Jiro Ito

You cannot change the arc contact from mission to mission. You can work around it by completing the main objective in mission 1, then having a "rescue" or "ally" objective pop up where you have to go talk to Manticore in the first mission and he gives you some information about the next mission. You'll still have to go back to Statesman, but he could say "based on what Manticore told you, etc etc". If your boss isn't a required objective, you can have him run away at 25 or 50 or 75% health and not have it affect the outcome. You can have a different objective (collect a glowie) required to complete. You can still have some mission text "Defeat the boss" appear at the top so players fight the boss anyway. You have to be creative sometimes within the constraints of AE. Sometimes the inflexibility can lead to some more interesting and creative things though, which is cool.

AE already exists in the game though, it's just called AE. Players generate a lot of content there now. Not very many people play those stories. Everybody knows where AE is, any level can use it, there's a system in place to mark some of the better arcs as "Devs Choice" so you know you're playing a quality arc before you jump into it. There are some great ideas to expand the options, which can hopefully be implemented at some point. The above idea seems like a whole lot of work on the dev side, for not much payoff. I think the devs will get more bang for the buck with a new Task Force or Strike Force. My "Other" vote is for just such a thing, new task force or strike force with hard mode options.

I feel like a single powerset that had every type of damage in it would need to have very low damage numbers to keep a bit of balance to it, since all the existing powersets of a single damage type (or, yes, fire/smash or cold/lethal, etc) eventually run up against a mob with resistance to it. Getting around that resistance within a single powerset would need it to have a lower damage output overall to balance. See: dual pistols lower relative damage since it can swap ammos.

Lots of people like the old missions though.

It depends what you mean by custom. If you make your own powersets, ie one guy who has Dominate, Char, Rain of Arrows, Jack Frost, Granite Armor, Singularity, Headsplitter, etc; a bunch of powers from all kinds of different powersets, then they will not grant xp. If you're making your own enemies but using existing powersets (fire blast/super reflexes, etc), then they will grant experience. Personally, I don't care about xp within AE missions unless I'm farming. When I play storymodes, I'm usually using lvl 50 characters that are fully built, even when exempted down, so it doesn't matter much to me.

arm armor made of literal arms for his army

Very cool idea!

Back Alley Brawler Arbiter Sands Marshal Blitz

owl take it under consideration - a dev, i hope

Seriously...I would love to roll around in a Longbow Chaser or Arachnos Flier, Halo-style. A couple other groups have some fun options too. Even as a temp power inside a mission.

This. I don't want the tauntyness of Taunt nerfed just so it will do a little damage, thank you. There's lots of other ranged damage options for tanks; every epic pool has a ranged aoe or two if that's what you want. Perfect Zinger has a chance for psi damage proc as well.

Sure, open the mini map and right click at a spot, and it'll drop a thumbtack on it. You can also type /loc and it will tell you the coordinates your are currently at, and you can type /thumbtack followed by the coordinates (/thumbtack 000, 000, 000) and it will create the waypoint for you.

A few of the AE badges are account-wide, but yeah, otherwise you gotta do the legwork. Fingerwork.

I bet I'm close to Player2's total. Now I have to count. *twitches*

Here's Talos Island for example, with AE location circled on the middle-right side

The building was removed from Atlas Park and Mercy Island, but it can be found in most of the other zones, including Pocket D. Look on your map for the blue and white "AE" marker, and that will be the building.

Love letters and Estonia but no Stank, Corruptamagoo or Defloobernaut. Sniff.

TF/SF settings already available allow you to Buff Enemies (I use this most of the time), or deactivate Incarnates, or Temp Powers, etc etc. No extra dev work required!

This one is great

Is there a reason we can't use Warshade or Peacebringers as custom enemies? Too many powers and forms to navigate?

love the sunburned dude

I feel like we're due to have some NPC heroes and villains get promotions to trainers and TF/SF contacts. As the game timeline moves forward, moving Ms. Liberty to her task force permanently and replacing her as a trainer shows some in game progress. In my opinion, Back Alley Brawler and Blue Shield (replaced with Ms. Shock as King's Row's protector and trainer) also deserves Task Forces instead of their current posts. I know we're all somewhat holding on to the past by being here in the first place, but if Incandescent can replace Castle in Peregrine, I think we can pass out some additional promotions as well.

Domingator!

The game already offers most of this now, by choice and without any additional programming time. Don't run AE missions, limited market use, cap your build at your desired defense/resist levels, disable all or all but Alpha incarnates on TFs, only do a given TF once per week. If there's interest in this, you could form a team or sg with other players to play with these constraints.

If AE is disabled, except for dev choice, then how does anyone write something for people to play so that it is chosen to be dev choice?