Booboo_Finger

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Or what about the early D&D pc games like Pool of Radiance and the others. Those games were huge! and took months to complete. These were the days before eye-candy and video cards, when games were made or broke by the quality of the writing and the depth of the games, not by how many relections you can see in a characters bald head!



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For a HUGE game, how about Captive? I think it had something ridiculous like 9,999 levels and it all fit in a single DD/DS floppy. I remember playing that game for years in the Amiga. I think I myst have gotten to lvl 200 or so because it was bugged and one of the combinations you needed was behind the door which it was meant to open.

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Career choice:

- Become a CoH/CoV developer
<ul type="square"> [*]Pros : Allows for unpunished long game sessions at work [*]Pros : You can tweak powers data to have an unfair advantage in PvP with your toons should you choose to[*]Pros: You can talk CoH with colleagues all day long without being called a freak[*]Cons: Have to attend meetings with Statesman discussing game balance and his *visions* blah blah blah blah[*]Cons: Can't post on the boards and ask for template advice with your redname without having 400 replies unrelated to your question[/list]
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Meh...

Trust me on this one, if it was your job, last thing you would want to do when you got home is play CoH.

It's kind of like being a game reviewer. The fun factor goes down a good 20-50 points if you are doing it as work. Nothing beats palying a game for pure, selfish enjoyment. Exept maybe, playing it when everyone else thinks you are working...LOL

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Y

There were no music CD's, music was on vinyl records (look it up).



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Would that be 33 1/3 or 78 rpms?

Oh, also:

You saw 2001 Space Odyssey in the theatersand thought the movie was real exciting because of all the awsome special effects!

Try watching it today with someone who grew up with Star Wars and watch them go to sleep on you and tell you it's the most boring film they ever saw.

You remember Disco Dancing to Charo and back when she was hot.

You know who Dee D. Jackson was.

You remember when Micheal Jackson was black

You remember when diapers were made of cloth

You remember watching 8th Man (Who use to boost his power form SMOKING A CIGARETTE!!!)

You remember when certain TV shows used to tell you they were IN COLOR

You could not make a long-distance call without the operator (There were times when you could not even make a local one either, but I'm not that old )

You just have to know where to look
Linkie

<ul type="square">[*] Better to have 1k xp then 2k in debt[*] The only good xp is the one you get to keep[*]Foolish Scrappers rush in where Smart Tankers are afraid to tread[*]A PUG is like a box of Chocolates: you never know what you will get[*]A fool and his XP are soon parted[/list]

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This one bothered me for a week after I started playing.

You can turn Profanity on in the option menu. It makes conversations MUCH easier to understand, especially when you're dealing with people who seem to have been raised by sailors (guilty!).

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What do you %$@%@$% mean by rasied by a %$@%@$% sailor?!!?

You owned an Amiga 500

Your mom threw away your copy of Fantastic Four #1

You know who Big Jim was

You catch yourself singing the theme to Super 6

You watched the original run of Ultra Man and Ultra 7

You watched The Green Hornet

You remember when comic books were $0.35

You had a Fisher Price record player

You owned a Batmamobile made by Gorki (sp?) toys (you know the one which would pop the blade on the front and had the mortar on the back that shot off little yellow pellots that you lost the day you got it)

You remember when computers had lots of flashing lights and big reels of tape.

'nuff said!

Gotta go cash my Social Security check....

oh yes! you remember when there WAS such a thing as Social Security

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- It is entirely possible that the badge you are struggling for no longer exists / never existed, does this invalidate your efforts?

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No...i was more refering to badges like Archmage Badge Accolade and such. 200 Pantheon Masks and 200 Illusionist Decoys, think about it for a minute...

After playing CoX for a while, I have found that certain simple truths exist and that once understood will make life a lot easier for you and possibly everyone else.

I am going to start the ball rolling by posting a few tid-bits of wisdom(?) and encouraging everyone to do the same. The one thing I ask is that if you add to this thread, you have to express each thought in 1 or 2 sentences at most, not in long "this happened to me" stories. After all, Zen is about expressing complex truths in a simple manner.

<ul type="square">[*] An ounce of heal is worth a pound of rez[*] You will die repeatedly and emass tons of debt when you are just about to level[*]The badge you most want is the one that will take the longest for you to get (IF you ever get it)[*]Contacts are not your friends; they are out to get you killed. If they were your friends, they would give you respites and break frees for free whenever you talked to them.[*]Your baby/dog/pet/phone will cry/bark/wet your floor/ring at the worse possible moment.[*]If at first you don't suceed, you will get a debt badge soon[*]Either your tanker or your healer will quit on you during a timed mission when you are in a PUG[*]Of all the things I miss the most since I installed CoX, my life is what I miss the most[*]If you are having arrousing dreams involving Statesman or Sister Psyche, it's time to take a break[/list]
I now pass the batton...

