOOR_UNIQUE_FOREST_01C It's basically every normal outdoor forest (you know the one with the stone pillars and the two "tunnels" in among the trees), but the sky is green! Because it's the Hydra dimension.