RikOz

Okay, one base downsized, two to go! I combined the computers and generators into one room (they were previously in separate, adjacent rooms). I know I don't need as much of that as I actually have, but I think the stuff looks cool. So that let me delete one room. My base NPCs (trainer, enh vendor, Icon guy, nurse, Hero Corps rep) were already in the entrance room, where they're right in front of me as I portal in, so I left them where they were. The major "problem" room contained all of my salvage racks, inspiration collectors, invention table, Merit vending machine, medi-porters, tip mission computer, and buff machine. The problem was that this room was originally right next to the generator room, down a relatively long hallway from the entrance. So I emptied all of the salvage racks, vendored the stuff, and deleted all of those racks. Deleted everything that wasn't storage of some sort, and moved my three inspiration collectors into my portal room, which is right next to the entrance. Then deleted that big back room. That left me with just three rooms: Entrance, computer/generator room to the right, and portal room to the left. In the portal room there were two portals to Paragon zones, one portal to Praetorian zones, one portal to Rogue Island zones (I have a vigilante or two), and one unassigned portal. Deleted that last one. Placed the three insp collectors on one wall and added three more, assigning each one to a specific type of insp. Place a buff machine, then noticed for the first time that there are two more buff machines that provide higher-level buffs, so I put them in there too. Found a space for the tip mission computer. The entrance room had an empty wall opposite the NPCs, so that's where I stuck the Merit vending machine, invention table, and an enhancement table. Everything is much more conveniently located now. Two more bases to go! Thanks for the suggestions :)

I can't remember - how many consecutive misses does it take for Streak Breaker to kick in? I was playing my ice melee toon the other day and her T1 attack, Frozen Fists, seemed to be missing a lot. So just for fun, as she was fighting a lone, yellow-con minion, I decided to attack with *only* Frozen Fists (it has a quick recharge). Six consecutive misses.

BTW, I mostly have my tongue firmly planted in my cheek while pointing these things out. I find it amusing to analyze these types of patterns. Many years ago, I had the most annoying roommate ever. He acted like literally everything that didn't go exactly his way was some sort of conspiracy against him. For example: Playing video games on my Super Nintendo (it was the 1990s). Every single thing that went against him was because the game was "cheating". Like, he'd be playing a baseball video game, and if he was pitching and the computer's batter hit a home run, the game was cheating. If he was batting and struck out, the game was cheating. If he successfully hit the ball, but it was caught by a fielder, the game was cheating. Watching live sports on TV? His favorite teams never lost because the other team played better. No, his favorite teams lost because the corrupt officials were cheating for the other team. If he was walking down the street and saw a police officer, he would immediately put his head down and change direction. Because the police were "always harassing [him]". Mind you, he had no criminal record to lead to cops "harassing" him. He was in his mid-twenties, but looked like he was 14. Every time he needed cigarettes, he would walk down to the corner convenience store without his ID, then come back a few minutes later, cussing a blue streak because, apparently, the a-holes at the store were "against" him because they wouldn't sell him cigarettes without ID.

I was doing a Malta mission on my fire/fire blaster, and I encountered three Titans in a row as I proceeded through the hallways of an office map. Each time, I spotted them before they saw me, so I clicked Aim, activated my snipe ... and the snipe missed every single time. Three consecutive attempts.

LOL - I'll be fighting in a crowd of enemies, and have my current target down to the point where a single hit from my T1 attack will finish them off. I use that T1 on them, and in the flow of my button-mashing, I've already tabbed to the next target (I have TAB set to "target nearest") and queued up my most powerful attack... ...and the T1 actually misses and I end up wasting my more powerful attack on the first target with 1 hit point. That is also somewhat related to why I prefer brutes over scrappers: the random nature of scrapper critical hits means that I'm constantly seeing big crits on targets that only have a couple hit points left. And I'll think, "Man, that crit would have been a lot more useful earlier in the fight!" Similarly, my aggravation when fighting Freakshow. My attacks that would do enough damage to defeat a Freak just before he activates his self-heal seem to miss 90% of the time. I'm also convinced that there is hidden ACC/ToHit debuff on ranged attacks when the target is in melee range. Blasting enemies on the other side of the room? I'm like a sharpshooter. Enemy get all up in my face? Suddenly, I'm shooting holes in the ceiling! Oh yeah, and my targeted AOE attacks that consistently hit every mob except the one I actually have targeted. It's a conspiracy! C-O-N... spiracy!

