uberschveinen

I got a welcoming committee. I came out in the middle of a Rikti Invasion, and emerged from the warehouse literally two feet away from the sad end of a Rikti Dropship's main gun. Needless to say it waved hi back very vigorously.

In revamping zones, I think it's more important to happen Blueside than Red. Bleu has so many zones that you can barely use all of them, and people end up going straight for the interesting ones. So many wasted zones, and adding new ones would only worsen that wasteage. Redside, on the other hand, is almost irksomely linear. There's not so much a choice in which contacts you take as which contact you avoid. The first few zones are fine for content, since there's options, but in Nerva and beyond, you can run all of them and still be looking at the same zone. Redside needs new zones more than it needs prettier ones.

For Blueside, I really want to see Dark Astoria redone. The first tim I heard of the zone and went there, it was very cool, and had so much potential. I couldn't wait to get in there, where the mood was so strong, and start hitting the contacts. Except there weren't any. It's the worst plotblock in the game that a zone with so much potential is just... sitting there. You wouldn't even want a graphical upgrade, just some good story arcs to make it work.

For Red, I think a new zone would be a more effective use of their time.

Failing that, revamping St. Martial would be great. Making it start at 25 instead of 30 would actually give players an alternative to the same boring and relatively uninteresting Nerv contacts, and let the familiy come in while they're still interesting. Making the zone look more pretty and flash ywould make it feel more liek a dynamic casino island and less of a boring flat place. It'd also let them fix up some of the boring enemy groups in the area, namely the Wailers.

Stalkers fit in the game because they have a radically different playstyle. Comparing them to melee archetypes isn't really the thing to do, because the comparions flows poorly. I think of them as a sort of sawn-off Corruptor. They've made a deal withSatan to swap the 0 on the end of the attack ranges for status protection, and the ability to buff everyone else for the ability to buff themselves. Sure, it's an odd way of thinking of it, but it's much more appropriate for the right Stalker mindset than thinking of them in the Brute/Scrapper 'attack attack attack, wait I'm in the red, heal, attack attack attack'. They really do work better coming from a Corruptor because you're used to the utility-belt style of problem solving instead of just killing it first.

Stalkers are entirely justified as an AT because they feel and play differently. It's not enjoyable for everyone, but no AT is. Complaining your Stalker isn't a brawler is like complaining your Dom isn't a Corruptor.

The question is are they fun for you to play. If so, then fine. If not, play another thing. I love playing my Nin.Regen Stalker because it's an extremely active and demanding combo to play, capable of huge damage and amazing resilience, but only if I use every last tool in my toolbox at exactly the right time. Not a half-hour ago I took down a +3 Longbow Ballista, and it was an incredible challenge, because I have to hit the heals, the regen buffs, the accolades, the MoG, and the handful of inspirations I had at exactly the right time. I spent half the battle a single decent hit away from death, desperately scraping away at the Ballista's health, until I just managed to take him out with a Hail-Mary unhidden AS.

Was it efficient? Hell no. My SS/SD Brute would have just kept putting him on his **** until he went down.

Was it LEET XP? No. I could have ghosted about five missions in the time it took to take out that one Ballista.

Was it fun? Absolutely. Unlike my effectively-immortal WP/DB tank that only starts to have trouble when trying to tank four Mothership Magi alone, I actualy felt challenged. It felt like actually playing some kind of super-assassin against a walking Abrams, desperately using all the skills at your disposal to take down a foe with far more raw power than you'll ever have. Most importantly, it felt right.

I like Stalkers as they are. They don't do super-teamy tank, buff, or AoE. Whoop-de-doo. They offer a unique and fun for many playstyle that can also contribute just fine to any competent team that won't break down and cry if their Inf-per-second falls below their calculated high-end yield.

The only things I'd ask for is that Golden Dragonfly's critical be adjusted, given the uncertain crit from hide was made to balance the non-Hide crit when that was rare and incredible, and for the HP cap to be adjusted a little upwards, or powers like Dull Pain or True Grit be adjusted to make up for not actually giving the intended benefits.

