Lord Mayhem

Yeah it's been happening for ages - I've /bugged it at least once.

It also happens occasionally with badges (seeing equivalent hero badge names instead of villain ones) and even with newspaper missions too (sometimes mentions the police band radio in the click text at the bottom of the newsie selection window).

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Thanks GR. I know we don't have any smilies in our motd but there may have been a couple of semi colons. Hopefully some one will have reported it by the time I get home. So I won't have to .

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I know we have semi-colons and colons in my SG motd on redside, because I like using them (as far as I'm concerned they're the punctuation equivalent of an endangered species and need proliferating, heh); but I can log-in characters just fine. Admittedly part of the motd does show up as a link when I mouse over it (when I know very well it's not a link), but I've never clicked on it; not after hearing about all the crashes that happened to players that did a couple of months ago.

Though if that does turn out to be the problem then the Devs had better fix it fast. The last thing we need is players being actively encouraged to miss out punctuation; a trend like that could endanger my sanity

It's a good job we don't have playable Rikti EATs - can you imagine trying to type out the motd in an all-Rikti SG without using colons?

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What, you want him to lie?

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What, you mean that lying is bad?

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The default bind to the Printscreen button will save them as jpgs. There is another command to save them as tgas but I cannot remember what it is.

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Both of these, and the key for toggling the UI for screenshots, can be re-mapped to any key in Menu > Options > Keymapping tab (scroll to the very bottom section). I left jpeg screenshot on PrtScrn then put the UI toggle on the ScrollLk/Insert key next to it on my keyboard - sometimes I want the UI showing, sometimes I don't - depends what I want the screenie for. Default setting always seems to be "UI off" whenever I log-in.

Handy hint: I keep a shortcut to the CoH screenshot folder on my desktop - partly so I can get in there quickly and pick which screenshots to keep (which I then store in a diff folder), but also because I take screenshots of the Vault on each of my characters whenever they deposit rare salvage there, so I have a record of what rares I have stored on each one. It can be handy when you're at the WW/BM and wondering if you have a certain rare for a recipe you want to make - can save you a trip to the Vault to check.

Honestly this does touch on one of my biggest problems with the game.

Needing several teams of 8 players to take out an AV of a power-level and/or size akin to Galactus, Darkseid, Thanos, Superman Prime, etc. is fine by me - I don't see many AVs in CoH/V of that "threat level", apart from Hamidon and the aspects of Rularuu - what I would term "global threats".

At high level I think needing a team of 8 to take out a similar or slightly smaller size group of heroes/villains of high power level is reasonable too - like the Avengers, Sinister Six, JLA, etc - as you do here on the LRSF against most of the Vindicators and then the whole Freedom Phalanx.

I think a full team of 8 players can be fine too against a really tough singular hero/villain, such as facing Superman, Doomsday, Magneto, Silver Surfer, Thor, Hulk (at his angriest), etc - as you might here against Incarnates like Statesman, Recluse, Stheno, Tyrant, and maybe a few select others like Honoree, spawned as AVs.

But needing 8 players to take out a single hero/villain of middling power level such as Spiderman, Doc Ock, Aquaman or Clayface just really annoys me and makes me feel like a henchman or lowly hero-villain - such as on a team of 8 here when we face individual AVs like Nosferatu, Barracuda, Mynx or Dreck. Most player heroes should be able to take down these guys one on one (which thankfully you can solo or in small teams when they spawn as an EB).

I would rather they scaled the latter encounters by numbers rather than scaling from EB to AV, somewhat like the Devs did in CoV with the Civic Squad mission from Westin Phipps - if you solo the mission you meet 2-3 Civic Squad members (as bosses), but take in a team and more of the Civic Squad spawn according to how many team members you have (still as bosses, though) - you need a full team to spawn all/most of them. With ready-made NPC supergroups that should be easy - if you had a solo mission against Mynx as an EB, then taking in a larger team you'd find more Vindicators spawning as EBs to help their team-mate, up to facing all 8 Vindicators as EBs if you took a full team in - you could do the same with the 10 Arachnos leaders/lieutenants and the 6 Council ones too.

