Mr_Hellcat

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Mender Lazarus is from 5000 years in the future, and Mender Tesseract is implied to be a CoH version of Khan Noonian Singh. Whatever the Coming Storm is, it will never occur within the lifetime of our heroes/villains. The only way we'll ever encounter it is if Ouroboros acquires a task force that sends the characters to that time.

For all intents and purposes, the Coming Storm is not actually coming in any way that's relevant to our characters.

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Unless there's time travel involved. My question is what Shiva has to do with this, and when we're going to be getting our ROCKET LAUNCH PADS and EXPANDED STEEL CANYON! D:<

I'd hug you and give you cookies but there's a monitor and internet in the way, so instead I'll hug my monitor and smear chocolate chip cookies all over it.

*hugs*

That was genuine and not sarcastic. Here's hoping I15 brings some ratings changes like tweaking or removing the star system. *crosses fingers*

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I'll PM you.

[/ QUOTE ]Do me a favour too?

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??? Yeah, I would like to hear this too. Only to just *know* what it was about. The way you put your statement, it sounds like some very top secret thing that shouldn't be said here...I am clueless of why it cant be said here. It's done and over with I thought.

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...*sigh* This' going to get me further denounced, but you asked and I'll be honest, and this' going to be a long ramble.

We're not supposed to discuss exploits on the forums and we don't know what's still there or not, but fine...

I created a meow mish for the sheer fact that the people who made the other ones were lazy about it. They just grabbed the farm map they were used to, the Family/Demon farm map, and used that with bubbles slapped in without much research. I preferred the Carnie Commercial map fully tweaked out set at difficulty 4. This gave me:

30 Ally/Rescues + 62 Destroy Objects, with each spawning 4 level 42 Comm Officers that spawned orange. I didn't realize the importance of the 42-42 Comm Officers was that they were trial spawns with upped rewards, but I did know the 42-42 ones gave vastly greater rewards. I also realized that soloing was a far better use of time than teaming. By setting the allies and destroy objects as mandatory, it upped the ticket drop at the end, too.

40+ it was granting a level per run through and if I had 700-1000 tickets at the start, I'd get above the ticket cap from the drops and end mission bonus, and I probably could have with 0 tickets.

If you didn't train past 40 you could continue to get xp like normal and ding to your heart's content. I did it because I just wanted a damnable VEAT and to finish my MM before my Arsonist gave me a rage heart attack. I started my MM before I14 and it was basically soloing aside from the very sparse PUGs on Liberty redside. After I14 it was either soloing or AE teams. I built myself an Atta caves mish with text and plot and rescues to up the Freakshow spawn count. It wasn't til like 30+ or so before I even heard of meow. Heh.. someone asked me for a farm once and I gave them my Atta mish as "a good map filled with mobs for xp." I bet it didn't even get looked at because it wasn't using the exploit stuff.


Now, onto the present of MA and MA farms...

1. MA farms will continue to persist for the very mechanics of MA.

2. Granted, as far as I know you can't bridge, but if anything, it's easier to get a group together of various levels with a 50 that knows what they're doing and plow through the mobs.

3. ANYTHING in the MA can be used as a farm because of the above and the fact that you can easily replay content. Even the Dev's Choice arcs can be farmed. Farming is just redoing the content over and over, after all. Exploitive farming is different.

4. The devs are against exploitive and MA farming, but unless they get rid of xp or something, there's no way to get rid of MA farming. They can't get rid of xp in MA though, or the only people who'd play MA would be, well.. you guys here and in the MA story section with a smattering of others, to be blunt.

5. They can't really turn the auto-powers off for Allies completely, either, though they have it set right now for just difficulties 1-2 at least, but disabled in 4. Some people do use this as a legitimate tool.

6. They can't really turn off the auto-powers for just Allied created critters either because of above and also because there are existing enemies that give a lot better buffs. I personally used created critters with FF, Sonic and Dark Miasma to get rid of the negligible energy damage the Comm Officers did, but I've seen missions with I'd say better buffs that come from developer created NPCs. (I'm looking at you, [removed]!)


