TyrantMikey

So I'm writing a story arc, where a Crey patrol is wandering through the building. In the arc, the security systems are presumably down. And the profanity filter kicks in because, apparently, the following is naughty, naughty, naughty:

Patroller 1: It'd be nice if they'd get the damned security systems back online. I feel naked.

srsly?

/em headdeskslam

So, now I have to mangle the dialog into the far less effective "exposed." "Naked" is the best word choice, but the profanity filter apparently thinks that TEENS can't handle the word "naked," despite the fact that there are female toons running around with barely more than pasties on them. Mind you, those costume pieces were created by the devs.

Oh well. I'll suck it up. I guess I'm just venting. Sometimes, the AE--presumably a story telling device--goes out of its way to prevent you from telling stories. It's like AE insists that you tell a Disneyfied version of Saving Private Ryan.

Portal Corporation is so incredibly underutilized.

Think about it. Those portals are punching holes through time and space. We can go anywhere, anytime. To any freakin' world we want to.

Need to go to the moon base? Use a portal.

Need to get to Atlantis? Use a portal.

Need to visit the 9th level of hell where the demons come from? Use a portal.

Discovered another planet on the far side of the galaxy? Use a portal. Maybe it's a primordial jungle planet with towering trees and giant reptiles. Maybe it's a desert planet. Maybe it's a post-apocalyptic world. Maybe it's a highly advanced civilization that's contacted us demanding to know why Nemesis is there. Maybe it's a world cloaked in eternal darkness, filled with vampires and werewolves. Who knows?

To date, though, we only ever go to other locations on Earth. It's sad, really. We could do so much more with it.

Okay, let's view this objectively, shall we? (Bear with me a second here.)

A brand new player coming into the game has only the bare minimum powers available to them when they hit the tutorial: Brawl, Sprint, a primary power, a secondary power, and an origin power. Five measely powers to get them to Stamina at 20. (Assuming that's the path they'll take, as it seems most popular.)

The devs have, over the 5+ years of the game, smoothed the leveling curve, fixed the Hollows so that it's nowhere near the death trap it once was, instituted AE, pushed debt out to level 10, and halved debt from 10 to 20. They've also granted temporary travel powers you can unlock through radio missions. Further, you can do a sewer run to quickly get your toon from level 2 to 8 (or even 10) as soon as you leave the tutorial, with just a few hours effort.

And let's not forget that the developers have stated that low-level content is under review. They've heard our cries and are doing something about it.

Now that stuff is all accessible to any player who doesn't have veterans rewards. If you've amassed veterans rewards, you have a few tricks up your sleeve that makes your leveling speed even faster. Blackwand (a low-grade snipe), Nemesis Staff, Base Teleporter, Sands of Mu, Ghost Slaying Axe (beats the crap out of COT Spectrals), and a Buffing pet. You should have far more attacks in your attack chain than a toon just starting out, meaning you can level far faster than they can.

It seems to me, in retrospect, that the devs have ALREADY done a ton of work to make it much easier for characters to get from 1 to 20 in record time. Can you do it in the time it takes you to design a costume? No. And nor should you. Bypassing that learning phase is a bad idea.

If you build a new toon, with new powersets, and you join a team I'm building, I expect you to know how those powers work together. If a level 20 character has to stop frequently to completely rearrange his tray, or research his powers, reslot them or respec out of a power because they don't work the way he thought they did, it tells me he has no idea what he's doing, and he'll likely get his teammates killed.

How does that benefit anyone?

I'll have to see about digging up some actual ticket numbers for you, but I have to agree with others in this thread who say that this is a solution seeking a problem.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a 5-mission arc using custom and standard enemies. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ticket drop rates were nowhere near as low as I thought they'd be. But that likely has a lot to do with how the custom critters are designed. If I recall correctly, to achieve maximum drop rates, custom critters have to include minions, lieutenants, and bosses, and can't all be strictly melee, and should include critters with Hard & Extreme settings. Mine have never been typical farming zombies (melee-only lieutenants or bosses). So, when I fired up the mission in the AE and did the test runs, XP and ticket drop rates were just where I expected them to be from previous runs.

Granted, the mission is challenging. But it's a hell of a lot of fun (I can't wait to watch a team of 8 pee all over themselves). And that'll make for some great advertising.

My point is this: AE isn't dead, ticket drop rates aren't broken (only changed), and farming won't be gone for long (they will figure out how to get around it). Oh, and Miracle Max is off enjoying a nice MLT. They're so perky!

So chill out, relax, go with the flow. I'm enjoying the reprieve from all the farming. It means we can see heroes/villains in the streets doing missions again. Cripes, there were TWO INSTANCES OF PEREGRINE last night.

