JKPhage

I for one am inspired. I'd love to see Tin Mage rebuilt, or a sampling of his "offspring" so to speak. I can easily imagine Lady Grey comissioning a unit of Tin Mage's for the fight against the Rikti, extra points if they have costume pieces we can unlock to be a member of the "Tin Mage Corps".

Also VERY impressed with Ruin's letter, probably most of all as it really drove home that it wasn't just the heroes that were fighting for our world. It was such a threat that everyone layed down their differences and joined hands, regardless of their past. I would love to see something just as dire when the Coming Storm finally rolls in. Something so powerful and epic that the entire world will have to band together and fight for our future.

As for in-game events... I was actually expecting something to happen in game today, though I can see why that wouldn't necessarily make sense. In the next few months though, maybe we'll see something come of the Tin Mage schematics, or some other little tidbit of info. Would love to see a new Vanguard Co-Op TF/SF that'll send you into the Rikti homeworld, possibly to rescue a survivor or survivors that had been held captive all these years? Could imagine a mission the retrieve the Prestidigitators wand from the Rikti. Either way, I'm hoping we get at least a few more letters, would love to see Hero 1's and Ajax's in particular.

Well, I ended up buying it, and I'm very impressed with it's performance. I'm running at max settings out of the box and no slow down. I DID turn bloom down because I couldn't really see much difference between normal and heavy, but that's it. Everything else is cranked to max and high settings and I'm running at a flawless framerate. Ran a full team of 8 and had no slowdown when the powers were flying every which directions. It's been a glorious experience.

Definitely going to upgrade closer to Going Rogue time as I can kind of see an upper limit to how much the machine can handle (i.e. it jerks for a split second when a large open area comes into view) so it won't be able to handle Ultra, but until such time, I'm perfectly content with this. Plus it's running skype alongside COH with a full chat of 6-8 people with no slowdown on either end. Very useful. If anyone is looking to upgrade and you can find one of these still on the market, it's a VERY nice box.

Yeah, that kinda threw me as well when I was trying to look up info on it. The only reason it comes with Vista is simply because it was released shortly before 7 became available. As far as I understand it though, microsoft is offering a free upgrade to 7 to anyone who purchases a machine with vista on the market. I'm going to take advantage of it but with all the complaints I've been hearing about COH arguing with 7 I may hold off on actually upgrading for a few weeks until things smooth out there, though I'm definitely looking forward to the upgrade.

I take it there's no real concensus on whether this will run COH decently? I mean, I'd imagine it will as what I've gather on it is that it's basically a re-branded 9600 with a few small improvements, and this one comes with a massive amount of memory. Considering I'm running on an integrated 8200 with 512 megs of video ram and managed to get a decent performance from nearly maxed settings I've got high hopes for this one, and like I said, I'm planning to upgrade at some point anyway, and when I upgrade to 7 I'd imagine I'll have an even smoother performance since it does away with alot of the background nonsense of vista.

EDIT - And Father Xmas beat me to the post button. So what you're saying is this card is probably not gonna handle COH well, or just not at maxed out settings? I had counted on having to upgrade the power supply just from a review I read of the box when I searched it earlier, so that's not an issue. I did check out the Nvidia page for the 240 and 220 and bother mentioned games like Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 and Spore, which (at least in the case of the first two) are pretty graphically instense, especially compared to COH, so I'm kind of trying to wrap my head around it. Are Nvidia just spouting marketing crap and blowing smoke up my backside or what?

Here's the dilemma people. We have a computer that went on clearance at work when windows 7 dropped, but it was a relatively new machine, has fantastic specs and is just far too tempting to pass up now that it's priced at 750 dollars down from 1000. I'd consider myself fairly knowledgable on computers but nowhere near the level of these people who build their own custom rigs, so I need a hand in determining what's the best route to go here.

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/hp-....html?tag=psum

That's the full specs on the machine. It's got both a Blu-ray drive and a lightscribe DVD drive which are nice amenities (and the machine will handle blu-ray video which is fantastic for me as I like to watch HD content when available, but that's an aside from COH), 1tb harddrive at 7200 RPM, 8 gigs of ram, all fantastic stuff. This suits my purpose very nicely as I like to run skype alongside COH when I'm playing so I can chat with my buddies easily while saving the world, and sometimes I'll even find myself in need of a couple browser windows if I'm trying to remember where a particular badge is or what contact I need to speak with, or something else random. I'm not buying this box STRICTLY as a gaming rig though I do want it to perform well in that area (with the eventual aim of having it run Ultra Mode at top settings when GR comes out, preferably with a flawless frame-rate, I'm a graphics snob).

