Hart

Huzzah! My home team wins!

There's also the option to freeze a character at 46, to enable sidekicking up to level 45 so you can powerlevel other people in door missions.

Since AE was added, this isn't really necessary - you can just run a map that SKs all your lowbies up to 45 automagically.

After i16 adds super sidekicking, this is getting nerfed beyond recognition. The plan is apparently to keep people from quickly hitting 50 with all the different power combinations they're interesting in trying. This keeps them on a permanent leveling treadmill, which prevents them from figuring out that there's no endgame and going off to play something else.

I'm also stuck on an SG leader change issue.

I've played around 3 months a year since release - the game just can't hold my attention. At CoV release, I started a VG that grew fairly large fairly quickly. Items of Power, Base Raids and PVP were ultimately a huge disappointment and I left.

Upon my return a year or so later, I was immediately reinstated as the VG leader by the system. This is how I think it should work all the time, but apparently that's not the case. I'm still the oldest member of my VG, and I'm still on top of the prestige counter. However, someone I've never met who hasn't been on in a couple weeks has the big red star.

I'm glad I haven't been kicked and robbed of my VG thanks to forced autodemotion, but it looks like this person isn't actually playing the character, so I can't ask for the star back. Is there a way to force the system to promote me so I can start recruiting again? If not, is this something a GM can do? I put in a help request, but never got a response.

Awesome, that'll do exactly what I was looking for and should help immensely from 1-5!

Thanks very much!

I'm trying to put together an AE mission I can solo from 1-10 or so to get the first few levels of the game out of the way with a minimum of running around Mercy Island.

Is it possible to put an AE mission together so that the enemies it spawns are one level below the player? This wouldn't impact xp too much below 10, and would be much faster.

I only bother with extensive feedback if an arc is particularly terrible. Unfortunately, this happens about 80% of the time when I play random arcs, and most of them are so far from being worthwhile that I constrain my response to a sentence or two of vitriol.

When it comes to good arcs, I mainly point out spelling errors or parts my team really had difficulty with.

I do this often because of marketing time constraints. I'm only on the market for 10 minutes once a day.

If I buy it now and craft it I can have the cash by tomorrow. If I put in bids now I can't craft it till tomorrow, -and- those slots are taken up for 24 hours so I lose sales. A hundred grand is a small price to pay to be able to list a 10m IO that's 90% profit.

On the other hand, if prices get up to around 400-500k I'll just go get the salvage with AE tickets. My last 40 gold rolls ended me up with 7 of the same devastation piece and absolutely nothing worthwhile, so the tickets don't feel valuable to me right now.

Assuming you're going to be duoing most of the time, I'd go for a Brute with Willpower as a secondary, and any of Stone Melee, Super Strength, or Battle Axe as a primary.

As a Mind/Psi you'll be able to lock down spawns fast, but the most reliable group lockdown you have early on is your a sleep. The mostly-single-target sets above won't break your sleep early on. By the time the brute can throw around AOE attacks he'll be able to keep the target's attention and take hits more reliably, and you'll have other options for aoe control in Total Domination and eventually Mass Confusion.

I'm also recommending the above because of reliable knockup/knockdown. When you're dealing with Elite Bosses and above, keeping things on their backs can help a lot. Even if it's just the start of the fight, a couple knockdowns can give you time to stack -recharge from the /psi secondary, which gives the brute more time to heal up from the last hit before he takes the next one.

Another option might be a mastermind - have them focus fire on one baddie at a time early on, and rely on them taking the presence pool and tanking in Bodyguard mode to take the really big challenges later. That requires a lot more player skill and game knowledge though, and since you've only got one post I'm assuming you're new to the game.

I'm sure I'll get downmodded by stalkers for this, but they're not very good for PvE unless they're solo. Stalkers are bogeymen in PVP - they make solo heroes cry and go find a defender to kiss it and make it better. Their main advantage is being invisible and having one really strong attack - in a game where NPCs always come in groups. They underperform in groups compared to other ATs unless played by an exceptionally skilled player, and even then the same player could do better at PvE with a different AT.

Also, you may wish to consider changing your name. It's disrespectful to the gay community. Maybe that was the point?

