ShadowsBetween

Honestly, I think the leveling pacts are a relic at this point. A lot of the intended functionality seems to have been superseded by Super Sidekicking. Part of the reason for leveling pacts was to allow to characters to always be the same level, so that when they did play together they could experience the same thing without the need for Sidekick Tetris.

I do know a few players who used leveling pacts as a way to *slow down* XP gain on a character they wanted to play, while simultaneously leveling up a character that they wanted to mess around with, but only at a higher level. (For example, a Fire/kin that they wanted for solo farming.) The characters that they actually mostly played and teamed with were pacted to offline characters that were really just along for the ride. I know one other who used it as a way to powerlevel two characters at once. The characters would be pacted (one from each of that player's accounts) and then one of them would join an AE team or some other farming map.

With Super Sidekicking, I can't really see the devs putting much more time into leveling pacts. For most players, SSK serves the purpose of allowing to characters to "always play together," with the only real exception being task forces, and other level-gated content like Cimerora.

Note, I'm not claiming that there aren't legitimate uses of leveling pacts. I just think that those are probably served "well enough" by the existing systems that the devs probably aren't going to make any additional changes a real priority.

What? I couldn't hear you over the grinding sound coming from the Trials. Perhaps if you suggested a time and date, and which zone you'd like to hold it in. I'd suggest RWZ for something like this. It's still accessible to everyone besides Praetorians, and the lighting in Pocket D is terrible for anything even slightly like a Costume contest. And there's a fairly open area right outside the base where people could walk without low level characters automatically getting eaten by monkeys.

Of course, an immediate problem with anything like this at the moment is all the people running the trials - all of the Co-op zones are used as staging areas, which makes it really difficult to use those zones for anything else. I saw a fairly vicious argument the other day because someone wanted to hold a costume contest in Pocket D, and the contestants were enough of a population boost to force the zone to split. Which forced the "much more important" Trial Grinders to play zone Tetris to start their mission.

How would it matter if you did get into the chalet? I've logged in on characters that were out there before the event ended. The characters appear to be standing in space, looking at a handful of NPCs standing on nothing. And after about ten seconds, the server notices where I am and automatically moves the character back into the main club area. And even if someone was out there, trying to navigate the invisible geometry would be a huge pain. About the only benefit is being able to access the Candy Cane elf, and the stuff he sells can only be used by the character buying it.

I've had a Logitech G13 game pad/keyboard/whatever for a while now, and I have yet to install it. Largely because after I got it home and really started thinking about it, I can't see how I can set it up. I don't mean how to assign the keys, I'm sure the utility for that is fine. I mean, how do I set it up when nearly all of my characters (and there are a lot) have a different layout of powers? Even the ones that are the same AT have different powers, different travel powers, different pets. Even if I took the time to somehow standardize all the powers trays, there are going to be ones that just *won't* fit the same layout. Like my Illusion Controllers. (And then there's the fact that I occasionally play several different games, most of which have at least a few noticeably different UI features.)

I've poked around online a little, and the few posts/blogs I've found about setting it up are exclusively about setting it up for *one* character. (Also usually for a completely different game, so knowing how to precisely map and bind the thing for a Bear Shaman really isn't that great for my purposes anyway.)

To be honest, I'm not sure I have the right playstyle to use the thing to begin with. Aside from the fact that I jump from game to game whenever I get bored, I make lots and lots of characters, most of whom have very little in common. I won't use keyboard turning, so setting up the thumbstick would be a problem regardless. (I use mouselook to turn, and the keyboard for forward/back and strafe from side to side.) I only use binds on a handful of characters, mostly so that shift+Lclick teleports, and a very simple setup to for the two Kheldians. (Q shifts to Nova and the "Nova" power tray, E does the same thing for the lobster.) I use up to three power trays, but I don't make use of any of the floating trays.

In short, the more I think about it, the more it seems like I'd have to basically totally relearn how to play to even make use of the thing, and I'm not sure that it's worth the effort for me.

So, my question is (more or less) has anyone else managed to set this accessory up so that it works across many characters, and several different games? Or have I acquired an expensive dust catcher?

Ditto. I'm not fond of dubs in any case, but anime dubs seem to make a special effort to be extra awful. And that's not even counting the companies that *change the script* for the dubbed version. (The currently available English version of "Castle of Cagliostro" has almost *nothing* to do with the original script. It's just awful.) I actually only know about a dozen words of Japanese, so it's not like I'm a language snob. I just prefer the original acting in most cases.

