Soul Train

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Yup. Just bought it on my iPhone. Can't wait to get home!

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"Ooo! Look at me! I'm Nadya! I have an iPhone! Weee!"

:P

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Guess it urks you to know that over 90% of my posts now are done via iPhone. I love it!

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I hate you. <3

:P

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You think you've got it rough? I work for at&t (the SOLE CARRIER for the iPhone) and nearly ALL of my coworkers have them.

They are pretty spiffy, just can't afford one right now, not even at employee discount.

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* I'm sorry.. I have to quit the team.. no... it's not that you disagreed with me... no it's not how you're leading the team.. but.. your defender put an orange force field around me.. and I'm wearing purple... dear gods man! You've made me CLASH!"

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Equation/Arbiter Fabulous will NEVER run out of material to 'critique', now.

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Now i want to create a MA mission of the exploding zombies built for a team of 8. Want a challenge, do that

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*throws Seeds of Confusion*

*stands back*

Okay, that mission's done. Next!

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There's more than one way to skin a catgirl... wait... ermm...

Actually I only saw a LOT of PL spam in PI when I was on Victory. I don't play on Freedom, so I can't say what PI was like, or is like, there.

Virtue, yes, it tended to get a little noisy. But, that was one zone, far removed from the lowbie zones. Lowbies had to have help GETTING there, as well (no shortcut through RWZ for you!).

With the AE, you were subjected to spam (and anti-spam kvetching) along with the usual Atlas Park noise... lag from the AE 'data download', costume contests, sewer runs, et cetera. Not to say Atlas wasn't noisy before... but people asking questions about the game was expected.

The AE spam drowned ALL of that out, there was so much.

An analogy, if you will indulge me, here. I used to live in Seattle, where there was a lot of radio stations around, and a lot of the signals kinda bled into each other. It wasn't too bad, mildly annoying but there was always something to listen to.

Then the church down the block got a broadcasting license and put up a big antenna... and suddenly you couldn't get away from their programming, you heard it on your computer speakers, your phone, your car radio when the damned thing was OFF... all because you were right underneath that big honking tower and the signal was too strong.

That's the impact AE spam had on Atlas. It was all-pervasive, and constant, and annoying... and this is from a veteran, I'd hate to think what new players thought once they zoned in for the first time.

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Just to make a point about the Golf/Baseball analogy; the problem as I see it with the current situation (though less now that the Mito-farms have been nixed) is that the 'pay' for playing 'Baseball' is much, much greater than the 'pay' for playing 'Golf'. This has a multipul effect of concentrating the playerbase in 'Baseball' (making it harder (to a degree) for Golfers to find other Golfers), encoraging people who dont like 'Baseball' to play it (because they do like to get payed), and making the poeple who love 'Golf', and simply will not play 'Baseball' to feel that they are getting the short end of the stick.

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Exactly.

And, here's the market impact.

Yes, more 'stuff' is being dropped. However, availability of Item A is not what determines Item A's price.

The DEMAND for Item A is what determines price, and with people raking in inf from their farm of choice, they can easily afford to pay a lot more for Item A than the folks who find farming boring.

This means that people SELLING their Item A's will set the price higher, knowing full well some schmuck who "wants it NAO" will pay that price. This nudges the aggregate price point for Item A upwards. Another person gets an Item A, decides to sell it cos they can 'make a mint selling these things' and they price it even HIGHER... and again, it's snapped up by someone swimming in inf and short on patience.

Meanwhile, back at the non-farm (would that be a ranch? I have no idea)... those people who are also wanting an Item A, but aren't raking in the inf because they're not farming, begin to lament that they can't afford an Item A because the price is ridiculously overinflated AND because they're soloing or running lower difficulty, Item A never drops for them... nor do they see a lot of tickets with which to buy an Item A from the AE vendor (if it's even available.)

It's not a supply/demand economy, it's a Gold Rush economy, and if you're not one of the people bringing in gold by the bucketload, you're priced out.

