Eva Destruction

Yeah, traps isn't available for custom critters in AE for some reason, and the doppelgangers use custom critter mechanics (set to Hard, as far as I can tell. So if you want to see just what powers your clones will have, go into the custom critter creator and see what you have on Hard/Hard).

VEAT powers aren't available for custom critters either though, but the doppelgangers still have them. Has anyone fought a doppelganger with a squid yet? What do you get?

Dark Miasma is definitely no fun. Army of Elec/Pain Corruptors isn't all that fun either, they keep healing and draining all your end.

Given a choice between inviting "John Smith" or "Amaz1ng Man," I'd go with John Smith any day. Leet is acceptable if the character is a Freakshow or a hacker or something...in other words, if a leet-speak name is one the character would have chosen for themselves. The same goes for creative misspellings. I used one for a character in AE, where there are no issues with names being taken, because the character would have thought it was cool.

People wou---people would----people would know----HAHAHAHAHAHA. I'm sorry, I just can't repeat that with a straight face.

I wish we still had rep sometimes....

So? That means they care, at least a little. Which completely negates the "if people come back and find their names gone they will be angry and leave again" argument. Then the devs can do a purge of names on characters of any level, secure in the knowledge that anyone who even remotely cared one iota about their character names at least took advantage of a free reactivation weekend to secure them.

Well yeah, that's what I meant, since some of us still do AE stuff, despite the new shiny being there. Incidentally, the supermodels are the shallow, stereotypical kind, and they soon run out of interesting things to say. The girlfriend is the non-jealous kind, and when you get bored of the supermodels she'll still be there with an "I told you so" and a great arc you've never gotten around to playing.

Um, isn't that song about mosh pits or something? Besides, it's overused, and it wasn't that good of a song to begin with.

And now I will think about Brutes every time I hear that song. My brothers-in-law are huge Metallica fans, so once again CoX has invaded my life.

We're also generally pretty good about answering newcomers' questions and pointing them toward the resources WN mentioned. It still doesn't change the fact that these newcomers have to have some interest in AE to begin with. Threads mentioning AE in the general interest forums usually contain a few "this is how I find arcs, there's a lot of good stuff" posts followed by rants about farming or lack of XP.

The vast majority of the playerbase never listens to other players. Go look at the market forum if you don't believe me. I join teams, hear griping about how AE is all farms/crap rewards, mention that I just played an AE arc that was fun, interesting, and got me a few bars of XP and some really good stuff from my ticket rolls, and get griping about PLed AE babies as a response. I mention that I play a lot of AE (not farms) and no one in-game has yet asked me what arcs I would recommend that they try.

Then again, I also groan every time a teammate opens their paper or scanner and immediately suggest we go do something that's actually fun, so no wonder nobody listens to me. Must get uber XPz. Need every server full of 50s, or something.

Putting that fix in with GR is THE worst thing they could have done, aside from slapping in that half-**** patch in the first place with no testing after months of ally abuse. Seriously. It's like getting your hair fixed, then walking into the room with three or four swimsuit models and expecting anyone to notice your new improved hair.

Other stupid things they've done is completely ignore issues that have been brought up over and over again by knowledgeable members of the community while apparently actually reading posts by Dev's Digest chasers who don't know where their shift key is (Aeon's comment on why we can't have finer control over spawn placement comes to mind....no response to all the people correcting him and clarifying what they really want), allow people to rate arcs without actually playing them in the first place, seemingly not realize that hardcore badgers want badges for stuff they didn't actually do, the sporadic at best awarding of Dev's Choice, Positron's "**** you" post that resulted in no noticeable action being taken and only served to make people paranoid about their joke arcs with animals on a farm, ignore multiple requests for simple additions (Lts and minions as "fight a boss" objectives, for example) while rushing to add the new shiny that is a cute gimmick at best and will result in mostly garbage arcs made solely to take advantage of the new shiny, leave Dev's Choices awarded during i14 closed beta on the first few pages, the farce that was last year's official AE awards, the most recent "dev interest" being contests that often require participants to unpublish what THEY wanted to write (and in some cases PAID to write) in favor of what somebody else wanted them to write, and the only Dev's Choices in that period being from said contests....shall I go on about how the devs have done absolutely nothing to dispel the common perception that AE is just a wasteland of outdated farms, broken arcs, and overpowered custom critters that give crap rewards?

All except Combat Numbers and Email changes being changes that make the low-level game smoother and more fun.

They've already put in the catch. Have you actually played Praetoria? The content is harder. Enemies hit harder, and debuff more. Lots of ambushes. Lots of "special spawns" and not so many 3-minion spawns to fill up your insp tray. People alternate between praising the more interesting missions and complaining that they are too difficult for low levels. Now wouldn't it be nice if we were better equipped to handle the increased difficulty, so we could have missions more interesting than glorified paper missions throughout the game, at all levels?

This also encourages alting, which means that there isn't as much of a rush to put out as much end-game content. Just proliferate a powerset or three to keep people entertained while you work on more end-game. Not that I'm not still going to complain about a lack of endgame, of course, but some people are easily distracted or just don't play their 50s very much.

Apex is a Scrapper, armor is for wusses.

He's a signature character, and as such should retain his signature look. Fusionette and Faultline kept theirs, after all.

