Cybercel

I, for one, am really glad to hear this. I read the US forums more than the EU ones these days, and it's annoying when I see a thread I'd like to post in! Direct contact with the developers is something most people here seem to have wanted for years, too - I know I'll appreciate it.

Also: New forum software = \o/

Just to reassure you further, where I used to live, we only had a .5 MBPS line as we were so far away from anything, and two of us were playing concurrently. It was absolutely fine for playing this game, and we'd even both run teamspeak sometimes, and fairly often have other things running in the background.

Where you'll probably feel the hit is when you're downloading patches, or non-game things like video and so on, as you're used to faster. 2.5 shouldn't be unreasonable, though - it was 2 MBPS when I first moved where I am now, and I was thrilled with that after the old line. I can't say I hugely noticed the difference when the lines were upgraded so I'm now at 4 MBPS.

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Now it MIGHT be that I16 is power customzation, ergo another extremely thin expansion. While it's nice they revamp the game engine to "modern" standards (still no gfx update it seems though) and we're getting GR this - to me - is very troublesome. Seems like another pointless stab at the competition.

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How can you possibly assume all that from a two-screenshot teaser?

I'm not saying it'll be earth-shatteringly awesome, because we don't know much of anything yet, but really, I think it's a little bit early to start the whining on this one.

I think the other problem with the merits, as they stand, is that it can take just as long to organise a short, low-reward TF or SF as a longer one. Nothing really seems to take that into account.

Sure, some people/SGs can throw together pretty much any team with little notice, but a lot of people need to spend time recruiting, making sure people are the right levels, good mix of ATs, etc. - and you need to do that regardless of the length of the TF. In fact, some of the shorter ones are those you need to be more careful about your mix of members on.

Also, I've found past a certain point, it doesn't matter how long it's likely to take - if you run an hour-long one, people will still often head off after, and you just get the one TF done, with less merits, if you've done one of the shorter ones.

I think villain-side ends up suffering more from these issues as it only has the more recent, shorter SFs/TFs available. On one hand, that's really good, because the old hero ones are pretty dire in a lot of ways... but on the other hand, it is really slow going picking up a lot of merits.

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I feel I accomplish something lasting. I know it's an illusion, but it works.

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I read an article about this some time ago that went into this in depth. Can't find it now, but you're spot-on here. This is why the games that do best aren't necessarily the ones people seem to have most fun playing, but are the ones that have the most accomplishments, things to keep people hooked.

I certainly know multiple people who play MMOs, never seem to be enjoying themselves, complain constantly, but then drag themselves online because they have to get the latest gear for their character, because the level cap's gone up and they just have to be there, etc. And I know I catch myself doing it to some extent... if there's a temporary event going, I feel like I have to get all the badges and so on, even though I'm not that bothered with badges. I hate to think what it can be like to real completionists who feel they need all of them on all alts.


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While we may argue that new story content is important etc, I think this, from a commercial and psychological standpoint is even more important in the long run.

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Well, it depends what the devs really want. In purely mercenary make-lots-of-money terms, yes, this is the most important thing. But the problem is, as above, false achievements often aren't actually fun. People feel that have to do stuff, so they do - but they aren't necessarily really enjoying it as they do it. It's playing on human instincts to make money.

Personally, if this game really made an effort to go more in that direction, I'd probably give up on it. One of the things I love about CoX is that there's no real pressure to be here constantly - you can leave, and come back, and you won't have fallen behind everyone else. You might need to respec if things have changed a bit, but you probably won't find your characters unplayable even then, and you'll have a free respec waiting.

Given that, it's no surprise that the game doesn't have as huge a population as some that have more of those little hooks to keep you feeling like you have to be there, you have to keep working. Things seem to suggest it has a pretty stable population though, and I'm guessing that's because while some people leave, others return, refreshed after a break.

Now, if the devs wanted this to be a behemoth of a game that people felt afraid to put down, then yes, more false achievement would be the way to go. But I'm pretty sure they've made comments before about the casual-friendly aspect of this game, so I assume that's something they want to keep

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Right, but with the dominator buffs coming, at least it's performance in battle will go up right? I mean i think they're making the damage buff from domi inherent.

