Vermain

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Also, and I'm not super-proud of this, you can put it on auto and go AFK for a bit with a boss.

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You literally are not a true Dominator until you've done this at least once.

Just scrap star ratings altogether. If you're someone like Roger Ebert and can objectively look at something, both in terms of content and context (what is the movie trying to do, etc.), then star ratings work fine, but in an online environment like this a star rating is begging for trouble. A simple "thumbs-up" system (where you can thumbs-up something if you like it, or choose to not do anything) would work the best. The arcs that people like will gradually float to the top, and the ones that aren't that good will stay at the bottom.

I'd say it's close to being vital for soloing, just because it's such an amazing way of keeping dangerous opponents locked down. In a team, it CAN be useful, but it's situationally useful. If you see a dangerous ranged guy sitting in the back that's not getting whalloped by AoEs, throw a Mez on him and count him out for the fight. You might as well take it since Call of the Sandmans were crazily cheap when I last checked.

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I noticed this last night in a quick mish I put together to see if I could get close to the ticket cap of 1500 now. I used to hit 9999+ with it at 50 when the same map was filled with level 52 (53 technically?) Comm Officers, but this time I only hit the 1500 cap with the end mission bonus fighting level 54 minions.


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Anecdotal evidence, but I think the tickets-per-mob was lowered slightly, at the very least. Granted, the decrease in ticket gains is likely attributable to the fact that Comm Officers basically exploded in a shower of tickets. What we're seeing right now is more reasonable, because, let's be honest, getting 9999+ tickets in a single mission was ludicrous.

I played through a few of them, and they're not bad, but none of them really grabbed me by the horns and pulled me in. Generally, an arc has to hook me with some new concept or idea immediately if I'm going to spend the time playing through the rest of it. Some arcs I know have a twist in them, which is why I ended up playing further (like Tangle in Time), and others just started off with an extremely unique concept and used that to reel me in (like One Million Eyes). I guess something like Johnny Sonata and the Hitmen is well-done, and I liked some of the quirky bits of humor, but the concept itself just didn't latch on to me. There was no interest in seeing what the conclusion was.

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That said, I think you have to put custom critters in context. Yah, they can be much more difficult. On the other hand, you're blowing through that MA arc a lot faster than you would anything "outside", because there's no travel time involved. No zoning, no courier filler, and probably no Defeat Alls. Hospital is pretty much right at the mission door.

To be fair, all that's gotta be figured in.

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Yes, but the MA doesn't force you to use custom critters. This is the essential issue: there's no reason to make mission arcs with custom guys if the custom guys are going to wipe the floor with a lot of people thanks to how powerful even just the minions themselves are.

Just edit the custom creature you want to remove from your group. Get to the creature ID page (where you enter in their name and biography) and then, from the Group dropdown box, select "New." Type in "removal group" or something as the name of your new group. That should move the custom creature from that group into the "removal group."

Imagine, if you will, a villain group dedicated to stealing ALL of the world's anime supplies.

I believe she's a Magic contact.

Really, I'm just a bit bummed because I have absolutely no desire to make any new Boss fights since they're now officially completely ridiculous, even at Regular.

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I told you so.

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The bosses are a bit obscene right now. If you don't give them a secondary that requires constantly reactivating abilities with decent activation times (Radiation) and a weapon with redraw, they will absolutely tear through anything that isn't IOed out the butt or isn't incredibly controlled in some way.

The forest-on-fire map seems to have been removed. On the other hand, an outdoor Eden map was added, along with the Faultline Highrise map.

Edit that particular creature, and when you get to the ID stage (where you set its name and description), change the little group tab underneath its name to "New" and then create a new group with a name like "blah" or whatever. This should transfer that creature to the storage group, and you can then add the new creature to your group as normal.

I think, at the least, we can agree that a 5-star system is a really terrible idea for the sole reason of subjectivity. I don't believe a mission like Footsteps Initiative deserves a 0 or a 1 in any circumstance, because it's A) playable and B) has a coherent storyline. 1 or lower would be "almost completely unplayable" for me, like if it were just a long string of Extreme Stone Armor Archvillains or something. If you happen to play a cat-angel or look amazingly like MEGA PUNCHER, though, it's very easy to just hit it with a 1-star rating and never look back, even though that's not very objective.

