NewScrapper

I want "no patrol XP" because (1) I don't want the hassle of having to regulate my rate of earning XP by doing some sort of "2-mission on, 1-mission off" nonsense; and (2) I want to actually earn my levels rather than being given them as a reward for prior inactivity -- Patrol XP as it stands is basically the MMORPG equivalent of welfare, and I prefer to work for my money.

I've got a 6-year-old PC that doesn't have a prayer of playing in Ultra Mode. Should I bother getting Going Rogue, or should I wait until I get a new PC? Is there enough non-graphics-intensive stuff (like the new Powersets) available in GR to make it worth the expenditure?

Good freakin' heavens, you people are obtuse. The reason I want a "shut off Patrol XP" switch is because, yes, I do want to level at a "normal" rate instead of being "rewarded" for not playing the game by leveling up so fast I bypass content. Which is not at all the same as saying, "I want to level up not at all" (i.e., "no XP" option).

It utterly amazes me how people will rain all over a request for an OPTION. As in, "Here's something that you don't have to use and won't get in your way at all, but it will make some other people happy." As if whatever doesn't benefit you personally somehow weakens the game.

Prior to Issue 11, I never cared one bit about being able to go back and do earlier content that I'd leveled past, and I always thought that people who asked for the ability to do such a thing were whining about nothing. But I never said anything about it on the forum because, hey, who am I to say this ability shouldn't exist? And then the devs created Issue 11 and Flashback, and I thought, "Isn't that fantastic? The devs were actually listening to all the people out there, and they created this whole new system to satisfy them! That's amazing! You go, devs! I'll probably never use the system myself (and I haven't, to this day), but I just love the fact that you've made people happy with this new thing that I myself could have cared less about!"

Same thing for weapon customization.*

Same thing for color customization.

Same thing for switching moralities.

Every single time, I said, "How nice that the devs were really listening to people's wants and needs out there! Even though this doesn't benefit me in the slightest, I'm so glad the devs were listening and responded!"

And now all I'm asking for is a freakin' "shut off or clear out something that was forced on me" option, and I get reamed by a bunch of trolls who are probably scared that the devs will pull time away from the next $10 "party emote pack" to actually help me out. Nice, people. Real nice.

Here's my point. Let's say that in Issue 20, the devs add the option to shut off or clear Patrol XP. HOW DOES THAT HURT YOU? You might never use it, the same way I haven't ever used flashback or color customization, but it would be there for anyone who did want to use it, and it would make at least some people happy.

* - Actually, I have used and enjoyed weapon customization, but I never clamored for it.

Okay, okay, I get that there are workarounds. I knew that before I posted. What I'm saying is that Patrol XP should have been made optional in the first place so that we wouldn't have to use workarounds. The devs have been really good in the past about making new features optional when there is the potential for those new features to get on players' nerves. This is an instance where that same foresight was obviously not applied -- obviously, I say, because if the devs were foresighted enough to say, "Let's put in an option to disable all XP," then there must have been some sort of selective blindness at work that caused them to not apply that exact same foresight to Patrol XP. So, I've made "New option: Shut Off (or Clear) Patrol XP" part of my Sig, and there you go. Ignore at your leisure.

When I say "canonical," I just mean "not contradicting what has come before," be that dev in-game content or content previously imported into the game from MA.

To me, the ultimate payoff for investing your time and imagination would be this: If the devs judge your Arc to be 100% flawless, fun, and canonical, then not only will they award you a free X-month (whatever's reasonable) subscription to CoH, but also they will convert your arc AS IS into an actual in-game mission that you could potentially get from an in-game contact (or even play from Ourouborous)! Think about it -- maybe instead of being offered "Bonefire" for the umpteenth time, your Kings Row contact would actually offer up YOUR arc! Wouldn't THAT be the coolest prize EVAR???

Here's a suggestion: If the devs can't provide an option for us to shut off Patrol XP when we're offline, they should give us the ability, once we've logged back in, to clear any Patrol XP we've earned during our downtime.

It's just weird that when PvP, Inventions, Mission Architect, and other big changes hit the scene, CoH was all like, "It's optional! It's optional! You don't have to do this if you don't want to!" but in this one instance they're like, "Please...who's NOT going to want this?"

I don't want my character to level up faster than normal due to Patrol XP. Is there an option to shut it off? I see the "Disable Earning XP" option, but that's not what I want -- I want to earn XP at the normal rate, not stop earning it altogether.

I'm planning to go inactive for a while. I have a story arc partially built in Mission Architect. I haven't published it yet because it's not ready. If I let my account go inactive, will the story still be there waiting for me to finish it when I eventually come back? I don't want to lose my work.

My ATI graphics card's fan died, causing my graphics card to overheat and shut down the PC every time I played CoH. My friend gave me another fan to rubberband on top of the broken fan, and that's working pretty well, but noisily. So I bought a new nVidea card with a passive heatsink that I hope will be both quiet and long-lasting.

My question is, since the new card is nVidea and not ATI, does that mean I can install the nVidea drivers without having to uninstall the ATI drivers?

My friend recommended that I (1) boot up in safe mode, (2) uninstall the ATI drivers, (3) shut down the PC and replace the card, and (4) boot up with the new card and install the new drivers. Does that sound like the best plan? Is it overkill -- can I leave the ATI drivers alone? Or is it underkill -- do I need to run something like DriverCleaner after uninstalling the ATI drivers?

(And feel free to comment on whether I was stupid to get a card with a passive heatsink instead of a fan...when it comes to upgrading my PC, I really wing it a lot.)