Really this game doesn't have much consistency in power levels - why is the Master at Arms of a single Rikti Mothership (U'kon G'rai - GM) tougher, needing several teams to take down, than the head of the entire Rikti Lineage of War (H'ro D'tohz - AV), who you can even take down solo as an EB? It annoys me probably far more than it should

I'd love to see it too, however unlikely it is.

/signed

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a mutant but has an antimantium skeleton because of an scientific experiment.

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But the mutation came first and was the sole reason he could survive that scientific procedure

And I guess this is why the Devs leave it to the players to decide on origin and don't make it effect gameplay too much - in the end a lot of the disagreements are just subjective. In a potential dual origin case do you go with the origin that makes greatest contribution to your combat capability, or the origin that came first, or the origin of your primary powerset, or the origin you prefer and just kludge your bio to fit that (if you even bother to write one) - it's your character so it's totally up to you.

I have a Merc/Traps MM who is Mutation origin because he can psionically dominate others to be his soldiers and an Archery/EM blaster who is Tech origin because the only reason he's a good marksman is his cybernetic eyes - sure, a couple of other origins could have worked for them, but I made a judgement call, which is what the Devs want us to do (except with EATs obviously).

Everquest had an "alternate advancement" skill called Mass Group Buff (MGB to players) that did exactly this - mainly for buffing an entire raid force of up to 72 players with one of your single target buffs - though it was on a fairly long cooldown.

Tbh it wouldn't be quite as necessary here if the "mini-bubbles" in the FF/Sonic/Therm/Cold buff/debuff sets had a reasonable duration like 15-20mins - if they're going to need renewing every 4 mins like now then I'll continue to avoid playing those sets.

A power like you suggest would mitigate some of that annoyance for me, but only if the cooldown of said power matched the duration of those mini-bubble buffs.

This is the only MMO I've ever re-subscribed to - say no more (but I will anyway!). I just find CoH/V's basic gameplay is just so much more fun than most of the MMOs out there, and like you said the community is way better than most too.

In 8 years of playing most of the major MMOs I'd never put a single person on /ignore until I started playing WoW - I think I had 20 "people" (and I use that word in the broadest sense) on ignore there in the first week! Like a fool I thought a couple of years of putting up with Bnet kiddies in Diablo 1/2 would prepare me, but oh boy! Think the forums are bad? - in-game my WoW server was even worse (especially Alliance side - Horde was better).

But be grateful that WoW is an idiot magnet - it keeps most of them out of other MMOs like this one

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Are shields a definite then? I've got my BS/Shields Scrapper concept on standby for exactly that!

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From what we've heard shields and the base editor improvements are fairly certain for I13, but in game development anything can slip.

The fact the Devs had shields in and working for NPCs in I12 has to mean a large amount of the animation work has already been done (for male and large bodytypes anyway).

But we can't be 100% sure until I13 hits - and I dare say that's a while away yet (late autumn is my guess, Xmas at latest).

I'm sure the main reason the Devs used bits of Shadow Shard terrain tilesets for Ouroborous is the same reason they used it for outside Pocket D - because it was the easiest way to show you're in another dimension with the minimum amount of extra artist time required.

I wouldn't speculate too much beyond that, tbh - for starters we don't know enough about Pocket D or Ouroborous from in-game lore - or about the Shadow Shard for that matter.

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*exception: no good ever came of MS Word

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I take exception to that

So what is the word processor that all the "cool people" are using? I'd hate to be out of fashion

Honestly the Devs are in a no-win situation with vet rewards. Make them too good and they alienate the people years away from getting them, make them too poor and they alienate the vets. Tbh I think these are fine - isn't one of the previous vet rewards just a respec and nothing else? (45 months?)

