Stele

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- Goon Squad placeholder is very misleading. ("Put down the strikes in Sharkhead to earn this badge" is not correct when you're killing Cage, who aren't striking

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I just learned something reading this. I went around killing scrapyarders wondering why this badge wasn't moving after I killed like 50 of them. I just gave up and moved onto another zone. Oh well.

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Could we maybe get a number indicator that shows when you mouse over the bar, similar to our HP/End bars? So that we can see (25/50,000) or even the percentage so that when it moves 1%, we can see the number go up since it's not easy to tell that the bar moved?

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That would be so fantastic! The way the bar is on some things just isn't really enough to show progress or to motivate you to finish or give you any idea how long it might take. The "complete/total" display would eliminate a lot of confusion for many people on what a certain badge really takes. But the % couldn't hurt, so at least you could know by the number that the bar moved if you can't actually see movement with your eyes.

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Is Castle's sig quoting everyone's favourite robotic assassin from KOTOR?

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From KOTOR2, and I think it was one of the other HK models, but yeah.

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I just finished playing it again. I love the game.

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KOTOR2 would have been better if they had finished the game, instead of left a bunch of unfinished arcs and even had unused cutscenes on the discs. Good old Microsoft forced release to milk Christmas sales and then didn't bother to let the PC version get completed either even though it was out in Feb.

One of the best (because of improved gameplay and graphics) and worst (because of another rushed release) sequels in history. *sigh*

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We've got a nice tweak to the Domination ability coming down the pipe (it will crank up your Mez resistance while it is active), and are currently data-mining PvP to see what effect our last set of tweaks to the AT have had.

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While this is unquestionably Nifty, I'm not sure it's the right direction to go in addressing the woes of the Dom AT. I think most of us will agree that Domination is already pretty sweet--it's just the rest of the time that we feel lacking. Making our brief periods of uberness more uber won't make the slog in between any better. I'd rather see something shore us up in the gaps.

Here's a thought: Keep the mez protection (I'm hoping it's protection, as opposed to resistance, which is much less nifty). Key it to the Domination bar, rather than the power. When the bar is full, and Domination is available, mez protection kicks in until the bar drops, or Domination is activated. This would present us with a tactical decision: Do I save the bar to keep the protective buff, or do I trigger Domination and go all megalomaniacal on my foes? More importantly, it would ease the frustration during those long periods when we're all sparkly and looking at the little dot of unrecharged Domination.

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Now there's a plan. My dom is still in the teens, but once that button lights up I feel like I have to press it or I'm wasting it. This is a really neat idea. I hope Posi is still reading.

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... Run the outside of the room and wipe out the CoT in the area. After the room is clear of everything but the AV and vines. You start at it's back and work your way around killing the vines untill your counter is at 0. At which point you can move in for the AV kill (Or take a QUICK moment to regroup.) While attacking the AV the vines will respawn. This is where most teams divert attention back on the vines, and I say to you NO. It's at this point that you completely IGNORE the vines and continue on your way with the AV ...

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Exactly what I would have said. Just finished this for the first time over the weekend. Did a team of 5, had 48 vines. Very important not to attack any vines until all the mobs are clear. Attacking vines aggros the AV. Sometimes you have to be careful with MM pets.

I ended up having help from some higher people in my SG. They got auto-exem to 33, and then sked us that were in the 20s. Evreything in the SF was 32-33 that way, and not too hard at all. Our only deaths were the corruptor and mm during vine clearing phase.

Has anyone done the 1st respec since I7 went live? I've heard people say that the respec is like the hero one and if everyone is 24/25 or 26/27 or whatever, that it won't be too hard. As long as there is no more than 1 difference in level. Then I've also heard that it's hard coded like the regular TF/SF and all the enemies are 30ish no matter what. Has anyone done this in the last couple weeks that can say which it is?

One of my toons is hitting 24 very soon and just wondering if I should get respec out of the way or wait it out for 30.

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Edit: I agree with the above post in some ways, choice is good as long as it doesn't hurt the other players. I like the idea of giving a number of each type of enhancement that is slotted (not what it does or even what power it's in), but I don't think that would solve it. There really needs to be other ways of getting Hamis... a TF or two would be a good way, heck, why not make the current TFs available to the 45+ crowd give out a hami at the end?

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That sounds like a reasonable idea. Those grueling 8-person TFs in the shard deserve a better reward anyway. That might give people a choice if they can't handle the lag or have a large enough supergroup or whatever to take down hami. Then it would just require finding enough people to hold out for 6-8 hours to finish those TFs.

I've been lucky enough to get a couple of HOs myself. But the job I work at is open 7 days a week so I miss a lot of the big weekend raids where it seems like most of the 50 population of the server is getting HOs. Others in my sg have twice as many as me just because the days they have raided I am stuck at work. I'm all for another option to get HOs.

