Si_ro_nin

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Thanks! But how do you change the mission setting then to NOT include 1-49 and have everyone play at 50?

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Add an allied npc that only has one level. Since he's on your team, you all become his level minimum. To get enemies stuck at level 54 and have everyone auto-sk to 50 (the maximum player level), you need an ally that is 54-54. Such an ally can be a rescue or escort objective.

Enjoy.

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Some useful info about IO's in my sig.

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That was a really awesome guide. Helpful even if you've been playing a long time.

I should point out they're already tracking which missions are villainous, heroic or neutral. If anyone can find a contact, anywhere, on red side that'll offer a heroic mission or a contact on blue side that offers a villainous one that isn't in a shared zone, that would probably answer the question.

It is illegal to sell other people's property, just about everywhere. The problem lies in explaining to a police official that someone has sold/stolen your property when it is ultimately still within your possession.

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Actually, I think they expect the torches and pitchforks regardless at this point.

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I keep trying to find the pitchfork emote

We already have torches and protest signs, so we could certainly put together an unruly mob.

Well it is incredibly time consuming to test the different resolutions, but I can now say that I'm reasonably sure not a single one of them works properly in regard to that cursor issue. Windowed mode or not.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to deal with it :/

Yup, that's exactly it. The laptop has an ATI 2600 and uses a widescreen resolution. Would using a non-widescreen resolution fix that? Or maybe running it in window mode?

Awesome. That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for!

Okay so obviously not a lot of people are going to have this problem, but anyway.

I play the game on two separate computers (not at the same time). One is my laptop, the other is my desktop. The laptop has much lower resolution than the desktop.

The problem I'm having is that because the laptop ultimately has less screen real estate than the desktop, my interface gets screwed up every time I switch between the two. (Menus that are to the far right side of a 1920x1080 resolution monitor get all bunched up on a 1280x800 resolution monitor). Is there any way I can have the GUI configuration stay separate between the machines?

Also, on a somewhat related note, when I tried to use window scaling to readjust the size of the GUI on the laptop, the 'hand' pointer for moving around stuff didn't line up properly with where the 'pointer' pointer was. Like, I'd put my mouse over an enhancement, it would switch to the hand pointer, and not be over the enhancement anymore. Very weird.

Yup I had this happen upon successful completion of Sister Psyche, twice. Once I was dc'd, and the other time 6 out of 8 in the party got dc'd.

If the bad rating really bothers you, you could unpublish it to clear the rating, fix the error and then publish it again. Right?

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

Technically Type R is just Honda's performance line of vehicles.

That being said, it could be they're just slapping the Type R label on their programming like a Ricer slapping a Type R badge on a Ford Focus.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ricer

So depending on the way they meant it, they're either making it run better, or they're making it run flashier.

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Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

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I'm not saying they did say that. But generally I found MA content to be a fresh alternative to the same level 1-20 content in Atlas and the Hollows that I've traditionally had to run through with every character. Nor am I saying that MA content should be any easier or more rewarding, but it wasn't to begin with if you weren't playing a farming mission.

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Perhaps the Devs made a mistake when they let people believe that you can and "should" create a character and grow it solely in an AE center.

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They made a mistake in attempting to make farming missions worthless for farming by making ALL MA missions put out rewards that are worth less than the equivalent non-MA missions. They could have taken a number of other approaches. They could have used reporting to weed out inappropriately content-devoid farming missions. They could have made the rating system more specific by rating on more criteria than an overall star-rating (content, level-balance, length, etc) and allowed users to search by specific ratings to weed out farms. They could have limited the amount of bosses that appear in a mission without any minions, lts, elite bosses or arch villains/heroes.

It just smacks of laziness to broadly change the system the way they did. It won't stop farming, but it did discourage my use of the system until I've exhausted the other new content that I have yet to explore in the core game.

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I don't know man. I wouldn't mind my grinding being more efficient so that I could get around to the fun bits....

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See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

Have you even considered all the changes CoX has experienced since its inception? Changes that have made leveling up faster (Rested XP for example), changes that have made our characters have way more options to get richer, sooner... You can't just focus on one nerf and judge the game by just that one standard. Overall, CoX now is a much more lenient and easier game than it used to be when I joined in.

