ReclusesPhantom

Originally Posted by SpecialDelivery

This is a fairly straight forward suggestion that hopefully I don't complicate.

Stated simply: Any Corruptor Secondary Power set that deals damage should be allowed the scourge ability. Scourge, for those that are unsure, gives a power the chance (specifically 2.5% chance per every percentage point targets health is below 50%) to do double damage.

Now granted there are not a lot of secondary power sets for Corruptors that actually deal damage, but the ones that do should have scourge. After all, that is a Corruptor's "special" ability. To be fair, there does seem to be one ability that does allow scourge. The power Gale from the Storm Summoning line does give the scourge ability. This makes the absence of scourge from all other Corruptor secondary powers all the more strange.

Naming just a few of the Corruptor secondary powers that do not get scourge are:
Storm Summoning - Freezing Rain, Tornado, and Lightning Storm.
Dark Miasma - Howling Twilight and Dark Servant
Cold Domination - Sleet
Trick Arrow - Acid Arrow
Traps - Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Seeker Drones, Trip Mine, and Time Bomb

I thought that perhaps since some of the abilities mentioned are considered "pets", such as Tornado, Lightning Storm, Dark Servant, Seeker Drones, etc., that perhaps there was something against pets. However the Voltaic Sentinel's Electrical Bolt is allowed to scourge. Although Voltaic Sentinel is from Corruptor's primary power set Electrical Blast, this still at least shows it's not a problem with pets in particular.

A quote from the Corruptor description includes this statement, "As your foes are weakened, your (scourge) ability kicks in, increasing your damage to an enemy as their hit points drop." It specifically states an increase in your damage, making no distinction whether the damage comes from a primary or secondary power set.

So to summarize, please give the Corruptor's Secondary Power Sets that do damage the ability to scourge.

Originally Posted by Smurch

Would be less OP and game breaking if instead you got a pet from them instead. So, aid GW and get a temp power to summon a Fortunata or Blood Widow. Aid Miss Liberty, get a Longbow Nullifier. "Miss Liberty sent me to help!" sort of thing. etc. etc.

Originally Posted by Sister_Twelve

I will probably end up doing 2 arcs today because I have some free time while I listen to football games on my internet stream. I decided to play a couple of the ones that people are entering into the Challenge.

The one I decided to start with is "One Too Many Lines Crossed."

The basic premise of this arc is that your character is infiltrating Arachnos in order to gather information and/or stop an uprising. In the author's thread about this arc, he mentions that the uprising is being led by a rogue member of the 5th Column and that the reason you are doing this is to prevent an all-out war between Arachnos and the Fifth Column and/or the Council.

The initial problem is that there is no immediate evidence of this possibility occurring while playing the arc itself. For the first three missions, (the ones that immediately deal with the uprising), the uprising comes across as so weak that I could not imagine this group ever presenting a real problem for Arachnos. The highest number of enemies I defeated in any given mission was about 5 people. The uprising doesn't seem to have any connection with the Fifth Column unless the Fifth Column sent a truck down to Mercy Island and distributed a crate full of guns and told the citizens to rebel against Recluse. They don't seem to have any distinct plans or even to have lucked into a way of threatening to topple Recluse.

On that level, the player immediately begins to question the necessity of the character even being there. The goal of the contest, as I see it, is to show that sometimes a hero must do things that challenge his/her moral compass in order to preserve the greater good. What good does my character's presence serve here? What does my slapping around the armed citizens of Mercy accomplish? What does my torturing some poor schmoe in a casino accomplish?

Without either: a.) some threat that is so immediate that I have no other choice than to take the darker path or b.) something that occurs that has very personal implications that would drive my hero over the edge, I don't really see what would motivate my character to take these actions.

In short, Arachnos would squash these people in short order whether I am there or not. On that level, there is no reason for me to 'cross the line,' so to speak. And on that level, what my character does makes no sense.

My thoughts:

- Your briefing for the first mission assumes you already know what is going on. In other words, there is no exposition and exposition is necessary to establish some sort of threat level and create some sense of immediacy. Throwing a player into the middle of what's happening tends not to work.

- The 'Psycher' Boss gives no reward. Apparently you have taken an offensive power away from him. This isn't a huge issue for me, but there are reviewers who will find this repugnant.

- There are numerous typos littered throughout. Too many to really list. I would take the time to clean it up before the contest deadline.