I know COH isn't the most graphically intensive game out there so for the time being I'd like to be able to play it with settings maxed (or as close to that as possible) without all the frame-rate loss and slowdown I get on my current rig (storebought present from last christmas. It's a slimtower. >_<) so I know I'm not gonna need the world's most powerful card at the moment. However, I'm unsure if the card that comes with the machine standard is any good or if you guys think that it'll be able to run COH to the standards I mentioned. It's got 1.5 gigs of dedicated video memory which is absolutely ridiculous, but does it have the muscle to handle FAA x16, bloom + DOF settings cranked to max and high quality water effects and textures without slowing my framerate to a crawl. I'll admit this is a totally amateur guess but it seems to me that if the card is capable of producing the graphical quality it's really just a matter of if it has enough ram to display all of it without slowdown, so 1.5 gigs sounds wonderous and seems like it wouldn't have any trouble, or am I totally off base?

Either way, I plan to upgrade it closer to Going Rogue when we have some more concrete system requirements for Ultra Mode so I'll be sure that I can run it smoothly (And I know I'll need to upgrade the power supply as well to handle a nicer card), the big question is, until such a time, is this card going to do what I want, and if not, will it at least run COH with decent graphical settings to hold me over until I can upgrade?

Nada on the elec armor thing. I'm trying to make something more akin to Aquaman and that's just pushing it too far from theme for my liking. Energy does seem very tempting as I've never played the set and despite hearing alot of negative rep on it I've also heard people who've played it say it's fantastic and fun. If it seems like a survivable and not entirely hair-pulling combination then I may go with that.

Anybody else? Still wanting to get a few more opinions before I pin down a choice.

Okay, so here's my dilemma. I was poking around the character creator and got it in my head that I NEEDED to use this costume I came up with for an Atlantean/Aquaman style character, and the best idea I could pin down that I'd actually want to play was a Brute with Super Strength, and yes, Leviathan Mastery. I've heard all of the talk that it's a horrible set for anyone but I figure if they bothered to put it in it can't be all that terrible, plus attacking people with sharks and waterspouts is just cool (and thematically appropriate).

This brings me to my issue. I'm one of those people who can't play a character comfortably if they don't make at least a little thematic sense (Power Customization has helped this but I'm still having issues mixing sets. Why does my blaster only use short range fire attacks but lobs ice? That sort of stuff), but I can make this work with power colors. I have Super Strength colored blue to give the impression that she's calling on the power of the ocean, but my secondary is giving me a ridiculous time of making up my mind.

I already have a SS/WP brute so I don't want to use willpower again. I've rulled out Fiery Aura, Electric Armor and Stone Armor for obvious reasons. I'm not terribly keen on Shield because I'm currently working on a SS/Shield tank blueside. I'm leaning in the general direction of Dark Armor, Energy Aura or Invulnerability. The hitch here is that I need something that can fit the theme. Dark works the best visually in my opinion, when I toggle on a blue Obsidian Shield it even looks like there are bubbles floating around the character, and all the rest evoke thoughts of flowing water. Energy Aura can get a similar effect but not as strong, and Invulnerability can be an abstract concept like Super Strength tinted blue, she's just calling on the power of the ocean.

So, of all the brute secondaries, excluding Fiery Aura, Electric Armor, Stone Armor, or Shield, what do you think is the best to use here? I'm looking for something that can survive well and be fun to play rather than a chore, but it has to be able to fit to the theme. If one of the other sets can be tweaked with power customization to look ocean-y then by all means let me know how and if it's going to make a good pairing to SS. Keep in mind also that I've got my heart set on Leviathan Mastery for sharks and coralax guardian, so I'm going to be filling gaps in powersets with those powers. Any help is appreciated.

