MissInformed

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It looked cool, but its execution time just made it unusable.

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I don't remember, but was it longer than Shadow Maul? That thing seems to go on FOREVER. Maybe they could alter the damage of Storm Kick or make it a cone to compensate for the time?

I miss the old Storm Kick animation, too. I remember talking to my friend about it in the office one day and telling him how awesome it felt when I used Storm Kick.

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Exploitive farming... he doesn't like exploitive farming. I look at this move as simply extending an olive branch and in a roundabout way saying, "You can go this far."

If it cuts down on the amount of tells asking for fillers then I'll consider it a success.

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I think this one. Plus, if they're farming and exploiting, now maybe they're doing it alone and won't get anyone else banned for exploiting.

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Just put in a line somewhere that states that your boss teleported away. Like you, I'd like an animation to show that. Failing that, you just have to work around it somehow.

Technically, they all teleport anyway. They're teleported to the Zig or to wherever LR keeps his victims.

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Yep, I had to fake this last night, too. I set the boss to run away at X% health and then set his dialogue to explain he was getting out of there and the defeat text to explain that he disappeared just as you were about to defeat him. Not perfect, but it will do. And technically my guy didn't "teleport," so even if they added this animation it wouldn't have suited my character and I'd have had to fake it anyway. That or make him a virtually indestructable AV programmed to run away, but I think that would only frustrate people and I think I myself would be more inclined to forgive a slight "fake out" in the logistical department than extreme frustration over a bad guy I felt was an unfair challenge.

Brazen Hussy, level 50 Dark/Dark Defender for the LGTF. I may need a break after that, so I won't sign up for the Raid just now.

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Unfortunately every one of the responses has been to form a team with a goal oriented activity. Not just to team for the sake of teaming or to hang out.

Justice doesn't seem to encourage random aimless head hunting anymore. Soon it will just have signs in Portal Court that say "Get off my lawn."

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"For the sake of teaming" is a goal, is it not? If you want to build a team for that, do it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't provide details (room for 4 level X and 3 SKs to defeat level X bad guys) etc.

Further, I think we're putting forth best practices here, since the OP was having trouble. Best practices are known ways to get successful teams together and don't really account for random things or "Hey, let's hang out" stuff. That doesn't mean it doesn't work or shoudln't be done.

No one is saying you can't just get together with friends and have yourself a good time. We are saying that if that's just not working for some people, they should try some of these options because they are generally going to be more successful. That doesn't equal "doooooom" or "no one wants to team just for the sake of teaming." If that's your thing, go do it. Lots of people successfully do just that all the time. They're not the ones in here looking for help on puttings teams together though.

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I dont think TF teams were at issue, though I may be wrong.

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Sure, but a team is a team. If a TF team is running, a team is running. If you can use techniques to form a TF, you can use them to make a mission team, too.

Have a plan. Advertise your plan. Get the people you know you run with most often in one channel.

Rather than attempt to speak for everyone, I'll say that my SG teams often and there's usually at least one Task Force going on every night. I'm also a member of several global channels that are not as large as JFA/Chrome or other server-wide channels and I frequently find teams through those channels.

You may want to look for a group to join or consider starting a global channel of your own and invite people you've teamed with and ask them to invite others who are more insterested in teaming. JFA and other channels are filled with people who are there for many different reasons. That's great, but it makes it harder to find people with your goal in mind. No harm in starting your own channel to keep in touch with a closer group of people who share one common goal.

Finally, no teams would exist without the efforts of the people who make the teams. It can be a lot of effort and sometimes you can get two task force teams together in 10 minutes and another time it might take 45 minutes to get 6 people together. Be willing to put in that effort and if you create your own channel, make sure you invite plenty of others who are willing to do the same.

Check back on the forums, too. The Saturday Matinee has been a Justice tradition for several years now and it is open to anyone who remembers to sign up. Even if you forget to sign up, you may find a slot open on a second time, just remember that preference goes to anyone who does sign up.

And, like a date, you're better off with a plan instead of just asking a girl to hang out sometime. Instead of looking for anyone to do anything teamish with, post something saying that at X time and place you'll be on and forming a team to accomplish X goal (Run a mission arc, level up charactrers from level 1-5, do TF X, whatever). People are more likely to respond to a plan.