Another end-game encounter would really help a lot. But it seems the devs have been content with Hami for this long and aren't really concerned with making something new.

I'm one of the people who enjoyed the fact that there was no PvP in this game, so I'm not too concerned with the HO vs no HO issue. But I do like making my hero the best he/she can be, and HOs are the only thing left to put on my main 50. She's loaded with 53 SOs and now the only thing left are HOs. I'd love more ways to get them, and I think most people would agree that choice is good.

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Peeps: No need to take out the shield or bother with the generators, holding the head takes the shield down

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So the hydra is broken, check. I guess everyone should go exploit the heck out of it before it gets fixed, as usual.

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Just FYI, this method of taking down the Hydra has been known since October. When my main was in range in November, we found a guide on the forums about holding the hydra and being able to beat the mission in 30-45 with no problem. That was fighting your way down to each box and killing all 6 krakens, though. Someone with invis and recall friend helped a lot.

So the holding method has been going for at least 5 months. I think if it was really an exploit they would have changed it by now. And it's funny since the last month or so everyone has been holding Hamidon the same way.

As to the main topic, I do agree with others. Completing the mission in 10 minutes is fine, but you might as well mop up the remaining krakens before leaving. All the annoyance of getting the mission and getting to the sewers, might as well get better xp while you're down there. Back when I did it, it was hard as hell to find a team that wanted to finish and not just farm. But once I explained to them we could hold it and not have to do the whole generator thing, people started coming around. Beat him 3-4 times back then. Getting alts near that range again, so looking forward to returning to visit the sewers soon.

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Anyone heard if we are going to get a free costume repec with the release or the ablity to adjust size and features at least once for all current characters.

Maybe a tailer mission for the feature readjustment for example.

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This is what I have been wondering for weeks. Since red names are posting in this thread, maybe this is the place to ask. We must be allowed to adjust body type with old heroes. I'd prefer if we were given it once for free, but we definitely need the option. I've got 14 heroes across 2 different servers, and I'm not about to re-start any of them just to redesign them with new costume options.

And thanks to Megajoule for the link to the screenshots. Very informative, getting to see some of the new menus and options and how it will work. Some nice shots of the body and head sliders in there.

Good thread. And you can see from when he registered back in September that he's been around a while. I wish I had a collection of my early impressions to the game. Reading his entries reminds me a bit of what I went through. Although I joined the same week with two real life friends, so I ended up sticking with one character quite quickly so the 3 of us could all stay together. After my long trek to 50, now I have 13 alts I'm working on.

Anyway, keep up the entries. Looking forward to more. And I have to totally agree with the group descriptions. Seems like most teams break down into those 3 categories. Bad team that falls apart, good team that is all buisiness, or great team that is chatty and kicks butt at the same time. My sg is full of the latter type of people, and they are why I stuck around on the grind from 40-50 and why I'm still around over 2 months later playing alts with them.

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I think part of the problem is that when you post a viewpoint, you phrase it in a way such that it comes across as "this is how it will happen".

And then when people get offended (the anime avatar thing is slightly uncalled for in the beginning, I have to admit) or defensive, then you explain what it is basically a speculation on the Worst Case Scenario. Which would have saved a lot of trouble if you had mentioned that in the first place.

Also, people accuse you ("this is how you are!"), and you accuse them back ("no, this is what you want!"), and it all cycles down to implosion.

So basically, yes, I think it would be better if you were to tone down your posts a bit. Again, not everyone does this, but it has to start somewhere, and with hot-button topics, it's best to be excruciatingly polite.

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You know, when it's put like this, I begin to think that Brawl deserves some credit. That's pretty much exactly the way Puffyshirt sounded, as I recall. Btw, yes, Arucard, he did stay around longer than release, because he was still posting when I started posting here. I never saw him say anything truly off-the-wall or obviously trollish, but I wasn't a board addict then.

Of course, I remember quite a few people complaining about SpaceKitten as too, and she (?) has never said anything I myself have had a problem with. Shrugs.

On-topic, I sit squarely on the fence (metaphorically speaking, heh) when it comes to anime and manga. I like/dislike some of it a whole lot, but then again, I like it or not because of the story/action/characters/dialogue/whatever, not because it's anime. It's the same thing as my opinion about the movies The Incredibles (awesome) and Shall We Dance (never in a million years would I even think of seeing it, much less like it). You see what I'm trying to say here, right? I just can't find it in me to hate any media universally.

Btw, you'll notice my avatar is nothing anime-related, though I admit a certain curiosity of how she'd look in a schoolgirl outfit. Hmm...anyone know how to get drool out of a keyboard?

