LostHalo

While it's not much of a "cure" for it, pretty much all of the relevant maps have a lot of doors attached to the walls, suggesting a possibly less...psychotic building layout.

Don't really know what's going on nor do I care. All I have to say is look closely at those two ideas, digest what they mean, then look back at what you just posted.

I don't remember which of the paths it is (it's 6, 7, or 8) but it specifically refers to looking at yourself/world with clarity and evaluating exactly how your perceptions can change you. Good opportunity if nothing else to train that path.

How amusingly appropriate, yeesh.

But yeah, if you look at the Vahzilok page on the wiki, their resistance power has this to say:

I imagine they have something that gives them a high resistance to threat and/or perception when they're without a human, if the AI itself isn't what makes the action unique. That said, there are other mobs that have special...actions like this. If you've ever played a squishy without Sleep protection, without explicitly being held by something with aggro control, you'll see mobs turn, use a Sleep on you/the squishy, then go back to whatever they were doing.

Sounds about right. And if you look at the childish tagging going on, it already started.

Wow. That's such a lawyer response. That said, he'd have been stupid to have given you any ammunition for getting around potential EULA violations (not that you would have). For what it's worth, that response there may as well have been considered a green light for what you were actually intending. He was just being a good lawyer.

I wouldn't say it's exactly slow. He has capped recharge while the Blue Tower is up (and +30% bonus to ToHit on top of AV and +4 level modifiers to accuracy). That said, if you have a decent build and proper support on the team, it shouldn't be hard to tank him, either with hovering or not being a wuss. Should be noted that since most Kinetics probably don't know about it, if you have one on the team and they have Increase Density, have them keep it up on you--it's a very large Energy/Smashing Resistance buff, both of which are favorites of the Patrons and Recluse.

Keep her back to the team. Also, fight her at the maximum of your melee range if you can hack it. Then, if there are other melee toons on the team, have them attack her on the side opposite to you at their respective maximum ranges. That should keep her from possibly hitting anyone other than you with the hold. There is also a method I call "chicken yard" but I refuse to elaborate on it because I hate it with a fiery ******* passion from hades.

It's fairly easy to tell when she's going to hold you if you watch for the signature animation and notice a black icon on your buff bar appear. If you're fast enough, you can pop Unstoppable and survive the hold. This is, of course, assuming you don't have a competent Sonic, Kinetics, or Empath on your team to beat her hold's magnitude.

If your group is reliably competent or they're your regular teaming friends or whatever and can handle taking on all four Patrons at once, the order is thus: GW-> Scirrocco -> Mako -> Crabspider Webmaster -> BS. GW for her auto-gank, then Scirrocco because he likes to spam huge AoEs and drain endurance. The other two don't really matter but because you have to take them down regardless, Mako is more annoying for his gigantic cones and defense (another one to keep facing the other way from the team). He also suffers from "Oooh, Shiny!" syndrome and will sometimes run away at random.

The Nictus have a special AI, so follow Romulus after a set distance. You can separate them with multiple sources of aggro control however.

Technically, yes, it is the most skippable but if your team has to rely on single-pulling the Patrons, skipping the Blue Tower is going to get your team killed. Before the stealthbuff to the Red Tower, it was possible to skip the Red, Blue, and Orange Towers (if you had at least one person to Cage the Orange). It's still possible to skip both the Blue and Orange but in all honesty, it's actually more detrimental to your time to do so (at least where the Orange is concerned).

Otherwise, the preferred order:
1) Red: Damage/Resistance
2) Blue: ToHit/Recharge
3) Orange: Defense/Special
4) Green: +HP/Regen/Heal

She has three, none of which are a cone. And on another note, I have no idea who started this myth but I wish they would stop repeating it. Anyway, one is Dark Regeneration which is a PBAoE, the second is Life Drain which is Single Target, and the third is Twilight Grasp which is ST with PBAoE effect. If your team has ample buff support, none of them should be an issue because they all require a ToHit check (however, being a +4 AV, her ToHit floor will be 10.5%, so she probably will heal herself eventually, just not enough to usually matter). That said, if you have a Plant Controller on the team, make sure they don't use Carrion Creepers. That can make things a lot more irritating when dealing with her.

Should be noted that there's a secondary issue that's far more annoying than this, which is the shorthand inconsistencies between recipes and crafted enhancements. I can deal with the Market server being slow, I understand that. The naming inconsistencies though...that just seems like sloppy work.

I wish that could go away and die a cold, lonely death.

Now these complaints I can get behind. Not having to remain fullscreen in AE was a shocking and greatly appreciated surprise.

