PoliceWoman

A little late, but here's my 2 inf on how I usually try to balance things:

* No EBs in an arc that is meant for players under level 12.
* No AVs in an arc that is meant for players under level 22.
* Avoid giving godmode powers (Instant Healing, Unstoppable, Elude, etc.) to EBs or AVs.
* Add allies to help against AVs; usually boss or lieutenant level. (EB or AV allies are usually too powerful.)
* Given the choice, err on the side of making it too easy, in preference to making it too hard. (Too hard might mean the player can't complete your story at all, which is frustrating.)
* Playtest! A lot! With alts of different archetypes!

I confess I don't always follow these guidelines, myself. But it's a starting point.

Thanks for the kind thoughts I've occasionally had thoughts along these lines too; i.e., get reviewers and/or MA fans to approve DCs to offload work from the devs ... Of course, something like this would be vulnerable to all the current criticisms we have of Dev Choice arcs (You don't award enough! You only award DCs to things you like! You didn't DC *my* arc! etc). I suspect if you really wanted to go this route, it would be fairer to use something like Tahlana's old "Rotten Cohmatoes" thread, which averaged the ratings from multiple reviewers, to qualify DCs.

Mon 6/21/2011

Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) joined a 16 player Lambda. I was the only support toon, but we had 4 tanks, 4 blasters and 3 scrappers. I questioned whether we had enough debuff to succeed, but went ahead with the trial. It seemed to me that we had a lot of people who were AFK through much of the trial. The power gathering phase was very messy, lots of deaths; at one point I had to remind a tanker to turn his toggles on, and people on the side that finished first ran to stand in the cut scene even though the other side still needed help. There was a lot of general stupidity in the Marauder fight; people died to nova fist repeatedly (and unnecessarily), people failed to use acids to close doors, and we actually ran out of paci grenades and had to send people to gather more from the weapons deliveries. I madly spammed transfusion (not only for the heal, but for the regen debuff) while trying to SB both teams. It looked pretty doomed, but we actually managed to win with 1 second left on the clock, very dramatic. I got an uncommon reward and up to 68% Interface exp.


Wed 6/23

Kyrie Eleison (33 fire/fire brute) did a Manticore TF. We had a high DPS team with good support and despite clearing most missions (since most of the team was getting exp) we tore through the TF very quickly, though I didn't get the exact time. This got Kyrie to level 34.

Spacegirl (51 mind/rad controller) joined a Tin Mage TF which went pretty straightforwardly. Afterwards I crafted a Diamagnetic Interface (chance of -ToHit) and a Clarion Destiny (mez protect). I normally prefer Reactive Interface, but wanted to avoid damage procs that might break sleeps; as a rad she already has -regen covered, so -ToHit seemed a good debuff to layer with Radiation Infection. And getting mezzed is the bane of my rad characters (as it drops all toggle debuffs) so Clarion seemed a good choice.


Thu 6/24

Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/fire brute) solo'd a couple AE arcs: In Poor Taste, which was a joke arc about CoH mobs that have terrible names (I gave it 4 stars) and The Internet is for Pwn!, where you meet an "Internet" contact that is meant to be like "The Radio" and "The Television" from CoV (also gave that 4 stars). I also hit the unclaimed ticket cap and claimed another 1000 tickets.


Fri 6/25

Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic defender) joined an ITF that finished in 25m 49s; I took the ancient nictus salvage. After that I formed a Lambda trial. It felt like it took ages to get enough players to try this, but finally kicked off with a 10 player league; it went fine, got an uncommon reward, Interface unlocked and 2% Destiny exp. I picked up a few more players and immediately ran a 12 player BAF. We had a brute AFK for most of the trial that I ended up exiling to be solo on team 3. I got a common reward and to 49% Judgement exp.


Sat 6/26

Ice Kate (19 cold/ice def) started soloing an AE story arc called Fresh off the Flier, which is an alternate CoV starting arc intended for lowbie villains. It seems well-written and does a decent job introducing lowbie villain factions, but doesn't actually seem that different than the normal PvE lowbie arcs. Got about halfway through before taking a break.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an STF. We had a team wipe to Dr. Aeon due to either not using the temp power that breaks his force fields, or maybe it missed; won the rematch. In the last mission, we had a messy fight against the 4 patron AVs as the flyer aggroed us mid-fight and people kept dying to it. Finished in 55m 28s, got 37 merits, a Notice, and an Endoplasm.


Sun 6/27

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a BAF trial; this league took ages to form, finally kicking off with a full 24 players. We seemed very leaky on prisoners and had a rather chaotic fight against the AVs, but eventually won. I got a rare and to 38% Lore exp.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapped) joined a 15 player Lambda, got a common and to 65% Destiny.

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined a 16 player Lambda. Against Marauder I tried fly-taunting him; this seemed to work really well, he could only occasionally throw a big rock at me. I don't think I ever saw Marauder nova fist while I was flying and had aggro, though he did move around agitatedly while trying to get at me, which might have been annoying for the meleers. Strangely we had 3 tanks on the trial, none of which really tried to take aggro from me. I got an uncommon and to 72% Destiny.

Sarcasm Lass (35 sonic/mental blaster) joined a clear most ITF; we were pretty low on support, with a tank, a rad and 6 damage. We had a team wipe at the end of mission 1 and a near wipe on the PC in mission 3. It took awhile to grind down Romulus in the last mission, but we eventually beat him, finishing in 56m 52s. This got Sarcasm Lass to level 37.

Shield Maiden (28 shield/mace tanker) solo'd Lars Hansen's arc for 8 merits, unlocking the Hess TF.


Mon 6/28

Primadonna (51 sonic/kin corr) joined a debuff-heavy STF team that finished in a speedy 27m 48s. I got 37 merits, a Notice and an Essence of the Incarnate.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corr) joined a debuff-heavy RSF that finished in 25m 41s, getting 25 merits, a Notice and an Essence of the Incarnate. Used this to craft a Spiritual total core revamp (45% rchg, stun, level shift).

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) did a 6-player speed ITF in 17m 28s.


Tue 6/29

Issue 20.5 dropped today and the first thing I did was play Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) on a 24-player Keyes trial. My first impression was that the trial was really complicated. We had to gather power cells and activate computers on each of three different buildings (called "reactors" by the game, which I think is a misnomer; these would be cooling towers in a "real" power plant). The process for gathering the power cells and activating the computers was slightly different for each reactor, and the last 2 involved dragging Antimatter (the AV) around to various workstations before they could be activated. In the meantime, we were getting bombarded by some kind of zone-wide area damage, which seemed to hit us with a big packet of damage every minute or so. The 8-player team I was on had no support toons; my medicine pool powers seemed to be the only healing on my team. We suffered a lot of attrition due to this constant damage. Finally after activating everything on all 3 reactors, we got to fight Antimatter. He had some power that entangled people in red or blue spheres, and we were supposed to avoid players of the opposite color (or take damage), while avoiding standing in big green circles. Also Antimatter would periodically run to a new spot and regen most of his life by using some machines that we had to destroy. This whole thing was very chaotic, but the leader kept us moving forward, and we eventually won. Surprisingly, there was very little lag, despite the complexity of the map and having 24 players on the league. I got a common reward and the Keyes technician badge. I also crafted the basic Longbow Ally; I'm pretty excited about having non-Praetorian pets for the Lore slot.

