RikOz

I made, and soon deleted, an Illusion/FF controller, mostly for the concept as part of a themed "super group" comprised of some my own alts. As an almost purely solo player, it didn't take long to realize how useless she was by herself.

I've used him a number of times, in the same situation. With the XP boosts, I usually hit level 8 by the time I come out near Thiery, and I like to take my travel power at 8, and getting from Thiery to Miss Liberty when you don't have a travel power yet is rather inconvenient. So I go get it from BAB, On a related note, I thought it was rather hilarious the first time I got that alignment mission to break up the drug convention, and it sent me to a door right smack across the street from BAB. You know, the hero most known for his anti-drug crusades doesn't notice the humongous drug deal going on across the street. Or equally hilarious, the big bad drug guys deciding to hold their convention right in front of BAB...

I don't see a countdown when I log out in a university, but I do see it in police stations.

Really? I've literally never seen her do it in Faultline, fighting her as an EB. Maybe there's a level cutoff where her powers change or something? I'm usually done with Faultline by level 22, but I'm still doing this morality mission all the way up to 29. EDIT to ADD: Just fought Nocturne again at the end of the Jim Temblor/Fusionette part of the Faultline story, and she definitely did not self-heal. I reduced her to near-zero health, and she promptly teleported herself out of there. My character this time started the mission at level 20, and leveled to 21 upon defeating Nocturne (love it when that happens, leveling up on the final boss of a mission!) Anyway, that character is ready to start the final part of the Faultline arc (in the dam), so she'll get to fight Nocturne again. I'll pay attention to what happens. I think I will also XP-lock a character at level 20 or 21 until they can get the Fire in the Hole mission, and see what Nocturne does at that level.

Nocturne is certainly my most-fought named villain, given that I can fight her twice (and optionally a 3rd time) in Faultline, and she's also the end boss in the level-20 range Hero morality mission, "Fire in the Hole". It is in this last appearance that she exhibits odd behavior. Basically, while fighting Nocturne in that mission, I will beat her almost all the way down, and she instantly heals herself back to full health. She does this twice during the fight. For a while she also had a tendency to come popping back up and attacking me again after officially completing the mission, but before clicking on the Exit button, though that seems to have stopped. She does not seem to do the self-full-heal thing during any of the fights in Faultline, so the fact that she does it (twice) in the morality mission makes me think it's a glitch. Is she actually supposed to do that? I know I ran the mission multiple times on live, but it's been long enough that I honestly can't remember if she did this back then.

I'm more curious to find out why, every so often, when I click on the "Go to this post" link in a forum notification e-mail, GMail pops up a warning that it's a "suspicious link".

Never mind, already answered by earlier poster and I missed it.

Aside from TFs, one thing I've always thought this game is missing is the ability to view the map of a zone I'm not currently in. It just seems odd that I can view the full city map, but I can't click on the zones to zoom them in. I mean, considering that our contacts are giving us the exact street addresses of the buildings we're supposed to visit, the effect is more like, "I need you to do something in Steel Canyon; I'll text you the address once you get there". So you take the tram to Steel Canyon South, and only then find that the mission location is a building up near the Icon store. Given that we heroes are supposedly residents of the city who know our way around, being able to preview a remote zone map would more accurately represent the idea of a contact telling us the address and we know right where that is and can travel to the nearest station.

Oh god, I haven't had to face them redside, but I've had to fight them a couple times blueside (in a vigilante arc, and fighting rogue cops in a Talos Island arc) and I totally agree, the glue guns suck.

I regularly do the XP farm, "Bads in Space", more for tickets than XP, and I have noticed that if I change my Notoriety to anything higher than the default +0/X1, I stop getting tickets.

Any zone, really. This is actually something I recall noticing back on live, not long after I started playing. So many functional doors, yet I seemed to keep getting sent to the same ones over and over. I found it puzzling, particularly for randomized missions like radio missions. For most missions, the only actual requirement is selecting the appropriate map type for the mission, and when the mission calls for an office or warehouse map, there are so many available, appropriate buildings that it just gets weird when all the rhubarb seems to happen in the same handful of buildings.

