AmazingMOO

It sucks, being half a world away and not being able to do a damn thing but lift your checkbook. Meanwhile, real heroes are doing what they do, and need to be remembered, even though we don't and may never know their names.



Inappropriate? Too tasteless?

I was in a discussion with a friend last night about the Animal Pack. Both of us have animal themed characters and both had bought the Animal Pack. I always try to take into account that there's simply no way with limited resources to please everyone. However, I was surprised at the number of complaints we had in common. A lot of the conclusion we came to was that a great deal of the pack seemed simply unfinished... like the developers had lost interest half-way through or that 'too much' was going into it for the money, so they stopped features mid-development rather than carry through.

I'm certain that at least some of these complaints have been mentioned before, but I'd like to point out things that really bother me about the Animal Pack, particularly in the way the features don't feel complete.

- Mouths do not close all the way on the cat and dog faces.: Like humans, cats and dogs of all sizes keep their mouths closed unless they are eating, breathing, or vocalizing through them. The cat and dog faces in the animal pack are supposed to be 'threatening', I suppose, but what they really look like is that they have overgrown teeth or are seriously overheated and panting.

- The facial bone sliders don't affect the facial features. This is bad, but not nearly as bad as the fact that...

- Animal heads are MUCH smaller than the human heads, even with the 'Head' scale sliders all the way out. With the possible exception of the minotaur head, all the heads need to have a maximum size that is at least twice or three times what it currently is.

- Animal heads can't be used with any existing hair. My friend mentioned that he worried that the 'Anti-Furry' crowd was the source of this, but I think it's just incompleteness.

- Bird Heads have only hooked beaks. Hooked beaks are limited mostly, but not entirely, to predatory birds and are used for tearing or cutting meat. There are no straight or flat beaks.

- There's no striped texture for the tails despite everything else having a striped texture. Even the new striped texture invented just for this pack isn't applied to it. Why would you not do this?

- Animal Feet can only be used with the 'Monstrous' legs. This is one that can MAYBE be put down to animation issues, but it still seems like a pretty huge gap. Look at a cat or dog's FRONT legs for an example of the way straight digitigrade paws should look if you're going for perfect anatomical perfection... which doesn't seem to matter in the rest of the art.

- There is no fur texture for hooved feet. Again, you guys developed a new fur texture and didn't apply it to all the existing animal feet? Why?

- 'Skin' texture for Cat Claws does not actually remove the fur from the claws. Why not? Furless claws don't exist, but furless hooves do?

No, no, no, no... Geez... where to begin?


As Ullikummis so mercifully points out above, security questions are NO EXTRA SECURITY for determined hackers who have a buck to make -- like those who'd hack an account to steal all your goodies to sell for cash. If you can guess or brute-force someone's password, guessing the answer to their security question is VERY LITTLE EXTRA EFFORT. Once they've read your facebook page to figure out your Dog's maiden name or your grandmother's breed or whatever, they can add their own computer to the 'authorized' list with no effort.

Yeah, a lot of banks use this and NO IT IS NOT ANY MORE SECURE. Some security folks call it 'Wish it was two factor'. It is NOT.

REAL Two Factor Authentication requires A) Something you know, and B) Something you have, or C) Something you are, such as quality biometrics like retina or voice scans. This is a password -- something you know-- and a secret challenge/response-- also something you know.

This change offers very little extra protection for vulnerable accounts. If you want to give us REAL two-factor account protection, pony up for a fob system. This gives you the B) something you have, and is recommended in the federal guidelines for bank security.

The RSA system is, relatively speaking, very cheap to implement, and the fobs cost about $7 each in bulk. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

Seriously, NCSoft, just like the banks who implement this crap, you are doing your customers a severe disservice. Not only are you making them jump through extra hoops for no benefit whatsoever, but you are also ensuring them that your service is more secure than it really is.

Nine merits is a bit out of whack, especially since the change to the Amy mission. On my FASTEST teams, my mission timing breaks down about like so:

11-15 minutes for Mission 1, vs. Mary M.
8-15 minutes for Mission 2, Rescuing Amy J., depending on the map
7-9 minutes for cleaning Katie's bedroom for her
3-10 minutes to rescue Katie's ghost... despite the fact that she ain't dead yet.

Best case for the TF these days is around 29 minutes. And that's assuming that Katie doesn't go nuts on the last mission and tear into the redcaps, which she's been doing SIGNIFICANTLY more often since issue 17.

