Crystalline

Has anyone else seen this one? On the last screen in a respec, the scrollbar on the unassigned enhancements window disappears. Mouse scrolling also does not appear to work, resulting in all but the top few rows of enhancements becoming inaccessible. I've reproduced it 4 times, by backing out to the previous screen, and re-entering the final screen again. Twice I counted placed enhancements; it happened once after I'd placed 15, and once after I'd placed 16.

It occurs to me now that a workaround might be to keep pulling them from the top, but haven't tried it yet. Typically I scroll through and look for the ones I want to slot into whatever power I'm working on.

EDIT: Yep, drawing enhancements off the top few rows to place them is an effective workaround.

Although this forum appears to be mostly for technical support, I am not sure where else would be appropriate to post this.

I had been dual-booting my MacPro ever since I got it, specifically so I would have a Windows installation to play games on, including, of course City of Heroes. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my graphics card died, and I had to order and install a replacement. The machine booted back up with the replacement card installed, and worked without a hitch on OS X, but Windows XP would not see the card. Searching the web pretty much verified what my gut was starting to tell me; that I was going to have to blow away my installation and reinstall. But before going that route, I decided to test and see how the City of Heroes Mac client worked.

I was amazed at how beautifully it ran. Yeah, I have a few glitches with the mouse on occasion, but certainly nothing show-stopping. And, on this machine anyway, both the color depth and the smoothness of the character motion are actually superior to what I was seeing on XP. So, I was able to abandon that somewhat cumbersome dual-boot routine entirely; I blew the BootCamp installation away and haven't looked back. I guess this all winds up to a big "Thank You" to the Devs and NCSoft for the Mac client. Really great!

I think MA is a fantastic RP tool. The missions I've made have all been for that purpose; they provided a backdrop for RP or furthered a storyline that specific characters were engaged in. I love it for that, and I love that the developers actually did it! I mean...kudos to them for just coming up with it at all.

But...

I really hope that that's not all it ends up being. I had initially done a lot of lower level MA arcs because they provided an interesting alternative to regular content. Even for a relative newbie like me, it doesn't take long to learn the standard low-level mission offerings backwards and forwards, especially Redside, and that gets old fast (for me, anyway). But, even before the recent changes, I found that doing non-farm missions, particularly if you were soloing, was not as fast as leveling up in regular content. Now, I assume that progress would be even slower. That disappoints me.

I personally enjoy role-playing games for both the "role-playing" and the "game." I see game mechanics, including character advancement systems such as XP, points, new skills, or whatever the system might be, as aids for enhancing roleplay and character development, not as detriments to it, or as elements that exist in opposition to it. If that weren't the case, I'd probably still be on full-consent RP MU*'s, instead of playing MMO's and tabletop. So, in conclusion, I hope they'll reconsider at least some of the recent changes. Even if they don't, I'll still be using it, but it will always leave me with a nagging "this could have been _more_" feeling.

-- Crystal

How dreadful. Best wishes for a quick recovery.

Fantastic

How refreshing. Thanks for posting this. Since personal anecdotes seem to be the order of the day, I'll just say that, personally, I've been greatly enjoying the game. Granted, I'm relatively new so I don't have much cred when it comes to comparing "today's" game to "yesterday's" game. If I may speak for my friends though (and none of them are in the room, so I guess I will ), they've been playing for years and as far as I know, are still enjoying both the regular game, and the MA feature.

More anecdotes...Been playing the end game Praetorian content lately (and now have my first lvl 50!). So, apparently, have others, because I see other teams all the time, popping in and out of the same portals I am. In Cap last week, somebody in broadcast stated that they were currently doing regular content with a team they had just picked up off the streets. And...I could go on...but others have already told these tales, all over the forums.

My impression so far is that many of the "MA has ruined the game" threads are being started by players who only want to join PUGs; they don't want to start their own PUGs, and they don't seem to want to have to adjust their play style at all. Which is fine -- not really my business how somebody else plays -- until they start agitating to have changes made that diminish my experience of the game, in an attempt to facilitate their own. I find that rude.

EDIT: Deleted a couple of anecdotes. There's only so much about ME, ME, ME that even I can stand.

That was an informative post. Thank you. I've been pondering how Mr_Bal's experience could be so different from my own. My experience has been that soloing my lowbies in MA is absolutely slower than soloing them through regular content. I do it when the contacts available to me are ones I've already done and don't want to repeat; it's more interesting for me to try new content. For a while, anyway. After a while, though, I just have to gain a level here or there.

I just saw the issue, and noted that the error message was actually referring to my Documents & Settings folder, rather than the installation folder under Program Files. Seems like maybe it was looking at the location of the shortcut I was using, rather than the target, for some reason. Navigating to the game's installation folder and starting with the actual exe, rather than using a shortcut, allowed the updater to start correctly.

EDIT: Oops. this was just meant as a general sharing of info, not a specific reply to anything EarthWyrm said.

I'm a new player; been here a little over three months now. And I am sorry you are no longer enjoying the game. I, personally, am loving it - both the standard content and MA. So far, I've been doing mostly standard content after maybe levels 20 - 25, but have started doing almost all MA with my lowbies. That's because I like to try out different Archetypes and character concepts. I don't keep all the characters I create, but I like to try different things, at least briefly, or sometimes try different secondaries and powers on the same character (by recreating them from scratch).

