Comicsluvr

Hi, my name is Comicsluvr and I used to be a market hater.

A review of some of my earlier posts on the Market will reveal that I was one of the more verbal, and less informed, about the Market. I was officially converted sometime early last year.

I still think that the Market has problems but then many of them stem from mechanics, not ebil marketeers. Players are also their own worst enemies in most cases.

I would be interested in a poll of how many players have overspent on something just from hastily adding a zero. How many have done it more than once?

I still think the Market has issues but it is not the den of thieves that I used to think and many others still believe.

I think this FAQ is a good idea. I'll be glad to add stuff as I think of it.

One thing that saves my MMs and their pets a lot is using macros and other shurtcut command keys.

I used to dispair when my Bruiser would run out of Leadership range and die fast. Then I started using 'goto aggressive' commands for him and the Enforcers. My tactics go something like this:

I move to about 60 feet of the spawn. I have cone powers with this range so I'm pretty good at guessing it by now.

I leave the Minions in BG mode to help me absorb hits. That way they tend to stand near me anyway. If the Pyro wants to run up that's his bad...

I use the goto aggressive on the Enforcers and place them midway between me and the spawn. That way their leadership covers the minions and the Bruiser.

Then I set the bruiser to goto aggressive and send him into the spawn. If he gets out of my Leadership range I just move up a little. Any personal buffs I have to increase his life span I give him before he goes or I just feed him Insps that I seldom use.

Any MM that doesn't use Force Fields can be tricky. Play to your strengeths and the enemy's weaknesses and you'll have better luck I'm sure.

If you're both running Mercs then one running Pain Dom and the other running Dark will rock the house.

You'll both have an AoE heal in case one goes down or you get seperated.

Tar Patch keeps the targets where you want them for a good while (while you shoot them)

Darkest Night is a great debuff against Bosses and higher. Anything else will die fast.

If you both take Leadership the stacking of that alome will make you much more brawny. Add in the Nightfall cloaking Dark Power and you'll be harder to hit. Stacked Assault makes up for any damage defecits and Tactics ensures that more shots will be hits.

At the lower levels some powers shine more than others so try a duo to lvl 12 or so, get DOs and see if yu like them. If not try another mix (or an alternate Build). 1-12 in a MM due is a lazy afternoon of play so no big loss of time.

If AR/Dark Corruptors are possible (no Mids on this comp) then I'd go with that. His /Dark plus yours will be awsome and your ranged AoE will help his undead out a lot.

*dashes off to see how much Inf he has on his Thugs toon*

To be honest why restrict this to 50s? Why not make it so that everyone could do a few missions in every zone? Hear me out before going for the pitchforks:

We already have a system in place for the local police contacts. Get the scanner freq, do three missions then get a Safeguard right? Ok, same principle but usable for higher-level toons. You go to a zone where the highest-level mob on the street is beneath your notice and the scanner gives you up to thre missions you can do in that zone. After that you HAVE to go to another zone. You can flip back and forth if you like but limit it to three before you have to move on.

IMHO this will encourage heroes to move around somewhat rather than camping in the highest zones. Of course Hunt X missions wuld be excluded from the list to keep highbies from hunting for the same targets as lowbies or having to go 3 zones away to find an appropriate mob but other than that no major changes are needed.

I would be willing to take a Merit hit if I soloed a TF. That way if could go at my pace, log if I had to and return. If I wanted to speed it I could. If I wanted to lope around and read every clue and defeat every bad guy I could do that too.

I think a LOT more people would do TFs if they coud be soloed. If the AV at the end is too tough to colo then include a warning at the beginning that the character reduce thair Diff so they spawn as EBs instead.

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-A stage and an NPC band to go with them, either one for each side or one in the center and we'd get different bands made up of different enemy groups or sometimes just an original band.

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Orrrr...guitar/bass/drum/singing emotes so we can form our own bands!

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First time I've ever seen an emote suggestion I liked!

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And, as soon as they diverted development resources from more commonly asked for and appropriate things like power set proliferation, new power sets, costume pieces, content, and the like, everyone who realizes that it would be a significant amount of work for very little effort (as well as being nonsensical because inf doesn't actually represent money) would go up in arms.

It would be an interesting distraction, but, like many ideas that would simply be moderately entertaining distractions from the real game, I'm going to say no exclusively on the grounds that there are better things for the devs to spend their time on.

