Dr_MechanoEU

Edward had managed to grab a hold of the Paragon times newspaper while on a bank job, he always did like to keep abreast of things going on in his favorite city.

He smiled when he saw the papers, "hmm...looks like it's more common than I thought...you know...I could use this to my advantage and protect the Heroes of Paragon city...then I'd have some blackmail material over one of them..."

He folded the paper, "hmm...perhaps I should prepare for a broadcast...an informational one this time..."

Right tonight is the night, L4D sheenanigans will begin at 10:30pm, hope to see everybody there

If this happens it tends to be 'I am a GOD!' the response is usually 'prove it...fight me in the arena and prove how much of a God you are' I can say with pretty much 100% certainty (spelling possibly incorrect) that there would be someone who can pummell the god character into submission, the current reigning Gladiators champion Freddie Femur for example or Fans own Toxic Weaver, neither of which claims to be a god, infact they use brand-own street thugs to take people out, so you weren't even pwned by another superhero...a mass of normal powered people with guns, lighter fuel, baseball bats, tire irons (gang warfare) and one strong SOB.

Nobody can claim to be a god if they were taken down by what amounts to a gang land kicking, especially a god of war.

Shame you couldn't have joined us tonight Fans, Quin kepting having crashes on the finale which didn't help the team much sadly, though we did get muchly pwned on the second map with the Boomer + Tank combination.

The maps all had 1 tank each for either side, normally in the same spawn point and a distinct lack of Witches (there wasn't one spawned in the entire campaign).

Right, enough of us own Left 4 Dead and also attend GG that it's probably time we set aside atleast 1 night a week for it.

Todays Versus campaign playthrough (Blood Harvest) was one side (me and my friend Idlehands have clocked up almost 40 hours each on Versus alone) and consisted of Myself, my friend Idlehands and Zeero on one side with Beet, Quin and Cactus Brawler on the other, hopefully it was fun for both sides involved and not just me, Idle and Zeero (the end score was 5k to 600ish).

Who has Left 4 Dead and would be interested in a one night a week Galaxy Girl get together, hopefully with enough people to fill out the full 8 needed for Versus mode.

Come on...you got to shoot at zombies and be the zombies, nothing much more fun than that.

Ed is the nearest thing I have to a god character, yes he is unkillable by normal means (gravity, explosions, modern weaponry and natural causes) but that is to explain Revive. However he does have one major glaring weakness in magic, any kind of demon binding spells or just being toasted by a magical fireball would cause him some serious harm.

Which is why he now remotely operates his schemes, primarily to avoid having any direct contact with heroes because he knows they probably would have worked this out by now.

Should Soaring Horizon ever get her hands on him, he'd be done for, if anyone actually took the time to do some mystical prying and research they could find out his true name (every demons true name is written down in a tomb of knowledge, though it would take a deal with a rather amoral power in order to get hold it).

Ingame he can stack enough Fear effects to actually fear AVs (this has been done to AV versions Romulous (normal and Nictus versions), Nemesis, Dra'gon, Hro'Dtohz, Hero-1 and Recluse to name a few) so usually that's the only ability I have that I tend to exaggerate.

My only trouble is that although he's one person he has 2 different powersets and I point blank refuses to mix them up, he's either a Mastermind and not as tough as his demon self but with a larger amount of firepower to bring to the table with his Bots and uses technology for his forcefields or a dark energy using regeneration scrapper.

The combination of scrapper and mastermind would reach tankmage levels and thus it is to be avoided.

World of Warcraft beater = We hope someone will eventually beat Blizzards cash cow...but we know it probably wont actually beat World of Warcraft.

*shudders* don't mention Gnomeregan...possibly the worst instance in all of WoW to the point where you can somehow aggro mobs who are 30ft below you at random (or atleast it seems that way) even had a case where it seemed like the entire instance came down on us at one point because we must have kept ahead of one far off mob we aggroed who picked up everybody else on his way to come smite us.

Stockades, Gnomeregan, Uldaman all had tightly packed mobs that runners just love to aggro and can make for testicles to the wall moments where if you survive you end up practically waist deep in corpses.

Now back on topic, the game may have gotten easier, I know inventions helped this even if they do take quite a long while to get through non-farming methods, take a look at my invinc/SS tanker, using inventions I can plug the Psi-resistance hole that set has to a level where it matches the same resistance I have to elemental damage (34% roughly) and that's not going all out (I could probably hit 50% if I used purples and all the really expensive sets).

Mind you IO sets are more for the 'advanced' player (I take casual to mean someone that is perfectly happy ignoring IO sets, doesn't even consider to try to comprehend set bonuses though there are vets who have the same attitude and thankfully the game isn't built around IO's).

