Radiac

Radiac standing by... (it'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home)
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(but hopefully with more beggars this time )

As usual, I can bring my +3 Rad/rad def, my +3 Dp/dark corr or my +3 Kin/elec def. The kinetic has no Hybrid (25% on it right now, but then if anyone wants to help do something about that in the meantime, I'll probably be on a lot between now and then....).

I'm not sure I can make this Sunday, so please put me on the "Maybe" list. I have several different toons that I could bring if I do show up. The kinetics seemed to help a lot last time, and I have a +3 Kin def I could bring, but he has no tier 4 anything and no Hybrid XP. I could also bring my Demon/thermal MM, my corrupter, or my main, Radiac. But like I said, I might not be able to make it, I don't know yet.

I'm pretty sure I can be there again.

I've been working on my Corrupter, though I guess the Rad def is still better to have, I don't know. My dual pistols/dark corrupter has everything tier3-ed now, including Hybrid, and he has the Very Rares to tier 4 his Judgement and Lore. He just needs some more incarnate loot to get him there. Now that I have my one Fusioneer toon level 50 and Alpha unlocked, I'm probably not going to bother incarnating him out much, so any time I do spend on CoH between now and Sunday night (and it might not be much) will be on my Corrupter, doing the daily 10-threader for Ephrum Sha and whatever else is available to get him some swag.

So for those of us on the U.S. East Coast, that's 8pm now, right? I should be able to make it. I used the Astrals from last time to buy more Ultimate insps.

"Red-5 standing by..."

Since my Pathfinder group hit level 11 and promptly cast Disintegrate on itself, I find myself able to do this on a Sunday now.

Oh, and before I forget, I just want to point out that I do have a +3 Incarnated Corrupter (Tin Star Jonny Ozark, my Dual Pistols/Dark zombie gunslinger). All of his stuff is tier 3, except the Hybrid which is currently only tier 2. I might be able to do something about that in the interim, but I'd be unlikely to bother if there's no real demand for it. I'm currently planning on bringing my Rad/rad dude, Radiac as per usual.

Shameless bump. Also, I now wish to remove "End of the world" by R.E.M. and replace it with "Bad Day" by R.E.M.

"I need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler was obviously the one big one I missed so far.

I should probably add "Separate Ways" by Journey too.

I didn't put "time of your life" by Green Day on the list, probably because the official title of the song, ironically, is "Good Riddance".

What will you be listening to when The End of Thirty-Minute-Long Days comes on November 30?

Suggestions from my playlist so far:

In the City (The Eagles)
The End (The Doors)
Heroes (David Bowie)
It's the End of the World As We Know It (R.E.M.)

I can try to get my Pathfinder group to wrap it up by 7pm, but I cant promise that (I'm not DMing this time...). Bright side: it's at my house, so I can just jump on the computer right away. I still have a bunch of Ults etc from the last time, plus like 1-2 of every incarnate component, just in case I need to make something specific. If anyone wants to offer a suggestion as to how one would slot Radiation Infection and Lingering Radiation for Tyrant, I'm listening. I don't think any of the Hamios that would go into those powers are expensive (anymore...) and in any event I think I have have some that I'm not using.

One procedural question: might it be prudent to tell everyone who isn't a team leader to just delete the Quills of Jocas power from the get-go? Or if not the leaders, just appoint people whose job it is to use the Quills when instructed, such as low DPS Def/Con/Doms or something, and have everyone else just delete the power. Just a thought. In theory, only 6 reliable people actually need the quills, even when doing the trial the normal way.

I would point out that I have been on pretty regularly since re-upping my account back in October 2011. That said, during the summer I was on so much you'd think I was unemployed and had no life, which is only half true. Now that summer is over, I'm back to my full time teaching gig and as such will be on a lot less (read "not at all") during the daytime and probably less at night, owing to just generally being busier. Also, lately I've been addicted to soloing my demon/thermal MM. I attribute this to the frequency with which he gets purple drops doing one Ephram Sha and 5 tip missions a day. At this point he's also up to 22 Hero Merits, which means I spent the last 44 days (at least) doing 5 tips per day. I think I spent one or two Hero Merits in there too, plus there are always days I didn't get to do all 5 for whatever reason. Anyway, it feels like 2-3 solid months. In that time I haven't successfully done a Magisterium "Very Hard Way" badge run, I still need some stuff for Geas of the Kind Ones, and my Dominator still needs like 6 different Praetorians for Dimensional Warder.

