Binary10

I'd appreciate a review of my arc, it's heroic aligned and I recommend mid-levels just to have a decent selection of powers available, but it should be completable lower level with a good character.

Arc ID is 141338

Its name is Vectors of Infection, and it tells the story of a plague that turns those who are infected into zombies and spreads rapidly through unknown means.

I know it's soloable because I've done it with a couple of my characters (None with exceptional setups) but it does have a couple AVs - you get allies that provide aid against them. It has 5 missions but only takes about an hour to complete, without heavy ghosting. With it you can go even faster.

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Title:Is it Live or is it Memory-X?
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Story Arc ID: 70210
Author’s Global Chat Handle: @Armsman
Length: Very Long (5 missions)
Alignment: Heroic
Type: Story-Focused
Groups: 5th Column, Crey, Custom Group
Has: Bosses; AV (Scales to EB based on team size/difficulty setting).

Story Description: The 5th Column is building a device to control the world. Can you save the world from TOTAL DOMINATION?! (Hey it worked to get my Villians and Vigilantes pen and paper RPG group interested back in the day.)

Designer Notes: The Arc can actually be soloed by most Scrapper (Level 50 MA/SR), Tank (Level 41 SS/INV) and MasterMind (Level 39 Robot/Traps) builds. My level 41 Gravity/Force Field Controller made it through mission 3 solo with no issues, but starting getting defeats in mission 4; so if you’re a support class or a blaster, you probably need a team-mate. This arc is actually based on an adventure I ran players through in the “Villians & Vigilantes” pen and paper RPG a number of years back. I was surprised at how much of the original ‘flavor’ I was able to keep in adapting it to fit in the CoX universe. There was only really one element I couldn’t include due to MA limitations.

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To start with, I think you should be classifying this as a "Task Force" - it felt long enough to qualify, with its map sizes and chaining objectives in each mission adding to the length. If you want it more of a story arc than a task force feel, you might want to reduce the map sizes or objectives.

Text issues: You have way too many ; throughout your mission text. Almost all of them can be replaced just with ,'s. I personally don't like the coloring of keywords, but you kept it consistent so that's a matter of style preference. Not in the mission dialogue, but the "Wolfpack robot" enemy should have "robot" be capitalized to match other enemies.

Three things on the first mission: The possibility of the boss escaping was unexpected, and I actually failed the first time because he just snuck out. If a mission can be failed by that, it should probably be mentioned. Second, the boss' unaware dialogue sounded more rikti than a computer, with the way you did your phrasing. Its combat and death phrases were much better. Finally, its fail dialogue references a flash drive, but its success doesn't - it seems like the success should mention finding it as well.

In the second mission intro you have the line, "The data indicates they" and you probably want to replace they with "the 5th column" because they haven't been named yet in that paragraph.

The 3rd mission intro still says "(Part 2)"

Finally, the constant chaining and shifting of objectives was disorienting (On all missions), and I often didn't figure out until later what was going on or why it happened. The AV in 4 was especially confusing, as there was no direct mention of it in the followup text or anything and there should have been something -- I figured out what was going on with it, but it seemed really odd to me that nobody talked directly about it.

Overall, it's well done, but felt really long and a bit confusing to me on the objective shifts. Most of that is just style preferences for me, the dialogue shifts that you might be able to do to help make the event causes clearer should just need minor reworks of things and not total overhauls.

Edit: A final note. In the later missions with multiple bosses (Especially mission 4, I think) you have a lot of dialogue that occurs on activation. Since every copy of the boss says this, it gets pretty spammy -- you might consider splitting them into single enemies with duplicate names for talking so most are silent, or just removing that initial dialogue. Or you could just leave it if you're fine with it, that was just one last thing I thought of that had seemed a bit unusual.

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Now, I have an arc for people to take a look at

Vectors of Infection
Arc ID: 141338
Faction: Custom
Creator Global: Binary10
Difficulty: Medium, the last two missions each have an AV but allies are provided to assist.
Morality: Heroic
Description: A plague has broken out that is turning people into zombies! Nobody can figure out how it's being transmitted to new cases, and the situation is growing desperate as the infection count rises.
Duration: 5 missions, about an hour of play.

The arc is meant to tell a story more than to be a real challenge, and as long as your character is decently effective the provided allies will pull you through the tougher fights.

I just got one published, it's got 5 missions and is all tied together into one (hopefully) effective story.