I was enough of a sucker that I decided to do the Keyes trial again, this time on Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper). This went much smoother because there was a lot more support and healing on this league (which was also 24 players). Also the players did a better job of staying together for mutual support. What seemed insanely complicated on the first run started to make sense on the second run, and we completed it pretty handily. I got a rare reward and to 41% Lore, 69% Destiny; it's noteworthy that Keyes mobs give exp to both incarnate trees. Though it seems longer and I only got about 4% to each.

Blond went on to do a 24 player BAF. No prisoners escaped. We had high DPS and in the final fight, the respawned Siege seemed to die almost instantly (while Nightstar was still at 70%), and so he respawned again, but we evened them out again and won the trial. I got a very rare reward and to 45% Lore (again, only 4% exp..hmm..maybe an artifact of the big league size). A teammate also complimented me on her origin story, which was nice.

I'm planning on staying on Liberty. Liberty is my "home" server. I think people moving to the pay-only server are severely overreacting. Being able to pay a subscription doesn't automatically make you a nice person, and being a free-to-play player doesn't automatically make you a bad one. There are plenty of people who can pay a subscription who are jerks, too, after all. You just have to learn how to deal with them.

I now have this mental image of hazygreys as played by Ben Stein of "Win Ben Stein's Money".

I think the intent of the 300 byte limit is so you don't get a wall of text thrown at you mid-mission. It can be awkward sometimes though.

You can split clues among multiple objectives (each giving a <300 byte clue) if you can determine a logical way to split your big clue up a bit.

The "start of mission" clue also has a much larger text limit, though of course you get that as soon as your start the mission, which might or might not work with your concept.

You can also insert extra exposition into dialog spoken by NPCs. This can be good for clues that (in your arc) are supposed to come from interrogating or talking to people. You can stage several lines to be revealed in order by assigning them to display at different health totals. I've also seen this done for destroyable objects that are given dialog, but I (personally) don't like that because objects normally don't talk.

It's possible to add text to mob descriptions or object descriptions, but probably not advisable as few people read those.

Each of these techniques are workarounds for what it sounds like you're trying to do, but maybe some of them will fit with your story idea. Good luck!

Mon 6/13/2011

Ice Kate (7 cold/ice def) joined a 6 player team running level 13 missions. We had both sonic and cold shields on the team, making us really tough. Finished the Clockwork Captive story arc, which got Kate to level 12 and DOs.

Yuki-Onna (51 ice/cold corr) did a speed RSF; for some reason the leader packed the team with colds, and we went with 4 colds and 1 kin for support. Seemed to work fine and we finished in 24m 46s; I took the Essence of Incarnate.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery def) joined an 8 player Lambda; I got a common reward and Destiny unlocked. I got the league star dumped on me at that point, and ended up recruiting up to 16 players and running a BAF. We had no escapes, I got a rare reward and to 36% Lore exp. A second BAF run with 15 players got me a rare reward and to 52% Lore exp. There was some drama over who was guarding which door, but it didn't seem too serious. I got some praise for leading, which was nice. I crafted and slotted a Rebirth Partial Radial Invocation (heal/regen/incarnate shift), figuring a self-heal with some regen was ideal for a defense capped stormy.


Tue 6/14

Kyrie Eleison (31 fire/fire brute) solo'd a few missions in Croatoa.

Mayday (51 fortunata) joined an all veat ITF; our lineup was 6 soldiers and 2 widows. We cleared most of the missions; I noticed one of the soldiers really liked going off to solo by himself, which usually ended in him dying. Finished in 51m 57s (not particularly speedy, but the team seemed to have a good time) and took the Ancient Nictus Fragment as reward.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined a speed Kahn TF, finishing in 18m 24s for 40 merits and a Notice of the Well.

Star Amethyst (52 dark/ice def) joined a speed Kahn. One rogue player accidentally went to the red-side Ouro, delaying us a bit. Finished in 21m 13s and got 40 merits and a Notice of the Well.

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 17 player BAF, got a common reward, Judgement unlocked and 8% Lore exp. I crafted and slotted an Ion Judgement (the basic electric nuke), mentally picturing it as being a deadly joy buzzer.

Ice Kate (12 cold/ice def) solo'd The Hollows: Parapsychologist, a pretty good AE story where you help Talshak the Mystic investigate a kidnapping by the CoT. I gave it 5 stars.


Wed 6/15

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an STF. We had a few delays as a rogue player managed to Ouro to red side, and the leader was a rogue so had to travel the long way between IP and PI. Plus, in the last mission, both the red and the yellow towers respawned; it seemed to me that our force fielder was using Force Bubble to keep minions away from the tower we were working on, and this did seem like it was helping at the time, but I suspect this meant the repairmen were kept on the periphery of the force bubble and never got killed, so when we left, they came back and fixed the tower. The FF ended up dropping Force Bubble and we killed the towers again, finishing the TF in 48m 19s; I got a Centriole.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols def) joined a pickup Hami raid. It had sounded like they were short on healers, so I brought an empath, but I ended up getting assigned to the green team which was all controllers and didn't need much healing. I ended up using the league interface to target tanks that were taking damage in order to run around healing them; I think this actually worked pretty well. The raid was rather slow paced but methodical, and we ended up winning, powering through the final bloom with the help of Warburg nukes. I got a Lysosome as reward.

Kyrie (31 fire/fire brute) solo'd Buck Salinger's arc in Croatoa for 12 merits, unlocking the Katie TF. I also hit the ticket cap at AE and claimed 1000 tickets.


Fri 6/17

I server transferred Darla Doppler (49 kin/sonic def) back to Liberty from being exiled on Freedom. Until recently I had been a big believer in kin corruptors over kin defenders, but my thinking has changed, and I want to give a kin defender a try in the current endgame. My main reasons are: most endgame content is on leagues or 8 player teams, and a defender's better buff numbers will help more here; the sonic blast debuffs are more powerful on a defender, and on a big team this will be a bigger contribution than higher personal DPS; and finally, defender epic pool shields + defender tough + cardiac boost could get a defender close to the resist cap on a "squishy".

So I respec'd into the following build:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Darla Doppler I20: Level 50 Science Defender
Primary Power Set: Kinetics
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Electricity Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Transfusion -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/Rchg(3), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5), Numna-Heal(5), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(7)
Level 1: Shriek -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 2: Scream -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 4: Howl -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(19), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(19), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(21)
Level 6: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 10: Siphon Power -- Acc-I(A)
Level 12: Speed Boost -- Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(A), Zephyr-ResKB(29)
Level 14: Increase Density -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GA-3defTpProc(27)
Level 16: Super Speed -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(25), Zephyr-ResKB(33)
Level 18: Inertial Reduction -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(29)
Level 20: Amplify -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(23)
Level 22: Kick -- ExStrk-Dmg/KB(A), ExStrk-Acc/KB(23), ExStrk-Dam%(25)
Level 24: Shout -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(37), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42)
Level 26: Transference -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(A), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(31), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(31)
Level 28: Siren's Song -- LgcRps-Acc/Rchg(A), LgcRps-EndRdx/Sleep(31), LgcRps-Acc/EndRdx(33), LgcRps-Sleep/Rng(34), LgcRps-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(34)
Level 30: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(42), RctvArm-ResDam(43), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), RctvArm-EndRdx(43)
Level 32: Fulcrum Shift -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33)
Level 35: Screech -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(36), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(36), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(36), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(37), Stpfy-KB%(37)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- Erad-Dmg(A), Erad-Acc/Rchg(39), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(39), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Erad-Úm(40)
Level 41: Thunder Strike -- Erad-Dmg(A), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Erad-Acc/Rchg(46), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(46), Erad-Úm(46), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48)
Level 44: Charged Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(45), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(45), RctvArm-ResDam(45), RctvArm-EndRdx(48)
Level 47: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(48), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(50), LkGmblr-Def(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A)

