Lord Mayhem

I have a great solution to this - I hardly ever exemp For the few times I do there's always some time left on my travel packs (and because I mainly play redside I can always buy another raptor pack in GV).

My experiences were somewhat different - my Spider felt weak until L24 when I could drop the gun attacks and get some decent attacks, my Widow felt weak until L24 and the endurance issues took even longer to solve, while my Warshade felt weak until L6 and then just kept getting better until I was a double-miring engine of destruction with zero downtime from L22+ (then I had 30 levels of fun levelling mostly in hazard zones) - but thankfully I did have patience, because I adore all 3 of them at L50 more than anything else in the game except my Archery blaster (which is also horrifically powerful) and I have consequently spent billions of inf on them. They all do things in different ways, but in their own style they just decimate all before them, are very survivable and always have lots of tactical options.

Peacebringers... I know I need to level a PB as I'm working towards one of every AT at L50 (four to go... all blueside), but at first glance they just don't seem to have any especially awesome synergies like the 4 VEAT branches or Warshades have, which is why I haven't made one yet - to me they just look like a Warshade but without all the amazing powers I loved on my Warshade. I'm prepared to be proved wrong when I play one, but I just lack motivation so I'm sure PB will be the last archetype I play to L50 out of the current 14 in the game.

Over my dead body! Breath of Fire + Bile Spray = awesome on my Earth/Fire Dom. But for Doms I could certainly get behind replacing /Fire's Blazing Bolt with Fireball, /Elec's Zapp with Short Circuit, /Energy's Sniper Blast with Explosive Blast, and /Psi's Psionic Lance with Psionic Tornado.

I'd go a step further and just turn all status protection clicks into toggles. I hate mez protection clicks - they take up time in your attack chain, they use up your auto-click when you'd rather have it on Hasten, they aren't perma out of the box like toggles, they need slots to make perma (1 usually, but it's still 1 slot more than a lot of mez prot toggles need), and until you get lots of recharge they're very vulnerable to leaving you unprotected when you suffer a lot of -rchg debuffs.

I see no advantage in them now compared to toggles - the traditional advantage to mez protection clickies is that they could be stacked in PvP, but that was almost always unnecessary in PvE and now PvP mez prot/res has been changed I'm not sure it's even a benefit there anymore.

No, I'm just fairly sure that most of the punishments I could think up - as consequences for associating me with a cheeky annoying Mancunian chav - would universally be regarded as "bad things"

Here are a couple of pages from Red Tomax's guide to the game that you may find useful - they explain how you get contacts, listing most contacts available in a table which helps to explain how contact referrals work (CoH and CoV differ in how you get contacts - personally I prefer the CoV way):

Contacts in City of Villains
Contacts in City of Heroes

You may also want to bookmark this page on Paragon Wiki which will let you link to the wiki pages of the contacts in your current level range so you can see how to get them and what they offer in even more detail.

I don't have an accent - everyone else does!

But if you insist you may read my posts in either a Brian Blessed accent or a Terry Thomas accent, depending on your preference and whether I'm using all capitals or not.

Just don't let me catch you reading my posts in Terry Christian's accent or there will be punishment!

(and yes I realise you may not know what these people sound like, or even who they are, but that's all part of the fun of an International forum - aren't you glad we merged!!)

Truly you have busted the n00b inside yourself, young Padawan.

I hate wearing hats, but I would happily sacrifice all of my hair on the altar of any deity or demonic entity you choose in exchange for a talking hat!

Although, all things considered, I'd prefer a talking T-shirt or a talking belt.

I felt the same way as you playing my En/En Stalker, but my Electric/Ninjitsu Stalker is at L47 now and it has been like playing a completely different archetype. In the same way as some Corruptors/Defenders play completely differently to each other depending on their debuffing/buffing powersets, an Electric Melee Stalker is world's apart when compared to single-target melee sets like DM/, EM/, MA/ etc. on Stalkers.

