Fusion_7

I've been perusing around these posts and reading everyones reaction to how cool Praetoria looks with all the new and colorful buildings and stuff. At how Praetoria looks so much "crisper" than anything blue or red side. In fact, some people almost don't want to leave Praetoria just yet in order to soak up more of its shininess, myself included. .

This brings up the next question for the CoX dev's. What will they do next to blue and red side now that we tasted the golden apple pie? The biggest thing I noticed was how the buildings in Praetoria look like buildings, not cardboard cutouts that repeat themselves over and over again as in blue and red side. Praetoria has more detail in the environment which I believe gives it more of that "crisper" look to it.

Now, I am not a computer programmer or game designer so to change buildings and environments might be a big task? That is why I would suggest to do it in sections. For example, maybe take one zone at a time and revamp that environment, buildings trees you name it, all of it. Until that zone is complete, people will be routed elsewhere for missions or contacts that were in that zone. Maybe in 2004 NCSoft didn't have all the bells and whistles at their disposal. It is now 2010. Technology has advanced and as Captain Pickard from the Star Ship Enterprise would say, Make it so!

I have to ask this question being that this is my first Dominator. Currently I am in Praetoria with my level 20 Elec/Elec Dominator. Being that I had to build a new toon in order to experience Praetoria, I decided to try a Dominator. To be honest, I originally started out with a Plant/Fire Dominator but then ended up deleting them as I felt I had "too" many hold powers and not enough ranged damage, but I'm not a Dominator expert so who knows?

The first thing I noticed was how good the ranged powers where. Without even slotting for range yet on my Tesla Cage, Electric Fence and Jolting Chain just to name a few, I am loving the feeling of going long range on some of my attacks. It would appear though being a Dominator, that more "hold" powers are available to me versus My Energy/Energy Blaster or maybe my Ice/Ice Blaster. With that being said, am I right in saying that most Dominator builds might play like a Blaster with ranged attacks or did I just pick a power set elec/elec that has more ranged attacks and thus feels like a Blaster?

Hmmmmm, this question must have stumped a bunch you guys as I never even got a "bleep" in the radar on any responses to it..heheh... Maybe my question wasn't clear enough. Let me elaborate a bit more.

As a Hero blue side, when you get the opportunity (when leveling) to choose your title, for example: The "Awesome Audacious" Fusion 7 or for Villain side, The "Heinous Hellacious" Brimoriota. It appears that either this function is not working while in Praetoria or it is "intensionally" not working because you have not departed to either the red or blue sides after level 20 when you exit for Primal Earth. Thus, the dev's "deactivated" this option until you can choose. For the life of me, I cannot find anything in paragonwiki or other threads that can tell me more about this.

No, it's not life and death that I need to know, I just wanted to bring it up because if it is a glitch, then hopefully they can fix it.

For some reason, when you level and are at the stage to where you can give yourself a title, it won't let you pick a new title for your toon. If will automatically default you back to the "Your on your way" ending in the selection process.

Now, after thinking about this further, it might make sense because you may end up changing your status from hero to villain so your title would have to change along with that? Maybe the dev's disabled this function until you get out of Praetoria (after level 20) and then can decide on what you will be, I am not sure?

I have to ask this "maybe silly" question that I have always been wondering but never either had the energy or time to ask until now. How does the in-game NPC chat function work? As you see by the image below, sometimes when you get a pet to help on a mish, this "follow, chat appears rather than the "info" option.

If you click on chat, nothing happens or no prompt appears. Not sure if this was implemented back in the day when it might have been thought to be more useful or was going to be used for something else, then the dev's just decided to scrap this option but never removed the chat feature with the NPC, I have no idea? I've also noticed this sometimes by clicking on some random NPC within the game and I will get the Follow/Chat option. Can anyone elaborate more on this?

So, I was bored and was just cruising around Imperial City when I wanted to try an experiment called "Do Baddies Die When They Hit The Ground?" So, I found a nice tall building and with my level 16 Elec/Elec Dominator, shot a couple sparks at them on top the roof. Of course this got them agitated and as I pulled away from the roof, like any other intelligent NPC in this game (heh heh), they followed me by leaping off the roof.

Now I know when you jump off a building with your own toons you won't die but your health bar will drop down to a sliver of life. I had to know if this was the case with the NPC's. Well, as they "skydived" off the building (which is what it looks like they're doing...lol), I immediately dropped down to the ground and was ready with the body bags when to my surprise, they were all alive but, like us with our toons, only had a sliver of life.

I also did this same experiment with my MM and her Bots. I had the little guys jump off a tall building in the Rikti War Zone. Yes, they all lived but only had a sliver of life left. My guess is that the program is set-up this way in the game. Anyways, this brings us back to how smart the AI is with these NPC. If you have flight or hover, lead them off a building and watch them jump. Especially nice tall buildings in Imperial City...heh..heh. I guarantee you will get a nice chuckle like I did in watching these guys "swan dive" off these rooftops, holding their arms out like that's going to help them fly....lol.

