Monkey_King

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People actually fail that mission? It happens so late that you have access to at least 2 stealth powers (PvP zones) and 1 phase shift (also PvP), plus your travel powers. The mission only has robots in it, so unless you have a Kheld on the team nobody will have increased perception. Even if they do, it's still a pretty easy mission. On a team it's almost impossible to fail it since even if someone does flub something and get killed, the rest of the team can take over for them.

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It's a very big tech lab map. You don't even need stealth to pull it off, since enemies rarely squeeze off more than a couple shots if you blow past them, but simply charting out the mission map can eat up a lot of time.

At any rate, thank you for fixing the chat bug. Even knowing the workaround, it was a pain in the butt. The overall increased merits should be a nice boon too.

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positron thank you for clearing this up. Just one question though, those of us that have the necessary "defeats" will not be able to obtain the Reformed badge until issue 14 launches? I ask because I got to the needed amount before this was removed.

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Yes, the game is still tracking your Longbow kills, and when I14 arrives, the game will automatically check your kill count and award you Reformed. The formerly bugged Coralax Blue Hybrid gladiator worked the same way; the game was always tracking your Coralax kills, but the award condition was broken. People retroactively got the badge as soon as it was fixed.

Also, thanks for taking the time to go back and look at this one, Posi! I figured it was a simple case of administrative oversight, since you would have revoked the badge a long time ago if it wasn't grandfathered in already. We appreciate the PR damage control!

The bonus goodies all by themselves are $9.99, but the exclusive Mac version is just $19.99, meaning that's a month of gameplay for $10.00. Well heck, that's a bargain in and of itself!

I hope the Mac users aren't getting sore about it.

Objective: Inadvertent griefing by high level characters swooping by, hitting a present, then sailing off and leaving the snowmen behind continues to be a perpetual problem.

Objective: THANK YOU for moving that present away from Hardcase!

Subjective: You erred too far on the side of caution with the candy canes. Of course you don't want people getting all the shinies in just a couple days, but the cost of the entire Winter's Gift set is way too much. It's contributing to some of the present grief, because jerky high level characters zip around sniping presents from lowbies and leaving nothing but deadly snowmen in their wake.

The one change that I use and enjoy more than anything else...

Inspiration combination.

Seriously, this QoL change is extremely underrated, but has proven to be invaluable again and again, no matter which character I'm playing. No more teams standing around sheepishly because nobody has an Awaken, and no more groaning because the last nine drops were yellows that you didn't need.

Wierd choice, but it's really the little things that make the most difference.

I'm assuming you don't get anything special if you're already on the 6 month billing plan?

My overall impressions of the day jobs have been positive. At worst, it's better than a poke in the eye.

I have a couple suggestions for improvements, though.

1. It's kind of vague what counts as an "Arachnos controlled zone" for the Arachnos Agent job. Sometimes the black steel Arachnos buildings count, sometimes they don't. I would have expected the air strip in Cap Au Diable to count, but it doesn't. Maybe some more of those zones need to be spread around.

2. The Intern job is too hard for lowbies to reach. Would it break anything to stick a science lab in one of the earlier zones? It's just an inspiration bonus.

3. Likewise, the Crey building in Nerva is a pain to reach for lowbie villains. There's frequently Crey enemies guarding the front doors, even.

4. The bonus XP/inf/salvage rewards need to work on charges, rather than a timer. Logging out for even 24 hours nets you a bonus so brief, it's often gone before you've even gotten to a mission. Ditto for the auction TP reward.

5. Some day job locations count for two rewards at once. Examples include standing in one particular spot between the Talos base teleporter and train station, and some of the villains' Black Helicopter locations. You only accrue time for one job, but it's not clear which, and it's too confusing to have overlapping job zones.

Interestingly, you can get the same thing to happen with NPC allies on Mayhem missions, if you ditch the NPC then start going in and out of doors. Something about following people through doors makes the AI completely wig out.