- Your Arachnos contact comes across as sort of a dimwit. A thug I can deal with. A stupid thug in an arbiter position is another story. Arbiters in general have reached the position they've reached because they tend to be a cut above the rest. In fact, most of Arachnos comes across throughout the arc as being somewhat mentally deficient.

- There is a brief nod toward philosophical debate between the relative virtues of fascism versus the relative virtues of communism. (I suspect that the Kommisar is the communist under discussion here... though why a dedicated communist would have attached himself to the Fifth Column in the first place is... ummm... well... maybe that's why he left the Fifth Column... although if he's persona non grata with the Fifth, then why would the Fifth be arming his revolutionaries? So I'm now giving myself a headache.)

At any rate, I had a moment of brief amusement because the person the arbiter was telling all of this was Ariadne, my Rogue Islands Communist Guerrilla leader, so her response to his unformed political rantings was sort of a... "Uh huh."

In fact, at the beginning of it, the sentence was awkwardly constucted enough that I thought for a moment that you'd read about Ariadne on the boards and that this whole thing was sort of a shout-out to another player's character, which I briefly found neat and then realized that your arbiter was talking about someone else entirely.

- Played it on my Widow at 2/+2/Boss/No Av. No issues. The first three missions are extraordinarily short. Mission 1, I defeated 5-6 guys. Mission over. Mission 2, I defeated another 5-6 guys. Mission over. Mission 3, I defeated 1 guy, (though this was the point of the mission). Mission over. And unfortunately as I said, out of the 5-6 guys, since 3 in each mission were those Boss level Psychers, there was no reward. So for the first 3 missions, I basically received a total of about 20 Architect tokens.

If you really want to make this group seem like they have any potential for their revolution to succeed, maybe you could create some running street battles against Arachnos or have them wiping out the RIP or something. As it stands, the revolution consists of about three groups of guys standing there on the streets with either a gun or a bat in their hands.

Overall, I'd have to say this is one of the weaker arcs that I have played for a variety of reasons. There is still some time left before the contest is over. I would take the time to reconstruct some things and make the revolutionary group more of a threat.

Originally Posted by Lothic

This is the Acrobatics version of the classic Hasten debate. Many people would like to use the speed-up effects of Hasten without the flame animations.

I agree with your point about this. It might be cool to have some new animations applied to Acrobatics only as long as there's finally a "no animations" option allowed for the pool powers. I don't want to be stuck with hardwired animations I shouldn't have to be stuck with.

Originally Posted by BackFire

If this was a copy/paste of the mission description text then I'll point out your typos so far:



Good luck!

Originally Posted by Talen_Lee

Every single scrapper with the pistol ancillaries is a scrapper who is using a pair of pistols. Or magical constructs that look just like pistols.

That's what I mean by 'conceptually narrow.' It can't be acid belching or bio-organic matter or tendrils of black hair. It's guns.

Originally Posted by Talen_Lee

[...]overlaps with 'weapon' mastery[...]

Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper

What about (Hero of the City + Master of Statesman's Task Force + Master of the 5th Column Task Force + Master of the Imperious Task Force) for Heroes, and (Made + Master of Lord Recluse's Strike Force + Master of the 5th Column Strike Force + Master of the Imperious Task Force) for Villains? That's level 50 and the three "Master of ... Task/Strike Force" badges currently available.

Originally Posted by Tangler

But at the time when the player reads Mesisen's bio they don't know this, so it just looks like a goof. If you're intentionally trying to throw a spanner in the works you should make it more clear, as the way Mesisen's bio is currently written it just looks like you were writing a typical 'this guy is an evil tyrant' bio, but forgot to edit out the 'crushed all resistance' bit.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

I have to admit one of my favorite things about CO is their animations on their Acrobatics travel power. I would squee like an angst filled tween girl watching Twilight if we had similar animations here.

Originally Posted by Cynical_Gamer

I demand that Cobra Strike's animation be made available for use with Crane Kick. It's a damn shame that such a cool animation is coupled with such a situational/skippable power. So sayeth the wise and mighty Cynical_Gamer!

Originally Posted by Vitality

Cobra Strike should be different because it does not do anything else other than stun (it has the very minor damage, which is the whole point of this thread).
Controller holds have more effects than just the hold.

Originally Posted by Mindscythe

And I notice that we're the only super-hero MMO mentioned on the list, so anyone interested in that genre is going to see us and no one else.

They say that any publicity is good publicity, but actual good publicity has to rank somewhere a bit higher up on that scale.