Dollymistress

I just wanted to add one more thing.

Issue 9 is the absolute best issue for time-consuming content, if you do take an interest in Inventions.

It has now been over a month and out of my 5 main villains, only one of them is completed with regards to IOs, and out of the other four I've so far only managed to slot one fully with basic IOs (no sets yet, but no more SOs either) and another is 2/3 of the way to slotting up with set IOs (she's an MM and I've slotted all the Primary/Pool/Patron powers but only a third of the Secondarys).

I haven't even begun to touch my Brute or Stalker yet, let alone my "second-string" alts or Heroes. I have a long long way to go yet, before Issue 9 runs out of steam

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Does double XP weekend end at 11:59 sunday.

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Don't be silly. Everyone knows it always ends when maintenance starts on the following Monday. No one sits around at the NCSoft/Cryptic offices that late on a Sunday and pulls the plug at the stroke of Midnight.

The event is roughly 72 hours long, running from the end of Friday's maintenance to the start of Monday's.

Meh.

Can't we make the real website nicer, like the UK site?

Over the past month, I noticed a lot of old acquaintances returning to try out the new features. Sadly, a lot of them were underwhelmed. I don't think people want to pay 10-20 million for a costume piece, farm millions of infamy for hours on end so they can buy rare recipes/salvage, and juggle limited inventories between different alts, using friends as intermediaries.

I feel the same way, but my ties to my SG and pride in my characters drives me to muscle past the drawbacks and continue on despite of them. I think other dedicated, veteran players feel the same way.

I don't see how I9 encourages new players to subscribe. If I arrived today, surrounded by all these experienced tech-winged and IO-filled players that I had no hope of competing with unless I invested a seriously scary amount of time into the game, I think I would look elsewhere for my fun.

As a quick rundown:

- I like the Inventions system, but I don't like how hard it is to locate the things I need.
- I love the costume pieces, but in a full month of playing I have never received one from a defeated enemy. Half my wings were bought, and the other half were gifts/trades.
- I don't like the Consignment Houses at all.
- I hate the lack of communal salvage storage, and total lack of recipe storage.
- I refuse to attempt the STF until the Flier is fixed villainside.
- I feel really sorry for BackAlleyBrawler, regarding the Hami. It was a good idea on paper, but essentially it seems to have ruined the nightly public raids across all servers, which were the most powerful reaons for older players to log in and play for a coupel of hours per night and collect their HO. Either improve the reward, or make it easier. Maybe get rid of the Mito reblooming altogether, and see how much more popular the Abyss gets.

I want more fun from the game. More missions, new factions, new powersets, zones, and for the love of God - villain Epic Archetypes.

I really feel that development of the game came off the rails somewhere just after Issue 8. All the natural, logical next steps (fixing and reintroducing the CoP, adding villain Epics, fixing the Flier, adding 1/2 new powersets for each AT) of expansion suddenly ground to a halt, and the "tide" of the game turned from positive player wish-fulfillment to apologies about what could not be done due to budget or manpower.

It's sad, but you really are going to lose me to Tabula Rasa when it arrives unless you at least fix the Flier and add new villain Epics. The soon-to-arrive MMOs will be competing directly with you for the first time (since they are also non-fantasy genre games) and if you want to retain players then you need to implement what they expected from you months ago.

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There was probably a thread on this I missed because of weak search-fu, but whatever happened to distributing the 'new powerset for every AT' that was once advertised for the since-cancelled new box edition, among Issues 9-12?

If I9 and I10 come out with no powersets, and the devs are only considering new sets for at most 4 ATs in I11 or I12, what happened to the rest?

Not to bash this efforts, scrappers and tankers need the love first, but is there a long term plan for the rest?

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We did plan out Power Sets for the retail box, but we've gone the route of free updates instead (woohoo!). Yep, we had some planned...and we thought about just putting those into updates as schedule permitted...

but then we thought it'd be cool if we polled the players what they wanted first. Not all of these power sets are of equal difficulty - some are tougher than others - but they are all possible. I can't promise exactly when it'll get in, but please know that we've heard loudly and clearly that players want new power sets.

BTW...Ball and Chain was my little addition last minute. It would be just be SO cool!

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None of the sets are for villains, who STILL don't have our Epic ATs yet. Why are you trying to increase an imbalance, instead of addressing it?

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Thanks everyone, its a great honor and privilege to be featured in a comic

Now if I can get the dev team to make a statue of me I will have everything a hero could ask for

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Would be a pretty good idea if there was a statue of Beefcake in Atlas Park (and a corresponding villain Statue in RV) with a plaque on it that you could click to look up the top 10 badge hunters on each server.

