San_Diablo

Okay, I'll bite.

Anybody not liking San Diablo's look? I'm rather proud of it, personally.

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That's Volcanis Prime. You wouldn't want him to get mad at you.

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Heh. Someone made him into my San Diablo card by mistake (my mistake, natch).

Can anyone ID the rest of the villains?

[quoteThe hero is too tough? Well doh! Drop your rep level. I"m really tired of people who run with increased rep and then complain that their missions are "too hard". Really now, what do you expect, more XP for not very much elevated risk/challenge? C'mon now...

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Sure thing. How do we get it below Villainous?

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* Objects gave time at random. Not sure if there is a cap on what gives you time or if it is dependant on the objects con, but we couldn't figure out why no time was being awarded for objects.


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I'm starting to think that this is intentional, the better to play to the mayhem theme. If it's steady or always awarded for everything, it's not going to feel frenzied or spontaneous. When villains go on rampages like this in the comics, they don't systematically target every piece of property in the area, they just randomly blow stuff up.

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I mean, if you were reading a comic book about a "named" villain robbing a bank in Metropolis and Superman showed up, I think you'd expect a really tough fight and possibly getting beat up by the "premiere" hero of the world.

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I'd expect a good fight, sure. The problem is, this isn't a good fight. This is one of the Giffen-DeMattis Justice League issues where the fight goes from the horrified villains looking up to see the heroes, to the next panel showing the villains on the floor, unconscious.

Moreover, you'll forgive me, but by level 40, I'd like to think that I'm past the point of being unable to solo Aqualad or Bucky. That Swan kicked my head in inside of fifteen seconds of seeing her, doesn't convince me that I've made the big leagues and the heroes are treating me as such. It makes me think, again, that the devs have a skewed perspecive of the signature heroes' place in the world if they're always better than us, period.

Now, for the Mayhem Missions (which are tied to level and zone), if the actual Phalanx members show up to fight me, no argument that they're EB/hero level to me. For them to be operating where they are, they should be of higher level. Synapse or Citadel shows up, I should be in for a rough fight, though the devs still need to look at their numbers to see if there's not something horribly wrong with these mobs (if the admittedly anecdotal evidence is accurate, very few mayhem missions featuring signature mobs are even killable, much less soloable).

The Vindicators? Bosses, at best. By the time my main villain hit 40, he'd beaten down Infernal on four separate occasions, and Aurora Borealis on two. Each time, these characters were Hero rank against me (faced them before EB, not that it'd help my fire/thermal corruptor much), often with a good five levels, minimum, between at least one of the encounters. It's not as ludicrous as Sea Witch (who somehow got significantly stronger between beatdowns), but it's still pretty ridiculous to argue that these characters are continuously in my league, much less my superiors.

So, what I'd like to propose is this. In missions (and no, not just Mayhem ones), if a Vindicator pops up, they're a lieutenant/boss spawn, with the exception of Ms. Liberty (generally portrayed as being in the Phalanx's level of power, if not Statesman's). The EB/Hero status should only go to members of the Freedom Phalanx, Ms. Liberty, Blue Steel, and a handful of other characters (Indigo, I can see, and Hero-1 if he ever shows up again).

Devs, think about this, okay? If the point of the Mayhem mission is to revel in our villainy, and the good guys not only send a Teen Titan to capture us, the hero can easily roll us, we're not only being insulted by the heroes, but by the game play. DC Comics rewrote Dr. Light because he was just that pathetic. Don't shape us up to be like him.

Almost forgot one...

The description of Lord Recluse refers to him as the "Archvillain of Anarchy". Lord Recluse, by the novel, finds technocracy and fascism to be inspiring philosophical ideals. He's as much an anarchist as he is a pacifist.

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Mob spawns really lack variety. Everywhere I go, all over the city, on the beach, in the power plant, Bane Spiders everywhere. Not just some Bane Spiders, but ALL Bane Spiders. Argh, talk about overusing a new mob. How about more Council, CoT (Possessed Scientists would be perfect!), Longbow, Coralax Hybrids, and other types of Arachnos?


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While I won't argue on a shake-up with other types of Spiders especially (esp. the badge-yielding but under-represented Mu Guardians and Toxic Tarantulas), the rest of this... well, it really isn't much of an addition to variety. We're already ODing on Council and Circle in missions, and Longbow throughout our careers. I'd much rather see more Malta, Carnies, and Nemesis.

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Then I get jumped by Posi. I was like OMG W T F needless to say he beat me.

