Heraclea

Shirley Bassey - Theme from Goldfinger RIP Honor Blackman

Statler Brothers - Flowers on the Wall

I am fairly sure you can also run Easton's arc twice and collect both badges. It would surprise me greatly if you could get both temp powers, though.

Faultline was originally a hazard zone, and it too has a storyline.

The Andrews Sisters - Shortnin' Bread

I must admit that the 'exploit' of base teleporting has breathed new life into old content. Material I might have avoided like Unity Plague and Scroll of Tielekku turns into enjoyable content once the issue of the missions being in random zones all over the city becomes mostly a solved problem. South IP is still something of an issue though. I remain a fan of Croatoa, and just levelled a character through the Hollows and found that quite enjoyable despite too many street hunts. Old style contacts need to be much more forthcoming with their story arcs, and never refer you to Security Chiefs. And any older mission that involves more than one door or train. or moves the goalposts after you finish one mission, ought to be treated as a story arc and have merits awarded. I probably won't do Maxwell Christopher's Nosferatu arc again unless on a character specifically tuned for it. Oddly, the content I intensely dislike tends to be newer. The lower level content in Night Ward involving Drudges and the like is simply unplayable. Never expected to get permamezzed and die on a tanker because of extended forced AFKs. Not fun at all. Arbiter Marchand offers long missions of drudgery, dangerous bosses, and annoying 'helpers', for tiny rewards. So does Field Agent Nance. Protean was way overpowered, and that arc definitely ought to have given more than six merits. Newer content is often marred by useless maps. It is way too easy to get lost on, say, the Admiral Sutter TF, where you can't find the rest of your team and the map gives no clues how to find them. Even if you can see them, you can't get there from here. I have nothing but compliments for New Dark Astoria though. There are very few bad maps there, I kind of liked the Major, rather sparing on the flavor text, but the ending seemed anticlimactic. Same with Mr. G; not sure how that fits into lore. And I really enjoy the Tsoo storyline in Steel Canyon involving the museum director. Try to get that one in on every character in those levels. I have started running more lowbie content on redside, and finally got a character through Praetoria last month. Did not do the grand tour there. Towards the end I just wanted to get out and escape into the wider world. Something to do once for old time's sake, but 20 levels of solo only content is quite a stretch. And you aren't going to make that stuff team friendly without toning down the mobs and revising the alignment system, which was unique but is inherently antisocial.

For whatever reason - new surge in new characters? - white salvage has actually been selling at 10 recently. I won't pay that little for it, myself; the workman is worthy of his hire, and sooner or later people will figure out that they can get more just vendoring. Did stock up on Luck Charms for the lowbies.

Something odd about the new Bombardment set. At level 50 each recipe, or at least each of the ones I crafted, requires: Kinetic Weapon Temporal Analyzer Unquenchable Flame Synthetic Intelligence Unit Did a double take when I looked at what the recipes needed for crafting, because this behavior is unusual to say the least, and I was afraid that I had mistakenly boughten several identical recipes.

This is why you run AE missions for tickets, so you can ignore the markets. It was inevitable that the value of inf would decline, even if pre-seeding put a backstop to that decline. There aren't many inf sinks in the game and the few big ones are mostly one-shot deals.

Excellent summation. There are other drama driving mechanics that other games have that CoH doesn't, like gear repair costs. Most combats are straight-up and don't require elaborate choreography and catherding. No one uses live voice chat to actually play the game, which I always found immersion breaking.

Those other games, the ones I left quickly, not only have misfeatures like elaborate boss fight choreography. They also have other sorts of dramas like public loot, gear repair fees, and 'need or greed' rolls. It seems to me that these mechanics all but guarantee an angry and elitist player base and constantly inject tedious drama into what ought to be a pastime. The greatness of COH in large measure revolves around the fact that it allows group cooperative play without any of that junk.

And here is why this doesn't work in City of Heroes. I was on a blaster and joined a Manticore a day or so ago. The blaster is ice/plants; yet another of a series of joke characters I fell in love with. Though I was on a DPS class, I was not by any means trying to maximize DPS output. Instead, I scanned for Paragon Protectors and did my best to keep them locked down, especially the energy flavor. The character has three ranged single target holds and one ranged AoE hold. I was trying to prevent Eludes first and making that a priority over DPS output, because that character can. Don't force me into a narrow role. What makes this game great is that it doesn't do that.

I've seen Kronos spawned in Skyway several times. FF is the usual area. He will not spawn everywhere; I don't think he can be spawned in Atlas Park, for instance. I don't know which zones he can be forced to spawn in. Skyway is a safe bet because the zone features other regular spawns from GMs. The cysts were removed back in the official game IIRC; chances of getting them meant people did not want to team with Kheldians. If you enjoyed them, you can still get them in the repeating Cimerora missions that feature cysts.

Si quis linguam Francorum recte loquitur, Latinam iterum fit.

I had a Fire/EM tanker that I rolled in i2 or i3 and played to 50. I made the character back before power customization because I thought the two sets looked good together. She became doubly unplayable because Fire depends on its self heal for survival, doubly so before IO sets, so I exiled her from Victory to a server I seldom played on.

Bill Withers - Lean On Me RIP Bill Withers

Patti Smith - Ain't It Strange

Very simple effects. Arcane plinths and stone tables. Praying Man, Woman with Sword &c., statues surface-attached to walls. From the Holy Office base on Excelsior.

Cristina - Is That All There Is? RIP Cristina.

I also turned off XP while exemplared for many of my level 50s that had achieved a basic level of incarnates (t3 all around, some t4s). They still often run exemped content. Has this been reverted to default for all characters, or does XP need to be retoggled for each?

Somehow the effect of Bitter Freeze Ray from Ice Blast got changed from the expected chunk of ice to one of the electric ball holds. This happened after I had been playing a new electric/electric corruptor in case that has anything to do with it. The ordinary Freeze Ray still displays the ice as expected.

Particles can be a problem with death patches. Some characters generate all sorts of funks, clouds, and ground patches of their own. These can come in any of the colors allowed. Trick is to adjust particles so that you see the patches but they aren't obscured by player generated effects. Another reason why that generic MMO crap is incompatible with the design, philosophy, and spirit of this game.

Dude who built a house, only to have his malt eaten by rats. Hate it when that happens.

Difficulty is not the only, and probably not even the main issue with Praetorian content. Now there are certain ways to make content 'difficult' that do not scale well, and actively discourage teaming. Dark Astoria Tsoos are probably the most familiar example of 'difficult' content that turns tedious and frustrating when you get the larger spawns that come with larger teams. The minions are all spamming Kinetics debuffs, making it too hard to move, while lieutenant class healers with other debuffs are poofing in and out. Doable solo, awful for large teams. This sort of thing puts a priority on preemptive damage to one-shot as much as possible. Night Ward and many other goldside mobs like Seers and Ghouls are annoying but playable solo, but which become extremely tiresome when encountered at the spawn size you'd get with a team of 8. Too many minions spamming the same kind of debuffs and mez is a recipe for unplayability. The other problem in Praetoria that isn't there on either hero or villain side is that the alignment system makes it harder for you to just join friends and run their missions. There are places you aren't allowed to go based on your alignment. There's nothing like newspaper or radio missions for teams to gather on an ad-hoc basis and do together.

The other ITrials like Magisterium and Underground seem also to be rising in popularity. Would like to see them return; my ice/plants blaster is 49 and I suspect she will be useful on it.