Noxilicious

Too bad it's easy to get tired of the reactor room quick when you spend 20 minutes just staring at it.

Back on topic, I absolutely love Grandville's underground. I especially like the two huge pipe rooms. One of them even pulsates with a red light, giving it this spooky kinda feeling, as if it's connected to some hellish contraption which, given this is Grandville, is probably true. I love hanging out there when I got nothing to do in the game.

This game is repititive. There's no way to deny that. In fact, as has been pointed out, instanced missions do a good job of highlighting repitition.

I think another thing is that CoH is all about the combat. Things like Archetype selection, power set selection and hell, even power customisation are just there to make combat more interesting. Combat isn't just the main draw to CoH, it's pretty much the ONLY draw.

And you know what? I like it that way. As far as I can tell, many other MMOs try to distract you from the combat parts, such as using elaborate crafting systems, but I've also been more interested in using the +1 Sword to stab stuff than making said sword. It's why I love that the Invention system isn't just simple to use, but not necessary to play the game to begin with. I can just fire the game up, go in and beat villains (or heroes) up, and when I get bored I just go do something else. Then, soon enough, I'll feel like beating baddies in CoH again.

The way I see it, many other big MMOs want you to commit to the game, get all the uber-loot, to get said loot you need to be part of a big guild that requires mandatory bi-weekly meetings, etc etc. CoH, meanwhile, you're just friends with benefits. It's a fun relationship with no strings attached.

I think that's also one of the reasons why CoH is known for its nice community, or at the very least nice compared to other MMO communities. Sure, like about every community there's bad eggs and there's flame wars and such, but how many MMOs do you know where vets give newbies a few millions worth of currency just because they happen to have some spare money? CoH gives you no reason to compete with other players, so instead you can feel free to just help people out for no other reason than because you can.

CoH may or may not be more repititive than most MMOs, but the difference is that I enjoy CoH's repitition, and that itself is quite an accomplishment already.

I'm in the same boat. I'm European, but I play on the US servers.

The worst part is that the European versions just pale when it comes to the content, and there's also the server status page difference that Sam mentioned.

Being redirected once, okay, I can deal with that. What pisses me off, and what Sam also mentioned, is that you're actively prevented from ever hitting the US site anymore. I can only imagine that someone didn't see all the consequences through, because this is just frustratingly idiotic.

Going purely by the primary, a quick trip to Thesaurus revealed to me there's a type of sword called Curtana. Maybe make that Lady Curtana to add a bit of a noble touch.

Some other ideas are Dame Mascus or Madam Mascus, horrible puns on damascus, another type of sword.

Yeah, that's what they'd like you to think! Can't trust those Praetorians on anything, you know.

In either way, it's pretty clear that when you side with Emperor Cole, you're meant to be a villain. Praetoria is basically "what if 1984's Oceania was ruled by Superman?" right down to the Thought Police/Psychic Friends Network. There's some semblance of moral grey because you're superficially safe in Praetoria, but you don't see people excusing Hitler only because he had some pretty awesome streets built.

In a sense, that makes even the Etoile Isles a safer place than Praetoria. In the infamous City of Villains, there's no need to watch your back because everyone's gonna be too busy to stab you in the front. In Praetoria, you never know when exactly someone's gonna rat you out to the authorities because you wondered why you're not allowed to leave the country.

On the other side, while we don't know much about the Resistance, and while there might be some moral gray going on with them (maybe they're willing to blow up buildings, killing innocent people in the process, just to end Tyrant's rule?), ultimately they'll still be the good guys by virtue of not sending death squads after you for political dissent.

Swimming sections in video games are by their very nature awful, if only because it differs too much from the normal gameplay and lacks the polish of the rest of a game.

Let's not add underwater gameplay to CoX.

Technically, there's four. Imperious is essentially Past Statesman.

Also, wasn't the news about Recluse at Herocon basically "Richter died at the Well of the Furies... or did he?" with emphasis on the "or did he?" I suppose it's mostly just wishful thinking, but I'd love to see a Praetorian Stefan Richter.

So, why should Praetoria be a goatee-universe?

In essence, that's what the Rogue Isles already are in relation to Paragon City. If Praetoria was a goatee-universe, we'd just have Evil Town, USA and Evil Town, Canada.

As for Rorschach, he's pushing the anti-hero boundaries so far he's already one foot into villain territory. In CoH terms, he's a Vigilante one step away from being a Villain, so he fits right into Praetoria.

"Hey, we have news concerning Going Rogue! The news is that you'll get the news soon!"

Also, grats to the newcomers and promotees. Do us proud!

