Eva Destruction

The CoP definitely has that "bring debuffs, lots of debuffs, and DPS, lots of DPS, or you will fail" aspect to it. Due to the the Aspect's "untouchable" cycles, it would be failable even if there was no timer. If you took the timers off these trials, a coordinated sewer trial would not be failable. A coordinated CoP would still be.

I think it also induces a certain feeling of being lost in the mass of people in a lot of players. As do Hami raids and Mothership raids. Each person is part of an enormous whole, so you can't see your contribution as readily. If you, specifically, DC or have to answer the phone or die, the rest of the raid won't really notice. On a single-team trial, they'll notice.

I'm pretty useless on large-scale raids due to my crappy computers, and yet I've still participated in successful CoPs, Hami raids, and Mothership raids. My contribution mostly consisted of firing wildly at the nearest available target. No coordination or thinking was required, or indeed even possible, on my part.

I will agree though, in a sense they require too much coordination. However, most of this takes place in the planning stages. You need enough ranged damage, enough melee damage, enough holds, enough healing for a Hami raid. It makes for a pretty boring half-hour for those who actually show up on time.

I agree with this. I've never used voice chat, it really annoys me that people think you need it, since as soon as people start using it they stop typing, even when they know they have teammates who aren't using it.

I also find that a lot of people just tend to assume everyone knows what they're supposed to do. Is it that hard to ask if everyone has done this before? By the same token, is it that hard to pipe up and say "I've never done this before so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do" before starting? And if someone does say this, is it so hard to explain to them what they're supposed to do? Even on the sewer trial, which has a timer, you can take a minute to pause and coordinate. It saves time in the end.

Surviving the spawn is only half the battle. When it's more efficient to clear a path for the squishies so they can help you than to just run past everything to clear the objectives, that eliminates a huge chunk of why I hate speed runs.

Yes, I could bring a melee who participates in the running past things and clearing, except that running into a spawn and NOT killing it runs counter to the reason I play melee in the first place.

I realize MMs have problems with +cons, which need to be addressed, but I don't play MMs so I'll leave it to those who do to suggest solutions.

AoE can be avoided. Ambushes....well I've made my feelings about the overuse of ambushes known in other threads. Knowing what to expect does help in dealing with them. It makes having more melee useful as well, whereas the standard tank and spank "challenge" doesn't encourage bringing more than one melee, unless the other melee is a Scrapper of the Stupid Scrapper Tricks variety.
I used to see the same thing all the time during Nemesis missions when squishies stand too close to the tank. To quote Butthead: "Uh, could you like, not stand there?"

Maybe. You'd also have a higher incidence of people trying to "tanker stealth" and dying horribly, or trying to solo spawns and taking longer, and I'd get to laugh at them as I'm running around with my Brute rounding up Romans for my squishies to annihilate.

It would be too easy. +2s are still a joke to many teams. Heck, I've been on teams that tear through the majority of the +4s on that TF. A team of 8 Scrappers is a wonderful, horrific thing.

If you can use Full Auto without dying to a puddle, you can use KO Blow or Total Focus without dying to a puddle. Yes, a melee character's damage output does suffer when they can't just stand there and mash buttons. On the other hand, melee has the advantage of not dying from a floating sword in the back.

MMs again, have problems. I acknowledge the problems but since I don't play them I have no idea what could be done to alleviate them.

This really really ticks me off like you wouldn't believe. I ran an RSF recently that almost turned into this. Had a nice private moment of "I told you so" when we ended up succeeding.

This, a thousand times this. Just for the record, I know a guy who regularly runs the sewer trial with the first eight people who want to join. I've been on some teams with him with really weird mixes of ATs. They've all gone better than the one I did with a static team that had coordinated our AT and powerset choices.

Yes, what a novel concept, that a team would be forced to take on things tailored to be a challenge for a team.

If I had my way, all the end-game TFs would be full of +2s at least. It would solve a lot of the problems I have with TF teams, most notably people bringing their farm builds and playing like they're solo farming and melees running off and leaving squishies to die.

The "gimmick" eliminates the need to turn Battle Maiden into another Reichsman in the name of "challenge." At the same time, it penalizes (nearly) everyone equally, so having a sub-obtimal AT and powerset loadout won't guarantee failure, but having a team full of idiots or just people who insist on using the same tactic over and over regardless of effectiveness will.
That's why I like + cons. Most Brutes and Scrappers can't do that with + cons, and the ones who can survive still need help to kill the mobs in a reasonable amount of time. This includes my Brutes and Scrappers, by the way. I also hate speed runs.