The developers are in a damned if they do, damned if they don't type of situation, and it's not so much that there's no easy fix for it. It's more like there's just.. NO fix for it. At least, not completely and not without pissing off the entire playerbase beyond the "Drama Club" members. But, if they wanted to seriously reduce the amount of MA farming or at least make it a lot more difficult for people to do in MA, here's what they should do (yes, another list):

1. Hard cap the number of Ally buffs at say 3-5 for Non-Combat and Pacifist Allies, while having anything above that not buff you.

2. Establish diminishing xp/inf/ticket returns for each Ally above the cap. That way people can still use Non-Combat and Pacifist Allies for storytelling purposes and won't be punished for Aggressive and Defensive Allies. I don't think drastically reducing the allowed Ally rescues would work because I can see the possibility of say someone wanting to have an entire army against a hard end boss.

3. Ally rescues should still be limited and put in a separate section than regular rescues but still count toward the rescue total, though. 30 in the Carnie Commercial map is ridiculous. There should be a cap of 10 Allies or so for each mission, and any map that allows more rescues will have the 20 left over in my example go towards regular rescues.

4. Establish diminishing returns on the same MA arc played more than once in 24 hours akin to diminishing Merits for TFs, except have it affect xp/inf/tickets for MA arcs. Say 90% for the second time through and then drastically drop off after that.

5. Remove the buffs from destroyable objects or at least don't let them affect the player like the Superadine Labs.

6. If it's still in there, don't let created critters' buffs affect the players too unless the target is mezzed. I don't know if this' an MA thing or a games mechanic thing, but when a /empathy drops Recovery Aura and I'm in range, it affects me, or at least did.

7. Remove ticket gains from stars. I've never agreed with getting tickets from stars, especially with Dev's Choice getting the high priority from the developers and essentially giving them free tickets, and this will keep farms from getting tickets for being 5 starred that the farm creators can then use before the arc gets hit for being a farm.

8. Put in a window of say 24 hours after an arc's published where it can't be unpublished, to help curtail people publishing farm arcs for their play period and then removing them so they're (hopefully just in the farm publishers' minds) less likely to be caught.

9. Establish a level range system. This' tricky, but I'd say make it so that level 1-10 players can do arcs up to level 20, 10-20 can do up to 35, 20-30 can do up to 45, 30-40 can do arcs up to 50, and 40+ can do arcs up to 54. You'd need to put in an "In my level range" filter to help accommodate MA users.

And finally...

10. Do not, do not, do NOT remove rewards from MA. I can't stress that point enough. As I said earlier, removing rewards completely from MA would absolutely destroy it.





You asked for more info and I gave it. By doing thus, I knowingly throw myself upon the mercy of the forums for admitting not only that I knew about meows but that *gasp* I used them. Now I go to bed, sadly expecting to come back and find myself on people's ignore lists and peoples' opinions of be devalued greatly simply for giving the info requested. :/

And yes, everything after the info was to try and make people see I'm not some [censored] or something. I just don't share some of your viewpoints on certain things.

You know, I missed some of the details, but I PMed Skarmory to keep it out of public discussion because who knows what out of all of it got fixed/tweeked and what could still be used or not.

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http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...Pocket-D-6.jpg

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Wow, how'd you manage the focus blur in that shot? It's amazingly awesome.

I'll PM you.

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Used to be that if someone was a level 50, you could count on a certain level of skill and teamwork, because they had worked hard through all the zones, and knew what to do.

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You have to define 'level of skill'. I don't die very often and when I do hit 50 it will have been through my skill and my hard work soloing, but any mechanic that may involve teaming I will have no experience in. However, I also avoid PUGs, always have in any MMO. When I have grouped, it is to Mal a new MM to teach them about bodyguarding or some tactic they aren't familiar with.

Skill is relative to an individual experience. I will only have had experience with one char at 50 so my overall knowledge of other classes will be next to nil.

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Since the MA I've encountered lvl 50's that don't know how to slot enhancements or even where to get them.

