JusticeFalcon

@Etherfalcon on Protector server

Paragon's Super Friends SG also on Protector server

Done and done, and kudos to you for your support. Happy Holidays!

[Secure Communication Blueside]

This level of villainy is unconscionable. It cannot be tolerated.

The villains of the Protector-verse have reached a new level of brazen villainy. This is not an isolated act, and it didn't happen overnight. It is part of a vast conspiracy that goes to the vilest depths of the criminal underworld. A few of us have been following this conspiracy for some time... we are only now seeing the beginning of what is to come. In the darkest corners of Paragon, names are whispered, plots are hatched, evil of the vilest kind grows in power. We cannot wait any longer.

No single one of us, not even the most powerful of our SGs alone is equipped for this type of threat. What I am proposing is a counter conspiracy of equal force, a secret alliance of the most powerful and daring heroes and SGs, to systematically dismantle this alliance of evil.

That is why I am sending a call out to the leaders of the most powerful SuperGroups on Protector. Beginning in January 2011, at a yet undetermined date and time, myself along with a few other conspirators will be recruiting for a secret initiative that will be known as the "Protector Vigilance Project". More details will follow, including date/time for our clandestine initial meeting where we will reveal the full details of what we are planning.

To the leaders of Protector's SGs, contact me via forum PM or in-game tell @etherfalcon to let me know if you have interest in joining the conspiracy.

Sic vis pacem, parabellum.

EtherFalcon

[This is purposefully vague, but I am serious about this, as in it will be seriously fun and drive some more interest and participation in unique server wide player events. If you're interested in what exactly we are proposing... contact me for details. This has the potential to be awesome...]

So, to close out the Protector 2010 Winter Ball, a big thank you to all who showed up and participated in the events, and an even bigger thank you to our hosts (especially @Ferria aka Honey Ryder), our judges, and our generous sponsors Everyone Welcome, Knights of Tomorrow, Indigo Raven, and Paragon's Super Friends SGs. If I missed anyone on that list, my apologies, PM me and I will update the list.

We had a good turnout for all events, with the whole show finishing up around 1am ET with the crowning of Monk Brawlin as our Winter King, and Honey Ryder as our Winter Queen.

Recap of the winners and prizes paid:

Ski Events (50M each)
Event 1: Ahnya
Event 2: Quick Feet
Event 3: Ionic Charge Au
Event 4: Humpty Dumpty
Event 5: Ionic Charge Au

PVP Events:
Event 1: Melee (Draw), the final 6 were each awarded 25M inf:
Static's Pin Cushion, Monk Brawlin, Daniel Eldritch, Fezznick, Chain's Assassin, and Ionic Charge Au. Daniel, please see @EtherFalcon in-game for your prize inf since I couldn't find you after the event.

(Note that this "draw" and poor event design on my part forced a last minute redesign of the PVP event rules to 10min free for all with 3 places paid.)

Event 2: Ranged
1st Place: Humpty Dumpty - 50M
2nd Place: Old Man Ionic - 30M
3rd Place: Ahnya - 20M

Event 3: Masterminds/Controllers
1st Place: Master of Illusions - 50M
2nd Place: Master Chain - 30M
3rd Place: Hell's Disciples - 20M

Event 4: Melee
1st Place: Chain's Assassin - 50M
2nd Place: Ionic Charge Au - 30M
3rd Place: EtherFalcon - 20M


Costume Contests:

Holiday Spirit
1st Place: Winter's True Spirit - 50M
2nd Place: Spirit of Winter - 30M
3rd Place: 4-Sa'Kin - 20M

Santa's Helpers
1st Place: Wello Bug - 50M
2nd Place: Lady Gr3y - 30M
3rd Place: Quick Feet - 20M

Tree Ornament
1st Place: Sulpher Girl - 50M
2nd Place: Kirae - 30M
3rd Place: Curious Ice Baby - 20M

2010 Winter King - Monk Brawlin - 500M
2010 Winter Queen - Honey Ryder - 500M

Thanks again to all who came out and showed their support and all the contestants. We hope you enjoyed this year's event, and we will start planning for the next seasonal Protector Players' Event soon. Enjoy the rest of the Winter Event and Happy Holidays to all!

Prize pool update:

We are now at 2 Billion total.

As a result, NEW update on events:

Ski Races - Race down the hill, 5 events, 50M winner take all for each event.

Snow Brawl - Last Man Standing PVP, 3 Events per AT category (9 events total), 50M winner take all within each event.
Category 1: Fight Club - Melee ATs Only (3 fights)
Category 2: Gunslingers - Ranged ATs Only (3 fights)
Category 3: Warlords - Masterminds Only (3 fights)

Costume Contests - 3 categories, 50M, 30M, 20M for 1st, 2nd, 3rd places respectively paid out per category.
Category 1: "Holiday Spirit"
Category 2: "Santa's Helper"
Category 3: "Tree Ornament"

And the final Contest will be for Winter King and Winter Queen, with a grand prize of 500M each, winner take all. King will be judged by the women organizers, Queen will be judged by the men organizers. Criteria for judging will be overall character including costume, bio, and participation in the above events.

