Acyl

I got a review that praised the humour in my arc. This player thought it was very funny...and here's the kicker, he said it made excellent use of game canon.

But he gave me four stars, not five. Why? Because there was a one problem - only ONE problem - that made him drop the rating.

He didn't like my Freakshow boss: teh Powergamer

He complained that my Freak tank used MMO and gamer terms in the boss dialogue. He said this was awful and immersion-breaking - I should have done something more in-character, and it'd totally be a five-star mission if I changed that.

I'm all...er...waitasecond. I mean, like...the boss is Freakshow, yo?

(And bear in mind, the entire mission is about breaking into Positron's lab to steal his inspirations. =P)

Yeah, as you've noticed - when you apply codes to your account...for existing characters, the new stuff will appear in your powers list and needs to be manually dragged to one of your trays.

When you create a new character, the jump jet should appear automatically in a tray, but the Pocket D teleporter will not (and the D teleporter can't be used until you're level 3, anyway).

[Team] Me: Did they add new sound effects for NPCs? Those screaming civilians are awesome.
[Team] Teammate: Huh?
[Team] Me: oh wait

/afk whoops, that wasn't a sound effect

(QR) The problem with the email function going to the spammers is that it's really bad for folks who were actually using it.

One of my SGmates accidentally ignored another of our friends recently. She was clearing out her mailbox, marked everything as spam...

We ran a TF that night. She couldn't figure out why one of the guys was so quiet. She kept asking him questions, and he didn't answer. Freaked her out.

Here's the great part. The rest of the team, including the guy she'd ignored, didn't realise what was going on. Because it looked like this:-

[Team] Tanker: Wow...how did you survive that?
[Team] Scrapper: Haha, luck.
[Team] Tanker: Seriously, how?
[Team] Scrapper: Literally, a lot of lucks.
[Team] Tanker: Did you use insps?
[Team] Scrapper: Yeah, ate a bunch of purps and hit my tier 9.

She only discovered the truth 24 hours later. The apology was hilarious - and for bonus comedy points, said scrapper player remembered everything she'd asked and repeated his answers without prompting.

But that, boys and girls, is why you can't send legitimate e-mail in this game anymore. =(

Sonic/Rad is a very strong corruptor combo. With that as your partner, it's hard to go wrong.

That said - well, I love Willpower and Invulnerability. I do. I'm not sure I'd recommend them for your purposes, though.

The thing is...WP and Inv are strongest when you're surrounded by many enemies; Rise to the Challenge and Strength of Will only really hit their stride when saturated. You're not gonna get that while going head-to-head with one tough enemy - an AV.

Now, you can tank an AV on a WP or Inv brute. But in my experience, I find myself leaning on my Tier 9 power a lot. And burning a lot of inspirations.

I suspect a Super Reflexes or Shield Defense brute with softcapped defenses would have an easier time of it. And it's really not hard to softcap an SR brute in particular with a couple pools and a handful of IOs.

DM/SR might be good for this purpose; Dark Melee has strong single-target damage and a self-heal, plus the tohit debuff stacks well with your defense. Note that your corruptor partner's doing some tohit debuff on the AV anyway.

Other primaries? Well, Super Strength is a popular brute primary, and does do good single-target damage. But a lot of it comes from spamming Knockout Blow. That may not be to your taste. Energy Melee has two heavy hitters, but their recharge is vastly longer and the attacks animate much slower than KO Blow. Stone Melee is reputedly a very good single-target set, but I have no experience with it.

Well, the reason I answered the way I did (apologies if it came across as sarcastic or chastising)...

But yeah, the answer I gave was the same as everyone else did - ie. the best we can do is to set the ally to 'front' placement and 'single' enemy difficulty.

The answer was the same, but I tried to explain why it's like that, and how it relates to what you're looking for.

I should note that precise spawn placement is one of the most common requests for the mission architect. The developers have said they'll continue to improve the system, and given all the MA tweaks that are in Issue 15, this seems to be true for now.

