Clave Dark 5

I'm pretty sure he was not making a custom map because that's apparently something devs have to sort out themselves and do "pathing" on (for say when a foe runs to you, or you lead an NPC out - where to do they walk, do they avoid getting stuck behind a crate? Do they know a good route around that corner? etc). Making custom maps is something we've always asked for and have always been told that it just can't happen because of the complexity and time it takes to work out said pathing, and then how would you even try and make it line up with another bit, etc. I think the OP was just trying to say their custom mission, not map.

They finally sent that poor guy to the hospital IIRC, after heaving up his guys for like 18 years.

I've always thought the usual Martial Arts with all its kicks would be a good dancer, but I've not played a Kin Melee yet either.

Other servers also have much, much lower population, so I'm not sure that's a great example. OTOH, knowing players, I can see that most of them would just ignore redside anyway, if they found out how hard it is to swap sides for Scorpion Shield. I'd suggest we rework the side-switching so it's not quite so onerous an undertaking, while still not something you do on a whim.

That's about right. Might as well go doorsit and fold laundry or something, IMHO, it's boring for anyone other than that one or two people who have it all memorized and slotted enough Stealth or whatever, and yeah, chances are they're not there to team with you, exactly.

I think when it's nothing but steamrolling it gets old awfully quickly. But outright incompetence is also annoying. Fine with beginners, I took a blind invite the other day from a newbie tooling around an AE mission he'd made with just random foes scattered all over an Atlas outside map. No story, just foes, and at level 13; my toon was 50 but *shrug* so he, I, and a few others cleared it (with a couple of deaths). I don't need to hide behind expensive IOs and incarnate powers to have fun. I just now logged off from a redside team which was gloriously good, enough so that we did occasionally bite off more than we could chew, which resulted in some grand chaos of what to focus on: holds vs. attacks? Heal now or fire off a debuff? All that sort of thing. Yeah, I even died a few times on my squishy Dom, but it was still fun as all get out.

I do this just as the mood strikes me, or if say I logged in on some toon to check for some free Inf and then see a call go up for something I want to do. I usually play a toon I'm enjoying leveling up, mostly though, or trying out a new toon to see if it grabs me.

I seem to recall someone a couple of years ago built a blaster that was rotten with them, and in play the build was smashy AF. The Mad King build I think they called it? I'm a big believer in building what you want and playing how you want, so I would say maybe go for it and just see what it feels like for you. Maybe try it on the test server if you have that kind of time (I don't feel I do, but others do), or just be prepared to respec if it doesn't wow you.

I dunno... it would be nice, sure, but it would be nice if I got a hundred merits every time I logged in, too. This feels like a power creep to me, for a power that's already pretty powerful. My first impression.

I think AE missions need to be much more team friendly, and maybe this has already been mentioned but it just occurred to me: when a CLUE drops, it shouldn't drop as a CLUE that you have to go over and open, it should be a pop-up window that appears on everyone's screen, like the ones you get when you first walk into a map or after you've left it. This doesn't seem like it should be too difficult to implement, but who knows...

That's about me. I was spoiled in that I actually won or placed in like the first three I ever entered one, then nothing since, sigh (although I did see one of mine later pop up in one of those costume threads on the Reddit board for CoH). OTOH, I also find some good ideas on costuming to use (with apologies to @Shenanigunner and @Marshal_General ha ha - I adapt, not outright steal).

I made something of an unconventional build with Rad, so I can't speak to it too much, but it feels just fine to me, no problems other than the slow animations mentioned, which I could see might bug some people.

Depends on what you want to do. I have one toon I wanted to build for as much damage as I could so I ended up "frankenslotting" a number of sets just to reach the "+2% damage" or something, then slotting up the rest to make sure it still had accuracy or whatever. Other than the ATOs though, as stated, it's not too common a practice as I understand it.

Well there's your problem right there. Unless you can find a post by a Dev here that says "we're going to be re-balancing this set" or "we found some bugs in this set", don't believe a damned thing you hear on this.

To be fair, the costume creator leans very heavily into that direction already. Start clicking the random button and you'll get tons of them... often with an animal head.

The message sent when you were offline should have shown up the very next time you logged in, they always do for me. I also think you can find them logged on the MA screen under My Published Stories.

Hard for me to believe this is true, and yet...? Had the same thing happen to a redside team that I was on a couple of days ago. Except the team leader apparently didn't want to hand hold them all the way, sigh.

I PUG mostly, and have started crossing things off my list of "do I ever want to do these again?" I won't do MJ in PI, won't do a Yin but once on a new toon, I won't do DfB more than 3 times, maybe only two per toon. The influx of population has been pretty helpful in this; previously, those few rules right there kept me out of about 75% of PUG member-calls in chat. We'd really become a community of grinders for the numbers instead of the fun. Bleah.

I tend to start from a build I find online, then throw out all the dorss I don't weant and add in the cool I do want; note that this often un-min/maxes said build, and IDGAF (I cannot stress this enough, I've grown to despise cookie cutter builds and that misconception that one simply must agree with them). Then I play it, and quite often still find it plays just fine. Then, as said above, I am confident I am slotted "properly."

After bouncing back and forth between the two types a few times, and also starting as one but becoming the other late in the leveling curve (that's Doms for you), I just generally play stupid on any toon these days and rush in. I just leveled a Dom with Def in the low 20s playing this way. I died a bunch, sure. Big deal, sometimes it paid off!

Such selfishness is very villainous!

My build was a Sav/Melee, and it's not super-optimized, but I dunno, maybe it'll give you some ideas:

Back on Live I could never afford to even think about them. Now I too have a lot of stuff piled up in my Character items that I'll never use, or never think to use... although I do have a lot of Build Snowbeasts on my Christmas-themed toon.

That's on the players, not the game. Focusing on merit-farming is already reducing this game as it is. We're all wealthy already by now, play what you want and who cares if there's a few less merits? Maybe stop speed running too.