Samuel_Tow

I want to take every chance I get to agree with Bad, because this is pretty much what bothers me the most. I'm not sure where new players are getting this attitude - I'm not saying it's from the Architect, from Veterans or whether they come in with it, but the idea that they should be taken on a team because they NEED one even if they can't provide anything to it, and that they should FARM for levels on said team, rather than play the damb game really bothers me.

Reducing the game to farming, grinding and a spreadsheet of numbers is something, that, regrettably, happens to any game after you play it long enough for the lustre, but it should NOT be the default starting point for new players right as they join. Claiming that someone is stuck-up for suggesting another player find teams his own level and level up so he can HELP, rather than powerlevelling him like the world is in his debt is just appalling.

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Hmmm, my Agent Wildkatze is guilty of just that in her base costume. The suit covers head to toe, but has stilettos. I vaguely recall debating about it for half a second and deciding she's just that agile she can do it. As a comparison, my tankers I don't expect to be that agile, and have flat soles.

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A colleague at work says she doesn't find high-heel shoes at all uncomfortable because she always walks on her toes when wearing them, so the heel doesn't matter. I'm not sure how much faith I can put into this, but it's certainly POSSIBLE that an agile character can dash around in high heels by just not touching the heel. To my eyes, it doesn't look good, though. I will admit to the appeal of a high-heel boot, but the only times I've used those on my female characters has been on those who fly inherently. I figured they won't be spending a lot of time walking around anyway. Might as well have pretty but uncomfortable shoes

Generally, though, I design costumes based on function rather than, because to my eyes, function IS appeal. When I see the old cartoon super heroes with the gigantic arms that drag on the ground, humongous chests and tiny, tiny little legs that can't be more than a third the length of their arms, I don't find them appealing. I find them silly. If I can infer function from form, and a good, practical function, then the form is appealing.

As for showing skin, it's a matter of both character design and character concept. Typically, if a character is vulnerable to regular attacks, I find it inappropriate to show much skin. On the other hand, if that character is super-touch, like my completely indestructible cyborg, then putting her in shorts and a small jacket is actually a lot of fun. Here is this half-dressed girl punching holes in giant robots and taking rockets to the face who just hand-waves the damage away and keeps on going. It's ESPECIALLY fun when I put her on a team of armour-clad big burly men and STILL have her be the strongest and toughest in the end

As for chest slider, I don't feel restricted by it in either direction. In real life, different women have different sizes of breasts that, despite popular urban myth, don't really have anything to do with their personalities or life philosophies any more than being tall does. However, I don't restrict myself by what is "real" so much as what is "average," and average is mid-slider. I don't feel the need to make my characters flat-chested just because that's how real women should look like and then work off that. I work off the middle. If a woman is supposed to be more busty, I bring the slider right. If she's supposed to be less busty, I bring the slider down.

On my characters, who gets what rack is largely random, based on what my whim was at the time. The two exceptions I have are my giant woman, whose muscle and shoulders slider went so high that I had to raise a bunch of others to compensate, namely waist, hips and chest. Pushing the limit on the creator limits my options a lot of the time. The other is my pink bunny girl whom I was inspired to make by Bunny Love, posting a link to whom would get me banned SO FAST. Given the source material, a larger-than-normal rack came with the territory.

You know, I've had an interesting observation on the subject of bigotry and shame. I used to be a pretty modest player, always worried about what my friends, even strangers, would think of my designs, always ashamed to make characters I considered "too revealing" or "too girly." Truth is, though, that I actually liked a lot of those designs I pretended to not want to make... Until I actually ended up making them anyway. Since then, I've admitted to myself that, yes, I am a pervert and I'm not really ashamed of it. Not being worried about what others would thing, and indeed even enjoying their reactions, has freed me to make several quite interesting characters, ironically such that DON'T come off cheap or cheesy.

