Iannis

I thought I was just lagging when I saw that going on. That's happening for everybody, huh?

I wish that MA would somehow show a breakdown of the decimal points. A drop from a 5 to a 4 might just be a drop to a 4 and 3/4 stars, or something.

The Rating system is ultimately just a joke though. Farm maps full of nothing but Lts or Bosses get 5-starred. SFMA content gets lowballed or not played because they're not good Tickets/XP. Some of those Dev Choices...I've played better arcs that aren't dev choiced. Without some random dev giving it a shiny golden star indicating you should rate it 5 stars they probably wouldn't be sitting on 999+ 5 Stars either.

I wish they kept some sort of short number of anonymous reviews (key point--anonymous so internet psychos can't stalk you for not loving their Mary Sue character who hangs out with Manticore and Statesman wishes he was as cool as). Maybe I could look at see a poorly written comment saying "UR ARC R SUX" with a 1-star so I could realize, 'Gee, that guy doesn't exactly sound like someone I would trust to review an arc' but another review with a 1 star that reads, "Your Custom mobs are all extremely difficult. A surprise ambush of 3 /Ninjitsu Archvillains when I complete random mission objective is not cool" sounds like a convincing argument to not do the arc because it legitimately is bad.

I think Statesman just went off the Story Bible which they've always claim they have. Or he did the easiest possible way to do the changeover--Search and Replace :P. That led to a few hilarious things, like I think WW2 was fought against the Nictus instead of Germany and Axis forces, until they began scrambling to fix the damage the retcon did. Just considering how crummy the Council is compared to the Column proves there couldn't have been much content in that bible to draw off of.

I always figured, assuming they weren't turned into the Council for lolGermany laws, it would've been a similar switchover to what the Lost and the Rikti experienced. Requiem's mysterious source, The Center, were aliens instead of some network of old gestapo farts who kept fighting a decades-old war using nazi gold to outfit the Columnist army. Beyond the elite Vampyre and Werewolves would be the secret innermost Council, who were wise to the fact they weren't fighting for some neo-reich.

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Similarly, the Bronze Recipe reward roll is quite nice. For a few hundred tickets you typically get recipes that you can use or sell on the market for millions

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I've never gotten anything but garbage from Bronze rolls :/

Not that Gold is all gold either.

That first week the devs must've had the Numina and Miracle drop rates set WAAAAAY too high, though. I think that's why those prices crashed. I remember having saved up a heap of merits for the switchover and had a miracle + and something like 3 numina +'s on that first day burning a heap of speed ITF and LGTF merits on random...now you don't see those kinds of drops. Or I don't...all luck of the (not-so-)Random Number Generator. Maybe I just haven't hit that SWEET spot on their number cruncher again yet.

But yeah, don't make it Arena. I tried it out when it first launched and it caused my longest lapse in subscription. Statesman wasted the dev's time making lolpvp (that was before Geko, and now Castle, have wasted way too much of their time trying to make a game that never had PvP balance in mind into a PvP game instead of making new sets or better PvE content). Only reason people use Arena now is to farm themselves to get PvP IO drops.

Yeah, auto-exemping really leaves no reason for everyone to stick there. Before the professional doorsitter mentors just alt-tabbed out and browsed sites and let the guy purpled and built specifically to farm the map do it, and the sidekicks just did the same since they couldn't tag along even if they wanted to.

Of course if you're a lowbie fighting 52/54s you probably aren't much in the way of help. But at least it's not as BORING as doorsitting. I could fall asleep easily in those godforsaken TV farms redside. GIANT MAP! MOBS THAT PROC VENG! AWESOME!

Those old builds are still good for purple recipe farmin' though.

Does MA still have the squat-thrust AS strike? That's also a strike against it :lol:
At least as a DM-er I shove a GIANT SKULL into the baddies.

The Destined One's destiny was to be the leader of Arachnos who helps subjugate the world. Naturally, Recluse murders you since you're the only threat left. Depending on which Patron you have I think the world can also face imminent destruction because of the war between your faction of Arachnos and the loyalist faction. In a few I think the Circle of Thorns or Nemesis are still alive and kicking.

The VEATs prove reading the future isn't written. You're consistently not on the truly divined Destined One list, but you actually change Destiny after you beat the snot out of Kalinda and go punch Statesman in the jewels while he delivers a Newsie speech on power proliferation.

With how much you manipulate and travel back and forth in the Timestream it's not all that surprising that the future is written in water.

And at the end of time there are only two Gods left. Rularuu and Lord Nemesis. They tamper with the timestream from the cafe at the end of the universe, both trying to destroy the other.