I was lucky and didn't get any crashing, but I was suffering some lost connections in the tutorial and abandoned sewers earlier. I'd lose connection for 20 seconds or so, just shy of getting booted from the game, and a few others were having the same problem.

Hey, 5th Column wallpaper! Maybe it was always there, but swiped nonetheless.

Also, high praise for the rundown of contacts zone by zone, including the unlock requirements for the secret contacts. Lack of documentation has been one of my persistent gripes about the game, and it would be nice if new players were capable of being a little more self-sufficient.

Related to that, under Port Oakes, Veluta Lunata's entry should be updated to note that she's located around Fort Hades. Otherwise, she's impossible to find. I know where she is and I sometimes have trouble spotting her.

Lastly, could I suggest updating a few of the archetype examples to have somewhat more...descriptive costumes. The blaster and scrapper illustrate the point pretty well, but how does a catgirl in platform heels suggest "defender"? Likewise, yes, villains like to put skulls all over them, but that doesn't necessarily illustrate what a corruptor is.

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Anything remotely sexual is verboten, always has been.

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Tell that to Dominatrix and her gimp suited minions.

I don't particularly care to play the "healer", but Pain Domination looks fun enough that I might revive my hook-handed surgeon after all. Primary Fire Blast, naturally.

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vBulletin? Seriously? Jelsoft (the parent company of vb) supports censorship and can revoke the rights of any site using their bb software at a moment's notice without requiring to give a reason.

Do a Google search of "vbulletin revoke" to find one of the more infamous examples... although its certainly not the only one. They aren't exactly 1st Amendment friendly. A serious and "third party" overview of the matter can be found here:

http://www.thejemreport.com/content/view/294/124/

Sorry to hear CoH is going to support them... even if its only indirectly.

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It's a good try, but after finding out which web forum it was that got their license revoked, I'd say they didn't have a leg to stand on. From the vBulletin terms of service:

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# You undertake to;

* ensure that, prior to use of the Software by your employees or agents, all such parties are notified of the terms of this Agreement; and
* hold all data (including object and source codes), software listings and all other information relating to the Software confidential and not at any time, during the period of the license or after its expiry, disclose the same whether directly or indirectly to any third party without Jelsoft's consent.
* not to use the Software for any illegal purposes and shall comply with all applicable legislation.

...

# The Software may not be used for anything that would represent or is associated with an Intellectual Property violation, including, but not limited to, engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities.

# If any of the terms of this Agreement are violated, Jelsoft reserves the right to revoke the Software license at any time.

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Considering what that site is still up to, it's only through Jelsoft's good graces that they're still up and running. You don't get to complain about "censorship" if you break the terms of service that you voluntarily signed up for.

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Wait, altering one power (which is apparently STILL too brutal in PvE) is wholesale nerfage? Or is it that people just ignore all the PvE implications of power changes?

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It is STILL not possible to convince people that travel power suppression was for PvE as much as for PvP. Everyone conveniently forgets that complicated keybind that was going around that pretty much let you ignore any and all penalties for fighting with Fly on, to say nothing of Super Speed kiting.

On a less teasing note, thanks for the update. I have yet to be disappointed by any updates (well, maybe Arena, but I'm not much into PvP), and I know the delays are because you don't want to give us half a mission creator. Professionalism is a rare quality in the business world.

But by golly, custom bosses better be in if you're pushing this back so much!

This is a roundabout way of saying "The mission creator is a nightmare of bugginess, it'll be done when it's done", isn't it?

Whoa, nice job with the new screenshots. They look even sweeter now. I may even swipe the cyborg arm for use on my robot-armed blaster.

Oh wow. Cyborg Sphere are the shoulders I've been wanting forever. Some of those other parts look like I could repurpose them too. I've never used any of their full sets at once, but I get a lot of mileage out of cherry picking.

I'm guessing there were also some maintenance issues in the background that are neatly solved by not having to worry about the game essentially having three different versions. I imagine Sexy Jay will be happy to no longer have to provide support for the hero-only costume creator!