Also the Patrol XP has helped, though I consider it a godsend, I find the 40-50 slog incredibly tedious since it seems to take far longer than it should (for me anyway) until I hit 45 and join a farm team to power level me to 50 (usually in one or two sittings).

Still that's my 2 bottlecaps.

It does seem to be that there's a link between them, the Power of Origins arc suggests that Incarnates tend to be similar to their predecessor and the 'original' origin, one origin to rule them all and in the heroics/villainy bind them.

The trouble with the Power of Origins arc is that it's all personal opinion, Sister Psyche says that there were no records of mutant origin heroes before the atom but I say that's bupkiss, we merely lacked the scientific explanation to consider some people of Mutant origin, their powers would have been attributed to some god (Magic origin, much like the Sybils) when in reality their powers were a mutation (plus Sister Psyche loves being the center of all things since she claims to be perhaps the worlds first purely Psychic mutant...yeah, whatever helps you keep your star status within the universe sister, if it helps you sleep at night).

From what I can fathom out is that the signature heroes are constants, there will always be an inventor type like Positron, always be a psychic/force fields like Sister Psyche.

The only thing is besides Sister whatsherface/Ghost Widow we have no other examples of the villains repeating themselves (no Lord Recluse version like Imperious is to Statesman, no heavily armoured Roman Mercenary or no Avatar of the Leviathan...).

Amy looked at Flash and smiled, "when my song starts you might want to give me some space..much arm and leg flailing is involved..."

She chuckled softly, "yeah it's an odd song to know the dance to but I just seemed to pick it up.."

TechnicalUK-ML-1291314-ML-

Amy is dragged to the dance floor and looks awkwardly around her. Amy doesn't know how to dance, well she knows how to dance really well to one song but she just dancing she's got a pair of two left feet but she tries for Flash's sake...

Amy sighed, "Bodi...can we have Tunak Tunak Tun...it's about the only song I know how to dance well too...ooh and a private comm chat with you if you please Bodi..."

Think the Union Server hamster just upped and died...right before Christmas too, poor little thing, I had a new wheel for him and everything.

Aka Union seems to have mysteriously crashed for myself...just wondering if any of you other innsominiacs are having the same trouble?

Edit: Nevermind seems to be ok now, false alarm all (even if there has been a suspisciously large number of map servers recently).

((hey some of us have to work/socialise so we don't get the chance to post in these topic as quickly as others :P))

Amy finally sauntered into the area, dressed in a Tuxedo, obviously deciding that one of those normal prom dresses really wouldn't suit her or the given attributes as to why she tried not to wear any form fitting clothing.

She slowly wandered through the crowd and over to Flash at the buffet table, "look sorry I'm late but I had some stuff to deal with, robbery in progress and I was a block away...I wasn't going to let a chance like that pass me up...anyway...I'm here now."

Amy smiled and leaned down to give Flash a kiss on the cheek, "Though I can't say I like the music they're playing..."

managed to get 18.50 on the old ski run and 48.50 on the new ski run and that was with SS/Sprint/Zero-G jet pack one one character and roughly the same on my other character thanks to Damz team of kins who gave my non-ss character (who had combat jumping) 3xSB and 1xIR which made the runs a lot faster to the point I was able to come off the course on the advanced ski run (by the abominable snowman) and still managed gold.

Ah this old chestnut of topic...

Well for Ed, since he's the only person I know whose gone from villain to hero to villain again and the fact he sees himself as of Paragon Cities major villains (not to mention it references his 'signature' power of Touch of Fear) I have him using This

Sadly Amy was going to be using Indestructible by Disturbed but Annette has already pinched that, plus it doesn't fit her fun loving personality and I've got no idea what theme tune would fit her...

Edit: Yeah just going through youtube...I think Word Up fits her fun loving personality.

The only type of attack that needs a seperate set of defense is Psi, all other attacks are considered to have a component of one of the above (Ranged-Lethal, Melee-Energy etc.) whereas Psi is often just listed as Psi...no melee, ranged or AoE component.

The system will use whatever your highest defense is against an attack so if you had higher Energy defense (40% lets say) than Ranged Defense (25% for examples sake) but were attacked by a Ranged Energy attack, the system would apply your 40% Energy defense to it and not the 25% Ranged defense. If the attack was of a damage type which you didn't have any specialised defense then only the 25% Ranged defense would be applied to it.

My view on merits is that the prices are a little bit too excessive and could be reduced by a third.

Merits introduced a lot more of a 'grindy' feel to 'City of' for me. I still believe fixing the too fast or too slow Taskforces to be of a modicum length instead of giving out merits as a carrot on a stick for some truly bloody awful content (yes I'm one of those people that despises running Positron with all my heart).

