Samuel_Tow

I have not. I keep making excuses, but this is not for lack of wanting to do it. It's just that the character I'm focusing on now can't run it, and I'm writing an overlong story about her, meaning I can't swap characters. It's almost done, though.

That said, nearly everyone who mentions Dark Astoria has good things to say about it, so that's something. Moreover, what you're telling me alleviates one BIG worry I had about the zone's... "Feel" when I tried it on Beta, and that was that everything would be dark, gloomy and depressing. If I really do get to challenge the odds, do the right thing and still walk away victorious, then... Wow. Now I want to run it even more

You actually bring up a good point, and that goes for both heroes and villains. It seems like the game so very rarely allows us to do the right/wrong thing in situations where this would put us in a bad position, presumably so that the game doesn't "end." I have asked, and numerous times, why I can't simply punch Daos in the mouth when he starts telling my villain what to do, and people instantly jump up to say "Because Arachnos would have you killed!" Let 'em try. Make my missions harder, put me in jail and force me to fight my way out, hell, even give me a Gordon Freeman choice, just so long as I have the choice to do the "wrong" thing and fight my way out of the consequences.

I'd never really ran across a really good hero example of the above villain dilemma, but what you're describing sounds like a good one. Conspire with the villains to make my job easier against the BIGGER villains, or tell them to go to hell, do it by myself and have a much, MUCH harder time. And you know what? Most of my heroes would choose to have a harder time, half because they specifically WANT a harder time, half for ethical reasons. And if Dark Astoria offers this kind of choice, I want to make it.

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This is something of a tangent, but I want to make it. Years ago, a friend of mine would occasionally bring his PSX over to my house, and for a while he played a game by the name of Warhammer: Dark Omen. I don't remember anything about the game's plot, but it was some kind of building-less strategy game. More importantly, as the game went from mission to mission, the player met various people asking for help, and was given the choice to stop and help them, or otherwise ignore them and hurry to his next major mission. If the player hurried, the old man in a hat would be pleased and enemy numbers would be low as the dark forces had not had time to mass. If the player stopped to help, the old man would be angry and the enemy forces would be considerably stronger, but the player would bring with him the people he had helped as extra fighters.

To me, this is exactly the kind of choices that make me excited to choose in the first place. Sure, I like no-consequence choices between good and evil so that I may pick by concept, rather than utility, but if difficulty were all these affected, I would still like it a lot. The thing is that doing the right thing is rewarding by itself, but walking the walk in addition to talking the talk is sometimes even better. Maybe it's just me being contrary, but when the game tells me I should compromise my ethics or else it will be too hard, I want to contradict it, stick to my guns and muscle through the difficulty anyway. Good, in other words, doesn't have to be comfortable, so long as it is actually good, as opposed to the faux-good I've seen lately where we mean well, but everyone around us dies because we suck.

Doing the right thing and failing sucks. Doing the right thing and paying the price... Not so much, so long as I CAN pay the price to begin with.

My ISP assigns random addresses to every user when they log onto the network, and we are required to set up our connections to acquire an IP automatically. There's nothing to yell at them about, that's standard practice in the entire country. That's why I find IP-tracking to be a pointless gimmick. Unlike physical addresses, IPs change on their own.

See, this really resonates with me. Granted, it's not terribly eloquent and it probably isn't very deep, but what it is is exactly what I want to hear. This is Cadao telling me I did exactly what I've always wanted to see super heroes do, ever since I was a little kid watching Spider-Man on Laser Disc back in the 80s. It's a hero doing what should have been impossible, facing great adversity, but never giving up. It's precisely this kind of possibly childish glee that first got me interested in hero cartoons and video games in the first place. I loved seeing people do what I never could and saving the day in the process. I liked seeing people be brave, competent and charismatic like I wasn't and probably still ain't. Even when the Swat Kats were neck-deep in Dr. Viper's goo and T-Bone was infected, I kept watching because I wanted to see how they would save the day and make everything right.

Honestly, it's this kind of optimism I've been missing the most in City of Heroes pretty much since I17 or I18. I know it may bot be "art," I know it may not be "mature" (even if the game is PG13), I know it may not be "serious," but you know what? I'm fine with that. I'm fine with being a wishy-washy self-serving barbarian if it means I walk away from a story feeling happier than I did when I came to it. It may not be oscar-worthy storytelling, but it's the kind of storytelling I like the most, personally. And the more I re-run old hero content, the more I realise just how far from those happy days of irresponsible fun we have actually gone.