I just installed the free ZoneAlarm firewall, and I was wondering...I don't have a home network, really, just one PC that's hard-wired to my cable modem, printer, and other stuff -- no wireless, either, usually, though occasionally I'll plug in a wireless router when I need to work from home off my office laptop. So my question is, when ZoneAlarm asks me whether my ISP should go into the "Internet zone" or the "Trusted zone", what should I say? Right now I've got it on "Internet zone," but I don't know if I'm being overcautious or if that's what it really should be set to.

Also, I've installed the free Avast! antivirus -- any special settings I need for that? I don't think it has a "gamer mode," so should I shut down resident protection when playing CoH or leave it on?

I'm also planning on getting Malwarebytes resident protection (one-time cost of $25). Any settings advice on that? (Do I even need that, or should I just do weekly scans with the free version?)

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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Sands of Mu though is a vet power. There's no reason why a pool power can't overshadow a vet power.

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Don't forget, you can't slot Sands of Mu, so SoM gets progressively get weaker compared to Shadow Maul, right?

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Exactly. It does less for the long animation, so making the animation shorter would bring it in line. Upping the damage would bring it in line too, but I'm more partial to seeing the animation time decreased.

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I guess the only argument I have against this is that since Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu have the same animation and are cone powers, new players (such as myself, once upon a time) who see Flurry in action would expect it to be a cone power also. This expectation would hold true even if the animation were shortened. The devs would have to change the animation entirely to remove that expectation, and I wonder which is easier, development-wise -- developing a new animation for Flurry, or making it a cone power?

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I'm ambivalent about making it a cone. It's very tricky getting the cone to affect more than one target in Sands or Shadow Maul and requires that you have enemies practically on top of each other. Since the damage is fine for Shadow Maul, it's like having icing on the cake when you get it to affect more than one target. If you don't, it's no big deal. But if the only change you make to Flurry is to make it a cone, it'll only be on par with other attacks if you do get it to hit more than one person. Most of the time, it'll affect only one target and still be underpowered.

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I don't expect that Flurry will ever be "on par" with Shadow Maul or Sands of Mu because, frankly, it's a pool power, and I don't expect pool powers to be as good as mainline powers. I just want Flurry to be the kind of power I can take without feeling like I'm hurting my toon. With only moderate damage and a low chance to disorient (one of my least favorite effects), I still wouldn't consider it a good attack even if the animation time were decreased. Give it the potential to multiply that moderate damage and low chance to disorient over 1 to 5 minions, however, and now we're talking.

I have to admit, though, my desire to see Flurry made better springs from my desire to use it on a speedster Dark Melee Scrapper who's also got Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu, so most of the time I will already be doing the necessary dance to get two or three minions in the cone. Would I take Flurry on any other kind of toon? I don't know. So if improving Flurry in some other way (increasing dmg or chance to stun, decreasing animation time, etc.) would open it up as a better tool for a wider range of builds, I can't really argue with that. I guess I just like triggering that same animation three times in a row because it gives me the feeling like I'm really beating the stuffing out of those minions in my cone, and making Flurry a cone attack would make the beatings that much better.

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That annoying pop-up is why I ditched Avira and installed avast!. Pop-up on start-up... okay a bit annoying. Pop-up in the middle of a mission and mid-fight? Mmmno.

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Had you been able to get rid of the popups, would you have kept Avira?

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Actually, my recommendation would be to reduce the animation time by a third, but keep the graphics as close to the way it is as possible. I think being a little quicker would make it feel on-par with other powers. They did it to Flares, keeping the graphics about the same, but decreasing the animation, and it turned a very frowned-upon power into one that people highly recommend. There's no reason why Flurry couldn't benefit from the same treatment.

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I would agree were it not for the fact that Flurry's basic animation is shared by Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu, and I have yet to see anyone register a complaint about those powers on account of their animation. I'm guessing this is because they provide sufficient bang for your buck -- i.e., a high DMG cone attack with -ACC is worth the chance of whiffing while being rooted for 2-3 seconds. That leads me to think that it's not the animation that makes Flurry bad -- it's the fact that it does so little for such a long animation.

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I'd recently installed Avira's Personal (free) product and was liking it except that the nag popup was getting on my nerves. Once I found a way to block it, I liked it MUCH better. Its an awesome lightweight AV that is what AVG used to be before it developed creeping featurism.

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What popup is this, and how do you block it?

There seems to be two schools of thought developing about how to improve Flurry:

1) Make it a cone attack.
2) Improve the Stun portion of it.

But doesn't #1 automatically accomplish #2? After all, making Flurry a cone attack means that the Stun portion gets applied to every enemy who falls in the cone, right? So instead of having a whatever-% chance to disorient one enemy, you now have a whatever-% chance to disorient however many enemies you happen to get in position. (I usually average 2 or 3, but have eked out 4 or 5 on occasion.)

Also, even if you were to guarantee a single-enemy stun, you're still rooted through the long animation, so you will have very little time to take advantage of it. Remember, Flurry's major drawback is the long animation -- if you miss, you're stuck, and even if you hit, you're stuck. Making Flurry a cone attack improves the odds of at least hitting SOMEBODY during that long animation time, stun or no stun, and that makes the risk of a total whiff much more acceptable.

So, I'm not objecting to improving Flurry's stun capability UNLESS doing that would take making Flurry a cone attack off the board. If you have to do one or the other, I say make Flurry a cone attack. That's the only way you're going to make the risk comparable to the reward. THEN, if need be, improve the stun capability. (But I doubt this will be necessary.)

Since it's a one-time payment of $25 for the real-time MalwareBytes (if I recall correctly), I might go ahead and fork that up. I'm not the only person who uses my PC.

So now it's looking like AVG (free) + ZoneAlarm (free) plus MalwareBytes (paid) -- still a good, cheap solution, from all I'm hearing.