cranebump

I'm running a toon right now in mostly "old school" mode, thanks to this thread. My main rule is I cannot procure anything that isn't part of system, mission, or TF rewards. So, I got absolutely nothing from P2W, and did not pick up stuff that would've normally been a part of my old account (Pocket D, Minor Jump Packs, Ninja Run, etc.). But I did accept the temp XP anniversary boost that everyone got. Build-wise, I figured I'd be doing some soloing, (maybe a lot, since my travel isn't going to be too rapid. So I went with a Sentinel (not old school, but what ya gonna do) for a bit of survivability. Went with something I wouldn't normally do. Took EB/Energy Aura (I want the KB when I solo). I skipped DFB and went to Davies, since I was a tech hero. Ran his arc, plus part of Nandelu's, plus Jiminez in KR. I led a team through part of the last KR arc, til I hit 8, at which point I had to log off. When I got back, I jumped on Frostfire team, set at +2 (we were spawning reds and purps mostly, and since the leader wasn't running XP boost, it stayed that way almost all mish). Trained a lot, then I got on Pos1 and 2, in succession, with the same leader. Sitting at 19 now, and facing the usual END problems. Likely will do some badge runs for AP and E:GC, then spend some merit to grab stuff I can sell. I figure I'll do some crafting. Then again, I may not, I might just relegate myself to DO's, then SO's, and just do that. What I'm finding, other than the slower pace, is: (1) You really go through a lot of lore that presages things later down the road. For example, when I get introduced to superadine, and hit the lab, it's the same lab used later on by Veles in the Stockwell arc. (2) Also did some things I haven't done at all since reboot. Had a "Kill 20 Skulls" in PP, followed by a door mish there (did this with my lowbie team). (3) You get a lot of time to fiddle with powers, combos, attack chains, all that. If I were a new player (again), it would be a pretty soft landing to get going (esp. if I'd played one of the old tutorials). (4) Fear. Those lowbie zones can be a pain, depending on where you are. We hit PP, looking for Skulls, and there were lots of Reds and Purps. When running mishes without XP boost, you can't consistently depend on leveling mid-mish to make it easier. This was actually a thing in FF (though I wasn't leading). Frostfire actually lasted awhile, since he wasn’t nerfed to nothing by leader levelling. Lead Scorchers were a pain that entire mission. It was the funnest FF run I've had since we came back. At this point, the only thing I am yearning for is Afterburner. I've put it off for other things, but I'm really going to need it to use old school travel. I log the toon out at WW's so I can eventually get market TP. I plan to log out at First Word location that gives you Psychic DR badge (can't remember the name). Planning on getting Bank abilities from Talos on, since I really don't need temps thanks to having flight (which I got early, so I wouldn't have to dodge groups in certain zones.). I'd like Pocket D TP, but I really have no memory of how you get that. When I played live, it was a gifted ability. I also find myself apologizing to teams that I'm using this whole "Grinder" style of play (which is why I'll likely solo many things, outside TF's, and radio teams). On the whole, it's been interesting. The game flies by less, and I'm filing all sorts of mental notes from mishes for my AE scripting.

Man, that is dead on. I forgot about that. I guess this explains why I like to log out at WW for the teleporter. And I do remember the taxi bots.

I have one lvl 50 I started redside, solo, no XP boosts. Ran most mishes on +2. Got to 20, ran tips to move to hero side. I didn’t team with anyone until I hit blue side. Eventually, I broke down and used XP boost for the last 5 bars. i did use base TP, though I collected ouro and bought mish TP. I also gave her a ton of iNf from other chars, so she’s got near 100% attuned enhances. I’m considering running a toon without XP boost, and not giving them any INF from alts. No SG base for crafting. Similar topic: I’ve seen a lot more calls for Hollows recently. I also ran KR story and bank mishes a couple times. Maybe I’ll make a rule to get all the bank mishes as I trundle through zones. I still recall how nice it was to get raptor and zero-g in Kings, and you could get them both before you reached 14, so you could wait on travel if you wanted.

I’m sure this originally developed as a way to get players to tour the zones. With the whole cosmic TP, it really isn’t a thing. Sometimes it’s good to have a short break, I would think.