*edit*
Great... I misspelled Cadao's name with a K and I can't edit my title. Woe is me.

I don't know... Having six heavily-armed mercenaries unload enough ammunition into a purse-snatcher to reduce him to hamburger meat doesn't strike me as any less vicious than seeing wolves and lions maul said purse snatcher.

Yeah, if using (and subsequently dropping) Hand Clap taught me anything, it's that the scatter caused by wanton knockback does more to hamper than to help. It's fiendishly annoying, for one, and it actually serves as a major drop in survivability for characters who rely on enemy-fuelled defensive auras, such as the above-mentioned SS/Inv Character. I also recall fighting any type of Clockwork with any type of knockdown to be annoying for the same reason, so that's a definite yes. Understood.

Still, though, are new Dark Astoria critters as troublesome even at -2 as I keep hearing?

Be funny to see uniformed cops growling at their dogs...

More specifically, you have to complete YOUR OWN version of the final mission. That obviously entails having to run all the previous ones to even get to it, but what was changed was that the Latin Student would give Midnight Club access to the mission owner only, not to everybody.

I wonder if they'll do the same with Yin's Market?

*edit*
And if there were free Midnight Club access in the Paragon Market, I'd get it.

I agree with the endurance concerns, though to be fair, those are only actually meaningful on the third "AoE" attack. The two fast ones actually have fairly normal endurance efficiency. Considering how crap Mastermind attacks are, I honestly don't see a reason why they must also cost more. All this does is it ensures people don't see them as a viable power pick. If they're going to be crap, then make them cheap, and if they're going to be expensive, then make them worth using.

Thank you I'd honestly given up hope of those particular bug reports ever getting heard since I'd used essentially all channels I could think of to report them, and they're all years and years old. This is quite literally the first time anyone has even acknowledged me talking about the subject, so even just you taking note is a great leap forward from before

Speaking of an Earth Judgement power: If anything like this is ever made, could you please make sure it could look passable as a basic strength physical attack, as well? I mean, shoot for something like a giant foot stop or ground punch or anything else that looks like it can be initiated by just raw Hulk-like strength and not necessarily something which relies on elemental control specifically, like breathing sand or turning people to stone or some such.

The reason I ask for it, and if I may indulge a little, is because characters defined by raw strength has no real, applicable option to pursue when it comes to Judgement powers. They have to make do with something elemental or otherwise something speed-based. Well, take a look at my Xanta for instance. She's big and defined by being strong, and a massive, explosive ground punch really would make sense for her.

Both of those are very good points that I hadn't considered. So there is a point to setting my difficult to -1. To be honest, if I could, I'd set all of my missions in the whole game to only spawn one level of enemy and one level only. The level drift which the game introduces all by itself irks me, so eliminating it at least before I'm "ready" is a good call.

That said... Are there many missions in Dark Astoria which fail if an NPC dies? I would hope we're not getting too many escort missions, what with them being one of the all-time and universally recognised godawful worst parts of gaming in general. So if getting my companion NPCs to show up at 49 and get killed, then all the better. I hate companion NPCs anyway.

Not gonna' happen. I can't survive +1 in the regular game, let alone Dark Astoria. OK, perhaps I can, but the point is that I can't survive it and have fun at the same time. I'm not looking for a challenge, and if I have to take a hit in progression, then so be it. I have a sneaking suspicion it'll take me a lot longer to get my level shift from the Alpha slot before I have to worry about any of the others.

I still hold out hope that critter to-hit will go down to more normal levels, but I guess City of Heroes interprets "challenging" as "curb the biggest part of Inventions," which has unfortunate implications for those of us who don't softcap defences on all out characters, but that's a whole other kettle of fish I don't want to get into. I'll see how that goes.

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Also, thank you for the numbers. I would have quoted them, but I don't really have anything to add to them or comment on. Regardless, calculating survivability is a good idea, so thank you for doing it.

Thank you. I feared this might be the problem, but I guess that still gives me a solution for what to do with my level shift, if ever I get one - don't bother with upping enemy levels, raise enemy numbers.