Kelenar

You are dead to me.

Acid Mortar can and does generate its own aggro, since I've seen guys doing their best to punch it to death. It can actually make a pretty decent mini-tank.

Which annoys me, since it used to be fun to slide around on.

Also:
If you click somebody's name in chat, you can get their character name or invite them to teams.
Seriously, if I ask one more five-year vet for an invite in a global channel only to get 'What's your name?' back, my head's going to explode.

Yeah. I mostly pull it out on teams that are well-defended enough that I don't need to be spamming debuffs, but could use the extra damage.

I'm curious how far they'll take this. How much harder than, say, the RSF can we make something before casual gamers are afraid to try it? How much more powerful can we make level 50s through new means without completely invalidating current IO builds? It feels like this is a very thin line to try to walk.

"Will you accept: designation: my valentine?"

The entire thing is the Rikti trying to port in the multiverse's biggest box of mixed chocolates as a peace offering for Earth.

Trial accounts are limited to 50,000 inf, according to Paragonwiki.

Honestly, my #1 suggestion would be to try a few different characters out. Level 14 is high enough to get a decent idea how a character plays. My first character was a Tanker, who I loved... until I tried a Scrapper, which was even more fun. And my Defender was better than that. These days, I don't even play Tankers. This may be heretical to admit, but you might find that Defenders aren't your favorite. Different ATs play vastly differently, and even different powersets within those ATs can be night and day. I'd highly suggest trying a few out before you commit to taking one to 50.

Apart from that, though:
Explore If you're careful, you can get around most of the zones on foot in relative safety, even ones dozens of levels higher than you. Zones that you might want to avoid until you get a jetpack: Eden, Terra Volta. Independence Port is also a giant nothing, so just don't bother.

I'd especially recommend the Shadow Shard. Find a Green Line tram (the easiest to reach are in Steel Canyon and Skyway City) and take it to Talos Island, then find the Peregrine Island Ferry on your map. Take that to PI and find the marker for Firebase Zulu on your map. Crossing PI might be a little treacherous, but you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a high-level to escort you if you ask nicely. If you can't get one, just jump into the water and swim until you're within spitting distance of the big white buildings; nothing spawns in the ocean. You'll have to go through one of the giant noisy portals to get to Firebase Zulu. Once inside FBZ, you can buy a jetpack for 10,000 influence. Don't worry about the cost much--once you start playing for real, this is a single kill or two at higher levels. The Shard is a really high-level area, but as long as you stay flying well above the ground, you should be safe. Especially be sure to check out the Storm Palace and the Cascade Archipelago. If you ever get lost, you can teleport back to the entrance of the zone by jumping into the void.

Rikti War Zone and Dark Astoria are also quite worth checking out. If you want to browse a little for yourself, check out the zone list on ParagonWiki.

Socialize On most servers, the platform under the statue in Atlas Park is a socializing spot. This is also often the host to impromptu costume contests. Most of these give out rewards that are a few orders of magnitude more than what you can carry at the moment, so if you happen to win, you might want to see if you can take a rain check on receiving your loot. If you're on Virtue, Pocket D is also a gathering spot if you like to roleplay.

I actually get quite a bit of utility from Trip Mine on teams. With FFG up and a few dark blast debuffs on most enemies, I can drop one in the middle of a group more often than not. Makes a nice mini-nuke if they're clustered tightly.

Virtue. It shows up now and then in any sort of public RP place. Pocket D's not as bad about it as Gemini Park used to be, but there's still occasionally a guy who thinks it's fun to stand in the middle of a crowd of roleplayers, spamming Warmth with Whirlwind on or such. (in before lolrp, etc.)

I guess, but I'm more used to them doing /e boombox, teleporting into people, summoning hordes of pets, self-destructing, casting shields on people, and just generally being an ***. With how little combat content is outdoors, I think it's a fair tradeoff. Maybe make it go both ways, so you can't see people who are ignoring you, either.

Heck, I'd love:

Completely hide ignored players.

Because blocking somebody's text doesn't even mostly eliminate their ability to grief you.

I think Atlas and Galaxy should be separate zones - there really isn't any need that I can see for vet players to be forced to go to a crowded zone on their hundredth character.

That's casual play in WoW? o_O Do hardcore players have to invest in a stomach tube so that they don't have to get up long enough to eat?

This is also big. BIIIIIIIG. The few times I've gotten friends to try the game, they've loved the costume creator and the looks of their powers and such... then gotten bored within an hour of logging in, thanks to running back and forth across Atlas Park to beat up ten Hellions in a warehouse over and over.

The two related fixes that'd help keep me as a vet interested:
More 'alternative leveling' zones: Playing a hero, I can stick to normal contacts from 1-50... or I can do Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, and RWZ on the way up. Or I can do any combination of these. Just having the two big choices of location and contact groups really helps alleviate a lot of my problems with re-running stuff. Villainside desperately needs this, since there are just enough contacts right now that you're likely to see 2/3 of them on a single character. Heroside, though, could more use...

Revamp Old Content: Oh, hey, the Devouring Earth have kidnapped some lawyers in Crey's Folly. And, oh, look, they kidnapped some different lawyers, in Boomtown this time. And now some... other... lawyers... in... Skyway... You know what? I'll just run a radio mission.

Nope. But if a relatively well-prepared group with good knowledge of tactics either needs to face trial and error or read a guide in order to beat something, it's probably not well-designed. Formulating strategies is awesome. You can beat a lot of things in the game that people think are practically invincible with good tactics. But being good at making strategies isn't always going to make up for things like "2 minutes into the fight the AV starts to spam an AoE attack that does massive damage. Only a tank having direct heals placed on them constantly will be able to take the damage." Heck...

A team of all scrappers who hadn't read a guide or played the encounter previously would, by your definition of the AV's AoEs, wipe 2 minutes in, unless one of them was standing at range for some reason. No reasonable amount of strategic planning is going to get around that unless you know ahead of time that the AV is able to abruptly kill everything in melee range that's not a heavily supported tank.

For strategy to really come into play, the characters have to have a decent chance of surviving whatever happens so that they can formulate a plan. If you make an AV that lets off an auto-hit 5000 damage nuke with a 200 yard radius when he hits 50% health, sure, there are ways to deal with that, but the first time you fight him, you are going to die. Period.

tl;dr: Strategy: awesome. Almost absolutely needing to to read a guide or go through several trial-and-error runs: bad.

I suppose my definition of a good strategic encounter would have to be: A decently-prepared team will never wipe in seconds with no chance to redeem themselves, as long as their actions are reasonably careful; any wipes will take long enough that the team has time to change tactics once they realize they're going about it the wrong way. There will be plenty of opportunities for them to wipe, but these will all be ones which can either be anticipated and dealt with, or which aren't deadly enough to cause an immediate wipe but require immediate adaptation and replanning. If the team does wipe, it should be because of a failure to deal with circumstances that fill the previous criteria.

That depends. Does an exploding planet check against AoE Defense?

I'm getting this mental image of the Paragon Studios office being a peril-filled land of arbitrary slappings.

I've always thought an Unchain Essence clone for a Dark/ primary for Blasters could be awesome. But then, I'm all for anything that can be stuck in a blaster primary that makes them slightly more complicated than 'target some enemies and click a lot.'

That's actually how I did it in the end, and it works pretty well. If you keep your eye out, you can see the flare as the buff's animation starts up once you get into sight range.