Memphis_Bill

Went to the 2d, 2pm showing Saturday. Had a friend (several states away) planning on going with her husband later that day.

Got out, texted "As usual, the critics are idiots. Fun movie."

Seems she agreed. I don't know this is one of my top-10-all-time-faves, but it certainly was enjoyable to me. (Though I agree about the jumping onto the boat - that was probably the only bit that had me cringe, effects wise.)

Yeah, I know. Happened about the same time I wandered off. Haven't even gotten to consider respeccing anyone for it.

Had to check and see if all the various artwork was on here or not

So, who's new/interesting/up and coming as far as artists? Any recommendations?

Yes, we can collapse major sections (Servers, For Fun, PVP) - but can't just ignore individual sections.

It'd be nice to be able to hide them to clean things up a bit.

(Posting because I'm glancing through and *deeply* disappointed in some people here who should know better... so I'm going to be avoiding this section all together. )

Yes, you can just not click on sections. Well aware of that. I'd like to just be able to do some trimming overall and not slip into areas that bring up old, bad habits.

Edit: A "For instance" to show the end result - mine would end up similar to:

[News, Events and Announcements]
-Announcements
-Discussion
[Development]
-Dev digest
-Community Digest]
-All Access: Gameplay issues and bugs
- Developer's Corner
[Player Help]
- All Access
- Base construction
- Player Guides


... etc.

*switches to nova*
*blasts posts*


So how's things in Kheld-land... don't expect there to have been MAJOR changes, of course.

*waves with all tentacles*

Temporarily back! >.> No, really! (No, really. Moving at some point here.)

How's Dark Control?


And for a scouting report:
Yeah, was off in TOR. Still kind of like it... but there are more times than not that something there would make me go "Y'know, COH does this better."

I *hate* slowly sprinting everywhere - and paying for training and power upgrades! (Even the speeder isn't that much faster.) Plus smaller teams (4). And having stuff stay lethal well past when they shouldn't be a concern, IMHO.

I do think they've come closest to the COH costume/every other MMO gear balance, though, with their upgradeable/moddable armors and weapons. Can't customize the look that much, though, which is disappointing. At least not that I found. Found myself really wishing that I could at least assign a default color combo to the armor, so it wouldn't look like such a mishmash as stuff got changed.

I'm half tempted to write a SWTOR to COH swapper's guide - though, admittedly, I wouldn't call myself even near-pro at SWTOR. I just go in and blow stuff up or stick a lightsaber through it.

OK, I admit it... back for a bit. Solely because of 2xp and wanting to have all my characters available for whatever we run!

... well, and wanting to try the Stalker changes. And grav on my grav/kin. And grav/elec dom...

... and really missing actual travel at speed you don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for.

.... and not having your look change because you need more defense...

... er, and...

... bah. Frigging COH, I tell ya.

(Now once billing and the forums talk so I show up as VIP for at least this month....)




Hi all.


* OK. Not just 2xp. Bout of life sucking badly, parent dying, etc. and just wanting the mindless stress relief that hauling a Fire/SS tank into a mob of enemies and pounding the snot out of them - as opposed to 1-2 enemies being a hassle - brings.

I must admit I get pointed to some unusual threads. On Virtue, you say?

Allow one of my Virtuites to respond to this.



Lynn held the warm styrofoam cup of hot chocloate in both hands. The morning was chilly here on Talos, typical for this time of year. She looked forward to the coming spring's warmer temperatures, wondering idly if her Kheldian friends were bothered at all by the temperatures.

She'd finally come to terms with the fact that she wasn't a Peacebringer, uniquely Earth-born. And come to realize it didn't lessen her gifts. As the heroine Linnurata, she'd been adopted by Voidbane's group, making friends with both Peacebringers and Warshades as they trained her and eased her into realizing the truth. She wasn't sure whose gratitude was greater, hers or her parents.

Of course, her birthday present was her application to host a Kheldian. She still chuckled at getting that from her folks.

Lynn's reverie was interrupted by the sound of a strident voice from down the street. Looking up from her cocoa, she saw a small crowd watching a rather ragged old man waving his arms and going on quite excitedly about something. She didn't know if it was trouble or not, so she drifted closer.

He was going on about being a demon, Exxon Valdez or some such, who drove a Bentley. At least that's what she thought she heard. She shook her head sadly and gauged the mood of the small crowd. She saw nothing but a mix of amusement and pity on most of the faces.

Then he started ranting about having resurrected Statesman.

She could feel the crowd's mood change. That was one loss the city had not gotten over just yet, and this sort of ranting could become dangerous for the old man. Stepping back, she pulled out her cell phone.

"Paragon psychiatric, Debbie speaking, how may I help you?"

