Techwright

I'm all for more gold content. I'm currently gradually working a solo character through the lower levels. I'm not exactly thrilled at having to turn off the XP for so much of it just to get the content done before outleveling it but it is what it is. Remind me (in spoiler boxes if need be) where we end up at the end of the Praetorian story. It's already been mentioned so I won't hide it in a box to say that players choose a red or blue side. But is there a story where a percentage of NPC Praetorians do not pick a Primal side? If so, it seems ripe to me for creating a whole new section in the game: the establishment of a new Praetorian world. To wit: Praetorians not content to integrate into Primal Earth approach Portal Corp for options. Portal Corp responds that they've found an Earth where either mankind has wiped itself out, leaving cities to rebuild and encroaching nature to push back, or an Earth never populated by a sentient species (or, at least, so we think). Both option provide an opportunity for Praetorians to establish a new home, and sympathetic, or adventurous, or exploitive Primals and adopted Primals to aid them in establishing it. This leads to new, high-end Praetorian content as a city is establish and whatever threats exist in the new world (or are also coming to the new world) are dealt with.

While I can see the suggested set being quite entertaining for a solo player, the good Dr has the gist of the problem. A significant percentage of the community dislikes the use of KB on a team, and a character built with a powerset that doesn't just have KB as an element, but is specifically designed around the function, would therefore likely have a harder time getting on a team than the Kheldian players used to have when their presence previously guaranteed powerful Nictus and Quantum opposition in a mission.

I had assumed the OP idea was tongue-in-cheek, then I read the rest of the thread. 😮 I've played on a couple of other MMOs where the devs addressed rage-quitting by enacting a timed penalty blocking entrance to another dungeon, say an hour (or something significant enough to ruin an evening), on a player if they quit a dungeon team before the end. Note I didn't say "if they rage quit". That's the problem: any number of reasons would have a player suddenly leaving a team. I've observed many over the years where the character stops, then starts again and the player apologizes but states a family emergency, sometimes with more details, and leaves. I've done that, too. I watch over an elderly relative, and have had to apologize and leave suddenly when something dangerous and unexpected happens to them and the situation needs addressing before I can get back into the game. I've even had those other-MMO penalties applied to me when the local power company has a blip and my computer suddenly goes off and back on. The problem is, no MMO has an ability to distinguish that the player left for a legitimate reason and therefore not enact the penalty, or reward, as the OP suggests. Until game A.I. can develop to the point where it can read text or hear Discord dialog to make a good ruling, having a reaction to any form of quitting is bound to label all as rage-quitting.

I suppose it depends on the telepath. If they're seeing the images in which the other thinks, they can at least have a good idea of what's going on, but more importantly, it means they're accessing the full brain and not just the speech center. That should override any language barrier, at least for the duration of the connection. There's also the question of shade (black, grey, white) and intensity. If the color-changer has that, they can basically blind a person (in addition to what you said about the cornea) by turning everything in a room to intense black. This can hide things and mess with an opponent's depth perception. They could achieve similar results by turning everything to intense white, or create a fog effect by turning all particles in the air to intense white. Even if they lacked these, the color-changer could hide a still object in a room by turning everything the same color. Once they're extremely skilled, they can change small amounts of an object to different colors. Imaging changing a "bridge out" sign and guard rail so that it look like they are not there, re-writing interstate signs to give false information, or on the positive side, hiding people's embarrassing scars and birthmarks by re-coloring them. Lots of possibilities even if "pew pew" isn't one of them.

👆 This. After years staying clear of it, I ran the TF on a team a couple of weeks ago, and was reminded just how dull it was. I'd rather run several Citadel TFs than a Faathim TF, though I suppose I shall have to run it dozens of times so that all my characters get the badge. Honestly, nearly the whole Shadow Shard could use an overhaul, but then, most of the long-time players have long known that. By any chance, does the Battalion have a clearing in their schedule? I've got a job for them.

I don't know about level 28 specifically, but its not uncommon for me to run up to any old contact, even ones with no past connection to me and try to speak with them. They usually say something like "I've got nothing for you, but go talk to [contact]." That's an active contact waiting for you. You might have to look up the name in the wiki, or ask in Help, but there's usually someone or the wiki that can point you to the new contact.

