Lazarillo

Point of note, but the hero we all see in Atlas is "Ms. Liberty". "Miss Liberty" is her mom. The latter does appear in a villain flashback arc, but I'm pretty sure that's it. That said, while it might be fun to see what the elder Liberty is up to these days (AFAIK, she's still alive and such, in-continuity, she's just retired), I don't think we need her nor her daughter barraging us with voiced content, least of all which stuff that actually draws attention to the game being, well, a game.

Personally, I like the change. It results in significantly greater XP over a medium duration. Yes, it means zero if you have a character that's logged off for 10 days and then you immediately log in and do a bunch of badge hunting. Yes, it's not "immediate delivery". But on the flip side, the amount that was previously rewarded wasn't ever likely to bump your level up significantly in the past, but in the current system, I can pick a few exploration badges prior to an Apex/Tin Mage on a recent-50, and finish such a double-header with 50% more Vet level progress. That's beefy.

They're pretty much ruined by the first arc requiring being an unquestioning nazi toady. It's a shame, because basically everything about them is great, but there's no reason Strax's arc shouldn't have involved betraying him and keeping all the stuff you stole for yourself (or similar). Taking orders from a jackboot (even a well-written one) isn't villainy, it's just being a goon, and I didn't sign up to play City of Goons.

I noticed on one of mine the other day, that I was hearing the "Domination turning off" SFX pretty frequently, which was odd because I was on a Perma-Dom-ed character. I'd thought maybe it was playing because the previous stack was wearing off, but it could maybe also be the short term "build up" effect turning off? Didn't notice any random activation FX.

Yeah, I was on an Apex/TinMage earlier and some of the players who were newer were getting a little lost because they didn't realize "mission waypoint is some weird inaccessible spot" means "it's inside the base". It's cute to add a maze, or whatever, I guess, but the waypoints need to be much more clear.

It's been done in another community for Ice Melee, FWIW (although one of the animations is bugged...but it's using the Ice Slash animation which is also bugged on HC...).

Update: nope, still exactly the same as it was before.

Noted. Given that I'm hardly the only one who had complaints about this, it surprises me that they wouldn't have made some acknowledgment of such, but I'll do another check of it on beta, because if that spoiler content is true, that'd be a major boon.

Not unless it was changed from its initial beta form, and there was certainly never any indication of such in the patch notes.

Honestly, it'd be fine if there were just, say, a mission to kill him and keep all the stuff you stole for yourself at the end. It's super frustrating, because it's not like the writing is bad, but Striga's worthy of better than demanding villains be nice to nazis. Which is weird, because we all know what any villain of real salt is going to do to a nazi.

There's no arc, but there is a pair of automatically-advancing missions given by one of the Contacts in City Hall that involves recovering some artwork that the Council stole, and where there's Council in the current early levels, there was likely 5th Column even earlier in the game's lifetime. So actually, that kinda tracks. Although the environment and anything any bosses may or may not currently say, I can't confirm, and may have been lost to the ages in the 5th->Council conversion anyway.

I'm confused why there has to be a big rigamarole mod manager when the .texture files I could (and still do) plug-and-play into the game's data folder seem to work just fine. Only annoyance is the lack of an updated Siren's Call map that's still turned 90 degrees.

I'd note that if you need more than one power to be on auto to make a powerset (or a whole AT) work, that's more a sign that said powerset (or said AT) needs a balance pass.

At present, that option is specifically for the Snake-badge-specific unlock (to give you a scaly mantle if you want one), but we can indeed hope that it ends up getting more customization options later.

Big, big, big disappointment that getting into Striga for villains wasn't handled better, because there's a lot of really good stuff there. There's only one acceptable way for a villain to deal with someone like Strax. Being a his obedient toady instead to unlock the rest of the content just wasn't acceptable. But at least I've got my VEAT customization.

Would definitely be cool as an option, though I'm not sure I'd want it as a "default".

I can accept reused animations across multiple different sets, to a degree. Like, it doesn't bother me that Gash (from Axe) and Pulverize (from Mace) look identical, or heck, that all the Axe attacks have identical Mace attacks have identical equivalents. It's a bummer when two from the same set are the same, or nearly so, though, and don't just at least have alternatives (like Super Strength has identical animations for Punch and Haymaker in one customization format, but you can always swap one to its alternate, at least).

It's disappointing how Gash and Swoop look almost identical (and the same for their War Mace equivalents). There's a minuscule change involving stepping forward with the right leg in the latter version, but it's not enough to really feel like it's offering variety to the set. One or both should be given an alternate animation so that the two can look distinct and the set doesn't have to be so repetitive.

He (it?) is one of the original BP deities and gets name dropped occasionally in BP banter in their original level range. Not related to DA.

Also, I was holding out for one more patch before I commented on this, but now that there's a release candidate, I just want to say it's extremely disappointing that being the 5th Column's obedient lackey is apparently going to be the only way into the new zone content. I was pretty hyped for this, but Striga's prolly DoA for my Redsiders if that's how it's going to be. 😞

You're thinking Hess, not Moonfire. But I'd be all there for a chance to fight it, regardless.

Speaking of new player experiences, defaulting the annoyances to off, or at least putting an equivalent PC in earlier stages of the game that don't require a side-trip, might be recommendable.

Do they not? 'cause I'm pretty sure other similar sorts of mobs do on live. For example, if Hercules Titans combine into a Zeus, you'll get XP for one or both (depending on whether you damaged them) and I could swear Warwolf-transforming Council do it as well. It may not say it's for the defeat, though. There'll just be a notice of receive an extra couple thousand XP or whatever in the log.

I'mma just note...the same power that IIRC, it was this team that changed to make it so that any damage could trigger it rather than only specific types, because the old way was too restrictive and semi-unintuitive? 'cause I'm pretty sure that wasn't a think back in the game's original lifetime.

The problem is that the "logic" guiding the puzzle is too arbitrary to be practical. "We have to have exactly one role per AT and exactly two ATs for each role, but also EATs each get three roles and they can be whatever" is, as you noted, not a representation of how the game works. But there's nothing that says the requirements can't be a representation of how the game works except for stubborn adherence to rules that were made up for the sake of having rules in the first place.