Stele

Still a good read. With elec, fire, shield, and WP available, and energy coming, very curious where they all fit in.

And I still think I must not be as good a player as I think I was because I never enjoyed my DA scraps or brute a couple years back. Maybe now with inherent fitness I could make it work.

Everything seems to be working fine with Steam and the launcher for me. But I just returned last week, mostly thanks to the Steam sale from two weeks ago.

Installed the client around July 16-17, right after the one-day sale. Waited a few days before registering my serial and reactivating though, as I wanted to start last weekend when I had some hours to play.

So after installing all the CoH files in steam, clicking play did "first time setup" which installed then ran the NCSoft Launcher. Then I think after clicking play on that, CoH verified some files. Just making sure the game was ready to go at that point though. Didn't login as I hadn't re-activated.

Cut to Sat, July 23, with time to play. Looked at the game in Steam and the Play button had turned back into an Install button. Ran the NCSoft Launcher from Start Menu and saw there was a July 20 patch. Maybe that's why Steam wasn't reporting installed? Couldn't really figure it out.

Launched from the launcher, logged into game, played, had fun. Wondered why Steam wasn't working right.

Decided to click the Install button in Steam and see what happened. It claimed a 7mb patch was needed. Clicked next. Finished immediately. Play button returned.

Now I click on the play button (or jump list shortcut) in Steam. It launches the NCSoft Launcher, immediately patches/launches CoH, and closes the NCSoft Launcher. CoH runs with Steam overlay, Steam screenshots, play time tracking, etc.

Everything seems to work perfectly, for a fresh Steam install within the last couple weeks.

Just thought I'd toss out my experiences. I know everyone has different hardware, OS, whatever. So maybe there are problems. But from what I've seen Steam integration looks great and the NCSoft Launcher is unobtrusive. Maybe some people could try a fresh Steam install and that would help? Good luck to those still having problems.

Seems to work fine for me through Steam. Installed it last week, and it ran the NCSoft Launcher. There was a weird thing where there was a patch and Steam claimed the game was uninstalled. I patched through the NCSoft Launcher to be sure. Had to click install on Steam and it detected the new update without actually downloading anything.

Clicking play in steam launches the NCSoft Launcher, directly starts CoH, and seems to work fine. I get my steam overlay, and all the features with it, with no problem.

Win7 x64. Highly approve of the Steam integration so far.

Yeah worked as expected. 30 days added on to the old end date. Good deal! Praetoria here I come.

Similarly just returned thanks to the Steam sale. This topic is exactly what I was looking for.

Have 4 melee 50s (2 scrap, brute, tank), but still saw Kinetic Melee and just have to roll one. 50s were Regen, WP, Fire, Elec... so need something different. Have SR in the 30s. So yeah, thinking Dark or Shield.

Any more preferences between dark/shield between scrap/brute? Would dark's death shroud really help fury as a brute? Or is shield better either way?

So, long time subscriber here, but been gone for a couple years. I got this awesome e-mail from NCSoft about 10 days ago inviting me to return and try the game for 15-days. Also around that time the Going Rogue Collection was on sale on Steam. Figured I'd grab that too and just think of it as 45 days for $10.

Anyway, put in my returning serial code finally this weekend after I got some free time to play. Everything seems to be working. Old characters still there and still with all their names too.

But of course I don't have the Going Rogue content as I haven't entered that serial number yet. Would definitely like to explore some of that sooner rather than later though.

So the question is: Can I go ahead and enter the Going Rogue serial and it will apply the 30 days to the end of my other 15? I assume it will, since that's usually what happens with people on trial accounts. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this? Want to get the most out of my free time.

So villains can get Kinetic Masterminds now right?

Dang I saw the threads and figured that meant it went open this morning with a patch and I had missed the fun all day. But alas... still closed.

Hope soon is tonight.

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Issue 15 will be centered around the Fifth... Anniversary of City of Heroes.

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Not-so-subtle hint at Fifth Column?

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Yep. Had enough setup with Ouroboros and Cimerora. Bring on the Column.

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Really, the 'not everyone will like it part' is a very, very minor concern.

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Obviously. Plenty of I13 proves that.

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Poster: Kitsune9tails
Q: What is the intended relationship between the Merit system and the markets?

A: The Merit system gives players who don’t like to fiddle with the markets the chance to buy that IO enhancement they’ve always wanted but haven’t been able to afford with influence/infamy. It also gives players a way to have greater control over supply and demand on specific items by allowing players to buy that incredibly overpriced recipe listed on the Auction House, thus decreasing the demand for the item on the auction house.


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This is the one I don't get. With these merits and no more random, there won't be any recipes on the AH, or the few that are will be even costlier. Hell even the Fear and Confuse sets are going to cost more now, for the few people that do use them. As other posters have mentioned, who the heck is going to piss away merits on Pool C random, when the devs even admit :

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The cost of pool D rewards are higher due to the significantly higher likelihood of getting the desired enhancement with a single roll. Taskforce reward tables have substantially more items on them than Trial reward tables.

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which is translated to "pool c has too much crap", which is what we've been saying on the market forum for 18 frickin months!!

At this point, you guys are locked in to the merit system. So the best way to make it bearable is going to be fixing the pool C drops. Make it so that we actually get something worthwhile with our merits. Drop the fears, confuses, etc into Pool A or B. Or weight the numbers to match the powers in the game.

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Lastly there's really not much new here. It just doesn't seem to be announcement worthy.

