Azure_Avenger

I'd say that this is the best Marvel animated series ever. This is the first time I've ever cared about the Avengers outside of the 2 Ultimate Avengers movies. In fact, I'd say that this is the best superhero cartoon ever aside from JLU. The fact that they made Hank Pym likable and is the first cartoon to portray MODOK correctly just shows how good the writing is. They even have story arcs built into the season and have hinted at the Kree/Skrull war and an ongoing plot with AIM. Great show and a must see for comic book lovers.

Some good reveals in this episode:

The return of Baron Underbeiht, and Wisdom
Dr Z is a member of the council of 13
And a new eviler Guild has been formed

I'm also betting that the Spinx agent that Brock was with will end up being significant. Any bets that it was really either 24 or a rogue Hank clone?

Next week, Phantom Limb's guild strikes!

I particularly like the epitaph he chose for himself:

'Keep Looking Up was my life's admonition // I can do little else in my present position.'

If you gotta go, do it with a smile.

Surprised no one mentioned this yet, but the Star Hustler Jack Horkheimer passed away on Friday. Story here:

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainm...r-dies-100821/

This guy was an idol of mine growing up and one of the most influential Astronomers in the last 50 years. Most people will remember him from the Sci-Fi programming blocks that many PBS stations ran in the 80s and 90s. RIP Jack.

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Getting "day job" badge dialog on log in, but on the badge list the badge is still showing as in progress. Happened to me multiple times today on multiple servers. Does not appear to be specific to any server, archetype, etc. At this point i'm not sure if i've even really earned those badges yet. (i know i was close.)

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I have also encountered this bug. If you bring up the characters "character info" from the options menu the badge clearly shows that it was rewarded however the badge list still shows it as in progress. If you log out and back in however the badge is added to the badge list.

I ran into another related bug with Mission Architect. Apparently you cannot publish a story that has a return in the mission description. It kicks out an error about HTML formatting. It took me 2 hours to track it down until I looked in this thread and removed the carriage return from the mission description.

I got another one. In the Architect mode the arc souvenir clue in the story settings won't display properly. It displays the text and constantly "vibrates" up and down making you unable to read or edit it. I should note that the text is close to the 1000 character max.

I tried the ITF 4 times hero side before finally clearing it. This fight is all about damage. When we had 4 damage dealers and 4 buffers/debuffers we couldn't scratch Romulus. It is only when we went in with 6 damage dealers (mostly heroes) that we finally won using the Nictus kill method. I should also note that we had a controller confuse Romulus and he attacked the Nictus badly hurting it. Enemies in this TF seem to be week to confuse.

However when I did the TF with a mostly villain group using the kill Romulus method, we cleared it with ease. It seems that having a number of villains on the team, particularly masterminds and corrupters, makes the TF easier.

On another note can someone confirm the locations of the generals in mission 3? The locations I am aware of are 1) the bridge, 2) the monsters, 3) the surgeons, 4) the bosses, 5) Requiem. However last night there was another EB on the platform with the 2 AVs. Does he not count or is there something weird about the General's locations?

Also there seems to be a problem with the ambushes in mission 3. One of the times I ran it the ambushes were severely delayed and we ended up with 5 consecutive ambushes when we got halfway up the hill. Romulus' ambush didn't appear until well after he died for the last time.

Anyone?

Maybe I'm just blind, but how do you change the skin tone on the model?

Great find BTW, this is going in the favorites next to Heromachine.

Kudos to the devs for implementing this much more equitable fix.

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Time to address the original post, I think.

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Such missions have always been intended to be group activities, hence the reason for the minimum group size requirement to start them.

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There are many ways to incentivise group activity. The above is a negative way. 'You cannot do this unless you have a group of at least size X.' A positive way would be 'If you have a group of at least size X, the rewards are better' or 'This challenge is so hard that you ought to bring a group of at least size X to deal with it.'

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We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous

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Finding a group of 8 is one sort of challenge.

SUSTAINING a group of 8 is another kind altogether. People get disconnected, have to go AFK, have issues of all kinds that mean they have to drop out temporarily or permanently.

You really need to look at how minimum team requirements pan out over time as opposed to the start of a mission.

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and that the need for grouping is a good dynamic in a social environment like City of Heroes.

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Yes, but how do you create that need? Gating content by simply setting a minimum team size on it is about the crudest way to do it.

