Father Xmas

Maybe they've added more patterns since the time I tried to make him.

I wished they ran those here in the US but we don't have a long history (or as long of a history) of live action costumed heroes on TV so the parody doesn't work. Plus most are 15 seconds in length.

Thermal Limit on an E6850 is 72C which is when I think the CPU will start to throttle itself.

You can use CoreTemp to monitor CPU temps. I personally don't like SpeedFan.

Not that devs often read this section. I would suggest sending a PM (private message) to Niviene.

Also 1) alternate Earth and 2) while a Marine would refer to himself as retired or inactive it is obvious that the bio was written by a third party who doesn't know better, or care (remember mirror universe, goatee not required).

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Some of the people in the forum, mostly old veterans, cant accept a change in the game. At least not a change that they dont personally aprove. Its a paradigm shift.
There is new people on the game, and they have different views than some of the veterans. And, saddly, the veterans are reacting like every human civilization did when confronted with change. They are throwing a tantrum and saying that its not fair, and that the game was broke.

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As a long time vet my problem with AE is none of the above. My problem is that it draws in new and trial players who walk away without ever knowing that there are areas outside of Atlas/Galaxy/Mercy and develop the opinion that CoH/V is a MMO that takes place in a building. They don't stay and become a long time subscriber and they tell their friends all about their experience in "the building".

Secondary concerns deal with players who never acquire experience using their powers before picking their next. While an experienced player may be able to pick and choose their powers wisely on a fast leveling character due to familiarity with the power set from other characters, a new or inexperienced player simply won't know better. This leads to "broken" builds and sub-optimal fun.

Lastly is if they do escape the building they will end up on the street with no basic knowledge about which zones for which levels, where the various stores are, how the market works, working the contact tree even how to travel between zones. Knowledge usually acquired simply by playing the game outside of AE.

For Vets, AE is a marvelous place and while it isn't the "level 50" button some may want when creating alts, it does provide yet another path to level a character, usually faster due to the lack of travel time, large scalable missions and a ready supply of players to team with plus new content that we haven't seen a couple dozen times already. It's just what is good for the Vets isn't the best introduction to the game for new players.

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Hey Father X, thx for linkies. I read your component guide, good read. I checked your 1200 rig. Any thoughts on the incompatibility mobo/ram comment? Do you personally run the 1200 rig, or is it just a wishlist / template? I'll keep checking back at your 1200 rig to see what updates you make.

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That's a very old comment from someone who didn't know what they were talking about at the time anyways.

That wishlist gets updated multiple times a year as the technology changes and the prices drop. I first created it Jan 28, 2008 and linked it in my sig May 24, 2008 and it has been changed five times since then and a time or two between it's creation and sig linking. The only thing the same from that build in May of last year and the current one is the power supply and the tube of Arctic Silver. Changed the RAM once (not for compatibility but questions on if it interfered with the 3rd party CPU cooler, it was very tall RAM with their own heatpipe to heatsink), motherboard twice, CPU twice, videocard twice, sound card once, CPU cooler once, case once, hard drive twice and the DVD burner twice.

Which unfortunately currently breaks CoH. Other than rolling back to the 185 drivers, can't help you, blame nVidia.

You can also scope out my $1200 rig parts list in my sig. It's undergoing a bit of revision at the moment (finally added a quad core) but it's a good place to start.

Level 15 Common Schedule A IO - 19.20%
+3 Schedule A DO - 19.16% (1.15 x 16.66%)

That's a 0.2% improvement over a +3 DO not 20%.

That said, being able to slot a Level 15 common IO at 12 means you will get the benefit of a +3 DO for 10 levels instead of the bonus decaying and required restocking at level 19 if you were using standard DOs.

And as Eek says, Level 25 common IOs are worse (32.00% Vs 33.33%) than +0 SOs. And while Level 20 common IOs are far superior to +3 DOs (25.60% Vs 19.16%), again SOs easily surpasses them in a few levels.

For me I start using Level 15 common IOs at level 12, Level 25 SOs at 22 and then upgrade to Level 30 common IOs at 27 and then never think about enhancements again unless I'm looking to use sets.

I would say the same critters that normally problems to other defense sets but less so due to the damage resist aspects of the set.

At the time of it's introduction, NCSoft was telling investors about a whole suite of microtransaction based games "coming soon™". So far only Exteel has appeared, at least in NA/Europe.

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Because the current documentation states otherwise doesn't imply anything other than when it was added to the manual, it was documented incorrectly.

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And the fact that the "incorrect" info hasn't been corrected despite numerous updates to said documentation since, and that other sources saying it's supposed to be different than it's working now were added to the game itself by the devs provides evidence that it's more than just a clerical error.

