Igor_Blimey

I know you've already played it, but 'Vernon von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions" (ID 115174) could do with a review.

Now with consistent level range!

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To me Desdemona looks like she's a backing dancer for Madonna in that black leotard thing.

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Actually, the delectable Desdemona has swiped her entire look from 50's glamour girl, Bettie Page (including boots!)

Try typing "Bettie Page" or "Betty Page" into a Google image search if you don't believe me (not if you're at work, though - I MEAN IT!)

Although I've spotted an error already - you've listed Betty Page's eye colour as hazel, when they're amber in the illustration.

You FOOLS!

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"Hey, let's make a TF were low level players are subjected to unresistable damage most of the time, throw some CoT and Clockworks in there and for some missions, put all three together. Ooo! Ooo! Know what would be fun? Make lots of defeat all missions! The players will like them! And lots of running around the city for no reason at all!"

Wonder what was being smoked at the time...

Worst.design.ever.

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I strongly disagree - SSTF1 is MUCH worse designed...

"Go and clear out this Crey base, filled with nothing but near identical grey Crey tanks. Well done, now the next mission is... exactly the same! And again! And... again! Now, the next mission is only ALMOST exactly the same! And again! Again! AGAIN! Now, for a change, fight some Nemesis in a mission that only lasts about three minutes! Now, back to clearing out those Crey bases! And again! Once more! Now you have to fight the Circle of Thorns and Rularuu forces in the really fiddly annoying Oranbega map FOR NO APPARENT REASON! Now stop."

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It was bad science. Simple as that.

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Mad science would have been more fitting

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No, no, no - OK, he has the delusion that he's the most Evil and Hated man in Paragon City, but there's clearly not enough ranting OR hyperbole to go with his self pity and he'd need to have some sort of Scientific Invention to apply the Evil Results of his Largely Pointless Experiment to. He's clearly stark staring sensible! He wouldn't last a second in the likes of Doctor Aeon or Vernon von Grun's academic circles!

And he never even bothered with a Dramatic Unmasking! The man's clearly a rank amateur to this super villain lark. Why, I bet he doesn't even have Sinister Incidental Music...

This is how his paper should have gone...

'Mwhahahah! Fools! FOOLS! FOOOOOOLLLLLSSSSS!!!!! Little did those unsuspecting City of Heroes players believe that the unrelenting thorn in their sides known as the fiendish, evil Twixt was none other than I, Professor David Myers, PHD!'

Dum dum dudda dummmmm!!!!!

'No one suspected that as Twixt lured villains to their DOOM by the hundred that they were part of a dramatic experiment that I, Professor David Myers, PHD, have chosen to call... The Experiment!'

Dum **** dummm dummmmm!!!!!

'Those buffoons never realised that the gathered data on mildly annoying people on-line would become the basis of my latest, and greatest, invention - none other than the Antagoniser!'

DUM DUMMM DUMMMMM!!!!!

'None will be able to resist my new found power to be mildly annoying in social situations! With the Antagoniser in my power, soon I, Professor David Myers, PHD, shall become the Supreme Power In the Universe!!!!!'

DUM DUM DUMMMM DUM DUMMMMM!!!!!

That's how a Mad Scientific Paper goes...

Actually, would 'porting people into the drones even count as PvP? You wouldn't get credit towards any ratings or the badges or anything - hardly a legitimate PvP tactic if it doesn't actually gain you anything...

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Reichsman's group was called the storm corps he kept them weaker so they couldn't oppose him unless this has been changed in the new TFs

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According to the wiki, the Axis America counterpart to the Freedom Phalanx is called the Amerika Korps.

The Storm Korps were a WWII Nazi super group fighting in Europe, although quite why they'd have such a bizarre composite English/German name is unexplained (they ought to be the Sturm-Korps or something). They mainly fought the Dawn Patrol, although presumably they were also responsible for wounding Statesman at Normandy.

It seems that a Bronze roll is the old Recipe Pool A drop (can be dropped by anyone, usually but not always difficult to sell) - these are yellow (uncommon) and some rare (orange) classed recipes.

A Silver roll is the Recipe Pool B - otherwise known as Door Drops, you get these when you complete a mission. These are all rare (orange) recipes, but again, they're often quite difficult to sell.

Gold rolls are the old Pool C (Taskforce) AND Pool D (trials) - naturally, you're more likely to get a 'good' recipe here as they're harder to get, but there's nothing more annoying than spending 4,000 tickets on something like an unsellable part of Trap of the Hunter or Pacing of the Turtle. The likes of Miracle: Recovery and Numina's Convalescence: Regeneration/Recovery are in this pool.

