Blackavaar

I just wanted to pop in to say, "Welcome, Sunstorm!"

This all sounds like good news and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

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The telepad recipes are as follows:

Clockwork Winder, Temporal Sands, Simple Chemical, Psionic Manifestation

OR

Alchemical Silver, Symbol, Inert Gas, Black Blood of the Earth

OR

Ruby, Destiny, Silver, Hamidon Goo

There are three ways to build one. You only need Hamidon Goo if you're going for the third recipe.

Now, why on earth anyone would ever WANT to do that, I don't know, but there it is.

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Oh that's an easy one - if I'm out casually playing my 50 at their true level and I don't want to have a damn thing to do with Wentworths, Hamidon Goo drops for me from time to time, and none of the salvage for the first two recipes will.

Its obviously not the most cost effective method, but some people don't bring all their hopes and desires to the market .

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Notice how all of those recipes require a piece of Rare salvage. I can see the market prices going up on all of those, including Hamidon Goo, as opposed to something that before you never had to buy anything for because there was more than just three recipes to build the necessary materials, none of which required anything Rare.

Edit: This still makes the market and the invention system much less optional than it was supposed to be.

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I’d like to take this time to go into more on the designs for some of the new stuff in Issue 13.

Bases:
We’ve made some changes to the way players deal with bases. Overall things got a lot less expensive, Prestige-wise, in bases.

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Prestige maybe, the OTHER costs went through the roof.

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This means that smaller SGs should be able to accomplish more with their bases now.

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This is simply untrue. Smaller SGs will be forced to used the Market System (something you promised in Issue 9 that people would not be forced to use) to even craft a tier 1 item like a telepad, because you have chosen to include rare salvage. To make matters worse, you've made Invention Salvage needed for dual builds, empowerment stations, as well as using the salvage required for the "power 10" IOs.

All this amounts to an overall increase in prices. Prices that I must add will be borne mainly by Group Leaders and Base Architects. This is ESPECIALLY true in SGs that are fewer than 6 people.

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If your SG wants to take advantage of the new, lower, prices, you’re going to have to do a little work in selling the older items, and buying the new, lower priced items. It’s an unfortunate artifact of the way the base system was designed that we can’t just refund your SG the difference straight away.

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Which shows that this change should have been held back until such a fix could have been implemented. Instead, in your rush to push through a poorly thought out change, you are off loading the conversion to players. Now you will have to maintain two sets of base items until such time that you can get around to automating the switchover.

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We’ve also eliminated the need for Base Salvage. Now everything in bases can be built with Invention Salvage.

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Thus you've went beyond ignoring the players concerns (which have been brought up repeatedly in the base section for the last month) to fix a non-existent problem of people "not understanding the difference between base and invention salvage". A problem, I might add, that could have been fixed with a simple text change to "Base Salvage Found".

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You will even be able to convert all that extra Base Salvage into Invention Salvage to help get rid of the extraneous items your SG has probably accumulated.

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Those "extraneous items" are BACK UPS in case someone accidentally deletes a base item...

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This change will help smaller SGs build cooler stuff faster, as well as give large SGs a benefit for all their hard work so far.

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We've already shown that you've completely missed that mark. It will still take small SGs a long time to get up and running, and now one person will be getting shafted because the recipes REQUIRE invention salvage.

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Don’t worry, the storage containers in bases will now be able to hold a small amount of Invention Salvage as well now.

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You raised the base salvage from 999 to 2,500 because it was shown that the original base salvage racks stored LESS than a player could hold on a single character. Now you are telling us that we can only store 30 items in the rack? I know characters with more Halloween salvage on them than that.

To sum up the base changes in PVP terms:
EPIC PHAIL!

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Agreed, the new base system as well as the PvP system are totally borked! I am assuming they go hand and hand because of the Base raiding they have planned down the road. But the salvage bins now only holding 30 items as opposed to 999-2500 like they do on live make no sense. Needing Hami Goo to make telepads and other rare salvage to base build is also alarming.


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What? Hamidon Goo to build a friggin Telepad? Are they nuts? Do you realize what a Hamidon Goo can cost?

Oh yeah, it's going to cost less Prestige, but we're going to get you on that Influence/Infamy.

I'm glad I used up all my Base Salvage crafting all of my important items beforehand. This system sounds like I'd be ruined otherwise.

Say it ain't so, Posi?!

Edit: Please remember that not all of us are farmers with 200 billion Inf banked up.