I'm sure you, as a veteran player, are all too familiar with just how fast one can learn those low-level missions by heart, particularly if you tend to have 'favorite' origins. For me, MA has been fantastic for actually making those lower levels as varied and interesting as the higher level content seems to be. Sure, an argument could be made that you blow through them so fast, it doesn't really matter, but it matters to me. So, while I realize that the existence of MA seems to be affecting your game experience in a vastly different way than it is mine, for my own selfish reasons, I really hope the devs never adopt the idea of limiting MA only to certain levels.

EDITED: For typo. And I still probably missed some.

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So before any other changes, bans, etc, IMO what the MA needs is the ability to publish and arc for play, but not have it come up on searches accept under specific terms, like a global name search.

This allows me to make a tough as nails mission to kill my firends fire tanker, share it with him cause my friend will know to search under my global for it, but not have it come up off general rating, lenght, etc searches if its not truely intended for general player use.

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I like this idea. Another player and I discussed previously how a nice 'wish-list' type of feature would be to someday have multiple publication levels, i.e. publish something so that only, for example, members of a certain supergroup, or even specific other players (or characters) could enter it. For those missions that one writes for a specific character or characters, rather than for public consumption. I gather that what happens now is that the author of such an arc just publishes it temporarily, then unpublishes it when it's been played. This was the other player's idea; I take no credit for it. Your solution seems to achieve the same thing, and is much simpler, although I would probably make it 'searchable only by ID' as opposed to 'by globalname.'

Of course...this does not address the issue of farming and very rapid power-leveling, and there seems to be a consensus, at least based on what I've read on the forums, that those are issues that require addressing. I guess I could just write a mission designed to get my friends to 50 in a few hours (if I knew how) and publish it so only they could find it. Maybe that's a fatal flaw in the idea, or maybe it's something that could be dealt with by other means; I really haven't the foggiest. But coming strictly from the perspective of somebody who enjoys having an arc written to advance my character's story, or doing the same for others, I like your idea.

Okay, that was enlightening. I believe I have zeroed in on the source of our basic disagreement, and it revolves around the word "quality." While I do agree that successfully reaching one's core audience is a measure of success, it is not, in my mind, necessarily a measure of quality, unless we're talking about the quality of one's marketing. Which leads me to the statement that "judging the quality of any given piece of work is very subjective." Indeed, the act of deciding what I like and what I don't like is largely subjective. But I would refer you back to one of your previous posts...

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Creative works still have a lot of techniques behind it. It's the same for singing, instruments, acting, drawing, painting, or writing. For example, painting requires an understanding of colors (complementary/contrasting), brush stroke techniques and the proper mixture/application of the medium (oil, watercolor, acrylic, etc). Someone who is completely passionate about painting but have no idea how to apply those techniques properly is not going to produce a good painting in the end. These techniques I'm referring to are usually attained by training and repetition which can be said for any profession.

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I agree with that, for the most part. There are objective criteria that can be applied when judging the actual "quality" of the work, not just the "do I like it" factor. I suppose the point I am trying to make -- and taking a distressingly long time at -- is that I think the work's "quality" is something unique and inherent to it and entirely independent of it's maker's level of popularity or commercial success.

And, although I am not entirely satisfied with the way the words came out of my head and onto the page/screen, I am going to close there, because I'm afraid I have been complicit in the running of the OP's original topic totally off the rails.

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While being a professional does not mean your work is automatically better than that of the majority of amateurs, I do however believe that there's a good chance that it is.

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Thank you for your response. I believe I understand your point of view a little better now. I completely disagree with it, but I think I get it. As far as I can tell, you rather tightly equate some level of commercial success with quality, based on the statement quoted above. That's your option, of course, and I doubt I'll be changing your mind, but I see no basis for the opinion. There are way too many variables that go into what makes one work sell and another not, many of which have nothing to do with the quality of the work. Which is not to say that I think it's all dumb luck, by any means. I very much like to think that quality *does* count; but the sale is not, in and of itself, much of an indicator.

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In contrast, you can only rely on an amateur's word when it comes to the quality behind their work.

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Not sure I get that. I suppose I could take their word for it, or I could view/read/hear the work and judge for myself.

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Well, that's where we disagree. I believe a professional has the right to question those who berate their work because it affects their reputation thus their livelihood. Amateurs do not have to deal with that kind of consequences.

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By that logic, no published author should ever expect a bad review, even if he can't write his way out of a paper bag? It does happen. Trust me, I sold many, many bad books, back in my retail days, and read even worse gallies; some of them really made me appreciate how hard an editor's job must be. Actually, as I read your statement over, its suggests to me that you are not so much "tightly equating," as I said above, but actually giving somewhat more weight to the financial aspect, and giving short shrift to the quality of the work produced. While I still do not believe that there is any right to expectation on the part of the author (artist, singer, etc.), I also think the work should be judged on its own merits, regardless of whether or not it's paying the rent. Do you disagree?

EDIT: I had inadvertently dropped the last sentence.

Hi.

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I come from an art background. I've been drawing and painting since I was 6 years old and I've taken countless art classes prior to college. I minored in Art history in college and I still continue my hobby to this day.

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Coincidentally, we have very similar backgrounds, at least in this one regard. But I am still struggling to understand your basic premise. By your standard, would a published poet who's primary source of income comes, not from his books, but from teaching, be an 'amateur' or a 'professional?' Would you automatically consider me to be a 'professional' artist simply because I have sold my work, even though I do not make my living that way? If so, would you also automatically assume my work to be superior to that of another artist who has not sold? Would any other criteria come into play there?

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Why should they be offended if people overlook their work in favor of something else? Do they really have the right to complain?

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In my opinion, no. And neither does the professional.