GoldenAvatar

I will give it a read and post back if I have more questions.

I have a Invuln/WM build and am looking to move way from normal IOs to sets.

So any information or link to info would be appreciated.

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If there's something from Everquest that I don't miss, it's the unenviable situation of 1-5 pieces of loot for 72+ people.

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The same goes for every MMO that utilizes loot determine character effectiveness.

That's one thing I absolutely love about CoX. I'm actually done developing my Controller. I've been done developing him since last respeccing him, shortly after the release of ED. He's as effective as I want him to be, and I will likely never get over how awesome it feels to be able to say that about a character I play in an MMO!

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Why keep playing the character if theres nothing left to do with them?

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The answer to this question really is "What do you enjoy about playing CoH?"

For some its geting to 50, some its learning the story of it all, some its PvP, and yet others its the collection aspect or it simply a combination of these as well as others that I haven't mentioned.

The upshot is that different people do things for different reasons, constant "character building/upgrading" for some is not the point of the game.

I think it says alot about CoX that it offers an enjoyable experience in such a wide range of tastes and has done so for a long time (in terms of MMO shelf life).

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Just wow...

1. Devs have lives, homes, and roots in their current communities so there is no guarentees they will move with the project.
2. If enough designers dont move this could mean sad news for the project.
3. The move for cryptic makes perfect sense from a buisness sense to me at least.
4. Depending on how corporate NCSoft makes things and who if any dont come to the new studio will determine if I stay subscribed.

I am patient and can wait but not forever.

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Read closer - the City of Franchise development team has moved with the game in majority (Minus Statesman).

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I will believe it when I see it. I have been with to many software companies that have been gobbled up both other. I am far to pesimistic and know better than believe a press release on its face value.

Just wow...

1. Devs have lives, homes, and roots in their current communities so there is no guarentees they will move with the project.
2. If enough designers dont move this could mean sad news for the project.
3. The move for cryptic makes perfect sense from a buisness sense to me at least.
4. Depending on how corporate NCSoft makes things and who if any dont come to the new studio will determine if I stay subscribed.

I am patient and can wait but not forever.

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A port to Linux or Mac... good luck with that LA.

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Posi, I read somewhere you were a fan of Pai Gow poker. Any tips?

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Sure.

Don't play the "bonus". They payouts are horrid vs. the actual odds of pulling one of those hands.

Build up a good rapport with the other players. If everyone is friendly (and you have a full table) you can ask who has the bug. If no one fesses up, it's pretty good odds that the dealer has it. If that's the case be prepared for the flush or straight in the high hand (which usually means a very weak low hand). Get your low hand as good as possible even if it means sacrificing your high hand to do it (like splitting up two low pairs).

Don't drink. You will make bad decisions.

If you are stumped how to play a hand, ask the dealer how the house would play it. The house will ALWAYS play a hand the mathematically best way to play it, since they want to keep their edge. The dealers will always tell you how the house would play that hand, as well.

If you have the bankroll and want some more excitement, bank a hand. You can win big, or lose big. Just be sure to bet the minimum on the hand before you bank (the house will match your previous bet to play against you).

If the dealer starts crushing you over and over with monster hands... get up and walk away. Don't keep raising your bet because you are "due" to get a winning hand eventually.

Don't go thinking that your casino rewards card is getting a lot of points playing hours and hours of Pai Gow. PG poker is, I believe, the least effective time/rewards of all casino games because there are so many pushes and the game takes forever to deal a hand.

Now, back to the design grind... anyone know a good way to pick a handcuff with a mechanical pencil, a Hero Clix, and a poker chip?

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In fact I do but why would I want you unhandcuffed from your desk?

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Excellent write up! I particularly like that you did two builds and a comparison between them and the I8 'standard.'

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Sadly, something a lot of players will have to consider is how spectacularly gimp this build would be if it exemplared underneath the level of its set bonuses.

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Great guide but as pointed out by UberGuy, dont plan on exempting down if you are using level 50 IOs.

I am abstaining from the topic but posting to let _Castle_ know I feel his questions are out of true context and as such results gathered from his questions will ultimately be invalid.

Let the discussion continue.

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On the other hand, PvE environments are generally static, and not because they have to be, but because game designers claim they *must* be: that an evolving PvE environment creates all sorts of problems that would upset or unbalance the game. Can't have PvE players alterning the environment, because a constantly shifting backdrop to PvE would wreck PvE.

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I don't really know any developers who believe that. We look at games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, God of War or Shadow of the Colossus and the innovative use of terrain involved there and think "How can we get things such as that into our game?"

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The reality of deformable terrain or move able terrain is essetially that most developers want to avoid the "stacking" wars of UO where you could completely enclose someone elses home with objects they may or may not be able to interact with, there by griefing you.

Statesman as I recall in the first few months of the game's release explained the reason deformable terrain wasn't used in CoH.

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_Castle_ just acknowledged that Invincibility is bugged. The taunt is apparently not working properly either.

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Correction:
All aspects of Invincibility EXCEPT the taunt effect are working. The Taunt effect, however, appears to only be effecting minions. This is true for all auto-taunt effects, including Gauntlet.

Interestingly, while researching this problem, I discovered that Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked. That'll be fixed as well.

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This only goes to prove that MMOs are very complex constructs. As I do QA on one current running I can say its very easy to over look something.

I have run about 15 SGMs so far and my observations are thus for the PI version playing my 50 Invuln/Mace Tanker.