Something else I forgot to mention:
Cringe Factor
Be aware that nothing will give away the fact that you are goofing off playing a game more then the "cringe factor". That is basically the face you make when, for example, your blaster misses 10 attacks in a row and gets dispatched to the hospital by some lowly enemie. Make sure you learn to keep a poker face even though you feel like jumping up and down and running around the room screaming with with frustration.

The cringe factor also come into play when you are in a the middle of a heated battle and your boss approaches and you have to alt tab while he goes on talking about something or another. Yes, your toon is taking a beating while that is going on and you will probably come back to a your toon face-planted and with a nice chunk of debt to boot. But just smile, and do what he asks you without letting him know that you ae getting creamed. It's kind of like having a flea in your underwear when you are in a date. Just smile above the frustration and don't let anyone catch on to your plight. Just keep this in mind: as bad as debt is in CoX, RL debt because you you lost your job is even worse!

OK, 2 things:[list]
[*] Don't hack the admin password to play at work. If you were really serious about goofing off at work, then you should have studied more and became an admin yourself. The more you study and get paid, they more you can goof off at work. Just look at our President. Think mere mortals can go on vacation as often as he does (or any other President for that matter) and still keep their jobs? The message is clear, if you want to goof off, study till your bottom becomes glued to the chair.
[*] I'm aware that everyting gets indexed by search engines, but since my boss is the kind of person who sends me an Email about the Email being down, I don't think I'm very much at risk here.

Do not bail out in a timed mission! If you don't have the time to play one (and they are usually pretty short) then say so. Don't join a team and then quit when there is 10 minutes left on the mission.

If someone lets you borrow the star to invite someone, don't keep it till you log. It's rude, and you will probably NEVER get the star ever again from the same person.

Introduction
So you feel bored at work and figure that you could use your idle time there to persue more important tasks, such as leveling your toon. You think Windows Solitarire is for losers and have played enough Dropheads, ICQ games and other freebees to make you wish that you were running around in Paragon City in tights when the boss isn't looking. If you are like that then this guide is for you!

In this guide you will learn the ropes of doing what you really want to do at work, and not get fired so you can keep paying the monthly charges for CoH.
Plan ahead
The right careers
The first decision is to choose the right career. You can either become a game reviewer, and flat out play games for a living, but there are some problems with that. First, it's about as easy to get one of those jobs as it probably is to land a male escort for an agency who only accepts gorgeous young women as customers.

The second problem is that if you are lucky enough to become a game reviewer, you most likely won't get to play what you want. So instead of playing CoH, you could be stuck with playing a real lame game like say for example Deer Hunter 8.
Last but not least, you would have to actually do a review. That would mean that you would have to be paying attention to all aspects of the game, and probably taking notes on it and later would actually have to write a big article about it. So where's the fun in that?

My suggestion is that you become a head of the IT department for pure unaldulterated fun. As the head of the IT department, you will have no problem installing anything on your computer and are in a key position to get your company to purchase the latest video cards and upgrades to have a decent gaming machine at work. My only advice is don't get one of those computers with the funky colors, transparent paneling and neon lights. Bosses tend to get kind of suspicious if you do that.

If you are not the head of the IT department, you can still do it, but it will take a bit more creativity on your part.

Installing and running

Whatever you do, DO NOT take the DVD to work and install from it. The best way to do it is to download the client and then run the updater. The reason for this is that this way CoH will not get listed in the Add/Remove Programs list and it wont put icons on your desktop or on your start menu. To run CoH, go to Run in the start menu and run it from there. No one will ever know...

AT selection
Basically every AT has it's pros and cons:
<ul type="square"> [*]Blaster : You can usually 1 or 2 shot your enemies when no one is looking. But you can also alt tab when the boss comes in and when you get back, you will see yourself planted on the floor.
Controller: You can mez your target and alt tab when someone walks in. The downside is that it takes forever to kill anything.[*]Tankers: You can alt tab and come back an find you that you are still standing. But just like a troller, it takes a long time to bring someone down.[*]Scrappers : Combines the 1/2 shot capability of a blaster with somewhat of the resistance of a tanker. Just don't agro a lot of mobs at once and you will be fine.[*]Defender: This is probably the only AT that does not do so hot for playing at work. Your attacks are weak and so are you. Your only choice here is to play an empathy, turn on auto-heals and put the tanker or scrapper on your team on follow.[/list] To team or to solo

I basically prefer to go solo out of consideration to my potential team mates. It's ok to alt tab and come back to your body stretched out on the floor. But people will usually get mad at you if you basically stop fighting in the middle of a big battle and it results in a team wipe. But then again, some people do that and can't even use the excuse that the boss walked in on them and they had to use auto tab.

