Eva Destruction

No it can't, because the cool factor is the only reason to still play the set. What could be removed is all the pauses in the Eagle's Claw animation. It would do better DPS and be more fluid so it would look better.

Also, it could have a chance of knockdown. If I'm using a guy's head as a springboard, there's a good chance he's going to fall down. And when he does, it looks really cool.

Organized crime is also organized.

I wouldn't put that choice to players right away. The first ten levels could have you working for various random hangers on, just to get a feel for the isles. As you get into the teens, you start having representatives of the factions take notice of you, and try to recruit you to their side. Once you hit the 20s you're actually doing missions directly for the factions (note that I didn't say faction) that your actions suggested loyalty to earlier. It's a more organic progression that doesn't shove a choice in the face of a potentially new player who doesn't know who these patrons are, picks Ghost Widow cause she's hawt, and is either stuck with consequences of that decision, or if the content is written so you can change sides freely and whenever you feel like it loses a lot of their sense of immersion.

Yes, there are. There are people who are fully aware that they are acting for purely selfish reasons, and do evil things with no delusions that they are benefiting anyone but themselves.

The mercenary who will kill anyone for the right price.

The would-be dictator who is in it for personal power rather than trying to further any particular ideology.

The jerk who kicks puppies because he can.

The monster who realizes that's what he is and still enjoys it.

This game is full of them.

I wonder what's going to happen when villains start coming over from Praetoria, who are not beholden to Recluse for breaking them out of prison and aren't on his list.

Oh, Scirocco has to fail, obviously. I would just like his arc not to play me for an idiot, by having Daos spell out to me why he must be stopped. I know he must be stopped, I like being bad. Even villains who don't like being bad, or think they're not bad, could see that what he's planning is a bad idea.

Ghost Widow and Black Scorpion only need to fail in order to maintain the persistent world. If this were a single-player game they would be allowed to succeed.

I don't see Nemesis accepting player villains into his army, even those dumb enough to sign up. He isn't the type to tolerate initiative in his minions, so working for him would have to pretty much exclude other content.

Freakshow, Crey, Council, sure, I can see that. Having the faction con friendly to you while you're working for them would be a nice touch too.
Yeah, that's why we're always going to be lackeys of the man, isn't it? Forever chasing the new shiny while what we already have sits there and rots in all its moldering unglory.

It would make for far more interesting arcs though. It would also make for a more pro-active feel; no longer are you doing what Arachnos says just because they say so. If the various Arachnos factions want you to work from them, they have to give you incentive. It would open up a lot more opportunity for profiteering, backstabbing, power-grabbing, working both sides against each other, and assorted other villainy.

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with letting Mako have the power of the Leviathan at his command. I should have it, not him. Scirocco's arc would have been far better without Arbiter Daos leaving the sour aftertaste of Arachnos lackey all over it. Black Scorpion's arc could be rewritten so that he fails, even without your interference, as could Ghost Widow's, thereby removing the overreaching hand of Recluse but still keeping all the patrons around...although Black Scorpion's arc is really just a hissy fit caused by the constant patron squabbling that Recluse encourages.

And it would be awesome. The web too would have to come down. Who's to say what else they're building in the Fab...maybe it could be turned into a Crey area.
Again, it would be awesome. There would be so much more variety to the missions in such a world than just Arachnos Arachnos Arachnos Longbow Arachnos Longbow Longbow. It would be everyone against everyone, and every man for himself. And there's you. You're an enterprising villain, out to further your own ends. You get to choose who would best help you, and ditch them when they're no longer useful, instead of running errands to pass the time while you become powerful enough to help some other guy take over the world.

That's why I've started bringing characters that can handle team-sized spawns to PuG TFs. I find that if somebody just starts fighting anyway, people will join in.

I do understand the desire to skip things sometimes, especially in the older, more tedious TFs. But that is no reason to just stand by the door. While the stealther is stealthing, you could be fighting.

If you have no knockback protection you go flying, and I'm sure it's epic, and you get up and you're all "oh, it's on now!"

If you do have knockback protection, the repel effect still sends you sliding halfway across the map. On your feet. It's not epic at all.

Ah, but it can. Put a Kinetic Combat chance of Knockdown proc in it. It's knockdown not knockback, but it makes more sense for the animation anyway. When that proc fires, it is truly epic.

Also epic: Ragnarok Chance of Knockdown proc in Full Auto.

Not as epic but hilarious: Ragnarok Chance of Knockdown proc in Caltrops.

Totally epic: Trip mine.

Not so epic: Enemies getting knocked back to get stuck in the walls on cave maps.

