Twoflower

Speaking as one of Sluggy's SGmates and a fellow author -- kudos! It's a terrific arc and deserves to be highlighted.

ICONS: Minimap waypoints never appeared, even when I was right on top of one of the banners. Made it difficult to figure out where they were. This happened in both the Atlas and Steel apocalypse events. I did see icons in my nav bar, but not on the minimap.

BADGES: Didn't get a badge for taking part in destroying the banner. Our team may not have done enough damage to it, but with everybody in the zone dogpiling on the thing, that's going to be a common problem.

CONFUSING INSTRUCTIONS: Saw "Seek the greater mystic aspect" and then had no idea what to do. We found a Eochai wandering around and beat it up, but I don't know if that was related or not.

LAG: Lag was particularly intense during the banner brawls. Not as much during the zombie apocalypse that hit Atlas at the start of the testing period, but around the banners, it was very difficult to fight.

DIFFICULTY: My team operating at level 49 was fighting L53s during trick or treat. Is that normal? Nobody had difficulty jacked and we had a team of 7. Salvage was dropping properly and badges were awarding though.

I doubted they'd do any big reveals, I'm just curious what they had to say in general -- particularly since it seemed to be about their approach to MA (story vs. farming, their goals for it, any changes or considerations in the works, etc.) I could be over interpreting the title, I guess.

The "Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Story" MA focused panel was today. Sooo... anything interesting from it? Anything mentioned worth note?

I luckily got in on a level bump up to 35. My Elec/Willpower scrapper was a freaking beast. The recharge times on the basic attacks left a little to be desired and lining up that cone was a pain, but the raw damage output was terrific and my survivability was lovely. Recharge can be dealt with via proper slotting (I was using SOs).

I'm definitely going with this combo once we go live. It's very satisfying.

This is awesomeness incarnate. "Mentor Tetris" indeed; the gymnastics needed to get a team together with enough mentors and at the right level for the content we want to do sometimes took 30+ minutes per romp just to get organized. (My SGmates have a lot of alts.)

Being able to bring whoever you want along on whatever you want regardless of level and STILL be able to earn XP... it's the kind of outside the box thinking that separates COH from other MMOs yoked to the traditional grind methods. Excellent.

Let me speak in favor of Buckshot, if only because it gives you the Trifecta of Cones. If you slot Buckshot and Flamethrower for range, leaving Full Auto's range at default, you can get them largely overlapping -- then there's no "Wah, short cone" problem. Cone, cone, cone, and things die. It's a lovely sight.

I will speak against devices, though. I rolled AR/Dev back in Issue Zero, and while it's thematically awesome, my damage was pretty underwhelming and my best tools (the explosives) completely useless on fast-moving teams. Pair it up with a good utility set like En or Ice. Don't plan on blapping -- you want to be a cone master, not a punchy kicky kinda person -- but things like Boost Range, various debuffs, immobs for Ignite, and area denial tools like ice slick are going to help you a lot. And, of course, Build Up, to cut through AR's commonly resisted damage type.

Now that I've had an AR for, oh, FIVE YEARS, I'm keen on the Dual Pistols coming in Going Rogue. I need a new angle on my firearm fun. And hopefully this time it won't lack Aim.

Seconded. I've already tuned up my existing three arcs with I15 technology, and I'm roadblocked again. Other than running the TF and SF there's nothing else new to do until I get more slots to work with. The slots are what I most craved.

Alrighty, thanks. Hopefully they'll be in soon -- they were the #1 feature I was waiting for in Issue 15.

Hallo? Anyone, anyone? Quick to verify, just click the little shopping bag icon and see if the story slots are showing up for ya.

I keep checking the in-game store... I saw them available for an hour after I15 went live, but they always threw an error. Now I'm not seeing them at all.

Just want to make sure this is universal and not just a problem I'm having. I haven't seen anyone else talking about it on the other forums, other than one mention of it in the release thread.

[ QUOTE ]
But is it listed as "On file" - you have to enable it in a different area, as I recall, of the account info to use a card in the in-game store vs. buying through the management page store.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's in the Billing Summary section. I'm not seeing any 'on file' option beyond that.

Also, the option to buy story slots is now MIA from the in-game store. I see options for character slots and respecs, but that's it.

EDIT: Okay, I found the option, and re-set my card just in case it wasn't already "on file". Very unintuitive. Problem is, the slots are still MIA as a purchasable item from the in-game store.

[ QUOTE ]
So i went to get my new 5 mission slots for AE - they are listed in the store - but when i go to purchase them it says payment cannot be accepted for this item at this time - when will they be going live for purchase.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm having the same problem here. I get:

Payment could not be accepted for your order.
Product distribution failed

I know for a fact the credit card on file is good, I used it to buy Booster II recently and it doesn't expire for years. Guess it's just system overload. I'll try again tonight.

I'm looking forward to seeing what changes they made to the MA. They've been pretty vague about it, just "improvements" and keyword searches.

The bad news is that indeed DCs are frozen. I have a lot of fixes I want to make to mine -- notably, ramping down the difficulty of the enemies, which became drastically overpowered after the patch changes -- but no ability to do so. I've sent a PM to Hero 1 requesting an unlock since my /tells have gone from "Had fun!" to "This is impossible!", but we'll see if the devs are willing to unlock for a 'non-critical' problem like that.

One positive? In I15, DC arcs will let you pick between normal drops and ticket drops. I know I for one prefer ticket drops; I'm in an SG with five-year vets sitting on vast piles of inf, and we rarely really IO the hell out, so we have low operating costs for our alts. Being able to snag exactly the items I want instead of money+shopping is terrific.