A vigilante means that you enforce a law from outside the law. Whose law you're enforcing, and how far outside the formal law you go, are matters of context.

It's basically the tactical element of DP. Getting good with DP comes down to knowing when to turn it off.

Mostly, you'll want it off. Knockback is your main mitigation, and the three attacks that have knockback lose it when you turn it on, plus Piercing loses the -res effect with it on. You want Incendiary when the enemy is unlikely to kill you, because it's in a hold or the like, and for the hold instead of the stun. Those are the mainstay of the power. Toxic or Ice might be useful against enemies that can hurt you and that arent subject to your mitigation, like mez-protected bosses, butthen I generally just use Incendiary and try to kil it first

Praetoria is morally complex and nuanced. There's no 'good guys' and no 'bad guys'. Just guys with different ends and different means.

As long as YOU can explain it to yourself, do whatever you care.

I'm with this. Either it doesn't work, or it does, and it's hilarious. Like the time that Brute ended up stuck in Paragon City in I8.

Fort Gladius, I think, might be more interesting if it's not only slaves and exiles, but actually mostly contains veteran soldiers from the Hamidon Wars. The bitter ones, who're angry about what happened to their world, and want it back. The ones who never really came back from their war. Fort Gladius is the natural dumping ground for all those dangerous Hamidon War veterans whose loyalty is not absolute, to keep these dangerous men out of the hands of the resistance. Cole keeps the men best suited to lead a rebellion busy with a more dangerous enemy.

The fort itself is one of the most free places on Praetoria, with few of the harsh restrictions of Praetoria save military discipline and little of the obvious propaganda. Hell, some of the people might never have actually seen Praetoria, and few of them know how controlling the dictatorship is, or that there even is a resistance.

The Resistance, though, uses this place as a training ground and safehouse, sending its recruits to be hardened, and those soldiers who've angered too many or become too well-known to be safe in Praetoria. The base is full of bitter veterans, and some of the most dangerous agents in the Resistance.

The Loyalist arcs are about fighting back the Devouring Earth, and finding a way to deal with the Resistance. The Resistance arcs are about dealing with Fort Gladius before they discover the Treehouse, and keeping safe from the DE. Both sides culminate in having to combat a new Devouring Earth monster, one of incredible power, the ability to control the DE around it, and worse, dangerously intelligent.

The Power arc is a more ruthless military campaign, where you must win at any cost, versus the Responsibility arc, which is more about keeping the soldiers under you alive even if it makes victory less likely. The first arc has you conducting general military patrols, activities, and rescuing captive soldiers, with the central plotline being discovering the DE are capturing soldiers to convert into Devoured. In the Power plotline the contact expresses disgust that these soldiers let themselves be captured alive and orders you to plant a beacon so they can destroy the entire Spire and everything in it, whereas the Responsibility plotline has you rescue the soldiers and destroy the Spire but let many Devoured get away.

The second arc involves the discovery of the Resistance base, at first following rumours of disappearing patrols, then encountering Resistance bodies, and trying to find a Resistance patrol and stalk them back to the base. In the last mission you encounter a large group of Resistance pinned down by the DE. The Power plotline is to use one of the lure bombs to draw enough DE there to weaken them, then finishing them by yourself, so you can check their bodies for intelligence of the location of the base. The Responsibility plotline is to help them fight them back, because at worst they keep the DE's attention divided, and at best you may be able to form a tentative alliance of convenience with them. In this case, though, you find them entirely unreasonable, and though they tell you where the base is because you saved them, they refuse to consider working with you.

The final arc starts with an attempt to raid the Resistance base, only to be ambushed by a new and terrifying DE enemy, a colossal Devoured with a lesser form of the Hamidon's ability to control the DE. You can choose to help the ambushed party escape, or let them die and flee yourself, because getting this intel back is far more valuable. Then you join a hunter-killer team tasked with killing the beast, only to find out it is actually a skilled tactician, and was exposing itself only to lure you in. You return to base to find that the base is under a massive attack, and that you'll have to fight it off. You fight for a time until it becomes obvious the attack won't end, and the second last mission is to distract the enemy long enough to buy yourself some time, by dropping behind enemy lines to attack the beast yourself so it calls back its forces. The last mission is to hit it while it's weakened, in the Responsibility plot by going in alone and planting a beacon for a massive airstrike, and in the Power plot by going in with a hunter-killer force, at greater risk, but so you can be sure you hurt it.

