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Posts
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Full Auto is made of win. But only if you spin the camera. If you don't spin the camera it will miss everyone. That is fact.
I was horribly addicted to the Gauntlet of Death on my Fire/Traps Corr. 17 trip mines, three Poison Gas traps, two Acid Mortars....BOOOOOM.
Soul Storm + Ignite is also awesome. The Soul Storm makes them spin nicely so they cook evenly all the way through.
Also, Caltrops with the Ragnarok knockdown proc. It has high amusement value. -
The Lost are one of those groups that like spawning bosses, even when you're solo.
And I had the Aberrants confused with Anathemas. -
You can't have no Aberrants at all, but you can have no Lieutenant-level Aberrants with the custom group trick. They do stop at some point, I think it's level 20, but the custom group will allow you to keep a wider level range.
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That might backfire if the captive spawns at the front of the room and the boss spawns at the back.
Moar control over spawn placement plz! -
If you use a map with a small "back" area (a single room) and put them both in "back," they will spawn in the same room at least. Also, if you set the captive's enemy group to "single," he will be unguarded, and will be freed as soon as he spawns, so if you chain him off the boss's defeat he will be freed as soon as you defeat the boss.
It's a little immersion-breaking in that the captive will just appear out of nowhere, but it's the closest you can get. -
There is a Malta Rd. near my house. Every time I walk by I keep expecting to see a robot shooting missiles at me from down the street.
My daughter has a ball that looks like a Hamidon Goo. She doesn't like us calling it that, she's not at the point yet in her gaming career where she understands the invention system. -
A certain amout of assuming is inevitable, it's the nature of the genre. You have to go a bit further if the arc has you in a role outside or beyond the one you assume when you load into the game, or if its a villainous arc. The best arcs for this have your character's deeds, motivations, and plans hinted at through NPC reactions, and the events of the arc itself, rather than putting words directly into your character's mouth.
The big problem I have with my character's actions being too scripted is that it usually goes too far, into unnecessary detail. I can accept "my character doesn't operate that way but this time I will because the plot requires it," far easier than I can accept something that isn't necessary to the story, and actually detracts from it. -
You're not blowing up your own stuff, you're blowing up other villains' stuff. They usually hate each other and aren't likely to team up to kick your butt, unlike heroes.
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Quote:The PPD are just the police, the Rogue Isles are way out of their jurisdiction, and mostly they respect that. Unlike Longbow.In theory, the best options would be to expand Wyvern and the Legacy Chain while giving the player more chances to encounter the PPD outside of Mayhem missions. Another interesting idea that would probably have a more explicit fit to your goals is to take the Paragon City Heroes (who are also mostly in Mayhem missions) and fill them out with more than just bosses. Perhaps semi-fusing them with Hero Corps.
Expanded Paragon City Heroes could work though, if you treated them like "heroic Masterminds." Again it's a question of jurisdiction though. Heroside, we don't go over to the Rogue Isles very often.
A group made up of disgruntled Rogue Isles citizens would be far more sympathetic than yet another "hero" group sticking their noses in where they don't belong, which is something I, personally, would like to see in a villainous arc. I want my villain to beat up people that my character can look at and say "these are the good guys. I am a bad person for beating them up." Of course if they're not Natural or Mutation origin, there is a question of where they get their cool toys, since most people in the Isles with cool toys are villains. -
Build Up. Build Up. And I repeat again: Build Up. It doesn't help that the enemy group was rather homogenous visually, so the guys that could two-shot you didn't stand out much from the guys who couldn't. For an arc that focuses so heavily on a custom group, they weren't very well developed, I thought. Evil tyrannical empire...how are they different from any other evil tyrannical empire? Some more background would have been helpful in drawing the player into the story. Some optional objectives maybe, to give us more of a sense of exactly what kind of evil empire we are dealing with.
