Part_Troll

Only the team leader can select missions. BUNK.

If the team leader -hasn't- selected a mission, anyone else on the team CAN select any mission they like, and the game will make it so.

It's a bit trickier if you aren't selecting one of your -own- missions, because the destination waypoint doesn't appear on your minimap. However, it DOES appear in your navigation compass, and when you get close, you'll see the (yellow) distance marker to the door.

Click on the door, and -bang- that's the selected mission, be it the leaders mission, your mission, or someone else's mission. As soon as you click on the blue hand, mission is set.

The griefing aspects of this can be quite hilarious -- when the level 2 character newly invited to a Peregrine Island street-sweeping team, inadvertently clicks on their own level 2 mission door in Atlas, and suddenly the Peregrine Island players are autoexemplared down to level 2.

Can you say 'argggh' as their aggro radius jumps by 500% and everything around them goes BOOYA -- instant team-wipe.

Not recommended for griefing. But it can be useful if the team leader is preternaturally dim, or something.

Ex

Eight Level 2-4's on a Sewer Run, all gaining levels like they were on special, and Every Single Ding is accompanied by some twonk's 'gratz', or some equally febrile buffoon stating PERMAGRATZ!!! as if they were absolving themselves from the HEINOUS CRIME of not acknowledging yet another miniscule progression in the career of a bunch of n00b characters.

Those of you inculcated to the ritual; when a thousand people sneeze, do you say 'bless you' to every individual?

Do you say 'good morning' to everyone you meet, and 'good evening' to everyone you interact with, and 'hello, how are you' on the phone Each and Every time you answer it, even if you've answered it 100 times before on that day?

Compulsive/Obsessive Disorder rules your lives.

For the non-terminally-braindead: Part_Troll refers to a stage show that Bill Bailey toured with. Google for the reference.

Where Part_Troll, long time CoH player and curmudgeonly old person with peculiar ideas of what comprises 'reasonable', 'fun' and 'comprehensible', lays down the Law According to Excession about 'congratulating people on the team who 'ding''.

Don't do it.

I mean, really, the flood of 'GRATZ' and the odd people who have personalised/macro variants with upbeat "you're doing great!", or "enjoy your new powers, dude!", or whatever, it's a pointless social wart, a ridiculous -ritual- which means precisely nothing.

Oh there are -some- people, perhaps new to the game, or terminally insecure, who -need- the adulation/recognition of their 'game playing prowess',people who stlll find the leveling ding to be a sweet sweet sound of Yet More Discovery and Growth.

Personally, I'm totally over it. Absolutely sick of people saying 'gratz' to me, or to anyone else on the team, to anyone in the entire &^%$#@ world. It's sheer noise. It's needless pointless input filling the available chat screen with stupidity.

It's arguably worse that people who -also- feel that "gratz" is overworked/overused STILL need to say 'PERMAGRATZ' or something in order to 'weasel out' of saying 'gratz' when people on that team/mission ding. Weaselwords from weaselpeople, if you ask me.

Ok, so it's not a big deal -- I don't comment on the practice, it just washes over the chat window and I move on, ignoring the proletariat and their socially binding ritualistic exclamations of innate idiocy.

If I never see another 'gratz' again, it will be too soon.

Ex

Some amusing answers in there, and a whole lot of ridiculous posturing and The Usual Garbage.

I'd expand upon that paragraph a lot, but that wouldn't really achieve anything for the vast majority of players, because they're not playing the game with people outside of their clique these days, and that, dear readers, is the BIGGEST problem this game faces.

So I'll only expand on it a bit. This is just my opinion, it doesn't need to be argued, disagreed or agreed upon by others, it's simply my opinion and the rationale behind that opinion.

Those people who are set to "SG only" in their search comments, (known quantity, only play with 'good' players, yada yada yada), there are many other 'good' players out there, that they will never meet. There are a lot of poor players too, and that can be annoying (I should know, I've played with most of 'em). But to limit yourself to SG only, that's really very very sad.

I reckon the reason people still put in 'my level or higher' is because they're still of the firm belief that getting levels -faster- is somehow more fun or something; they're also the kind of people who don't like to help others, and fail to see the obvious corollary -- if you're playing with people HIGHER than yourself, then you're abusing your own rule because it advantages you. You won't team with 'lower level' people but you'll happily team with 'higher level people'. Leechers do this. Socially maladroit scumbags do this. A lot of CoH players with 'my level or higher' in their search comment are self-labelling themselves as players I don't want to play with, it's a good thing.

