RikOz

Story arc: The Freakshow War Contact: Tina Chung (in Founder's Falls) Mission: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Tina_Chung#Break_up_the_meeting This mission is bugged. It's an "open map" mission, with the specific mission area sealed off with a forcefield. The goal is to defeat all of the Council and Freakshow mobs, and take out the leader of each group. Problem: Not a single Freakshow mob on the map. Council absolutely everywhere, but no Freakshow. Also, neither group leader appeared - I assume that, since they were supposed to be negotiating a deal, the two leaders would have been together. I went to the trouble of flying along the forcefield, to mark out the entire border of the map. A lot of the enclosed area was covered in water, but I covered every inch of dry ground until I ran out of mobs to fight. I also flew to the tops of every building I could, just in case, though I didn't actually expect to find anything up there because putting the mobs up there would have made the mission impossible for non-flying characters. I checked every place I could at ground level in case there were mobs in open areas under the buildings. I was in this mission for nearly an hour. No Freakshow, no leaders. I gave up and autocompleted the mission.

Okay, I've personally confirmed a bit of what I wrote above. I've logged out one of my Natural characters in the Steel Canyon Natural store, two days in a row, and made sure she was near the front door, or at least closer to the front door than the back counter, when I logged her out. Both times, upon logging back in, she was right where I left her, rather than ending up stuck behind the counter.

Okay, with further observation, this seems to simply be an "issue" with any costume pieces that are supposed to be highly-reflective metal. Another of my alts has one costume that uses the "Metallic 2" chest and legs, as he is a reformed, former member of the Gold Brickers, now operating as a hero. In normal lighting, these pieces are shiny and golden, but in outdoor night lighting, he looks more silver as all the yellow washes out. So I guess that's fine, except that his back piece (can't remember what it's called, but it's the same piece the Sky Raiders "Porter" mobs wear - I use it because it's the closest I can get to the Gold Bricker flight pack) is made of a much less reflective material, and so it retains it's bright golden color in all lighting conditions and ends up looking really out-of-place and "stuck on" at night. Likewise, a "robot" character I have uses the Enforcer chest and legs, which are also highly-reflective. Silver is the base color, but I used yellow for the pattern, and the pattern vanishes at night. So basically this is just a side effect of a piece being made of shiny, reflective metal, and I'll just deal with it or find a way to work around it.

I ended up starting out in Founder's Falls with Jose Escalante as my initial contact. Do that guy's missions ever lead to a story arc? He seemed to be alternating me between Council and Devouring Earth missions, with no apparent connection. It also appears that he sent me on the same "mini-arc" twice, on the same character, involving rescuing this Tyla woman - who is from another dimension - from the Devouring Earth, and stopping the DE from invading her dimension. At least I'm pretty sure it was twice on the same character, as I don't have another character high enough yet to be fooling around in Founder's Falls. In any case, I gave up on Jose and went to work for Tina Chung, and she got me into a story arc right off the bat.

I've noticed, in quite a few Day Job locations, that if I log out near a door, when I log back in my character sometimes appears briefly (like, a split second) outside, the door opens, and I reappear inside. Basically, you log back in and it goes through the "enter the building" animation. My solution to this is to try to position my character far away from the door when I log out. The Natural store has the odd distinction where the door behind the counter is a functioning door, for whatever reason. So if you log out right near the counter (where you would be while buying enhancements), you're close enough to that door that the game wants to make you re-enter through it. So try making sure you're near the front door when you log out, see if that helps. I suspect (though I'm not a coder) that, in "reality", there is exactly one instance of each store (notice that every store of a type is exactly the same inside). That's why there's often that little "loading" bit after the door opens - the game is shunting your character into that one copy of the store, regardless of which zone you're in. So, when you log out in the store, the game makes a note of which zone you're in, and then notes that you're in the store. So when you log back in, it first loads you into the proper zone, and then moves you into the store. And for some reason, being close to the door triggers the door animation.

I've done what you suggest, multiple times on multiple characters. Leave, come back, still no mobs. Sometimes there are other players there, all doing the same thing I'm doing: standing around wondering where the mobs are.

Nope. The color changes going from indoors to outdoors and back again.

I've encountered an odd - and irritating - color glitch with the "Valkyrie" costume pieces. This doesn't seem to affect other types of costume pieces. Here is what the coloring should look like on my character using the Valkyrie pieces. Note that her basic chest piece, under the Valkyrie "chest detail" piece, is not part of the Valkyrie set, but I've used the same colors. However, under certain lighting conditions, notably the "night" lighting in Atlas Park, Kings Row, and Steel Canyon (so far), all of the yellow completely washes out, leaving the yellow parts looking white, and the orange parts looking red. And notice that this does not happen to the underlying, non-Valkyrie chest piece, nor to her head pieces, which are from the Carnival of Light sets: It seems to be completely unique to the Valkyrie pieces. Alas, I realize there's probably not much you can do about this, but I figured I'd throw it out there just in case.

