CraterLabs

I was in the eastern Jackpot neighborhood during a Banner event, and noticed some NPCs were repeating dialogue, like this: For context: that Tiger Yellow Ink Man said that to an associate (and I believe the associate said the same thing), but then when I moved in to attack them, they repeated the phrase like it was a bit of attack dialogue. For the two Freakshow a minute later, one said the line first, and then the other said it to the first one in response to it. I ran around for a bit since I was trying to find Ancestor Spirits to kill (as one does), and noticed more repeated dialogue here and there, though I couldn't get it to trigger consistently. Though admittedly I didn't try long, I only needed to kill three Ancestor Spirits after all, for reasons that are definitely clear beyond any need for explaining.

This has happened to me too. I *think* what's happening is something weird like one of the people you talk to is not technically a "contact", so something weird happens when you get to the "mission complete/turn in the mission" time, but I've not double checked that to see if that's what it is. (Of course, it might be an actual bug. Dunno.)

Okay, this is so mild that it's probably not worth worrying about, but just in case it is: I was going for the Tricked Out badge in Dr. Kane's House of Horrors. I was wearing a costume before we went into the LFG menu, and wore it all the way through the event. But then during the final fight against the Abomination, I accidentally clicked the costume power, and the costume dropped. I instantly clicked it again to put the costume back on by resigned myself to not getting the badge. But then at the end of the fight, I got it anyway! A nice surprise but... I shouldn't have gotten it? I didn't wear the costume for the whole event. My guess is that whatever mechanism checks for that badge is something like "check if the player is wearing it every five seconds" or something. Or alternatively, "were they wearing it at the start", "did they keep wearing it at the start of each boss fight", and "do they have it on at the end of each boss fight". Something that might let what happened to me slip through the cracks. Likely not a problem since it's always better for badges to err on the side of generosity, but still. Felt worth reporting.

This is the clue that you get from Sister Solaris' first mission, the Idol of Mot. It says "Mot showing the absolute worse view of them" when it should say "Mot showing the absolute worst view of them".

I admit I *do* understand the rationale behind his removal; having both Gabriel and Ouroboros as options to redo the Dark Astoria missions is a bit of a redundancy. I do prefer the flavor of Gabriel, though.

This event was super fun. And as someone who likes collecting Red Cap Coins, that was a fun little surprise. I get not giving people badges, but for next year I'd like him to give a special title for a couple weeks or something. "Pirate Pulverizer" or somethin'. (And then if you can lure him to Fort Hades and kill him on a ghost trap, maybe "Fort Hades Employee Of The Month", heh)

Max as a contact is fun because he gives you the quirk of being able to just jump straight to his last mission if you want a bonus challenge, and that's really cool. But if you're like me and you really want to fill the relationship bars of all your contacts, you're sort of locked into doing all his missions anyway. It's always possible to outlevel mission contacts, of course, but it's weird that he's sort of the only one who gives you a specific path that you can take to cut off his relationship bar status. It's especially surprising since he's a max level (incarnate-level, even) contact, and those typically can't be outleveled. Could he theoretically be tweaked? Or, alternatively: could Gabriel be reinstated in Dark Astoria? That would allow all the Dark Astoria contacts to be retaken without the Ouroboros system, and might allow people to have their cake and eat it to where Max is concerned?

Yeah, this is basically what I was suggesting. I think the thing that even sparked the idea for me was the recently-implemented "Skulls Vs. Family?" tip. In *practice*, this might not be quite what I want since each of those tips gives you a short mission to run through before you actually get introduced to the contact in question, and that would probably be a bit much for Doctor Graves or David Wincott. But theoretically something similar to the Valentine's Tips which are pretty much just a tip to have you go up to a contact and click on them (except when they're not doing that) could work? I dunno how twisted that particular knot of code is, admittedly. -EDIT- In fact, a Valentine's Tip might be perfect for David Wincott. His first dialogue serves as an introduction to him, but if you're following a tip there could just be an extra dialogue page that describes him busily coordinating with other police and holding up a finger to ask you to wait for a second while he handles things to serve as the Mission Complete moment a la the Valentine's Tip missions, and then have that segue into his normal introduction. The other thing about Wincott and Gordon Bower is that they both have separate dialogue coded for an initial meeting depending on if you get referred to them from a mission, or if you just walk up to them out of the blue. It's not hard to imagine that extra dialogue code being handy for this kind of thing, though again I've never seen the code myself.

I believe that Essence of the Earth has a cooldown preventing you from taking it too often. You can only use it once every sixty-ish seconds (so that you're not accidentally wasting it too early before the effects of the first one wear off, I think)

With the understanding that Tanker really isn't the best archetype for PvP play, and that Street Justice/Super Reflexes might not be super intuitive powersets for it, how would you start setting up this build for PvP situations? Would the general practices for a Tanker using a defensive set instead of a resistance set still work, or would there need to be some wheel reinventing going on?

