Large_Man

Damn. I was going to post some shots of my own, until after looking through my screenshots folder I don't really have any action shots. Just shots of the comical and the bizarre.

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Corollary to the above: Content that's just flat-out wrong. St. Martial is the worst example, for my money. The arcs have you actually collecting debts for a casino. Really? That's what we get? And Hardcase, who is without a doubt my least favorite contact villainside. He has one mission that's even passably villainous (luring the Wailers into Paragon). Everything else is save this, rescue that. I consider Hardcase entirely misplaced in CoV.

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Can I add Terrance Dobbs to that list? I can't help but wonder if he was added in the high end game because players scrabbled so hard to be Bug Hunters.

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Eh? How do you figure? Terrence Dobbs is a [male reproductive organ]. He has you destroy the Arachnoids' on and only chance for a cure to their condition, just so he can stay in business, and even sends you out to beat the crap out of his competitors.

Dobbs is a bag of [feminine hygiene product], he fits in as a contact just fine.

That said, CoV could definitely use a few more contacts. Especially to the point where we can actually get referred to new contacts from someone other than a broker. Especially in the late 30s, My characters seem to run out of contacts often in that range. Particularly ones from enemy factions (not including Arachnos), those ones usually tend to be pretty fun.

Don't forget about the absurdity of the villain Accolades. Half of them you can't get until you're in the 40s.
Plus the one that requires you to spend 5 hours in Siren's Call?? What the frell is up with that??

Also, some of the requirements for the hidden contacts just don't make sense. They seem like the devs just picked random badges out of a hat for some of them.
The best example that comes to mind is Doc Buzzsaw. I have yet to manage to get a character the Bling badge before I outlevel her missions. Not only does it not make sense to be her requirement, but it is even a resonable requirement anymore, what with the xp increase?? And by "reasonable", I mean without having to drastically slow down my leveling, by either racking up massive debt, or running a ton of missions while malefactored.
Some of the other ones are ridiculous as well. Hammer Down for Crimson Revenant and Thorn Robber/Thief for Arbiter Leery seem ridiculously excessive. Native for Ambassador Kuhr'Rekt is a joke.

There's also the whole Black Market thing, although there's not really a whole lot the Devs can do about that.

And I've said it before, but CoV lacks a feeling of... independance. There's very few points in the game where you aren't treated like someone else's underling.

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To be fair, my preferred solution would be revamp the whole leveling system to function more like it does with giant monsters & rikti. I'd like the game a whole lot more if the foes didn't grey out so fast and if some encounters always held some risk. Even wolverine found the occasional common thug a good brawling challenge on occasion...

Do that and there wouldn't be the huge difficulty difference in the redzones, just a reasonably more challenging one.

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Wait, so you mean that all enemies in the game would always con as even to you, at all times?
Honestly I really don't like this idea. Basically this would mean that all enemies will aggro on you, at any time. It would also mean that you never ever get any stronger than even the lowest level enemies do, you just gain more powers than them.
I like the fact that I can become stronger than enemies, that I can reach a point where I can run through a previous zone and nothing wants to mess with me. And I can't say I'd be thrilled at the prospect of having Hellions and Skulls still pose a potential threat to a L50 character.

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And if you loss much more then two, the TF would prolly be doomed anyways.

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Bull. First time I ever did the Ernesto Hess TF, all hell broke loose. We started with 8 people, and by the last mission only 3 of us were left. We still completed the damn thing.

But had it been under this new "fix"? Pff. HELL no. The moment we were left with 3 the TF would have been impossible to beat.
I've done others that started with 8 and dwindled down to 4, but we still beat them. We sure as hell wouldn't have under this new "fix".

I strongly dislike this change. TFs have a high potential to lose members for various reasons. Only now, losing those members easily has the potential to automatically doom a TF/SF to failure.

Unless you have a group of dedicated players who you absolutely know are going to be there for the entire duration of the TF/SF, you have a high chance of people dropping. Some people get connection problems, some have RL issues that take priority, some decide the TF/SF is too long and back out, some just drop without ever saying a word.

I don't think this "fixes" much of anything. Quite the opposite.

Er,.. actually I was referring to costume salvage, not the temp power costumes. I.E, Hami Costume, Statesman Mask, etc. From what I remember, those pieces dropped more frequently during the last Halloween event (I know because every character I had that did it had TONS of it left over).

Basically it's way too many insps, barely enough salvage. Costumes and rocks drop at a decent rate.

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Does anyone else feel that the Treat distribution is a bit... unbalanced?
What I mean is, my characters have been getting metric tons of tier 3 Inspirations dumped on them, a reasonable amount of temp powers, and barely a shred of costume salvage.

