Bridger_EU

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January: Cosmos - Jakey K

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Link to the thread, please?

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Look, my team of rabid PvP Empaths! A gaggle of Brutes! Charge them down!

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Actually, I've always wanted to see how an organised team of Empaths would do in PvP.

With stacked Fortitudes, Recovery Auras and Regeneration Auras along with Clear Minds and Adrenalin Boosts on tap and (of course) huge amounts of healing, I think they could be pretty nasty...

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Not really, but PvP in CoX is largely rock, paper, scissors, and a bit of talent.

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Im interested to know how you came to that conclusion RW? Shed some light?

Most PvP systems in MMO try to work on a Rock, Paper, Scissors approach. An approach which WoW manage extremely well. So grats to them. However, with CoH, its very easy put builds in 2 camps. PvP capable, and PvE.

Its my experience that in CoH/CoV there are Uber PvP builds that can cope with 99% of other ATs. Leading to imbalance etc. Which leads to dev nerfage.

Follow FOTM's for example.

EM Stalkers
Spines/Regen

FOTM's from some time ago:
Blappers
Illusion/Kin trollers.

Rock, Paper and Scissors is a CoX utopia and always will be since the game is primarily designed for PvE. Devs may have other impressions about their achievements. To them i say - Go try WoW.

And this isnt out of frustration. I have PvP capable toons. I'm just not very good with them. I enjoy PvP when im winning or losing. (within reason...!) Neither is it out of a Fanboy love for WoW. I cant play that game anymore - bores the pointy bits off me. Certainly CoX devs could learn some tricks from it though.

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As always when discussing PvP in CoH/CoV, I think its important to distinguish between solo/1v1 PvP and team PvP.

There are some combinations of Power Sets in some ATs that are weak in solo/1v1 PvP. I do not personally believe that there are any that are not capable of being very useful and effective in team PvP.

Likewise, while there are some advantages to 'PvP builds', it's not been my experience that I need to dedicate a character to PvP in order to have fun with the occasional jaunt into one of the PvP zones. None of my characters have what I think of as 'PvP builds', but I've enjoyed playing all of them in PvP. Even if I do die a lot.

As is probably obvious, I have fallen well behind with the Creative Genius competition. For this, you have my apologies.

In order to try and rectify this situation, we've decided to try a slightly different approach to this regular competition, where you, our creative players, will nominate entries for each month's Creative Genius, and we will pick a winner from each month's nominations.

For full details, please see the updated Be a Creative Genius and win!

The first nominations thread (for June's Creative Genius) will be posted in the first week of July.

In the meantime, please see Creative Genius Nominations - October to May, where you will be able to nominate previous entries for the past few months, in order to bring us up to date.

Once again, my apologies for letting Creative Genius slip behind. Hopefully the new system will prove more effective. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions, please post them here.

Please use this thread to nominate submissions for the Creative Genius awards for the months of October 2005 through May 2006.

Due to the period of time involved, these nominations will remain open until the end of July, at which point the winning submissions from each month will be selected from those nominated here.

To nominate a submission, please post a link to the appropriate post and the month for which you are nominating that submission.

There are some important rules to bear in mind when making nominations:
<ul type="square">[*]You may only nominate one submission from each month. If you nominate more than one submission for a given month, only the first one will count.[*]You may not nominate your own submissions.[*]Nominated submissions must have been posted to this board during the appropriate month - for example, to qualify for the Creative Genius award for April 2006, a submission must have been posted to this board for the first time during the month of April 2006.[*]All submissions first posted to these boards in the appropriate month are eligible for nomination, regardless of what form they take.[*]Only nominated submissions will be considered for the Creative Genius awards.[*]If no nominations are received for a given month, there will be no Creative Genius award that month.[*]If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please post them to Creative Genius - A new start. This thread should only be used for nominations, and any off-topic posts will be removed.[/list]Happy nominating!

[EDIT - In the case of stories or other submissions posted in multiple parts, I'm happy to be flexible when it comes to nominations. If you wish to nominate a specific section or chapter, do so for the month in which it was posted. If you wish to nominate an entire multi-part submission, you can either nominate each part for the month in which it was submitted, or the entire thing (it will count for the month of the first submission, but please include links to all the parts you're aware of in your nomination). Hope that makes sense - if you have any questions, please post them to the New start thread.]

Enough, please.

Sheesh, all this from one throw-away line by a random NPC that dared to use a little 'meta-humour'.

As it seems that many of you can't discuss this reasonably, I'm going to have to lock it.

I'm very sorry to hear you had a bad experience.