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It seems to discourage teaming, is all I'm sayin'

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It discourages blind teaming and door sitting.

People who want to team cos it's fun will still team.

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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The reason people 'beg' for farms is, they want a free ride. And up until this point, giving free rides to people was a benefit.

I suspect the practice of charging for spots on 'farm teams' will resume, or other variants of 'what's in it for me'... and thus you'll see less "PL MEH" because it'll be pricier.

The issues I've had with the practice of 'farming' have been:

* broadcast / request / tell spam - with no need to pad a team, this should abate fairly fast

* AE mission catalogue filled up with a thousand copies of the same mission created by different people - because dev content also offers purple drops, there shouldn't be as many engineered farm missions within the AE anymore, as people will gravitate toward missions that give them more potential 'stuff'.

* new-and-clueless players on level 50's and epics - again, with no need to pad or fill, there won't be the impetus to rope anyone who's standing around into your AE missions, and the new players will have a chance to learn more about the game's scope, lore, mechanics, et cetera. Veteran players on new characters will of course do what they know how to do to PL past levels they find boring (and I have absolutely no issue with that at all.)

So yah... the fallout from the Great AE Farming Rush of 2009 should subside, and most of the anti-farm crowd (who in my estimation were more against the EFFECTS rather than the PRACTICE) should have much less reason to cry 'foul'.

I am NOT optimistic about the market rates, because there's two sides to the supply and demand equation. Just as more valuable stuff will drop and get sold, so will more inf be earned, and people with more cash will pay more for stuff they absolutely want NAO... which in turn keeps the prices higher.

Awesome, innit?

Alsto' we do need to come up with a better name than "When Pigments Fly". Where's the Punday Nights crowd? Surely y'all can think of something!!

I'm happy P_P is happy.

I'm happy Geek_Boy is disturbed about agreeing with P_P.

I'm happy for these additions, cos it means there should be a lot less of the broadcast spammage and the AE boss farms, because people will be able to fine-tune regular missions to accomplish the same thing (including get purple drops, which you can't get from AE).

All of this means the current noise levels in AP and Cap should drastically decrease, maybe not to *crickets* but at least to a tolerable dull roar.

That, and my MA stalker will get to actually use her fists more often, and my defender will finally have powers that match her costume (white and gold!)

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It seem to me that talk of adjusting the rewards is beside the point. What MA has really done is shown that a lot of the game content isn't actually fun for the players, at least not after the first couple of times.

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... but killing hamidon mitochondria that can't fight back is fun again and again and again?

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to some people, yes. to others, no. we dont all find the same things fun. I dont particularly like golf. others do. I'm not about to tell them they cant golf.

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Someone else's game of golf shouldn't prevent me from playing a game of baseball though.

The inflation alone from the rapid leveling and disposable income (without real money sinks) has prevented me from even thinking about getting into inventions seriously. I've poked around with bubbling on one of my old characters to see what it's all about, and from what I've seen, the rate that you can gain infamy/influence in bubbles compared to regular missions is ridiculously disproportionate.

Twinking would naturally contribute to this, much like it does in every MMO--however, the ability to earn crazy amounts of money through exploiting at early levels isn't often there like it is here. Bubbles are an exploit of the games mechanics, and it has a drastic effect on those who don't bubble themselves.

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Gasp, I am 1 man short of my 4 man golf team, better cancel your baseball game so we can force one of your players to fill in.

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You misunderstand the point.

The amazing amounts of MONEY people are making playing power golf is driving up the cost of sporting goods across the board... apparently because a good Louisville Slugger makes a great 3-wood and people are using baseball hats as sunshades.

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But if they all kept it to one thread, then they couldn't pretend to be unique little snow flakes every time they regurgitated the same tired, flawed, silly arguments over and over ad nauseum.




Yes, I made two vomit reverences. It was intentional since that's pretty much what the forums look like to me right now.

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Change the skin. It helps.

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Last night there were higher levels complaining about too many lowbies in Atlas. As if the Lowbies should level their starting zone to make the 35+ happy. Makes me wonder if the 35+ knew they could go to RWZ and not have any lowbies at all.