Oh and yeah, did I mention ditch the Build Up? The big lab map with the two elevators could stand to be replaced as well. -
Quote:We didn't have any problems with messed up spawning levels, from what I recall everything was 50.Please be honest and brutal with it. I'd like some feedback on what can actually be improved. Oh, and the slightly messed up spawning levels I cant do anything about, I've forwarded that to Doc Aeon, and hoping something gets fixed one day. (As in, groups that should only spawn at, say, 35-39 will still spawn at 50...but hey ho.)
The problem I did have was that it was stretched out longer than it needed to be. The "you rescued so and so, now go rescue so and so" got a little repetitive. A mission could be cut, or additional objectives could be added, indicating that we are helping the good guys make some headway aside from just gathering them up.
I did like the take on the good guys, some good costuming, and the custom Nemmies looked nice too. And yeah, it's nice to fight Nemesis in an arc that is straightforward rather than the usual convoluted attempt at plotting. -
So if you went out to a nightclub looking to score, would you wear a sign announcing "I'm looking to score?" No? Then why would you put "ERP welcome" in your character bio? Makes no sense to me. It's an open invitation to any frustrated 13-year-old (actual or emotional age) to hit on you in horribly mutilated English. This says to me that you are either a) desperate (and therefore probably actually or emotionally 13 years old yourself) or b) an attention-[censored]. Either way, if I were actually interested in participating in any kind of ERP, you would be the LAST person I'd do it with.
MRP is completely different, if by MRP you actually mean "mature, may offend some people" and aren't using it as a euphemism for ERP. If your villain's backstory revolves around watching a serial killer rampaging through the orphanage you grew up in, it's just a courtesy. Unfortunately too many people use "Mature" as a euphemism for ERP, thereby showing that they aren't. -
Build Up and Aim, for the reasons Chad mentioned. Rage even moreso, especially when it's used on a Boss, since its duration is so long. They utterly and completely bypass defense, as well as increasing damage. This is bad enough in and of itself if you're a defense based character. The reason it's especially problematic on Bosses and higher (which are the ones who have these powers on Hard) is that the best way to deal with a Boss you're having trouble with is to eat purples. These powers negate most powersets' best "tough enemy" tactic.
Power Sink, Energy Drain, that End drain power from Ice Armor. A lot of people hate End drain. What is worse, these powers are autohit.
Fire Armor on EBs or AVs, possibly even on Bosses. The Fire resistance is so high as to make these enemies take forever to kill with characters that rely exclusively on Fire damage.
Certain powers are problematic when stacked: the aforementioned Devices powers, as well as anything that debuffs. This includes toggle debuffs like Darkest Night and Rad Infection, but also the secondary effects of powersets like Ice, Dark Blast, Psi, Electric, or Sonic Blast.
Confuse and fear seem to annoy a lot of people too, because a lot of powersets don't have any protection from them. -
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Quote:Maybe when they were created that was a semi-valid reason. Although even at that time there were badges that were specifically tied to getting a certain level that could have been used.PvP zones are also the only level gated areas on that side of the game. The devs may have wanted to use that to regulate how early one could actually get those accolades.
However the accolades requirements were revised in the very same issue that hero hazard zones were opened to all levels, and accolades that required badges in previously level-locked zones were simply set to be unobtainable before a certain level. Would it have been so hard to lock the villain accolades the same way? That same issue the devs acknowledged that attempting to force villains into PvP through accolades was dumb, and removed Raider. There is no longer an excuse.
And yes, I am well aware of how easy these exploration and history badges are to get. I get all the PvP zone badges and patrol temp powers with pretty much every character. The ease of acquiring them is irrelevant. -
On a more constructive note, there's an idea I played around with for a mission that allows for the illusion of possible success, but will likely fail:
You go through the mission, there are a bunch of objectives. Completing them spawns another required objective: An EB (to guarantee that he will be at least a boss and therefore not one-shottable) at the front of the map.