As someone who has fun with the odd casual PvP session, I might humbly suggest that drawing conclusions based on a single attempt in a zone where you were horribly outnumbered might be a little hasty, but it may well be that PvP simply isn't for you - which is fine.

Personally, if I enter a zone and see that my side is horribly outnumbered, I either leave immediately and try again after doing a mission or three, or jump right in, knowing that I'm going to get ganked but seeing if I can take someone down with me just for the hell of it (I don't normally manage to, but the odd occassion where I pull it off is very satisfying ).

As far as Spines/Regen go, my Brute can beat them toe-to-toe. The problem is keeping them in toe-to-toe range once they start to lose.

Of course, I suspect that part of the reason I enjoy my little PvP jaunts is that I always go in fully expecting to lose horribly and die a lot - that way, any success I do have seems so much sweeter.

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anyone else notice how a simple request for a SG turned into a 'mine's bigger than your'e' thread?

Quite disappointing really

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It is a little, but a healthy competition will never go amiss and it goes to prove people have a lot of pride in their respective SG's

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The problem is that 'a little healthy competition' has a distinct tendency to devolve into 'a lot of unhealthy flaming' with frightening speed.

So, I think that's about enough of this now...

Okay, I think I was pretty clear about the consequences of any further unpleasantness in this thread, and am locking it now.

Bob, if you wish to start a new thread, please feel free to do so, but if you or others start being offensive again, I'll have to lock or remove it.

Okay, I'm afraid I've had to remove a large chunk of this thread due to off-topic posts and flames.

Any more of this - from anyone, including the original poster - will see this thread locked or removed.

If you'd like to take part in this league, please post the details of the characters you wish to enter.

If you wish to debate the pros and cons of 1v1 PvP in CoH/CoV, please feel free to start a new thread to do so - it's a valid thing to discuss, given that PvP in these games is not balanced for 1v1 battles.

My apologies to anyone whose entirely innocent posts were removed. At the time, the most recent list of interested characters was:

Sweet Chilli - Controller - Union
SinghMC - Scrapper - Defiant
Jumanjimon - Scrapper - Union
Jumanjionic - Blaster - Union
Katora - Controller - Union
Serophina - Scrapper - Defiant
Chelsea Smile - Brute - Defiant
Imaginary - Controller - Defiant
Daybringer - Controller - Defiant
Anubis - Scrapper 50 - Vigilance
Openheimer - Controller 50 - Vigilance
FireTaker - Tank - Vigilance
Dr Infernum - Corruptor - Union
Thundercharge - Blaster - Union
Razgul - Scrapper - Defiant
Thaliada - Defender - Zukunft
Flush - Defender - Defiant
Skinz - Scrapper - Defiant
Spectra Phantom - Controler - Defiant
Sunspot - Blaster - Union
Neutreno - Defender - Union
Midnight Gale - Controller - Defiant
E-gen v2 - Controller - Defiant
Omega MCX - Controller - Defiant
Plight Trawler - Blaster - Defiant
Dearch - Corrupter - Defiant
Forbearance - Tank - Union
Knight Stalker - Scrapper - Union
Debt Collector - Brute - Union
Unforgotten - Mastermind - Union

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1) i realise Living Laser is an Iron-Man Villain, but i thought it was okay to use the name since the lawsuit thingy was cleared up with Marvel

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The lawsuit had no effect on the EULA - recreating characters owned by a third party was against the rules before the lawsuit, and remains against the rules now.

Please create your own characters, not copies of ones who belong to someone else. Thanks.

Just so I'm clear here, the aim of this exploit would be to kit yourselves out with HOs for PvP events on the Test Server?

If so, I would humbly suggest that you may well end up killing cross-server PvP events. Those players who either can't be bothered to so the same, or have moral objections to exploits, might simply withdraw from any future events.

It will also mean that we'll have to think long and hard about any future 'official' PvP events on test where there are prizes involved. As I said during S4, we can (and did) check a character's slotting, but it's a fairly time-consuming process for any event that involves large numbers of players at the same time.

Personally, I wouldn't get any satisfaction from winning a PvP battle due to HOs rather than my own skill, but I appreciate that I'm what many would regard as a 'casual' PvP player.

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and i know how long theyve been askign for it to be updated so mayb someone could look into this cheers for putting mine up there though its much apreciated

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Oh, and I do apologise for the long gap between updates. I'm going to be doing my best to update the fansite listings more frequently from now on.

At present, the fansite listings are ordered by the date that the listing is added, and listings are added in the order they are received.

The end result is that the most recently submitted fansite will be at the top of the list.