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That's just flippin' ridiculous...

When they first announced the X-Man movie, there was noise of hiring Glen Danzig to play Logan/Wolverine, mainly because of his height and build. But of course they went with Jackman.

I think it's worked out - he has the right ATTITUDE.

As for Hal Jordan, the persona they need is a bit more serious. He was originally 'the man without fear', and a test pilot for Ferris Aircraft, if memory serves...

... which means I'd be looking for a modern-day Lee Majors. Ryan MIGHT be able to pull it off, but I don't see that many 'comic' opportunities playing Hal. Kyle, maybe, he has his goofy moments. Guy, definitely.

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Ok..I have not read the whole thread...but at least half so if this has been brought up I missed it.

Let's look at a different angle. AE is supposed to be an "entertainment" company with fancy holo suites for people to "play" in, am I correct? If that is the case, then you should have to pay (infamy/influence) for your time in those holo suites, like putting quarters in your pac-man machine.

There should be a set rate of cost per mission in a story. That cost should go up based on the level of each story. Lowbie missions against lowbie critters cost less than Level 54 missions full of bosses. I would completely remove infamy/influence as a reward as well as enhancement drops and leave inspiration and tickets as your reward for playing at the entertainment site. I would still reward experience because you can treat AE missions as training. To me prestige is a personal choice, you can turn that on or off at will if someone wants to earn prestige as well that is fine by me.

A new player will have to go out into the world and earn some money before he can go to the entertainment building and play in the holo suites. High level toons that want to play high level missions will pay a higher premium. If you want to lackey a lowbie, the lowbie has to come up with the money to play the high level content to get the high level XP rewards...no more free rides.

If you keep the cost of lowbie missions cheap enough and they can turn in tickets for their training enhancments if they wish to get them but they have to go outside to earn more cash to play AE new players will get the experience of more content. If it costs you 50k (completely random number) to run a single level 54 mish, not many brand new players could do that. They will pay the 40 bucks it costs to run that level 10 mish.

Vets that want to PL will just float cash to their lowbies so they can play whatever farm is hot that day. No more begging for a PL because somebody has to pay for it..literally (well literally in game money)

I think the current ticket drop rate and XP is more than ample reward. You can make quite a good living and outfit your toon on ticket drops alone.

This was a spur of the moment idea and I rambled a bit but I think it could just work. You can now all procede to punch a zillion holes in my little idea

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This makes some amount of sense... but it would open up yet one more market opportunity for the RMT gold farmers - people who were out of in-game cash for their holosuite fix.

And as much as I'd like to see this mess cleaned up... if the solution opens up more business to THOSE guys? Nope. Let's try something else first, please.

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In the past, when I've used the GMs (via in-game /petition), support has been excellent. The GMs know the game, are polite and friendly, and speak coherent, apparently native, English.

Today, the GM I dealt with (regarding a bugged mission) clearly had English as a second language. Lots of very weird sentence constructions, like "have a pleasurable game play" and "it is currently under investigation of Developers".

Moreover, this GM was apparently an idiot. At first he was like, "there are many mobs in your mission, please kill them first". I had to say, twice, *this isn't a door mission* before he got it. The full detailed explanation was already in my petition, this particular problem is on the known issues list, and it should have been grotesquely obvious what this mission was and what the issue was.

Has NCsoft/Paragon started offshore outsourcing of CoH support to some form of call center-ish organization that has no clue about what they are actually supporting?

Anyone else had recent problems in dealing with support?

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They do, and it isn't recent. I've been running into these types of GM's since I started playing in '05. Based on the sentence construction/grammar, they sound suspiciously familiar to the agents my company employed for email support in 2004-2006. And yes, they were overseas, in a country well-known for 'offshore tech/customer support'.

However, when support is contracted out, the company doing the contracting may not field all of the work in the same location. Some agents may be in one country, some in another. And altho' you find good and bad support everywhere (our worst was in North Hollywood, CA, of all places!) you can definitely see linguistic, 'slang' and other differences from one locale to the next.