Arc ID is 141338

Its name is Vectors of Infection, and it tells the story of a plague that turns those infected into zombies and spreads rapidly through unknown means.

Please don't feel like you have to rush to review it, I'm fine waiting until your load has been cleared out a bit before you get to it.

Mission name: Vectors of Infection
Arc ID: 141338
Morality: Heroic
Length: 5 missions, about an hour
Description:A plague has broken out that is turning people into zombies! Nobody can figure out how it's being transmitted to new cases, and the situation is growing desperate as the infection count rises.
What you were drinking when this was created? Caffeine. Lots. Delivered via homemade flavored coffee drinks.

There is only one thing I noticed in this that I'd tweak (There may be others, I'm about to go to bed so am a bit out of it): There is a point to teaming. Find a friend that you can trust to have a solid internet connection and not do something to screw you over, and they can not only aid you in ghosting when the mission has it but if you lose your connection they'll be sure the mission won't reset on you.

They won't get the badge, but they can help ensure you do. You can repay them for the favor when they want to get it themselves. A duo on Villainous still shouldn't encounter any bosses that would give them a problem, as well.

There are two stickied threads about this in the Bugs forum right now:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...n=0&page=0
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...n=0&page=0

I'm sure they'd welcome even more feedback added to one or both of them (Why there are two stickied, I don't know. You'd have to ask Lighthouse)

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Cool idea. I'd prefer the 'two levels above the probate/under diress person' to be outta there to be honest...my level 50 heroes would travel to the Rogue Isles in a heartbeat to fight some dangerous threat, and lacking a level 52 villain anywhere to 'sponsor' 'em...A sponsor, yeah, somebody's gotta vouch for the character who's over in the other playground, but I'm not sure I see a need for the level-locking though?

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Seconded for both dropping the +2 level requirement and it being an awesome idea.

I'd actually go so far as to say remove the level requirement entirely. Making it take the SK/LK slot is fine by me, and allow exemping or SK'ing in it, but don't put any other restrictions in place. This will open it up for people to use their favorite characters for RP, regardless of their level vs. their friends' character level. Your character is there for mostly non-violent reasons (Fear of blackmail, etc. Actually v-side, there's a number of missions that are almost heroic that I wouldn't take much persuading to be convinced to help on...) so having a higher level to watch you shouldn't even be needed, just a contact who's at home there to be sure you don't get yourself into trouble.

One note: You make the comment that Defenders can handle the longer animation times (Noticably Ice Arrow) but I find that untrue -- while activating an arrow, a Defender deals zero damage except from attacks that had previously been launched. The MM can still be ordering their pets around, and imo overcomes a significant portion of TA's activation suckiness because of this.

Having been mocked quite thoroughly for reading the guide when I'm not planning on making an MA stalker, I noted this bit and can provide a little extra information.

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- Cons – I found out very early that Area Effect will hit you and break your hide and also ruin your opportunity to land the “Assassin’s Blow” attack on your opponent. This is a byproduct of regenerations “Heal” defense instead of damage avoidance. Other Sets have Area Effect defense, where as with regeneration you really need to choose your placement carefully to avoid “hot” spots where you suspect mobs will be throwing Area Effect attacks.

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The only Stalker set to get any AoE defense except for Hide before level 35 is Ninjitsu, which has a base 13.875% defense to AoE in Danger Sense. The other one that gets any is Super Reflexes, which gets Evasion (At 35) and gains 21.375% defense to AoE then.

The thing is, hide itself has a base 37.5% defense to AoE (That I believe can be enhanced) while it is unsuppressed. I'm sure this is to aid in getting off an AS while opposing a damage toggle and other such PBAoE attempts, but it means you're not defenseless to AoE. They can still hit relatively well as 37.5% isn't enough to floor enemy hit chances, but it definately helps. Hide's defenses against everything else are significantly lower, it's only AoE that it has the huge protection against.

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I've never seen these two bits to be true.


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Right now on the Black Market:

Chronal Skips and Rikti Alloys: ~800,000
Deific Weapons: 1,500,00
Empowered Sigils: 750,000
Soul Trapped Gem: 550,000
Pangean Soil: ~3,500,000
Prophecies: ~2,500,000
Diamonds and Magical Conspiracies: 1,000,000
Essence of the Furies: ~2,000,000
Hamidon Goo: ~3,000,000


I expect that things are worse hero-side, where inf is more abundant (driving prices higher) and where magical salvage is less abundant (driving demand higher).

