Canine

Nope, the announcement was about Testing a new server technology on the North American training rooms

They weren't cross server teaming, it was a glitch with test server names.

Read the full thread.

Specifically, AmazingMOO gave it to him.

Well, as I said in the Ultra Mode Shinies thread, the art team is fully aware of the loading screens now looking dated.

To quote David Nakayama from Closed Beta :

So there's something in the works, but don't expect it any time immediately. I'm personally not expecting anything until after Going Rogue lands, as the whole team's going to be busy as hell until then.

Also, can I point something out. There are around about 50 loading screens in the games, not counting the mission map screens. No, I'm not a particularly skilled Photoshop jockey, so I'm slow, but it was taking me 2-3 hours per screen to kick out the loading screen mockups I did.

Assume a trained art monkey can get that down to 30-40 minutes, and you're still looking at 25-34 hours of work. And that's not including the time spent acquiring the Ultra mode screenshots, which can be the longest part of the process (can take an hour or so per zone if you're waiting for just the right lighting to show off the shadows. On mine, I went with 'meh, it's daylight, good enough' since I knew it wasn't for any serious production usage.)

So you're looking at tying up a trained art monkey for a week, probably two, doing nothing but loading screens. I bet the studio manager's not likely to consider that a particularly high priority with Going Rogue rapidly approaching.

In conclusion, the devs know. There'll be something happening, but there's no point holding your breath (IMO).

Me? What'd *I* do?

<looks round in panic>

Umm... OK, go for it, do whatever you want with the screens I've posted. Just bear in mind that the loading screen mockups I did are just that, Mockups.

Gimme a sec and I'll dig up some of the other screens I took when putting the loading screens together...

Oh, and a quote from David Nakayama in CB -

So there's something going to happen, but I personally wouldn't expect anything until after Going Rogue. I'm betting that the whole team's likely to be busy as hell until then.

Anyway, here's some more of the screens I've taken for building Mockup Loading Screens : (and this is where I destroy the bandwidth on a free Photobucket account, but hey ho...)

What He^ said, also, remember, Ultra Mode is not an on/off switch. There are several components, all of which have different settings, so you can customise the experience to match your personal tastes regarding framerate and shininess. And what settings are good for you are dependent on all your hardware, including the resolution you play the game at.

I can get anywhere from 5-60FPS, depending on which bits and pieces of Ultra mode I have turned up how high.

Maxing everything out, including zone and model detail sliders causes pain. Lots of pain. Don't expect to be able to manage that on anything other than bleeding edge kit.

Getting back to the point of this thread, this is one of the screens I took for the Peregrine Loading screen mockup, and I like it quite a lot, The Cutlass Isles, as the day heads toward sunset:

I stick with the 4.9/9.9 marker because that's (at least hero side) the latest point at which contacts will still give you their main arc. If you turn up at Tina Macintyre at level 45, she'll still give you her non-arc missions, but you won't get on the main arc.

Also, Safeguard/Mayhems are annoying. At 5 level marks when you accept a Safeguard/Mayhem, you've got a 50% chance of getting the lower level one and a 50% chance of the higher level one, as near as I can figure it out.

Stopping at 4.9/9.9 marks means you've got a relatively small amount of effort required to get you out of that level band and into the next one.

<shrug> That strategy worked for me on my Dark/Stone scranker.

Oh, and I'm ignoring the existence of TF's, as there's no maximum level cap on them, but remember that there's still a max level cap on the team leader when starting an Eden Trial, and if you try to start an Eden Trial with a level 50 team lead, the team auto-disbands (or at least it did the last time I did one).

/macro XP "option_toggle noxp"

Click the 'XP' macro to turn off XP when at level x+4.9 where x is a multiple of 5 (i.e. level 9.9, 14.9, 29.9, etc. etc.). Complete all contacts/missions/Mayhems in that level range. Click macro again, move on. Repeat every 5 levels. Wonder why people complain about a lack of content when it takes you 4 months of regular playtime to play through all story arcs. Swear profusely when you are reminded of just how many 'Street Hunt' missions there are in CoH. (CoV may require copious amounts of swearing when you face yet *another* EB/AV. )

It's what I did on my Dark/Stone scranker. And as a bonus, I finally got to replay all those old non story arc missions that usually get missed or just outlevelled in the post XP smoothing rush to 50.

As a further bonus, you can rack up some significant quantities of Reward merits, salvage and recipe drops too

Ideally you want a strong solo character who can cope with occasional EB's, so Scrapper, Brute, Tanker set up to scrank. Something with Mez protection is a good choice.

All the above my opinion only, your mileage may vary, not everyone is patient/stupid enough to stick with the 'do EVERY mission from EVERY contact' idea when they realise they've got another 15 'Hunt 30 <mob type x>' missions left until the contact's out of missions.