They're supposed to powergame against us in the end game, just like we're supposed to powergame against them. It would be kinda pointless to give us more power just to have us stomp even-cons until the end of time. There IS such a thing as overkill you know....well ok not really, but if you give me a tac nuke I'm not going to use it to take out an anthill.

Way to totally make yet another irrelevant post.

There's a shield generator? I didn't find a shield generator. And even if I had, any traps player can tell you they don't last long against a Titan, since they like to hug you and get asploded by AoEs.

Nance would make perfect sense if he introduced you to Roy Cooling, so everyone had him as a contact (except people running the arc through Ouroboros of course), but still suffers the problem of NPC allies being dumb as bricks and not so useful because of it.

(By the way, I finished this arc with no allies and no problems when I ran it with my squishy Blaster, although admittedly she was a heavily IOd 50. I don't see myself running it with a character that doesn't care about the badges. PPD are the opposite of fun at these levels, as are Zeus Titans and EB fights that drag out until you're all out of inspirations.)

Doubtful. I think its feature in that section brought in good attention, which put it on the first few pages, which automatically opened it up to bad attention.

We have heard this exact same story far too many times. I don't recall an obvious avenue for player griefing being exploited for so long with nothing being done about it....ever. Even the old-school hami griefers at least couldn't hide behind total anonymity.

No, you don't, or at least you shouldn't. You're not two people, you just fight two people's worth of enemies. No bosses means no bosses, even if you're on x8. If you're getting bosses, either something's wonky with the settings or it works differently in AE now. Also, that setting will downgrade EBs to bosses in AE.

They have existed for a long time, they only recently came to prominence with the takeover of the 5th. Of course their long-running existence was retconned in, but it's now canon. From their enemy group overview on the CoH website:

It doesn't, or at least didn't. It kept the most recent ratings. Someone demonstrated how, by switching between a 1- and 5-star rating, they could put an arc in and out of the hall of fame.

It's the current featured arc in the MA Arc Club thread, so it's not at all surprising that he's received several plays from people who understand the rating system is crap and are inclined to be generous with their rating.

Captian Castillo is Zapp Brannigan's great-great-great...........great-great-great-grandfather.

It has two fairly short TFs and an uninteresting arc. I guess that qualifies as "some" to some people. I'd personally describe it as "a bit" or "it's a start."

All the people before him followed that advice. That is why he no longer has any.

Somewhere in some dev's mind "we want more challenging end-game content" and "we like dynamic and interesting mission design" translates to "send wave after wave of enemies at us in every mission." Yes, a map full of enemies standing around waiting to be beaten up gets old. But so does wave after wave of enemies coming to you to get beaten up, when it's in every mission.

It ends. You just have to kill a LOT of Nazis before they give up. Unfortunately for them, I love killing Nazis.

I go to the RWZ with my characters that don't do well on missions set to x6 and higher. Lots of bosses and Lieutenants, fewer piddly minions for a character with less than awesome AoE damage to wade through. Plus, you know, alien invaders and all. I like killing them almost as much as Nazis. And you get Vanguard merits for the Gr'ai Matter if you don't like ship raids.

I always just kind of assumed this is what had happened. I don't remember exactly if it's canon that Positron helped reverse engineer our mediporters, but it would make sense if he was involved, and Anti-matter is just as smart, so there you go.

Because then you couldn't have any missions to save kidnapped civilians, since it wouldn't matter.

We are not. Many hero missions flat out state that we are to arrest them. Additionally, the dialogue for many hero missions flat out states that the villain is in the Zig. The fact is though, I just opened up on that villain with an automatic rifle. Then I froze him solid and set him on fire. Unless he is rushed to some kind of medical facility, he will die.

Playing through this arc, I came to the conclusion that the safety of super-powered criminals is more important than the safety of innocent civilians.

Bleeding heart nothing....ALL of my heroes are the type to go "well if everybody has a mediporter that would free up a lot of time heroes spend saving hapless citizens so we can go after the big boss instead." Which would pretty much render the vigilante options in half of the tip missions moot.