Well, this is all I can write as of right now, since my boss got back from lunch and I have to pretend to be doing some work here . . .

If you have any questions, let me know and I'll try to answer when no one is looking

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DO NOT...
...refuse to use a rez just so you can soak up 'no-risk' XP's. I hate debt- who doesn't? But if you just bought the farm, chances are some or all of us are pretty close to dyin' too and we NEED you!
(some guy actually said this was the ultimate technique for xps- he said his SG had been tporting a dead body around for a month. Please- say it ain't so...)

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Now that sounds like an Urban Myth if I ever heard one. You can only TP someone to the same zone you are in. That being said, you could not TP the corpse into a mission or another zone. Not only that, but once outside, you would have to keep the corpse somehat close by. So in conlclusion, even though that was an absolutely hillarious idea, it would be too impractical and limited to be true.

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Do not broadcast something akin to the following:
"lvl 20 troller lft PST"
^Seriously, you're begging for a team on broadcast and you want them to send you a tell? How arrogant can you get?


[/ QUOTE ] its not arogance its common sence. I broadcasted "lvl 12 blaster lft", lastnight and got picked up by a team where the highest player on the team was 4 lvls below me. So i promptly quit and sent the same message and got picked up buy a person running solo missions but got to one tjey couldnt finish by themself, so i figured we would be getting a team togeather but they didnt want to, they just wanted me to help them defeat a boss so they could get a new contact. i helped defeat the boss then they quit the team saying that a friend was calling them or somthing. So no it is not arrogance.

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I think you missed the point here...
It's not the "lvl 20 troller LFT" that was arrogant, it was the PST part. If you want a team bad enough that you anounce it in broadcast then dont' expect anyone to send you a tell. Just click that team window when it comes up and be done with it.

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That has to be the silliest thing I've read in awhile.

Just because you're looking for a team doesn't necessarily mean you're looking to "help that one guy 20 levels below you kill a single boss then get booted" or "spend the next 4 hours on a TF"...

There is absolutely nothing arrogant about saying "hey, I'm looking for a team, drop me a message and lets see if I'm the right fit for your team (and their current goals)" ...that's what the "PST"'s there for.

At what point did "LFT" become "blind invite me so I have the pleasure of dealing with whatever crap I'm dealt"?

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Looking for a team so bad you have to broadcast it (probably more than once), yet still require all the controls up front about what you're getting into?

Here's an idea...

PUT YOUR OWN TEAM TOGETHER!



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My point exactly. If I see someone broadcast "LFT PST" I pretty much giggle and if it's up to me the person will rot before they get invited. Now if they said something like "LF TF team" or if they are looking for a particular mission, it's a different story. Otherwise it's as silly as someone who wants to get paid to join in a team doing the spelunker badge mission.
I already send tells to people I find doing a search, so i'm not going to do it for people begging for a team in broadcast.

If you ask for spare change, don't say that you only accept quarters....

Which reminds me: If you expect people to be polite enough to send you a tell before inviting, be polite enough and let them know you are not interested in joining and don't leave them hanging.

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Do not broadcast something akin to the following:
"lvl 20 troller lft PST"
^Seriously, you're begging for a team on broadcast and you want them to send you a tell? How arrogant can you get?


[/ QUOTE ] its not arogance its common sence. I broadcasted "lvl 12 blaster lft", lastnight and got picked up by a team where the highest player on the team was 4 lvls below me. So i promptly quit and sent the same message and got picked up buy a person running solo missions but got to one tjey couldnt finish by themself, so i figured we would be getting a team togeather but they didnt want to, they just wanted me to help them defeat a boss so they could get a new contact. i helped defeat the boss then they quit the team saying that a friend was calling them or somthing. So no it is not arrogance.

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I think you missed the point here...
It's not the "lvl 20 troller LFT" that was arrogant, it was the PST part. If you want a team bad enough that you anounce it in broadcast then dont' expect anyone to send you a tell. Just click that team window when it comes up and be done with it.

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When a team is pulling, don't run around the corner to be with person pulling, it really defeats the whole purpose. They will be back with new friends for you to play with momentarily. Just stay around the corner with the rest of the team.

