LordXenite

Well said Jade.

Also, post-I13, with the forms now gaining the inherent team-bonuses, the last approach Jade mentioned is now a lot easier to handle, and perhaps even more fun.

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After reading the guides I'm even more confused. I'm noticing that the differences between the two ATs aren't as clear cut as I once thought.

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The differences become clear once you start playing the two Kheldian AT's.

At first, Peacebringers can be quite aggressive thanks to their -defense effect (especially in Nova) and their first self-reliant self-heal. Warshades are more suited to kiting an enemy (especially in Nova) or keeping it at bay with their Snare attack and the slow effect they stack on their enemy.

Later on, as your Kheldian matures, you will discover that Warshades require enemies around them to power themselves and pack more tactical options than Peacebringers, while Peacebringers have an easier time tanking and can outlive tougher enemies by using their self-reliant buffs/heals at the right time.

Both Kheldians must remain very active to be efficient! Especially if they are true TriFormers.

If you are choosing the TriFormer way, depending on the situation, you will find yourself staying in one form, or shape-shifting like crazy. It is very important to figure out which strategy to employ when.

I would dare say that more than any other AT in the game, Kheldians benefit the most out of having their attributes monitored by the player and the use of keybinds.

From my experience, I have to say, the best thing I've ever done to enable me to understand Kheldians was to research them while playing them.

It's one thing to know that Unchain Essence is an AoE nuke that packs a stun effect on top of some damage and a totally different thing to realize that to efficiently use Unchain Essence, a Warshade can use other powers to first position the enemy group in such a way that once a single enemy is defeated, the Warshade can anchor that defeated enemy, use Unchain Essence and then quickly switch to a Boss that was caught in the AoE and hit it with Gravitic Emanations to stack the stun effect on the Boss!

Then again, some Warshades would simply just go for the kill and will not even bother trying to stun anything, and yet other Warshades would first teleport a foe to them, overpower it quickly, and draw an Extracted Essence to help them in their fight before attacking the bigger group.

A build lets you do what you want, but since there are so many ways to play a Kheldian, building them to effectively match your playstyle means you first have to decide on a playstyle, and to do that, I guess you must first experiment with your Kheldian to make up your mind about what you like to do. YMMV, but that's how it worked for me.

Do you have any spec document that declares the direction of the project? (i.e. is this going to be 3D, or isometric? how'bout gameplay mechanics: will this be skill-based, turn-based etc..?).

I hope you have fun Projectionist!

If the Devs were RP-minded (at all), we'd have more mission goals then we do. We'd have conditional logic in every missions and ways for a team to actually have dialog with enemies before (or even instead of) fighting those enemies.

In my opinion, You sir, fail to understand what RP is all about!

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I don't get this feeling at all. If anything, the engine reminds me of Tabula Rasa with tights, and I've seen all of its iterations for quite a while now, where it went from OMG AWFUL to eye-wincingly bland.

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You're talking about the Graphic Engine, not the Game Engine, correct?

Try looking here, check the forums and obviously, practice creating your own stuff.

You can try the following:

1. Use more in-game canon faction and their NPC's.
   
2. Design your custom critters with holes that would let people defeat them.
   
3. Avoid using killer NPC power-combinations unless it's for special Bosses (avoid high-DPS/high-debuffs when designing Minions and Lieutenants).
   
4. If you have to have an EB/AV, try to balance it out by adding side-goals Allies which players can then choose to use against the Boss.
   
5. If the Story is lowbie-friendly, avoid using NPC groups that do not scale well from Lv1 to Lv50.
   
6. Test the Arc with Controllers/Defenders that have late-blooming AT/power-sets and function better on teams (Bubblers/Shielders are a example).

I'm not saying we shouldn't make story-arcs based solely on our own custom critters, I am saying though that the Devs would like Authors to realize there are considerations to that, one of which is story-arc size, and another would be the difficulty some player-characters may have facing such missions.

Last night, entering an AE mission, I saw a tip. It said something along the lines of "Custom Critters take a lot of space in your Story Arcs, so try and use them sparingly".

I conclude therefore that giving ranged attacks to custom critters is all in-line with a policy the Devs have about custom critters being more for flavoring our stories rather than providing the bread and butter for them.

I think the Devs simply want their own creations (i.e. in-game canon faction NPC's) to still provide the main battle-groups for most of our stories but still let us create our own critters so the story will have its own unique identity which will differ from in-game arcs.

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...Of course, NCSoft did have one of those (that car wars one), but hey....

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Two, NCSoft had two games shut down in recent history. Auto Assault (the car one), and Tabula Rasa (the overly ambitious Richard Garriott one). Both games, in my opinion, were not unique enough to differentiate themselves from other games of similar types, especially when you consider they required a subscription-based pay-to-play model. Despite that, NCSoft is coming out with Aion which was already launched in Korea (Q4 2008).

