NightshadeLegree

Whilst I agree entirely with the OP, this argument is, for now, a lost cause.

Try again when the shine has worn off, when those who are running these things 3 or 4 times a day have maxed out their new slots and realise there's nothing more to do until the next issue crawls out a few months down the line.

Personally, no argument will convince me to step onto this hamster wheel. In two years or so of playing I haven't run any particular TF more than half a dozen times at the absolute most. Running the same thing over and over again isn't entertaining to me, it's a job, and I already have a job in the real world.

My secondary account expires this month, my primary expires start of May. I'll come back for the next issue, assuming it's got something that isn't just more raids. In the meantime I'll spend my time, and money, on other games, that aren't taking a direction that's completely counter to my preferred playstyle.

I don't mind the zoning if there's a valid reason for it (even if I did have to stifle a few groans when a Grandville contact sent me to Thorn Isle in Nerva for the umpteenth time...) I do dislike the primarily blueside tendency to place missions in utterly absurd zones, like the law office in Perez Park, or (my personal favourite) the comic book convention in Crey's Folly.

I quite like the ambushes as they make the missions more lively and give the impression that our enemies are actually reacting to our attack, rather than just standing around waiting to get taken down.

That said, I hate hate hate the ones where the ambush spawns directly onto you, in melee and instantly firing off their attacks. Unless they have been established as having teleport abilities/technology they shouldn't really be doing that. I've noticed several of those in the Tips, though the GR missions generally have them running into combat in a more believable, and survivable, way.

I've read, from time to time in the forums, about Defeat = Delete, and I've always known I get too attached to my characters ever to try it. That, and I've got a fairly reckless style of play that tends to see me bite off more than I can chew on a regular basis. Debt, as they say, is only a badge.

But a weird thing's happened with one of my characters. Ace of Shades, a DB/Nin Stalker, has ran through the Resistance Crusader arc from 1 to 12 without a single defeat. I wasn't trying particularly, and given how common the opinion is that Praetoria is rough on stalkers, I was quite surprised. Nonetheless, thus far at least, she's unkillable.

Then I finish a mission, hit level 12, and talk to Beholder for my next mission.

"Defeat the Aspect of Praetor Tilman"

I've never done this mission before, but I have a very bad feeling about it. The temptation to stock up on reds and purples and put all my faith in an opening AS is high.

Ah well. I suppose that's why I like new content so much (new to me at least.) There's nothing quite like the first time running a new mission, when you don't know what's in store for you. I still remember the absolute sense of dread when I did the long walk to my showdown with Recluse's champions in one of the Oro arcs.

Ever find that, for one reason or another, you find yourself really anticipating one particular fight, despite the fact it's just one of many any character will have?

I'm not even going to try to be realistic in terms of dev time required (especially for number 2) My top 3 wishlist:

1. 1-40 Blueside rewrite, modelled on CoV. Shorter, more coherent arcs from contacts with actual personalities.

2. Zone revamps, and lots of them. Not just 'hey let's put some actual content in the hazard zones' type revamps, but have a dynamically changing world that reflects the progression of the story. Kings Row got devastated in the Praetorian attacks? Let's see the aftermath in the actual zone, and put in some missions for lowbie heroes to seek out Praetorian infiltrators, or deal with the Clockwork hindering reconstruction efforts, or the Skulls capturing a portal device and crossing the dimensions to snatch purses in Nova Praetoria (alright, maybe not that one...)

Personally I think Cole should have targetted Peregrine Island first, home of Portal Corp, but I'll readily admit that that's only because I hate PI. Such a bland, illogical place with it's Rikti on the beach and Behemoths in the parking lot.

None of the old stuff would be lost. Ouroborous is pretty much tailor made for keeping old and obsolete content in circulation.

3. Soloable TFs, with EBs instead of AVs for those who want them. Nerf the merit rewards into the ground for them if you like, just let me run them at my own pace and with a decent chance to experience the story.

The difference between the endgame grind and other real or percieved grinds is, I think, that it's never been quite so blatant. The devs are releasing these two Trials with reward mechanics that actually encourage running them over and over and over again.

This is a pretty radical change from the game that introduced merit rewards and diminishing returns to address Speed TFs.

So why the change? Simple. They just can't get the content out quick enough.

This, the endgame, was supposed to be part of Going Rogue, before it was pulled. This should have been out eight months ago.

Either NPC pathing has gotten worse, or they're having trouble keeping up with our inherent fitnessed selves, because I'm finding it a lot easier to lose them than I used to.

With that in mind, may I suggest Cat Herder or A Little Help Here for alternate badge titles.

I would have said Escort Service but that would be open to misinterpretation, especially in Pocket D on Virtue...

As Organica says, any mission that involves time travel should award the badge, even if you're under level 25, though you won't be able to use the Ouro power until you get to 25 - just as well, seeing as the only villainside arc (unless they've added others) prior to Time after Time (45+) that awards it is Echo Down the Aeons, which only goes up to 20.

I know some older missions that should award the badge never used to - like The Devil's Timepiece from Mercedes Sheldon. Looks like that's been fixed now.

I play both sides, but about 75% villains. At the moment I've got a lot of heroes stalling in the low teens, mainly because though I don't want to run the Hollows with every character, the other blueside zones are very unfocused, with a lot of aimless running around and very few interesting arcs.

That's starting to change as newer content gets added, but I think I'm still most inclined to the redside ATs. Perhaps as I start switching characters over I'll spend more time on blue, though the first character I moved was a Scrapper, from blue to Redside.