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My feeling is that any solution has to take into account one thing: The devs want the player to be able to level 1-50 in the MA. It's shown in the loading tips and it was touted as a feature when the AE was being released, so I don't honestly think that any solution that takes out the ability to do this will be seriously considered.

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OK all well and good, BUT... have the Devs explicitly stated that they want you to level your first character from 1-50 within the MA?

To my knowledge, they have not.

Thus, level-gating the MA to "at least one character on the account reaches level x" or putting the MA buildings in midlevel zones would not prevent 1-50 leveling... but you WOULD have to expend some minor effort at the start of that character's career (or level someone else 'the old way' to a predetermined point first).

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No problem and didn't realize ST had a rep. I remember him but not much about him.

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I was unaware I had a rep either, honestly. But apparently I do.

Fernandes, contact @Dollhouse (either on the forums or in game). The main Carnival of Light group is (was?) on Triumph, but I believe many of them play on Pinnacle as well.

The Carneval Rene' IS a group on Virtue, but it is extremely stagnant, and altho' I'm not 'running it' I seem to be the only one on. Or, I was. I've not played any of my characters in well over a month now, and judging by the mess that still is the MArch, it'll be a while.

Which should make all those folks who don't like me quite happy. Either way, enjoy your game.

I'm off doing other things, establishing my 'rep' (whatever THAT means) and generally having fun with friends. So far that practice hasn't stepped on any toes to my knowledge....

I heartily agree with MOO's suggestions. It's 'cool' to do AE content, but not at the expense of learning how expansive the DEVELOPER content is.

Yes, I know, we outstripped their 5 years worth of work in 2 weeks, BUT... is it all content we feel is worth bragging about, honestly? It's what's known as Infinite Monkey Theorem - at some point, they'll write Shakespeare by random chance. The corollary is, you don't want to read everything ELSE they wrote.

We all may be tired of the dev content... but the new players have never seen it. They haven't seen the NPC text that War Witch has worked on, or the zone designs, or ... well you get the point.

*head bowed*


... God Bless the Seventies...

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My favorite is Williams Square in Founders Falls, even after 5 years it still makes me catch my breath. I would love to hear the full track.

I want a COH Soundtrack SO BAD! I would pay money for that. C'mon, Devs, that's a microtransaction waiting to happen!

PS: I also want a full size wall poster.

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Uhm... I think you can download the soundtracks for free, there's an FTP folder with all of them in it.


The trick is remembering where it is, which is where it all falls down for me, of course.

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ftp://ftp.coh.com/music/

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Thanks Niv!


Now.... about that wall poster...

Hardcase? a hero? Uhmmm..... no.

He's a merc demon hunter. He basically gets paid by Johnny Sonata and crew to keep the Wailers off of JS's case. THIS is why he tells you to undo the damage you've caused by playing around with Viv, as they're plotting to undo the wards keeping the Wailers out of the Giza (and thus Hardcase would be out of a job.)

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My favorite is Williams Square in Founders Falls, even after 5 years it still makes me catch my breath. I would love to hear the full track.

I want a COH Soundtrack SO BAD! I would pay money for that. C'mon, Devs, that's a microtransaction waiting to happen!

PS: I also want a full size wall poster.

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Uhm... I think you can download the soundtracks for free, there's an FTP folder with all of them in it.


The trick is remembering where it is, which is where it all falls down for me, of course.

Yanno... I was wondering when someone would try something like this... one of my arcs has wall-to-wall Succubi (which can really mess with a team, but solo it's actually a little easier, tho' still not a cakewalk).

Then I ran it on MY succubi (who has both confuse and Mass Confuse) and it... got weird.

No one's playing the missions I've written... I haven't even used all three slots on my second acct.

Only reason I'd buy a fourth slot would be to move a mission from second acct to first acct, and then let second acct go.


... kinda wish I could transfer characters too...