Wicked_Wendy

I don't know and it got even more confusing in February when an "off duty, out of uniform" Ms Liberty sent my characters off on a mission to perform a ritual to revive the Red Widow.. a former flame of Lord Recluse. The ritual goes badly and Red Widow seems bent on killing Recluse.

Now granted most heroes try hard not to take any life even one as twisted and nasty as Recluse but it seems to me that simply allowing Red Widow to assasinate Recluse would throw Arachnos into a state of total confusion which would allow Longbow, the organization Ms. Liberty helped create, to attack and possibly even defeat the organization once and for all. Instead we take off and steal Cupid's Bow and Arrows and shoot Red Widow with them so she resumes her role as Recluse's girl friend.

Villain side this make perfect sense since the BOSS now owes you a huge favor for getting him back his favorite lady but on the BLUE side of the game.. why on earth are we playing Matchmaker for a evil mastermind bent on ruling the world?


So you see the problems at Longbow HQ start at the very top and go downward. No wonder so many Rogue cells exist.. obviously the general rule of thumb is .. do whatever you feel like .. just make sure your outfit is clean so you look good doing it Oh and always remember rule #1 .. when it doubt run away

Added: Oh almost forgot to add that the entire Valentine's Day mission takes place AFTER Statesman has died. Along with wondering exactly why Ms. Lib had me being essentially Recluse's pimp I couldn't help but wonder .. If we know a ritual that can bring back the dead why are we using it to bring back an Arachnos Widow instead of bringing back... STATESMAN? During the LRSF States assembles a huge group of signature heroes to seek revenge when we defeat Ms. Liberty but little Megan hates grandpap so bad she'd rather bring back a Villain than revive her own Grandfather? Mental note: Do not piss off Ms. Liberty EVER! hehehe

Because some leaders are total Control freaks? LOL In the very beginning leaders did a lot of this to ensure players that knew how to use them had them .. but now just about everyone knows what to do and its crazy to give them all to one person.

There is absolutely no need to waste time handing off every grenade to one person as long as the team knows how to use them. The fact is that CAN backfire on a team.. One team I was on not long after Lambda went live we all dutifully gave our grenades to the tank. Then the tank dc'd and we had to run around getting more nades in the courtyard while Maurader was running around and time was ticking down on us. We did manage to grab enough to defeat Maurader but it was close and the Tank never did make it back.

Fact is now that a lot of players have Judgement and assorted other incarnate powers it's rare that a team uses even half the grenades they collect.. I have completed the trial with two of them still available in my trays because others were quicker using them when required. Leaders that require this are simply holding on to older strategy because they don't know any better.

I guess this is the right spot for this. I will start by letting everyone know I did file a Bug Report on the issues we battled tonight while doing the ITF in Cimerora on Virtue,

We began around 11PM EDT and 2:05:43 later finally completed the task force. We encountered multiple bugs and on two seperate occasions had to request GM support..

1. Mission #1 while inside the caves we actually had a minon guarding one of the Sybils become trapped behind the wall of the cave. Occasionally his legs did appear and we were able to keep tabs on him but nothing conventional allowed us to defeat him and move on. The Gm was requested and then one of our two Masterminds somehow managed to summon pets behind the cave wall and defeat him.. The GM showed up much later as we were outside clearing the temple area for Solaris. Also in this mission the first sighting and battle with Augustus romulus Nictus (EB) occured ... we spotted him in the first mob after exiting the caves.

2. Mission #2 No major glitches but we did locate and defeat the second of numerous Augustus Romulus Nictus (EB).

3. Missin # 3 Using conventional strategies we worked our way up through the valley taking out Generals and finished up by defeating Requeim and Romulus along with the Phallanx Controller. On two different occasions we spotted and defeated Augustus Romulus Nictus (EB).. we are up to 4 of him so far. Then the HUGE bug occurred. We got a mission complete and left the mission and then.............. IT repeated itself. We petitioned the GMs again and decided rather than standing around we'd begin the mission again. This time we went and took out Requeim, Romulus and the controller first and worked our way back taking out generals .. the GMs arrived as we were taking on the final general on the bridge. Still unsure if they assisted us or if we just got lucky the second time but we did finally get the fnal mission.

