GrinningSpade

/signed. Sounds like a good plan and improving Pocket D as a hub is a great idea.

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After the arc in Newspaper Missions you get a 50% less chance of CoT missions appearing. That's why 'They'll know not to deal with us' again.

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Did you even read the arc? The Morea clan were not "dealt with once and for all". They didn't even appear.

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As you can see Yuong is less mean, he's not so self-proud and rather talks about his father's strength as he has done many daring things in the past (although after that he's a bit lazy).

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Ok first off, there is no way your arc will have influence over the newspaper misisons.

Plus, nowhere in the arc is my villain influenced to do this one. Hurting CoT? Sure if you pay me for it or if they are in the way of my mission. But we are not heroes and frankly it is in my interest that the gangs keep roughly as strong as they are now. It keeps the demand for my villains services strong.

About your other question. Yes I read the other arc and commented about it. See that thread.

It is you who introduces two related contacts and introduce a new criminal group. I think you should make sure the storyarcs fit together and introduce the new organization properly. If you don't, you are missing the opportunity to create a good story.

Would love a thing like that. However, it is deliberate that upgrading pets takes so much time. It is the weakness of the MM.

What I am wondering here is why would my villain want to be involved? Does he dislike CoT? Sure, they are a pain. But he is not a hero, there is no profit in this Story to attract him.

Sure, he has done a bit of heroic actions now and then but only after the contact tried to persuade him that villaingroup would become a problem for him making a profit in a later stadium.

And yes, I would like to see this arc using the Morea clan. After this mess it seems they are dealt with once and for all, hurray. Only to turn up their ugly faces later in the fathers arc.

Ps. Young seems to be a weak willed character always talking about how great his father is. I would suggest, less father talk, more about how great he thinks himself to be.

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The contact has not seen his/her power yet. Also, many contacts on Villians will treat you that way. Your full potential has not been seen yet, that's why he's treating you that way.

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Considering that Shen is an operator in a highly dangerous place like Grandville he wouldnt want to send out just any muppet. So assuming he is a smart fellow doing a little research about the apprentice is a good idea.

But besides that he can have his reasons to be an arrogant person. But that part is done to often IMO.

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I can see you have a pretty good point there - there is no storyline involved. But as in the last mission, this is your first (and probably last) delge into the Morea clan. Sheng didn't claim to know much about them either. He just knew that they were about, wrecking stuff. And he knew where they met. That's all he knew about them.

Also, about the "few Arachnos bases" bit, I'd like to quote from the actual arc:

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Black Scorpion: "I agree. He/She could become a threat to us all."

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Black Scorpion says that he/she could become a threat if he/she continues down the path they're going. He/she has cleaned 3 Arachnos bases in a row, if he/she continues to do that and starts moving on to even bigger things like higher ranked Arachnos then even Recluse's lieutenants, he/she will become a threat.

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To make this Morea Clan and their involvement with Black Scrorpion an interesting thing is if the villain would have stumbled over their excistence during his misisons. Thus making it viable that they would consider him a threat to their own operations which probably relies on secrecy (as they are not known by anyone). That would give them a reason to try to take the villain out. The last mission could then be a rescue to save this Shen as he is confronted by the clan to silence him. This could be discovered after an ambush from the morea clan.

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This is the first time you've faced Arachnos under Sheng, also they don't know you're the crazy villian who mauled then tens of levels before. They just think you're another one of his apprentices. Would they send a AV in or anything? But just to be sure, they'll send a whole 3 bases of troops. Sheng sees your potential from here, and is more respectful than earlier, and he knows you can do it easy. Yet his personality leaves him to put his own burdens on his apprentices.

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This is not however the players first clean out arachnos base misison. And then 3 bases after each other without anything interesting happening is boring. But see my remarks about how to make the story more believable above.

Timing out inactive users is a normal procedure for any client server based connection.

If you removed the timeout function, then every time a client crashes the server will keep the connection open indefinately. Eventually this could lead to conection problems for active players. Which is a bad bad thing.

I have three problems with this arc.

The first one is the tone. The contact is talking to a high level villain, not a flunky straight out of mercy. The villain has done some incredible things to get there. I get a little tired of arrogant contacts who try to prove their importance with being arrogant. Some mutual respect seems to be more fitting to me.

The second problem is the arc itself. In the end its a fight against very tough opponents and they come out of the blue. There is no clue whatsoever, no storyline that they are involved. The only thing is that they seem to think that the villain is a threat because he took out a few random Arachnos bases. Well at level 45 they will have taken out dozens of bases nothing special here.

The third problem is repetition. Clearing out a base is boring. Doing that 3 times in a row without anything interesting happening is not a good thing in my book. I am sure that more interesting things can be thought of.

Thats my 3 cents.

Lol I assumed this was intentional. To make sure we understood that these guys are soldiers and you only can see their numbers not the names. To stress the secret militairy thing going on there.