Hmm, was gonna say I beat her without too much difficulty on my fire/fire blaster (amusingly, named "Flaminatrix"), but then I re-read and saw the AV bit. I was only set at +0/X1/no AV, so I guess she was an EB to me.

Welcome back!

I was exploring Echo: Galaxy City yesterday, picking up badges, when I read the text of the "Land Locked" badge: "This lock holds back the waters of Eastgate Bay, and has been the target of many super criminals bent on flooding Galaxy City." This was extremely odd, because Eastgate Bay is way over on the other side of The Hollows. You know, three zones away from Galaxy City. According to the full city map, Perez Park is on the other side of that lock. Then Atlas Park, and finally The Hollows (aka "Eastgate"). Eastgate Bay is a few miles away from Galaxy City. Can somebody explain this?

Unfortunately, it's not a feature of the Fiery Aura melee secondary 😞

I don't know when it was introduced, as I only discovered the game about a year before shutdown, but the color-changing powers were there when I played on Live.

I use a specific, odd number for the last three digits of all of my bids (my birthday, to be specific), and after that first purchase, that number keeps showing up in the "recent bids" box for nearly every subsequent item I look at. That has to be a glitch. Anyway, when it comes to putting recipes on the AH, I frequently find myself torn over the simple fact that, for the overwhelming majority of uncommon and rare recipes, I'll get more inf by vendoring them. That's completely backwards from WoW and the few other MMOs I've tried. So when I look at the going price for a particular recipe, and see that people are bidding around 1,000 inf, but I can vendor it for 5,000 ... do I take the better price from the vendor, or do I be a nice guy and help propagate the recipe into the community? I think part of the problem is also people taking advantage of the way the AH awards winning bids - giving the highest bid to the seller with the lowest asking price. People like me who know about this start posting things for 1 inf, and eventually, buyers who also know the system start making stupid low bids. I've posted a lot of recipes for 1 inf, and they end up selling for 1 inf. The amusing thing about this is the minimum 5 inf auction fee: I post for 1 inf, a buyer gets it for 1 inf, and then I get charged the 5 inf fee, so I'm basically paying 4 inf to get rid of it.

I should have also mentioned that I wasn't trying to make Hotstepper look like the singer of that song. Until I went and watched the video after I made the character, I had no idea what the guy looked like. I heard the song on a stream at work a couple days ago, and it gave me the character idea. Anyway, he's a Fire/Fiery Aura scrapper (I already had a fire/fire blaster and a fire/fire brute... I like fire 😄 )

Here come de Hotstepper. He's a lyrical gangster. Word 'em up.

Well technically, they're not transparent....