4. Mission # 4 went smoothly with no bugs excpet yet another sighting and defeat of Augustus Romulus Nictus... so in all we defeats 5 Romulus Elite Bosses and 5 Romulus Avs ( 1 in mission 3 and the normal 4 in mission 4 as you force him to devour Healing Nictus). Is there a SPECIAL badge available for defeating him ten times in on TF? .. Umm NOPE lol

The BIG issue was the repeat of mission 3. The GMs responded fairly quick but as you can see our team was resourceful and wanted action as opposed to standing around doing nothing. I know the added EB versions of Rommi have been reported but I figured I'd just add them as further confirmation they problem still exists. Actually no one seemed to care about that anyway. it was just another EB we al got to defeat for added XP and INF. I would imagine the serious RPers would question how Rommi managed to heal and get back into action so quickly in Mission 3 where we actually battled him three times

I'm not sure what to call them but I get your idea... In the DA arcs we see the Dream Doctor using a combination of Staff Weapons (melee attacks normallly reserved for Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers or Stalkers) with Illusion Control. As a side note this was also an incredible TEASE for those of us still waiting on the arrival of staff weapons..NAUGHTY BAD BAD Devs lol

Currently I am working my Beast Mistress toward 50 and the thought occurred that a perfect alternate secondary for her would be Plant Control.. Giving her the ability to control both plants and animals! The same would hold true for Earth Control, Storm Summoning, etc.


Players have been drooling over the possibility of a Blaster with defense as a secondary instead of short range or melee attacks for years so your idea for a shields blaster would certainly be greeted warmly.. Not sure if the Devs would ever allow it though... I think they purposely leave Blasters vulnerable to keep them from being too powerful.

As for something completely new I think a new sort of Hybrid AT similar to the Soldier of Arachnos would do well. In my opinion they did an outstanding job with SOAs giving us the option to develope our character in multiple ways.. an SOA can be set to be a Melee or Ranged attacker or even a combination of both. They can have, with Patron powers included, as many pets as most Masterminds or they can't stealth like a stalker. Something along those lines would go over quite well again I am sure

Like many others I get Alpha to T3 for the level shift and then start working to get my other powers open and to eventually get Destiny and Lore to T3 for the added shifts. After that I do tend to work on getting Alpha to t4 first and then I focus on Judgement and Lore [never hurts to have more damage] before working on Destiny and Interface.

One thing I also do is work to have what I consider the big three Destinies available .. Clarion, Barrier and Rebirth. This gives the league more options Clarion for the UG and MOM to combat MEZ. Barrier comes in very hand on either of these as well.. especially the one with 2 rezzes when you are doing MOM and get no option to head to the hospital after defeat. For the easy trials like the BAF, LAM and TPN Rebirth works fine just helping keep everyone at full strength. I normally pick 1 of these and get it to t4 and am happy with having the other two at t3 so I don't lose any level shifts.

I enjoy creating my characters.. After chosing powers I will create a name and that can actually include going to the web to research... Several have names that utilized an English to Elven translator and one used English to Latin. Every single character gets a bio .. although with some I wait till I play them a while to decide what will go best with their abilities, etc. Anyone that knows me well can tell you I agonize over costumes to give each a look that works.. LOL back when I first started my old Villain SG members joked that I changed my look so often they weren't sure who they were playing with half the time.

All that said .. when it comes down to it I suspend disbelief when playing and simply accept whatever the Devs offer to make my character stronger, faster, better! Someone else said it here earlier in any MMO more than half of what you see is beyond Real Life belief. Let's examine a bit of that..

The entire Invention Origin System .. Okay aside from characters that are either Tehcnology or Science origin how on eart do we "REALISTICALLY" explain going to the lab and CRAFTING enhancements to our abilities? I suppose yu could add magic origin by saying the crafting was actually creating a spell or potion.. but how does a Natural hero explain it? NOW .. I'm sorry but regradless of origin I have no desire not to IO out my characters so they can be as powerful as possible.. anyone else feel different?