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Hey I basically said the same thing to backagain/revolution_pro in that praise thread he was trying to promote a few pages back. It had a nice opening post of him not complaining. And then more standoffish responses, his standard fare.

And the PuffyShirt story is quite interesting. Especially about 15 posts into this thread I started to wonder if a "Backagain/revolution_pro should be banned" topic would do any good. Now that I know there's actually a precedent, it probably has some merit.

Spacekitten is cool. Sure, she don't like TA. But there's a lot of people like that. I've never had any problem with them but I can see how they might rub some people the wrong way.

Some people don't like KaliMagdalene much either. Obviously backagain/revolution_pro is in that camp. When you post thousands of topics you're bound to say something somewhere that offends someone. But I've seen a LOT of informative posts from her, especially concerning Dark Armor issues.

Some of those TA guys can come off as arrogant. But they obviously know how to play the game. You can tell from their posts, and from their well-known accomplishments. So I can tolerate attitude, as long as there is something informative behind it.

But attitude, argument, wild speculation, rampant despair, and refusal to accept any criticism from anyone ever... it's only been a few weeks and a few hundred posts, but it's more than enough. And the name change won't help.

As for the main main topic, before the puffyshirt sub-topic... It was probably only a dozen posts in when the fact that two teams existed was pointed out. And then someone mentioned Lord_Recluse as CoV lead. A simple user name post would have stopped the whole "CoH won't update once CoV releases" whine.

And as for the costume complaints. The whole character creation engine is going to be modified in I4. The new "body and face scaling" will allow EVERYONE to modify their hero. So... every single hero in the game is getting new costume content with Issue 4. Read that closely.

EVERY.
SINGLE.
HERO.

Now what is there to complain about?

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The Crescent - of course, I almost forgot this one. Mesopotamia existing in the Fertile Crescent. The Crescent, btw, in my opinion, has the best district music of any district in the game. Is there any way to find out who was responsible for that music?

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Yes! I mention the music everytime I run through the zone, which is a LOT in my 30s with any toon. Best music in the game.

I rather enjoy the dialogue references, like the invincible line from Big Trouble in Little China and the TPS reports from Office Space. I'm sure I've heard some more, but I'll have to see if I wrote them down somewhere.

Very interesting topic overall. I find the Talos references were easiest to recognize, greek mythology being so popular and all. Too bad this game wasn't out a couple years ago when I took a Greek Mythology class in college. Could have used it on my paper of mythological references in current popular culture.

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Well, if you tend to do missions with a group, it could also lead to outleveling contacts/content...

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Er, that's what the "flashback" part is for. You won't be able to outlevel anything. And maybe the drop/pick-up missions will allow you to skip some of the boring "kill 10 outcasts in steel canyon" or "kill 10 clockwork in boomtown" that you always get to introduce you to new zones as you get within range. If you can skip those boring missions and get right into your story arcs, that will help as well. We'll still need more detail on the drop/add mission feature.

But as a whole, this plan covers the vast majority of players and concerns.

Wow. They listened to us.

One note, as others have mentioned, story arcs don't always appear once a contact has leveled up. I made a scrapper at i2 release and just got her to 50 before i3. I completed every available story arc. Yes, I have all the souveniers that were available up to i2. And I got a few arcs as the VERY FIRST mission from a contact. The vast majority I got within 2-3 missions, before I even had a phone number. And it's hard to remember the earlier contacts, but I'm fairly sure the only contact that didn't give me my story arcs until the bar was full was Crimson. You can ask my sg how many days I spent swearing at Crimson for not giving me the malta arc, but sending me on a mundane malta mission.

Many of us really enjoy the story arcs. Flashback will help greatly with that in the long run. It could also help if the suggested idea of completing the same mission at the same time was done. Many times when I have been in a group with same-level heroes we have had the exact same missions to complete. It does get a little boring repeating things, and interrupts the story a bit. Might be tough to implement since most of them spawn different mission doors.

Anyway, proposed changes sound great, especially for my squishies. I love my scrapper, but now maybe I can get to the high level game in a reasonable amount of time with some of my alts besides my tanker.

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I think a solution to Rikti Crash Site and Peregrine Island (not enough and too much) would be to place another city zone (not hazard zone) inbetween the Crash Site and Indy Port (there's plenty of room).

Make it 35-44 or 40-50, and have it include Carnies and Malta (another place to hunt each). It would also include another entrance to the Crash Site (further north of the current one), which could have its own DMZ.

In addtion to this, put another Ferry in Indy Port near the entrance to this new city zone (which could be around the Tech store (across the water from Bricks), so that there would be another way to Peregrine Island that doesn't involve Talos (and it would be near this other high level zone... plus Bricks, if the new zone contains 35+ enemies).