It still sucks that villains don't have the fun info terminals like heros do.

Awesomeness!

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They learned from the last Event. They camped the hospitals for I think it was Cuppa's party, or one of the prior anniversary shindigs

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Not true. I was playing as Manticore during the Cuppa-thon and was responsible for spawning all of the critters during that event. None of the devs ever camped the hospitals. I spawned the RV versions of the Freedom Phalanx and Arachnos AVs at one point and I believe what happened was some crafty player managed to train some of them up into the rez stations. I was babysitting everything I spawned and killing off the things that were wreaking too much destruction. In the chaos, I lost track of a few of the AVs and just assumed that all of the players had taken them out. As soon as I heard over broadcast that they AVs had gotten up there I went up and killed them off. It was never us griefing you. At least not directly.

I suspect that this is what happened this time. Ghost Widow was actually the only dev who had permission to spawn anything during this event. I don't believe anyone working at Cryptic or NCSoft attacked another player. We actually have very strict guidelines about what we can or can't do while logged into a signature characters. So if you were attacked by Lord Recluse it was undoubtedly one of the AI critters spawned by GW.

We took a lot of extra steps to make sure everyone was aware of what was going on this time so everyone could avoid it if they wanted too. We had 8 or 9 instances of Pocket D open during the event and things were only being spawned in 1 instance at a time, with plenty of fair warning beforehand.

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Heh, so it was you who shot everyone with arrows after giving them titles?

I remember you insta-killing someone for messing around too much, getting in the way of your work. It was a kewl "I find you lack of faith disturbing" attack...

Too much arguing.

Shivans + stacked Vengeance is broken. This is obvious. Stacked Vengeance alone, is also broken. Shivans alone, I think is fine.

I use 'spare' Shivans when I am having a tough time fighting an EB or AV. I don't use stacked Vengeance at all. I certainly never use both at the same time.

With one exception. The final mission of the LRSF is broken, so as far as I am concerned, using a broken combination of powers to overcome it is the logical answer.

If a mission clicks the "You Lose!" button, then of course I'm going to click the "actually, I Win!" button in response.

I have no experience with stacking Vengeance in PvP. It sounds like a sad tactic to me. However I have a lot of experience with PvE, and I know that generally people enjoy a challenge and are not in the habit of bringing stacked Ven or Shivans to the Respec Trials, Patron Arcs, or other really difficult encounters. The exploit isn't even used in early missions of the LRSF, because it IS broken and just makes things too easy. Using it unbalances the game.

This is not true for the final LRSF mission, simply because that mission already breaks and unbalances the game *against* the players. The only way to make things fair to a reasonable PuG, semi-casual team or a team who doesn't enjoy torture is to redress the balance using broken tactics.

If you nerf Shivans and stacked Ven in PvE then players will either just go back to Stoners, Kins and debuffing Corrs; or they will find a different broken exploit like attacking from under the map or slotting a bizarre combination of IOs.

I don't use stacked Ven and Shivans because I get a kick out of "cheating", I use it because if I don't there is a huge chance that my team will give up and walk away after repeated wipes from those ridiculously powerful heroes.

Even with stacked Ven and Shivans, I'm literally *scared* to take the alpha those guys dish out. I was conditioned by the early LRSF days when BaB would run up to me and deal out over 3000HP damage in a single hit, or Numina's AoE alone could wipe an entire team *instantly*.

I will try to be there

I was going to bring Posi a present, but I don't have room in my tiny salvage inventory and I need everything to work on the 1,000,000,000,000 craftings required for Fabricator.

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Flight poses are an example. No matter how ugly the implementation might be, as long as its not an actual embarassment to the company, I'd say add them, and let the players who want to use them use them, even if they are not perfect.

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Ironic example. The problem with flight poses was that people who used Fly had no choice but to use them, whether they liked them or not. You were automatically put into one when you started flying. That's why they took them out.

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I'm pretty sure he's referring to the new optional poses, which are kinda shoehorned into the game in an ugly fashion but at least they are here.

It was clear form the closed beta that those poses were going to be shelved forever until peeps made a big fuss about really really wanting them, so as a consolation the emote-fly option was invented (which works really well if you set up a decent keybind).

Hmm.

So my Hero will get the Heat Seeker badge before my Villains.

I seriously hope the Villains in the STF will be level 54, and feature insane Regen abilities, for the first two months. Then drop to 53...much much later...

Meh. I have alts on both sides now. The whole thing looks pretty kewl, but then so did the LRSF before I actually played past the third mission.