To answer your question BaBs, yes. They ARE always that brutal. I pop over to massively about once a week to read for updates and news that I might have missed or any specials they might run that would interest me but I avoid the comment link like the plague. It's like Massively is a magnet for all those stereotypical rage!nerds you see in movies who sit in their mothers attic eating mini-pizzas, wearing a towel cape and complaining about how the battle mechanic of CoX makes no sense because it's not based on the standard d20 rules for combat from 3rd edition DnD. (Note I have no idea if this is true, just the best nerdrage I could think of.) They have nothing better to do than sit around and *****.

On the other hand, I'll agree with most everyone else here that we could use and issue after GR that focuses on revamping our existing zones in need of work. While it may not seem like something terribly productive to the development team, it'll make all those zones that we've been looking at for five years look like they got a fresh coat of paint. Especially if a graphical update is included with the package. Looking at the screens from GR, Praetoria looks like it almost belongs in a different game. I'm thinking we could use a remodel of the Atlas statue, some re-draws of textures in hi-res, a few details updated here and there to make them at least close to on-level with the new zones. Then toss in a revamp to how the mission lines work, kind of guide players in the right direction a little better and in those zones that need it, toss in a few new contacts (Kings Row could use one or two to be sure).

Not saying that ALL the zones need to be redone entirely, but some could use the makeover. As people said, DA and Boomtown could definitely be made into something fun. Especially with the events of issue 15 and the 5th Column now wandering the streets I could see Boomtown turned into something similar to Recluses Victory or Rikti Warzone (albeit without the co-op status since it wouldn't make a ton of sense) against the 5th. Have them convert the old Freedom Phalanx HQ into a sort of base of operations and have players fighting for territory against them. Take enough territory and eventually they send in Reichsman to stomp you into submission and you have to rope in a whole zone of heroes to take him down. That'd make for an epic event with mechanics that are already in place. DA could REALLY benefit from some of this as well. If a friend hadn't pointed me to it when I first started playing as a place to hunt masks for a badge and just generally for the fun creepy atmosphere then I'd probably still not have visited it to date, or even known it existed until the name started popping up in zone announcements.

Anywho, that's just my two cents. I know Paragon Studios is going strong and Going Rogue is just indication of that. Heck, if GR flops and CoH proves to not be the cash cow the execs want, didn't they state that the rebranding as Paragon Studios was to show devotion to the CoX franchise? They could just as easily go "Okay, CoX isn't pulling the numbers we want. Think we should start working on CoH 2.0?" You never know what they might do. Either way, I'm looking forward to many many years ahead of CoH-y goodness.

I know this isn't technically a "bug" but I think it's something that warrants mentioning and bringing to BaB's attention. I play blasters (and other such long-range oriented attack users) ALOT, and as was mentioned earlier when one misses, a random node is generated for the attack to home on but I wouldn't call it close to the enemy by any means so much as "in the general vicinity of" your target.

I personally think this should be tightened up drastically as there have been some real "What the hell just happened there?" moments when I've missed. One of my toons may be an ex-supermodel but I don't think he's so mentally deficient as to arch his back nearly parallel to the floor and fire his snipe straight into the cieling when the target is DIRECTLY in front of him. It's especially noticable on snipe moves. And yes, that EXACT situation has happened to me before. The character model contorts in ways that just aren't physically feasable.

I DO think that having the node randomly generated is a nice thing, it avoids the typical video game problem of "Even though your sword BLATANTLY sliced through the enemy, you missed", there are points where it's just ridiculous. I think it would be a great QOL update if the node generation was tightened to a small zone DIRECTLY around the enemy, above and behind them, but within say... a two foot radius. I can imagine my characters missing that badly, but when they fire a full 75 degree angle away from the target? Come on now, we're supposed to be crime fighters. NOBODY would last that long with aim that bad.

I know I'm probably repeating this here, and I don't know if this is now working as intended or not, but I just rolled a new empathy toon last night, female model, powers tinted the same across everything, and she does not play the Healing Aura animation. She just stands there and glows instead of the typical "crouch down and spread your arms" animation. If this is WAI then sorry to clutter the thread, it just looks ODD to me.

Mmmm, I'm of a mind that after GR we'll be getting an issue devoted to pretty much nothing but bases, especially considering they appointed Sunstorm as the "Dev in charge of bases" recently but have had him plugging away on stuff for GR instead of bases.

