Red_Raccoon

Paragonwiki agrees with that level range, but I actually ran the Night Ward arcs on a level 37 character (level 39 when I finished). I didn't use Ouroboros, I went straight to the contacts in zone.

/This. CoH chronology isn't always consitent, but it's long been my impression that the chronology is generally based on character level and not real time. I think this is most evident in Tip missions, where certain NPCs undergo character development (i.e., Desdemona is a villain in the 20-30 level range, but by the time you're level 40 she's reformed and become a hero)

That's why I was surprised to see that although the SSA#2 is clearly a sequal to SSA#1, you can access the first arc in SSA#2 10 levels earlier than the final mission of SSA#1. That seem weird to anyone else?

As mentioned before, the mission teleporter does not automatically teleport you to the mission in the nav bar (although I agree it should). A mission just accepted will immediately appear in the nav bar but it is not selected until you hit the select mission button.

If you or the lead did select the mission and you still teleported to the wrong door, then I don't know, maybe it is a bug. But based on what I'm reading in this thread (and my own experiences) it certainly does not seem to be a common problem. Like DarkGob said, fixing an issue that affects very few players is not going to be a high priority--and also probably more difficult to locate.

Missions are supposed to be filled with a mix of +1 & +0 mobs. In the past the ratio of +1 to +0 usually seemed fairly even, but lately it does seem like a lot of the newer missions are weighted toward more +1 mobs. I've run a few missions recently that were almost entirely +1. Could just be random chance, though.

I remember spending many an hour studying (and hanging out) in that library. Although that was before it was called the Geisel Library (i.e. before they built the new addition with Suess money).

On topic: I mostly solo or play with friends who already play on the servers I use, so server population is not a big issue for me, and certainly not a reason to move chracters. I have characters spread across half a dozen servers and if I were start migrating them, I'd move them to Justice where my largest and best base is (but until I come into a bunch of free slots and transfer tokens I won't be making any mass migrations any time soon).

I would like to point out that once you begin a contact's story arc, it will always remain open until you finish it. Even if you outlevel the contact, he/she will keep giving you missins for that arc (and only that arc) until completed.

Of course, many contacts offer one-off missions in addition to their story arc. They will not offer you any more of those individual missions if you've outleveled them. And if you outlevel them before you start their story arc, you've out of luck. But you should never be prevented from completing a story arc once you've started it.

If you're not sure if you're working on a contact's story arc v.s. a one-off mission, look for the book symbol next to the contact's name in the contact window. If you see a book, you've begun their arc and can finish it at any level.

Also important to note is that the mission level does not exceed the level of the contact, so while you can continue an outleveled arc, you may find yourself fighting enemies below your level, possibly to the point where the mission is too easy or even stops rewarding xp for kills. Fortunately, you can compensate for this (for a few levels at least) by temporarily upping your difficulty setting.

Unsealing the door doesn't cause the demons to spawn, that only happens when you get close to the portals. If you're careful and can keep your distance from the portals (not always easy, I admit), you can explore that area for regular spawns without triggering a demon attack. I'm not sure how you're triggering multiple portals at once unless you're moving within range of a 2nd portal after triggering another one. Don't do that--if you trigger a portal, either destroy that portal and any demons it spawns as quickly as possible, or run away in a direction that does not take you near another portal. The portals are never placed very close to one another (and are always in the same set locations)

I'm fairly familar with this mission, but I haven't run it in some time. I don't ever remember that map even having a portal room. Anyone know if they've changed this? Or has it always just been a random?

Wow, that I did not know. The 2nd time I ran Max's arc (on the same character) I considered not doing all the side missions but decided to do them anyway because I was worried the final boss fight might be too difficult to solo without the helpers. Next time on that character I may skip them.

Yeah, I figured there might be a problem somehow tying the reward mechanism to specific mission completion and I knew they wouldn't want to give a premium reward for running just one mission (just didn't realize the tracking was completely borked). Besides, the side missions are supposed to have their own reward (the helpers). Also, even if you run all 4 missions, it's still the shortest arc in Dark Astoria. So I'm not going to complain about no reward table for that one.

I think you are remembering wrong. I've done Max's arc twice, once regular and once through Ouroboros. Both times I did all four arcs. Neither time did I get a reward table.

I hear you on this. I always enable paying rent for all ranks in my supergroups. I don't ever want other members to not have access the to base and its stuff because they're waiting around for me or another higher ranking member to log on and pay the rent (I've been on the flipside of that equation before and it's pretty annoying). I'm aware that members may pay the rent earlier than necessary and waste prestige that way, but the cost is so low these days that I don't find it a big concern. I noticed that the default permission setting for paying rent limits it to the first 2 ranks, and I suspect that most leaders simply don't think to change it.

Maybe it changed at some point, but I know from personal experience that's not how it used to work. I once had leadership in a villain group that consisted of alts for me and two of my friends. When I went too long without logging on to the leader, leadership passed to one of my friend's lowbie characters. We all had recently active characters more highly ranked than that lowbie, but he was the first one that logged on after the leader character hit the leadership expiration date.

I missed out on this game for four years because of the same misconception. I just thought PvP was what MMOs were all about. In fact, it still amazes me to read a thread like this and see how many players are even more adverse to PvP than I am.

