High Beam

You might try the babes of War if your toons are female. I may not be a member any more (retired to semi-active play) but they are pretty much each of the items you mentioned. 5 years with the number one rule being NO FARMING, no powerleveling (exploitive type). Send a shout to em and see it they are your type (http://babesofwar.guildportal.com)

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This video will explain all.

(no, it's not a Rick Roll)
(yes, you may wish it was...)

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Zoinks man. I am so glad i spent my time in Japan drinking. That was . . . distressing.

No fixed Halloween Costume badge Art.

I am still having fun playing peoples created content. The changes that the devs made didnt affect me since I wasnt into farming or lazy story creation. More power to them.

Regarding the arcs that wouldnt start, did you sent them a tell letting them know that they were broken? Cleaning up the litter on the streets is something everyone can do.

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There is no closed beta, only open

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No no, you're doing it wrong. It goes:

"There is no Dana, only Zuul!"

That was a nice read that definately brought back a memory of wo. Nice part was, nobody was spamming for farm invites. Sometimes older is better.

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How can I populate a map with some panicking civilians in addition to the enemies? You know, the one we see in the official missions all the time running around like headless chickens with their arms up...

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I was wondering that as well. They are a flavor addition that I desperately want in my designs. Of course I can imagine people taking it to the crazy degree.

hello all this is my first post here in the MA forums. I published my first Arc last night after working it for two weeks. I havent had a lot of people play it yet but the two peopel that have given me feedback indicated that the enemies used smoke grenades way too much.

the Arc ID is 8814
Save the Cheerleaders: A Babes of War Story.

In it I gave the ole 5th Column an additional trooper who wields tools from the Devices set, specifically the Smoke grenade. I made these cats Lieutenants. They dont show up in every mob but they apparently are a pain to some. I believed it was a nice element and though challenging solo, wasnt too much of a pain.

The question is, is there a way to force a Boss to spawn on the random mobs, on a solo person at lowest difficulty. I was able to trick boss battles to notch down an EB, but the issue here is the general mobs that are dispersed throughout. I really dont want to remove the smoke as a player in the mission because I think it really makes them more challenging.

If anyone haas any suggestions please say so. Also if you are so inclined, give the mission a shot and see if the addition of smoke is too much. I know when you have a large team in there I can imagine there be more chances of it happening (more LT's spawn).

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I'm for the suggestion to give the present spawns GM coding, too. I opened one present in Galaxy City on my newly created Tanker (Lv. 3 at the time) and got Lv. 9 Snowmen from it. And of course, there's the issue of high-level characters ignoring snowmen they could easily defeat, but the people who actually belong in the zone can't. You'd think common courtesy would be enough of an incentive for things like that, but I've been proven wrong in that many times, both in real life and in-game.

I'd also like to see some more variety in the holiday missions, too. Like, what ever happened to the "Steal/Recover the Presents" missions from just after CoV launch?

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Year after year its the same thing and the same complaints. Spawns like this should Con white or orange to everyone. When you get a NAUGHTY the Monsters should also automatically agro on the person who opens it.

But I know I'm wasting my breath... they jhave't listened for 4.5 years now.

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I think the reason they havent "listened" is rather they look at the realistic aspect, which is that many players simply click and bolt. Instant aggro or not, they are out of there regardless. So instead of a zone capped(ish) spawn they have someones high end spawn. If they slapped GM coding on them, like a Rikti Raid or something, people would still bolt and it would still leave a spawn that, if it had been a large team that clicked and ran, a large spawn that GM code or not, the player will still have a real trouble beating. The problem remains the same.

To be honest, the real solution is to have the spawn be the only thing that drops candy canes, on defeat and that other than say Snowball Temps, Jingle Jet or Snowman Build powers or Present inspirations, there is no cane drop for Nice. People would be more likely to clean up their spawns.

Overall I am satisfied with the Winter Event this year. The existance of Dual Builds allowed me to respec into a number of travel powers that aided my badge hunters to complete their OCD with regards to the ski and bobsled runs. I am perfectly satisfied with the drop rate of canes on presents and do not mind the other aspects of Candy Cane collecting.

I did not like what was done to the Winters Gift IO's with regards to dissalowing them to be slotted into the Prestige Sprints. I am well aware of the arguements and such, I am just stating my feelings here.

From the badge angle, I again cannot complain, we got a new one this year and we can get the old ones for new alts with canes. All good.

Realy the ONLY thing I really wish they would do is bring back the frozen water In Paragon (not just in the BNY mission). I miss ice skating outdoors. It was jun and debris hockey is money!

