Jophiel

I probably have about 18 months of actual play time under my belt (not counting lengthy breaks) and was happy to hit 40 over Double XP weekend. So hitting 50 will be an accomplishment for me

I made a decision not to use the AE for leveling my first 50 so I could know the story arcs, task forces, zone layouts, etc. I can't promise I'll hold so firm for my 2nd, 3rd, etc real run up to 50.

I had to do other stuff most of the weekend but managed to get my Defender from 37 to 40 and a blaster from 12 to 17. I was mostly happy about the Defender since that's my main and I'm slowly climbing up to 50.

Gorgeous pieces. I'm only envious that I missed the promotion but look forward to seeing if you decide to make them a regular (if not bargain basement) offering

I started playing around launch and then took a long extended break until a month and change ago. When I returned, my highest level character was 18 (now 37). It seems that everyone I talk to in the game is on their -nth trip up to 50 and going through the motions.

I don't start groups because I usually feel unqualified.

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DA's inconveniences are minor and easily overcome.

And I don't say that just because I own a vacation condo in the Rami Arcade. =)

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When I entered Dark Astoria and saw that the hospital zone was named St. Eligius, the zone won a special place in my heart.

It's still a dump, though.

More facial hair options for Naturals would be nice. A decent pencil mustache or a stereotypical "French" looking mustache. Currently the closest we have is the ridiculous "handlebar" mustache that looks like parasitic worms growing out of your face.

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Distinctively Mutant-y?

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I guess what I meant was that anything you could have as a mutant, you could just as easily explain away via a science or magic origin. "Mutant" is really just "science in the womb". But, where science & magic have unique looking things such as test tubes and lab coats and runes and witch's hats, there really isn't much I can think of that distinctly says "Mutant!" and not "Demon summoned from the other realms" or "I was trapped in the Gamma chamber when it went off".

Natural, I'd like to see more "low tech" melee weapon options. Things like kitchen knives, straight razors, broken bottle, tire iron, chainsaw (even if non-animated), machetes, etc.

Mutant, I guess more bestial options would be nice. "Mutant" is so ill defined that it's hard to think of anything distinctively mutant-y

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Tanks should aggro the mob to them and try to keep the aggro from most people, especially the Defenders

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This, I agree with. But, to elaborate:

Controllers should stay back and use their mob control abilities to keep critters away from the Defender

Blasters should hang back and burn down ASAP any mobs who the controller fails to keep away from the Defender.

Scrappers should stay close to the Defender, in order to quickly jump upon any mobs which come too close to the Defender.

Also, everyone on the team should be dressed as scantily-clad women for times when I... I mean, the Defender... is not auto-following the tank and actually looking at the screen. With the new Science booster, there's no excuse for dropping the ball on this one, people!

I've had good luck on my 36 Rad/Rad by just typing "No AE, No Blind Invites - Rad/Rad" into my team field, setting it for "Looking for Any" and then just doing my own solo missions. I nearly always get at least one invite, if not a couple throughout the evening. Sometimes for a radio missions or actual mission arcs or a task force or... something. But I rarely log off having felt lonely all evening.

This is on Victory.

I have my team message field set on my lvl 35 defender on Victory to say "No AE - No Blind Invites", turn on the active "Looking for team" flag when I start playing and have managed to get into groups almost every night I felt like being in one. Sometimes arc missions, sometimes radio missions, sometimes a task force invite. But I almost never find myself lonely the entire night.

I do agree with people who want the AE building out of AP/GC/KR but I can't go so far as to claim that it's killed the game. At least not my game.

I've never visited a detective (aside from bank jobs) after getting the scanner. Not even when entering a new zone for the first time.

FYI (from a gameplay point of view) - Mutant origins get boned on enhancement drops later in the game when there's no Mutant origin criminal factions (lots of magic/sci/tech though!).

Depending on how you go about advancing your character this may or may not matter to you.

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Around level 45, I saw my first Mako summons. This massive coral monster with a huge freakin' hammer! I was so sold on the look, I didn't care what he did. I talked to the guy in my group who summoned him at length on his coolness. The next two levels felt like forever. I wanted my own coral beast so bad!
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I was so confused and angry I just sat there looking at my new abomination. Thin as a rail, ugly, no hammer, no weapon at all in fact... Something ran by and he shot a pink mind beam out of his head... I nearly cried.

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I think I hurt my chest by suppressing laughter at my desk

Oh, as far as antialiasing goes, do you mean my card settings or in the game? I tried to look for in-game settings but didn't see any under Video. I just now found card settings in the "ATI Control Center" and jacked it up to 4x. I'll have to see if it makes a difference (positive or negative).

Ok, I see the problem. I screwed up typing in my resolution. It's 1680x1050. which is the native resolution for the monitor, an Acer AL2216W.

I didn't realize that I mistyped it before. It's people like me who make tech support jobs difficult.

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Wait... Are you sure that's 1060x1050? That's almost square. NO monitor has that kind of proportion.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that I cropped the images. I was focused on the character/citizens themselves and not the surrounding landscape.

Consensus seems to be that I'm just not used to seeing the game the "right" way. I'll need a couple visits to the cstume shop since some of my characters were made with the old view meaning that I used "thin" heads to make it look correct and now they're really thin looking heads

I think the globe looks round. You're probably right and I'm just not used to seeing it the "right" way. I just needed a second opinion.

