Landlubber

Even though we never really met ingame (the closest we came was when you organized a mass meeting in Atlas Park in honor of Christopher Reeves on the anniversary of his passing), I'm sad to hear you're leaving, but I'm hopeful that it will only be temporary - so on this note, enjoy your vacation from CoH, and see you again when GR is out In the meantime, I wish you all the best, and enjoy yourself with whatever you'll be doing

300 [+1]
Serenity: Those Left Behind [+1] - required reading if you've liked the series and the movie
Star Wars: Legacy "Broken" vol 1 TPB [0] - no rating from me right now, because I'm still undecided - do we really need another "last of the Jedi reluctantly making a stand against the dark side" type of SW story? I've read TPBs #1 and #2, got #5 at home, but have been waiting for #3 and #4 for months so I can continue reading
Absolute DC: The New Frontier HC [+1] - do yourselves a favor and get the DVD with the animated version too, while you're at it (if you're european, you might have to order a region 1 disc like I did, but I consider it worth it)
Watchmen TPB [+1] - duh
Powers vol 1 "Who Killed Retro Girl?" TPB [+1] - read the TPBs in order if you can
Rising Stars vol 1 "Born in Fire" TPB [+1] - written by Babylon 5 creator J. M. Straczinsky; brilliant, this could be an awesome film if done right
Fables vol 1 "Legends in Exile" TPB [+1] - another must-read series; and you'll never guess who the villain is!
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall HC [+1] - very loosely connected to the main story-line, but works very well as a stand-alone series of stories. Plus, the HC edition is a beautiful book.

Can we get a sticky for this thread, pretty please?

I'll take an H) and a I)

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<<

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(psst, and a B)

I'm quite surprised that my name wasn't taken, actually - or maybe it was, and someone from over the pond got something tacked on to their username.

How does this work anyway if there's a naming conflict? Will both of them get a _EU or _NA appended, or just whoever's got the newer account (or whatever criteria they use)?

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Patch Notes for the 19.20090619.5T2 update.

<ul type="square">[*](Europe Only)Addressed a bug that prevented European players from entering the French and German servers. [/list]
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Heh... thanks for that I've been away from the game for the last month (RL got more important), and on coming back I was wondering if there'd been a server merge and Zukunft and Vigilance had been taken down. Couldn't find anything on the forum and announcements though, so I was seriously confused for the last two days (and worried about my MM on Zukunft).

*edit*: just read the announcement about double xp week on those servers. Woohoo - now maybe that afore-mentioned MM will finally get off the ground and into the 20s

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The second one is how I would have written it had someone given me the first lot of info and said "Pad this out so it looks beefier."

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"And you know what you could do as well? You could just add two or three line breaks after every single item to make I15 look even more massive!"

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A few immediate thoughts...

1. Yay!
2. Does this mean I can finally play a MM through the Hero content?
3. If this is going to be a totally separate zone, I guess it'll mean even fewer players in the current zones, which is a bit scary as it's already looking pretty empty these days.

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And as an extension of point 2.: does this mean that each character can now potentially get ALL the game's badges (apart from the temporary ones, like anniversaries)?

and to point 3: depends on how it's implemented really. As I understand it, the new zone is mostly for letting you switch over. But actually I rather hope that they make it so that once you have gone rogue, you'll start at level 1 again and have to build up your reputation from scratch. What would be the point in going rogue with a lvl 50, only to have access to pretty much the same endgame content as before anyway (give or take the occasional TF)?

Did anyone else's jaw just hit the floor?

So THAT's what all those extra Developers have been doing!

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B H M A: Badge Hunter Mission Arc - from what I can see on the US fora, this was created for the badge hunters to identify each others' arcs and five-star them (for the star-related MA badges). It doesn't seem to have worked as intended, per the first post in this thread.

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I submit to you that it worked exactly as intended for most of the participants - just not for the bloke who wrote that post

Well, as for me, a title shouldn't be TOO descriptive, it should make me wonder a bit. Hints about what the story is about are good, but it should be just vague enough that I want to find out more about it.

As to the story in question, how about: A Super-Ordinary Life ?

Oh well, I'll thrown in mine as well then. It's a short one if your toon can handle it... I tried to tone down the stacking mezzes and slows of my custom mobs by tinkering with their powersets, but haven't tested this version much yet, apart from one 9-minute run-through with my lvl 50 Brute. One regular Boss when soloing, no AVs or EBs.


Title: Camera... Lights... Action!
ID: 90822
Suggested Level Range: technically 1-54, but recommended for toons with mez protection to cut down on the annoyance factor.
Description: B-Movie director is looking for A-List Superhuman to star in his latest masterpiece - a teenage vampire slasher flick!
Just a one-shot mission so far, I might add another one or two eventually (doubt I'll get more than that into one arc due to space constraints)
Link to City of Guides entry: http://www.cityofguides.com/ma/view-mission.php?id=82

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IMO it would be a good idea to allow reviewers to edit their reviews and for authors to comment against reviews.

Why? I'll tell you why...

* I realised after posting my 1st comment that there was a minor point that I'd wanted to mention but forgot.. wasn't worth a second review but would have been worth adding to the original.

* Part of the feedback process means that arcs may change - an updated review/rating may be better in this case than an additional review leaving the original (now erroneous) review.

* An author may want to question/clarify something raised in a review (e.g. one of my reviews stating it wasn't soloable due to an EB, where my main comeback is that the mob is an EB so can be downgraded to a boss if soloing by playing lowest challenge level).

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I was just about to post something similar, because that same issue just came up for me. I just added a comment, replying to feedback someone left, but it would be good if the author could edit their original description to add update and change notes.

