Iannis

Red Caps are little jerks who like to pound the top of your head like it's a bongo drum. Of course, they're just doing what they're born to do. They're not as evil as Westin Phipps of Haven House, who simply delights in inflicting pain and misery and oppresses the weak for his own sadistic pleasure and getting paid by Arachnos for his collaboration.

With the Tuatha and the Fir Bolg free they'd have to find some other poor suckers to feed off of, though. They're parasitic...evil like a tapeworm is evil (ps there needs to be a giant tapeworm monster inhabiting the Sewers), but still bad news.

Wretch hungry. You get Wretch dinner?

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Retrieve Wretch's special lunchbox from an Arachnos base.
Arachnos Base commander says, "...I guess...Lord Recluse sending him to bed without dinner for wrecking a lab backfired on him..."

"YAY Wretch have supper now! Wait..there not...SNACK PACK MISSING!
WRETCH WANT SNAAAAAAACK PAAAAAAAACK!"

MISSION OBJECTIVE: Retrieve Wretch's pudding from Doctor Aeon.

"Mmmm, pudding."

2 merits received!

Ehh, Hazard Zones were there because originally I'm not sure they knew how players were actually going to play.

But, patrolling the streets was a necessity because contacts could and would run dry on you during certain level ranges. Plus, what with the ridiculously inbalanced underling XP Crey's and Eden was great PL'ing for fire tankers....ha, that was the reason there were level requirements on those zones that are finally being removed, years later, not that anyone even cares about it....Pretty good incentive to just pound mobs out on the streets when there was no difficulty slider (you could find tougher packs in hazard zones), the mission/story arc completion rewards were peanuts, no half debt for indoor defeat (made because most blasters lived in permadebt), some of those missions were created to be as obnoxious as possible (SAVE 50 HOSTAGES FROM GIANT ORENBEGA MAP YOU STILL MAKE ME ANGRY!) with niches and hooks much more hidden than they are today. And, of course, mission doors were purposefully spread across the city as a travel timesink so sometimes it was nice to not have to spend so much time running around.

They're a failed experiment. It'd be nice if they did something to them, but I dunno what they could do to make people really interested in going there. Make 'em level 50 with higher purple recipe drop rates and open 'em up to both sides or something, I dunno.

Issue 17: TO THE MOON, ALICE, TO THE MOON!

I expect a few Praetorian versions of existing zones. I would certainly *hope* it's more than 3 or something (that's the minimum number to qualify as "several", right?)...I guess that'll be the real test of how good all those minions they hired are working out if they surprise me with 10 or 12 or something.

I'd love to see Lord Extrovert's Grandville that's filled with Red Caps building rainbow bridges, and see a world where the Tyrant just has a really awesome god-emperor throne built in the middle of Atlas Park where his worshipers have to gather daily on penalty of death to prostate and chant for several hours about how awesome he is.

Mako would probably look like Aquaman...

I think it's just that Mercs don't particularly stand out. Thugs do the same thing, but better.

Oh no, no flashbang disorient grenades that scatter things!

I wonder that since that gun turret summon power comes with little jets now why the Commando doesn't summon one. I heard he did in CoV beta, but had it removed. Considering it was stationary pet so the turret was kind of meh I can see why nobody complained.

Combine the Cathedral of Pain (way to be a feature of CoV and still not in game years later. GJ statesman) with The Coming Storm and make Mender Nemesis vs God.

"What does God need with a Time Machine?" your mysterious ally asks in a note.

I'd say Hazard Zone facelifts, but what with MA nobody would probably care enough to leave the holodeck anyway so making them into new leveling zones Faultline-style would kind of be a waste of time. Unless they made them all level 50.

5th Column and Reichsman running around Boom. The Sleeper beneath Dark Astoria is partially reawoken and suddenly the place is super-dangerous. Crey's Folly begins spawning mutants and Arachnos gains a foothold there with the assistance of Crey Corp.

I prefer Tactics. I just hate the targeting drone floating around.

Plus, hey, even though I doubt anyone needs it you're providing some boost to the team.

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Having a troll play the bongos on my head before exploding doesn't scream epic superheroics..

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Red Caps make me laugh when they do that. It's like an obnoxious little gnome riding on Superman's head, and he JUST CAN'T CATCH IT.

The Troll Tunnels beneath the hollows just popped into my head thinking about it, and I realized I *hate* those tunnels. They only existed to make the Hollows Trial mission door a pain in the butt to get to. I've never gone into them for any other reason, and I doubt anyone else has ever either.

And working on base raid PvP is like setting that bag of rats on fire and throwing them on a guy, kicking him in the nuts, and stealing his wallet.

I do wish they'd make the Cathedral of Pain (I STILL BELIEVE IT'S COMING SOON™!) a task force though. Stick it in Ouro as a time distortion, or in the Shard since it was supposed to be fighting Rularuu anyway, I think. I'm sure they had some usable stuff made. Just not the base raiding and items of power part of it.

RULARUU! I *still* want Rularuu Bracers. I think it'd just be awesome to have bracelets with blinking shifty eyes on them, and it would be fun for everyone instead of just weapon users.

A rularuu crown too. That's what I'd call a third eye.

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Devouring Earth could have gas bags that burst when you step on them

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As long as it doesn't stir up a swarm of angry bees. I hate Swarms so much.

Introducing more traps could be interesting. It was something they really should've thought about a lot when they made they took the Rogue class and twisted it up into Stalkers. Barracuda lets you slap a killswitch trap...I hope SO HARD that City of Rogues will have story content building on that idea. Players are too lame to invite ATs because "lol ur not a broot or a corr gtfo"? Work in reasons TO invite ATs that players, due to game mechanics, have deemed undesirables.

