Adventuring Temporary Powers

I'd quite like a powerset that involves the use of disguise, or perhaps a power pool. Not necessarily a temp drop, although this one works more for me than your other suggestions.

This is a dayjob power already. I forget which one. Also Mind, Earth, Electric 'Trollers/Domis have mass sleeps. And there are a couple of other powers (which I forget right now) that do the same. I'm not sure if you can grab Sleep Grenade as a temp power from a Safeguard/Mayhem.

Very few missions have the old 'defeat mobs to find a key' element to them. Frostfire is the obvious one and I think there's a Clockwork arc at 10-14 which has a similar mission. Otherwise, not much in the way of need for a temp power, unless there were specific content designed for this kind of Heroing/Villainy.

In the AE this was not a feature because of the map's inability to determine whether or not the mob would be on the right side of the door to be defeated and allow the player through. So I'm guessing that special coding is used in the very few missions which use that feature.

We already receive tips from randomly defeating mobs that are level 20+. I think the suggestion is just flavour. There are a few Praetorian missions which have the option from a dialogue box of planting bugs on downed enemies, which for me works fine.

The Arachnos Flyer bug mission is another example - the contact actually gives you the bugs. No need for a separate 'temp power'.

The Game can't be expected to cater for every player's own 'take' on how things should be done. For instance, why would my psychic character need a Tip mission drop when he/she can sense that something is going to happen?

So there has to be a certain level of fudge to allow us to imagine for ourselves, and not be railroaded into a certain way that things work, and can't work otherwise.

And just in case there's a counter suggestion of 'give all psychic powered characters a special power to drop Tips' - what about my characters who are psychic but don't have a Psi damage power?

Screenshots work for me. And again, the 'tips drop randomly' thing If you want to believe that your character has taken a picture of something then go ahead. This won't stop the fun for you.

You can even create a macro called 'Bug' that fires off the appropriate emote and brings up the AFK message 'Taking a picture...' if you want.

Having pooh-poohed a lot in this thread, I wouldn't be surprised if I were forced to eat my hat though - with the new developments who knows what direction the game will go in?

My personal prediction if some of these ideas were implemented would be either a new AT with its own arcs that feature this kind of Detective work, or an amusing 'mini-game'.

1. We don't need a power set devoted to disguises. Individual temp powers would be adequate. The problem with power sets is that they take up slots which would be occupied by a primary or secondary. The temporary power would function without doing that.

2. Day job powers are too inaccessible to the average player to make them convenient. That goes for temporary powers granted from various missions. What I'm hoping for is something that people can get right into if they wish. Day jobs require time spent logged out on site, and therefore are not convenient for accessibility.

The point of the gas grenade is to take out a group of mobs so you can sneak past without agroing them. Many of the 'sleep' powers in the control sets actually agro groups. Also you may not have a controller in your group.

I would have also suggested a tranq dart gun which would not agro mobs. However, the nature of single target sleep doesn't fit with what I'm trying to accomplish. This is not your inherent science power tranq dart either--it just doesn't sleep long enough.

3. Lock-picks is not just a power for previous missions but also for future missions. It's something that can be incorporated into future missions. Having the ability to open locked items--files, chests, doors, etc. would add interest and believability to the game. It would be really fun if it were a mini-game where a small screen would pop up and you could actually see what you're doing with the lock-picks (of course that's not going to happen).

4. Electronic bugs again are something that has a lot of possibilities. Sure there are missions that have glowies where you would put the bug like the arachnos flyer mission, but those are isolated instances. Having the ability to plant bugs through a temporary power would add another dimension to the game.

As for Psy abilities-- as much as I sympathize your desire to 'read minds' how would you accomplish that? The mechanics for planting bugs and getting missions off that are pretty straight forward, but the mechanics for mind reading are not. We don't even have conversations in this game let alone the ability to interact with NPC's on a conversational level. I would love to have the ability to ask an NPC questions and get back an answer... in which case those characters with psy abilities could get a 'reading' like true-false-or some other content. So as far as I'm concerned your example of having a Psy mind reading ability is not even in the same ball-park as planting a bug.

This game, of course, suffers from being over simplified. I.e. they do pretty much everything for you except kill the bad guys. They tell you where to go, what to do, they provide all the information without any effort on your part (simply click on the glowie)... I guess they assume that there are more lazy people who don't want to do the work of actually solving mysteries playing this game than there are people who want the challenge of figuring things out for themselves. I suppose that's a by-product of a society that focuses on immediate gratification. This assumption is built into this game.

5. The camera suggestion was never about screen shots. It was about goals. I.e. taking a picture of a file folder is not the same as taking a screen shot. We actually have a camera picture taking emote. There's no reason you can't use that graphic with mission objectives. I.e. you click on the glowie a file folder appears and then you click on your camera power, you've gathered some evidence.

This could have some effect on story outcomes. For example if you fail to properly gather evidence, the bad guy gets away on a technicality.

Yes you could 'pretend' to do this just by clicking on a glowie but that's less satisfying than actually performing the actual act of taking a picture or planting a bug.