She gave a quick rundown of the situation to the nurse on duty, who promised to send help. That taken care of, she drifted back to the small crowd. She picked out the people who were getting most upset and went to them, convincing them with gentle word to go about their business and not let the crazy man upset them.

Minutes later, she was waving goodbye to the ambulance taking the old man away. She hoped he'd get the help he needed. And a bath, while he was at it.

I feel like something's missing from the OP - something intended to be said or explained, but not. Possibly from having the combo "points" mentioned. So if I'm a bit off on this, excuse me.

That said, things I'd like to see (and I *think* this is in line with what you said) -

1. More finishing OPTIONS... so the combos aren't just 1-2-3 and too bad if you miss, but you could choose 1-2-(optional) instead, or 1-2-3 (missed) - use 4 instead, have a different combo fire off. Missing's a PITA with these combos.

2. Possibly longer combo timers - it seems they expire when the powers I need finish recharging in the middle of a fight, and I hate feeling like I have to build for recharge. 1-2 seconds longer would be great. And would work with #1 above.

I won't argue with a buff of some sort.

That said, immob protection and +per in one power make it one I *will* take. (frigging ghosts...) So I'd disagree with useless - just "not as useful as it could otherwise be."

I know I've said it before, but -

This is an online, text-only medium. If you want to be taken seriously (and you're posting an idea, so I'm assuming you do,) run things through a spell checker first.

Not saying this to say I'm perfect at spelling and grammar - I'm not - but look at how many responses are making fun of "melle." Presentation means a lot.

As far as the OP's suggestion - I feel like we've had a fairly good mix.

/signed to "it's not broken."

And /signed to adding suppression, which would be a good compromise, in my opinion.

/signed

Lucky: You're way off base. Stop. I've seen you before, you're better than this. Stop making an *** of yourself. Your first reply had absolutely nothing to do with what the OP said, and you're just digging yourself in deeper.

DV: Stop being a snob. I have over 300 characters. Is having a few on a server - which I'd have to log in and out of to check, anyway - and not wanting to hold up a team making me 'riff raff' or an 'undesirable?' I damn well know what *I'm* doing, and "RP" as a reason for this sort of thing - yeah, no. I'm an RPer as well. I don't want that to be a reason for splitting people. It certainly doesn't make me any better or worse than someone else.

Aett: Depends. Are there onions nearby?

Scarlett Shocker: Don't know if a global unlock makes sense for this. For some things, yes. This is just kind of an archaic throwback, IMHO, that should just lose the unlock. Keep the arc (or an arc,) drop the restrictions.

So, I had someone insist I had to read this thread, given some of my comparisons (both ways) with COH and other MMOs. (I can't seem to get away from the COH forum, no matter how much I try, someone always sends me a link....) Which is fine, timing wise, because I'd sort of wanted to write something up like this. A fair amount of this is going to be agreement with other points.

Without further ado, favourite things about COH:

1. Costuming having nothing to do with powers.
2. Costuming staying the same throughout your career.

The two are related, after all. I can set up a costume and stay in it from 1-50. I can switch to an RP costume (say, a "civilian," or a "stealth," or "officially military," or "holiday" or whatever other theme I want,) and my defense/resistance/END/etc. will stay the same.

Similarly, I'm not going to look like "Blaster #9879873498279384" because as I level I have to get "blaster gear" that changes the look I've tried to create when making the character - and have to change it because the gear becomes useless for higher level enemies.

Costuming being separate from gear is something I REALLY wish more MMOs would take up.

--- Hybridizing ---

That said, I wouldn't mind (having played with this a bit) being given "slots" with a costume that would let me do little modifications. Nothing incredible - and no, I couldn't say exactly wht would go in here, but if I had an "armored suit" I'd get a tiny bit of defense (or better, debuff resistance,) for example.

Also, SOME games let you keep an older piece of equipment and use it as a pattern for a look on another piece of equipment with better stats. So, some might be learning, finally... it's just such a klunky workaround to me. (Aion.)

3. No race limits/bonuses

There basically ARE no races (Kheldians aside, and even that has no impact on the host) in the game. You can make up anything you want, and you won't be penalized because you have a blue fish-guy Tanker instead of a burly rhino-man.

You can basically create any "race" you want - alien, elemental, human, robot, etc. - just because your concept calls for it, within the limits of the costume creator.

4. Social empowerment
5. SSKing!

The one thing I miss *badly* when going to another MMO? Global chat. Followed by being able to use email anywhere - just open up the window and type. Supergroups... may be a case of familiarity more than anything, but they seem more fluid and enabling than most "guilds," with bases being a lot more friendly.

And the SSK system is just incredible versus what I see in several other games.

