Finsplit

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I just wanted to comment on the new hero side storyarcs. I'll comment on villain side once I run them, but I thought I'd comment on what I've seen:


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I'd just like to say I agree with most of what LunarKnight says. I ran Daedalus's arcs with my peacebringer, Mercedes Sheldon's hero arcs with one of my tankers, and her villain arc and Sister Airlia's first arc with a stalker.

I generally find Cimerora uninteresting, and Daedalus and Sister Airlia have done nothing to change my opinion. I like seeing Arachnos more on heroside, and it's nice to fight one of Recluse's inner circle at 40 (instead of having to wait for 45+). The castle-full-of-Malta mission looks like it might be a lot of fun with a team, but I was doing it solo, so it was painfully slow. And I'm still annoyed that my stalker was barely able to tickle the Longbow Ballista in Sister Airlia's arc, although that's not the writer's fault.

On the other hand, I greatly enjoyed Mercedes Sheldon on both sides, and I wish she had more for villains to do. I also wonder why she's 20-25 on hero side -- that's a range where heroes already have plenty to choose from (other story arcs, Striga, Faultline).

> INVENTORY

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I'd kind of like to see a carnival related job for logging out at any known "Carnies" hotspot.. the only down side is, you'd risk rapawning in a zone enemies are known to spawn in..

J/ Wilde

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No worse than going to Potter's Field for Mortician.

Since one of my characters does have the evil clown gimmick, I'd love to see Clown or Joined the Circus as a badge for the Carnie tent area.

I've been thinking of upgrading my old G4 eMac for a while now, and this is definitely further encouragement. Just need to find the money ....

Since I'm a librarian -- and in fact, one of my characters is a librarian too -- I damn well hope there's a badge for logging out in the University library.

Sounds like I'm going to have to put my controller on the back burner for a while so I don't outlevel the Midnight Squad thing -- it would be perfect for her.

Repeatable missions in the Hollows? Between that and the sewer, I can see people just grinding up to 20. Sounds dull to me, but I know some people will appreciate it.

VEAT sounds great. Now to actually get a villain to 50 ...

Looking forward to seeing what sort of powersets have made the crossover, even though I really don't want to *have* to roll any more characters ... darn them for twisting my arm like this!

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Confirmed. Females can use wings with the tuxes and males cannot.

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How about with capes? Like, oh, say, a scarf?

/e drools just a little at the thought of finally getting my Fourth Doctor homage costume right

*sigh* I'll be out of town on Thursday ... real Valentine's Day with my real sweetie has to take precedence.

As for the expansion pack, well, expecting every expansion pack to be as useful as GvE is like expecting every vet reward to be as useful as the Sands of Mu or Nemesis Staff. Some of 'em will just be stuff you don't like. Me? More costume pieces is always better -- even if I don't use 'em now, I may need 'em down the line.

Get your marshmallows and pointy sticks here before the flames start, folks...

Well, what did you expect when they hired Marcel Marceau as the new corporate spokesman? (Uh, no-spokesman, I guess.)

Paragonwiki says the Mayhem version of Atlas Park has only one side mission, as opposed to two in the Safeguard. Other than that, same level ranges and rewards.

A few microscopic caveats, but in in general you can put me firmly into the I Do Not Like It, Sam-I-Am camp.

Besides the occult, Nazis were also deeply enamored of kook science, especially if it could be dressed up as a repudiation to "[censored] science," much like Stalin's embrace of Lysenkoism as a superior, Communistic approach to biology. (And I am totally not going to say anything about the current administration and their attitude toward science. No. Nope. Uh-uh. /e wide innocent eyes)

Antaean's already mentioned the hollow earth thing. The idea that the Earth is actually on the *inside* of a sphere, with the sun/moon/stars floating in a cloud in the middle, was popular, and Hitler actually sent some scientists out with a telescope to attempt to look across the sphere and spot British fleets in the North Sea.