Personally I think vet rewards should just be tokens that you can cash-in for different rewards from a list/pool - then they could just keep adding rewards to the list/pool, but anyone could get anything specific they wanted with a few tokens.

Either way I can't really say it bothers me - it's a free bonus that the Devs didn't have to give us.

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I'd find the name Purple Cobra very funny, and I perfectly understand that Mary Whitehouse might find it highly offensive, but it's down to her to report it, not me.

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I doubt it would bother her either - she's far too dead to care

Please just tell Castle, Positron, Back Alley Brawler and Sexy Jay that we're not that bad - if they start to post occasionally over here then we promise to go easy on them

And if they still doubt that then I'm sure War Witch will be willing to vouch for us

I've probably reported a few dozen in my time.

If I feel a name is offensive to a certain racial/cultural/whatever group then I report it immediately, no question.

If a name is a rip-off of a copyrighted/licensed property and it bugs me (i.e. it's not funny/clever enough to get my appreciation - it's just a total lack of originality or a deliberate rip) then I'll report it IF I have the time and it catches me in a bad mood

If a name rips off a copyrighted/licensed character, but is done in a clever/funny way (i.e. parody, more than direct rip-off or homage) that brings a smile to my face then I don't report it, even if I think it probably breaks EULA. I usually take any bio they have into account when deciding.

I pretty much never report costumes, unless taken together with the name they're an EULA breach.

I'd never report a name/costume just because they were terrible though - tbh at least 50% of the characters I see are pretty bad, but that's subjective opinion and nothing to do with breaking rules.

But honestly if in doubt, report it and let the GMs decide as said - they're the ultimate arbiter of EULA-breaking names, not us.

BTW on my Corruptor I put Radiant Aura on "auto" during Mothership Raids and Rikti Raids and even some TFs, because when it's laggy the auto function is faster than my PC/interface is once I've pressed the button (I sometimes get 2-5secs of power lag in really laggy situations). Never been called a noob for it - had people say "great healing" a few times - but it's a personal choice and frees me up to focus on debuffing/damage.

In addition to that I'd like to see at least one completely random Rikti Raid at least once per day (maybe one in Paragon and one in the Rogue Isles) - dynamic content is goooood.

In fact I'd like to see a lot more dynamic zone events added - GMs popping up occasionally in any zone where their faction spawns, fires like Steel Canyon gets in every city zone, the Talos/IP Ghost Ship popping up in Striga (perhaps the most logical place for it, if you've read the history plaques about the Moraine there), Peregrine and a few of the Rogue Isles zones.

And I want to see some banks being robbed by NPCs in city zones too - lots more dynamic events, in fact.

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On the flip side, dark armour, for example lends itself more to a magical or natural origin

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Ummm why? Maybe in your mind it does, but from a lore perspective it doesn't. The Netherworld (where negative energy comes from in CoH/V) is another dimension, and much like the Shadow Shard there are multiple ways to access it - magic, sure, but Portal Corp uses technology to access other dimensions, Nictus/Warshades draw on dark energy from the Netherworld and they're science origin, and it's not such a stretch from there to imagining a mutation that lets you access those same energies.

In fact Natural origin, like you mentioned, is probably hardest to rationalise it for unless the Dark Armor effect was produced by a magic relic or technology that the Natural origin character had obtained, yet their primary powers were innate to their race or achieved through training (hence Natural origin).

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The Devs supposedly put an underwater area into Cimerora (I've yet to find it, though)

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in one of the cimerora tf mishes theres a cave room where u can swim under a small bridge

its a small from with a bridge innter cross and the back one allows u

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Ahh - on the second mission of the ITF with all the Nictus? The cave room that usually has 2 cysts in it, one on the left as you enter and another at the back across the bridge?

Though admittedly I played my Warshade on the last ITF I led and we had cysts all over the place, so my memory might be playing tricks on me.

Happy birthday!