I'll throw in my two bits: I definitely would not have resubscribed and bought some of the Booster packs if I didn't have a way to get past the godawful 13-20 slog on my Dominator. On the other hand, I can understand the reasoning, as getting from 1-50 in a single day is somewhat counterintuitive to the idea of an MMO - specifically, the monthly pay scheme part.

While the Meow spam is gone, I think it'll only take a few days before people hone in on an equally easy Lieutenant-class mob and start farming that ad nauseum. I think people will just end up being far sneakier when they do make farms, as a result.

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Other than Aim/Buildup and Darkest Night, I'm not seeing a huge problem with these. By and large they make sense to me and finally standardize what level grants what (lowest=S/L protection and basic attacks, next up=controls and such, etc.)

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I do agree with the one comment that it would be nice to be able to pick the base ranged power for melee sets in some fashion. Being able to pick from just a standardized list (Gun/Shuriken/Energy Blast/Fire Blast/whatever) with the same damage/recharge/whatever would be great. I suppose there's the problem of how not every damage type is equal, but it does create a lot of conceptual problems.

It's a bit sneaky, but I wouldn't exactly blow a gasket if I saw someone doing it. I generally judge missions more by how fun they are than how high their star rating is. The star rating doesn't honestly mean much to me, because the majority of the missions I've played that I've actually had fun in are ones that someone else recommended to me (and had like 20-30 ratings when I played them) rather than ones I randomly looked up that had 200+ ratings.

Or have the hero arrive too late to stop the full realization of a plan. The generator is already operational, the impervium has already been stolen, you end up beating up the wrong guys, etc.

Try deleting and renaming the invalid Name field. Occasionally, something like a < bracket can get stuck in there for some odd reason and will be invisible until you correct it.

It's just meant as a way to organize the powersets in a way that people will be able to identify easily when they're looking to give their guys Ice Armor or War Mace or whatever.

If AE missions gave no EXP, all of the farm teams you currently see would stop doing AE missions and... start doing newspaper missions again over and over and over. Meanwhile, no one would play AE missions unless they were roleplayers or friends of the author, because even roleplayers generally like to be rewarded for the time and effort they put into running through a dungeon. I vastly prefer the current system where you can form your own team with likeminded people to take things slowly and do storyline missions and actually get rewarded for it. Trying to penalize the farmers will, in the end, only penalize the people using the MA for stories more.

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Well, basically the way it was for me before I14, most teams I ended up on just wanted to do radio mission after radio mission without interacting with each other or doing any story content. If I wanted to take part in a story, I usually had to play solo.

After I14 was released, most teams I end up on just want to do radio mission after radio mission without interacting with each other or doing any MA or story content. If I want to take part in a story or use the MA, I usually have to play solo.

Not much has changed...

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This is my experience, too. Granted, I enjoy the newspaper missions more than the AE farms, just because there's more diverse enemies to fight and it also tends to require slightly more coordination.

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For the record, a Superstrength/Willpower with both set to extreme is just cruel.

Mine is optional, so he's only there if you want to fight him. But if you do, he will give you a hard time and then rez to finish you off.

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Really, it seems like any AV with its attack set put above anything but Normal is impossibly difficult except for an extremely well-organized team.

It's not mine, but I'd just like to pimp the arc "One Million Eyes" (ID: 71933) by @minimalist. I haven't laughed so hard at an arc since I played Footsteps Initiative, but it's also got a fairly tragic story woven throughout. Pay special attention to the dialog inbetween missions, as it will become relevant later on.

If I have only one complaint, it's that the humor and the tragedy are sometimes too much all at once to the point where I'm not sure which I should care about the most. You'll see what I mean on the AV fight in the final mission. Either way, he did an utterly fantastic job of writing it, and the concept is so clever and original that it's something you really should absolutely play.

MAs shouldn't have more excessive enemy spawns than normal. The only thing you can really have an effect on as far as spawning goes is the way that spawns scale (flat/back-loaded/increase as the mission goes on).