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We want to continue to offer good rewards based on a group accomplishment through such missions and maintaining that requirement is the reason for this change.

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And this is the point where I really have to stand up and shout. I've not seen it picked up on yet, so I'm going to pick up on it.

A randomly selected Pool C recipe is NOT a 'good reward based on a group accomplishment'.

Some of the Pool C recipes are worth doing a TF for. Some aren't even worth getting out of bed for. If you are going to nail a mechanic in place that says 'you MUST do a certain amount of work as a group in order to earn the reward' then you have to apply a similar level of consistency to the rewards themselves.

The reason why people soft load the Cap TF and do Speed Katies isn't because they don't like fighting the opposition. It's to minimize time wastage caused by the random reward selection system.

Who in hell wants to do a whole TF just to get a - I have to borrow the delightful phrase - Crap of the Hunter recipe, or a Snipe recipe?

Let me hammer it home again: if you are going to make the challenge consistent, then make the rewards consistent. It's unacceptable to require people to do a set amount of work for a mere CHANCE of worthwhile compensation. Guarantee the worthwhile compensation, and you'll be on firm ground.

So how do you guarantee the worthwhile compensation?

Simple. Let people choose which Pool C recipe they get.

That takes the randomness out of the process. If all TF rewards are SUPPOSED to be of equivalent worth - and if they aren't, then why the hell are you requiring people to do the same amount of work to earn them - then there is no reason to prohibit the player from choosing which one they want. Inconveniencing players is not the same as challenging them.

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QFT and

<3 Sadako

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The Quarterfield Task Force [u]NEEDS[u] to be reduced to 4 players then. There is no reason for the required number of people needed.

While you are at that change, might I suggest removing the redundant missions?

Removal of missions 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 23 should stongly be considered.

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QFT

I still haven't been able to run it because of its length and the fact getting 8 people together to run a long TF on a low pop server is nigh impossible.

I think the badges should go:

Exploration - All current explore badges except shady/multidimensional, these need to be moved to accomplishment

Accomplishment - Mission badges, TF/SF/Trial badges, plus shady and multidimensional which are closer to mission badges than explore badges.

Acheivment - defeat villain badges, stat badges (healing, damage taken, debt payed off, sk, etc), and leveling badges

PvP badges - Time spent in PvP zones, PvP kill badges, Pillbox badges, Bloody Bay meteor badge, and Warburg nuke badges.

Inventions - All invention related badges.

Holiday - All badges from the Valentine, Halloween, and Christmas events.

Veteran - As is.

Gladiator - As is.

Also an option to sort the badges within the categories either alphabetically or by completed or uncompleted would be nice.

Basically people are spamming players offering to sell influence, power leveling, and invention salvage for real money. The act of doing this is in violation of the EULA and hence this thread.

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I got 2 of these annoying messages & used /ignore & /gignore & reported the lowlife of a parasite via petition. It was very annoying to have this tell smack me in the face in the midst of fighting a Ritki zone invasion with heavies surrounding me & having to not lose my temper over such sickening behaviour in game.

Anything PlayNC can do to reduce such exploitation is a step forward in my opinion. Good riddance!

As for suggestions? Here are mine:

(1) I like the brilliant idea that Luerim12 gave, to better moderate exploitation on the auction house. Show the prices max, min & average for the last month!

(2) What about the option of imposing minimum & maximum selling prices on auction items?
Eg - rare hamigoo salvage - min price 5,000inf, maximum 500,000inf. Set with the rule - first maximum bid wins. Yes, I can see people missing out, but how is that different to the current market? The only difference is instead of selling it for 2million, it is dropping to 500k. (My price is just a mere example). By imposing a max price, it helps to reduce some of the extreme exploitation that goes on in the auction house. Sure, it may continue, but with a lower return, it will discourage some of these gold diggers.

(3) Track any banned accounts back to their credit card number - and ban their credit card on trying to open any PlayNC account. This means they have to go to the trouble of getting a new credit card - that in itself will help to discourage the spammers.

(4) Increase the drop rate for the rare precious shiny things.
For example - Numina's convalescance, or any other recipe, or rare salvage that sells for over 1million. Increasing the drop rate means the sales price will lower. This is a good thing for all players, and is only bad for someone who expects to profit on the auction house.

(5) Alter TF completion offering of the rare recipe!
Modify it so you can pick from a certain area - heals, Targeted AoE damage, defense, etc. To give you a higher chance to get what you really need. The screen could be modified to click "rare recipe" which opens up another screen, and you click "Heals", and a random rare heal recipe is given to you.

