TyrantMikey

Most recently, it's Jacob Shadow. And what made him crystallize for me was, of all things, Ninja Run.

I'd seen that power all over the place and wasn't overly impressed with it. Consequently, I'd never bought the booster pack. But then I saw someone with a set of boots that I really liked. When I asked him about them, he said they were the Tai boots, came with the MA booster pack, and I had to have them. So I got them.

Now, Jacob Shadow is a Claws/WP scrapper, garbed completely in black, with all auras suppressed. The first time he turned on that Ninja Run and actually engaged in combat with it on (I tend to do a lot of jumping to get over uninteresting targets), it was breathtaking. I finally had the scrapper I wanted.

It hasn't been the same since. This will be the scrapper I get to 50.

At the risk of sounding really bizarre and out there:

Get rid of prestige, and use influence for all base-related purchases and rent.

Here's how you could do it.

• First, create a separate SG influence account for all supergroups. Convert the existing prestige to influence using the standard conversion ratio (or some new, as yet to be determined ratio). Then, wipe out any prestige balances.
• Convert all base rental and item purchase prices to INF.
• When a player enters SG mode, a certain percentage of their INF goes to the SG's fund, just as a certain percentage is converted to Prestige now.
• When paying rent, pay for it with your SG's INF account. It should even be automatically deducted from the account on a monthly basis for a nominal surcharge so you don't have to go to Atlas (or whatever it is villain-side).
• When paying for items, pay for it with your SG's INF account.
• Allow players to sink money into the SG account to help pay the rent and extend/maintain their bases.

To this day, I don't understand why we have so many separate forms of currency. We have influence/infamy, prestige, tickets, merits, and Vanguard merits. (There may be others.)

Other ideas for influence sinks:

• Base Booster Packs. Available in game, and purchased at Atlas (or the red-side equivalent) using INF. These unlock decorative items that you can add to your base.
• Portable Rapid Transit Telepad. For a nominal fee, you can purchase a small device that allows you to teleport to the supergroup portal of any zone in the game, without having to visit your base. You just throw down a telepad and step on to it. Every zone in the game is listed. You must pay an initial registration fee, and then a monthly maintenance fee (all in INF) to maintain the service. You can cancel at any time. (This would be very useful to toons that aren't members of a supergroup.)
• PPD Monitoring System Access. For a nominal setup fee and a monthly maintenance fee, you can acquire a device that allows you to talk to any detective on your contact list without having to travel to him.
• Hospital Pharmacy Access. (This would require creating new contacts in hospitals.) For a nominal setup and monthly maintenance fee, you have access to the pharmacy located directly inside any hospital in which you are rezzed. From there you can purchase Respites, Awakens, Catch-A-Breath, and Break-Free inspirations, and all their larger equivalents. (The Paragon PPO, if you will.)
• Crisis Notification Service. This would require adding functionality to the (currently largely unused) Info Terminals scattered throughout the city. For the usual fees, you can access a list of missions available for completion in any of the zones level-appropriate to you. You can then add the mission to your list. (The Service becomes a paid contact.)

Bah. I'm tired, and I'm done.

Well, if we're going to talk about powersets...

I still think a kinetic staff would be a wonderful melee set, and relatively easy to animate. It has the potential to do PBAOE damage and tons of single-foe damage. And with power customization, the effects are easily modified to suit the whims of the player. For example:

1. Kinetic Strike (1) - A quick jab to the torso. Melee. Fast recharge, moderate damage.
2. Kinetic Smash (1) - A quick jab to the face. Melee. Moderate damage. Chance for foe stun.
3. Kinetic Choker (2) - A charged jab to the throat. Melee, Minor Damage, Chance for foe stun.
4. Kinetic Sweep (4) - Sweeping the quarterstaff from below to put your target on his back. Melee. Minor damage; Foe -Defense, Foe -Knockup.
5. Build Up (6)
6. Kinetic Fury - A flurry of attacks from both ends of the quarterstaff. Melee, Minor Damage (SL).
7. Confront (8)
8. Kinetic Quake (18)- You smash one end of the staff down on the ground, releasing the stored kinetic energy within and creating a shockwave that deals damage to your foes. Point blank AOE Melee, Moderate Damage (Lethal), Foe Knockup.
9. Impending Doom (26) - Leaping overhead attack that lands on the opponent's head, dealing high damage. Melee, High Damage (Lethal), foe Knockdown, foe -defense.
10. Kinetic Pulse (26) - A single, highly charged jab at a foe that deals extreme damage. Melee, Extreme Damage (Lethal), Foe Knockback, Foe -Defense.

No doubt it needs work, but I could have serious fun playing a class like this.

Here's my idea for a new promo vid.

The music is Spybreak! by the Propellerheads. Those of you not familiar with the title will recognize it immediately if you've ever seen the Matrix. It's the music playing when Neo assaults the Federal Building. You can hear it here.

Since the piece starts with "Make him look bad!" I'd start it with a sped-up tour of the costume creator. Design a wicked-looking toon, and then run him through the city at high speed. All through the full four minutes of Spybreak, show this character whooping butt on heroes/villains as you see fit in as many different environments as possible. The idea is to emphasize the speed of both solo and team play.

Spybreak is a fast-moving piece of music, and it *really* suits the pace of combat in this game. I think it would make an awesome promo vid.

But that's just my opinion.

EDIT: I really need to learn how to do this video editing stuff.

Shouldn't we be removing the Cryptic logos from those, though?

Or is Cryptic still, in some Satan-inspired way, still affiliated with the product?

/em runs off to check the website

I am all in favor of drawing new, long-term subscribers to the game. I am also painfully aware that marketing has done a horrible job of advertising this game. As others have pointed out, word-of-mouth just doesn't cut it.

