Jade_Dragon

True. If you are fighting against multiple spawns with occasional pauses in attacks, then the chance of the crash happening during one of those lulls increases. OTOH, they can still happen while you are fighting, while the Rage bonus is useless if you are not fighting. The more often the crashes, the more often they will come while you are actually fighting.

The fact that you are crashing more often in an increasingly smaller period of time is a big factor too, as Edana pointed out.

I will add that a good "hook", like some chat binds that make witty comments when you throw out a taunt, can make playing a character a bit more fun even when you're soloing. Even a good costume, or a gimmick like a Dominator using a second costume for when he activates Domination. Or a robot that always uses Self Destruction when Unstoppable is about to crash. (That's one I came up with recently and really love doing )

I think you just worded your suggestion wrong. Like I said, parity means "equality". It DOESN'T mean "identical". There is parity in the Hero side having the Statesman Task Force, and the Villain side having the Lord Recluse Strike Force. The two are not exactly the same, and in fact Rogues and Vigilantes get to do both, but because that is fairly limited in scope, that's not a problem.

(Besides, it's pretty much a given that the Alignment Merits are the parity to Rogues/Vigilantes getting more opportunity to earn Reward Merits from Task Forces)

Here's some other suggestions I might make in the spirit of the idea:

1) Add some new Newspaper/Police Band missions that are more in the spirit of vengeance or making money. A native can choose these missions if they feel like being more of a "grey" character themselves, without actually changing Alignment. It would be somewhat like the different "feels" of the Tip missions. Then, instead of a Safeguard or Mayhem Mission, a Vigilante or Rogue would get a special kind of mission of their own. A Rogue could try to rob the bank as with the Mayhem mission, but also get points for protecting propery. A Vigilante could get a mission to sneak in and beat up a villain that the police have cornered, while trying to dodge the cops that want to stop him. Both would get their respective missions in either city.

2) As with my last post, add special contacts that ask you to "do good" in the Rogue Isles or something nasty in Paragon City. Heroes and Villains that don't consider themselves the kind to do this can just skip the contact. But the Vigilantes and Rogues will find them right up their alley.

3) Open up some of the existing contacts for Rogues. They already gain access to these contacts with Newspaper missions, let them do some "preliminary" missions, maybe a single arc. These missions would not be identical to their existing missions, but similar. They also don't earn you the Contact's cell phone number.

Some contacts, that don't even require you to do a Newspaper mission to unlock them, could just give Rogues their usual mission. Again, I'm thinking the Midnighter Club mission here.

4) If this is possible, add a new Task Force that makes players on the team temporarily "grey". The mission can then go freely between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Heroes and Villains would enjoy this because it gives them the opportunity to experience travelling between the cities, while Rogues and Vigilantes could be required to initiate it. In this case, the mission being unique to greys might be balanced by the benefit natives would get out of joining it as a teammate.

I've never heard of that. AFAIK Praetorians entering Paragon City or the Rogue Isles get the same mechanism for picking up native Contacts as a Hero or Villain that switches sides.

EATs are different, the reason they are called "Epic" archetypes is presumably because they have a tie-in storyline. And besides, EATs do not get content which is exclusive to one faction or another. There are both HEATs and VEATs. They were not introduced at the same time, but it was understood that VEATs would be introduced to bring parity to HEATs, and a storyline would be introduced to bring parity to the HEAT storyline.

The devs have said introducing content that is only accessable to a small percentage of the player base was a mistake. That was why they lowered the unlocking requirement from level 50 to level 20, and why EATs have tended to lag behind other ATs when gaining new features, such as Power Customization.

As I said, the Rogues gave up the Hero/Vigilante tips to gain the unique Rogue tips. Are you willing to give up some Villain contacts for your unique Rogue contacts?

Let's stop beating around the bush here. There are really only three reasons to go over to Paragon City as a Rogue:

1) You are in the process of becoming a Hero.

2) You want to team with other players on the blue side.

3) You want to earn badges.

There are plenty of role playing reasons to become a Rogue. But the only reason TO GO TO PARAGON CITY is because you want to be a hero. You want to perform heroic deeds and save people. If you want to do that, you might as well finish the job and switch sides. You can rely on your teammates to provide heroic tasks to perform, but if you want to truly be a hero you need to prove yourself to the Contacts so they will accept you.

The game assumes that if you are in Paragon City, you're trying to redeem yourself, to become a Hero. And I think that's a natural assumption. You may not want to take that final step, because you still have sentimental ties to your home (or not) but just being in Paragon City is pushing you towards being a Hero.

It's a City of Heroes, after all. You don't rob banks or put the hit on mooks in Paragon City.

