Ardrea

I'm going to offer up three simple suggestions that I think could really improve the usability of the new interface. Others may disagree.

1. When you're clicked into a numerical entry field (e.g., Enter Price or Bid fields), typing the escape key clears the field entirely, but leaves your insertion point there. This would make it easier to get rid of the previous bid or price, which isn't always (or even often) useful.

2. When you're clicked into a numerical entry field, typing the tab key advances you to the next such field, from left to right, and then from top listing to lower listing. This makes it easier to change the number of items to bid on after entering the price, without needing to click in that tiny "X_" field.

3. When you search for a string in the market, you can use the "&" to separate string you wish to match with and "and" operator; e.g., "Recipes & PBAoE Damage & Dam/End". This would find all recipes for PBAoE Damage that have Dam/End in their names.

I think it would be a step towards getting the usability the old interface had back.

I've still been seeing a few bugs with it. I was bidding on low end salvage for a new toon last night, and it would take my bids, and I'd see a purchase. Then I'd click on "get" and the bought listing would disappear, but it wouldn't give me the salvage. I'd see no message or anything either; the listing just disappeared. These were bids for single items, not stacks; it wasn't happening on ever bid, or even most of them, but enough times to be very worrying. The market was very busy last night though, so I decided to give it a day and try again before I submit bug reports.

I really don't like not being able to search within a category. The search field clearly does searches for "A or B or C", which is how it finds salvage for recipes; but it can't do "D and E", such as "Recipes and Melee Damage and Endurance" to find Endurance IO recipes in the melee damage category; variations on I used to do very commonly with the old interface.

Offering a serious reply; I'd say you're going to find the CoH community very accepting, regardless of which server you try. There are occasional lapses that one might encounter anywhere, but if one were to find an unfriendly or intolerant reaction, and especially a harassing reaction, then that would be a problem that /gignore or even a petition would be best suited to addressing. I don't have the text in front of me, but harassment of this sort would surely be considered a violation.

Historically, I believe the Victory server has been considered the unofficial GLTB friendly server (that's what the Paragon Wiki states on http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Servers ). But again, you should enjoy playing CoH on any server you choose to try, including Virtue.

Ashtur's remarks above about the rate of alt turn over being destructive to RP rings true to me. I create characters and play them to fifty with the expectation I'm going to keep them for the long term and develop a shared story and experience with others around me who're doing the same. When an otherwise excellent RP'er retires their fifty to start a new character, it does take the RP wind out of my sails too -- in a way, I put effort into that person's character too, and it then just disappeared. It's always a bit of a downer, and is the sort of thing that could create a chain reaction to break up an otherwise healthy group.

Does this mean that RP SG's become less active, or dry up and dissolve faster than before? I'm not sure. I've been in a position of trying to find an RP SG a few times, as I am again now, and it does feel as though it's more difficult than before -- the RP groups don't seem to advertise as they did a year or two ago. It may well be there's just as many and just as active, but to me they seem harder to find.

Perhaps they're closing in on their core membership to those RP'ers who just want to rapidly turn over alts in an RP-environment; perhaps the influx of vocal non-RP'ers causes the RP community to close in a bit. Maybe we just need renewed effort in connecting RP'ers to each other. I do feel that most RP communities have a few core players who sustain it. Those who're naturally outgoing and engaging and who bring new players into their fold and make them feel part of the group -- the sort of activity that replaces players who've had to leave with fresh roleplayers.

It's not even live yet, and already there's cut-throat competition.

I have to say though, it's a wonderful idea, and I'm sure I'll need it sooner or later.

I've been using bits and pieces of different IO sets in my new characters recently, starting from level 7, and I've been very happy with the results. I find those recipes and their salvage tend to be cheap, cheap, cheap! And make paying attention to slots and slotting almost useful at low levels. By the late teens and twenties, they make a build that performs quite well -and- they don't wear out. If you want to give it a go, just read Fulmens' Mini-guides in his sig.

I have a VEAT character with mental training, swift, hurdle, and sprint slotted up decently, plus an occasional IO set bonus for run or movement speed. The character can run 36 mph non-sprint, 50 mph in sprint, and 71 mph in Ninja run. The price is high -- it's a theme build, but it's also very fun to travel around with.

Oh my goodness, an Alignment Thread.

I'd leave it to those who define the setting to give me a working definition of what's "Good" (or Heroic), and "Evil" (or Villainous), and then I would try to work within those as best I can, at least not work against them, and if I just can't stand how they define them, well, I know where the door is.

If the setting's definitions are up for debate, then in an escapist game, I'd prefer something fairly black-and-white as personal preference.

In some of the games I've played, good and evil have been considered fundamental forces, akin to electricity or gravity, and were separate from normal intents, actions and consequences. I found that quite intriguing, since it's so different than how the real world is generally viewed.

Super-Reflexes/Tai-Chi Tanker.

I think you could get a costume token or three out of a polite inquiry to the email they sent out.

Still, typing "izual" into google would have brought up the diablo npc in the top search hits. The ten seconds to do that when I'm considering character names is worth it, to me.

I've been here a while now, but am a relative late-comer. I just have to say how happy I've been that in a game going on six years old, the dev staff is fairly big, active, and creating new stuff, not just maintaining old stuff. We can disagree, sometimes jokingly, sometimes a bit heatedly, about what that new stuff is; but there's been sixteen issues in just less than six years, another one around the corner, and a substantial expansion just over the horizon. I'm happy.