Inspirations.. Not to be graphic but we carry around a series of small blue, green, yellow, red, ect items that allow us to heal faster, hit harder, or whatever. We even use terms like POP A RED. Almost sounds like we are all running around taking drugs doesn't it? Now I am sure some of the die hard RPers explain it away as them digging deep inside for that extra bit to get through a hard battle and that's fine but the relaity is we run to our contacts and BUY inspiration. Now I don't know about you but I have no desire to stop carrying around my break frees and whatever to stay true to my character's profile.

Influence, Infamy, Information ... It took years and the advent of the Going Rogue era to finally bring the reality of what these are to light. RPers swear, and many still do, that the influence they earn is the respect they get from the citizens of Paragon City.. or the fear they instill in the Rogue Isles. And for a number of years this was the same stance the dev team took.. Super Heroes don't get PAID to do their job. And then GR hit and while rumor here on the forums was if you switched from being a villain to a hero all your Infamy was lost and you started over earning Influence. Then the issue went LIVE and what actually occurred.. As soon as you stepped from one side to the other your INF magically transferred into the appropriate CURRENCY for your location. Delude yourself how ever you like but INF is CASH and even the devs now refer to it as such. I can buy an enhancement with my influence in Founders Falls, short cut through the RWZ, and purchase inspirations in Grandville. I'm sorry but even before GR the old thinking never made sense... I go to the tailor shop and order a new costume at say 30 level. When its ready I PAY for it with influence? Now run to the mall and grab a pair of jeans and a shirt and tell the clerk you don't have any cash but feel you deserve these becasue everyone in your neighborhood thinks you a great guy/girl. Then wait for security to come and throw you out. LOL

Enjoy the game and don't worry about the little things that seem out of place. I mean let's be REALISTIC here for a second .. we play a game where our characters can shoot energy beams out of their hands or eyes, They can run faster than a car or fly.... I don't nkow about your neighborhood but so far in my town we don't see a whole lot of that in the real world so WHY place RL constrants on a fantasy game? GO HUNT, KILL SKULS hehehe

There is still room for some improvements on older stuff Rosa..

As Comicsluvr mentioned a few of the older TFs could stand an upgrade like POSI got..

Synapse ..even with stealthing this still takes around 90 minutes in most cases.

Basically as you start out you are subjected to a kill all followed by a street hunt, three more straight kill alls, a PATROL and yet another kill all before finally getting an option to stealth ...and thats after a second PATROL.

suggestions.. change a few of those defeat alls to find leader and his minions... If players want to steam roll for the XP fine but at least give them the oprion not to so more people will view this as less of a punishment than a trial.

The lose one or both of the patrols. This was one of the first things that was chucked when they revamped the POSI. Patrols offer up absolutely no XP, INF or whatever. All they are is time wasters and before the outcry of "YOUR SEARCHING FOR CLUES..IT'S A PART OF THE STORY LINE" begin .. That same info could be easily obtained by changing the midless defeat alls the proceed both into defeat the leader and his minons and seek clue to ____________.

The trial almost seems like a candidate for the same treatment the POSI got.. Turn it into two shorter ones. The first half (the part that now has all those kill alls) could be us stopping the Clockwork's plans.. hench the current defeat all clcokwork in the station missions. The second part could begin with the current Defeat Bertha Mission and revolve around locating the Clockwork King and putting an end to him.

Sister Psyche.. Not nearly as bad as Synapse and most of the mission give players the option to stealth or steamroll

about the only suggestion I'd make here is lose the missions in the middle that suddenly shift the focus, though briefly, from Freakshow to Council. There is at least one of these where aside from a single mob you fight nothing but Council. We see three other TFS between 20-30 that revolve completely around Council.. Moonfire, Hess and Citadel... was it really necesary to throw them into Sister P as well? So let's give the poor tired facists a rest and revamp one or tow of those to focus totally on the FREAKSHOW and eliminate the other.

Now Moonfire and Hess are actually pretty good as is. No one seems to mind the early defeat alls in Moonfire since its a really quick and easy way to get the defeat badges required for the Atlas Medalion. Both are fairly short in length and aside from ONE talk to mission in Moonfire both never require the team to leave STRIGA. Over double Xp I did Citadel for the first time in a while and I realized how much shorter it is than in the old days.. It did get an overhaul a while ago.