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Since MA I've encountered veterans with level 50' who don't know where to get level 40+ enhancements, too.

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I'm just curious what the opinons are about the best thing to purchase with your AE tickets.

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Love.

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Well see the reason (I believe ) that Manticore and Ghost Widow are in the video is that both of them are borderline characters on the good / evil side of things. Manticore financially backs Wyvern, who , to some people, could be seen as a terrorist group, and Manticore himself, if he felt the situation warranted it, would kill to keep the world safe.

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Hey, anyone who puts an arrow in comic Statesman's chest to save the world is definitely a hero. Comic Statesman is such a [censored].

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There was one little note that got put into one of the more recent patches that no one has discussed, and it disgusts me that the community would let it go unnoticed.

You removed ChickenTug Emote from MA!

I miss having all posable foes looking like they were desecrating a chicken for abhorrent reasons! That emote REALLY tied my arc together, and now it's gone.

So I'll make this sweet; Return my emote, and I'll allow you to publish your 'Going Rogue' without any 'unforeseen circumstances' happening to your precious... Stuff.

But seriously, what was up with that emote? Maybe the Banished Pantheon might've used it for rituals, but... What WAS it?!

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It was removed because it animation locked mobs into exploitable levels.

As for what it is, it's the eternal struggle of civilian vs enemy for the chiclets in their purse. But with a chicken!

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Or, for another - Croatoa. We know the critters there fight each other when observed - but without someone there to spawn them, they won't fight each other because they don't "actually" exist. Larger events, such as Jack, Eochai, and Sally exist independant of observation, "living" on a timer.

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So what you're saying is that it isn't some ancient war, but rather US that causes the hatred and fighting in Croatoa? It's OUR fault?

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Another question for you.. do other people exist if you're not interacting with them? For all you.. well, for all I know, I suppose, you're all merely part of a complex computer simulation and when I'm not interacting with aspects of it, it shuts down the sensory aspects of them and runs the systems as data.


OoooOOOOooooOOOOooooo *finger waggle*

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That depends on which form of existence you imply. Do they exist as people somewhere on this earth? Does their character exist? etc.. The answer to both are yes. You can go by get_global_name or get_local_name to prove someone exists whether you can talk to them or not. You can do searches and come up with results that they exist whether you interact or not. As far as do people exist in reality? go to Myspace or any other site and you will find tons of people who exist regardless of whether one chooses to interact with them or not.

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Merely programs! Flavor subroutines to add spice to my world! You're all just forum AI! Well, except for the few CoH players I've met in person through drunken parties and a road trip from Chicago to Washington, DC. At least with them I know they have a holographic representation for part of the time I was exposed to them.

Here's a question.. is Ghost Widow tied to just our Arachnos? Or is she tied to all of Arachnos, including other timelines/worlds? Granted, I haven't played the 60's retro arc, so I can't tell for certain... but if Arachnos in the Praetorian world is heroic, would she be tied to it and be heroic?

Another question for you.. do other people exist if you're not interacting with them? For all you.. well, for all I know, I suppose, you're all merely part of a complex computer simulation and when I'm not interacting with aspects of it, it shuts down the sensory aspects of them and runs the systems as data.


OoooOOOOooooOOOOooooo *finger waggle*

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I think it does, because Zombie/Rikti raids can still hit the empty zones. THey don't usually stick around very long, though.

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Ahh, but what about if the events don't happen? What about zones like Faultline, the PVP zones, the Hive, etc?

A semi-related issue... I've had the same "error message not showing up when there obviously is one" issue before, except I was able to run the mission. I believe my issue stemmed from confusing the system from being in the MA editor for too long, changing too many things, etc, but I can't say for certain.

With my issue, I was able to test it, but most of the objectives weren't working. Destructible objects would be there, but not glowing and with no surrounding enemies, etc. The same with allies.

Based on the fact that at least for me there seems to be a MA-induced memory leak, I'd suggest having save and exit breaks every so often.

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yes and this time the revolution will not be televised!

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Wow, that was bad.