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Of course. You're grey to him.

This does bring up an interesting point - apparently, there are badges awarded for each of the Freedom Phalanx members you defeat, but they only come up for defeating them in Recluse's Victory, not anywhere else. This doesn't make much sense to me - these guys aren't pushovers, no matter where you fight them.

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Just an observation. The TV really needs to require a different badge. Nobody is going to have the King Midas badge. In CoH, my Blaster got his 2nd influence badge naturally sometime around level 40, and he'd been earning full influence rewards his whole career. Bling is hard enough to get for Doc Buzzsaw; this is flat out penalizing people for being members of a SG.

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Agreed. I'd recommend any of the following as other options, all chosen for the evil TV theme, rather than anything specific to the contact:

Exploration: Media Junky, Snake Charmer, All Consuming, Washed Up, Weapon of Mass Destruction, Next Big Thing, Sparky

History: Technofreak

Accomplishments: Agent of Discord, Paragon of Vice, Plague Carrier, Soul Taker

Achievements: Irradiated, Electrician, Most Wanted, Slacker, Sleepy. I believe there's also one for destroying news vendors on Mayhem Missions. (Print is dead - and you killed it!)

Accolade: I believe there's one for the media in I7.

All of these, IMO, are more appropriate than Midas Touch, especially if the rumors are true that you act more as the TV's hypnotized subject than its star.

Sleepy or Slacker are, IMO, the best choices.

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I've crashed every time I tried to enter a mission in Grandville, so I've given up on that for now. I'll wait to try again when the issue has been addressed.

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Same as the others - it also crashes when I leave the zone via the ferry or the helicopters (haven't tried Recluse's Victory). This happens regardless of graphics and sound settings.

Also agree that the lag's horrendous. I've somehow survived teleporting anyway.

Got a quick question - are the mayhem mission locations constant, either tied to the broker's zone or the character's level, or do you go back to "earlier" ones - I'd like to hit some of the low-level ones with my villain main.

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High Pain Treshold I was told gives a bonus to max hp, not sure how to get it though and I had not even heard of Megalomaniac.

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Megalomaniac is the villain version of Vanguard.

Incidentally, my hero has the TF Commander badge on test. When hitting Icon and checking out the epaulets, a couple were flagged as "evil". Between this and the comments about accolades having mirrors Villain-side, it's probable that the villains have an equivalent badge.

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It will NOT be a stand alone.

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So it's part of a papier mache diorama?

CITY OF THIRD GRADE BOOK REPORTS!

I realize that this is probably more than a touch late, but...

Of the reams of new missions, how many are going to be pre-40 content? Several stretches of levels are low-content areas, both hero-side and especially villain-side, due to contacts drying up faster than needed.

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Neither is Arachnos. Leaving the Rogue Islands would completely eliminate their ability to send large forces after you, though you might have to worry about someone else instead. Still, history is full of examples of groups much larger and more powerful than Arachnos (say, the US government) chasing people who weren't anywhere near supervillain level unsuccessfully.


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Hey, now. It's not the US government's fault that people keep screwing up the spawning for Bin Laden by beating up all the clockworks!

More seriously, though, I do think the difference is pretty vast. Certainly, it's possible to escape such a fate, but if the target were in the middle of, say, Hawaii, and had no prior warning of an organized effort against him, I'd say the odds would be on the aggressors' side.

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You won't have to, unless you're stupid enough to stand in an empty football field and wait for them.


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Assuming you know they're coming, and assuming that they're not forcing you into a strategically disadvantageous position.

I'm not saying it's definite, I'm just saying that given the reach Arachnos has, the raw numbers at its disposal, and the fact that they have the run of the Rogue Isles, I'm saying that if Arachnos wanted someone dead there, it'd d probably be happening.

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Wouldn't make a difference either way.


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Sure it would - if Arachnos picks a fight with one or two people, most of the villains don't really care except how it directly impacts them, particularly if Arachnos either doesn't say why they're doing it, or puts up a dummy reason. If it's an islands-wide pogrom of all Destined Ones, they're all in it together. One or two people are usually easier to wipe out than a whole army.
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and that any of those groups would be willing to put the Destined Ones up in the long term (by this point, Nemesis and Malta are the only ones the Destined Ones haven't directly struck at in numbers similar to Arachnos).

Not a big assumption.