I'm sorry of this has been answered before, and maybe someone can point me in the right direction if it has, but my question is this: Conductive Aura, a power in the electric control set, is a toggle that drains endo out of nearby badguys every second or whatever, and when it does this is it gives me +regen and +recovery off of it. Note that the power does not "heal" me per se, nor does it "heal my endo bar", it simply gives me a slight increase to my recovery and regen rates when it endo-drains a badguy. As an "endo drain" power, it will accept "Endurance Modification" enhancements, including sets. So I ask, what do I get if I put a Performance Shifter "Chance for +Endo" proc in this power? I'll have to look again, but I'm pretty sure Conductive aura accepts accuracy enhancements too, so I think when it tries to drain a badguy it rolls to hit him.

Thanks Newchemicals, I'm going to stick with 11.9 for now.

Ok, I have a system running Win 7 Pro, I have a Radeon 6990 card, and when I last got the "new catalyst version available" message, I decided to give the 12.4 a try, since I'm using 11.9 now and I thought it might be time to update. When I let it do this, it got to a point in the update where the screen went black and never came back. After waiting a long time (60 sec?) I just turned the computer off via the power button and back on again, and it came back with the 11.9 drivers still. I wasn't running other programs while attempting this, and as far as I know my Windows stuff (i.e. Direct X or whatever) is not in need of updating.

Apparently letting catalyst itself do it's own update won't work, which seems really stupid to me, considering that the company's own software should, at the VERY least, be able to do this with minimal fuss. I mean really, all of the configurational stuff and extra bells and whistles that let you run two monitors or whatever is nice, but if there's ONE function I want Catalyst to do smoothly, it's updating (and rolling back) the drivers for me.

Can anyone tell me:
1. Should I just stick with 11.9 for the forseeable future (as I am doing now)?
2. Should I try to update to 12.4 and if so, how?

Just a quick note to whomever's reading this. I have the "Atlas Park classic" theme as my smartphone ringtone and the "private message" sound as my text message notification. I'm currently using screenies as wallpaper for both my computer and smartphone.

I would pay money for things like an official "Go. Hunt. Kill Skullz." T-shirt or mousepad or coffeemug, etc.

Just FYI.

(Actually a "Property of Vanguard Athletic Dept." t-shirt would be nice too)

I just tried to convert a level 13 Blessing of the Zephyr travel speed/endo enhancement into the +4 KB protection enhancement using the "three converter option". It gave me the Travel speed one, so I bought more converters and tried again. I tried to convert it a total of 5 times and never got the +4 KB protection piece. Now, on this character, I already HAVE one +4 KB protection enhancement (in Fly) and I was hoping to get a second one to put into Recall Friend, but apparently I'm unable to do this after 5 attempts. I did the math and the odds of NOT getting the +4KB enhancer after 5 repeated attempts is like 3%. This makes me think I'm either the unluckiest person on earth or the mechanics of enhancement conversion are such that it looks at what you already have and tries to anticipate your needs by giving you something that you don't have already. Does anyone have any information about this that could shed some light on it for me? If there's some systematic rule that causes the +4KB enhancement not to happen, or that makes the in-set conversion process anything other than random, it would have been nice to know that before burning through like 30 Astral Merits and several million influence on converters. There was nothing about this in the write-up on converters on paragonwiki when I last looked, which was 1-2 days ago.

