Large_Man

This whole system is just confusing and unintuitive.
They said that you're supposed to get your points on the date your billing cycle turns over or whatever, so if it turned over in September, you'd get nothing since you already got your September points. Ok, that's fine and dandy, but my cycle turned over on the 1st, and I renewed my VIP status yesterday (tried to do it a week ago, but technical issues caused it to not go through). I haven't gotten my points yet.
What's concerning me now, is, does this mean I'm supposed to get my points at the end of this month's billing cycle? Well, the end of this cycle for me will be in November. So if all the other info is accurate, then does that mean the points I get then will be November's points? What happened to October's points? Does the fact that I counted as a Premium player for several hours between the end of my last billing cycle and when I renewed my account somehow prevent me from getting points for this month?
And as someone else pointed out, what good does it do anyone to get their points at the end of their billing cycle? Especially if they can't maintain their VIP status for the following month. And if so, would they even still get their points, since they're no longer a VIP at the point they'd get them? If not, what does that mean for those of us who prefer to renew our accounts manually rather than continuous billing?

Honestly I wish they'd stop beating around the bush and come out and explain to us exactly how this system is supposed to work, because the small amount of info they've given us isn't enough. If there's a bug in the system, then they should just come right out and tell us, so that way we at least know that the reason we're not getting our points for this month is because of a bug, and not because of some weird convoluted rules the system has that they're not explaining.

I don't really get why people are against the idea of adding some extra dialogue options to the Graves arc to compensate for additional character types. I mean, I know it can be done, and done easily, because they already DID it in the arcs before Graves'!

I mean, look at the very second mission of the new arcs. Interrogate a Longbow Prisoner. There's three simple options; Break his arm, Break his leg, and Describe to him what you could do to him. Just three simple options, but they allow for a variety of character types. Is your villain just the standard variety of mean? Break his arm. Does he prefer to cause intense levels of pain or display his strength? Break his leg. Is he the non-violent, intellectual, or psychological type? Describe what you could do to him. It's so simple, yet it allows for more than just a single type of character.
And the same goes for several of the other choices in the other pre-Graves arcs, like what to do with that one top-hatted villain in the Longbow Base, or how to deal with Lt. Harris after he breaks down.

The only thing that really confuses me is, if they were doing so well with these sort of choices beforehand, then why did they suddenly stop once you reached the Graves arc? Why suddenly shoehorn your character into a single role now, after so many arcs before then let you decide what kind of character to play? That's really my issue with the arc. It's not so much that they shoehorn you into acting a specific way, that I can deal with- it's that they just sort of spring it on you from out of nowhere, after letting you decide how your character acts all the way up to that point.

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I constantly have email from "empty" but that doesn't stop more from coming.

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On that subject- I've noticed that whenever I get huge clumps of e-spams, like 80% or so of it is all from "empty". Couldn't they make it so that when a character/account no longer exists, all their sent emails are automatically wiped? It seems kind of stupid that an RMTer's spam gets to linger around long after they themselves have been ejected from the game.
Plus it would drastically reduce the number of times people would have to hit the Delete button.

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I also concur that making email something you can opt out of would go a long way towards solving the spam problem. Not only would a very large portion of the player base have the problem disappear the moment they disabled email, I think the minority who left it on would suddenly become far too small a market to be worth bothering with.

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Except that if they make it something that can be turned off, they'll "helpfully" add a warning to the sender that the recipient has opted out of email. Then the next step is for the spammers to grab your global handle, and send you global tells at all hours of the day or night. What do you do then?

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This. Very much so.
If you give people an option to not recieve email from people who aren't on your friends list, and you don't put in any kind of warning message telling people that their emails aren't reaching you, then RMTers will have no clue whether their emails are actually reaching their recipients or not. If they don't know that their spam is being blocked, then they might not be so likely to change their spamming strategy to something else.