The map used has to have a "front" area that consists of a single room, fairly small, with three possible boss spawn points. The EB is here. At about 1/2 health, when the player is good and distracted, the EB will spawn two more required objectives: a pair of bosses. These bosses are Illusion/Ninjitsu, with only Group Invisibility from their primary, and at least Hide and Danger Sense from their secondary. Their surrounding group is set to "Empty," and they are set to flee immediately upon seeing the player (I believe you set them to flee at Full health/1 minion remaining). Set their nav bar text to something confusing, that doesn't indicate to the player that they must defeat two more bosses. Most players won't even see them (make sure the visible EB doesn't have a defensive powerset that will encourage players to use yellow insps), they will have no attacks, so won't break their Hide, and have +perception, thereby giving a very good chance that at least one will see the player and immediately flee. Even if the player sees them, they will have to defeat two bosses with defense before they can escape, while still fighting the EB.
I never fully tested this theory to see how well it would work in practice, and of course it isn't foolproof, but there it is.
Edit: Just did a quick test, and it totally worked. I used one of the tech labs where the front room was that one with the diagonal pillars. The visible boss spawned at the front of the room, the invisible runners spawned at the back, saw me from all the way across the room, and immediately started running. I had Cloak of Darkness on (+perception) and still didn't see them (I didn't try tabbing to them though...totally didn't think of it. Got sucked in by my own diversion).
And I realized something else: it doesn't have to be the front. It can be the back, as long as it's one of those maps with a small room on the top floor and all the "back" spawn points in it. The mission will fail as soon as they hit the elevator. -
Quote:Unless he runs, you can go back and try again as many times as you want.1) A boss you fight is one tough mother so he defeats you (that does pull a "MISSION FAILED", yes?). I consider this a bit too mean, what with the debt.
Quote:2) Said boss, set near the 'front' of a small map, flees at the first punch.
Quote:3) A defendable object - I hear these almost never work out and the foes always get to it before you can stop them.
Quote:4) Some crazy to-do list like click on 37 glowies with long timers spread out over a huge map and a really short timer on the mission. -
Awesome, another one of my favorites. Gratz Bubba!
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Quote:The only real downside I can see is it would require a complete playthrough every time you fix a typo. Still, it's better than having arcs up that even the author can't finish.Advantages of this approach:
- Gradually filters out stale content.
- But you can still find the stale content if you really want to.
- Encourages MA authors to perform regression testing after a patch or a re-publish (note: it's a good idea for authors to do this anyway).
- Discourages MA authors from writing arcs that are too long/too hard/too tedious, since they have to play through it regularly.
- If I have a favorite arc by an author who quit the game, I can keep it from going stale by testing it myself.
Disadvantages:
- Won't filter out farms (except for stale ones no one is playing).
- Increases overhead required by an Author to maintain each story arc.
- Requires some development effort to implement.
Not the same thing at all. A mission full of Malta could get a 5 for playability, even though nobody in their right mind farms them.
Quote:The downfall of this (and any) rating system is the conscientiousness of the raters. On the plus side, the lack of a rating in these categories would indicate no opinion and not zero -- so your arc wouldn't be torpedoed by someone who quickly one-starred you in anger, as long as other people give you fives for having a good canon-oriented story.
This system would probably give better results because only people who have an opinion would bother to rate a category.
This system works well with something like COHMR, which is a third-party site that people have to make some effort to even access, and is therefore populated by people who care about story and mission design. Such a system, used responsibly, is superior to what we have now, but since it won't be, we'd probably end up right back where we are now, with the majority of arcs sitting at 4 stars in all categories. -
Well, forum PvPing against yourself is one way to win at PvP....
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I would PvP if my friends PvPd. I have neither the inclination, the skills, or the system requirements to become a hardcore PvPer, and I have no interest in fighting hardcore PvPers, because I just lose a lot. I can handle the PvP game working differently than PvE. I don't like that everyone has to have SJ+SS, and I don't like the current implementation of travel suppression though.