Okay now here is MY suggestion.. individually none of these is bad but if you are using TF and trials to level your character, which I sometimes do, after Sister Psyshe you see nothing but Council, Council and more Council until level 30.[Note this did change recently with the addition of the Adm Sutter TF in IP that is available between 20-40 for XP] Now I have nothing against it but if we had to lose ANYTHING I'd suggest dropping Hess completely. WHY? Well #1) It's not required for any accolade like Citadel (TF Commander) #2) the villains defeated provide no defeat badges .. Moonfire lets you defeat Vampri and Warwolves for defeat abdegs and those defeat badges help with yet another accolade (as mention before). and #3) of the three its the only one that requires players to complete a story arc in order to even begin running it. That final battle inside the volcano is cool but the TF doesn't get nearly as much play time for all the reasons listed above.

Now I am not suggesting we just drop the TF.. Replace it and let us battle someone besides Council.. Tsoo or Family come to mind almost immediately and since defeating Tsoo Sorcerors earns a badge required for another accolade I'd go with them over the Family. They could always move Hess to Ouroborus like they did with the old Calvin Scott and the Old Positron TF so it would be available for anyone interested but this would give us a little variety in the 20-30 level range.

While there are some that would disagree I think Manticore is pretty good as is.. Not too long and most missions are stealthable. If we changed anything here.. get rid of the street hunt in Crey's Folly at the end. All this REALLY does is forces us to travel from KINGS ROW after we rescue the councilman to Crey's Foly and then .. back to someplace like Kings Row again or Atlas to battle Hopkins. Replace it with a defeat the leader/minions and seek clues since all we are SUPPOSEDLY doing is seeking out the location of Hopkin's hideout when we are street hunting in CF. [at this point can you tell i am not a fan of mindless street hunts or patrol missions?] lol

OK... now for my FAVORITE Task Force {please note sarcasm alert} Numina. Take away the mindless steet hunts scattered over almost every zone in the game and this entire TF is about 5 missions long. On top of that while the story revolves around the Devouring earth we barely see them at all until the final two mission. Its even gotten harder since the 5th column returned.. years ago you could send ONE player to Boomtown and quickly take out 20 Council. Now everyplace you even see council you also find the 5th and as soonas you enter an area .. the 5th column attack the council and its a race to see who can kill them faster. Half the time we lose! I don't know what Dev wrote up this mess but it seems like they were rushed so an easy out was .. "Let's just run them all over the place on a series of mindless hunt missions instead of actually THINKING of some door mission content" Except for the final two hunts Rikti in FF and DE/Nemessi in Eden none of the hunts even offer up XP for the defeats. AND the entire TF can grind to a halt if a zone event occurs while your trying to hunt in a particular one. On one Numina in particular (when it was the WST) we got to sit and wait for a zombie invasion to end before we could hunt Vahzilok in Faultline and then ended up waiting again for a Rikti invasion to end before we could defeat Warrior in Talos. REVAMP this thing and make it more interesting.. as is most players do it for the TF commander accolade or when its the WST and they can earn double merits.

I don't even want to start on the Shard TFs LOL Let's just say in over 6 and ahalf years I have done Doc Q twice and its enough to last me a lifetime. lol Thankfully at 35 we now have the ITF and it gave players between 34-45 something to do besides the long, long LONG ordeal in the Shadow Shard.. Love the zone HATE that task force!

Well as the weekend winds down I have taken a moment to start the usual how'd it go thread.

For myself..

Dark/Dark Corruptor went from 26 to 35 level (9)

Dark/Dark Controller went from 30 to level 35 (5)

And my Fire/Rad Corruptor went from 31 to level 36 (5)

Over the past three days I have done Posi 1, Pos 2, Synapse, Sister Psyche. Moonfire, Citadel, Manticore and Sutter's TF. All three joined Vanguard and since they are all three already in the MIdnighter Club they now have access to Cimeroroa and the ITF.

Okay now for the fun stuff

For the thousandth time.. NO you don't earn double Incarnate XP during a double XP weekend .. I swear I saw that almost constantly being asked in globals the past three days.