Dr. K awards 30 merits, and it can be done by a speed team in around (or somewhat less than) 30 minutes.

Katie is my favorite TF in the game, but it's somewhat hard to recruit for due to the low rewards. I'd love to see those rewards bumped to make it more attractive.

So why can anyone and their brother put bullets into me during my rez animation?

This is especially obnoxious when you have the inspirations to pull off a full recovery-- rez, breakfree, purples, blues... but the enemies around you have defeated you again before your UI is responsive again, because it DOES wait for your rez animations to finish before allowing you to use it.

I and several others on Victory are experiencing severe lag, rubber banding, and random disconnects. A regular groupmate and I experienced it last night whilst on LGTF and four of eight members of a Sister Psyche TF experienced it this evening. I had moderate lag and frequent rubberbanding this evening, but not the complete standstill I did yesterday.

A common feature to the issue seems to be that it doesn't effect information coming into the game client-- only information going out of it. For example, you don't see a huge spike in damage messages after yellow or red spikes. You can see the enemies wailing on you and your team, but none of your powers will activate, you can't click on glowies or doors, and cannot click the 'Exit' button after mission completes.

It's a minor, pedantic gripe, but something that continually irritates me about the game is the terminology used. For example, we have a lot of power sets that use 'Build Up' and 'Aim'. Tanker, Scrapper, and Blaster powers are frequently balanced around these powers and the players all understand that they accomplish the same thing. However, they could be at least named differently, as shown by Focus Chi in MA, and Psychic Focus for Psi Blast and Concentration in Psi Manipulation.

The latest textual cheese grater to assault my nose is the naming scheme for the various Incarnate Alpha pieces. In various places, including parts of the Incarnate crafting window, pieces are called 'Common', 'Uncommon', 'Rare', and 'Very Rare'. A friend mentioned that this made more sense when the only place you could get certain pieces was taskforce drops. However, those descriptions don't really fit any more.

The real barrier for obtaining the Tier 4 Alpha Slot Abilities is not chance of having one drop on a taskforce. Rather it's time taken and effort spent to work towards the goal.

Calling an Alpha Ability 'Very Rare' is like calling level 50 characters 'Very Rare'. Not only is it incorrect, but it also belies the amount of work and effort a player has put into obtaining it. It's not something you just happen to get because the die roll came out in your favor. It's something that you worked for over a period of weeks.

There are a number of ways these could be referred that would be more appropriate and more descriptive. Some partial naming schemes even exist within the game itself. For example, the abilities' names contain 'Boost', 'Boost', 'Revamp', and 'Paragon', for tiers 1-4, respectively. If we were to differentiate between the two 'Boosts', it'd make a lot more sense than a 'Common' - 'Very Rare' spectrum.

T1 Alpha -- Alpha Boost
T2 Alpha -- Super Boost
T3 Alpha -- Revamp
T4 Alpha -- Paragon

'Super' is a tricky word to use when working in the comic book-themed genre due to the legal morass surrounding it. (Thanks a ton, DC and Marvel.) So some other theme might be better to use. Some friends and I were joking about using the term 'Epic', which is thrown around willy-nilly in MMOs, but the Tier 4 we settled on 'Super Epic', falls as dangerously close to the line as 'Super Boost'.

For the time being, I'll stick to the 'Tier 1' - 'Tier 4' spectrum. It's not as nice as it could be, but at least it's descriptive.

There's a lot to love about Alpha Strike. But it has also, not to put too fine a point on it, brought some floating turds to the surface of the CoX pond.

Lets get this first one out of the way:

- Phenomenal, God-like Power-- Astounding, Lemur-like Intelligence: The barrier for entry into the Incarnate club is currently pretty low, which is frankly as it should be since this is a game. That barrier currently includes willingness to participate in the weekly task forces. Since there are lots of... teamwork challenged... individuals out there who want the goodies and are willing to attempt to jump through the hoops, it means that there are lots of them suddenly working their way on to pick-up group and other taskforces. You can avoid this kind of taskforce pretty easily, and it wouldn't be so bad, except that at the other end of the spectrum, you find


- Speed Runs: Lots of people have lots of characters for whom they want the goodies. Since completion of the weekly task forces is currently the only way to get the t3 and t4 Alphas, these people are going to be doing those same taskforces pretty darn often. This situation is RIPE for breeding min-max play. "What parts of this can we skip to finish as quickly as possible?" This causes taskforces to become more boring, more repetitious, and more mechanical. Players tend to expect group leaders to know the methods for speeding a given taskforce. If you prefer not to speed through a taskforce, you can cause serious communication problems with players who've learned the Speed tactics to a tee.