So there's a chance we might get something closer to what you're looking for, but not right now...

I've been playing since mid-2004, and I still haven't done everything there is to do. I've done most of it, mind. But not all of it.

There's still some story arcs I haven't done - mostly villain ones. It's really really hard to do every single story arc on your way to 50. Chances are you're gonna skip over stuff, as I have. And, hell...I've not done all the 45-50 villain arcs yet, much less the lower-level ones.

Viva Ouroboros! Endless fun.

In the past year, I've also had a lot of fun IO'ing my 50s. I mean...I like playing the game itself. I like the combat engine. So I also like tweaking my characters to do my favoured playstyle, but better. That's fun for me too, and it's an endgame in itself.

...er, other folks have already answered both these questions in the thread. Not sure what else you're asking for.

Hm. Okay, see...the most you can do to determine an ally's placement is to set 'em 'Front, Middle, Back'. If you put 'em to 'Front', they'll appear somewhere in the front of the map.

That might be next to the door.

Or it might be a little further in...depends on the map, and where the 'front' spawn points for allies are. If the map has multiple 'front' ally spawn points, then the NPC could appear in any of those places, not necessarily the same place every time.

As other folks have noted, if you set the enemy group difficulty for the the ally to 'single', they will appear on the map standing by themselves. Technically speaking they'd still be 'captured', though; they won't be in an active combat state until you go within range of 'em.

That's the best we can do, and it's the same answer the other folks here have already given. It's not like we're hiding super-secret Mission Architect haxx0r tricks from ya, that's all that can be done, unfortunately.

If I may suggest, though - you could set up the animations for your ally NPC and make it look like he's fighting or threatening the bad guys...

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Haha...thanks for pointing out my error there.

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Heh, hope you didn't think I was nitpicking or anything. Didn't really mean anything by it, just thought it was worth clarifying.

* What challenge level for missions?

Whatever you can handle at a reasonable speed. Note that some challenge levels give you more enemies, others give you a regular amount, just harder enemies. A character with a lot of single target attacks may do better against smaller numbers of tough foes, while one with more AoE attacks may prefer larger crowds of weaker opponents.

* Better to just kill mobs outside?

Not usually. As others have pointed out, missions (and story arcs) give bonus XP, and you only suffer half debt from dying indoors.

* What specific other skills are a must-have?

Pool powers generally depend on what your other powers are - they're generally stuff people take to round out builds, not must haves in and of themselves. That said, most people take the Fitness pool (for Stamina, sometimes Health).

If you're playing a character without mez protection, note that the Leaping pool has Combat Jumping (Immobilize protection) and Acrobatics (Hold/Knockback protection). The defensive toggles from the Fighting pool are good on some builds. Aid Self from the Medicine pool is also a very nice heal - it can be interrupted, but that's not a huge deal for some characters. Particularly defense-based Brutes and Stalkers (SR, Shield, Nin, etc).

A lot of builds can benefit from the +recharge boost given by Hasten (in the Speed pool).

Of course, there's a lot of useful stuff, but you have a limited number of powers on each character. That's where personal choice comes in. Pick what's most useful to you, within constraints.

* AE missions, they good?

Some are. Some suck. Probably not the answer you're looking for, but it's true. Mostly I play stuff folks have recommended to me personally, or stuff I've seen advertised/reviewed on the forums.

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Good Power Pools: Fitness will probably help you a lot (you'll be going for the tier 4 power: fitness). Other than that, it's up to you. A travel power is usually a good idea. Other than that, it depends on your build to see what you might need.

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To clarify, Aett means the tier 4 power in the Fitness pool. The power itself is called Stamina, and it greatly improves your endurance recovery (blue bar).

Most players take Stamina. It's not essential. You can get by without it, and some character types don't need it. But most folks swear by it. 'course, this ain't a solo-specific tip and you might already know this by now.