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July 14th, 2011

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With Going Rogue going live December 22, 2012?

Servers going down on a Wednesday? Patch? I15 dropping on Test maybe? DOOOOOOOM!

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OP is just another DOOOOOM spreader, trying to stir things back up.

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I'm trying to decide which type I prefer. The screaming, yelling and frothing at the mouth DOOOOOOMsters are more entertaining, but the sad and disappointed types tend to have a little more depth....

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You do yourself a great disservice by not reading the actual OP and the OP's later post. The thread is about broken mission arcs. You all got sucked into the hyperbole and expected it to be about farming.

I swear it's like someone could post a topic remotely sounding like a a gripe about farming not being available in MA (note: it still is), put a sentence in vaguely referring to MA and then post nothing but links to cute puppies and people would start attacking the OP for wanting farming.

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Well when we only get three slots each, many authors want to make each one count. Personally a single-mission arc feels like a waste of a slot to me. If we didn't have that limitation then I would make some short ones as well.

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While that is the case, there is such a thing as too much. After all, there're quite a few people who think Robert Jordan stretched out the Wheel of Time too far.

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And oh how I do wish I had stopped after the first three of that one.

Unless it's fiction in New Yorker, we tend to expect a conclusion to a story. I'd rather have a one joke pony mission than a five mission arc with an unsatisfactory ending.

Having fun is often a balance of finding/making fun and avoiding unfun.

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Ahh, there we go. Fun. Not your fun, though. The player's fun. Just because you and your friends enjoy writing something very intricate and detailed, up to and including descriptions of any and all details, doesn't mean the average player will enjoy it or even take time to notice things. I'm not saying aim for the lowest common denominator, but lower your expectations of what people enjoy from what you and others here enjoy, to what the average player enjoys.

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Well when we only get three slots each, many authors want to make each one count. Personally a single-mission arc feels like a waste of a slot to me. If we didn't have that limitation then I would make some short ones as well.

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While that is the case, there is such a thing as too much. After all, there're quite a few people who think Robert Jordan stretched out the Wheel of Time too far.

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One thing that needs to be considered is the ego and grand idea of the creator. People want to make their stories teh UBERZ and judging by the looks of a few of the responses, have a bit of snobbery when it comes to arcs, so they're going to cram as much into their arc as they can, maximize it, etc. Even though longer arcs do give progressively more tickets per mission, it's going to be a drag for a player or team if they play a three mission arc and it feels like five or six missions long, or they play a five mission arc and it feels like eight or ten missions long. Tack troublesome bosses, ambushes, etc, onto it and it can feel like even more.

What's worse is the fact that even if you don't do that, others will, and it will just sour people towards longer arcs, just like a bad experience with specific enemy groups will keep people from doing developer content with them in it.

Edit: Oh, and announcing you're /ignoring someone with a differing viewpoint and/or opinion that you've publicly shown a dislike for based on said viewpoint/opinion is just going to make them the victor in the situation unless you're in a highly centralized area of like-minded individuals. The viewpoints here are obviously shared amongst the localized group, but based on the post above me, I'd say your group is quite localized and specialized, thereby running you the risk of coming off even more in the wrong if someone outside your group happens upon the discussion.

Dear Devs,

While I understand that putting anything into the game in the CoH/V world would cause spoilers, I believe there is a character you're doing a great disservice to one of your characters. In that regard, I'd like you to add more content and stories in Praetoria involving Lt. Sefu Tendaji's Praetorian self. Sefu is a Type R hero who you introduced and then proceeded to break my heart with in the RWZ missions.

So please, please add more content about him, even if it's his Praetorian version or his Cimerroran version, etc. He deserves better for being so awesome. I mean, he's the type of character that should be in the Freedom Phalanx, not Longbow, for pete's sake!

Sincerely,

The Hellcat




Ok, so now that I've gotten that out of the way.. what characters would you like to see get more screen time through their Praetorian versions in City of Heroes: Going Rogue?

...you thought giant creatures made of rock would be slow until the Hollows proved otherwise?

..when Frostfire was a chore instead of a bonus?