Chunky_Style

I was stress testing my BA/WP Brute in a paper missions, and I noticed the mobs stacking when breaking line of sight. Each time it happened was in a warehouse map, using the corners with the boxes at the edge of the corner. The mobs would jump over the box and stack. Using an attack like Beheader would only hit one mob, but Cleave would hit all in the stack, as would Pendulum. As you can imagine with sufficient Fury you could easily two shot an entire pull. Mobs that I was able to do this with were Freaks, Family, Council and Arachnos.

I tried doing it on other map types and corners without an obstruction but the mobs wouldn't do it. It seems that obstruction on the corner triggers the stacking.

One I think I remember, though it may be just a fever dream, was only being able to buy the base 10 enhancements from stores and needing to unlock your origin's contacts to buy the others. On a side note, does anyone remember what the base 10 were?

I remember being an Invul tank and calling Fire tanks squishy.

I remember seeing a Fire/Kin-Fire/Rad Controller duo running through Bricks with upwards of 20 Imps in tow.

Out of everything in this thread about the only thing I miss is the massive sweeping parties in Perez. A new player could have their friends list full over a weekends worth of play.

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Inventions has been touted as something that shelved level 50's can partake in. Level 50's that have completed all their story arcs already. Please, how can both of those occur? Level 50's can not experience IO's if they are locked out of acheiving specific rewards because they happened to hit the level cap before I9.

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It's like I said, we are looking into other options that keeps the mechanic of the four pool system. Our intention is to not make people feel "gimped" for previously completing all their story arcs.

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Keep this system and open those pools up so that the items in them can drop anytime, anywhere. Players would simply have a better chance at those items if they did that content. I really don't like the idea of tying any loot, specific items or groups of them, to any specific or groups of content. So just open those tables and give use a chance to earn those items in normal play as well. And by chance I don't mean .0000001%, 2% to 4ish% sounds good.

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Sorry, I have to add another 2c...

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Although bases are built by a team, Emmert and his team viewed them as being “incredibly, incredibly individual” because each piece of the base is designed and added by individuals.

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This just isn't so!

Bases aren't built by a team. They're built by the (usually very few) people who are given base editing permissions. Often this devolves to a single base architect.

Many people feel locked out of bases because they can't contribute. The only way they can help with the base is to earn Prestige, which just gets swallowed up by rent or by high prices - and after level 25, they have to sacrifice Influence to do that. The only way they can contribute is via a negative. They don't get to ADD anything.

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I'd say it goes even further than this. I've been running a little experiment for the past few months where I create an alt and pop into Mercy or Atlas and wait for the inevitable SG invite. I join and watch the SG behavior for a couple of weeks or so to see how they run things. In nearly all cases the majority of SG members are pre level 20, with the minority being the leaders who are higher level, though usually not above 40. Of the low level members the majority haven't been on it over two weeks and the higher levels not much more frequently. Usually after a week or so the low levels are purged and the recruiting begins again. Now the SG is full of new people that don't know each other. They're given the speech about earning prestige and then left to their own devices.

The cycle starts over. Some play, most don't. Last login numbers run into the double digits until a new culling/recruit session happens. It seems this process exists only to serve the leaders of the SG and that entry to that group within a group can be nearly impossible to gain. These SGs treat new members like day laborers instead of valued members that can contribute anything of meaning to the SG.

I have no idea how to fix this. Some people that lead SGs want their base and they want it now. If the price is to plow through one hundred new members a month then so be it. I know every SG isn't like this, that some still value the old methods of recruiting players that they've come to know over time. But I think those SGs are now the minority while the Prestige Mills, as I've taken to calling them are by far the majority.

A few ideas that might help. Have different plots.

1. Raid plots. These plots can contain any item and are only limited by the constraints now in place.

2. Non-Raid plots. These plots would be cheaper but wouldn't allow the placing of any raid items. If NPC raids were implemented these plots could do that.

3. Casual Plots. These plots would be even cheaper but would be limited in size and could only contain med stations, storage, and an SG computer. No NPC raids, teleporters, crafting or buffing stations.

I don't know that this would actually help, but I'd like to think that given a choice between base types and prices that more people would be inclined to put forth the effort to obtain a base. This might also help people that join an SG just for the base and have to pay the price of prestige mule. If they could get admittedly limited base functionality at a lower price they wouldn't need to join an SG for that reason alone.

