MissInformed

Good for you! I wish my manager understood this when she talked to upper management.

If you're incredibly frustrated while you're in the game, there are many options there where you can find help within the game, as well. You can try the local server help channel, which reaches every zone and instanced mission on the server, by sending a message like this: "/hc, I'm looking for X. Can anyone tell me how to get there?" You can also join the global help channel (Help), which reaches across all servers.

For this particular mission string, I did it when it was new and I had no idea how to find it. The map marker was way off the map and into the black section, which I'd only seen before when it was bugged. I opened a help ticket and contacted a GM. The GM was helpful and when I still couldn't figure out what was going on or how to get to the mission, he actually led me there himself.

It doesn't make sense to sit around and get frustrated and angry and then blame the game and the developers before you get help. The developers may have made some challenging missions, but they've also given you many many ways to get help when and where you need it. If you use all the tools they've given you, there's very little in this game worth actual frustration and anger.

Try some of the Dev Choice arcs, or whatever they're called. I've played quite a few and have enjoyed them all.

If you're really bored, there's nothing wrong with taking a break. Do something else for a while - that's usually all I need to get reenergized and start enjoying the game again.

For me, the worst thing I can do is make myself stick with something I find boring, whether it's a book, a game, a TV show, whatever. That just makes me dislike it. Coming back after an absence really makes me appreciate some things more - or find out for sure they're not for me. I picked up and put down the book On Hundred Years of Solitude a dozen times before I actually got beyond the first 100 pages. My friends started calling it "One Hundred Years to Read This Book." But the last time I started it, I really enjoyed it and now it's one of my favorite books. All those false starts were just the wrong time for me to enjoy it. Earlier this year I took a few months off from CoH and played another MMO and some single-player games. The way things worked in those games gave me a much stronger apprciation for CoH and how amazing it really is.

Hooray!

Red, thank you so much for taking care of all of this for us! I really appreciate it!

No surprise there. Badges have always been more popular than PvP in this game.

I may have to facilitate a meeting on Thursday night, in which case I'm not sure I'll be able to participate. I'll let you know as soon as I find out. (Damn you global economy and my having to be in meetings 'round the clock!)

Edit: Meeting cancelled - I'll be online Thursday.

I believe it's called Australia. It's used by both Aussies and US players who playing during what would normally be off-hours for people playing from the US.

I don't have access to the game UI right now, but if you have any trouble joining global channels, let me know and I'll include some directions later.

To you and Goober, because you've lived in or been to worse places. I come from Northern California. I've never been to Houston, Louisiana, or Florida. Austin humidity is hell on me. I moved here at the start of August when tropical storms were heading for Houston. While I'm sure it was much worse there, here in Austin the humidity was shocking and totally hellish because it was totally different than what I had lived in for my entire life. I remember thinking that since my new apartment was a mile from my new office, I'd walk to work. I left my apartment, locked the door, headed to the gate, and barely made it to my car, which I drove to work with the AC blasting.

It's about perspective. Mine is different from your own and much closer to Arwen's. Austin humidity is bad. And there's a reason I'm not in Houston, Louisiana, or Florida.

You can also buy recipes, not just completed IOs. You can buy recipes at WW or even from the crafting tables themselves. If you're going to buy a recipe at a crafting table, check WW first to see the going rate. Table recipes could be more expensive.

Also, before you ever bid on a crafted IO, first check the prices of a recipe and the salvage needed to create it. I've found a lot of times a crafted IO will go for far more than the recipe, salvage, and creation fee, so buying the ingredients and making it myself can sometimes be cheaper.

The key to being successful at WW is patience. I start bidding on things before I get to the level where I can use them. (How far ahead I bid depends on the rarity of the item and how fast I'm leveling, so I have no set recommendation other than "before you need it.") Since there is absolutely no need for any IO in the game*, I bid low and wait it out. I'll increase my bid if I'm really not getting anything, but there's not much I can't wait for.

*To be competitive in PvP, they may be more valuable and I can see you'd feel a need to have them if you're facing someone with Perma-Dom and you don't have it, for example. Aside from being competitive in PvP, there really is no need for IOs, just wants/desires. You can get through the game quite successfully without having any.

That's the Empathy Healing Aura. It's actually not the most powerful healing aura in the game, but the more powerful ones need an enemy target and can't be spammed in the AE building. They also need an accuracy check, so while very powerful, they can miss when you need them most.

If you want to be a good Defender, don't worry about how powerful a heal is. Instead learn about the different Defender powers, how they work together, and how they work with the other powers in the game. A Defender with shields has no heals - that doesn't make the person any less of a Defender. Learn how the buffs and debuffs work and learn how to help people on your team. With a Kinetic heal, the heal aura is centered around your bad guy target and anyone needed a heal has to be near that target to get healed. If a Scrapper needs a heal, you may be able to target the Scrapper and heal him by hitting his target with your heal. With a Dark heal, the heal aura is centered around you and anyone needed a heal has to be near you to receive it. If you want to heal a Scrapper and you're far away, you need to get close to the Scrapper to make sure he gets healed. If you see that the team seems confused about how to work with you and your heals, you can let them know about which kind of Defender you are and how your heals work to their best advantage.

