ATRAtwo

<QR> My only issue, as with most desktop wallpaper, is that because the windows task bar is at the bottom, a more appropriate size would be 1280x1014 instead of 1280x1024...

Probably not feasible, but you could reconsider the placement of "cityofheroes.com" which right now is mostly blocked by my windows taskbar. (Maybe that's an advantage...)

<QR>

Alcatraz eh? Ok, the Bay Area can have some lovin'.

Just come back to Howie's Game Shack in Orange County the next time California comes up on the list.

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Ex Libris, Lighthouse, etc: the poll only let us choose one server.

For my money, our SG/VG/etc is spread over Infinity (which I marked in the poll) and Champion.

I went to the NCSoft Meetup at Howie's Game Shack in Orange County. That was a good location for Southern California. (I drove from Long Beach. A friend in my SG and his son drove from near Magic Mountain theme park, which was pretty darn far indeed, driving an hour or more on the freeways.)

The US population is concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest on the poll so far both because of history (those states have been around longer) and because of weather.

If you pick the Spring or Fall in either of those areas, you should end up with more than enough people.

If you pick a high-pop but multiple-distraction area like SoCal, without the rest of NCSoft's games to pull people in...

Well, I think you may need to advertise these things with in-game popup windows, like you did with the issue 9 "technical issues and new features" popup window.

Or maybe the game launcher, except I think most people click without reading, unlike me.

You'll always have a disproportionately high percentage of forum readers show up, though in some cases they tell their forum-avoiding SGs about things

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I won't drop the game over this but it would be nice - now if the new marvel had custom powers and COX didnt then i would be upset. (notice marvel is NOT capitalized)

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SFC_America, I suspect that's exactly what will happen.

CoH was released in 2004. The tech used to build it was the best available somewhere in 2000 to 2003.

It had and has limitations.

In theory, there could be a CoH 2 at some point, and it's probably cheaper to code CoH 2 from scratch, using the lessons learned in CoH and the upcoming Marvel game.

As much as I'd like to have power customization, I'd rather this be done instead:

Move the character database to the Guild Wars model, where everyone can play with everyone, because there's a shared character database farm, and players can group, and then when they enter a zone or instance, that zone or instance is handed out dynamically to one of CoH's 11 servers.

Consider this a Paragon Crisis, and everyone keeps their existing hero name, but their original Server Name is the name of the "alternate Earth" they came from.

If you were Superguy on Champion, now you'd be Superguy (Champion) and be able to team with Superguy (Justice) and Superguy (Virtue).

We would regularly see several instances of Atlas, Talos, etc., which do their usual job of capping the # of players in a zone instance.

Essentially, it's a huge database merge, but we PRESERVE the server info as the Alternate Earth you're from.

Future characters would be created as normal, where you pick a "server" (or original Alternate Earth) and still have 8 (or 12) slots for each.

When you pick a name that's already taken on at least one Alternate Earth, you'd then get a menu to pick one of the remaining Earths.

Further, Cryptic could create more Alternate Earths, so if for some reason your fave name was already taken 11 times, you could have that name and be from the 12th or 50th or 5,000th Alternate Earths.

This also introduces story possibilities, as foes could pay attention to what earth you are from, so that if Champion heroes have defeated the most Hellions this month, then they are attacked by preference in a group of heroes from various earths :-)

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Do the attacks from hami / the mitos still ignore defense?

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Yes. Defense is of zero importance.
The only things that help your survival are Toxic Resist, EoEs, Mez Protection, and HP.

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So FF supers are suddenly happy that a couple FF powers still give some minor Toxic resist?

SR Scrappers seem up the creek though.

I mean, Quickness is the only power that matters, since Stuns blast through even Practiced Brawler?

Regen Scrappers seem far superior, since their abilities always work, plus Reconstruction has 20% toxic resist.

Yes, yes, there's some -regen in some mito/hami blasts, along with some -heal.

It basically comes down to 20% faster recharging attacks vs. 20% toxic resist, plus essentially resisting the -regen for a while.

Invuln Scrappers... I think they have Toxic resist somewhere. Unyielding? Dull Pain?

Dark Armor.. they have some Toxic resist somewhere.

