CraterLabs

Okay, so hear me out: the new Winter Lord Trial is great, it's loads of fun and I felt like it was engaging me the whole time through. I love the classic one, but this new version is definitely an improvement over it, so great job to the devs. And having the Suspicious Presents as a way of bringing Lord Winter into Paragon or the Rogue Isles or Praetoria is a fun throwback to Live, so great work on this year's Winter Event all around! But next year: would it be possible to tweak the Winter Lord from the Suspicious Presents so that sometimes he drops yet another present that could send a team into the classic version of the Lord Winter Trial? This would be a way to work in the OG method of assaulting Lord Winter's Realm from back on Live, while still keeping the new, updated version the "main" one, and it would fit story-wise too with the usual Trial being us laying siege to Lord Winter when he's prepped in his stronghold, and the other one being when we're chasing him back to his realm after he tried sneaking into ours with the Suspicious Package. Then maybe put an Exploration Badge into this new version of Lord Winter's Realm. Call it "Olds Cool". 😛 Okay, maybe not. But the rest of it!

I was in Viridian's final mission in the Council of Evil arc, and I'd befriended two Bane Spider Scouts and a Bane Spider Executioner as I moved through the mission map. As I stepped off the elevator into a new "mapless" region of the map, one of the Bane Spider Scouts eagerly raced ahead of me shouting "Let's do this!", ran down a hallway, through a doorway that I couldn't click on, and then after a moment said "Short-Cut, where are you?" After a couple of baffling moments, I found the Bane Spider again, having freshly stepped off of the elevator we'd entered from, ready for action again as if he'd respawned or something. Ultimately harmless, but the behavior seemed weird. Since he said "Where are you?" right before the initial "Let's do this" that hand him running ahead through the ghost door, I wondered if maybe I was juuuuust far enough ahead of him when I stepped onto the elevator that it made him get lost at the same time that he got the signal to move between floors with the elevator? Maybe he was running ahead to wherever in the world the unseen elevator entrance was so that he could show up again at the elevator exit I'd just stepped out of? I dunno. Either way, it was weird. Fun, though!

In the first mission of Viridian's Council of Evil arc ("Capture Sebastien Frost") you get a clue with a typo: it says "These plain white invitations bears a short message" when it should say "These plain white invitations bear a short message".

But does Vanguard *know* that yet

For some completely unknown reason, Vanguard just awarded me a Merit for The Lost in Darren Wade's "Midnight Draws Near" story arc. (All kidding aside, I know that there's a link between the Lost and the Rikti that sometimes leads to fun crossovers between the groups like the Lost occasionally having Rikti drones and stuff like that, but this seemed like worth calling out because I can't think of an in-story reason for this merit to be awarded in this way even if there's a mechanical one under the hood. Honestly I don't hate it, heh.)

Would it be possible to get an option to revert it to having disrespectful enemies? I've always liked the variety of having the occasional room filled with tougher-than-normal enemies. It makes enemy groups feel more like they're actually real enemies gathered together instead of just repeated computer programs that I'm fighting. (And it makes sense to me that if you're fighting through hordes of street punks or rooms of soldiers that some of them are going to be *even tougher* than normal). Don't get me wrong, I definitely appreciate people wanting "consistency". I've matured enough to the point that I can recognize that not everyone has fun from items in Super Smash Bros. or not liking random crits in Team Fortress 2 (even though those things are part of what makes the games fun to me). So as far as QoL improvements go, I can definitely see why it'd appeal to a lotta people. I'd just like an option to bring back the variety. 🙂

In the first mission of Captain Mako's Iron Fist story arc ("Defeat head Longbow agent"), your compass-text mission objective is described as defeating a Longbow Ballista, but the actual boss that you fight is a Longbow Officer instead of a Ballista.

In the "Beat the truth out of Dr. Aeon" mission from Efficiency Expert Pither, you go to the Aeon offices in Grandville (by Dr. Forrester), but the pop-up text implies that you're at his main laboratory in Cap au Diable. Either the mission is sending you to the wrong Aeon Lab, or the text is inaccurate.

The Galaxy City tunnel being restored is fun! I couldn't get a good look at those heroes, but are they supposed to be the figures from the Loading Screen? I caught their names as Goldie, Mighty Monk, and Kamakiri, is this the first time we're getting names for those characters? Either way, I like it (and so does my main hero who's *still* completely traumatized by Galaxy City gettin' wrecked)

Ahhh, that tracks. Was that always the case? I remember noting the oddity that some Succubi are lieutenants and some are bosses, but didn't notice that they were at different levels. Either way, it's probably good that he's calling a specific boss so that it can definitely be a demon to line up with his quote. Maybe a fix would be to lock it in to a Blade Prince with a Succubus helper or something?

I'm playing Mako's second story arc (not via Ouroboros, just doing it "in real time" at level 50 with some incarnate level shifts), and I got to the "Find Information On The Leviathan" mission in Nerva Archipelago. I get to the boss, Raxtos, and he says "From the depths I summon you, my minions! Aid me against my foes!" during the fight, and then a Succubus and a Magma Thorn Caster both arrived. The Magma Thorn Caster is a level 50 minion who cons blue to me, but the Succubus is a level 45 Boss who's conning grey. My guess is that it's some weirdness about how the CoT has a couple of different Succubus enemies that can be called, but I dunno. The fact that it's a Boss-level ambush instead of just a couple minions might mean it's coded a little oddly, but I dunno if that's unusual or not.

This one... miiiight not count as a typo? And if it does it's subtle enough that it might not get noticed. In Lorenz Ansaldo's "Interrogate Legacy Chain leader" mission, the final boss you have to fight is named Tellus Legacy Of Earth... But in the Clue you get upon defeating him and his helpers, you get his name is Arcanist Stigand Now at first, this might just be a case of "Okay, so they left the generic name for the minion instead of using the character's name in the story" which sounds right, except I don't think the Legacy Chain bosses ever get the word "Legacy" in their names, do they? That's what happens in the Gladiator badges, but it's not in their normal names, is it? Unless it's a thing where the same minion has a set of possible names they might draw from, like the Prisoner units. At the end of the day, probably not worth worrying about, but I'm guessing some writer at some point just quickly copy/pasted something from one place into another that wasn't *quite* where it should've gone, but it's close enough that it doesn't even register as being wrong. And yet here I am. Dunno if a "fix" is needed exactly, but it felt worth mentioning.

Ooh, really? That's unfortunate. The Gauntlet power's description still reads as granting the bonus so I assumed it was still a thing. Even if we don't get that general bonus, however, I do think I'd like to see the arc widened for Tankers (or even in general.) The Sweep isn't always Crossing.

I've been toying with Cross Punch on my Street Justice Tanker, and I like it, but it feels like the cone on it should be wider. Probably not too much wider, but as it is it almost feels like its arc isn't significantly improved over what it gives to Scrappers, which is kind of disappointing considering Gauntlet.

I'm using Ouroboros to play through Kelly Nemers' Croatoa story arc (Hatred's Hungry Heart). I finished the second mission (the one where you rescue 4 Tuatha from the Cabal), left, and clicked the Call button in my contacts menu to turn the mission in. She gave me the post-mission dialogue, and then I accidentally clicked to "talk about what else was going on" (I think, or something like it). At that point she became un-callable from the contact menu. Fortunately I was still able to run back to her in person and talk to her and things progressed as normal.

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?