Retrogression

yes - bug came in some time in 2006 or 2007, making 3 shades of red and 6 shades of green have this interference problem where when you choose one of each, you get all red.

I posted a screenshot of it in this thread ages ago but it hasn't been fixed yet.

the only character that I see actually introduced in that story (1st of the dark sheep tales) is Gravity - I think - I recall Darkity and Kin had small parts in an earlier episode.

maybe I'm building badly or a lousy player - though I think I'm just average and with slow reflexes, but a lot of knowledge of the game - but I can't solo very well with my defenders, even though they're the AT I play most.

I can't manage even a heroic mission versus mobs that stun or hold. If I miss a few too many times in a fight, I run out of endurance and can't protect myself anymore.

I take attacks on my defenders, and I slot them, but, let's take my level 50 kinetic defender for example. She solos about as well as a level 11 scrapper, which means, she can usually do fine in a heroic mission but an EB or a couple of +1 groups too close together and she dies. Or being held without enough breakfrees (and I don't count it as "can solo" if you have to stop in the middle of a mission and go to Pocket D to buy inspirations).

My storm defender couldn't even solo that well with her previous build, but I respec'd her and figured out a strategy for her and now I can solo at that level 11 scrapper (scrapper with no protection from mez and training enhances) by debuffing the heck out of their to hit - hurricane and a couple of dark blast cones. So they miss her a lot. That's her only defense. (storm defender is now level 33, she was created back in 2004)

The problem is that defenders attacks do so little damage, even fully slotted, it takes them much more than twice as long to defeat an opponent than a blaster. And they have powers with more self protection, but depending on the primary, that can vary and be problematic taking too much endurance.

Prior to getting stamina, many defenders simply can't defeat opponents that are resistant to their damage types. They run out of endurance before doing enough damage. The enemy recovers hp faster than they recover endurance to go on attacking. This is because the powers the defender uses to help themself cost a lot more than scrappers self protection powers - because they are really team protection powers. But when soloing the cost is the same as protecting the team - higher even due to lack of defiance - even though the use of the power is much lower. Look at the amount of self healing an empathy defender gets vs a regeneration scrapper, per endurance point used from healing aura vs reconstruction.

So, sure defenders 'can' solo. but it's no fun to me. I like playing defenders in teams. I do have some of that 'add scrapper soloer' mentality, that's why my first 50 was a kinetic defender - she speeds up entire teams' play so I could play at the speed I enjoyed.

actually, getting certain badges and bonuses are like alternate advancement in a way. you can get extra slots of salvage storage or a once every 30 minute power or something like that, which is the same kind of thing alternate advancements give.

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And Urban areas would be so cool. I can see it kind of like the Urban area in "Edward Scissorhands"---very retro looking and cartoony.

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The word you're looking for here is Suburban.

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THANK YOU for explaining that. I was wondering what the heck the person meant by "real urban areas, not everyone lives in a city" ? After all, urban = city, they mean the same thing.

LOTRO - only 5 total? that's no good...

If they had sidekicking and exemplaring, I don't see why people would miss out on so much content, but just exemplaring is better than nothing. If you have neither, the game is missing a vital feature.

Even if Castle enjoys resource contention that also makes him want to slap people, plenty of us don't enjoy being made angry. It's good that at least one game doesn't give us that incentive to irritate our fellow players.

Don't take the Global chat for granted, either. I remember how long it seemed waiting for that feature. How it was supposed to come out with (was it issue 3? or 4?) but wasn't ready yet. How for months, maybe a year, I begged for Global Chat

It was a brilliant, wonderful day for CoH when global chat finally came live. Even though it's been one of the buggiest features of the game, it's been a huge win, its sizable drawbacks compensated for by its enormous benefits.

Sidekicking - good; I was not surprised EQ2 picked up on it (and yes their mentoring is a good feature of that game), I was surprised more games don't feature it though. Maybe in the future more will.

The rest of the above is all true. I played Everquest. Friends camped things. One friend camped one thing for something like 40 hours straight - no sleep. He had to, in his mind, there was no other way to get some special item for his 'epic' quest.

I never did that. So you did not "have" to. But the game was such that most people seemed to cave in to the pressure or quit the game. There were all kinds of ways that the mechanics of Everquest encouraged people to be the worst of human nature. It was like a course in game theory where you really are the Prisoner facing his Dilemma, except betraying is a winning strategy... and I don't mean in a role playing way, I mean as people, to the other players of the game, including the ones they've befriended.

Even CoV encourages players as people to do the right thing, even if their characters are doing mischief and mayhem.

will it show days since logged in?