I switched from my normal attempts to soft cap smash/lethal DEF to instead soft-cap ranged and energy DEF, reasoning that these are much more prevalent on incarnate trials. For the same reason I took Charged Armor as my patron shield, since it gives smash/lethal/energy resists. This build gives Darla a total of 45.39% range DEF, 44.46% energy DEF, 20.71% lethal DEF, 33.19% energy RES and 66.52% lethal RES. I was pretty pleased by these totals; I have scrappers less durable than that.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 23 player BAF. Out of these 23 players, there was only one support toon. We had lots of death but succeeded. I got an Uncommon reward and to 37% lore. After that I split off and tried forming my own Lambda, but after asking around for awhile, I could only get 3 players.

I proposed we switch to a Posi 1 TF, which 3 players was enough for. Surprisingly, there was tons more interest in Posi 1 than in Lambda. Or perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of people are tired of incarnate trials. I switched to Ice Kate (12 cold/ice def) and formed an 8 player team. We had no heals but O2 boost from a stormy, but lots of defense from my cold shields and a FF toon. Despite this, we flew through Posi 1 in 42m 5s. Everyone was very psyched, and wanted to do Posi 2. So the same team started Posi 2; we had a couple near wipes against CoT near the end (I think we were getting tired) but finished in 49m 58s. This all got Ice Kate to level 19.


Sat 6/18

Millie Volt (51 elec/elec brute) joined an 16 player Lambda, got a Very Rare and to 54% Destiny. After that we did a 20 player BAF. We had no escapees, but I did get confused and got to punch people a lot; didn't manage to kill anyone, though. Got an uncommon and 13% Lore.

San Min (51 MA/will scrapper) solo'd Vernon Von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions, a funny AE story arc where you're helping a mad scientist explore alternate dimensions. There were some AVs but nothing I couldn't handle. I gave it 5 stars. Visiting Wentworth's I found I had sold two Ragnarok IOs that I had totally forgotten about for 1.3B inf, which hit the inf cap for San Min and I had to mail myself another 900M inf before claiming.

I like to hit level 50 doing something cool, so Darla Doppler (49 kin/son def) formed an STF that I ran at +1 difficulty. We had a strong team so I set it as a Master of STF, but told everyone we weren't serious about it. Due to these settings I think I really ended up running a MoSTF where everyone was exemp'd to 49 but the TF was at level 51 (from my +1 difficulty) so effectively it was a +2 MoSTF. Fortunately, we were pretty awesome so this did not slow us down very much, though we did have a couple deaths from the security forces in mission 3 that prevented the "Master of" badge. One scrapper reported that exemping to level 49 disabled all his incarnate powers, but the rest of the team still had them, which was very weird; at a teammate's suggestion, he toggled on/off the Walk power, which brought his incarnate powers back. Also, I hit level 50 on mission 3; trained up before the next mission, but the team was still exemped to 49 for the whole TF. We finished the STF in 46m 10s and I got a Nucleolus.

After that Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) formed a Kahn TF. The team killed the Kronos Titan while waiting for the last few members to finish another TF. The last two people were someone I actually invited, and his friend; it turned out this "friend" was someone I normally would never team with, but I felt it would be too rude to refuse to include him, so I went with it. He was mostly okay, except in the very last mission, where as tanker he seemed completely incapable of getting aggro from Reichsman. I could even see him doing the "taunt" animation, but Reichsman just seemed to ignore him; I have no idea why. Fortunately this did not slow us down. Finished in 24m 21s and got 20 merits. (I had already completed Kahn TF as WST and was doing it for badge credit now.)

Kyrie (31 fire/fire brute) joined an 8-player Sister Psyche TF. We were very DPS heavy, with only a stormy and a VEAT for support. We had a messy zerg-fest on Devastation (just a Freakshow boss, really), which was really my fault because I just jumped onto Devastation without any preparation, and the rest of the team followed me, which the 3 or 4 large groups of Freakshow in the area seemed to take issue with. Over the course of the TF, we also got to enjoy the benefit of 3 Nictus Cyst Crystals courtesy of our peacebringer. Nevertheless we finished in 1h 43m, a pretty decent time, and got Kyrie to level 33.


Sun 6/19

Darla Doppler (50 kin/sonic def) solo'd Alpha Unlocked. It took me a long time to defeat Trapdoor and the Honoree, but I managed to eventually wear the EBs down; between Transference and Transfusion I never ran out of either END or health, and my high energy defense prevented them from being any real threat to me. After getting Alpha Unlocked, I joined what I was told would be a pickup Lambda, but the leader somehow selected BAF instead. We had 14 players and I got an Uncommon reward and 22% Judgement exp; after that we actually did a Lambda, with 15 players, and I got a Common reward and 35% Interface.

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 20 player BAF, got a common and 22% Lore. I also messed around renaming April's pets; the Larry/Curly/Moe thing seems all-too-common for MM pets, so I ended up renaming them after characters on Gilligan's Island. I tried to set it up so that the Arsonist would be Gilligan.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 16 player lambda, got a common and 51% Destiny.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) formed another speed Kahn TF. Some of my teammates complained they took tons more damage than normal, but I couldn't see any obvious reason why. Nevertheless finished in 25m 27s; I took a Dimensional Keystone (not that I really need one since I have the tier 4 Alpha I want already, but figure it may come in useful someday).

April Fool joined an 8 player Lambda. We were very light on debuff, with only me (a trick arrow) and maybe some VEAT debuffs on the team. We did have an emp and a FF on the team, but the FF was a little spotty on buffing and the emp never buffed at all. The leader originally didn't want to split the team to gather temp powers, for sake of team survivability; I didn't really think this was a good idea (you really need the bonus time from doing both sides simultaneously) but went along with it, mostly. One tanker split off anyway, to try and solo the other side. When we had gotten 7 caches and 1 acid with only 1 minute left on the clock, I gave up on the "following orders" thing and switched to help with acids; I saw the leader getting acids too, so I think she had the same idea and just didn't say anything. This was enough to let us collect all 10 of both. Against Marauder we got him down to about 40% life, then seemed to hit a brick wall as the team was unable to stay alive against the adds (despite both emp and FF on the team!), then finally ran out of paci grenades while trying to zerg Marauder with lots of hospital runs. We started collecting paci grenades one-by-one from the weapon deliveries, but ended up running out of time, failing the TF. This got April to 99% Destiny; I tried to stay in the Lambda sector to solo my last 1% Destiny, but the trial kicked me out once I dropped from the team. Oh well!

Also on Sunday, the AE Invasion event on Freedom server played my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc, among others. My arc was described as "a lowbie-friendly arc that is rich in details, background, characterization, dialog, and action" and was voted the best arc of the day, which was really nice.

Added: Vernon von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions (#115174) V48-54
A mad scientist sends you to explore alternate dimensions. Comedy.

Source: Thank Goodness It's Mission Architect Thursday thread.

