Acyl

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And then we have the farmers who are busy blaming everyone but themselves for an exploit being fixed.

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Yeah...the badgers who like the current situation have a right to be annoyed with the changes, I can see that. But even then, not all the badge folks are up in arms over this, 'cause it seems lots of folks thought those badge targets were pretty whack.

But the Rikti farms were a different thing. Farming for XP/inf/drops isn't the same as farming for badges. Can't equate the two. A lot of people who were mad about the Rikti change are now pointing fingers at the badge change as evidence farmers are being victimized.

But it's not the same thing.

I thought it was about Electronic Arts, the game company...

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RPers are some of the loudest opponents to farming.

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throw hyperbole out the window already

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Take a look at the boards. That isn't hyperbole if anything its understatement

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Perhaps. Perhaps not. Here's the thing, though:-

The infamous cat-Rikti thing was an exploit that lets characters level very quickly, and lets folks earn a lot of game currency very fast.

Badges aren't profitable in the same way; farming for a badge doesn't make you rich, it doesn't let you bypass game content by gaining levels. It doesn't give you anything you can sell to other players. Badges are an achievement and in-game goal, but they're a different sort.

Now. The argument that 'RPers killed MA farms' asserts that story-oriented players complained about the MA being taken over by folks farming XP and drops. Maybe that's true.

Extending that argument to claim that the story-oriented folks have an axe to grind against badgers is different, because farming for badges is a different case.

You're equating farming for badges with farming for XP and loot, which is not quite the same thing.

If you had a filler in a different zone, are you sure that person wasn't in AE mode?

Secura's not talking about in the AE building, but rather someone who's still got AE stuff as their active task. Such people can be invited to teams, but may bork stuff up.

Sounds like a completely unrelated instancing issue. Nothing to do with it being a farm or anything. I imagine it's just a one-off server hiccup. If it persists you may wish to contact support.

If you do contact support...I would advise not bringing the word 'farm' into it. As you've probably realised, presenting the facts in neutral terms - tried to enter a mission, it glitched out - would have been better.

Your first post suggests that the problem is specific to farming. Which carries a lot of implications...

I was under the impression that the 60 month vet reward didn't need to be claimed - it's not a power or anything. Once you get the badge, you have early access to the power pools.

That said, there have been issues with vet rewards and similar account-based stuff lately; folks earning vet badges they shouldn't qualify for yet, that sorta thing, so there may be a bug somewhere.

I mean...the phantom merits sounds really weird.

I cannot confirm or deny that, there, is an awesome post.

As most folks have said, CoH is more forgiving than most games. You don't need Tank/Heal/DPS like many MMOs.

That said, it's still an MMO. Some combinations are force multipliers - you can have three characters that greatly renforce each other. Others aren't.

But there's also a divide between what's optimum and what's fun for you. Playing three scrappers isn't the best combo, for example. But an all scrapper team can be pretty awesome with three people just flipping out and killing things, no cares in the world. Three blasters - well, blasters can be very fragile. But the carnage will be insane.

Personally, I'd suggest that whatever you do, at least one of you should look at playing a defender or controller of some kind - support isn't required in this game, but most folks still agree it's nice to have.

Some of the most efficient superteams are all-defender or all-controller. With enough stacked buffs and debuffs, you don't need tanking or damage ATs.

But really, anything can work.

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Considering that the last time I picked up a gaming magazine, there was a preview for a God of War-type game based on Dante's Inferno...

No, you only wish I was kidding. Apparently Beatrice has been murdered, and Satan has taken her soul to Hell. So it's up to a ticked-off (and apparently quite buff) Dante to fight his way through the nine circles to get her back.

Sad literature panda.

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Are you...they're really...I mean...

See, I look at it the other way. I was a literature student, and damnit I want to play that game ZOMG NAO.

(I was the sort of student that gave fussy lecturers heart attacks by comparing metaphysical love sonnets to Britney Spears lyrics.)

No idea about the flier, but the techs rebuilding destroyed towers is not new. They do that.

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Looks awesome to me! Champion's graphcis seem perfectly designed for handling the primary colours and clean lines of iron-man-style super-armour. Its actually the more everyday sort of customes (such as yours truly tends to prefer) that Im worried about. The woman in the the Sorcery trailer looked so badly purportioned it was like a child's drawing.

All in all, though, it is a reasonably good-looking game. It is NOT photorealistic as CoH is, and its not meant to be.

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I think Champions Online looks awesome in screenshots. But the videos look awful. The game's great when everything is standing still. When they start moving, that's when I want to cry.

