Amanita

Issue 16 just keeps getting better and better. The other day I tried to take my team through my MA arc- only to realize that most of them couldn't run the thing, being too low in level. Now that will change. I am liking this- being able to team with anybody and not worry about the whole "SK tetris" business.

I can't wait for this to go live- I've got lots of existing characters who will benefit from this, big time. And a couple of new characters who are gonna get made. The look of spines has been such a turnoff that I never used it for more than two levels. Now that's gonna change. And electric melee and armour? Sweet!

I would love to see a set of crystalline spines for spines scrappers. I don't mean big honking chunks of quartz, I'm picturing something slimmer and more graceful- anything but the chunky banana dorks we have now.

I dedicate this mission to the wonderful folks of the Bay Area, and bridge and architecture fans everywhere!

Level range: 1-50
Difficulty- easy to moderate, squishies may have a harder time

Synopsis:
The railroad fatcats who tried to scuttle the Golden Gate Bridge to save their ferry boat monopoly have really gotten desperate! When a slew of malicious lawsuits fails, try magick!
They've used an ouroboros crystal to go back in time to try and rework events in their favour, by kidnapping the Bridge's entire engineering staff, with plans to eliminate them!

But the engineers aren't going to take things laying down and have some tricks up their suit jacket sleeves! They're going to need all the help they can get against the thugs hired by the railroad, NIMBY's who don't want a bridge screwing up their sweet country life, and obnoxious socialite snobs.

Notes and things to consider:
The engineers in this mission are combat allies with a range of abilities, so for fun I suggest running this mission with a large team. Or if you like, play solo and watch the engineers kickbox and blast their enemies into submission with just a little urging from you!

I've taken to calling Guardian Server the home of the Dead Skyscrapers, and here's why- it seems that several of my characters there come from tragic backgrounds, being the manifested souls of skyscrapers who have fallen in one wretched way or another.

Iron Angel Aveda is one of the Aveda Towers of Eden, aka Woodvale. When the Devouring Earth invasion struck, she and her siblings fought to try and save their home, while guiding many of woodvale's human occupants to safety. These skyscraper incarnates frantically appealed to the city's human hero population for help, but this was not long after the first Rikti War, and there were considerably fewer heroes left to answer the call at that time.
Add to this a communications screw-up which got a group of fledgeling heroes deployed a crucial position on the front lines, which they could not hold. This loss gave the Devouring Earth a foothold, and one by one, defensive positions began to fall to the monsters. The Skyscraper clan fought bravely, but were soon overwhelmed, being among the last of Woodvale's defenders to fall. Luckily for them, a few other surviving heroes were able to carry them to safety in a general retreat. Sadly, Woodvale was lost that day and the Skyscraper people found themselves rootless beings dispossessed not only from their homes, but from their steel bodies as well- those having been all but destroyed by the Devouring Earth. Some time later, Iron Angel Aveda visited the ruins and collected a bit of structural steel, which she forged into a fearsome set of claws, replacing the sword she had lost.
Now it is her mission to wipe out the devouring earth and reclaim her family's home, at any cost.

My WTC tower tribute characters are also on this server- a pair of skyscraper souls returned from the afterlife to mete out justice to evildoers, saving other innocents from the sad fate that they suffered.

Big Blue's fury is based off of this incident:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjib_I_ab84
She's the manifestation of that crane. She was proud of her job, and thrilled by the people who came out to watch her work, caught up in the joyful spirit of Civic pride. But then that last fateful lift happened..She was wracked with guilt over the lives lost that day, wishing that she had been able to do something to save those men. So she's taken up being a hero, hoping to repay her debt by saving other lives.

Seiglinde Ironwolff is another crane spirit- her construction company was one of the few not in the Family's pocket, and one night some mob hitmen came after her operator. Their boss didn't like him telling the other workers not to let themselves be intimidated by the Family.
Seiglinde felt horrible guilt over not being able to protect her operator, and went on a vengeance-fuelled killing spree, hunting down the Family men responsible for his murder.
She found them in a warehouse in Independance port..Not a single Family man survived her onslaught- the deeper into that warehouse she went, the wilder and more blood-crazed she became, until she finally found the hitmen. The others were lucky- they died quickly, the scene inside that warehouse left even veteran PPD detectives sickened. The hitmen suffered much more at her hand, her rage impelling her to prolong their agony as long as possible. After this, her own people turned on her, believing her to be in need of incarceration and treatment for her grief-broken mind.
Needless to say, when the breakout happened, Seiglinde welcomed the promise of freedom in the Rogue Isles..after all, that was where the REAL family bosses lived. Justice would indeed be a dish served cold...