Any character of any concept, when made well, can be cool. That doesn't mean JUST sell on sex appeal, but be actually cool as a character concept and character design. Pretty much the biggest hurdle to making one is getting over the taboo of it. This both lets you make one to begin with, and prevents you from giggling like a pre-pubescent boy and sticking giant boobs on it because it's so wrong but so cool.

I've always hated people who chastise others for being a "guy in real life" like a guy playing a female character is shameful and men shouldn't find virtual female characters attractive. Worse still, this gets applied to actual WOMEN, like women should never, ever like hot, sexy super heroines, and if they do they're immoral. It's patently silly, and it IS happening just the same. Me, the only time I feel justified to badmouth someone's costume is when that costume SUCKS. Male, female, cheescake, robot, giant chicken - the concept and specific design doesn't matter. If it's bad, it's bad, but if it's good, it can be very good.

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You know after going through this, I see why power customization was put off for so long, some powers just wouldn't seem right being another color... Pain Domination Blue? Dark Miasma Green? Hot Feet Pink?


[/ QUOTE ]Dunno bout the rest, but i think if you ignore dark's name, it has a LOT of potential for customization to fit different themes

[/ QUOTE ]Even if you don't ignore the name, there's always Ghost Widow's take on the powers.

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Pastel Darkness, yes... Actually, no. One of the first things I thought to change were Ghost Widow's godawful pastel darkness powers to a more natural "Dark" look so that they would fit with my Dark/Necro Mastermind's Dark Miasma powers.

Two years ago, I really wanted to change my Electric/Electric Brute's lighting to blue, but I worked a cool construction equipment yellow-and-black suit on him that works really well with the ugly red electricity, so that's staying.

My Fire/Fire Brute's fire is getting changed into the same rancid green that his eyes are burning with. His is supposed to be more a physical manifestation of the energy of destruction more so than boring old fire.

My Energy/Energy Blaster will instantly have all of her Energy Manipulation powers recoloured to the same blue as Energy Blast. If we get a selection of power EFFECTS, I'm going to swap out Sniper Blast for something that doesn't suck, like a big giant fireball or a Zeus Titan beam of energy ala Blazing Bolt.

My Energy/Energy Brute will have all her Energy Aura powers recoloured to the same pink that Energy Melee has for consistency's sake.

That's about all I can think of offhand, and it doesn't even include NEW character that these changes will enable.

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The thing about this game is that it uses typical diceroll combat. Making it more 'difficult' wouldn't make it more 'challenging', it would just change the numbers in the computer's favor, thus making both combat and downtime longer and more tedious. To make it more challenging would be to rebuild the combat engine into something more skill based, which would be ideal but is not likely to happen. Ever.

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Yuo could always go the Darkfall online route, and make targeting FPS-like, rather thanb ased on an internal dice mechanic. I've never been sold on this idea though, since I've always felt my character's performance should have more to dow ith my ability to do with build than reflexes, but thats just me, and I do see the appeal of the other way of doing things (I had actually planned to buy DFO when it came out, but due to the uselessness of Adventurine studios, I was literally unable to do so - I was trying to give them money, but their website refused to sell me their product).

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And herein lies the major disconnect. Some people, myself first and foremost, don't enjoy the kind of "battle" that is waged in the books and via calculators, which is decided LONG before the first blow is ever landed, with the actual encounter only the final, physical representation of a foregone conclusion. Even if this outcome is possibly affected by random chance, the obvious aim is to minimise how much that random chance vulnerability affects you. That you want power to depend on your build rather than your reflexes, while I can respect your preference, is a symptom of a significant culture clash.