(6) Alter TF completion to offer you rare salvage!
The screen pops up at the end of the TF. You can pick from SO, recipe, salvage. So you click Salvage, and you can then click "Arcane" or "Tech" to get whichever side of the rare pool you are after, which offers you a random rare from that type.
(When I say arcane, I'm referring to stuff such as Mu Vestment, Pangean Soil, etc, I'm not sure on their real classification).

(7) Level restrict Peregrine Island.
OK I will upset some people here. But this is how I feel. Please, change Peregrine Island to have a level restriction - make it level 40+ for example (just a suggestion). Yes, people will farm in other zones, but eventually those farm leaders will level up & have to move on as it affects xp. It just makes it that little bit more difficult, and will slow the farms down some.

(8) Paying to join a farm!
I have been in Peregrine Island and regularly seen messages on broadcast such as "Battle Maiden Farm, 1million influence per run" and shockingly people pay this per run. They pay even more to do arcane runs for the rare salvage drops. And the farm teams are led by the same build. I'm not asking to "nerf" the fire kins (I have one & it's not 50 yet!). But being able to run an 8 man team set on invincible with only 1 or 2 fire kins is rather disturbing. It would be interesting to investigate the banned RMT's accounts & see if they were running fire kins to grind up their cash.

Maybe a fix to this would be to stop the "mapping" - that is, after the map is explored out & the 6 other people quit, allow the mobs to reset down to the number left on team. Yes, coding is required, but it fixes the problem without having to nerf anyone.

I don’t mind farming when the people grinding away are experienced players & helping their friends level up without any catch, and everyone is *learning* how to play their hero (not just sitting AFK...). Paying to join a farm bothers me. And when people PAY to have their level 2 levelled up in PI and go from 2 to 50 in a week & have no clue how to play, that sickens me. And surprisingly there are accounts sold with alts PL'd up to 50, and I get stuck teaming with some idiot who has no idea who to play his level 50 fire/kin, and I check out his info to see he is a 2 year veteran yet has no idea how to send tells... and then realise he bought the account from some leech that PL'd it... and that upsets me. The game to me is about playing & *learning*, which unlocks your potential to be worthy of level 50, the pinnacle of your success, a super hero.

Zloth summed it up nicely for me:
"Paying $500 to have somebody PL your hero up to 50 is like paying somebody $50 to tell you the end of the latest Harry Potter book.

So long as farms charge people to get PL’d and people are willing to pay for it, it encourages RMTs to exploit this for their own gain. This is why I think the zone restriction & fixing the “mapping” can help a bit to reduce this problem.

These are just my suggestions, please don’t crucify me. I was asked for my opinion, so this is my feedback & in no way a criticism on anyone.

Thanks for your time.

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I have been asking for numbers 6 and 7 for an eternity. Although I would make PI a 35+ instead of 40+ because some late 30 characters have run out of missions and use the low end PI spawns to get them to 40.

Rare salvage is too rare, it needs to be fixed.

Thank you for being on top of this guys. The constant spamming was one of the reasons I left WoW. We need to make it clear that spammers are not wanted here and will not be tolerated.

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Well, I poke fun and can be serious at the same time. The air is changing around here, my whiskers are all a-quiver with it. Good or Bad? Meh, who can say. It's just 'Different'. On one hand the forum titles are Cool, interesting, and neat. But on the other it is easy to see where a feeling of favourtism or elitism could spawn. I'm a little split about it really.

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True. But how is it any different from usual? We've already seen people use Post Counts to take shots at people they don't like, Star Ratings (When we had them), and Reg dates. And there are people who don't like the scoop for one reason or another, and will use anything they can as an excuse to attack people. So it's going to happen one way or the other.

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Meh, no arguement from me there. Shoot, I've had people point at my comparitively small post count in arguements. But this is now getting a little off track. Sorry for the de-railment.

=. .=

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Low post count? If you have a low post count then mine is minuscule.

The only reason mine is so low is that I only contribute to a discussion when I have a point or a sarcastic comment to make. That and I don't play forum games.

The new background is big improvement, kudos to whomever came up with that.

Issue 9

The Good

- Invention system is flawlessly integrated into the existing game and really provides something to do for high level characters. It's never been easier to get a TF going!