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I've been saying the same thing ever since we got more Emotes than we have mission maps...

This is one of those issues that a few people would be interested in but not enough to warrant the change.

Considering all of the hard coding that goes into a character's frame (see 'why we can't change height') I'd be willing to bet the only way to do this would be some sort of weird xp transfer system. Basically you buy the change (just like a name change) and doing so saves your toon as they are at that moment. Then you delete the old one and create the new one with the new gender and the exact same name. Then you Load the saved stuff you had before and now your new toon has everything they had before but with a new gender. It would also act as a respec though since you'd have to retrain up.

I'd be shocked if the Devs could pull it off with anything short of this level of mechanation.

Yeah I'd go with whatever combination of Defender or Controller Mind/Sonic Powers seemed to feel right to you. Either Mind or Sonic can be portrayed as hypnosis of the crowd or simply stimulating the audible pleasure centers so they like whatever you play.

Since you're a musician (and regarding the Villain name mentioned above) I'd also try some sort of qualifier in the name relating to music. Your name should immediately conjure up mental images of music and orchestra instead of ballet.

Long post warning. Tl;dr is the last line.

1) I am not an economist but having lived in the 'low income' bracket for most of my life I feel qualified to speak on it.

2) I see the current system as unfair to the 'little guys' (new players or players new to the Market...not always the same thing). More on this below.

3) All arguements of 'Market PvP' are wasted on me because every other facet of PvP in the game is voluntary. Yes, you can still choose not to use the Market but unlike PvP the Market is such a large and pervasive part of the overall game now ignoring it would be like driving a car with 3 tires.

4) I heavily favor taxing the rich, in RL and in the game. Why? Because they can afford to pay it pure and simple.

5) My problem is not with just the Market but the manner in which it functions with the Crafting System as well.

6) The Markets from redside and blueside should have been merged from the start. Barring that they should have been merged some time ago. As it is the redside Market, a big attraction to some players, is very sluggish. This directly the number of redside players which directly affects the amount of redside content.

Ok, on to the meaty part. I personally think that the Crafting system is borked because some higher-level Recipes require salvage attainable only by lower-level toons. When a lvl 40-something toon needs an Alc Silver or other piece of Common Salvage he thinks nothing of paying 50-100k for it because he can earn that much in a few minute's of play. If a character in the teens or 20s needs it they may have trouble competing with the price and get shut out.

A real world analogy would be bread. Yes, the wealthy still buy bread, however some of them buy the ultra-pure and expensive designer bread (yes, designer bread...) that lower or middle income people avoid simply due to the price. You never hear of someone buying all of the bread in town and then flipping it at a huge profit.

Personally I think that all recipes should require salvage that only drops in the level range of the recipe. Purples need more high-end salvage and are a good example of this to me.

My other problem with the Market is manipulation. I have always felt since I9 launched that there should be Market controls to prevent a few characters from cornering the Market on a single commodity. Something listed as Common should always BE Common in that there should ALWAYS be a supply of it on the Market. No one player or cartel should be able to bottom the Market on anything.

Another RL bread analogy: If Don Trump came to my home town and decided to buy all of the bread in town in a single day he likely could...and at the store's price. Wow...no more bread for anyone else...for that day. More bread would be delivered that day or the next. If he continued to do so the local bread makers would see the golden goose for what it was and begin making more bread because the stores hate running out. In the real world supply always increases to meet demand unless the supply in controlled by the powerful few.

Now in-game we have the problem that supply does not increase with demand thus prices can be manipulated. This often hurts the little guys more because they do not have the earning power of the bigger ones. I think this stifles the whole Crafting system. Sure, you might get lucky and sell a recipe or salvage for a million at lvl 10 and be rolling in it. But what if you want those lvl 20 IOs a few levels later but can't afford to craft them because all of the salvage for them has spiked over 50k?

To sum it all up I think the Market should be designed in such a way that there is ALWAYS a minimum number of salvage pieces available. If the amount gets too low the Market generates more to meet the minimum number at whatever the Vendor price is. Common items would have a minimum of 1000 pieces, Uncommon 100 and Rares 10. This would also benefit Redside with it's sluggish Market.