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Sure it is. For one, you're a hot target - the villains who hide you are taking fire for the duration of your stay, at a level of fire directly proportionate to your utility to them. For another, many of these groups are also shown to be currying favor with Arachnos - no proof it's not a trap in the first place. Moreover, since the Zig-sprung villains tend to be known as Destined Ones even outside of Arachnos if in-game NPC dialogue's any indication, the villain groups aren't likely to be wholly trusting of anyone coming their way under that description. Finally, and most tellingly, all of these groups are at least as bad as Arachnos, and wouldn't be above putting a bullet in any villain they've "saved" the moment they've given up anything useful.

I won't say it's universal (Sky Raiders likely won't care, Council has ways of making sure you're one of them, Malta and Nemesis are probably playing Arachnos as much as Arachnos is playing them), but it's not going to be universal.

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If Arachnos got it into their heads to wipe out specific PCs, they'd probably succeed.

Right now, there's a guy named Osama bin Laden who has rather a few people on his trail, and they don't seem to be doing so well. He doesn't even have superpowers.


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He's also not on an isolated part of American soil and is surrounded by a large number of supporters, and whichever side of the fence you're on for Bush, I'd like to think we all agree that he's not as ruthless as Recluse.

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Arachnos can't keep its own house in order. They're not going to suddenly morph into some monolith of efficiency at the drop of a hat. Frankly I doubt they could catch the Marx Brothers, never mind anyone with real resources.

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We've never really seen them try, outside of the comics (which, IMO, isn't a good gauge of measuring anyone's competence).

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Firstly, Arachnos would destroy you, as they busted you out and suddenly you decide to fly solo.

First off, they busted our characters out of jail, and then said "you're on your own". Their own people attack our characters on the streets. They can't suddenly turn around and say our characters owe Arachnos anything.


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Sure they can. Doesn't mean they're right. I'd say the debt's usually paid off by level 20, around when the PCs bust a few other villains out of the Zig.

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Secondly, there aren't enough hours in the day for Arachnos to even begin hunting down everyone they have a grudge against.


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In all fairness, if Arachnos as a whole really wanted to actively hunt any given villain, it'd be a short fight. The Rogue Isles are theirs, after all, and most villains aren't really welcome anywhere else.

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That problem is exacerbated when you realise that if they sent troops after any of our characters, they would lose. As EvilGeko pointed out rather a good bit upthread, our characters have killed thousands of Arachnos personell by level 40. Any troops they sent would come back in boxes. They would have to send real talent, something they're obviously short on or they wouldn't be breaking supers out of jails.


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They're busting supers out of the Zig for two reasons:

1. The Zig's apparently almost as impregnable as Disney Land, and

2. Recluse's little "Project Destiny" thing, as nebulous as that still is.

Yes, by the time you hit level 40, you've wasted thousands of spiders, but not all at once.

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Finally, what would happen if Arachnos did go after the Destined Ones with enough force to pose a real threat? Simple, the Destined Ones would turn to the enemies of Arachnos for protection. Nemesis. The Council. Malta. Even Longbow. All of whom would jump at a chance to get valuable intelligence on Arachnos technology, tactics, bases, troop strengths.... (Though I pity anyone who chose Malta; better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)


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Assuming that Arachnos decides to go after the Destined Ones as a whole, rather than one or two at a time, and that any of those groups would be willing to put the Destined Ones up in the long term (by this point, Nemesis and Malta are the only ones the Destined Ones haven't directly struck at in numbers similar to Arachnos). If Arachnos got it into their heads to wipe out specific PCs, they'd probably succeed.

Of course, I don't see refusing to work with any of their big bosses as sufficient reason.

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Three out of four sets are magic in origin? What the- . . . !?

Shouldn't Mako's powers be Mutant in origin? The vomit is cool, and the armour’s description can be rephrased . . . but Spirit Sharks?! It boggles my mind.


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Agreed, though technically, I think that Ghost Widow roughly takes the "natural" slot among the signature villains (she's a ghost using inherent ghostly abilities, rather than channeling magical forces). Lots of fuzziness there.

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And what about the natural origin? I'd like to keep some of my characters true to their concept. I suppose I can just skip a Patron all together, but I fear that will severely hinder my characters' abilities to engage in Player versus Player combat, something I was hoping to get into.


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Depends on what you're running. To be honest, I'm in the opposite situation from most people - I was hoping the PPPs would be shiny but not terribly useful for me, so I could get one or two powers, and run leadership or stealth stuff.

Instead, my corruptor - with his demonic costume but cybernetic background - gets the Black Scorp set, which is all kinds of good for him, complete with the mace's appearance. That said, I'm pretty sure the only "important" power for him will be the AoE immobilize/slow. Everything else is candy, sure, but that's the one that contributes something significantly better than a generic pool.

