Clave Dark 5

Thank you for hosting this, as it motivated me to take this vague idea for a story that I had and actually get a working arc out of it - plus it got me to get off my duff and play some AE stories, I liked them a heck of a lot!

Kick has a chance for knockdown. I do often keep that trash power available somewhere on my tray so in case I get slowed and nothing is recharging, anything to spit in their face before they take me down.

We don't like to say CoH encourages cookie-cutter builds much, but... yeah.

Anyone can soft cap, just like anyone can hide behind ATOs, Incarnate powers, rows of Purples and Winter's sets, etc. And it's boring after awhile! Do what you want, and maybe even go to extremes and try to create say a workable semi-petless MM or a Dom who's sole purpose is upping the damage percentages (I have, they were both fun). I don't feel the need to measure my "Big Big Stick" against speed-runs or masters of or whatever else the "number go up" fans are into, and you don't have to either. Remember this min/maxxing mindset rules the forums, but not so much in-game, and doesn't have to if you don't want it to. Play what you want, how you want. I generally have a build ready for my new toon, and just follow that without too much more tinkering (unless it's unplayable (when I might just drop it instead anyways). I often start from other people's builds and then yank out parts I don't want such a Fighting, or to make room say for most of the Experimentation set because it seems to fit this toon or whatever.

I don't say this to be mean or anything: the word you wanted was "dual", meaning two of something; "duel" is when two people fight, so they're probably from the same root linguistically. I only bring this up because this was one of the first posts I read after I woke up and was mightily confused for a little bit. 😄

Arc ID: 68219 Arc Title: Exes & Allies (ignore that v21) Author Global: @Poltergeist Prince Discord Handle (If relevant): n/a Number of Missions: 3 Level Range: Sky's the limit/ 20 Description: See below Inspiration did indeed strike, and after some waffling about, I manged to make it fit three missions long. Sadly I wasn't original (or maybe fast) enough, because this also takes place in Kings Row, and one mission eerie predicts the first mission of another wonderful arc I played after plotting this out, The D Squad Episode 1: Constellation Row by @Forager, Arc ID: 68066 (check it out!). By the time I learned of both of those I was already too deep on to stop, so it is anyway. Gay Pride Month is cancelled, now it's Gay Wrath Month.

Yeah, I was already too far into it to want to drop it, might as well hash it out and take the hit if anyone says "heeyyy... this first mission is just like that Forager one!" Have to say seeing how you handled things (across the whole story) has kicked mine up a notch, I think, if I can get it done. Also really liked the character FlakRabbit, inspired name choice.

My TANK WHO'S 50 AND IOED OUT needed Insps and an Amys Ward to get past that. I had it set for +1/+2 too, so that felt a bit needlessly tough. The allies help a lot though in other spots. I don't normally go for toughy play, so I shudder to think what would have happened if I had stepped in with another toon. Still though: solid writing, fantastic use of mechanics with writing towards them making sense. Dispiriting for me though, because your first mish is a near-exact copy of the first mish of something I'm working on, and you pull it off much better than I was planning; I may just abandon the arc now. Seriously good work.

I've no idea how devs make new stories, I doubt they're the same system at all. Making use of the AE/making the AE usable for players isn't about relieving a burden or anything, but just like encouraging people to play the game - like costumes, why bother with them except to just encourage people to play? AE just shouldn't be seen as a "level your character" tool is the point, yes. Devs don't have to review every story ever made, the small, small group of people who enjoy writing stuff for the AE often post about their own and others' works, you can just work from there alone. The current game runners used to have a member who took the time to run some AE works and award Devs Choice (they even hosted a story contest for Christmas-themed stories once), but that dev had to step away for personal reasons. Nothing since.

To the first part: perfect example of the broken nature of AE - it was nerfed to prevent power leveling, but only enough so that the only thing it's good for is power leveling (oh, and I suppose some story telling). Stupid, stupid choice. Make tickets worth something, enough that you could play for those and get some decent return on your time, or something. Maybe make Dev Choice arcs given merits, and keep designating new Dev Choice arcs. Anything. C'mon devs at least try, jeez. Clearly they're not interested. To the second part, well, I could say the same thing about any other game, movie, play, etc. These are stories people you might know are telling, and stories about this shared universe we all apparently enjoy. But yeah, you are a loot-focused player, and this clearly is the game the devs make now for players like you. Thank you for presenting your case as soundly as you have to help make this clear.

