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1

(Almost Tested) Bug Reporting / Re: Consolidated Feedback: Kheldian Revamp

« on: July 15, 2022, 12:36:48 am »

Well, I did not expect it to take a whole month for me to do some more playing with this, but I did get back to my previous character, played around with it a bit more, and can say that, having worked in Dwarf, and SOs, it's bloomed very quickly.  Here this character is in the mid-20s where a Kheldian would normally be be trying to find a way to slot everything and make Dwarf useful, and I'm hot-swapping forms multiple times throughout fights, taking full advantage of each one as needed.  This is, legit, how Kheldians should feel and I'm having a pretty great time with it.

The update to Gravitic Emanation helped, and Gravity Well doesn't feel too bad, for me, just because I have access to the ranged attacks in Dwarf form (in fact, my usual fighting habits involve shifting to Dwarf form once I get some aggro, then briefly back down to Human anyway when Gravity Well finishes recharging, because that Hold is just too useful).  Mire, in practice, didn't turn out to be too bad, either.

My general mission picks haven't had me dealing with too much mez-related frustration so far, so I can't comment there; I certainly wouldn't mind some SoA level protection in the passive (it'd help at low levels, especially), but so far, Dwarf is sufficient for me.

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(Almost Tested) Bug Reporting / Re: Consolidated Feedback: Kheldian Revamp

« on: June 13, 2022, 05:24:10 pm »

I started a new Warshade on the test server yesterday, have been playing the Kheldian arcs, bumping up a few levels, doing the next, etc, so I haven't been following the leveling curve exactly, but have been hoping it's maybe a decent approximation.  I just hit finished the pre-level-20 arcs, and so with Dwarf on the horizon, my general take on the low level experience:

• It's pretty good, overall!  "Fun" might be subjective, but it feels important to note that, well, I think it is.  It has a "smoother" feel than previous experience with Warshades, but it still feels like a Warshade.  To me, that's a pretty good sign of a target getting hit.  Like most low-level Warshades, I'm spending most of my time in Nova, occasionally dropping out to trade some offense for defense (or opening from Human to use Gravity Well starting in the late teens), and the toggle suppression makes this a very easy transition.
• "Real numbers" on powers aren't exactly perfect.  Not sure if much can be done there (or should).  But checking them always gets the human form numbers.  There doesn't seem to be any way to see stats for Powers when shapeshifted, or how Enhancements will affect them.
• That said, tying powers together is nice for keybinds and for "prework" on the forms.  I'm going into Dwarf territory already with most of my attacks slotted, so the feel of "take it at 20, it'll be useful by the 30, maybe" is gone.  Really liking that.  Similarly, by old Goto-Tray form binds are pretty much obsolete, since I'm using the same powers across all forms.  In this case, that obsolence really feels like a feature.
• Probably the biggest beef at this point is the way Powers with significant effect changes between forms are looking to work.  Gravitic Emanation is primarily a control power in human form, and has the piddly damage and long recharge to match.  In Nova form, it's purely a damaging power, which means its Recharge is lower, but if it's used while in human form, you're pretty much locked out of one of your two main Nova AoEs for an entire fight, and that can be a little bit rough.  It's also going to require a lot of Frankenslotting to really get the sort of mileage that having both of the cone powers in the current "live" form does.  While it's nice to have to slot fewer powers, in this case it feels more like having to choose between two fairly key ones.  Mire looks like it may have similar issues (albeit not so much when it comes to slotting), though I haven't seen how that goes in practice yet, so we'll see on that front.

More commentary to come, I'm sure.  But that's my "first 20 levels" assessment.  Overall positive, but Gravitic Emanation might need to be looked at a little more thoroughly.

3

AE/Mission Architect / Re: Donkyhotay's AE missions

« on: May 19, 2021, 07:07:24 pm »

I had a need for some tickets, so I gave these both a try.  A little feedback, if you're looking for it (or even if not, I suppose).

Name: The Many Lives of Lord Recluse

A really neat idea.  Parallel dimension counterparts tend to be fun, and this one ran a nice gamut from creative to quirky.  Plus, I liked having missions with big mean baddies (who absolutely kicked my butt the one time I did try engaging...and the other time when Lord Reclusive and all of his clones literally spawned right on top of me...) that could mostly be avoided by focusing on other objectives.  It's a cool concept I'd enjoy seeing more options for in missions in general, I think.  The humor was a little hit-or-miss for me.  I got a good chuckle out of Lord Footloose and Captain Makorena, but there were what felt like several references to cold blooded murder for a laugh that...I just thought were, well, kinda cold-blooded (Fissionette's bio, the debriefing from mission #4).  I'll note that the kind of subtle stuff regarding the mission contact that could be fairly easily missed was pretty amusing, and felt like a reward for actually trying to read through things though as noted, the way it all ended was a little dark for my tastes.

On the technical side, everything looked okay.  I was running at +1x2 and a couple of the baddies didn't spawn for me: I got two Lady Recluses in mission #1 instead of any appearances by Ghost Widower and I got multiple Lord Recklesses, too, but I can't remember from the mission briefings if there was anyone missing from that (I saw Fissionette and the crab person...incidentally, was that person supposed to be a canon counterpart, too?). Also, does the Helsing NPC in mission 4 have some sort of perception-boosting power?  She aggro-ed like mad, which was a little annoying.  Might have just been bad luck, but you may want to re-evaluate her powers.

Name: Shining Stars: The Search for Dillo

I absolutely adored this story.  Just some good lighthearted heroing.  You have a real good handle on the Shining Stars characterizations, IMO, because it was silly, but not in, like a patently ridiculous or out of character way.  Most notably, it was Flambeaux at her Flambeaux-est, in a way that had me laughing as I rolled my eyes, which is how she should be.  I had slightly mixed feelings on the last mission.  It was fun to fight alongside Dillo again, but on the other hand, the half-baked excuse to keep the mission going felt, well, half-baked.  And on the other, other hand, the final "twist" when the boss summons his ambush felt amusingly full-circle with the old Twinshot arcs too.  So up and down, there.  Maybe do something with the urn that gets name-dropped a couple times, instead, to set up the last confrontation?

I noticed a few minor typos here and there on this one.  Twinshot not capitalizing the first letter in sentences in briefings, Flambeaux calling the Prussian Prince of Automatons "nemesis", stuff like that.  Dillo's line when he gets rescued in mission 2 is missing a word, I think, because it didn't make grammatical sense (and not for the usual Dillo reasons).