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Yes, but it seems pretty likely that PSW will be made less powerful in some way - Castle didn't outright confirm it, but he did answer some questions around it, including agreeing that if it were toned down the rest of the set would need adjusting to compensate, and that he'd probably bet on the entire set being rebalanced like the blaster version. I believe he meant the Blaster Mental Manipulation secondary by that, as it shares a lot of the same powers.

Now, I'm not worried for my Plant/Psy's sake as I play her because she's just ridiculously fun, but if you're making it specifically with the intention of running around using PSW over and over to farm, it might well break things for you. If you're not too bothered and just want a Plant/Psy anyway, then go for it, but otherwise I do agree it'd be worth waiting on the changes before spending a lot of inf to make a farm build that might not be useful for farming afterwards.

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Thing is i love my Rad trollers , got 3 of em and thought it be similar on a Defender but seems not to be

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If you want that set, you need the Radiation primary - which happens to work very well with the Sonic Blast secondary. The Rad secondary, as people have said above, is a bit lacklustre.

That said, I know people who do honestly enjoy both the Sonic shield set and Rad Blast. I actually have a Corr with the Rad Blast set as her primary at 50, it's by no means unplayable.

Irradiate is quite a good debuff as well as doing AoE damage, but yes, it will tend to get you killed earlier on in the game. I found as I levelled further I used it more, as other people tended to have all the aggro. I'd think that on a hero team with a Tank, it could be even safer. You just have to watch when you use it. The other AoE is really quite weak I think - takes longer to cast that Irradiate for less damage and less debuff.

As Sonic you shouldn't really be getting mezzed too much thanks to Sonic Dispersion - unless you've been fighting a lot that use sleeps recently? Those are annoying on Sonic and FF, but at least not that many mobs use them.

Overall, I think because Rad Blast does have quite a few forgettable powers, if you're going to take it, best to do it with a primary that will keep you busy. Sonic and FF are largely shield, turn toggles on, forget for a few minutes until it's time to shield again or if the toggles drop - so it's a good idea to back them up with a secondary that's useful or that you find fun. For instance, my Corruptor with Rad Blast is a Thermal, and she tends to be kept pretty busy by that. Also, I have all of her primary, so it doesn't bother me that there aren't many good powers to take in Rad Blast.

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PS: Might be over sensitive to British nationalism trends since I've lived a large part of my life in the UK.

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You are.

As you well know, I've not even lived in the UK most of my life, and I'm one of the least nationalistic people you'll come across. I was just thinking in terms of language, and defining the servers we already have on that basis. I even said "English-language" servers in my post as I know a few people get upset otherwise, so I certainly wasn't meaning anything else by En-UK.

It's certainly worth considering whether it's also worthwhile defining them by locale, though, given the tendency for servers to be a bit dead in the middle of the night for their prime time zone(s).

Try changing your graphics settings if your graphics card can handle it - on low graphics settings I do quite frequently end up seeing through some parts of people's costumes, which could explain the bald head thing.

However, I wouldn't say any of the graphics flicker, for me. Might be worth updating your graphics card drivers and so on, just in case it's related to that. Posting what graphics card you have might help people answer your question, too.

Thanks for the tips.

My latest attempt avoids the Def route, and has insane recharge, backed up with a fair amount of recovery. While I've been aiming more for those, it has a respectable accuracy bonus, too, which I always like.

Confuse is definitely part of the plan as I love it, and the purple set for it is just so cheap.

Before this gets too derailed (maybe too late? ), I'd just like to make the point that regardless of the exact naming conventions, I'd really like to see this happen and think it would be of great benefit to us all.

I'd hate Paragon to get put off doing this over people arguing over naming conventions. Ideally, I'd like them to make some sort of call over whether servers should be marked to show intended language or intended location/time zone, or a bit of both, so people tend to end up on servers they'll enjoy being on. But really, the details are far less important than a server list merge in the first place!