I doubt they'll keep Ninjitsu unique to Stalkers. Sort of surprised Castle didn't give it to scrappers already...and put in a Quick Recovery instead of Hide just to troll stalkers who ask why QR isn't in Regen or Willpower.

Maybe Castle'll give Stalkers Dual Pistols with a modified short range, though, but not the other melees. BOOM HEADSHOT STRIKE! PWNT! LOLOLOLOL

Nah, in Hindsight the devs just wish they hadn't made the epic pools for Heroes so *good*. Hence watered down Patron powers.

Maybe they'll Force Respec you? Maybe nothing will be impacted at all and you'll just unlock both blue and redside epic pools if you betrayed your side.

Well, he really DOES look like M Bison. Except he sports the 5th Column emblem, which he probably shouldn't. I mean, he was Amerika Korps, and was put on ice before Requiem came out of hiding with the Column.

I wish he appeared without his hat at first, but in the last mission he says "OK, I'M GOING TO START FIGHTING...SERIOUSLY." (alternately: FINALLY, FOUND MY HAT) and pulls the visor down to cover his eyes. At that point you realize, "oh god we're about to get owned, son"

Heh, those bosses they're farming in AE are purposefully designed to be as weak as possible.

Go fight a bunch of level 54 Vanguard bosses and see how well THAT goes. Mmm, massive -DEF -RES debuffs feel GREAT. Or, Rularuu. Eyeballs with hax accuracy, Wisps that can shove you inside a bubble.

I'm not sure if double XP carries as much weight considering how fast MA lets people level up nowadays anyway.

Give me a Double Drop Rate weekend and it would be AWESOME! Dr. Q, now worth 200 merits! Purple recipes: now you might actually get one to drop naturally doing an ITF or a LGTF instead of having to farmfarmfarm for it! Rikti Mothership Raid now gets you a heapin' heap of vanguard merits (why aren't vanguard merits tradeable, anyway?)

Hue changes won't have such a HUGE impact on me. If possible I'll try to tint them all the least visible color, though. If I still played my regen scrapper i'd be GIDDY with joy at not being a huge green beacon of light anymore.

If my Fire Armor scrapper could pick to only have flames coming from the Fist location I'd be happy too, even though I don't play that particular character much anymore. But choosing between specific locations powers emanate from is different from just changing their color.

I do eagerly await to see firekin imps the color of rainbows, though. I might goof off by making my MM summon bright pink thunderclouds and yellow ice slicks. If they give me some kind of AE screen where I can pick different looks for my pets it would be *sweet* (think how Soldiers of Arachnos costume screen--you can only change a bit here and there from a default uniform, but enough to look a lot different from one another), but that's a different beast from color customization.

Don't you eat that yellow snow.

Most I'd ever hope for is the ability to respec your Primary and Secondary. I mean, drastic power changes do happen in comics. But changing your AT seems like it'd just lead to a giant mess.

Shard Reflections, I'd imagine. It's been too long since I looked at a pack of them to see if there's a thug with a baseball bat though.

Hm, that manually setting level range works goofy worries me. I might need to check my lowbie-focused arc again and make sure that it's still spawning 1-15 proper-like (when I was using a coralax to levelset one door with trolls and LB to 15 instead of 20)

If you nerf the XP out, the players using AE to PL alts will just flock back to GV or PI and go back to selling spots on their TV/BM farms again. Purple recipes might stop climbing up in price, though, with people getting those drops again.

Redside I appreciate MA's Tickets . All the Redside SFs give crummy Merit rewards...when people actually try to run them. The respec trial is the saving grace...no sitting in the TV reactor being bored out of your skull waiting for respawns, wee!

I noticed my custom mobs (a Claws/Pain, and a Mace/Pain) were also refusing to use anything except one heal. I think Custom Pain Dom is borked. This was running with my level 50, so there's no chance they weren't high enough level to have access to those powers.

Also I gave a broadsword minion-type Parry and the idiots just kept cycling Parry. Who needs to Hack and Slash: I HAS DEFENSE BUFF NOW! Had to take it away so they'd stop being dumb.

Some custom stuff just doesn't work in the AI right I guess.

My first thoughts

First thought: 45 or so minute long Reichsman fight. OK, this has gotten to be a pretty hilariously long slugfest (i even dropped an HVAC on him during the fight. Somebody else dropped a Rikti Drone, lol. Nobody else dropped a big and nasty pet on him...maybe 8 shivans would pummel him down quick, assuming they wouldn't spaz out on all the 5th). It's like I'm really playing EverQuest again! The TF timer clocked in at about 2 hours. Pretty sure it was an hour spent in that last map.

Second thought a): How did Statesman manage to beat this guy back in the 80s (or 90s? whenever it was Amerika Korp attacked Earth)? We should all be speaking German right now considering how vastly stronger he is compared to Statesman or his other evil twin, the Tyrant...
2nd though b): At least they didn't make him a Nictus.