Wow. I guess the Stone Tankers will just be using Rooted (for the +regen) and Earth's Embrace. Granite Armor is only useful in tanking the GMs prior to Mitos and Hami.

I guess that's one way to force Stone Tankers to deal damage

Looks like Increase Density and Clear Mind have value, since anti-mez toggles/clicks aren't good enough on their own.

Mmm...

Will be interesting to see if anyone still raids Hami with the Statesman Task Force available.

Which takes more time to complete? (Counting the initial 18 mitos as a bloom, there are four blooms total: 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%; that's a lot of smashing!)

I guess by heavily relying on Electrolytic and Untyped damage, if you had a 50 you wanted to optimize for only Hami raids, you'd max your smash/lethal (for the GMs you farm for EoE) and completely ignore all other resists.

FF and Sonic defenders would dump useless powers to take more attacks from their secondaries. Other Defenders might respec slots, but probably keep their usual assortment of powers.

The Green mitos that are susceptible to Holds...

Is that only the damage portion, or can you mez Green mitos? (Purple Triangles still in effect?)

Blasters have little reason to change any of their powers... Controllers might change enhancers so their mezzes are all 3 Damage SOs instead of 3 Mez Duration.

Yes, you'd be hurting yourself for the other parts of the game, but a Hami-specialist Controller, who would only ever fight GMs, Mitos and Hami would simply aim for damage, right? Unless those Green mitos are Mezzable?

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/snip/ the blasted Vahz hunt is gone at last.

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Speaking of Faultline hunts...

What if you have a CoT hunt for Faultline on Live, and you don't complete it before issue 8 launches?

I guess you'd have to use the mission drop feature, right?

Something I put in Player Suggestions, but will repeat here:

I wish there were two prestige totals:
<ul type="square"> [*] Functional Prestige[*] Decorative Prestige
[/list][color= yellow]So if you have 100k prestige, you can buy 100k of Functional AND 100k of Decorative.

This doubles our buying power. It does *not* restrict it.[/color]

Your base grows 2x as fast with the proviso that your Functional items can never be more than your prestige total, but you might be able to quickly afford a 12x12 base of which only 8x12 is functional or somesuch.

Rent, if it still exists, would only be on Functional Prestige.

Simply, Telepads, Rez Chambers, Rooms, all deduct from Functional, while Lamps, Tables, etc. all deduct from Decorative.

Therefore Decorations cost us nothing, we can have some from the start, and we still have incentive to grow our base.

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F.ex, my bases have zero decorative rooms; none. Another guy wants a big meeting hall with a huge conference table, though ... just to have it. Never mind it consumes footprint, serves no functional purpose, and we'd never meet in it. We have different priorities.

Good in theory, not so much in reality.

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Exactly. When I kinda inherited a base (cause no one else stepped up to the plate when the SG leaders went on to other MMOs) I had to figure out all kinds of weird stuff, and chat with leaders of other SGs.

Hm, Door won't place. Why? Doh! Someone (we're close friends, so virtually everyone has an alt that is rank 5 and can edit anything about the base) filled the ceilings with track lighting!

So, first thing I did was to clear out everything that wasn't functional.

Next, I played around until I understood where my power and control came from, etc.

I moved stuff around, redid rooms until I maximized the number of doorways crisscrossing the base.

I learned how to, for teleport rooms, raise our Tech Porters up 2 floor levels with 0 ceiling, and place the beacons BENEATH each Porter so there was no question which Porter the beacons applied to.

And then I went about reforming our workshop, adding a 2nd workshop so we had enough room for all the new storage items, etc.

Only later, as our SG is somewhere in the 8 to 10 million prestige range (103k rent or so, which is what, around 1.7% of the total?) and we moved, with issue 7, to SIX telepads instead of three, did I finally say, "hey Art Boy, there's nothing left to spend prestige on. Go wild with sg logos, base tables, and all that nonfunctional stuff. We're earning 300-500k+ in a month and only paying 100k rent on an 8x12 plot filled to the brim with mission computer, raid porter, etc."

If we were starting from scratch, I'd build a workshop or oversight center, whatever lets me place Storage Racks for Enh, Salvage and Insps.

Then I'd start thinking Workbench/Oversight Center and a Porter to Talos and Atlas.