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Makes more sense to me if it has to do with localisation, so it would be En-EU. I still hate the fact that this blasted board is uk.boardscityofvillains.com, at least eu.cityofvillains.com works.

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See, I was thinking of it the other way around, that'd we might be able to help the French server by not bringing localisation into it too much; the French Canadians might be quite happy to have a French-speaking server available.

At the same time, I'd like it to be clear which area each set of English-speaking servers was originally from, mostly to help people find the ones that speak the version of English they prefer, but also to help find the one that's likely to be populated at the right sort of time. I figure En-UK and En-US accomplish both.

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Ideally, if this were to happen, I'd like the two English-speaking EU channels to be marked En-UK or something along those lines, so people would know they were generally English-speaking, but UK time zone rather than the ones that are bound to have more people on at US times.

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Seesh, not you too Cel!
It should be En-EU, not En-UK, there are a [censored] load of nonbrits in your own channel, don't forget us!

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I'm talking language here, really. UK to signify British English rather than American English, which is the intended language of the two servers. No one really says "European English" do they? I was imaging the two others would just be FR and DE, so no region tag on any, just language tags.

(Also, I did say "English-speaking servers" in my post, I know they're full of you moon-landers. Now sign in and do a TF or something. )

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It also appears that dc'ing on exiting the final mission of the TF isn't uncommon.

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Had that problem on an SG TF the other day - on exiting the last mission, most of the team mapservered or outright crashed. Was very random in who it affected, though; one team member was on multiple accounts on the same PC, and only one of them dropped.

Thanks for that, Archy. I've redone my build using a few things from that - even though I've changed it quite a bit, it gave me some pointers.

Of course I've done my usual trick and ended up with a build full of purples (hai perma-PA/Hasten/Acc Met), but I think I can do something pretty decent with alternate slotting on those powers until I can afford it.

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Since the EU servers would be linked with the US then many Global names would be in need of change.

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I've been thinking about this for a while, and what I'd like to see is what you've outlined above, but for global, perhaps append an EU- or US- tag to global names, channel names, etc. Post server-list merge, there would be a few options; either have all global names and channels created on the former EU servers continue to be appended with EU and the old US ones with US, or make it selectable.

While it wouldn't be the end of the world to lose global names and channels, it'd be a real pain to get back in touch with everyone, and re-establish a new identity. This could work around it - and then none of us would lose anything, but we'd all end up with more servers to play on.

Ideally, if this were to happen, I'd like the two English-speaking EU channels to be marked En-UK or something along those lines, so people would know they were generally English-speaking, but UK time zone rather than the ones that are bound to have more people on at US times.

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I'll dig out a build for you if you still want it.

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I'd be interested in seeing this, if you don't mind. I've dug my neglected Ill/Rad out recently and started looking at a build for her, but it's so many miles away from the builds I normally do that I'm having a hard time with it.

I've got PA almost perma in one attempt, but then I'd been looking at a high def build for soloing as well, and was struggling to fit in enough of both def and recharge. Wondering whether to forget the def in such high amounts and concentrate on other bonuses - pretty concerned about my recovery, for one.

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...I hit the 2 billion infamy cap...

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I didn't even know there was a cap. That is impressive.

I've found the market easier to play villain-side, too (not something I do heavily, mind you); not sure whether that might change a bit with the MA in place.

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I think that it is harder to strike it rich on the red side.

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Would like to see it on red side as long as it isn't an MM

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Is it really harder to earn inf on villain side, though, or is it just a case of what you tend to play or enjoy playing (and perhaps therefore have more toons capable of earning)? I hear that a lot, yet I always have inf on my villains and have two toons with fairly expensive IO builds, yet on hero side I don't have a single fully IO'd build, and really don't have inf to spare; I'm currently doing everything I can do try to put enough together to rebuild my Blaster. I quite frequently don't transfer inf to new villains, either, as I do well enough on the market to fund them up until I switch to IOs at 32.

