cranebump

All's well that ends well. I'm not even sure the last room bothered me near as much as the running past objectives, especially the first two groups of hostages in map #1, and the Council Raid Leaders. It's not like you can finish the mission without accomplishing these first. Hell, in the opener, you can't go inside the police station until you take care of the outside objectives first. The soloists made it slower by flying ahead and, in some cases taking team members who were following the tank, expecting, I guess, that the tank knew what he was doing. The whole "let's fill the reactor room with shit!" is obviously a thing at the moment. It may well be new folks. I guess I'll have to ask questions now, like I do with Pos1 (i.e., Clearing sides first?)

First, I'll answer your question: No, and I didn't notice they were doing it until there was one left. Second: the implication here is that it's someone else's fault for not informing the person about the glowie clickies. While I agree with that sentiment if you're running with new people, and you're in charge of the team, and you actually want to make it smoother, a) I wasn't in charge (and didn't want to be, or I'd have formed the team myself), and b) I cannot confirm we had new people. Maybe some of them were. The Kheldian certainly played like a noob.

You know, if people WANT to do it that way, then it’s all good. But how about letting the rest of us know about it? Or make sure the group can handle it. We were just not a party that melted things. Especially the support toons relegated to cleanup. I can more or less mez things indefinitely. But my little pew-pew gun takes forever to bring down purps at that level. Irony is we’d have been speedier if we’d have worked on the mobs together. Assuming speed was the goal. I’m not sure what our strategy was, but I think it was “none.” Or rather, some people had a plan to screw everyone else. (I still can’t figure out why the Kheldian kept charging ahead. They seemed determined to leave an exquisite corpse, at least once a mission).

Really, I TRY to be positive, but this stuff… (sigh) if I may indulge for a moment… Yin run. Everlast. Supposedly we’re a team, but our gaggle has 3 people who are basically soloing, including both tanks (one slightly less so than the other, who is obviously there TO solo, and whom we shall call The Magnificent Asshole). First mish: we engage first mob holding hostages, and they leave squishy support types to finish off the rezzing purple Freak tanks. At one point, there are only 2 of us, so I have to inform everyone there’s still hostages back here. We get a bit of help, but our soloists do the same thing with subsequent mobs, so I end up on the clean up crew again, trying to, you know, complete the actual mission objectives. Once inside the po-po station, the Magnificent Asshole tank (who has evidently joined this team to smell his own musk) runs off again. He is joined by a Peacebringer who becomes his Magnficent Shadow. But Shadow is either a noob or a complete dumbass, because he dies multiple times during the TF. I am happy when it happens, and I laugh and mumble, “You shoulda waited, you feckless cretin.” Moving along: Same thing happens on subsequent office map. They run off. PB gets ass handed to him in the Freak-filled L1 room. At one point, when I finally catch up to the Magnificent Asshole, I see him start to get slammed a bit, and I actually hold off on my support attacks for a second, because by now I wish he’d faceplant. But he pops his tank heal. I dutifully lay down some Arsenal support to obscure the fact that I wanted his toon to die and get mapserved. I pray for such divine justice, but, well, no such luck. Council map: same thing (what did you expect?}. They run past the mission objectives (council raid leaders), to do…I don’t know wtf. Evidently something. Once again the people actually teaming have to clean up their droppings. By now, I really hate these f***ers, but I’m wordlessly trudging through it, because anything I say won’t fix douche baggery. I pray for a lightning strike to fry the Magnificent Asshole’s hard drive. God ignores me (again!) Finally, the finale. We get ported to the reactor by one of our front runners. I begin to think we might actually do something as a full team. No. Far from it. We plunge in, knock out the AV well before the mobs annnnd… Someone clicks all 4 gd glowies. Before we’ve cleaned out the mobs. Before we’ve even come close to cleaning them out. Triple aggro. We’re all running around like slaughtered, headless chickens. For a moment, me, the squishy Troller, seems to be the only one targeting Clamor upon her return. For my pains (and because I don’t know what’s behind my freakin back in that mess) I catch a big fat slamma jamma from something (still not sure what…I think it was a diesel train) and I faceplant. I rez, pop a purple, eat some greens, duck into a corner (I have ONE small blue to use), and reconstitute, resummon and reload. I head back into the fray and mf’in Clamor’s STILL just hangin’ around. I’m not sure what everyone’s doing, but eventually they run out of lesser targets and we all FINALLY focus on the same thing (thanks, God…bit late, though). We finally take her down, exit. Someone comments on how fast it all was (though it was not announced as a speed run). I comment on the triple aggro at the end. True to his nature, the Magnificent Asshole responds with how much he enjoyed the “reckless”nature of it.” I comment that “you might want to clear it with everyone else first.” (Of course, what I want to say is: “F*** YOU! Of course YOU like that sh*t! You’re a f***ing tank! You can wade around in that sh*t waving your dick while the rest of us get clamped in the firebox YOU likely made!” F*** you, sir! F*** you, indeed!) The sad thing is, such “Magnificence” isn’t even all that rare at the moment. Of the last dozen or so Yins I’ve been on, I’d say fully a third of them have had someone click the reactor room glowies while the big end fight was not under control. It seems to actually be a thing. I would therefore like to request that such runs be advertised in some way. I’d prefer to call it a “dumbass douchebag run,” but “reckless” will do. So if “reckless” is your thing, please let others know up front that the task force will be all about you and what you find fun (like porting us all into the rear room so you can activate all the ambushes at once and watch the squishies die). Yes, we can figure out your douchiness on our own pretty quickly once we’re running. But it’d be nice to have a chance to dive off the team beforehand, for those of us who don’t want to stare at your ass tracks in the distance (not to mention clean up what’s come out of it, now that you’ve sh*t on the whole TF). In short, don’t hide your selfish jerkitude. Announce it up front, you gd, mamma-dint-raise-yew-raht POS. You know you’re a Magnificent Asshole. Might as well embrace it. (Now returning to more positive frame of mind [slowly…slowly…])

Hoo boy...

