Kelenar

See, I like the punch. The kick looked cool at first, but the sloooooooooooow juuuuuuuuuuuump started grating on my nerves after a bit, especially since it's so, well, slow compared to how fast-moving the other MA animations are. The sloooooooooooow puuuuuuuuunch at least doesn't defy the laws of physics, and the alternate animation helps avert the 'MY SUPERPOWER IS KICKING' thing.

If they took every animation over about 1.5-2s and found a way to cut them down to size without losing the good parts, I certainly wouldn't complain.

I pretty much try to ignore Hollywood (that way, I'm pleasantly surprised when they make something good) but the Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop movies and the Short Circuit remake are three things that could cause me to start a riot if they suck.

My guess would be easier. With a little more damage and the ability to focus on damage rather than cycling a hold every couple of seconds, I could probably drop FC before his reinforcements arrive... I got pretty close as it was, and that was with a single character. That's just the FC fight, though. I haven't looked at the rest of the mission too closely.

Really, with all the stuff that came in the second ambush (which incidentally arrived around the same time as the patrol discovered me, so I had seeker drones and stuff in the mix too), I never got a good look at the AV. I know something was throwing out Dark Miasma powers, there were Grave Knights, and one of the enemies had the sonic dispersion bubble, but that's about all I saw. I was mostly too busy frantically throwing out AoE controls while trying to keep FC held and stop him from regenerating too much. That said, they didn't seem incredibly dangerous--like I said, I lasted a good long while against them with nothing but softcapped defenses and my controls. Not long enough to take out FC, though, and I gave it a couple of tries. Plus, that was purely by luck, since the dispersion guy didn't run at me--if he had, he would have instantly freed FC, which would have made matters worse.

I might have to see if I can round up a team of eight to tackle this. I'd be interested in seeing how the mobs scale.

Well, my experience running it at +0/x1 with AVs and bosses turned on on my Earth/Fire permadom:

The normal spawns were slightly tricky, but fairly trivial once I figured out how to handle them: Drop Quicksand, Earthquak, and Volcanic Gasses, then start hitting the guys with dispersion bubbles with Fossilize. With Scorpion Shield running and most of them stuck in Quicksand and Earthquake fighting my pets they usually weren't much of a threat to me while I did this, but if they were, I could duck around a corner. Once the bubble guys were locked down, it was pretty easy to lock down and take out the others.

The Forward Commander himself seemed like a pushover. I'm not sure what his other set was (Mind Control? Something in his spawn briefly confused Animated Stone), but he seemed obsessed with his dual pistols. He didn't manage to take out my Animated Stone before I could get him held, which is pretty rare--most AVs I've faced drop pooman in a few hits. The ambush that spawns when he gets low on health, though, made the fight a no-go for me. I wasn't able to get a good look at it, but it included a bubbler and I think something that was spamming Twilight Grasp, which was enough to make the Commander stage a comeback. Plus, well, the second AV. I managed to last a good minute and a half or so after the ambush arrived, but I couldn't kill the Commander with guys defending him. It's possible that if I'd softcapped myself with purple insps long enough to take out the Elite Bosses in the ambush, I could have turned back to the Commander, taken him out, then focused on the second AV, but I suspect I would die before I could get the second AV held.

Hmm...

Does your challenge bit include if AVs are disabled?

CoT are pretty darn common villainside, too.

This is part of the reason for the feeling of lackey-ism villainside... plus, villains tend to have much more variable goals, so it's hard to make arcs that work for every concept. Most heroes want, in one form or another, to save the world. Some villains want to rule the world. Some villains want to destroy the world. Some villains just want power, some villains just want to kill a specific hero, some villains want to kill all mutants, some villains want to destroy Paragon, some villains are just trying to save the world through any means necessary, some villains just like to see stuff explode, some villains want to release extradimensional horrors from their prison, and some villains just want money. Even if you narrow it down to the few most common ones, that's still a lot more variability to account for than heroes have.

Way ahead of you there.

Vahzilok, Luddites, and Knives of Artemis must eternally fight over who gets the rights to use crossbows.

Normal subscription-based MMO with a fairly large, persistent world game with, I think, a nine-dev team and a player base that wasn't even laughably small last time I checked. (I can't find the source I got nine from at the moment, but it's easy to find "It's less than ten guys doing it out of their garage.") And last I heard, they were making money, thanks to self-publishing. Which isn't to say that I'd ever want to try developing a legit MMO with a staff that small, but it's apparently happened.

Yeah, and the list of stuff that's worth crafting is pretty long. In my experience, pretty much everything that's not vendor garbage (hello, Ruin!) or super-high-end (damage set purples) consistently sells for a heavy profit crafted, even after you factor in salvage costs. There are occasional exceptions where the crafted and the recipe will hover around the same price, or the salvage shoots up and makes the profit margin on the crafted really thin until prices adjust, but it's pretty widespread.

Speaking as somebody who's run six different Defenders to 50 on PUGs, I think I can count the number of times I've had people blame deaths on me on one hand. And most of those were in the first year of the game when people still thought a Defender's role was generating green numbers. Besides, any team that takes this game so seriously that team wipes result in "it was your fault!" rather than "THAT WAS AWESEOME" isn't a team I'd want to stick on.

I can think of at least one legitimate MMO with a single-digit developer count that, as far as I know, is profitable. Not large at all, but profitable.

Yes.

List it for about 200. If it's worth anything, it will sell, and almost always for a fair price, thanks to the way the market works (highest bid gets matched with the lowest list price). Simple and easy, takes about 40 seconds to offload a full inventory of it.

For a week and a half or so, the crafted were going for 100-150 million. Easiest billion I ever made, since I was running tips anyway.

Well, the thing is, I avoid radio/newspaper missions whenever possible, because they're boring as hell. So a string of unavoidable defeat-all radio missions isn't really the way to win my enthusiasm.