Grouchybeast

I think it even goes beyond what you might call 'casual farming'. I've been levelling up a blaster mostly solo, and as I climbed the levels, I started upping the number of enemies I was fighting. Not to get more inf or drops, not even really to get more XP, but just because it's more fun fireballing big groups then small ones, and it's so easy to tweak the settings now, so why not? The mere act of playing while levelling up a new character was generating more inf for me per unit time spent that it did before.

That was my very first thought when I saw the announcement. Never underestimate the potential for people to be grotesquely inappropriate via the internet.

In testing, I saw one team of 8 high levels fail miserably, and one succeed fairly comfortably, even though the tactics were the same (split up 2 to a banner, then deal with the banners one at a time). The main difference was having a rad/rad defender on the latter team, which helped bring the banners' HP down a lot faster. Good buff/debuff seems to be fairly key for attempting the event with a small group.

Although since I16, getting to a tailor blueside is just an easy jog over to the Vanguard base door in Atlas.

I don't think it does. When the market is responding slowly, clicking for more info on an item results in a blank last five transactions, which is filled in when the AH server eventually responds to the request. If the whole database was loaded, then the last five would always be available locally for all transactions (although possibly out of date).

My understanding is that what the programme does is load all the AH *icons* from disk into memory. Any issues this causes are primarily related to your system. E.g. many people have reported significant improvements to AH performance by adding more memory.

Given that a Hami raid involves a lot more players than an ordinary TF, might there be a problem with attrition cutting down the numbers of people in the raid? Occasionally players have to go eat, get called to do something they forgot, have the cat sick up on their laptop, etc. Players who leave won't be able to be replaced, which would lengthen the duration of the raid, which would lead to more people having to leave, ending up with the raid spiralling into failure due to low numbers. Annoying, if there are people outside the Hive ready and willing to join in.

I guess it would help if players could choose to quit the raid, and that opened up a slot for someone new to enter the Hive. However, it's still a problem if people simply log out and don't quit, or have their net connection go down and can't get back on. (I don't think it's possible to kick someone from a TF-style team if they're not logged in, right?)

Hmm...since a zone-wide TF setup would probably require all-new code anyway, it might be better to ask for some kind of a timer on place-holding for teams, instead? If someone leaves, their account is flagged as having 'reserved' a place in the Hive, for some length of time (5 or 10 min?). If they don't relog a toon in that time, then the flag is lost and someone else can enter the zone in their place?

I don't know. It all sounds a bit complicated. Is losing places on Hami raids a big issue? (Over here in Euro land, it's more a case of not getting enough people together to run a raid at all :-)

Search for portmanteau and you want the third item in the list, 'portmanteau word', or possibly the fourth 'What is the term for a new word constructed by combining parts of existing words?'

The Oxford English Dictionary uses British English spellings? I'm shocked!


In the vein of 'names I was sure would be taken', I was fairly surprised to get 'Purple Phase' as my first-choice name for a claws/elec scrapper on Union. On the other hand, naming a Widow was hard, and I finally had to give up on variations of black, widows or spiders. I do rather like Latrodecta, though, so maybe there's something to be said for the lack of the most obvious names leading to something more fun.

If you are playing only in the off-hours, then you are by definition not in the majority of players. There are definitely people who are always going to have trouble getting into TFs. People who play very odd hours will find it harder, and there's people who for work/family reasons just can't devote a sufficiently large chunk of time. I'm not saying that every single player in the game can get into a speed TFs at will, I'm just disagreeing with the stance that it's impossible for anything other than a tiny minority.

I have about four people on my global friends list, my SG is me and my other half -- who is now busy playing Dragon Age: Origins :-( -- and I play on Defiant, which has been supposedly dead for the whole 18 months I've been in the game.

This is how I became a l33t speed runner: I joined speed TFs recruiting on the Defiant global channel. I demonstrated the ability to follow directions. I got invited to more speed TFs. The end.

Maybe it's a server thing, but it usually seems pretty easy to get into a TF on Defiant, using the main global channel, even outside of core hours. (Or maybe we're all just nuts. I was on one Quarterfield TF that started at one-thirty in the morning.) Union likewise has plenty of TF's recruiting. Maybe the US servers don't have such active global channels? I honestly don't know, as I'm a Euro-only player.

I've been on more than one sub 30 minute ITF (on Defiant) which included a couple of PuG players speed-running for the first time. Sub 40 min is *easily* doable even with a few people new to speed-running on the team. All it requires is a balanced team, an experienced leader who can give clear directions, and players who are willing to follow them.

This game seriously is just not that difficult to play. Not in the market, and not when doing TFs. It just isn't.

Maybe it depends on the server. On Defiant it's pretty common to get speed TF runs advertised in the global channel -- in fact, sometimes the assumption is that any TFs looking for members will be speed runs, and the people who want a 'normal' TF are wary about joining without checking first.

You really have a depressingly low opinion of the players in CoH. TBH, speed-running TFs is even less like rocket surgery than using the market.

Or even just 'craft and sell your drops'. By doing exactly that, starting a brand new toon on a brand new server, by lvl 43 I have a toon with set IOs and 200 million inf in the bank. And I still have about a dozen of the shiniest IOs in a rack saved for later use.

Oh, no, wait, I lied. I also got a handful of crafting badges and sold common IOs. As that's a big marketeer secret that is in no way suggested to every single person who has ever asked about how to make inf, I guess that puts me in amongst the l33t.

I generally post for the minimum I'd be happy to receive for the item. 2/3 the going rate is also a good price point to aim for, as you'll sell before everyone listing higher than you.

Sometimes, though, if it's a high-value item on a character I don't use much, I'll list high and be contented to wait for as long as it takes to sell.

What he said exactly was 'We could write Arcs, but with MA out there, we'd rather write TF/SF's'. I'm pretty sure that any new zones will have their own arcs associated with them, or they'd look rather thin. But I'd say it doesn't sound promising for people who'd like the devs to add new arcs to older zones like Boomtown or DA.

Well, Positron did say during the 2009 anniversary party that since they'd introduced the MA there was no need for the devs to write arcs any more and they'd rather write TFs instead. Now, Posi talking in Pocket D doesn't count as an official statement of policy. I might call it 'highly suggestive', though.

There are usually loads of Fir Bolg in the 'finger' of the Misty Woods zone that points out into the lake. If there aren't any there on the first try, circling out and letting the groups respawn usually does the trick.