I just bonked into this headlong over the weekend. Managed to pick up a Regenerative Tissue: +Regeneration rec for 10m, but it's level 27. The level 30s are selling for 80m at a fairly good clip, but since mine's 27 it's been parked since Saturday with only one bid outstanding. It'll be a nice profit if it sells, but the wife wants it for Cauterize if it doesn't..

You might also look at the 'Slow but reliable?' thread I posted a couple days back. Don't want to bump it because this stuff seems to get outdated fast, but there's some great advice there. I've been making about 5-10m a day in 10 minutes worth of marketeering based on what these guys told me.

Now, if I could just find a efficient way to get Merits for LotG+Rch or Numina's +/+ without having to solo strike forces..

Probably get drowned out in a sea of voices, but if you're looking for something unique, AR/Cold can be very powerful and very flexible.

You -can- have redraw issues depending on your attack chain, but Sleet's res debuff makes up for the lethal damage and combining Sleet with Ignite, Full Auto, or Flamethrower is pretty brutal. Late bloomer for sure, and the early attack chain of slug > burst > slug makes you redraw if you need to benumb something, which is frustrating to start and probably the reason you never see ar/cold mentioned.

Trying to keep a very short duration buff up on everyone all of the time is an exercise in frustration - and that's coming from a /kin main! I spam SB; I don't spam ID.

Prioritize taking/slotting it according to your goals (SFs? AVs? Doors? AE?) are and what you're giving up to get it. For straight AE spam or most door missions, it's nice to have but not required.

If you take it, prioritize using it based on what you're about to encounter - Goldbrickers and Malta require different tactics than Madness Mages and Ring Mistresses.

Another option would be to ask the group leader to kick the idiot.

If one member of a group is making another member of a group upset because of what they're chatting about, it's the group leader's responsibility to ask them to stop, and failing that, kick them. That's part of what the star means; you resolve conflicts between group members. Sure, you might lose a potential friend - but most people don't want someone who's both a pedo and a jerk as a potential friend.

The real question being asked is poorly presented - the 'pedophile' label is skewing responses because of the prejudices society gives us. There's a kneejerk reaction of 'hang the pedo' The real question I see is how to deal with offensive content. What defines offensive is different for everyone.

Please note that I'm not a pedophile or saying that it's OK to be one.

For me, anything religious is intensely offensive, and I mean to an abnormal degree. I view folks who cite chapter and verse as child abusers. I think they subject their own children to cult indoctrination before they can think for themselves. However, I'm aware it's an irrational and -personal- reaction that most people don't share. Maybe we should all take a step back and consider that 'offensive' is relative.

The pedo from the first example was intentionally trying to offend people. The people discussing a video game which incidentally involved child killing weren't necessarily trolling. They were discussing something which offended Ximmys personal tastes, but that's not the same thing; if there were multiple people in broadcast interested in the conversation then broadcast was an appropriate place for it, and if not it's just a matter of saying 'could you take it to tells?'.

I like the idea of anyone and everyone being able to use the same name. If I see someone named "Death", "Legolas", "Elric", etc I can make a snap judgement about them that's likely correct. On the other side of the coin, I won't be unable to make a concept character like "Lucky Seven" for lack of the name - "Lucky Eight" just doesn't have the same ring.

As far as genericing characters for inactivity - it would ruin a big part of the game for me. I've been active on and off since beta, but only attained the 15 month vet badge. I think this is the best MMO on the market - but I'd be bored to tears if I only had one game to play for 5 years. Loosing a name means loosing recognition, in the sense that old friends won't immediately recognize you when you log back in after a year or two. That makes rejoining the community harder, which is a pretty big negative for a social game.

I'd wager that the CO -beta- has a bigger impact on the game than the actual release of CO. Just about everyone I know has preordered in order to play the beta and determine whether they're interesting in buying the game, particularly since the lifetime offer.

I understand that the approach that CO took is totally different than the CoX approach. Having just returned after a year or so playing other stuff, I have to say that despite AE and the necessity of the market, I'm enjoying CoV more than ever - but I'm still planning on taking a week or so off and trying the beta.