Personally, I prefer to rate arcs using the whole range of 1 star to 5 stars. Although I respect that a lot of forum goers seem to have gone to a "5 star or nothing" system, I feel you lose a lot of information by doing so. I'm not willing to lump arcs that are "good try, could be great if you work at it more" in the same category as the "best stories that MA has to offer", and in my opinion, to do so is a disservice to both the writer and the player of MA story arcs.

There are several arcs I originally gave 4 stars or even 3 stars, that I believe I actually helped by providing useful feedback that the author was able to use to improve his or her story arc. Some of these have made it onto my "favorites" list and would easily score 5 stars from me now.

Likewise, I've received several middling to low scoring reviews, with extensive feedback, that let me considerably improve some of the story arcs I've worked on.

This feedback effect is greatly reduced in an environment were people are generally willing to give arcs 5 stars just "for effort" rather than for actual quality.

Added: The Hollows: Parapsychologist (#372507) H5-40, but should probably be H12-40
Talshak the Mystic asks for your help investigating a kidnapping by the Circle of Thorns.

Source: default search + my level (where my level = 12)

Thu 6/2/2011

I hit the ticket cap at AE and claimed 500 tickets.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) was on a speed ITF that took 18m 24s (got 26 merits), then an STF that took 25m 1s (a record time; got a Centriole, bleh), then a 7-player Kahn TF that took 16m 1s (got a dimensional keystone).

Rain Dancer then formed and led a 10 player Lambda trial, getting a rare reward and to 86% Destiny exp; followed that with a 12 player BAF trial with no escapes, getting a common reward and up to 21% Lore exp. I had someone praise my small team style for trials, which was nice.


Fri 6/3

I played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) on an STF. This was slow to start as we struggled to fill up the team. I briefly tanked Ghost Widow in the final mission when the tank died. The tank died again on Lord Recluse which left the melee scrambling to aggro LR away from the team, but we recovered and finished in 42m 46s. I got an Essence of Incarnate.

A friend was complaining that no one would team with him on red side, so I logged on Marcia Law (28 pistols/kin corr), picked up a third person, and teamed up for 4 paper missions, getting to level 29.


Sat 6/4

I bought the Steampunk pack, because it looked cool, although the only piece of it I've used so far is the sash-like belt with a clock shaped buckle. For some reason I really like that belt.

Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute) joined a 7 player Sutter TF. Our team kinda struggled against the AVs, suffering a team wipe against Riptide, and 2 team wipes against the matched pair of Durays. We struggled with whether to kill the Praetorian or the Primal Duray first; what finally worked was to chase the annoyingly TPing Primal Duray around and killing him, then the other. Finished in 1h 15m and got to level 29 due to the Weekly Strike Target bonus.

Marcia Law (29 pistols/kin corr) joined another Sutter TF, this one with 5 players. We had 3 kins on a 5 player team, yet I still had to ask for SB repeatedly (I seemed to be the only one who consistently cast it). The leader had never done the TF and our team really struggled due to low DPS and low survivability. We suffered a wipe on generic IDF in the first mission, then to the Captain Stone AV in the first mission, then to Riptide in the second mission (eventually beating him by pulling him into a hallway). One of the other kins found that Repel was surprisingly good against the ghouls that rushed us. We suffered 4 team wipes against the two Durays; our tank had no taunt, making it tough, and we really didn't have enough debuff or DPS to get the job done. Finally gave up after the fourth team wipe. Nevertheless got Marcia to level 30.


Sun 6/5

Kyrie Eleison (29 fire/fire brute) solo'd the Roy Cooling arc for 5 merits and the Helping Hand badge, then the Keith Nance arc for 5 merits and the Fairest badge. This got her to level 30.

Tour de Force (35 FF/nrg defender) joined an 8 player Sutter TF. I originally brought a blaster, but our team was very blaster heavy and support light, and after the previous night's rough experience on Sutter TF I insisted on switching to a support toon. After seeing Repel work well, I found Force Bubble also was very good against the ghoul bombs. This TF went very smoothly, finishing in 48m 1s and getting Tour to level 36.

After finishing Sutter TF I immediately got invited to a 7-player ITF, finishing in 30m 52s and getting Tour de Force to level 37.


Mon 6/6

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 16-player BAF trial. For some reason we had 5 tanks, but nevertheless we had no escapes and the trial went well. Got a common reward and to 66% Judgement exp.

I switched to Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) for another BAF run, this time with 14 players. I got a costume compliment from a teammate, which was nice. No prisoners escaped. One of our tankers repeatedly ignored the 2 ring warning and got himself and several league members sequestered multiple times; managed to win anyhow, though, getting an uncommon reward and to 29% Lore exp.

While on the BAF trial, a friend repeatedly asked me to drop from my team to help him with a Master of Barracuda SF run, despite my telling him I was already doing something. This ended up making me mad, and I put him on ignore. Later, after cooling down, I felt I had handled the situation badly, so I took him off ignore and emailed him an apology.


Tue 6/7

Hit the ticket cap at AE again and claimed 1000. Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) ran half of Sidekicks Can Be A Pain in the Cape, a story about a kid who wants to be a sidekick and ends up getting into trouble. I felt this story was kind of light on actual writing and badly suffered from "Your Princess is in Another Castle" syndrome, where you keep going places looking for the hostage and it turns out he's not there at all. I ended up quitting halfway through and gave it 3 stars.

Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) joined an ITF; another MA/SR was on the team and said it was unusual to see two in one place. MA/SRs used to be really common, but I guess it is out of style these days. We sped through the TF and I was asked to team TP in the final mission to Romulus, but ended up doing so to the wrong place (I TP'd next to Romulus instead of before the dance floor), but things worked out anyhow. Finished the ITF in 18m 45s and I got an Ancient Nictus Fragment. I crafted a Musculature (DMG) boost and used it to replace the Cardiac (END) boost that I had previously slotted. My philosophy on alpha slotting has evolved to the point where I think all my scrappers and blasters (basically, toons with high base damage) should have Musculature.


Wed 6/8

Sarcasm Lass (34 sonic/mental blaster) solo'd 2 PvE missions in Warburg, for no real reason; just needed something to do.

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) joined an Apex TF. We had one brute at -4 due to lacking an alpha boost and he died lots. Finished in 24m 41s and got 80 merits, 2 threads, and Notice of the Well.

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a pickup BAF trial. The leader was only able to recruit to 11 so started Lambda, but had second thoughts and told us all to quit so he could recruit more. It felt like it took forever to start again, between recruiting more people and fiddling with team composition. We finally started the BAF with 15, divided for some reason into 4 teams. The trial was rather chaotic as the leader gave no instructions, so lots of raid members shouted random orders to fill the power vacuum. We somehow managed to win anyhow, getting April a common and to 84% Judgement.


Thu 6/9

Strong Woman (51 inv/SS tanker) joined an Apex TF. I was asked to bring a tanker, and was asked to be lead tanker even though the team already had a tank; the other tanker was admittedly pretty bad, though I did manage to die once myself, to the hydra in the sewers (stupid toxic damage!). In the final fight, our team was just awful at avoiding the blue stuff; at one point 6 of our 8 players were dead to blue stuff. I've gotten pretty good at dodging it and don't think I ever got hit. Finished Apex in 31m 22s and got 80 merits, 2 threads and Notice of the Well.