The ordering is not intended to signify anything else - we're not saying that the fansite at the top of the list is any better or worse than any other site listed. It's just the most recently submitted.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be very comfortable with ranking the sites by 'quality' - all the fansites are the result of the hard work of our players, and all of them deserve respect for putting in that time and effort.

On the other hand, I'm open to suggestions for alternative 'sort orders' for the list.

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Wow, this has dropped right down the board.

Is it worth dropping Bridger a PM and seeing if he can sticky it?

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It's in the 'What's On' sticky at the top of the board.

Guys, as I have said many, many times before, if you see a post on these boards that you feel is in violation of the rules or otherwise requires my attention, please report it to me via the 'Notify Moderator' icon or via email.

Please do not respond to the aspect of the post that concerns you - it just means that when I deal with the problem, I have to edit an entire thread rather than a single post.

Thanks

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Sorry, but -Bumped-

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Please don't 'bump'. It's against the rules on these boards.

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Isn't it nice how friendly, intelligent, mature and just plain nice people are on CoX?

Orignally, when I looked at this thread, I wasn't interseted and moved on. What made me post was the developing 'stuff' that was flying around and made me read on.

For me, the thread title did sound a little boastful, but no problem - whatever floats yer boat Those that would help out, I assumed would reply - the task-forces would start and maybe later Raz would post something with an update on how his 'marathon' (which is how I see it) - was proceeding.

Again, no problem.

If there is a problem, I think its always wise to avoid direct accusation and moderate language use, always aware of the potential to offend.

Failing that, just don't post. Saves time and energy all round.

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Couldn't agree more. I think it's best if I lock this now.

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As a slight aside to all this Bridger, do you often have to issue warnings or take other actions against forum users? Is it something that's rare, occaisional, or frequent?

Of course, I know you can't and won't give numbers or anything like that, just curious as to how often people drop themselves in it on here...

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Warnings are fairly common, suspensions are rare, and as yet, I've never had to permanently ban a message board account - although I'm perfectly wiling to do so if required.

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Not a dig at the GM's in any respect Bridger but I think something needs to be done to publicise what happens when people send petitions.

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Okay, as far as I understand it, the process is as follows:

The /petition is registered by the Customer Support system and assigned a ticket number.

The system automatically generates an email based on a keyword search of the /petition, linking to articles in the Support Knowledge Base that may help with the problem.

This mail is then sent to the player who made the /petition (by default, I believe it goes to the email listed on their PlayNC Master Account).

The ticket is then added to the appropriate queue (there are several, and /petitions are sorted by type and urgency).

The GMs work through the queues, and deal with each /petition in turn. This often involves further emails being sent to the player making the /petition.

It's very important to note that, if the automated mail doesn't help, you should reply to it with further details (in the space indicated in the automated mail). This will make it much easier for the GMs give you the help you require. Likewise, if any further emails you receive don't resolve the problem, reply to them with further details.

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I know that individual cases can't be made public but there is a strong feeling among the community that petitioning people has little or no effect. The amount of times I've warned people using bad language that they will be petitioned only to get a reply back along the lines of "So, what that doesn't do anything".

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These people are sorely mistaken. Every /petition is investigated, and the appropriate action taken.

It is important to note that there's a cumulative effect for some violations. A single incident of bad language may not (depending on the exact situation) result in immediate disciplinary action, but repeat violations will end up with an account suspension, as long as they are /petitioned.

So please, if you /petition someone for a EULA violation, then see them doing the same thing at another time, /petition them again.

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I've petitioned several people in the past and have been in situations where repeat offenders have been regularly petitioned but there has been no visible action taken. To this day, I have no idea what sort of action the GM's can take and how often they do take those actions.

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The two main actions the GMs take (beyond verbal warnings given to the player in-game or short-term chat bans) are account suspensions (typically for 72 hours) and account terminations (ie, permanent bans).

According to the Senior GM I just chatted with, the GMs are currently suspending several accounts each week, on average.

If anyone ever has concerns about 'repeat offenders', please PM me the name of the player concern and the ticket numbers for the relevant /petitions you've sent, and I'll look into it.

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Also, some more clear cut guidelines on what IS petitionable and what isn't. I know every case should be evaluated on it's own merit but I'm also guessing the GM's can only go on what they see in the chat logs for that petition. If this is something that has been long running, it may seem the comment made that leads to the petition is fairly harmless but if it's something that's been going on for a while, it could just be the straw that broke the camel's back.

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I'm afraid I can't make it any more clear than the EULA (including the Code of Conduct that forms part of it). If in doubt, /petition and the GMs will investigate.