To be honest, when AE first came out, there was so much hype. People were actually afraid that no one would ever do regular missions again..hehe. I was one who kind of got sucked into the hype. I started to (or tried to) build a story arc but never got around to finishing it. Lazy, not enough time, too complicated, not sure why I couldn't motivate myself to build one?

I remember in the early days of AE, the AE transport room would be packed with people lft. After about a couple of months, I started to lose interest in doing any of the AE mish'es. Yeah, sometimes I would get an invite for a team and I would usually accept if it wasn't a farming type AE mish which I won't do. And speaking of farming, we all know how crazy AE was with people power leveling like crazy in the early life of AE. I think I power leveled up 20 levels in just a couple of hours. After the dev's nerfed those exploits, I think that more people started to migrate back to CoH and CoV again.

So, for the past maybe 8 months, I have yet to do another AE mish again. And now that GR is out, even less motivation to venture back into AE mish'es. Who knows, maybe I will take a peak and see what's new. I read somewhere that now you can make a doppleganger of your toons. In those cloning mish'es I've always felt that was fun going head to head with yourself. So, maybe some life might still be left in the old AE?

Hmmmm maybe if we're lucky, we'll get a God Mode bug which would make you invincible and you could destroy everything in site, including your teammates...lol.

After perusing these forums and reading all the goods and bads with GR, I did like one thing that was added. The Que Feature which shows you where you are at in line if your server is full. I play on Freedom so when a new installment or upgrade comes out, it is usually full. Not sure why this was never implemented earlier? In the past, if your server was full, you just couldn't log in. You would have to keep trying until you could log in.

So, Dev's, not sure who was the one who thought about adding this? Whom ever it was, give yourself a nice pat on the back.

Wanting to access the new content in GR, I decided to build my first Dominator. I was always curious when others would run around with their plant pets or other power sets, how much fun they would be? So I built a Plant/Fire Dominator. Currently at level 5 and having fun so far.

The thing I need to figure out is the inherent button called Domination. Now, I did read the paragonwiki description which said:

"Nothing delights a Dominator more than inflicting pain. When a Dominator attacks, his sadistic nature grows. When your Domination bar is over 90% you can activate this power to unleash his true potential. Your control powers will typically last 50% longer and will more easily Dominate stronger opponents. Additionally, you will completely recover your Endurance. Domination lasts for 90 seconds and recharges in 200 seconds. The recharge can be reduced by self and ally buffs, but cannot be slotted with enhancements.Domination protects the villain from Knockback/Knockup, Repel, Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse effects, and can be activated even while suffering from them to break the villain free.

Domination doubles the magnitude of the villain's own Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse effects for their normal durations, then keeps them going at normal magnitude for half that amount of time longer. Debuffs and other secondary effects are not improved.A Dominator's Domination level is shown by an orange bar between Endurance and Experience Points. It rises each time he attacks. It rises faster if the Dominator has more teammates. This is a mild effect with one or two teammates, but on a large team Domination can be brought from 0 to over 90% with fewer than ten attacks. The Domination level falls very slowly when not used. It's automatically reduced to zero 90 seconds after Domination is activated."

Well first off, unless I'm color blind, my bar doesn't appear to be orange but a dullish type gray color..hehe. Also, as with my other 12 toons, this is the first one that had required activation in order to use it. All the others are "auto on" all the time which I thought was interesting. Also, the button will be grayed out until my bar does get over 90% full then I can activate it. Based on what wiki states, that if you don't use it, it drops back down. Also, it is best used in team situations and the larger the team usually equals more kills which is the best use you can get out of it as the bar will fill quicker.

Unlike some powers which can drain end if used or once the power runs out, I really don't see any negatives here? How much does it really help when mezzed or with knockbacks? With that being said, when and where would it be practical to use this and what have you guys felt was the best way to utilize this power?

I have to ask this because I know I am not the only one here who is noticing this. For some reason when starting out in Praetoria at level one, you cannot see any XP accrue in your bar. What does happen is when you go through the first few contacts, run a few missions, then bam! you get the level 2 advancement. Now granted, the first level is usually the quickest to advance and and should be no biggie, but it would be nice to know that some XP is accruing.

I started the missions as a Veteran Player not wanting to go through the boot camp. So, am I missing something here to why we cannot see any XP on level 1 or is this designed this way until we reach level 2. It seems that once you do reach level 2, then you can see the XP bar(s) again.

Well, now that I found out that you need to create a new toon in order to access the new GR zones, I have decided to created a Dominator which I have not built as of yet. Without having to spend hours and hours trying to figure out, can you guys somewhat guide me in what might be best for someone who does teams but needs to survive while soloing.