Also widely believed was Hans Horbiger's Welteislehre, or "world ice theory," which held that almost everything in the cosmos is actually made of ice, and that the universe is driven by an eternal conflict between ice and fire. Sounds like there's a potential inspiration for an ice-based character there...

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My main issue with the fantasy genre is that it's so horrible over done by now.

Which is funny. I've always loved the fantasy genre. 10 (or so) years ago, it was a horribly neglected genre. There were perhaps a few games. And the only movie anyone could remember was Willow (or Dragonheart it you didn't mind risking getting beat up).

At some point, all that got turned on its head. And it was great, at first. But it's really getting old by now.

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It's not just fantasy. It's Dungeons & Dragons. Every fantasy game out there seems to be just a minor reworking of D&D's basic style (which, of course, was mostly copied from Tolkien with a few dashes of other authors). I love D&D and have loved it for 30 years -- yes, I'm old -- but after playing through Phantasie and Might & Magic and Wizardry and Bard's Tale and more, and too many pen and paper D&D knockoffs to count, I'm just burned out on the whole thing. So WoW and LOTRO, you may believe, are not getting so much as a glance from me.

And the shame of it is, the fantasy genre's so much bigger than D&D and its imitators. Why doesn't someone create a MMORPG based on, say, Ars Magica? Or a totally city-based fantasy game, say one that revolves around gang warfare in the city of Sanctuary (of Thieves' World fame)? And I would absolutely murder for an Amber MMORPG...

Something to wonder about: if wings were available from the start, would that reduce the incentive to use them, as compared to keeping them rare?

As you might guess, I've seen way too many bad costumes with wings stuck on the back for no apparent reason other than the player feels that he or she has to tell everyone, "Look! I got wings!" (Yeah, I'm a snob. Haul me off to Snob Court.) It's gotten so I was actually feeling a little embarrassed when I put wings on one of my characters.

So, would common wings result in the city being overrun by dragons, fairies, and bugs? If so, yeah, I'm against it.

(Oh, and for the record: I have one character I'd like to have insect wings for, and another one who would like jet boots. But if I can't get them, well, I'll live without them. I like the characters anyway, and their costumes are cool just as they are.)

More 35-40 and 40+ content? Yay.

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This is a mish for a high-dps, self-healing, efficiently-mobile protagonist (whether team or solo).

Into which of these catagories does a Trick Arrow/Arrow Defender fall?

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Indeed. I've done two Safeguards so far -- Peregrine with my 46 TA/A and Talos with my 30 Ill/Rad controller. Both were solo, on Heroic, which is how I'm accustomed to doing Mayhems (normally I run on Rugged).

In both cases, I had a fairly easy time of it, although the archer died twice. (If I ever do that one again, I'm packing my tray with blues and greens.) I found all side missions, and completed all but the arson one in Peregrine -- I was defusing the last bomb when a couple of Strongmen came in through the door and interrupted me -- and completed everything in Talos. In both cases, I exited with a large chunk of time still on the clock, and I suspect I could've cleared the map if I wanted to.

In neither case did I ever receive a message telling me I'd lost time, even though by the latter part of the Talos SG, I was just running straight past street spawns and leaving them aggroed to smash up whatever they wanted.

I wasn't able to stop the villain from breaking into the vault in either case. In Peregrine, I received "The villain is getting away!" message and, thinking he'd gotten past me somehow, went straight to the getaway flyer, intercepted him as he came down the street, and stopped him cold. In Talos, I continued deeper into the bank once I got the message and caught the villain coming down the corridor into the lobby.

I do agree that it's annoying for the markers for completed side missions to stay on the map, but that's my only complaint so far.

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It's been mentioned before, but since it's Live, I'll mentioned it again...

There's a bunch of graphics that are invisible. The Skulls Dyne Lab, Hellion lair (with puzzleboxes), Portal Lab (with portals in various stages of construction), and other maps that have unique decorations in them. All of these objects are invisible. We can run into them, stand on them, and get line of sight errors from them, but we just can't see them.