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QFT. The only things that are new in this article is the badge UI changes and the NPC placement. Until we get an example of such a change for the NPCs, who knows if it'll be good or not. As for the badge UI changes, probably could have been done in just a paragraph by Posi here on the boards:

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Hey, folks, Positron here. Look, we know we've had some complaints about the badge user interface, so we've decided to do some changes. We hope you'll enjoy them. First, we're going to add more badge bars than ever before, such as badge bars to gladiator badges, or bars indicating how many more plaques you need to get a history badge. On top of that, instead of just a blue bar, we're going to give you actual real number percentages so you can tell EXACTLY how far you are on some of those badges.

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Something like that. This article just seemed to be a rehash of stuff that was already known.

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I hope it's that nice of an improvement. I figure it'll just be more tabs, like the contact list FINALLY got recently. A progress bar for history badges and an actual % on others would be fantastic.

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What??? Since when? Please name one mission arc that's ever changed, ever. The above quote from the Ten Ton Hammer page is quite simply an untrue statement. The mission arcs in CoH/V have never evolved.


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All of the 5th Column missions got changed to Council.

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Wow i loved the comic at the end

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Best thing in there.

/em coughs loudly in the direction of the devs

I just don't get it.

This game has encouraged alts from day one. You have x number of power combinations per AT, y number of ATs, Z number of slots per server and however many servers.

Now finally they are giving a bonus to whatever alts you are not playing, so when you do get around to playing them again you get something. More xp, a badge, a temp power, some kind of xp/inf/item bonus.

Sign me and my 50+ alts the hell up right now.

If there's someone out there only playing one character, they're playing the wrong game. Go somewhere else where all you do is grind out new stuff for the same guy over and over until they raise the level cap, make all your gear worthless, and then you can do it all again... This is not that game, and thank god it's not. Those games aren't fun, this one is.

Play what you want to play, when you want to play it. Take an extra minute when you log out to park somewhere. Or don't, you'll still get the "patrol" bonus even if you're not working on a job. This is all extra. It's a nifty added in bonus. Even more so than "optional" inventions, you really don't have to participate in day jobs at all if you don't want to.

Anniversary badges, event badges, veteran badges... I just can't see the badge complaints. There's always been something that not everyone can have.

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I was hoping to be able to get extra Vanguard Merits for hanging out there.

Still, I'm not complaining.

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Hopefully that's one of the unlisted ones. I'd love to have Vanguard job and get some kind of extra merits. Maybe put you in "ship raid" mode for a few hours. Every kill = 1 merit. Be great for just running the RWZ arcs and not forcing anyone to do a raid event which can be quite laggy for some, and on other servers maybe rarely done. The vanguard costumes and weapons are frickin awesome, and any easier merit access would be good.

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[*]Vigilance is almost unanimously seen as a poor inherent. It benefits very few of the Primary powersets and, despite an attempt by a developer to explain why it’s “defender-y,” there is little about it that genuinely feels that way. All other inherents assist or reward the AT for performing their role. Vigilance rewards the Defender that is not performing their role well enough.

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This should be priority 1, starred, asterisked, etc. Especially after the nifty defiance changes blasters got. Defenders are the only AT left with a "bad" inherent. Domination might still need work, but everyone else has something appropriate and useful.

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I've seen the behavior I've cited on many boards over the years. While I dont beleive for a second that the removal of post counts/reg dates will STOP the behavior you describe I do believe that every little bit helps.

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I've seen it other places, but not so much here. The only thing people with 2004 or early 2005 reg dates are likely to do is dredge up ED, GDN, agro caps, etc... and how different things used to be.

Around here it's more like the old guy saying "In my day, we walked uphill to school in the snow... both ways!"

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The changes for APPs/PPPs are more widespread.

The basic tack we took was "if the power is not being taken by the players, replace it with something that is." So, a number of formerly heroside only powers are now available on villainside, and a number of powers have been replaced by something we feel will be more useful in general.

I'll be very interested in seeing the reactions to the new lists in Beta.



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So uh... post the lists now. We'll give you some reaction. You want reaction, we want info. Win-Win.

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This sounds ominous:

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To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.

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Patron buff or Epic nerf?

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Well obviously this was the first comment in the article that really jumped out at a lot of us.

Let's hope it's a patron buff. Since they're allowing patron respec, a little more variety in the choices would seem appropriate, rather than making the epics all copy-cat-ish like the patrons have been.

Guess the reward part of this topic is pointless with the i13 merit rewards coming. But the points brought up about not being able to exem properly and perhaps the trials getting reworked a bit still stand. I hope the devs consider that before this gets unstickied.

OOOOOOOOOOOH, costume-y goodness from Jay!!

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Matt Miller: So we've had Jay working on a lot of civilian clothing for this feature. He's done a myriad of different suits, from single-breasted, double-breasted, two, three and four-button, bolo ties, normal ties, bow ties, pinstripe – you know, striped suits, like many different varieties of that... sweaters, sweater vests, and then the police uniforms. We've got a ton of different police uniforms. We're even including a really cool police belt, with all the accoutrements on that. I can see a lot of players just grabbing that and putting it on their tech characters and gadget characters, just because it looks so cool.

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Hm, interesting guide. Was thinking that Dark Pit + Thunder Clap might be effective to disorient.

Actually thinking about a Corruptor but there don't seem to be any guides for that yet. I'd guess it's a little less debuff/heal from storm but more damage from dark. Should be fun.

Hey the Kronos Titan is classic. I can see the need for it to be changed, but when it was first done that was impressive and funny.