[ QUOTE ]
Go with my experiment above. Heck Don't even tell them just show a random person (Random as in has no idea who positron is) posi's posts and ask them how he comes off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Still not proof of sanity. It's proof of mass paranoia, more than anything else. Just because the majority spazzes and misinterprets and overreacts doesn't make them right.

I'm still waiting for someone to actually post "My character was deleted / rolled back". They didn't say they'd be banned from the game -- which would mean nobody could post their horror story -- just that they MIGHT lose access to the character. Has anybody come here to talk about the actions taken by the evil devs and protest innocence? No.

It's not quite the mass pandemic of slaughter people are assuming to be, regardless of how MANY are assuming it to be.

[ QUOTE ]
OK whens the last time any of us open'd that nice little book that came with our boxed "city of heroes/villians" games. Blasters were meant to hit melee toons from a range and be "safe" or hit and run tactics, now with these ranged attacks u hit a single target or aoe the group and u have 5-8 ranged attacks flying back @ u. were u thought u were safe. ur a blaster for godsake u should be able to pick off from afar not get picked off

[/ QUOTE ]

Ur is a city in Mesopotamia.

That said, ALL enemies in the game -- thorns, council, hellions, freakshow, doesn't matter -- all of them have a ranged attack of some kind. Their AI may only use it when they have no options left, but generally there's always something. You can never stay at range and be totally out of harm's reach.

However, staying at range LIMITS the enemy's ability to fight you unless they too are ranged specialists. That's the safety the manual was really talking about. Many enemies in the game do their worst damage up close and personal; the attacks from afar can hurt you, can kill you, but are safer.

The main problem here isn't the custom enemies being able to shoot at you with knives and shurikens and such, it's that the damage they're dealing per shot is excessive. Yes, they only get one shot at you, but especially in the case of shurikens that one shot is actually their best attack! That's crazy.

I really hope the damage gets ramped down. I get WHY these enemies are now given a token ranged attack, but it needs to be a TOKEN ranged attack, not the finger of God.

I encountered this problem in beta. I had a passive NPC following you (named "Cameraman") and a combat ally, a Mastermind, following. But the MM never used her secondary or even her summons.

I asked the devs about this and was told that only the OLDEST joining member of your party gets to use summons and secondaries. It's an antifarming measure, to ensure you aren't tagging along with a fleet of bubblers and healers.

Since the cameraman was added to my group first, even though he had no powers, he was the designated support guy. The MM became a blastermind. So, I used a more linear map, swapped their positions around, and now things are fine.

"What do you want?"
"Information. Information. Information."
"You won't get it!"
"By hook or by crook, we will."

Yay for the Prisoners. I may have to do something with these guys now in an arc.

Stay on target, folks. If this devolves into yet another farming discussion thread it's gonna get 08-locked.

Mood within my supergroup's the same as it's always been -- excitement about the AE's ability to tell stories and provide new content for us to run. We're a little concerned about the ranged attacks being the Hammer of God, they could use some toning down, but otherwise things are positive.

I have no problem with the hype machine dying down and AE becoming Just Another Part Of The Game. That's the way things should be; it shouldn't completely consume people's attention in the same way no one task force or other game system should be the total focus of the entire community. It's part and parcel with everything else in the game.

It's been said, it should be said again: Getting to the ticket cap is a very rare thing indeed.

They are not cutting tickets across the board. For most characters on most maps on most missions you would not even come close to the cap anyway. You can still level and gain rewards at the same speed you would if you were running typical developer content.

The ONLY thing this affects are min/maxed farm style rewards gathering. Go play some MA missions -- NORMAL ones, not just all-boss clears designed exclusively for ticket maxing, thank you -- and if you start hitting the cap regularly, THEN I will back your play for removing/raising the cap. Until then, this won't affect much of anything.

As long as the limit is higher than what I could typically get on a mission of that size facing ordinary mobs, I don't care. I'm not expecting AE to earn me rewards any faster (OR any slower) than any other content in the game. Provided it's still equivalent, nothing is ruined for good. It's just normalized.

By and large, the "coded" tags will be obsolete... once I15 hits, and we can add an ACTUAL tag of "story" to our missions. Until then I still recommend using these.

And even after I15, we're going to need agreed upon standards for tags. "Story" is pretty obvious, but "Solo" vs "Solo-Friendly" vs "Soloable" would be three different tags that all mean the same thing and all are appropriate... standardizing will help us.

Nope. Only ordinary ambush groups without specified boss characters.

I did this in one of my arcs by picking a map which had a boss spawn relatively close to the final defend-glowy. The boss may be immobile, but he typically spawns within range and starts kicking your butt. (Which unfortunately was pretty brutal on soloers since he was an EB, but hey, it was my first arc. Didn't know any better.)

Enemy descriptions are difficult to read -- you have to target them, open a menu, and specifically pick 'description'. They aren't fed to you passively like mission intro/outtros, or behind a single click menu like clues.

Therefore, I treat them as niceties, extras, easter eggs, nothing more. I'll write custom descs, but often it'll just be a one line joke or some other comment about them. Occasionally I'll do some background info on that particular critter, but nothing critical, nothing you NEED to know -- just some enriching text. Can't rely on people reading it.

As for the rest, clues and intro/outtros and dialogue, those are must haves. I also go for redundancy; outtros and intros should summarize your most important talking points, in case people skipped the clues.

And as for people who never read anything and mindlessly zerg because they don't care about story and just want MOAR XP, they're not the ones I'm creating for, so I don't care if they miss out on the plot or get confused as to what's going on. The text is there for those who enjoy stories.