Perhaps in the future...

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Hopefully something like this is in the works for I4. They just filled the gaps for 20-30 content with Striga. Now would be a good time to fill the gaps for 35-45 or so. Especially the late 30s. Sure, people farm the sewer trial for good xp. But they also farm it because story arcs and Numina TF are all done at 38 and you have to do something for 2 levels to get more.

Glad that Statesman finally addressed this. There nave been numerous topics about the Hollows over the past months. Of course the other problem with the Hollows is still people are having spawns drop on top of them.

Just search around and you'll find plenty of topics, people getting sent to door missions surrounded by purple mobs from +5 up to +10 or so. Maybe you can take a couple hits from a +5 when you're in your 30s or above, but at level 5 you're not gonna last.

Getting sent through crap like this at level 5-6 is ok for some veteran players. A lot of us who were around before I2 just skip the Hollows when we make alts because it isn't worth the frustration. But I feel for the new players who think they have to do the Hollows missions after they get sent all the way there from King's Row.

Come on guys. I'm a lvl 44 regen scrapper, I'm as mad as anyone. But Chrismas gets me feeling like a little kid again. Let the man spread some holiday cheer.

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Yep. I'll grant one of those original wishes.

Maybe two.



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I hope it's snow and abominable snowman. Er, maybe santa hat. No, snowman. Hat. Snowman.

Oh come, on give us 3?

Beat it tonight, with about half the same group. We fought our way to crates, since we only had one person with tp + invis, and that was the same person with rez. Couldn't really afford to risk them dying. But we got particle cannon on 4 of the first 5 crates, so then we dropped to the bottom after killing the 2nd kraken. Cleared Rikti, cleared maybe 5 tentacles, the controllers dropped the shields and we went to town. After Hydra was down, we were in the middle of clearing tentacles and the mission complete happened. Still mabye 5 tentacles left when we got it, and 43 minutes left! We were quite happy finishing in half the time, and at level 41 at least I will get to enjoy my Enhancement for a couple levels.

Well got a team together last night on guardian with a tank, a blaster, 3 controllers, and 3 scrappers. Unfortunately the controller with tp/invis hadn't done it before, so the first part took us quite a while, and we had a couple of accidental deaths on the way down. Wasted time with people running to the hospital and back since our rezzer went down.

But, on the ground, we got things going, and cleared out only a quarter of the tentacles, since we were low on time. But sacrificing the phantom army to the tornado worked wonderfully!! Then the controllers went out, throwing out holds and BAM, shield down. It was really awesome. We beat the hydra, but ran out of time after that.

So, what all do you have to clear to actually beat the mission? Is it all 6 krakens and the hydra? Or does the whole map have to clear? It can't be the whole map cuz you guys just tp-ed down too. Anyway, we're going to try again today, and hopefully everyone can move along faster. But your strategy is definitely good. The generators are way too much of a bother.

Really good to know. Had a good effort this morning, but we got bugged out of 1 of the Particle Cannons, and then we ran out of time. Someone's pet destroyed a generator before we had all 4 of them ready to destroy. Now I'll recurit some holds and to hell with the generators. Much better plan.

And yeah, better get it done before issue 3 hits. Although I think they said the monster thing is limited to outdoor spawning monsters. Babbage in the Clockwork TF is supposed to still be lvl 19 or whatever he is. So hopefully the Krakens will still be the great xp they have been in this mission. Could always try it on test server to see.

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It's actually a really bad idea for a company to give release dates for updates. You should've seen what happened to Blizzard when they were making their biggest (1.10) patches for Diablo 2 and Warcraft III. Everytime they gave a date for something and were off by a little, the people on the forums went nuts on them.

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And a little company called Valve. And a moderately anticipated sequel to something called Half-Life. Remember when it had a release date of Sept. 30, 2003? And it's just now coming out this month... maybe.

Anyway, I hope it's on test for quite a while before going live. Listen to the players on the test forum and get those final bugs kinked out. Issue 2 wasn't exactly the smoothest patch I have ever seen in a game...

From a lvl 36 scrapper... THANK YOU!

Be happy as heck to try it out on test whenever you guys want.

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There was always something "different" about KR!

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Yeah, like being the only zone with a tram but no place to shop enhancements.

Snakes in a can?

Counterparts to hero stuff... dice should definitely be craps. Perhaps some poker or blackjack variations. Villains should gamble. Gambling is evil.

Been some great ideas so far. Like the pacing, hand wringing, hiding behind cape, female hair toss, and beard stroking classics.

Really like the death animation choice idea. That should just be part of the villain though. 10 or so different choices would be plenty. But villains always have the most dramatic deaths.