I switched to Mystery Girl (52 emp/pistols defender) and joined a pickup BAF trial. We had 23 players which made it very laggy. At one point during the prisoner phase I found myself the only one chasing 3 commandos running towards the west exit; this was a bad feeling considering I was an emp defender (albeit an aggressive one). I screamed for help and a stalker came to the rescue (how often do you hear that phrase?) and between us we beat up the fleeing commandos. I got an uncommon reward, Judgement unlocked and 4% into Lore exp. I crafted a Void Radial Judgement (PBAOE nuke with a big damage debuff); mostly I wanted the damage debuff for extra mitigation, and I figured the PBAOE would actually stack well with Hail of Bullets.

I started a new cold/ice defender, taking the name Ice Kate and soloing to level 3 in Outbreak and Atlas Park. Partly this is motivated by cold shields becoming AOE buffs on test server, partly I've wanted a hero-side cold for awhile but never quite got one off the ground.

Virtual Girl (48 kat/fire scrapper) solo'd Scirocco's first patron arc, beating an EB-level Barracuda and an EB-level Serafina, though it took me 3 tries to beat Serafina due to her hurricane, which kept overwhelming my limited knockback protection.


Fri 6/10

I wrote a background story for Ice Kate about mutants and Olympic figure skating, then solo'd Grim and the Green, a dev choice AE arc that proved to be a decent investigation story where you work with the police against the Skulls. I gave it 5 stars. This got Ice Kate to level 6.

Virtual Girl (48 kat/fire scrapper) joined a clear most ITF. I occasionally got overrun by Cimerorans, and my self rez came in very handy; our blasters died lots, though. Finished in 54m 33s and got 26 merits and level 49. I got a compliment on her bio, and also on her survivability ... "for a fire aura toon". (Which I can't really disagree with; most fire aura toons, including some of mine, are really squishy.)

Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) joined an 8 player Positron 1 TF. We had a good team mix and fun players who spent most of the TF cracking jokes. At this level I found I had KB protection (from IOs) but no immob protection (both CJ and Burn were taken at some level above 20, ack), so I kept getting trapped by Tenebrous Tentacles (eww). Finished in 43m 15s, got the Positron's Ally badge (I had previously done Posi 2) and got to level 31.

I switched to Sakura (28 plant/storm controller) for a Posi 2 with the same team, but some weird chat problem prevented the team leader from sending me tells or invites, though he could see my tells. The last tell I saw from him was "just a minute" so I patiently waited for 15 minutes for an invite, before I saw him broadcasting to fill the spot I was in. We managed to straighten it out and start Posi 2 after that, and the next time I zoned (into the first mission) I got like 12 tells that had been queued on the global chat server or something. It was very weird. The TF itself was no problem and finished in 50m 46s, getting Sakura to level 30. I also got a compliment on Sakura's name, and chatted for awhile with a teammate on how important it was to get a good character name.


Sat 6/11

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) solo'd 3 vigilante tip missions.

Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) joined a 6 player speed ITF, finishing in 22m 33s.

Mayday (50 fortunata) formed an Apex TF that finished in 24m 42s, then used the same team for an 8 player Lambda trial, getting an uncommon reward and to 52% Destiny exp.

Ice Kate (6 cold/ice defender) solo'd some door missions to get contacts and level 7.

Spacegirl joined a pickup Lambda trial. After a long recruiting period, we finally started, but the leader disconnected somehow as the trial began and got left out of the trial, and didn't seem able to rejoin. Did the run with 14 players, got a rare reward and Destiny unlocked. I also got a compliment on Spacegirl's bio.

Sarcasm Lass (34 sonic/mental blaster) joined a 4 player hero tips team that eventually grew to 8 players. I got 2 compliments on Sarcasm Lass's costume, which was nice. We did 5 hero tips and a hero morality, getting Sarcasm Lass to level 35. I switched to Kyrie Eleison (30 fire/fire brute) for more, and we got caught in a nasty 5th Column crossfire that resulted in a near wipe, but managed to finish 3 more hero tips before people got tired. This got Kyrie to level 31 and I picked up a new global friend.


Sun 6/12

Police Woman has gradually been converting reward merits into hero merits, and today I spent 30 hoarded hero merits on a level 10 Gladiator's Armor (resist TP/+3% defense). By my calculation, spending 30 merits on 15 Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% rchg) is probably a better value, but I had lots of LotGs and zero Gladiator's Armor, so I ignored the math. I don't even have a build that uses a Gladiator's Armor, though, so I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it yet. Probably stash it in base storage for a rainy day.

I played Police Woman through a vigilante morality mission, converting her to Vigilante alignment. I mostly did this to pick up a few of the villain badges they've added since the last time Police Woman visited red side; mainly the red side respec badges, but there's probably a few more. I also broke down and crafted a Pyronic Radial Judgement (the wide fire nuke) for her; I had been avoiding judgement powers because they were "too super", but finally rationalized it as being "no worse" than Warburg nukes, which I don't seem to mind using.

I hit the inf cap at the market again and mailed myself another 900M inf.

Playing April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) I formed and led an 8-player Lambda; we picked up a 9th person via the LFG queue. This team had some decent players but was rather squishy and we really struggled to get the temp powers; we actually ran out of time during the temp power gathering phase, after getting only 8 acid and 6 grenades. I initially called on people to kill Marauder directly and ignore adds, but we ended up getting overrun by adds. The players had a lot of courage and kept valiantly zerging back into the fight but at our best we only got Marauder down to 80%. We switched to focus on killing adds, and got enough extra temp powers that we were able to close all the doors, but we weren't able to make another valid attempt on Marauder before time ran out. So we failed the trial, but all the killing did get April up to 60% Destiny exp and we picked up some astrals along the way. In hindsight, I think we needed more tanking or healing or both; our brute was plenty brave in assaulting Marauder but we couldn't keep her alive against him, and as a result Marauder could mow through us with impunity. Oh well.

After that, I ended up rolling our team into a BAF league that was forming, which ended up starting with 22 players. We had no escapees; I got a common reward and up to 99% Judgement exp

Finished the night playing Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) on another Apex TF (for badge credit towards Assistant), finishing in 29m 48s.

Congrats to Dr. Geist and the Scientific Method (#111022) on becoming the newest Hall of Fame arc! Well deserved, IMHO.

Woo woo!

This is really a matter of personal taste, but since you are asking, here are my two inf. (Note: all purely my opinion, your mileage may vary.)


The answer depends on the overall "power level" that your arc is targeted for. If your arc is about world conquerors, alien invasions, dimensional travel, etc., then it should probably cap at level 50. If your arc is about organized crime, corrupt cops, gang violence, etc., it should probably cap at some level below 50.

Another way to look at this would be, what are the enemies that you're fighting in the non-Security Guard missions? Since all your other missions go up to 54, I imagine they are custom groups, but the theme of the custom groups might help you decide. If you think your custom groups are most like Family or Crey, maybe level 40 is an appropriate level cap for your arc. If your custom groups are more like Rikti or Rularuu, then level 50 would make more sense.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the thoughtful responses; it is interesting to read the broad spectrum of opinions on this.

I don't have a specific agenda in posing this question; I ask the question because I am no longer sure what the answer is.

Some background: I commonly use the AE search tool, setting the limitations of "not voted" and "my level", to try and find interesting story arcs. The search results return a list of unplayed story arcs, roughly sorted in some arcane way that usually presents "high rated" arcs first.