Anything more is gravy.

I almost wish there were two prestige totals:

Functional Prestige.

Decorative Prestige.

So if you have 100k prestige, you can buy 100k of Functional AND 100k of Decorative.

Your base grows 2x as fast with the proviso that your Functional items can never be more than your prestige total, but you might be able to quickly afford a 12x12 base of which only 8x12 is functional or somesuch.

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Thanks everyone for the comments. Glad you enjoyed it.

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But, but, what AT and powers are you? What Security Level? How many HP do you have and how did you slot your powers?

Tell us the important stuff!

Good writing. I think I'd brew a different cup of tea, but the quality and thoughtfulness are present.

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"Gee, let's have 2 superhero MMOs! We'll compete with ourselves!"

Thus diluting both player bases.


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Doesn't Sony have like 4 different fantasy MMOs?

That's like saying Lineage II's fanbase dilluted Lineage 1's...

Or that everytime Marvel releases a superhero game for PS2, it's diluting the fanbase.

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The only real dilution is in $$/month.

I can afford one MMO, plus I don't want to have altitis across two MMOs.

Wake me when there's an MMO that A) allows me to be *a* Green Lantern and B) doesn't stick me with only energy blast, force field and flight.

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Please read this announcement before you post your questions.

Rumors? We don't need no stinkin rumors! You guys have some questions, and I got you some answers:

The in-game items costs 9.99. You will not lose any of your current in-game items - it doesn't erase your Hero Gear Kit purchase, for example.

You can upgrade your current COH, COV, or COH/COV account with the combo box.

With the 12 character slots...currently, this is the maximum amount of character slots you can have. So if you already have COH/COV, you will still have 12 - you don't get 4 additional slots on top of that.

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Sales tax on the $9.99?

Let's break this down... I heard somewhere the GvE box would be $30 (remember kiddies, Wal-Mart is not trying to be the $50/$60 game seller like EB/GS).

$15 = 1 month
$10 = the goodies code
$5 = DVD (so you can easily re-install), map.

DVD is said to have:

"DVD bonus digital items: City of Heroes® comic books, Prima® Issue 7 Strategy Guide update pack, movies, game trailers, screenshots, and more!"

Comics are already a free download.

Update pack is a free download.

Movies are probably also free downloads, either here or Gamespot.

Game trailer... It's possible Cryptic's next MMO games might have their first trailer appearance on the DVD, but it might be too early for that.

Screenshots: downloadable.

"and more!" -- We clearly need to know what "and more!" is.

This is clearly a great gateway box for a new player, and it's nice for reinstalls. For those with only CoH, I'd tell them to pick up a cheap copy of CoV instead, esp. if they can get a pre-order helmet or the collector's arachnos cape.

I'm leaning towards the $10 code unless I win another of Statesman's trivia contests at a convention.

The Jump Jet sounds like it'll seriously help out lowbies in areas with high walls, as well as heroes with travel powers, so for the $10, it's worth it in time saved. Tiki Room is just a bonus.

Not sure on the "exclusive costumes" but if they include all the Toga pieces from the Valentine's Event, that'd be a good start.

Also, wouldn't it be a treat if the old VIP/Destined One badge let you in to the Tiki room also?

As-is, that old badge is just taking up space and inflating badge counts.

Use Medicine/Aid Self (includes Disorient Protection. This was added in ish 4 I think, when Health got Sleep Resistance).

Yes, that's two powers to get, but Aid Other will speed up your heal badge.

Also, is AB's disorient mag higher than the mag 1 mez protection of Acrobatics?

Wow. "All Good Things..."

I guess if Cricket ever gets an associate, we know Cricket's gone in a few months...

Bring another NCSoft meetup to Howie's Game Shack, since you're now on Lord British's pet project! "Lord British, this IS the meetup location you are looking for..."

May I suggest you do a farewell tour as Ms. Liberty over the course of your last week here? (like maybe hit Pocket D in 2 servers/night from mon-sat or so.)

Might be amusing if you could be Ms. Liberty by possessing the trainer in Atlas, so people see Ms. Liberty step off the pedestal!

May the TR forum software have all the features you've dreamed of!