Count me in as another one giving the devs massive Kudos on this one as well!
For the longest time I have had no desire to play a spines scrapper, due to the repulsive look of the powerset. Now I can't wait to make one and turn it loose. I'm also exited about the proliferated powersets, I sense an electric scrapper or two in my future as well.

And power customization? Woo Freaking Hoo! I've got several characters who will be using this for sure!

Don't worry, I won't ask for a list, I think I can guess.
I think the Golden Gate Bridge under construction is safe fodder- I am pretty sure that every last person personally involved with that bridge's design and construction has passed on by now- if not, then they are pretty darned old, or were VERY young when it happened. I know the key players on the engineering team are no longer with us, so I am sure they're safe.
Likewise the NIMBY's and railroad fatcats who didn't want to lose their sweet ferry monopoly money.

As I said, I plan to indicate that there's some political satire in the mission description when I publish this thing.

I must confess, I really don't like this trend of banning things (in game OR in real life) because somebody, somewhere MIGHT find something offensive.

I've got a Golden Gate Bridge character- If somebody who is a friend of a friend who knows somebody who jumped, and gets upset, then I automatically lose the character name? Even though there is nothing obscene about the name, no spiteful references to jumpers in his bio, and nothing offensive about his costume, (such as making an outfit of zombie parts and saying "Here's my impression of somebody who jumped off of me") I would still lose a character that I worked on for a long time and was quite attached to? That just really sucks and blows right there.

Now, if I DID make a GGB whose intent was to be offensive and rude, then I could see the point. For example, writing a bio filled with horrid and tasteless jokes about jumpers and traffic accident victims, making the aforementioned "mangled victim" costume and clowning around, or making zombie MM pets and naming them after jumpers- That's the kind of behavior which should be dealth with, as it's pretty obvious that the intent IS to shock and offend.

Now I'm skittish about playing that character- what if somebody complains and I lose him? Renaming wouldn't cut it- without the name, the whole concept of the character goes down the tubes.

I don't see anything offensive about the name, personally. If you were named "Al-Quida insurgent" or your name contained something offensive aimed at a particular ethnic or religious group, then I can see why you would have gotten the generic-bat. But "Extremist Insurgent" sounds pretty tame to me. Heaven only knows that the world is full of them- political extremists as well as religious. Your character could have been any one of these.
Off the top of my head I can think of several varieties of rebel or Guerilla factions far removed from Islam or any other religious ideology.

So I can't think of any reason why you would get generic'ed for the name alone, personally. I would have to see your bio and costume too- if your bio contained any "hot button" material and your costume made you look like an Al-Quida member or was some sort of offensive caricature, then I could understand.

Last night while walking around at work, I got an idea for an MA mission, based on some historical politics- namely the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Any Bay area or architecture fan CoX fans might know something of the story- how railroad monopolies and others almost killed that bridge dead to preserve their own interests. The idea I had involved some comic railroad fatcats, raging NIMBY's, some kidnapped engineers, and a present-day tolltaker who worries that if efforts to go back and change the past succeed, he's gonna lose his job.

I've also been reading about the history of the Brooklyn Bridge, and one historical political figure- Boss Tweed, and his "40 thieves"- other crooked politicians.

Now, I know that modern-day political satire is a hot potato, and I'm not interested in it- I do NOT want to mess with that stuff, so you won't see me putting Barack Obama in a mission. I imagine there might be lots of cool ideas that could involve the man in one way or another, but it just might be too hot a potato to safely play with.
So my question is- Is historical political satire okay?
If I do this, I intend to write "historical political satire" in the mission description, so people who don't enjoy politics in game can steer clear.
And yes, I will restrain myself from having the railroad boss make jokes about running trains. Funny, but too much chance of it being taken the wrong way.

We were talking about this last night in an AE team. I had my DB/WP scrapper Brooklyn Bridge out to play. Brooklyn Bridge is a nearly 8-foot fellow whose taste in costumes runs towards voluminous gothic clothes, cloaks, or heavy armour. Although he does have one cute leather outfit Myself and my teammates were talking about how some guys just can't comprehend that yes, women play this game. And yes, women sometimes make male characters and enjoy playing them.

Fortunately I've never had to deal with raging homophobe boys like the OP- I would have petitioned that team leader for his foul behavior right away. I've got gay friends and I don't put up with that cr*p at all.
And just for the record, I'm not a snitch who plays with one finger always hovering over the "petition" button. It takes something godawful for me to launch a complaint- harrassment, abusive behavior, griefing, or the like. Racist, homophobic, or hate speech are definately on the list.

