Emberly

Posting in support of the Big Red Ball. This is a great fun little thing.

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Main downside to AE seems to be crappy threads on these forums and annoying broadcast spam in Atlas Park.

I also play EvE online and the crafting there is intense (hello T2/T3 production!), and so is the market. Honestly the market here is crude as hell, no donchian channel info, no history for the last x weeks, no number of sales. It's still serviceable though, and it fits the casual role the game has to a T. It's actually impressive that people get anything done marketwise at all in CoX, what with how crude the tools are. Hats off to you all!

If she runs Nod32 AV, you might want to put the Steam directory in its whitelist. I had a lot of Steam game problems previous to doing that. Just a thought.

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Excessively bad spelling, punctuation or grammar loses stars from me, no matter the reason or excuse. The odd typographical error or non-repeated mispelling (e.g., spell "shield" as "sheild" once, but correctly every other time) do not count. I don't give feedback about it, though.

edit: Regarding the thread title, it's hardly elitist to expect decent use of the language.

It's amazing what a 500 inf bid gets you assuming you are willing to leave it up for a bit.

Posting because this is easily the best arc I have played so far in the MA, and that includes the dev's choice arcs. This one even beat out Ascendant's arc, and that's saying a lot.

In a perfect world, Mod08 would lock all other threads on this topic, directing them here, and then delete all DOOMposts in this thread as being off-topic.

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There has to be an option to rate without performing ANY of the arc at all for those cases.

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This is only true if the purpose of rating it one star is to punish the arc's creator. I submit that we will all be better off if instead of dropping an arc and rating it one star, we drop an arc and send feedback on why we dropped it.

As for arcs that truly deserve one star under the current system, the equivalent would be to play the arc and not vote it up, thus lowering its average votes per playthrough, or to not complete it, thus increasing the number of times the arc is dropped. Under the system I proposed, both of those statistics would be available to players to sort or search under.

Under my proposed system, any given opinion becomes equally weighted. If you didn't like the arc, you do not vote it up. The "score" changes from being a mean of star ratings to the number of votes out of all plays the arc received. If an arc is playable but not good, it may have many complete plays but few votes. If an arc is unplayable, it may have few complete plays and even fewer votes. The good arcs will have many complete plays and many votes. Under my proposed system, yes, the individual's vote does not hold the power to torpedo someone's arc, but the overall system is far more useful.

My system would not only report total number of votes; that would be useless without knowing how many times the arc was played and/or dropped.

The rating system is worthless. It should be a "all or nothing" type of system, where you can thumbs-up an arc or do nothing (important: no thumbs-down option). This removes the ability to grief while retaining the ability to actually play and recommend an arc. Combined with more robust search capabilities, this would allow for meaningful sorting of arcs. Good arcs would show up as having many ratings relative to plays; bad arcs would languish down where they belong.

I think that also, you should not be able to rate an arc until you've completed it. If you have to drop an arc due to poor design or too hard bosses, or whatever, it should be relayed in the form of anonymous comments, not a lower rating.

oh hey it's 9:50 Pacific, time to read another crappy thread about how bothered people are by others enjoying a game in a different way.

I started snickering at this:
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- Forming non-MA teams is incredibly hard to do at the moment.

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and started laughing outright at this:
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- The existence of so many "Meow-50s" is really bothersome at higher levels as experienced teams must either tutor these inexperienced players, or the inexperienced players can make the difficult, higher level game content even more difficult by making "newbie" mistkes.

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Emphasis added to point out what was so funny.

One improvement I'd like to see is getting rid of the 1-5 stars system and replacing it with the ability to either vote an arc up or do nothing (important: no option to vote an arc down).

Reporting the number of "thumbs ups" an arc gets would give a better idea of quality than the current system, or at least no worse, and have the advantage of being far less griefable. One possible positive vote per arc per global. Votes could be tallied and then people could sort by raw score, percentage of people that completed the arc that voted positive, or whatever. Removing the ability to vote an arc down hurts nothing and stops things like the badge griefing and ratings wars that have already taken place. The relative merit of an arc can still be measured by comparing # of completions to # of positive votes.

