Agent White

I still just find it weak set up and a weaker excuse to kill off the characters. That could've been tightened up better so it actually mattered beyond "I just need superpowers to do this and they're convenient to kill for them".

I dunno I just wanted to see the powers actually come into play in the fight :P Then again, Recluse actually knocked Rula-Wade around a lot without me having to do all that much so maybe he did and I didn't notice?

Yeah, it was ok. So many Elite bosses @_@ Every mission except the tank mission had 1. Though lots of allies too.

I was honestly expecting one of the villains to bite it. Slightly disappointed none of them did.

And uh, were Stateman's and Psyche's powers ever actually meant to come into play? Because... they don't. Like, if he had just plain murdered them and no mention of stealing their powers had been made it wouldn't have made any difference, except one throwaway line about how 'omg powerful' he is with both sets of powers. Kind of a letdown since a huge part of the plot is him trying to steal their powers and... uh, doesn't seem to matter.

And there didn't seem to be any reason to have the 2nd obelisk there except Rula-Wade (awful name btw) liked it for decoration? It certainly served no purpose this time except to remind us he still had it. I do like the effect for it though.

The beam thing was an ok mechanic, sans the fact it was not in fact a beam at all. If you're not in the bubble you just explode. in the first mission with it I didn't bother to venture out of the bubble so I honestly thought th thing was bugged because there's no visual effect if you're not hit with it. Just more iTrial training.

So, ya, it was ok. I liked that these things advance the game's plot but for the most part the surprises were kind of weak, the only actual surprise was spoiled for us, and there just seems like there wasn't a lot of cohesion between the early episodes tying neatly into the latter. That the Phalanx were targeted pretty much arbitrarily to accomplish this main goal is just kind of weak. I think more specific reasons could have been rolled in and you know, making the stolen powers actually matter beyond 'oh no he's so powerful, Mary Sue PC help us!'.

And with this I think we've also overplayed the "THE WHOLE WORLD IS IN DANGER, (RANDOM LOCATION ON EARTH) HAS BEEN (TRAGEDY), (OTHER RANDOM LOCATION) IS EXPERIENCING (PLOT RELEVANT DANGER) WE HAVE TO STOP THIS" bit. It was neat with Dark Astoria and Mot, it was ok with this. And I know we've got more world threats coming so.. let's try to not make it so formulaic? I understand these events have to be big and it helps to add emphasis to the danger but at the same time it gets a bit ridiculous and cheapens things when you have to start tacking on "AGAIN".

As for the SSAs as a whole, I'll be doing parts 1 & 2 as soon as my characters hit 20 and re-affirm their alignments, doing 3 & 4 once a piece for the 1st time completion, then waiting til 50 and I get incarnate goodies to hit episodes 5, 6, and 7 (to further help getting more incarnate goodies) then farm either episode 1 or 2 depending on hero/villain alignment for merits.

So, ya it was ok. It was satisfyingly epic-ish, though I think I liked the end to Dark Astoria more.

I think this was actually answered in a Ustream or freedom friday. They said -all- SSAs will share the same rewards and the same cool down timer, whether it's Vol. 1 or Vol. 2.

I could be totally wrong, but that's what I remember

The heal is frankly so minor and so infrequent as to be pretty much not worth it.

It's for the completionists and to give us something else to do while we're waiting on more slots to unlock.

T3 should really be "the main goal", its just where the biggest bang for the buck is. So how 'worth it' th T4s are is really up to you. They're not heads and shoulders better than T3s, but they are better.

I noticed him too. Could be anything. New contact, new SSA, new taskforce.

Could be the new holder for the Positron Taskforces. With Statesman and Psyche out of the picture, maybe all the 'signature' taskforces will be moved to lesser NPCs so the signature characters can be used for something else.

Who knows!

One is the greatest treasure that can possibly be imagined. The other is the greatest terror mankind has ever known.






And the labels peeled off like.. aeons ago.

I would guess converters are like tips, they drop from any enemy above a specific level regardless of what you con to them

Sadly we're probably more likely to see more new Alphas, Destinies and Interfaces since they added to Lore and Judgment.

I'm still waiting on the Psychic and Toxic judgments m'self.

Yeah I can at least confirm the bug with the BAF. Ran one with my Necro last night, as soon as Nightstar spawned my pets were charging across the courtyard to her.

Even with a finale bonus you'd still have to grind it.

But it still just doesn't make sense to have every other aspect of DA award iXP, from enemies to mission completes, but not the finale reward.

Ok, when DA first hit I ran through with my 50+3 to check out all the new shinies and stuff, loved the story, the missions, etc.

Checking it out now on my 2nd 50, just fresh from unlocking his alpha. Ran a repeatable for the daily 10 threads and did Heather's arc. Common roll on the reward table about 7% towards both my interface and judgment. Not a bad gain for running at the basic settings.