A secondary bonus that could come with a costume creator UI upgrade would be a comparison window, as in, take an instant "save" of one costume and compare it to what you're working on actively.

Mainly because they confuse and frighten the people at the USCO and USPTO.

Additionally, the devs aren't really suited for the task of solving the horrendous problem with IP law in general. It sucks but unless you're planning to get into a position capable of fixing the problems...

They are as specific as they can be.

Too specific = Easily abused.
Too generic = Impossible to enforce.

The rules seem to have hit a nice balance, at least in my view, but when your ("universal" you) toon is sitting on the dividing line, any compromise probably isn't likely to make you happy. And based on what I've seen reported, the GMs are generally pretty willing to work with you if the complaint was bogus and flagged inappropriately.

And for the most part, I'd (completely pulling this statement out of my ***) have to imagine it's actually pretty hard to "accidentally" copy an existing IP with the existing system. Most of the popular media that's relevant to this discussion is so incredibly integrated with the gaming culture that I'd honestly say you're lying if you're playing this game and haven't heard of the larger names.

Unless it's obviously a ripoff, I don't really care what people do with their toons and the toons' appearances. But even then, all they're going to get from me is open mocking for their created failure.

CoH has, to put it bluntly, an assload of potential character slots for a reason.

Honestly, I can't actually offer any solutions to this because I'm just not able to really justify the issue in my mind. CoH simply hasn't been designed over the last years to expand "upward", so that's probably why the complaint just doesn't work for me. Level 60 isn't likely to happen (that said, level 50"+" has been discussed regarding the universal slots and other similar things).

Positron is also at a low level and not everyone likes to lose their powers (and it's likely to get nailed, probably the hardest of all, in the next round of averaging, alongwith everything else unfortunately). I wouldn't say it's due to an uninteresting story or whatever, I'd say it's more due to those two TFs each being a posterchild for extremely poor design (Positron kind of feeling a little lame for not having any sort of "real" boss fight and Dr. Q for having you run the same three missions over and over).

As for running for speed to get the reward... Who are you to judge other people and their method of enjoying the game? I revel in trying to maximize speed while mocking the people that "require" prefabricated conditions to get the same or worse performance (kind of like that thread claiming the LRSF Phalanx encounter is too hard).

The search browser's irritatingly limited design.

Improvements I'd like to see to it:

(a) The ability to hide people that are already teamed from the list ("Truncated to 50 from 358 found? GREAT! Except their names are all m***********g grey on this list!").

(b) The ability to designate the search area as "local" so I don't have to hunt my location from the dropdown menu (preferably a button next to the dropdown menu that can be clicked without messing with the menu itself). Additionally, I don't recall since I haven't been on in awhile but I seem to recall searching a zone like "The Hive n" gets to be kind of wonky.

(c) Self-defined level parameters. I don't want the 41-44s on my search. Or even the 45s or 46s!

(d) As a continuation to the function provided by (a), the ability to advertise my team, or more specifically, the ability to put my team on a large list of teams that could be searched by other people, sort of like a more literal version of "looking for team" where you actually get to look at a list of teams. (And of course, the ability to hide my team from the list, however the list itself should default to "on" so the function doesn't go entirely forgotten like the LFG flags people can put up on the existing list or ignored like global channels by those unacquainted with it.) Also, it'd be nice to be able to advertise to a self-defined amount, maybe even down to the team's character list if it were possible.

(e) This one's a bit of a pipe dream because of the myriad of tricks that make it impossible to define the condition but if someone is AFK, I'd like the system to designate it on the list.

If nothing else, (a) is extremely unobtrusive for development and I'd really...really appreciate if I could get that tiny increase to my degree of control.
And if I could have only one thing on that list, then (d) is probably my biggest desire.

RPers are an "out group" to a large amount of the game population. ERPers are an even more separated "out group". The more distant an out group is, the more it will be a source of ridicule. It's not complicated.

After that, there is this, which you're already aware of...it's the Internet. John Gabriel's G.I.F.T. illustration already covers why people act the way they do online.



And regarding the theme of your question to application beyond the game's context...

People are stupid. People are also ********. I don't think there's a solution to those two conditions, so it's more or less a case of "quit letting it get to you".

Because "good", "solid", and "followed instructions" are more than likely 100% not what happened?

As for the -1 glitch... Well, no, I'm going to call it an exploit, mainly because I simply view it as cheating. If you want to play on easy, sure, go ahead, just don't expect to get the bonus adulation other people get for playing on the equivalent 'normal'.

I think a large part of the problem lies with the lack of attention that is given to introduce new (and old) players to the concept of "global channels". There are very few that use server names in their titles while being private but...it's a challenge just to get someone to understand the tricks to even start looking for them.