<ul type="square">[*]Low DPS builds are going to have difficulties solo and worse in larger spawns from teaming. (I ran all SGMs on Heroic and most solo) [*] Dark Ring Mistresses power that is -Regen effectively cripples my build. (I have 2 End in all Toggle Powers and 1 in all attacks. These mobs seem far more effective then their normal mission counter parts.)[*] Note to everyone Vidiot Maps has the Arson mob spawn listed in the incorrect location or it may have been moved. Either way on the PI map they are located at -767, 0, -282.8, next to city Info Terminal.[*] Enemies in Break Out side mission simply disappear so that you cant get credit for rescueing the PPD npcs. (Highly annoying)[*] Bombing Side Mission - Bombs always located in exactly same locations. (While easy for players to stealth, was this really the design?)[*] Increased effeciveness of zone mobs. (Broken Design concept imo. Simply put they balanced the game a specific way, players level to 50 and understand their build's strengths and weaknesses. Now they see the exact same mobs in a different kind of mission and the mobs don't behave as they expected. Its akin to saying "Your build is very defensive, Resistant, ect, but not in these missions sorry.") [*] Vandal are effectively not important (If a team or player simply focuses on side missions they never have to defeat the Vandal as the side missions are currently designed give enough additional time to never have to worry about it.[*] Several time Vandals have been defeated without me ever being near them and gaining bonus time. (I can only assume they attacked something that exploded and killed them or simply vanished and I got credit bonus time even though I did no damage to them. See Break Out mission for disappearing enemy example.)[/list]
These are strictly my opinions and are just a reflection of my experiences so far with Safe Guard Missions.

Apparently Cryptic didn't get the memo or chose to ignore it. Microsoft has a next to poop record publishing MMOs.

Asheron's Call (fairly successful for its time)
Ashron's Call 2 (Failed)
Mithica (Failed, never left development)
Vangard (Cancelled publishing deal)

I think if they want to sabotage Marvel's entry into this genre MS as a publisher is a perfect way since they have a horrible track record.

Having worked in MS's Game Studio I can say from my point of view, I dont think the management has the chops to stick it out and will bail the first chance when the project hits its first major problem that makes it cost more money.

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I bet there's some UBER SECRET spot the devs use just to be cool... like you talk to a fire hidrent or type in a certian command or something... like go into a telephone booth and type /superman or something... and it gives you XP for lvl 50 I swear game developers do this all the time, I know I would if i was a game developer...

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When we play on the development servers or Training Room, sure... but when we play on Live servers even we dont get any special commands or cheats. We level up just like the rest of you... I know I will be on with my Dominator a bunch this weekend.

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How come Cuppa gets the Uber-Button and not Posi? Poor Positron, not being able to get to 50 in an instant.

P.S.: CuppaJo came and judged the SG Costume Contest for Infinity. She was a level 50 Blaster that hadn't ever increased in security level. I think even the devs (or moderaters like Cuppa) wouldn't be able to stop themselves from leveling even once during the journey to 50.

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From personal experience I would imagine 2 or 3 things are required for them to use any special commands.

1. An account flagged for the priviliages to use the commands
2. A special client only distributed interally at cryptic and NCSoft.
3. The computer they use to log in must do so through their own network as to be part of an authorized subnet that the game servers recognize as valid access.

There may be more to than that even.

Hey Jagged your link to Understanding Total Upkeep appears to point to a no longer existing thread.

The buisness model for Guild Wars is that you don't have a monthly subscription however you will be paying $30-$40 every 4-5 months for an expansion. However the expansions are not necessary for you to play the base game.

Now one thing this game has PvP and of coarse as expansions come out if you want to compete effectively in PvP you will of coarse want the new uber/escalated loot :P

That in itself is the hook. As I see it whether you pay $12-$14 a month for a subscription and get free upadates or pay $35 every 3-4 months for an expansion pack it equates to the same thing, they still get your money.

LOL, perhaps I am just a cynic at heart but I remember how the Tanker changes came about. Don't praise before you hear their intentions. ;P

Tankers begged for the devs to take a look at their class some of the more vocal folks got them to do it. And we all know that it took a good long while before the smoke cleared from that firing line.

I certainly hope the controller changes go smoother, but Fire and Illusion players had better see the writing on the wall.

Definately an Alliance chat (name it whatever you like :P) with the the following abilities;

A player belonging to a SG that is part of an alliance must have the privilage set by his SG leader to read and/or type in alliance chat (preferably one permission for each). This way SG leaders can regulate the amount of BSing that goes on in the Alliance chat. But it gives the Players the ability to have a Choice whether the Alliance Chat channel is open to its members or is a restricted hot line between SGs. Ok that is only one big thing, but its a good one.

I would like to see the ability to change SG colors, Symbol, and Number of ranks after SG creation.

Basically as I see it the mission difficulty slider acomplishes everything and more that statesman's original post indicates is his concerns.

The increase to the base stats of all bosses only amplifies the fix to the point where many people it is excessive.

If players wish harder or more interesting missions the difficulty slider obviously provides a tool for players to "choose" when and where they want mission more difficult, instead of having all missions with bosses to be inheriantly more difficult.

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We would like to offer character transfer, but we are still looking into whether this will be technically possible. More news on this as soon as I have it.

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Hrmm this leads me to believe that if they get this issue put into place for the EU launch of the game. Then folks might very well be able to move from US to US servers as well.

For me and my friends this would be very helpful as we could consolidate all our favorite toons on to one server.

However I see one major pitfall that relates to customer support calls. "I bought a Limited Edition copy of the game to play on the EU servers, Why doesn't all my characters from the US servers which is a non limited Edition have the special features on them?"

This is ofcoarse a problem with changing between accounts and not necessarily just servers. But it will be a valid concern. Especially if say I were to take over a pre-order account from launch that has the niffty streak effect on all the toons made on that account. Now I move my toons from a non pre-order account to a pre-order account or visa versa. Making sure everything works right could be one of the reasons this paticular feature is a bit problematic for Cryptic.