EmperorSteele

It's not copyrighted as a NAME though, only as a title of a work!

So touche.

Kobyashi Maru is a japanese term for "Little Wooden Boat".

Can't copyright that.

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...for making mid-tier salvage prices skyrocket today. Hopefully some of you marketers made out well =) I was crafting for someone's characters and initiated a "gotta have it now" attitude. Paid too much for a lot of stuff just to make sure I got it, so, yeah =)

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Don't be silly. Everyone knows that the only time prices ever go up is when evil marketeers manipulate the market. You must have been shopping at the same time that someone else was coincidentally forcing prices up and making you pay more than you wanted to.

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No, i was paying upwards of 25% more for things than the latest high bid. If you saw Alchy silvers going for 100K, that was me =)

...for making mid-tier salvage prices skyrocket today. Hopefully some of you marketers made out well =) I was crafting for someone's characters and initiated a "gotta have it now" attitude. Paid too much for a lot of stuff just to make sure I got it, so, yeah =)

I was working on something like this as well, heh.

A finger bone, huh? Reminds me of something I read in the Chronicles of Prydain =)

*stiffles a snicker at the thought of you only getting contacted by dirty old men*

Well, the thing with Controllers is that they have low damage at early to mid levles, so you're going to have a hard time soloing. You'll make up for this later on when you have a pet and can brush off anything short of an AV with ease.

Here's some tips:

One, Controllers have an ability called "Containment" where any foe that is HELD, SLEPT, STUNNED or IMMOBILIZED takes DOUBLE damage from most of your attacks. So you want to open up with an ability that inflicts one of these statuses on your enemies before going in for the kill. Note that Plant's signature power, Seeds of Confusion, does not grant any of these statuses and therefore does not grant the Containment bonus.

Many Secondaries have powers that increase your survivability, damage output, and make life easier and more fun. Radiation Emission is among the best secondaries for this sort of thing. It has powers that can debuff a foe's Damage Resistance, which means they take more damage from attacks, and it has another power which increases you and your teams' Recharge times, which means you attack faster and more often.

Learn to use your powers effectively and in tandem with one another. Find a strategy that works (like always casting AM -before- a battle, then opening with Vines) and it'll make your life easier.

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I know that many SGs are creating SG-specific MA arcs, but for the arcs to earn tickets for people playing them they must be published on an individual's account. This uses up one of that person's arcs, and makes the arc visible to anyone, including non-SG members.

Instead, how about allowing designated SG members to post SG-specific MA arcs on the Mission Computer and Oracle items in their bases? That way the arc would not use up one of an individual's arc slots, and would only be usable by SG-members.

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I'm not opposed to the idea of running arcs in the SG base. However, as someone not in a SG, the idea of you getting extra slots when I'm limited to 3 .... sorry, I can't support that idea. It has to count against whomever publishes the arc.

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Oh, quit QQing. SGs already have a storage and transport advantage over non-SG'd folks. One more advantage (a thematic one, to boot) wouldn't hurt.

If it really stings that bad, don't let the SG arc show up in the main MA system. Have it JUST be through the base. That way, it's not like an individual is getting any more slots.

Oh, dang yo.

/e eatpopcorn

Aw, how cute, someone at NC soft learned how to use the Perspective tool in photoshop =)

It's all a Frostfire plot, is what it is!

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Also I've noticed I have a large number of SO-driven characters where I would normally be using IOs this time last year. Any field crafter wannabes on Virtue, heroside, who want some help on getting Fabricator, drop me a line >.>

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*drops a line on your face*

Tell me watchyuu need!

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...his can't-think-for-themselves fans will one star it down further?...

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You know how I react to Venture or Talen_Lee giving out a one-star? I don't PLAY it. No play, no rating. No rating, no one-star. No one-star, NO TANKING YOUR RATINGS. So don't put your lousy rating on MY doorstep, sir; I only throw stars at stuff I actually play. If you want to sniff out a one-star conspiracy, I suggest you look elsewhere, and learn to not alienate everyone with one sentence while you're at it.

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Well, in a way, that's almost as bad. True, 1-star ratings are worse than no ratings, but let's say Venture just didn't like an arc that maybe -you- would like. But now you won't play it, because -he- said it was bad or had a BadTrope. And so it stays buried on page 1482. Your 4-star rating (assuming you liked it) could help bump it up a few hundred pages and give the author tickets... but now, that won't happen.

Supposedly.

*shrug*

Are insps allowed? I think I could carry a bunch of large purps and oranges to maintain survivability while i plow one of the things down.

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There is nothing in here that requires a character to be Genre Savvy in order to realize something is wrong.

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Uh, newsflash: something IS wrong! A high ranking member of the PPD has been compromised and is being used to take out Heroes (ironically, it's that member of the PPD whos job it is to make sure that compromised heroes aren't going around doing stupid stuff like... hurting civilians and other heroes). Would the plot really benefit from there being no indication of this whatsoever until the last act, at which point he go nuts for no reason and out of nowhere?

I dunno. I just like to build up to things, though perhaps i over did it?

Anyways...

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Notice that it explicitly says you break into their base. I think we can assume there's no search warrant. If the detective did have probable cause to search the group's computers he'd get a warrant and a bunch of CSI types would show up to examine and/or seize them. If the supers or their pet bots resisted then they'd call in SWAT, other supers, Longbow, whatever. Of course, the plot would fall down and die if this happened, since the supers aren't doing anything wrong so they wouldn't resist, and there's no probable cause to search them in the first place. The detective proffers no reason for the search beyond "I don't like them".