Also, I've noticed that in the PPD stations, only the female Warden posters are left. Swan, Mynx, and the male Warden images for the Freedom Corps posters are gone (probably invisible too). I know that's a minor thing, but, hey, I likes my Mynx posters. =^_^=

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I had the same LOS error off target blocked hit me in a couple arachnos maps last night too Pep. I could see the drone but could not target/attack it until I walked around the invisible wall and was on the other side.

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Me three. I walked into one of the Mole Point caves in the Cascades -- the one where Dr. Huxley and Sara Moore hang out -- last night and everything but the people was invisible. I actually thought it was just more Shadow Shard weirdness, until the Mole Point operator gestured me toward a teleporter that I couldn't see, or use. I /bugged it. I hope it gets fixed soon -- not having access to the teleporters is going to make getting around the Shard even more of a pain in the neck.

I don't really have anything substantial to say, since all I've done since the download is running one mission.

But as a long-suffering Trick Arrow player, I just had to come here to say that I deeply love the graphics adjustments. My burning Oil Slick actually looks like a fire now! And the little green cloud from Acid Arrow is cool too.

I often find myself forming my own groups as well. A few rules I live by:

I *always* send a tell, usually in the form of "Want to join a level x team?" or, if I'm currently solo, "Want to team with a level x AT?"

I do send tells to people who have the "Not looking" flag up, unless their search comment says "I don't want to team" or anything similar. However, I don't start trying to recruit from that pool until I already have one or two other people on the team. I think people are more likely to join if there's already the nucleus of a team formed, rather than risk winding up in a pickup duo with someone they may not work well with.

I never invite anyone more than 5 levels below me, and if I invite anyone more than 3 levels below, I make it clear they'll be SK-ing in the tell. I never invite anyone to exemplar, unless it's inviting a 50 to participate in a TF/SF.

I generally don't mention what kind of mission it is in the tell, unless it's an AV or a TF/SF, of course. If I know there's a badge involved, I may mention that too, especially if it's one that helps you get an accolade.

Oh, and when I do have the team together, I'm careful to do missions from everyone's lists. Usually when we're done with the mission, I pull up the list, pick one, and say "Unless anyone has anything else they really want to do, we're doing this." Works pretty well, I've found.

Maybe this is why I have very few PUG horror stories. I've even (gasp! shock!) successfully completed TFs with pick-up groups.

I admit I'm much more of a 1a. I'm just constitutionally inclined to think "I can save this team, I just have to work harder!" Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Also, the bad PUGs I've been on (which are heavily outnumbered by the good, or at least acceptable, PUGs, I should note) tend to be bad because of one or two chumps. I hate to abandon the players who have actually been pulling their weight and leave them to deal with the bad apples.

I believe Tech's Taser and Magic's Apprentice Charm are your choices. I'm not fully sure about the Apprentice Charm, since I've never tested it -- can anyone confirm?

I'd say that you're waiting a little too long to get Blazing Arrow, which makes a really big difference in your damage output at low levels. Unless you're planning to just spam debuffs and let other people handle the damage, and even then you'll probably miss it.

If this was a PvE character, I'd say you're insane for putting Disruption Arrow off until 44. On the PvP side, Disruption Arrow is admittedly a bit less useful, but I think you should at least consider whether you can't squeeze it in earlier.

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Gauntlet power effects (including taunt auras) have no effect on ArchVillains, Giant Monsters, Mitos, and Hamidon. This is by design.

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Can you still use Provoke? Or is it "real" Taunt or nothing?

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question, one of my alts tried to solo his first mayhem mish (the one where you get the flight pack). I failed, (hero killed me repeatedly and took too long to get out of jail.

Is there a way I can still get the flight pack?

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Sure. You can run newspaper missions until your broker offers you the Atlas Park mayhem again, and then succeed this time. You just need to successfully complete it once to get the pack.

(edit: Beaten to the punch.)