One of my supergroups, The Extracurriculars: Dorotea Dagger (Dual Blades/Super Reflexes stalker) from Mexico: Dorotea Solana Cortez was a homeless child on the streets of Mexico City, getting by as a petty thief as part of a small-time gang. Despite numerous run-ins with the police, she always managed to escape mysteriously. And she had an edge: a nearly superhuman skill with a blade. A tourist from Paragon City heard rumors about her and managed to track her down, and convinced her to return to Paragon, where she paid her tuition at the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls. In the aftermath of the Galaxy City disaster and the mysterious disappearance of Headmistress Dahlia Ventura, Dorotea now leads The Extracurriculars, a team comprised of several of her fellow former students. Beatriz Brasil (Staff Fighting/Bio Armor scrapper) from Brazil: Beatriz Pinheiro was an orphan growing up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Though Beatriz is unaware of the fact, her mother was a practitioner of magic who blessed her infant daughter with protective wards shortly before her own death. As the girl grew, her own innate magical attunement strengthened and improved those wards, but this was unconscious, as she still remained unaware of her natural gifts. These wards helped her to survive on the streets, but she also helped herself by always carrying a discarded broomstick with which to defend herself. When she was 10 years old, she was taken in by a martial arts instructor, who raised her alongside his own children. He replaced her broomstick with a proper fighting staff and trained her in its use. At 14, her benefactor sent her to the USA and enrolled her in the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls. When the school was destroyed a few years later in the Shivan attack, Beatriz and fellow students formed The Extracurriculars super group. Betty Beatdown (War Mace/Invulnerability brute) from England: Elizabeth Downing grew up poor in London, UK, with a physically abusive stepfather. One day, when she was 13, her drunken stepfather hit her ... and his blow had no effect. Her mutant powers had manifested as invulnerability. When the next blow proved similarly futile, Betty picked up the first object at hand - a cricket bat - and gave her stepfather a taste of his own medicine, along with a promise of more to come should he ever hurt her or her mother again. Before long, Betty found herself recruited by the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls, and relocated to Paragon City. After the disaster in Galaxy City destroyed the school, Betty teamed up with several of her fellow students to form The Extracurriculars. Energy Ellie (Energy Blast/Mental Manipulation blaster) from USA: Born into a magically-gifted family, it was no surprise when Ellie Sturgeon began to display magical abilities of her own at a young age. Growing up in Paragon City, it made sense to her parents to enroll her in the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls as soon as she was old enough, in order to direct her powers in the right direction. When the school was destroyed in Shivan disaster, Ellie and several of her fellow students banded together to form The Extracurriculars. Kinetic Keisha (Kinetic Melee/Regeneration scrapper) from USA: Keisha Franklin was a high school student in Miami, until an explosion in her science class wounded her and doused her in chemicals. Amazingly, her wounds healed unnaturally rapidly, and she later discovered new kinetic abilities. Not long after she transferred to the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls, the Shivan disaster destroyed the school. Now, Keisha has teamed up with several fellow students to form The Extracurriculars. Mental Miyuki (Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation blaster) from Japan: The youngest member of The Extracurriculars, Miyuki Oshima is nevertheless one of the most powerful. Born and raised in Saitama, Japan, her mutant psychic and telekinetic abilities manifested when she was just 12 years old. Soon after, her family emigrated and relocated to Paragon City so that Miyuki could receive training at the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls. When the school was destroyed in the Shivan meteor disaster less than three years later, Miyuki was among the now-former students who banded together as The Extracurriculars. ((I didn't intend for two blasters in the group to have the same secondary, but Miyuki started out as a Mind Control/Psionic Assault dominator (or corrupter, can't remember for sure) and just wasn't working for me for solo play, so I rerolled her as a blaster and picked the two powersets that I felt fit the "mental" theme.)) Rayusha Razor (Claws/Willpower brute) from Ukraine: Rayusha Ustyyanovych was born and raised in Luhansk, Ukraine. Questionable, experimental, medical treatments she received as a child made her more aggressive than a normal child, while bestowing a mental mindset that lets her shrug off pain and injury and allows her to maintain focus regardless of difficult circumstances. However, Rayusha gained, from her parents, a strong sense of justice and cannot stand by while the weak are mistreated. When it was revealed that her childhood medical treatments were part of a secret government program to raise up a corps of assassins, the family fled to the USA and settled in Paragon City. As one of the older students at the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls, Rayusha helps to lead The Extracurriculars team in the aftermath of the Shivan meteor tragedy. ((I may tweak this a bit - it's a little too "Wolverine-ish")) Tabitha Target (Archery/Darkness Manipulation blaster) from Scotland: Tabitha McKinley bears a magic bow, a family heirloom that has been passed down for generations. The bow has a connection to the realm of shadows, and it grants its bearer the ability to draw upon shadow powers. It also grants the ability to fly so long as the bearer carries it. The bow grants no special archery skills or powers, though - that's all Tabitha. In fact, the one condition for using the bow's powers is that the owner must use the bow for its mundane purpose with great regularity. Failure to practice, or otherwise utilize archery skills will result in the shadow powers diminishing. Tabitha was a student at the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls when the meteor attack destroyed the school. Now she works with several of her fellow former students, fighting crime as The Extracurriculars. ((Because her powers come from the bow, she'll keep the same bow with every costume, even though it might appear out of place with more modern armor. She uses that wooden longbow with the arcane runes on it.)) Tonya Toronto (Ice Blast/Ice Armor sentinel), from Canada: ((No bio yet - I haven't decided on her real last name, because she's Canadian "First Nations" and I've had some trouble trying to find how surnames work for them. I plan to consult with some Canadian friends for suggestions. I mainly don't want to inadvertently give her a name that sounds stereotypical or mocking.)) And finally, the Extracurriculars' former teacher and future nemesis ... Dahlia Danger (Dual Pistols/Traps corruptor) from USA: Dahlia Ventura established the Galaxy City School for Superpowered Girls, acting as the school's headmistress and primary instructor. In reality, she is an Arachnos agent, and the school was a front intended to identify superpowered young women and indoctrinate them into Arachnos' philosophy, with the intent of turning them to Arachnos' purposes. Unfortunately for Arachnos' plans, the Shivan meteor attack interrupted and derailed their plan, and when the school was destroyed Dahlia had little choice but to flee back to the Rogue Isles with the Arachnos agents who responded to the attack. Dahlia's former students, who went on to form the superhero group known as The Extracurriculars, remain unaware of her true nature. They presume that she perished in the attack, and remember her fondly. Dahlia lets them believe she's dead ... for now. ((Heh - no, she didn't dress like this when she was "teaching" 😄 )) EDIT: The costumes depicted above are the girls' "level 20" costumes. Their starting costumes weren't really "costumes" - they were whatever they happened to be wearing when the meteors struck. So, a mix of school uniform parts and some personal items. By level 10 they were able to create basic, spandex costumes, with the non-USA members choosing to create costumes in their own national colors. By level 20, they had enough resources to design and create more suitable suits that offered more protection. And just for fun, here's a wallpaper I made of the group back when I first created them on live: The girl in the blue beret was Flavie Faker, an Illusion/FF controller from France. I deleted her because she was just terrible for solo play (which is what I mostly do). Flavie was replaced by Tonya Toronto, and Beatriz Brasil is a new character created for HC.