Reduce Posi/Synapse by a couple of missions (seriously do we need to visit the same map four freaking times in Synapse with no variant to it what so ever) and at the same time introduce a couple of missions to the Katie and Hess TF, sure they would need addition story for these extra missions but it stops them being a joke when awarding merits.

The other problem I have is that the merits are awards based on average run time...the LRSF and STF are some of the hardest content in the game yet because people tend to run them in opitmised teams the merits are a lot lower than they deserve to be...I doubt data mining showed how many times a group started but did not complete those two taskforces.

In my opinion both the LRSF and STF both should award the same 55 merits award by the Posi TF (Posi isn't at all hard on a small team or solo it's just incredibly boring and long).

Overall I think merits were a good idea but the pricing system is a little out of whack and I personally doubt we will ever see recipes drop in price if they prove to be a tad high, we'll only see the TF which become speedfarmed drop in merit value making it even more of a chore to get a recipe through merits.

[ QUOTE ]
There are no "fantasy" shields.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tis true, all the 'fantasy' (Kite, Knight, Heater, Targe Round, Cavalier) shields were present throughout points in history and have been used in battle.

Besides...ALL the weapons are Fantasy, that's a lie and you know it, let's take a look at Battle Axe shall we...

Legacy axe/colourable legacy ace, Rularuu's Wrath, Roman Axes: Yup these are fantasy, will agree on that one.

Hatchet, Pickaxe, Shovel, Firemans axe, lumberjacks axe: All are modern day items.

Talsorian, Impervium, Rikti Axe: Sci-fi axes.

Total Fantasy Axes (included Roman A, Roman B, etc.): 5

Total Modern/Sci-fi Axes: 8.

That's just Battle Axe, Bows have 1 (count it), 1 fantasy based bow (Rularuu's Gaze) all the rest are tech/real world based.

The only one which could be considered having a large number of Fantasy based weapons is Broadsword.

((Just like to thank those that took part in this short but sweet topic, unlike the last couple of times where there has only been one broadcast, this time there was several making him open to being traced, if anyone follows it, the trace leads back to a house in Darwins Landing in the Rogue Isles)).

to be honest with you there ML I think the figures are being marred by concentrating soley on the US.

There are some servers which still do weekly Hamidon Raids which may leave them thinking that the Hamidon Redux is acceptable. Meanwhile EU side, I don't think I've ever seen a Hamidon raid formulated as a plan/event get off the ground (hmm there was one organised through UBH but this was a long time ago now and it failed to beat Hamidon).

One suggestion, which came about from Lighthouse's post (The changes weren't FOR the oldschool PvPers and they knew that the changes would peeve them off something horrid but it was for getting new people into PvP) was that the Devs are simply thinking that the older PvPers will disappear and be replaced by a fresh batch...

...the problem with this is that there was a topic asking people that didn't PvP if they would PvP with the changes, it was a resounding NO! from a good 99% of the people who posted in the topic (which ran to 10+ pages I believe). So there simply wont be the new influx of PvPers that they apparently thought there would be.

While this isn't to the scale of NGE that happened with Star Wars Galaxies (that game has never recovered from that...and atleast Issue 13 didn't completely invalidate an expanion pack only 2 days old like the NGE did) there is something seriously wrong if there is a mass exodus of PvPers.

EUside we lost pretty much all of our PvPers or atleast a lot which made up the 'heart and soul' of the PvP community and as such there's probably five or so hardcore PvPers left which post on the forums.

USside they also lost a lot of their community and something like 1000 accounts (most PvPers have 3+ accounts).

What angered most USside PvPers is that Lighthouse had made a topic called the 'pvp wishlist' to which most PvPers responded with suggestions to alter the current PvP, make it more new player friendly, which bugs needed ironing out etc. and it was completely ignored, tossed aside in favor of the devs version of PvP 2.0.

Most PvPers asked why on earth should they have bothered making a list of everything wrong with the current PvP system if it was simply going to be ignored.

I have to agree with you ML, both Team Leads past and current (Statesman and Positron) both have real trouble admitting when they've done something wrong. Statesman was woefully inept at listening to the players and had to have the game progress under his vision (you play the way I want you to play) while Positron listens to players and will tailor things with regards their conscerns but he simply wont admit that there are things wrong with his Ideas.

Merits, the problem with them is that encouraging people to run really crappy content (the Positron TF) for more merits should instead be fixing the uber-quick and the uber-slow TF to a modicum level (adding a few more missions to Katie and reducing the number of missions for Positron) and not giving high merits for long, boring content that should have been fixed AGES AGO!

PvP, I've seen a lot of people say that if the dimishing returns on Healing was removed and the Travel suppression a bit less, that it would be far more enjoyable...as for me I have no Ideas how PvP could be improved, Issue 13 introduced a whole new boardgame with its regards.

