Ad Astra

Kills in AE do not count towards any badging progress outside the specific MA badges - so, no, those won't count. You will have to find them on the street or in paper, scanner, or regular missions and appropriate TFs/SFs. Nor do AE Rikti drop merits. Again, you will have to leave the AE building for those.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Alright...that's my mistake.
I was always under the impression that the devs said it was a mistake because it was too easy to get a character to 50.
My apologies.

[/ QUOTE ]


Nope if you don't PL, and don't play every day in a team, but instead only play casually maybe in a team maybe solo it can take you a few years to reach level 50. Now if you work at it reaching the level cap isn't that hard, but you have to want to. With PLing being the easiest way to reach the level cap.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's what I always thought. I thought it was EATs that started the whole PLing phase of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not so much.

People addicted to "dinging" a level are what started the whole PLing thing. Some people really enjoy the quick gain of levels because it is a tangible evidence of progress. It's a personality thing.

In other words, there will always be people who PL - because they like it.

Currently, there isn't an animal skeleton model in the .game. Your idea (which has been suggested lots of time) would require the development of this model - in multiple forms, since a bear's skeleton would not move the same as a wolf's skeleton or a big hunting cat's skeleton.

Energy Blast was originally Water Blast, but someone decided that the graphics were not quite right for Water. Haven't you seen the bubbles that emanate from your hands with Energy Blast? Also, Energy Torrent does exactly what you described to Hellions.

Please go check out Lady Jade's Powers Suggestions Box stickied at the top of this forum.

Edit to add - Welcome to the forums, Guns - please poke around a bit to see what others have already said about things and add to their threads.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and Vitality's idea of limiting AE to those with a level 50 character would actually hurt many altoholics out there. Personally, it took me bout three years to get my first level 50 character (and I still don't have my second one after 4 1/2 years). But I certainly tell you I knew how to use the train, where Crey's Folly was (or how to find it if I didn't already know), how to get my cape, how to run on a TF, etc. Making AE only unlockable with a level 50 would have locked me out well past my learning curve on the mechanics of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

What I mean is as soon as you get a level 50 character you can access AE with any level character you make.
Make it the same way they did with EATs and VEATs.
The AE access wouldn't be limited to just that level 50 character.

[/ QUOTE ]

They know.

What they were saying is that people can go a long time before they get a single level 50 on their account.

Keeping them locked out of the AE until that point on all of their characters seems harsh.


Maybe until they get 50 levels across all characters?

[/ QUOTE ]

No...what I mean is you only have to get ONE character to level 50 to open up AE content for your whole account.

That means as soon as you get your first character to 50 you can go and create another character and do AE content from level 1 on.

[/ QUOTE ]
That doesn't seem like it's fair or makes any sense. It took me 2 years to get a level 50 because I kept getting distracted with alts. And how would it make sense for new players who bought the i14 box that says "Architect Edition" to be unable to actually use the architect without leveling to 50 first?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see as being any different then when Issue 3 came out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Was that the issue when they added Khelds to the game?

If so, the devs have already stated that restricting access to them to players with a level 50 character was a mistake.

And haven't you seen other posters in this thread demonstrating how your idea would adversely affect players who make lots of alts - in other words, their City experience is broad at the bottom with a growing narrow peak headed towards a level 50 instead of what was obviously your path of a single character headed in a straight line up to level 50.

Please don't try to tell me that FatherXmas & Dispari didn't know how to play until they got a single level 50 character (even discounting my own experience of taking that long to get to 50).

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and Vitality's idea of limiting AE to those with a level 50 character would actually hurt many altoholics out there. Personally, it took me bout three years to get my first level 50 character (and I still don't have my second one after 4 1/2 years). But I certainly tell you I knew how to use the train, where Crey's Folly was (or how to find it if I didn't already know), how to get my cape, how to run on a TF, etc. Making AE only unlockable with a level 50 would have locked me out well past my learning curve on the mechanics of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

What I mean is as soon as you get a level 50 character you can access AE with any level character you make.
Make it the same way they did with EATs and VEATs.
The AE access wouldn't be limited to just that level 50 character.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand that the AE access would be across the whole account.

What I am saying is that for the first 3 years I played the game, I would not have been able to access AE because I had ZERO level 50 characters for that time.

This would have been long past the time I learned how to take the train, do a TF, run a respec trial, survive in a hazard zone, get a cape, etc.

During the time it took me to run a character up to 50, I also ran about 30 others up to the level they could get their capes. Of those, more than half were of a level to get into Ouroboros (it didn't exist at the time, but they would have been able to get there if it had). Out of all my alts, 3-4 were of a level to get thru the Midnighter's Club to Cimerora (if it had existed at the time).

