CoX_Starblaydia

Lag has been on the increase a little for me in Atlas, but sometimes it spikes rather highly in MA, too.

Has MA attracted so many new and returning players that the aging EU servers cannot cope? Cue shock and ironic horror!

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Also i dont understand why the auto sk function was implemented, it was rather obvious that it was going to be abused.

Perma 46 is not as accesible as auto-sk.


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If they take away the auto-SK function, that'll just lead to 'SK PLZ' spam in Atlas in addition to the 'LFF' spam.

Though that would also mean the architects need to get a little more creative, with 'best farm for 1-10' arcs having to crop up.

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I wonder how many people are seeing power lvling in atals and instantly assumeing that its a new sub and not just a some ones new alt.

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That is, usually, my first thought upon entering the MA building. Getting the badges info from random onlookers is a good way of checking - a million architect badges and *nothing* else is a good way of spotting them (unless, as you've mentioned, a vet's second account). Other than that it's the questions that the average player has figured out themselves before Level 10 'what does a blue insp do again?', 'I want to farm but don't know how' etc.

I also note that most of these toons have rubbish names, usually related to their AT and powersets. My Energy/Energy blaster, for instance would probably now be called 'NRG B1ast Guy3' or something. The secret, though, is to go and craft your MA missions in the dampened power room, with team invites set to 'don't accept' so nothing bothers you.

Every MMO has places where you can farm - be it spider nests in SWG to get your Jedi through those tough later levels when the content was sparse and difficult, or spawning fields in WoW of X, Y and Z creatures to just get you through the next couple of levels to use A, B or C piece of equipment.

Where CoH falls down is the starting zones. One for Villains, one for Heroes, no matter what your AT. Upon exiting that, Heroes get two choices of starting zone and villains one, though with two contacts. That's it. Beyond your third or fourth toon, you've used up all the options. Hell, even the different AT options blueside all have to go to the same bloomin' building to get their missions from the fun with acronyms agents. Hopeless.

WoW, on the other hand, has a starting zone for each different race (bar death knights, as alliance/horde share the same one), for a total of 9. It's difficult to get bored with taking a new toon through the early levels if all you need to do is switch race to open up a whole different set of early content.

Do I need to go to the Hollows for the nth time to level my character by killing Frostfire for the n-1th time? No, I'll go to MA and do it easier, faster and with a bigger group. MA was a good idea, but (as of before the patch today, at least) they've broken their own game.

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Finally, a boxer who only ever uses a right hook is a hopeless boxer.

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The animators (and the programmers linking animations to powers) have evidently never been in a fight, seen a fight, or even been in the vague vicinity of knowing about actual fighting moves - take the Super Strength tanker/brute set for a prime example:

'Jab' is animated as an uppercut.
'Punch' is an odd elbow downstrike maneuver.
'Haymaker' is some sort of flourished two-hander hammerstrike.

At least in 'Hand Clap' the toon actually... claps their hands.

I just teamed up in the MA (asking for 'team', not 'farm') and joined in a Rikti-farming mission with captive-freeing and object-destroying by the truckload.

This group had a lvl 37 asking/checking if the blue inspirations increased your Endurance.

Oh hurrah.

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'A love of combat on the high seas'?? A pirate game?

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It was only a matter of time before someone tried to turn Sid Meier's Pirates! into an MMO.

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Female version would be 'A top too small for boobs', cigarette in mouth, belt, no skirt.

That's all we ever seem to see of an evening in most towns, i thought?

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Bonus points if the torso looks like Playdoh wrapped up in string. Oh, that, and flabby bellies/hips sticking out.

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Morris dancing costume FTW! Ideally paired with a custom "stick" skin for Broadsword and a new "hanky" shield skin!

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The beard facial detail doesn't have the 'matted with real ale' option yet, though, which is a pity. Hey ho, something for the 'Natural' Booster pack!

/signed

The opportunity to look a little like Hero 1 is irresistible.

Heh, it was an X-Men 2 movie reference.

Someone been playing Braid?

Quite cool, though, some timeslip powers to match up with Ouroboros.

Create Paradox perhaps need a bit of work - it's novel, defeinitely - as to me it's a little... odd. Star Trek, however, has taught me that paradoxes are nothing if not odd. Altered Destiny, too, is rather random, in that an attempt to res friends may not work and end up ressing enemies instead, much to the chagrin of all players concerned.

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I usually lump swedes with turnips and carrots.

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Yeah, Eriksson, Taylor and McClaren.


Wait...




Oh, root vegetables! Nevermind.

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That's not a farm though...

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Hence why I counted myself lucky, but that was mostly for play-testing rather than phat XP. I've thankfully had no 'want to farm?' or random team invites that turned out to be farms, either. Evidently they don't use the LFT system blueside, either, as I'm always on that.

I think there's far too much 'LFF' being broadcast in Atlas, but they's paying their money just like I am.

The good thing about having it in Atlas is that new players, leveling their first toon, get introduced to AE as they enter their first few level-ups via the new contact system. They can find out about the great feature that is MA first-hand.

The bad thing is that it clutters the starting zone with all sorts of rubbish that is a best pointless and a worst confusing, irritating and overwhelming.

Some method of balancing those two - if only in Atlas - is probably the best way to go about things.

Not only the mistakes made, but also the reasons why they were mistakes - which is nice to see that he can look at it objectively.

Nice insights into player subscriptions, too.