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Heh? Oh. I assume you've never worked in a job that is primarily adding things, whether it's software or technical writing, to an existing "document". In short it isn't in your mandate to fix things beyond what you've been assigned to add or fix. As a matter of fact it is generally frowned upon with extreme prejudice by your boss. You do your job with as little interaction with the rest of the document as possible. The more that's modified, the more proof-reading (software testing in the case of code) that is required and that is generally someone else's job and they aren't scheduled to do work beyond the estimate based on your original mandate. That's how technical writing and code development has worked everyplace I've been in my 25 year career.

In short if they weren't modifying the section that includes incorrect information, nobody will proof that section for correctness beyond spelling and grammar (and sometimes not). If some fact in the manual is incorrect and they aren't aware of it or it isn't considered significant enough to schedule someone to go in and fix it, it will remain indefinitely.

I can imagine how this error was created. When the manual was being updated a tech writer went to a developer to ask what were exemplaring rewards. The developer tells the tech writer that XP debt gets paid off twice as fast and if paid off the character get Inf instead of XP, now shoo. The tech writer goes back to their cubical look up XP debt and it says that XP debt gets paid off with half the XP earned. Since under exemplaring it gets paid off twice as fast they incorrectly assume that XP is doubled while exemplaring and if XP is doubled then when XP debt is paid off you must get double the Inf. Voila, a mistake made in good faith. And since many players already believed this to be the case, it goes unnoticed except by the few of us who end up muttering to ourselves because nobody wants to listen to the facts.

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The thing is there's been a contingent of players who never liked exemplaring going as far back as when it was introduced. They didn't see a good reason to and this was back when the debt cap was much, much higher and perma-debt was all to common. People crunched the numbers and found no advantage to their character when running in exemplar mode than not, including influence generation. But that wasn't the purpose of exemplaring, the purpose is to allow a higher level player to join a team of primarily lower level characters just as sidekicking allows a lower level character to join a team of primarily higher level characters. It was a method to facilitate teaming, nothing more.

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And it looks to me like it wasn't that they weren't at an advantage that cheesed them a little, but rather that they were at a DISadvantage that was the problem. That's shown right in the first post of the thread you linked. Social or not, there's no reason people agreeing to go down to a lowbie's level should be getting short-changed on their rewards, especially when they're already being short-changed on the power they're losing (slot-wise) when they go to a level below 32.

By short-changing people when they exemplar, aren't they really discouraging people from doing that instead of SK'ing lowbies up, which is also meant to be a "social" feature? It's really just another point that says it's not logically sound the way it's working now.

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Rewards must be somehow balanced for the level disparity. Sidekicked and exemplared characters earn XP relative to their actual level and not the level they are sidekicked/exemplared to. In the Sidekick case this prevents earning massive XP relative to what they need to level. In the Exemplar case it is a proxy used to create another reward. Now it wouldn't seem "right" for a level 40 to earn actual level 40 XP by defeating level 10 Hellions simply because they have both arms and one leg tied behind their back but for XP debt repayment, since it's not advancing you in level, was all right.

You also have to remember the intent in adding the exemplaring system to the game in the first place. Players wanted the ability to team a higher level character with a lower level team for play. The rewards were appropriate for the time since XP debt started to accumulate at level 5, the max XP debt was much higher, there was no difficulty level in the game, certain ATs at certain ranges simply could not take on a lone boss solo in mission making repeated defeats inevitable, etc. So having full XP to alleviate debt was a nice reward for "helping" some lower level characters on their mission. The conversion to influence was simply an easy method to make a reward once XP debt was payed off than receiving nothing at all.

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It just ticks me off every time someone believes that some aspect of the game (sidekicking, exemplaring, leveling pacts) should grant benefits above and beyond normal game play when such features were added primarily as social benefits.

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And it ticks me off when some people's lips are so tightly glued to the dev's backsides on some issues that they can't consider the possibility that things haven't been working correctly all along despite the previously mentioned documentation issues, the fact that it's not logically sound from a risk vs. reward standpoint, and now we just added that they're discouraging their own features by short-changing people when they use them.

I can't speak for others, but personally, when I bring this topic up I'm not looking for rewards above normal gameplay to be given, but rather I'm looking for the rewards that currently are BELOW normal gameplay to be brought up to normal level (Katze: Thank you for getting my point on this), especially now that they changed the spawning code to make more short-changing mobs spawn.

Finally, the amount of time something's been a certain way in the game means absolutely nothing-- all you have to do to figure that out is look at the arena badges, which were supposed to be in the game in something like issue 4, but were first activated 11 issues and 4+ years later.

