RikOz

There's definitely something glitchy with the calculation. I checked it on one of my many alts - one that was still under level 30 - and it said she had something like 8217 hours, which works out to 342 days of play time. Not possible. On a related note, a few years ago I added up the total play time of all of my WoW characters, and at that time it added up to my spending around 25% of my time playing WoW, from the time I first subscribed until the day I made the calculation - it was something like 2 years of total playtime over a span of 8 years. And that span of time included the six months in 2012 I did not play at all because I was playing CoH (those six months ended with the sunset of CoH, and I went back to WoW). My only excuse for spending that much time is that many of those hours were due to the fact that my job, during the whole of my WoW career, was very seasonal, and during the slow periods I pretty much played WoW from the time I woke up until I got tired and went to bed. So I was racking up 15-16 hours a day during those times. Hey, with work being slow, it was a lot of entertainment for $15/month.

Another random civilian I clicked on: "Is interrupting people heroic?"

*I* know what a ziggurat is.

How could I forget them!

The problem with Crey mob names, as we encounter them in Crey buildings: The Infiltrators aren't infiltrating anything. The Researchers aren't researching anything. The Field Agents are not in the field. Discuss.

I was not able to succeed at that on my first three 50s (fire/fire blaster, DB/SR scrapper, MA/Nin scrapper). But my fourth 50 was my SS/Inv brute. Popped Unstoppable right at the beginning of the fight, and that settled matters, because they couldn't kill me. My fifth 50 was my energy/energy brute, and the new Energy Melee features helped me by letting me one-shot several of the baddies. I do like to keep my NPC helpers alive, just for story reasons. So... My wish for "helper" NPCs (and I suppose for hostages that I have to lead back to the entrance as well) is that they would make it so that they can actually keep up with me. This is especially true when I'm playing my Super Reflexes alts that have Quickness, because I can't turn that off and I just leave the helpers in the dust. The worst "offenders" here are Miss Thystle and Frostfire in one Hero alignment mission, and Silent Blade in another. But even my non-speed-boosted characters outrun them. For hostages, there was one redside mission where I had to kidnap or rescue (can't recall exactly which in that specific mission) a guy on an outdoor map. My character had no speed boosts at all, but I ended up having to turn on Walk to lead him out because, even at normal Run speed, I literally had to stop and go back to him about every 15 steps because he would fall behind and get "lost". And this was on an open, unobstructed grassy field. I mean, I know the game code can do it - Mr. Yin, an old man, stays right on my heels after I rescue him from the Lost. I also wish that helper NPCs simply would stop Flying in indoor missions. It gets really tiresome when I enter a room with a high ceiling and multiple balcony levels, and Overdrive jets up and away from me to attack somebody on the third level instead of helping me with the mobs I'm fighting. I don't see where she went, so I can't come help her, and she always dies. She also has a bad habit, in the alignment mission where you have to get the two cops away from the Carnival and the Whispered Hand assassins, of zooming all the way to the other side of the big warehouse room to attack an Illusionist that I had planned to ignore because I've already defeated the mobs guarding the last cop and that Illusionist was well out of aggro range. Overdrive yells something like, "I'll hold them off! Just get those cops out of here!", and in that case I just take her at her word and leave her to it. There's one mission where I avoid rescuing Overdrive if at all possible, because in that mission one of her guards has a "you can't touch this" ability, and I just really hate mechanics that amount to "wait for a timer to run out so you can start punching again". Unfortunately, Overdrive and her guards sometimes spawn right in, or very close to a doorway that I have to go through, so it's impossible to avoid aggroing her guards.

Captain Apple has his new costume all designed to be ready when he hits level 50:

Chatter in Brickstown: "relys" should be "relies".

LOL - random pedestrian in Brickstown:

I would love to see something like this. I dislike the Quickness power from Super Reflexes, because being forced to sprint through caves is painful. But it's an Auto power, so I can't toggle it off, and if I just skip the power I lose out on its other benefits, like the Recharge bonus. The stealth/movement speed power from Ninjitsu has similar issues - too fast for going through caves, though at least that one is a Toggle power.

Right, but I'm just talking about the ending of the arc. The yellow arrow points you to her, incorrectly.

This reminds me of my character "Fallout Bull" (formerly "Roentgen Bull", formerly "Rad Bull"). He's a SS/Rad brute who gained his powers via drinking way too many energy drinks. I gave him Super Leap for his travel power, because I felt it fit the theme :)

When I looked at the red/blue, and the "Agent of S.H.I.F.T" bit, I assumed it was a reference to "red shift" and "blue shift" with regard to the light spectrum. Just a guess, of course.

This is why I save the "Experienced" buff charges (the temp power you get during the anniversary events) for later levels. Since all that power does is grant you five blocks of "rested XP", at low levels you just burn those off in less than ten minutes. So I save them up for higher levels, when gaining five blocks of XP takes a lot longer. More bang for the buck, basically.