I'm thinking that when we DO get an upgrade we'll have an option to toggle for "Raid pathing" or "No raid pathing" so those of us who want to build a PVP oriented base can do so and those of us who would rather build elaborate, pretty bases can. Or hell, they may find a way to let you do some nifty stuff and still have a raid capable base for all I know.

Either way, I'm hoping for a ton of new style sets (we've had the same ones since launch, would it kill them to let us build offices or apartment style stuff?) and a revamped building interface. The way it works now I try to move an object and it goes five different ways than what I thought it would. If they implemented a better grid system and a viable y-axis then that'd make it much easier. I'd also be pleased as punch to see a way to use the arrow keys to place objects instead of drag and drop as it would make for easier precise positioning.

Anyway, that's just what I'm hoping for. As is I can't build bases at all for the way the system works, I just can't get my head around it, nor muster the patience. If they can find a way to make it more solid then they just might have a new base builder on their hands.

I'm all for giving us a limited range of colors for Khelds if that's what the devs want to do to keep them within theme, it makes sense. However, just because they have different colors doesn't mean the powers are all that different, but in actual practice Khelds are a diverse little race. Heck, if you try to find two khelds with identical builds you're in for a long hunt. They have so much diversity in power choices and player style that they can play like an entirely different archetype from toon to toon. Heck, I'd probably be more inclined to play them if I could use a spectrum of colors, say warmer oranges/reds ala red shift for melee style attacks and cooler blues/greens ala blue shift for ranged blasts and the like, and support style abilities could be the current green and/or white. I think it'd be really cool to see them use the spectrum of the stars based on what kind of abilities they're utilizing.

Nictus could play the same tune really as I always read their powers as controlling dark matter. Darker purple for melee and a nice deep red for blasts and ranged abilities, etc etc.

I personally think that they just haven't been given it yet for slightly different reasons. The forms COULD be part of it, but if that was the case then they wouldn't have given MMs partial customization, or Stone Armor for that matter. I think it's mostly because Khelds have so many powers in their primary and secondary sets that they would have taken longer to complete the sets for the both of them and kept the devs from completing other smaller sets that could even possibly have power overlaps (Fire Manipulation/Fire Melee) that the majority of the playerbase has access to. If they'd chosen to do Khelds in this first wave and the time spent on them meant that say... fire powers didn't get customization there would have been a public outcry that the epic archetypes that the entire playerbase doesn't have access to got customization but fire didn't. In this way they cranked out most of the general powersets with stated intent to go in and work on epics and power pools for a future update, and I can't imagine that while they're working on those (which have mostly repeat powers from other sets in terms of epics) that they won't at least try to work on Khelds/Spiders. I can imagine the next wave of updates being Epic Archetypes, epics and pool powers, and if we're lucky MM pet customization.

That's just my two cents though, take it as you will.

I skimmed over the thread and just wanted to put in my two cents real quick.

From what the OP said it's entirely possible that what happened went down in a less than hostile manner and his friend just needs to lighten up a bit about "The Gays". Victory is indeed the unofficial gay server, the number of GLBT SGs should tell you that. Q Patrol hosts the annual Q Pride Prom on Victory every year, last year it was an event that turned out so many people we spawned Pocket D 2 and Ghost Widow made a personal appearance along with Lighthouse. Anyway, as I read the first post I take from it that someone could have said to him when he questioned one of the more obvious toons running about (There are a myriad of rainbow costumes and names like Sizequeen and the aforementioned Nova Gina) that someone told him "Yeah, Victory is the unofficial GLBT server, if you're uncomfortable with that then you might want to find another server to play on." I don't consider that trying to force someone off the server or run them out, just a simple statement, like if someone on Virtue was annoyed by RP, they indeed would probably be better off finding another server to play on.

Either way, just from the tone and language used in the first post it seems like the OP and friend might be a little ignorant on the subject, like the fact that alot of us really dislike being called "The Gays", it's not a noun, it's a descriptor thank you very much. But that aside it just seems like the reaction you'd get if a couple drunk frat boys stumbled into a gay bar and then very quickly out. Victory is a painfully friendly server. In all my time playing there I've never had a bad encounter with another player, never had anything raunchy in broadcast, and generally just had a blast playing there. If there IS someone (or several someones) being rude and trying to run people off, they are in the minority and the general populace would be just as glad to be rid of them as anyone else. There's a reason people in general call it the GLBT server but most of us members call it the Family Server. We're all about friendship and tolerance.