I'm happy with this news. The only things I don't like are fighting Ghost Widow (eek) and Heroes having access to the Flier.

Can we just make the Flier into a mission enemy? Get it to spawn in Recluse's Victory? Anything?

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When the trial was active, a mission for anyone else in the Sg could complete,give a bonus but not clear.

You could say have a Fedex to Azuria, stand by her and click her every second for the entire time, the trial was active getting a mission complete bonus each and every time.

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Wow. so that was the bug?

No wonder they pulled the Trial. And no wonder a lot of higher level SGs jumped up in Prestige during those few days. I thought the IoPs or Trials were just giving lots of Xp/Prestige.

Heh. You know the day before it was taken away I ran the Trial solo and had quite a bit of fun trying to take down those monolith thingies. Pity, I could have spent the afternoon farming Prestige...

Oh well.

Not sure about these values. As far as I understood, a Ribo is practically priceless. I've traded one for three Acc/Mezzes before, and even then the person I was dealing with thought he had a good deal.

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The ElectroFires Infinity
Energy View 1
Chapel
Inspirations Storage
Enhancement Storage
Picnic Area


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I never thought I would see a base that had obviously as much painstaking effort put into it as my own.

But sheesh...

There are elements of this base that are simply a work of genius. The Chapel design is totally unmatched. I have never seen a single room as impressive and striking as that one.

The Energy room is also wonderful, with the fun use of monitors.

The storage system is amazing. I have never seen someone do that with the stores ever before. I wasn't even sure it was possible.

The remaining rooms are all really good as well - especially the Cafe. However, that Chapel and those stores are light years ahead of anything I've seen in bases for a long time.

I hope you realise we're all gonna steal that storage idea

The Faux Pas!

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Only in CoV are you given the same contacts to choose among.

In CoH the list of possible contacts given after a Safeguard depends on your origin, AFAIK, so it is impossible to chose the same contact for all team members unless you are of same (or close?) origins.

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Poor Heroes. I forgot about that. Oh wait...I'm a villain...does this mean I get to laugh at you evilly?

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And then you have the problem of many contacts giving a random length segment of random missions before giving the true story arc, giving you a long period of confusion and frustration before you are "on track" on the story arc...

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There goes my laugh. You're right, for most contacts, anyways. Some infamous examples like the TV are jumbled for each character, while others like Abyss pretty much follow the same set pattern. Oh well.

What ticks me off more than anything else today, is that I just remembered that back in October I decided to "tie up loose ends" on all my level 50 alts. Back then I had the final mission of the Vivacious Verandi arc set up on all but one of my villains, cos I like working for Vivacious but DESPISE betraying her to Hardcase.

I also had the Ghost Widow betrayal open on 1 alt, the TV "farming mish" open on by Brute, the Shady badge mish reserved on another, and the Lord Recluse finale open on 2 others cos I had them reserved for SG Turret badge purposes.

That's NINE quick rare Pool B drops I threw away right there! Sheesh, it's almost enough to drive me nuts. I could have taken like 30 mins to dorp those 9 rewards the day Issue 9 arrived. Sux!

Consequences of the current proposed system:

1) If you played the game "properly" (as intended), completing all the story arcs you could, and tying up any loose ends after you hit 50, then you will be punished for this. The only way you will be able to collect Story Arc drops is through rolling an alt and doing the missions all over again.

2) If you played "normally", and completed quite a few story arcs, but not all, then you will be paritally punished. You can go back and complete the 45-50 arcs you didn't get around to doing, and if a Broker referred you to any low level contacts along the way to 50, you will most likely be able to contact them and complete an arc or two full of grey-con enemies.

If a "Flashback" system is introduced, you will be able to return to incomplete contacts.

3) If you were PLed most of the way to 50, then despite the Devs insistence that they dislike PLing, you will be rewarded. When Issue 9 arrives you can start out by running through all your level 45-50 arcs, and then returning to any lower level contacts you were referred to via old brokers, a lot of whom will offer at least a single arc before realising you have outlevelled them.

In all cases, from now on the most effective way to collect Inventions Story Arc drops will be to find a SG or otherwise dedicated team of 7 helpers, at the same level range as yourself (ideally level 10). The 8 of you can then synchornise your missions - running a Mayhem/Safeguard together, choosing to be introduced to the same contact, and then simultaneously completing missions and story arcs using the "autocomplete" feature.