City of Heroes, at its base, is a click-n-kill RPG with jumping, which is about as static as it gets. Lacking an auto-attack as it does, however, and putting such emphasis on short-term, high-yield benefits (like a 10-second hold on a single enemy out of a 30-second battle) and fine positioning brings it about as close to an action game as a click-n-kill framework is pretty much ever going to get, which leads many people, myself among them, to treat it as an action game where success depends not so much on the numbers you crunched, but on what you actually DO in combat. To me, specifically, an "attack chain" is a mythical animal that may as well not exist for all it matters, because combat doesn't come down to chaining attacks in a pre-decided patter over and over again to defeat foe after foe. It's an exercise of thinking on your feet, knowing your enemies, their strengths and their weaknesses, knowing your powers and when they are appropriate, and being able to spot opportunities as they arise. That's about as close to an action game as it's ever going to get.

To give you a good example, I'm a person who SUCKS at strategy games and plays RPGs rather very simplistically. However, I'm also a person who's right at home in just about any action game that doesn't require reaction time enough to hit a 50 millisecond "blink." I've tried just about any fighting game that can be played on the PC (including just about any arcade fighter) and found most of them to be either too slow or too complicated. About the best ones I've ever found have been Capcom's VS series (largely Marvel vs. Capcom) for their breakneck speed, wide array of easily-used, effective tools (full-screen dashes, super jumps, push back, switch counters, etc.) and the simplicity of the combat system. There really isn't much that's needed to play these games but to know what your characters can do and when you should have them do it.

One final note on difficult has to be made. It's true that some people see a system and immediately shoot for the highest potential in that system, upon achieving which they start looking for the toughest challenge. It's a matter of balance between power and opposition. This balance doesn't have to be drawn between the top ends of both scales, however. There are people like and a few people I know, who look for the balance lower down. See, when I see I have extra power and I'm doing exceptionally well, my reaction isn't to think "Cool! This means I can go even higher!" but rather to think "OK, I'm ahead of the curve, so I can afford to do some things I WANT to do, rather than the things I HAVE to do." For instance, if my character is sucking wind like a jet engine, I will have no choice but to take Stamina (or delete the character), and it's a no-choice that will get made against my will. However, if the character is doing just fine without it, I see no reason to take Stamina when I can take, say, Intimidate and Invoke Panic because this particular character is supposed to be a psychic who induces maddening fear in other people. Sure, no matter how well I perform, Stamina is better than no Stamina, but the point is I don't NEED better, because I don't WANT better. What I want is "good enough," and if the game were to suddenly get "more challenging," then I will no longer be good enough. Which will suck pretty seriously.

As with PvP and as with "end game" raids, I'm not opposed to the game holding venues of extreme challenge. As long as they're not put directly in my way and I don't HAVE to drag myself through them, then they don't bother me. As long as "the game" doesn't require me to have a top-tier, expensive, planned out, BORING build, then I won't bat an eye at people manufacturing their own "challenge," even if in this game this strikes me more as a simulation stress test than anything I would describe as challenging. Regardless, as was said before - the quest for more challenge should NOT be such that it yanks the game from under all the people who came here for the super heroes and the cool powers and the fun of curb-stomping faceless mooks, rather than for the ultimate challange. Added venues, yes. Game-wide core principle change... Not so much.

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Not sure if this is a new feature or not. I was just readin the forum Issue 15 Bugs: Costumes and Faces. There were people complaining of bugs when switching costumes between sizes such as Male to Male Huge, or female to male huge, and the emotes not working properly.

Did I miss a feature where we can now change our character model with a costume change? I couldn't find the option in the editor, and that particular forum is not letting me reply/post in it. Anyone know anything about this?
After 5 yrs+ on here, that's a feature I think would be great!

[/ QUOTE ]It's a feature that will be available from the Science booster pack, and there will be specific contacts in Icon and Facemaker that will allow you to have different gender, height, or even switch to huge in each separate costume slot.

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To add, though the Booster isn't out yet (that I can see), it was released on the Training Room for a short while, which is where people came up with the bugs that it had and why they have experience of something not actually released yet.

How would that Praetorian thing work with people who are named things like... Names? Like me, say.