So you've got:

EARTH CONTROL
ELECTRIC CONTROL
FIRE CONTROL
GRAVITY CONTROL
ICE CONTROL
MIND CONTROL
PLANT CONTROL

I have built a Controller so does a Dominator somewhat play like a Controller? I will sacrifice defense for more damage if I can so any good suggestions you guys can throw at me would be great. I know everyone has their favorites but there has to be at least a couple of these sets that are better than the others for survivability and damage.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to know that anyone who pre-purchased GR will get access to those zones tonight prior to the release tomorrow. When I logged into CoH, everything seemed to be the same after my download with the exceptions of the hero symbol and those exclamation points that I had to figure out how to turn off...lol.

Anyways, I was assuming you could access the new zones for GR from CoH side. This doesn't seem to be the case. So, I logged back out and noticed I had no more slots left for my Freedom side, (12 used so far). So, I opened up a new toon on Virtue Server and presto, I could now access GR zones. I did it fast and then deleted it again figuring I can always take my time later to build another toon.

So, without getting too deep into this as I have not been reading up on how to access zones and such, is the only way you can access GR zones is by creating a Praetorian? For those who have handed out many an explanation on this, please feel free to send me a quick link so I can read more on this. Thanks guys.

Got on this morning and saw that there was going to be approx. downtime of 5 hours or so. I know normally we get Thursday mornings for the 3 hour downtime but me thinks this has something to do with tomorrows grand installment of GR.

In reading some of these forums, I remember getting that "pre" download when I signed off about three weeks ago. I also read something when I signed on Friday about a pre-download prior to i18. I did pre-order GR so hope all will be well tomorrow. I don't do beta testing as I like surprises. You know how excited you would get when you would open up Christmas presents? That's how I want to feel when I sign in with GR. From what I see on the screen shots, this should be fun. I just hope I can log on tomorrow as we know with any grand installments, it can be tough to get on.

I didn't know where else to post this as I am not sure if this really constitutes as a technical issue or bug?

It seems that on some missions that have "built-in" cells that substitute as hospitals once you die, will read as foes once you are down to the last kill. For example, if you are doing a cave mish with those holding cells in them and you come down to the last kill, open up your map and see all of the doors hi-lighted as foes. It's actually pretty funny as I was on some teams that thought they were foes and they all headed over to the cells and no one was there..lol.

Since this new "last object left" tracking system was added, I do find it very helpful (especially in caves) getting to the last objective or kill. I think enough people were complaining prior to that trying to find that blinky or last foe.

Back to the cell doors. Me thinks that because the cell doors are something that can be damaged and/or that you can interact with, the program thinks and reads these as actual foes and thus they show up on the map. I really don't know the true answer so I gave it my best shot..hehe.

I have to say, so far so good. Since Jan. 09' I had not ventured into the Scrapper route as I had my fears for any type of Archetype that had mostly melee powers. Though I had built a Widow, Stalker and a Warshade Rino/Lobster which do utilize melee powers to some extent and I enjoy playing them. During that time, I have tried my hand at building a Tanker, only to delete them half way through because I felt they were not doing enough damage or I was "keymashing" just to get a kill. I also didn't like having to lead (which most Tanks seem to do) on mish'es and not being too experienced at Tanking, didn't want to let the team down if I got them slaughtered.

So, over the past few weeks, I have built a (now level 36) Fire/Fire Scrapper. I can honestly say that she is very fun to work with. She is built for damage and has excellent "self" healing capabilities with Healing Flames, Consume, Fire Shield and Plasma Shield just to name a few.

In team play, having never played a Scrapper before, I was concerned at how I needed to "fit in" during battles. I would use the same techniques as if I was a squishy, letting the Tank draw aggro, but then instead of sitting on the sidelines, I would immediately jump in to drop a Fire Sword Circle then go to town. It actually kind of gives you a little rush when you are in the middle of a large group of enemies swinging away. A different perspective if you will. If I was on a team without a Tank, normally I would either be the first or second, depending if there is another Scrapper who wants to lead, to jump in. I have found that I can activate my Healing Flames quickly enough before I ended up kissing the ground.

All in all, I am still learning the Scrapper ways and techniques. In addition to team play, I have also found that my Scrapper is great at soloing mish'es. Another quick observation. I play on the Freedom Server. It would appear that I have been getting much more invites than I would with any of my other (light-on-the-melee) toons. It would seem that others seem to know there is a value to having a Scrapper on your team.

Well, if I could change my main title I would have changed it to "Tweak Group Fly" instead of "Get Rid of Group Fly". I currently have two MM's but never really thought about getting Group Fly for them because they will normally spawn back up in the location once I get there or come to a stop.