One of the biggest differentiators for CoX is the depth of the mechanics, which seems to be sorely lacking in CO. There's only so much you can do with a handful of powers, and I'm not convinced that I'm interested in doing all of it - but I'll still be investing in that unlimited lifetime account, even if it's only as a form of real-world marketeering. If it's being released for the xbox it's likely to be released under 'games for windows live' - which means it would have to be as terrible as the shadowrun game in order to fail, since Microsoft is backing it.

Just for a sense of perspective, I also made ~5m yesterday - in precisely 10 minutes - using the suggestions listed here. I expect to make slightly more today, because I invested 12 minutes this morning (2 minutes was logging off and loading twice, so I'm still meeting my time goal).

Breakdown:

Flipped Luck Charm: 7 stacks
Buy 70k/stack, Sell 150k/stack. 455k profit, 2 minutes.
Flipped Scientific Theory: 5 stacks
Buy 60k/stack, Sell 150k/stack. 375k profit, 2 minutes.
Flipped Hamidon Goo: 1 stack
Buy 6m/stack, Sell 10m/stack. 3000k profit, 30s.
Flipped Deific Weapons: 1/2 stack
Buy 3.8m, Sell 5m. 700k profit, 1 min.

I spent the remaining 5 minutes crafting 20x 25 Acc IOs using some of the Luck Charm stock, some instant-buy Boresights and just under 1m infamy. This was using a combination of auction-bought and crafting-station-bought recipes to stay within my time constraints, and accounts for crafting costs as well.

Still don't have the lvl 25 acc crafting badge for some reason, but I estimate these IOs are worth 4-6m, so if I can move them they're another 3-5m profit. Not bad for 10 minutes work, if I say so myself. Once I get the badge, these will net around 250k profit each - but unfortunately they require a whole slot to sell and are very time-consuming to move to alts since the character switch cycle takes around a full minute.

Flipping oranges is certainly the highest ROI per second so far, but there are some complications. Primarily, they can be purchased with tickets, which effects both the supply side and the demand side of the equation. They're also only needed in limited numbers, and the people who need them are probably savvy enough to have a basic understanding of the market. Finally, filling 15 slots with buy orders at 600k would require 90m, which is twice what I have to invest.

Incidentally, it took me three times as long to write this post as it did to make that inf.

That's a lot closer to what I'm looking for. Thanks Goat!

..and now I have to figure out how to upmod people on the CoX boards..

Odds are that if you post to the Virtue forums you'll have a half dozen guild leaders arguing over who gets to invite you. I'd offer, but I'm a redsider. Do a little research, pick one that matches your goals, problem solved =)

Hmm. I was really thinking something more like 'buy luck charms at 5000, sell them at 35000' that I could do indefinitely without having to think about it. I wouldn't be able to buy them at 5k often, and I wouldn't be able to sell them at 35k often, but when I did I'd make 600% ROI.

So far my efforts have consisted of leaving a few hundred 7k bids on luck charms, since I expect that any I pick up I can resell for 20k easily if I'm willing to wait - and waiting's most of what I'm interested in doing. They've been in notoriously high demand for literally years, so I doubt that market will dry up any time soon. However, with the number of slots I'm trying to fill, a single market won't be enough - and I expect that there's someone out there willing to bid 7001 infamy and sell for 19999 now that I've said this, so I need to diversify into a handful of buy/sell markets.

Actually crafting stuff seems to involve a lot of messing around - bidding on recs, bidding on multiple salvage items, and time spent crafting. I'll give it a shot 'cause it seems unanimous, but what I really want is a black market mutual fund >.>

Howdy!

I see the market as a market, which is to say that it's not a game and not fun for me. I have more fun farming. However, with prices being what they are since AE, farming doesn't cut it when you want to buy nice things.

So, what I'm looking for is a way to spend ten minutes or less each morning refreshing bids and sales for one or two items and constantly make a profit. I know I'll do better if I check in with the game morning noon and night, undercut competitors by one infamy and so forth - but it's not /fun/ for me and CoX is supposed to be a game.

