srmalloy

If you have a Sentinel+ archive for a character, double click on the file to open it with Microsoft's browser. This won't actually render it properly, but it will display the parsed XML data. Parts of it -- the costumes and character sliders, for example -- aren't going to be particularly informative, but the powers section should give you the information about the build, and there is a tool that can read the Sentinel+ files you have and save out the costume files. Copying the costume files into your costumes folder for your install (and removing the 'username.servername.' prefix from the front of each filename -- "srmalloy.guardian.ledyanoy kulak.1" doesn't display well in the 'load costume' pick list) will make them available for you to pick at a tailor.

When you are offered Mercedes Sheldon as a new contact (when receiving her from Athena Currie, she's paired with Tristan Caine), there is no description for the contact.

If you opt to do the tutorial, you get to choose whether to do Outbreak (and become a hero), Breakout (and become a villain), or Galaxy City (and make your choice there). Galaxy City is the fastest.

Along with Grym, in the second mission in the base, running back and forth along the edge of the platform pushing against the railing, until you move around up onto the platform where he can run straight toward you. at which points, he remembers he can jump, jumps over the railing to the lower level, then runs around to the ramp you came up to meet you. The NPC pathing in these missions is abysmal.

There's a P2W vendor in the Galaxy City tutorial, the woman in the suit standing to the right of the Longbow Heavy that is the trainer; in Atlas Park, there's one on the west side of the plinth in the center of the zone (a bit north of the enhancement vendor on that side).

You kind of sort of already have that. There's an in-game option to "turn off XP" that will automatically convert that XP into influence instead. Really? Where is that located? From ParagonWiki, Menu -> Options -> General -> "Disable Earning XP" And if you need more directions to find it, it's near the bottom of the Miscellaneous section.

I changed the colors of the abilities, but only that, using the 'match colors across powerset' option to set most of the abilities the same, then turned it off and made Blazing Bolt a more 'intense' flame, but I didn't touch the animations.

If you pick two characters with the same archetype and the same primary and secondary powersets, and if by some freak chance their enhancement slots are allocated identically, you're still going to be looking at a very small chance that they're slotted the same way. There might be some aspects that people try to reach on their characters -- Def cap or Res cap are examples for melee ATs -- but there are enough ways to get there that the rest of the build is generally unique to each character. There is no 'one meta build' for any given combination of AT, primary, secondary, power pools, and Incarnate boosts.

It didn't take Homecoming for me; I'd created a Bots/Dark MM, with a backstory (that has grown to six pages, held up for my not being able to write a reasonable fight scene) of being a Soviet project to create a robotic combat director accidentally given sentience that, instead of just carrying out the orders it was given, replaced them with its own tactics, critiquing the generals who'd issued them. Labeled a failed project, he and his bots were crated up and stuck in a dusty warehouse until accidentally awakened. After taking him blueside, I realized that I still enjoyed playing the sets redside, so I created another from the same Soviet research program, intended to correct the 'flaws' in the original design, but which through a mislabeled backup had portions of the original's programming loaded (the project completely canceled and the techs involved sent to Siberia), creating a more ruthless version of the original. Still later, I made a third character from the same project, the infiltration unit that was to have been part of the 'BRIGADYR' program. (edited to address the problem that the forum, unlike the game itself, does not support Unicode)

I'll freely admit that I've been running an AE mission that's clearly labeled as a low level XP farm -- but when I do, I turn off earning XP and run it for the ticket drops, then turn around and spend them on the common salvage rolls to get what I need for IOs; it's a more reliable source of salvage than relying on the random and Irregular mob drops. Doing it with XP turned off keeps me from outleveling the regular content.

Unreasonably high prices that resulted from extremely low supply. There's a "good price" and there's an "unreasonable price" I can remember times on the 'official' servers when Luck Charms were going for 30,000 and up. And grinding in the south end of the Hollows, fragging Madness Mages for them because I couldn't afford those prices.