I don't think we should increase fees or anything like that at all. I simply think that the best way to curtail the amount of Inf in the game is to reduce the amount that can be earned at the top end. Since many more times the Inf can be earned in the Market than actual play I feel this is where it needs to begin. Lower the amount of cornering the Market on Common Salvage the the overall Inf amount in the system will go down. This holds true for anything that would only be useful for lower-level toons like common IOs under lvl 25 or so. If the 45-50 level guys want to have massive bidding wars on purple recipes and whole sets of 45-50 recipes let them...none of it will reflect on the rest of the playerbase at all.

As I see it the easiest way to reduce the amount of Inf in the system is simply to lower the amount that the uber-rich can earn.

Thanks...I wrote it months ago when the City Scoop sent out a hue and cry for fan fiction but never submitted it. Now that I have (and it's been tentatively accepted!) look for more stuff from me and my fevered imagination!

I was sitting at the table with the new shackles on when she came in. The shackles were new because I’d broken the last pair…last three pair actually. The ‘table’ was a block of steel that probably weighed five tons or more with a knee hole carved out of it and lots of places to fasten shackles. My feet were fastened together as well as to the floor under the knee hole. My hands were completely enclosed…probably because of that guard’s neck I broke when I grabbed him. Then the hand covers were fastened to the table. My arms were fastened to my sides and my thighs were banded together. I was beginning to think they didn’t like me any more…

“Name?” she said simply.

“Schrupsher Slasher,” I replied simply. She scowled at me and her pencil hovered over the clipboard she was holding. “This will go much faster if you cooperate,” she said pointedly.

“My name is Violence, Total Violence,” I said finally.

“Your records here at the Zig are pretty complete Mr. Violence…starting from when you were broken out. But the breakout and subsequent fire destroyed many previous records including yours. I would appreciate it if you could fill me in on who you were and how you came to be this way.”

“Why bother?” I asked flatly. “I’ve racked up more prison time that Charles Manson. You guys would be nuts to let me go…ever. So take me back to my cell, turn on my cartoons and leave me alone.”

“Mr. Violence…,” I could see that calling me that bothered her, “…I’m trying to help you. Yes, you’ve been convicted of a number of crimes but I’m here to try and make your stay here less painful if at all possible. I’m trying to learn from you so that I might help others before they get as far down the road of crime as you are. I’m trying to find out how I can help others not turn out the way you did.”

“Well you’re honest at least,” I said after a long pause. “Last guy was some self-serving putz trying to get his name in the papers by working on a terrible case. Didn’t care about me at all.”

“Is that why you killed him?” she asked in a softer tone, sounding like she really cared.

“No, I killed him because he took me off my meds just to see my reaction. Being a lab rat is top of my list of things I don’t like doing.”

“I’m not like him Mr. Violence…really I’m not. Please tell me what I need to know and I’ll see to it that you get the best treatment we can provide.”

I sat there in silence for a while, a long while it seemed. The lights hummed and her coffee got cold and the gears whirred in my arm and the metal creaked in my armor. Finally I decided to go for it.

“Creed,” I said simply, “my name is Arthur Creed.”

She did some fast typing on her laptop and pulled up my file. It wasn’t very impressive, small-time mostly. I’d been an enforcer for the Family a long time ago…and not a terribly good one. I was strictly bottom rung until one day Tony calls me up and tells me to head over to this warehouse he owns. Seems he was paying some junior mad scientist for some new weapons and the guy hadn’t delivered yet. When I arrived two guys hiding in the dark grabbed me and tossed into the big glass tank at the back of the building.

“So you were taken for experiments?” she asked as the guard brought us each coffee. Mine was the bigger cup and I drank it through a straw. The small hole in my faceplate didn’t allow for much else. “How terrible.”

“Yeah I guess the doc needed his lab rats and Tony had decided that I was expendable. So I get injected with all manner of things and the doc monitors my progress and the whole thing nearly kills me. I lost track of time in there…must have been weeks I don’t know. But when one of the guards slipped up one day and let me out I took my chance.”

“You escaped?”

“Hell yeah, but I got me some payback first. The doc and his goons tried to stop me but I guess I was stronger that he figured. I smashed him to a bloody smear…guards too. Later that night I paid a visit to Tony’s house and let him know I wanted to quit my job.”

“You asked him to let you go after all he’d done to you?”

“Not exactly…I turned in my resignation as I tore out all of his arms and legs and used the rest as a sofa cushion.” I explained evenly. She looked frightened and I was glad. She wasn’t all ice and steel, she could be afraid. That’s good…everyone should be a little afraid once in a while.