And on the odd chance that they actually do start resorting to tells or broadcasts or whatnot, why couldn't they just implement an active "censor" feature that automatically blanks out the name of the offending websites, like with the swear filter, only mandatory?
And to avoid the spammers simply adding spaces or punctuation to bypass the filter, they could set it up so that the filter checks specifically for the letters of the offending sites, in order, regardless of having letters, punctuation, or spaces between them. The spammers need to be able to send out the correct web address in order to get any actual business, so they have to have all the letters in the correct order or their victims won't know where to go.
True, they could always try something weird like putting the name backwards, or garbling the letters and adding decoding instructions or something like that, but I severely doubt that anyone stupid enough to buy inf from these verminous scum is going to have the mental capacity to really figure out the name of a website if it isn't just spelled flat out.

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This assumption is not restricted to AE.

A week or two ago I felt like teaming, so I hit broadcast and got a team together. As it happens the first mission I had lined up was "Rob the Mercy Bank", and I mentioned that in broadcast to let people know I wasn't forming an AE team.

Everything was going great until someone grabbed the money. Suddenly team chat looks like this:

Player 1: Oh no, someone grabbed the money!
Player 2: Exit quick!
Me: What?
Player 1: Don't kill the guards!
Me: But...

Several of the team run for the exit, and the rest of us are taken out by the now overwhelming security. Once everyone is either outside or faceplanted...

Player 3: What happened?
Player 1: Someone grabbed the money. We'd have completed the mission if we defeated the guards.
Me: Um... I wasn't planning on farming it...
Player 1: Really?
Me: No.
Player 1: Why not?

On reflection I realise that the Mercy Bank is a very popular levelling tool for lowbies, but at no point during recruitment or during the mission itself did I, or anyone else, use the word Farm. Having to explain and justify why I wasn't farming it was something I could have done without.

So it's not just an AE problem. It's just more pervasive in AE.

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I totally feel your pain. I had a similar experience on my Corruptor like a year or so ago.
The leader basically sent me a tell saying "hey, care to join a low-level team?" with no mention of the words "bank" or "farm".
Having never heard of the bank mission being a popular farm, and conditioned by the normal game to automatically grab glowies if no one else is around to do so, I grabbed the money and later was summarily b***hed at by the team leader, despite the fact that not a single mentioning of "farming" was made during the entire mission. He basically ranted off about how I should have "assumed" that we were farming the mission...

Also, I've been away from the game for a while - what the hell is this "meow" nonsense I keep seeing sprouting up all over the place?

Lately I've been experiencing a recurring problem with CoX.
Every so often, when I log in on a character, I notice that suddenly all the major geometry is missing from the zone. Mostly buildings and other large structures, although the ground and lesser details like chimneys, balconies, fire escapes, etc. are still visible. Once this happens, the only way I've found to fix it is to completely log out and then log back in.

I've been experiencing this problem since back in around I12, but back then it was extremely rare when it happened. Since then I've taken a break from the game, and now that I'm back, this problem shows up frequently. It's really annoying to have to either completely quit the game and log back in, or else run around in a world of invisible buildings.
Has anyone else been experiencing something like this?

Ugh.
Reminds me of the Ernesto Hess TF I ran a long time ago. We wound up waiting twenty minutes for the leader, who had mysteriously gone AFK inside the (completed) mission map after the rest of us had exited. A couple people quit, but most of us didn't want to have all that effort go to waste.
We were all about ready to finally quit ourselves when the guy finally comes out of the mission, and casually mentions "oh, I walked away from the computer and forgot I was on a TF".
The resounding chorus of facepalms could be heard for miles.

What is the point of the Traveler accolade? It gives you the exact same power as the Dimensional Explorer day job. It's utterly redundant that the power for the accolade is the same thing as the power given by one of the requirements for that accolade. I mean, shouldn't it at least be a different jet pack, like a faster one or something? As it is it's rather pointless.

Hooray! My AR/Thermal Corruptor can actually kill things now!

Seriously, the buff to Assault Rifle makes the set a lot better overall. Before it just seemed like there was this huge, unnecessary delay after every attack, and now that's gone, so the set flows together a hell of a lot more soothly.

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...limiting SG salvage bins to 30 to prevent hoarding is ludicrous.

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Especially given that the racks still hold event salvage, and a lot of SGs/VGs stored A LOT more of that than just 30 pieces.