Some of my characters have ToTed for several hours just to get the extra costume slot, but wound up with nothing but two of the exact same piece of costume salvage at the end of the day.

I understand that some may feel that one should have to work for the costume slot, but let's face it; anyone with a decent amount of inf can just go straight to the AH/BM and get the necessary salvage with almost no effort whatsoever.

I've had way too many characters clicking doors over and over again having the word "treat" pop up, but not being awarded anything, either because they already have a ton of temp costumes, and/or because they don't feel like having to clear out their inspiration tray every three minutes.
Especially since a lot of them are only ToTing just to get the extra costume slot.

Distribution of treats should be equal.

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<massive pirate flag of ARR>

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Holy crap.
That is made of win.

I wouldn't even know whre to start in making something like that.
Y'arr.

Y'arr. I'm... not attractive.

Heh. I'll have to make it a point to log in mymost recently created villain tomorrow, Cap'n Pegbeard. He's a pirate who was turned into a vampire hundreds of years ago.
So now he's a vampirate.

Y'arr.

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I can't help but notice that Metal Armor/Melee and Elastic Melee/Elasticity aren't on that list.
Bone Armor/Melee would also be cool.

The powers listed seem kind of... dull.
Most of them are just hand-held items; shield, weapons, etc., Only psychic weaponry and vibration actually seem like actual super-powers.

Ok, forgive me if some of this has been said already, there are a LOT of pages in this thread and I didn't feel like spending all night rading through them all.

Mostly a bunch of quotes from enemies and other little things all over the place...

One of the most obvious is "City of Gyros" in Galaxy City; for those who don't know, a Gyro is a greek food sometimes pronounced "Hero"...

If you've ever bothered looking at the surroundings in Kings Row (especially near the starting point in the Mayhem mission), there's a pawn shop with the "A" in pawn burnt out.. I ROFL'd when I looked up to find my villain robbing the "Pwn shop"...

In one of the Safeguard missions you have to retrieve a "Dragoon Ball". It's description in-game reads, "Legends say that if you find all 7 of the Dragoon Balls, it will summon a mighty mystical cavalryman who can grant you a wish."
A parody of the Dragonballs from the anime series "Dragonball".

At one point an enemy said to me, "Do you feel lucky, punk?".

Don't remember whether it was hero or villain -side, but I once heard a Freakshow boss say "All your base are belong to us!".

Some trolls say "Me have body by Superadine", a reference to the "body by Calvin Kline" string of advertising.

meh, that's all I cn think of at the moment.... it's late. Me brain no work more good...

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to Large_Man, you do get bonus time for spawns in a Safeguard..defeat the "Villians causing Mayhem" and get another 1:30 like in Mayhem mission.


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You obviously misunderstood my post. I was not talking about the Vandals, I was talking about the regular mobs. In mayhems, there are no Vandals, only regular mobs of PPD (and occasional Longbow ambushes), and you get 30 seconds every time you defeat one of them(referred to ingame as "resisting arrest"). I was saying that they should award the same in Safeguards for generic enemy spawns unrelated to Vandals, side missions, or the robbery itself (call it like "arrest" or something).
In Mayhems, it is fairly easy to accumulate over a half-hour's worth of time before even hitting the side missions. However in Safeguards I often find myself running low on time.
I know I already said that the extra time in Safeguards was somewhat redundant, but hell, I'm a badge wh0re, so I need as much time as I can get.

It seems to me as if different characters have completely different experiences with Safeguard Missions.
I recently soloed the Brickstown one a couple of times with my (L39 at the time) Tanker, and not one of those times did I have any of the usual problems people have with them.

SG Mish #1:
Super Jumped over most of the buildings directly to the bank door. No aggro, no problems. Right as I reached the door, got the "Bank is being robbed" message.
Went in, ran into Hollow Point and his partner LITERALLY standing right next to the door- not on their way out, but on their way IN. They immediately aggroed (not surprising as I was like a foot away from them), and I beat the crap out of them. Took out the rest of the robbers with no problem. Cleared out the vandals and side missions with no difficulty.

SG Mish #2:
Same tactics as before, SJ'd right to the bank door. Went in, found Savage Siren just barely entering the lobby and expected to be spammed to death by Terror moves. Instead, I blindsided her in the back of the head with a Knockout Blow, and beat the crap out of her before she could regain her senses and launch a single attack. Cleared out the lobby, found her partner just staring at the vault door like a moron, wondering what was taking Siren so long.
Cleared out all the vandals and most of the side missions without a hitch, but had a little trouble with the jailbreak. Number one, every time I rescued a PPD Shell, it would immediately keel over from the explosion of the Nemesis Warhulk guarding it, leaving me with no backup for the coming battle. Found Shock Therapy busting out downstairs; beat up her buddies, beat up her most of the way, then she suddenly turned into something resembling DeathSurge, and was invulnerable for several minutes before I could finish her off.