I play a few villains, and the thing I've always noticed is that it just feels the same as blueside, just with different stories. There's a fundamental issue that I see: Heroes are (generally) altruistic. They do good for the sake of doing good. Any tangible rewards are just bonuses, not the primary motivation. Villains, on the other hand are (generally) greedy. They do crime in order to gain some tangible benefit. They rob a bank to make money. Except, robbing a bank or stealing an object for the purpose of selling it ends up feeling like wasted effort when the only evidence of "loot" is that it says "loot" in the mission completion text, but the character doesn't actually obtain any loot beyond the same standard rewards a hero gets for doing the opposite mission. Villainous "victories" are hollow. Even if the villain's goal is to obtain "power", to become the most powerful villain ... why? Just for the sake of being more powerful? A hero obtains more power so that he/she can help more people and defeat bigger threats. Villains obtain more power to ultimately benefit themselves in the material sense, but that never happens. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of the MMO genre, that neither opposing faction can ever actually "win". The status quo has to be maintained for gameplay/balance reasons.

Heh. Not just hazard zones. "Turrets" in the Rogue Isles. My main villain was doing the missions to foil the dastardly plans of the other characters in that Dr. Graves storyline, and I had to go talk to Dollface. There was a purple-to-me Family mob that aggro'd on me and killed me while I was trying to talk to Dollface. That's when I discovered that there are Turrets positioned on the direct line between the Hospital and Dollface. So I'm getting tagged by a turret flying back to Dollface, and when I finally get back to her, that purple Family guy is just pacing back and forth next to her and won't go away. Meanwhile, that turret is still sniping at me from a ridiculous distance. I had to give up and come back later.

The relevant mobs for the Atlas Park mission, "Find and defeat Arachnos Commanders" - the second mission from Aaron Thiery - spawn at a ridiculously low rate. I've seen this every time I've done this mission arc. Right now, I'm the only hero in the appropriate area, and only one group of mobs has spawned.

Dr. Henry Ferguson was a cardiologist, until a bizarre accident involving a defibrillator triggered his latent mutant gene. Now, in addition to his medical practice, he fights crime in hands-on fashion, using his electrical powers to subdue wrongdoers! (Elec/Elec scrapper): EDIT: Forgot to mention his superhero name: "Heartbeat of America"

I only even discovered the game about a year before the shutdown was announced. Even though it had just gone F2P, I went with the VIP subscription so that I'd have access to most everything (I'd already been paying for my WoW sub, so no biggie). And then I bought piles of costume pieces/packs (however it was done, I can't remember). I probably sank $200-$300 into the game, only to have it yanked out from under me after a year.

Re: Lady Spectrum - LOL! A character I shared earlier has a related backstory. His friends all told him that consuming so many energy drinks wasn't smart. But he didn't listen, and now he has superpowers. Super Strength/Radiation Armor brute, with Super Leap for his travel power.

Odd. I was having this exact issue after the original install. Then it went away after the last big patch/maintenance, so I assumed they must have fixed whatever was causing it. Have you downloaded/installed the latest patches? (Quit and relaunch Tequila, or open Options and click the Re-validate button.)

Just a note - Bobcat is the name of a canon character (she's the Praetorian counterpart to Mynx), so you might need to change her name. (Cool costume, though) I have now seen two separate player characters named "Lord Recluse". I mean, c'mon. The first one I saw was blueside. My immediate thought was that the player probably also plays WoW, and has a death knight named some variation of "Arthas" and a demon hunter named some variation on "Illidan".

I noticed this too; it's pretty bad, leaving little for the 5-10 range except the Hollows; shades of being sent to Perez as soon as it's in-level to kill 10 Circle of Thorns. I think something that breaks the progression through early levels for new players wants looked at pretty urgently. And, as near as I can tell, you only get sent to The Hollows if you know to click the "Find Contact" button to get Officer Wincott. It took me a while to remember that one, because as near as I can tell after running a crapton of new alts through Atlas Park, and doing all of the stuff from the origin contacts downstairs on top of the Matt Habashy and Twinshot stuff, nobody in AP sends you in that direction.

I'll look at it again the next time I do that mission. I did try fighting Skulls elsewhere in the zone on a couple characters, and it seemed to me that they weren't counting for that mission. But I'll try again. But saying there are level 15s all over the zone - that doesn't seem accurate to me and I've been running new characters through that zone since the Homecoming relaunch. That's why I said "nearly" the entire zone. Indeed, the Skulls behind the police station and in that general vicinity are lower. And they need to be, for the mission where Ms. Liberty sends you to talk to Blue Steel, because a player not using XP boosts is likely to be level 5-6 when they get that mission. But it's still inconsistent. On several occasions now I've found that area full of mobs conning orange and red (though no purples). I'll grant that this was all more of a problem on my first few characters, because I was electing to not use stuff from the P2W vendor. For more recent alts, though, I've said, "screw it" and I've been using the Prestige Enhancements for a damage boost and the 2x XP boosters to make sure my alts are now level 10 by the time they finish Atlas Park. That still leaves the problem, though, where once you're level 10, the contacts in KR just want to shuffle you on Steel/Skyway instead of offering missions, the only exception being the contacts for the new Skulls/superadine story arc. So I end up missing out on the old KR stories.