I've done The Daedalus arc, and the Mercedes Sheldon arcs on both heroside and villainside; haven't gotten to Airlia yet.

I agree with what some others have said, Daedalus's missions seem a little bland, and it really makes no sense for all these modern villain groups to suddenly show up in ancient Europe. Time travel should not be such an easy thing for people to get ahold of.

As for the Midnighter arcs, I can't help but notice the severe contrast between heroside and villainside. Heroside, the arcs were very enjoyable, and there were enough missions to go around. I especially liked the Magic Man, I thought that boss fight was really well done.

But villainside? I can barely call that an arc at all. A 10-person hunt mission, a mission inside one of those tiny casino maps, a fed-ex, and one outdoor instanced mission; what the hell? That's like one-and-a-half missions worth of content there, and it's not even well-written. I mean, seriously;

"A magical deck of cards has been sold to a member of Longbow. No wait, it's a fake. The Carnival has the real deck. You get it back. The end."

Wow. Riveting. So, what, the Carnival is going to unleash the deck's awesome power to take over the world?? No, they just sort of... have it. They have it, and you need to get it back because,... it doesn't belong to them. That's it. They don't even really say what exactly the deck is supposed to do at all until after you get it back, and then, it.. just casts some sort of curse. That's it.

Whereas heroside, you've got:
-A magical cassette player that causes anyone who listers to it to break into total chaos; the woman who has it is attempting to cause world anarchy.
-A magical watch that lets the holder stop and rewind time as much as he wants, even letting hm completely undo his own defeat on multiple occasions.
-A magical crown that makes the wearer a master tactician and strategist; a Warrior boss has it, and is using it to take control of the entire faction.

So what the hell? Heroside gets three whole arcs worth of awesome stuff, while villainside gets 1.5 missions worth of blah? What gives?
Why does heroside, which already has tons of content available, get a buttload of shiny new missions, while villainside, which is in desperate need of new content, barely gets anything?
Now, I'm not one of those people who are convinced that the Devs hate villains, but with crap like this going on, I can't help but feel they might be somewhat biased.

I was grossly dissapointed with what new villain "content" I have seen, I'm hoping Sister Airlia provides a little better.

Seriously, 8 merits for an SO is ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous is the fact that story arcs don't award them anymore. Seriously?? Story arcs aren't even worth a single enhancement??
The way things are now, it takes like 2-3 story arcs just to get enough merits for one enhancement. Yet, most of the enemies in those arcs are going to be dropping a ton of enhancements on their own, so how the hell are they suddenly so valuable that they can't be given out as arc rewards?

Subjective:
I know I said in a previous post that I sort of liked the system, but since then I've changed my mind.
The merit system just feels... wrong. I can't exactly put it into words.
It's like, the game was great before, not overpowered or anything, very well balanced. But now for some absurd reason, we suddenly have to grind for our rewards, instead of them being actually *rewarded* to us.

Having to grind for the sake of "phat lewt"?? That sounds a lot like some of the other big MMOs out there, and is one of the main reasons why I play CoX instead of them. I don't like that the game I enjoy is slowly being converted into a total grind-fest MMO like those others, who shall remain nameless.
I like the idea behind the system, the general concept is pretty appealing, but I just don't feel that it was implemented very well. It just seems... forced, sort of.

Server: All
Character: All
Zone: All

Bug Description: Randomly attacked by nothing.
A number of my characters, while traveling to missions, have suddenly taken large amounts of damage out of nowhere. There was no animation of any kind, and none of the missions had scripted ambushes, the character just suddenly had a big red number pop up over them. Many of these instances took place in zones where the character was vastly higher level than the maximum level for enemies in the zone. Looking at it in the combat log, there is a message reading "Something attacks you for XX.XX damage!".

Server: Guardian and Protector
Zone: N/A
Character name: Mr. Gigantic, Prototype X-32
Time: N/A
Location: N/A
Mission: N/A
Mission Contact: N/A
Bug Description: Two of my villain characters somehow got the Criminal badge early. Neither of them is level 50, neither of them has been logged out for 21 days total, and neither of them has used up 21 bars of Patrol XP. One of them used maybe 2 bars, the other one hasn't used any. The badge is supposed to be awarded for either using up 30 bars of Patrol XP, or spending 30 days total logged out on a L50 character. Neither character has filled any of those requirements.
I've hear the numbers were reduced to 21 instead of 30- if that applies to this badge as well, then they haven't used 21 bars of Patrol XP either, nor have they been logged out for 21 days total.