--- COH can learn... ---

The status flags aren't really used much, or encouraged, and the LFG tab is... rather bare-bones (and kind of misleading, and limited.) COH can learn a fair bit in these areas and improve.

6. Travel

COH may not have huge worlds - IP or Nerva north-to-south can be a bit of a pain, so was the old tram-brickstown-crey's-RCS run. But we get travel powers early (earlier STILL now,) and even our Sprint (+Swift built in) is faster than a lot of the "run at a bit of a trot" most other games force on you. And our travel powers would be outright *cheating* in most of those other games.

Not to mention we don't end up getting stuck on any ridge higher than a centimeter, forcing us to take long detours. (Guild Wars.)

Plus, you don't have to pay to take the train, ferry, or teleporter. Just go.

7. Enemy power vs you.
8. Instant Healing's gonna kill you. (Not the power.)

In COH, even the lowest-power character can deal with 3 minions and expect to walk away. With slotting, tactics and inspirations, most can deal with EBs, with some soloing AVs and GMs. And, once you've outleveled them... they're just not a threat. You're not going to be walking through Atlas at 30 and get stunned and killed by a Hellion.

Other games have had even non-Elite enemies have to be taken on 1v1. If you can go 1v2, you're doing great... but it's a risk. And some areas you had BETTER have a team (with the holy trinity.)

COH makes you feel powerful.

Plus, if there's a fight and you ARE killed, but you had the guy down to a sliver of health, you can hit the hospital, grab some inspirations and hot-foot it back. The bad guy will have regenerated osme, sure - but he's not back up to 100% strength and life the second you die. That's EXCEPTIONALLY annoying - and makes no sense in 95% of the cases it's done.

9. Instancing
10. No world-spawn competition in most cases.

Dear $deity, I wish more games would instance areas. "Find 10 of these, and kill 30 of these." Well, great... but there are 5 other people fighting for the same limited spawns. It's worse when it's a boss you have to fight, and someone sees you waiting for 10 minutes for the respawn just to jump in, tag it and kill it. Stuff like that would be far better handled in an instance.

Yes, I hate tagging.

Now, you can say COH is *over* instanced, and to a point I'd agree - but most of the time I'd rather see other games with more instances and less competition for something on a long spawn timer that you're competing with everyone else for. (Tabula Rasa - beta - having a line going out a cave with a logos you needed to complete the mission... at least 100 people in line, with a slow-ish respawn. I wish I still had that screenshot. Other games are just as ridiculous.)

For COH, you have to... Patch the dimensional tears! Fight the Clockwork King! Defeat Burkholder! And you and your team do it *in your own instance,* not standing around hoping everyone else there isn't going to jump in. (Plus it *counts* for your entire team.)

11. Alpha and Interface.
12. Slotting and IOs

Of all the Incarnate powers, I think Alpha was perfect - boost to the character without being ridiculously overpowering, and it let you do pretty much anything and work towards it. Interface, I think, is the best of the other trees... Judgement, Lore and Destiny can be just ridiculous, especially with not being toned down for regular content. But A&I really feel like an adjustment to you and your powers, taking you in a new direction.

Similarly, since we don't have gear to have a variety of, you'd think there wouldn't be much difference in one Fire blaster from another... and yet thanks to IOs, there can be. You can go for extra damage, adding defense, getting incredible recharge or whatever. And that's not even getting INTO how different the ATs are internally...

13. No holy trinity
14. No set roles, nobody "needed" - or "useless."

With the vast differences in abilities within an AT, you can't really say you "need" one of X, Y and Z to handle an encounter. Pretty much any combo will do - which is great, because I can't say "level 40 blaster" and have you guess, within 95%, what my powers, slotting, etc. are. We're not cardboard cutouts. That Defender could be an empath, or trick arrow, or radiation or dark - all of which bring different things to the team - and all of which would be useful. Same with tanks - is it a fire tank, a dark tank bringing control, a shield tank?

You can just throw together a "coalition of the willing" and go to town, not have to be held up because you don't have a tank or "healer." (Which is one of the hardest things to get used to in other games - people looking for a healer because they actually DO need them.)

15. Train when you're ready, not when you can afford it.
16. Enhancing and Crafting - it just drops.

Yeah. I hate paying for training. It feels like more of a ripoff to me when I'm going from "Piddly first attack I" to "Piddly first attack II, III, IV" and the cost is going up rapidly.

COH does have you pay for SOs and the like, true - but you decide what to put them in, how far, and what to put IN them to an extent. Plus the drops you need just *drop.* You don't have to fight a certain boss for it, to roll for one, to hope YOU actually get the one drop you'll see this week and not the guy who doesn't need it but just threw it on the market without asking. Generally, you can be pretty self sufficient - and the cost for upgrading, by comparison to other MMOs, is minimal and WELL within reach without ignoring whole sections of the game.