So keeping me, the player out of AE because I didn't have a level 50 character would have been an arbitrary restriction designed to prevent players who didn't understand the game applied to someone who did understand the game.

The fact that I don't have access to VEATs is still a bit of a sore point, but at least the Devs have admitted gating access to the EATs in general was not a good idea.

Adding such a gate to AE is not a general fix to the problem of players who don't know how to play the game.

Or having them in the Midwest, either.

I know that it would be great to have them at either Origins or GenCon, both of which have attendance in the 25,000+ range, drawing folks from around the world.

It appears that their marketing/travel budgeting folks don't recognize anything east of the California state line, even thouch airfare and hotel combined would have been comparable between sending folks to San Diego vs. Atlanta vs. Indianapolis (site of GenCon).

So if you are truly a City fan, it's your dime to head out to the West Coast if you want to be part of a City & Paragon Studios event supported by anything more than swag sent out via mail (and leftover swag from a West Coast event at that).

[ QUOTE ]
I think the easier solution to all of this is one of the following:

1) Write off the AE-only players and don't team with them.

2) Write off the AE-only players but team with them with a grain of salt.

3) Team with the AE-only players but be prepared to teach them how to play. Afterall, the difference between a suckie player and a good player is only 2-3 weeks of teaming on some good teams.

4) Team with them and expect them to suck. Prepare for lotsa quitting and some team wipes.

5) Team with them and be suprised if they are any good. If they are good, add them to friends and team with them regularly.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is one of the best answers I have seen. I know it can be really frustrating to team with folks who seem clueless about the mechanics of the game, but in most situations, you can pretty quickly make up your mind whether helping them through the learning curve is personally rewarding to you at that point in time.

If You don't want to team with an AE baby to teach them how to play - then just don't. I know it isn't written on their foreheads, but really, if playing with any idiot (AE baby or just naturally come that way even after playing all the content, it happens) isn't what you want to do, then quit the team and move on.

AE seems to have given us more idiots who can't play their way out of a wet paper bag, but they have always been with us and we have always had to make the personal decision of whether it is rewarding enough to spend the time to work the idiot through his/her "issues" or not.

Oh, and Vitality's idea of limiting AE to those with a level 50 character would actually hurt many altoholics out there. Personally, it took me bout three years to get my first level 50 character (and I still don't have my second one after 4 1/2 years). But I certainly tell you I knew how to use the train, where Crey's Folly was (or how to find it if I didn't already know), how to get my cape, how to run on a TF, etc. Making AE only unlockable with a level 50 would have locked me out well past my learning curve on the mechanics of the game.

I do like the idea of setting a cap on total lifetime XP earned through AE of an equivalent of some arbitrarily-chosen Level that would force a combination of levelling in AE & outside AE, but that does go against the announced Dev view that AE is an alternative levelling path from 1-50.

But still, if people on your team aren't playing to your standards, either find some reward in helping them out, or if they are literally unteachable or you aren't in the mood to do so, quit the team. Just move on to the next team.

[ QUOTE ]
Woot, first on the list, I'm so proud

And... Elvis avatar? o.O To quote Yoda... er, no, to butcher a quote from Yoda, Avatar? Elvis? My tank this is!

Though the cat's working its way back into the rotation....

[/ QUOTE ]

Yay! The orange kitty cat is coming back! He's my fave of all your avatars, M_B, because he reminds me of my much-missed Calvin (orange tom cat) I lost a couple of years ago. I see him and smile!

PK - always amusing, keep it up. Oh, and yeah, probably may as well go back to the PK avatar since you will be keeping the name. I never really cared for your Westley avvy - too plain, not nearly enough *drama*.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Characters don't get deleted after X time around here. If they are below level 6 and the owner's account has been in-active for a time the names become available again, but the characters themselves won't be deleted.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was under the impression the name-release wasn't an automatic feature, but rather a script that NCsoft needs to specifically run. And IIRC they've only done this twice.

I could be mistaken, however.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, you are correct _Acyl_. It's a script that must be run - I believe they have said that they may not necessarily advise the playerbase of plans to runs it, so there is a general warning kind of thing in case someone gets upset that a name goes "poof" on an inactive account that is reactiviated.

Oh, look, another AE is ruining the game thread.

Did we really need another one of these? I doubt it. And probably not from someone who confesses he used that mechanic to get 20 level 50 characters since I14 dropped.

Players who are interested in content will do content and most likely stay around to see what else they can find in-game. Players who race to 50 to find that they are now bored will likely quit the game. As you said, OP, it's been the same thing since the game released.