I haven't played up a Shield character high enough to experience every single power, but from what I have experienced, and from what I've seen on the numbers listed in-game, the set is kind of lacking compared to other armor sets. Particularly for Tankers.

I believe there are 3 main problems for this.

1. Phalanx Fighting.
While a good idea, in practice you're not that likely to have teammates that close to you for a long enough time that the defense bonus is viable. Squishies prefer to stay clear of the heart of the battle, and scrappers tend to be all over the place. Other Tankers may stick together, but there's also the fact that you and they are going to be surrounded by baddies, meaning there's not really enough room for teammates to fit in the radius well. And without the extra defense provided by this power, you're left with just a measly 15% total defense.
A solution would be to slightly increase the effect radius, so that the power is more likely to catch allies in it.

2. Defense Resistance.
The amount of Defense DeBuff Resistance is somwhat low, second only to Willpower (which doesn't rely on defense all that strongly). It hould be at least brought up to match the other sets.

And 3. One With the Shield.
As far as tier 9 powers go, this one is fairly underwhelming. It provides a moderate buff to Max HP and Endurance Recovery, grants powerful mez protection, and gives enough Damage Resistance to... bring the set up to par with Invulnerability?

That's not right. With OWtS active, L50 unslotted, the set has a total of 45% Resistance to Smashing/Lethal, 30% Resistance to everything else except Psionic, and 15% positional defense (without any allies in PF's radius).
Invulnerability has 45% Resistance to Smashing/Lethal, 20% Resistance to everything else but Psionics, and 10% Defense to everything but Psionics. And this is without Unstoppable active.

So with the tier 9 active, the set overall only has 10% more Resistance and 5% more Defense than Invul? Once again, that's not right. It basically makes you an Invul with extra Max HP, Endurance Recovery, and mez protection.
And it only provides slightly more protection than some of the other sets.

Solutions to this? Well, to start, give it a decent self-heal in addition to that Max HP boost. The power doesn't really provide that much extra protection, and the set lacks a means of regaining HP, so if you start getting your butt kicked enough to need to use the power, it at least restores some of your HP so you don't die right away.
Secondly, have it provide some Defense in addition to Resistance. Perhaps about 15% or so. Since the set overall relies on both Def and Res, the tier 9 should buff both, not just Res.

Other than that, I actually do find the set pretty fun. It's just sort of weak compared to the others.

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1. It's kind of vague what counts as an "Arachnos controlled zone" for the Arachnos Agent job. Sometimes the black steel Arachnos buildings count, sometimes they don't. I would have expected the air strip in Cap Au Diable to count, but it doesn't. Maybe some more of those zones need to be spread around.

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Agreed. There are plenty of Arachnos bases that should count, but don't for some reason. The hero equivalent is Law Enforcer, which required logging out in a Police Department, and those things are friggin' everywhere, so it makes no sense for them to be so scarce villainside.

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2. The Intern job is too hard for lowbies to reach. Would it break anything to stick a science lab in one of the earlier zones? It's just an inspiration bonus.

3. Likewise, the Crey building in Nerva is a pain to reach for lowbie villains. There's frequently Crey enemies guarding the front doors, even.


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The same with Mortician. At least redside lowbies can get to Potter's Field in Sharks, albeit at a significant risk to their own safety, but both the cemetaries blueside are in hazard zones.
Couldn't you just throw a small cemetary into King's Row and/or Port Oakes somewhere?

Subjective:
Overall, I like the Merit System. It's a decent way to build up credits to get decent rewards. In fact there's only one minor issue I have with it at all:

Lusca.
I can understand the other GMs awarding two, but Lusca? Lusca isn't a normal Giant Monster. It's NINE. Technically eight if you count the fact that the head doen't attack at all. Lusca requires much more time and effort to bring down than any other Giant Monster, so why does it give the same rewards? Each tentacle should be worth a single Merit on it's own, since you have to take down at least 6 of them in order to defeat the thing.
I say give Merits to the tentacles instead of just granting more to defeating the head, because that way if a group decides to take out more than just the required 6 tentacles, they at least get some extra reward for their effort.