Well, you can teach intellectual property and all that. But when you're dealing with a huge swath of folks whose world has always included high-speed internet and endless media choices via the multiple screens through which they've experienced the world (not to mention various apps that do a lot of mental work for you), it's no wonder the concept doesn't register. Then again, a LOT of things don't register, now that our attention spans have dwindled to near zero.

This.

Just when I thought I was out...

You'd think this would turn folks away, but...no...:-)

Pretty much any of them (though there's a special place in my heart for RAD/RAD).

Hellion: Have you ever actually stolen a purse? If so, leadership over our entire organization is now yours!

Priorities can dictate what you sell. I don’t really care about holo-costumes, so I’ll sell Prismatic Aethers before merits. I also sell off crafted IO-set pieces (sometimes playing Convertor Roulette). That said, TFs run so frequently, you can acquire and use merits as suggested in this thread. I agree with those who say there are better options, though.

I would think your efforts to test the limits will be extremely useful in ferreting out things like that. Looking forward to seeing what else pops up.

The Praet tunnel map, with all the demons in it and that eerie red glow is pretty cool looking (though the map itself is pretty mundane). Can’t recall the mission. The Sutter map with the floating “Death Star” ship thing is pretty cool, because of how dangerous that can get when you take on turrets and such. and the giant robot map with all the bullets flying in the finale is pretty cool, too.

I have been toying with the idea of picking up the mace powers on a trad toon through the patron pools. Maybe attaching it to a weapons-based character (like archery/ninja training maybe?). As with all of the power pools, though, I wish I could access them a lot sooner. By the time I get a character to the level where you can qualify for it, the powers almost always seem superfluous (and less useful than some of the others). I suppose I could do some selections and then do a re-spec to make the patron/Epic powers more central to my character’s schtick, but I just don’t know if it would be worth the time and effort.

Same. 🙂 Though Bane sounds interesting. I’ve never been drawn to the Crab route.

Being a fan of guns and such, I've played a couple SoA's. Never got one to 50. But there's a whole summer ahead...MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That's just crazy! I'd have thought things would crash well before that. My issues with file size are well-documented. I've had crash issues with nowhere near as many critters. That's on my poor lil laptop though.

I usually get Echo: Galaxy after AP. Or zip into RWZ to grab the easy one, then use the free jetpack to get two quick ones from KR (the one on the ground between the buildings where the clocks hang out, then the one on the Helipad with the CoT).

Red Gold: A Sharkhead Story [ID: 39802 ] by @FourthSurvivor Touted as a sequel to Diviner Maros's arc, this L20-30ish (it varies on the high end--most are 20-29) arc drops you back into the Coral trade, working for the pleasantly named Death Master. You start out as part of wide-ranging hit on Cage assets (DM wants 'em ALL). This somehow places you at Villa Requin, where, as you're gettin' dat bag, some Spiders, THEN some RIPPERS show up yelling, Hail Lord Recluse (or some such). Weird...You're told that "Mako's Marines" showed up, but I didn't see anything that looked sharky for some reason. A buyer for the coral is on the list, but DM has better things for you to do, namely hit Mako's favorite haunt and steal some of HIS shit (I'm too big for my britches, sure, but, c'mon -- why am I poking MAKO?). The Chum Bucket is a quick hitter. You find yourself a fence in there, after a short spat with the Fam. The Hunt for Red Coral (-tober) sends you to The Pit next, where slags roam (or rather, UNDER it). Clever little mish follows here, involving your Slaggies and some Scrapyarders. We get a lead from Crazy Jim that takes us to Potter's Field (ahhhh...nice --I wrote an arc using that as a backdrop). Collection for your pains isn't as simple as it seems, sending you on a walk down "Succubus Alley" (and I'll leave it at that). The finale has you securing your smuggler ship against some familiar faces (including a lil boss cameo I'll leave for you to discover). All in all, a well-crafted, fast-paced, mean mission (seriously...I just felt like a mean ol' bastard the whole time [which is the point, I'm thinking -- this IS the Isles). A sliced-up seal of approval (thanks to our finale bosss) [wink]. PLAY IF: you want a neat little "tour around Shark," complete with the zone's usual suspects. P.S. Nothing is quite so satisfying as rifle-butting someone in the face, followed by the word DOMINATION popping up on the screen:-)

What I've seen are more regular mission teams forming, but that may be because I've been on Everlasting more, and this is just something they do. I know I didn't see a lot of straight story mish teams on Excel or Torch.

/em holdtorch

It can be a bit much, but you get used to it on regular teams. For Zone events and such I just accept that I'm not going to see much of anything clearly and go with it. What actually does bug me is when people have their shinies on next to trainers for extended periods. I sometimes wish we had a power suppression zone around the area. Those instances are pretty rare, however.

I'm trying not to be impressed by the fact they took the time to make macros for this sort of thing. (straining...straining...phew...yeah, that's next level douchey).

Indeed. Now, cutting it is another story...