I have no interest in farms, so if an obvious farm showed up in my "top search results" list several times, previously I would start it, look at the first mission briefing, then if it was still obviously a farm (e.g., mission briefing = "Kill them all" with no other details) I would 1-star it and quit without actually entering the mission.

But yesterday I thought about this some and realized that I (and the "community" in general) would be generally against a player who 1-stars story arcs without playing them, simply because they were a type of arc they didn't like. For example, I would not view it as ethical to 1-star horror themed story arcs simply because I don't like the horror genre. And certainly I would be unhappy if someone were to 1-star one of my arcs without giving it a try.

This made me question whether what I was doing was "right". I thought this would be an interesting topic for discussion, and thus posted the question here. I am still not sure what the "right" answer is. In fact, I've found it quite interesting to read how many different points of view there are on this.

Just something that I've been wondering, that I thought I would put up for discussion.


QUESTION: Is it ethical to 1-star obvious farm arcs in AE without playing them? Why or why not?

Added: Grim and the Green (#61156) H1-14
Help the police bust a Skulls drug ring. Introductory.

Source: default search + "my level" (as a level 3).

I keep a written journal of my various adventures in CoH. This makes me think about what I did each night: what worked and what didn't, what was fun and what wasn't, what were my proud moments and what were my embarrassing ones, and so on.

I feel like this gives me a better understanding of the game and how I like to play it, and on later nights, I remember to do more of the fun things, and less of the unfun ones.

From memory (so take it with a grain of salt) but I think this is called City Map 2.

Thu 5/26/2011

Projectionist, an artist who ran a Mission Architect contest last summer, finished making my prize for that contest -- cover art for an imaginary comic book based on my Teen Phalanx Forever! story arc. I really like it!



That's a 20% scale version of the picture ... the original is huge and has a ton of detail. The arc id for Teen Phalanx is #67335 if anyone wants to try it out.


I wanted to start playing my mastermind (April Fool) again, but with the incarnate trials being very MM-hostile, I decided I needed a respec to make her playable. This is what I came up with:

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

April Fool I20: Level 50 Technology Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Thugs
Secondary Power Set: Trick Arrow
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Call Thugs -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(3), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(3), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), BldM'dt-Acc(5), BldM'dt-Dmg(7)
Level 1: Entangling Arrow -- HO:Endo(A)
Level 2: Dual Wield -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 4: Glue Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 6: Equip Thugs -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Zephyr-Travel(40), Zephyr-ResKB(40)
Level 10: Aid Other -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), IntRdx-I(13), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(13), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dct'dW-Heal(15), Dct'dW-Rchg(17)
Level 12: Call Enforcer -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(17), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(19), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), BldM'dt-Acc(21), BldM'dt-Dmg(21)
Level 14: Aid Self -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/Rchg(33), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Numna-Heal(34), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(34)
Level 16: Poison Gas Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 18: Pistols -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(23), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(23), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 20: Acid Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 22: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(27), LkGmblr-Rchg+(29)
Level 24: Tactics -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(36), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(37), GSFC-Build%(40)
Level 26: Call Bruiser -- BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg(A), BldM'dt-Dmg/EndRdx(29), BldM'dt-Acc/EndRdx(31), BldM'dt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), BldM'dt-Acc(31), BldM'dt-Dmg(33)
Level 28: Disruption Arrow -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 30: Vengeance -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 32: Upgrade Equipment -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(36)
Level 38: Oil Slick Arrow -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), RechRdx-I(43), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(43), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(43), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(46)
Level 41: Charged Armor -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(42), HO:Ribo(42)
Level 44: EMP Arrow -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(45), Lock-Rchg/Hold(45), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(45), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(46), Lock-%Hold(48)
Level 47: Gang War -- ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(48), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(48), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(50), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(50)
Level 49: Resuscitate -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 1: Supremacy
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(42)

April was originally built for maximum recharge (which is very helpful for both summoning pets and firing trick arrows), but I completely switched my focus to range defense, which I believe is the key to surviving incarnate trials. (Smash/lethal DEF doesn't help as much because Praetorians have a lot of pure energy attacks.) This build gets me to 44% range DEF; not quite soft capped, but the +4 Praetorians in the incarnate trials need more than 45% defense anyway, so I figure I can eat a luck every now and then, as needed.

I tested this by joining a 24-player BAF trial. This was pretty laggy and I ended up disconnecting in the final fight, but I managed to reconnect and rejoin the league in time to get the reward; a common reward, and 14% Judgement exp.


Fri 5/27

The Praetorian Surge event was occurring on Freedom, and so I logged on a level 1 version of Police Woman on Freedom. I had created this character maybe 4 years ago to reserve the name "Police Woman" on every server that I could. After getting out of the tutorial (woo, level 2!) and into Atlas Park, I fought Praetorians (including several signature AVs) under really laggy conditions. After suffering through massive lag for about half an hour, I got sick of it and went back to Liberty. I did get the Defender of Primal Earth badge, though, and devs announced they had 4000 simultaneous players on Freedom, which unlocked the badge for all.

Back on Liberty, Mayday (51 fortunata) joined a RWZ raid. Our team started out pretty full, but kept losing people for some reason, and we were a 5 player team most of the raid. I ended up gaining 368 vanguard merits; this gave me enough to purchase the salvage storage sack.

Mayday went on to join a 17 player BAF. We had a lot of prisoners escape, but managed to finish. I got a rare reward and up to 69% Judgement exp. After that we did a 16 player Lambda; my team got all the tubes while the weapon cache team was only on 3 caches and were dying lots, and we ended up going to help. I got an uncommon reward, Interface slot unlocked, and 17% Destiny exp. I converted 19 astrals and downgraded an uncommon to make a Reactive Radial Interface (25% chance of fire DOT, 25% chance of RES debuff).


Sat 5/28

Spy Girl (45 MA/ninj stalker) joined a 4-player 2nd villain respec, which went straightforwardly, finishing in 18m 30s. The Weekly Strike Target bonus got Spy Girl to level 46.

Switched to Virtual Girl (47 kat/fire scrapper) for another run of the 2nd villain respec, this time with 5 players (all DPS, no support). Discovered that CoT in Cap au Diable no longer count for the hunt mission. The lack of support made things a little painful but we still managed to finish in 20m 24s, getting Virtual Girl to level 48. I also got a costume compliment from a passerby, which was nice.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) formed and led an 11 player Lambda. I got a common reward and up to 63% Destiny. Did another Lambda run with 9 players, got an uncommon and to 88% Destiny. A third Lambda run with 10 players, got a common reward and Destiny unlocked. Something I noticed while doing these trials: Judgement does not appear to be affected by rage crash (which normally zeroes Mega's damage). This kinda makes sense because Judgement powers are coded not to be affected by damage buffs, and the Rage crash is a type of damage buff. For Mega's Destiny slot, I decided on Barrier for increased survivability, converting 21 astrals to craft a Barrier Partial Radial Invocation (90 sec buff with 1 ally Rez and incarnate shift).

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) joined a 16 player Lambda, got a rare and 26% Interface exp. I went into the temp power gathering phase with some trepidation, since this is where most masterminds get splattered due to pet aggro and general squishiness, but my high range DEF respec made me very survivable, and I didn't have any problem at all. I did leave a trail of broken and bleeding bodies of pets behind me, but they're only pets, who cares about them; I just summoned more whenever I got to an objective.

Mystery Girl (51 emp/pistols defender) joined a 16 player Lambda, got a common and unlocked the Destiny slot. I crafted a Clarion Invocation, because running out of break frees is what gets Mystery Girl in trouble.