I assume you're referring to the Unofficial Homecoming Wiki, and not the Paragon Wiki? Just tested it, using the link in the menu at the head of the forums, and it was working fine as of 4:50pm Eastern USA time.

I'm sure he'll be lurking in the shadowy corners of the forums. It's kind of his thing, after all.

Small update to that, well, a rumor really, though it might have some merit. Superherohype.com is reporting a rumor that the villain for The Mandalorian and Grogu movie is Embo the bounty hunter, which had several appearances in the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars and was voiced by none other than Lucas' "heir to the empire" Dave Filoni. While I could see Embo brought to live action (as they did a certain blue gunslinging bounty hunter), I'm not certain I agree with the website's declaration of Embo as "the big bad", though he may be the prominent villain for the movie. The character simply doesn't have a "big bad" vibe. I could, however, see Embo as the freakish henchmen to a Big Bad, much like Jaws or Odd Job in the James Bond franchise. Since this is to be a predecessor film to the currently-unnamed one that is supposed to wrap up all, or nearly all, of the so-called "Mando-verse" section of Star Wars lore (that intermittent period from the end of the movie The Return of the Jedi, to roughly the mid-point between it and The Force Awakens). I suspect the "big bad" might have a smaller roll and be pulling strings in the background of The Mandalorian and Grogu, much like the Emperor did in The Empire Strikes Back. The real "big bad" is likely to be Grand Admiral Thrawn, with the Nightsisters leadership as his sidekicks. If you're not acquainted with Embo and his hat that functions much like Captain America's shield, see the vid below:

It kind of blows my mind that failures like this are being turned out by the very company that green-lighted the Miles Morales animation trilogy. It makes me feel like they stumbled into success with the first of that trilogy, and had just enough working little grey cells to say "keep going".

I'd say rounding up and ceremonially executing a group of people just to set an example makes them a lot more than "kind of jerks". There are a few leaders in villain groups for which I can have a moment of sympathy: "so much squandered potential". Not the Petrovic family. It's monsters like that which tempt me to turn vigilante.

Ah, yes. I see where this is headed:

Clever! There's some intriguing flavors here, ones I wouldn't mind actually having. Not really keen on the licorice idea, and the chocolate Pepsi is, well, it could go either way, so I'll say "intriguing". Also... "Bannanna"

Regarding #5: While I enjoy some Kill All missions, the ones repeated ad nauseam in task forces (*glares at Citadel*) make me empathetic to your pain. I wonder if on such a modification might be made where the NPCs have...I don't know...perhaps a heighted alertness, not unlike the Nemesis army, that actually draws them in towards the players. The challenge then moves from finding and eliminating them all in a short time, to the potential of attracting too much attention and having the whole cave/warehouse/office building on alert and moving towards you. But you'd probably not be hunting strays or taking too long. Regarding #2: Without intending to malign the dev team, this is the one in your list I'm most surprised hasn't been fully addressed by now. A thorough review of the text seemingly should allow for a "simple" rewrite to improve the situation. I say "simple" because I've no idea if there's a complication to the process or not. I realize there's a lot of text to read and possibly improve, but I'm thinking in terms of chunks each update. I know some has been done in updates past, and do not wish to forget to credit on that.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me privately that some of my original text below was confusing. I've rewritten it to try to improve my comment. Apologies for any confusion caused. Are you taking Ice for the defensive or offensive ability? I assume defensive due to the primary powers position in your comment. If otherwise, let me just point out that the fire defense, Fire Aura, for the "???" in your comment, it is a bit different. While it adds damage along with the defense, it also requires player intervention to boost the knockback protection. Otherwise, the tank/brute/scrapper may be tough enough to survive the harder hits, but they stand a good chance of being tossed around. For some guidance on what might work for knockback mitigation please see the contributions in this thread:

