AzureSkyCiel

There's quite a bit of buzz over this so I thought I'd lend my insight on the matter up coming "facts"* about the upcoming Haunted Mansion Halloween trial.

- Ghost Widow will guide us as our host. Our "Ghost Host"

- Voice overs will return for just this once with the special guest star Vincent Price.

- Sanity effects will be added into the game to psyche players out. Known sanity effects include...
1. Hearing whispers everywhere
2. finding yourself suddenly alone, in the dark, and being attacked by invisible enemies.
3. your enhancement screen popping up and all your IO sets getting deleted.
4. Your characters head popping off and becoming a glowie, clicking it will result in text quoting Hamlet. (But not the scene you'd think)
5. Your entire team walking into a room to find them all dead in horrifically brutal ways that violate the "t for Teen" rating
6. On a related note: Sister Psyche stuffed in a fridge.

- There will be puzzles in the form of locks that make no mechanical sense at all.

- One room will be an obligatory reference to M.C. Escher's Relativity.

- If you look closely, you'll notice a certain well dressed, tall, dark, and slender gentleman watching you from the trees outside the forest.

- Is this haunted room actually stretching?

- This chamber has no windows and no doors!

*Void in every state and country of the world and any land mass in general

okay, I'm done.

Here's a question: Excalibur has had many incarnations across thousands of mediums, when listing it, should we list specific iterations of it?

For lore...

-I'd probably set it in a parallel world that makes full use of the fact that super powers have always been around and became prominent again after the end of World War I. With super technology and magic ending up everywhere, I'd probably have it set back between 1960-1980 (yet you'd still see modern PCs and other pieces of modern tech).

-Statesman and Lord Recluse may or may not have offed eachother sometime in the fifties, all that's known is that both did battle with one another in the Canadian wilderness and when the smoke cleared, both were gone.

-Arachnos and the Fifth Column (and by extension, the Council) got absorbed into one organization. (This would also reduce Arachnos' prominence redside)

-Rikti War still would have happened.

-I'd keep the Origin powers arc but make it MORE confusing and contradictory. Each contact you speak with offers their own theories on the matter, some even contradicting themselves to remind you they're not the most authoritative source. Branching dialogue would let you agree or disagree, but if you're not the same origin as the person you talked to, they'll brush you off with what amounts to "And what the hell do you know?" while same origin would get something like "Well, if you ever really figure it out, I'm all ears to make heads out tales of this mess."

-I'd probably keep something like the Well of Furies but make it more vague, less "directable", and probably even never let it be referred to by the same name more than twice outside of the same person.

The world...

-Paragon and the Rogue Isles would still be the main hangout of heroes and villains respectively, but the biggest city would be another city where heroes and villains indirectly battled one another for control over it through missions that increase or decrease the territory hold. along with other places...

-Paragon's Geography would be tightened and the city itself shrunk a bit. I mean there are gaps between war wall sectors that you could fit two whole zones into, I'm not kidding! which brings me to my next point...

-War walls/zone barriers are still there, just in different ways. With how special Atlas is to Paragon, I imagine that they would have long had a barrier protection field around it before the Rikti War. Similarly, this could be applied to Brickstown and the Zig, others would gain war walls that look more alien in design, obviously since they were built originally by the Rikti.

-Expand the Rogue Isle. 'Nuiff said

- Home Turf instances: Inspired by GW2's Home Instances, I had the idea of heroes and villains being able to start out in a corner of a City, a village, a suburb, etc. etc. (I imagine plenty of different options) that they can use as their own tutorial and starting zone. This zone you could continue to work in, either raising it as a testament of your prowess by driving all crime out (or uniting it under you as a syndicate for the "glamorous villain") or let it decay and become a wretched hive of scum and villainy (for when your hero is too lazy to GO OUT and fight crime).

Mechanics...

-Faction favors: The ability to run repeatable missions or arcs from NPCs of specific factions, this earns you favor with them so you can gain temporary powers or other boons.

my own theories...

Hybrid: Will allow for your character to buff a set of modifiers, effectively allowing tanks to debuff or team buff/heal like a defender, scrappers and stalkers gaining controller durations for their holds, Defenders gaining corruptor levels of damage, etc. etc.

Genesis: Will be weird, there's only one power in this slot specific to each AT, but the Genesis slot abilities will synergize or buff up your AT's inherent. (Like Defenders' Vigilance not just granting end discounts as Teammates fall or lose HP, but their buffs, debuffs, and heals become stronger)

Mind: AoE Control power, perhaps? While judgements have mez abilities, they're ultimately secondary effects and procs to the main thing. Whereas this could be one heavy hitting mez that locks down half of a room and could even synergize with Radial judgement mezzes.

Vitae: Possibly a set of strong defense toggles? Not as insane as Destiny's initial effects, but much longer lasting (of course) and could work well with the aforementioned Incarnate Slot.

Omega: I've always kind of imagined it might be something like this. >.>

now since you're only making a costume piece suggestion, I'd say this does have a decent chance for happening in the future, especially with the in-game market coming.

Oh, and Sam, about the demoralization bug, that's been fixed in beta and is expected to go live with the new issue. So we've already got one problem solved.

I'd like to agree with many of these ideas as well as submit a few of my own suggestions:

1. Add "Wounding" to Assassin's Strike- Basically the idea is that 'wounding' would be an effect placed on a target that survived an AS power from hidden and make the remainder of their short existence miserable. Wounding would be a massive debuff to the victim's defense, resistance, recharge, damage, tohit, speed, regen, recovery, and special.
The idea being that after a target takes such massive damage in one instant, they're left in a crippled state, requiring every bit of willpower they have just to try to limp away. This also would add a teaming element for stalkers in tough fights against major AVs and such.

2. Add Bonus Damage for attacking from hide- This is inspired by Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's chain kill mechanic. Basically, upon landing a hit from hidden, you get either three seconds of plus 80-100% damage or three seconds 100% critical chance. The idea being to sort of finish the trifecta of scrappers doing consistent DPS, Brutes building up to higher levels of DPS, and then we would have stalkers able to open up with heavy DPS before normalizing a bit more throughout the rest of the fight.

Poke the poodle!