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For instance, is it considered a petitionable offence when someone uses arena as their own private chat channel? I'm not talking the odd question but when people quite happily spend lengths of time holding general conversations on there and are often repeat offenders(I think everyone on Union can name 3 people renowned for doing this)

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Personally, I would say yes - /petition them.

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Does someone have to swear at you in a PvP zone for it to be petitionable? I've seen people being pretty nasty with what are only very subtle remarks but the actions they are carrying out at the same time are what make them so nasty. Surely GM's can only look at the chat logs and see what is there rather than what's happening in the zone at that time?

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The GMs have access to logs of everything, not just chat. In cases like this, the person sending the /petition should describe the situation to make it clear what the problem is.

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The upshot of this is that many people just do not bother sending petitions as they see it as a pointless waste of time.

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Which, unfortunately, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't /petition because you don't think it will achieve anything, then nothing will be done, as the GMs won't know about the problem.

If you want something done, you have to /petition.

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I know you always advocate us sending them but until we know what action can be taken and how often it IS taken, people are a lot more likely to flout the rules or retaliate in kind.

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I'm afraid that there is an element of trust required here. We have good reasons (based on our privacy policy) for not giving details of the actions taken against another player's account. I assure you that all of us here take EULA violations and the general behaviour of our players very seriously.

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Is each petition looked at individually or does past petition history come into it?

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Both. Which is why it's so important to /petition every time you see a violation of the rules.

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Some sort of published figures which show that in period Z, X number of harassment petitions were raised of which Y were dismissed, Q resulted in warnings and W resulted in action taken.

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I very much doubt that we'll ever publish those kind of stats - and to be honest, I very much doubt that they'd achieve anything positive if we did.

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Well I never knew you could speak to Wincott and return to your old contacts, I'll do that for a change.

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It is mentioned by both the contact who gives you the mission to visit Wincott, and by Wincott himself.

The contact that gives you the mission to see Wincott should say something like:

"He could really use your help in reclaiming the Hollows. Of course, we can really use your help here, too. Wherever you'd like to lend a hand, you'll be welcome."

Then, when you speak to Wincott, he should say something like:

"Otherwise, you can keep pursuing leads with your current contacts. I'll still be here if you decide the fight for the Hollows is something you want to be a part of."

Okay, a few things. The first two are general in nature and aimed at everyone.

To start with, I'm concerned by some of the language being used in this thread. Attempts to avoid the language filter are against the rules on these boards, as is bad language itself. If you can't think of a way to make your point without bad language, I would strongly suggest you think harder.

From now on, posts with bad language are liable to be simply removed (which, unfortunately, will remove any replies to those posts, due to the way the board software works). I simply don't have the time to individually edit dozens of posts, especially those from regular posters who really should know better.

Likewise, it would be really nice if we could have a discussion about PvP on these boards that didn't involve flaming and other insulting or unpleasant behaviour. Once again, if you can't think of a way to make a point without being unpleasant, think harder - or don't post.

As to some of the specific points being raised...

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It was so bad after a while, when I stopped to attack a seemingly lonesome villain, I had FOUR [4] stalkers surrounding me in the AS position. Now it goes without saying that me being a blaster, only one or maybe if I got lucky, two of the stalkers actually got in their AS before I was dead.

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I'm curious here - what were the rest of the heroes doing while the four Stalkers went for you? Had you teamed with any of the other heroes, or gone off solo, despite being outnumbered by the villains?

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Why isn't there moderators in the pvp zones when there OBVIOUSLY should be?

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Our GMs cover the entire game. You can /petition violations of the EULA (which includes a Code of Conduct) from any zone, PvP or not.

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This is a GAME, and so there SHOULD be rules and code of conduct. Having Player versus player with no rules is ONLY laziness from the devs, and nothing more whatsoever.

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Erm, there are rules and a Code of Conduct. There is a mechanism to report violations of the rules (/petition) and people to enforce them (the GMs).

We're always open to suggestions, though. What exactly do you think Cryptic should do?

Appropriate subject choice.

Please see my comments in this thread.

Thanks.

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i'd like for once to have a serious discussion about this so comments like 'stop whining and moaning' are nothing more than flame bait and i'll just get them removed.

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Erm, actually, I decide what gets removed.

That said, I would ask people to remember that there is no need to be rude when posting your comments.

I'd also be interested to find out how much experience you have of 40+ PvP at this time?

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/Bump

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Please don't. It's against the Message Board Rules and Guidelines on these boards.

Thanks.