It would be fantastic to have the web display days since checking Wentworth's. This would make it easier to make sure you check on your sale/bought items before 60 days elapse so you don't lose stuff!

I strongly recommend not keeping these in Wentworths slots if they turn out to be expensive. Remember, anything you put in Wentworths, if you don't check on it for 60 days, it vanishes.

I've lost millions of inf and lots of items this way by not logging into that character and visiting the auction house for a couple of months! I'd hate to lose my respec too

There are now so very many costume options that are only available to some, and not all players. Here's a guide to them!

Categories
<ul type="square">[*] Game version owned[*] Missions from City Representative[*] Task Force[*] Holiday events[*] Veteran Awards[*] Inventions[*] Vanguard[/list]
Game version owned
You only need to have this game version as part of your account to have these costume options opened.
Note: there are many, many options that are only available if you own City of Villains. I am not listing them all here - but getting CoV seems to nearly double the available costume options if you own only City of Heroes.

<ul type="square">[*] Collector's edition CoH: the Cape of the Four Winds[*] Collector's edition CoV: Arachnos Cape and a no background Arachnos chest detail[*] CoV pre-orders: 4 different special Arachnos helms: Wolf spider, Crab spider, Mu, and Blood Widow helms - none is colorable[*] Good vs Evil: Justice and Sinister sets - each includes top texture and bottom texture for tights or armor, shoulder item, two sets each of gloves and boots, and Sinister includes a spider pattern you can apply to any texture as well[/list]
City Representative Missions
The City Representative stands in the middle of the top floor area in Atlas City Hall. At level 20, you can get a mission from her that opens Capes (other than shoulder capes, which are a veteran reward). At level 30, you can get a mission to unlock auras at the tailor.

Task Force
Heroes can do the Croatoa task force for Katie Hannon, and if they win the Ten Times the Victor accolade by defeating the archvillain witch all ten times, they can get a witch hat (with no hair) at the tailor.

Holiday events

Winter event
The Winter event was the first to include a costume item.
<ul type="square">[*] Santa Hat - In Winter 06, you could unlock a Santa Hat by doing a hero side mission to save the presents, or a villain side one to steal them. In Winter 07, you could unlock the Santa Hat by being given a temporary power gift (one of many random gifts). [*] Earmuffs - logging in for Winter 07 event gained you the earmuffs. They are a head detail piece.[*] Boots and Gloves - doing the mission to save Baby New Year in the winter 07 event gave four options; two of them were these fur-lined boots, and gloves.[/list]
Valentine's day

<ul type="square">[*]Toga - For logging in on Valentine's Day 2006, you would receive the toga. It was also available for doing the mission for DJ Zero on Valentine's Day 2007.[*] Laurels and sandals - for sending a friend a game code and having them buy the game, the whole account unlocked the laurels and sandals costume piece for both players, in Valentine's Day 2006. In the 2007 version of the event, you could obtain these items for a single character by doing DJ Zero's mission.[*] Hearts costume - it may still be bugged for female characters, but the hearts costume could be unlocked by doing DJ Zero's mission in 2007's Valentine's day event.[/list]
(continued)

I wanted to add my collage, it's not in alphabetical order, and it's just heroes (I didn't get any of the villains done yet but that is next).

The problem is ONLY that scrappers, as an AT, don't need more blades; they have already got claws, katana, and broadsword. What scrappers need is more unarmed combat, probably, or something "different". Stalkers also are fairly well stocked with blades, having ninja blade and claws, but having a 3rd option works well for them.

But Brutes and Tankers can definitely use the Blades option! Neither has any (well, Tankers have Axe, if that counts, but it doesn't really).

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It's one thing for a charge to be denied by an individual's financial institution as a result of a fraud policy (which is out of the customer's control)...it's completely another when the charge is denied by a member of the customer's household (which is something the customer can control).

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I hate to say it, but no, I do not have mind control over everyone in my household, and I doubt anyone else does either.

I don't see it as that different. If the person who denied the charge certifies it as an error, offers for example a notarized statement that the charge was in fact legitimate and offers to pay the penalty incurred by the charge back, I think they should not permanently ban the account for that error on the part of the friend/relative of the player. Any more than they do for an error on the part of a bank.

There isn't any more control. Possibly more recrimination, but all you can do about either one is yell at them till they try to assuage you (the bank or your relative/friend).

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I don't think I'll ever be able to attend any sort of get together in real life because I'd wouldn't be able to decide whether to go as BAB the dev or as my main character and be able to hang out with friends/SG mates.