I would PvP more if there was actually something for me and my hypothetically PvPing friends to do besides just beat the crap out of each other, but just beating the crap out of each other is sometimes fun for me. -
Quote:I think you may be on to something here, that a lot of competitive players don't realize. Not everyone learns the same way. Just because YOU learned to be a better player by getting pwnd repeatedly, doesn't mean that's the best way for someone else to learn.In fact, playing with someone who knew how to play, but not really at all what to do with the skills ended up as something of a tutorial where I'd constantly narrate what he was doing wrong and what he was doing right and occasionally laying some mild smackdown just to punctuate a point. He did end up getting a lot better in time, which let me speed up my game and actually try a fair bit, which was actually a lot of fun. To me, that shows that, even in a competitive game, cultivating a new player so that he stays and gets better is a wiser decision than simply crushing him and turning him off the game entirely. After all, at least for me, it's not whether you win or lose that matters, it's all about playing a good match.
On the other hand, I played with a nephew of mine who liked to just botton-spam a lot, which caused my attack attack attack to send me face-first into plenty of kicks and punches. Him I couldn't explain away, as he would not listen, so I had to get my game together, walk all over him by playing a little more defensively and exploiting the vulnerability after bigger attacks and, yes, eventually crush before it got through to him that his cheap approach was not, in fact, an "I Win" button. He got a lot better when he started fighting smart, though, so it was a net positive effect after all.
I refuse to believe that none of these people actually want the "noobs" to get better. Some don't, because they enjoy lording their superiority over people, but those aren't competitive players, they're just bullies. Just looking at the number of PvP guides in these forums proves that there are competitive players who want people to actually compete against. Some of them just go about it the wrong way.
Take into the account the fact that a lot of people are simply inarticulate, and spewing tired catchphrases like "survival of the fittest" is a lot easier than actually saying what you mean, it looks like everyone is just a jerk. Eventually it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of jerkitude. -
Quote:From an author's perspective, yes. But from a player's perspective, the arc by an inactive author that is still valid, not broken, and still getting plays is more important than an arc the author hits "Republish" on every month.Finally, I think archiving stale arcs would be great. However, I consider the fact that an author refreshes an arc as a more important criteria for keeping it in the active search results than whether it was recently played. An arc from an author who no longer even plays the game could get a random play, and keeping that arc in the system instead of an arc from an author who cares enough about his or her arc to refresh it would be unfair.
You don't have to care very much to refresh an arc. It requires pressing two buttons. It takes a bit more of an investment to actually play through your arc, especially if you purposely made it overly difficult. -
Knives are like Chimera's ninjas. They are polite enough to saunter into melee one by one, so you always have something to fight even if you're moving in slow motion. If the caltrop pile gets too annoying, or too dangerous to my /SR (if you aggro multiple x8 spawns that's a lot of little autohit ticks, plus whatever normal attacks the RNG lets through) I'll Raptor Pack off it.
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I've got another one, shortly after the Manticore incident. Same Scrapper, a few levels later. We were on an ITF (I think it was that ITF that dinged me to 50 actually), on the first mission, up on the platform. As usual the tank went to herd some Romans, somebody ran in after him, somebody went straight for Sister What's-her-face, and as usual we ended up in a mess of angry Romans, several dead squishies, with a Nictus ambush coming up behind us.
At some point the tank dropped dead, very very fast. I think he was SS/Shield, so it must have been either a Rage crash or CDF on a massive scale, since we had bubbles that would have put him well over the soft cap. As soon as he went down, one by one the squishies started dropping. Before long, I am alone in the middle of an angry seafood buffet.
Doesn't count as scrapperlock if you're simply the last survivor of a team wipe right? Well I think it does if you stand there fighting for a good three minutes or so (around the time my bubbles dropped and some of the Nictuses started going down, making way for def-debuffing Romans) before you notice that nobody has actually led the chick to the altar, do it, then continue fighting for another few minutes after the mission has completed and your audience has punched out.