Cranebump presents: "Data Games" [ID: 26757] "Section-41" is an "off-the-books" organization dedicated to protecting Paragon City, "by any means necessary." This includes stepping way over the line, working with entities like the 5th column and Doc Vahz himself. Now, they've taken one of PPD's finest hostage. You're going to get her back. Overview: *Contact: Juliana Nehring *Morality: Neutral *4 missions (3 small maps, 1 medium; the first 3 missions are all pretty short. Last mish is timed, 60 minutes, but I completed it in about 25 mins, on average, during test runs) *Featured Groups: Freakshow, Wyvern, Section-41 (custom group from Friends & Lovers, with some added bosses), and first appearance of a new group "Omnibus." *Featured individuals: Fareed Abdullah and Exarch Industries; Sting Agent Rash; Hellbeast and "Bot;" Meg Mason; Super Hacker Jeri McKitnick (whose name is a smashup of two noteworthy hackers). *Titles feature a "pie" motif (everyone likes pie). Thanks in advance, Crane

It’s tricky to get things just right. Been running tests as I design latest arc. First mish ended up placing an ally (whom I had to switch from escort in order to make subsequent spawns work) who has appeared at the same place in every run since my second edit of the mish. Mish has two glories that drop clues. Wanted the second glowie to spawn a flood of adversaries (who are after the same data) in middle and front to seize control of the facility, so that fighting back to the door actually held some danger. Ended up spawning the max level of patrols I could, but, as the map is so small, they spawn on floors 1 and 2, rather than just on the lower level. I’d like to throw in an ambush trigger, but my event chain is too small to keep it from being circular. So I settled for the patrol spawns, giving one of them some dialogue indicating arrival. The cool thing is that the facility has wandering friendlies (“lab techs”) who take on the invaders, so it’s something like several battle spawns. And not all the friendlies fight, which has this effect of people running for cover while some duke it out. All in all, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for or, but it’s close, which, with AE is usually goood enough.

Haven’t tried this yet. I am currently testing a mish where I wanted 3 members of a villain team to spawn together. I designed them as 1 boss and 2 LTs, made one of their sets “hard,” the other pretty sparse. In the test run, they spawned as 3 LTs and just kicked my rear. The grav boss slapped a mez on me, while the pay assault and savage melee took me down. It was brutal. My initial attack nearly dropped 1 of them, and significantly damaged them all (was running DP baster who has a few toggle defenses). Had no breakfrees though, so that was that. The arc capped at 25, and I was running a L27, exemplared. i don’t know that you can get 3 AVs, but you can make lower levels tough by selecting higher levels on their power, say a Boss or LT with Extreme setting to primary and secondary. That might allow the spawn, though it wouldn’t be a true AV.

Grab some plasmatic tasers and grenades from p2w. Slap them with KB between normal attacks. Not sure if that’ll do it, but I use these a lot with to augment my lower-mid level solo toons. Seems to work on most things.

You can't manually pick, but, if you get the right map and object numbers, you'll find things will pop up in the same places, consistently. Takes some messing with settings and sometimes choosing different maps to make this so. I also find the wide range of places things can appear to be a pain. It's not as big a pain as all my NPC dialogue firing as soon as someone enters a mish, though.

“Mute” General tab. Sounds like a great idea.:-) I remove that and Help from my main channel to reduce clutter. All the “buildbabble” and other crunchy stuff is beyond my capability, so I leave that to the gearheads. Any other question I could answer is usually answered by someone else more quickly and better than I could do it, so Help stays off. I’ll help others when teaming, or if I get asked a question. If I need help, I usually go to the forums or find a wiki (which I wish more people would do—there’s a lot of good stuff written down). Of late, I’ve devoted one tab to nothing but NPC chatter for when I solo. It can be a helpful boss finder on large maps.

What you don’t like clicking 12 computers? 🙂

When approaching the “box paths” in the office maps, and someone in front of me goes one direction, I’ll go the other (aka I “herring bone” it). Same thing with vators. If you take left, I’ll go right. I also park toons on the WW roofs a lot, but mainly bc I like the auction house TP power and to acquire/recharge it. I turn off showy toggles when training, because I want the trainer to “see” me. And finally: back in the day, when running Frostfire was more common, I’d make an announcement at the beginning using some exorbitant number of how many times I’d run the mish. Example: “This is my 1,347th FF mish.” Thinking of doing that with Synapse now.

Some details: arc relies mostly on stock enemies, with a selected use of 2 new factions. Play tests showed some nice timing of events. I changed my creation procedure by touring the map first. Haven’t yet used random map insertion, which I may at a future date, just to give some variety. All in all, this arc is pretty clean, though I thought the bosses played too easy.

Cranebump presents: "Friends & Lovers." [Arc ID: 26757] A 5-mission vigilante arc for lvls 10-15 Your "mischief" has gotten you tossed in the klink. But fear not. The enigmatic Triistanna Caine of the "special" PPD detachment is willing to make a deal. Investigate the possible reformation of the leaderless Vahzilok in exchange for your freedom. With Doc Vahz in the Zig, how hard could that be?