I hate Mercy. It's faster to sweet down the beaches and zone into PO as a level 5 than it is to run across Mercy several times doing the contact missions.

Nothing in particular blueside I hate. The Hazard Zones haven't served any purpose in ages besides to be vast chunks of empty real estate, but I don't really hate any of them. Boomtown was huge for the sake of being huge, but Crey's Folly is pretty darn big too...used to suck to cross it to get to RWZ, and so nobody ever went to the original RWZ.

Mutant pack will summon a pet Frostfire who creates awesome ice slides wherever you are.

Ugh, I loathe stalkers that "go scout". They're always useless types who just leech instead of fight. I scrap with my stalker, i don't go clear the fog of war off the map because that's SO important :P

unless they're picking priority targets by tab or something. I have macros to automatically pick out sappers or surgeons and whatnot so I can spot them immediately and then rip their head right off to keep them from being obnoxious.

I got too lazy to use /flypose. I hated how you had to be moving instead of writing a bit of code to set that to be your default flight pose, or something. Guess I could've bound a key to do it, but...meh.

I sort of wish the Events would be expanded on beyond just Rikti and the occasional ZOMBEEEEEEEHS! Nothing fancy. Maybe just basic factions, like Freakshow or Carnies or something, could swarm a zone every now and then for no other reason than because they were bored and begin wrecking the place. Go get a shiny badge for stopping them.

I think having a Tetris minigame in Pocket D would make me actually go to that otherwise useless zone. Opening the ski lodge the whole year might get me to go and goof off some too. Tetris is awesome, and the slidy ice is too. EverQuest had /Gems, which was Tetris, to play while you were bored...but, nah, make zones and maps and stuff instead of minigames. It would be kind of funny to pay Influence to buy packs of cards and play card games against each other (Lord Recluse has all the most broken, overpowered rare-print cards!), but annoying because they'd dedicate an entire Issue to it :lol:

This sort of reminds me of how Statesman used to kick around hints of a Super Secret Out of Combat Skills System which would provide alternative routes to earning XP and/or rewards that would be coming "next issue!"...nothing ever came of that, naturally, because I think States was good at talking a big game but Positron was the one who actually had to figure out how to DO it...I figured the Invention system was probably put together from old notes they made way back then.

I don't buy the SAPPAN OTHER MARCUS COLES because, if it was that easy, Lord Recluse would be sucking the life force out of every single alternate version of himself (or getting his own lifeforce sucked out by an alternate version of himself. Ha!) Instead he has zany time travel plots and builds a Web to turn Grandville into an impenetrable fortress that no one can assault or his pylons will fulcrum shift their strength into him. That's draining in-universe superheroes, not alternate-dimension Recluseses.

Requiem might fully support the Reichsman's return. It becomes an untanglable mess when you consider he's exploiting Nictus shards while in charge of Column troops in the past. He may just hope the old italian fart and the nazi superman kill each other off and he'll become supreme commander of an intergalactic army of space nazis.

Burn isn't really anything to write home to momma about anymore. That power has been nerfed down quite a lot since the glory days...

had a katana/fire armor scrapper. Was an offensive beast, but Fire Armor is weak like a wet paper sack armor and I had to hide behind a real Tank. Could keep things knocked in the Burn through the duration if I didn't goof up my soaring dragon/golden dragonfly knock attacks, but it was kinda meh. Shockwave I seriously doubt will keep multiple things in a burnstack very well, but shock and focus would be good to keep a boss stuck in the burn. Been debating deleting that scrapper, actually, it's just been collecting dust and day jobs...never even got it to 50 since groups used to evaporate due to everybody wanting to pay for the privilege of getting farmed on BM runs once you got to PI.

And keep CABs for blazing aura. Running that offensive gobbles power.

The moon is hollow and filled with a vast ocean of NAZI BLUE ROOMS

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Crap that sounds like the death of a street fighting set. Not saying this could make Martial arts look like a street fighting set though...

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If they ever do get a Street Fighting I'd hope they'd give another try to Combo system. Kick...Headbutt...PILE DRIVER! Kick...Grapple...SUPLEX! Punch...Build Up...CHI BLAST!

Yeah, I remember there used to be a way to stick a custom silent sound in to replace Targeting Drone since it drove people insane to listen to have their speakers on and have to listen to it...

you could probably do that for powers, still, but only you would know.

This'll be good for people who actually want to do anything OUTSIDE the holodeck. Maybe you can only find a few other people who want to play the outside world game anymore (self fulfilling prophecy, that: people said MA killed the game and quit playing, thus weeding out people who don't go to MA!) instead of a braindead mito farm...at least we could pop ourselves a tougher map and have more of a blast. Naturally you're going to have idiots who want to 8-man spawn on Invincible with a small team that might not be able to handle it. Just...avoid those...but maybe not, people obsessed with watching the XP bar fly probably wouldn't leave the AE building.

And the few people who were still out there in PI and GV can just set their BM and TV maps to 8-man and till soil without having to bug people "fill plz?" until it coughs up a purple after a few hours.

That's a pretty useless little power.
Yeah, unless it shows glowies on maps. Sometimes, just sometimes, you'll still have a headache finding a glowie...but most of the less visible spots that used to hide things in maps were deactivated a long time ago. Remember back when those little mail rooms would have a stack of TNT in a nook you overlooked, or there was a hostage hidden between floors in a column bunker's blue room? arggggggh