No, people are just greedy. They want lots of shiny things NOW! Ideally for little or no invested effort.

(please see .sig)

If you look at the bottom of this page, then you'll see where it says "• Four stance emotes".

No details are known yet, AFAIK, about exactly *what* the stances are going to be, but they're part of the Going Rogue 'Super Shiny' edition and the upgrade Booster for those who prepurchased Going Rogue 'Not so Super Shiny' edition.

Is this question limited to the US servers?

If not, then the Darkwings (Union) have been around since a day or so after EU Launch, and still have the same two idiots in charge (me being one of them). Oh, and the Talons of Darkness (Union) have been around since a day or so after CoV launch. Same two idiots in charge.

To be honest, the SG's are in a holding pattern and largely filled with our alts, but they're still 'active'. Ish.

Had no trouble at all on my MM, he was webbed to the floor and vanquished in a hail of plasma/rocket/laser fire assisted by assorted traps.

On my SS/Invuln Brute, however, he was a complete pain who got away. Which was a minor shock, after having so little trouble on my MM. Got him down to half health easily enough, then he bolted. Every time I hit him, I stopped moving, but he didn't so I managed about another half dozen hits before he left the map, and even a Full Fury KO Blow doesn't make a huge dent in an EB Crimson.

It left me irritated in a 'OK, how the hell are you supposed to manage that on a solo Brute?' sort of way, but I got over it. Now I know beforehand what's coming up, so I can plan around it. Same with all the other 'annoying' missions such as the 'stop 40 Fir Blog escaping' mission in Croatoa. once you realise how the mission works, it's pretty straightforward, and I don't think I've failed that one for years.

So long as you're Scooby Damz, and not Scrappy Damz...

It's the artist

In some ways, I find his music similar to Mr. Scruff's, but distinct enough that it has its own style and feel.

(It's not me that the OP's looking for, BTW )

Don't forget Dr. Forrester in the 40-45 range, too.

Cossie = Costume.

And congrats on the end of the day job acquisition grind. Now you can start rotating them to actually get some charges in the powers that come with the accolades....

I've got a couple of toons to full, and another handful on their last day job.

I still remember the gist of a comment he made in a thread about (I think) Invulnerability or tanking.

It went something along the lines of 'I was on an invuln tanker last night with a team of 6 fighting carnies. I would just tank the Strongmen and I was fine. So invuln is fine. FINE!, you hear me, FINE!'

I paraphrase more than a little there

From what little I can recall, the thread erupted after his post. The general feeling I got from what followed was that people didn't think he knew how to tank worth a damn, what with leaving the squishier team members to deal with all the non-strongmen. You know, the Illusionists, Master Illusionists, Ring Mistresses, Seneschals, Harlequins, Attendants...

This also leads on to one other issue I always had reading Statesman's posts. He'd arrive in a thread and either post something utterly inconsequential or as in the tanking thread, post something that caused an uproar and then never post again in the thread following up on the whys or the wherefores raised in response to his posting. Left a lot of loose ends dangling.

I've more or less gotten over Jack though. I barely even twitch when he's mentioned any more. Although that's probably partly due to being an EU player, and we never really got the same level of exposure to his wisdom.

I do still like to remember some of the old stories though, if only to remind myself of how far the communication with the players has come, and how stable the game is compared to the nerf bat days.

If you ever want an education, go read the old patch notes on paragonwiki and notice the change in emphasis from massive and regular rebalancing/nerfing/tweaking/fiddling about under the bonnet to the current situation where patch notes tend to be about bug fixes, new stuff or balance fixes.

Disclaimer - My original toon is a Katana/Regen scrapper. I got hit hard and repeatedly by the nerf bat back in those days (I started at EU launch, so from Issue 3 onward).

<minor rant>Get in line. Katana and Broadsword wielders have been waiting FAR longer for scabbards/saya And don't get me started on the idiocy of putting archery sets in game which sets to much store by the avatar creation tools without quivers being available as an option...</minor rant>

(back to the OP)

It's looking good so far.

Whenever I've tried something like this, I've found I tended to sink too much time and effort into trivialities like tweaking a button just *so*, and I've ended up getting burnt out on the whole project due to the slow pace of any noticeable progress if that happens.

Any number is as good as any other as long as it's more than 3 Plus, it's entirely possible that 7 is as many contacts as you can have going at once at any point in the game. It may also be a compromise to stop you having masses of outlevelled missions clogging up your tray later on

What I'd like to know is does the increase in active mission slots come with an increase in active mission arcs?

Oh, and how will the new exploration badges effect base transporter beacon acquisition? Will the beacon requirements stay as they are now (a subset of the new badge load in the zones) or will they be bumped to require all including the new ones?