Good luck to all and see you tonight!

Also posted under "News/Announcements - Player Events":

As the Holiday Event is upon us, I would like to announce another Protector Players' event hosted by some of the same folks who brought you the Halloween Event.

The Protector Winter Ball starts on Saturday December 18th at 9pm ET (8CT, 7MT, 6PT).

Event will be held at the ski chalet in Pocket D and is open to everyone. We will host a number of contests, including Ski Races, a PVP "Snow Brawl", Holiday Themed Trivia & Costume Contests, and the crowning of a winter King and Queen. Total prize pool is 1.5 Billion INF!

So mark your calendars (ahem, Stalemate ) for Dec 18!

Any questions you can PM @EtherFalcon or @Ferria in game.

I concur with the weekends being best. Sat/Sun afternoons and evenings seem to work best.

We are going to make another attempt right now. Join under atlas ASAP.

Super Group Name: Paragon's Super Friends (PSF)
SG Leader: Spunky Taco – Leader of the Friends
Recruitment Officer: EtherFalcon (Global: @EtherFalcon)
Website: www.psfcitadel.webs.com
Global Chat Channel: PSF Citadel Comms
Preferred VOIP: Skype

Contact: In-game tell. See EtherFalcon in-game for an application.

Description:

PSF is currently the #13 ranked SG on Protector. We have a tight core leadership group of officers, and are looking to recruit new players to our SG. We have a number of active coalitions, including the Guardsmen and Knights of Tomorrow. Our promotions are both objective/subjective, based on prestige, leadership, and contribution to the SG. We have a regularly updated website. We have tens of millions of prestige already banked even after completing our lag-inducingly huge SG base, "The War Room”, a space-based satellite in geosynchronous low-earth orbit. Our IO tables recently underwent a massive upgrade, so even new members will find all the best SOs and IOs for their build.

We are looking for more active players who enjoy TFs, story driven AE arcs, costume contests and other in-game events.

We are also looking to start regularly holding parties again in the infamous "Boom Boom Room".

Our Base:

The War Room is a large, fully-operational SG Base. We literally have everything you can put in an SG base, and a few things you won’t find anywhere else.


SG base includes:

• Alphabetized storage bins with lots of stored salvage and enhancements and rare/event/SO/IOs,
• Teleporters to ALL zones,
• Med bay with insp bots,
• Auditorium/mission room with flashback,
• Vehicle bay with 2 arachnos heavy flyers,
• Mission computer & Raid Teleporter (for CoP), and control room for our base-mounted super plasma cannon
• Largest available power and control units,
• Officers areas including Executive Offices, interrogation room, watchtower room, training room, the executive ultralounge,
• And of course our great hall dance club, the infamous Boom Boom Room.
• And a number of secret passages to access the officers areas

See EtherFalcon in-game for an application.

Big thank you to all who participated in the counterstrike tonight. In the final tally, around 30-40 of us were successful in downing 2 Rikti dropships in Talos. Happy to report no civilian casualties. Strangely enough, in the ground assault following the bombing, despite the fact that we had close to 40+ heroes on the hill, there were no Rikti heavies in the invasion forces. We can only surmise that the heavies were onboard the bombers we destroyed...

Congratulations to all those who can now say they are among the elite few who have destroyed a Rikti dropship. Special thanks to Crimson Guardian and Lady Gr3y and all others who helped promote and organize the strike teams.

Thanks to StarGeek for posting on Protector Vigilance. To our senior server veterans and leaders of other raids, we will especially need your help. All ATs are welcome but especially helpful will be level 50s with buff/debuffs and ranged DMG. As accurately stated earlier, the primary dmg type done by the rikti dropships is energy, so high energy resistance is a good idea. Other than that, just DMG DMG DMG.

C'yall tonight.

I'll start out by citing OLantern on Liberty for his excellent posts and strategy on this (all of which I have directly stolen).

Heroes of Protector: the Rikti have harassed the good people of this planet long enough. It's time to go on the offense. Luckily for us, the Rikti have taken care of the hardest part of conducting a war: finding and getting to the enemy. For the next several days they have brought this fight to earth, their tactics have become predictable, and I propose we exploit it. I want to make their assault so costly that they will learn to fear the heroes of earth again.

In short, I want to blow up a Rikti dropship.

I'm hosting a blueside assault on dropships on Friday, November 5th. Teams will begin forming under Atlas in Atlas Park at 8:30 pm Eastern time, with the actual attack starting as close to 9 pm ET as possible. If you need to reach me in-game, my global is @EtherFalcon.

You WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO FLY. If you don't have FLY, i suggest you buy a jetpack.

I will say right up front that in orchestrating strategy, I will have to be short and specific with commands. Please do not take this as rudeness, I'm simply trying to control a military operation as tightly as possible.

Here is a guide on fighting dropships taken from a repost of an older post by OLantern on Liberty. Big ups, OLantern.

***

1) Some caveats: what fighting dropships is NOT.