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I guess those rumours about a 5th, nonpartizan/non-Arachnos Patron were just that: rumours. That’s a real pity. I’ve always felt the greatest strength of the City of games were the players’ ability to create virtually ANY original hero or villain their imagination could come up with. These new powers don’t seem to affirm my belief.


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I don't think it was a rumor, just that it was problematic in implementation. Burke is a low-level merc functionary - he's another option low-level because he's low-level, and not a direct threat to Arachnos. Add forty levels to his people, and that's no longer true. The problem becomes finding another patron who's logically of the same power level as the Arachnos villains, is willing to hire across ATs and origins, and won't get his allies capped on sight just for association.

The problem isn't that these villains don't exist, or that they don't have powers that they can swing for them. It's that they've already got backstory that's just as off-putting as Arachnos' for the RPers (Requiem, Duray, Vahzilok), or has serious issues with working with others (Carnies, the DE, the CoT, the Knives of Artemis and Malta).

I don't think it's that Cryptic's intending to keep only these four, or that they don't want to add in more for non-Arachnos people. I think it's just that they didn't feel confident in such an option right now.

Of course, if this were the case, it's just as sticky a situation, since people couldn't get out of their PPPs when something "better" came along.

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Looks like I'll be taking a lot more pool powers if I ever make it to the 40 - 50 range.

I thank you, Devs, for the effort and the wonderful game. I'm just opposed to the thematic limitations of these Patron Powers.

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Agreed. Speaking as someone who's by and large ecstatic with the options available to his characters (to the point of annoying other members of his VG with his giddiness), I've noticed a few problems...

1. Anti-mez stuff should've been available, IMO, to corruptors, MMs, and especially dominators. There's something intrinsically silly about a dominator having to worry more about a scrapper's mezzing ability than the reverse.

2. Brutes should be hitting stuff with their maces.

3. Mako's pool is thematically very, very narrow. Unless Coralax come along in I8 and have access to his abilities, I don't know that he's going to be used as often as the others for this very reason. This is admittedly a criticism without suggestion - I don't know what else could be done with him.

4. Despite what I said above, there's a known NPC who has anti-Arachnos plans while being tolerated by them, works well(ish) with others regardless of origin or AT, has oodles of plot threads to work with, and has the ability to hook people up with an array of powers: Dr. Aeon. Similarly, while I won't pretend that just porting over the APPs wholecloth will work for villains, we do know of someone who trains element-wielding villains in advanced uses of their powers: the Order of Four Winds, who trained Scirocco Ice Mystral. I hardly expect these suggestions to be implemented on the spot, but both, IMO, fit the bills people are asking for: Arachnos alternatives, and elemental powers. Of course, that's what the suggestion forum is for.

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More than likely, each Patron Power pool will be AT specific for ATs that get a power pool (which I bet leaves Kheldians in the cold after the crossover goes live).


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Well, I don't doubt that'll be a common problem. What happens to pre-40 characters who switch sides?

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So each patron power will give brutes and scrappers a ranged attack, flavored by the patron.


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Black Licorice Scorpion Attack!

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Corruptors, Dominators and Master Minds will all get a "shield" power and self-recovery powers.

Probably slightly different based on ATs, but that's about it.

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I'd imagine corruptors and stalkers might get some low-mag mezzes.

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Ahhh...I see. Now the problem is going to be sorting out this thread into two categories. 1.) people who don't like the system, and 2.)people who are reporting bugs with the current system.

Good Luck. I see a repeate of what the Defiant bug thread turned into. Eventualy all the actual bugs and people trying to reproduce the bugs or get the bugs fixed get drowned out by people who say the whole system is "bugged" and demand a change to the system, when in reality the system is working as intended (apart from a couple of bugged contacts). These people will refuse to acknowledge the difference between a bugged contact and the non-bugged system.

I have by no means unlocked all the locked contacts, however the ones I have unlocked (I can't remember their names but the Ghost of Scrapyarder contact, and the Scrapyarder badge contact) did not have bugs in them for me.

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Problem is, we've had nine unlockable contacts so far (Veluta, Dumont, Buzzsaw, Tarixus, Jaeger, Revenant, Slot Machine, Leery, and Sonata). Of those, four have been or are bugged (Veluta, Tarixus, Jaeger, and Leery), and another's borderline (Buzzsaw requires Bling, which is usually gotten around the same time people outlevel Buzzsaw). We're looking at about half of them being bugged to limited or no usefulness for months on end, on top of finding them and their requirements in the first place.