“So what happened next?” she asked the obvious question. I tried to remember the early days two years or more ago and fill her in.

“I started doing contract work for Arachnos, same old enforcer stuff but with higher stakes. They gave me a medi-port link, body armor, drugs to calm my head when I got over the edge. When I got shot up they put me back together. It was better than rolling bums in the gutter so I stayed around a while.”

“What about your…other enhancements. Did they install those too?”

“I wasn’t as tough as I thought,” I replied as I pulled on the hand shackles a bit. The guards tensed but they knew I wasn’t going to try anything. “I had my left hand bitten off by a demon about six months after I started working. They hooked me up with a cybernetic one and I did a few bank jobs to pay for it. My legs got all mangled by the Warhulk I mixed it up with about a year ago. They gave me new piston legs to increase my jump distance and kicking power and I kept working. The big one was when my right arm was torn off fighting a Malta robot. I never knew it was gone until I tried to swing with it and nothing happened. They held me in Medical for a week after that job, hooked up a new cybernetic arm all the way to the shoulder.”

“According to the medical report you’ve also had a number of operations and replacements done on your internal organs,” she read aloud from my file. “One lung, a heart pump, several bones replaced with metal rods, one artificial kidney and some strange sort of replacement for your stomach. All this in the last two years?”

“Yeah they fixed all that and I still have to pee,” I said dryly as I finished my coffee. “Granted it’s only once a week or so but there’s just enough organics in there to need the system. They also added a drug engine to process and inject my meds on regular intervals.”

“Tell me more about the meds,” she said as she leaned forward. Oh but she was pretty. “We’ve tried to analyze them but we get nothing that makes any sense. It looks like you’re on a stimulant and a depressant at the same time.”

“That’s complicated,” I said and nudged my coffee cup. She motioned to the guard and he brought a fresh one for both of us. “The doc’s experiments made me different in a lot of ways. My muscles are denser, my bones tougher. But in order to run it all I overproduce adrenalin. Basically my engine runs a little hot all the time. He did it as a motivation to work for him because it’s the only thing that fights the pain.”

“Pain? Your doctor said nothing about pain.”

“Remember that self-serving part? Yeah, he left out the pain for his little tests. I’m in pain pretty much all the time. The more relaxed I get the more it hurts. But when I get charged up and the adrenalin gets to pumping I feel it less. When I’m really fired up I don’t feel it at all. So doc built the perfect fighting machine, a wind-up toy that only feels good when it’s breaking other toys.”

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “So you HAVE to exert yourself in order to stop hurting? How terrible. But how do you sleep?”

“I don’t usually,” I replied as I finished the coffee. “The drug that you can’t figure out acts as adrenalin to fool my body into thinking it’s all overworked. That keeps the pain in check most days. But at the same time if it didn’t have the depressants I’d go stir crazy just sitting. The synthetic is good but not perfect…it still keeps me on edge all the time.”

“Is that why you volunteered for all of those work details since you were captured?” she asked as she typed. “You wanted something to exert yourself?”

“Yes, but for some reason they won’t let me lift weights in my cell,” I said flatly. She looked at me over the laptop’s screen and then resumed typing.

“So tell me about the last crime you committed…the one where you were finally captured and brought here.”

“Finally? I’ve been nabbed a dozen times over the past few years. Trouble is cops never listen when their bosses tell them to be careful with proper villains like me. So I break out and return to my wicked ways eventually.”

“The crime Mr. Creed…if you please?” It was the first time I’d heard my name spoken in over two years.

“I was with a few others breaking into Portal Corp,” I explained finally. “We were looking to steal some technology to sell when Longbow showed up. Then the PPD showed up with the hard suits. Then some of those new Psy Cops showed up. My armor can take a lot of punishment but mental powers cut me like a hot knife through cheese.”

“Butter,” she said absently as she typed. “Hot knife through butter.”

“Hey you eat what you like and I’ll eat what I like and I like cheese,” I said firmly. She stopped typing and smiled before urging me to continue.

“Well the rest of my crew were on the floor or using their medi-porters to get out but mine malfunctioned. I was stuck there surrounded by all the cops and Longbow so I just gave up peacefully.”

“It says here that you were beaten senseless after killing two officers and sending eleven others to the hospital,” she corrected me.