Dude are YOU sure you should be calling someone else rude? On one of the Citadel's I did the entire team ended up waiting around in Talos for 5-10 minutes while ONE guy was ??? no idea what but he took forever to actually join us in TALOS to start. Not exactly considerate considering EVERYONE is trying to get as much done as possible while the XP rate is high. Then later mister tactful gets all upset and tells another team member that they are RUDE for stealthing when HE had clearly said he'd do it. Didn't matter that the guy being called rude was 3/4 of the way through the map and about to locate the Base leader by the time our hero arrived... HE wanted to stealth the mission . A whole long, LONG argument ensued and i was just about to say "Boys can we be nice or do I need to seperate you?" "Don't make me stop this TF. I will turn it around and we will go straight home!" lol

I discovered joining a POSI two 45 minutes before you'd normally head to bed is NOT a good idea on DXP weekend.. We killed everything we could find on EVERY single map. The XP was great but I finally got to bed about 40 minutes later than usual ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Yawn!

So anything funny or silly happen to you over the weekend? And what did you get done?

I don't know.. I decided to test this so i grabbed a 50 I hadn't done any trials with OR even opened the Alpha slot doing the Mender arc... After an hour of constant street hunting I had managed to acquire 2% of the iXP required and 2 threads. Now having done trials since they appeared i know I could run a BAF and LAM in about that same time and walk ou with 10-11 Astrals (40-44 threads when converted), 2 Emps (another 40 threads converted) and at the very least 2 common components. I know they wanted to make the process slower but ..two quick trials = enough threads and components to slot two powers to teir 1 while an hour of street hunting = ??? 2 threads!

I ran all of the arcs on my SoA and took merits at the end of each rather than components... That wasn't too bad I got emps twice and astrals for all the others and averaged at 3-4 threeads per arc. Now my crab has teir 4s in everything so it was just an experiment but if I'd cash in the Astrals and Emps for threads I'd have about 80-90 threads and that would slot one power to tier 1 and start a second.

DA is quickly becoming THE trial zone on Virtue mainly because it allows us to roam the streets huntng for threads between trials.. and aside from a crafting table everything you had in the RWZ is right there by the hospital.. inspirations (see the combat nurse in the Hospial lobby), Merit vender, enhancement store, and access to bases. About the only thing missing is quick access to the market .. Villain side all you had to do was step out into Cap and Hero side got to FF and quickly take the train to Talos. Of course I have /auctionhouse available so its been a while since any amrket actually saw me. lol

Maybe today i'll run the arcs with a Brute and see what sort of drops I get.

I know at times it looks a little bleak Tony but lets face facts if we clean up the entire city and no bad guys are left.. what do all the super heroes do?

If you want victories look no further than the incarnate trials. Sure a lot of us repeat them daily but if you follw the story line each trial you complete is not just defeatng but eliminating another one of Cole's cohorts.

Apex TF.. we defeat and eliminate Battle Madien

Tin Mage .. we defeat and eliminate Nueron and Bobcat

BAF .. Siege and Nightstar are destroyed

LAMBDA .. Maurader and the PPD take a huge defeat as their facility is destroyed

Keyes .. Anti Matter is removed and we now control the reactors the service Praetoria

MOM .. Both Malaise and Mother Mayhem are gone and the seer network demolished

UG .. The undreground sewers are a little safer for the resistance and we obtain evidence of Cole's deception.

TPN .. Cole's new lapdog Maelstrom is gone and now the public is aware that their "beloved' Emperor is a liar.

and now the DD .. we stop Diabolique from becoming DEATH itself and take out yet another Praetor.

That's 10 of the 15 known Praetors that Emperor Cole uses to maintain control over his people. All he has left are Black Swan, Chimera, Dominatrix, Infernal and Shadowhunter (who aparently is so unimportant he isn't even required to obtain the Dimensional Warder badge LOL). While that battle isn't over that certainly sounds like progress to me.

I'll admit the deaths of Statesman and Sister Psyche are devastating and I am still reeling a bit from Psyche's death. I understood the reasoning behind doing Statesman in.. shifting the focus of the game from one GOD LIKE super in charge to US being the ones that save the day. And in true comic book fashion just because Statesman and Sister P are gone does not mean they are gone for good. EXAMPLE. Captain America (dead .. opps no sorry alive). Anything is possible .. I sort of doubt we will see a return of Statesman but just last night in chat someone suggested that Sister Psyche could easily be mind riding again inside Manticore just like she did with Aurora. NOT saying it will happen but I certainly could.

