Did You Know - Return of the Son of the Unofficial History Thread
In the beginning, Sally was an actual monster-class creature. I'm not sure if we still use that classification any more, actually, but on the scale of "bad guys" you pretty much had Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Arch-villain, Monster and Giant Monster. Only the last level was truly the sort that required groups of heroes to handle. (I'm pretty sure this was before Elite Bosses were invented.)
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Giant Monsters are not necessarily stronger. If the level 50 Giant Monsters on Monster Island in PI were not giant monsters, they would generally be stronger, not weaker, because players can't be higher than level 50 (outside of level shift). But as Giant Monsters they always con even to any player, if they were just Monsters they would only con even to level 50s: any player lower than level 50 would have a harder time fighting them as Monsters than Giant Monsters, because the critter would have an intrinsically higher level than them. So as Monsters they would be as strong or stronger than as they currently are as Giant Monsters (except, as noted, for level shifted level 50 players).
Also, the class shown by a critter in a player's GUI can be overridden by the devs, so that it can read "Object" or whatever. As far as I know, there is no "object" class: I believe most are usually a subtype of minion.
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So before the scaling code was implemented, Kraken (just to pick one) was a Monster and not a Giant Monster?
Of course, that's a whole other "Did you know?"
In the early days (before Issue Seven, according to Paragon Wiki) Monsters such as Kraken and Babbage did not scale to each individual attacker's level. The Kraken, for instance, had a level of 14(?) and would con grey to higher level characters with associated combat penalties in regards to higher level players.
It was not at all uncommon for high-level heroes to take down lower-leveled monsters for fun, badges, and just for revenge for having been defeated by them when the heroes themselves were young.
The "purple patch" caused all Giant Monsters to scale their damaged given and received to match the level of the attacker. (It's slightly more complicated than that, but the previous link to the Wiki explains it.) The upshot is that ALL Giant Monster class creatures are a challenge to everyone, no matter their level. Likewise, all heroes/villains can make a meaningful contribution to defeating them, regardless of the apparent level difference between the monster and the hero.
* The Rikti Magus Elite Boss you see in ship raids made their first appearance in two missions in Angus McQueen's arc. Originally, and up to about Issue 9 or 10, one missions spawned one of them, and a second mission spawned nothing *but* them throughout the entire map. And this was true even if you attempted to solo the mission, and there was at the time no way to downgrade them.
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Also, the class shown by a critter in a player's GUI can be overridden by the devs, so that it can read "Object" or whatever. As far as I know, there is no "object" class: I believe most are usually a subtype of minion.
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You'll also see many NPC allies con as "Hero" despite being closer to Pet in terms of combat attributes. Like Mender Lazarus. He's NEVER been a Hero.
When the issue went live, (or maybe some short time afterwards; it was years ago and my memory is faulty on good days) Sally had been altered. Instead of fighting back, she was revised to take one hit and then dive beneath the waves, "defeated". You still have to attack her to make that one hit and get your badge credit but with some things, game mechanics are game mechanics and you have to just go with the flow.
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They were bosses though, right? I don't think we even had Elite Bosses until Issue 3.
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But I believe you're right...Heracles was the first EB and the two Hollows ones were updated at the same time, possibly at player suggestion even.
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In the beginning, Sally was an actual monster-class creature. I'm not sure if we still use that classification any more, actually, but on the scale of "bad guys" you pretty much had Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Arch-villain, Monster and Giant Monster.
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Also, the class shown by a critter in a player's GUI can be overridden by the devs, so that it can read "Object" or whatever. As far as I know, there is no "object" class: I believe most are usually a subtype of minion.
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Also, Did You Know: Behemoth Portals used to have a large Stargate type stone ring around their blue vortex, which was positioned on top of a stone platform with a ramp leading up to the gate. These disappeared a couple of years ago, the actual portal effects began spawning on the floor instead of on their elevated platform and this is why now there is a displaced faint blue ring above the main portal vortex. The upper ring actually traces the inside diameter of the original stone Stargate, and once upon a time the portal vortex would have been inside that.
There is a special portal in one of Scirocco's Patron arcs which has a LOT more hit points and physically crumbles its stone structure as the portal takes damage. AS this no doubt uses a different rig altogether, this one should still be fine.