But when I went to talk to Heather I hear the familiar cha ching of a reward, I get an enhancement and about 200,000 influence, which tells me if it'd been a non-50 arc that would've been a chunk of XP.

So... why isn't it IXP? That's what I should be earning as an incarnate, that's why I'm -doing- DA. The standard missions awards about 8000 iXP on completions. Why is the arc finale rewarding giving me standard XP?

No, you can't break down Incarnate abilities.

But do you mean you made the exact copy of your T3? Because otherwise, you can make a T4 with -any- two T3s, just scroll down, you'll find the recipe.

And you can't really hit us with 'concept reasons' and not tell us the concept.

And it's kind of coming down to picking nits with Lore Pets. For the most part, they all hit like trucks, some just hit like bigger trucks (Cimerorans) and some like smaller trucks (Seers) but you're still getting hit by a truck. So most of it does come down to just flavor.

If you're looking for just straight up damage, go for the T4 that gives you a boss and a lieutenant both with +DMG. The other T4 gives you a boss pet and invulnerable Support lieutenant, which can be nice but you have to figure it's a 5 minute uptime on a 15 minute cooldown so it isn't like you'll be relying on that support heavily.

Warworks is definitely the go to from that list if it's pure damage. As said, they were the kings until the Cimerorans deposed them.

I'll be honest, it kind of surprised me they didn't tag in some extra rewards for the badges, especially given some of the challenge with some of them.

Yeah I've had great experience between Victory Limitless and Forums. You can find any kind of teaming, between Incarnate Trials, Taskforces, Giant Monster hunts, and just plain Mission teams.

in fact just yesterday I got into a Katie Hannon TF, then later in the day a Tin Mage run. Was great for my fresh 50

I will say it gets pretty quiet after about 8 or 9 pm (Pacific) because a -lot- of folks, especially some of the more active players forming a lot of the big team events (Trials, raids, etc) are east coast.

And ya do not be afraid to run your own stuff. Just a quick shout on the channels can drum up at least a few folks for just about anything. I pulled a group together m'self for the Tina Macintyre finale, since it rewards credit for both Antimatter and Neuron for Dimensional Warder.

You just unlock them at the tailor, they'll show up under the proper spots, no account e-mails or anything needed.

if you want to look up the exact pieces you have go to the collect tab -> Super Packs. It'll list each Costume piece and what tabs in the tailor they can be found under.

ahhh, what a fun bug.

The mission was at least working prior to the last patch, I ran it on my widow and he showd up normally.

honestly I was hoping he'd be -slightly- more challenging >>

Go watch the latest UStream, they actually touch on this.

Making sets using existing enemy groups would be pretty specific, which kind of goes into Epic archtype territory. Plus it still takes time to do new animations even with existing models, compounded by the fact Masterminds are the most resource intensive AT in terms of both design and usage.

Funnily enough, Sister Psyche was showing up in the first day runs of the trial.

This has since changed.

Listening in on the Ustream today Zwill chimed in about this and I couldn't possibly have disagreed more.

This change is for 'new players'. Well, I'm hardly a veteran at only half a year's experience with the game. I can tell you right now, it would make me feel much worse opening the e-mail and using it right there and there and realizing that if I didn't do something -right then-, it's wasted.

That is a worse experience than neglecting it in the Powers list. I'm a new player, the last thing I want to do is feel like I've wasted anything that should be beneficial to me. Finding it in the powers list later on when I understand things a bit more is a vastly better experience because even if I can't find it at first, it's still there for me to use when I figure it out.

If I'm -that- new that I have a hard time figuring out the mail UI, then I probably don't understand how to check if the power is active, what it's actually boosting via the detailed info, or the duration. All I know is that I opened a mail and said it was activated, but I don't know what that means. I can either continue on just bumbling my way through learning the game or I can panic and try to take advantage of it while I can because I don't want to waste it.

or worse I'm the new player that doesn't read everything enough and I just claim it and skip past the note, so I activate it and don't know it. Again, I've wasted it.

None of those situations makes me want to deal with this new system. I'm an intelligent person, I want a choice and I don't want that choice to be "Don't claim it yet" because again, there's no way to tell the game to not blink things at me as an alert that I have unclaimed items. I can hide un-claimable items, I can turn off the 'new account items' window, I cannot turn off the e-mail BLINKING AT ME CONSTANTLY.

Frankly I think it's insulting to players' intelligence to rob them of the choice altogether. It just smacks of poor design and tells me that no one actually bothered to ask or discuss the issue with players. It sounds like this was a perceived problem and it was discussed in-house, a solution was agreed upon and everyone nodded along with it.

I'm a newish player and I can tell you right now, don't take choice away from me, don't make me feel like I've wasted it. Both of those are cardinal design sins and it's exactly what this new implementation will do with XP boosters as is.