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Imagine this: Let's say DX -was- an arachnos spy like the Detective believes. Narrative structure demands that she would be in the middle of some sinister plot and that there wouldn't be much time to wait for warrants and getting folks together for a proper investigation before something disastrous happened. Your probable cause is the fact that she attacked you in the first place, plus the origins of the other characters, which (along with most of them being annoying, jerks, or both) was supposed to convince the player that indiscriminatingly taking them down wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

Obviously, you didn't buy that reasoning. Good for you. It's just too bad that you think the arc is worse than a ritki comm farm for it =(

Fair enough, though you did complain that it was tedious... which it wouldn't have been if you bothered using the help in the mission to begin with =P

As for the plot, the fact that the morons are attacking you on sight is usually good enough to bring someone in and continue an investigation. If somebody attacks a cop, the police don't shrug and say "well, there's no proof of a crime, we should let them go". Heck no, they lock the jerk(s) up and investigate.

Act 2, yeah, you made a good point about there not being a warrant mentioned, however, do you know how many times a contact ever mentions a warrant?

ONCE.* During the Countess Crey arc. And that's IT. So this is to mean that warrants are either supposed to be automatically assumed, or that heroes don't have to abide by them, or that the contact has the ability to supersede warrants, in which case you're being overly harsh in your analysis.

*: I used google to search through Red Tomax's site, and the Countess Crey arc was the only blue side mission to even use the word at all in any context.

And you don't have to "run around blindly". You can easily RP it as "I'm just going to do what he says for now and wait for the other shoe to drop." Or maybe you're playing a Villain (which, YOU were) who just wants an excuse to beat on some heroes and shouldn't give a rat's behind about police procedure (though in that case, one has to wonder what your motivation would be for betraying your contact and messing up Kalinda's scheme). Or maybe you can assume your characters don't read TvTropes and aren't as genre-savvy as YOU are and despite their intelligence, might actually not be all that suspicious (at least until act 3, which is where people's red flags are supposed to start going up).

Plus, you can't even question any of your contacts ever, as we don't have access to dialog trees, so harping on me about what amounts to a technical limitation is somewhat unfair.

And then of course, some people take Sue hate too far.

I'll admit it, my arc is a sue arc... hell, one of the characters has SUE as their MIDDLE NAME (she is, incidentally, the most sue-ish of the lot =P). However, this has only stopped one person from enjoying it afiak... and he hates self-insert/sues/other peoples characters in general so much that he REFUSED to rescue any of them and got his butt handed to him by an AV who was designed AROUND HAVING SIX HELPERS TO DEFEAT... and then he complained it was TOO HARD.

Yeah, there's some other problems with the arc, but complaining that it's too hard when you're given the tools to survive and prosper is somewhere between stupid and reta-... erm, mentally disabled.

(incidentally, i tried to make the other characters not-so-sue-ish, though I doubt the player cared and wrote them off regardless *shrug*)

Quick, someone make an arc where you sit at a computer playing a video game!

Hey T_L, thanks for the review =) I'll have to hunt down the typos (was "groupes" really one of them? Oy...). As for dialog problems, I'll re-read what I have, see if i can shorten anything or make it flow easier, if that's the problem.

Anyway, this part:

If you want a challenge and a plot at the same time, with a big, dramatic conclusion? This is a great place to go.

...is exactly what I was going for. There are things in the arc that will annoy people and prevent a 5-star rating. I can live with that, but as long as they get to the end and say "Damn, that was pretty good!", then I did my job right =) In fact, I think I'll put that in my sig, if you don't mind =)

In the meantime, I'd like to remind folks that this arc will be tweaked and finalized come I15. Thanks to the ability to select whatever powers I want (or leave out ones I don't want), I can hopefully make the arc just tough enough to satisfy both my internal difficulty barometer and keep it fun for people who haven't exactly IO'd out their toons =)

Most normal NPCs, let's leave it at that.

Quantum PPDs, some Arachnos... tons of normal folks. Just raise the cap back up, ya goofs!

The problem with this is the inability to duplicate certain events and atmosphere, such as the Paladin ambush in the Synapse TF, or climbing the Volcano in Striga only to find a huge door, or circling around Paragon defeating all the various foes you've ever faced. And some stories take more than five missions to tell (though to be fair, when a lot of TFs can be adequately summarized as "fight council cuz i said so, fight freakshow cuz i said so", perhaps this isn't such a huge issue), you'd really have to squeeze or do away with a good deal of content.

It'd be a nice exercise in creativity for sure, but i doubt any MA-made mission would ever be a suitable replacement for a Task Force (even if some of them are awful)

You want warning? Keep abreast of changes being made on the Training room. The latest patch was being developed and discussed by the community for the last 2 weeks.

Hehe, i said "abreast".

Hey Talen...

I asked for a review all the way back on page 9... though i did concede you probably wouldn't like it. If it helps, i removed the defeat-all portion of the last mission =)

Just so you don't have to go hunting for it, its the one in my sig *points down*

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I've actually never seen anyone on Virtue with more than 300. So, pardon me for thinking that these won't have a high collection rate.

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BS! I'm a virtuite all the way and my main has over 600.

Get out of the D once in a while and socialize with actual PLAYERS =P (i keed)