I can see the effects of a slowly declining membership in Atlas Park alone. I used to like to hang out there with my 50s and pass out influence to characters with no 3-month vet badge if I thought their characters were well-designed and had great bios. Lately, it's really hard to find a character with less than 18 months worth of vet badges. That speaks volumes.

Now, the question remains: What to do about it. If marketing can't be bothered, a grass-roots effort may, in fact, be called for. Some think that Facebook is a great venue, and I don't altogether disagree with that. But we've also seen other sites rise to the occasion to provide valuable services to the COX community (BadgeHunter, COHTitan, and so on).

I propose that we might consider a grass-roots advertising campaign using subscriber-created posters and videos. I, myself, would be willing to provide the website for it (though you'll have to put up with my hokey domain name), as long as others would be willing to provide the content. I'm not all that great with graphics-editing software, and I don't know squat about video composition.

But imagine what we could do if we had a link we could share with folks on our Facebook or Twitter accounts (if we so chose) that took potential new subscribers to a custom page that contained TONS of advertisements for the game. Posters, video trailers, screenshots, tutorials, testimonials from long-term subscribers. We could potentially build a far-better advertising movement than Paragon/NCSoft has. All it would take is some interest and commitment.

Start small, and build from there. I know we have some very talented people in this community. If the Marketing Department won't do it, maybe it's time we jumped in and did something about it. We shouldn't have to, that's true; but we want to see this game be successful every bit as much (if not moreso) than the Devs and the rest of NCSoft.

Here's another one that would be nice (though it's likely already been mentioned and, if so, I apologize).

Someone mentioned that the tailor screen shouldn't be modal (that is, take up the whole screen so that you can't do anything else) but modeless (a widow, so that you can access menus and the chat window).

The same should be true for the enhancement management screen. It really blows when I can't see my chat window for tells or that someone's attacking me because I'm managing enhancements in Brickstown and an ambush has shown up or someone's trained a group of baddies nearby who thought I looked like a fun/interesting target.

Aside from all the other awesome suggestions:

• Targeting. Give me a targeting option that I can bind and, when used, it selects the nearest target within the 45° angle directly in front of my character. Sometimes, cycling through targets is a pain. And trust me, you never want to hear my blaster say "Oops!"
• Hazard Zone Contacts. I really loathe having to guess which part of a guard's anatomy I have to click on to gain access to the Hollows. Please fix them so that you can click anywhere on a contact to gain entrance to a Hazard Zone. I don't want to feel like a gropy spandex-wearing perv anymore. And believe me, that one guard at the Hollows seems to always want you to click him in his Extra Special Place™.
• Detectives. Give them cell phones. Please? It's insane that we have to run all the way back to these guys to get a bank mission and then run all the way to the bank, and then run all the way back to the contact to clear it. You've worked really hard to simplify contacts everywhere else, and these guys are a glaring omission.
• Caves. Eliminate blue caves. The Cimmarora caves are awesome. Even the brown caves are better than blue caves. Design new cave types that actually look like caves: stalagmites, stalactites, massive vaulted ceilings, puddles of water, crystal veins, and so on. Study your other NCSoft titles for examples: Guild Wars and AION. You don't have to copy their work, just use them for inspiration.
• Magical Mystery Doors. I shouldn't open an office door and land in a warehouse. Or click on a cave entrance and land in an office building. Or, for that matter, do two missions in a row at the same door and have the map completely change on me.
• Giant Rampaging Monsters. I'd love to see a giant five-storey fire-breathing beast that rampages through Steel Canyon, setting buildings on fire. (Or some other similar creature.) It requires every hero in the zone to take it down. Big rewards for doing so. The beast should move from zone to zone, and when he spawns there, engaging him should be just like it is in a Rikti invasion, so that everyone can help.
• AE Inspiration Vendors. I don't understand why these guys don't sell wakies. You realize it's just a time sink, right? I can actually buy 3 cabs and convert them to a wakie for 150, which is actually cheaper than the cost of a wakie. If that's by design, then so be it (but then I don't understand why you don't just globally reduce the cost of wakies). If it's not by design, you might want to look into it.

[quote=Lemur Lad;2285222]- look at badges that fit well together when you're planning how to get them. In other words, there's no point hunting in the open to get Silver Bullet if you're going to run the Moonfire TF at some point.]

This brings up a very interesting point. Certain taskforces and strikeforces are going to be very well suited to collecting certain badges. I freely admit that, despite having been around since April of 2004, I have yet to complete all the task forces. In point of fact, I have probably done less than a handful of them.

So, I could probably use a lot of help in beefing up my knowledge of which taskforces are good matches for badge acquisition. Some of that, I'm sure, can be gleaned from ParagonWiki (a prime research tool).

Okay, so here's the down and dirty.

I'm working on A Complete Idiot's Guide to Badges. One of the things I'd really like to include in it is advice from the swath of players who have spent tons of time hunting badges. What techniques, tips, and tricks have you learned and/or developed to improve your badge-hunting skills?

Tips, tricks, and advice will be included in the guide in a special section with appropriate credit given. So if you have something to contribute, speak up!

Thanks!!

P.S. This isn't included in the Guides section because it's not finished yet, and I'm not promoting a completed guide. Besides, any replies would be useful to anyone reading the thread.

P.P.S. I'll be looking for folks to help proof-read the thing for accuracy, content, etc. If you're willing to help out, send me a PM.

I will officially out my mom. She plays with me all the time.

I'm 42, and she's 21 years older than I am.

And she's an awesome player, working on her 42 month vet badge.

If it were me, and this were made within a relatively quick timeframe (but with a massive budget to ensure it was done properly), I'd have it cover THE COMING STORM.

And then tie a major release of the game with the release of the movie.

But hey, that'd only be marketing genius.