I just installed a new video card into my aging system and fired up CoH. Runs wonderfully now at 1060x1050 as far as video lag and stuff goes. Resolution looks a bajillion times better than it did back in the day when I was running at (I think) 1280x720.

But everyone is taaaalllllll....

Here's what my character used to look like on my screen
Here's what he looks like now
Here's some passing civilians

Is this what it's supposed to look like and I just need to visit the costume shop and lower the leg slider to the bare minimum and push out the body sliders to widen him out? Or am I seeing distorted graphics? I was trying to eyeball if Atlas's globe looked properly spherical or not but I was hard to tell. But I suppose the wheels on the truck in the last image look "right" even if the people all look like supermodels on the catwalk.

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Current queue:

137561 "Ctrl + Alt + Reset"
181165 "The Case of the Late Richard Faraday"
209473 "Standing Within the Mists"

[/ QUOTE ]Standing within the Mists is actually due for a pretty substantial overhaul once I15 comes out so if you're short on time, feel free to pass on it. I appreciate your offer but you won't be running the "finished" product anyway.

Cat ears!

Thanks again for the input. I think I might re-do the final mission to have more of a Haz-Mat "First Responder" feeling as you describe and use the "Blasted" types as placed mobs ("bosses", patrols, whatever). I like them existing since they give the feeling that your villain messed up their day something solid but I was never completely at ease with a building full of OfficeRage super-freaks. I think they're a lesson in "less is more".

Posted it in the big "Show off your costume" thread but I have a hero based off of the notion that Ponce de Leon located the Fountain of Youth and became a DB/Regen scrapper.

Pity there's no way to even come close to faking a conquistador helm. Believe me, I tried.

Just a couple notes to clear up some plot points and give a little feedback. Nothing really to "defend" but just give what I was thinking in case you (or someone else) has an alternate view on why it does/doesn't work. Thanks for the review

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And they're letting Council members work in their warehouse...this place might have worse security than MAGI.

[/ QUOTE ]The Council warehouse was a separate entity from Magewyn (or MAGI, obviously). The idea was that you had Lily keeping an ear to the ground regarding the poison and her lead brought you to the Council.

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So what am I doing sifting through it? ((no interact text)) Eh, might as well stick the bomb here, doesn't look like anybody cares about this stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]Whoops... something to fix.

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Even though I look nothing like the guy in the picture, and there aren't exactly a lot of women in the council...oh hey, look it's a key card. You'd think the magnetic strip would give that away...apparently whatever Lily's on is affecting her perception as well as her memory.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, Lily is intentionally... erm... perceptively challenged. Hence her asking suggesting that it might be a discount card the crux of it isn't so much to sneak in under disguise but rather to know (A) where the base is and (B) to open the front door.

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So this brilliant Council scientist is a Warwolf? Funny, I always thought they'd pretty much degenerated to a near-bestial state.

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I look forward to I15 when I can set levels. Unfortunately, the only Council mobs who span 1-54 are warwolves and Arch Villains. Come to think of it, I should have just created a custom. I think I shied away from that because it's hard to make a convincing Council without the authentic Council bits & bobs. I faked it up for the NPC you come across but you only see him for a second. I didn't think it'd work as well for a boss you're really looking at.

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So I trigger the bomb, and cause all kinds of chaos. Which, somehow, I can see even from inside a Council base. Well, I guess they have cameras all over the city or something.

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3rd person narrative, really.

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And apparently I only have 45 minutes to do it in...or what? The gas is going to dissipate? The rescue squad is going to finally come up with bio-hazard suits? The super-powered robot squad is going to show up? Why am I on a time limit?

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The antidote only lasts so long. I'm almost certain that's in the text.

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What's this "Urn of Jubilee" this Blasted Hero was supposed to guard?

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That would be me changing the name of the objective partway through creating the arc and then missing an instance of its name in the revision. Thanks for catching that. Although, the original intent was that the object was an urn supposedly containing soil from the Garden of Eden (The "Book of Jubilees" being the name of an alternate accounting of Genesis). I was making a newbie character once and was visiting MAGI and saw that they had the same urn sitting there with a plaque saying it was water from the Well of Furies and shifted it to that to make it slightly more canonical. I think I'm going to go back to the Jubilees thing since, as you point out later, there's not a whole lot to unlock about a vase of water whereas tapping the power of some dirt might be a little trickier.

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No big heroes trying to stop me, nothing. Well, I got the urn, but it was a bit anti-climatic.

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Another thing I'm waiting on I15 for. I had tried to make sure the boss was between you and the objective but apparently it's not working for me. I understand that we'll be able to chain the appearance of clickies to boss defeats in I15 so that's what I really want to do. You are, however, not the first to say that the final mission is too easy (despite me trying to fix that) so I'll have to work at it harder. I think I'm a little gunshy of super-ultra-monster custom mobs and so erred on the side of caution.

It seems that you did ultimately enjoy the arc despite its warts and I really appreciate you giving it a run through and your opinions so I can polish it up further.

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15) If Chris Jenkins were ever kidnapped by a villain; do you think a single hero would lift a finger to help him?

[/ QUOTE ]*Cough*Lookitmysig*Cough*

I've won several CC's so I know they can't all be rigged. But I've also been to ones where all the winners were pretty lackluster costumes with the same SG tag as the sponsor. Not that *I* didn't win but there were much better costumes in general.

Can't say I sweat it much. I pretty much just attend CC's as a social affair, to see some potentially interesting outfits and make small talk while we're all standing around. If I walk away with a couple million influence, it's just a bonus.