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No need to get nasty. I'm just stating what the actual reward system for exemplaring was, the fact that it's been incorrectly documented in the PDF manual and often stated incorrectly by players before that manual was released isn't my fault or nor is it a case of me kissing up to the devs. As far as I can tell the incorrect definition was made after Issue 6 as the CoV manual only states that exemplaring (called malefactoring in CoV) only accelerated XP Debt repayment and made no mention about influence at all. The PDF CoH manual that came with the GvE box (between I7 and I8) uses the language quoted by Katze earlier in this thread. So it's been wrong for about 2 1/2 years.

As discussed in the thread that was linked, the biggest gripe then was the reduction in Inf earned. As someone cleverly pointed out, the difference between exemplaring and not, from a pure reward standpoint, was a major reduction in Inf. Again this was back at a time when reloading your enhancements every 7 levels was mandatory and once you got into SO territory, very expensive. It wasn't unusual to not be totally SOed until level 35 due to the costs involved. But it seemed that in the devs' eyes, by the phrasing used in the CoV manual, that accelerated XP debt repayment was the carrot for this system and not Inf at all.

Now since those days numerous changes have been made the XP, leveling and Inf generation systems. XP debt is nearly trivial these days so XP debt repayment isn't that attractive of a reward anymore. And Inf is no longer a problem for anyone willing to use the market to sell drops (for affording regular or common IO enhancements, not the high demand uber ones) so that aspect of the reward that wasn't a big selling point then is even less today.

So could it the rewards for exemplaring be tweaked to be more useful today as when it was created, sure. Could they adjust the XP to Inf conversion for non-minion/underlings so the Inf reward for lieutenants and up are similar to what they would reward normally, sure. But I'm just tired seeing this topic trotted out every time there is a double XP weekend announced about how exemplaring is "broken". Don't string me up because I'm simply pointing out that the manual is the thing that's "broken" not the function, exemplaring works as it always has since it was first introduced with Issue 2, with all it's problems about Inf earning, long before the first double XP weekend.

As for my rant, it simply bothers me that even after all the changes that makes it so, so much easier to level to 50 from debt reduction, reduced debt cap, patrol xp, smoothing the leveling times (done by changing the XP of critters in certain level ranges, which has been exploited to some degree by min/max MA writers) and the farming/zero travel time aspect of AE itself that there are still people who post looking for yet an even quicker way to get a 50 as if under a week isn't fast enough. I keep seeing thread after thread bemoaning the fact that it takes too long to level to 50, that player preferred rare and super rare enhancements are so expensive and tough to get (look up what 'rare' means and read about supply and demand as well as inflation due to an uncontrolled growth in the money supply, does Zimbabwe ring a bell with anybody?). So I have a tendency recently to "go off" anytime someone wonders why some aspect of the game can't be exploited for some kind of advantage for earning XP, Inf or both.

ParagonWiki: The Players' Guide to the Cities is a good starting point.

Avira AntiVir here as well.

Now since I haven't started a new character since I14 dropped it was news to me (or so I'm told, still haven't made a new character since I14) that the contact for the AE tutorial pops up when you first zone in from the new character tutorial, bumping your normal first contact off of your nav bar as the waypoint. This leads new players who don't know better straight to the AE building.

Look like a job for Pepsiman.

At the top of this board in the sticky labeled "Guide: Solving Vista Error 13/14/driver stopped.."

It happens some times. For me it occasionally simply won't shut down all the way after I exit so I'm force to kill it from the task manager under the processes tab. Can't miss it since it's still hogging all that memory.

Go to Youtube and do a search for Air New Zealand Safety Video and then sort it by view count. The first one is an interesting example on how get the attention of passengers. I'm not direct linking it for obvious reasons once you see the description.

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Considering that these official sources are far more recent (which lends itself to the idea that this is how it was supposed to be working all along), how are we quoting it wrong?

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Exemplaring still works the way it always worked since it was introduced and documented in Issue 2. Since you are quote happy.

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Higher level characters can now help out their lower-level friends easier than ever with this "reverse Sidekicking " feature. Exemplars artificially lower their level to that of the Aspirant. Exemplars will lose access to powers gained after the level they have been lowered to, and their Enhancements will have an appropriate reduction in effectiveness as well. Exemplars do not receive Infuence or Enhancements for arrests or missions. They do receive XP and Inspirations. 100% of XP received by an Exemplar goes towards debt reduction. If there is no more debt to get rid of, further XP gained will be converted to Influence.