Out of both, the only real problem I had was with the PPD in the breakout mission. The hostages should NOT be guarded by something that explodes when you kill it; that's just unreasonable.
While I did recieve long-range aggro from many of the mobs, for the most part they only attacked me once or twice before completely ignoring me and going off to destroy random objects instead.

The only major problem I can find is the following:
The layout is indeed anti-climactic. In Mayhem missions, the PPD spawns, side missions, and random devastation are all for the sole purpose of earning necessary time to complete the Bank Robbery. Granted, I usually end up with an entire half-hour of time more than I actually need, but at least I feel like I might actually need it for something. In Safeguard missions, the main part of the mission comes first; once completed, there's no real point to the side missions and vandal spawns. Why do you need extra time to complete missions that only earn you extra time? The fix should be relatively simple:
-Earn the extra time from vandals and side missions BEFORE the bank starts being robbed. Have the actual robbery only take place a set period of time into the mission. If the robbers get away, make it so you can confront them in their hideout or something instead of automatically getting a total mission failure. You can only fail a Mayhem if time runs out before you complete the main objective; Safeguards should be the same way. If you fail to get the money back before time runs out, THEN you fail. It would add to the fun if you had to find clues leading to the robbers' hideout, like finding a set number of glowies or something, or finding a mob (or mobs) that holds the key(s) to the hideout so you can get in. That would be something worth earning extra time for.
They should also award 30 seconds of time for each non-side-mission-related mob you defeat, like the PPD spawns in Mayhems.

The Safeguards just don't have the same kind of allure that the Mayhems do. The only real reasons to do them are;

A: The temp travel powers on lower lvls are a godsend. That jetpack makes the Hollows suck infinitely less.

or B: You're bored from the same old kind of missions. Even then Mayhems are far superior. The side missions in Mayhems can be done before the main task, thus earning you more time to complete it. Plus once you've finished robbing the bank, running the side missions, and blowing up everything possible to get the maximum extra time, you can still run around the map at your own leisure, blowing up stuff for the various badges. PPD for Outlaw, Longbow for Villain, vehicles for Impounder, random crap for Vandal, plus the exploration badge. In safeguards you've got no real reason to stick around once you've done everything. You only get time from defeating vandals and doing side missions, and the only thing they're good for is beating more vandals and finishing more side missions. Plus you only get badges for the main task and the side missions, so you can't really badge hunt afterwards, and unless you know exactly where the exploration badge is, it's a real pain in the ar$e trying to find it with all those supermobs running loose.
At any given time a safeguard is either too hard or too short. They can be fun at times, but aren't really worth the time and effort it takes to do them.

I may have discovered something else about the enemies in safeguard missions- not only do they have increased perception and range, but they also seem to have increased damage as well, possibly more. I soloed the AP mish with one of my tanks, and totally got chewed up by two Hellions minions of equal level. This was utter bs- I just came from a Hellions mission before going the safeguard, and was taking on groups of four a level higher than I was with no problem. But two lowly Hellion peons? My Chilling Embrace didn't seem to even have any effect on them whatsoever. I actually had an easier time taking out the villain and his minions at the bank. I managed to confirm this heightened difficulty with yet another Hellion mission afterwards; the spawns in that mission were definitely weaker than in the safeguard.
Is this increase in enemy difficulty intended, or did I just get a weird bug with mine that made the mobs harder than normal? Because for a Tank to have trouble with these peons is ridiculous. If this was intended, then it serves no useful purpose other than to aggravate and/or annoy. If we want the safeguard to be more challenging, we'll set our difficulty level higher, thank you very much.

Did a third SGM today (the Atlas Park one) with a group, and I was actually a little surprised with how well we did. We went in with six people, and two dropped out right away, yet we had little difficulty completing the mission. We had no problem with random street mobs, either they didn't have that super perception crap they've been having or we just didn't notice; either way we just blew past them easily, Went into the bank, took out an eidolon, three reapers and another eidolon, took out Rosethorn or whatever her name is, and were done. We went outside, took out the first wave of vandals and a key-carrying swarm of Vahz, completed the arson mission and then took out another wave of vandals, and then realized there was no point in sticking around, so we left. All in all it was actually really short- shorter than the Police Band missions we did in order to get the Safeguard.
Two of us were convinced that we were going to have a hell of a time trying to survive in the mish, given the high difficulty imposed by entering a Mayhem mish with the same number of people, but it seemed almost a little too easy...
We actually found the mission to be a bit boring, but that's probably because everything was right there- the two vandal spawns were right next to the bank door, as was the arson mission and it's keyholders. We touched barely a fraction of that map to get everything done...