Many happy returns of the day, Kaiser.

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Why would the low pop servers all die and the high ones live ......

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Because whatever brings them down has nothing to do with the population? Justice used to go down frequently while all the others were up, so whatever brought it down seems likely to have been specific to that one server or its connection. The west coast servers go down more often than the others, so there could be something specific to the entire hook up. Could be weird power flucutations or something about the wiring of the building and have little to do with the actual servers and nothing at all to do with what's on them.

Either way, though it can be annoying and bothersome, it's a fairly minor inconvenience. They've never been down long enough to make a real dent in my play time or have any adverse affects on me. Having alts on other servers has been a good way to keep playing while the servers have been down. If I ever find myself in a position where the sever going down for 20 minutes or eevn several hours causes me any real stress or trauma, then I have far more serious issues I should be looking at than server status.

That's why I have alts on all the non-west coast servers. It seems the west coast ones have always gone offline more often than the others and for a long while, it just seemed that Justice was down more often than any other server.

welcome back.

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I am acquainted with the Common Rule, and I don't think that Prof. Myers's final product was an exceptionally valuable piece of scholarship. However, I am still not convinced that an IRB would not have granted approval beforehand. Even where there are risks, they may be offset by the benefit of the research.

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But how much benefit is there to his research? It seems like all he proved is that when he acted like an [censored], people didn't like him. I didn't see anything new in his paper. Other academics have been writing about things like this for ages now and uncovered much more interesting social interactions in The Sims Online.

Like LHF, I'm wondering why he seemed surprised by the behaviors he observed. If he's really an anthropologist, why would this be at all surprising? Forget even being an anthropologist, I think the rest of us would have been able to explain this without doing any "research" and without any fancy credentials.

It doesn't matter if the person you're looking at is in the flesh or represented by pixels. If you treat people badly, you're not going to be making friends. Most of us learn that by the time we're 10.

I suspect this guy just enjoys jerking people's chains and being able to write about it and speak about it at a conference is just the cherry on top. I think I'll just write him off with the people who think "role playing" just means "free pass to be an [censored]."


"Hey, stop griefing me!"

"Back off, man! I'm an anthropologist!"

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"Jay can't understand why Super Booster IV: Devs Gone Wild isn't more popular."

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I'm at work and haven't clicked on any of the links in the thread, but this caption cracked me up, no picture necessary.

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You don't have to disengage from the final boss during the ambushes on the TF. I'd recommend that you stay on the boss and use your aggro managers to fend off the ambushes while defeating the big boss, and then going after the ambushers. That way you don't let him regenerate his massive health back. Beat him down, he won't rez, unlike Romulus or Jade Spider.

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I'm sure this is possible with a fairly balanced team of 8, but with the team of 6 we had, it was not. We did try and it resulted in wipes, which also meant total regen on Reichsman. We lacked the aggro management needed to keep two AVs busy and damaged and Reichsman did his "Unaffected" thing several times. I don't blame the mechanics of the TF for the difficult time we had, but I think the "start" information is misleading.

I'm really surprised this TF will allow people to start with as few as 4 people. While I wouldn't go so far as to say it would be impossible to complete with 4 people, this isn't like completing Synapse with 4 people. The team build with 4 people is going to have to be pretty spectacular. It might beetter if the text said something to hint about that, allowing for a team of 4 to do the TF as a real challenge, but definitely encouraging players to go with a team of 8. There's plenty of precedent for that in missions with EB/AVs that say, "You may want to bring some friends" or something similar.

Good design is also about establishing good expectations. The problem with the TF expectations is that the base level expectation is all over the board. Some are easy with 4, some are EASIER with 4 (Hello, Positron), and some are going to be extremely difficult. If you set the expectation that a team of 4 can do the mission, then it does not go without saying that "A small percentage of teams of 4 will be able to complete this TF." If it's going to be that difficult, it needs to be said. Allowing a minimum of 4 to start without any warning should mean something closer to "Teams of 4 may be challenged, but it's certainly possible." I'm not suggesting they spoon-feed us information about how to create a solid team, but that they give us a fair expectation of what to expect so that we can plan accordingly on our own. Right now I believe that the expectation level is not set to match the actual level of challenge.