What's that got to do with the overall system of unlockable contacts? Everything.

For starters, very few people know about these contacts in the first place, so fewer bug reports and petitions get sent in than other bugs. Debuggers have fewer records and less data to work with, meaning it takes much longer than it otherwise would, especially if someone mistakes the notion that they're getting few complaints with the idea that the system's working for most people. The forums are full of complaints about the dreaded barrage of "working as intended" responses from GMs that often preceeds an acknowledgement from a red name that yes, indeed, the bug's real and problematic.

The system, as it stands, leads to limited playtesting available on the test server. Combine this with near-complete the lack of information in-game, and we get the current scenario: a handful of people trying to convince Cryptic and NCSoft that the problems here need their attentions. It's no surprise, then, that it takes months on end before these bugs are acknowledged in the first place, much less patched. By then, most of the players who've worked to get the changes made are out of luck, having outleveled the contact and its content.

If the system were that people in the game knew where to find these contacts and/or how to unlock them, we'd have a faster turnaround on the bugs due to a greater number of people using them.

If the badges that unlocked the contacts were easier to get and/or announced that a contact was unlocked, we'd have a similarly superior system for the players to aid in the debugging.

As it is, however, it took a month for Tarixus to get changed. It took over twice that for Jaeger to change. It's been over three months, and I don't believe that Leery's fix has gone live yet, and to my knowledge no red name's ever commented on the extreme difficulty surrounding getting the badges in time for Buzzsaw, much less Veluta.

Yes, the bugs are a separate problem than the system for unlockable contacts, but the bugs wouldn't be nearly so persistent if the system were designed better.

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I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

but here was our intent with these Contacts - reward Exploration. Reward people who poke around to find new things. Now, the down side is that once found, these Contacts don't inform the player about what it takes to unlock them.

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That's part of the downside, States. There's plenty more where that came from.

1. Disinformation spreads like a plague. People still don't know how to deal with the Illusionist badge or most giant monsters, for instance.

2. If the badge or contact is buggy, people outlevel content before the devs realize anything's wrong. Yes, you don't seem to mind, but we do - Jaeger was like this for the longest time, as was Tarixus, and Veluta and Leery still are. Nobody likes being told they're missing out on a chunk of the game because of bugs.

3. Good portions of the game are already content-poor. Unlockable contacts with unknown requirements make this situation worse, forcing players into random guesswork. This isn't a fun activity, States. It's frustrating, especially given that so much of this content gets unlocked by either grind badges (Slot Machine, Jaeger) or badges that are too dangerous for the contact's level (Veluta).

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I only wish I had actually gotten to play cards instead of just building a deck.


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Oh, yes. Atrocity Studios will steal your caffeine...

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Crikey people, I am 5'4" and about a buck 25 standing in the rain. I don't need the huge option. Just move the body slider to athletic.

Miri says he thinks I am an NPC in Steel Canyon. Supposedly there is female NPC sitting outside a coffee shop with a laptop that says random "cuppa-esque" things. Maybe that's me? I am still waiting on coordinates to check it out.

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Is that the one that drops a nuke if I say enhancement diversification?

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Could we maybe, I dunno, get explanations for when our ideas get shot down?

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While Powerhelm's tone is a little more strident than I'd be here, I do agree with his questions here. If the ideas we're proposing aren't going to be used because of some kind of exploits, why not go ahead and tell us what those exploits would be? If the idea isn't going through, we're only dealing with hypotheticals anyway. The only outcomes would be either a) us working together, players with the devs, to try to address these exploits, b) the players see the problems the devs are facing, and back off some more, or c) the players and devs don't agree on the problems, and nothing happens.

A or B are better situations than that we have right now, which is pretty much identical to C.

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A neutral trainer could be devised, but from a RP perspective it would make no sense. This person would have to have the authority to both increase someone's security level in Paragon City (not permission that is handed out lightly, as it's only the trusted signature heroes who can do this), as well as be qualified to increase a villains threat level (also not given out lightly, as only Recluse's arbiters may do this). Who could possibly be trusted to have such permissions for BOTH sides?

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Malaise?

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It's called ventrilo.

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At least one of my VG's members is deaf, and I know for a fact that at least three more either can't afford ventrilo, or else can't afford to upgrade their computer to allow for it to be useful.

And, well, a couple people do play cross-gender roles, so the deep voices kind of kill the RP.