Oh, and one other thing: will it be possible at some point to view/sort arcs by rating in the overview screen? In that case, I hope 0 gets treated as "no rating" instead of just "abysmally bad", because when I add a comment (as I just did), I obviously wouldn't wan't to rate my own arc, but I wouldn't want to bring down my average either by not doing so

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I'm really enjoying these reviews, so I'd like to step forward and take my lumps.

My arc is #67280, "Whatever Happened To The Cockroach Crusader?" Four missions, mostly unique maps, level 20 up. The villains are a mix of the Freakshow (for space saving purposes) and a mix of custom mobs.

There's something very wrong with Roachman and Roachgirl, a pair of not completely un-bat-like crime crushers. To make matters worse, their arch-nemesis, Day-Glo the Fluorescent Man, seems to have returned from the grave...

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I just gave this one a try and found it really enjoyable. Great story - obviously modelled on 60s-style Batman TV show that turns gloomy (nice HAL-9000 reference there at the end btw).

Only thing that irritated me at the time (but is understandable in retrospect):
tiny casino map + EB that's set to flee at 10% = recipe for mission failure. I almost had him, but got stuck on one of the gaming machines for a crucial 2 seconds, preventing me from firing off that last potentially decisive Air Superiority.

But then, it makes sense story-wise - in fact, the way the story unfolds, he has to get away somehow (I'm willing to bet that if you succeed in that mission, he's escaping after being taken in by the police or something).

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Would be handy if the inspirations simply didn't vanish after being used in test mode. Since there's no reward in test mode why should there be a penalty?

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Actually that's a superb way of giving people an optional "god mode" for testing their arcs properly too. Just pop a non-vanishing Insp a few times to fight the AV / EB so you can check their ambushes or other dependent conditions trigger correctly.

Nice idea Cal!

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Gets my vote too. I have run my own arcs a couple of times then had to break off and go buy more inspirations, as I want the arc to be just on the edge of insanely tough while still being doable.

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Not to mention that this would allow you to test your arcs - or more specifically, your custom EBs and AVs - with various inspiration setups other than the ever popular "just fill it all up with purple". Which in turn should give you an indication as to how balanced they are.

Great idea, I like it too

Am I the only one who thinks that Insps should drop in Test Mode? I just did a quick forum search and saw that the suggestion has been brought up during Beta, but that was about it.

I understand about nothing else dropping and no xp/inf rewarded, and that's of course very reasonable. However, as far as I'm concerned, if an arc doesn't require you to use inspirations (at least during Boss fight or while up against more than one Lt), it's too easy. And if it DOES require you to pop insps, how are you supposed to test it properly without them (especially if it's a longer one)?

Yes I know, you can buy medium and large insps right there in the AE building, but why should you be forced to fork over your hard-earned tickets, AND interrupt the flow of your mission to go and get them?

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2) Probably a bug.

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Not that I know for sure either way, but my g/f played an arc the other day, and failed the mission. When she came out, her contact was lying on the ground, saying something like "Great, now you've done it. We're all dead."

To me that sounds like it was done on purpose - or maybe just a VERY freaky coincidence

Oh, I'd definitely be interested - I just don't have anything to show yet. I literally only used the MA for the first time two days ago; I've never been on TC during Beta, and I was away over the weekend after I14 went Live.

I'm currently working on my first two arcs, but I don't expect to get done with even one of them before next week or so...

But anyway, my global is @Ailar, I can let you know once I publish something (or maybe even when the whole thing is ready for testing)

I wonder, what are peoples feelings about MA arcs that restrict you to to pre-lvl 50?

That question came up for me yesterday as I was getting started on my first own story arc. Basically, for the first mission I need a group of automatons or robots as enemies. At the time the only possible candidates for me seemed to be the Clockwork, but they are only lvl 1-20 (*)
There's also Psychic Clockwork, but they on the other hand are lvl 40-54, and as far as I'm concerned, for balance reasons I'd rather have a lvl 40 play through my story as lvl 20 than the other way around.
Another option is to just use a custom robot group (which I'll need to use anyway from mission 2 on, so it might even make more sense story-wise to go with them from the beginning)

But anyway - I just came across the thread that talked about story arcs that can be used from lvl 1-50, so my question basically is: what are ya'll thinking about arcs that bump your lvl 50 chars down to lvl 20?

As for me, lvl 20 is okay with me, I just don't particularly like to go beneath that. Stamina, you see - I still remember what a pain certain ATs and builds were for me before I got that...



(*) Yeah, I completely forgot about Nemesis at the time, and maybe even about others I still haven't remembered. Let's ignore that for the sake of discussion for now

While I can't remember seeing an official statement about this, I don't see why they wouldn't be. The MA basically is only a fancy GUI for editing them.

(As it happens, I just now had one of my first stories open in Notepad, thinking that I wouldn't have to go ingame if I wanted to do proof-reading and corrections)

Ah okay, thanks for the info

And yeah, pushing out a complex patch like this, which is bound to have some problems left, just before Easter weekend does seem like a strange, marketing-inspired decision...

Thanks for the warning

Saying that, those of my chars for which I could come up with passable bios already have them, however...

Are you saying that you can't put any line breaks into custom MA critter descriptions? How about mission text, etc? Hopefully that won't have to be a wall of text?

(never tried it out on TC, so I'm completely in the dark about the finer details and current bug-status of the MA)

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If you wonder about the number, take a look at my badgesheet in my sig. Ofc if there are any changes to the badgelist at launch, i'll probably edit my badgesheet first.

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And on this note, thanks a lot for keeping your badge sheet updated that promptly. I've been using it since I13, and it's been a great help