Note, however, that the likes of Karma: KB Protection, Steadfast Protection: KB Protection and Regenerative Tissue: Regeneration are all Bronze rolls, BUT they max out at level 30. Achilles Heel: Chance for Resistance Debuff (which goes for a fortune on the redside, but curiously goes for next to nothing on the blueside) is a Silver roll that maxes out at level 20.

Wiki Page on Recipe Drops

Thanks for the help, all - I've now added a new Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 with 256MB memory and my computer hasn't exploded!

Not yet, anyway...

I spent yesterday afternoon wandering round Paragon City and the Rogue Isles with everything turned up to full going 'Wow! Look at that!' until I got told to stop.

Some things I noticed:

Those bits of the VEAT costumes that were stubbornly slightly the wrong colour turn out to be polished chrome. My Widow now looks like a T1000!

The pond in the middle of Oroborous is actually a reflecting pool. I've also spotted reflections in the MA building windows and on the Valkyrie sword costume part.

Somewhat unrelated, but 3D Sound appears to default to Disabled. After a year and a half on the game, my surround speakers are now WORKING!

Dark Astoria is really atmospheric - gouts of steam erupt from the sewer covers, the fog now looks like fog and the Banished Pants undead now all have glowing sigils on their chests. Watching a row of blue lights approach through the fog, to resolve itself into a column of decaying zombies trudging towards me made me wish that there was actually something to do in Dark Astoria...

You need to be extremely careful when putting ambushes with an EB/AV fight - this is very often an arc killer. I'd suggest keeping it to a maximum of one per opponent, and making sure that the ambushers don't have the likes of blind or confuse attacks.

Also, test it out with a team - three lots of ambushes set to hard on an eight man team will spawn dozens and dozens of opponents, filling the map and making it an extremely annoying and no fun battle!

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It sounds like you have a PCI-Express graphics slot, 2 of the small PCI-ex slots (I run a sound card in one of those) and 2 PCI slots. I'm very certain you won't have both PCI-EX and AGP and almost certainly there wouldn't be two AGPs.

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Am I right in thinking that the presence of the two short PCI-Ex slots means that the long one is definitely a PCI-Ex Graphics slot? Just making absolutely sure...

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So in short you should be able to fit any of the modern cards with two buts.

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With two buts? By the Lord Harry, Jo-Lo has a lot to answer for...

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1) your power supply is up to the job

2) you have the right and enough power connections from said Power supply

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Well, the only thing I've added to it so far has been a pair of 512MB RAM chips, and there's loads of different sorts of plugs and whatnot in there. Hopefully, the power should be there...

OK, I've opened up the case up and taken a look inside. Once I'd hoovered out all the dust and did some googling until I found that I appear to have a PCI-Express slot and what is either two AGP slots or two PCI slots and two other very short slots which are apparently (but probably not) also PCI-Express slots.

Oh, great Tech Brains of the internet message board, please tell this lowly non-tech what sort of graphics card I require!

Please phrase your answer in terms that can be understood by someone who did GCSE Computer Studies in 1990 and got a grade G. Ta!

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A quick google tells me that this is actually on-board graphics processing rather than a separate graphics card. If your PC has the capability to take a graphics card then that's going to give you an immediate noticeable increase in quality. On-board graphics capabilities aren't really up to most gaming demands now I'm afraid.

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Cheers for that - is there any way of telling if my PC can take a graphics card, without physically opening the case up? Something in control panel or something?

I probably need to clean the dust out of it anyway, but opening it up means unplugging all the cables and I've found that computers really don't like that very much.

Many thanks, oh technically minded people!

Incidentally, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else, but the WW/BM Day Job teleport power now gives charges instead of running on a timer, and is now actually extremely useful to charge up!

Don't know if the Base TP from the Monitor Duty accolade is on a charger too, though...

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Does anyone else hear the Pocket D monkey fight in Sharhead too?

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You can always hear the monkey fight in Sharkhead - by the Natural store guy, if I recall.

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I get demoralised by NO feedback. Like, none except for the people I actually know sort of none. Sure, got a few extra ratings. No feedback.

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Aye, that's what's so annoying about not being able to communicate with the US servers - sure it was nice to get 420 tickets and eighteen plays overnight, but not getting any feedback comments for them left me wondering exactly what people thought of it.

It's also quite annoying for my feedback to end up going nowhere - I like to explain exactly why I voted the way I did, and I like to point out any typos I've spotted.

Why was it changed from emails to tells? Does anyone know...?