Cranebump presents: "Friends & Lovers." [Arc ID: 26757] A 5-mission vigilante arc for lvls 10-15 Your "mischief" has gotten you tossed in the klink. But fear not. The enigmatic Triistanna Caine of the "special" PPD detachment is willing to make a deal. Investigate the possible reformation of the leaderless Vahzilok in exchange for your freedom. With Doc Vahz in the Zig, how hard could that be?

You could run through the signature story arcs at max level maybe? Run them blue and redside, get a buncha merits.

Variety, and far and away nice people. No one way to enjoy the game. And you can pretend to be a super hero. I like that...

Had a ton of alts, but have pared down. I have several with the same prefix (Acro-), but with different powersets. Three of them are from the same “family.” One of them was a toon I leveled to15 quickly to test AE story arcs. Trying to keep my alt numbers down, but will probably create a family of archers once again, using various secondaries. No reason.i just like bows.

I have one person on ignore. They tried forming a team of 8 to run PI mishes 10 mins before an update shutdown. When I mentioned the servers were going down pretty quick on team chat, they replied WHAT IS THIS YOU SPEAK OF? TELL ME! Thought at first they were trying to be funny. But they kept typing in ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME, BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS USE IT. When I made a request for them to consider doing otherwise, replied I DONT CARE ABOUR UR LIFE. Quit the team, put them on ignore. If not for the UR LIFE part, probably would’ve just bailed and left it alone. But, if this is how they wish to portray themselves, it’s not someone I need to be around. It’s like Maya Angelou says. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Other than that, I haven’t ignored anyone. I just shut off the General tab in my main feed. I’d like to ignore the bubbles of people who are running on our team, but are constantly chatting on other channels talking “build-babble” while we’re in mish, but that’s fairly common it seems.

Standardized the Skullion costumes more Balanced encounters Ran multiple tests with on level toons, including a squishy corruptor Still on the fence about certain maps, but at some point, you have to leave things be.

I don't have "street" mishes, per se, but the first 2 arcs of "Oridinary People" are set in KR, and focus on a Hellions/Skull "plot." The final arc is still under construction (last 2 mishes are pretty tough). It caps at 20, and has been playtested with a tank, a scrapper, and a corrupter.

Playthrough of Arc #2 with a lvl 16 Corrupter,Archery/Poison/Experimentation. Breezy, esp, since I can heal allies. Faceplanted vs. Operative Demare, but Demare is not a mission objective. Will likely change destruction of last object to a long-click glowie instead. Demare is tough, even with allies, so may not need reinforcements for him (even though the spawn mob is easy). Arc #3 with same toon plays easy through mishes 1-3. Still have to work on Mish 4 and final boss battle before republishing. On the whole, looks like it will be moderate enough for toons 15-20. So far...

Thanks, appreciate it. i unpublished Arc 3 after play through. Need major fixes on last two missions.

Here’s the playthrough with lvl 16 Shield/WM tank Mish #1: Narrative mish. Willie is a bit hard to see, but torch helps. Edits: None Mish #2: First time up, the two front patrols both got me. Rezzed in mish. Went with corner pulls of patrols when I could not bypass. Ambush spawn after Cyrus caused me to retreat to upper floor and wait around corner. Took out last of Skullion crew there, then hard to return to finish off Cyrus’s guards for mish complete. Edits: *Make to where defeat Cyrus is boss only. This should allow a hasty retreat under duress. *Revisited ambush group to ensure it was doable. Changed to Cyrus at ¼ to Cyrus completed, as to allow some lag time, and a delay for player to leave, or attempt to defeat the ambush. Mish #3: Guards conned at 15, so they were actually useful. Still had to do some fancy stepping to drag opponents with me a couple times. Had both guards on ambush, and that saved me pretty much. For the last boss, she got off Gang War before I downed her, so I spent about a minute hacking the Posse down. Edits: *Revisited Ambush setting, but, as it spawns after you get 2nd guard, it is beatable. Had 3 mins left, even after playing “Hack a thug” for 45 seconds. Mish #4: Taunt-pulled, but got too many perps. Retreated to exit, took a beating and rezzed. Stupid Darkflame pet was still around, and they all came again, so exited normally, rested, then went back in. They were STILL at door, so exited again, bought insps. Popped 9 of then, before damaging boss enough for her to flee, but by then the minions killed me. So, first issue is a logjam at front of map, due to spawns. Went back in, she’s STILL there, with her Umbra beast out. I free Kendricks and he helps me take her down. Once past the door, the mish is pretty easy. Ambush is 4 Initiates. I’ve learned to target Pacifiers and Perforators first. I collect the glowies and exit, leaving many spawns behind. Edits: *Left as is. Just because I faceplanted and had to run doesn’t mean it’s not doable. Mish #5: I start at the top, free an Ally, find 2 crates, and the truck. I level up in the middle of the ambush battle. PPD swarms in, but, by then I’d taken everything out. Now I have a swarm of cops with me. They end up hunting perps, and I lose most of them. Easily take down the two bosses with about 4 mins to spare. And this with normal speed, no sprint toggle. Edits: None. The arc is doable at lvl 15-17, with a tank, at least. It would require some doing with something like an MM. My tank had low damage output, so it was a slog. High dmg output might melt some groups before they engage. I am hoping the player analyzes the opposition to determine priority targets. Not everything should be a plow through (like a lot of TF/mishes are). Since it’s AE, I assume players are looking for something different here. I think the changes I’ve done make it dicey, at times, but manageable. There are so many variables, though. Some toons might just cruise through. In that case, I am hoping story works. Next up: visiting Arc 3. I suspect there’ll be some issues (there always are).:-)