Now, I wouldn't mind seeing some options where you can do something heroic in the Rogue Isles, or engage in some "black ops" and make some shady deals under the table in Paragon City. But I'd want to be able to do that with ANY character. I already role play many of my "villains" as coming back after the mission is over to beat the snot out of their Contact for putting them in that mess. If I had the ability to secretly be a "vigilante" in the Rogue Isles, even if I wasn't a Vigilante, then I'd jump at it.

There's no reason to JUST give Rogues and Vigilantes the ability to do that, though. Not unless this isn't about parity, and this is instead about making Rogues and Vigilantes better than Heroes and Villains. Parity means "equality". It doesn't mean "I get to do everything Heroes can do AND everything Villains can do." Or even "I get something special because I CAN'T do everything both Heroes and Villains can do."

The Praetorian only contacts are only from 1 to 20. And after they reach 20, Praetorians become Heroes or Villains just like everyone else.

Since Rogues and Vigilantes can't exist prior to 20 either, I would say there is an argument for there being three well-defined factions up until 20, and then two blurred factions after that. Not as blurred as they would be if both sides could cross over freely regardless of alignment, but more than it was.

Keep in mind also that Heroes or Vigilantes higher than level 20 (and that includes all Rogues and Vigilantes) would have outlevelled all of the contacts in Praetoria anyway. There would be no point in allowing them to access them.

Tips are equally available to Rogues, Vigilantes, Heroes, and Villains. The devs introduced content for everyone, not just Rogues or Vigilantes or those looking to become Rogues or Vigilantes.

And the Rogues may have unique Paragon City missions now, but they lost the normal Tip missions in order to gain them. Personally, I don't think that was necessary, Heroes and Vigilantes still have two choices per tip, while Rogues still only have one. But perhaps at a later time the new Tips will be given multiple options as well.

You have not lost anything that you already had as a Villain. You have gained the ability to participate in teams on the other side. That may not be enough for you, but it is more than you had. And you didn't have to give up anything to get it. (You have to give up Alignment Merits, but those didn't exist before)

You also have the option to go full Hero, and then Vigilante, at which time you will be the one running the missions from the Contacts on the blue side, and you will be going over to the red side to team.

And the pun is mightier than the (s)word.

No, no, you groan at puns, instead of laughing at them. That's what I meant, I thought it was funny.

I always pictured it as similar to Spines, you're basically shooting the claws out and "popping" another set to replace them. Widows really implement that better, visually.

Although in the case of my own Claws Scrapper, she's actually summoning an energy wave, which I think is the "official" explanation. She is a robot, after all.

Unfortunately, there really isn't anything that can be done about it, since changing the animation of a power can't change was it DOES. A ranged attack is a ranged attack, period. Making Focus or Shockwave into a melee attack would effect the balance of the set. And honestly, there were so many other melee sets that could have gotten a ranged attack (Energy could fire a burst of energy as easily as Claws, and a weapon could be thrown) and yet the devs seemed to be inconsistent about whether they felt that a Melee set should include a ranged attack or not. Claws almost seemed like trying to add a ranged attack where there DIDN'T need to be one.

Well, one important point is that the whole point behind Rogues and Vigilantes is to take a half step towards eliminating the faction restrictions that already exist. Rogues cannot talk to contacts to take Hero missions, but they CAN run them. The limitiation is, again, just so there is still a reason to play either a Hero or a Villain.

With that in mind, introducing a new faction with missions that no one else can run does seem to be opposed to that mindset. On the other hand, the factions already exist, and while the side switching system can smooth over it, there's nothing it can do to eliminate it. Even Praetoria can't eliminate the faction system, just go over it with a new coat of paint.

So while I agree that while there should be no content EXCLUSIVELY for one faction or the other, to me there's nothing wrong with the contact's dialog or even the content itself being different based on the faction. That already EXISTS, Rogues in Paragon City already have their own content for all of the Hero Contacts, that content is that the Contact says, "I don't talk to villains". The lack of content indicates a faction difference. So all that is needed is to add an alternative option.

I wouldn't be opposed to this, even though I would be opposed to adding a whole new contact and content that only the Rogue (the representative of the Villain faction in Paragon City) can take. That's based on the principle that if the devs are going to introduce content for one faction, they should introduce equivalent content for the other faction. Slightly more questionable would be to introduce new content to match existing content (opening up Hero Contacts to Rogues) but I think as long as the new missions were just variations with the same theme as the original, that would be okay.

There is the question of how much time the devs should spend on such an effort, but that's the case with any new content. And just as Rogues can play Hero missions by teaming with a Hero or Vigilante, Heroes would be able to see the new content by teaming with a Rogue. As long as that was kept to a minimum, I don't feel the Heroes and Villains would feel too left out. Vigilantes, of course, would be able to team with the Rogues for their content, while being able to experience their OWN new content in the Rogue Isles.