Let me explain. This is just my opinion, of course. I happen to like cell-shaded graphics, and I think the style works for a comic book game. But...

Champions Online is an action game. Therefore the power animations are fast. Very fast.

When you activate something, it animates within a second. Or less.

Yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels like. There's nothing wrong with fast animations, mind you. Champions is an action game, and you need everything to be fast in an action game.

Except...the Champions animations aren't just quick, they're also complex. So you have these elaborate poses and movements playing out really really quickly.

I don't want my character to twitch like he's being electrocuted. It looks like everyone's suffering from horrible seizures. I want a superhero game, not Dance Dance Revolution Online.

A lot of my friends aren't interested in Champions because it's a streamlined action-oriented game. But me - I love stuff like that. I'd play Champions, but the animations bother me. Not the art, the animations.

THE TITLE DREW YOU IN!

It claimed another victim!

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I think you are right. It has to be something that will be used, that is beneficial to the player base and is as efficient for gameplay as the typical shard architecture.

I have no clue if itll ever happen but if/when I ever get my mmo ideas off the ground this is the type of system I would like to try and see if it will work to the benefit of the community.

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It's sort of a form and function thing. The traditional 'many different servers' structure of MMOs may have been established for technical reasons, but it's proven pretty good for fostering community identity.

It's easier to feel some kind of affinity for your server as opposed to the game at large. And group identity matters, I think.

There might be other ways to do things, but one needs to consider the social impact.

Well, it's a question of blending the elements right, I guess. Phantasy Star Online's lobby system bothered me quite a bit. I never really felt a sense of community there; if it wasn't for the friends that dragged me to the game...well, y'know.

Guild Wars was slightly better for me, but I still...didn't really like how they handled towns and cities. They just felt like a really weak movie set, rather than something actually real. The fact you could blink between channels kinda killed immersion for me, oddly. Maybe I'm just weird.

Granted, I've heard folks say CoH's instanced mission map system means our city zones are pretty much glorified lobbies anyway. I guess there's some truth to that. Hell, look at Cimerora. But the game as a whole feels different to me.

'course, that's an entirely subjective opinion. I guess when you come down to it, I just like discrete servers rather than all the technical fiddling of global environment systems. That's not a rational preference...but I do feel that way, and I bet others do as well. I'm not saying the majority of folks think like that, just, well, I'm probably not alone.

This sounds like a terribly interesting idea, though the apparent scale and scope makes me shudder.

This is gonna be really tough. Sounds like you're still building up to the real critical mass needed to make this a self-sustaining project rather than just an idea. I think your first hurdle will be building a cohesive team. Ideally one that's able to proceed without you, if need be.

Of course, there's already been enough doom-and-gloom skepticism in the other thread regarding this. I should probably stop being a dripping wet blanket. Raining on parades isn't cool.

I'd offer to contribute, but I don't have any relevant technical skills - and technical skills are the first thing you need, not the last.

I've helped run text-based games, mostly MUSH and MUCK codebases. But while I've been an administrator on those games, my role has almost always been what an MMO player would call a GM. Or customer support.

Getting truly technical people is the greatest challenge. A game requires more than just coders. You need folks who can design combat systems, think in balance terms, and then make it happen in the game engine. Writers and artists are relatively easy to find. Technical experts who are really skilled in math and practical software creation are rare. I don't mean to insult most game players, but I reckon most folks have good ideas...but the devil's in the execution.

And like visual artists, the really talented design and code people want to work on their own projects. I know several people with such skills, but they're already gainfully employed. I don't mean anything negative by this little homily on game design, please note. Typing all this out is just my way of working through the scope of your challenges. I do wish you luck with this.

As for me, personally...I'm a writer by inclination and former profession. I was a radio journalist and scriptwriter. I draw as a hobby. But my knowledge base is politics and economics, not history, and my art isn't genre-appropriate.

I'd be willing to help in whatever way I can, though I doubt what I can do is really useful for your purposes. I'd happily do free art, but a) I'm not that skilled, and b) I do cartoons and manga-style stuff in bright distinct colours and strong lines. Most of my recent work is CoH gift art and commissions. I could attempt stuff suitable to the gaslight or Victorian period, but it'd be new ground for me.

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the tech for one single massive game server wasn't around in early MMO history. it became the norm to have separate shards, and it stuck around.

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This. There are plenty of practical reasons for having multiple discrete game worlds and player communities, but inertia and player convention explains it the same as anything else.