Let's see.... I have 200 or so alts. with the only restriction being that I won't repeat a primary/secondary combination on the same AT. Some powersets I've almost reached my limit with very few combos unused.

Claws/... I've got 14. My only heroside 50 is a claws/SR scrapper so I know the set pretty well by now. The only drawback I find is that after playing it so much several of the other melee sets feel terribly sluggish by comparison.

For blasters in particular I love any combo of NRG/ and /NRG. Knockback is just too much fun.

ATs... my roster has 33 MMs, out of a possible 48 combinations. I think it's safe to say that's my favourite AT overall.

Finally, a dishonourable mention for Dual Pistols. The set itself is a bit lacking (too showy, not enough oomph) but it lends itself to so many different concepts I've got 18 of them.

I've been playing a few of the Tip missions recently, and I'm enjoying them quite a bit... with one problem.

An awful lot of the in-mission conversations end with ether whomever you're talking to going hostile and aggroing on you, or an ambush being triggered. That's fine... but I'd much prefer it if they went hostile after I closed the dialogue box.

It's not so bad when it's one opponent, but trying to pick out the priority targets in an incoming ambush when the screen is still filled with a speech box is just awkward, and closing it takes time that's more usefully spent hitting insps or activating defensive click powers.

"You, obviously, are not a mutant. I, obviously, am not a mutant. That building over there, is obviously not a mutant."
- Dmitri Krylov.

I've been running a lot of lowbies through 1-20 recently, on all sides.

Blueside is fastest, if you go Atlas - Kings - Steel. I suppose the absolute optimum (outwith AE etc) would by a sewer team, followed by a radio team in Kings, then a Posi TF. I've also noticed that whilst the AP door missions were tweaked a while back to make them closer and easier to get to, the ones in Galaxy have not been, and will still merrily send a lvl 3 halfway across the map into a red zone.

Redside can be fast-ish, especially if you street sweep Mercy (I get bored with Snakes quite frequently.) There's a lot less zoning and useless running around than blueside as well. All of my fastest levelling recently has been Brutes and MMs, but I think that's as much to do with the ATs as the content.

Praetoria? I love the content, love the zones, but it's not quick. The enemies are generally tougher and, teamed or solo, it's much riskier to push up your difficulty settings, so lower xp. All of my slowest recent levelling has been done in Praetoria.

I'd much rather have alternative generic pets rather than have them drawn from specific enemy groups. Not that I dislike the in-game groups (I currently have characters inspired by Longbow, by Crey, Hellions, the Destroyers... probably others I'm forgetting) but I feel that if we finally get true MM pet customisation it would be too concept limiting. It would work great for a few concepts, but it wouldn't work at all for too many others.

(See the discussions about Lore pets for why this is a Bad Thing)

I'd like sharp suited thugs as a choice for my MMs; modern day style zombies; steampunk robots; mercs that looked like anything other than what we have just now... just for starters.

Female pets? Eh... not going to get into that debate again...

Solo, I die a lot.

I tend to tweak the difficulty settings until I find the point where I probably won't die in a mission if I'm playing well unless I get careless, or unlucky. It keeps things interesting. It's sometimes fun to steamroll through a mission or two, but if my health bar never falls below half I'm going to get bored and it's time for another visit to the Fateweaver.

On teams I prefer the same. The occassional team wipe keeps everyone on their toes, but wiping on every second group is just a pain after a while.

One thing I do hate is joining an ITF or similar full of purple'd out 50s with set bonuses up to their eyeballs, and then the leader sets it to 0/x0. We have all this power - let's use it! Then I just see how reckless I can be without getting killed... or /kicked, if I'm really reckless.

I imagine from the Devs' point of view, balancing this stuff is getting harder and harder (and incarnate powers will surely make it harder still.) I remember an all MM Barracuda on 0/0. We walked the entire SF without a single death until the ambushes in the final mission wiped us. Then we came back, defeated the ambushes and beat Reichsman down by brute force... no temp powers used (I don't think anyone knew we were meant to, it was on Test.)

The knockback on powers like Focus is annoying, and can really upset your attack chain so I could live with knockback being changed to knockdown.

But only for melee ATs, because knockdown, or up, is grossly inferior mitigation to knockback, since the foe just has to stand up and immediatly starts attacking again. Sure, you may be okay if you're a blaster or a dominator with powerful melee attacks of your own, but for say an Energy corruptor or defender the extra time it takes for the enemy to run back into melee range is very valuable.

I love the difficulty slider. The last time I was levelling a high level hero was pre-I16, and the higher settings under the old system just didn't present a challenge... until I discovered Malta at least.

I have a couple of personal rules that I follow for the diff sliders - I won't run at -1, I'll switch on bosses by level 10 at the latest. Other than that it depends on the character.

I prefer to expand outward rather than upward - even on single target oriented characters I like minions to be minions - lots of them and easy to defeat. I just find fighting hordes of foes has more of a superpowered feel to it than fighting small numbers of tough rank and file.

The only problem I've found with this are certain groups have enemies who are no danger on their own, but lethal if there's several of them - I think the technical term is force multipliers. Council Marksmen, for example, are just a minor annoyance individually, but if there's 3 or 4 of them spawn as part of a group at 0/x3 they can easily flatten your recharge leaving you utterly helpless.

So what's your preference? More enemies, or tougher enemies?