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Yup and maybe its just a villain side thing but Ive yet to get a generic "team" tell or a blind invite from a farm team have always received something like "hi want to come farm with us" which has all the info i need to decide if i want to join them or not.

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I count myself lucky, then, that one random blueside MA invite I received recently was from someone play-testing his missions with a full group.

When you have an eight-man team in the mid-teens and the leader/author says "this boss stopped my lvl30 scrapper", then you know you're in trouble

Ooh an RP'd University, just what I'm after for Starblayde. I have his secret identity set out to be a Professor at Steel Canyon's University (though he has yet to clock up the offline time there for the Professor badge), taking a sideline in investigating his mutation origins, so this would be perfect. A place to hang around in with a theme other than "yey it's a bar" or "we're just under a statue" will also be great.

Ideally, if I'm online enough to warrant it, I'd be after the Professor of Mutation role for him but were there better candidates he could quite easily be Professor of, um, Art(?).

As for what I want to see from it? Jeez, some RP would be nice, and if we can informally help some people along with their RPing (rather than 'join the university and learn to RP') then that'd be great, too. Colour me anxious to hear more!

The only bit I saw was actually someone saying "look what I found on the EU forums", and that was only a single question and response to and from Positron.

Perhaps they're just not that bothered over there?

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Yesterday i was roaming the sewers in the US, when i found this lonely scrapper trying to find some sole mobs to wack. I gave him some buffs, along with the magic booster buff, the guy went totaly happy.

So i talked to him a while, he spent 2 hours just creating his character and i must say it was looking pretty nice. He was only playing for a week now, but he enjoyed every aspect of the game...

Back when i was lvl10, my first character, the friend who got me in CoH was already level14. She had the fly power. Overwhelmed by joy, FLYING!!! I didnt care about ED, bugs, lag, features, progress, boredom, or whatever devs announced to come soon (tm).

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QFT.

Other than the ubiquitous first flying moment, the coolest thing I've ever done in CoH was with my first toon being invited to a sewer run. At the time I had no idea what it was, or was for, but the group of eight random people who'd done nothing other than team up, rampaging through the sewers I found incredible and nothing like any other MMO I'd played.

Moments like that can still happen, but no so often now for us jaded not-new layers.

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...I figured we could do with an 'I'm staying' thread. It may take off, it may not, but I think it's worth a go.

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I was writing one of these with a much larger introduction atm, and figured rather than a new thread, I'd post my basic thoughts here instead:

I've only just got back to CoH and I'm not quitting any time soon. The MA is a great technical and interaction achievement, but farming is also annoying. Inverted Cloud/Silver lining situation here. I didn't ask for the MA, didn't have it on my list of wants or ideas, but it's great when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it.

CoH is coming along just fine, and unless you desperately want X, Y or Z feature and cling to every developer's and red-name's over-hyped word for the merest hint that what you want is coming, then you probably won't be too depressed yet. Vaguely recognise the following, anyone?

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"Hey, I'd love something cool like... and ice cream factory, or a space station, or a haunted house or something"

"Yeah, space station sounds cool"

"Love that space station idea"

"They're doing a space station?"

"When's the space station coming?"

"Awww man they didn't make a space station in this issue"

"...again, no space station"

"if we don't get our space station, I'm leaving!"

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Anyways, ramble over: I'm @Starblayde on Union for random roleplaying and levelling of my late-30s main or any of my pre-teens (those are security levels, tyvm!) alts.

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Good grief, where did the underlying optimism come from? Who's stolen my Grumpy?

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Positron's not just named after the particle, you know! It's probably because Optimism Man doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

And would have an awful back story.

It's like defeating a random spawn of Illidan before you've left Goldshire (to grab a random other MMO analogy)

Fun, yes (after all Posi promised us fun!) but a little - in fact completely - pointless.

Is that 5th Anniv. badge kicking in yet, or do we wait til the event 'properly' starts stateside?

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What I'm dreading is if he just does a speech, patting himself on the back and reassuring other people how wonderful they are and how great the game is right now and that there will be great things in the future but he won't reveal any details yet (aka the dreaded Soon).

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QFT.

If this immense super-global announcement is anything like the I14 Follow-Up statement, then I think we'd all better go and find our credit card details for somewhere else.

I'm sure a good chunk of it will be patting CoX and its players on the back for five years of paying his mortgage, but there absolutely has to be items of substance in the broadcast.

Fingers crossed.

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I did try logging in, but everything froze solid. Not the best time to have the uber-lag.

I was hoping to pick up something like the Winter Event badge you get for knocking over a Winter Lord - can you get those badges, or just more of those puzzling Merit things?

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My afforementioned Lvl 4 (now 5) has the following badges:

Aracnophobic
Mistress of Olympus
Sandblasted
Frozen Fury
Poltergeist
Wrangler
Entrusted with the Secret
and Sentry

And about 40-odd Merits. So, yes, you can pick those up. More lag than a Mapserver disconnect, but worth it if you're after things like that. Kronos Titans and Winter Lords raining like, er, rain really.

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Hmmm... looks like i am the only one who thinks this is fun. Especially for new players... Old ones as they said, been there, done that... but for some it is probably fun.

I can't wait to get home and protect lowbies on Atlas, I knew that Kinetics on Araf will be handy someday.

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My brand-new new Level 4 toon has now got the proof of a defeat of Lord Recluse, Sirocco, a Kronos Titan and a Winterlord, among other things including Rikti.

Oh and she just spoke to Ms Liberty for the first time. Defeating the entire game's big bad before lunchtime? Awesomesauce.