Also, an idle uninteresting fact: Spectral Demon Lords didn't always deal Psi/Dark damage. Once upon a time, they used the standard Dark Melee Smashing/Dark pairing of damage. I'm not sure why that changed.
Expanding on this, Lord Winter is the same class as the Reichsman, which can take several seconds to bring down even with 30+ people spanking it.
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1. If you bring a very low level character to a level-scaled zone event like a Rikti invasion or a Banners event, your character will be very, very weak, at least speaking of damage dealers. This is because of how most combat attributes scale. At level 1, most ATs have very similar if not the same scales for almost everything and almost all enemies are scaled to be very weak. As you go up in levels, however, enemies start getting stronger as you're expected to be using enhancements and your damage decreases in relation to enemy hit points. When fighting a level 30 Rikti Chief, you will attack said chief as though you were a level 30 character. A level 30 character with one slot in each attack with nearly useless Training enhancements slotted.
2. The entire ridiculous powerlevelling craze over the Winter Lords of 2005 (was it?) happened because despite being "Giant Monsters," each Winter Lord had an intrinsic level appropriate to the zone it spawned in. What this meant what that a Winter Lord in Atlas Park would spawn around level 5 or 10 and have a scant 4000 - 5000 health while apparently the same Winter Lord spawning in Peregrine Island would have an intrinsic level of 50 and have upwards of 20 000 hit points. However, because these all conned the same to everyone, everyone got the same rewards, so level 50 characters could come to Atlas Park and kill the much easier Winter Lords there for the same amount of reward.
Of course, the reward itself didn't scale. It was always around 5000 XP, I think. To a level 49 character who needs several million experience to get to level 50, this is small change. To a level 1 character who needs 106 experience to reach level 2, that amount of experience all at once was enough to bring you up to about level 8 or so. This is when the developers first introduced the experience reward cap, stating that no single experience gain could ever give you more than half the experience you required for the next level.
Ah, those were "fun" times
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Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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BTW - I have no problem with anyone correcting my statements. The whole reason the original thread started was from discussions where five different people had five different versions of some event or had simply never heard of it at all. Getting the right info out there is the whole point.
Also, Did You Know: Behemoth Portals used to have a large Stargate type stone ring around their blue vortex, which was positioned on top of a stone platform with a ramp leading up to the gate. These disappeared a couple of years ago, the actual portal effects began spawning on the floor instead of on their elevated platform and this is why now there is a displaced faint blue ring above the main portal vortex. The upper ring actually traces the inside diameter of the original stone Stargate, and once upon a time the portal vortex would have been inside that.
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Also, the class shown by a critter in a player's GUI can be overridden by the devs, so that it can read "Object" or whatever. As far as I know, there is no "object" class: I believe most are usually a subtype of minion.
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Did you know....when CoV was first released that Archvillain-class desk had to be defeated to complete the mission. This took a very long time if you were solo.
Also, the portal in the "Defeat Infernal" mission from Maria Jenkins didn't scale down when AVs first started scaling down to EBs for soloists. It was bugged to not spew demons at the time, but still took a very long time to defeat if you were solo.
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I know certain "objects" scale down in both hit points and reward given when boss spawns are disabled. I'm not sure if these are tagged as objects, but Behemoth Portals naturally have boss level stats and rewards, but become much easier to kill and much less rewarding when bosses are disabled. The Behemoths they spawn are not affected.
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Arc: 60092 - Supa Rumble in the Park
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Did you know: Stairways
One of the features of the new Atlas Park is that certain buildings have rooftop features. A few of these are enclosed, so that they cannot be reached from the outside, even by flying heroes.
How do you reach them?
Watch for a door like this one:
Click on a stairway door and you'll be taken to the top of the building or to a balcony or some similar spot that is otherwise inaccessible. Some are enclosed. Some are open-air. Some are are rooftop plazas and some are rooftop gardens. Explore around and see what you find.
Stairways are a Praetorian invention.
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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
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You'd be in Perez minding your own business when suddenly you'd hear "Skyway gate" in broadcast, and then what looked like every critter that ever lived come bearing down on you glowing green. If you didn't know this practice existed, or for that matter what rad toggles looked like and did, this could scare the living crap out of you. Some players fled in terror, while others who knew what was going on took advantage of the free XP.
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