There is actually a bit of a bug (which I reported in the Bug Reports forum some time ago) at the end of the arc, after you talk to the Latin Student and gain entry to the Midnighter Club. For some reason, the yellow marker points you to Mercedes Sheldon as soon as you enter the room, when what you actually need to do is talk to the guy behind the desk, and then talk to Montague to actually finish the arc. Talking to Mercedes before level 20 doesn't get you anything. There is one random, non-arc mission that I have only encountered once or twice (across 100 alts, most of which are above level 20), where you fight through a cave full of Lost (and maybe some Rikti), and in the caves you find a pile of books that read like religious texts. They're apparently written by the Rikti, and the Lost are treating them as religious prophecy telling of a future paradise/utopia. It seems the Rikti are using these texts to recruit volunteers for "the change". This future paradise/utopia is strongly alluded to by the random Lost comments in Faultline, but if you haven't seen the mission where you find those books, the chatter doesn't make a whole lot of sense - you're left wondering, "What are these guys on about?" I think it would be very helpful if that particular mission was pushed more strongly. Having it just show up among the random missions that appear after you've completed a contact's story arc makes it very easy to miss. I, at least, rarely continue with a contact after I've completed whatever arc they offer. Unfortunately, I don't recall the name of the mission, or who offers it. I've done it on almost every character, and I think she's only died on me once or twice. The only times I've seen her actually run away from me have been when the mob she's currently targeting happens to flee, and she chases after it.

The Lady Jane mission is one I routinely drop to -1. I also like to manage things so that I'm thaaaaaat close to leveling in the previous mission, then turn XP off before finishing. Then turn XP back on for Lady Jane. That way, I'm likely to level up on the first few mobs, and I'm effectively now running the mission at -2. Because that mission is an insane exercise in frustration at low levels, particularly when it spawns almost nothing but the ghosts.

I'm on the verge of deciding to just autocomplete any "board transit" mission that uses that factory map or the city neighborhood map - the big one that's used for the "rescue the congressman and six of his aides" mission. The factory map is just infuriating. The neighborhood map is too damned big with entirely too many possible places for the "hostages" to spawn. Both maps end up taking entirely too long.

LOL, yeah. The last time my fire/fire blaster was placated, the enemy was already pretty low on health. Since he had to run right up to me to placate me, he was standing in both of my AoE damage auras. So he placated me, then fell down dead. I was like, "Yeah! Take that, smart guy!"

Well, I have reached a milestone! Three new characters bring me to a total of 100! #98: Funbot 5000 (Rad Melee/Electric Armor brute) - punching bad guys is FUN! #99: Philantropic Odin (War Mace/Ice Armor brute) - to get the reference, check out the song "Valhallelujah" by Nanowar of Steel on YouTube. And finally, #100: Seratus (Street Justice/Energy Aura stalker) - "Seratus" is Indonesian for 100.

I've recently started taking it on newer characters, but my main (fire/fire blaster) has never had it. In any case, I only took the power for the +ToHit. I've typically disregarded any Confuse or Placate resistance as inconsequential; having never actually seen an NPC use either of those on me, I assumed they were pretty much limited to PvP or team content. Granted, it's understandable that my main, being a blaster, didn't get Placated for a very long time. Even running +3, she can usually take out enemies before they get anywhere near her. But it's still not completely unheard of for an enemy to get all up in her face - sometimes it's because of attacks missing, allowing an enemy to get close, and sometimes she Hovers right past an enemy and doesn't see him until he hits her from behind. My other 50s are all melee, though (2 scrappers, 3 brutes). Two of the brutes have Assault, and they are the only two among my six 50s with any Placate resistance at all. And one of them was my first toon to get placated. Looking at all that, plus mob behavior, it appears that mobs with the Placate ability are set to use it when they're down to a certain % of health, so it's entirely possible that I've simply consistently been able to damage them enough to defeat them before they reach that preset plateau, and it's pure RNG that has resulted in a cluster of Placates where I'd never seen them before. I can see where it would happen - I damage an enemy exactly enough to take them down to that preset health, and then my next attack misses and that gives them the chance to use Placate. I would also explain why a couple of my brutes have been placated while neither of my scrappers have been - my scrappers have much faster attacks (Dual Blades, Martial Arts) than my brutes (SS, Energy Melee, Dark Melee), so an enemy is more easily able to slip a placate between my brutes' attacks than my scrappers'.

I occasionally find it fun, when I'm on a high-level toon in Atlas Park, to take out an entire crowd of Hellions with one AoE. Though I do tend to look around first to make sure I'm not about to kill-steal from a lowbie.

By 2004, most of my county had been wired up with fiber optic internet, courtesy of the local Public Utility District.

This is a bit of a puzzle. I've asked, in-game, when certain Bane Spiders gained the ability to Placate my characters, and some players are telling me they've always done that. Except, I've been playing on Homecoming for two years now, and this literally never happened to me until about a month ago, shortly after the i27 patch dropped. Granted, this is only happening to my level 50 characters, and I only got my 5th and 6th alts to 50 about a month ago. But since I play solo exclusively, I run a whole lot of alignment/morality missions to earn merits, so I've run the level 40-50 tip missions many, many, many times on level 50 characters. These include several missions against Arachnos, so I've run into those high-level Bane Spiders plenty of times, and as I said, my first Placate only happened about a month ago. The first time was on one of my fresh 50s, who hadn't unlocked her Alpha yet, but the most recent was on my main, a T3 incarnate running missions at +3.

This one was really only funny in context. I got a standalone mission I'd never seen before, to see if I could find Count Crey. I entered the mission, and a Crey Vigilant yelled at me: "This is a medical facility! You're not sterile!" It was funny because I was playing my SS/Rad brute. I looked at the Vigilant sadly, and said, "My whole body is irradiated. Of course I'm sterile." Then I punched him really hard.