/anti-doom

I'm a type D. I look for 'niches' and interpose myself between people who just want to sell those recipes quickly and empty their slots, and those others who haven't the time or patience to get those recipes and the corresponding salvage and do it themselves. When the niche goes cold, I make a note of it for another time and move on. I am able to get a reasonable margin for doing this, and through volume, I make enough influence/infamy to outfit my own toons pretty well without resorting to farming.

Occasionally, I 'buy it nao', but only for select items where the 'nao' price is tiny compared to my market throughput.

I'd flip shamelessly too, if I was much good at it. Flippers correct marketing mistakes others make, by snatching up their woefully underpriced offerings and relisting them at prices more appropriate for the supply and demand of the item.

I hoard a little influence and infamy too -- I have a few billionaire toons. I'm not ashamed of this either, because by effectively taking those billions out of circulation, I help keep prices down through limiting the money supply. Inflation is, of course, just too much influence or infamy chasing too few salvages/recipes/etc.

Great post from the OP, overall. And even if the people who should read it don't, it helps me explain to in-game friends how the market works, and why I'm not ashamed of making a profit there.

Yes, I have. It wasn't easy, and the story, while compelling to most of us involved, got halted half-way through.

I think the key attribute needed is something at stake that goes beyond one character, or even two character's personal lives. In the case of the story I mentioned, it was the loyalties of an anti-villain being torn between red-side, and blue-side; with a blue-side supergroup working to create a set of circumstances for the anti-villain to cross over, and the counter-efforts of NPC red-siders to permanently corrupt the anti-villain to the red-side. It involved a half dozen players at one point, some with larger roles, some smaller; several AE arcs, stolen technology, NPCs both canon and unique, military style raids and sleuthing, spying, and conspiring. Great fun, until other circumstances took the wind out of our sails.

As I see it, the most important ingredients are a storyteller -- a player working with you who has some imagination and the trust of a few friends to arrange a story and make decision about how things turn out (a peer game-master, of sorts) and a few friends dedicated to following the story where it leads.

Bold Garlic's response above is a pretty good build. According to Mid's, it soft-caps all three defense stats (Melee, Ranged, and AoE), which is a very good thing, gives Lethal and Smashing resistance around 45%, plenty of recovery and regen. It's possible you could maybe Frankenslot Stamina and Health a little better with some more procs, but that would be ... expensive. There's a guide in the Market and Inventions forum on how to slot globals and uniques. The offensive side .. well, it's a Tanker. Offense isn't going to be in Scrapper range, but you'll be able to keep it up forever. Still, the Mako's, Touch of Death, Obliteration and so on sets are good ones that'll make the offense powers do what they can.

The other thing to do is to be sure to get the accolade powers that boost End and HP -- Atlas Medallion, Freedom Phalanx Reserve, Portal Jockey, and Task Force Commander; for total of +10% End and +20% Health. These aren't trivial and will help any character.

The LFT flag doesn't reset if you log and relog within a few minutes. After a while, it will.

I use the LFT flags a lot (I've been teamed with you Quinch, and it was a fun team, too ) and I make an effort to only use them when I'm actually looking and I respond to tells when they're sent to me. I appreciate it when teams looking for members check for those flags first.

Mood emotes are a great idea, but I see no reason why they'd need to be part of a booster pack?

Just some new idle emotes, like /e drink or /e crossarms, and so on. /e happy, /e sad, etc., would be great imo, and perhaps could just be dropped on us in an issue or three.

It's certainly a great power; one of my run-slotted non-super-speeding characters runs at 66.99 mph with it on. I just wish it didn't look the way it did -- like my character is rushing over to elbow-jab someone.

If the search window was up when you logged off, or was d/c'd, then the search box with the same settings and last search results will be back when next you log in, even to the other side. It's just the results from earlier though, and the list won't be up to date, especially if you'd been logged a while.

I have an OCZ SSD application drive on my computer. CoH is sped up by this a lot. I've only been running with it for a few months, so I can't speak to long term reliability, but so far it's operated flawlessly. Launch is faster and installing CoH Patches is -ridiculously- faster. Does it improve loading times from zone to zone? I really can't say; when I got the SSD, I also got a faster cpu, faster video, more ram, etc., and don't know which was the bottleneck before.

I still think the market could be set up to better sink out some of the inf supply.

For instance, I post a Uselessonium salvage for sale at 1inf. Someone buys it for 50000. Why do I get the difference? Sure, it's nice, but the market could keep the difference too; or if that frightens folks, we split it, 50/50.

Well, you mentioned this issue on my LFSG/VG post, so I feel it's fair to reply here to your discussion.

I have found that small groups expect their early members to be leaders; to recruit, to build, to create teaming and stories, and so on. I, myself, am not a leader. I can be an excellent follower -- I roleplay decently; even creatively. I put a lot of effort into my characters, and people often enjoy being around them in my company. I can play often, and can earn large amounts of prestige. I don't like seeing new groups I put my heart into dissolving because they couldn't get up to critical mass. So, my criterion for joining a SG/VG is that it meet a threshold of consistent activity. Once there, I can add to it; I can play a lot, I'm creative, respectful, and while I absolutely will not lead, I can be a good, supportive team member.

The stage of a group where it needs to grow is one where you need certain kinds of players; people who enjoy, or at least tolerate, those early development roles; and are willing to risk the group not making it. Some of us just aren't those kinds of people.

You might have a look at this link over into the SG recruiting forums for the Global Defenders: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=191023

What I find interesting about this approach is the substitute travel power angle. Oh, it's probably not worth it to save one or two power selections in terms of overall PvE capability, but it's -different-. And heck, 50 mph is faster than some fliers.