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That is only a list of the most expensive. I didn't say none were worth selling, I said that most aren't.

I have rares that the last 5 sold values are 3,000 3,000 5,500 2,500 and 3,000. That is not worth selling. Most of the rares I have fall into a pattern like that, not the huge values in your list there. Most of the uncommons I have are even worse.

Edit: After seeing Mortimer's numbers compared to yours, I'll amend it: About half the rares aren't worth selling at WW. However, I still stand by only a couple uncommons are worth it at all.

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Uncommon: There are some uncommon salvage items which are so unpopular that you shouldn't bother selling them at the Consignment House. An NPC store will give you 1000 influence for any uncommon piece of invention salvage. Usually, though, you can sell them at the CH for ten times that, and a few are worth much much more.

Rare: Again we see the division between popular and unpopular pieces, but the NPC stores will only give you 5000 influence for rare salvage and you can always make more than that on the open market.

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Overall an excellent guide, but I've never seen these two bits to be true. All I have ever seen is pretty much the opposite: A couple rare and uncommon salvages sell for reasonable amounts, the rest sell for 500-1000 inf and no higher. Rares rarely go high enough above the 5000 to the store to make it worth taking a sell/buy slot and some inf to post.

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i cant find a tech sleek option anywhere

[/ QUOTE ]27 month vet reward.

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If this is true, that's awful. Mixing inventions with rewards that take over 2 years of playtime? Nothing like having most of a set but not quite being able to complete it for something you can't control...

Really, that's even worse than not having any of the set available.

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Opinions of Ulitmas's motives....

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Never have I seen my name so butchered since Castle called me Optimus... then again there was a time back in Everquest when I was tanking a raid mob after our first tank went down and he yelled

GO TULIMUS

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Yeah, switching a couple letters around...pretty bad...

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Please leave Shivans alone. They are very useful to the squishier AT's in the game.

The simple thing to do is to make the rewards tie into the minimum team size. If the TF need 4 to start, you must have 4 to get rare drops. Make the missions scale to the TF minimum, instead of for a solo player. Leave it so that you can still complete the TF if under the minimum, just no rares will drop.

I think that would solve the problem.

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No, it doesn't, because you then are penalizing people who have had things happen to them - i.e. I have run TFs where we started with the minimum, then had people drop because we hit a rough spot.

Which means if they finish that TF, they are NOT getting the full reward.

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A better solution would be to figure out a way for AVs to scale based on number of opponents -- this could even be a dynamic scaling thing.

Then you could make the minimum it would scale down to be for a team of 4, but a team of 8 wouldn't just be steamrolling AVs because they don't get much harder (Actually as it stands now, many duos can easily take out AVs as well). I am aware that a few AVs consistently give teams fits -- Infernal, etc. Since the AV scaling would have to be done per AV if it were going to be at all effective, these would be handled on a case by case basis.

Yes, it would be a lot of work. I think it would increase the end-game replayability and fun immensely though.

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I see no reason for blasting the OP for pointing out a possible exploit of the rare drop system. He does it because he wants it fixed, not to brag. A new economy is coming to the game and he has pointed out a potential exploit and yet everyone either wants him to hush up about it (which is silly since data mining can find out if it's rampant anyway) or they dismiss him as an anomaly. Trust me, even if this is anomaly, it won't be once I9 hits the servers as there will be a gold rush to get those rares to market before anyone else. Let's get this issue out in the open now and deal with it.

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Um, bull. He is doing it to brag about is uberness. It's obvious. Who cares if you can solo a TF? Can you solo a Mind/Rad? Meet me on test and show me, Ultimus. I'll bring a nice cookie for you and your soloing ability.

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Will you earn a recipe for soloing a mind/rad?

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Now, you CAN'T solo them - you HAVE to have two or more people online, and on the relevant map - which sets the spawn sizes accordingly. Problem solved.

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Because duoing them in 30 minutes and getting one recipe each is soooo much better, right?

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The under 30 minutes for an SF is probably an exaggeration, but the accomplishments are doable.

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Didn't he say under 30 for the villain respec trial? Considering how easy it is, I could believe that.

Just a couple notes on a solid guide -- Granite armor does not have an accuracy penalty any more. It used to, but now all it does is -recharge and -damage (Aside from all the movement penalties).

