PBiz

I figured that was the case! I was just asking so I knew I didn't miss anything specifically, or if decisions were made with some of the dialogue and world that weren't going to be addressed! As always, I and everyone else on Homecoming appreciates the hard work you all do.

Thank you for the clarity. It makes more sense to me now. Is the implication here that people purposefully used the map with increased spawn density in mind then? Perhaps for a challenge or anything else? Because I feel like lowering the spawn density would otherwise not change the arcs so drastically to worry about the writer's intent. I just know that when I make an AE arc, I avoid this map entirely, despite how great it looks, as a result. If there was a less dense version, I'd definitely use it for sure though.

So I was able to do a little testing. I noticed the Level 50 Sky Raiders weren't included. Any reason why? Are there plans to include them later? The inclusion of the Skulls and Wyvern enemies seemed like they came out just fine. Didn't see any issues or anything missing from them! I plan to test the Freaklok and Blackwing later. I didn't run into any issues with the Kallisti Wharf Office Maps visually. I think they look gorgeous. I actually love them. However, upon testing them, I'm just reminded of why I never run these maps. I use the AE pretty frequently and these maps are always on my avoid list, and it's entirely because the spawn density is frankly absurd. They're all packed so close together you don't know where one group ends and another begins, you can aggro an entire room with a team even while being careful. And the enemies on the second floors can also come at you. It's real bad. I know you said the density is unchanged, but they need changed. I have no interest in using this map until something is done about that. It just causes too many issues.

So I tested out in the AE with these level 50 Wyvern on my fully kitted out Dark Melee/Rad Armor Brute. I played on +4/x8. I'm aware that this is not the intended way, but I think it's worth discussing my findings. So uh, the minions have Flash Arrow and Net Arrow. That is a bit too much. You got to move these attacks to the Lieutenants or something because they spam those moves entirely too much. They were a challenge, but not in a way they really ought to be? I had trouble on my difficulty, and getting through it was a slog, and it was honestly mostly because Net Arrow slowed me down so much and I would get 5 stacked on me on average for the start of the fights. And these are fine on minions normally, but there's only one minion type, so it turns into EVERY SINGLE MINION has the same two powers and uses them en masse. I would say to make unique Wyvern minions have one or the other to split it up so not every single minion has these powers at the same time, or simply move them to a lieutenant. But I really think they need tweaking because having every minion with both of those powers is just too much.

So I tested out in the AE with these level 50 skulls on my fully kitted out Dark Melee/Rad Armor Brute. I played on +4/x8. I'm aware that this is not the intended way, but I think it's worth discussing my findings. This was absolutely one of the worst times I've had playing this game. Fighting one group was torture. The terrorizes stacked and were endless. There's shades that stack terrorize on a target, and then there's one Lieutenant that also stacks terrorize on a target. But for melee, this was just not fun at all. Furthermore, all of the -ToHit stacks. I normally never have a problem with being able to hit enemies, but this was just impossible. My base ToHit is 81% and my Accuracy is 1.25x. I have Beta Decay for -Def on always, and then Soul Drain for +ToHit and Ground Zero to do -Def. I could NOT hit these enemies at all because the stacking -ToHit was entirely too much. I feel like this is just going to be torture for any melee characters to deal with, especially for a tank since they'll be targeting you exclusively. You'll be chain terrorized and then not be able to damage anything. My recommendation is to tone down the terrorize mag or duration on a lot of these moves, and to also tone down the -ToHit value on a lot of them too. This was just way too much.

After bouncing around Kallisti Wharf for a while, I think overall there's been a ton of great work put into it. One noticeable thing is that there's a lot of interesting interactions between groups on the overworld, but you get no NPC dialogue hinting at anything. I notice it's mostly with two separate groups talking to one another. Is this intentional? I have to, again, question all of this talk about the Blackwing group bringing down crime so much when the entire side of the map is straight up filled with villainy and villains doing villain things. I get it on the hero side of the map with Crey there pretending to be goodie goodie, but on the other side of the map, there's too much going on that it's basically hell for any civilians to be around there at all. One notable thing is that I've done the hero story arcs so far, but not the others, but there seems to be dialogue that hints at a lot more that I may or may not be missing, but I'm wondering if it's going to make sense when the next set of arcs come around. For instance, the Warriors are oddly defensive of the workers at the stadium. Is this going to be touched upon? Because the Alexander the Great arc doesn't touch on that at all. Keep up the good work though.