I know there are big differences between the markets and I think the devs have even come out with datamining showing villains are behind heroes, but I really do wonder as to the reasoning for it. Is there any actual game reason for it, or is it just how people are playing?

In some ways though, this question does just make doing this test on red side more interesting and useful. If you can do well there, the stats and people's experiences certainly seem to suggest you'll do well blue side.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. I think it's fair enough to ban arcs in this way - as long as there's some sort of in-game warning first, a lot of people won't read this otherwise.

Punishing people who have power-levelled, retroactively, seems extremely unfair. There was no warning of that with I14; just one about publishing arcs with exploits. I realise the EULA means they can pretty much do as they want, but it seems a bad move given how wide-spread this has been. As I said in another thread, I can see people leaving over this.

Again, if this is going to be done, there should be an in-game warning for people who don't read the forums, and it should be applied forwards. Otherwise, can you imagine what it'll be like for people who've joined recently to suddenly have their toons locked off? They won't stay.

Overall, something needed to be done and I'm glad to see something happen about the situation, as things couldn't sensibly stay as they were. However, I'd really prefer to see serious game changes made than just enforcement like this.

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OK first off, the only "bug" or exploit in the game was com officers giving the xp they shouldn't.

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That wasn't a bug - Comms Officers were changed to give Lt level XP on purpose. Rather hilariously, this change was made to avoid portal farming - the Comms Officers used to give minion XP, while the portal gave a huge chunk, and people were putting a tiny bit of damage on the portals then waiting for them to automatically de-summon, giving the XP bonus.

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But isn't the really high rewards an issue right now? Admitedly with a good Freak&CoW team we can level really fast, as fast or faster then the old Dreck farms, however we could never reach the xp gains attainable from the current Commtastic farm.

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I'm not saying the current rate with Comms is sensible, just commenting that capping anything is likely to either get in the way of people who aren't actually farming, or be so high that it's ignorable.

But while we're on the topic, no, I don't think the rate of XP gain is really the main issue at all. It was possible to level (especially on DXP weekends) very quickly anyway. Mostly, what's changed is how available it is. You can do it without any specialist knowledge, saved farm missions, toons sat in the late 40s to use as SKs, etc. Why do you think you used to see people sat in PI begging for PL, or PL sellers? Because it wasn't that easily available.

Even after the next patch, I highly doubt we'll see the end of MA farming. The rate of levelling will slow down a little, but does that change anything, really? If people are bothered by the broadcast noise, and less low level teams available, I can't see the Comms patch changing much. That said, I think it's still sensible (perhaps the MA farms will be slightly less easy with that sorted out), and I like the idea that was posted of vastly lowering XP for certain mobs found to be farmable, in the short term, while bigger fixes are found. (Think it was Judgement Dave? Much better idea than the current tack of removing things entirely.)

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play random ma mish
mash roll salvage button
put it on the market
make millions
repeat


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This. It also works really, really well when crafting, as each pool is quite small. Roll a bit, make things, sell any stuff you didn't need at a huge profit.

Lionsbane... the MA has actually drastically reduced the price of most recipes on the market, so you don't need to farm to buy things anymore, so I really don't see your argument at all. Sure, salvage has gone up, but so a normal, non-farming MA mission and do a few random salvage rolls and you're set. It's a lot cheaper to make a build now than it was in I13.

Also, if you're farming for inf, do it on a 50. There you go, problem solved, you're not being unwillingly levelled. Plus you get better inf.

I really don't think the ability to farm is the problem; it's always been here, and it stocks the market, as we've seen with I14. The problem right now is that it's too visible and too easy to do, potentially sucking in people who'd not have PLed otherwise, from too early in their CoH life. I honestly think that's the problem the devs should be looking to solve. Simple things like moving MA into its own zone would help prevent unaware new players getting caught up in it.

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The devs have metrics and data mining for that sort of thing. It's just a personal view but I think a "high" cap would do it.

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You'd have to set the cap very high on the bell curve to not get in the way of people who are just playing well - at which point I just don't see the use of it. So it takes someone three separate days instead of one to level. Oh well.