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On a slightly different note, if this is the case...shouldn't they just open up ALL powers to both heroes and villains? Because that is essentially what they are going to do.

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I'm surprised nobody's said this already, but...

Power proliferation isn't that simple. Sometimes they just port the powers over directly without any changes, yeah. The AT modifiers alone will ensure the powers function differently. If all proliferation were like that, it'd be easy.

But...sometimes the powersets need to be tweaked for gameplay and balance reasons. Fire Melee is a good example. Tanks, Brutes, and Scrappers all have Fire Melee. Look at the powers and power order, though - they're different for each AT. Psychic Blast for Blasters is likewise different from the Defender version.

Hell, look at Archery. It appears to be identical between Blasters and Defenders, but I'm told it actually isn't. Rain of Arrows has different base numbers between the two sets - not AT modifiers, but the power itself is different.

A lot of the Mastermind secondary powers are weaker in some way than the versions Corruptors, Controllers, and Defenders get. Lower numbers, higher end cost, shorter duration, that sorta thing. That's nothing to do with the Mastermind AT modifiers...many of the actual powers are tweaked.

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Why people play heroes and not villains...is a rather complex question.

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Only as complex as you want to make it. You answered it succinctly at the end of your post:

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most people don't have a problem pretending to be a superhero. But not everyone wants to be the bad guy.

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^Simple truth - not overanalyzed.

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I don't like simple answers. =D

I don't think there's just one explanation; trying to sum it up too succinctly does a lot of players a gross disservice.

The reason I ended with is a different answer from all the others, and I've heard each and every one of those from friends. Several of my friends don't play redside, and only one guy claims it's because he doesn't like being evil.

I agree:- 'people prefer superheroes to supervillains' is the common-sense answer, but I've got no evidence for that, and instead know plenty of folks claiming other reasons.

The OP is correct.

Here's the capes currently available to a brand new character of male and huge body type:

Full Mantle (Valkyrie - requires mac pack)
Half Mantle (Valkyrie)
Asymmetrical Mantle (Valkyrie)
Over Shoulder Mantle (Valkyrie)
Single Shoulder Mantle (Veteran Reward, all options)
High Collar (Magic Pack, Basic/Occult/Arcane/Valkyrie/Long Cape)

The Long Cape option is available for high collar capes in the character creator at level 1. This is the case for male and huge. This lets you use all the standard cape patterns with the high collar cape.

Females only get Basic, Arcane, and Valkyrie as high collar cape options in the character creator. Females can only access the Long Cape options for the High Collar at level 20, and can't use the Occult pattern at all.

This is presumably a bug.

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Why is hero population larger than villains? IMO being evil sounds more fun.

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Why are there more super hero comic books than super villain comic books?

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Why people play heroes and not villains...is a rather complex question.

Other folks in this thread have pointed out gameplay reasons. There is technically less content for villains, and many people don't like the content that is there, because it is structured differently from heroside.

CoV is more graphically intensive than CoH. The hero game is older, so it has a more established playerbase. Many people like the hero archetypes (classes) better...and so on. There's lots of gameplay reasons.

There's thematic problems as well. The fact is, making a game where you're the bad guy is difficult. Heroes are good guys because they stop bad guys from doing things - it doesn't matter WHY they're doing it. A hero can be out for revenge, he can be noble... but why is the bad guy a bad guy? Does he want to take over the world? Does he like to kill people?

Most of the villain content assumes that your villain is more of a mercenary for hire. Someone who breaks stuff for money. That's actually a reasonable direction to take, because 'evil for profit' covers more ground, but not everyone likes it.

Then of course, there's folks who don't like to play a bad guy at all. I mean... most people don't have a problem pretending to be a superhero. But not everyone wants to be the bad guy.

Well, doing good mission start and end text is easier than working the plot around scripted events and making interesting stuff happen.