Reading this thread brings back some memories. The hunting teams in Perez, watching the entire zone show up to beat on the poor old level 15 was it? Kraken. There actually being people in KR and Boom. Running around Atlas wondering why there were so many level 50 Fire/Dev blasters and what made them so damn uber(I joined after the Smoke Grenade fix) and peeking into scary, scary places like Brickstown at level 15. I really miss the sense of wonder I had at the time. Hearing zone names like Steel Canyon, Indepence Port and Talos Island and trying to imagine what I would find there once I was actually high enough. Going into a hazard zone for the first time and seeing the absolutely HUGE spawns. Being a level 24 invul/SS tank and doing the Sister Psych TF. Seeing the mass of level 28 Freaks in the first mission, taking a deep breath and diving in, and then walking out.

Hey who was that guy that had a TF tied to Psych? The one that dealt with that crazy Malaise? I miss that TF. Damn, doing the Positron TF for the first time and calling the devs every sort of name I could think of throughout it, and then finishing it with only 3 people at some ungodly hour. As I'm typing this I see the old manual sitting on my desk. If you still have yours crack it open and give it a read. Some great stuff in there that reminds just how much this game has changed, and how much in the manual was wrong even back then. I suppose the one thing I miss the most about the good old days was the newness of it all, getting and using new powers, watching high levels obliterate some wayward ambush and craving that power. Now, well, maybe it's time for a break. After a little over two years the shine has worn off a bit. I still love the game, but damn what I wouldn't do to get that new MMO smell again.

Works fine for me. I did the Freak respec trial the other day with a four player team, two blasters, a scrapper and myself, SS/Invul. I had no problems getting and keeping aggro. I think I used Taunt maybe three times, for those wave stragglers that like to hang out on the catwalks for some reason. Other than that Punchvoke and Invincibility did the job. We had one death the entire trial. One of the blasters got steamrolled in the final wave I think it was. Not much to be done about that with aggro limit capped at seventeen though.

Maybe if you posted your build we could get an idea of where you are having problems.

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It looks like the devs finally figured out how to count to one.

Single target attacks now hit only one target no matter how many you have stacked.

There might be a bug though. A couple times when I had a few stacked up, it would say "Readying attack", but then nothing. No hit, no miss, no nothing. Cone/AoE attacks worked fine there, but single target wouldn't do anything. I'll have to play with it some more and see what's going on.

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Strange. I was in a mission today with my tank, herding and stacking, and using KO Blow on the stacks. It worked every time. Although I have noticed in the past that Jab and Punch don't work on stacks nearly as well as Haymaker and KO Blow.

The mission was one of those level 50 'Close the Portals' with the Council as the enemy.

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What do you mean by "worked"? Were you hitting multiple targets with those attacks or were you just hitting/missing one target every time?

The patch they put in removes multiple hits on stacked targets with single target attacks. The bug I ran into only happend two times in one mission, so it seems to be quite rare.

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I mean it worked, herd, move around a corner, wait for them to stack, KO Blow, nice Council Blossom. Though it was hard getting them to stack sometimes.

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It looks like the devs finally figured out how to count to one.

Single target attacks now hit only one target no matter how many you have stacked.

There might be a bug though. A couple times when I had a few stacked up, it would say "Readying attack", but then nothing. No hit, no miss, no nothing. Cone/AoE attacks worked fine there, but single target wouldn't do anything. I'll have to play with it some more and see what's going on.

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Strange. I was in a mission today with my tank, herding and stacking, and using KO Blow on the stacks. It worked every time. Although I have noticed in the past that Jab and Punch don't work on stacks nearly as well as Haymaker and KO Blow.

The mission was one of those level 50 'Close the Portals' with the Council as the enemy.

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[*]Energy: Boost Range - Replaced with a click version of PFF that cannot be perma'd


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You can have my Boost Range when you pry it from my cold dead hands, you damn dirty ape.

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You didn't notice I had put it into Build Up?

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To be honest I hadn't. But if the two powers are combined into one you know as well as I do that one or both will have to be nerfed. Unless we can slot it for Range and/or Damage. I don't want to have to slot it that way, but I suppose I could live with that.

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[*]Energy: Boost Range - Replaced with a click version of PFF that cannot be perma'd


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You can have my Boost Range when you pry it from my cold dead hands, you damn dirty ape.

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so seriously, what do you guys think the next nerf will be? or maybe, what change will that make that also affects regen?

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Does Dull Pain recharge faster than rest? If yes, then that's our puppy.

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Regen scrappers were the most overpowered AT on the game (circa I3)


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I used to think this as well. My regen came up during I2/I3 and she was a great Golden Goddess walking the earth.

Then I made my invul/ss tank. Just imagine hundreds of mobs all trying to rip me apart only to be destroyed by the Rage + Footstomp + Fireball +Footstomp combo. The level of destruction I could, and still can to an extent, deal out with my tank far outsripped anything I ever did with my scrapper. Of course it was a longer road with my tank, but at 50 the tank was far superior.