Oh - and what was the question?

[ QUOTE ]
I've been having a recurring problem lately. Often when I try to put enhancements into storage, the game freezes up and falls over.

Anyone else having this issue?

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't been having a problem either.

In fact, late last week I spent pretty much an entire evening sorting and taking inventory of IOs in my Enhancement Tables, moving about 350 IOs between tables. Eventually a memory leak (pesky bug) acted up - but that was at the end of a two hour session in-base.

Bill's got you covered. For a one-stop shop of Base Guides, look here:

Base Guides and Resources

in the Base Construction forum. Lotsa good stuff there.

Also, join the global channel "BaseBuildersInc." (the "." is important) to find help in-game while you are building or just to show off your work!

Welcome to the base-building addiction, a subaddiction to City itself!

[ QUOTE ]
For myself, I have an easy time explaining temp powers or abilities. Every single character heroside, and every character villainsiide, share something in common. If you're a hero, you've gone to City Hall and registered with them. Regardless of what you you claim your origin is, all heroes start out at City Hall and are given a security clearance (visible on your character screen). All villains start out in the Zig. The blackwand my mutant tanker carries? I a made friend during indoctrination and he gave me that as a parting gift. Sands of Mu? A little trick a zig cellmate taught me. The tech my magic blaster carries (body armor, long range missile)? As I got more and more experience fighting Paragon's villains, I realized I'd need to augment my abilities with some tech, so I raided our superbase's storeroom for some things we gadgets we picked up over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the best job I've seen working through the "incongruities" OP is so worried about - Good Job!

And I LOL's at the memories from Wizards. Yep, a "little trick Mom taught me" works to explain any number of things.

[ QUOTE ]
Have fun with that Invincible Posi, I hope you've got clear mind on the team...short of that, stack up on break frees. I don't have 4th of July plans per se, but I do have to travel to NYC to go to a wedding. Personally I'd rather go to the dentist than spend about 15 hours round trip on this *&^%$ wedding (sigh), but oh well. See you guys next weekend. . . and Johnny, even though it would be out of order, how about if we do the new 5th column TF?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point about Invincible, but we can always change the difficulty if we need to.

[ QUOTE ]
What do you considered a Comic Book name?

Firestrike?
Incredible Iceberg?

Both names are heroes of mine, and I play on freedom.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice!

I can get superheroey names if I want to take the time 5-10 minutes maybe) to work past all the identical "great" ideas that apparently weren't all that original anyways. My most recent score was Psychique for my new baby dom on Triumph.

Spread across the servers (and of varying ages, some probably at least 4 years old, but some more recent) - Fireblaze, Maiden Frost & Frost Maid (one is the evil twin), Arctic Ice, Dr. Neutrino, Wynter Hazard, Darkefire, and TechnoValkyrie. And those are the most superheroey or supervillany names, I have a good 30+ others that I like that may not "qualify" as "super".

[ QUOTE ]

Personally, I would like to see these costumes that are given out as Cons be exclusively through the codes for a period of time - say 3 to 6 months. I would then like to see them go into the store for sale - say $5.00 a costume. That way attendees get a cool thing (for free) that is exclusively theirs for a short while, and then anyone who wants it can get it later for a cost much less than on eBay (and the money would be going to game development).

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be fantastic. Seems unlikely to happen, though.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The point I was trying to make though, is that if you DO want to play a natural-origin human character, none of the current control sets really fit. Every other archetype (kheldians and doms not included) has power choices that can be played as a straight-up vanilla human. No weird race, no superpowers. A watchmen style hero if you will. Controllers and dominators simply don't. And they should.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, wouldn't using grenades technically still be "science" or "tech?" Depending how far you want to take it, a "Natural Human controller" shouldn't exist, unless you can get enemies to stand still long enough to pile dirt around them or get them to fall into a pit you dug. Alternately, go for some of the Tank or Scrapper sets and slot for stuns.

And if using bits of tech (grenades) is fine for that, why isn't having a device to work on all the other varied effects controllers have?

Not against a "grenade" based set - heck, we have trick arrow as a controller secondary - but if you want to be strict about "natural meaning natural human," you've got a heck of a time coming up with a set that actually matches that.

[/ QUOTE ]

This. Mind control is probably the strongest current contender if you call it "Cult of Personality" or something like that. But I think of grenades as devices, and therefore sci or tech, not natural - same for Trick Arrow, Archery, AR, Devices and Traps, BTW.