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Voice chat is quickly becoming a requirement for any MMO. It is just far too convenient to just talk rather than typing everything out. It is just a fact of life we'll have to accept. The days of being able to type out instructions over ooc chat like we did when raiding Fear and Hate in Everquest are long gone. It is just nice to see PlayNC also capitalizing on integrated voice chat for their launcher.

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Do what? It's not even necessary for World of Warcraft. Blizzard's added a bunch of quality of life improvements specifically aimed at reducing dependancy on voice chat, even.

A convenient avenue for voice chat might be neat to have, but I don't have a microphone, so I'm not sure if I can take advantage of it. That, and my issues with mics and telephones. I'm on the phone a lot at work, and I'm starting to get sick of being "ma'am"ed all the time, no matter how deeply I try to talk.

They're going to let us do WHAT?!

If they're letting us have the full range of mission creation tools that are available as of I12 (branching mission options, event triggered enemy spawns, etc), this is 9 thousand shades of cool. Even more if they let us make cutscenes! If it's just mission dialogue, boss names, and those two minions who stand around saying things, still pretty sweet.

What is the review process going to be like, though? You can't control what other players say, but surely it's going to affect the game's rating if actual content winds up full of profanity and offensive terminology. I don't think even a couple customer service reps could handle it if EVERYONE gets in on the action (and they most certainly will!)

Also, is this coming in I12, or just Soon?

The branching dialogue options sound interesting, to say the least. I'll wait to see how it shows up in the new zones to see what they actually do with it. If they go back and spruce up old content with it, though, there's a couple villain contacts I can think of who need some more dialogue choices...

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I'm very confused as to why Psychic Scream is in Mental Manipulation.

My only guess is that they just swapped it out for Aim.

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That's not a big slap in the face to Assault Rifle blasters or anything, no. How nice that the new kid gets powers shuffled around so HE can get Aim and Buildup. Seriously, I was thinking that the absence of Aim or Build-up might be the balancing factor, but that seems not to be the case.

As is, I'm rolling up a something /Psi blaster as soon as I can on test because holy cow. Drain Psyche is going to need some serious looking at - that just cannot be ported as is from the dominator set. It's functionally a full heal/full endurance power on demand. That's... not a balanced blaster power. Power Sink eat your heart out.

Giving the set fear and confusion may be taking things over the top. Both of those are mez effects that frequently bypass existing mez protections, even in PvE. The confusion power seems unreliable enough, but a /Psi blaster with Presence and Scare is going to fearsome indeed.

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An interesting thing about opting in and opting out is that, is that we want the players to play the game they want to. The players who opt out can play the game the way they always have. But from the advertisers' side, it's only good for them if the players are not resistant to seeing these ads in the game. The last thing we want to try to do is coerce or force players to opt-in for the advertising. So we hope a lot of people don't opt out and we hope that people actually enjoy the fresh experience there. The bottom line is if they opt out that's better for players and advertisers.

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This is a really good point that needs to be highlighted. They can't make the in-game advertising obnoxious, because not only will everyone opt out of it, but really annoying ads have the opposite effect on consumers, which of course is bad for the advertisers.

Case in point, show of hands of people who have actually bought talking, animated smileys or thought about consolidating your mortgage loans through a certain company? Now a show of hands of people using browser plugins that BLOCK all those ads?

I'm not worried. Money is involved, and they won't make any if they're stupid about this.

I'm still having trouble seeing where villains got screwed here. There wasn't a whole lot else brutes, stalkers, and dominators COULD get, since they have most of the logical picks anyway, tons of people have been wanting Elec/Storm corruptors, and you have to be careful what you give to masterminds.

My main critique would be that the devs wimped out and gave some sort of Electric set to dominators instead of cobbling together a proper Stone Assault set. There's enough powers that could be cherry picked already, it wouldn't have been THAT hard. That, and I'm disappointed that scrappers didn't get Ninjitsu. That was the one thing I was holding out for.

I suspect 90% of all the sturm and drang over powerset proliferation is coming from the vocal minority that is the PvP crowd.