The moral choice mission is one to destroy this DE monster, because it poses a clear danger to not just Fort Gladius but Praetoria itself. You go to the Resistance base one way or another, Power, ordering you to plant a beacon there so the monster attacks and destroys the base, allowing the Loyalists to hit it while it's badly weakened, or Responsibility, forming a temporary alliance with the Resistance to fight it. When you get into the base you're confronted by the base's commander, who offers you pretty much the same choice. If you choose Power, you have to fight him, then plant the beacon, and then go out of the base to see a huge number of Resistance bodies and a EB monster with a half-health cap. If you choose Power, you go outside, but are confronted by your CO for trusting the Resistance, who were planning to do the same to your base. You fight him, and then the Responsibility contact joins you. You fight a full-health EB, but with two strong Boss allies. In this case an unspoken treaty of nonaggression forms between the Resistance and Fort Gladius.

Either way, the threat is ended and the loose ends tied up, just before you're called back to Praetoria to celebrate your remarkable success before heading to your next assignment.

Two story-driven arcs, first published some time ago but considerably fixed-up since for GR. The story's something of an exploration of morality and vigilanteism, and how dangerous the quest for justice at any cost can be. They're meant to be played sequentially, as the arc's a bit of an epic. Also, as a warning, it does get a bit grim, and may not be the sort of thing Golden Age heroes want to play.

Arc Name: Operation Oedipus: Glory of our Empire
Arc ID: 372767
Morality: Vigilante (More heroic than vigilante, but not strictly good-guy.)
Creator: @ArkhonvonEvilsatan
Length: 5 missions; two big, two smallish, one middlin'.
Enemy: Malta and customs
Difficulty: Meant to be moderately challenging for a 50.
Synopsis: Malta's made a dangerous enemy. A man calling himself Vasiliy says he knows how to take down the most dangerous organisation in Paragon City, and he needs your help to do it. Is it even possible, and will it be worth the cost? (Warning: grim)

Arc Name: Operation Oedipus: Day of Infamy
Arc ID: 505627
Morality: Vigilante (Less heroic than before, but still not anti-hero.)
Creator: @ArkhonvonEvilsatan
Length: 4 missions; 2 big, 1 small, 1 middlin'.
Enemy: Malta and customs
Difficulty: Meant to be moderately challenging for a 50.
Synopsis: Malta's been hurt, but desperation makes for a deadly foe. Will you do what it takes to finish the job, and can you trust a man out for revenge at any cost? (Warning: grim)

I'm looking mostly for feedback on the way the game plays out, since the characters I have to test with are all of a kind, and don't help me much with making it good for everyone. I'll gladly take any corrections, or suggestions as to the narrative and dialogue, since AE isn't the sort of medium I'm used to.

Also, any suggested fixes for things that don't quite work. In the last mission, I've used a few of my own workaround, namely stuffing the mission, to make the Marchand's Office map spawn right. So far, I can get all 5 of the things I want on the roof about 30% of the time for a spectacular finale, 4 of them on the roof about 40% of the time for a strong finish, and the rest of the time it just falls a little flat. Has anyone got any more reliable means of working around these spawn problems?

Because the developers just don't want things on back for players.

People have been asking for back pieces literally since CoH beta testing. Capes and then wings were it. There's never been a justification as to why players can't have them, we just don't get them.

The problem with Energy Aura has never been what it is. It's always been what it isn't.

At first, Energy Aura stood out as one of two high-defense sets available to Brutes, if you care to count Stone as one. Compared to Stone and its inherent weaknesses, EA was the only 'offensive' Defense set. Unfortunately for EA, that was all it had going for it. It had a good T9, and Energy Drain. Stealth was a novelty. The rest was weak. It was even worse than it is now, in an environment completely devoid of +defense set bonuses.