Yeah those more than one missions Badge missions are a pain. OMG I so wish I could have done those instead of Division: Line. I am hoping to get a revision of the guide up soon to cover some of the new content (as applicable).

A good example is the 25-29 Arc. Looks like the "Origin of Power" arc from Percy Winkley is far better (from a quickness standpoint) because even though it lists in the 46-50 section the badges count for the 25-29 range.

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I just want to know if they will freeze over the lakes and stuff so I can ice skate like i did many years back...

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Roger that. I loved when the lakes would freeze over in the City for ice skating. I'm not sure why they stopped doing that.

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Just like in Tom and Jerry! I loved that and miss it.

Synapse! My MM cooked your speedy butt in that mission with the thing

Welcome to the show and I look forward to hearing from you (and Sunstorm) on the great things ahead in CoX.

Hola Sunstorm. Welcome. Be safe and fight hard!

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Nice hook for the Mac user! Thanks for making it available as well. The Valkyrie outfit looks interesting.

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What does it look like. I dont see any pics.

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Mac Gaming? (Not a Rick Roll)

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Funny thing is, the guy in that video is a Mac user. As is John Hodgman, who plays PC in the Apple "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads.

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Yeah, like Hunter Kressel (sp) who did that great Mac "boat Anchor" one. I just thought it was fitting here for humors sake.

The Macworld article that another poster linked makes some good points, and as a whole it may well bring in some new players that will stay, which is a good thing for the rest of us players as well as the company's bottom line. I mean, somewhat jokingly, Mac users are definately more geeky and fanboy/girlish, Hell Woz might roll up a Controller.

Cleaning up the badge UI is nice to hear. For me, the Day Jobs peice is a lot for me, so I can never consider Issue 13 a bust. little things add up. QoL is exactly that Quality. Badge UI clean, TF merits, Day Jobs, the additional bit of content mentioned in the TenTon hammer article, SHIELDS. they add up. I cannot complain, and I havent even seen what is there in Beta. I say to thee Doomsayers, Nay!

Mac Gaming? (Not a Rick Roll)

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I'd love to get that background image without the text for my desktop.

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/signed

The image is pretty and if that quality of art carrys on thoughout the site, bonus!

Thank you for this brief yet informative guide.

Let me talk about the 2008 Halloween event. Before I do so though it should be understood that I am a badger, and a completist in that sense, but I am also not OCD and have realistic expectations. I have one (1) Hero Badger and one (1) villain badger. Getting ANY badge on any other toon to me is purely optional and something I don’t freak out over. On my main badgers I have accepted that I am never going to earn the top tier healing badges or damage taken badges without farming.

First the good.

The Zombie Apocalypse addition to the annual Halloween festivities is a brilliant addition. From the red skies and the spooky music to the animations of the undead rising from the ground, they are all fantastic. The new badges have great art and are fairly easy to get, even for a soloist who might intentionally avoid the large lag-cluster fights.

The change to door knocking for Trick or Treat has made things quicker and seems to have lessened door camping. Good job there. Also the increasing of spawn size to match the team size. Nice.

Now the not so good.

There are issues. Some of which have been pointed out in this thread already and some that date back to very first year that some of these things were introduced which have been problematic for me.

The disturbingly low spawn frequency of Spirits from door spawns is really a problem. I have the good fortune of having it on both my badgers from last years event, but seeing the frustration in my team (SG) mates yesterday some of whom are new to the game and some new to badge collecting really saddened me. We spent 2 ½ hours in Independence Port and 4 ½ hours in Talos knocking on doors (all of us were below level 30 and I was on a non-badger toon trying to help them get their badges). In that time we saw 2 spirits and one was actually killed by someone not on the team, who literally said he was sorry after the fact but he just needed a few more spirits to get the badge.

Also the lack of seeing Boss classed foes spawn with any sort of regularity. Between that Talos/IP ToTing mentioned above (7 person team), plus 3 hours in Grandville (8 person team), plus around 3 hours in PI (8 person team), I saw ONE (1) Boss spawn, and that was a Vampire Lord and that was in Talos, when I was door knocking SOLO with my DB/WP Scrapper.

Now some have complained about the lack of Tier 3 Drops. It was essentially candy in the bag, which is one of the things Halloween is about. It was like getting Snickers Mini’s instead of crappy candy corn or carmel apples. The one Boss that I did face, DID drop a Tier 3 and I got a number of Tier 2’s from popping Lieutenants, so perhaps there was a shift to sync them up with the foes faced, but seeing as the amount of Bosses I saw, that’s pretty lopsided.