Subjective:
While the change to Salvage racks to let them hold Invention Salvage is nice, it sort of screws over anyone who held more than just Base Salvage in them.
Myself and a number of people I've talked to about this all had a large amount of Halloween and other non-base salvage stored in the racks, and now we suddenly have no room for it anymore. Some people I know have a few hundred pieces of this salvage stored up, which means buying extra salvage racks isn't really a feasible solution.
It's been suggested to us to simply have a character carry it all around with them, but then it no longer becomes accessible to the rest of the SG unless that specific character is logged in.
Please give us back a means to hold our non-base, non-invention salvage, because it all no longer fits in the place we kept it in.

Also, why aren't Brain Storm Ideas storeable? Base salvage was easily shareable amongst all members of the SG; why is it converted into something that isn't easily shared?

Ok, this running thing has officially gone too far.

I was just on my L19 SoA, running Willy Wheeler's arc. I got to the mission that requires you to rescue Ace McKnight from Arachnos, and went through the majority of it with no problem. Finally I find Mr. McKnight, take out his captors, and proceed to start taking out the other enemies nearby.
I take out a nearby TacOps, and McKnight has engaged a Wolf Spider and a Mu Striker. 2 attacks in, and McKnight bolts. And I mean he just completely hauls [sit part] out of there, Crimson-style.
Here's where things got less than pleasant; he took off clear across the map, aggroing every single enemy in his path. I hike my way all the way over to catch up with him, to find him just swarmed with Arachnos, in that one dead-end room that sometimes houses the elevators, with about one fourth of his life left. I attempt to alleviate the situation, and fire a venom grenade into the nearby pile of enemies... and McKnight takes off again, this time back in the opposite direction, and leaving me surrounded by an army of angry spiders. I barely get out of the situation alive and back to where I rescued Ace, which is where he is- until I get there, at which point he whips around AGAIN and takes off down a different hallway, re-aggroing the horde of enemies that had followed me all the way back from where he ran off the first time, and getting himself killed. Mission failed.

I attempted the mission again- this time clearing out all the enemies down the paths that didn't lead to him before taking out his captors. And he does it AGAIN. One attack from a nearby Wolf Spider, and he takes off. Fortunately there's nothing down that way that can kill him anymore, so it's just a matter of retrieving him. I take out the ambushes and remaining enemies and head after him. Once I find him and start heading back, I run into one stray spider I missed. The guy attacks me... and off McKnight goes again. I finally tracked him down and hauled his cowardly *** to the mission exit.

Now, it's one thing when the enemies you face suddenly turn yellow and take off. But when it's an NPC you have to rescue in order to complete the mission?? THAT we definitely don't need.
If you specifically need an NPC to survive to complete a mission, then it is vital that it not have the urge to run off on it's own and aggro the rest of the map.

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The one thing I'd really like to be able to see in the Architect is the ability to use NPC-exclusive costume pieces when designing custom bosses/pets, or at least the ability to make slight alterations to existing NPC outfits.
For instance, if I had a mission idea that involved a Nictus-possessed Fake Nemesis, I'd be able to take a Fake Nemesis npc, tint the armor darker, give it a nictus-style aura, and give it umbral blast attacks. Or if I wanted to make, say, a "Freak of Thorns", I could take a Defender or one of those other "jawa"-type CoT, give it the Juicer electro-pack, electric-ball flight, and some electric blasts and be done with it.

I'm not suggesting it be anything too complex, but just enough so if we decide to make a custom boss from a specific faction, we're not limited to either just a generic boss model from that faction, or a custom model that doesn't have any of that faction's unique costume traits.

I'm sure I'd still be able to work without something like this, but I ask because I've got a ton of ideas for various missions and arcs that involve various twists and nuances in the game lore, and I'd love to be able to use some of the unique pieces to be able to really tie them into the story.