MissInformed

Agreed. When it comes to so sheer spectacle, Nova is one of the most impressive powers in the game. (Nova and some of the Khled powers, I think.) Nova looks like shock and awe.

Crap. I had one, but I loaned it to that Puffinstuff guy.

They don't need it now. I got 5 levels on a character in the last month and never went near an AE. I've played AE missions, but always with a level 50.

And he doesn't only fly. We had a "spawn Caleb" event on Justice once and spawned him multiple times. Sometimes he was flying, sometimes he was on the ground by the water near some rocks. He didn't spawn in the same location at any time and we had to search him out.

You're right! I forgot that as long as one other person stays on the TF and everyone else quits, it works.

That does sound good. But stop teasing with the "summer winding down" bit! In Austin we're just a few days away from setting a new record for triple digit temperatures, the lake levels are the lowest they've been in since the 1940's, and they just moved us to stage two water rationing. Not only has it been all over the news, but home within city limits got a phone call last weekend to ensure we all knew about it and some city official was on the news explaining about fines and such.

A cold front came is coming through tomorrow or Friday and may drop our daytime highs down to 98!

Maybe we can do a vacaction swap and I'll spend some time in Oregon and you can barbeque in October.

Possibly so, but it didn't specify and read "most potent." The most potent powers in the game happen to be the ones that don't deal any damage.

Several of the ones I've seen listed here I was considering, but I think I'll go with Seeds of Confusion.

This is almost exactly how I'd define the two. I know I tend to fall between the two and which side of the line I'm on depends on what we're talking about. And I don't think it matters what the goals are as much as the player's attitude about the goals. Some people are hardcore about their costumes*, some about badges, others about the number of 50s they have, how fast they completed a TF, etc etc etc.

I tend to bounce around the line and sometimes I lean more one direction than another. Some days I'm a hardcore socializer.

*Seriously. The ones who draw out a zillion new options and post them in the costume suggestion forum? Hardcore costumers!

This. It has nothing to do with fairness. These people made something for themselves and then freely gave it to the rest of us to benefit from. In most cases not only are they not paid for their effots, they incur costs in the form of web hosts and other overhead costs to get the product to us.

So no, maybe they haven't catered to Mac uses. And no, you don't have to get a PC. You could learn how to code and make it yourself, then generously give it to others as they have.

Suddenly it's not so easy, is it?

I'm not positive, but it might depend. They recently just changed the TF settings so that even if someone calls the final mission in, the TF doesn't disband until everyone quits. I've DC'd in the AE missions with only one other person and I don't recall if I logged back in on the team or not. However, if you're doing a small TF and had to get additional members to start the mission and then leave, you have lots more control over this.

When the other people leave, as them to exit the game but not to click the "Quit Task Force" button. As long as they do this, I believe they still register as being on the team. That way if there are only two of you actually doing the TF, as long as one of the other offline "startup" people is still considered "on the team," you shouldn't disband when there's only one person left online.

I think that's right, but you may want to verify before you actually begin the TF and while the startup people are still available.

It all depends on what you want, though. Aside from buying most of my characters some kind of knockback resitance IO as the earliest possible level, I rarely move any influence between my characters. I use common IOs and don't really worry about the best sets or purples. I do have characters I have loads of sets and bonuses on, but they're all level 50 now and rake in influence. For any character I'm leveling up, I use drops and place lowball bids on IOs/recipes that are several levels higher than I can slot at the moment. By the time I can slot them, I've usually won them. If not, I have more influence and can bid higher.

I log of hours, play often, and I do have characters with loads of set bonuses. Some people would say I'm a casual game because of my slotting and some people would say I'm not because of the time I invest in the game. I don't jump through hoops to get my IOs and I'm willing to wait for quite a while to get what I want. Maybe I'm not a casual gamer, just a casual slotter.

Thankfully, "gone" and "not quickly accessible" are not the same thing. Anything that you had in your Favorites and that still exists you can find again with the Search function and add to your subscriptions. Some things might be gone for good. Any thread you saved to favorites that wasn't recent or stickied could have been deleted, but that happened on the old forums all the time, too.

Anything on the internet could move/vanish/crash at any moment. If there's anything specific out there that you really rely on, you may want to copy it into a Word file and storeback it up yourself. I don't do that with the vast majority of things, but there are a few specific keybinds/instructions I do save on my own. I wouldn't, on the other hand, copy 20 pages from the Paragon wiki site and save those on my own.

Could just be lazy. I always forget which zones Bloody Bay and ... heck, now I don't even remember the name of the other zone.... Oh, Warburg! I always forget which zones they connect from. Sometimes it's faster to ask then to start pulling up websites to check.

If someone's level 50, it may have been quite some time since the person was last in Faultine, which isn't any sort of "hub" zone, like Talos.