It's insular insomuch in that one of the most effective methods for getting players together is functionally resistant to people that would be understandably unacquainted with it.

As is always the case, it can be done well or horribly, horribly wrong.

BAD:
Explicitly depicting someone with accents that refer to variations in pronunciation. I don't care if the someone from the southern US sounds different from someone from Ireland. You do NOT add or remove random letters, nor should you attempt the same effect by replacing letters with punctuation marks. It looks bad and reads poorly, don't do it. If the character is speaking cogently but has a specific voice you want to convey, you do it with descriptive language. There's a massive difference between someone having an accent and being hard to understand, which leads into...

Better(won't give a blanket description of "good"):
If the character actually speaks in a way that screws up the word order, the words themselves, or makes them hard to understand, it's permitted but you have to be careful about how you go about the presentation. Just off the top of my head, Shogun actually does a spectacular job of showing how someone gradually eliminates their linguistic weaknesses...admittedly over something like 1200 pages.

The poor and uneducated 1880s negro family in the South? Go for it--within limit.
The international diplomat with a Texan accent conversing with your suave secret agent? I don't think he would have made it that far in international politics, judging by the cue card presented that suggests he might be functionally retarded.

I can't remember the name of the absolute worst example I've ever read but I recall it took me awhile to realize one sentence using the combination of letters was actually supposed to be "couldn't". And that wasn't the worst example. It wouldn't have been so bad but it was the first time it had been spelled that way (yes, the author actually modified the portrayal of the accent during the book) and throughout the entire book, this character's impossible representation was completely understood by the rest of the cast, despite having entire sentences written in that manner.

Not going to read the other posts but here are my observations, leveling an EM/EA at the outset of CoV up to 40, then why it took until Issue...12 or so to get to 50:

1) CoV's favorite mob: Arachnos. They are a constant theme throughout the game and as you level up, they get worse and worse to deal with, eventually culminating in pure Psychic -DEF nukes. If the mob gets past EA's pittance of Psionic defense that Energy Cloak (another matter I'll get to later) provides, you have no passive protection from them. Literally, you have nothing you can do and these are probably the most prevalent enemies in the entirety of CoV. Sure, you can "heal" yourself (something else I'll get to) or drain their endurance (which has mechanical issues unspecific to EA), but these are reactive measures and are not one-offs for reliability. I'd elaborate more but yeah...it's not that I'm expecting immunity but with the sum total of the set's protections, I'd at least like a cushion of some kind at the least.

2) Energy Cloak. I rolled a Brute. Why am I playing a Stalker/Scrapper with Fury because I happened to make the mistake of choosing the thematic Energy Melee pairing at release? It's this one power alone that makes it painfully obvious that this was a rushed port from Stalkers when Fury was still wonky and made Ice Armor unplayable. I've given better treatises [read: walls of text] in the past about my issues with this power and what I'd like in a replacement true aggro aura (I still like the combination -DMG&+Resist&-SPD [no -Rech] Invincibility/CE mix but alas...), so I'm not going to go into it here. The real kicker is that the power itself is such a (relatively) large amount of defense, to everything no less, that it's detrimental to not take and use it.

3) Conserve Power. God I hate this power. I have Energy Drain. It fulfills that function PERFECTLY on its own. I can understand using it or wanting it, but I don't care. It has no purpose. Even when I wasn't so picky on functionality I thought this was the dumbest power to include in the set.

4) The passives. Give them a secondary function like Invuln's and I'll let these slide. Right now though, they take up too much space for too little return as little more than set bonus mules (which, amusingly enough, had been my opinion of the passives for Invuln on anything but a Tank before their relatively recent upgrades--they're still set bonus mules but they actually have a valid primary value to their inclusion).

5) Overload. It's not so much an issue with the power but the fact that because it's probably in the top two for best uberShield™ powers (or simply the best to some but I prefer the current MoG to it), people seem to use it as some sort of justification for the rest of the set having sub-average performance. It's a great power but I really dislike it being used as some sort of goofy leverage against the set's baseline performance (yes, I know this sort of opposes my relevant stance regarding Stone Armor but then, I never thought its early powers were weak, anyway...).

6) Energy Drain's changes. They're a nice try but it doesn't solve the survivability issues acceptably (way too little to save you against a single target--if the heal is large enough to keep you from dying at that moment, you're still going to die while it's recharging because you're likely in the middle of a cascading defense failure when dying in a large group or fighting an AV who will proceed to laugh at the extra 90 hp you gave yourself, plus the 2 or so seconds of animation-stalled regen) and the new taunt component runs completely counter to the people that actually want the stealth that Energy Cloak provides. Additionally, making me open combat with a power like that so that non-stealthed squishies don't eat half of the alpha when they approach completely misses the point of having a heal and endurance recovery attached to it...