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If you devs want it secret from sg mates in all cases, you should make it so your player accounts get the veteran rewards. Unless you already fixed that little loophole

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Putting this is SYSTEM guarantees it will be buried and those who want to see it and aren't lucky enough to be in the zone WILL miss it.


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So true. You need to put it in a much LOWER used channel than that. I agree with the "Friends" one, that's in orange so it'll show up.

Keep it in admin and put admin in one window not all of them, would be better, or put it in something lower traffic. We don't want to miss the invasions when they get rare and new characters need Watchman accolades.

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if the windows would actually scroll like they should instead of:
click.. up a line. click.. up line. click zooom!!! Where the hell did my place disappear to!!?!?!? And if you do manage to find the spot you want then BLAMMO! another spam slaps you back down to the bottom of the chat window again.

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This is a problem not just with the admin channel but with all windows' scrolls. They just don't work properly!

Fix that instead and we get a permanent QOL fix!

when I use this, not only do my 33 month veteran award power graphics not show up - my new insect wings on a corrupter don't either.

One amusing thing: if you use this command to suppress your effects, you also have your veteran award staff suppressed (nemesis staff or blackwand) so that the blast from it comes out of your hand instead.

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I'm just alittle buit depressed, why are there no acual Aliens, always Alternet humans... the only ONLY aliens we have are the Keldians, and the use humans as hosts, so with a merger they are techniclly just modified humans.. it's just not fair ... humans suck =-)

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You forgot the Rularuu?

Two problems with the Icon/Facemaker interview article:

I think Jay's post said Ian was no longer around.

Also, it's Exoproto, not Proto-Ekto.

It's too bad no one posted this earlier. This would've cured nearly all the sonic headaches!

Why didn't the poll have more options? Such as:

do you use:

_ Myspace
_ Livejournal
_ Friendster
_ Facebook
_ (etc)

And put the first effort into the one you found the most players used? It seemed like the decision was premade, and the poll was not very informative. How few would have had to have used Myspace for other options to be explored? Less than 1%?

As for the friends list - if 33,000 CoH/CoV players use Myspace (which I doubt) then only a very few of them are friending it. There's a lot of selection bias in that poll.

And I thought the subscription numbers were notably higher than 100,000 anyway. At least 125,000 ? I haven't checked that MMO comparative population thing lately...

in issue 10, just give Tankers the Energy armor and Scrappers the Ninjitsu secondary. Those are already pretty much ready for use and they have thematically matching primaries already available in both ATs (katana or martial arts for scrappers, energy melee for tankers).

Then for issue 11 or 12 add the new sets. Also add new sets other places if you at all possibly can (how about adding traps for controllers secondary, thermal primary and fire blast secondary for defenders, dark blast for blasters plus a nice dark manip secondary set using powers selected from the dark melee, dark defense and dark miasma sets, trick arrow / archery corrupters, and put ice brutes back with the -recharge speed in their secondary replaced by unenhanceable -damage or -defense? (the slow runspeed could be retained without a problem)

Just a slight counter-point here.

I know what all the powers look like. I create my characters knowing what their powers are gonna look like. What throws me off usually is when the character's already created and then the power appearance changes. Most extremely, my invuln brute, but also my fire tanker seems to have got the CoV only fire shields now instead of the oval shaped original fire shields.

I don't mind power customization as long as it always leaves a way for my powers to be left alone in appearance. Unless the power graphic is crashing people... please let (me at least have the option that) my powers look how they looked when I created the character or it can ruin the character for me

If my invuln scrapper stopped being shiny I'd cry she's one of my 50s

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On the subject of travel powers, I can see how the OP can prefer them to mounts, but I think it's a problem that either are regarded as such a necessity. It's as if what's going on around the player isn't important or dynamic enough to him, and so the journey to the mission needs to be skipped.

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It isn't as if that's the whole point, in any game. I'm yet to meet any MMO where what's going on around you is dynamic enough to stop and say "ooh" "ahh". You do it the first time then every time after that its ho hum.


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Walking through the hollows, where you're likely to get killed at any moment by purple conning trolls or sneaking up out of the ground pumicites, is an example of a dynamic stroll at fairly slow speed. I actually enjoy it on occasion.

But in most such games, the travel time is wasted from the viewpoint of XP, at least. If a game came up with a good way to reward your character just as highly for the time spent traveling as for the time spent fighting/slaying monsters/defeating enemies/finishing missions - so that your travel time was interesting innately and also rewarded - people would not care so much if there were no travel powers or mounts.

That's why people camped in one place for 4 hours or more. It was challenging to get there and it was not a challenge that was rewarded. risk = reward was not respected (and still is not for folks wandering through the hollows!)