For a proper villain of style and class like me there can be only one choice:True music for the maniacal minded overlord. You can't beat the classics.

Well let me add to this list then:

Been in the game for 33 months

Never done Hamidon new/old/hero or villain
Never done Shadow shard stuff even though the scenery is awesome
I havent done plenty of TF's but I am working on them.
I never bothered to do the invention badges (I am not that rich)
I never done a base Raid
I never started a SG although i put out the light in quite a few bases.
I never been able to get myself a brute or tank past 22. Even though i keep trying.
I never finished on time on the skislope which annoys me quite a lot.
And the list goes on and on. Got plenty to do for a few more months I guess.

Just wondering now. How long can you be in login mode to select your toon? If I am that screen and go afk for a few mintues. Nothing would protect my toons from being deleted.

So unless you require a password to delete a toon this would not make such a great security benefit anyway.

So to me adding another button to go straight to the server selection is not a real security problem.

Of course when you autolog you should log out as normal. It also saves much valuable server time so that is basic common sense.

And if you are concerned about the security, change the deleting procedure.

I never experienced this and I can imagine how frustrated you must have been. It sure would be a good method to solve this problem. It also could be used to harash people with.

But to me the main question is: How often does a thing like this happen? Often enough to warrant the valuable time of the dvelopers to change it? Considering as well the amount of frustration the involved players must have experienced.

To bad. I thought it was a nice gesture to make a player driven event. My only problem was that I would have been unable to compete as drawing stuff is not one of my many talents.

At least let them change the sound effect of the mace. Right now it has the same sounds as the broadsword which is a bit silly.

Nice ideas all and great work on them. Thumbs up here.

However I sincerely doubt this will going to happen. Especially when you consider that Galaxy City is an empty zone as well. But what about joining these two together?

Making Galaxy City a place where young heroes AND villains grow up? Including the opportunity to do some PvP? Then after the arcs are completed the villains escape to rogue islands with the forces of the long arm of the law hot on their tails. While the heroes move on to better places.

This way the area can be re-used quite easily. Plus it gives the PvP'ers the oportunity to start at level 1.

Of course Pocket D would be a good place for some coop missions other then those of an event. They even got some portals to use.

/unsigned.

The day people start refusing people to enter their groups because they can see he hasnt have strong enough enhancements is the day that the farmers will rule this game. I have seen it happening in other MMO's. Lets not make the same mistake here.

Sync issues sounds like an explanation. Hope they can fix this as well. If this can happen to Rikti Raids it can happen to other mass mob groups perhaps?

But but, I am a mastermind. My job is to send my minions forth to do the dirty work while cackling evily and twirling my moustache!

Besides the bodygaurd option is not so easy to get them into. Someone had to explain to me what macro I had to use to activate those (and i think i lost that piece of paper since). Would be much easier if there was a button to make them do this since the cease to attack button is not the same thing.

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How about the possibility of Heroes and Villains rising above the pettiness of hero/villain rivalry and follow a path together through more shared mission zones kind based on similar beliefs, i.e. like cults dedicated to debt ;o) and have their own meeting/sg type places

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Well if the Do Gooders stop bothering me when I am trying to make some money and walk on the path to world domination out there I see no reason to bother them at all. Even better, I am glad to enroll them into my future armies of darkness.

Problem with that strategy is that it tends to shift the agro to the summoner after the minions are mowed down. That is quite unhealthy for the mastermind.

The brute makes a far better 'tank' then my minions do any day. Plus fully buffed minions can do healthy damage to the opponents especially when they get an aoe attack.

As an avid MM player I know this problem quite well. It takes time to setup your MM properly and going unbuffed is not a good idea with every pet. So I always try to upgrade them a bit if not always completely.

Thus for fast moving groups that can handle the mobs I upgrade them further in the lull of fighting.

It happens that some players run ahead like silly fools and charge into the enemy before people are ready to go. Quite often this results in casualties. But then I appear, waste the mobs, raise a few villains on the go and be the hero.

Sometimes it is good to understand why you are the Mastermind and they are well something else.

In that case:

/entered

Perhaps now i can get a computer that looks cool and allows me to play this game without crashes.

Just noticed this in Cap au Diablo and then in the next raid in Sharkhead. During a Rikti Raid Heavies spawned but before we could target them properly they suddenly dissapeared again. Not once but a few times. First I thought this was something to my with my graphix but others noticed this behavior as well.

Did anyone else experience this and can I consider this an anoying bug or should I consider this a documented feature from the evil Rikti to make our lives misserable?

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Here's a thought that ought to balance things out a little more...

We already have difficulty levels that scale various things... why not scale the debt with that? Y'know, leave it on heroic and suffer debt as it is now or bung it on invincible and have good old I3 flavour debt.

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Excellent idea. This one gets my vote. With great rewards come great risks as it should be.