Now, it's been upgraded markedly. Small improvements across the board, and access to hole-fixing. The problem isn't how good EA is compared to EA, though.

Now, EA competes with Super Reflexes and Shield Defense. The former has higher defense numbers than EA, and with positional defense, can get higher bonuses to those numbers. It also enjoys much more resistance to defense debuffs. In survival terms, it's better out of the box and easier to put on the shelf.

Shield Defense is comparably survivable to EA, in that it is moderately survivable on its own merits, albeit probably slightly less so, and that it can become quite resilient when you can put sets into it. The difference is that SD makes no pretensiosn towards being a survivability set, and offers the alternate defensice mechanism of killing everything incredibly fast.

EA is a decent set trying to compete against good sets. There's better offensive sets and defensive sets. That's why nobody takes it for power reasons; not because of what it is, but because of what it isn't.

Tyrant's bio is also comical propaganda.

The things the mobs say in-game, most notably the Syndicate whose entire stock-in-trade is primarily information, very strongly suggest that Praetoria is the only city that actually exists in the sense that it can sustain its own existence. The Syndicate arcs suggest that the other cities are just approaching livable but are still unsustainable, whereas the Resistance suggests they're still having basic services built. The times they're mentioned by Loyalists are from unreliable narrators, but suggest either that the cities outside are failing or that they're suspiciously successful, and neither are very believable.

It is possible that sustainable cities exist outside Praetoria, but very unlikely they do so as anything other than vassal states over which Cole exercises control through dominance of crucial resource.

No. What does happen is that nobody will introduce you to new contacts or give you new story arcs once you're level 21, so you either have to grind or team.

You can stay if you want to get the Praetoria-only badges, or if you want to play it like that, but there's no other reason to.

There are so many crappy arcs clogging the search already. More arc slots wouldn't help that proportion at all.

I want more arc slots, but they won't deal with this specific problem.

There's none for sale for now.

The market shift has completely thrown the entire economy, and it'll be at least a month before it settles down. Not only were all the items that people left sitting on unplayed characters gone, but they've got new and shinier things to do than relist.

Give it a few weeks and it'll be just as good as the old one. By then, you'll have the surplus to be able to buy some of the nicer ones too.

Oh? It seemed to me that with the older arcs that the first contact between Primal and Praetorian was the Portal Corps mission that went wrong and hand Longbow sent in to fix it. Soem guys just suddenly appearing in a secure lab, being arrested, and then having what is basically a military force attacking in full to retrieve them doesn't seem very nice.

It's actually kind of hard to tell now, with the changes and the advance in time.

The Devouring Earth still control almost all of the earth's surface. Praetoria is, as an island, safe only because they've basically built a superweapon around the entire mainland. There are a handful of reclaimed patches of land just now starting to be built, and are barely inhabitable as of yet. There's no farmland or anything outside these cities, and without the massively complex and technologically advanced food production mechanisms in place everybody would starve.

Praetoria has, being generous, a population of maybe seven million, including Resistance, assuming that there's high-density living somewhere sufficient to keep running the industries that exist there. Maybe underground houses or something. A few tens of thousands each rebuilding the handful of other cities, all of whom came from Praetoria anyway.

Assuming comparable population growth, the population of Earth before the Hamidon Wars would have been in the region of five billion.

I daresay that constitutes a threat.

Praetoria isn't an absurd Planet of Hats, unlike most of the other alternate dimensions.

In fact, the assumption by much of Longbow, the Freedom Phalanx, and half of Portal Corp leads to most of the troubles between the two, which I think is actually a brilliantly-played way of integrating the older Opposite-Land view of Praetoria in the missions into the new, actually-morally-indistinct Praetoria. First contact, and they see Evil Freedom Phalanx and assume it's another one of those damned Evil-Universe Earths, which instantly leaves every assumption they make about the world dangerously flawed. Even though they have strong doubts about what they're doing when they see that the police are actually a damned sight nicer than them, and the people are oppressed but contented, they assume that there must be a sinister reason because, duh, it's an Evil Earth. Hell, they assume that everyone on Primal Earth must have an evil analogue outright. Notice that when you play missions against you, they refer to you as 'a Praetorian'? To them, you're just another one of these superpowered analogues, because how else could you have superpowers, and are therefore evil and must be defeated. They don't even call you a super-Praetorian, they just assume that Praetorians are generally like this.