For example, how many times have the thermal sisters been rescued in the last week compared to the number of times the mission has been purposefully failed?

Hopefully, both this issue and the previous will be alleviated somewhat when i20 brings some mechanic changes to the way characters can earn their Alphas. However, I can only see it exacerbating the


- Flood at the High End of the Market: For some time, the market had stabilized in a somewhat positive curve, with a few odd spikes. This was thanks to a steady introduction of low- and mid- level content, the ability of players to gain experience while exemped, and a few other key changes.

The shape of that curve has shifted dramatically and now resembles something more like what it looked like a few months after issue 9 came out. Since so many people are doing so much high-end content and dumping all the drops on the market, those high-level pieces are dropping dramatically in price. Meanwhile, low-level and mid-level pieces have risen dramatically in price.

This is going to get worse when people start farming their favorite level 50 -1x8 behemoth map for shard drops so they can get t3s and t4s without grouping.

But honestly, the market is secondary to the real game... putting your imaginary life on the line to save the world from the forces of darkness. Right?


- 'Hey, Give the Star to a 50+1 So They Have Their Level Shift. It's Safer and Easier That Way!': This has been happening more and more frequently to me. One thing that I have been enjoying about this particular week's task force is the noticeable rise in invasion events. They're not quite at Invasion Week level, but frequent enough that a lot of people are taking the opportunity to work on their badges and accolades.

The first thing that happens when a mid-level anything starts to try to form an event group is that the 50+1s immediately demand the star so they don't lose their level shift. Sometimes you can deal with this by selecting a 50 mission from their roster. Sometimes you can wait until the team is full and then pass the star. Frequently, however, it just doesn't work out and you have someone complaining and moaning that they have to fight even-con enemies.

Likewise, a LOT of the challenge of the high-level taskforces is simply not present for 50+1s. The obvious thing to do is to raise the difficulty level so that you're presented with at least the same challenge you were as before, if not more. Again, enough people want to min-max these taskforces that it's difficult to assemble a team willing to go for challenge. The risk*time/reward ratio is lowest at -1. You get more drops, more shards, and can blow through any given content in a fraction of what you would if you were fighting even-con enemies.

That very quickly becomes dull and repetitive, at least for me. It becomes easy farming for badge counts or drops. I know some people claim to enjoy in-game agriculture, but I've personally never been one for watching the grass grow.

A friend logged in yesterday and asked what was going on in a private channel. I responded 'Lots of people on STF that have no business on STF.'

It occurred later that it was a really awful thing to say. Everyone who plays the game has payed for the right to attempt and try to learn how to overcome any one of the challenges it presents. 'Keyed' content are one of the most obnoxious game mechanics I've ever encountered in an MMO. Not only does it restrict what a player can do in the game, but it lends itself to abuse and elitism.

Even the Cimerora key is pretty obnoxious despite being soloable simply because it locks out the intrepid explorers.

However, there is a real difference between 'accessible' and 'completable'. Statesman's Taskforce is one of the most difficult challenges in the game. If you don't go at it a certain way and hold your head just right the whole time, you'll be made to regret it.

This is at a real difference to most of the rest of the game. Well-constructed teams help during the other 45-50 TFs, but you're not going to suffer if you decide to switch out a rad for a kin or vice versa.

Most of the rest of the game's content is presented as 'You should be able to do this.' The LRSF and STF are not in that category. They're designed to be extremely difficult challenges for dedicated players. However, aside from one or two loading-screen tips, there's very little in-game information to inform players of this.

Because the STF and LRSF were this week's Strike Targets, it meant that a lot of people who'd planned to solo their entire incarnate career were suddenly trying to work their way onto a taskforce, frequently for the first time. The fact that this was the most difficult taskforce in the game made the situation particularly painful. Some of them turned out to be really good teammates. I met quite a few people that I told I'd like to group with them again.

I also saw a lot of people who tried to get on a taskforce, get confused, frustrated, and discouraged. They were suddenly cast out of 'You should be able to do this' and into 'You may not be able to do this at all.'