I know the set can, and does, do acceptably when paired with a set that is, well, better than EM but it really shouldn't force someone to make that choice when say, they're like me way-back-when, not knowing any better at the time and thinking "Hey, let's do both the sets with 'energy' in their names!"

</wandering rant>

I don't dispute that. But you can get people to do them without a ton of tertiary coaxing because they get something explicitly from it.

Getting the Mayhem(s) you missed requires you either have a friend with a toon at the right levels, a generous global channel member, or some random person out there you don't mind bugging about it, which was one of my specific issues with it. I find it less troublesome to get a TF going blue-side but hey, whatever. At this point, we're not going to convince each other.

If you completely disregard the second half of my mockery, yes. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. But then, if you actually finish reading, no, that isn't what I am saying.

I'm making fun of your argument by invoking the amusing "circular" slippery slope that is powerteaming on CoX. 8 person teams that do poorly tend to have problems behind the keyboard long before they reach the game itself. Certain configurations have marginal improvements in underlying function but because of how CoX has been built, even those marginal improvements can be superceded by the "bad" configurations given proper ability and planning by the players. If it's by accident, it's a damn good coincidence but I'll give them benefit of the doubt and say it's spectacular design.

Lol.
I would leave it at that but I'd rather leave it at this: If your team of Blasters can't figure out a method to 'scrape by' on 28% defense to everything and an additional 80% damage buffing...it's so pitiable I'll just leave you with a metaphorical trailing off...

It's not really being mean or anything. It's the way they're phrasing it that suggests shenanigans are afoot based on experience with interpretation of people on this particular medium.

That said, if they actually have the money, the reason why it's perceived to be more likely than not that they're RMT clients is because of:

1) If they made their money by playing the market, they would NEVER give an "unlimited budget". They know what the market costs and how it works. And they know an "unlimited" budget doesn't work that way and can mean a whole lot of everything or a whole lot of nothing. What I'm saying is they aren't stupid. If they want a build, they want a build that does exactly what they want it to do. The idea of a "blank check" doesn't fly with them unless they're just going for opulence, which should come off in their manner of presentation.

2) If they made their money by playing the game explicitly, they must have gained some rudimentary understanding of how to build toons. I know this isn't always the case (several I can actually name off-hand that I know are outright bad at design and seek help regularly) but they don't use a term like an "unlimited budget". They, after earning that funding, will have a good understanding of what things cost and their availability. Secondly, they will also have a strong sense of what they do and don't like in their toons. They don't give a blank slate, they want [x] build to fulfill conditions [a], [b], and [c] because they've run into some limitation or they want to build a new toon but just don't have the...natural ability to get what they want out of Mids'.

Yeah, some people might just suck at presenting themselves on the Internet and we're being, admittedly, jaded cynics about it, but it's not like our views aren't totally random in their basis.

It's in all honesty just the Mayhem missions.
It's fairly easy to forget to stop everything that my toon might be doing ("Hmm, I have an hour of time to play...well, I see an ITF is going to start, I think I'll get on that as soon as possible") to make sure I get that range's badge...because otherwise it's a pain in the *** to acquire. If I could get a hold of the missions by my own power later on, it wouldn't be an issue. But yet, I can't.

All I'm saying is no arbitrary level-based limit on the badges. Ouroboros can solve the issues of any other mishaps except those particular badges, so it's irritating. Admittedly, being that my villains are purely Virtue-based, I would doubt it would take more than a single night to get all 9 badges if I wanted to, it just feels like it is imposing on the people I would be using to get them.

As for the other requirements... The only other old requirements I found particularly aggravating were the PvP badges and Unbreakable. With those gone, it's just the one issue that is more or less a "necessary evil" based on a limitation of how the Mayhem missions are designed. My point is not that it should be changed further (more or less ambivalent on that--I may not like it but I don't demand a change) but that it shouldn't be done again for a power-granting Accolade.

Yep.

Yes, completely support.

No. Purely based on the level of difficulty that the mission is set to spawn is all that's needed. Including a "smaller teams" flag would make things unnecessarily easy to take advantage of.

As long as they don't use CoV's Accolade requirements as a guideline. Even after supposed fixes, the villain-side requirements are still dumb as hell.

Why invite anything but a Blaster when with Leadership, as they can do tons of damage and be entirely indestructible at the same time? Heck, Leadership is just icing on a full team and it isn't even required.

This game is never as restrictive as your question, or some very, very stupid people's opinions, suggest.