And that brings me to the major problem here. With no candy-based incentive (Tier 3’s), no reward for teaming with a large group (Boss spawns), and no reasonable chance to earn all of the Door knocking badges in even a marginally unreasonable time (Spirits), you’ve caused an essentially fun, diversionary event to become a grind, and a grind with no real reward.

Another complaint from me, is that you still haven’t put in the effort to add graphics to the three (3) Halloween costume badges (Fashionable, Clothes Horse and Ostentatious). You clearly sat down and put some thought into Halloween badge art (the 4 Apocalypse badges), so it’s not like you WERENT looking at it and actually working on it, applying people power and resources. Why are these badges still filled by crappy placeholders? I know it seems minor but because it is so minor is why it makes no sense that it hasn’t been fixed, like a year ago! It looks terrible and to be honest, smacks of apathy.

And then there’s the other shortsighted, still not fixed, annoying frustrating PITA aspect of the Halloween event.

Jack in Irons.

This crap with the whole 1 in 10 chance of Jack spawning needs to end. When this portion of the event was revealed in 2006, the badges for popping Jack and the Unseelie court were new. Everyone was working to get this so there were tons of teams whose sole function was popping Eochai to eventually get Jack to spawn. Last year things were different, it was already a whole lot harder to find a team that was dedicated towards this end because a great deal of the badgers, the type of player who will drive a team for that sole function, already had theirs and were now focusing on other things. This year its worse. I watched an Eochai spawn in Port Oakes, stripped already of its Unseelie remain in place ALL DAY. I could not gather people to take it down. I tried elsewhere in Cap Au Diable and got a team to do it once, then when I said lets keep hunting to get Jack to spawn, they all rolled out. So there a new Eochai spawns and gets quickly stripped of its Unseelie and is left alone. I broadcast and everyone asked if the Unseelie were still there, when I said no, nobody joined. So the amount of people willing to grind for hours trying to generate a Jack spawn are down radically. This means less chances of seeing Jack and of seeing Unseelie for newer badgers. This is a natural result of reducing the value in XP and influence of GM takedowns to where you have to go through a huge amount of effort, hours of effort, for ultimately very little XP gain and little reward and you are playing dice with the chance to get the spawn you need. It dissuades the casual player, it dissuades the power gamer it dissuades pretty much most badgers.

The Winter Lord redesign is a good example of maximizing opportunity, and to be honest should have been worked into the way Eochai/Jack ran. There needs to be a spawn timer. A set time after which if ole Pumpkin boy or Jack haven’t been taken out, they despawn and spawn elsewhere. This allows a periodic refresh of spawns for those who are seeking Unseelie (badge problem solved), and allows a more frequent chance for jack to spawn (Jack badge solved).

I know it’s too late this year. The code is in and the devs aren’t going to change it this late. That I accept, as I said, I am a realist. But seriously, this needs to be resolved before next year. City of Heroes/Villains is not a game where there are millions of players, not even a million, not even 500K. This is a game with about 250K players, of which perhaps half (and that is being generous and yes I am assuming) are more that a few hours a week players. I don’t know what the ratio of new players to veterans is but it is this kind of event, one that’s supposed to be fun and goofy and extra and targeted towards the casual player that should not be where ludicrous standards are applied. You want to reap the rewards of Set IO’s or crafting badges or Ouroboros badges, groovy, that is where the long-term committed types prosper over the casual player. But this is supposed to be a goofy extra, fun with friends. And its not that fun when you are grinding for hours for low XP/inf in the hopes that a different low XP/Inf monster will spawn giving you the badge you want.

I love the Halloween event, but seriously, beyond the Zombie Apocalypse, the devs need to tweak the old to make it new.

I tried, I really did. I tried to read the entire berdillion pages. I made it to 8.

I am a badger. I am a 51 month vet. And I like to have as many badges as I can. The problem with a lot of badgers in here in this thread is that they want them now. They want them immediately. I have a ton of alts. My badgers (1 H and 1 V) hit 50 ages ago. I essentially drag them out when there is a new badge or some new content. So resting them in a day job works for me. I have a heap of other toons to drive up the levels.

I am glad these arent instant gratification badges. I am glad they take time to earn. and I hope they dont cave and shorten the duration required to earn them.

The way it's meant to be played . . . oh sorry, wrong officially supported video card manufacturer.

Crispy Gamer's strip Backward Compatible had this one today!!

MUST . . . SELF . . . DESTRUCT!!!

Crispy Gamer's Web Site (For Props)

Backward Compatible