Just wanted to post and say that despite Venture having some issues with it, I had a great time playing through "Hearts on Fire" with my wife the other night. It's a fun arc with a good story; don't let one person's opinion sway you from trying it.

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You're doing a great job with these reviews, Venture.

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You should ask him to review your Taskforce.

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Ouch.

Oh god, MUDs. The parsing alone!

Please remove the Story Arc exclusive portion of the drops. Punishing players for previously completing content is a bad idea. Making non-repeatable content required to get certain items is a bad idea. I support Story Arcs dropping recipes, but nothing should drop from a Story Arc that doesn't drop elsewhere. Otherwise, it's pretty obvious that the purpose of the Story Arc drop is to act as an alt timesink.

Also, please add a set that has no effect other than make NPCs around the character say "Look at the size of those things!"

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Possibly RAM problem then. That proc and video card should be fine as they are similar to mine although I have an 6600OC.

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Hmm. I have one gig of RAM. I think I will just suffer with it

Thank god. Having missions that are guaranteed to be in the same zone is a great thing for CoH.

Edit: Pulling out the radio kicks the snot out of my framerate. My machine is not top of the line, but it has a 3 Ghz CPU and a GF6800GS videocard. Am I alone or are others seeing this? It's not a big deal, I guess. I wouldn't mind a bit if the radio was the same as the radio that merc MMs use to call up their troops.

I love this game, but I have never felt so insulted by a game developer as I have when reading Cryptic's posts.

I can only imagine how Concern, Erratic et. al. are feeling right now, after having been called liars by the devs on the EF issue.

Really, Cryptic, stop insulting our intelligence. It's getting old. Missed patch notes? I maintain little faith in the developers' methods of data analysis when they flat out refuse to admit to a change, despite screenies and other evidence from players. To insist that nothing was changed, then post a "missed patch note" that declares the change, is insulting and unprofessional.

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I'm a little worried that making all the other powersets more balanced will make defenders less useful. Because defenders are there to cover the holes the other powersets can't.

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I assume you mean archetypes, not powersets.

At the higher levels of the game, the other archetypes have less need of a defender. Defenses, APPs, Stamina, Hasten, et al. are all slotted up. Things like Speed Boost or Accelerate Metabolism, or even status protection effects, while definitely appreciated, are much less required than previously. I don't think I have cast Increase Density in about two levels, other than on my defender partner. Most other classes just don't need it any more. Other defenders here doubtless have varying experiences, and that's good! I still feel valuable in a team, but my buffs are just not as large a factor as they were in the past. A controller can use the same buffs, and even with their decreased effectiveness they are more than enough to replace me.

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He wasn't doing anything other than buffing and healing. If that's not being a buffbot... what is?

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That's called being an Empath (or FF Defender). If you don't like the way they work, avoid grouping with them.

I'm sure, speaking as someone whose played an Empath, they'll be thrilled not to be grouping with someone with your attitude as to their role in groups.

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There's nothing that stops a defender of any powerset from blasting or otherwise adding value. Had you been SK'd up to a decent level you would have been a lot more useful. I must agree, your anecdote makes out like you think that defenders should be nothing but healbots and buffbots. Even a forcefielder (especially forcefielders!) can contribute with blasts and power pools, and that's assuming they have none of their more specialized primary powers.

What you describe is not "being an empath (or FF defender)". It's being lazy.

Thanks for the heads up, Statesman. I am glad that my beloved AT is generally where you want it to be!

I do want to mention that from my experience, the fact that Controllers get Defender primaries as their secondaries makes a lot of defenders superfluous. I realize the buff is less, but at higher levels, powers have matured to the point that the difference between a defender buff and a controller buff is irrelevant. I find this especially true for my kineticist. My Fulcrum Shift caps damage, but so does the Controller's Fulcrum Shift, and they bring a lot more to the table than I do. Same with Speed Boost; they might give less +recovery than me, but they still give more than most players need. It would be nice to feel wanted again, and not feel like a leech on my SG. Sometimes I feel like they only invite me along out of pity

Congrats on your engagement and upcoming wedding! If all goes well, expect to see One Man Stands and Carbon Dating there, crying and throwing rice^^