Particularly if you take Primal Mastery -- Power Boost and EMP Pulse turns entire spawns into gently waving vegetables waiting to be harvested at leisure.

In the Dominator Fiery Assault, Fire Breath (breathe a narrow Cone of fire) is using the same character animation (stretch right arm out to target, flame from hand) as Flares (single target ranged). The power effect -- the billow of flame at the target -- is correct. I remember the Blaster power animating as blowing fire from your mouth, but it's been long enough that I don't remember from my old Earth/Fire Dom whether this was the way it worked before.

No, we just know that their security will trigger, not whether it will trigger appropriately. It certainly didn't here.

I don't recall what the number was, but there's a cutoff -- you or your team have to do at least X% of the mob's HP in damage to get credit for defeating it. This is why, if you see a group of people going after, say, Jurassik, you want to get added to their team rather than just jumping in and attacking, because you probably won't do enough damage to get the badge for defeating him.

I think Flechettes would benefit from the same sort of Swap Ammo thing that Dual Pistols has -- be able to switch between, say, minor to-hit debuff, minor Defense debuff, minor slow, things like that.

IANAL, so I'm making a supposition at this point, but because a non-profit is required by law to use its income only to cover costs, I think this closes off a potential avenue for NCsoft to charge that they're profiting off of the misappropriation of their property, which is a separate claim from simply using their code without permission, and has larger penalties associated with it that they can personally be hit with.

IIRC, it's Steel Canyon that has the first origin-specific stores; I don't remember KR as having anything but the Freedom Corps vendors selling TOs near Blue Steel.

I've recreated some of my characters, made some new, and I'm looking at ones that could be done better by reworking them. One of the latter, Mobile Suit Gun Dame, was a DP/EM Blaster, and was restarted as a DP/WP Sentinel.

This. You can scale Hellions to level 50, but there aren't any mobs in the group defined with abilities appropriate to a level 50 NPC -- you'd get a level 50 Hellion Brawler who has a pistol attack and a punch, and no resistance or defense to speak of. A mission full of level 50 Hellions would resemble one of the old 'meow missions' for lack of challenge.

Handing out the Halloween costume powers? Set up the P2W vendors so that each month, they have a randomly - selected costume available for free during the month?

All of the other primaries' nukes are 'boom' powers -- you trigger them, they go off and do all of their damage right away. Full Auto and Rain of Arrows are both DoT damage -- Full Auto roots you for the duration of the power, and Rain of Arrows is a location-based power whose target is fixed when you start the animation. With RoA, if the mobs move out of the area while the animation is playing, too bad; you've just shot up the ground. With FA, the mobs in the cone get to shoot back before they go down, and you can find yourself faceplanted from it. One of the things I used to do with my AR/EM Blaster before the shutdown was to run up stealthed to a big spawn of Nemesis in PI, pop Boost Range, Aim, and Build Up, then hose down the spawn with Full Auto. With the armor from the Munitions Mastery pool, I could usually expect to survive the return fire, adding Flamethrower if any of the spawn survived the FA, and Boost Range gave me a really nice beaten zone for the cone, although the target limits in later issues made it dicier.

This was why I liked Energy Manipulation for my Assault Rifle Blaster -- the must-take Tier 1 Power Thrust was a 'get away from me' extender, and Build Up, Boost Range, Power Boost, and, Conserve Power all fed the primary; the attacks in the secondary are pointless and ignorable, giving you more room for other things. I'm going to have to try a Sentinel, although I really liked being able to hit targets at "see that dot?" range (Snipe and LRM were about 270 yards with Boost Range up).

There should be a way to tweak Sentinel+ to grab characters from the Homecoming servers, if it doesn't already. Might be worth trying, just to see if it works.

You could probably fake it to a degree with something like a TrackIR setup mapping your head movement to turning, but it won't work as well, because the display won't rotate with your head, so you would be looking to the side to see the monitor. And it won't let you turn all the way around. The system works much better for flight sims, where you're turning your head in the cockpit, but it still has the 'monitor is forward' limitation.