Forgetting and occasional laziness aren't the same as stupid.

I could be wrong about this, but I think that the RMT tells, not emails, started before inventions came out. If I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't very much before inventions but it was before.

Also, there was a one hour show that was all about MMOs and power leveling and it was almost entirely focused on City of Heroes. It came out sometime after CoV but WAY before Inventions. It spent a lot of time talking about a character named Champagne Bubbly (I assume she won't mind my naming her here since she was featured on a television show!) and how the player was married with a small child and her Controller wasn't leveling as fast as her husband's character. She hired some company to PL her from the 20's into the higer levels. (The show incorrectly stated that the highest level in the game was 60.) It spent a lot more time talking about the guy who lived in San Diego and made his living PLing CoH characters and was doing so well he had to start outsourcing the work to... some Eastern European country.

The show airs on G4 and other channels sometimes. I wish I could remember what it was called. It was just on again last month.

The show was all over Champagne Bubbly. It showed her buying the PL, the PL guy logging her character in and playing, then the account holder logging Champagne Bubbly back in and getting all excited about all the levels she got. Apparently Champagne Bubbly and her husband never read the EULA.

Unemployed?

That makes me sad.

It does. And, while there's a brand called Yogurt of the Gods or something similar that comes in many flavors, I'd skip it and go for the Fage or the Oikos (By Stonyfield farms). Where they each have 13-20 grams of protein per cup, the Greek Gods yogurt only has about 6-12. (It does come in some neat flavors, though.) Fage and Oikos come in plain, honey, vanilla, and blueberry. None of the Greek yogurts are cheap, but the versatility of the plain option and the protein content make it worth it for me.

I often don't get enough protein in my diet and this is an easy way to get it without eating a whole chicken.

I understand where you're coming from. At the same time, are you putting yourself in Sam's shoes while you're asking him to walk around in someone else's?

Yep, he judged. Yep, he ranted. Yep, he could have helped this guy out and he didn't. And now you're judging him for it.

Why'd this bother him so much? Maybe it's his pet peeve. Maybe someone else's laziness and willingness to take from others without effort bothers him. Maybe his socks crawled under his feet inside his shoes and it really bothered him and then this guy came along. Does it matter? We all have bad days. I don't know what kind of day he was having before this interchange came about. Sometimes I have days where the wrong person just has to say "Hello!" to me and I get annoyed. Not because of the Hello but because of what came before it that the person had nothing to do with. I try not to take it out on the person who said Hello, but some days are more difficult than others. Some days it's easier to get mad over a Hello than to deal with the 100 other things that led up to my being mad over a Hello. My parents had a 15 year running argument about wire shirt hangers - very Mommie Dearest. It took me years to figure out that the hangers weren't really what was making them so angry, it's just what they chose to focus on and use to vent.

Sam posts about his bad experiences. I call a friend and rant about mine. Thankfully I have friends who listen and allow me that time to get it off my chest and move on. If I didn't have that outlet, I think I'd go crazy or be simply unbearable. Sam rants about game related things here because who better to understand (or not) what happened than someone who shares the environment, even if we may not share his response. If you don't want to do that for Sam, don't read his posts. Simple. And then you won't have to tell him the same thing when he posts his next "I don't understand people" thread.

Not when they can see all your badges. Even a new person can figure out that if I'm a level 12 character with 5 years of badges, I probably have influence lying around.

Oh, the MA babies are far scarier. A zombie you can spot from far away. You might not notice an MA baby until it's on your team and it's too late!

I heard about this paper on NPR last week. They intereviewed the professor and he was really interesting. His name name is Robert Smith? - he had it legally changed to include the question mark so he would stand out from all the other Robert Smiths out there.

Well, if Sam quoted his conversation correctly, I'd hardly call his response "flying off the handle."

Sam: "Please give me money?" What do you take me for? You can't just go around asking people like that.
Begger: o srry
Sam: You're level 37. Just kill stiff.
Sam: Be faster than begging anyway.

Sure, he wasn't Pollyanna, but if that's flying off the handle, you come from a much calmer place than I've ever been.

I have to agree with Nethergoat on this one. The only reason farming actions involve "performing the same activity over and over for the rewards" is because that is the most efficient way. Look at the things they repeat over and over. They are picking specific missions which meet specific criteria and only repeating those missions over and over, not any mission out there. They picked those missions because they are the most efficient. When one gets altered to prevent farming, they pick the next one down the line or find a new one. They could have chosen any Task Force, but they picked Katie Hannon because it was most efficient. Without adding the efficiency part, you really don't capture what farming is.

If only we could motivate them to take over the goverment and run it as efficiently... It'd be like those Sprint ads about firemen running things.