This way, all team members will have a good chance at defeat drops, while also picking up 8 story arc drops per mission arc. You'll gain approximately 1 story arc reward per hour - the same rate as sololing, but you and your team members will be able to mix and match your rewards as desired and face a lot more enemies along the way. Your only possible downfall will be facing only one AV/EB between all 8 team members, leading to only a single defeat drop. However, since all defeat drops are random (regardless of minion, Boss, AV, etc) this should not prove a hassle.

Teaming without synchronisation will become an extremely inefficient playstyle.

Is this really how it will be?

I took an overview shot

http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/basemain.jpg

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Really nice work, Dolly...the lighting in many rooms makes a huge difference. I also like the vet rewards, 1 per desk in the "office" area.

I am SO stealing some of your gorgeous work!

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http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/base16.jpg (the old Arcane wing)
http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/base17.jpg (same)
http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/base18.jpg (The Grand Library)
http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/base20.jpg (the Classroom)

Heh, that's actually a classroom for teaching SG rules for newbies. It used to be part of the "Grand Library" but has been relegated to the Arcane Raid TP room due to the size of the "Maze of Death" room

My base designs ebb and flow. Everything is based on specific concepts, such as: Classrooms, Libraries, Gardens, Dorms, Labs, Sewers, Hospitals, Briefing Rooms, Observation rooms, Kitchens, Mazes, Lounges, TV rooms, Sacrificial chambers, Offices, etc etc. Over the past few months I've pretty much used every single object/style in the editor, from Sewer to Ancient and back again.

Oh and I'm always spying on other bases and stealing their ideas!

My base has undergone about 9 different overhauls over the coure of the past 9 months. Pictures of the present update are at:

http://www.the-faux-pas.org.uk/basepics.html

I need to add pictures of the new "Inventing Workshop" to these pages.

Upgrading/impoving a base can be traumatic. There are past designs/concepts in each overhaul that I miss, and each time I rebuild the place I feel a lot of pressure to make it at least as good as the previous incarnation.

I still miss the garden and "Grand Library" from previous builds, but the "Maze of Death" makes up for the loss. I still think my best design was the 12x12 base where I split the plot into an Arcane and Tech "wing", each with its own hospital, teleporters and storerooms.

I really should take an "overview" picture.

Yay. Funness!

But seriously, why is it that a Knive boss can stun any of my villains for about 3 full minutes?

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Beh, we forgot about the bane of slows:

Twelve Knives flinging caltrops!
Eleven Mushrooms mezzing!
Ten Warwolves howling,
Nine Tsoo Sorcerers,
Eight Madness Mages,
Seven Fiends a-fighting,
Six Morts a-rezzing,
Fiiiiive Super Aaaa-rachnoids!
Four Master Illusionists,
Three Spectral Lords,
Two Air Thorn Casters,
And a Sapper in a Devouring Earth Treeeeee!

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Okay here are some suggestions:

1. Angel wings, bat wings, and insect wings - each with a simple little animation that activates when you fly. A small pair of bat wings for the temples on one's head would also be nice.

2. Transluscency - Some phase/stealth powers create a transparency effect, so why not have it as a fixed option. Here I am thinking of Ice/Smoke/Astral themed characters.

3. Arachnos costume pieces - It still really annoys everyone that those Arachnos helmets are now largely unavailable. Adding them to the options would be nice.

Also the "over the shoulders" Spider chestpiece that all Arachnos personnel wear would be nice. At a stretch, the "Spider Legs backpack" of the Crab Spiders would make a nice addition.

4. Under the "face" options, many makeup styles are available, but none allow for someone to choose a separate colour for eyeshadow and lips. The two areas should be independently colourable.

5. Cigars for women!

6. Hair - I've felt for a long time that the hair styles and textures are the weak link in costume creation. Unless one uses a very dark colour all hair styles appear to be plastic wigs or a skilled work of origami. More vibrant textures and some reworked styles would help to fix this.

7. Shoulder animal - some more variations please, like a spider, snake, bat, parrot, etc.

8. More helmets - Japanese style helms, Retro Sci Fi helms, elaborate and ornamental helmets.

9. A veil would be nice for female toons. Not the small frontal veil we now have, but an over-the-head all around veil, like at wedding or in really scary movies

10. A quiver option under belts, for archers, a holster option for gunners and a sheath/scabbard option, for those with swords.

11. A harlequin/jester parti-coloured outfit!

12. A spider-eyed head type similar Tarantula Mistresses.

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Just remember. Debt is a badge. Nothing more, nothing less.

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If you earn Deathless, then when you get to level 49, you should actually be at level 50. So you wasted/lost all the time that it takes to get from 49-50. That is what debt ultimately costs you - about 2/3 days of play.

Some people care about that. Others don't.