Dr. K and Barracuda would have been kinder choices for the first WTF target, but the underlying problem here is that there's never been a very clear way to determine the difficulty of an in-game challenge ahead of time. Players trying to 'get into taskforces' just for the sake of obtaining the new reward should have been told ahead of time, in big, easy-to-read letters, "Hey, this taskforce is a BEAR. It's one of the most difficult taskforces in the game. If you're just learning about taskforces, you might want to wait a week or two until the Strike Target is not quite so difficult."


I recommend a color-coded difficulty system that's shown whenever you talk to a TF contact.

Blue: Beginner Challenge (New Posi 1, New Posi 2, Synapse, First respec)
White: Moderate Challenge (SPTF -- Numina's TF, respecs)
Yellow: Difficult Challenge (Shard TFs. LGTF)
Orange: Very Difficult Chllange (ITF. Dr. Khan. Barracuda)
Red: Extreme Challenge (LRSF, STF)
Purple: Prerequisites required (Tin Mage, Apex)

First of all, thank you Paragon devs for getting that Hotfix on the table so quickly. I mentioned to some friends that if I was the person managing that rollout, I'd have made the call to do a full rollback if there wasn't a patch ready to go in the next 24 hours. I know that some of you were likely up all night busting *** on that one, and I appreciate it.

Now all that said... a 100mb patch? Was there really that much new code shunted. An altered graphics or textures? Any zone geometries?

Why on earth was a 100mb patch necessary for, as far as I can tell, a fix that should have been all executable code?

Ivy Star, my Elec/Elec/Elec made it to 50 back before the dramatic increase in EXP gain. She was supposed to have green-tinted lightning blasts and an Ivy leaf/Pentagram motif to her costume. She's an AOE/Blaptroller type and is a real joy to play solo and in groups. Being a blappy-type, she DEPENDS on Charged Armor to reduce some of the S/L damage she takes, especially in groups. Despite the fact that Brutes, Tanks, Scrappers, and Stalkers can color their Charged Armor power, Ivy cannot.

Right now, if you're a Rogue doing a Hero Taskforce... which is one of the big bonuses for selecting a 'tourist' alignment, you get to run all over creation while your teammates wait on you to arrive. It doesn't matter what travel power you've selected or how quick you are on the draw. The Heroes have O-portal Access and Base Portal access. They're ALWAYS going to arrive first, maybe as much as 5 or 6 minutes before you if you have to, say, go from the Bricks end of IP to the far wall of Astoria, which can happen a few times on Citadel.

Even if the team leader can let his teammates into the base, tourists can't use the base of opposing factions.

Vigilantes don't really have this problem. The Rogue Isles are much better connected in terms of travel. Even if you HAVE to leave the current zone, which you don't usually have to do, you're never more than one stop away.

If you're careful, and your destinations happen to be Atlas, KR, or Talos, you can sometimes use a Wentworth's teleporter to help speed you along, but there is still a serious limitation here. If you're really lucky, teammates might even set up a 'Recall' chain for you, but it's pretty rare to see that level of coordination on a non-master TF.

It would be different if the designers said, 'One of the penalties for being a tourist is that you don't get easy travel away from home.' However, that's not really the case, especially when you consider how much easier travel is for vigilantes than rogues. Also, since the combat exploitation of the Oroborous portal has been fixed, it's allowed even during 'Master' TF runs since it doesn't really effect the game balance. ALL it does is speed up travel time... for heroes.

There are two options to make this situation more fair.

The first option is the 'take away' option. It's kinda stupid since it punishes everyone to disallow use of the Oroborous Portal during taskforces just because a few team members can't use it.

The second option is the 'Well, why not?' option. Allow Rogues to acces Hero zones via Oroborous and allow Vigilantes to access Villain zones the same way. Better yet, allow folks to permit tourists entry into their bases. (But that would break CoP.... or it would if there weren't 3x more heroes willing to do CoP than villains). Additionally, if you have tourists in your super group, allow them to collect and install teleport beacons for both hero and villain zones. Heaven forfend that we have to dump more influence and salvage to make more teleporters.

We've seen a few costume pieces attached to screenies that are leading players to believe that it's possible NCSoft is going to release a new 'Animal' booster pack in the near future. Among them seem to be feline and avian head models, avian foot models, and 'Toho Films'-style reptile feet.