Epic: Using Tornado to get them out. Any problem caused by knockback can be solved by more knockback.

You kind of have to, if you have alts.

The problem with McQueen specifically is that his arc, which has you stopping a second Rikti invasion, has a higher level requirement than Levantera's arc, which puts you right in the middle of a second Rikti invasion. And if your new hero is running through a zone and dropships show up, how do you ignore that? Do you actually go to another zone and pretend you didn't see that, and put off the RWZ content until 50 so your character's personal timeline remains consistent?

I don't even care about any of that. I make more inf and get more drops solo. I just like to kill things. A task force allows me to kill special things in special circumstances with a shiny badge and some merits at the end.

I have ONE travel power (occasionally two, if I took SS because there was nothing else I wanted at 49), and sometimes ONE Stealth power (if it does something useful besides stealth). And a whole bunch of other powers to kill things, keep me alive while I kill things, or help others kill things. I came to fight, not stand around and wait for a TP.

A half-tested WiP is still more tested than most.

I hereby submit that the devs look at the terrible ideas of allowing us to set the level of random merit rolls and revamping the AE search interface.

I'm talking about specifically pool C recipes. Granted, I don't memorize every single one, but there are quite a few recipes that I know are pool Cs; you'd think after all this time, running around on x8, and whacking bosses just because they're there, I'd have gotten one.

Until the amount of inf you can earn from boss drops equals the amount of inf made from purples by players who run with bosses off, that's still not going to work. Of course for Controllers who farm, bosses present a risk that is probably not worth any reward.

Yeah, you try that and tell me how it works out for you. 'Cause right now it's not working out very well for me. I fight many many bosses (not because I live in some magical pony fairy-tale land where I want to help people, but because I am more concerned with fun than efficiency, I find bosses more fun than no bosses, and I want those pool Cs and the inf they sell for) and I have yet to get a significant pool C drop from one.

That is why "Looking for Feedback" and "Final" are two separate flags.

Then people would change the flags on their farms so they could get tickets from ratings. Thereby removing many of the benefits of filtering out "Work in Progress" arcs.

IMO, it's the risk you take when you publish something that's unfinished. We have had changes made to test mode so you can test risk-free. If you want those tickets so badly, you risk someone nailing you with a bad rating, on the off chance they find your arc among the other 18,000 0-star WiPs. You can always unpublish and republish to wipe the bad rating out.

This, pretty much. You don't really need to seed items that are already available. They may be expensive now (which makes them a greater inf sink, since market fees are higher), but they are there.

It was in the patch notes, I think. Of course it was a minor thing overshadowed by new shinies so I'm not surprised you and probably many others didn't notice or forgot.

I'll admit I'm basing my observations entirely on my own playstyle. I don't turn bosses off when I'm running at +something dumb/x8 at 50. I'm a frickin' Scrapper, bosses are my natural prey. I also raise my difficulty as I'm leveling up. At some point around level 40 or so, on a melee toon or a debuff Corruptor, my difficulty gets to the point where bosses start spawning in random groups. Before that, I'm only getting bosses that spawn as mission objectives. And before that, I'm a lowbie and running with bosses turned off.

Maybe the "no bosses when solo" option should be rethought as well. On lower difficulties it's used by weak soloers or AoE Blasters and such, yes, so it needs to be allowed, but on x8? Who really runs -1/x8/no bosses except farmers?

Using one of the most soloable Defender builds as an example of why Defenders don't suck solo is a bad fit. On the other hand, running arcs with a team-support oriented Empath and complaining that they're too hard is dumb and I will ignore you. Pick a character who can solo well...and by "solo" I mean "solo nearly any dev-created content in the game," not "solo Council radio missions." THEN you can complain when you run into customs that kill you more than a group made of Malta Sappers, Longbow Nullifiers and Rularuu eyeballs.

One thing I learned when some critters gave no XP is that the XP awarded is no indicator of difficulty. For instance, let's say hypothetical author was making an Energy Melee/Electric Armor boss. He gives the critter every single power from both sets....except Power Blast. Now we have a critter with Build Up, hard-hitting melee attacks that stun, auto-hit end drain, mez resistance, and decent damage resistance that only gives 40% XP.

Either an average of the last 5 or the last price. Remember, these are meant to be an inf sink. If they are listed at "buy it NAO" prices, that's fine. It means the guy with more inf than patience gets his bid filled, leaving the guy with more patience than inf to get the next recipe a real person lists.

People probably aren't fighting as many bosses at lower levels, so it's not really helping as much where the shortage is the worst.

Is that like the dirty logic people were using to argue in favor of a market merge?