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If your SG wants to take advantage of the new, lower, prices, you’re going to have to do a little work in selling the older items, and buying the new, lower priced items.

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To clarify, this means that base items that were placed before i13 will sell for their pre-i13 costs?

What about Teleport Pads or other items that have to be crafted first? Would we be better off just keeping them, or will the cost difference make up for the trouble of recrafting?

Will the invention salvage used for these be the expensive arcane or the lesser used tech salvage?

So, there really is no Chest option, just Chest Details.

And not one of these cyborg pieces gives the generally half and half look most people have been really asking for when they say"Cyborg". You can make a good robot though.

I must say I am somewhat disappointed in the costume options. I was hoping for more stuff with skin, you know? Like the single Cybernetic Eye option. Like a bare chest with implants weaving in and out of it. Like some flesh and cybernetic leg options and a single robotic leg option.

No offense, JLove, but I think you may have misunderstood the desire of the masses.

Native American Weapons:

Tomahawk

Native Longbow (w/ feathers tied to it)

Some Native American costume options (Native Headband w/ feather, Feather Headdress, Mocassins, Fringed Leather Pants, Loin Cloth, Native Mohawk w/ feathers) and emotes to go with them would be nice too (/e smokesignal, /e nativedrumdance (adding arm flourishes) or /e peacepipe).

I will of course add the Costume Requests to Jay's thread as well, but I wanted to request these as a group somewhere.

Give the Natives some love, please.

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I'm more of a concept builder than someone who simply takes the "bestest" powers. That being said, I am bit concerned when it comes to Travel Powers, since most of the choices do not fit with most of the concepts I have in mind.
How viable is it to use Swift and Hurdle as your only travel powers? I've heard of people doing it, but is this actually doable, or am I just going to end up getting mugged by every high-level mob of minions I pass in the streets. Super Leaping, Flight, Super Speed and Teleportation are not exactly desirable for more than half my concepts, but I'm also sick of getting blasted in the streets of King's Row upon arrival at level 5 by some random mob of villains and waking up in the hospital. It'd be great if I was at least fast enough to escape from them.

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Don't repost, just ask a mod to move it to Player Questions for you.

I'll answer your question while I am at it. I myself have several characters that go sans Travel Powers and use Swift/Hurdle as their mode of transportation (I am also a concept player). Swift and Hurdle properly slotted (1 extra slot on each is generally enough though you could go higher) is enough to blow past most mobs easily. At most they get a couple of pop shots off at you, but as long as you keep moving they'll never catch you.

Also, with this set up you will learn to find all of those short cuts and tricky ways up and down the maps of the city. Go exploring Skyway, you'll see what I mean. Using this slower set up has also helped in using faster modes of travel because of this kind of knowledge.

Helpful hint for Teleporters during those Smash and Grab side missions.

In most of these the second set of safes is behind a metal door with a slot in it that you can see through. If you zoom in to almost first person view while standing close to the door, you can actually place your Teleport reticle inside the room and Teleport yourself inside. This can save time and possibly an alarm tripping due to the door's explosion if you have to destroy it.

Number of items per player that must be destroyed to gain extra time.

Barrel 5
Bus Stop 1
Cardboard Box 3-5
Car 5
Crate 5
Dumpster 1
Fire Hydrant 1
Large Metal Crate 1
Mailbox 1
News Vendor 1
Parking Meter 5
Pay Phone 1
PPD Car 1
PPD Swat Van 1
Trash Can 1-5
Truck 1

You can find more specifics at Paragonwiki.

Atlas Park
Kings Row
Skyway City
Steel Canyon
Independence Port
Talos Island (Coming Soon)
Brickstown (Coming Soon)
Founders Falls (Coming Soon)
Peregrine Island (Coming Soon)

Edited to repair links.

[color= yellow]Mayhem 101[/color]

Part One: Buying Time

When you first enter a Mayhem mission you will be placed in a location away from the Bank. If you stay low to the ground, you can take your time destroying objects (Mail Boxes, Fire Hydrants, etc.) to get yourself some extra time. Take your time and take out any Police that get in your way. They are worth extra time as well. Stay low (below roof level of single story buildings) and avoid as many Longbow spawn points as you can. If you do cross a Longbow spawn point you will see a "Stop in the name of Longbow!" message. Stop and look around. Use cover and wait for them to come to you (this will assure that you don't aggro some Police as well), then clean their clocks and move on.