This is why Longbow is taking such drastic actions to fight Praetoria long before they find of Cole's plot. They look into Praetoria and see an Evil-Earth filled with superpowerful beings, and that is obviously a catastrophic threat to Primal Earth. Nobody notices that Primal Earth would never have come under threat if not for Longbow's aggression.


As for good and bad guys, that's the sort of oversimplification that Praetoria doesn't really need. Each side has its reasonable aspects and dangerous beliefs, albeit that each turns out to be the right one to make in the end because it's necessary for the game.

The Wardens believe that Cole's empire has become an unacceptable source of suffering to humanity. Regardless of whether or not most of the people are content, enough are so far from it that his governance cannot be allowed to continue. They, however, believe that their revolution should be as bloodless as possible, because the only people who suffer in a violent rebellion are the common folk. However, by doing this, they are allowing Cole to remain in-power for far longer, and possibly ensuring they will never actually be able to end his rule. They have essentially decided it's better for the people to suffer indefinetly than it is for them to suffer worse for a brief time, even though the former inherently results in much more suffering. This legitimation is inherently albeit subconsciously selfish, in not wanting blood to be on YOUR hands, and tends to weaken their argument for removing Cole in the first place.

The Crusaders have embarked on a bloody rebellion, embarking to destroy Cole's reign by any means necessary. If that means causing untold suffering and death, then so be it. Since Cole's reign is cruel and ruthless, the people are suffering, and suffering in a way that will never end. Breaking that iron grip now will cause far more suffering, but it will only be for a moment, with less net suffering overall. In fact, since Cole is likely immortal and his reign would be indefinite, there is literally no one specific act the Resistance can perform that is not acceptable, and even laudable. So long as they are aware of the horror of their works, they don't run the danger of becoming as bad as Cole. Their weakness is that this is how you run a coup, not a revolution. If their victory costs them popular support, they will have to choose between tyranny, and becoming Cole, or anarchy, and potentially the destruction of humanity itself.

Responsibility is much the same as the Warden angle, save that you don't believe that keeping Cole in power is unacceptable. Cole may be ruthless, but he is the right kind of ruthless in a world that came within a hair's breadth of human extinction with billions of deaths and the loss of nearly all of the earth's surface to the Hamidon, a threat that is still very real. The Syndicate seeks to take over, and they have the means to do it if the Praetorian authority is weakened, and there are so many threats that seek to harm the citizens. Cole's rule may be harsh, but it is fair to most, and most people are happy. You will uphold his rule, but also uphold the standards of the rule, allowing neither enemies of the state nor the state itself to needlessly harm its citizens. However, in doing so, you are compromising the strength of the state. When so many threats exist, due process can become a danger. By doing things by the book, you are allowing the Resistance, the Syndicate, and many more do do far more harm than you would have, and to innocent civilians at that. You may not have blood on your hands, but now there is blood on the street.

The Power loyalists believe that Cole's empire is the only thing that stands between humanity and extinction, and that Cole is the only man with the strength to lead it. Nobody else could then, and nobody else can now. If Cole falls, then there is anarchy, and no dictatorship, no matter how cruel, causes more suffering to more people than anarchy. Worse, the Devouring Earth are still a catastrophic threat, albeit held back by the power of Cole's empire. If the empire no longer functions, then sooner or later the protections will fail, and humanity will face the united force of the Hamidon as a billion individuals. Humanity will be extinct. Therefore, Cole's empire must hold. There is nothing that he can do, nothing his empire can do, that will cause more suffering than his removal, so his empire must be defended, whatever the cost. And if that means becoming a monster yourself, so be the price of power.

And so it should be. The fact that sometimes you just have to let your metagame objective go because it's not worth making that decision to you is the sign of well-founded morality in a game.

My most used Brute is SS/SD. Anyone incapable of noticing the damage unleashed of the superhero analogue of a runaway bus full of freight trains is also likely incapable of actually figuring out how to install the game.