As far Galaxy being destroyed.. Its the new tutorial and it allowed us the opportunity to create almost ANY archtype and decide for ourselves before even reachin level 2 if we want to use our powers for good or evil. Also .. eventually we are going to run out of Praetors and once Emperor Cole is gone what's next? THE COMING STORM... for all we know the destruction of Galaxy may very well be the first blow of that promised future plot line.

This can be annoying especially when it affects the outcome of the TF. Lose your only Tank/Brute on an STF and you either scramble like crazy battling Recluse on the final mission or fail.. I have been on STFs that succeeded without one but it is a LOT easier with aggro control. Lose the ONLY character you have with holds on a Lady Grey and the Hamidon mission is a nightmare.. again I was on a team where this happened but we managed to succeed but it took a LOT ot time, a lot of deaths and a few trips back to repurchase inspirations. Now admitedly the leader that put that team together was putting a LOT of faith in one players ability to hold but when that player quit .. we all suffered.

Real life happens and if some one has to go then no problem but the ones that always annoyed me were players that did one or two missions and then POOF .. no message about having to go .. just GONE. I have seen this a number of times on MOONFIRE and my immediate reaction was .. he only joined to get vamprii and warwolves for his Atlas Medallion. HEY ... we are doing a TASK FORCE here if all you want to do is badge .. go hunt them solo on Striga.

Of course there is the opposite problem .. I can remember a few TFs where a player announced at the entrance of a mission that something had come up and they'd be AFK. Ok no problem like I said RL happens. Then the mission ends, everyone else heads outside and 10 minutes later we are all still waiting on one team mate to get back. Of course, as stated, real life does tend to not give a crap about your COH mission and what you assumed would take a minute can turn into 10, 20 or ?? Worse case of THIS happening on a team I was on was a Synapse. We had just completed the mission that spawns Babbage and we waited and waited and waited.. apparently because our missing in action member was still inside we never got the Babbage spawn. Thankfully those days are pretty much gone since leaders can and do kick members that diappear with no notice.

Lets see I haven't done everything yet but

DIB .. I enjoyed the trial and the temps buffs are a nice bonus basically extending the Damage, Accuracy, etc that you got on the DFB to level 30. Hope they fix the bug on the dual AV fight at the end. One team i was on managed to defeat both Shivan within 2-3 seconds of one another and no badge.

DD Trial ... Honestly will all of the hype I was expecting a far more challenging trial. I will admit I don't think I'd take a 50 +0 anywhere near it with minions that are 54 + 3 but my characters with all three level shifts have had no problem with it so far. I was hoping for another trial like the TPN or UG with a guarenteed bonus (60 thread or a minimum rare/very rare). The first one I did I got a common and a total of 4 threads so that killed that hope.. maybe NEXT trial.

Dark/Dark .. I didnt get a chance to play with this too much on Beta and started out a bit disappointed that we don't have Beast Mastery or Staff weapons yet but my Controller is at level 23 now and I am enjoying the sets.

Dark Astoria .. LOVE the new zone and the new missions arcs. The art department did a fantastic job on many of the mission maps and I even enjoy the non combat (SOLO) missions where you get to BE your contact and get a little more of a glipse into their lives than the short bio you see when you click on them. The zone is quickly becoming the TRIAL zone on Virtue .. mainly because between trials, while the leader is recruiting and team mates may be AFK you can street hunt and get more threads!

Low level arcs.. I wont comment too much since I haven't done them on live yet but I did a few on Beta and the new arcs in Steel and Cap are good and offer another way to gain XP besides the same tired old contacts or running nothing but radio/newspapers until you outlevel the zone LOL

Now.. fix the bugs and release BEAST MASTERY next week and I will eb a happy camper.


Oh I forgot one.. I did a number of DIBs and while the COT mages I defeated counted toward that defeat badge I helped take out a number of Freakshow tanks and not a single one is reflected in the badge status area. Same problem existed with the Lost Bosses and Helions Bosses we defeated in the DFB when it first came out so i am hoping that gets fixed.