I have no doubt many will check out other Superhero games out there, but no Superhero out there is already as established as CoX already is, so many people may simply return to their more familiar stomping grounds, at least while the shiny new kids on the block get their feet under them.

About the AE farms, one must realize that farms will simply replace farms. It's the basic law of Evolution, people adapt, farmers included. You can try and take the farming or the farmers from the game, but you can't take it out of the players.

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Normal PvE enemies always have ranged attacks, and custom critters need them too. Maybe they need to be toned down, or the enemies should rely on them less, but they can't be removed without creating an absurd exploit.

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Precisely why I'm all for ranged attacks injected into melee-based power-sets for our critters. The damage of the ranged attack should be in-line with the difficulty setting and the NPC's level, while the frequency of the ranged attack should be adjusted so that the NPC will not rely on it to defeat our characters, but then again, how are the Devs supposed to balance this with an NPC critter that was set to prefer ranged attacks and yet has only melee powers for example?!

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the ranged attacks need to be toned down in damage, as do the rest of the attacks, minions with 300 damage attacks is a bit much.

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You could of course point the finger towards the person who designed those Minions and ask them to re-balance their own creations. The Devs are obliged to simply balance the MA (critters and all) so that things aren't exploitable, anything other than that, should be left in our hands as much as possible.

This of course includes the ability to introduce Minions with aggressive and extreme power-set choices. That's what the freedom of choice is all about. Those Authors who do this, also choose to antagonize people who wish to solo their Story Arcs and may not be able to do so even on the easiest difficulty setting when played on a squishy character.

In essence, every time the Devs balance our critters for us, they risk antagonizing players and authors alike, so recommending they do so, cannot be taken lightly either.

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Is there no epic battle between the heroes and the villains?

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Those are what we refer to as Task Forces. The STF (Statesmans' Task Force) etc...

I started my own SG, an All-Kheldian SG... it's made me see the game through light-blue and dark-purple glasses

Dark hair (red, brunette or jet black) is so much more interesting than blonde... just my 0.2 INF.

Sorry guys, Arcanaville's simply too busy to respond right now as she's contemplating Pokemon issues!

From my personal experience, minions having CC/debuff powers were quite amusing for my Peacebringer, but very much not so for my Warshade. I'm talking here about MindControl/DarkMiasma minions which essentially rendered the team I brought with me into my mission quite frustrated (although my wife said she wasn't frustrated but actually bored!)

So, I've learned my lesson, Minions stack because that's how the game's engine spawns groups, minions first and plenty of them!

Also, Rollback himself is quite a nut to crack when you solo on most squishies... not that that's a bad thing mind you, but you know... just saying.

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or just immobilizing.
*
rings of fire and the mobs can't reach you, and a controller is totally safe.

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Last I checked, immobilizing/holding an NPC wasn't doing the most DPS on the NPC, and would eventually break, not to mention that most melee-designed characters are supposed to have melee-armor power-sets which grant them mez-protection to a degree.

Using Hover on a Blaster is essentially using a toggle power, which will almost never deactivate, to keep the Blaster safe from harm. I do not consider this the same as using Immobilize/Holds to keep an NPC away.

Using Hover requires no action, using Immobilize/Holds requires action, that's the difference between trying to exploit the game, and playing to your AT's strengths and tactics.

I actually like those ranged attacks on custom-critters, but then again, I also love DualBlades/Devices on my critters because it's fun to see them web your character then run to you flailing their swords...

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WTF is hover sniping? lol

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Imagine a Blaster that's simply hovering around (which not only enables them to stay away of the melee NPC's range, but also grants a minor +DEF) and uses their Snipe attack, or just their ranged attack-chain. Basically, such a Blaster would be at no risk what-so-ever, and would be able to take down anything in a mission as long as they would stay away from the NPC's.

Thinking up a data-structure is the easy part, Sigium...

My Lv50 TriForm PB. Ascendantia.

Heck, lets start the ball rolling on AE mission-goal improvement in allowing more than one trigger per each goal! The Devs should really start there before even thinking about expanding the conditional logic available to us.

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Worst game concept ever but the refresh rate is good and its remarkably lag free.

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Only because your senses mislead you into thinking there's a good refresh rate, if only you could experience things on the Quantum level, you'd see what refresh rate really means, same goes for the lag, it's a lie because your senses are synchronized to shut themselves off while other stuff is being processed!

I *DO* love the user-created content in 'Life', but I'd like it a lot better if they lowered the monthly fees

First, you gotta design and implement it in the core-story in-game engine. Then, you have to modify the AE story-arc editor, then there's cycles upon cycles of internal testing, then beta testing, both closed and open... so maybe we'll see this in the Future™, but it's definitely not coming Soon™...