My Elec/ stalker can take spawns down faster than many of my brutes/scrappers can solo and truly does feel like a melee-blapper, plus I get to feel like I'm really contributing on teams. Plus when you hit the difficult targets you can still pull out AS and do a nice chunk of single target damage (though single target performance is slightly weaker than other stalker sets outside of AS), but your area burst damage can be truly spectacular and offers the team damage mitigation too (knockdowns from Lightning Rod and Thunderstrike, plus the fear effect if you use an AS first).

It's just as funny in Fistful of Arrows, which I have slotted with a Ragnarok set on my Archery/Energy Blaster. Those must be some heavy arrows to knock a fully armoured Roman Legionary or a power-armoured Crey tank on his backside!

I 100% agree with this. Having to re-apply the mini-bubble buffs from FF/Cold/Thermal/Sonic to everyone in your team (and all your pets, if an MM) every 4mins is the only thing keeping me from ever playing these powersets. I played a Bot/FF briefly in beta and just keeping those two FF bubble buffs on a few bots and players was enough to put me off these buffing sets for life.

And if the Devs don't want to make them PBAE-cast then a 15-20min duration would work instead, so you could buff everyone at the start of the mission and not have to worry about re-buffing until the start of the next mission.

I've been thinking about this and it makes me wonder what the main reason is that many players are powering through L1-20 as fast as they can:

a) because they hate having so few powers and thus a lack of tactical options;

b) because they're bored of the existing newbie content, having seen it so many times;

c) because they hate the endurance issues that can make the game annoying to play at L1-20 (due to lack of Stamina and TOs/DOs/IOs at those levels being so much weaker than L22+ SOs/IOs);

d) because they hate feeling pushed into taking so many pre-requisite powers at L1-20 just to set up a travel power and to get Stamina by L20;

e) because they despise the levelling process entirely and just want to get to L50 as fast as possible (either for PvP, farming, some other perceived endgame reason, for bragging rights, or from a perception that that's how all MMOs should be played);

f) all of the above to varying degrees.

Speaking as someone who used the recent double xp weekend to get 4 blueside characters to L20, personally for me it's mostly down to c) with just a smidgen of b) and d), perhaps a little of a) with some archetype/powerset combos, and none of e). I expect Going Rogue will tackle b) and I can live with both a) and d) as we level so fast at low level now (and it's about to get faster). So increasing the levelling speed from L1-20 is helpful for all of the above issues, but it's not directly tackling problem c) which is the main issue I have with L1-20 in this game.

For me - and I suspect for many other players - this game is all about the journey, not about reaching the end as swiftly as possible (though maybe that will change if Going Rogue adds significant endgame content/progress), so I would rather see the Dev team tackle the end issues at low level rather than the speed of levelling.

As a very worthwhile side-effect this would also improve the new player experience immeasurably. I have a friend who still refuses to try CoH/V again, 3 years after last trying it, because he hated the early end issues so much (despite me telling him things got better at L20+, he wasn't willing to put up with that on every new character - or even on his first one) - to him this will always be "that game where you run out of mana all the time" (and yeah that's a quote, heh). I keep trying to convince him to come back, but I always have to be truthful and admit that really not much has changed on the endurance issues front at L1-20

There are a number of ways the Devs could have tackled the L1-20 endurance issues:

• Dropping the Rest power's base recharge rate to 30secs or less would be a good start.
  
• Weighting insp drops at L1-20 towards mainly blue insps would help too.
  
• Getting rid of TOs/DOs and scaling SOs down all the way to L1 might help as well - this would also simplify/streamline the game for newer players, though you'd still have the issue of outlevelling enhancements so quickly at lower levels that it's barely worth slotting them (maybe SOs could be changed to never go "red" and stay at -3 level effectiveness even after you've far outlevelled them?).
  
• Though my favourite option would be to simply increase the base recovery rate to 2.5 end/sec on every character (i.e. equal to what Base plus Stamina with 3 EndMod L50 IOs or 3 EndMod +3 SOs gives you), and then turn Stamina into a passive global endurance discount power (-10% or -20% to global endurance costs) - i.e. like a passive version of Conserve Power with a lower end discount value.

I don't think it's likely, but to me this latter option is the only thing that would smooth out the play experience differential between the pre-stamina and post-stamina levels (which makes me dislike the low levels) while also improving the new player experience.