I think I'll have to put in more interesting search comments, like "if are braindeath on a stick, then please avoid playing with me", I'm sure that will raise hackles across the board.

"Teams my level or higher" (with supersidekicking, whodoyouthinkyou'refooling?)

"not interested in teaming" (then why aren't you flagged as 'no teaming'?)

"SG ONLY" (why?)

Discuss/add.

The Shard TFs are ok, now that they have SuperSideKicking (still need to be minimum level 40 for the first two, and 45 for the second), and the JETPACK vendor.

They are long though, and the contacts are loathe to hand their cellphone out.

I'm up for them.

Impressive amounts of non understanding.

A few points of clarification for the eternally blind
[*] I was not the leader, ergo, I was not 'pulling together' an ITF[*] The FF Defender was already on the team when I joined[*] The deaths thing was due NOT ONLY to a significantly less than expected amount of defense, BUT ALSO because there was no effective leadership. Just a few short directions makes the world of difference, and there were no directions given, so people just did whatever they wanted. Teams don't act like teams, then things fall apart, fast, (Especially for thoughtless scrappers who think they are unkillable).[*] the whole argument about 'let people play how they like to play' is screwy when you're talking about a task force at L50; some people have roles that the Archetype offers which are far too valuable to the team for players to be selfish about "oh, I don't get to benefit from Speed Boost" says the kin, and drops it from their build -- instant team gimpage.

But most importantly:
[*] As ever, arguing on the official forum is a -complete- waste of effort.

Back to playing the game as best I can, with the functional, the dysfunctional, and the hypercynical self-serving "my level and above only" louses which infest this great game.

Ex

The portal room has been totally toned down. I don't think the Portals 'spew out' any more than one lot of villains these days. They used to have seemingly infinite hit-points back in the day. Burned out on the Portal Room during the 'wow, you can -farm- this mission!' where people played it for weeks on end, until the devs finally removed XP from the spawning critters.

It used to be a team-death-for-sure room. These days, it's a sad paper shell of it's original ferocity -- and I am NOT complaining.

Ex

I have a L41 Storm defender on Freedom I can port over (if free server transfers are available)

Which particular Wednesday did you have in mind?

Did a Synapse TF with my L18 FF defender, went from L18 to L24 in the one TF. Was triffic. I was the only mitigation (all scrappers and a blaster), we did the TF in less than 2 hours, and had 0 defeats. Bubbles rock, even with just SO's in them.

ITF on Virtue. Many scrappers, some blasters, a tank, a controller and a FF defender.

First mission I notice a distinct lack of personal bubbles.

"Can we please have the team bubbles"

'Sorry, I don't have the small bubbles'

Do an Info on the L50 defender -- Personal Force Field, Dispersion Bubble, Force Bubble. That's it. The two team bubble powers completely absent.

'I like playing odd builds, this build can tank like anything when I'm solo ...'

It's a freaking TASK FORCE lady! Get your head out of your fundament and use the Dual Builds for a SOLO/PVP version and a TEAM version of your useless defender!

Had I been team leader, she would have been unceremoniously booted.

As it was, I was just along for the ride, and it was a very sloppy death-filled ride, let me tell you. We prevailed, it was 'okay', but it wasn't anything -like- the kind of Blaster Nirvana I thought I was enrolled in. :/

I did ask her if she also had a petless mastermind ...

Ex

I've already said my bit -- Mostly my heroes are buying SO's now that Rikti War Zone localises the 'store'. The time taken to do it is measured in minutes. The resources is minimal compared to the huge cost of IO's. (yes, if you have patience, you can get IO's cheap over a few -hours-.) For me it's a time constraint, I only have so much time to play (and I have a LOT more than many people), and I resent spending that time juggling salvage and recipes to get even Generic IO's in my character.

I did an experiment and gave a L27 scrapper a total generic IO build, paying market prices for the IO's. It took about 14.5Million inf (this was in 2009ish) and 40+ minutes.

The same thing on a L27 blaster, took -way- under 3Million inf and four minutes.

Four minutes.