Tell me about it. I did the Brickstown one with a sk'd Defender. It was merely a nuisance to my Invul Tank, but my sk wound up with like an entire level's worth of debt. She tried flying up and over all of the mobs, but they still aggroed on her nonetheless. I feel kind of bad about even inviting her to it in the first place...

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MAJOR PROBLEM: how in blue blazes was I supposed to know to defeat Ring Mistress spawns? Did I glom over that in the mission description? Was I supposed to just start clearing the entire board and figure it out eventually?

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It's not really that hard to figure out, Mayhem missions have the same setup; the enemy groups with keys are a type of enemy different from all the generic mob spawns on the map. If all of the generic mobs around are Clockwork, and you run into a Council mob, it's got a key. It's usually the same enemy type as the bank robbers and vandals, the only difference is they're not robbing the bank or vandalizing anything.

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Does anyone know if the lowbie Safeguards have fewer side-missions, or am I missing something?

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Yes, lower lv mishes have less side missions.

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Killing, excuse me, *defeating* random bad guy spawns on the streets didn't add to my timer, so I quickly ignored those. Perhaps I should get 30 seconds for each one so it's worth it to me to be defeating them.

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That's GENIUS. Why the hell didn't they make it that way in the bloody first place? Mayhem missions are about wreaking havok, so all havok you wreak earns you time. Beating up generic mobs on the streets (PPD) counts as havok, so it earns you time. Safeguard missions are about preventing havok, so ALL instances of preventing havok should earn you time, including defeating generic spawns.

I personally heve never had any problem with stopping the bank robbery itself. With my L14 blaster I ran in, took out the robber mobs inside, then caught the villain still trying to blow the vault. Took him out easy.
My L35 tanker gto an even bigger head start, ran into the bank and caught the boss still in the lobby, having not even reached the vault yet. Easy pickings.

Other than those obvious problems mentioned, such as the mob issue, and the issue with the timers, the only real thing I have a major problem with is the Vandals- I find it kind of annoying that I have to immediately drop what I'm doing to go fight a group of enemies elsewhere, under penalty of losing time if I don't. This is especially a problem when what I am doing happens to be a timed side mission- having to leave and come back takes time I don't have. OF course I've always gotten to the vandals right away, so I don't know how much time you really have before you get penalized...

The new Faultline's pretty interesting and all. Plus the hazard zone gave me a place to finally get the Spider Smasher badge for my main- hunting Arachnos in PvP zones was just too much trouble.
I found at least three new badges while there, but could only find two of the old ones- couldn't find the Undammed or Faultless Mystic badges.
But anyway, wouldn't they have to had changed around the Positron TF to match the new scenario? The TF originally involved three villain groups trying to blow up the Overbrook dam- now the dam has already blown, and one of those villain groups has been kicked out of FL completely...
Also, while I was teamed with someone who was exploring the new FL, they claimed to have been attacked by a... tentacle... coming out of the floodwaters near the dam. I remember reading something about there being "something" released when the dam blew- anyone know anything about this?

I've only done two safeguard missions, myself. First one was the KR one with my L14 blaster- didn't have any real problems with it, although I LITERALLY scoured the entire map and couldn't find that damn exploration badge..

Second one I did with my L35 Tank in Bricks, and a L28 Def I was SKing. We got screwed over royally. While we had no actual problem stopping the bank robbery (I got there early and pummeled the boss into submission while he was still in the lobby), everything else gave us severe grief. My partner wound up with who knows how many bars of debt from mobs that just kept showing up from out of NOWHERE. Then the sewer bombing side mish screwed us- we got there early and managed to take out three of the bombs, then we took off for a moment to take out some vandals, then we went back inside; took only about 3-4 minutes since we started the side mish. Suddenly I'm on fire, and the side mission is declared a failure- [censored]? They gave us six minutes total- weren't we supposed to have at least two minutes left? We didn't even have enough time left to stop the breakout at the jail...

But yeah, the mobs are definitely way too clumped together- the PPD in Mayhem missions aren't NEARLY as tightly packed as they are in the safeguard missions. Plus it doesn't help when you have to leave your side mission to take out vandals, under penalty of losing time- especially when the side missions are timed themselves.

I really hope the devs manage to work out all the problems with these new missions- they seem like they could be really promising once all the bugs are worked out.