Remember, some Defenders don't even have a heal of any kind. That doesn't make them lesser Defenders. The best defense is to make sure your team doesn't take damage in the first place. Heals are great when you get into trouble, but so are some other powers available to a Defender - even your offensive ones. My Empathy Defender has Energy as a secondary set. I carry some blue inspirations in my tray so that if my team gets in a tight fight and is getting overwhelmed, I can run in and use Nova. Anything nearly dead will likely be finished off and anything not will likely get blown away from my team, giving them a few seconds to recover, use inspirations, get shields back up, etc. Using the blues quickly, I can fire off a heal to help mitigate the damage already taken, hit Vengeance on anyone dead, and resurrect someone.

To be a good Defender, know as much as you can about all the tools that are available to you and how they work with the tools everyone else brings to the table. That knowledge is more powerful than any heal in the game.

Which is exactly why I said I wasn't sure in my original post. Thanks for backing me up on the flip-flopping thing. I really wish they'd leave it alone. I don't know why it's been changed a few times. When I logged in last night it was

Last on...
...
...
second highest
first highest

I personally take no offense. Austin is great, when it's not trying to kill me with cedar and oak pollen for 6 months of every year. This was one hot and miserable summer and, though I love that I can grow a hibiscus plant on my porch, I would give anything to again be able to walk among the redwoods every day.

Also, people in Texas are terrible drivers. I mean the worst I've ever seen in my life with the exception of my own father. I can't speak for all of Texas, but Austin seems to be the red light running capital of the US and no one here seems to understand that the left hand lane is the passing lane. And everything really is bigger in Texas, except for the itty bitty parking spaces which don't fit any of the giant trucks and SUVs that take up two at a time.

Every place has its issues - Texas is no different, no matter what the natives try to tell you.

Manoa is right a about the BBQ, though. Before I moved here, I only thought I knew what barbeque was. Texas schooled me on that and I'm grateful.

Since they can't stand in front of you with a finger held 2 millimeters from your nose while they say, "I'm not touching you...." they do this instead.

Spamming a heal aura is that annoying. I'd avoid inviting anyone doing it to any team I was on.

The AE isn't inherently boring or "Mad XP." It's all about what you decide to do with it. If you make the team yourself or solo and choose missions for content and not the Mad XP, you can find some really great stuff. Or you can run the same mission over and over again just for XP and drops. (For a while longer, at least.) It's really not that differnt from anything else in the game except for the "one stop shopping" aspect of not having to leave the building to do it and some missions set up just for farming.

You could forego the AE and have pretty much the same boring experience farming some other mission in some other zone. The AE isn't the blame for a player's choice to repeat the same mission(s) over and over again. People did that before the AE ever came along. The AE gave people additional power to do it, but how you choose to use that power is up to you.

The clock is really the only reason I run in windowed mode. If that didn't work and I couldn't put a clock up on my screen, I suppose I'd buy an actual clock and keep it next to the computer or wear a watch. Sometimes low tech solutions are still the best.

I've done it dozens of times with a team of 50's and sidekicks. Many TFs are more difficult when half the team is made up of sidekicks, but I haven't noticed that to be a especially big problem on the ITF.

One thing I would point out is that if you have a team that is SK-heavy, it's much harder to go down Lag Hill than up it. If you go backwards (down the hill), it's very likely the SKs will get separated and if they're much lower in level, they will probably get killed. That said, most good teams can recover quickly (as quickly as the lag will let them) and be able to get through the mission without much bother. If that's the only mission they die in, debt will be cleared up by the end of the TF, especially if you spend some time clearing rooftop mobs after TF completion.

Absolutely, especially since you can have the most active and fantastic SG around and have hardly any prestige because each player has the ability to turn it off by switching out of SG mode. As long as you have enough to keep the power on and the teleporters working, if you have them, it doesn't matter what the number is.

While it doesn't matter to me at all and matters little to you, it matters to him and his group. That's the only reason needed to make it important to him and I can appreciate that.

That said, no, it's not a good enough reason to change an entire system around so they can feel good about their number again. I can respect that it matters to the OP and his group, but he needs to understand that his mountain is a molehill in terms of other people and the game design.

And OP, if you really want that number to matter, the very last thing you should do is cheapen it by buying it. If the only thing that matters is having the higest number and now how you got it, then consider if that high number is worth more than the account you would be giving up if you break the EULA. If it is, while I respect that you've chosen that as a priority, I'd sy you should examine whjy it matters to you and maybe reconsider.

This may need to be a bumpersticker.