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Certainly I don't base portal to Dark Astoria from Atlas, just to get to Talos quicker.


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Well, I do. I also use base portal from anywhere except bricks to Creys Folley to get to PI faster - when that toon is over 40 and can enter Ritki Crash Site.

From PI, I use the base tp to the hollows to get to Atlas faster, and go to Perez to get to Steel or Galaxy faster.

And many, many more little shortcuts that aren't that short.

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Sure, I use all those but the DA one now. I used the DA one pre-Pocket D.

If I am in a lowbie zone, I'll tram to KR, hit P-D, Talos, and be right next to the trainer store magic store, etc.

If I am in a high zone, Bricks can tram to Talos, FF can P-D to Talos.

Precisely what zone would I have to be in for the base TP to DA to compare favorably to Pocket D? I'm going to Talos to sell, anyways :-)

TP to DA was good while it lasted, but Pocket D is much more awesome.

Base Portal to Talos is probably mandatory so you can skip an extra zoning thru Pocket D, once that is live. Talos and Sky let you tram everywhere. I like the one poster's suggestion:

one green line telepad, one yellow line. Make Talos the green and Skyway the yellow. Then each destination drops you off next to a trainer and not far from stores.

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Teleport beacons for all CoH zones?

Yes. It's in our internal QA right now, making sure they all work right. (So it's a patch or three away from the Training Room server).

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Curse you, Positron! Now we'll have to go get exploration badges, and thus xp, in the city zones, while in SG mode.

Will your depredations on our playing time never cease?

Btw, please don't put Beacons in the PvP zones. I can just see some SG using a few characters to lure a larger group to the center of the map, where suddenly 10+ reinforcements Telepad right into the combat.

Pocket D is handling KR/Talos/FF pretty well right now. Certainly I don't base portal to Dark Astoria from Atlas, just to get to Talos quicker.

Hey, here's an idea: make the dropoff point in the City Zones be adjacent to the SG portal and/or Police Drones. SG Portal is probably better, because people Heading to Peregrine Island probably are going to Portal Corps, and if they want Ghost Falcon, base portal to Talos to the ferry is available.

We're only running 3 telepads right now: all of the 7 hazard zones except faultline. Perez is a great central location to hit 4 lowbie zones, and Pocket D handles KR.

I suspect we might keep the hazard zones, and add a pad for Skyway/Brickstown, since Bricks and Perez are covered. With enough excess prestige I guess we could put together enough power/control to complete all telepads, but really, gotta add in the rez booth and such first.

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I demand a transcript! And don't forget the new cover sheets.

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And the TPS Reports!

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How many "alarms" can we check per day, while also generating and testing new content? I can guarantee we get more "alarms" than we have time to look at properly.

An easy reply to that is 'Hire more people.' Ok, so who do we let go to keep this in our budget, and isn't that just robbing Peter to pay Paul? Increasing the budget means either Cryptic or NCSoft loses income OR we increase the monthly charge for the game. None of these are really good ideas or feasible.

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Which is why 160k+ players paying $15/month just isn't enough money

But seriously, I suspect things will get a bit better once CoH/V Korea launches.

That's hopefully a gazillion new box sales, subscription fees, etc.

Even if we only added another 200k subscribers from Korea, that would DOUBLE Cryptic's revenue, which should be enough to address having a full-time bugfix team, even if that team starts out with only one to three members.

Anything extra is gravy.

Suppose CoH/V Korea gets 400k or 1 million subscribers? Then, not only do they have more revenue, but can be very picky about who they hire too.

So, Castle, drop whatever you're doing and get CoH/V Korea out the door so we can clone you

Positron:

And the reason Numina hasn't completely healed you and restored those abilities?

I mean, are you missing an organ or something?

Numina ought to be able to fire off Regeneration Aura or Heal Other or something and fix you up right away.

Also, you've worn the suit for how many years and NO ONE has the super power to heal you and/or MAGIC and/or SUPERTECH?

Meh. Feels too much like Ben Grimm being stuck as the thing.

Your situation would be a lot more believable if you didn't live in... the City of Heroes!

I mean, couldn't the alternate-earth Oranbegans have healed you?