Blasters weren't given mez protection, not even half-*** mez protection. You can use three powers while you're mezzed. You still can't move, use inspirations except for awaken, or use any other powers. That's not mez protection. They're not supposed to have mez protection, because they're SQUISHY.

Pray tell, what is the "real problem" and how would you fix it?

(Ok, with Stalkers the problem is that an AT that relies on surgical strikes and single-target damage is pretty useless in a game that has turned into an AoE-focused blitz fest, but that's a flaw in the AT's basic design.)

You have hundreds of enhancements, recipes and salvage items that are worth mailing? Really? Or are you one of those people that mails Ceramic Armor Plates to yourself?
APPs are intended as a reward? First I've heard of it. If you're going to "reward" me for getting to level 35 by giving me access to a power I couldn't get before that at least make it worth taking, I mean a crappy self-rez, what is that? I hereby demand the removal of all powers I don't feel are worth taking from the game.

I also demand access to all powers at level 1, double the number of enhancement slots, and for every enemy to fall down instantly and give me double XP and inf the second I walk into the mission. Anything less is half-**** and we shouldn't be happy about it.

You're squishy, or you're on a team and there are squishies and you don't want to go over the aggro cap.

Offenders are generally pretty useless if they ignore their primary rather than just take one that helps them kill faster, and incidentally helps the rest of the team kill faster. Skipping Transfusion is just....whaaaa? Skipping ID is meh, especially at 20 when there isn't that much mez being thrown around. Although if they had Siphon Power and Speed Boost they wouldn't be completely useless.

Who are these mystical "most teams" that run at +2? Are those the same people that used to run on Invincible despite multiple teamwipes because "it's awesome XP?" If fights last a really long time it isn't awesome XP, and you need to turn it down or find a smarter team.

Shield Charging into the mob rather than running in and hitting Soul Drain usually stops them from dropping the Quartzes right away, giving me time to kill them before they do. If they drop one I'm dead. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, get hit by a x8 DE spawn all attacking at once on a shielder and you're eating floor.

The doorknob can earn respecs the same way the rest of us do. It's more useful than some people I've dragged along on respec trials.

That's what my DM/SD is going to do. Assault, Tactics, ditch Focused Accuracy, pick up Conserve Power and Physical Perfection. That should put me over the 300 DPS mark.

This....

combined with this has made me a little less paranoid about the super-secrit i20 beta. Crossing my fingers that it's that and the devs aren't stupid.

As for the inherent Fitness, since it'll be slottable and available from level 1 (or close enough to it), the only question I have left is, will the values be the same as they currently are? If so, then no problem.

Yes, you can, except for ambushes. If you have an ambush tied to a trigger you can't tie anything else to it, but you can have as many other objectives as the map will allow spawn off a single trigger.

I have gotten several purples in the course of getting my PvP IO. Which admittedly I haven't gotten yet, but by the time I do I'll probably have earned enough inf to buy a second one. It's still fun, especially the one with the wave after wave of Malta, the one with the Nazis and the one where I rescue Ravenstorm and he aggros the whole room and dies.

I'm not going to get a respec recipe because I don't need them, I have several unused vetspecs and if those run out I can do a trial. I use Mids.

You don't have to do anything.

Since you're so opposed to "farming," or even presumably playing the game at 50 (since even without farming you can earn more than enough to buy a respec recipe for each build in a reasonable time frame) what do you need respecs or dual builds for?

One thing it will do is give characters access to more powers before level 30 or so. It will definitely give you access to more powers before 20. I dunno, what with the last few issues adding more 20-30 content and GR being all 1-20 maybe their datamining shows that the majority of players spend most of their time at those levels?

Of course the fact that after you hit 30 new content tends to dry up and you're playing through a wasteland of old, lame fed-exes to Azuria and Brickstown contacts sending you to Perez or some guy in St. Martial sending you to the far end of Nerva for some arc that frankly isn't compelling enough to be worth the trip has nothing to do with it, oh no, it couldn't possibly.

Yeah, that would be nice too.

Actually, speaking of ITFs, one of the things that "alarm points," traps, and other security measures could do is make stealthing, and therefore speed-running more difficult. It would also make Stalkers more lol-worthy than ever, but the devs hate them anyway.

Or they could finally get rid of that stupid room entirely, as well as other mission maps that serve no purpose but to annoy. Multiple-elevator tech labs come to mind. Or maybe some of the larger mission maps will be shrunk down somewhat.

And maybe they'll finally do something about the lag in Arachnos bases. Maybe? Hopefully? No, probably not. Or finally fix the holes in the smooth caves/Cimerora caves so Stormies can play too? Again probably not.

It could mean graphical upgrades to the older maps. It could mean new skins for existing maps. It could mean the removal of some of the more annoying-to-find blinky spawn points (behind the crates in the warehouse, I'm looking at you. For ten minutes). It could mean some new tilesets replacing some maps in the "generic warehouse/lab/office/cave" rotations, much like Praetoria got new tech maps and some of the blue caves have been replaced with smooth caves.

It could mean changes to map dynamics...addition of "alarm points" that spawn ambushes, security cameras, defenses such as turrets, stuff on fire, destructible terrain, changes to spawn points, etc. Which would be very cool, but I wouldn't call it "minor."

As long as it's not more rewards that you can only earn by not playing.