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Whoa, back the truck up. I'm not judging the game by one nerf. I'm judging AE by two nerfs (tickets and mob difficulty in AE). AE, when it came out, was an excellent vehicle to making the standard content easier (I could buy SOs with tickets and save my inf for IOs on the market). It was also fairly easy and fun new content as well. However, it also suffered from a glut of basically duplicate farming missions. In attempting to fix the one problem, they've also made the fairly easy and fun new content extremely difficult. Effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm recently back from an extended (2 year or so) leave from the game. It is a lot of fun for me to try out new builds, different ways to try out new powers and of course, play through the content with friends, make new friends while playing through the content, etc. It is just plain easier to get to that fun stuff when the enhancements are easier to get so that I don't have to spend the majority of my available game time grinding for influence, merits or tickets.

A better, more community friendly, solution might have been just flagging all the boss farms after the first one as duplicates and deleting them. Sure some people would run it constantly, and people like myself might run it once a week or less. But as the OP points out, that's pretty much an inevitability based on efficiency. (Meaning that people will still farm, just farm something else).

I'm personally not a fan of farming for farming's sake. I think it is pretty boring to kill the same mob for hours on end. I think more thought could go into making the most efficient farming mission more fun and less utility. There's no reason an AE mission shouldn't be both fun and farmable at the same time, just like regular missions.

Even a rikti comm officer farm could be made more interesting by playing it up as some sort of annual rikti comm officer convention, with a lot of amusing npc chit-chat ("Can you believe how much they're charging for water?" "Hey are you going to that portal seminar?" "Wow, I can't believe security keeps letting heroes into this thing.") and maybe a "RiktiCommCon '09 ID Badge: All day access for all three days!" as souvenir.

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Last time I checked, Games were supposed to be a recreational activity. Playing a game "efficiently" tends to turn the activity to a monotonous grind which to me resembles a job on an assembly line.

Oddly enough, if a lot of people gravitate to the assembly line, the Devs respond by changing the game and making the parts the assembly line focused on even less appealing for casual players as a result of the Devs' effort to return the assembly line workers back to their normal level of productivity.

In other words, people who play MMO's efficiently tend to show the Devs what in the game should be modified so that the casual gamer can play the game without feeling inferior to those so-called Efficiency Experts.

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I don't know man. I wouldn't mind my grinding being more efficient so that I could get around to the fun bits. I'd love to know what setup the OP is using to get that many tickets that quickly, but I understand that if he posted it, it would probably quickly get out of hand. And we'd get nerfed even worse. Which is just sad.

Awesome, I can't wait to auto-toggle healing aura on villains!

Weaaaaaah-woom-woom-woom
Weaaaaaah-woom-woom-woom
Weaaaaaah-woom-woom-woom
Weaaaaaah-woom-woom-woom

or is that too meta-evil...

Also, if you do wind up considering replacing a laptop with a laptop, you might want to visit this site: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

It has the various benchmarks for the laptop graphics chipsets.

This site: http://www.notebookreview.com
has a wide array of reviews of specific models as well as a huge forum for laptop users to solve problems.

And of course there is http://www.xoticpc.com
for if you ever want to replace your own laptop or if you want a good deal on a gaming laptop.

They have one that is about as decent as the dell studio for only about $672 before any customization: http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7682-...tu-p-2571.html

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I think the best solution would be to buy yourself a new computer and give him your current one (assuming you're not having the problems your son is complaining about).

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LOL!

This is my computer (except with Windows XP, instead of Vista):

XPS M1730
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9500 (2.6GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache)
Sapphire Blue
Microsoft® Office Small Business 2007-includes Publisher + Outlook2007
2Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Speed: 500GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) with Free Fall Sensor
CD / DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
NVIDIA® SLI™ Dual GeForce® 9800M GT 1GB GDDR3
Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965a/g/n Mini Card
Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
Dell Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Bundle
85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9-cell)
High Definition Audio 2.0

My ex bought this one for me a couple of years ago when it was new technology.

I don't think I should give my son this one...do you?

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Haha wow, I didn't think you had a gaming laptop. Those tend to be pretty extremely expensive and you're not likely to find much of an upgrade in that market.

From the options you listed, the Studio looks to be the best bang for the buck, especially if you can drop the monitor in favor of re-using an older one.

That being said, don't be afraid to shop around. Newegg does sell complete systems. Here's one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229090

The only thing you'd need with that is a monitor (I'm assuming he has one if he has a desktop now).

I don't know. It seems reasonable to me that if a custom critter is harder to fight than a similarly rewarded non-custom critter, something is wrong with the risk vs reward ratio. I know I stopped playing MA arcs when I realized I would get more out of the standard missions.

Perhaps the this should approach this mathematically. A straight comparison of critters and their rewards in MA vs regular would be enlightening.

I think the best solution would be to buy yourself a new computer and give him your current one (assuming you're not having the problems your son is complaining about).