There are a few exceptions. The Studio Ghibli dubs are actually pretty decent, although I'm sure it helps that the people in charge A) actually liked the movies a great deal and B) made the effort to get actual voice actors, rather than just shoving a microphone at random people in the coffee shop.

Don't they allow you to melt down the components? I could be mistaken, since I've paid slightly more than zero attention to the Incarnate system. However, I thought they added the ability to "disassemble" any of the components into a bit more than half the amount of parts you'd need to make it. (IE, for the shard stuff, a Common component breaks into one or two shards, an Uncommon breaks into three or four, and so on.) Melting them down "wastes" a good portion of their value in the sense that an Uncommon Shard Component takes eight shards to make and only melts down to about half that. But if you aren't using the component for anything else anyway, it's 100% wasted if you can't craft it into something.

Well, for one thing that other MMO doesn't have any instance content except for the dungeons. If you're doing anything else, you're in the shared world with all the other players who aren't in an instance. I have no idea if their LFG tool will work if you're in a PVP match, which is the only other instanced content that game has. The difference is, it's not as apparent there, because *everything* is basically street sweeping, with a handful of "Task Force" dungeons here and there.

They've reactivated the Halloween event as an apology for the accidental server rollback during the last maintenance. So, at the moment, night will last until sometime on April 5th, which I *think* is when they're planning to turn the event back off.

I have a level 50 character who happens to have about six Alignment Merits saved up. I've decided that it's probably the best use of my time to use them on the one point Random Rolls, and then sell whatever pops up on the market. (Crafted first, for the ones where it makes a difference.) I know the different level brackets have different recipes available, but I have no idea which ones are worth anything. I also know that whatever recipes I get will be level 50, or the level cap for the set.

So, my question is: what level bracket would be the best choice for a level 50 character who intends to sell the results on the market?

Nah, I've seen a few sites jump the gun on their April Fools prank. Basically, this is the worst three or four days of the year to release anything like "real" news. Because if it sounds even slightly odd, no one will take it seriously. I know of at least one game that ran into this problem: the game itself sounded so outlandish that everyone assumed the announcement was actually a prank. In fact, after the game had actually been *released* there were still people on forums insisting that it wasn't real.

The bustier is still pretty shiny, but at least the pants look more normal. (Well, normal for a super hero, anyway, and at least they *don't* look like they're made of linoleum.)

"Normal" Mastermind pets do not benefit from Recharge, and can not slot Recharge Enhancements. Some of the "abnormal" pets can be slotted with recharge, but it *only* affects the recharge rate of the summoning power. All pet attacks are immune to recharge boost of any kind. (Accelerate Metabolism, Speed Boost, or inherited Recharge enhancement from the Incarnate slots.) When the change was made, I believe that a dev posted that they had discovered that recharge enhancements were messing with the pet AI scripts, which was one of the reasons why the Thugs Enforcer only ever seemed to use Hurl Boulder. Fixing the AI apparently would have been extremely difficult. So the only realistic way to prevent recharge from breaking the AI was to prevent recharge completely.

The two upgrade powers are the buffs you use on your pets to enable their other attacks. Equip becomes available at level 6, and Tactical Upgrade is at level 32. Usually, people will recommend that you take those powers as soon as they're available. You only need to slot them with a single endurance reduction (they're quite expensive, around 45 endurance each I think.) Each of them is an AoE, so if all your pets are summoned, you should only have to cast each of them once to upgrade all your pets. (Unless you're in combat, in which case some of the pets might be out of range or out of line of sight and miss the upgrade.)

Your character can also take three personal attacks from the primary set. I believe that these are Rifle, Burst, and a grenade attack. These are totally normal attacks. However, some people greatly dislike them because they are basically the same as the three lowest damage attacks from the Assault Rifle set. Whether they'll be useful to you or not depends on your playstyle, and what secondary set you picked. Some, like Forcefields, aren't very active at all and will leave you with plenty of time to pick off the weak and the wounded.

Serum is your "utility" power. This is a single target buff that you can cast on one of your pets. Unfortunately, it has almost more drawbacks than benefits. First, it is on an *extremely* long recharge timer, long enough to make it a "once per mission" power. Second, the power has a "crash" effect when it wears off. It will improve the damage out put of a pet while it is active, and then it will basically cripple the pet when it wears off. (The effect is severe enough that it's usually faster to dismiss a pet and summon and equip a new one than to wait for the pet to recover.)

