Seschat

The suggestion I've been pushing for a while is to add a contact blue-side (Manticore's second in command of Wyvern, perhaps) who offers an arc equivalent to a Patron arc. Four missions where you go confiscate various toys from groups led by Wretch, Ice Mistral, Silver Mantis, and Barracuda. Then a final mission where Arbiter Sands shows up with some major fire power to take it all back. End result, you have the storyline elements required to access Patron Pools, but without having the extra 55 missions and ten days of filler to get it.

The Sad Rikti Drone Sound: This noise did not have to be applied to every floating, limbless mob in the game. Arachnos drones, maybe, since they use Rikti technology. Council/Column Valkyries, Gun Drones, and Rularuu eyeballs? Not so much. It is just pathetic to hear a mighty engine of destruction to go *bur-breap* every time I hit it with Brawl.

Maybe he's trying to reform, trn over a new leaf, and start a hero career of his own... Nah.

I bet that his buddies reprogrammed his Base Teleporter for city hall instead of the secret Hellion warehouse we all see in the tutorial as a practical joke.

Round one: Penny, with a good sized group, so she didn't have any survival issues. (My friends may have had some issues in deciding which spawns to aggro first, however). Clamor had a Bad Day (TM).

Round two: Citadel, with my Storm/Psi/Elec defender. Mostly because I had no clue what he actually did. I kept him alive up to the main fight with O2 Boost, but was too busy after that to worry about him.

From here on out, I think I'll solo the lot.

Ok, could we have a role call on which of the Praetorian Guard is actually deceased? Because, as far as I can tell, we have:

Battle Maiden: Captured, shipped off to Siberia, now a member of Malta.
Neuron/Bobcat: Beat up in opening salvos of the war in their home dimension. Embarrassed, but likely MedPortered out. Actually, Neuron provides Marauder with a super-serum at a later date.
Seige: Known infomorphic AI. Probably survived the BAF fiasco by uploading to another frame.
Nightstar: Possibly a more hardware-based AI. Linked to Seige, so possibly uploaded elsewhere. (Considering we don't see them after the BAF, they may have downloaded themselves to Voyager II, and are leaving the solar system for all we know )
Marauder: Another early defeat. The Praetorian teleport network is still up at that point. Unless Neuron's super-serum interfered with things, he probably MedPortered to safety.
Anti-Matter: May not have trusted any hospital Berry had a hand in, but there's that space station of his he could have teleported to...
Malaise/Mother Mayhem: Deceased.
Dominatrix: Presumably rescued from Mot with Ice Mistral and the others devoured during the Dark Astoria storyline. Unikely to have stayed in the city afterwards to be caught by Diabolique.
Maelstrom: (Only included because Cole seems to like him). If not dead, probably suffering crippling psychological issues after failing his master so badly.
Diabolique: ??? Have not participated in a DD trial. Any aftermath dialogue from Dream Doctor?
Black Swan/Chimera/Shadowhunter/Nega-Pendragon: all laying on the ground or in adjacent hospital to Magesterium when Cole nuked Nova Praetoria. Presumed dead.
Cole: Technically alive, but de-powered drastically, much like Reichsman.

I miss anybody?

Most of my Ion users are pretty squishy (Defenders, dominators, contollers, corruptors, etc.), so the chance for hold is my friend. After I've annoyed a spawn by deleting 2/3 of their HP, it is nice that a quarter of the survivors _aren't_ shooting at me.

All right, first off, I know I will be burned in effigy by some players for even starting this thread. I understand, but guys, hear me out.

For the last several years we've had a variety of new equipment based power sets come out, starting with Dual Pistols, that have had no unlockable item options. And personally, I'd like to see more earnable, in game rewards made availible, encouraging players to play the game, rather than just throw Paragon points at their desires. Crey CB-X9 pistols for Dual Pistols, Nemesis Staves for Titan Weapons. Arachnos Maces for maces. Circle of Thorns staves for Staff Melee.

Now, in light of the current play environment, and to not exceed the patience level of the current crop of players, we should consider some guidelines.

A: Most unlocks should be earnable by midgame. And by midgame, I mean 25th-35th level. Back before the Atlas/Mercy revamp, my Natural and Science origin characters could get Council weapons well before 10th level. They still stand a chance, but they aren't earning credit towards that until they leave the starting zone anymore. Is there really a reason a simple giant clown mallet isn't an option until 40+? (And I'm ignoring the very valid option of getting your Incarnate buddies to help you out here.)

B: High level unlocks should be worth the effort. The Rularuu gear is a perfectly good example of this. It is shiny, has high detail textures, and the bloody eyes move! Roman armor, on the other hand, or the perviously mentioned hammers are not. They are pretty stock costume parts, suitable for any number of core character concepts.

C: Earning an unlock should take a reasonable amount of time. The tommy gun is a perfect example of where this fails. I cannot think of a single spot Blueside that has a reasonable number of Consigliere spawns*, and Redside the only spot is way up in the 45-50th level section of St. Martial. Rikti weapons are kind of in the middle: back when invasion weekends were more common, even a lowbie could get a signature weapon without too much difficulty. But they are pretty nifty.

And that's my wild thought of the day. Excelcior!

*- If the Devs want us to spend time in Independance Port, upgrading some of the Family spawns in the SW corner to have higher boss probabilities would do it.

And it is getting worse. NPCs like Lady Jane did not originally have difficulty with steep stairs in Cimmeroan-style cave maps, and now they do. And just this week Desdemona got hung up on the gently rolling hills of People's Park. At a guess, somewhere in the AI code is a constant labeled $MaximumVerticalSlope (or some such), and it is set to something well less than 45 degrees. Which is unfortunate, given the staircase angles of Praetorian-style indoor maps.

OK, most of the posts here are approaching the matter from a purely game mechanical standpoint, which is fine, up to a point. However, let's look at things for a moment from within the genre we're playing: superheroes and supervillains. At which point one has to ask, what does the character do beyond blow large holes in things?

From this point of view, one might consider that Blasters and Corruptors started out on the wrong sides of the Red/Blue line. A villain can make a pretty good career as a one trick pony ("I blow stuff up!"), be it as a trusted hench-being, bank robber, or powered muscle of a third world dictator. However, he isn't going to be considered one of the major players until he can do something really interesting. (The Red Threat's gambit to blow up the entire world might count, but we saw how hard the Midnighters shut HIM down. No recurring roles for Boris.)

A hero, on the other hand, really needs to ask himself "What can I do with my powers for others? Sure, the Human Torch can blast Hydro Man into vapor, but what makes him useful is his power stunts of fusing a collapsing construction site into an immobile mass, melting your tennis shoes or tires to the street, or vaporizing the massed gunfire of a bunch of gangbangers before it can injure the hapless civilians.

So, from this point of view, I don't mind too much the construction of the Blaster powersets, except the heavy prevalence of melee powers in the secondaries, and some of the numbers we see coming from the primary attacks. The X-Men's Cyclops pretty much exemplifies our current approach to Blasters. He shoots things. A lot. His mitigation is to shoot things before they can hurt him, and keep the range open, mostly through blasting them back. And when that doesn't work, Jean Grey's gets to use Vengeance.

But to be honest, I really wouldn't want to play Cyclops.