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From everything said by devs about the difficulty slider, there should have been bosses spawning at DiffLevel 2 and higher. When we were told that DiffLevel 1 on solo suppressed Bosses, it should have been inferred that when you're not solo or when the DiffLevel was higher, then you *should* be getting bosses.

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That refers to end of mission bosses, which become LTs. Not those that spawn in normal spawns. Those never spawned for teams of size below size 6 or 7, I can never remember, with the exception of boss-heavy groups like Freakshow, the Lost and the Rikti. It should IMO stay that way.

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Actually, it refers to bosses as the critter class, which applies to any bosses that spawn, be they end of mission, ambush-attached or random-spawned. It's just a facet of the spawn code that id doesn't have spawn sizes big enough to support bosses on Heroic/Villainous when solo for the most part. However, in my experience bosses in small-team spawns are nothing new, as I've been seeing bosses from all factions on as small a team as a duo all the time and from a variety of different factions, and have seen bosses even when solo on rarer occasions. Typically when I see one, chances are there will be at least a few more in the mission.

With the exception of the Malta group, I'm actually not highly opposed to bosses showing up when solo, provided they show up alone and not +1 (which they tended to do before). I like to see a greater variety of enemies in the game, and few bosses are so tough that they can't be taken out completely on their own.

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Something new:
Unyielding difficulty can spawn Bosses in the +1 spawn points for a solo character (The +2 spawns are too small for this). This might be the case for tenacious too.

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That seems more than a little odd. That's a significant bump in difficulty, and seems unlikely to be both intentional and (intentionally) not mentioned.

Then again, the patch notes this issue were complete garbage.

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It is true for tenacious (2nd diff) now as well. Boss spawned by himself, but it was *nice* to see for once. Was seen in a MA mission I created where the Boss mob never spawned before while solo, even on invincible. Now I can actually test my bosses :O

IIRC, it use to be like that when they first made the difficulty and team size changes a very long time ago. I really really really really really hope it just wasn't mentioned in the patch notes.

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Bosses have shown up in missions ever since they fixed the spawn scaling issues in I7 or I8. It wasn't frequent and was more common for some groups than others (the Lost had a lot of Anathema and Pariah bosses all by themselves, as did Malta with their Zeus Titans), but it wasn't uncommon to see, say, a mission that was 50% Paragon Protectros (the boss kind, from Crey) or one full of nothing but Freakshow Tanks, even when solo.

This hasn't changed, though I suspect the frequency with which it is occurring may have wavered if people are noticing it now more than before.

CoV-side, Pocket D connects to Port Oaks near the Mercy ferry, Sharkhead Ilsand near the Monkey Fight Club and St. Martial Island under a powerline near one of the brokers.

The whole double experience weekend is an example of zeal triumphing over everything else. I'm on a server I can log into every time and I STILL feel like not logging on just to avoid the madness.

If you're playing from the UK, I'd suggest sticking to the East Coast ones. The West Coast servers have a worse connection from Europe, at least for me, and while it may not be MUCH, it's still worth considering. I'll see about getting you a link to a list that says which are which.

Beyond that, I'm not a good guide for looking for populated servers, as I don't like big crowds (and the lag they bring).

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No dice. Anyone have a table of which coast each server is on?

Just as a little example, I recently found an old anime movie - 1998's Spriggan - which doesn't really have much of anything of what people would call "anime clothes." Soldiers wear soldiers' uniforms of different colours, the protagonist wears a uniform complete with armour while the antagonist wears a backwards baseball cap and a baseball jacket (like I used to have when I was a kid, no less). About the only thing sufficiently "anime-like" is the protagonist's metal head band and MAYBE one cyborg's armour, though he was just... Fat. Called General Fat Man, no less.

There are still a bunch of things I'd like from this movie, though, nevertheless.

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http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/
Comes with a windows installer, you can run it from cmd.exe

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Now that's what I'm talking about Good advice and it should be enough to get a new person ready to run the given copy-paste script.

