GadgetDon

Oh, and things do happen that would never happen in blogs. Like the funny custom license plate examples that showed up on Positron's list: "PLAN AHE", A VW-Bug with the plate of "FEATURE", and a red car with "FF0000"

I've gone on and off twitter from time to time. I got myself an app that's constantly updating the people I follow. It's not the only tool I use, but I've come to appreciate it.

(1) Twitter encourages informality. My most recent twitter is "I love my Harmony 510 remote. One remote controls my desk TV for either Dish Sat watching or AppleTV, and living room TV for Dish Sat! " Now, I may do up a full blog entry of my experiences with my new remote, but this was a fast and easy way to tell people I liked it.

(2) Twitter DOES work with conversations. The site could do a better job showing the full conversation, or an app could do that too, but it's there.

(3) There is some interaction with people who for one reason or another don't do normal blogs. I liked a little note of "OK, I16 closed beta is later today" (or even "now"). And it's really instantaneous.

I've got no interest in people tweeting about the minutiae of their life. I've got a few friends I follow, some company reps (@Syfy is a fairly interesting read, with not too much marketing spoodge), and a few creative types whose tweets I find interesting. (There are creative types whose tweets I find completely uninteresting, but that's where the choice comes in.)

Nice to get any updates we can get. Is the closed beta still at "friends and family", or have players started being invited in? (Yes, I know the friends and family are players, but you know what I mean.) Things going well?

Briefly, the Application "package" includes a faux C drive, which will hold your screenshots, binds, local copies of MA arcs, and so forth. Right-click on the application and choose "show package contents". CuppaManga's guide has the full nitty-gritty.

I suspect there will be three sections to closed beta:

(1) The inevitable friends and family period. The only people who get in are those who have a direct connection with Paragon Studios, so the devs can look over their shoulders and see what's going on (and how the player reacts to it). My guess is that is where I16 closed beta is now.

(2) Chosen beta testers, with multiple waves. These are the people who, for one reason or another, Paragon Studios thinks will be useful in pounding on GR.

(3) Clopen beta, where people who one way or another have won a guaranteed spot in the beta. Loyalty program, pre-order GR, maybe HeroCon attendees. It's still closed beta in that not everyone can get in, but the number will be so large, the difference isn't significant (why I call it Clopen). This is the one that has to start on November 15th or later, and I suspect Paragon's goal is that the stability and bugfixes will have it at the "ready for Open beta" and that this will BE the Open Beta.

Now, we may not know when the first and second stages of beta testing are going on (well, those picked for the second stage closed beta will know). This is the sort of beta that will take a long time to be successful, and my guess is that they will set up a separate test server for the early stages of closed beta.

Until now, the costume creator/character creator has been pretty much rock-solid, even as they add things like real numbers display or custom weapons. There's probably a good chance of bugginess in this new version (beta is to wring the bugs out) so that's why they might have closed it. Also, there was whining and moaning about some custom weapons that didn't make it into release unchanged, and they may want to avoid that.

My guess is that for a week or so, it'll be the "friends and family" group before the first wave of players is invited in.

Errand would look for the owner of a kitten. And see if there's a reward. Hey, money is money. (And if no reward, give the owner his card for "Rogue Island Delivers!")

Nice to have the forums back!

The new forums will be here, some 72+ hours from now. It's just that, while they're converting...there will be no forums available for us.

Remember to hold onto your towels, people, it'll be three days out there sans Rookery.

I guess I'll see everyone on the other side.

Naw, just one last patch.

First and foremost, my lack of interest in PVP is because I'm just not every good at it. Not sure why, but I don't seem to do that well as a general fact (though one is that I don't have builds tweaked for PVP or IO'd out). I've done it a few times, and it's also mixed. I was working on time badges for my badger. Had a great experience in Bloody Bay, a guy dueled with me, wiped the floor with me but it was a contest, I did nail him once. Then I moved on to Skyway City and ran into an idiot. Months later, I was in Warburg getting nukes for the fast hami attempt, and a blaster wanted to challenge my tanker just to see how it was. He waited for me to launch the rocket, and then we battled. I did win that one (among other things, loved how taunt reduced his range), but we both had fun and he thanked me for the test.

