EmperorSteele

So I zone into Grandville from Ouro, (facing south) and i notice WAAAY in the background in the endless sea something that looked like... buildings? They were only there for a moment before the atmospheric FX kicked in, so I flew to the very south of the map and saw this....



Definitely buildings.

According to the "world map", Mercy Island is south of Grandville. So is this supposed to be Mercy, or was the "Grandville" map supposed to be bigger, or were the Rogue Isles originally meant to not have any barriers and allow you to traverse freely from one island to the next?

Yeah, you can tell if he's going to be a future contact or not by now nice they look. A lot of older (and now unused) NPCs look terrible and stiff, while newer ones use a Dev-version of the Costume Creator and moderns assets.

Just have the Envenomed Dagger Temporary Power ready to use. It gives -250% regen for 10 seconds. Really hard to go wrong there. (just make sure to pop a yellow if you don't have any +acc or +tohit bonuses or buffs on you)

You CAN escort a Hostage to any other objective point (like a glowie) and have them stop following you, and then set the mission to only end when you get to the exit (which would make it appear that you've lost them)... that might work out for ya. Though using the same gag 2 or 3 times in a row might be a bit tedious unless you find ways to change it up.

Eva: Aw dammit, so much for those ideas, haha.

Trilby: Taking an escort to an exit will just pass the mission. Doing all your other objectives first or afterward won't have any affect. You can set up a TIMED mission that will fail the mission if you don't get the escort out first, but people generally disslike a) timed missions b) escort missions and c) TIMED ESCORT MISSIONS.

About the only thing you can really do to make things difficult is set the minimum and maximum levels of the mission to 54... OR... have a level 20 mission and put a naturally level 40+ EB/Boss in the mission. They'll be leveled down but will be a lot tougher than normal level 20 EBs.

One fun trick i almost did once: Set your "bad guy" as a Required Escort, then set them to Betray the moment you "free" them from the surrounding minions (if there are no minions, they'll betray immediately). If you defeat them, you get "Mission Failed". If you somehow manage to get them to the Exit, you get Mission Success. This doesn't do much good as an in-mission mechanic, but it's fun if you want the player to experience one of two separate dialogs depending on their actions.

I had somehow rigged it so that the boss encounter was optional and still gave you a Mission Failed if you killed the boss, but i nixed it when that wound up, well, failing the mission and making the rest of the objectives meaningless.

You could also set a bunch of Destructable objects around the mission and encourage the players to drag the Boss to these things, blow them up, and thus hurt the boss, though it's be more practical to just wail on the bad guy... The only way to force this would be ham-fisted and contrived: Have the Boss be a friendly escort, and have the player have to bring them to a bomb. Then the player can destroy the bomb (they'd have to be told to do this). Then the Boss will lose a few HP. I don't know if you can chain Escort objectives so you can kill the Boss with bombs, but it'd be fun to try. I can see this in a villainous mission: "Make the hero's death look like an accident", but short of giggles I don't see any justification for a Hero blowing up a badguy they can just punch into submission.

Right now, we don't have the means to make Bosses invincible, or super high level, or the ability to debuff them through in-mission temps or by clicking glowies. We can's set a mission to be timed only at certain spots (It's either from the beginning or not at all).

I guess one thing you can try: Bots/Devices-MM/Blaster minions. Make sure Bots has ForceField generator, and that Devices has Gun Drone. The moment you appear, the boss is extra-protected and it will behoove the player to get rid of the things shooting them and protecting the boss before actually engaging him. Granted, a decently intelligent player will know to kill the summoners, but ignoring the baddies simply isn't an option like in some encounters. (in all honesty, i forget if MA Bots MMs get access to FFG, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere...)

Yeah, i see a bit more demand for Sleep/hold/confuse as they cost a fraction of the damage sets and can be converted "upwards".

It should be noted that, as far as i can tell, you're not strictly limited to rarity. You can take a AirBurts IO and try your luck converting it into a Scirrico's Devrish. There's three "filters" you can use: In-set, type, and rarity. Grabbing a bunch of 1,000 inf "damage" IOs and converting them might be worth the cash.

There's also another factor to all this: The AT-IOs will be sold in "booster packs" (you get five random Store items for cheap... you're guaranteed a rare items such as an AT-IO or costume piece, AND, you won't get any duplicates of the rares or Very rares once you have them), and will be trade-able. AND, they can be "boosted" to Purple levels of enhancement effectiveness (though i think the Boosted versions WON'T be tradeable, it was hard to hear the Devs sometimes). So really, all this talk of converting into VRs might be moot if people decide to spend their money/points on the AT-IOs...

I would guess that Dark will have a "special mechanic" that'll be tacked on atop the normal Immob/hold/aoe immob/aoe hold/pet dealie-o. How good the set is depends on that extra mechanic. We'll likely see -ToHit on most abilities, maybe a fear power akin to Terrorize. *shrugs*

I was watching the Ustream of the Player summit, and the Devs have OFFICIALLY announced Dark Control... and it'll be FREE for VIPs!

No other details than that, so far.

It should be noted that currently, the conversion is random. Still, getting saddled with a sleep or confuse recipe, given the chance to turn it into a damage recipe, might be worth the cost to some people.

Right now they're just being given away in beta, they're not in the Store interface yet. They're probably still deciding pricing...

UPDATE: Enhancement converters are now available for testing in BETA! I'll let Goliath Bird Eater spill the details:

Whelp, That does it. I'm scared...

http://nonadventures.com/2011/11/19/hero-sum-game/ (note: mature language)

I lol'd. Though no way in heck am I going outside, it's FREEZING today ;_;

Yup, I see them too, in First Ward. Maybe the big moon is a left-over from the Halloween event?