Still more a fan of writing programmes in an editor, though

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If it does happen I see it as a way for many people to salvage character that were nerfed into the ground from the previous issues. I would definately respec into something else for my namesake character. I would respec my storm defender, all of my trollers who had empathy that werent mind control, all my trollers who were kinetics werent mind control. Even if they didnt give a full respec I would be glad if I could start over at level 1 but still keep all my badges but allow me to pick another primary/secondary.

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Im sorry, are you suggesting that empathy was 'nerfed into the ground' for controllers ?
The AB +recharge portion not affect pets is 'nerfed into the ground' ?

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Since no character ever has been "nerfed into the ground," this statement is false on its face. The only good way to "salvage" characters is to remake them as far as I'm concerned.

Banned accounts SHOULD get wiped because no-one has any access to them any more. I suppose keeping them around for a while in case the original owner wants to plead a case is sound, but keeping them forever seems unreasonable. Unreasonable enough to not believe it's true.

As for Trial accounts, I understood it that they were being treated the same as Live accounts. Hearing they're wiped separately is good, if only because I assume it means they're being subjected to MORE stringent measures, what with them not being paid for and not being accessible. I can't be sure of it, but I can suspect.

And as for names, the purge level was dropped down to 6 for a reason. Raising it back up to 30, 40 or even 50 is unreasonable and far too draconian, not to mention a solution that won't actually help much, but hurt enough to be a bigger problem than it's worth. The solution to this problem isn't applying more power.

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Just idle speculation I think. EU population is pretty low as a whole though and it isn't helped by the need to provide multi-lingual servers which further fragments the limited numbers.

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Well, one only hopes the services will be combined, but the EU servers will retain their location and support structure as well as languages, just allowing US players to access the EU servers and vice versa. And maybe some day the PlayNC store will begin respecting my wishes to have US merchandise shown to me when I only own the US version.

I suppose I keep forgetting how most other MMOs are structured. I mean, not literally forgetting, but ignoring the mentality they create. For some reason, my brain always makes the connection that "new player" = "new to MMOs," which isn't actually always the case. I remember a time when we here on the forums could get together and pat each other on the back that "Ho ho ho! This was my first MMO!" I mean I'm in that boat - I hated MMOs as a concept before I bought City of Heroes never expecting to play more than a month - which is why I guess it colours my perception. I'm not sure many players remain for whom City of Heroes was a new and exciting experience, as opposed to yet another MMO.

Still, I wish we could spread the message around to new people that it's generally better to go through the low levels "proper" AT LEAST once before you start rushing for the top. Unlike most of us here with 50+ months of game time, we shouldn't expect that new players would be bored of "the low level grind" and want to get to 22 and Stamina and SOs as fast as they can, or to 50 and the "end game" or whatever. And I'm not just talking about farming or powerlevelling or even power gaming. Just the notion that one must level as fast as possible because THAT is what the game is about.

Personally, to end on a weird note, to me levelling up is like earning money: sure, it's very satisfying it earn a lot of it really fast, but money is only worth as much as the things you buy with it, and sometimes cashing in your levels to play a cool low- or mid-level piece of content is more entertaining than still more levels to no practical end before THE end, ESPECIALLY to a player who hasn't played it before. I'm looking at 60 months, and I still giggle like a little girl when I find something I haven't played before. It could be the Kheldian arcs, it could be a newly redone AT (currently experiencing Dominators for the first time) or just some unlockable contact I never got around to.

Interesting... I've seen random freezes on other games (restricted to Mirror's Edge at the moment) where everything will freeze for a while and then resume. I highly suspect my video card is overheating, but I don't know what to do about it. The fan is turning, there's enough space around it and all, but it's still making the back of my PC case really hot to the touch. I'm even getting blue screen errors about "a hardware device or its driver" having malfunctioned, and it's making me worried I might fry something important.

I'll have to ask, as well - what is this nVidia performance programme and where can I find it?