Anyway...I apologise for the ranty nature of my post it's late/early and I haven't slept much.

A screen whirred out of the roof of the car, Edward appeared on the screen, obviously pre-recorded, "well now you're all here...just to inform you...you're far..far too late..." Edward chuckled as from within the car the bleeping got faster.

"Stay...enjoy the show...it will be quite spectacular..."

There was a click as the roof shot off, falling somewhere nearby and one single solitary beep as the car detonated...

...in a shower of fireworks, rockets whizzing out the top of it, leaving glittering trails as they screamed into the night to explode high above Steel Canyon in a variety of colours and patterns. A dull whump noise was heard as the surrounding area was showered in ticker-tape of all colour being sprayed from the car. A banner slowly unfurled with the words 'Surprise!' written across it.

Edward flickered onto the TV screens once more, laughing and laughing hard, "what...I said it would be a spectacular show didn't I?"

He grinned, "any of you science types would have figured out the plan never had a chance of working, the conflagrigation from the explosion would have destroyed the small pox virus almost instantly...so I thought why not show Paragon how much I love it by giving them some fireworks...enjoy Paragon...oh...and open the trunk...gifts for all!"

Inside the trunk was gifts labelled for various Heroes and Heroines, for the science types was a kids chemistry set, those of a natural nature was a set of small dumbells, people of a Magical origin had a kids magic set, Mutants had a variety cuddly toys with 'hug me, I'm special' T-shirts on them and lastly those techy guys had a small tin clockwork robot.

"Merry Christmas Paragon...thought I'd get in there early..."

The laughter cut off as the signal returned to normal.

5:40am.

The TV screen flickered again, "tick, tock, tick, tock, time..never enough..." he grinned.

Edward raised the timer..."oooh 21 minutes left...hmm...no doubt you hero types are already hurrying to the scene..." he tapped the timer, which advanced to 11 minutes left, "you see...sometimes I just can't WAIT for the fun to begin...tick, tock, tick, tock, time...never enough..."

The screen flickered once more...he was obviously taunting the heroes of Paragon City.

Parked nearby Pandoras' Box in Steel Canyon, something inside a car bleeped...

5:31am

Television sets across Paragon City begin to flicker into static, a logo that hadn't been seen a while cropped up on the screen, the now infamous skull and cog logo. Heroes who saw it knew there would be trouble ahead as Paragons rogue prodigal son would begin his broadcast.

"It's been a while Paragon City...you miss me...awww I bet you did, I bring the fun in don't I?" the voice and image of the elderly Edward Johnson aka Doctor Mechano filled the screen.

"It has been simply far too long since I last made an impact upon the people and I can't let people simply forget about me...oh know...that would be far to selfish of me to let your dull, meaningless lives go unfulfilled without that little dosage of the fun stuff that is pure chaos..."

He chuckled to himself, "I know what your thinking "but Doctor Mechano...how can you surely top the Chaos of your last efforts, the Prison Break, the Trolls, the wholesale explosions?" well my dear Paragon City, I have the answer for you...the most glorious, spectacular extravaganza ever revealed to the public eye from yours truly..."

There was a smirk as he continued, "Somewhere in Steel Canyon is a car, that car is filled with high explosives, now I know you think this is like one of my last plans but you would be wrong...inside that car is also a vial of the small pox...a disease which has gone untreated for a very, very long time now...highly contagious, highly deadly...the explosion wouldn't spread the disease too far but it doesn't need to thanks to being highly contagious. Oh and incase you're wondering I HAVE included a metal erroding substance with said explosives so please don't go trying to convince some poor robotic lifeform to retrieve it, acid burns are hard to buff out of chrome..."

He held up a timer, 30 minutes was on it, "You have thirty minutes starting from....now..." the timer begun to count down, "to find said parked car, disable the explosives and halt the spread of a disease which killed one out of every two people who contacted it and to which the vaccine hasn't been created in forty years...good luck finding one of those in a hurry...perhaps something for those sit at home science types like myself to do..."

He chuckled, "well heroes...you need to hurry...you've got to find the car, find a way to disable the motion sensor wired explosives and safely remove the sealed glass vial in...twenty nine minutes and fifty seconds...it's good to be back Paragon...really is..."

The screens returned to static and then back to your scheduled program.

(The car HAS been reported stolen so running the liscence plates through the PPD would flag it up, also it is filled to the brim with explosives so anyone looking through the window would be able to see it...happy hunting/RPing ya'll ))

Edward while he's out preaching across the Airwaves during one of his many pirate broadcasts to Paragon City before the inevitable chaos that always seems to follow- Jesus he knows me