For the record, despite my wariness of PvP, I have tried it a few times. It was OK, somewhat fun at times, no really bad experiences, but not something I wanted to seriously get into. I'm just not a very competitive person, especially with strangers.

Actually, once you "open up" alignment merits by running your first morality mission, you can earn an alignment merit in just 10 minutes by running the first arc of the SSA#1. At least they limited that to once per week so players aren't piling up the merits like crazy, but still I'm amazed by how much easier they made earning those merits with the SSA vs the old method (10 tip missions + 1 morality mission).

Then can you give an example of some of the names you have seen genericized? And, do you know what explanation was given for the action?

I do not believe City of Heroes has a policy against using the words Good, Angel, or Heaven, and I do not believe that they would genericize a name simply for including any of those words. However, that does not mean a name including one of those words couldn't be genericized for another reason. Angel, for example, is the name of a copyrighted comic book character, so you would have to be very careful how that word was used in a name.

I would also like to point out that the converse is also true; just because you haven't seen a name genericizedfor including the words evil, devil, or hell doesn't mean it never happens. However, while undoubtedly such names have been genericized on occasion, I doubt that any of those words by themselves were the issue.

Disagreement does not equal offense.

I've never heard of anyone having a character name genericized for containing the words good, angel or heaven, and I very much doubt I ever will. Using the formal name of a deity can be problematic because of the potential to use it in ways offense to the worshipers of that deity, but for the record I have a friend who does have a character whose name contains the word "God" (Hammer of God or some such, I think) and it has never been genericized in 3 years.

Actually I think it may be the opposite. Most VIPs get the vast majority of their inf from the market--by comparision, the inf they sacrifice while playing in SG mode is only a small fraction of that. But a free/premium player that can't use the market has to rely on inf earned by running missions or selling stuff to vendors (often for pittance of what the market pays). Yet free/premium players still need to buy (and regularly upgrade) enhancements, which can be costly over time. SG mode could significantly cut into a free/premium player's already limited ability to afford those enhancements.

Also, under level 25, there is no penalty for playing in SG mode. After level 25, a percentage of influence earned is sacrificed, which increases as you level up. I believe it starts at 10% at level 25 and caps at 50% at level 29. So if you're under 25, play in SG mode and don't worry about it. At level 25, you may want to look at how you are doing inf-wise before deciding if you want to continue.

So you're saying they won't be expanding on the frisbee toss mechanics.

/ragequits

Strange as it may sound, the Devs add a lot of content these days that allow villains and heroes to work together, but little or nothing that that has them competing against one another.

Base raiding appears to be dead for good, but there are still PVP zones in the game that allow heroes and villains to fight each other and compete over goals. As others have mentioned, the problem is that PVP is not very popular and those zones are mostly empty, but if you want to give it a try, I hear Freedom still has a reasonably active PVP population, so I would start there. Even on Justice, I've run into players ready and willing to PVP.

If it helps, I've been playing this game for about 3-1/2 years and I'm still finding old content I've never run before--and that's in addtion to the new content that is regularly added to the game. And a lot of the content is pretty fun to repeat as long as you mix it up and don't get into the habit of grinding through the same missions over and over again. So if you're fairly new to the game, I wouldn't start worrying about running out of things to do yet.

His name is Atherton Cromwell, and my hero was able to speak to him and was offered a mission (although I didn't accept it).

I agree that automatically passing leadership due to inactivity is good design. Here's my personal experience with it:

My first year playing this game, one of my villains was invited to a super group. That character quickly became my most played villain, and I got a lot of use out of the group's base, which was well equiped. Then one day the leader decided to redesign the base from scratch. He sold off all the items and had just started replacing everything when he went MIA. We never saw him again.

No one who was left in the group had much in the way of permissions, so no one could buy stuff for the base. So for a while we just had a mostly empty base. But the upkeep was past due and no one even had permission to pay it, so soon we locked out of that mostly empty base. At this point, most the few who were left quit.

But then the old leader hit the expiration date for inactivity and I logged in to find that I had inheirited the group. I emailed the old leader to let him know I intended to get the base back up and running on my own unless he planned to return soon. After not hearing back from him for a week, I went to work. I paid the upkeep and then I replaced all the transporters and storage units and everything else that had been scrapped and got the base back up to speed. I've been maintaining that base ever since.

One thing I didn't do was kick out the old leader (or anyone else for that matter). That would be BS. It's been 3 years since he's logged on, but he's still a member when and if he wants to come back. But I am leader now and if he ever returns and thinks I've just been holding the group for him all these years waiting for him to come back, he's crazy.

Anyway, I think my example illustrates exactly why this policy was implemented in the first place.

Yeah, I missed it too. I logged in after I got home from work on Friday and it was already over. Then I checked into it some more and found out it actually ran from 4:00 pm Thursday to 4:00 pm Friday. I'm a little disapointed, but next time I'll remember to look for it Thursday after work instead.

As for those who think that this will fail as a marketing strategy because the freebies aren't good enough, I think you may be underestimating the power of FREE. I've seen people practically fighting each other to get to the tiny free samples of food products offered at Costco (and some people I know say they primarily shop there because of the free samples). I've also seen people at ComiCon wait in line for 15-20 minutes just for a sticker or small poster. So I'm sure this will get many people checking the market weekly. How many actual new sales that will translate into remains to be seen.