We know that a lot a people don't like change but if something works as an inferior power, then it should be revisited by the dev's for an overhaul. A few months ago, I ended up doing a mish or something and received a temporary power "Team Teleport". I never had this power before but when I was able to use it in team play, I really liked how it worked. Especially in TF's to where you need to get a blinky or TP everyone to the Boss. It speeded things up and saved a lot of lives in the process. Now, that is a practical power and is useful.

I think Group Fly needs to incorporate something that can benefit, not hinder you and/or your teammates.

Ever since I was in college and played this game back in 2004-2005 and then started up again Jan. 09', I have always wondered way anyone would ever take this power? I bring this up because now, there are so many ways one can get around until they can obtain their travel powers.

Buy a Jet Pack at Wentworth's for example. There are those who got jump packs with their purchase of CoX....etc. Based on what paragonwiki's description says about Group Flight: "You can endow your nearby teammates with Flight. Be mindful! Your friends will fall if you run out of Endurance or if they travel too far away from you. Group Fly travel speed is slower than Fly.
Flying allies suffer from reduced Accuracy. You must be at least Level 20 and have two other Flight Powers before selecting Group Fly. Major hit to Accuracy; use with caution. Popular at Hami Raids." Well, it appears there are more negatives than positives on this one.

You can see, based on this description, that you must be at least level 20 and have two other flight powers. Also, it has a limited range if your teammates travel too far from you. The only practicality I can see would have this available in the early stages of the game, not after level 20 and not after already getting two other flight powers.

Yes, this game is based on individuality and everyone has their own unique choice on what travel powers to use. Some people like Super Speed, some like Super Jump, while others including myself, like flight. This being said, when traveling to missions it would seem most people (after level 20) have their own way to get there. In most cases, you will have another teammate TP you over to the mission door or TP the entire group over.

So, in a nutshell, I say get rid of this option of Group Fly. I cannot be the only one who feels this is a needless power with only a very small percentage that uses it. Maybe replace it with another practical power. I cannot think of anything at the moment but I am sure you guys can come up with something better. I also know there will be those of you who defend and love Group Fly. Well, "clap", "clap" "clap". Yes, that is me clapping for you because you are braver then me for picking that useless power. If you can give me a good logical reason for picking this power after level 20 then the floor is yours!

I just need some clarification on this since one of the upgrades changed this and gave us this option. In the past, I know we could (every so often, 48 or 72 hours) have the ability to complete a mission with a contact if either we felt it was way to tough, or we just wanted to complete it for other reasons. Now, it seems I can only locate the option to abandon a mission from my contact and they won't give me the option to complete the mission and for me to get credit for that mission.

When I think abandon, I am thinking that mission has been canceled and you will move on to another mission with that particular contact? This brings me to another point about abandoned missions. When you get a timed mission and you want to abandon it, it seems to be a little difficult to do so even when you call the contact to abandon it. Normally, I would have to click on another mission and I will get that prompt to abandon that timed mish but sometimes it still won't cancel that timed mission. I know in the past, we didn't have the luxury to complete a timed mission ahead of time if we wanted. My guess is that stayed the same.

Did they remove the complete option altogether and replace it with the abandon option? Thanks..

I have fellow co-workers who are devoted WoW players. Apparently, WoW has a contiguous or continuous map meaning no loads between zones but from what I gathered, to achieve this continuous map, their environments might not be as detailed as CoH is. Because of this, CoH might have to have "load zones" in order to load the next zone without crashing your computer or freezing up.

I think it might be similar to video games for PS3 or X-Box 360 that have certain load times between zones because the environment is so detailed within that zone. I often fantasize about what it would be like with zero load times between zones or when there is a Rikti Invasion and the force fields come down, being able to fly over the wall into the other zones. Hehe...

I say natural aggro as I thought I read somewhere that Tankers, just for being Tankers, will still draw some aggro by provoking an attack on a group. I know that you can get Taunt or Confront as a separate power but what I mean is without these added taunt powers, can a Scrapper still draw aggro?

I ask this being that I am working on my first Scrapper and did the Citadel Task Force last night and we didn't have a Tanker on our team. The primary melee attackers were myself and another Scrapper. I found myself as the main one jumping into the large groups of Council and it appeared they were all coming at me as if I was causing natural aggro?

For my toons, I always neglected picking up Super Speed as power. That is until I built my first Scrapper Toon recently. I wanted her to have quick reflexes as part of her powersets and Super Speed fit the bill with that.

Being that I haven't tried Super Speed since the first part of 2009, I noticed something that always annoyed me was gone. It was that constant humming sound that came along with it. Now, it only happens when you turn the power on and then goes silent . I think back then, I made a suggestion to the dev's to either change that annoying humming sound or silence it altogether. Well, it looks like someone listened.