Bladesnow

That's the spirit. The community will live on, whether we can save the game itself or not. CoX is NOT the servers, or the game system, or even the lore. It's the shared community and the world we created in our minds. Expressing it through the medium of these servers and the beautiful client that the dev team worked so lovingly on has been a convenience and a catalyst, but it has always been the *people* behind the screens and keyboards and the spandex and superpowers that really mattered.

That will remain if the worst happens, and I'm confident that a group of people as creative and caring as the residents of Paragon City will find a way. After all... we are heroes. That is what we do.

Wise advice. The people who write it in the first place don't really put much thought into it. (grin)

Don't forget Felicia Day and the Guild's latest video "I'm the one that's cool". The culture has changed immensely in the past few years, and comics and video game nerds ARE a lot more mainstream than they were. Such a protest could grab a LOT of attention if done well, and as you said, in a situation like this any publicity is good publicity.

Whatever works.

The Incarnate trials have brought unprecedented levels of power to the heroes of Paragon City. They have also brought nearly unprecedented levels of confusion to the players. A concerted effort has been undertaken by several forum members to understand the system which awards Incarnate salvage. Some results have been produced, but more log files are needed to generate statistically solid information.

To help in this effort, the Champion Foundation is offering in-game “research grants” for those willing to produce log files and email them for analysis. We will pay 1 million influence via in-game email to the character or global account of your choice for each log file containing trial data submitted to coh.log.files@gmail.com , to the limit of available funds – as of this announcement, the Foundation has 1 billion(10^9) influence available. Donations to the project can be made by contacting Bladesnow.

To enable chat logging, log in to the character you intend to run trials on, and open the options menu. Scroll down to the CHAT section, and find the fourth option “Log Chat”. Enable that. Also check to make sure you have the combat tab showing up somewhere in your chat windows.

Once you've completed the trials you wish to submit, go to the home directory of your CoH installation and find the logs folder then inside that the game folder – usually C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\logs\game. The file will be called chatlog (date).txt. Be aware that it contains any and all chat from all active tabs while you have logging enabled, if you are worried about this you should open the file up in notepad or the editor of your choice and delete the offending lines before emailing the logfile. You may find Tao's Log Cleaner useful for such cleaning.

By emailing your logfile to coh.log.files@gmail.com you implicitly grant the right to share that file among members of our analysis team and publish collated results. Incude your AT and powersets as well as who you wish payment emailed to. Please indicate if you wish to remain anonymous in any reports, and we will replace your character name with a subject number. Should you choose to participate, thank you for helping further the understanding of CoH.

Egad, it's the evil twin Skippy! THAT'S where he's gotten to. Thanks much for the info. Sounds like I was doing nothing wrong, and the problem was I was too eager.

First, as you I assume have noticed by now, only the empyrean merits are good for the purpose of buying a very rare, which is the only thing I need at this point. Those you only get once a day if you'll recall. So the couple of hundred astral merits and thread I have lying around are essentially junk, since for some strange reason they can't be traded or sold. It looks like I've for once lucked out, and with an upcoming patch they will have some uses.

Second, we were told very early that the empyrean merits would be good for OTHER things. I wanted to see what those other things are before I making the irrevocable decision to spend them. Now that we've had a glimpse of what those "other things" may be, I am very glad indeed I waited.

Third, the incremental gain for a lot of the tier 4 powers are, as many are so fond of pointing out, not that great. Hardly worth burning irreplaceable and untradeable resources gained in content I actively loathe.

There's probably other points, but that should be enough to be going forward on.

Paragon Studios is lucky they have a lot of good will built up with me, or I'd be gone already over the shoddy way they've responded to player's concerns about these trials. Or rather, the conspicuous LACK of response. Sad part is, one of the things that is saving them I figure is that the rest of the industry is so bad on that score. I really cannot figure out why they've gone down this road.

You would lose that bet. My main has done right at 175 trials, and has only 2 tier 4s. I've done another 20 trials or so on an alt. It does not take significantly bad luck to require a hundred or more trials to get all tier 4s. Just as it does not take significantly GOOD luck to get all tier 4s in well under 50 runs. I know MANY players in both situations.

That is one of my biggest objections to the way the trial rewards are set up. A completely random system like that is fine for something that is part of an optional system and can be traded, but NOT for a character locked item required for continued advancement.

Indeed. The group of people I hang out with on Protector almost never has more than 4 or 5 people online at once, tops. Pulling together 8 people to start a TF is a schedule juggling act that can take a week or more. A lot of us have always preferred to play with people we know. Until the alpha and the WTF there was no real downside to largely ignoring TFs. Now with the trials, we have to find 4 to 8 more people - and two of our solid regulars cancelled.

I'm glad you had a good experience.

Yeah, I used to run occasionally with some folks over there. A lot of them are gone now, for various reasons. My home's always been Protector, but I've got a hero or two on every server.

Nothing personal, Golden Girl, but I've been in a league with you, and it does not surprise me that our preferences are diametrically opposed. The difference is that *I* am not trying to impose my version of "the right way to play" on everyone else.

All right. I tried them. I hate them even more than I thought I would. The reward structure is about the worst I've ever been involved in, across any of the MMOs I've played. So bad I've been driven to posting in the forums to make sure the devs at least have a chance of hearing that not everyone likes their shiny new monstrosity.

A couple of my SG mates have cancelled, even more don't want anything further to do with the trials at all - save, perhaps, posting in the forums in self defense themselves. How is any of this at all good for the game? A few more people posting in the forums about how they don't like the latest content is not really a net positive.

That is... disturbing. Not too surprising to hear, but quite disturbing. Even more disturbing is that they don't see the disrespect for some of their players inherent in that decision.

Naw, just proof of something I've always suspected. Arcanaville is a strange visitor from another planet. (wink)