The very best missions I've played, in my opinion, have both... killer writing and very creative objectives/spawns.

But that's harder to do.

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That's what I was most concerned about when reading that the OP wanted to softcap positional defense. If you go for IO sets and wind up a few percentage points low in damage it's not a big deal. But when the whole point is to softcap defense you don't want to spend lots of inf on your various shields only to find that the cumulative effect of using lower level IOs is that you're not at the softcap.

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A very good point and excellent suggestion.

Though personally I figure so long as he's using level 25+, maybe 30+ IOs in his defense powers he should be okay. But it is a good point to make, because if you're slotting up the +def powers with IOs, you might not actually be getting as much direct +def buff in there as you would with three SOs at the ED line.

Watch the percentages. I was looking at a couple of softcapped builds recently. One used level 25-30 IOs and had a ton of +def set bonuses. The other used level 40-50 IOs and had much fewer few +def bonuses. Both were softcapped, though. The second build still hit the softcap because that guy was getting a few percentage points more +def out of his powers themselves.

The first build was a lot tighter, and the individual powers were slotted less effectively. The second build had a lot more wiggle room, and each power was better slotted. On the other hand, the first guy would perform better when exemp'd down, so it's a tradeoff.

So chances are it's just a serverside or game issue, nothing wrong with the mission itself? That'd probably be a relief to the OP. Hopefully that's the case.

1) IO sets should be lvl 33 for Siren's Call

Yes, this is true. Level 33 max, since Siren's caps your level at 30. I think it's fine to go as low as 20-25 for your IOs, though. You're not losing that much in final power effectiveness from the slightly lower enhancement percentages.

2) IOs in inactive powers still grant set bonuses if they're lvl 33 or below

This is a tricky one. I believe this is correct. If you have a level 38 power slotted with level 29 IOs and walk into Siren's Call, you can't use the 38 power anymore. But the 29 IOs in that power will still grant the set bonus. That's my understanding of the matter.

However, a lot of people insist otherwise. I can't offer you proof that I'm right. Maybe someone else can.

3) Slots you add to powers you've chosen between 1-30, even if added AFTER 30, still work just fine.

Correct, you keep all your slots when you exemp/mal down. Only powers are locked out at lower levels.

4) Purple IO's and procs work at maximum lvl regardless, so best to use 50's for those.

Purples only drop at level 50. Their set bonuses apply no matter how far you exemp down - you can drop down to level 1 and still have a working purple set bonus.

Procs and global uniques will work if the power they're slotted in is available. So the level doesn't matter if that's all you care about. Use whatever's cheaper or easier to get. Usually that's a 50 proc, but not always.

If you want a set bonus from slotting that proc with others in the same set, though...then the level 30 rule still applies.

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Anyone know why theres a AE in RWZ but not in PD?

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We don't know. A Dev has not spoken to repeated requests to put a MA terminal in Pocket D. They are aware that's what we'd like.

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My personal theory is they'd rather keep Pocket D as a social zone rather than filling broadcast with folks recruiting for teams (or looking for 'em).

This isn't just for the sake of RPers or anything, because social areas serve a function beyond strict RP. My SG often meets in the D - not for RP, just chat and stuff. Player-run radio station DJs frequently host shows from the D. Folks use the place for events. And so do the devs, really.

Yeah, there's team recruitment and such in Pocket D during Valentine's and Christmas, but that's seasonal. Different. Maybe they want to keep the D clear of such things under normal operations. Mind, this is just my opinion. Totally groundless speculation.

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You're equating farming for badges with farming for XP and loot, which is not quite the same thing.

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it's exactly the same thing.
Repetitive behavior in the pursuit of in-game rewards.

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True but with the exception of accolades badges don't increase your ability to earn more in game rewards. Whereas drops and such add to your productive capital.

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Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I agree it's all repetitive behavior in pursuit of in-game rewards. That's quite right. But it's not the same kind of reward. That's the difference.