The problem is that the sound the two bigger demons make is actually annoying to many people, *and* they do it constantly whenever they're *NOT* in combat. Robots clank like a refrigerator rolling down a flight of stairs when they're moving, but they mostly just hum and beep quietly to themselves once they stop. Ninjas, Zombies, Thugs and Soldiers just stand quietly and wait for something to happen. You can locate a stationary Demon Summoner from several *blocks* away in game. The only other thing that comes close is the squelchy "SPLORGH" every few seconds on the spines damage aura, or the loonies who leave something like Footstomp on auto. And people aren't very fond of those, either.

The problem for me is largely the writing. Redside missions almost *always* portray you as either a hired thug, or as a lackey to someone who makes the villains from Saturday Morning Cartoons look sensible by comparison. There's really not many missions that offer any other option. *None* of my villains are mustache-twirlers who would pour battery acid on kittens just to prove how "EVIL" they are. Maybe some people do want to play as fruitcakes who plot to destroy the world and kill everyone. I don't, because to me, that's the same as saying "villain equals stupid."

To be honest, the Tips missions don't really help, since the writing is often even *more* cliched than for the older missions. AND the mission is written in a way that removes *any* sense of choice. You're there to beat down Flambeaux just for the sake of proving how evil you are. Not because she's a nitwit, or because she's managed to inconvenience you, but solely to prove that you're more evil than she is. Frankly, I ignore the Tips missions entirely now on most of my characters, because NONE of the choices appeal to me as they are written.

As for PVP... I have nothing really to say about it. I personally hate PVP, and refuse to have anything to do with it. One of the reasons I've mostly ignored many of the newer, shinier MMOs is the apparent assumption that even in the ones with PVE servers, "nearly all" players are going to PVP at least a little. (For example, unskippable and un-droppable quests to "introduce" you to PVP, or putting items needed for PVE quests in areas that operate under PVP rules.) *Edit* Just to be entirely clear: a game that allows other players to attack me, EVER, for any reason, is one that I refuse to play. As Memphis Bill stated above, I tolerate the PVP in this game because it's entirely locked off in areas where I never need to go.

My math could be off, but isn't saying "a 1000% increase" the same result as if you multiply by ten?

It could stand to look a little less like plastic. The lipstick and WonderBra are a little overdone, but it's the *shiny* that actually makes me think it looks weird. That, and the strangely ill-fitting boots really do make it look like it came out of a bag at a mall Halloween store.

And there really isn't much they can dress her in that can excuse the fact that one of her signature powers is a rope. That, as I understand it, often gets stolen by bad guys so they can use it on her.

I think the devs could turn the frequency down on the howls. Other than that, I don't mind them all that much. Certainly not enough to bother to make a macro for them. That said, with the demons and robots I *DO* pay close attention to them in mission maps, especially sewer maps with those tiny doors in the baffles. Robots especially love to run right into the opening and then stop dead. In fact, I once teamed with a Mastermind who had named their Assault Bot something that more or less read "I Block Doors."

I pay attention to this with zombies and ninjas too, of course, but they'll eventually switch to a melee attack and clear the door on their own. Demons might take a while to decide to move, and robots are perfectly content to stand there until they rust.

Honestly, if someone is going to kick me because the demons are howling too much, then they're probably looking for excuses to kick people anyway. "Your build sucks. I hate that AT. That power is stupid." I'm always more than willing to add such a person to my ignore list. It's less frustrating for everyone that way.

Probably not directly related to the Google accounts then, I noticed that sometime last week. To be honest, I've never been a big "youtube" user. I don't have any videos, and I only had an account at all so that I could have access to the Favorites list.

The emote only works if you want to make your pets run a fairly stupid emote every time you stop moving. And for the record, I hate the slurping sound more than the howling.

As for the Defender, there's a couple of different reasons they might have said that. The obvious is lag trouble, or a general dislike of Masterminds. I've run into at least one Defender who felt compelled to buff *everything* on a team, and deeply resented any pets of any kind. Especially temp pets. The idea that they could simply *not* buff the pet was beyond their comprehension, even after several team members pointed it out. I've also run into a couple of players who find "demon" themed characters of any kind offensive.

In any case, it's the other player's problem. Make a note not to team with them again, and ignore them.