Defeating a dropship does not grant a badge, merits, or other special rewards of any kind. The xp and inf you gain from defeating one is nothing to sneeze at, but you could earn more in the same amount of time doing something else. This is something you undertake purely for the fun of it (or for the bragging rights, if you like bragging about making things that make scary noises explode).

Dropships have hitpoints well up in the Giant Monster range, but unlike GM's and AV's, they cannot be taunted, slowed, knocked down, or diverted from their flight paths. In a dropship fight, everyone is there to pile on the DPS.

Fighting dropships is also not for the faint of heart. A ship has only one attack, a powerful energy blast that hits you with multiple packets of energy damage. This attack can kill lower-level or very squishy characters. If you die, just hit the hospital and get back in the fight. After all, debt protection is in place during a Rikti invasion, so who cares? (By the way, for what it's worth, I've taken hits from a dropship on a blaster and not been killed outright.)

2) What you need to do to beat one or more dropships.

Defeating a dropship requires four things.
First, we need enough people to take out a ship before it flies off the map. I believe we'll need at least three full teams, hopefully with a level 50 leader for each. I'll coordinate with other team leaders during the half-hour staging time to ensure that each team has a leader of the proper level. Keep in mind, the enemy may hit hard, but it attacks so slowly and so rarely that it can't dent us if we act as a group.

Second, we need to know the ships' flight paths. Dropships cross zones on preset tracks (see Vidiotmaps for map packs that show the paths), some of which are too short for some teams to deal enough damage to destroy a ship before it gets away. The ships can't be slowed or taunted, and they fly fast enough that they might get away before we can blow them up if they're on one of the shorter tracks. I'll be handling flight path mechanics and calling targets, but if there are other team leaders who know the paths, that would be wonderful. Ideally, we can fight in Talos Island, which has a very long, curved flight path that takes the ships through most of the zone.

Third, everyone involved must able to fly. If the character you want to bring doesn't have Fly, head to the Shadow Shard (or Grandville, if you're a Rogue) or the market and purchase a jet pack. The ships fly very high in the air, and even with long-range attacks, they're hard to hit from the ground. They move slowly enough that melee characters with flight powers can get in regular hits against them. Regardless of your powerset, you'll need to fly alongside or otherwise near the ship to keep up with it and keep piling on the damage. I'm told by friends who've tried that Superjump CAN NOT substitute for flying here. (On a related point, while the ships can't be slowed, kineticists shouldn't despair; their ability to boost teammates' flight speeds is a godsend.)

Fourth and most importantly, people need to act with a modicum of thought. Not much, just a modicum. I'll be calling out which ship the group should target, and the group members need to concentrate fire on that ship. Additionally, buffers should be buffing, and teammates should support each other. I'll be calling out instructions in Request, as on a Mothership Raid, unless anyone has any objections; please keep that channel for team leaders.

All of that said, fighting a dropship is, in many ways, the simplest "destroy a huge bag of hit points" fight in the game. You don't really need to worry about aggro (tanks, don't waste your time on taunting), and there are no "necessary" debuffs. Just pile on that damage, and you'll get to see the cool "dropship explosion" animation.

Sorry to hear it didn't pan out as you all had hoped. I think your diagnosis on why it was less than well-attended is probably accurate, a combination of all factors (minus the new management comment, Stalemate). Chalk it up to factors beyond your direct control.

That said, based on the player halloween event, I do think there is an appetite (although maybe a short attention span as evidenced by lower turnout on day 2 of the CC) for player-led server events just based on comments from people along the lines of "when is the next one?". How many of those that attended were "new", i have no idea though.

I might be willing to help out in the future, pending availability, for whatever I can provide, which often isn't much more than sarcastic commentary and apparently good fundraising skills. But hey, it's a start!

Many thanks to all who participated last night and congrats again to all the winners! We start round 2, the last 5 categories, tonight at 7:30pm ET. All winners from last night should show up for the grand finale, where the grand prize winner of 1B inf will be chosen from the winners of each of the individual categories.

Good luck to all and hope to see you tonight!

(And, oh yes, there WILL be another after-party in the Boom Boom Room. The Dom, Goose, and brews are all on ice as we speak, and the main stage is shined up and ready for dancing... of all kinds... See a PSF representative at the base portal after the CC for a team/base invite.)

And now for the update...

In order to accommodate times for the Dev hosted event on Friday in Pocket D, the Protector Halloween CC event will be announced from Pocket D during the official Dev hosted event, and will start IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the official event. First round, the Warrior Category, starts under atlas immediately following the Dev event.

The Saturday event time stays the same, first category for that night will be announced at 7:30 pm ET under Atlas.

Any questions, contact @Ferria in game for more info.

Again, the total prize pool is 2 Billion inf, with 100M for each round and 1B for the grand prize!

EtherFalcon. Pleased to meet you and Welcome to Protector!

The planning team is working around the times. Stay tuned.

I can confirm that. 2 slotted gives you some overlap, one slotted is not enough.

It's going to be EPIC.

Like others have said, still seems to be working properly.