This one had some problems. Mission 2 had a bunch of collectibles and I would collect one and then the counter would either not go down, or it would deplete to zero and not complete the mission until I found the correct glowy. You ought to just make it like the first mission computers where there's a lot of duds until you collect the right ones. Mission 3 had a weird issue where when I clicked the glowies Aside from that, Mission 3 wants you to escape from the mission, but it could stand to have a waypoint directing you back to the entrance since you keep being ambushed and it's unclear if you need to defeat them all or not. Plus waypoints are nice, even if it's a little map. Mission 4 or 5 wants you to defeat Raid Leaders. Given the context of the mission, would it not make more sense they'd be Base Leaders, since they aren't actually raiding anything? They're just chilling in their own base, unless I missed something. Overall, this seems to be a second of the two hero arcs made where they build up to something and just kind of abruptly ends it. I'm sure this gets continued in another arc, but having a rather ominous conversation to conclude on doesn't really feel satisfying. I'm frankly still not sure what the major thing we did was aside from stop a bunch of Council bases, and that doesn't seem significant enough for an arc like this. I would've liked something a little bit bigger to end on. There's also a Sky Raider mission that seems kind of interesting but sort of goes nowhere too. Again, I'm sure it continues somewhere down the line, but it honestly feels a bit dissatisfying and out of place. I'm not trying to dump on this arc because there's parts I really enjoy about it, but it doesn't have nearly the same kick to them that other Homecoming arcs do where it completes stories and leaves you with a big climactic finish where you feel like you really saved the day. Oh, and after I completed this arc, it doesn't show as completed in the Ouroboros list. The other hero arc did show as completed though. Here's a screenshot of the completion badge and the Ouro list.

Just a quick one, but the hurt box on the PEACE Keeper is waaay too low. On my flying melee character, it looks like I was punching the air below its feet. And then when it knocked me up, it flew up to accommodate the hurt box way above me again to get back into melee range. The hurt box can probably stand to be lifted a little bit. Linked two images of my character in melee range. Looks very off.

Just wrapped this one. Overall, I enjoyed it but it feels kind of incomplete in terms of story. I would've like to wrap and conclude this one, but the ending is a little too open ended for my liking, especially with nowhere left to continue it. I assume this will be in the next round of arcs, maybe? I enjoy where the Warriors arc goes, and I think it's a good degree of progression for the group. Interesting maps as well (give us the Forge map as an AE map pls). I'd say there's a string of missions that are all more or less fetch missions where you go back and forth between long distances that felt like Issue 0 arcs in a bad way, and I think if it were possible, it would be better without the backtracking to the contact. I'd also like to echo that I also didn't get the last portal in the last mission. It just didn't glow, but that was really the only issue I found.

I feel like the PPD corruption issue is odd considering the Blackwing group is very clearly a hell of a lot more corrupt as an independent paramilitary group brought in to do what the PPD was failing to do. Shouldn't the focus be more on there's a lot of shady reasons why the PPD was ousted in favor of Blackwing, even though they seem to get glowing reviews by the residents? I feel like that adds a little more intrigue into it that makes more sense. I find it odd that the residents would embrace this Blackwing group rather readily, or that we're supposed to believe that crime is down when a whole half of the city is dedicated to villain-side shenanigans, especially when the PPD as a whole has a great reputation otherwise Paragon City, and that it seems reasonable that the PPD would have acted a lot sooner to clean up their act in Kallisti Wharf if there were issues. If PPD has been utterly corrupt to the point they needed thrown out of a city, why should there be any faith in the rest of the organization? Additionally, I think the confusing part to me is "They don't understand the community they were trying to protect." I'm not sure exactly what that means. By all accounts, Kallisti Wharf has really been billed as a big, booming tech city with a university and everything, and some other corrupt bits across the pond with industrial stuff going on. It's not like King's Row which is a lot more poor population or anything. It's supposed to be a rather advanced and gorgeous city. I'm not attempting to get political with any of this, and I can understand the political implications of all of this, but I feel like groups like PPD or Longbow should really be cut a little more slack considering they routinely go up against terrible, invincible monsters that can tear them in half or blow up a city block, and villains are constantly putting civilians in so much more danger with actual masked criminals and monsters just hanging out on street corners, always attempting to commit high level crimes with superpowers. I feel like attempts to make them closer to a real life police organization is difficult since for the most part, the crimes are far and above anything in real life on average, and they are constantly outgunned and punching up to try and stop crime and murder. I feel like having the PPD struggling to keep up with all of the villainy and crime is a lot more sensible approach to go, and that's why they had to bring in a whole independent paramilitary group to clean it up, rather than PPD was just too corrupt to exist in the city. It just feels like a disservice to the group.

Have the level 50 versions of all of the existing groups been added to this as well? I know Skulls, Warriors, and Wyvern (may be missing one or two) are getting an upgrade in this patch. I feel as though there's a couple other existing groups with level 50 mobs that haven't gotten their level 50 versions too such as Sky Raiders off the top of my head.