If it helps, install Vidiotmaps. It's still valid ... except for Kings Row. Boy is it off. It clearly illustrates how out of whack KR is now. In the "red" neighborhood in the north, it shows nothing higher than level 9. Go to the area yourself, and good luck finding anything lower than level 11.

It's also worth noting that tells are not text messages. Specifically, a text message doesn't get lost in a constantly-scrolling box that is being continually updated by multiple people. For me, personally, I've missed a few tells simply because I have my chat window collapsed. I collapse it quite often because I want to focus on the task at hand and the constantly-scrolling text becomes a distraction because my brain wants to process the words. I also play on a 32-inch screen (repurposed TV) and I think my eyes constantly flicking down to the chat window was contributing to the eyestrain I mentioned in another thread. Another reason for not responding to tells could be that the recipient might be in the middle of a costume designing session. I know I'm not going to back completely out of the costume designer in the middle of the process just to read a tell.

Right, my point is that KR is supposed to be a level 5-10 zone, and all of the older content is still designed around that concept. Technically speaking, a character is supposed to get the heck out of Atlas Park no later than level 7 or so and move on to Kings Row. Then Steel Canyon and Skyway City are supposed to be the next step up at level 10. The Shining Stars mission I mentioned in the OP is supposed to serve the exact purpose of moving the character to the next zone. Dillo tells you to defeat those Skulls and then go talk to Grym at the University in Steel Canyon. But as it stands now, Steel and Skyway are "easier" than Kings Row, when they're meant to be the next level of difficulty/challenge. All this is why I suspect that the new material that was still unreleased at Sundown was simply not finished. I think the original devs still had adjustments to implement but just hadn't gotten that far yet, and then they never got the chance. Keep in mind that I'm also trying to look at this from the point of view of a brand new player, of which we do have some. A new player who has leveled via missions, not repeated DFB runs, who hasn't yet figured out how to ideally slot their powers, and who might still have some stuff unslotted simply because they don't have the Inf and haven't gotten ideal drops.

Apparently, the newer story content in Kings Row has caused some sweeping, zone-wide changes. One change seems to be that the whole zone is completely overrun by Skulls, and groups like The Lost are no longer appearing where they used to appear (now there are more Skulls in those places). But I'm here to discuss the level range of the zone. The zone menu at the tram station still indicates that KR is a level 5-10 zone. However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North. This becomes a problem because the various contacts in Atlas Park continue to introduce Kings Row contacts when the player character is around levels 5-7, and the Atlas Park contact, Aaron Thiery, becomes unavailable as soon as the player reaches level 8, making the second half of Matthew Habashy's story suddenly unavailable if the player hasn't already started it. [EDIT: These mechanics are clearly intended to push the player along to Kings Row and out of Atlas Park.] And then the "older" contacts in KR are still handing out missions based on the character and KR mobs being in the 5-10 range. This results in an issue where the first missions most of these contacts offer are "street-sweeping" missions. Missions to defeat mobs in KR that are now too high-level for the mission level. In other words, as soon as the player character is high-level enough to tackle the street mobs in KR, the KR contacts stop offering missions and instead start introducing contacts in Steel Canyon and Skyway City. This includes the second tier of Shining Stars missions, which start in Kings Row when the player reaches level 10. One of the earliest missions here sends the player all the way to the north end of KR, to talk to Dillo, who tells the player to beat up 10 Skulls in that neighborhood (Skulls elsewhere in the zone don't count for this mission). Except that all of those Skulls are now level 14-15 and conning red or purple to the player. In short, it seems that the new, previously-unreleased content for Kings Row was not finished at the time of Sundown. The new Superadine storyline is fine, but otherwise the rest of the zone has been rendered more or less obsolete by the combination of the overscaled mobs + regular contacts whose level range has not been adjusted to reflect the changes.

Roscoe Buteo played professional football in Seattle until a freak mutation rendered him ineligible. Now he utilizes his newfound abilities as the superhero, "Seahawk"! Water Blast/Willpower Sentinel.

I've come to the conclusion over the years that, in this, computer programmers deal with almost exactly the same situations that we professional cooks have to deal with. Namely, people who don't do what we do, don't know how we do it, and don't comprehend the resources we need to do it promising things to customers and expecting us to "just do it".

Thanks for the comments. I'll try replacing some DMG enhancements with Endurance Reduction and see what happens. I already have ERs in the defensive skills. At these characters' current level (16) I don't have more than 3 slots unlocked per power. I do tend to lean more toward the Brute playstyle, but at the moment I don't have any brutes with the same power sets as these scrappers, so I can't directly compare how they work out.