I would like to see different types or teleportation effects, like disappearing in a puff of smoke (your choice of smoke color), emerging from a portal (in the ground or thin air), disappearing by turning into a tightly bunched group of birds/bats/leaves/etc that then fly apart and dissipate. I would like to see a jetpack as a costume option instead of a temp power, but I would want it to look different from the ones we have now (the new retro space set accomplishes that I suppose, but that hasn't been rolled out yet). I'd like to see some more wrist band options. That's all I can think of for now.

Please count me among those who expected Mole Machines, and by that I mean Mole Machines we had to fight (giant monster or transport a la the Arachnos Flier, whatever). I was expecting, instead of this sort of "rising force" where badguys spawn one at a time then spawn rates increase as they get cut down, something more like an all-out blitz with a big Mole Machine as the tip of the spear spawning and buffing Nemesis troops until you destroy the Mole Machine. Instead we got a really transparent Zombie Apocalypse with a Nemesis skin on it. Reading the story about the invasion I was half-expecting a steampunk Nemesis surface fleet and army invading from off-shore a la D-Day. Not getting that I can live with, but the lack of Mole Machines is unforgivable.

I vote for Cheeta's idea, I want a rock and roll band as a pet set. I also want the option of making them an all-female band (Gem the Holograms play Paragon City! Woo-hoo!). I also like the insect idea. It doesn't have as much glamor, glitter, fashion, and fame as the band one, but it's got potential.

Hello GreylockDS2, and welcome to Triumph: the server that almost wasn't, but then was. I recommend joining the chat channel called "Triumph Watch 2.0" so you can get the skinny on task forces forming, etc. "Help" is also a good channel for asking general questions. I myself have a level 16 I just made, so look me up if you're ever in the mood for a task force (I do a lot of TFs). I generally don't play villains ever, just heroes, FYI. I have ONE villain, who is level 21 despite being made when CoV was first rolled out years ago. I would totally invite you to my SG ("Hero Depot"), but most of us are never on anymore. That said, I'm on a lot recently and we have working teleporters, crafting tables, personal vault access, enhancement storage, hot and cold running Well of the Furies water, etc.

Just a short rant: I expected mole machines. I seem to remember some time long ago (before the last time I quit the game) doing a mission on an instanced outdoor map where there were these big Nemesis mole machines. They were a static part of the scenery, you couldn't attack them IIRC, but there they were. Now this Nemesis invasion arrives and I fully expected some giant monster/transport version of the Nemesis Mole Machine for me and others to have to bring down hard using teamwork like a tribe of cavemen felling a wooly mammoth. Instead we got the same Zombie Apocalypse from Halloween with a Nemesis skin on it. It's a let down is all. I mean, I'm not programmer, but I can't imagine it's terribly difficult to take existing graphics files (like they apparently have for Nemesis Mole Machines somewhere) and incorporate them into an event like this. I was half-imagining there would be an honest to goodness Nemesis surface fleet with big ships like in the Sutter TF, and that we'd have to go out into the water to fight them, then click a door and go inside one and fight them in their own boats, but I can see that being too much to expect. The Mole Machines seemed like low-hanging fruit to me, and not to get them (so far...) left me disappointed.

If they're going to release Super Packs as a product in the first place, then they'll want them to be successful and bring in revenue to make the game more profitable for the company. To be successful, they have to have something in them that new players would want, and they have to have something in them that veterans would want. Since veterans already have basically everything, this would imply that there has to be something brand new in the packs that you can only get in the packs to make veterans want to buy the packs. This, to me, is the only reason or explanation of why the ATIOs, the black wolf pet, and costume pieces are in there. Speaking as a VIP player and long term veteran (though I have quit and come back twice now) it doesn't appall, shock, surprise, anger, offend, or phase me that they did this. As a player of this game, if there's a new thing they're rolling out, I'd naturally ask the question "What about this product appeals to me, why would I want to buy it?" and if that question comes up with the answer "Nothing." then I don't buy the product, and the product likely fails and ends up costing the company money for having attempted it in the first place. So for that reason alone they have to put something in there that's exclusive to the superpacks for those of us that already have practically everything else. If anything, the fact that they're going to make the ATIO's buyable with in-game merits AT ALL is the surprise. If they REALLY want to sell Super Packs to us vets, they'd wait a good long time before making that an option. I feel like the amount of Reward Merits you get in the packs coupled with the ability to purchase some ATIOs with merits is cutting me a tangible break that they were under no real obligation to do. As it is my VIP status get's me 400 points per month, with which could buy 5 Super Packs (and what else am I going to spend it on?). They're under no mandate or obligation to make any in-game item widely available like that if they don't want to. There was a time that you had to play this game on a paid account for several YEARS in order to unlock different things like trench coats, wings, etc. That not only had the burden of money but it also required you to WAIT one or more YEARS to finally get the thing. You couldn't even pay up the two years worth of subscription fees all up front just to unlock that stuff, it only dropped when you had put the time in. So anyway, I don't feel like I'm being ripped off, and I like the super packs.