I'd definitively say "no" on this, but it would nice to see extreme min/maxers stop (inaccurately) saying "Carp Melee is the best choice, all the rest are [dog droppings]." ETA for clarity, posting in the morning is a bad idea.

Considering that I can do that without having to worry about taking out my friends with them, I think I have enough control over my mushroom clouds to not damage the city as well. 😃

You can also log right out (perhaps to desktop, I can't recall now), log back and in and boom, there it is.

I jump from toon to toon, and don't often revisit them too often, but I used to - I like them and I am loathe to let them go (I could strip them for IOs and be rich forever), but this discourages me from revisiting them tbh. And if a lot of my work in the game has been rendered moot, that kind of makes me less connected to the game at all. Not being able to pull them back out and be effective* is just kind of a barrier to playing them ever again, and therefore less likely to come back. *I know I know, "it's all relative regarding the toon and old build" etc. but I'm not interested in keeping up with all the newly enforced minutia - which alone is indicative of something in how I'm feeling about playing. ETA -- I realized it's not the respec but the homework to understand all the changes and THEN creating a new build. I have had fun with designing builds, but this "forced" feels well yeah, "forced," and I'm likely to skip it, etc., see above.

I appreciate the swerve towards paying attention the AE in some manner and for this topic as well. I'm not a big lore junky and that's a tight deadline so I'll have to sit this one out - unless I get some crazy burst of inspiration or something. I did have an idea kicking around that on LGBTQ issues I've never worked on... but I'm probably tripping over the lore aspect more tbh. I'll be checking out the winners as we go though of course! ETA: apologies for my mistake, I assumed this was a dev-run thing ha ha, clearly this is better'n that 😃

Eh, maybe half-ish. That joke made, you can PVP for free, so why not everywhere too? Realistically I don't see it, because if you can kit out a toon in 5 minutes, then what's there to play for, past that next five minutes? Making yourself stupid rich reaches that same point quickly enough too, so I think I'd go in another direction and parcel out the wealth differently in some manner, say "you get 100 merits per 24 hours when you log in (per account)... period" or something. But I'd also disallow AE farming but that's never going to happen either, the blood-curdling whinging would be the death of us all.

We should replace all maps with that floating asteroid map, yeah. Who says this game isn't now about speed? 😄

That 41 level character is ready to play the Market Crash TF - ru8n that, instant purple, even the cheap ones go for like 15million. Most teams you get on you can even coast and let others do the big work, if you're underslotted or something.

Agree with the general sentiment in this thread, to hell with snark or feeling bad for taking something seriously - that's the new frontier past the "you're not a man if you show emotion" era.

Seeing how the IOs and Incarnates came after, that would seem to suggest that logically they are the problem. The problem didn't exist until them.

Yes that was you, and you called him a twit, a direct insult on someone you admit that you don't know, not just disagreeing with an opinion. It refl4ects poorly on you, and I say that as someone who's generally happy to see you posting. I'm not even just talking about you either, I mean, look at this thread. I believe some mod just the other day posted something in a thread that was "getting out of hand" to the effect of "if you disagree, just shrug and move on"? I'm not so foolish as to pretend that's not how the modern day internet in general operates however, but I keep having hope...

So you'll tell us where the author's ideas come from based on what and then assure us that's only a small loud subsection? Meanwhile, our famously friendly community is insulting the author in the fifth post of this thread.

There's also "speed of mob clearing" which the devs do indeed seem to love encouraging via giving us Fold Space, more of the anti-repel powers to draw them together the rush to 50, so we can T4 out our toons quickly "and then start playing the game." Both of those help out with farming because we rush to have all the shiny bits now "to play the game." Seems to me to be a fairly valid read of the general assumptions behind how a majority of players play - and what the devs aim for. A hit dog holler as they say, and I expect to hear a lot of hollering, judging by what's already been posted in this wonderfully accepting and friendly community of ours. 😏

But since Doms are now playable as heroes and controllers villains, this doesn't really make any sense. I mean, y'all can just go ahead and say "because we wanted it this way, tough," we can't stop you.

I like the old "baffle them with BS", so I'm joining the bull moose party.