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Without knowing what graphics card you're using it's hard to be completely definitive

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It's a nVidia GeForce 6100, apparently...

Split from the Dev's Choice Nominations thread to avoid cluttering that up with nonsense...

Xemulas said:

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Oh, I removed it. Was sick and tired of something I do for recreation in my spare time making me so angry (Getting 'feedback' from people saying things like "I don't understand the story lulz, but it's pretty good lol 3 stars, after it getting to around 40 plays and 4 star average, being praised for the story all the while. Just an example).
Pointless for a badger when people of that caliber can lower your average. Anyway!

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Don't get demoralised, Xemulas - it seems that quite a lot of players never bother to actually read anything in the mission briefings and debriefings, and then complain that the story doesn't make sense without it!

Anyway, getting marked down by people who have actually played the arc is much, much less annoying than the 'players' who are deliberately marking down anything that's appearing high up in the five star arc listings. There's nothing quite so exasperating as getting an arc starting to gain momentum with some really nice feedback (even the Americans were starting to play it!), only for it to get hurled into the Four Star Void with the message 'You have been voted no stars for your arc' without your number of players completing your arc badge making any progress.

I reckon you ought to have to finish the arc before you can rate it - that would save a lot of grief, and might allow something to get into the Hall of Fame once in a while.

A similar question - I currently have 2GB of RAM on my system, would upgrading to 4GB allow me to run the game on maximum settings, or would I have to upgrade the graphics card?

I have no idea what my graphics card is other than 'it's the one that came in the computer', which I'm guessing means 'not a very good graphics card'.

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Well then one can instead say: This weeks recommondations are... [insert names or arcs here].
Don't think a suggestion to play arcs should be punished or the forum posts about it here on this forum would get into problems as well.

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That's pretty much what it does say anyway - it was 'please play the following peoples' arcs to help them get badges' not 'Five Star the following peoples arcs'.

Very few people actually did either, to be honest :P .

It only seems to be Common Salvage that's rising in price at the moment - Rare Salvage has plummeted quite dramatically. Tried selling a Deific Weapon recently? I'm pretty sure that even the Common Salvage will start to drop again as soon as the farmers realise that they can fill their inventory for about 500 tickets with mid-level salvage and get up to ten million for it (prices subject to change, naturally - that 'Inert Gas for 500,000 inf' boom didn't last very long).

Plus, of course, everyone can now always get mid and low level salvage at any time, so the prices are bound to drop sooner or later. As 70 salvage only costs 560 tickets, you can fill your inventory, then refill two and a bit salvage racks in less than one story arc. Or whatever the farming equivalent of a story arc is.

Just a few ideas I had for some cosmetic changes to some powers...

Blaze
Change the name to Blazing Gaze and convert it to firey eye beams.
Reasons: Stylistically it makes more sense to have the shorter ranged but more powerful attacks (Fire Breath) coming from the head-area and the longer ranged attacks coming from the hands. Plus, of course, firey eye-beams would look AWESOME in comparison to the 'just-another-fireball' animation Blaze currently uses.

Boxing
Change the name to Bash and use the left hand Brawl animation instead of the right hook it currently uses.
Reasons: First and foremost, it would save redrawing any weapon every time (off-hand BD attack uses a kick). Secondly, it works thematically for several powers - it would grant Shield users a shield bash power, and AR users would gain a gun-butt bash, effectively a weaker version of the Arachnos Soldier's Pummel attack. Finally, a boxer who only ever uses a right hook is a hopeless boxer.

I know you've played it already, but I've tinkered with it a bit since then and I'd appreciate a proper review...

Vernon von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions
By @ Igor Blimey
Arc ID: 115174
Vernon von Grun is placed in charge of the Arachnos version of Portal Corp...
Intended to be humourous, contains three AVs, an EB and a Custom Group, levels 48 - 50.

With the dual build system, I've found that the PBs are a lot more user friendly.

On one build, I just have a tri-form with as all the shapeshifted powers six slotted - however, he has a lot of powers which he never gets to use, and just using the same four powers all the time gets pretty boring.

The second build is a pretty powerful blapper.

The tri-form is extremely powerful, but the blapper is a lot more fun, although getting Stamina was pretty essential and no one wants a non-triform Kheldian on their team...

Mad Science, you say?

Why not try:

Vernon von Grun's Extraordinary Extradimensional Excursions
by @Igor Blimey
Arc ID: 115174

Featuring the one, true Mad Scientist - Vernon von Grun!


DUM DUM DUDDA DUMMMMM!!!!!

Humbly submitted for review.