I just did two builds on the one L37 character, filling it up with SO's, including the 'new build' respec, and it took me about 12 minutes from leveling through the first set of SO's through to respeccing and the second set of SO's, and it cost me less than 6M inf. Doing that with IO's would take me hours and hours of effort.

Interesting anecdote -- my L32ish Earth/Trick Arrow controller did Manticore -twice- with zero enhancements, and one of those efforts was the "L40 Paragon Protector Elite" bugged runs. Never had a problem with my powers, didn't feel gimped, was normal speed (just over an hour on the normal one, 1:45 on the super-hard PPE one). Both times I didn't realise I'd forgotten to enhance until after recruiting the TF.

Enhancements aren't the be all and end all of the game. Knowing how to play your character is so much more important.

An IO'd character who doesn't know about line of sight, about interrupts, about following the team, they're a loose cannon waiting to blow up the team.

IO's are utterly meaningless when doing PVE stuff. They are absolutely essential when doing PVP stuff.

Ex

Forcefield types without the group shield and the individual shields (but they have personal force field). "Oh, but they don't benefit me, why should I take them????".

Tanks/Brutes without Taunt. (Can you say TROLL? )

Kheldians without Nova "W T F ARE YOU THINKING?"

Controllers without their Hold power.

Scrappers without stamina who are always gasping for endurance.

Any character post Stamina, who insists on perma-sprint, who is always low on End (usuall because they didn't take stamina, but also when they just chew up all their end, and gasp for end whilst the rest of thre team whittles down the bosses "normally I play with a /kin, this team sucks!".

People who faceplant. Every. Single. Encounter AND in doing so, put the team in danger. (if they are just gimping themselves, that's fine).

Stalkers who insist on -initiating- combat, and then die, lather rinse repeat. "Just wait for the team to aggro the group THEN use Assassin Strike" "BUT IT'S MY BEST POWER, I DON'T DIE A LOT!". Idiots.

I think i've left a small percentage of the player-base out of my list, so I'll just add something a little generic "if you don't team up, you arent playing the game".

There. That about wraps it up for my involvement with this thread.

Next?

(moderators, please have a -slight- sense of humour before summarily deleting this post, you power-crazed gumbies!)

Here's my take on it. Hero side (cos thats what I play)

Level 1-7, Sewer Trial.

Level up.

Hit WW, bid 111-333 on L45-> SO's. Fill enhancment tray with 10.

Hit Vanguard Base via Atlas, talk to Quartermaster, sell all your SO's (the quartermaster give you best possible price, some 40-60% more than a generic store will give you). Now you have 200K or so inf.

Buy L10 Training Accuracies and perhaps some recharge for Rest, and run speed for Sprint. ONLY accuracies matter. Cost is 10-20K.

At L12, get to a DO store, and kit out. 110-150K for a fully kitted out guy in DO's. Trust me, it makes those early TF's much much easier 'at level' (if you're insane enough to do TFs at level).

L17, another 150-200K on more DO's. By this time with drops, salvage and recipes, you should have a few hundred-thousand (you're BOUND to get some rare salvage, most of which sells for >1M these days).

L22, all L25's SO's. 1.5-2M.

L27, respec, sell all your SO's, funds the next lot of SOs (L30's)

L32, if you're pushed for time, L35 SOs from RWZ or Midnight Club quartermaster (nobody bothers with the origin-stores in Founders/Bricks these days). Otherwise, pick up the IOs you can off the market, or get your Crafter to make you some, or your SG or whatever.

L37, now you're looking at IO sets. You should be rolling in cash. For frankenslotting, you can get amazingly good deals on random IO's. For the 'gold plated' sets, you need to have a sugardaddy character. My L38 Shield/Electric Melee tank was gifted 350M. He has 60% of his 'cheap' sets slotted, and still has to worry about the really expensive stuff like Numina uniques, and LOTG 7.5% global recharge IO's, which are hugely expensive. He's been spending Merits on Obliteration recipes, he already has Task Force Commander, prolly spent 700merits so far. He's a beast. IO's -hugely- change the way your character plays. Not just 'a bit', but night and day changes. It takes time, it takes lots of money (because people are &^%$#'s) but it's very much worth it in the long run.

BUT, if you just want to play, then SO's work. They're cheap, fast (5 minutes to /respec and buy/slot SO's from RWZ quartermaster), and they work. People saying 'oh, but you can get L35IO's and NEVER WORRY ABOUT THEM AGAIN, yeah, I spend 5 minutes four times (L32, L37, L42, L47) and less than 10M, and I'm all set, vs the 40-50 minutes -solid effort- to futz around with a huge bank just to get generic IOs.

