Amish_Justice

I downloaded the NCSoft game launcher a couple months ago, and to be honest, I kinda hate it. I only use it for City of heroes, and it seems a needless step/use of resources. I was actually considering trying to go back to the original launch mechanism, but that's apparently being phased out early next month.

I do, however, play a lot of other games on Steam, and I noticed that City of Heroes is available through the Steam launcher.

Anyone have any idea if I can somehow transfer my account over to Steam, and then just use their one launcher for all my gaming needs?

I've seen a lot of unfortunate clipping with the Steampunk pieces. Many of the high necked collars clip with the neck skin, unless the physical scale setting is shifted to the range I refer to as Chunky.

It's a very poorly animated release, with all sorts of graphical flaws and failures. The sleeves don't color match the shirts/jackets. There are a plethora of existing colors that are unchangeable (hair under hats, for one, and gold buckles everywhere). It appears that the animators did a poor job of testing the steampunk pieces compatibility with existing costume sets and pieces.

While I agree that there's an inherent contradiction in my words, it's not as inane as it sounds.

I'm a bartender, so I often play during off hours, and often a larger team isn't an option. I also like to play support-based archetypes. Those two facts make solo-ers excellent teammates. You can predict that they'll already be self-sufficient, making my work in support easier. They are often in mission (rather than standing around waiting for others), allowing me to join them in the middle of the action.
I also find that many solo-ers appreciate a little back-up from time to time. It helps to break up the monotony of their missions, and allows them to overcome more challenging objectives. Much of my most enjoyable times playing CoH has been playing in support of someone who often plays alone.

Oh, sure, everyone teams with friends. That seems like a sure way to turn off new players. I brought a couple new players to the game, and we played for a while, but they both quit because they couldn't find teams when I wasn't around.

And sure, I like an occasional Task Force fine, but I really prefer finding pick-up-groups to join for a couple missions or so. Less commitment, and more variety. I'm something of an Alt-o-holic and I don't care for the 50+ content (feels like an unsatisfying grind) so I've never played any one toon (or even one server) long enough to join a SG or to build a strong network of friends.

For me, the search window is one of the only ways I have to (for example) offer my kinetic's service to a soloing scrapper or tanker. It's the only way my Bubbler can help a soloing blaster. It's the only way I can find a group of three other friends, and guest star with them for a couple missions.

And it just doesn't seem like it should be that difficult to fix...or better yet to build again from the ground up.

I used to love playing this game, but I am so frustrated with the Team Search menu, that I'm finding myself starting up other games rather than struggling to find a pick-up group in CoH.

Why is it taking so long for the game developers to tackle the many problems with the Team Search window?

Why do people in Supergroup bases still show up as if they're in mission?

Why do people who are solo in a mission look exactly the same as members of a team?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4210915/What...low%20Mean.jpg
Yellow has essentially no meaning any more, because players colored yellow could be solos in a mission, members of a team, or people on a Task force. Useless!

And why is there no ability to filter search results based on what someone is actually doing, as opposed to what they've set as what they want to do? How bout being able to filter OUT people who are on a Task Force? How bout a filter for Team Leaders? How bout a filter for people not a team?

Why isn't this a priority? I haven't heard word-one from any Red Names that any of this is being worked on. Are they just resigned to have a faulty mechanism for searching for teams?

I just realized that this should probably have been directed to the Development forum. Gonna take it over there instead.

I used to love playing this game, but I am so frustrated with the updated Team Member search menu, that I'm finding myself starting up other games rather than struggling to find a pick up group in CoH.

Why is it taking so long for the game developers to deal with the many problems with the Team Search window?

Why do people in Supergroup bases still show up as if they're in mission?

Why do people who are solo in a mission look exactly the same as members of a team?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4210915/What...low%20Mean.jpg
Yellow has essentially no meaning any more, because players colored yellow could be solos in a mission, members of a team, or people on a Task force. Useless!

And why is there no ability to filter search results based on what someone is actually doing, as opposed to what they've set as what they want to do? How bout being able to filter OUT people who are on a Task Force? How bout a filter for Team Leaders? How bout a filter for people not a team?

Why isn't this a priority?

Extremely disappointed with this pack. The quality of these boosters has dropped off significantly in the last year or two. I'm not sure if that's because the City of Heroes crew has lost some of their more skilled animators, or if it's because less of a time commitment has been assigned, but this pack is FULL of flaws and oversights which make me wish I hadn't purchased it.