Final thought: This was only worth 20 Merits? Oh well, there's always speed ITFs and LGTFs for merits, or ticket farming for random recipe rolls. Devs sure do like trolling redside.

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aren't Stalkers supposed get a temp power that makes certain machines in the SF useable?

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Oh yeah, I got to hit the killswitch. It's kind of fun to turn all the nazis into puddles of goo. WHO GOT DA AOE DAMAGE NOW, SUCKAS!
We ran out of nazi reinforcement waves long before Reichs fell over. I guess maybe you'd constantly be getting harassed by them if not for having a Stalker to nuke 'em.

That mission where he uses Fist of Tyranny on you cutscene into a 5th Bunker jail was awesome.

Dark / whatever.

They suck end. They're expensive. They don't really mature until late. But I've always found them to be good fun, they can hold their own just fine if played competently, and the rare Psi factions are afraid of ME.

Well, actually, every minion in Paragon is afraid of me. That's one of the fun things about a Dark tank.

I rated this thread 1 star. No HOF for you.


Now if you'd said Hitler instead of Rome, maybe you would have gotten 4.

AV ambushes at the door aren't cool, Beavis.

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I did just 3 days ago a LRST with 7 corruptors and a brute and I dare any one to melt these AV's as fast as we did. And we have corruptors of all shapes and sizes on the team not just kins.

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Wasn't that the original way people ran Recluse's TF before people began realizing you could do a non-optimized team so long as everyone just dropped Nukes and Shivans to wipe the Phalanx out easy-peasy? Not possible for a Master run, of course.

Stalker is fun. They still have a bad rap from too many bad players being team leeches. But, I can't deny, in a situation where AOE is king (farming gajillions of mobs for Purple recipe drops before, farming bosses custom-tailored to be easy Ticket drops in AE now) a primarily Single-target AT designed around rapidly eliminating real nuisance mobs isn't much wanted or needed. Nobody in their right mind is putting in Sappers or stuff in their farm arcs :x. Dropping the AOE Debuff/Fear from an AS is nice, but Brutes just stomping out AOE on everything around them is nicer...

Once I had someone actually kind of SURPRISED I was able to scrap so well. Apparently they had only ever grouped with crappy stalkers who rolled the AT to "i 1shot u i r l33t" in lolpvp

Malaise is the posterboy of City of Rogues. Depending on what arc you're playing he's either good or chaotic evil.

Soldiers can go good. Hugo and Alita's story arc where Hugo shakes off the Bane indoctrination and tries to lead a rebellion inside the mental network of Recluse's elite troops is proof of that.

By the same token Warshades or Kheldians might've become so fed up with Good being dumb that they decided an oppressive regime has the best chance of finally crushing and conducting a full-scale genocide of the Nictus from the face of creation. Or they might've decided to turn to the dark side and become the new Space Nazi Emperor themselves.

Huntsmen are good stuff.

Bane feels too much like a gimpy stalker to me. Pre-Castle buffs to the AT Bane would've been better, but I *already* played a gimpy stalker. I don't want to go baaaaack. If you want to use a mace, you might as well make a Mace brute. They're better.
Crab is...well, is fine. I just don't like the crab backpack.

Huntsmen are pretty awesome. They're like Leadership-oriented Offenders. with Status Protection.

Misleading title was misleading.

I thought Posi confirmed in an interview they were FINALLY going to give Boomtown the Faultline makeover. It's been being rebuilt ever since CoV launched, according to the mission arc redside!

Ninja/Storms is fun. I have my numpad bound out to do various tasks to keep them in line, though. (sometimes jounin seem to just refuse to use their swords. Aggravating little monkeys) Bad stormies are the ones who run around just mindlessly knocking everything around...Hurricane can just as easily be a tool for keeping enemies pinned in place or herded tight for AOE splatterage. Just don't use Tornado unless you WANT to mess the battlefield up. It's good fun to watch that dervish go tearing around if you're in the mood for it, or possibly to cover your escape. Decent thing to use on enemies immune to KB, too.

About Team TP: don't rely on that idea too much. Any team you get onto will probably loathe you because Team Teleport bypasses the Teleport Prompt. I remember I was in a group of long while back, and the Thugs/Pain(i think) guy KEPT TEAM TPING. It was screwing up everyone else up, and dropping squishies into danger and he nearly got teamkicked for using it after being told to stop. Kept telling him that we HAVE prompt teleport on and that we WEREN'T clicking Accept, we weren't having the option to refuse. It's such a little piddly issue I doubt the devs have ever devoted the 5 minutes it would take to go and fix it :/.