I suspect you'll only earn credit towards them when you're the character that some/all of the team are being super-sidekicked to.

i.e. you'll get badge credit whenever you're owner of the active mission - or when there's no active mission if you're the team leader - that others in the team below your level are being super-sidekicked to.

I'm all for reducing the requirements for some badges (as I posted earlier re Hero Slayer, Illusionist, etc.), but I can't say that Outlaw is a badge I have ever struggled to get during normal gameplay: I almost always have it by L45/46. All my characters do their mayhem mission every 5 levels and don't necessarily do full clears on every one.

What they do all tend to do is the L40-45 arcs from Westin Phipps in Grandville (usually because I avoid Dobbs as my duo partner hates Arachnoids, Korol's & Kuhr'Rekt's arcs are so short, and I don't find No 204's arc is worth the hassle of hunting 200 Toxic Tarantulas to unlock it - once was enough). The PPD in those tends to get me Outlaw every time. If it doesn't for some reason then you can always do Television at L45-50 as he has PPD in his missions too - as does Abyss at L45-50 iirc (specifically on the Sunstorm arc). Any PPD count for Outlaw, not just mayhem mission ones.

I'm not seeing how it will be harder, but then I usually Ouro the Magus Mu'Drakhan arc that has Infernal in the 3rd mission of it, and farm his behemoths on that - a few times I've done the mission at an xp-giving level and farmed them then, but either way it didn't take too long (just over half an hour I guess). I just hate to feel pushed into farming it like that.

I do have a few characters that didn't have to farm his Behemoths at all, because they did a few LRSFs for the extra hero credit through "normal" gameplay, but honestly as I said earlier I think Hero Slayer should only need 25 signature heroes, just for parity with the blueside badge Villain Disruptor (which only needs 25 signature villains from the [Arachnos] and [Rogue Isles Villains] factions, iirc).

Firebug is always the mayhem badge, other than Hero Slayer, that I never get through normal gameplay by L50, because: a) only the person who clicks the last firebomb gets arson credit; b) I rarely do my own mayhem missions more than once every 5 levels (for the temp power as much as the referral) for a total of 9 by L50; and c) which mayhem side-missions you get are random until L40+ (when you get all 5 side missions in the Founders' Falls and PI mayhems) so you don't always get an arson in mayhems before L40 - so consequently I never ever get Firebug normally by L50.

Usually I have around 4-6 arson credits towards Firebug when I hit L50 (though one of my recently levelled L50s only had 3 arson credits by L50). Sure, you can easily get the arsons off a single L45-50 (or L40-45) mayhem if you have a friend with it and they log out while you do just the arson in their mayhem, then they reset the mission when they log back in, but it's a tad annoying to have to game it like that (though less annoying than having to do another 20-30 newsies and 4-6 mayhems to get it solo).

I think Firebug should be changed so that either everyone in a mayhem team gets arson credit not just whoever clicked the final firebomb, or (more preferably) just change it to requiring five arson completions instead of ten.

I really hate having to wipe out grey con mobs for a badge, but at least this one doesn't take too long. On one of my stalkers I got this badge when the Consiglieres were worth xp and it took under a couple of hours, but otherwise I wait until L50 and just blitz it in that NE corner of St M and it usually takes anywhere between 45mins and 90mins depending on AT/powersets. Sure, I find it annoying to have to do that, but then that's why I'm not a badge-hunter usually.

Though it would be much easier to get Gangbuster for the unlockable contact if it was set to 50 or 100 bosses, and some L30-34 Marcone bosses were added to St M somewhere. I've only done Slot Machine (L30-35) once normally (i.e. not through Ouro) and while it was a decent enough arc it wasn't memorable enough for me to want to go farm grey con Marcone bosses in Marconeville (Port Oakes) to unlock it on other characters as they level up (because all of the existing Marcone bosses in St M are L36-38 iirc).