PS, looks epic in FW:

Most "attack" NPCs won't stop attacking until whatever they're fighting is dead. Also, there's no way to guarantee the NPC will appear close enough to the boss to be activated (IE, see you and waltz on over, then see and attack the boss)

Holding off ambushes... however we have this little problem where the enemies are such a high level that holds don't last long and you may as well have the DPS folks kill the buggers.

There's not much of a way to boost an enemy's stats or make them dependent on other mobs for survival... you could give him a Regen or Willpower secondary... Maybe also give him a special enemy group that's all */Emp (Minions, Lts, and bosses) and set them to come ambush a few times. Theoretically, they'll keep healing and spamming regen aura until you dispatch them.

You CAN have an ambush that attacks enemies, BUT 1) friendly ambushes are currently "bugged", only one friendly from the group will come assist you, also 2), very few MA critters can out-damage a Player-Character of the same powerset.

Leav: One problem with your challenge: Recharge speed. My lvl 50 Mind/Kin has TD down to less than a minute. Hypothetically, first group: TD, APPAoE, Terrify, dead. Next group: Mass Hyp, Mass confuse, APPAoE, Mass Hyp after a few seconds, Terrify, dead. Next group: Total Dom and repeat etc...

Compare that to a mind/anything with no recharge bonuses, or heck, an anything/anything with no or few recharge bonuses, and the Mind controller will win out. Especially if you're talking about a toon that relies on immobilize but doesn't have defense bonuses. Immob does DoT and keeps Containment up, but it doesn't keep you SAFE. Hard to kill things when you're dead. It's more about build than powerset.

That said, I feel encouraged to let loose and see just how far I can push my Controller and put a video up on youtube...

If they could do it with Null the Gull, they could most likely do it within the costume creator. The only reason we HAVE null is because someone was able to CODE the speed buff-negator, but there was no one to IMPLEMENT it into the MENU. So we were given an NPC to talk to.

Standard Code Rant applies, but as far as I've been able to piece together, causing a character to be immune to speed buffs, and taking away VFX that are hard-coded onto a character who uses an optional power are two completely separate things. Our Primary, Secondary and Incarnate powers are a part of the character. You already have every single power, there's just some you cannot access (either by choice or because you're not the appropriate level). The Pool powers are NOT. What they'd have to do is make every pool power automatically assigned to the character before the character would be able to be flagged for fx: on/off. So at THAT point, they might as well wait until everything is color tint-able, too.

If this is, indeed, a way to turn a Obliteration: Damage into a Obliteration: Dam/rech or a Ragnorok: Damage, I wonder whether or not the new IO then becomes character or account-bound? How how many resources it takes to turn an uncommon damage IO into a Very rare (unless you're restricted by rarity)?

Very interesting....

I COULD link you to my Mind/Kin guide, but it's fairly tl;dr. I'll just give you slightly less tl;dr...

Mesmerize: Mag 3.5, which means it can SLEEP AVs in ONE hit. Very handy solo, or when your team is facing down multiple AVs. No other control in the game can completely shut down an AV in one shot.

Mes/Lev/Dom makes for a rather viable attack chain from early on to level 50. While a lot of controller sets have only a hold and a DoT immob. Until level 32, a mind controller will kill enemies (particularly bosses or small groups) much faster than most other controller primaries. Bonus: The enemy can't attack back, because if he isn't held, then he's either asleep or being flung through the air. Slot for damage and treat a Mind controller like a Blaster with Mez effects and you can't go wrong. Confusion and Mass Confusion are not only fun, but unbeatable strategic tools for turning the tide of battle.

A Mind Controller is also one of the few AT Powersets in the game that could theoretically solo Hamidon. It's attacks don't have a "Position flag" (for melee, ranged, or aoe), which means you can hit and damage every single mito. And with 3 hold powers (Total dom, TK and of course Dominate), the greens will also eventually go down. Note that this is theoretical, though with enough regen bonuses and the right secondary and a lot of patience, I could see it happening. On a more realistic note, Mind's powers not being typed means you end up bypassing the defense of any NPC or character who relies on Positional defense.

Now, MC does have some issues. The lack of steady AoE containment really hurts one's ability to farm (Confuse and Fear don't add Containment. Sleep breaks on one hit. The AoE Hold takes 4 minutes to recharge). However, depending on what Secondary you take, this can be mitigated. Rad has an AoE hold. Kin, in conjunction with Mass Hypnosis, will let you safely Fulcrum Shift 10 enemies at once and 2-hit them with Terrorize and your Epic AoE and you'll NEVER lose a single hit point.

The best part about Mind, which is why it shines on Doms and seems lackluster on Controllers, is that it doesn't NEED a secondary. Many of the other Controller Primaries suddenly become very weak when you can't buff your pet, debuff your foes, or simply add on m04r damage. That is, when asking "Why would anyone play a Mind Controller", they're already considering it in comparison with other controller sets when paired with a buff/debuff secondary. On it's OWN, it's a very solid set.

Overall, if you have a min/max mentality, then perhaps a Mind controller isn't the best choice. But, if you simply have a concept that calls for a telepathic character, rolling Mind Control won't have you feeling left behind or gimped.

I'll leave you with one last thought: I've played a number of characters. But my Mind/Kin, my second 50, is the one that receives compliments for awesome gameplay. She's the one that solo'd the Clockwork King AV when the team tanks (yes, both of them) fell. She's the one who, when my tank kept faceplanting against psionic foes, I brought in, and we proceeded to wipe out the rest of the map with ease. She's the one who held off 3 War Walker EBs at once during the Apex Task Force (one perma-held, one perma-confused, the other was kept asleep). Now, some of that was probably just as much, if not more, due to my secondary and pool and APP choices. But at the end of the day, she's the character I enjoy playing most.