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So Insights SAY +25% _Accuracy_ but what they mean is +25% (or not even that, but whatever) _To_Hit_Buff_.

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An interesting theory is that lucks *are* "+25% defense" relative to base 50% tohit. Perhaps in the distant past, all critter types had base 50% tohit (and they do again). Lucks date to that time when a player popped a luck, he was reducing net tohit by 25% for all attackers; +12.5 percentage points DEF = "+25% defense" colloquially. Given other things I've seen and heard, this is not a bad theory.

Insights, though; good luck coming up with a theory there.

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I must eat a little crow here. A friend in my SG had gone to the Arena (using 2 accounts) to test accuracy/lucks, and got the 12.5 number from using HeroStats. (IE seeing it took 2 lucks to reduce chance of being hit from 50 to 25.)

However, multiple devs (including all-caring _Castle_) stuck with the additive nature of lucks, and that one luck was 25, so 50-25=25.

So, boardname newchemicals, you were right when the devs were wrong, even though you're not playing this game these days.

It seems then that:

the additive nature of defense (or subtractive if you like) is accurate, but instead of:

50 - 25 = 25

it's 50 - (25 * .5) = 37.5

And that extra multiplicative step was not admitted to by the devs in any past redname posting that I'm aware of. (Even _Castle_ told me in a PM that the 50 - 25 = 25 was correct as far as he knew. Of course, if he looks for a 25 and finds a 25 in the spreadsheet, that doesn't tell him to check the acc formula for the 0.5 multiplier...)

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I've got a screen shot in the aoe ko blow test period days... I think I'll submit that picture It's the Haymaker one I'm gunna submit tho because it's got a cool shockwave to go with it.

Haymaker

Rules don't say anything about test server Of course, she's originally from liberty, so I'll mention both servers. Hopefully that's legal :/

Yeah.. it's prolly as good as I'll get. Maybe I'll get another one tho.

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Rules DO say, however, "UI must not be visible."

Nice shot, though.

/screenshotui = 0 is your friend, just remember to set it to 1 again after you take your contest shots.

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Some of us remember Pann from her Eve-Online days.

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Not really, but I do find it amusing that most of NCSofts community coordinators seem to be women.

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IMO, players give women community reps an easier time than they do men. Whether it's something inherent in the female personality or some sort of chivalry/romance-fantasy on the part of the players, it's a trend that I've noticed on many different game forums. NCSoft has simply noticed the trend and capitalized on it.

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Um, I do believe Tisirin is male though. He appeared so when he stopped by while godslayer and I were talking with CuppaJo.

But, I admit he could be an Illusion Controller... ;-)

Seriously, he was cool, and fessed up to having posted only like twice since CoH launched

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Server transfer - It is in the works. There will likely be a fee for doing it. This is because they can't completely automate the process and will have to hire people to move characters over and change names when necessary.


Again, please note that this is all subject to change and to my own memory of what was said there.

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Btw, an idea of my own:

Assume server transfers are available. Instead of waiting to see if your name was taken and you have to rename yourself, do the following:

1) log in an existing char on the new server, or make one.

2) /friend the name of the hero you want to transfer

3) If that name appears on your friend list, you'll be renaming yourself. If it does not appear, pray that it stays that way, and file for the transfer, but have a backup name (like superhero- instead of superhero) ready that you've already vetted with /friend.

You could also be a name-hog and make a char with the same name to hold it until just before you file the transfer, when you delete the placeholder, and THEN file.

A friend from my SG and I also chatted with Posi and Cuppa.

I posted about Pistol Corrupters (and "no pistol scrappers") in the thread devoted to that.

My observation and editorializing after talking with Positron on "why weren't early powersets bugfixed until 2 years later?":

If power bugfixing is your bugaboo, get uber-skilled with databases, and check the job listings. Joe MMO Player is likely happier that there are X+Y powers instead of just X powers with bugfixes, even though we veterans want our main's or alt's powersets fixed. This problem is only solvable by increasing the pool of applicants with Geko-like skills, which thankfully happened when Darth Geko got his two apprentices, Darth Castle and Darth Worked-on-another-MMO.