I'm pretty much with Sam on this. I absolutely love how quickly you level in this game. I love how they just hand you levels in the early-game with a flower bouquet and a card that says "I hope you feel welcome!" It's one of the reasons I'm playing this MMO, and not any other, especially older ones where grinding is required to progress.

Outlevelling contacts may have been a concern, but frankly, we already have Ouroboros and we're able to turn our XP off. You're not forced to carefuly calculate what to do to do it all, you've got sufficient options to do it all in your time.

Besides, one effect of being able to level up so fast, and having many character slots, is that it encourages making more characters. So what if you only get to do one contact in the 5-10 range? One week of playing, you've got five characters that will have done all five contacts.

I respect that people come into this game preferring one style of playing over another. I don't want to levelling slowed down, though. You could say that in that regard the game caters to my interests more than to yours, but you CAN slow down your levelling speed. If instead the 'default' levelling speed was slowed down to satisfy your preferences, well, I doubt I would have any option then to increase the speed to do something I like. The way it is, people who prefer levelling slower and people who prefer levelling faster could feasibly be sastisfied both, the other way, one group would be neglected completely in favour of another.

I do agree, though, that having inactive contacts clutter your contact list can get rather annoying, and if the devs could get a way for inactive contacts to remove themselves right away without you requiring to visit them first, I would welcome that.

On the topic of getting travel powers too early, well, I can't really agree that that is the case. The thing with MMOs, they always wow you with their sheer size the first time you play it. Play for a month or two, though, and the huge world you saw will warp into a merely empty one. You already saw most of it, and you just get tired of traversing the same desolate wasteland or forest with nigh-identical trees at the slight chance there might be a pretty-looking texture somewhere. Having fun things to see is nice, but once you already saw them? I'm afraid MMO graphics cannot come close to the feeling of watching a sunset or visiting a museum. You only want to see that stuff once, and then you just wanna do your quests.

I also sincerely doubt that putting travel powers to a later level 20 or hell, even 30 would do more harm than good. It would not encourage street-sweeping again because, as already mentioned, the XP just isn't worth it. Instead, it'll just be tedious to navigate through dangerous places to get somewhere where you will get worthwhile XP.

If you want people to street-sweep, you need to give them a reason to do that, not force them to do it. To my understanding, being beaten in a zone gives you more debt than being beaten in an instance already, so it'd only make sense that you increase the amount of XP that zone mobs give you, risk vs reward and all. Slashman's idea also has merit. In the end, if you want people to do one aspect of the game, you need to give them a reason to do so. Exploration is only fun until you're done exploring and saw it all, so tweaking zone mob XP so that it's a feasible alternative to mission arcs, or creating unlockable mini-arcs like Slashman mentioned might result in less people just being instance-shut-ins.

0.02€

Well, the title says it all, doesn't it?

Basically, from what I understand, I6 introduced both City of Villains and bases, so I guess it's not surprising there will be a City of Villains Strike Force contact that requires a base to use. It's a reasonable idea, after all, on paper, anyway.

In practice, however, it's just a needless hurdle. While it is easily enough to join a super group with a fully-outfitted base, I don't see why that should be a necessary. You see, I like soloing and I like being basically a freelance villain on the Rogue Isles, so I have very little interest in joining super groups. None of the little conveniences of super groups and bases are enough to make me want to join any.

I also like Strike Forces, though. There's something about their feel that makes me want to do them every so often. Most of the time this works out out perfectly, too, but when it comes to the Silver Mantis Strike Force, well, I trust you understand the dilemma. Either I would have to rely on a team-mate to have a functioning base, but that's a gamble and I would just risk annoying the team I make when it turns out we can't do the thing we set out to do, or I need to join a super group I have no interest in participating in just to use their base, and franky I just consider that dishonest.



tl;dr: Why make it so that you need a base to do the Silver Mantis Strike Force. That's silly, just put her on Sharkhead Isle so everyone do it regardless of their super group affiliation.

Considering that one of Going Rogue's first promises is new end-game content, I sincerely doubt that Praetoria will stop after level 20.

Rather, I believe that if you start as a Praetorian, you only have until level 20 to decide whether you join the Praetorian Police or the Resistance or in other words: Whether you'll be a villain or hero.

I assume that Praetorian trainers just refuse to train you once you hit level 20 if you didn't join their faction, and if you don't join either faction, you won't be classified as either Hero or Villain and therefore unable to access the other two 'worlds', meaning you'll be stuck where you are until you come to a decision.

Of course, this is all just speculation, but I like to think it's more reasonable than assuming Praetoria is just 1-20 when end-game content has been promised.

By and large, they don't change anything, but there's some notable differences between the origins.

