General_CoH

Thanks for the comments. So, communication channels available for freebies:

Team
Local - per zone
Help - per server
Friends - server or global? (Sorry, I have no experience with this. Does global friends chat from other servers show?)

Good job. You're eating my bed time and probably more of my time later. I've tried a few Linux distros over the years, just to see if there's anything that I consider a decent replacement to Windows, and they were always a little too much hassle for me. Now I have another one to check.

You have a point, Snow Globe. I'd say that it depends on the player's experience and what he wants to do. VIP status has many different aspects, but several won't appeal to players without high level characters. On the other hand, it's possible to get altitis early on, and just the ability to play around with a multitude of character slots and the extra powersets available can make a VIP month attractive. While I personally see buying $15 worth of PP as a better deal, my feeling may be skewed by the fact that I already subscribed for several years in the past, and passed through the creation of quite a few forgettable characters.

There are quite a few questions and discussions regarding interaction with free accounts, and I figured it would be a good idea to create a FAQ for that. I want to see what kind of information we can gather about this and possibly ideas to circumvent the limitations.


Far as I know the situation is like this:

Freebies can get tells and e-mails (and claim attachments in them), but can't send them.

Freebies can post on the friends channel.

Freebies have one global channel they can post on, the help channel.

It's impossible to trade with freebies or drop inspirations on them.

Freebies can invite to team via a blind invite. They can talk on the team channel.


Dealing with freebie friends:

If you want to send inf, do it by e-mail.

Personal two way communication isn't possible. Best you can do is if you're both not teamed one can invite the other (blind invite if initiated by the freebie) and then chat on the team channel. Otherwise one way communication only, and answers can be on a more global channel (such as friends).


Dealing with unfamiliar freebies:

The game doesn't let you know that your target can't reply to your tells.

Is there any way to detect that a character belong to a freebie player?

Jagged summed it up nicely. This has been discussed several time during the beta, and I think there's a general agreement amongst players that this needs to be implemented. It's probably not trivial to do, but hopefully the devs are at least considering it.

The default behaviour isn't that bad. Just click both mouse buttons together again to stop.

It's best that he exits the game and waits for the NCsoft Launcher to download the rest. Download is throttled while the game is running.

What Snow Globe said. The VIP Starter Kit gives you nothing but a VIP month, as I understand it. My guess as to why it exists is for advertising purposes and because during the head start it was the only way to create a new account.

Noxilicious, assuming your friend wants to continue to play Premium and just wants more features, I'd recommend buying $15 worth of Paragon Points instead. That would bring him to Tier 2, with one extra token to slot for some extra goodies, and 1320 PP to spend on stuff.

I was able to e-mail inf from a Premium account to a Free account and claim it on the Free account.

The high level stores are contacts specific to the origin. (At least that was the way it was. Haven't gotten a char to high level for a while.) With IO's that not really that important.

I just tried it and had no problem sending inf by e-mail from a Premium account to a Free account and claiming it on the Free account.

I like the idea of donations. Just set up a new e-mail address and set up a donation using this. Shouldn't be too hard. I'm willing to do it if you want me to. I imagine that the donation link can even be posted on this thread.

I have no idea what hardware would be best, but there were some good ideas here. CoH really is keyboard friendly, and I've been playing it with just a keyboard at times. BTW, the mouse knob on my Thinkpad can probably be used with the same hand as a mouse alternative for powers which require mouse locations. But I'm sure there are better solutions.

The popup contact is a good idea, too. I still think an introduction to the detective could be a natural part of the first Twinshot arc, but just having a pop-up introduction would serve well.

Thanks. It was mentioned but obviously not clearly enough. I changed that answer and made that text bold, and I also changed formatting a little to make the questions stand out, which hopefully will help.

Thanks, Aggelakis, I missed that and made the same suggestion. Though why did you call that a complaint?

Now that I've read it, my thought is that it could replace the second part of the trainers mission, as it will fulfill the role of teaching about the train and going to another zone.

On second thought I think it would be best to disable the detective highlight (as the OP suggested) and add the mission at the very end of the first Twinshot arc. Twinshot says there that the new base is in Kings Row, and could naturally seg into meeting the detective there. That's likely the best time for it, since the player is expected to continue with radio missions anyway, to open up the next contact.

Pentium 4 is not available to buy these days, so it's not relevant to the argument.

I think that a rule such as "any $80+ CPU is good enough" is better than the "not-so-accurate" rule mentioned.

Regarding the AMD CPU's, Llano should be good enough. It would be interesting to know if Llano integrated graphics can run Ultra mode (probably not with all options on). AMD's Atom stuff is the C and E families (C-50, C-60, E-350, E-450, etc.). Still, I have an E-350 laptop and it can run CoH at playable (to me) frame rates even at 1080p, using its integrated graphics, with pretty low options, but not bottomed out. It won't run Ultra, of course.

I agree that having the detective highlighted is annoying. Problem is, the radio missions are the only way to get new contacts once the low level missions are finished. If the detective doesn't automatically show up then players are more likely to get stumped.

Of these two evils, I think the current way is better. When players get sidetracked to the detective they won't magically become unaware that they had another mission. They might get thrown off because they'll think they're going to the mission but will end up with the detective. They will then likely search for the mission. The alternative is that the players will finish the low level missions, then look for something to do, and it will be hard for them to find it (since they will be in Atlas Park, finding the detective won't be obvious at all). I think that will be more of a killer.

Perhaps the best solution would be to add the detective to the Twinshot story arc. Have the player visit the detective and get the radio. Explain that the radio provides missions specific to the zone, leads to a special mission after three missions, after which you get to choose another contact. That's really important information to learn. If this becomes part of the introductory missions there will be no need to direct players to the detective via the map, and have them stumble over this concept.


Edit: Missed SailorET's making the same suggestion. That'd teach me to read the thread. So consider SailorET's suggestion signed. (But won't sign the OP's suggestion without it, for the reason posted.)

Yes, beating the heck out of a large number of enemies is the cool thing to do for any melee character.

Regarding the pictures though, I looked at them several times and the left looks better to me. On the other hand the right one looks like the newer one (due to the better resolution). So I don't see the graphical improvement. Not saying that the game hasn't improved (it certainly has), just not seeing it here.

I'd like to see the ability to select characters from the server selection screen. Here's a rough example of how this could be done. Discussion follows.