At lower levels (5-8 or possibly 5-10 depending on your AT) ignore Cars, Vans, Dumpsters, Crates and Large Crates. You can buy yourself enough time with Cardboard Boxes, Barrels, Mail Boxes, Phone Booths, Trash Cans, News Vendors and Parking Meters. Trying to destroy Cars or Vans at this level is especially dangerous as the explosions really hurt.


Part Two: Side Jobs

As you are slowly working your way across the map, watch out for your side missions. Each of these missions will buy you some extra time and help you get closer to achieving the various badges.

Arsen: nets 4 minutes of extra time and contains a few more Police toward that Outlaw badge. More importantly setting fire bombs is the only way to earn the Firebug badge. There will be a total of 3 ambushes triggered during this mission. One is triggered the moment you enter, and will usually interrupt the defusing of a bomb unless you have some cover to use. Take out the first ambush and then arm the bombs and you will get your extra time. Don't leave just yet though. Two more ambushes are coming and if you exit they will overlap and gang up on you. Wait by the interior doors and take them out as they arrive. Only after all ambushers are defeated should you attempt to leave.

Kidnapping: nets 8 minutes of extra time and contains plenty of Police to help you work toward the Outlaw badge. There will be a Longbow ambush spawned the moment you enter the mission. It is best to wait for them and then take them out before moving on. As you exit the kidnapping mission with victim in hand, watch for an ambush by higher level Police. You can avoid them if you simply keep running to your rally point, but I always find it easier to deal with them first.

Raid: nets 6 minutes of extra time and is the easiest side mission to finish very quickly. Most characters can simply run past everyone on the way to the glowie, take out the guys near it and click it for the extra time. If you're feeling adventurous, or don't think you can run past, just take out the guards a group at a time. Watch out for the Longbow ambush spawned by entering the map. If you are fighting they can catch you off guard. I would wait and take care of them first if you decide not to stealth it. If you stealth it, the Longobw will often be caught by the villains at the deal and you can skirt right past them on the way out. The Temp Powers from Raid missions are great. Special powers like the IR Goggles can come in handy against Smoke Grenade and/or Stealth using foes.

Smash & Grab: nets 5 minutes for breaking into all of the safes and an additional 6 minutes if you break into the Vault. Again plenty of Cops to work on the Outlaw badge and the Vault doors in these count toward that Safecracker badge as well.

Break Out: nets only 3 minutes of extra time and IMO is not worth it because it usually take longer than it is worth. Also, the villain could be useful if the AI was intelligent enough to not get stuck on every object on the way to the bank. If you do get this one, save it for after the bank. This will give you an easy out button in case you get in over your head. Going down the elevator activates the Longbow ambush for this mission. It is best to go immediately back up to take care of them before trying to take on the guards in the cell block.


Part Three: The Bank

When you first arrive at the bank, getting near the bank door will trigger a Longbow ambush. Note which direction they are coming from by looking for their speech bubbles and then get behind some cover. Wait for them to come to you then pound the daylights out of them. Stalkers, don't bother trying to get off an AS. The Longbow can see you and will almost always interrupt. Instead use that first strike to get your guaranteed Critical, then just go to town. One you've taken care of that ambush, go ahead and enter the bank. Now in the cases of Independence Port and higher maps, some Longbow Eagles may appear in the bank even though you've stayed low the entire time. Just be on the lookout. Otherwise you should not have to worry. Start out by clipping a few civilians with a ranged attack. Avoid being spotted by any guards if you can. The idea here is to get the civies out of the way. They are set up to run in groups, so clipping a few of them should get rid of the majority. You learn which civies are part of which group eventually. After that just take down the guards a group at a time. Try to keep a reign on any pets when the guards try to run. They will try to get you to aggro other mobs. Just wait. They always come back. You should have plenty of time to work with here so don't be in a rush. Take it nice and easy and just one group at a time.

Now when you reach the Vault room, try not to get too close (within 10 feet) to the Vault door until you've dealt with the Guards. This will trigger the Guard ambush waves and have you fighting more Guards at once than you need to. Once you have defeated all of the Guards in the Vault, then begin working on the door. Keep an eye out for the waves of Guards. There will be three waves, each progressively tougher than the last.

You will probably break into the Vault just before the first wave arrives. Do not take the Money yet. Take care of all of the waves of police before you take the Money. You don't want to be caught by the additional waves during the fight with the Hero. Such could be fatal. It takes some time for the ambushes to come if you wait for them (and it takes some patience) but you will be much better off fighting the Hero without having to worry about the cops on your back. Once you've take out all three waves, go ahead and grab the cash and run. Run back to the bank entrance and you can sometimes catch the Hero unwary, just entering the bank door. If you're in a team try to all stay together though. You don't want to have the Corr catch the villain at the door while everyone else is still halfway back to the Vault.