I'm not into badge-hunting for its own sake, but there are several badges needed for in-game accolade powers that just invite farming - I rarely feel the need to farm, but these 3 in particular just push me towards farming - so I would be grateful if you could look at them:

• Hero-Slayer (parity with Villain Disruptor would be nice, i.e. 25 instead of 100 - please think of Infernal's poor Behemoths!)
• Illusionist (why decoys? That just invites tediously farming the same MI's decoys over and over - maybe change the badge to needing 50 Master Illusionist bosses or 200 Illusionist lieutenants instead)
• Unbreakable (not a defeat badge, but seriously how are you supposed to get this badge without farming it?)

The Devs need to add two things:

a) The ability to pass the star on SFs/TFs, like you can in normal teams.

b) Allow players to "mutiny" and trigger a vote for passing the star to someone else. Allow each player to (anonymously) request a mutiny vote once every 30mins of logged-in time. Have that mutiny tag last for 30mins (unless the team breaks up sooner, then it is reset) then as soon as 3 players all have their mutiny tag up it triggers the vote window to pop up to the side of everyone's screen. This has all team members' names in it as clickable buttons to register your vote for who you want to take over as leader, and a decreasing 1 minute timer until the voting ends. A simple majority gets the star.

Thus if the leader had gone afk the players could all agree in groupchat to trigger the mutiny and all vote for the same person to ensure they get the star. Or the leader could arrange to pass the star to someone else beforehand, if they were considerate.

The button to trigger a mutiny could replace the SK/Exemp button in the team window, seeing as we won't need that anymore.

Yay! I hate exemping and rarely do it because I hate losing powers that I've earned. Regressing like that just doesn't work for me from a "fun" standpoint (as a player) nor for the purposes of in-character logic.

If you manage to solve this issue (please do!) then please also make it apply when exemping down to do lower level TFs/SFs - I always avoid those on my L50 characters because I hate losing powers and set bonuses I have gained, but I'd love to have a wider variety of TFs I could do with my L50s without voluntarily "gimping" them.

I got one feedback comment from you inside MA, saying you had played the arc, but if by "PM" you mean that you sent me a /tell then I doubt you'd have been able to get through to me anyway as I'm on the EU servers. To my knowledge we can't send cross-server tells to the NA servers (or receive them). I'm not sure why it said the inbox was full though - maybe it's a stock response (or maybe there's a @Lord Mayhem on the US servers as well who hasn't played in a while but has a full /tell buffer).

I think you missed it. It should spawn from the beginning. What you describe did happen to me once in testing and to a friend who tried it post-release, but not since - luck of the draw I think - we all miss glowies from time to time. Sadly I can't control the glowy placement as precisely as I would like - some of those office maps have messed up spawn points too (i.e. stuff designated "middle" showing up in the first or last rooms).

I've had to change that map once already after my initial preferred choice developed a regular "hole in the world" that players could fall through. The existing map is one of the few remaining that works and has enough placement points to fit all the objectives, but I'll think about changing it. Sadly some of the smaller office-to-cave transition maps do lack some of the more interesting room layouts and/or lack sufficient mob/item-placement points for this mission's needs.

Compared to the (intended) comedy accent on the 5th Column boss in the Coralax mission it didn't register to me as too flippant, but I'll definitely think about changing it.

Yeah, I know some of the maps are long - the arc was paced that way mainly for selfish reasons - so that my friends and I could get a fresh L1 character to L7 solo purely on this arc, ready for 3 newsies/pbands and a mayhem/safeguard to get them to L10, so that we could avoid the tired/old existing newbie content. I also tended towards larger maps because I hate zoning so much (my zone loading times seem to be getting slower by the month...). Honestly one of the problems I have with Dev-created newbie content is that sometimes the maps are so small it barely seemed worth the time it took to get into them, the mission was over so quickly.

But I will re-assess the maps I used for the 1st, 4th and 5th missions.

Yeah I was going to write an entire arc based on Spectral Pirates at one stage, but gave up on the idea after getting feedback from some players saying they hated fighting the pirates most of all on this arc. I guess it depends on powersets - I tried to include a variety of low level factions on this arc - ones that players don't face often in the usual newbie content - so that everyone had a chance to face enemies that were easy for them as well as enemies that were tough for them. Can't please all of the people all of the time, I guess.