The people who you aren't teaming with are stupid. Not just unintentionally uninformed, the sort who will usually become a good player with time and patience, but wilfully ignorant of the basic elements of the game. By not teaming with them, you're not missing much.

For now you'll have to be happy with only going to select portions of Praetoria for the purposes of blowing up small parts of it.

I think the thing is the Ballista isn't so much a named boss as a super-mob. There's not one guy called Ballista (Ballista-1 doesn't count), but a whole class of guys within Longbow that are Ballistae. The only other comparison I can think of are the Rikti, who have the HA suits and their Magi, both of which aren't individuals but entire classes of a faction, and both of them already appear outside, in the RWZ. There's also the EB Zombies, in the invasions, as a class and not a character.

I think it should happen, especially if there's the tech to give them some kind of reaction dialogue, but there's not actually a precedent for this.

Okay, first things first.

This isn't a bait and switch. That doesn't matter, because what you mean isn't bait and switch.

A bait and switch is a very specific act in consumer law.

A product is advertised at a particularly desirable price, with no caveats as to limited quantities. A consumer sees the advertisement, and chooses to travel to the store, or in recent times, visit the online store, with intent to purchase the item at the desirable price. On attempting to purchase the item, however, they are informed by the salesman that they have sold out of that particular product. The salesman, being a good salesman, then asks if, perhaps, you'd instead like to purchase this comparable product at a less desirable price, or a comparably-priced item of lower quality.

This is still legal.

It could be, though, that the manager of this store decided to deliberately have only a very small number of items in his inventory of the sale product. It varies by jurisdiction, but for the most part, they must have significantly fewer items that a reasonable business would expect to sell in the circumstances. They must also have failed to make known, either in that advertisement or in circumstances of equal notoriety, that there was a limited quantity of the item avaliable. It is usually not necessary to demonstrate that the business deliberately intended to lure customers in using the sale.

That is a bait and switch. As you can see, it doesn't actually apply.

What you want to accuse NCsoft of is a misrepresentation.

A misrepresentation generally occurs, excepting unusual jurisdiction, when a party to a contract misrepresents the value, quality, nature, or content of the consideration they are providing for the other. This misrepresentation must be a statement of fact, in that it is of an existing and objectively-ascertainable object or state of affairs. The statement must be false, or in some cases made with unreasonable and wilful ignorance of the true state of affairs. This statement must have induced the claimant into entering the contract, insofar as they would never have entered the contract if it had not been made them. The statement must, finally, be material to the contract.

So to accuse NCsoft of a misrepresentation we must establish several things.

Firstly, that NCsoft included in its contract with you that in exchange for the consideration of your dollars, it would provide you with such consideration as includes access to certain electronic items. This is not true. The page in question, which we can agree constitutes an offer, purports to sell you a serial code to be applied to your account, and access to the Going Rogue expansion. This offers 'new costume pieces' without ever beign specific as to what they are. Nowhere in the offer, the advertising material, the forum information or the website information, is there information from a NCsoft representative stating or implying that these specific constume items are a component thereof. In fact, in the only places where information on the exacting contents is provided by an NCsoft representative, it is explicitly and clearly stated that this standing offer does NOT include the two costume sets. Without a representation, there cannot be a misrepresentation. Let's keep going anyway, because I can pretend this is studying.

The statement must be factual. Since the statement does not exist, there is no way to determine whether or not it is one of fact. If it did, it would be one of fact.

The statement must be false. Since the statement does not exist, there is no way to determine its falsity. In general, the courts believe that a statement cannot be false until it exists, so no luck there.

The statement must have induced you into the contract. Well, that one's easy to prove. Sadly, without a statement, there cannot be inducement. If it did exist this would be easy for you.

And, finally, the statement must be material to the contract. This one is not true, without a statement to begin with. If such a statement existed, it would be a point of contention as to whether this costume item was actually material to the contract. Perhaps you could prove it, but perhaps not.

On the basis that your alleged misrepresentation comprehensively fails all of the four tests needed to establish a misrepresentation by dint of not existing, I don't think you have a very strong case.