That's it. Defeat the Hero and his Longbow entourage and you're done.

See the following maps for locations of Longbow Spawn Points. So far I have only mapped Atlas through Independence Port thoroughly. I will add more maps as I finish them.

I agree. That's good advice.

Okay, first thing, wait until everyone is in the mission before you head to the Bank. The meleers should be at the front of the group.

Remember the timer begins as you get within 10 yards of the Bank building. Try to all arrive at the same time.

I know, we all knew this part right, well here's where it gets tricky.

Once you enter the Bank, run as fast as you can to the Vault. Ignore all Guards and even the Boss group if you pass them. Get to the Vault and stop them from destroying the (invisible) Vault door.

As long as you catch the Boss group and the Vault door has not been broken, you can now run back out of the Bank leaving the Guards at the front alive. Try to run past them fast and get out of their range and they will go back to their starting positions. If you run too slow (or multiple runners are running at different speeds) they may follow you outside the bank. Try to run out of their range before they wander into the Police. If the Police defeat them the mission will complete and the timer will start.

As long as you have outrun at least one Guard in the Bank, you can now take your time clearing the entire Safeguard and completing all of the side missions. If you are going with a team, make sure they all know what you are doing so they don't defeat the front Bank Guards prematurely. Once you have cleared the side missions and the streets to your taste, simply return to the Bank and finish off the rest of the Guards. Voila. You're done.

Correction.

There was no Fortunata Helmet given as a Pre-Order helmet. The Blood Widow Helmet (which sometimes appears on Fortunatas) was available for females only (the male version of which is the Mu Helmet). So, Fortuna on your CoV Pre-Order list should be changed to Blood Widow.

Also, the helmet you have listed as Mu Helmet is actually the Mystic Helmet.

Otherwise, well done. /e thumbsup

Edit: You might also want to note that the Buddy Code versions of the Laurel and Sandals (Valentine) have the advantage of being account wide, while the new versions must be earned for each particular character.

Wow, a lot of doomsayers in here.

A lot of people seem to jumping to a lot of conclusions though.

We don't know exactly how they are going to track how many players are seeing the ads yet. I doubt they are going to allow spyware to be used on their customers though as that would create a mass exodus, and that is something I am sure NCSoft does not want. More than likely they will simply track whether you are opted in or out to determine this.

Pricing and placement of ads should work like in real life though, if they want to retain immersion. I cannot see them rotating ads on every zone in that happens. That would totally detract from the immersion of the game. Instead the ads should be paid placement on specific billboards in specific areas and would remain on said billboards until the paid advertisement time is up. Locations in places like Atlas Park, Peregrine Island, Cap Au Diable and Grandville would be the high end advertisements and should be the most expensive placements as those areas are very populated. Other locations in less used zones like Boomtown or Dark Astoria (especially considering the visibility factor here) would cost much less and placements would last longer. Whatever they do, they should not let them rotate upon every load in of the zone. That would be horrible for immersion.

Also, they should have competing advertisements and product placement. They should not take a deal with Coke and let them dominate the ad space. They should let the advertisers compete for ad space the same way they do in real life (an ad for Coke seen on one billboard, an ad for Pepsi or RC Cola on another down the block).

The additional advertisement they are thinking of is most likely product placement. Having Starbucks plastered on your /e drink cup, or Lays on the side of a truck, or various products in the Natural stores shelves or on the Black Market's displays. Perhaps changing the generic markets to known stores such as Vons or Smith's Food, or putting Winchell's Donuts sign on the donut shop in Faultline. There's a lot they can do without adding pop-ups or plastering ads all over every inch of wall space, like some of you people automatically assume.

Whatever they do with these advertisements, I am sure they will cut it off completely if a majority of the playerbase dislike the way it all plays out. NCSoft cares about it's subscribers and wants to keep them. They would not chance the whole game falling apart because of in game ads.

Just give it a chance people. It could really help the immersion to have more realistic advertisements. And again, you can always just turn them off if you don't like them. I really doubt they are going to try to goad you into turning them on.

You've got a /e thumbsup from me Lighthouse. I'll give it a chance before I say the sky is falling. And as many of you may know, I'm one of the more pessimistic players on these boards.