“The last time I was captured the count was nineteen killed, four in hospital and six forced into early retirement,” I stated calmly. “Not to mention untold millions in property damage. Compared to that I’d call two dead plus eleven wounded a peaceful surrender.”

“So you say,” she coughed and decided to let it go. “Now what I’m curious about is how you intend to spend your time here in prison. Are you going to try going to school or working in the shops or what?”

“I’m just passing through lady,” I said with a grin she couldn’t see through my helmet. “I plan on breaking out as soon as I can and resuming my burgeoning criminal career.”

“But surely Mr. Creed you must realize that there is no possible way you can escape now. Your past efforts have given us enough information to hold you permanently. We know how strong you are, what sets you off, how to control your medication, everything. How do you hope to escape under those conditions?”

“By letting people underestimate me, just like they always do.”

“How so? We know everything about you. What have we underestimated about you?”

“The depths to which I’ll go to escape,” I said as I quietly increased the pressure on the bands around my legs. I also pulled ever so slowly against the shackles holding my hands to the table. “You see in your world I’m just a thug, a stupid criminal with no sense of right or wrong. You think that I’m violent because I was mistreated or my parents didn’t love me or some crap. What you don’t get is that I LIKE being a violent psychopathic killer. And when I get out I’m going to prove it to you by killing you even though all you’ve ever done is be nice to me and try to help me.”

She sat back in her chair and for a second I thought she was going to cry. Her hand covered her mouth and I saw it shaking.

“Why…why would you do that?” she said softly. “I would never hurt you in any way. Why would you even think about killing me?”

“You remember the story about the fox and the scorpion?” I asked as I increased the pressure slowly. I could feel the metal stretching but it was taking so long. “The scorpion needs a ride across the river and asks the fox to take him. The fox says hey, if I do that you’ll sting me. The scorpion says if I do that then we both drown don’t we? The fox decides to carry him over and halfway across the scorpion stings him. As they’re both sinking the fox asks why and the scorpion says ‘it’s just the way I am.’”

The telltale creaking is what gave me away. As the shackles began to give the metal protested and the creaking sound alerted the guards. They brought their big gauges to bear but the woman was in the way. As they moved to get a better angle I tore the shackles loose and swung them back and forth. One guard crumpled as I hit his stomach, the other went down with a broken leg. The nice lady, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know her name, leaped back from her chair as I smashed the shackles down on the table. In another few seconds I was free.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded as she backed away.

“Why would I?” I asked “You’re not part of the job.”

“Job…what job?” she asked, apparently relieved that she was going to live.

“I got busted on purpose to get in here,” I explained as I opened the door and turned towards the cellblocks. “It was the easiest way to get in to break out another inmate.”

The alarms started blaring and two other guards came around the corner. Bad timing on their part. I straight-armed one against the wall and snatched up the other one by his collar.

“Wait! I’m your guy…the inside guy!” he shrieked as he dropped his rifle and struggled not to pee himself.

“You’re the guy who slipped the speeders in my coffee?” I snarled as I hauled him up eye to eye with me. Well, eye to digital optics anyway. He nodded so hard I thought his head would fall off. “You make lousy coffee!” I said simply as I folded him in half backwards over my arm. He shrieked so loud I was grateful for the sonic dampers I wore. I tossed him to the side and realized that the social worker was still cowering in the doorway.

“He was on your side,” she looked at the growing pile of bodies in horror. “Why did you kill him?”

I sighed…some people just don’t get me. “Remember the scorpion? And I really did hate his coffee. Some days that’s all it takes. If you really wanna live walk in front of me…down this way.” I motioned down the corridor with my head as I gathered up the bodies.

“Then…you’d really kill me?” she was crying as she stood up and began walking slowly.

“Lady, I’ve killed seven like you before breakfast…and I haven’t even HAD my breakfast yet. Now you walk in front of me and open the door with these keys as we go.”

She took the keys and began walking as I dragged the guards along by their belts. Twice we were jumped by more guards. I added them to the stack and we kept going. When we hit Maximum Security I held one of the guard’s eyes open for the retinal scan as she turned the key. Then the fun began. I found the cell I wanted, dumped the pile of guards and keyed the door open.

“You’re late,” he said as he stepped out. He was tall, taller than me even, but thinner. The grey and green mottled skin was pretty disconcerting the first time you saw him but the crown of horns was what really set him apart. That and his talent with magic.