(If these are not called "'Zilla Feet" in the costume options, there is no justice in this world.)

Obviously, these teasers are doing a lot to get hopes up and speculation roaring. Knowing that there's no way that all of these will be in any given booster, here are my hopes for included pieces and goodies

- A 'Stripe' pattern for the Bushy Tail

- A 'Stripe' pattern for the bushy tail. I have a racoon character, and a good friend has a ferret character that could use this.

- Stripes for the cat tail.

- A curling 'Squirrel' tail.

- A rodent head, preferrably with big cheek pouches.

- Rounded 'retracted' style hand models that look like a cat's paw without the claws extended.

- A leonine mane

- An 'All fours' pose emote that would allow a character to drop into a digitigrade quadrapedal stance.

- An 'On the Hunt' run pose power that allows a character to run in a digitigrade quadrapedial fashion.

- A 'Dry Off' emote, which causes the character to shake rythmically.

- A Texture Compositor build in to the costume editor to allow characters to 'paint their own stripes.'

- A 'Go Fetch' emote that throws randomly a bone, a stick, or a frisbee

- And heres the big one that would more or less allow super animals to exist as a new 'Gender' in CoH -- A new quadroped animal body type.

So, yeah. Your guess is is good as mine on when any of this would ever be implimented. What hopes and speculation do you guys have for the pack?

Me: Man, I feel like crap today because of this darned flu. I hope there's something awesome on the COH site related to issue 20 or the new booster to cheer me up.

Avatea: Free Goodies! Free VANGUARD-THEMED Goodies! Oh, and take a look at this nifty cat head that may or may not be in our upcoming booster.

Me: Mission Freakin' Accomplished, NCSoft!!!

First, I have a lot of characters that are the children of a Vanguard scientist, so I'm really getting a kick out of the idea of miniVAS running around the house.

Second, the two animal heads I've seen so far give me a LOT of hope that the new booster is going to be awesome.

Posi mentioned in his interview that in his opinion the worst failure CoH had has been the Gladiator system:

Please... please if we start adding in animal heads...

Please include a running posture that's a 4-foot digitigrade gallop. Allowing for further control over the torso and limb length would allow players to include characters that were animal/human hybrids or even just mostly animal heroes.

I would wet myself in joy.

Some friends and I last night decided to try for the Master of Tin Mage II's Taskforce badge. We were all fairly familiar with the Director 11 encounter and used a strategy we'd seen used before with some success-- we concentrated on siccing our pets on him to keep him busy while we blasted him from Range to avoid his proximity bombs.

We encountered quite a few problems that appear to be game bugs rather than WAI effects.

- Director 11 kept getting stuck in the warehouse racks while running from the pets we had chasing him. The larger pets, particularly the Vanguard HVASs we had chasing him, would frequently then get stuck on what appeared to be pathing loops and run in circles on the other side of the room.

- While stuck, he (or his invisible buddies) would lay dozens and dozens of mines in one spot, high in the air if he was stuck on a top shelf.

- If you attacked him while he was stuck, he would eventually begin disappearing and reappearing as if he was trying to teleport. This broke targeting, but players never got a 'Placated' effect or anything like that.

- Players would frequently lose all their endurance as if they had been sapped despite not being attacked and no Sappers being alive in the room. The cause that immediately popped to mind was that there were somehow invisible Sappers mixed in with his invisible bomb-setting buddies.

- If one player managed to get agro and was defeated by Director 11's direct attacks, the players around him would be completely detoggled even if they had a full bar of endurance.

Despite all the strangeness, my team stuck to its guns, avoided the bombs like they were selling something, and eventually got the 'Midnight Dodger' badge after a half-hour or so of trying to tease Director 11 off of his shelf.

This is a problematic fight, and it's SUPPOSED to be super-challenging, especially since it's tied to a badge. However, I can't imagine that this behavior is anything like what the devs intended. It *LOOKED* broken.

I use Mid's simply to keep track of what I'm doing. I'm a visual learner, and it's a good 'lookalike' for the build screen. I'm also OCD about testing, so I typically take everything to the Training Room before the live server.

The thing that bugs me most about respecs is finding powers after the infamous 're-sort' of all your buttons. I've gotten in the habit of arranging all my powers in a certain way across my alts so that when I have to respec, I know more or less where to put everything after using /cleartray.

The second biggest irritation is the fact that the respec window (and other windows) hide chat.