And I still say that beating up the same guy multiple times or for any extended period is a cop out in terms of story and mechanics. Doing it once or twice makes sense; there's always got to be some incincible guy out there. But I think this game has resorted to that ploy too many times.

I did both the new TF and the new SF this weekend. We had a full team of 8 for the SF and several of us had Nukes/Shivans/assorted Temp Pets. I think it went really well and I had a good time. I also think that without the aresenal of temp powers we brought along, it would have been much more difficult and less fun. The cut scene was a great addition. (I say that now, before I've seen it 2 dozen times. Damned if you do, damned if you don't with those, I think.) I think it took is a few minutes under or over 2 hours.

The hero TF was actually far more difficult for us. The game will allow you to start with a team of 4 and we went with 6. It took is just a few minutes under 3 hours to complete the TF and I'd say nearly 2 of them were spent in the final mission. I have to say, I was incredibly disappointed in the mechanics of that mission. I love the idea of the guy spawning additional bad guys on us, but the way it happened was not run, it was simply tedious. Beat him down, he spawns someone new and regens all his health. Repeat until you are ready to scream, then repeat at least once more.

I am really fed up with Task Forces that require us to beat up the same person multiple times or for a ridiculously long period of time before we win. That's just plain lazy "I'm out of ideas.... let's keep beating up this one guy over and over"
development. Beating up on nearly impossible to kill guy isn't "epic." It's tedious. Adding ambushes doesn't change the fact that we're still beating up one guy over and over again. I think our Dev team is far too talented to continually be hauling out this type of final encounter.

Mary Macomber, Jade Spider, Romulus, and now this. You can change what the AV looks like, you can add an ambush, you can make us fight in some hazy "dream sequence" fog, make us all turn into pandas, whatever... it doesn't change the fact that we're still beating on the same "invincible" thing repeatedly. New schtick, please.

I liked the end of the LRSF, for example. I very much liked the idea of getting the individual temp powers to use to mitigate different things (Though I agree with those who said it's not the best way to give every AT a role to perform) Those ideas are new and different and provide more of a challenge than "beat the guy up until you bore him to death and then give me a call."

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I hope the fix is to give us the Dev Tools. First thing I'd do is fix teh ch4t I3uG.

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100025000300What chat bug?

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WHICH [Zones into Talos]
chat [Zones into Dark Astoria]
bug?

Spyder Noir would also like in on... I'm guessing on Naphil or Captain Darkspirit, but it could be his Rad/Something Defender.

Sarah Wynter - 50 Ice/Kin Controller (or whatever else is needed)

Many happy returns of the day, BA!

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It's cool to have more options but I would rather have more baddies to fight, new places to see, and more powers to try.

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Seconded.

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This is exactly why I'm so glad I'm not a Dev. I agree with Flea and Darkbridger on this, but I also know how many people think power customization is the be-all, end-all, top of the list desire. I don't really care what color my powers and while this addition is neat, I really couldn't care less and haven't really understood why it's such a big deal to so many.

I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be a game developer and try to prioritize things to make so many people people happy when they have such varied interestes and desires and I don't even understand them. I will never get, for example, why anyone would want a "shoulder kitten." Seriously.

Put me down as an alternate.

I can bring Emma Thorne (51 Spines/Regen Scrapper) or a Defender or Controller.

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So apparently I'm in a relationship with everyone on the Justice server. No one has any children by me yet, have they?

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Not yet. So... when are you going to move to a rural area, stock up on guns and ammo, and declare yourself a messiah?

There's always room for another polyamorous cult in Texas and it's a buyer's market. Once everyone gives you all their money and worldy possessions, you won't even need a mortgage.

DDDDDDDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMM!!!

Overreaction. It's the American way.

The server status page really should have a message about the daily maintenance window. I think it used to on the old site. I'll pass that suggestion along.

Congratulations!

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You'll come back. They always come back.

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Here's hoping!

Until then, you'll both be missed very much.