“Well last time you broke ME out you took your sweet time too so quit griping,” We stood there scowling at each other for a few more seconds until we both started to grin. “Good to see you again Draegul old friend,” I said as we clasped arms. “I brought you a present.” He eyed the woman hungrily and I gestured to the pile of dead guards.

“You never let me have any fun,” he pouted as he began the incantation that would resurrect the guards and transform them into his slaves. The woman watched on as the guards stood up, even the one with the hairpin spine, and assumed the guises Draegul chose for them. He then laid down an inky fog that cloaked all of us from sight.

“She yours?” he asked as he hiked a thumb at my reluctant companion.

“For now,” I replied. “You broke the last one.”

“I work with what I have…not my fault she was of inferior construction.” His grin had more teeth that Captain Mako and all of them sharp. Some days he worried even me.

“Your lucky day…you get to live,” I said to her as I pushed her into Draegul’s cell and shut the door. It was made of steel but it had a speaker and a viewport. I wasn’t sure if she was feeling slighted or relieved since she looked a little of both.

“You know they’ll only treat you worse when they catch you again,” she said as she pounded on the door. Then her voice lowered to barely a whisper. “If you’re so terrible then why let me live?”

“Because when they let you out I want you to tell everyone what we did,” I replied. Tell them all how terrible we were, how we killed without mercy or hesitation. Tell them the next time they get the big gauges on us they’d better pull the damned triggers and get it over with instead of throwing us in prison over and over. Tell them we’ll keep killing and stealing and terrorizing until they put us down like the mad dogs we are. Then maybe they’ll get the point and do the job right next time.”

“We should go,” Draegul said as we heard more guards approaching . “It’s a long fight out even now.”

I looked hard at the woman and nodded once before we started down the hallway. Draegul kept his peace until we were out of earshot of her cell.

“You liked that one huh?” I nodded as we waded into the horde of guards that poured around the corner. Draegul made it too dark for them to see, too close for them to breathe, then his zombies and I crushed the life from them. He replaced his fallen minions as needed and slowly but surely we made our way out to the exercise yard. Once there he spread his wings and took flight while I leaped over the wall in a single bound and we headed for the river. We got into the sewer tunnels unseen and started back to our transport hidden off the coast.

“So why did you let her go?” he asked as we walked. “She would have made a good hostage if nothing else.”

“Propaganda,” I replied. “Now when she tells them how terrible we are they’ll be more afraid of us next time. Pirates used to do it all the time in the old days. Terrorize one shipload of people, murder a few, threaten the rest and the story spreads. Next time we tell someone to open a vault door they’ll do it.”

“And you liked her,” he said with a grin. “She was pretty and all but she didn’t seem to be your type…not enough leather and muscle. What was it about her that made her so special?”

“She didn’t call me a monster,” I said simply. “Nowadays that’s a rare thing. Now shut up and walk…it’s a long way home.”

My biggest problem with the OP's suggestion is calculating deaths per run. How on earth can you calculate something with so many thousands of variables including team makeup, individual builds and player's relative skill? One team with lousy builds but playing skill might be able to get through unkilled while a skilled team trying new (and not very good) builds might get smeared.

Personally I think most of the griefing could be cut out by simply not allowing anyone to 1-star an arc until they've finished it. If you start an arc then quit, the lowest you can rate it is 2 stars because you really haven't seen it all yet. Most griefers and starring cartels want to get through things fast, not play arcs they're going to slam anyhow. Someone who goes all the way through is more willing to give an honest answer in my opinion.

Otherwise the current system is ok for me. Anything can be griefed so trying to make a grief-proof system will just eat up Dev time better spent making new content IMHO.

Granted I wouldn't mind being able to see a percentage of teams that have finished versus how many have started. If I want something light I'll pick one with a 100% finish rate or close to it and 10< plays. If I want a challenge I'll grab something with lower finish rate and see what makes it so tough.

Vahz are tough in numbers but yeah, the zombies really are dumb as stumps. If you catch a bunch of them facing away from you and you use single-target attacks you can thin them down a lot before the rest will notice.

I always thought this was because they're resistant to Immobs and that makes them HELL for lowbie Controllers.

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I'm personally still stumped as to why they were called "meow".

