Eva Destruction

From the SFMA search:

#99458: The Unbearable Being of Lightness

Another old arc that hasn't been updated in forever. The Legacy Chain, a group dedicated to preventing the irresponsible use of magic, is about to use magic irresponsibly. Good intentions, road to hell, blah blah. Serafina is involved for some reason, I don't know why because she has no bio and the text is very sparse, as is the mission design. The final mission includes standard critters who have been appropriated into a custom group but still have default bios, and a final EB with rad blast for some reason. My irritation at this EB is possibly due to his powerset dropping my defense from two lucks' worth into the negatives with his first shot, but after all the other problems, it really ticked me off. I could see where the author was going with this, but execution counts. A lot.

#175803: For Love or Monkeys

The first rule of Monkey Fight Club is you do not steal all the monkeys from Monkey Fight Club. Another short-ish, lighthearted arc, with mostly Standard enemies. I seem to be having decent luck with those. I turned up my difficulty to x2 before starting this since x1 was getting boring.

I just dinged 24 (it took another four exploration badges, let's call them ally patch tax, or maybe Monkey Tax), and now have Dull Pain. Two or three more arcs of decent length and without too many allies should get me to 25.

The Reichsman battle would play out the same way if he had half the HP, it would just be a lot less tedious.

Forced rolls when you accumulate enough merits would force people to roll low-level garbage instead of allowing people who ALREADY ROLL to save up until they reach a level where there is a good chance the stuff they roll will be desirable. That is why I'm completely and firmly against them.

Fix the level slider, let it go up to +3, and see if that helps mid-level supply. People are bidding on these things, so obviously they want them, but as it stands if want to generate pool Cs that I can use for my level 35 exemp-friendly build I have to level-lock my character at 35. I've done that once, and I'm not doing it again.

Ally behavior is wonky, so if you go back and reacquire the ally it might just get up and start following you. I haven't checked to see if non-combat allies do this for the last few patches though, so it might have been fixed for them.

Yes, I agree it is a catastrophic failure in encounter design. Have I completed it with a sub-optimal team? Yes, I think we had a /kin Controller and a Storm Defender on my first run. Was it difficult? No, the only times anyone died was when squishies stood too close, and they were immediately rezzed. Was it tedious? Very.

You're trying to have your EBs spawn alone, correct? That's the only way you can guarantee you'll only fight each EB once.

Each EB has to be set as a "fight a boss" detail. The mission enemy group needs to be set to Empty, and the boss's surrounding enemy group needs to be set to Empty. Otherwise it will default to surrounding the boss with either the mission's main enemy group, or they boss's own group, and since your group is only EBs, you will get multiples.

My problem with Ignite, now that it is no longer spammable, is its cast time. It's just too long for a power like this. A solo character has to factor the cast time of their immobilize, plus redraw, into the cast time (unless you took Cryo Freeze Ray or have a tentacle-spamming fluffy...powers shouldn't be balanced around corner cases though) while a teamed character often finds that the enemies are dead or knocked out of the patch before they have time to take any damage. A 4-second cast time for a power that isn't guaranteed to do its full damage is too long. Compare other "burst" powers (except Shout, that one kinda bites for DPA); even Power Burst, half the cast time, almost half the damage and the enemy is guaranteed to take all of it.

Full Auto. 16 targets. That is all. I would even argue that Flamethrower should be expanded to 16 as well. It's a huge cone. If AR is intended to be an AoE-focused set, and its AoE output is mostly in the form of cones, it can break a few rules, especially since unlike the other AoE sets (Fire, Archery, Rad Blast to an extent) it suffers in the single-target department.

Hmm, a passing thought....add a +tohit +dam buff to Sniper Rifle, kind of like Follow Up? Conceptually, it would make sense, as you've taken the time to get a bead on your targets and can more accurately shoot them where they'd take the most damage.

M30 Grenade: possibly add a slight Fire DoT effect to it? Or replace the lethal component with Fire...this power seems to be considered one of the skippables, so something should be done to make it more attractive within the context of the set without unbalancing it. Adding a less-resisted damage type makes sense to me.

A few things that come to mind:

Parks that are more parklike, rather than just random bits of greenery. Playgrounds, picnic tables, washrooms, barbecue pits -- something to indicate they are used for recreational purposes, not just random green places for villains to hang out.

An old "downtown" district. Storefronts on older buildings, narrow streets, narrow sidewalks. An area that is old but well-maintained and high-traffic. Port Oakes would be great for something like this, it could be near Marconeville.

Hopping through Steel Canyon, it is far too open for a "big business" district. Those places often have a claustrophobic air, property costs are so high that empty space is minimized. There isn't any grass, there are maybe some deliberately planted trees in planters along the narrow sidewalk, and that's it. Steel Canyon currently looks more like "skyscraper park" than a true canyon.

I agree that the train stations need more variety. Look at real life transit systems. I'm thinking of the Toronto subway system because that's the one I'm familiar with, and I could tell what station I was in without looking at the sign, because they all had a slightly different layout. Even just adding different skins would make for some variety.

And update the billboards already! "Earth for humans?" Seriously? How un-pc is that? I'm surprised Kheldians aren't up in arms over those. Add some less controversial Vanguard recruitment billboards, and there should be some for Longbow too, along with the usual business advertisements.

More from the SFMA search:

#135563: Forever Lost

This has issues with characterization, and bosses named "Random Boss1" It does have a story, just not very well done.

#176460: Just Say "No" to Dihydrogen Monoxide!

The Council's latest diabolical plans involve Dihydrogen Monoxide, a substance that has been linked to tumors, catastrophic brake failure, and That Room. It has the usually dreaded 1-54 level range, but it's Council so it's ok. At three missions it only slightly stretches the joke, and I get a free towel.

Filters never work.

I agree that trial accounts have no need to post except maybe in the "Player Questions" forum. If they're limited to one forum, it should be far easier to moderate. But really, trial accounts have no need to post. Most people on paid accounts don't post, and yet still manage to play the game. Asking questions in-game usually gets you an answer anyway.