So...most folks gunning for fast XP and stuff don't care about badges. And lot of the badge crowd don't care about the other rewards. Yeah, both kinds of players are farming.

But I ain't heard folks screaming about badge missions overwhelming story stuff in the search list.

That sounds fair, yeah. But Ouro isn't really a viable way of regaining a farm mission...since the whole point is to have one map folks can zone into for mad killing at any time they want, and reset for multiple runs.

If the mission's in the middle of a story arc, then the prospective agricultural engineer will have to do all the stuff before to get the mission they want. And even then it won't be great, 'cause agriculture usually isn't conducted solo (*). But Ouro locks people into TF mode. Moreover, I've no idea how one can reset a map while solo in Ouro, short of logging out for a bit, which goes against the whole speed/efficiency idea behind agri-business.

That's why folks running old school farm maps freak out if someone on the team actually starts completing the mission objective, like grabbing crucial glowies or something. Once the mission's gone, getting it back isn't really possible. The only thing you can do then is move on to another cash crop.

* footnote: solo horticulture is stuff like hitting the walls in Impy's Magic Romeland, not map running with a team and fillers. Collective farming is a socialist activity.

Well, I think the Praetorian missions are all arc stuff, which shouldn't be affected by Issue transitions.

It doesn't sound like he lost the mission through all this weirdness though - it shouldn't have been completed.

Honestly, if I were the OP, I'd just put a crew together and give it another shot on a different day. You say this has happened a few times? Were you trying it a few times in the same day, or over the course of a week or something?

I'm not sayin' you're wrong, just that it pays to be absolutely sure there's a problem with the mission and not some other factor. If the mission keeps borking no matter what, and you're certain nobody on the team is in AE mode, then yeah...that does sound worrying. I doubt it's some SUPER SEKKRIT anti-farming technology, but the mish may well be glitched or corrupted. Whatever.

Trouble is, if there is indeed some problem with the mission itself... personally, when I've had glitched missions, what the GMs always did was autocomplete the mission for me. But that's not what you want, so I dunno.

/Nin has always been popular for stalkers. Some reasons:-

a) it's a def set, and def sets have always been regarded as better for stalkers than res-based sets
b) Nin has fewer key powers than Super Reflexes (two toggles versus three, etc.)
c) Nin has a self-heal built in (SR doesn't, of course)

EM was, at one point, the PvP stalker set - indeed even the PvE stalker set - because of its single-target emphasis and massive damage output. Since the adjustment to Energy Transfer, it's become somewhat less popular.

Some folks like the ranged capabilities of Spines, though I vaguely recall a recent change that made the ranged damage less attractive. Not sure on that one, though...someone correct me if I'm wrong?

I kinda disagree with what Rigel's saying. Not with his precise arguments, but the general thrust.

He's quite correct, Dark Miasma Defenders are awesome and do a lot. I've got a 50 Dark myself. I wouldn't say they can tank, but you're excellent support, can replace a controller in a pinch, and can do pretty good damage.

The thing is - it's a Swiss Army Knife of a character, and a lot of the powers aren't precisely intuitive in how they work and should be used. For instance, Twilight Grasp's description and short text still doesn't indicate that the power does -regen (though the detailed info/real numbers does).

I love my Dark, but I was level 50 before I knew what the hell I was doing. And I didn't powerlevel or anything; I played that defender off-and-on for at least two years.

I've got a better idea now, but my poor Dark still needs an extensive respec because there were some poor slotting choices made.

Maybe I just suck. I'm a slow learner when it comes to games. But that's my experience.

Scrappers and brutes are easier to grok, and much harder to get wrong. I agree the final play experience may be less rewarding. Indeed, nowdays I prefer to play 'technical' characters - my current defender is a Kinetics/Sonic.

But I started with scrappers. They were easier, which freed me up to learn about the rest of the game. I think for me that was the right choice...and it seems to be what the OP's asking for.