Grouchybeast

I went to Memorabilia just in order to visit the CoH stand, and I'd probably go again if Paragon/NCSoft were there.

The player meet in Birmingham was awesome, and the support for it from the EU marketing people was very much appreciated. I'd definitely sign up for another of those.

Honestly, I don't really care that much about the forums. It normally takes a day or two to get an official response here anyway, so if EU posts are dealt with with a bit of a timelag, it doesn't make much difference. In-game events, competitions etc are more important to me, and recently there seems to have been an effort for greater parity between US and EU on that front, which is great.

I think this is actually a good comparison -- in both cases people using the system in the absolutely least optimal way will find their rewards substantially reduced compared to people who don't. Likewise, even very occasionally teaming, or very occasionally using the market, gives an enormous boost in reaching the desired goal.

Actually, I'm pretty sure she already did -- I think she looked at tens of thousands of hit rolls, to check the RNG. Search would probably pull up a thread or two where she mentions it.

Well yeah, but that's inconvenient, and incurs debt.

Whereas if, with Aim and Buildup, my fire blaster can pop a crashless 1488 point damage nuke + 15sec mag 4 stun every 100 sec, well -- yes, please! But it's kind of insanely overpowered.

I've picked up two or three shards from kills even on sub-20 min ITF speedruns. It's hard not to get at least *some* shards on the ITF because of the bosses, EBs and AVs that can't be bypassed.

Unless there's been another one since, the last problem with drop rates was discovered by players, many from the Market forum, who devoted a *lot* of hours to testing and investingating, including writing software to perform statistical analysis of the large amounts of drop data collected (DropStats). And even with cast-iron statistical evidence, it was very difficult to persuade the devs that it wasn't a 'perception bias' and they should take a closer look.

IIRC, the problem did indeed stem from an uninitialized variable, though.

Measured as Shards per player per enemy defeated, the drop rate is identical between teams and solo. (The Shard drop mechanics are different to normal salvage drop mechanics, in that instead of checking for a drop and then assigning it to a random member of the team, it checks for every player individually.)

So, if you defeat ten thousand enemies, you'll on average end up with exactly as many shards as someone who defeated ten thousand enemies while playing in a team of eight -- they're just likely to have done it rather more quickly.

It won't help. I could find refutations of the story going back to early 2009, without bothing to look further back. It has that skim of plausibility (milk can cause real agricultural pollution issues) combined with something to ridicule (they're going to treat it like CRUDE OIL!) that makes it really appealling.

It also makes me wonder how effective the Seers really are at seeing what people think about Cole's administration, and exactly how far out of line citizens of Pratoria can get before something bad happens to them. Even if they think not being slaughtered by the DE is overall a good thing, everyone gets annoyed by things the government does, or they think the government does. There's a big gap, though, between planning to blow up a praetor, and thinking that Cole's administration could use a shake-up because it lets bunches of heavily armed Syndicate and Destroyers run around the place (or that they're idiots because they're planning to outlaw curved cucumbers).

I haven't played through all the Praetoria missions yet. What's the most petty thing that we know from the story arcs that someone has been arrested/punished/disappeared for doing or thinking?

I am strangely reassured that other countries have their own versions of our 'The European Union is passing laws to OUTLAW BENDY BANANAS' stories.

I wonder if they have them in Praetoria, too? I expect the seers don't like them.

I know exactly what you mean. I like Barracuda, especially the ambushes, but the tunnels sometimes give me motion sickness. It was especially bad a couple of days ago, with two MMs on the team, because of being shoved by the pets so I was constantly facing not quite the way I expected.

Citadel it worse for it, though.

The recipe for the Very Rare requires two different Rares.

ETA: And of course you can also choose to swap out different Uncommons, Rares, etc, either, if there were circumstances under which you wanted bonues from different sides of the tree.

I guess that you mean I19, as I18 had one TF (CoP), 83 tip missions (each with two different sets of objectives), another dozen morality missions, and rewrites of Tina's and Maria's arcs. And Praetoria, of course, released at the same time.