It bears mentioning that most games with single-world environments have less competition for names than CoH does. Guild Wars requires you to give your characters a first name and last name. Others do this as well. But with a superhero game, a lot of folks are competing for similar-sounding stuff.

Anyway. The other thing is this; once you've chosen to do a separate 'server' system, you're stuck with it. When an MMO announces that it's merging servers, this is perceived as a sign the game is dying. It's fine if you START with a single global world, but you can't change your mind afterwards. It looks bad.

Architect.

Or 'writer', perhaps, since all your identified player types are '-er' words. =)

Whatever you call it. I imagine it's kinda constrained due to arc publishing limitations, but even so, I know folks who rotate their published stories and are always making new ones...

No matter what time they do the server maint, someone will be unhappy. It's a matter of opinion.

The maint window's always been smack in the middle of my free time. But it's a reliable period. I KNOW the servers will be down on Monday and Friday. Big deal. I can damn well do other things for a couple hours.

It's two hours. Jeez. It ain't the end of the world. Read a book. Watch some TV. Do the dishes.

Okay. Maybe they shouldn't have a maint window at all? So nobody needs to suffer? Well, no.

I dunno what MMOs you've been playing, but in my experience the CoH servers are more reliable and stable than all the other games I've played...aside from Guild Wars, but their server system is pretty weird and funky. So really, if they wanna do maint, I'm happy to see 'em do it.

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I'm all for the tricky stuff, when it fits the task at hand.

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That's how I play my Ice/Ice. I have attacks. And I have control/mitigation powers. With a bit of recharge, I can attack non-stop. Or I can use control powers non-stop. Or mix and match both.

It depends on the situation. On a large team with lots of buffs/debuffs/control, I just focus on pure damage. On a smaller team or solo, I use my control stuff more.

That's why I like Ice/Ice, because it has a lot of options. And while Ice is better at single-target damage, it does have Frost Breath and Ice Storm, which ain't bad attacks.

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Then maybe you should have said that in your previous post.

My response to your vague post was quite valid, and IMO quite necessary to clear up any cofusion for those that don't even know who to contact for these services.

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Ah, sorry if I was unclear. Let me explain where I'm coming from. The first thing I said was that the hero and villain economies are separate. Which they are, and that seems to be the developers' intent.

Finding someone else on the other side to trade with...to me, that's actually going outside the system. I admit that's a matter of opinion, though. Clearly how I define things differs from how you (or most people) define it, so it's quite right for you to point that out.

Note that I'm not saying the hero/villain economies should be separate. In fact personally I support merging the markets - but that's a different debate entirely, and not what I was getting at.

(Also: I don't think Smurphy does the inf transfer thing anymore - his sig says the service is 'suspended due to apathy'.)

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I'm not attempting to bash you for anything nor agree with any snide comments about how people should know how to play the game; I am just making an observation from my own experience that I didn't find it a difficult game to pick up.

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I don't think this is a difficult game to pick up, but it is a difficult game to master - if that makes sense? I had to explain some stuff about IO set bonuses to a friend recently, and he's been playing for a while.

On the other hand, I've been playing for over four years, and he gave me a lecture about Confuse mechanics - I was totally wrong and he corrected me. Very humbling experience.

ParagonWiki article on Global Chat Channels

Most supergroup recruiting goes on in Atlas Park, in my experience. Mind, you can also go looking for a supergroup. Post on the Freedom server forums, for instance.

AE is Architect Entertainment, also called Mission Architect (MA). This is a new feature introduced with Issue 14 - the player-created mission/content. This is quite popular right now.

Among other things, AE missions can auto-sidekick or auto-exemplar characters to the mission's level range, which can make it easier to form teams.

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Well, currently there's no cross-side transfer of any kind.

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That is completely FALSE.

There are a number of players that transfer influence/infamy for little more than auction fees. I recommend @Smurphy.

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That's not a cross-side transfer of the same resources, that's exchanging stuff on one side for stuff on another. It's not the same stuff that's going over.

Trading blue stuff for red stuff with another player has already been discussed in this thread.

Well, currently there's no cross-side transfer of any kind. The hero and villain economies are separate. As folks have noted, this might change when Going Rogue comes out, but we don't know yet. It's just speculation.

Using the market to transfer inf between two heroes...yeah, it'd work like you think. There are a few tricks to make the transfer safer, like picking an item that's rarely bidded on and checking the transaction history before you make the payment. But yes, you've got the basic idea.

If both your characters are in the same supergroup and have access to a storage rack, that's a safer way to transfer items, though not inf.

What folks usually do is to get a friend to hold the goods for 'em while they switch characters.