Sometimes, there are repeating patterns of behavior amongst the Paragon City criminal element that make me go, "Hmmm..." There are a couple of level 40+ Hero alignment missions that send the player up against the Devouring Earth. Perhaps coincidentally, when I run these missions on a character that does primarily Lethal damage (say, my DB scrapper), these maps spawn with 90%-100% rock monsters (aside from the Devoured monsters), who are particularly resistant to lethal damage. Meanwhile, when I run these missions on a character that deals primarily smashing damage (like my SS brute), these same maps spawn 90%-100% smashing-resistant plant monsters. It's as if the DE knows in advance exactly which hero, with which powerset, is going to respond to their attack, and sends the appropriate "soldiers" on the mission. Several months ago, I found myself quite surprised when an Arachnos Bane Spider Scout pacified one of my characters. I'd been back in the game for more than two years at that point, and this had literally never happened before. I figured out that it was because that particular character did not have Leadership: Assault, which provides resistance to Pacify. Having not previously even been aware that Scouts could do that, I started carefully watching these Scouts while fighting them, watching for that distinctive Pacify animation. And guess what? If my character has Assault, the Scouts don't even bother! I find this odd, because I've always kinda assumed that "status" resistances, after their primary function of actively resisting something or other, would have a sort of passive, secondary benefit of effectively making the opponent waste an attack. That is, opponents will attempt one of their normal attacks, and if I can resist it, they've wasted that attack. But when it appears that they know in advance that I have the mental fortitude to resist pacification, they simply don't try and just shoot me instead. Most recently, while doing a long Nemesis arc, on one mission I became annoyed with all the Toxic damage I was taking from snipers. So after finishing the mission, I went to my SG base and obtained a Resist Toxic buff from handy-dandy buff machine. Thereupon followed a half dozen missions in which not a single sniper appeared (granted, some, but not all of these six missions were entirely populated by automatons). And then, once the buff expired, the very next mission was again full of snipers. As if they knew in advance. Now, I've been playing MMOs long enough to understand RNG. But RNG that consistently rolls in exactly the same disadvantageous way over a span of years just starts feeling weird. Anyway, just ranting a bit :D

Reminds me of rescuing those corrupt cops from the Carnies/Whispered Hand in one of the alignment missions. Every time I stop while leading them out, they start writing tickets :D

All right, thanks! I'mma start fiddling and see how I can improve things.

You've reminded me of another thing I was wondering: Are all those generators and computers actually necessary, in HC, to power everything? Because that stuff takes up a lot of space. My one small base is more or less what you described, it has one medium-sized room off of the entrance room that holds everything I need. Part of the space savings comes from it being the base for my villains, and so it really only needs one teleporter to cover the redside zones. My blueside bases all need at least three. I've also figured out that I really don't need so many salvage racks. I've realized that I almost never use them. My characters store rare salvage in their own personal vault space and just vendor all their common/uncommon salvage. So one thing I can do to make downsizing easier is sell off all of the salvage in the racks. Then the only items I actually have to move before deleting/shrinking the room are my inspiration storage units. Everything else can just be deleted and then replaced in the new, smaller space.

Heh. I have similar complaints about the random nature of scrappers' "critical strike" ability. My scrappers seem to roll the big crits when their opponents are already one hit away from defeat anyway. So many of those crits just seem wasted, when they would have been much more useful early in the fight. It's a large part of why I prefer brutes over scrappers.

Possibly the best positioning of a glowie I've ever encountered: I noticed, while fighting Warhulks with Fiery Melee, you can actually see the fire inside the glass bubble where the operator sits: I was trying to capture the above effect during an earlier fight, but he asploded just as the screenshot triggered. I thought the resulting capture was pretty spectacular, and regret that I hadn't gotten my UI out of the way beforehand:

I have four SGs, and of course a base for each one of them. There's nothing fancy about any of the bases; they're more or less "utilitarian" for my purposes, since I'm the only one who sees them. Alas, as time has passed, I've found I'm only really happy with the last one I built. The reason I'm happy with it is that it's ... compact. It's compact because I learned from my mistakes with the three previous bases. Simply put, I greatly overestimated how much space I was going to need in those first three bases, and so I'm stuck with multiple gigantic rooms that are mostly empty space, and stupidly long runs from one room to the next. My question is this: Is there any way to shrink a room without having to move everything out of it first?

I have two Psi Melee toons, a Psi/Elec scrapper, and a Psi/SR brute. The brute has turned out to be so much fun that she's my most recent alt to join the "over level 40 club" (only 12 out of 116 alts). She's a reroll from live, though in name only - on live she was a Fiery Melee/Regen brute that only made it to level 7. Though her lack of leveling on live probably had more to do with the fact that I rolled her not long before the shutdown announcement. Utterly love playing her, but, like any other psionic character, Banished Pantheon zombies are a challenge. No brain means psionics don't work well.