Noted. Archon Rogers was originally set to "betray on arrival" at that door, but I couldn't get that to work reliably and it ended up bugging the mission, so I re-wrote the arc to have the Council hunting him and just put in an ambush. I also wanted the players to have time to read the clue from Rogers before being hit by the ambush, hence leaving it until the exit door. This also gives players the option to just exit and escape if they hate ambushes - and I understand many players do from the feedback I've had on my other arcs (where I've toned down many of the ambushes - against my own preferences, because I really like ambushes as I find that they liven up an encounter and add challenge).

I do understand what you mean, though - I don't like rescue/kidnap missions on large maps at the best of times and I should have avoided it here - this is one occasion where intent and story should bend to accommodate gameplay, so I'll revisit it when I have time and try to find a better/smaller map and a different/better ending.

I do like the spawning patrol idea and had considered it (I have used it on my other arcs), but it does use up spawn points on the map that static spawns would otherwise use, which can make a map seem very sparsely populated on the initial runthrough (and I really hate maps with lots of empty space - it just kills an arc for brutes in particular).

I'm glad you enjoyed it. On the whole this arc was more influenced by xp-gain pacing and gameplay than story/theme, unlike both of my other arcs (which are very story/lore-heavy), so in that respect it did the job it was created for.

Sadly at the moment I feel the MA is in flux with the Devs removing so many mobs/maps without notifying us, so I am struggling to justify the cost of buying extra story slots (i.e. paying the Devs for the "privilege" of making more content, when they've delivered so little mission content themselves in the last few issues...) until the MA stabilises. Plus I lack motivation to devote another 30-50 hours to planning, writing, creating and testing another arc since my magnum opus (my 3rd arc, id: 220049) has seen so little play since I published it a couple of months ago (when compared to my first two arcs), especially as the typical MA audience seems more interested in farms or single missions.

I'm planning to wait and see how I16 & GR changes both the playerbase's attitudes and the Devs' intent towards the MA before I consider paying to write any more content for it. If things improve then I'll certainly think about wheeling Captain Blackbeard out again, probably in a pirate-centric arc.

I'm not I've probably been playing villain arcs for too long, hehe. I don't mind that style of contact briefing - I find it more characterful than most of the hero-side contacts, anyway - and it was intentional in this case (yes, it is supposed to be King Midas inside the car, and from the lore I've always thought of him as quite a haughty character even though we never actually meet him in-game).

I must admit I have had previous feedback on this arc about the contact not suiting very heroic players, but then on my whiter-than-white heroes I always stick to only "heroic"-tagged AE content anyway. This arc is deliberately flagged neutral so that anti-heroes can do the mission (as well as villains) and several of my heroes are anti-heroes so it didn't seem odd to me - I figured that RP-motivated players of very heroic characters would probably avoid it because of the neutral tag.

As a counterbalance my first/debut arc (id: 84285 "A Mythos of Mystical Mysteries"), while also neutral (being a "save the world" kind of thing), is slanted more towards heroes, and the contact for that is Faathim the Kind so he's not condescending at all - and of course I've had villain players telling me that arc is not villainous enough

Of course you can't write a mission to suit absolutely every player or character as tastes and RP-motivations differ. While I started out wanting to write neutral arcs to serve the widest possible audience, I did consciously decide after this arc that I would stick to only "heroic" or "villainous" as I think it yields better results by being less ambiguous (and is easier to write too!). Consequently my 3rd arc (id: 220049 "Overshadowed by History") is completely heroic and it's the arc I'm most proud of out of my three. You might prefer it, but because its final mission is L45+ it fell outside of your guidelines for what you wanted to review in this thread (as does my other arc).

Thanks. That seems very fair. In fact in some ways I'd rather get 4 stars than 5 stars - I've had much more success looking for good stories in the MA by searching the 4-star stuff than the 5-star (I'm wondering if a lot of the 5-star stuff gets there and stays there based on author popularity/fame more than the actual merits of the arc itself).

Thanks for the review - some great feedback and as a bonus I really enjoyed reading it too!