Sun 5/29

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) answered a call to help kill Jack in Irons in Croatoa; this team went on to beat up a Jack vs Eochai fight, which got us merits but no one got badges (presumably they had done too much damage to each other). I also solo'd 2 vigilante tips, and hit the unclaimed ticket cap at AE, so I claimed 500.

Spy Girl (46 MA/ninj stalker) joined an LGTF, which the leader suddenly made into a Master of LGTF. In the first mission I complained that a defender who was trying to stealth through the Rikti was running Oppressive Gloom (which draws aggro), and karma caught up to me as Rikti drones promptly aggroed on me and killed me. It was still the first mission so we decided to restart. On the second try I stealthed to Penelope Yin and used Recall Friend to TP everyone there. Mission 2 we mostly cleared through; mission 3 the leader wanted us to fail it, but only I and a fire brute ended up finding Infernia. We fought for a minute, then I realized no one else was coming, so I ended up TPing some people over (inadvertantly TPing a blaster into a fight once, but he survived it). Mission 4 we carefully took down the mitos without incident, and in mission 5, I was able to stealth to the end and TP everyone there. I have to say I'm really liking Recall Friend on my stalker. Finished in 1h 3m, got to level 47 and got the MoLGTF badge.

April Fool (51 thug/TA MM) formed and led a 15 player BAF; I got an uncommon and up to 32% Judgement. Did a second run of BAF with 12 players; we had trouble keeping the prisoners down, and a lot escaped, but we still finished. I got a very rare and up to 48% Judgement. Lost a few more people due to attrition and I ended up leading an 8 player Lambda next; I ordered a 4/4 split on the temp power gathering phase, but somehow we ended up with 6/2 with only a scrapper and MM (not me) on tubes. Despite this, things went very smoothly, and I got a common reward and up to 74% Interface exp. The high defense build is definitely working, making the incarnate trials quite doable as a MM.


Mon 5/30

Spent some time soloing on Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute), completing 3 hero tips, 3 door missions, and picking up a Shivan shard (for a rainy day..) in Bloody Bay.

April Fool formed and led a 12 player Lambda trial, unlocking the Interface slot and getting to 6% Destiny. Did a second run of Lambda with 9 players; it seemed like we had a lot of people AFK, which is bad for a 9 player league. I rather punitively moved all the AFK people to the second team (which gave them 0 exp, but they were AFK, so why should they get exp), keeping all the active players on my team. Eventually the AFK people got back from AFK, though, and I rebalanced the teams to be more even. Our 9 player league had no heals (except my Aid Other) and only TA and cold for debuffs, making for a rough fight against Marauder. Our pickup tanker died a lot and I felt really sorry for him; he was very determined and kept getting up and jumping back in the fight, though. I dumped all my inspirations on him to try and keep him alive. Finally finished the trial, and I ended up at 35% Destiny. I burned 25 astrals to craft a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire dot).


Tue 5/31

I was only on for a little bit, but while I was on, I played Spacegirl (52 mind/rad controller) on an Apex TF, which finished in 23m 48s.


Wed 6/1

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) formed and led an 8 player Lambda trial. We were support heavy and the Lambda went very smoothly. I got a rare reward, Interface unlocked, and 36% Destiny exp (very tasty!). After that I spent some time recruiting our league up to 12 players for a BAF trial; this took some time as another league was competing for recruits at the same time. Finally when we had 12 players, I started the BAF, but one person was AFK (actually, he had crashed) and so the game decided 11 players can't handle BAF, and kicked our 11 person league back to RWZ, which I had never seen happen before. I ended up picking up the very next person to show up and started with 12. This pickup person immediately said, "12 person BAF? Are you crazy?" which I got a kick out of. This BAF was very successful and we had no prisoners escape (this was a really good job on the part of the league members). I got a rare reward, a Coercive Persuasion (RECH/ACC) recipe drop, Judgement slot unlocked, and 15% Lore exp. I ended up crafting a Pyronic Partial Radial Judgement (wide area nuke with more targets) and a Reactive Total Radial Conversion (75% chance of fire DOT) for my Judgement and Interface slots.

Here's my current idea for "how to get people interested in AE with almost no development effort":

* Award an Empyrean merit when someone completes a Dev Choice arc for the very first time. (Limited to Dev Choice arcs to avoid farms.)
* Have incarnate shards and/or threads drop in Dev Choice arcs.
* Get Dr. Aeon (or some designee) to award a few more Dev Choice ratings.

Advantages:

* Players really want a way to get incarnate progress other than BAF and Lambda trials, which are getting tedious due to repetition. Players also would like a way to make progress towards incarnate stuff while solo. This would immediately provide a couple dozen story arcs that support this goal. Completing a story arc usually takes longer than doing an incarnate trial (probably by a factor of 2 to 4), so an empyrean merit isn't out of line, and limiting the award to once-ever per arc will keep this from getting farmed.

* Adding alternate ways to get incarnate progress will buy the devs time to create more incarnate trials, reduce player burnout, and keep people playing CoH longer. (i.e., revenue for Paragon Studios.)

* Getting more players involved in MA will make it seem more worthwhile for the devs to spend work effort on MA, whether fixing existing problems, creating new features or awarding more Dev Choice tags.

* This ought to be easy to implement, since the MA search tool already knows which arcs you've completed or not completed.

Disadvantages:

* Incarnate drops would have to be limited to Dev Choice arcs (excluding even HoF arcs), otherwise people would just get their drops from fire ambush farms. So this doesn't directly help the many high quality but non-Dev Choice story arcs out there. However, I argue there would be a trickle-down effect because (a) the devs would have more incentive to award more Dev Choice tags, because it would immediately create "new incarnate content" and (b) getting more players involved in MA in any capacity will increase the visibility of Mission Architect as a feature and potentially drive future fixes and improvements.

* Would require some additional effort on the part of developers to review and approve more Dev Choice arcs. (Arguably, this is something they should be doing already... but this would give a new and better reason to do so.)

Projectionist sent me this terrific cover for the Teen Phalanx comic book. I really like it, especially the amount of detail. (This is a 20% size version of the original...)

Thanks so much, Projectionist!

Fri 5/20/2011

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 13 player Lambda. This league seemed to be almost entirely scrappers, stalkers and MMs. A couple players didn't really understand how to use the acids, so we ended up with 4 portals sending reinforcements at us; we won anyway. I got a common reward and to 97% Interface exp. Followed that with a 20 player BAF; we had no escapees but the lag really made it dreary. I got a rare reward and to 82% Judgement exp.

Kyrie Eleison (24 fire/fire brute) solo'd Stephanie Peebles' Striga arc for the Wedding Band temp power, then I spent some time playtesting my AE story arcs, which I had been tweaking to try and get around the hyperaggressive profanity filter. A friend joined me while I was playing through Axis and Allies (I had to rename "Statesman" to "Staatsman" since Statesman was a bad word according to the profanity filter...bleh...) and we cleared the ruined city map I was using to represent Stalingrad, but it seemed our hostage failed to spawn, making the mission uncompleteable. We had to quit, but Kyrie got to level 25, and I proposed to run a TF instead.