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Because the current documentation states otherwise doesn't imply anything other than when it was added to the manual, it was documented incorrectly.

The thing is there's been a contingent of players who never liked exemplaring going as far back as when it was introduced. They didn't see a good reason to and this was back when the debt cap was much, much higher and perma-debt was all to common. People crunched the numbers and found no advantage to their character when running in exemplar mode than not, including influence generation. But that wasn't the purpose of exemplaring, the purpose is to allow a higher level player to join a team of primarily lower level characters just as sidekicking allows a lower level character to join a team of primarily higher level characters. It was a method to facilitate teaming, nothing more.

It just ticks me off every time someone believes that some aspect of the game (sidekicking, exemplaring, leveling pacts) should grant benefits above and beyond normal game play when such features were added primarily as social benefits.

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I do find it interesting that it does say

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If you have no XP debt, then you will earn influence at
double the normal rate.

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and both you and sigma1932 do agree that it is actually XP converted straight (1 to 1) into inf. You would think that they would have corrected that when they released the newly revised manual which now includes the Invention and AE systems.

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That simply shows how pervasive the "race memory" is.

I'm sure whoever they tossed the manual updates to they are 1) low on the totem pole, 2) are not thoroughly versed in all the features and systems in the game, 3) only added new sections to the manual plus minor changes elsewhere to tie them in and 4) did not do a full fact check on all aspects of the manual.

At some point in the past somebody simply documented it wrong, either because they or whomever they asked misremembered how it worked or because that's what the majority of players believed if asked so they didn't bother to check any further.

The zone screen tips still refer to wikia as the place to find ParagonWiki. So while generally useful to new players, they aren't 100% accurate either.

Yes, the updater is interruptible, it will save it's place.

Same can be down with level 20 common invention recipes. But in bids at 1/50 to 1/100 their crafting cost and sell any bought to a store for huge markups. Not all recipes are available that cheap but some of the less popular ones are. Why level 20? Price shoots up by over a factor of 4 to 5 over level 15s.

First, the "wrong way" exemplaring has been quoted as fact for so long it's become part of the "race memory" of the players. That doesn't change the fact that it's incorrect.

When exemplaring, your character earns XP based on the character's actual level however, if you are in XP debt all of it, not half like normal, is used to pay off XP debt. Any left over or if you weren't in XP debt to begin with is converted at a 1 to 1 ratio into inf. You receive no normal inf reward ever while in exemplar mode, any and all inf comes from XP->Inf conversion. It has been this way since I first encounter exemplaring in September 2004 when Issue 2 was released.

So while it's correct to say XP debt is payed off twice as fast but it's not because you earn twice as much XP, the XP earned is simply not cut in half. The problem is too many people explain this as double debt reduction which is then interpreted as double the XP and then the "double" idea gets moved over to inf when not in debt and a myth is born.

Heh? We never got regular inf while exemplared. It's working as designed and I expect this never to change since the XP value used is relative to the character's actual level and not the level they are exemplared to.

Now during double xp weekend are you not getting double xp converted into influence?

As for "risk vs reward", it use to be 3 minions per team member ( difficulty 2 and 4 adds bumps the count up one) and then substitutions are made to bring the spawn size down by exchanging minions for lieutenants and bosses at roughly 2 minions to a lieutenant and 4 minions for a boss. This excludes spawns with named bosses of course.

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Hrm. Ok, so it appears I'll need to break the pact to make something like this work. Is this considered a bug? Or is this intended behavior I wonder?

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See Flipside, your above statement makes it sounds like you were trying to game the system. See even though the game has an excellent sidekick/exemplar system in place to allow players of different levels to team up, some people still didn't like the feeling of being left behind as your friends out level you because you don't devote every waking hour to playing.

So they created the level pacts to solve that particular problem. While both of you are playing, no difference in XP earned. However if one of you enjoys sleep, need to go to work, have a significant other that demands attention, then you can remain in XP lockstep with the player who has less of these time commitments.

They didn't create it with the sole purpose of leveling two characters faster pacted than not. There isn't a loophole that will allow you to PL one faster by denying the other XP. It's a simple concept, sum of XP earned by both characters separately are added together, divided by 2 and awarded to each character.

Edit: I started writing this before your last reply flipside. I just seen too many players over the years try to find leveling advantages though unintended interactions in existing systems within the game. With all the changes, intentional or otherwise, the devs have done to speed leveling, resulting in the "disable XP" switch for players who don't want to outlevel content or contacts, it simply annoyed me when it seemed you were looking for a way to pull a fast one and get a pact out of sink with one another.

Edit: It was 3 in the morning where I was, shouldn't rant while sleepy.