I'll be game for this. No 60 month vet here, but I was definately planning to keep my subscription running this whole time, so no biggie.
I may even go to the plaync store and buy a few months in advance, just to make sure.

Count me in as another who tried to test the science booster, but a spectacular comedy of errors made that rather difficult. Took forever to get patched up, and then when I tried to log in, the login servers were down. Annoying!

About the bright colours on ice- I say allow them. Some people might really enjoy the crystal or gemstone effect, and make some pretty cool character concepts with it.

lol. Fangirl here
I have to admit- I didn't make much of an effort to head over to Test server for issue 15- The main feature, the task force would be useful for only two of my characters, as it is restricted to levels 45 and up. I don't think my scrapper or my brute would have made much difference in terms of testing. No fancy IO sets or special builds, nothing out of the ordinary.

And I'm still fooling with MA, to get a mission to work just the way I want it to, so I doubt I would have been much help testing the changes there.

But this issue? I've got a slew of characters who will benefit from this, with lots of different powersets to experiment with. They come in a variety of level ranges, so after playing in the tailor to tweak the colours, it would be no problem at all to take them out for a few missions to see how these customized powers actually work, without the need to level up first.
And the proliferated powersets are things I've been interested in for a very long time. Scrapper's my fave archetype, so anything that gives me some new options when rolling one is a plus in my book. I would love to see how an electric scrapper rolls, or a clawed brute. Freaking sweet all round.

I may not have the most playtime, thanks to my wierd work schedule. But when something grabs my attention like this, I will make time.

Ok, those new metallic spines look sweet! I will definately be playing a spines scrapper now. The current banana dork appearance of the powerset is seriously off-putting, I've only seen a handful of costumes it looked good with. But these metallic spines are sweet! If they roll out crystal or glass spines, I'll be even happier!

One thing I wonder- when we're fighting custom bosses, WHY oh WHY are they always dual blade wielders?

I hate recruiting people. I don't send blind invites since so many folks hate them, so I always send a politely worded tell- something like "Would you like to join our team? We're running missions/TF/Whatever".

It seems that a lot of people can't be bothered to answer, or get really snippy when they do. Who needs that?
I don't expect an answer right away- I understand somebody may have their hands full right then. But if you're going to decline, no need to be nasty about it.

I think the reason why long robes work for NPC's but not player characters is that with the long robed NPC's, their robes are actually a part of their body. They don't have the problems caused by layering a skirt over a pair of legs.
They're using a unique body model where the robe replaces legs entirely.

With body type being a permanent choice, it would not work to let us players have it- we would be stuck with the robe for all five costume slots, and few people would want that. However, with body type now being changeable thanks to the science booster, I wonder if we'll see some new body types being made available.

I was wondering about the Spines too, if those were ready. I would love to see those!

To be honest, I would not be surprised to see a few "yellow snow" characters when this issue rolls out. At least until the novelty wears off. Kinda like Spore and those "willy-creatures". I'm sure some of those are still around, but I bet quite a few were made just for the lulz and forgotten about.

Looks pretty sweet to me- especially since it appears to be controllable power-by-power. Rainbow Brite clones will abound! j/k

I can't wait to see the alternate versions of spines and granite, myself. For the first time, I am interested in playing a spines scrapper since I won't be confined to banana dorks of doom sprouting everywhere. Now, if granite gets a cool enough make-over, I just might play that too.
Hmm..Improved spines, electric melee for scrappers, clawed brutes..I sense a Preatorian Skyscraper clan forming

Count me in as another who would love to see this up close and personal. I did the closed beta thing in issue 11- Thanks to my messed up work schedule I didn't get as much testing as I would have liked, but I still did what I could and did my best to submit some helpful feedback. I am impressed with how quickly these issues have been rolled out, and am also happy to see this going to Beta so quickly after the announcement.

ComicCon is this weekend or close, right?

Scrappers are far and away my favourite.
With Going Rogue, I might do an MM to have them switch sides- that could be cool.

When a friend of mine introduced me to this game, he let me make a character on his account and run through a few levels. He sat right there with me, explaining how the game worked and other helpful things. Mind you, he knew that I was NOT going to do anything which could get him in trouble- no obscene or rip-off character names or looks, no offensive behavior in chat, or towards other players, or anything else that could get him in doo-doo.

While technically what he did was a no-no, I am glad he did it. It got me into the game, and I've stuck around for close to 42 months now