BTW, as for the original--yes, the guy was a MORON for how he reacted, but I do think that leaving the team once you got yours was a bit selfish, particularly if you were an effective killer. Yes, they could have gotten someone, no knowing how good that person would have been. If I join an invasion team, I usually stick out the whole invasion.

I was the one who figured it out, and yes, it's from launch from the Terminal, using -demoplay {demoname} to the thing to run. But I don't remember what you type in the terminal to launch the client.

[ QUOTE ]
As for Martial Arts, the alternate animations we have right now are mainly punches. The idea was to provide you guys with a way to make the classic, fights with their fists and feet, super-hero that many have been asking for. That includes a new animation for assassin's strike (Assassin's Blow?).

[/ QUOTE ]

Bless you, bless you, bless you!

[ QUOTE ]
FYI, thanks to feedback from you guys (and one player who included the KEY piece of information, in particular) this particular bug looks like it has been squashed.

Of course, I say "looks like" because:
1) It hasn't passed QA yet -- it hasn't even been submitted!
2) There may be other things causing the same symptom.
3) We could simply be wrong and the fix doesn't do what we thought.

Anyway, fingers are crossed! Here's hoping this is the last of the wwwwssssdddddd1231231234123chat bug.

[/ QUOTE ]

Preliminary grats!

The thing I've wanted most from power proliferation is a punchy, street fighter, slugfest set for Scrappers. But there's a possibility that's now going to be handled with MA's alternate animations, so looking forward to seeing how that works out.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm trying to get it to go off, but so far all my chat entries have been clear of wwwwaaaaasssstrash.

110020000110001000000Can anyone verify that this bug is gone?

[/ QUOTE ]

I hate this bug. It's a minor issue ultimately since it isn't crashing servers or corrupting data, but it is highly visible, distracting and annoying.

What's broken and why is it taking so long to fix? The key problem here is way back when, someone decided it would be a good idea to have three separate keyboard input interpreters and any changes done have to play "house of cards" game with the three. The current set of bugs began appearing a while back when we started making changes to implement the mission editor, which morphed into the Mission Architect.

I've no doubt that it will be fixed at some point; I just wanted to basically point out that, yes, we're aware of it and yes, we are trying to fix it. It's just an enormously more complicated task that it "should" be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Having dealt with bugs caused by similar issues, I'm having flashbacks to that House of Cards feeling. You have my sympathy and best wishes.

[ QUOTE ]
Can we get Mending Mitochondria removed from the AE critter list? Please? Please?

[/ QUOTE ]

The fix needed, in addition to fixing so they attack at all levels, is to fix the broken custom group hole. Make sure that any custom group must have a minion, a lieutenant, and a boss in order to be used. It's the hole all exploits drive through.

This morning, when trying to log into Virtue (and had same on some other west coast servers), I get the error message of "Couldn't connect to DB server". I was able to get in for a half hour to an hour, disconnected, same error. Was able to log back in for now, but there might be something that should be checked out.

East coast servers, like Victory, no problem.

Note: I'm in Iowa, and running the Mac client so the normal tools suggested to get dumps aren't available.

Update: Just able to log in, but I'm posting anyway in

Had a decent team, a bit stronger on damage. Plant emp controller (me), stone tank, two rad defenders, two scrappers, two blasters. We just could not take down the towers.

I just ran a master team. It was overloaded on damage from what we normally like to run with--stone tanker, plant/emp controller, 2 rad defenders, 2 scrappers, 2 blasters. Normally, we like 3 damage, four support for buff/debuff, but having heard of the bug, we went for the damage.

No luck. Two scrappers, 2 blasters, supported by two rad/rad defenders simply couldn't take down the towers as the repairmen spawned healing. The repairmen were killed instantly, but they still go off their heals.

First time in a long time I haven't managed to complete the STF.