Anywho, I'm going with the crowd here, QR is going buh bye. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Int take a kick to the nads as well.

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Here's the thing, though:

Statesman only said the stores in Talos and IP.

Either he just listed Talos and IP as examples, or he means that those stores in the Talos and IP are the only stores he wants to see gone. It's no surprise that those cater to the level 20-30 crowd: a crowd that already has contacts in Striga and (I'd assume) Croatoa that sell enhancements.

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I'm fairly sure the contacts in Striga only sell Natural and Tech enhancements. They might sell Science as well, I'd have to check to be sure. With the nature of the beasties in Croatoa I'd assume the contacts there would sell Magic enhancements. This would limit players being able to buy unless they were one of those origins.

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Maybe he just wants to see people cut back on going all the way back to Talos to sell. It could be a change as simple as that. That he's been teaming with too many high level heroes on whatever server he plays on that keep holding up his pick-up group because they have to go back to Talos to sell.


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Hehe. This would the all time bad reason for a change in the stores. I understand though, it is aggravating to be on team that wants to sell every ten minutes.

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Either way, the levels this would directly affect are levels that have multiple contacts that sell all enhancements. The stores don't sell anything other than Power 10 SOs, so it wouldn't be that big a loss if they were removed and would mean more people would have to sell at Ghost Falcon and the SO contacts.

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If we assume, and that's all we should do until States himself says for sure, that he meant the stores in Talos and IP, and I'm guessing he meant the Origin stores, this would effect the 20s more than anyone. Even though the stores sell only Power 10s, they still are a great help to newish heroes that might not have contacts worked up.

Thinking on this some more I've come to think that this issue stems from States not liking that players are filling up on SOs as soon as they hit 22. I understand why he doesn't like that, it's quite a power shift. But I think he also knows that there isn't much to be done about it, much like Stamina, without hurting the casual players.

That's who I'm worried about. For myself it's no big deal. I'm a powergaming min/maxer, I, or another will find a way to deal with it and move on. Sure I'll whine a bit, but in the end I'll deal.

Well since States didn't come right out and say that stores are gone we can all relax a bit.

But if they do remove stores I can a huge shift in the haves and have nots in this game. All my characters are mutants. This has nothing to do with concepts and everything to do with the fact that most of the mutie stores are right by the trams. Given that I'm all mutie, I have every mutie contact worked up to full enhancement sales, so this won't effect me at all. While other heroes are struggling to get decent drops, fighting with teams to do their missions to unlock contact sales, I'll be sitting pretty. Selling won't be a problem at all though, since I doubt the devs would remove the Freedom Corp stores that no one but me seems to sell enahncements at.

What really worries me is that this would cause a player driven economy to spring up over night. How much would those lovely endrec SOs go for on the open market? This is an SO that I've only ever gotten once as a drop in thousands of hours of playing.

Also I can see teams getting harder to live with since the members that have higher lvls to provide SOs won't feel like doing missions to work up other's contacts. I would be willing to help out other players, but I can't honestly say how long I would do this. At some point I'll want to do my missions as well, and depending on my character I may not be happy with sticking to Heroic difficulty to ensure no one on the team out levels the contact they're trying to work up.

Power changes and stuff like that I can live with, but something like this, even with adjusted drops, could be very very bad.

States: Well someone has to scout.
Manticore: I'm not doing it, I just go my suit cleaned.
Positron: Don't look at me, I'm all out of awakens.
Jet Li: Hey I'm a Natural, one of you super freaks do it.
States: Geez guys, we're heroes here, one of you has to go!
Synapse: Why is everyone looking at me? Oh I get it. Send the blaster right? I'm just going to die anyway so why not?
Manticore: Just go do it, you have SS.
Synapse: Yeah fine. Just have your rez ready Posi.
Positron: Dude, I spec'd that out last week.
Synapse: ........you guys are [censored].

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Y'know, it'd be nice if they DID aggro on things- but I think they don't because someone could in theory train Positron through the town, whacking everything in sight.

Though a L50 is going to vaporize most SC spawns on contact. Maybe if they have some sort of ranged attacks (even Scrappers/Controllers get decent ones) they can use to mangle things in range? I'd train stuff to Manticore just to see him use that bow before I5. :P

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Dude, that's what I said. I didn't say make them move and fight, I said give them an automated power like the patrol bots that just stand there at hazard zone entrances and trams and zap things. One-hit kills.

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Urge...to...herd...all...of...Steel...to...Positro n...rising...must...fight

Urge for teh win! :P