The Snake Treatment: Revisiting Old Gangs
By
AzureSkyCiel,
Posted on: 2010-05-14 09:21 in Suggestions and Ideas
Well, obviously I'm not expecting the Hellions or the Skulls to come back at level 50, but a story expansion would be great.
Plus some fresh models. I was doing a Skull Mayhem Mission, and the old Skull Models are looking... old.
As the Hellions, Skulls, and Vahzilok are among the first Enemy Groups you face, some fresh models would be lovely.
Toss in a few more variant enemies, maybe mix in some female ones.
Make some trolls that actually look Trollish. (How about a Troll GM in Skyway or the Hollows?)
Obviously, all of this would have to wait until after GR... but it would be cool!
Minor stretches for some groups, sure, just to extend writing possibilities - but I really don't see the Hellions and Skulls being a threat into the 30s. Their storylines do lend themselves to a "bleed over" into other groups. Filling out their stories? Sure. But a basic street gang (which, even with their powers, they are in Paragon) *should* fade away. (And running across a few Skulls in a later Malta mission, with them barely taking more than a Brawl or two to take down, gives a good feel that your character has really advanced.)
On the other hand, yeah, some groups just vanish way too fast. The Tsoo, for instance, have a *lot* going on internally that we don't get to see (all the boss types, etc.) But they just sort of go "poof." They shouldn't be a "still fighting at 50" threat, but they could use more exploration.
My main level-range beef, though, tends to be the Banished Pantheon. They vanish by the 30s, then suddenly come back up in the 40s. (Alternate dimension, sure, but still BP.) This really came to light in AE's release. There's a lot that could be done with them - they had the power to sacrifice a city zone, they're fighting the CoT (and their deities are as old, if not older,) but we don't really get to go in depth with them either.
To be honest the whole "Skulls at 30-34" thing was mostly because those expansions were based off of my AE arc idea which wads mostly meant to give closure on the Skulls story with also kind of a reminder to a hero that like villains, they end up stepping on people on their way up, and sometimes these stepping stones will try to make a comeback to remind you who they are.
I also can agree with you and Techbot about the Tsoo Ink Men, the whole Red and Blue Inkmen things are especially disappointing for a group that I feel has a good diversity.
First fix I would do is make the Red Ink Men have another trick besides kinetics, possibly give them full on stalker stealth striking abilities and let them be like the Black Ops group, or possible even radiation emission with AM. (Rad can be magical too, look at the spirit of sorrow!)
The second fix would be making it so that instead of each color fazing the previous one out, the new ones just get added.
This has a wonderful double edged sword of mitigating stacked debuffs (and Mezzes) with diversity, whereas it would also diversify the types of debuffs and mezzes you encounter.
So ideally, at level forty you should be fighting Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue Ink Men.
Click here to find all the All Things Art Threads!