I want to be able to build my own custom maps (they could use whatever revamped base editor interface we're getting in I13), make my own custom bosses/EBs/AVs (existing costume creator), make my own cutscenes and boss/spawn dialogue, customise the mission with a timer and the possibility of failing it, place glowies exactly where I want them to be, place spawns as well (from multiple different factions if I so decide) and link multiple created missions together into an arc.

If the player generated content turns out to be a single simple UI window with a dropdown to select a map, a dropdown to select enemy faction, a dropdown to select mission type (kidnap/rescue, get the glowy, defeat the boss, etc), a dropdown for level range, and a couple of fields to enter a brief mission briefing & debriefing, then I'm going to be rather underwhelmed.

Basically I want to be able to make arcs like Seer Marino's "Oh Wretched Man" redside or the Faultline arcs blueside - I don't want to be limited to making new newspaper/police-band missions.

I'd be interested to know how many people actually care if we get it back, considering the Devs would have to spend time on it that they could spend on other content.

I don't think it would be many.

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I agree with you!
The trouble is the devs see farming as an issue and as such are trying to stop/curb it.
The only way I see to stop farming is change the missions used for farming or change the powers that allow farmers to farm. I wouldn't want something like this to come into effect if it meant nerfs to Fulcrum Shift, the Fire Primary or any other power deemed too uber.

My personal choice for a difficulty change would be for more Elite Bosses. At the late levels Bosses are generally too easy, EB's would pose more of a challenge.

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I really don't care what the farmers want to do - if they're players paying their subs then it is up to them if they have fun playing like that. The more stock they put on the auction houses, the more likely they will fill demand by the playerbase, and then the cheaper that stock will become - simple supply & demand. I would prefer everything on WW/BM get cheaper than everything be expensive - buyer's market instead of seller's market - because I just want to play the game, not make oodles of inf.

You're not confusing all farmers with inf-sellers are you? I hope (know) the Devs want to stop inf-sellers as they're the ones who really wreck economies in a bad way - once too many people buy inf from them you get crazy inflation of prices as people with bought inf (or gold/plat, as it is in other games) start paying silly prices for things to make sure they get them, and that inflates the whole market up so typical/average players can't afford anything. Sure, the inf-sellers do use farming to make their inf, and probably do use fire/kins or fire/psis to do it, but nerfing the tools they use is like the government banning everyone in the country from having any kind of sharp knives (bread knives, steak knives, etc), and only allowing blunt knives (like butter knives), because there are too many stabbings (then you'd get people being stabbed with forks, so they'd have to be "nerfed" next ).

I just don't want the Devs wrecking gameplay for the rest of us purely to stop inf-sellers/farmers. Seen it happen far too many times in MMOs - everyone suffering restrictions/nerfs because just a few people abuse the EULA. Not here please. So I hope the Devs find ways to stop the inf-sellers without nerfing the things they use to ply their trade - like fire/kin controllers or fire/psi doms, or certain missions - because the farmers would just move on to other sets/ATs that do the job next-best and other maps/missions that are next most profitable - then you'd have to nerf them too - and it just becomes ridiculous.

The Devs supposedly put an underwater area into Cimerora (I've yet to find it, though) as I recall a post by the dev Back Alley Brawler saying he had enjoyed watching the first players to muck about in it swimming.

That was obviously a test area for the Devs, so I'm sure an underwater area is planned at some point - and I'm 99% sure any new underwater area would have something to do with the Coralax - they're the most obvious faction to dominate an issue dedicated to an underwater zone.

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And make a gigantic Clockwork nest there, almost like a mini-city, with assembly lines and the machines they use for melting down and reforging the scrap they collect.

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Only if we get tons of 5th Column as well and the return of Reichsman, maybe as a rival for Requiem for the leadership of the 5th Column - Nazi superman vs Italian fascist - who will win?!

That would be more of a global threat to bring heroes and villains together to save the Earth.