1. Many of the costume pieces include preset colors which are unchangeable, making them of limited use to heroes who don't want gold in their outfits. This is also true of the additional pistol and rifle pieces -- color is unchangeable.

2. Clipping issues abound, most dramatically with the tops of the many shirts and with the actual necks of characters. Anyone with their physical slider below the halfway mark will experience this -- so if you wanna play a steampunk character, he'll have to be pretty beefy.

3. There is no cohesion of texture between the set's jacket parts and sleeve parts, making the border between the two obvious if you're using anything other than white.

4. Similarly, there's no coordination of color tone, meaning that if you color your pants the 4th grey from the left, and color your boots that same color, they won't match, because the palettes for both are set to a different scale.

5. The "power" is essentially just a faster recharging "Jump pack" made available years ago.

6. The auras would be cool, except they do not include any options for eyes.

On the whole, like the animal pack before it, I'm really disappointed to see how little effort seems to have gone into this. These oversights would have been enough to have prevented me from supporting this flawed pack, had I been made aware of them before hand.

I'm stunned by how unprofessional this quartet of developers seems to be. This video is in dire need of an editor.

It's clear to me, for example, that Snakes, warwolves, Arachnos spiders, and Slag Golems resist slows pretty dramatically, and that Nemesis seem to be resistant to Confuse powers, and I feel like my Fear powers don't work as well against Ralaruu (not sure bout that one).

I guess I'm curious if there's a concise listing of which enemy types resist which different control types.

Are there, for example, enemies which naturally resist sleep attempts?

I'm rolling my first Electric Dom, and I've gone with Energy as a secondary.

I know Static Field is worthwhile, but does the set have any stinker powers I should avoid? Is the aura a keeper?

The actual Character was an Energy Blaster named "Sperm Donor"

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4210915/Sperm%20donor.jpg
I later gave him a little tail and the Atomic Aura, white around his hands.

I'm still waiting to hear back from...well, from whoever's reading my petition, on whether my alternate names have been accepted. To be honest, I was surprised at the genericking, but I've got a more clinical relationship with sperm, because of my work.

The solution is an unlikely one, and I discovered by accident.

If you speak to the pedestrians around the city (the non-enemy, NPCs), you'll get a variety of responses. These responses actually correlate to the first letters of the NPC's names.

I believe, and I haven't tested this in a while, if you speak to anyone with a name that begins with an 'M', they'll tell you how many hours that particular toon has "patrolled the streets of the city".
I wish I was more confident it was am "M" but I'm not sure it isn't an "H", and I'm too lazy to log in now and find out.

I guess the obvious caveat would be "How do I change my name, without paying for it?"
Or is paying 10 bucks the price of naming a character something that someone somewhere MIGHT find offensive?

I bind the ` key to "Petcomall pass" making it easy for me to recall my pets. I find that locationally directing my pets, rather than telling them specifically who to attack tends to keep them better organized, and less likely to charge.

I had a character I named....well, I named something that I thought would be too clinical for someone to care, but I guess someone had a problem with it. Came back months later, found the character had been turned into a Generic.

QUestion is, how do I change the name to something else?

Anything and everything from the Traps set. It's so thematically binding.

Am I the only one who just can't bring himself to take Thermal Radiation or (to a lesser extent) Cold Domination because of their lackluster appearance? The animations for Thermal, especially when the colors are manipulated, are just painfully bad, and because both sets offer shields, it becomes impossible to team without having to constantly look at those effects.

I'm wondering if there are others, like me, who hated the looks of these sets, but who managed to find a color combination which appealed to them?

There's another element here that no one seems to have mentioned. Task Forces.

The last couple issues have added many new Task Forces and more incentive for doing them. The last issue even introduced a new tool to find teams specifically for them. While improving this aspect of the game can hardly be considered a bad thing, it has had an impact on the already-small population of people who prefer Pick-up teaming.

More players running task forces means larger groups of players who are inaccessible for teaming. On radio, tip, or arc teams, there's always room for players leaving, and new ones being added, but not so with Task Forces. If you're not there when it's being formed, you're out of luck.

Added to this, the newer color coded Team Search window has actually been modified to the detriment of players who prefer small casual teams. It's color coding system is only concerned with players who are looking to form teams, rather than those who are hoping to join existing teams, or who are looking to pair up with other solo-ers.

Personally, I like Task Forces, but I don't always want to commit to playing one toon for an extended period. I guess I just wish they'd redesigned that search window from the ground up, to make it more functional. They've actually made it more difficult to team now.