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Now there is one I wish people would get through their heads. Case in point, we had a tough mission last night. Tons of high +2 creys with 2 -3 bosses in each mob. We are right next to elevators. It should be reasonably easy right? Well, I do a perfect pull and scrappers rush in, aggrowing the whole room resulting in several team wipes. All accept for me who ran like hell and used the elevator. Dying over other peoples stupidity is not something I like to do.

also, if you have an invisible or stealthed character scouting the place DON'T follow him or her. It's really bad for your health

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Replying to someone

You don't have to type in the name of someone if they send you a message, just press BACKSPACE and you'll automatically be in Reply mode to the last person to send you a tell.

(I don't have time to log and check but would this work?

/bind &lt;key&gt; autoreply, "message here")

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you can also do it by simply putting a /r in front of your message. That works out even better when you type your answer in the wrong channel. When that happens all you ahve to do is scroll back to the message, hit Home and and put the /r in front of it.

Also, when inviting ppl, hit the backspace key to get their name, hit backspace (to erase the comma) then home (get the cursor to the beginning) del twice to erase the /t and finally type /i. Yes, it sounds complicated but it's not.
This is also another reason to send tells before inviting ppl.

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Noobs Kill Stealing---and when you inform them that Kill Stealing is frowned upon by the community they reply with "Cry much?" . After this the conversation usually follows with..."br34k 0ut Y0urz h1ghest lvl her0 so I can k1ck your butt with my lvl 25 corrupter"

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Guess he would be in for a surprise when my lvl 40 MM would show up

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Activating MoG without warning? You're kidding right? that shouldn't effect anyone but the scrapper.

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Actually, no....
Back in the days when I played my MC/Empath that was one of the things I hated most. First of all because in the heat of the battle, i pretty much saw health go down and would react by trying to heal the toon. Since I was also trying to keep my mezes from breaking, I hardly kept tract of who I had healed before.
Secondly, because since that was my first toon, and I had never played a scrapper (and havent played one yet) I had no idea of what MoG was. In all honesty, it's not the healer's responsability to know what scrapper powers are. The healer's responsability is to know what a healers powers are.

And now for my pet peeve:
Don't invite a team for a mission you got 4 levels ago.
Don't invite people for hunt missions and then go off on your own killing stuff and expecting everyone else to do the same. If you are going to do that, just go ahead and solo the dumb mission.

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I sometimes accidentally click Rest, then turn it off again immediately. I notice that when I do that 1) Rest does not need to be recharged and 2) it heals me a little bit for the time that it's on.

Does anyone know how long you can have Rest on for before it needs to be recharged?

I'm imagining a strategy where you could click Rest, count 1-2 or something, then click it off again and it would not need to be recharged. Then you could do it again. That way, you could get healed, but still have Rest around if you really needed it.

Anybody know?

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I also notice that when I open up my arrange enhancements window, when I exit I am strangely rested. Try this!
After you mastered this technique, try this on for size:
Open up your organize enhacement window in the middle of a vicious fight. Notice how all the din of battle is gone? How calm it feels with nothing but the "arrange music" playing? Doesn't it feel peaceful? Nice? Go ahead. Take your time in arranging your enhancements. Put all the ones of the same kind together to make it easier to sell them. Update your enhancements. Now is as good a time as any.
And now for the most amazing part: exit the enhance arrange mode. Notice how you have trancended your thirst for endurance and now lie snuggly on the floor. Doesn't that feel good? You might even notice that you are no longer part of a team. But dont worry. They all probably thought you looked so peaceful sleeping like this that they did not have the heart to wake you up and tip-toed away.

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1. Move your character to a place where you can not be harmed or attacked.


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So that is what I was doing wrong! (slaps forehead)

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2. Click on the Rest icon to activate the power.


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And here I was trying to turn it on by sheer force of will (slams head on table)

Thank you Sultry Selene! You have opened up my eyes to the errors of ways. Your guide has changed my life! Now, when will you relase the ultimate guide to Sprint or better yet, the one to Prestige Power Slide? In all honestly I cannot figure those out for the life of me!

I did the Dr. Vahz mission recently and got no cutscene

Excellent program!
Finally I can do all those fun binds I thought about first but was too thickheaded/lazy to do by hand

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As far as Mind/* controllers go, by far the most damaging powers in the controller set. ....

...I am not sure about the solo-ability of these



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I just started a Mind Control/Empathy Controller, and she kicks booty. Mind control does good damage and is pretty much all mezzes (exept for levitate, but that is really usefull when you see a mob picking up a rock or something).
I haven't really developed the empathy part. But I find that Healing Aura and Rez are also a big draw for finding a team whenever I don't want to solo.