First off, all origins have different inherent powers. All of them do ranged low ranged damage, but their damage types and additional effects, like -res or -dam, differ from origin to origin. They're pretty weak, though, so by the time you can slot something decent into your powers, the inherent powers will have outlived their usefulness. Generally, I stop using them at about level 12 when I get DOs.

Then, blue-side, the different origins get different starter contacts, who in turn throw different enemy groups at you. That, too, is only relevant up to level 5 when you get contacts independant from your origin. On that note, red-side only gets two starter contacts, both independant from your origin.

Lastly, both blue-side and red-side have a story arc where you get to talk to five different characters that tell you about the "Origin of Power". There's one character per origin, and the character whose origin matches yours tends to give you a larger picture about your Origin's, well, origins, whereas the other four give you general answers. However, this is just flavour text and has no bearing on game-play.

Supposedly, Origins were intended to play a larger part in the game, but right now, it's basically just RP-fodder.

While we're at it, fix the Longbow Ballista in Sister Airlia's first arc so that he doesn't spawn at a minimum of level 40 anymore. If you do that arc as soon as you can, facing an EB five levels above you is the least you want to do, especially when you have a boss-sized ally you have to lead out but she refuses to actually move past him and then gets knocked out and you LOSE THE BLOODY MISSION.

Quite aggravating when faulty game code screws you over like that.

On that note, have Daedalus' first arc be accessible when you're actually level 35. You know, the level when he POPS UP TO TELL YOU YOU UNLOCKED HIM. It might be WAI, but when I am told a contact is unlocked by reaching level 35, it strikes me as odd he won't give me missions until level 40.

I'm not getting into the pronoun debate at large here. Let's just say I'm more or less with GG on this and leave it at that.



As for teaming etiquette: Communication is the A and O of every team. Whether you consider letting the mission-holder click glowies or not, whether you want to clear or stealth missions, people will only know if you tell them to. If you're not doing as well as you hoped, the only way to get a new strategy is to actually talk to your team-mates.

Anecdote time! So I was on this Numina Task Force once and early on I asked the leader if they had a plan for the Big Hunt and they didn't, really, but planned to cross that bridge once we get to it. I asked if I could just take charge for the Hunt and organise who goes where, etc etc. I was on exactly one Numina TF before, and I didn't even organise the Hunt then. Clearly I had the perfect credentials for the job.

It went fine at first, but half-way through, I got really confused on who is where currently, how far the current part of the Hunt has progressed, and keeping tabs on ParagonWiki and the team-chat all at the same time. I lost track of things and we ended up resorting to little more than a dibs system.

And it still worked. Why? Because people actually said where they were going to go and the rest could adjust accordingly.


At another time, I was leading a Barracuda Strike and we were doing fine at the first mission. At the second mission, however, we started doing fairly badly, thanks to several people really liking to take charge and be the first in battle, and when the Brute and the Crab Spider run into two different directions, the rest of the team will end up splitting up.

What I noticed is that the Crab Spider was at the head of the team most of the time and I decided to play on my team-leader authority and officially announce that Crab Spider the team's spear-head. Not a whole lot changed in terms of individual playing-styles, but now that everyone knew who to follow there were no team-splits, meaning it was us who steam-rolled Nazis instead.

Moral of the story is that communication is everything when dealing with other people. You don't even need to tell them to change the very way they think, just nudge them into a slightly different direction and things will go smoothly.

People ask all these questions so they can help you, as in, you specificly.

I imagine it's like tech-support, really. If you really want to help the person on the other end of the line, you need all the information you can get. More often than not, though, they will start with very general statements, and you need to ask your way through before you can actually start helping.

Take the ever-popular "What AT is best?" question, for example. We cannot possibly know what that person already knows and what they expect, what their preferences are, etc etc. Maybe they have very limited play-time or they want to be as self-sufficient as possible, so Scrappers are the way to go, or they want to play solely in teams, so Controllers will suit them best. Or maybe they just prefer red-side and all the previous suggestions are mood, anyway.

Yes, we could tell them that Scrappers hurt a lot in melee and can take a hit while Blasters do ranged damage but a soft breeze knocks them down but that's already the info you get when you're choosing ATs in the game. How general are we supposed to get? Where does keeping it simple stop and being needlessly vague start?



As far as the scenario of someone asking which powers to pick and which to skip, even that requires knowing what the player expects. Hell, even the loading screen hints say that some powers are better suited for team-play while others are suited for solo-play.

Now, I could either give him a run-down of all the powers and the various situations they are useful or useless in, but chances are, the player being new, they'll just be needlessly confused. I could give them suggestions for a solo build, but then it turns out they actually team more than they play solo and in the end, they'll feel they have an inadequate build. OR I could ask them those questions and know exactly what they need.

The Wretch Strike Force will fill the gap. You heard it here first, folks.