You can't slot for knockback resistance or hold. There are no regular enhancements for it. Certain set bonuses and set enhancements do increase status protection of certain kinds, but they don't need to be slotted in powers that actually give status protection.

As a general rule of thumb, not all effects a power gives can always be slotted for.

I've seen this happen, myself, but I didn't think it was significant. Thinking back on it, though, it is. It used to be that on a successful attack, enemies would only be alerted once an effect LANDED on them, which came some time AFTER the to-hit check was made due to effects being delayed for animation purposes. This seems to no longer be the case. On a lot of attacks, enemies are alerted as soon as the to-hit check passes, regardless of whether you hit or miss.

I've seen this most obviously on slow attacks, such as Rain of Arrows. Interruptible attacks are a little tricky, since they're slow, but their to-hit check is staggered until AFTER the interrupt duration, which is largely right before the attack itself. It IS noticeable on Assassin's Strikes, though, as enemies shouldn't notice you until AFTER you hit them, but many, many times they turn around and take a swing as you're taking your own, a second before you actually hit. This seems like a bug.

Also, this is a forum as much about requesting technical assistance as for reporting bugs with more explanation, screenshot and what have you, both as a place where the actual developers may see and as a warning to other players who may be seeing the same bugs. I wouldn't rush to criticise people for bringing bugs here.

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Unless the download from the CoH/V servers is going considerably slower than downloads from other places do, you're going to run into the same problem with it from any source. 2.8 Gigs is 2.8 Gigs, after all. The only way that someone could help to avoid that would be to burn the thing and send it off to your friend on a DVD, but that would take even longer.

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Pretty much this. Whether you download from Paragon Studios or from someone's shared site, you're still going to see the same download speed. If you need to do a full reinstall, though, I'd dig up your old CDs and see if they won't save you some of the download.

It's odd, though, at least from my perspective. I expect a veteran to want to level fast. After all, I'm traditional slow levelling's biggest proponent and even I can appreciate levelling fast now that I've done it all.

But what would possess a new player, one who hasn't seen anything from the the game, to want to level faster and faster? Doesn't it make sense to see the game and get a feel for it before you shoot for the end? I can only speak for myself, but I only look to level faster when I run out of interesting things to do and need that next level to get more. This shouldn't be a factor for a new player until at LEAST level 10, possibly until level 20. I remember back in the old days when I first got to level 20 and realised that ZOMG! It will take me all day to get a single level! This is horrible! THEN I might see someone look to level faster. But before that?

I've seen a lot of people suggest Perl scripts, but never really seen them explain how to get Perl for Windows or set up a command line shortcut to it.

Not come from the UK (joined the game before there was an EU version) but I hail from Eastern Europe, myself. The US servers are pretty cool. There are a lot of them and you can understand people in ALL of them Well, most of the time, thanks to the rare examples of horrible spelling compounded by leet speek and lack of actual sentences, but that's besides the point

Welcome to the US servers. Expect to see people from all over the world here.

Speaking of names, the world has given us a wide selection of very cool ones, and creative means of using them. To avoid subjective choices of what is good and bad, I've "borrowed" names on a couple of occasions.

One was the name of General Morden, chief bad guy for most of Metal Slug and owner of his own massive army. Since he's a famous character, I could obviously not use his name directly, but I was able to get Morten, which has roughly the same sound (maybe even better) and it turns out it means... Something in Swedish. I don't remember what. I used it for a hero, though, and a girl, at that.

The other was that of a notable villain from Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperfoce Go! I spelled it "Valeena," because I had NO idea how it's actually spelled, and the game accepted it. Checking IMDB now, apparently it's spelled "Velina," which should have been pretty obvious. That's actually one of the reasons I didn't spell it like that, as I suspected and wanted to be slightly different. The other reason is that the word spelled "Velina" can't actually be pronounced as they did on the show. Win-win! Also used this one for a hero, but I kept the gender. Come to think of it, I'm not sure mine would be pronounced right, either.