I'm "for" the Superpacks, if they keep the game up and running. I haven't bought any yet, but I did just plunk down 15$ for more points so I can do so sometime soon, and I can tell you I wasn't about to spend that money on what was there in the store already. I would have been content to let my 400 points per month roll in and slowly acquire stuff like costumes and power sets, but the superpacks got me to spend money. I admit it.

As a player of CCGs, including online CCGs, I can tell you that in the time since starting my paid subscription to CoH when it was released to the present, I've probably spent twice as much money on the "no monthly fee" online CCG that I've played (off and on) during that same time span. There are things I like and don't like about the "non physical cards" aspect of the system, but to me what it boils down to is supporting my hobbies.

I like playing these games and am willing to pay the people at the software/game companies to keep producing them so that I can keep playing them. Maybe some people will tell you it's a ripoff to pay money for randomized product and then "strike out" and get "lousy cards". Nobody every promised me that I'd make a profit on this (or any) game, and nobody's forcing me to buy anything I don't want to buy, so I'm ok with that. The fact is, there are a lot of highly necessary, not terribly flashy things that have to be done by people in order to keep games like these running on a day-to-day basis and basically nobody wants to pay for them. MMOs are going free to play because the "pay a subscription up front to gain the right to play this game" model is one a lot of people don't like. It sounds and feels like you have to commit to something, and a lot of people dislike that. In the new world order of "free to play, pay to play WELL" I'm ok with superpacks. Other games are going this route, from what I hear.

I personally don't care about a lot of things that I might get in a superpack, and maybe only really want a few of them, but opening one up has a sort of "Christmas morning" feel to it that I like anyway, and if that money pays the salaries of the programmers, developers, etc that keep the game up and running, I'll do it. People who don't have the money or don't want to spend it are free to do as they please with free-to-play accounts, and they get to enjoy (to a limited degree) the game that people like me who spend for VIP accounts and superpacks are paying for. I don't have a problem with that either. I'd rather see the company that runs this game make a bunch of money (including some of mine) off of it and therefore keep the game going as long as possible than see it go free to play, then wither and die due to lack of profits. I believe in supporting my hobbies.

Some people who play CCGs (both online and otherwise) feel as if they're only winning if they can make more money off of it than the owners of the stores that they play those games at, and feel like they're getting "ripped off" of the store proprietor buys cards for one price and sells them for another. Well, that's how those stores make money, and if the stores lose money, they close, and if they close, I don't have any place to play my CCG games at anymore, so I don't want that to happen. So I don't steal from them. I don't complain that they're "ripping me off" in card trades. I don't cheat to win tournaments so that I can justify my entry fee by the amount of prizes I win, etc. That's just me.

I will also say that the VIP account I have gets me 400 points and a Vet Token per month that I don't always know what to do with anyway, and this gives me something else to spend those points on that I didn't have as an option before. I know other players that have basically run out of things to spend points on and would not have spent any money on points if not for the superpacks. If that supports the game, then its a good thing. Maybe some bad mixed with some more good, but on balance a good thing, in my opinion.

Paragon wiki has something that suggests it's the lvl 33-44 respec this week (Feb 7-13), but I haven't seen the main WST schedule sticky post updated as of this reply. What up, devs?