The end of the day, SOs are fine for all non-pvp characters.

As soon as you enter the PvP world, it's a whole new ball game, with the super-rares "I can buy that recipe for a mere 1,300,000,000inf!" 1.3B for -one- recipe. Ridiculous. And people spend it, because it makes SO much difference in PVP, where the guy with just one additional hitpoint survives long enough to crush you, before running away to gobble inspirations and use his tricks to get back up to full strength.

Someone else posted the answer.

Create a NEW SHORTCUT on your desktop
Look for CityOfHeroes.exe (NOT COHUPDATER.EXE), and that's the program you want a shortcut to

Modify the TARGET properties of the shortcut so that it reads

"drive:\path\CityOfHeroes.exe" -project "coh"

So for me thats

"C:\NewCoX\City of Heroes\CityOfHeroes.exe" -project "coh" -renderthread 1

for my dad it is

"c:\program files\city of heroes\cityofheroes.exe" -project "coh"

Save the settings.

Click on the shortcut.

Congratulations, you've bypassed the updater.

Ex

I wrote a bunch of times how Maintenance times/schedules were screwing around with Australian game-time, with increasingly bitter messages, culminating in my 'screw it, if these keeps up, I'm outta here'.

Someone listened to the piteous whining, about something that just did not affect 99.5% of all players (because maintenance at 9am on a weekday is hardly 'serious game time' disturbing), and Did Something.

That change of schedules from twice-a-week Monday/Friday maintenance, to Once A Week Thursday maintenance has been totally awesome. Mondays are now viable. Friday evenings are now a prime time extravaganza. No more 'oh, we can't start this TF because it's maintenance tonight', no more Annoying Admin Messages from Hell about impending maintenance on Mondays and Fridays, driving off the few people who bothered to logon.

It's been a remarkable change, which has revitalised The Game for many Australian and GMT+10 players in countries such as New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore.

Since I wrote such a lot damning the decisions to have regular and unannounced maintenance on so many days of the week, and had written nothing about the new 'revamped' schedule, I thought I'd correct my omission, and publicly applaud the people who made it happen.

Thanks NCSOFT, for coming up with a solution which has greatly alleviated a problem for us Aussies. Thanks very much indeed.

Excession.

Names I've used recently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation

Where R (Range) is 40 characters (a-z, 0-9, - . ' ?) and the possible selection N is 20 characters, we get some

3.35367e+29 possible choices.

If you take CaSe into account that shoots up R to 55, giving this value as a result.

1.22871e+33

Thats a huge number.

Consider that the combined mass of all matter in the solar system is only something like 10^34kilograms.

A billion is 10^9

Give each billion a billion things thats 10^18

Give each of those megatrillions a billion things thats 10^24, and you still have to give those quintillions some thousands of billions MORE, EACH, to get to 10^33

People complaining about names being unavailable simply have insufficient imagination.

End of argument.

Cry much?

You come up with a GREAT NAME (TM), say "Cap'n Crunch", and lo, when you try to name your character to this Amazing Name, it's unavailable.

Here's some recommendations to get you past the hurdle.

Prepend your name with a Colour.

Yellow Cap'n Crunch
Blue Cap'n Crunch
Orange Cap'n Crunch
Turquoise Cap'n Crunch

OR An emotion

Happy Cap'n Crunch
Sad Cap'n Crunch
Vapid Cap'n Crunch
Banal Cap'n Crunch

There is also the end of your name to modify, if putting something in front doesn't appeal.

Say the name you wanted was "Burning Hate"

Burning Hate Revisited
Burning Hate Returns
Burning Hate Surprise
Burning Hate Ultimate
Burning Hate OMG
Burning Hate The Movie
Burning Hate And Spite
Burning Hate Invisible
Burning Hate of Fate

Using such simple 'additional words' you can still create a signature character name with all the feel and bounce of something special, and not have to resort to mis-spelling, leet-speak, putting a number at the end, or the hateful use of an excrescence like

Burning Hate.

PERIODS DO NOT BELONG IN MOST CHARACTER NAMES.

Edit: Fleeting's link below is terrific. Highly recommended.

Now get off my lawn.