What I've got going for me is about 250 auction slots among all my characters, and a starting pool of around 50m. The restriction is that I don't want to spend more than 10 minutes a day messing with the market - including logging in and logging out - and those slots are spread over 20 characters of various levels, so I can only access maybe 40 a day.

Can anyone make a recommendation of a market I can either get into or corner myself that turns over slowly enough to keep me having to mess with it hourly, but reliably enough that I can depend on it as a long term plan?

~Hart

Crabs have backpacks, Banes have maces.

Crabs and Banes can take gun attacks, but they do have to draw the gun first.

Crabs can get away with wolf gunning for Wide Area Web Grenade or Heavy Burst, since they can draw the gun before a fight, launch a salvo, and then cycle their crab attacks.

Avoid gun attacks on a bane. If you attack with the gun, you put away your mace. Banes redraw twice for gun attacks - once to get the gun out, and again to get the mace back.

Is there something stopping a team from locking the nictus down with immobilize and just dragging Rom off somewhere to murder? Last I heard PTOD doesn't prevent immob or sleep - do these have some sort of special protection?

I'm all for playing with your kids. I think that playing games with your family is a great way to build on the typical parent/child relationship. In addition to a parent, you become a friend. You show your kids that you see them as people instead of responsibilities or objects, and while playing the game you approach them on equal footing rather than as adult and child.

That being said, it's necessary to trust your child to make responsible decisions before you allow them to play games on the internet without supervision. If your child is not mature enough to make good social choices, then they are not mature enough to contribute anything of value to the community when you're not around.

Like respect, mistrust is a two-way street. If you feel the need to be overprotective, you should seriously question whether your child should be involved in the activity in question at all.

Actually.. it's more like a 58% chance to stun a Lt, assuming a mag 2 stun is sufficient.

You've got a 25% chance to stun him on the first roll - if this occurs the 2nd roll doesn't matter. The 75% of the time that the first roll doesn't get him, the second roll still has a 25% chance to stun him. You're more than twice as likely to stun lts and minions with PSW during domination.

The opposite effect occurs with bosses. Instead of doubling the mag, you get two activations at the normal mag. The mag 2 stuns have to stack in order to stun the boss, so you've got about a 6.25% chance - 25% of 25% - to actually stun them with PSW.

I'm going to post Or Die Trying here because we technically have a villain group. That being said, our focus is to create a community.

Name: Or Die Trying

Currently Recruiting: Yes - 1 on 1 recruitment only, so you won't see any /broadcast spam.

RP Level: RP-friendly - no requirements and /sg is assumed out-of-character.

PvP Level: Casual - no specific plans for PVP at this time, but that could change; see Theme/Concept for more.

Theme/Concept: ODT is the team to go to when you're looking for a challenge. Most groups stack the odds in their favor when selecting missions, power sets, and difficulty levels - to get a great reward with minimal risk. ODT members prefer to assemble a team and test it to destruction, taking on increasingly difficult tasks until the bodies start falling. In short, we enjoy overcoming the greatest challenges we can face while laughing in the face of death - and debt.

Activity: Prime time varies, but groups are consistently active from 6-11 PST M-F and throughout the day Saturday and Sunday. Plans are in the works to host strike forces each Saturday.

Requirements for Membership: Membership requirements are very lose - once again, we're trying to develop a community, not necessarily recruit people into the VG. An interest in completing the most difficult tasks possible and a sense of humor are mandatory, as well as a degree of player skill. No character level or time commitment requirements are in place, and the only expectation is that VGmates aid one another if possible.

Leadership: Desdemona Hart, Putrid Remains

In-Game Contact(s): @Desdemona Hart

Out-of-Game Contact(s):
Official Forums: Hart
Email: Hart@ordietrying.net

URL: http://www.ordietrying.net

Coalition(s): Paradox, Mournlanders - functional association.

Other Details:
*Zero prestige is A-OK. Well-geared teammates are more fun than decorative plants. We have all the base essentials already.
*Planning to run weekly SF each Saturday; still debating timing due to East/West coast issues.
*Anyone from any VG is welcome to join our forums and use our site to schedule and announce events of a challenging nature.
*Willing to coalition with superteams and other small groups to provide base benefits.