Myth: You have to unlock Wincott as a contact through a KR contact.

Fact: You can talk to Wincott as soon as you hit level 5, sparing yourself a long, tedious round trip from Galaxy or Atlas to KR, then all the way to the Hollows. As soon as you ding 5, go directly to the Hollows and talk to Wincott. Then, when you talk to your KR contact, he won't send you off to talk to Wincott, because you've already done it.

I'd be down with that. More options is better. The trick would be ensuring that the radio mission sent you after spawns appropriate to that zone, but I'm sure the engine could handle that.

My only concern about this system would be that my defeat is not always my fault.

We've all teamed with overzealous zergonauts responsible for numerous team wipes. Why should I be penalized for their style of play?

Even if the team leader kicks the zergonaut from the team, or if I quit the team, the reputation has already been applied. I think I'd have a problem with that.

I'd like to submit that the current options for patrols and the like are a bit limited when you're designing missions.

Here's the completely fictitious scenario to go by. Imagine that your mission circles around a group of 5th Council invading a Crey facility, and there are civilians in the base. The players have to get into the base, recover clues, rescue civilians, defeat the big bads at the end, and whatever else you can think of, while 5th and Crey are fighting for control of the facility.

If I recall correctly, the current alignment settings for AE are as follows:

• ENEMY: Patrols of this type will only attack players. If your mission involves two different villain groups, those groups will not attack each other. Consequently, if you have a patrol from group A walk past a static spawn from group B, they will not attack that spawn. Also, two patrols from opposing groups will not attack each other, even if that's the behavior you desire.
• ALLY: Patrols of this type are friendly to the players. The patrol won't follow or attack the players, but will attack any enemies around them.
• ROGUE: Patrols of this type will attack ANYONE, including other members of their own group. Consequently, if a patrol of 5th Column runs across another patrol of 5th column, they'll wipe each other out. Or, if a patrol of 5th column runs across a Crey patrol, those two will engage in combat until one of them emerges the victor.

Now, here's where things are lacking:

• Patrols never attack static spawns. This breaks immersion. If the 5th are trying to take over the base, why are they ignoring all the Crey standing around trying to look menacing?
• Patrols set to Enemy will ignore each other, again breaking immersion. If the 5th are trying to take over the base, why are they ignoring the Crey patrol walking right past them?
• In either case, you almost never want 5th Column patrols to attack other 5th Column patrols. That would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to take over a Crey facility. In point of fact, it would probably do a lot to help the Crey fight off the 5th, and tick off the Invasion Leader.

The sensible thing for patrols to do is attack any character on the map that isn't in your own group. Unfortunately, the Mission Editor currently provides no setting for patrols that encourages them to behave in this way.

So I'm suggesting the addition of a new alignment, appropriately named Group, that would do just that. Patrols with this aligment will attack any character they encounter that is not within their own group.

This would allow for roving battles between groups within maps.

Naturally, players would not receive XP for those NPCs defeated by NPC patrols. However, this setting is a story-telling device, as it creates a more dynamic environment within the mission. If I want to create a map where Crey and 5th Column, or Nemesis and Rikti are fighting for control of the map, that can be very easily done with lots of patrols set to GROUP. That cannot be done with ROGUE, since the patrols would wipe each other out, regardless of which group they belonged to.

(Also noteworthy is that my testing of the current implementation of Rogue appears to be buggy. Sometimes, patrols set to Rogue attack each other, and other times they completely ignore each other. There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to this behavior.)

I'm open to comments, critiques, rebuttals and suggestions.

I spent all day teaming with my mom and my nephew doing radio and contact missions.

Good lord is teaming streamlined. At various times, either my mom or myself was playing a toon that was significantly higher than my nephew's level 20ish toon. It did not matter which mission we played, we all got XP, influence and drops. Once we figured out how to turn off the pesky nag screens about exemplar penalties, it was even easier.

Earlier in the day, Icon was pleasantly uncrowded. Around 6PM EST, it was a nightmare. Fortunately, we all made it a point to use the IP and other less-commonly used tailors.

For my tank, I loved the No FX options for my toggle powers. Also, the alternate punches for Super Strength are full of win. Regardless of my toons, I'm glad I can make the primary and secondary sets use the same color schemes so that energy blast and energy melee are blue throughout (goodbye pink pom-poms of doom, I shall NOT miss thee).

And much to my pleasant surprise, my story in AE didn't need tweaking. I was nervous, but had it well designed, so I was able to run my nephew through it to teach him how AE works.

We spent the WHOLE day in the game. It was THAT MUCH FUN.

I16 is 100% win. At least, it is for the three of us.

<QR>

60 month vet.

I don't even want to *think* about how much money I've spent on this game, and will spend in the future.