The other note is that ice patch can easily use a third slot of recharge: This permas it in granite. When you're in a heavy fight that's forced you into granite for a long time, being able to maintain the ice patch on the ground without a gap can be very useful. As well, it lets you be able to get a second patch down some of the time when not in granite, which can also be helpful in slightly bigger fights (Move 10 feet to another clump, second ice patch).

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Sirens Call: Hit some untargeted Mobs with AoE DeBuff, maybe some minor damage, but under 20 points of damage to be sure. This translated into 9000 XP Debt or about 3.5 Mission Complete Bonuses for this toon. I think that is wrong for stray AoE DeBuff in a PvP zone to award debt so high. The Mobs were in no danger.

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Debt in a PvP zone is supposed to be based on the damage dealt to you by the mobs, not the damage you deal them.

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_Castle_ just acknowledged that Invincibility is bugged. The taunt is apparently not working properly either.

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Correction:
All aspects of Invincibility EXCEPT the taunt effect are working. The Taunt effect, however, appears to only be effecting minions. This is true for all auto-taunt effects, including Gauntlet.

Interestingly, while researching this problem, I discovered that Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked. That'll be fixed as well.

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Using mudpots and performing some tests with a scrapper, neither mudpots or gauntlet on my regular attacks could reliably take aggro from anything: It didn't work on minions, Lts, or bosses. Only the taunt skill worked when I first used it.

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AI critters have always 'cut and run' if they consider themselves unable to win an encounter. The behavior you describe is consistent with that condition.

It is not impossible that the AI is flipping to 'run away' mode too easily for some reason. Reading Aett_Thorns post, it does not sound like this is the case, but if you can get some solid data to back it up it'd definitely be worth looking into.

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I've been seeing them cut and run recently while playing as my dark scrapper. One run through a basic attack chain (Shadow punch, smite, shadow punch, shadow maul) and I've seen bosses take off running -- while they can still easily hit me.

It's annoying how things like having 20% defense will leave the enemies sitting there bashing away, but having 20% -toHit makes them flee. Could it be changed to be consistent at least? Make them do a full calculation on their chances to hit, so toHit debuffs aren't more flee-causing than simple defenses. Then everyone can suffer the pain, and maybe the whole run code will be modified to not include that

General issue: Sharing of both Newspaper and Police Band missions completion credit for different brokers is broken. If you team with someone that gets a different contact than you for the zone and run police band missions (Noticed it only in the lower hero side, Talos Island to be specific) then you can end up receiving credit with a broker in an entirely different zone. Villainside, only the people sharing a broker received credit at all (This could have been because the villains didn't have higher brokers, and would have been receiving credit with them instead.)

The workaround is to just open and use one person's missions, don't try to share them unless you have the same contact.

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Well, I'm going to go eat some Thanksgiving food now, so whether you agree with me or not, it doesn't matter. I know that I can pull a single boss from a mob because I've done it several, several times before and I know that I doubt that I'll be able to change anyone's mind on the matter.

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For what it's worth, I've NEVER seen a difference in pull success whether I target a minion, Lt, or boss. I can get them all individually, I can get the entire spawn with any of 'em.

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Sheesh why is this thing called LRSF so hard? Is it this hard on the heroic equivalent? if so then it is way too hard if you have to have a "perfect team" to do it. No TF/SF should require a perfect team. Just good players.

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There is no current heroic equivalent.

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I think a reasonable workaround for Transfusion would be to move the heal to the very beginning of the animation, basically closing down the window between the start of the attack and the time when the mob still has to be alive for the heal to work. It does make the power slightly more powerful than it would otherwise be, but I think that's a reasonable compromise to make for a defect in your game engine that would otherwise be very difficult to fix.

What if Transfusion was turned into a very small AoE that also worked on corpses even if you can't target them? There might be an issue with stacking the heals if you do that though.

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Moving it to the start of the animation wouldn't be significantly more powerful than it is now, as long as the animation time remained the same. Sure, it would keep people alive if you miss getting the heal off by half a second, but most of the time when that occurs they're taking so much damage they plant before it's recharged anyway.

What would be far more powerful about it is that people wouldn't miss so many transfusions. While better kin players already don't miss many, that would still be a noticable boost. I always figured it healed for so much in large part to compensate for this bug. That being said, I think this solution would be good if a fix is desired. A few rare times it could fail then (If the enemy died the instant of activation, probably) but far less than now.

It would boost the power of fulcrum shift and transference even less to do this (As far as the timing boost goes, not the less-missing goes) because neither of them are directly involved in keeping people up.