Anywho, just had to get that out of my system. Now what's this about hipsters not knowing about the Hanky Code? Really?

As little chance as I know this has of working: Please consider me for beta my beloved Dev Team? *Puppy Eyes* I've got so many power ideas I want to play with that I'd be testing out most everything like a FIEND, and being the exploration buff that I am I'd be testing out hazard zones with low-levels to see if there's anything buggy there. Just keep me in mind.

Shameless ploy aside I do really hope that some of the people with more active subscriptions get picked after all that I've heard of people who've been gone for months/years getting invites for some reason.

Okay, not gonna read all of this thread right now, just gonna pop in my two cents.

LOVING all of this, especially the implication that power-loss when exemping might be fixed as it always irked me to join a team with someone, exemp down and not be able to fly, or effectively play as I had been for most of my recent career because I'm back down to one or two powers. If they've gotta be scaled down in power accordingly to access while exemp'd then so be it, I just want to be able to use them to relatively the same end.

The only thing that's making me a liiiiiittle one edge is the whole "20% more rewards in the lower levels" thing. I know it sounds fantastic and most people love the idea, I do too as it means I can join my friends with higher level toons sooner when I roll a new one, but what about story arcs that can be outleveled? I have yet to play through ANY of the epic archetype exclusive stories because I've been working on other toons and I'm worried that I might outlevel Sunstorm or Allen Deslock's missions and end up at a loss for what's suppose to be happening. Is there possibly going to be a re-adjustment to content that can be outlevelled to prevent this, or if we get close will we just have to switch off XP earning? I know I'm just another voice in the crowd but frankly I think any string of missions should be given the story arc treatment that once you've started it you can always come back to it even if you outlevel the contact. Maybe a little less obtrusive in that you can ignore it if you wish to, but you should be able to finish it. Like Veluta Lunata, I've heard of people getting up to her last one or two mishes and outlevelling her, which royally sucks.

Anywho, just my two cent initial reaction. Overall: AWESOME, just a little concerned about levelling TOO fast for us story-centric players.

Dude, you can make nude caucasian characters as is, I've seen someone in one of my SG's do it across multiple toons. That's yet another beef I have in that we can't use true white costumes with skin. We look like we just left a wet tshirt contest.

I'd fully throw in my lot with a true RGB color picker for all, veteran status be damned. If someone makes something inappropriate then they surely knew what they were doing and that there would be consequences. One of my biggest issues making costumes is trying to find a shade that matches just right to my vision and ending up having to settle for less. Same could go for powers, within the limitations that the devs are wanting to impose, like earth tones for stone powers.

Anywho, this is all just based on the color ideas. Frankly, the new creator looks perfectly fine to me, I see no reason to nitpick it till I see it in action.

I'm not saying I'm entitled to something I'm not, I just don't think it's very fair that they had it sitting out for anyone to walk by and play with at comic-con (which I would have been at if not for scheduling black-outs at work for back to school season) and then they shut it down for those of us who've been chomping at the bit for just a peek at what the customization will entail. That and the fact that BaBs tweeted "Yeah, everyone should be able to access character customization" and then ten minutes later "GTFO if you're not beta" with no explanation at all.

BaBs just gave us said explanation to point out that the creator is apparently suffering quite a few crash bugs and other known issues and they didn't want to open the floodgates on that, which was what alot of us had inferred, but at least they did us the courtesy of letting us know. That works for me, it's all I was after, either access to creator or a reason we were being denied it after being told we wouldn't. Trust me, I'm not alone in this. Test forum was buzzing with irritation, I guess I was the only one who strayed into discussions to bring news.

That's not the point though. Alot of people were excited to try out the character creator so we could see the customization first hand, but then they implemented this block when anybody just walking around comic-con could try it out, whether they played COX or not. Now those of us who have been loyal players and weren't able to drop everything and fly across the country to go to the convention aren't being given the same courtesy. Not to mention the videos and pictures that everyone has seen by now, so it's not like they're hiding anything. It's just poor judgement and completely cowed the excited mood that everyone had about the beta.

Everyone is getting that right now. They put up the patch then took the servers down to implement the "Lock Everyone But Beta Out" patch. Special.