And NPCs attack like knights 😄 It's very consistent - a lone enemy will run a straight line about 10 degrees to my right (as I'm facing them), and then at the last second make a hook toward me. I actually first noticed this when fighting Pumicites in The Hollows. It was very obvious due to the speed those guys move at, and it looked like they were purposely programmed to try to run around behind me. But then I started noticing it in other missions with different mobs.

I forgot to add my main reason for asking: The indirect paths make it rather challenging to manage my knockback. I try to align myself with the mob so that, if one of my powers procs its "chance for KB", it's not going to knock the mob off the 3rd-level catwalk in an office map, or knock him into a crowd of other mobs. I mean, it's easy enough to avoid that kind of thing if I have a specific power that KBs enemies, because then I can use it strategically when necessary. It's these powersets (like Energy, both ranged and melee) where you just get these random, unpredictable KBs when you least want it. This is one reason I've started avoiding rescuing Overdrive in alignment missions - she's always knocking my targets all over the place, which is really annoying when I'm melee and the guy I'm punching goes flying away from me. And knocking enemies off of balconies in office maps is extremely aggravating when it's one of the mobs guarding the hostage I'm trying to rescue. It's either fly down there and try to find him (difficult if the KBd mob isn't the one I had targeted), or stand around twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to find their way back to me.

In WoW, where player models and enemy models can indeed overlap, a group of mobs would run straight at you, overlapping each other, and then spread out around you once they got there.

I've started noticing something: when enemies run up to you, they never run straight at you. They run to the right or left and then make a little hook and attack you from the side. Wondering if this is deliberate, and if so, what was the rationale behind it? I mean, if it's a full three-man spawn coming at me at the same time, sure, it doesn't surprise me when they take different paths, since they can't all occupy the same space. But it also happens when it's just a lone mob. Not really important, just curious.