Mind you, I19 had three new story arcs, another in flashback, new tips and morality missions, Praetorian zone events and a Praetorian repeatable mission contact, so that was far from predominantly team-only content, either.

Any Rare should get you towards the Very Rare in the same tree equally well. Did you scroll down the list of Very Rare recipes in the crafting interface? It's an annoyingly discreet scroll bar, unfortunately.

Ah. {faint bells are rung from my own installation from the DE}

It's possible that you've run into a problem with the somewhat confusing packaging in the Deluxe Edition.

There are actually *two* serial codes in the box. One is the main game code with 30 days of time included, which is found inside a little white square with 'Security Code' on it. The other, unfortunately rather easier to notice, is on the back of a disk sleeve. This second code is a 'sidekick' code, which they included so people could give a friend a 15 day paid trial of the game.

So it's possible that the problem you're having is to do with having used the wrong code, or putting the wrong disk in the drive.

ETA: Here's a picture of the two DE codes.

With a comic and a disk?


Welcome to the game, ItsJames!

If you did buy one of the old box sets, then you won't have access to the new low-level areas of the game, called Praetoria. This is available as a paid expansion, but you don't need it to check out the game -- you'll still find people in the old lower-level zones.

If you're joining the EU server lists (as I think the Deluxe version was sold in the EU) then it's probably helpful to know that Defiant and Union are the English langauge servers, while Vigilance is the French language server and Zukunft the German one.

You really don't need a full team -- two people is absolutely ample for any of the Ramiel missions. People on Defiant just seem to give a shout on the server global channel if they're having problems with one of the missions, and I've never seen someone not hop in to help them get past the problem encounter, be it Trapdoor or Holtz and Honoree. You might well have more luck with that than with trying to find someone who wants to run through the whole arc.

No, but you did say that the devs were potentially excluding 25% of the population. What you meant was 'that subset of that 25% who also don't want to run TFs'.

I'm pretty darn introverted, by any of the definitions you've given. On the other hand, I like TFs, because for me they are by far the lowest-stress form of teaming, as they require the least interaction from me. (Beyond saying 'I'll take a spot' when someone says they're running a TF, all I have to do is show up and follow the team from spawn to spawn. I don't have to talk in chat if I don't feel like it, and the team has a defined duration and end point, after which I can simply says 'thanks' and leave without feeling like I'm causing any inconvenience.)

It depends on the character, really. I'm quite happy with the Cardiac Rare I've got on my blaster -- I have zero end problems now, and the Very Rare doesn't improve the Range bonus, so there's no incentive there. I'll probably try putting future components and shards into moving up the damage tree, although the relatively small amount of extra damage even with Very Rare isn't all the that enticing. It might be if I could be bothered to make a second build to take advantage of being able to move slots around, but I'm too lazy :-)

I know this sounds like a silly question, but are you sure you got all the clones? I've had problems with Trapdoor when one of the clones spawned out of sight on the walkway under the platform, and I didn't realise.

Also, I see you've got a couple of holds. On my blaster, I spammed Char as often as it was up until I got him held. Unless they've changed it since I ran it, that seemed to stop him bifurcating.

Also, also, the Envenomed Dagger temp power is really nice for slowing down his regen.


It's impossible to drop the Trapdoor mission, because it has a choice in the dialogue tree at the end.

No point? But...but...there are badges!

What's your guess? Say, within an order of magnitude. 50%? 5%? 0.5%? 0.05%? (Again, that's people for whom having to run one/three TFs is a deal-breaker that will cause them to leave the game.)

Out of curiosity, what percentage of the playerbase do you believe is so entirely unwilling or unable to take part in a TF that they won't do the three TFs, ever, required to get the Rare Alpha boost? (Or the one TF, ever, required to get the Rare, which gives the level shift.)

I prefer to solo, myself. But when all I need to get a Rare boost (and the gain from the Very Rare is pretty marginal, so, eh) is one TF, ever, I find it hard to get very worked up about how the devs are marginalizing solo players.