- Statesman Task Force is a nice late level TF that also helps provide content for high level characters.

- New wings!

The Bad

-Consignment houses could have been implemented better.

-Most salvage is too rare which drives the prices up to ridiculous levels.

-The sudden shortage of influence is forcing people to play out of sg mode if they want to participate in the invention system.

-No new story content. Hopefully this will be rectified by I10.

The Ugly

-The lag generated by the auction houses

-Talos base portal bug

Got a question for you. Is there any point to using inventions higher than level 50? The bonuses seem to be the same as level 50 you just happen to be paying more.

For me it wasn't that good. The Snaptooth fight is ridiculous due to the massive ambushes that Snappy summons. The co-op missions are limiting because if you play at odd times, like me, then it is near impossible to find someone of the opposite allegiance to team with. Luckily since my mains had done the event last year I could skip straight to the DJ Zero missions. Here is what should be done for next year:

1) Remove the team up requirement from the event

2) Change the Snaptooth fight to something more thematically appealing and tone down/remove the massive ambushes.

3) Remove Arachnos from the event (I'm sick of fighting them).

4) Change it so that you don't have to run the last mission 5 or 6 times to get all of the rewards. Twice is enough.

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It's entirely possible accolades could be affecting Defiance either intentionally or unintentionally. Intentionally being that Defiance is coded as 50% base and not 50% boosted. In which case this is perhaps a documentation issue, or becomes a discussion of whether this design was the best way to go. I don't know. and really, I don't see what Defiance has to do with a badge bug, this is an issue for Blaster forums, I think.


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Agreed. Let's stop hijacking this thread and swerve back to the original intent of bugs with badges. If we want to further discuss defiance, just add on to the weekly tirade against defiance in the blaster forums. I also apologize for inadvertantly hijacking the thread. Mea culpa.

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I would like to see an answer to this also because I have a sneaking suspicion that this is also the reason that Defiance doesn't work correctly.

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Never even considered that because I know on my blaster which has them all, he doesn't get defiance until below 40%.

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now that's interesting.
Defiance *is* something that could be caring about your maximum HP. It could be taking a measure every so often if your current HP is below some level. If that's miscalculating your Max because of buffs, then you're on to something. (Unless it's intentional that Defiance kicks in at some level of HP and not some percentage, so it's unaffected by buffs. In which case I would question if it's affected by debuffs.)
HOWEVER, I still don't see how incomming damage would care about your max HP any more than it would care if you're buffed with Insight, or carrying a full tray of enhancements, or wearing a cape.

This all comes down to cases of people failing to farm damage. I suspect the Devs may be thinking it's better to let people fail farming than to look into fixing it. Unfortunately, non-farming progresses the damage meter so slowly that we can't tell if it's broken in other situations, and certainly can't make a reproducable case to study.

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The fact is that accolades and dull pain are NOT your hit points. They are additional hit points granted to you. Your hit points are the base that the AT gets regardless of powerset. How the hell can you sit here and say that the code can be misreading with defiance and not damage badges? The code does not see those additional points as actually being yours. So in both cases it is pretty simply. You never did answer my question about farming damage while only taking damage in the boosted hp range and getting the badges or progress at least.

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Interesting concept. You're saying Dull Pain and the Accolades are effectively different creatures as far as the game can tell, and whiel the game records the damage taken, it doesn't award credit to you, because they're not "Yours"?

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Exactly. Allow me to illustrate what I beleive is happening. (I would love to be wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm right.)

Lets say you have a base hp of 100 and an accolade which gives a 10% hp boost giving you an effective hp of 110. Now lets say that Defiance kicks in when your hp is at 50%. So it should kick in when your hp is at 55 pts but is instead kicking in when your hp is at 50 because of the way accolades are currently calculating. If anyone has hard numbers to back this up I would love to see them.

This also explains the damage taken badges as you have to take damage above and beyond the bonus given by accolades for the damage to count towards the badge.

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Positron, can we please get a clarification on whether the plus hp from accolades is counted towards the damage badges?

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I don't know the exact mechanics of the code, but from what I do know there is no reason why it shouldn't be.

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I took 9.3 million points of damage in 25 hours, per hero stats. No damage badge given. I was told by other players that if the damage taken does not get you below the bonus from the accolades that it does not count toward the badge.

What is the official answer?

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I would like to see an answer to this also because I have a sneaking suspicion that this is also the reason that Defiance doesn't work correctly.