Plus, odd as it sounds, it's nice that drops are private (unless you tell people you got a purple or whatever.)


I criticize COH a fair bit (and do try to be fair *about* it.) But these are the sorts of things that, while in other MMOs, I look back rather fondly on COH for and wish other games would "break the mold" and copy, instead of doing the same-old-same-old as everyone else.

... that the forum can't answer.

Alternately, there's an account issue somewhere similar to something that cropped up in Aion a while back - just not as badly. (Over there, you could post, then find out you were in someone else's account. Good year ago or so though.)

Regardless - the issue.

I'm not VIP at the moment, just premium. Browsed to a post in general discussion and replied... I happened to notice my name was in gold. (Which, even as a VIP, it wasn't.) Glance next to it and it informs me I'm VIP with full posting ability. Switch forum sections (to this one, in fact) and it has the correct info - not a VIP subscriber.

Might be minor, but if it has anything to do with account security or tracking, thought I'd throw the heads up at the web folks.

What I'm looking for:

- Overall "look good." I think Random has inspired 1-2 costumes and 40 illnesses over the years.

- Does it fit the idea I have for the character - or that particular outfit. Yes, I do have extra costume slots unlocked, some for civilian/business dress, an "armored" look, etc. Varies by character.

- Have I been overusing that piece/color? If so, I'll try to pick something else.

- If it's a continuation/remake of a character, does it continue that character's "theme." For instance, my first 50 was an Elec/Elec blaster. There are 1-2 things I'll try to maintain across "copies" besides look - sometimes it's the round glasses, or the Jewel belt, or the color scheme, or the Celtic pattern on the boots. Even with that, they can look very different.

Not really back. Went to put in a post in the tech issues/bugs regarding unlocks and a quick suggestion. I'm mostly in a galaxy far far away when I'm gaming these days, and taking care of sick family when I'm not. (Which takes more time.)

Best experiences, IMHO:
Pinnacle
Victory
Infinity
Guardian

So much complaining. I hope my objections to things in the past were reasonable, and not quite this stick-in-the-mud-ish.

I'd be thrilled to see this happen. (If I trusted the devs and their writing, which is not a flaw with the idea.) I'm 100% for this. Especially after seeing how it's handled elsewhere. One of the things I liked about the Kheld arcs (and Voids) is that they felt like the game world having some reaction to me, specifically, not "Generic character #9087454 doing generic madlib mission #4872391."

Having some outside force going "What, a new magic user? I must have their power!" (as opposed to "Oh, look, another generic hero, send more generic minions") while someone completely different is trying to go after my Bots/Traps character's tech would do nothing but help keep the game fresh with repeated runthroughs. (As opposed to, say, Twinshot, which I burned out on after two runs because, oh look, just like redside had, everyone gets to see the exact... same... thing... every... single... time.)

So, since dropping back down, I'm wandering in selecting a few characters to unlock for the occasions I meander back here.

Unlocking characters seems about as irksome as enhancement combining when you want to do multiples - with a bunch of popups, reverting back to showing previous characters *right* as you get the unlock message (which gives a quick "Wait, I didn't unlock that one!" feeling until you see it do it over and over) and more.

Suggestions:
1. Let me put a checkbox or otherwise select multiple characters at once to unlock, with a countdown of how many global/server slots I have free.

2. If I'm going to require multiple *global* unlocks, make me have to select that so I can see it - and yes, a warning here is fine.

3. Cut down the number of popups, confirmations, more popups, etc. when unlocking. I really don't need five warnings and a confirmation. Combine them into one dialog box, and give me a "Don't show me this again" option.

4. Don't revert back to displaying whatever the first character on the server (locked OR unlocked) is at the end of it. Keep the character display on whoever the last character I unlocked is.

Haven't run across this, and I don't see it mentioned.

Back to Premium, of course, so I'm unlocking characters. With two (on two different servers,) I'm showing "Server slots 0/0" (which are servers I didn't buy extra slots on, so that's fine - but leads to something else I'll mention in a moment.) So of course I go to use a global unlock token.

Slot gets unlocked, but the game locks up tight.

I'm assuming (yes, I know) it's more a client communication issue, as Windows (win7x64) thinks it's still running just fine. Still need to pull up task manager and kill it, though.

This did not happen on any server I have *server* unlocks handy (for instance, Pinnacle, where I had 18 usable.) Those zipped right through. Haven't tried it on unused slots.

I mentioned "Something else" about server slots showing 0/0 - apparently I had two characters "pre-unlocked" over on Virtue since dropping back down to Premium. And yes, I'm very certain I hadn't unlocked them since dropping down.