I'm up to 116 alts. I keep them sorted by level. That's easy to do - when a character levels up, I just move them up the list to join my other alts of the same level. The exceptions to this sorting method are two "concept" SGs I created, "The Extracurriculars" and "Solar Angels. There are 10 members of each SG, so each team fits on its own page in the list, and don't move. I keep all of the members of each SG at the same level (to represent them leveling up together). Extracurriculars are all currently at 37; Solar Angels are currently at 31. I have two other personal SGs - one blueside that is the catch-all SG for my heroes/vigilantes, and another redside for my villains/rogues. Several of my earliest alts (and most of my 50s) are members of a fifth SG, which is composed of members of another online community (though I think only two of us are still active players). Each alt handles their own "finances" for the most part, though my "main" will occasionally mail Inf off to help out other alts. I'll mail certain IO sets to my @Global that are most useful in a certain level range, once a character no longer needs it. For example, the flight IO set that grants stealth while flying is very useful for characters spending time in Founders Falls (damned snipers!), but not as useful outside of that zone, so an alt with that set, once they hit 40, will mail it off for the next level 30-39 alt to slot. My level 50s who no longer have a use for Catalysts will drop those in the mail for lower-level alts to make use of. I pretty much play entirely solo and so, with a few exceptions for "concept" reasons, I only play "DPS" ATs. In order of preference: brutes, blasters, scrappers, sentinels, stalkers. No masterminds - I've never liked "pet" classes in games, at least not those that summon crowds of pets. That goes all the way back to my playing a necromancer in Diablo 2 with a herd of skeletons. I think it's because I'm a bit claustrophobic, and get tense when my character is surrounded by a crowd (probably part of why I also don't enjoy team play). Anyway, my goal is to eventually have alts of every possible primary/secondary combination for those ATs I play. For this purpose, I have spreadsheets to keep track of which combos I've already used, to avoid duplication. My exceptions to my "DPS-only" rule are one tanker, a couple corruptors, and a dominator. My "Extracurriculars" SG originally included an Ill/FF (FF/Ill?) controller, which to date is the only character I've deleted. I discovered quickly that she was absolutely useless in solo play, at least at low levels. I mean, pick one: offense *or* defense, but not both at the same time.?

Scientific fact: Placing an ordinary chair in front of elevator doors will cause those exiting the elevator to be shifted into an alternate dimension.

Completely coincidental combination of NPC lines in Brickstown that made me chuckle: [NPC] Panhandler: Extra change? [NPC] Elda: I feel much safer with you guys around. (Elda was actually talking to a PPD Shell)

I think they have. I've now been on HC three times longer than I was on live, though, so I'm not always certain which lines have always been there. Is the 5th Column guy in IP saying, "I make this uniform look good!" new?

Vazhilok line I hadn't seen before: [NPC] Reaper: A pretty face, yes. But it's what's on the INSIDE that counts here!

Talk about brazen! This Skulls Girlfriend just completely ignored me while rifling that purse!

I love it - he has a similar color scheme to my elec/elec blaster, Fuseweld: (She also has the spine thing)

Alt #116! I heard a Spanish phrase that I realized would make a great pun name for a female villain. I'll leave it to you to translate and hopefully get the joke. Presenting my new Savage Melee/Willpower scrapper, "Playa del Mal"! Simple costume to start, as I do with all of my alts.

One of Bocor's missions, redside. Fighting "Duke" Mordrogar. As I approach him: "It is here! Soon we shall free its master! Nothing shall stop us!" As I fight him: "Feel the flames of Duke Mordrogar! Your pitiful powers are nothing to me! My flames shall not falter! You will burn! You will ALL burn!" After I've defeated him: "Oh. Whoah. Okay, I give up."

I like it when I find those spots with nice lighting: And sometimes, the NO-lighting:

I did that with my villain-turned-hero. Though I originally rolled her as a villain (both on live and for HC), her backstory said that she started out as a hero named "Blue Violet" (violet the flower, not violet the color), who worked together with her sister, "White Orchid". While I never actually designed that original hero costume, I imagine it being blue & white. As a villain, though, she altered her name to "Bruised Violet" and went with dark purple & black. When she eventually worked her way back to hero status, she discarded the "Violet" and renamed herself "Blue Celestina" (celestina is a blue flower that grows in the Dominican Republic, her country of birth) and returned to a mostly blue costume, with some black and white here and there.

Well, it used to be that belts were actually worn around the waist, because that's where the waistbands of pants were (hence the name, "waistband"). The "belt around the hips" is a more modern thing. If you look at Golden Age superheroes, and even some Silver Age characters, you'll see the higher belts.