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just because today is april fools day doesnt mean its not true, and just because it was on wikipedia doesnt mean its not true... anyone can edit that... im not saying i believe it, because im about 90% sure its not because this would be an SOE style move and i think ncsoft knows better. but just because its april fools day doesnt mean its not true, because no one from nc has commented on it yet.

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On page 52 of this thread Lighthouse said:
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We hope you have enjoyed this April 1st News Item!

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Happy April Fools Day all. The joke is over now.

And welcome to all of you new to the forums. It's a shame this joke was the only thing that could get you here.

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*starts placing bets on the number of people who will still lodge complaints about this 'upcoming feature'*

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I'll wager the thread gets up to 70 pages with at least 2 complaints/threats to quit per page.

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We hope you have enjoyed this April 1st News Item!

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Great one, Lighthouse. Congradulate the whole dev team for us on a very well played joke. You guys rock! You had me laughing all day long.

Love ya.

Possible reason for us not getting Electric Melee and Electric Armor for heroes yet. Recoloring blue electricity to red for the port from herosdie to villainside wouldn't be as hard as recoloring red to blue for the port from villainside to heroside. I imagine this bit of extra difficulty may have been a deciding factor in it's not being done for this round of Proliferation.

I'm sure Electric Melee will make it to heroside eventually, just as I'm sure that Broadsword will make it to the villainside.

Patience is a virtue.

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Whew.... happy it's just a lame joke.

I almost canceled my account.

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If it was so lame, why did you come so close to canceling?

LOL This is just pure gold! The fools are out in force today! LOL

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Ok, so i got a dozen new characters I'm making based on this awesome new feature. Boffo Man, The Shluckter, The Wonderful Whammo and Soopah Kablooow. I just hope I can pay extra for this feature, that only heroes get it, and that this feature stays crunchy in milk.

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Don't forget Dr. FLEEM!, and the Whama-Bam Smasher. lol

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this is so stupid, just because they are adding a new feature does not mean that they should take one away. What they should do is give a choice on sound or visual sound.

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Wooo! Another one!

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Ummm... I was sure this was a joke, just like most people around here...
But when I logged in earlier... it seems like the code for this somehow leaked out onto live.

Maybe it's just part of the joke... dunno...
Still sound on live, but tons of bubbles now.

I think I might quit and wait for the Pre-VS-CoH emulator. Although, they're not even including Villains, they hate them so much there too...



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o.O That's not VS, that's people making binds to fake this. I notice you said bubbles. You mean Speech Bubbles, right? Like from normal chatting. People do that all the time usually with inventive ways to call out their power
"Let me show you what wading through the River Styx would be like!"
*uses Tar Patch*

VS is a non-bubble sound visualization. Compare the april fools pictures to what you're seeing in the game. People are just adding

/local FREEM!

to their power attacks. Heck, they can edit the text bubbles to be transparent and have colors different from the normal black text white background.

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When I first learned about binds and macros I set up a bunch of those myself. Then I got hassled by team mates about spamming up their chat windows, so I stopped using them.

This joke brought em back! lol This is so hilarious! I love our devs. I'm at work and I'm havng so much fun just reading these reactions that co-workers are looking at me like I'm crazy. (/e whispers most of them are WoWers.)

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this is so stupid, just because they are adding a new feature does not mean that they should take one away. What they should do is give a choice on sound or visual sound.

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Welcome to the forums!

And April Fools!

I'm at work right now, so I can't get online. But if this is really on live already, doesn't that kind of give it away? I eamn they said in the announcement it's a feature coming with issue 12. Is issue 12 out yet? Is it even in beta?

It's a joke people. Laugh at your foolishness.

Edit: And anyone who thinks this would be a good feature to have. Imagine standing in Portal Corp waiting to start a mission, seeing the Clankity-Clank! VRRR-RRR-RRRR!! Clang!! Clankity-Clank! spamming as you're just standing there. Imagine a team with more than 2 MMs with Visual Sounds being spammed for every shot a henchman makes or takes. This would an absolute chaotic mess, unless you only play solo or maybe duo.

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Not bad, devs.

But between World of Starcraft from last year, and this years WoW April Fools Joke, I think they win.

Bard guitar hero = lolol

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No way. WoW's is so obviously a joke. No one bought into it even for a moment. This joke rules. People are actually coming to the forums for the first time just to complain that they don't want the sound removed. Anyone doing that on WoW's forums about the Bard? Nope.

An April Fools joke is supposed to fool people. If you're not fooling anyone then it's not a good joke.

CoX rules!!