I've been looking over the Prisoner bosses in Brickstown; they can give you the Mob Specialist Badge and they add some fun color to a zone that doesn't get a lot of foot traffic. But once you figure out the seven-ish places that they spawn and start hunting them specifically, they're a smidge repetitive. Would it be possible to add the Shotgun and Submachine Gun bosses to the Arch Spawn pool at a low spawn rate? Both to tick up their visibility, and to add just a smidge more variety to hunting down these super criminals. I don't think that it's *impossible* to spawn normal Prisoner bosses anymore; my vague understanding of the spawn rules is that they might still pop up if enough heroes start showing up in an area. But without that eventuality, players are deprived from such lovable personas as Andy Smash-Hands, Fingers, Banjo, Chains, Chris the Fist, Lefty, Mad Mike, Jack, Needles, Tommy Fontana, Phil, Danny-24, Big Al, Beastly Keetsoth, and of course, Dee Nutz. If there was, say, a five percent chance to spawn one of these guys instead of one of the normal Arches, it might add some fun spice to patrolling Brickstown on those days when you're a hero with a lonely vigil. No pressure, of course. Those wily crooks who grab the guns from prison guards are still out there in the code. It's just hard to find them since there's not exactly a whole lot of missions or story arcs that make them show up. (Also, I'd be willing to write a mission for Ouroboros about dealing with the Prisoners if that'd help)

I'm pretty sure Exploration tips also get limited to 3, but I've not really tested it. But either way, this kinda thing wouldn't count against that limit.

Would it be possible to use the Tip system as a way to introduce certain contacts? I think it might help the players to learn more about things organically, and also address a couple of personal annoyances i have, heh. Namely, three things I don't like: Some contacts that used to have regular missions to go meet them in Live (like David Wincott or Gordon Bower) no longer have those missions available. That clears up mission bloat, but it also means that the bread crumbs to go to the stories and areas that these characters facilitate are often ignored. You either need to remember to do them when you're at the right level, or go back and do them later in Ouroboros (which isn't always great for players who prefer to do stuff while leveling up instead of backtracking through Ouroboros to get them.) Some contacts you're supposed to meet by having a pop-up appear when you get to the right level or get the right badge or whatever (like Bane Spider Ruben), but for whatever reason, the game doesn't always make those pop-ups appear. I'm not sure why they sometimes appear and sometimes don't, but I think I've had Ruben's introduction trigger maaaaybe twice since Homecoming opened up? I don't like Dr. Graves and Twinshot automatically becoming contacts. It's easy enough to ignore them, sure, but if I do that it always bugs me that they wind up hanging around in my contacts menu forever with an incomplete (and incompletable) relationship bar. This is a super niche problem, I fully admit that, but I always like completely filling up the progress bars on my contacts, so my choice is either to get bugged by Graves not getting a full progress bar in my menu, or to force myself to march through his mission with my XP progression turned off on every villain I make. (Twinshot doesn't bug me as much, probably because I like her story more.) And I think a lot of these little issues might be resolved if the Tip system replaced the current methods of meeting them. Consider: Instead of having a contact give you a mission to introduce yourself to David Wincott and his Trolls Task Force, you could get a tip, hearing from the FBSA that a PPD officer named David Wincott is starting some new task force specifically to deal with the Trolls problem! But unlike most other task forces... it's personal! He may have issues, but he's addressing a real crisis for the city in a region that's been destroyed, and a superpowered hero could turn the tide. And if a player doesn't want to do that? They can just drop the tip! Instead of gambling on if Bane Spider Ruben's introductory pop-up makes its way to you... what if your villainous character just hears about it naturally through a tip at level 15 or so? The word gets out, and Port Oakes can have a decidedly dastardly villain show up if they choose to investigate, and the mission won't be missed because no introduction popped up. I CAN JUST IGNORE DR. GRAVES. ...I'd like to pretend this isn't personal, but it totally is. I'm the only player who hates that he's automatically a contact. But if his introduction is a tip? If you hear a rumor about a whispered gathering of new villains who are holding a contest for a mysterious benefactor? Well then, that sounds *delightful*. I admit that this one is a little trickier, because his mandatory-ness is meant to help new players be introduced to certain game mechanics. I am willing to sacrifice those players' tutorial experience to make it possible to never interact with him again, however, mwahahaha. ...okay, so, I think it's a good idea, but even if Dr. Graves doesn't get this treatment I think we should do it. Let's get the Hollows Task Force back in the spotlight. 🙂

I believe it does, I've not checked it. I want to use them in a new story, though, and they don't exist anymore to use.

I've got a story where I'd like to use the Dockworkers faction. And specifically I *would* like the Dockworkers rather than the Scrapyarders since it's focusing on the Family and St. Martial rather than miners or Sharkhead Isle or the Cage Consortium's crimes. And while I'm on the topic, could we get the low-level Warriors from The Hollows added back? I don't know when they were taken away exactly. I used them in a story called "River Of Fire!" a while back and liked that they were available at the time, but I'd kind of like to have them have the option to be used again. I dunno if the Warriors revamp did something to the code that made them get cleared outta AE or what, but it'd be nice if they came back.