SpittingTrashcan

Ah, but as the OP makes clear, some people don't even want certain buffs from their own teammates. So that's three settings for each buff in the game: accept, team only, decline. So that's three possible values, times every single ally buff in the game, times every account in the game - oh, but we want to make this setting per-character? Okay, so multiply that by however many alts, and gee whiz suddenly that's a lot of extra information to insert into the database. Now, if they have a sane database engine, it might only be moderately delicate and time consuming to insert those extra values. But that may not necessarily be the case...

Anyway, the short version is that any person who casually proposes a technical solution to this issue is only making Castle's headache worse.

Oh, the new players will quickly learn to resent and envy our shiny veteran badges no matter how many horror stories we tell of the olden days. At least they probably won't be AE babies - I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts there won't be an AE building in Praetoria.

I'm'a roll me some alts in Praetoria anyway, and I'll be happy to put some newbies on the right track while I'm there.

Both options can cause something to happen against your will. The division is over which thing is more undesirable, and is being debated strictly between people who consider either effect (or, in some cases, both effects) notably obnoxious. There are two ways to win: either go to the additional trouble of making everyone able to set things up just as they like (and contemplate the possibility that this will be demanded for every ally buff ability), or categorize both groups as the sort of customers who are excessively difficult to please.

(Full disclosure: I don't consider either effect notably obnoxious and am frankly astounded by the level of distemper on display.)

Like to beat on a big bag of hitpoints for half an hour? I have found your new favorite mission.

Someone used Mystic Fortune and now my parents are DEEEAAAD

I think that Romulus at the end of the ITF is an excellent example of a more strategic AV. He can be handled in several ways, and poses a different kind of threat depending on what you bring to the table, because while he himself is a fairly standard AV his three support Nicti complicate things considerably. I'd like to see more encounters which have multiple paths to resolution, where the path you take depends on the team you bring. To that end, it's not only OK but encouraged that AVs should break some rules. AVs do not need an enormous amount of HP, but for designing strategic encounters it's important that they have enough HP or other defenses that their unique mechanics are difficult to circumvent just by burning them down quickly. "Invincible until conditions are satisfied" is one way to require a strategy, but as Romulus shows it's not the only way.

What about an AV that circumvents taunt mechanics in some way? The Thorn Tree does this by virtue of being untargetable until certain conditions are met, but if I recall correctly there are apparently plenty of unexplored options available in the threat algorithm. Healing powers or buffs could generate threat. Mezzes or debuffs could. Taunt could have its threat multiplier ignored. Heck, a team of AV enemies could include a character who has Taunt, turning the tank-and-spank methodology back on the team. Or an AV could periodically reset its aggro queue (with some visual effect), so the next person who hits it gets nailed. Or it could have one attack that it reserves for support characters - rather than one that kills outright, what if it grants a debuff aura or reduces buff effectiveness or just knocks the target way the heck back? What if the AV places an effect on the prime aggro target such that anyone who heals him is damaged for the same amount? Or a power that it uses to reverse effects, so that attacks become heals, heals deal damage, mezzes grant resistance, buffs become debuffs, and vice versa?

Lots of possibilities.

You'd think that the developers would know by now that unless explicitly instructed otherwise, players will try to use any place they can put things as storage...

On review, I must retract the opinion that a hero must act villainously in order to carry out Daedalus's mission. They can also just be astonishingly naive.

Or "naive", in the sense of "I'll give them a chance to comply with my unrealistic expectations, and then when they respond in the likely manner, I will feel justified in doing what I planned to do anyway." But then we're back to villainous.

We've drifted pretty far off the intended topic, though - for which I must take some blame. There have been some pretty good examples brought up: bopping Sally, the mess in Croatoa, marking a Malta operative for death. It's true that Terra is taken to a laboratory, purportedly to research a cure for her condition, but that project does not seem to be coming along particularly quickly. Notably, the same courtesy is not extended to poor Joe Boxer - whose brain is still alive and intact inside that Titan. Until you kill it, presumably, because it's never mentioned again. Never mind that the Revenant Hero Project and Eternal Nemesis amply demonstrate that disembodied brains can go on to lead rich fulfilling lives.

We can rebuild him. We have the technolog- whoops, never mind.

Another thought. Generally, heroes are assumed to have the option of nonlethally subduing enemies, then transporting them to the prison hospital. However, Warhulks and Tarantula Mistresses clearly have a living person embedded in them - and they explode, so thoroughly that they leave nothing behind but shrapnel. Well then. Arguably their fault for rampaging around with what is apparently a significant quantity of explosive material strapped to them, but still a bit grim...

Edited to add: Oh hey how did I overlook this one. Also from Crimson: provoke a gang war between the Knives of Artemis and the Carnival of Shadows. Even if you scrupulously stick to principle in your direct interactions with either group, I'm pretty sure the Knives don't take prisoners - and worse yet, the Carnival does. Congratulations, you've condemned any number of Carnies (who are not always volunteers - recall Madeleine Casey) to assassination, and any number of Knives to psychic enslavement and eventual consumption.

HEROES!

Brief general reply.

All reward systems most encourage what they best reward. The developers have the means to control exactly what is rewarded, and how much; they need to decide what behavior they want to encourage, and then reward exactly that (and not some approximation or derivative thereof).

I like subtle trolls.

My personal favorite Ghost Widow moment is in the mission where you defend Grandville from a beach assault by the Nemesis Army. She is standing on a cliff overlooking the beach, casually holding a Nemesis soldier in midair with her Soul Storm while her Night Widows pick his brain.

If we're talking about actual workflow improvements, it would be ideal to be able to select a group of recipes and generate a shopping list in the upper right hand pane containing each salvage item needed to craft all the recipes in the group, with the amount to buy equal to the number needed less the number in inventory. Also: switch between looking at the recipe and the corresponding crafted item in one action. The main difference between these recommendations and the changes that were made is that my recommendations are based on things that I actually do at the market.