So I formed and led an 8-player Citadel TF (though I passed the star to a higher level character before starting, so we could play at level 30); we got a good team together, with a mix of damage and support. We were doing pretty well, but during the second to last mission, someone on LB announced a BAF trial was starting, and our tanker asked, "What's a BAF?" After we explained what a BAF was, the tanker went, "OMG I need that!" and quit the TF to go join the BAF. I really think he would've been better off finishing the TF to get the badge, but oh well. This ended up bugging out the TF, causing the mission to repeat, but I was able to fix it by calling the contact myself (even though I was no longer leader). This advanced us to the final mission, but changed our combat level to 29 (I guess since I was super-SK'd?). We ended up finishing in 1h 12m and got Kyrie to level 26. I had two teammates rave about how much fun it was, which was a little odd because Citadel is one of the more repetitive TFs; I really think they just enjoyed the change of pace from the incarnate trials.


Sat 5/21

Kyrie Eleison solo'd some more in Striga, and fighting war wolves, I found that I really need knockback protection. I used another toon to buy a Blessing of the Zephyr: KB protection using 2 hero merits, which I crafted and slotted into Kyrie's Fly power. Finished Tobias Hansen's arc for 13 merits, then Lars Hansen's arc for 8 merits, getting to level 27 and unlocking Ernesto Hess.


Sun 5/22

Police Woman (52 AR/dev blaster) hit the inf cap at the market again, emailed myself 900M this time. I switched from 500M to 900M so I wouldn't have to do this so often; I would've sent a billion, but the amount of inf you can send via email caps slightly under that.

Shield Maiden (27 shield/mace tank) solo'd in Striga to level 28. I probably should be running the newer story arcs that start in Talos instead, but I keep ending up in Striga with my 20s toons because I want the Wedding Band and the Hess TF contact.

Rain Dancer (51 storm/archery defender) joined a 7-player speed ITF. Our team was kind of support heavy, but our buff/debuff just seemed to make us kill stuff faster. In the final fight, due to weird timing on Romulus's rez, we somehow managed to kill Romulus 3 times and 2 of the Nictus AVs -- effectively beating 5 AVs instead of the normal 4. Finished in 19m 38s. We went on to do an STF (filling up to an 8 player team); this was a little messy near the end, but finished in 28m 2s. I took the essence of the incarnate without really thinking about it, but with her Alpha slot complete, I probably should've taken the HO.

After that, Mayday (50 fortunata) did a speed LGTF in 21m 47s, getting a Hero 1 DNA and a Notice of the Well.


Mon 5/23

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) joined a 14 player BAF, got a common reward and to 98% Judgement exp. We did a second run, but right before we started, I asked to swap toons, resulting in a mixup where some people quit and some people entered the BAF. We ended up having to restart the whole trial to straighten things out (ack!).

So on the second trial I played Mayday (50 fortunata) on 16 player BAF; no serious problems, I got a rare and to 18% Judgement exp (starting from 0). The leader left and somehow I got stuck with the star. I recruited back up to 12 players and we did another BAF. This seemed to go a little slowly (our DPS on the AVs must've been low) and our main brute claimed he got sequestered like 11 times in one fight. Nevertheless won, got another rare salvage and up to 49% Judgement exp. After that run, some more people left, and we ended up doing an 8-player Lambda. We had no heals but decent debuff; it was a rough time gathering temp powers, but we did manage to get Synchronized, which was apparently the last badge I needed for Master of Lambda. After finishing the gathering phase, we had no trouble with Marauder. I got an uncommon reward and up to 96% Interface exp.


Tue 5/24

The insane AE profanity filter was mildly improved in Tuesday's patch, removing some common words like "Statesman" "Paragon" "Manticore" and "Spider" from the profanity filter. This let me fix all my story arcs so that they can be played again, although I did have to rename "Black Scorpion" in order to republish my Flower Knight Task Force...because apparently Scorpion is still a bad word.

Blond Justice (51 sword/shield scrapper) did a STF. Using shards I picked up on this TF, I was able to craft a Musculature Core Paragon (+45% DMG and level shift). Our tank didn't seem too "with it", and in the final mission, after some chaos against the patrons, I ended up tanking Ghost Widow for a few seconds, died, then a fortunata took over tanking Ghost Widow. In the final fight another shield scrapper tanked Lord Recluse, died, then I tanked Lord Recluse the rest of the way. Finished in 36m 33s and got an Endoplasm SHO.

I was waffling on what Alpha boost to craft for Mayday (50 fortunata), and after asking around for advice, finally settled on Cardiac for the ENDRDX, which seems less sexy than +DMG or +RCHG, but Mayday really burns up END fast, so this is probably the right choice. By this time I had enough components to craft a Cardiac Total Core Revamp (END/RANGE and level shift). I am finding that I get enough uncommon rewards from incarnate trials that it feels more efficient to craft the 2nd tier Alpha boost using the incarnate thread stuff (from the trials) rather than the incarnate shard stuff (from TFs). Maybe the 1st tier boost too. Rares and Very Rares seem scarce enough that using Notices of the Well still seems better for those, though.

Mayday went on an Apex TF; we had two tankers, one of which had nothing in his Alpha slot so he was at -4 and died a lot. Had a pretty messy last fight against Battle Maiden (mostly people forgetting they can't stand in blue stuff, I think) but managed to win in 29m 1s and get the Master of Apex badge.

Kyrie Eleison (27 fire/fire brute) solo'd Black as Midnight, an AE story arc where you're helping the Midnighters. This was a very pretty looking arc with lots of interesting ideas, but the story was not very well explained and had me very confused for about half of it. I gave it 4 stars.

Mega (51 SS/will brute) joined a 2nd villain respec, finishing in 16m 10s and getting a Notice of the Well.

I somehow got volunteered to lead some incarnate trials, and so I formed and led a 10-player Lambda trial. This got Mega an uncommon reward, Interface unlocked and 9% Destiny. We picked up a few more players and did a 13-player BAF trial; I got a rare reward, Judgement unlocked and 6% Lore exp. A second run of the 13-player BAF trial got me another uncommon reward and up to 13% Lore exp, then some people left and we finished up with an 8-player Lambda trial, which got me a rare reward and up to 40% Destiny exp.

I ended up crafting a Void Judgement for Mega, coloring it red to steal the idea I had heard from someone else to treat it like my brute's "natural rage". With Interface having been so heavily nerfed in the last patch, I'm not sure which Interface power I want to use; maybe the -damage one. Haven't decided for sure yet though.

Some thoughts after playing the arc, then sleeping on it:

* I kinda lost my way in the story starting around mission 3, where it seemed like trippy things started happening but without much explanation, and this feeling persisted until the end of the arc. Visually, a lot of interesting things occurred, but I didn't understand what was going on.

* This is partially due to the unusual structure for clues, with a big info dump at the start and end of each mission, and no clues along the way. This is an interesting mechanism, but if you want to go with this, I think you need the objectives and the character dialog to more clearly tell the story. I agree with Glazius's comment that it felt like I was following the objectives that popped up in the nav bar, but did not have a clear understanding of what they meant.

* Regarding the lengthy begin/end clues, they seem organized in bullet point format, which feels rather sterile and sharply at odds with the dream quest mood that I believe your story is trying to set. Is it possible you can provide this exposition in a more organic manner?

* For some reason I keep thinking about that friendly BP mask and keep wondering what it's story was. (I think it was briefly touched on during the arc, but I didn't get a complete mental picture.) Maybe that's a good thing, though, to keep it mysterious. I dunno.

Anyway, best of luck, hope some of this helps!