It reads like a comic book full of plot holes.
Well then by that token we shouldn't extend immortality to the guy who faceplants every other spawn. Resources are finite and he's overtaxing them. We should reserve them for a citizen who doesn't go out of their way to tax the system. Think about it, how many times to we place our heroes in unnecessary danger? Now think about how often most citizens, even if they're assured not to die, would do so.

You also get into the question of where to draw the line between Natural Origin Hero and non-powered citizen. A level 1 character isn't all that powerful. What's to stop everyone from registering as a hero just to get on the mediport network?

Especially since many of them are far more "superpowered" than a level 1 hero, especially the high-level PPD. The Paragon City Fire Department seems to consist of one guy, and he never actually goes into a burning building, so he's pretty safe.

I agree, it's a bit boss-heavy, and probably better suited to melee. If we had better spawn control they wouldn't be spawning so close to each other (unless you mean you have to fight one boss after another without any spawns in between to restock your inspirations), but at least they can all be pulled, so there is that.
Page four now, but still...fingers crossed.

Thanks, that's my favorite part of it too.

Will ponder this and take another look at his dialogue. He doesn't get a lot of space in which to talk (especially since in his first appearance he's a betraying ally and they don't get to talk much anymore), but that still gives me quite a few lines to work with.

Until we get more precise spawn control, stuff like that will keep happening sometimes. I prefer that Arachnos warehouse to the other, elevatorless one for reasons that I can't quite remember but probably have something to do with chaining objectives, and I'm not using an Arachnos lab because I hate them, so I acknowledge that the map might have a few problem spots, especially once you throw in a patrol or three. Actually....right up the elevator is the worst spot on that map, so if he showed up there, um, sorry?

The bombs are numerous to increase the chances of the player randomly stumbling upon one in a map where they're not looking for them and is on fire. The destroyables....they're there to keep Council from spawning in the first room. I guess I could replace one or two of the sillier ones (I can't remember if I already removed the car, but it was the silliest one) with optional bosses that only show up after one of the later objectives is completed.

Not really unfortunately. A Super Strength boss without KO Blow is a bit of a pushover for a level 40+ arc unless you give them Rage, which I'm not doing because an 800 pt melee attack is easier to avoid for a squishy than a thrown rock that hits for over half your HP and ignores the purples you ate. Maybe Rage has been toned down enough that it no longer leads to painful death and massive frustration, I don't know, but I've fought enough critters with it before the change to curse the author's name every time I see that tell-tale glow, so.... As a longtime Blaster player who has been on the receiving end of many Rikti swords and KO Blows and Total Focuses and other Really Nasty Things That Kill Squishies Dead, I can sympathize but at this point in the game's development it's pretty much par for the course that high-level enemies will instant-death-kill you if you're squishy and unprepared. Of course you KNOW that Longbow Warden has KO Blow, you don't know that the custom critter does....but I tend to assume everything I encounter will kill me in horrible nasty ways until after its corpse is long faded.

Can't win. Too few clues, someone tells you "this and that should have a clue." Too many, and someone tells you there are too many clues. I did try to set my objectives more or less in the order I expected the player to encounter them, but beyond that there isn't much I can do besides stop trying to cram so much detail into a five-mission arc, and detail-heavy arcs are my personal preference, so...stylistic differences I guess.

Thanks again to everyone who played and commented. *Summons Bubbawheat to put up this week's arc*

This. A thousand times this. It's not TALKING to other people. It's the need to deal with other people. When you join a TF team, you are making a commitment to deal with these other people until the task is done. You can't just walk away when you stop having fun and start feeling drained.

Except it isn't a private narrative. It's canon. You go to the future, beat up Recluse, bring back his helmet (the PG-13 equivalent of bringing back his head), show it to him and say "look, I kicked your butt at the height of your power. What are you gonna do about it?" and he says "Nothing. Congratulations. You're awesome. Go take over the world or whatever it is you want to do." Which just makes the RSF more insulting, since you can only start the TF that gives you the Servant of Recluse badge after he tells you that "you are a true villain, beholden to no one."

I'm hoping the majority of it is limited to eight people and not like the Cathedral of Pain. My computer is old so those things are laggy, and they take a long time to set up. Usually they're planned in advance to ensure people will show up. Like some other people here, I mostly prefer to solo. Sometimes I do feel like teaming, and I can usually put together a TF in a pinch at those times. I don't like having to schedule feeling like teaming.

I'm not optimistic enough to anticipate a lot of soloable content. I would dearly love for there to be some. But I'm not holding my breath.