[ QUOTE ]
Ad Astra, I'd like to think that I've made a VERY COOL looking "conference/world domination room" with flags and weapons and big round table. It's very hitler-esque. Not what I was going for, but it just looks so cool. It's just a decorative room, no function whatsoever.

The whole base is tech themed, with factory walls in the workshop and custom colors all throughout. The workshop in particular has a lot of decoration.

I was just wondering how much people cared about this kind of thing. Am I wasting time/prestige by making it look shiny?

It just seems a shame that everyone's either in a SG already, or is a lowbie that you can't trust...

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds very "nice" (not the adjectve I would pick for Hitleresque, but I can't find another one right now).


I was just trying to convey that when I zone into a base and see a nice thematic or kewl-looking base, I go "Ooohhh,sweet" and think the SG has its act together - superficial, I know.

I would love to see pics sometime.

So your point is that you want 2 freespecs to be available around the drop of a new issue?

One that was held over from the previous issue release and then a week later a new one (that will wipe out the previous one not used, as is done now)?

But what if this mythical Casual Player already used his Issue 14 (for example) freespec prior to Issue 15 dropping? He has no freespec to do the experimenting you are hypothesizing other than the one that dropped with Issue 15. This is what he has right now, with a freespec dropping concurrent with the new issue.

I have to think your Casual Player won't follow the scheme of waiting until the new issue drops to immediately respec into the changed powers only to change them a week later. That really isn't all that "casual".

I think it more likely that CP will play around with the changes and perhaps go through a respec. Or he won't, and will use the respec at a later time.

And you are assuming that CP has no other alternative possibility of a respec - no vetspecs, no chance to run a respec trial, let alone no chance of the very nice random drop of a respec recipe.

I understand that the timing of the head's up warning was very compacted this time out and that many didn't use their freespecs because they were saving them for some reason. But if you had not used it before, you were satisfied with your character as is (presumably).

Your proposal would only be a help in those specific cases where someone who had saved a freespec from the last issue had an almost immediate buyer's remorse after using it (less than a week of play with the changed powers) and had no other sources of a respec reasonably available. With vetspecs and 3 respec trials - how many times has CP needed to change his character anyway?

Beacons are available in the regular editor menu, you don't have to craft them.

Just sell the beacons you don't want and buy the ones you do want - easy peasy!

On another note, you asked if I would expect decorations. I would say "yes" at least to some extent. A base with bare walls in the default patterns is boring and has no personality.

I wouldn't necessarily expect some of the elaborate multi-level rooms that people have been showing off in Base Construction, but some color and neat lighting effects and various furnishings are definitely nice to have and to me at least minimally a requirement (or else I might think the SG too focussed on mechanics while ignoring looking cool, which to me is a big part of the game).

[ QUOTE ]
Hey look, a thread about AE. And it's about Freedom.

We need a new sub-forum just for these threads.

[/ QUOTE ]

or else to let us know what to avoid like the plague.....

But yeah, at least 3 active right now, aren't there?

OK - but I also don't see why delaying the drop of a freespec until at least a week after issue release helps you out.

The changes in the issue release that prompt the freespec are there when it drops and are the same exact power changes a week later (generally, barring some weird circumstances). And the power changes stay that way until the next tweaking, typically with the next issue release, which we all know will be at least a couple of months if not half a year away.

How does delaying the drop of a freespec help?

I'm not much of a numbers person myself, but I do follow the threads created by those who are numbers people. I test stuff out for myself on the Test Server. I make my own observations about changes to powers, using my own measurements like "eh, not so much" and "OMG!" and maybe then use a freespec.

But I know that my saved freespec that dropped with the issue release is still sitting there after I get my chance to make my observations. The date it dropped is meaningless and if they waited another week after dropping it would have no effect either way.

So it goes back the Claws' point of "why spend effort to make it so?"

Given that Posi has been quoted as saying that being allowed to keep 10 Enhancements is generous, I would say the main reason it isn't feasible is because there are no Devs working on a "solution" since there isn't a problem to be solved here.

Enhancements are meant to be permanent until written over, sorry.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'll be going fuchsia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ten points for spelling it right! (Twenty if you can convince me that you didn't look it up or use a spell checker.)

I ask people how to spell fuchsia sometimes just because I know that no one really knows. I have yet to run across anyone who can spell it correctly on the fly. Another fun one to sting people with (well, people who aren't from there) is to ask them how to spell the name of the country "Philippines."

[/ QUOTE ]

Spelling bee champ here. I can spell all kinds of silly arcane exotic words - not really a useful skill, but fun at parties (not).

Oh, and I'm going a tasteful muted heathery tweed myself.