You'll note I did not directly quote Posi. That was INTENTIONAL, so nobody misquotes him based on my post. Castle &amp; Co are bugfixing our powers *now*, so let's move on. Thankfully we got Castle &amp; Co BEFORE the 44 new MMO announcements/launches at E3.

(Castle apparently was the main DB guy in Master of Orion III)

Tidbits I learned about SERVER TRANSFER that I'm intentionally not attributing to any particular Cryptic or NCSoft employee:

In the end, this is a billing issue. Assume for the moment that it would be a nominal sub-$1 fee, just enough so people don't overload the servers with transfer requests.

There then needs to be a communication network between NCSoft's billing, and Cryptic's game servers, to both add a charge onto the player's account and complete the transfer successfully.

Cryptic wants this to happen. However, a rabid legion of fans assaulting NCSoft isn't gonna help, so prayer and/or positive thinking is about the best way you can help in this matter.

I'll go out on a limb here, though, and say that perhaps if CoH/V had lots more subscribers, Cryptic would have more leverage with NCSoft. That's my personal idea that I just invented with this post.

So, go and get your friends addicted to our fine game. Worst case scenario is that they have a great time :-) Best case is NCSoft builds the web interface between Cryptic and NCSoft's billing system.

I think the CoH/V Korea launch is soon or has already happened, so perhaps that will be enough of a cash infusion to make it happen faster.

Other stuff:

The original poster pulled more info out of Positron than I did, but I also had fun drinking a Dr. Pepper while Posi drank one of the Monster energy drinks from Howie's Game Shack.

CuppaJo being more NCSoft than Cryptic, my SG friend and I just kicked back talking with her and Cryptic's Producer, who wore the nametag "Serdar" and whose real name I forgot (oops!) but who is "Jack's (Statesman's) boss and the guy who keeps the business (Cryptic) running."

CuppaJo and Serdar were extremely cool. We mostly had a lot of small talk and just had a good time, which is pretty cool for people who'd never met each other in person before Sat night.

I'm not a mindless dev-praiser, but I will say that I think the interface of the forums make us treat everything like business instead of friendship, and that's a shame.

I'm not friends with Posi, Cuppa, Serdar, Tisirin (almost forgot you!) and the rest, but I could easily be friends with them if I saw them on a regular basis.

***They simply made it that easy to like them.***

Oh, the next meetup *may* be in Texas again. (All the NCSoft forum board people like CuppaJo and company work there, so all they need do is rent a Net Cafe and drive, rather than fly, hotel, yada yada.)

Posi, Cuppa, and the rest: hope you're not only out here for meetups because of E3, but I'll certainly make the effort to attend any further meetups in Southern California. The combination of the devs and publishers being so very cool with the fans is a big part of CoH/V's success, on and offline.

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The idea is teh funnay though.

The most wanted guy in all of CoH. A poor lil' Infected. Running from entire legions of level 50 Heroes.

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I guess the only speedup you can do is to be in a team of 8 when one of the team defeats him, so you all get credit.

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OK, sounds Great, but what about Prestige?? Will we be able to earn a bit more prestige to be able to affor even reasonably priced cool stuff? I haven't posted about prestige before now but I've meant to. I mean my lvl 50 goes on a mission and makes nothing but prestige, 4 or 5 per kill, sometimes less on +2 baddies...and another thing about that, I really hate my 35 Characters don't make any money in SG mode...he still has 15 lvls worth of enhancers to buy and it seems you make the most prestige in your 30's...this is a patch I'd LOVE to see...exchange rate for Infamy and Prestige raised 30% or more

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Some solutions, for the situation as it is today:

1) You still get enhancement drops. Sell those in Talos for max money, or anywhere
if they are coming in too fast for you to run to Talos all the time.

2) Consider running an entire level or two in non-SG mode, then switch back.
Based on the leftover influence my 50 had (entering SG mode around 42)
you just need to run in non-SG mode 1-2 levels per 5-level band to, between
enh drops and inf earned, make enough.

I know this doesn't help you reach the influence-earned badges any faster. My
50 only has the 2nd one because I switched to SG mode.

Another option, if your SG allows alts, is to grab one of your low alts, put them in,
run them 1/2 the time (up thru 33), run your Main the other 1/2 the time, in a mix of
sg and non-sg mode as you like, and enjoy.