Of course, yet another alternative is to revamp the existing missions for an interplay with its Rogue version, somewhat like how the Maria Jenkins arcs were revamped. For instance, the Hero version of the mission might see a Rogue continuing to interfere in places, while the Rogue version would show the events from that Rogue's point of view. This would be a good theme for a new Contact as well. (Of course the Rogue in the Hero mission would be an NPC, and the Rogue would have a Hero NPC in his mission as well)

Yeah, this is the problem, while it would be possible to have the claws coming out of the fingertips, the problem is that all the animations have the attacker using his closed fist. So the best you can do is choose claws that look enough like fingers to give the illusion that your hands are open.

If the claws DID come out of your fingertips, the current animations would make it so they were sticking through your palms and out the back of your hands.

With Power Customization, though, this has become a possibility. Combining Weapons with Power Customization has been discussed before, it isn't currently possible, but might be eventually. For instance, choosing clawed fingers instead of one of the blade options might change the animations so your hands are held open.

And then do a little dance with a hat and cane?

You can team with Heroes and Vigilantes in Paragon City. Would you be willing to give that up for 20 more Merits? (That would pretty much defeat any purpose of being able to cross zones) How many more Merits would you be willing to give up to get Contacts in the City?

Paragon Wiki says that you get 30 merits only for the first time you reaffirm your Alignment. Then again, Paragon Wiki also says that you only get your Alignment Power when you reaffirm your Alignment, when I know for a fact that you get it the first time you run a Morality mission. (You have to maintain your Alignment for 7 days, but you don't have to run another Morality Mission) So either Paragon Wiki is wrong, or I heard wrong. I'm trying to clear it up myself, but most of the guides I see posted here don't mention it. I know I read somewhere that it is 30 Merits for the first time you reaffirm as a Rogue or Vigilante, and more than that (maybe 50, I'm not sure) each time after.

If you cannot continue to earn Merits, I do have to wonder at the logic. It would be more productive in that case to continue to switch alignments, reaffirming only once each time. Also, Heroes and Villains can continue to earn rewards for maintaining their alignment, when Rogues and Vigilantes can't. That would be an imbalance.

If that's the case, I'll admit you have an argument for Rogues and Vigilantes gaining more access to content.

I can agree with that. I just balk at the idea that it must somehow be unique to Vigilantes or Rogues. I would say the same about Preatorian missions in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles that natives would not be allowed to take.

The thing is, various individuals cannot take missions when they are "visiting" somewhere else. But they do not give up their own missions in order to gain the missions in the new area. Unless the people that you are "visiting" then gain the ability to run your missions, you're gaining an advantage. It's already enough of an advantage to be able to team with those players to run their missions that you are having to sacrifice Alignment Merits for it.

Putting it another way, the problem is not that you don't have missions, it's where you have to go to get them. You'd like to be able to do something when visiting another area. But that doesn't mean it has to be completely unique to you, you might run one of the native missions. The devs just need to decide which are going to be available, and how much is balanced by giving up the Alignment Merits.

AFAIK there are no Villain contacts Rogues can't use. And ditto for Hero/Vigilantes.

If the Rogues and Vigilantes are given special contacts only they can use, shouldn't the Heroes and Villains also be given special contacts only they can use?

If Rogues and Vigilantes were given access to certain contacts (like the cape and Midnighter Club missions, for instance) or these new "grey alignment" arcs were available for anyone who wanted to take them, though, that would be nice.

Because part of your reward is ACHIEVING that alignment. As long as you keep shifting your alignment, your reward is less because you are achieving different accessibility to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, and Alignment Merits. Settling on one alignment is a greater committment than changing to meet your goals at the moment.

Also, the reward for Heroes and Villains is intended to be greater because Rogues and Vigilantes have greater access to more content. This is primarily represented by AMerits, but the Hero/Villains get more regular Merits the first time as well.

I believe you get the same (greater) reward every time you reaffirm your Rogue/Vigilante status, just the same as when you reaffirm your Hero/Villain status. The reward is regular Merits, not Alignment merits, but it's greater as long as you choose not to change alignment.

Basically what it means is that it is possible to perform an Assassin Strike ten times in a row, and miss every single time, IF you are using other attacks between the Assassin Strikes. The streakbreaker does not consider uses of the same attack as "consecutive" unless they are actually used consecutively.

This is likely one of the main things that causes people to believe Accuracy has been nerfed. Their overall hit rate is well over 95%, they hit with every other single attack they use, but because of some random bad luck a particular attack misses every time. This is usually noticed because accuracy is very important at that moment, they're trying to mez a foe to provide damage mitigation, or they need a heal and their drain misses. The streakbreaker just tries to keep you from missing too many times in a row, it can't do anything about missing at the worst possible time.

My guess is that each individual entity has its own streakbreaker. You can't have all your "free hits" going to your allies or your foes, for instance.