Welcome Home! I understand the demands on time. I've had new ones added to me these last 8 months. I too love controllers and dominators. The challenge is that they're more team-oriented the first 20 or so levels until the pets start showing up in the options list. There's plenty of ways to compensate for that these days, however: running multiple team Death From Below (DFB) trials and later Drowing In Blood (DIB) trials to get you to the right levels quickly. Both can be completed in 20 minutes or so depending on the team skill level. I'd mention Positron 1 and 2 task forces, which, with a good team can be done nearly as fast, but it depends on the team skill and goals. These could drag out to the end of your available play time. The Synapse Task Force definitely could. For solo work when coming back into the game after a long time, I'd recommend checking out ice powers regardless of the archetype. These slow or even freeze your opponents buying you time. Some of these show up in sets that are not primarily ice, such as the storm set. Personally, I've often said that I love the Illusion/Storm controller, as the character develops into a Swiss Army Knife able to react to most any need. It does have AoE abilities with ice elements and can generate multiple pets to help make quick work of those crowds you've slowed. Fire/ice is a great solo combo as well: ice for control, fire for lots of damage over time.

Kinetic melee - incarnate-level fight

Thanks, lemming! So now my villain can be completely comfortable that his life will not be affected if he both takes the money and turns on others. Yeeeeessss...

Red side - Mr. G (primal) arc - finale (Rob Vangaurd's safehouse) The map location supposedly marking the door (see the mark just below my guy's map arrow in this pic) and the HUD location mark actually at the door are over 500 yards apart from each other. I experimented with several things to see if it was a temporary glitch and the two remained apart.

I've been waiting for a Bionic Man reboot for a long time now. So has Lee Majors. He's been told they'll give him a cameo, but he's no spring chicken anymore. Frankly, I feel they should drop the dollar amount in the title. It will eventually make the material seem quite dated. The Bionic Woman: They actually did a reboot in 2007 with Michelle Ryan and Miguel Ferrer. It only lasted 9 episodes. I was a huge fan of the two Bionic series as a child, so I tuned in. It was rubbish writing. A complete waste of good acting talent and improved film techniques. Hopefully, this doesn't seal the fate, and a future, better version will appear. As to Kirk: I've only seen season 1 of Picard, so I don't know this moment y'all are referring to, but if they're implying Kirk was resuscitated, isn't that what William Shatner did in the books? I didn't read those, I felt it was tied to Shatner's hubris, but I read some synopsis of the books, and understand that through Borg tech, Kirk was regenerated.

I know Lynch's work best through the 1984 version of Dune. Admittedly the movie has taken a lot of heat over the last 40 years, but I really think he did something extraordinary with it: cramming a massive story into something functional at 2 hours, 17 minutes, and with 1984 movie tech. Sure there were things I didn't like: such as the interpretation of the Baron Harkonnen (Of the three attempts, I feel Robbie Coltrane's TV version came closest, though Skarsgard was pretty awesome). But Lynch did give us a very cool and stylized look at the Guild navigators, an important book plot point and something the latest interpretation sadly avoided entirely. He also gave us an interpretation of the Fremen learning the weirding way, something I seem to recall being in the book (it's been 40 years since I read it) and which neither of the other two interpretations gave. Lynch also had Thufir, the mentat for House Atreides, enslaved to House Harkkonen, as well as a toddler Alia with freakish ability: again, something in the book that the new version ignored altogether, or in Alia's case, changed to an unborn status only. There were other elements Lynch got right as well, and I feel this earns his interpretation a look for first-time viewers. I've not seen Twin Peaks. It's on my to-do list, though admittedly sadly stagnant. As I loved Kyle McLachlan in both Dune and his season-long guest role on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I really should kick that viewing opportunity into gear again.

I'm slowly playing through red side on one of my very few villain characters, the highest I've ever gone so far during Homecoming. (I've little memory of red side during the original game.) I've nearly completed the Mr. G (primal) contact arc, and have reached what appears to be the finale, and with it a question:

No idea. I should add that I logged off again in Fort Trident today, and it was only 15 seconds rather than 30. No idea why the longer one yesterday. I remember being surprised at the number. Even so the Fort is a safe zone, I think, so why the longer timer there? Perhaps it is what @lemming suggests.

Released: Syrensays Col. Roughrider

Well, true, but its all about guiding the time. The Menders may hate your guts, but they may need you to get time to play out the way they want. 🎶When you're in Faultline look behind you...'cause that's where the Mender's gonna be. 🎶