Degnared

Explicit text seems reasonable enough. Especially as it is now, so that you dont' get to the end of the mission and find an Archvillain, then realize you needed a team to beat it. I know I kind of feel cheated when I get invited to a team to beat the AV in the last room.

Unless, of course, it was their original intent to be vague about it. It makes sense in a few situation, such as the Shadowhunter mission. It's 1 hour, timed, defeat all in an instanced outdoors, full of wolves. All you know ahead of time is there were tracking devices on some of the wolves, and they've stopped transmiting, or something like that. Then, part way through the mission, you encounter Shadowhunter, who says that he's culled those tracked wolves from his herd. And now you're down to a half hour with an AV to fight, and probably more wolves to beat. I admit it doesn't seem fair, but that might've been the "original intent".

I don't think it's such a bad thing to decide that whatever you were originally doing, or were going to do, isn't as good of an idea as this new thing you're going to do.

How is seeing an Archvillain with a full team *better* content than seeing the same character as an Elite Boss when you're solo or in a small, low difficulty group? I expect the difficulty of facing an Elite Boss solo is comparable to facing an Archvillain with the average team, especially the average team which is planning on facing an Archvillain.

I think some people are confused, with the idea that they won't see the character at all, but some other Elite Boss. I'm certain that that isn't the case.

But, uh, if Castle gets promoted for these qualities it's likely to be a PR sort of job not a development sort of job.

I would hope that one yellow isn't enough to break through two powers worth of stealth (Hide + Stealth). Two seems fair. As far as I can tell, any single perception power sees through a single layer of stealth. I know I was seeing Stalkers with the IR Goggles, and Tactics will see them to, I understand. Stacking the two will very likely see through both.

On the subject one one shotting (from full health), do you know what pains must be gone to to accomplish this? The Assassin's Strike alone certainly won't manage it. With a Build-Up you might manage against some squishes if you're well slotted. Generally this one shot behavior comes into play with the Assassin's Strike, Build-Up, and at least a few reds. And of course you need to hit. Build-Up does include a tohit buff, so this isn't too large of a concern, but Assassin's Strike isn't autohit, for sure. Though, if I were trying this, I'd probably take a few yellows in conjunction, and maybe a preemptive break free, just in case. Of course, this all supposes you've got a target that's standing still. These are easily found in ongoing battles, where your target probably isn't at full health anyway. And these ongoing battles are generally rife with AoE unpleasantries, and stacked tactics all around. Players who aren't actively engaged are usually travelling.

My Broadsword/Invulnerability Scrapper had a friendly rivalry going in Siren's Call with a Stalker. Before I even thought to try IR Goggles (and I don't have Tactics), we engaged on a couple occassions. It was always a close fight. His Assassin's Strike would take me down to 20%-25%, and I would immediately Dull Pain back to about 60%. I'd probably get hit with a Placate and a Critical at this point, and be around 50%. Somewhere in this I managed to Build-Up and Headsplitter. We never managed to get much further than this, because some heroes would rush in and break my Stalker friend in half.

When I did start using IR goggles, I saw him coming, and we only tried that scenario once before he moved on, I think.

I don't think it's unreasonable that if your teammates - or even your general allies (other villains in non Free-For-All zones) - can see you, then any NPCs affiliated with you would be able to see you in the same manner. I certainly appreciate the change to combat NPCs, of course.

This thread is more likely to provoke some new limit on giving away influence than it is to increase infamy payouts.

I read somewhere that the original intention was that players would trade enhancements. I would like to see more in game tools in this direction. Perhaps a place at the universities could be designed for this. There's a request channel, but that is more often used for team requests than trading requests, and if you make a trading request, you're likely to be met with silence. The in game society wouldn't know how to start a trading economy at large. If they had a push in this direction, then we could be trading our useless DOs and SOs for useful ones, instead of selling then buying, at a loss.

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Will you also allow players above the current maximum level to receive the PvP zone missions? These PvP missions affect the entire zone, so it doesn't seem correct to only let a subset of the PvP players in the zone to affect it.

If the mobs don't scale correctly to higher level players in the zone, why not make the missions autoexemp players to the PvP zone level?

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Second.

Energy Aura Bugs:
Hide toggle has single target icon, instead of self toggle icon. (Not a biggie.)

Power Shield has a root effect when activated while Kinetic Shield does not. I'm not sure why Power Shield would need it, either. It seems to be using something like the teleport animation. I think it's possible the root effect was copied with it.

Virtue Badges

Badge hunting coordination on Virtue. Announce your badge missions and see if anyone wants in, or coordinate hunt or event badges. Etc.

My beloved Broadsword has a guide listed with every secondary but Invulnerability. If someone has a guide which takes account of having both, I would much appreciate it.

You can read the story during a task force (or anyone's mission) by clicking on the i button next to the mission on the missions drop down.

Enjoy.