Tested Arc #2. Results and changes: Played Arc 2: Hope & Bullets using a lvl 15 War Mace/Shield tank Mish #1: Played through multiple times. Kept mostly as is, but am considering dropping OZ, and spawning the last ambush on getting database. There’s no reason Oz is there (or shouldn’t be as a spawn). Considering giving Willie pistols, so player has a minor ally, but overall the mish is doable as is. You can’t bumrush everything on the map, however, depending on archetype. Had to play strategically, to include a retreat, with a taunt to drag away a Darkflame from another group. I’d say a stalker would breeze this mish. Edits: *Added dialogue to Oz to make his appearance a reaction to the player’s incursion. *Gave Willie Pistols, and made her an Ally. Mish #2: Levelled to 16 between mishes. Played a couple times, then made the following changes: Playthrough: it's too damned hard, due to cluttered map. Edits: *Made Gatling and Sanders plain ol’ bosses *Set map to “empty” *Removed one of the destructible objects Result: I still get a boss spawn in front, either Gatling or Sanders. Sanders is the tougher of the two. He spawned yello (LT), but summoned ambush, and it got dicey. Had to retreat to pull leftover minions. The Soothers and Pacifiers make things tough with bubbles and heals. Gatling would’ve been easier, but when I corner-taunted, I pulled the second patrol. Glowies ALL spawned in the same room, which was great. Operative Dessose appeared in the same area, but was not logjammed, so I recovered him, and used him to take down Gatling/final room. The first time it’s worked out that way. Overall: mish is doable. The ambush is still difficult. You can’t just charge in, if patrols are active. Map is set to empty outside that, so player has to be selective. I’d bring Insps along. Mish #3: The way this mish goes depends on the wandering patrol. I aggroed them, and they pulled Noira. So I ran back to entrance. Surviving patrol followed, but Noira turned back around. I took them out, then went back down, took her out. Noira is not a mission objective, and will run at 25% or less health. She’s not tough alone, but, with tight quarters down below (Univ library map), you might need a pull if you’re playing a melee toon, like I was. Boss was low damage/whiffed some, but has good defense, so I concentrated on minions first. Had to use a green insp, just to be safe. Spawn points of objects is perfect. Boss spawn ended up being below, instead of at door, but it worked out. Edits: None Mish #4: This one’s pretty easy, if you take the allies along. Glogre moves so slow that I ended up walking most of the map until it was 95% cleared. Sullivan is hard to find, so I replaced the collection object. Spent a lot of time looking for her, but found her with over 10 mins to spare. Dunno why. When Steve G spawned, had a yellow nav that led me to him (yay!). But the nav for Larry was WAAAY off. Steve is easy, particularly with allies. For Larry, I needed both Glogre and Acrobattle. I didn’t find Whip until later. Had wiped out his guards, but he was behind a wall. If you use all 3, the entire mission should be a breeze. None are required, however. Whip and Acrobattle can keep up with faster movers, but Glogre cannot. No nav for Sullivan, which sucks. I didn’t clear the whole map, though, so that may be why. Of note: there are several PPD spawns that roam around and kill stuff, which is sorta nice, I guess. They won’t follow, but they’re there. Adjustments after playthrough: *Set all Ally guard groups to “Empty.” Changed Sullivan collection object. Get rid of “The Whole Gang” enemy group, which was the original group for the mish. Gave Overseer a different guard group to presage what’s in Arc #3. Changed Glogre to “aggressive” so he’d be more active. On the whole: it’s more balanced, and all doable by a lvl 15. My toon has multiple slots that weren’t even enhanced. The one’s I had enhanced were all at 15. The Mutant Hacker is an interesting baddie. Then they die, they rez, with a stun effect. There aren’t many, but it’s quite the surprise. Even effects the boss allies. On the whole, the arc should now be playable enough for players to enjoy the story (hopefully).