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The same reason gamers started using the term 'pwned', some kid miskeyed the word owned, his friends who saw it thought it was cool and thus it spread. Just like a lot of the 'l33t speak' out there. Someone who REALLY likes cats wanted to mark their mission so their friends could fins it and so put the word meow in the title. Their friends searched for it and then their arcs used the same thing.

There were plenty of farm MArcs what were not so marked but so many of them were and so many others thought it was cool that it spread.

Note that NONE of the above is based on actual evidence or knowledge on my part, just a study of human nature. It might have been because the first Meow farm mission builder asked their cat what to call the MArc for all I know...

I created one called Hero Boot Camp, #94077. Three missions, all stock bad guys, first mish is 1-14 the other two are 1-20. In each mission there is a different Longbow officer to help.

I designed it as an alternative to the Sewers and to give new players an idea what it was like to run with one other person. The first officer is a FF Controller, the second an AR Blaster, the third a Shield Tank.

I'm still tweaking it but it's getting positive feedback and I've run it myself and it seems to be ok.

For the less serious-minded my Zombie Arc #46051 is pretty humerous and goes from 1-50. Read the text and the descriptions. The title alone (too long to even remember for me) is enough to play it.

Thanks for the tips crew. I was not aware that Burn lasted so long. I think I will simply build one with and one without and see how they run.

Thanks again.

My fire/fire Blaster is lvl 31 and having a good time. But soon I'm going to have a 'free' power pick and I'm torn over Burn and Combat Jumping.

Burn does AoE damage (and this guy is an AoE beast) and frees me from Immobs.

C-Jump grants good Immob protection and I can slot in a -KB.

Who out there has used Burn to good effect and is it worth skipping the C-Jump I have planned?

Input appreciated.

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If you're having fun, sure.

Especially with dual builds - you can have a "pure" build (as you call it,) and one to mess around with other stuff with. Comes in handy with some controllers/defenders/corruptors.

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This. Dual Builds have helped me a lot with some characters I was struggling with. Now I can have the 'Team Build' and the 'Fun whatever I want for Theme Build'. Great idea IMHO.

To be honest I would never be a low-level thug in Paragon City. I mean I can just be leaning against a wall and some gonk lights me on FIRE as he runs by? Forget that!

Now the more powerful organisations and villains are another matter but as a flunky I'd be out of Paragon City on the next bus.

My family and I watch these, turn the volume down and then MST3K them. Works great for silent flicks too. Usually MUCH funnier than what's going on...

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I'm a big Kin fan, but I believe TopDoc once posted numbers to show how game-breaking a team of 8 Fire/Rad controllers are when he was putting together one of his super teams. Taking away one of them and putting in a Kin only dropped the numbers. Basically you cap damage, ToHit, and recharge with 8 stacked AMs. The team runs Hotfeet and Choking Cloud. You team teleport into spawns and everything is held in a couple of seconds and then melts. The process gets a little faster once you add 24 Fire Imps but it's brutal even before then.

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I was on a Fire/Rad superteam for a while and I was always amazed at our potential. Even before the Imps we rolled through full spawns in less than 10 seconds. We devoured Monsters, AVs, everything with little trouble. AM plus Hasten requires 5 teammates to hit perma everything after that was gravy.

It was also boring as dirt after a few weeks truth be told. Every superteam I've ever been on where you had 8 identical or nearly identical builds eventually got so boring after a few weeks that I would quit. It's too much like an 'I Win' button to me...no contest at all.

My idea of a 'perfect' team has a few requirements and a lot of room for different stuff:

1) 8 good players who get along. This is key.
2) We like using Skype or some other team chat channel. This makes coordinating things SO much easier.
3) One of each AT because I like the old Avengers and FF comics where there was a mix and everyone seemed to have something to do. Powersets are not as important.
4) Everyone has fun.

All else is of secondary importance to me. I've seen team with mostly Blasters (lots of carnage), mostly Controllers (controlled carnage), Defenders (very safe carnage), Tanks (slow carnage) and Scrappers (Scrapperlock x 8 is wild to see!). All of them had good and bad days.

I would go for a theme team if I could. Everyone taking Fire or Ice Powers or Earth/Stone or all Mind/Illusion or something. Easier to make a coordinated team if everyone has a clue what everyone else can do.

Since I don't do much anime I'm not worried about fresh ideas for names and costumes. I used to spend more time doing a name that anything else but now I find that adding a color or gemstone to another word makes it much easier.