Steve_Dallas

[ QUOTE ]
1) The vet reward where the "mandatory" missions to talk to the Field Analysts, Sam Wincott, Jim Temblor, Gordon Bower, and the PvP zone contacts are optional instead.

Okay, that one isn't a vet reward... but I really wish it were. I get so irritated having to run a bunch of 'errands' when I get a contact in a new level range before they give me a real mission. I know those folks are there at this point and what they do and can talk to them if I want to do their arcs. Please just let me get on with the contact I'm talking to. It gives me the impression they really don't want my help



[/ QUOTE ]


I could not agree more about this. It drives me crazy telling my team that I will be bouncing around for half an hour before I can get a mission we can do once we transition from doing the 2nd jetpack mission to the mission arc that has the Spelunker - Save the Fortune Teller mission.

I usually grab a Steel Canyon radio mission for them to do without me while I run all over town talking to a Field Analyst (I am already above heroic, so I get the point already.), visit Wincott, and go talk to a PVP zone person. Maybe if I got a half a level's ExP and 10 merits for doing each talk-to mission I would not whine quite as much.

Two other vet reward questions:
Why can't we have Prestige Power Slide from the CoH DVD edition added? I can't find any unused copies of that edition for my other three accounts.

Would it be possible to make all accounts paid with one credit card have the same number of months as the highest one on the card? I bought my 2nd account a year after the first one, then added another every year until I got to four accounts. I'd love to have all of the goodies on most of the accounts. I understand that that may not be in the spirit of things, but it would be greatly appreciated.

Generally speaking, I like having extra damage powers so that I can have some chance of having one of my empathy defenders soloing a mission without dying an average of five times. The blasters and other damage types don’t use it as often, but it is a lifesaver for characters that are built to be party buffers, as when they solo, most of the buffs they have cannot be cast so they affect themselves. I do understand that the alternate build is great for this, but most of my characters are in SG mode most of the time, and the defenders are in it all the time to earn the healing badges for the SG, so they never have much in the way of influence.

Strong Likes:
Temporary Power: CHOICE: Permanent Ghost Slaying Axe or Permanent Sands of Mu, Sprints, Base Items. - 12 Month - OMG, Great!

Power: CHOICE: Permanent Nemesis Staff or Permanent Blackwand, Respec given to all characters on account - 33 Month Definitely handy. A ranged power and a Respec. Who could ask for more (OK, plenty of you can ask for the bloody moon, silly me.)

Bonus Power: Assemble the Team Teleport Power – 42 Month – Very Useful.

Summon Pet Power – And they give bonuses to self and team. (They still do give team bonuses, right?). - 48 Month – Very nice power, very nice for a 4 year anniversary.

1 power from the following - (Ghost Slaying Axe, Sands of Mu, Nemesis Staff, and Blackwand) – 54 Month – Great. Can always use another damage power. Especially range for my defenders.

One additional Character Slot, 5 Reward Merits, Access to the following Power Pools at level 6, and can access Tier 1, 2, or 3 powers Flight, Superspeed, Teleport, Superleap – Level 60 – This is Golden! I can’t wait until mid August to get it. I will have a lot of characters to respec!



Nice:
Costume Piece: Trenchcoats - 3 Month - I use this a lot.

Costume Piece: Belly Shirt for Females, Scottish Kilts for Males, Respec given to all characters on account - 9 Month. The respec is very nice, and the belly shirt has come in handy a few times.

Costume Piece: Angelic Wings, Demon Wings - 15 Month. Kinda nice, but IO wings kind of overwhelmed them.

Costume Piece: Shoulder Cape, Respec given to all characters on account - 21 Month - Starting with some kind of cape is nice and the respec is very helpful.

Prestige Power: Emergency Base Teleporter (long recharge item that teleports you to your Base) - 24 Month - I like any kind of travel type power. I would have expected something flashier for the 2 year anniversary power though.

Base Item: Arachnos Flyer (Villains), Longbow Chaser (Heroes), Power (Choice): Demon Pet, Clockwork Pet, Red Cap Pet, Rikti Monkey Pet, Robot Pet - 36 Month – It would have been nice to have a larger variety of pets.

Respec given to all characters on account – 45 Month – A respec is always nice, but maybe something else could be thrown in the pot?



Kind of Weak:
Costume Piece: Greek Alphabet Chest Emblems 6 Month - Never used it. Should be grouped with something else?

Costume Piece: Samurai Armor - 18 Month. Something other than a costume change token should have been bundled.

Costume Piece: Anime-style tech armor - 27 Month. - Another case where something more useful could have been addded in. 1% Regen bonus always on maybe?

Costume Piece: Signature Group Chest Emblem , Base Items – 30 Month Less weak than some of the others here, but still not my favorites.

Costume Pieces: Boxing Set – 39 Month – This has to be the weakest of the weak, in my opinion.

City of Villains Pre-Order helmets – 51 month millstone (No spelling error here). This is almost, if not as bad, as the boxing set.

50% discount on all tailor sessions - 57 month. With all of the free costume tokens one should have by now, I can’t see this being very useful. Not only the free ones from Vet rewards, but the ones from every issue per character slot a character has open. If a Level 50 doesn’t have 12 spare tokens by then, it probably means he or she was in too many farms.

To all of the weakest links here, something could be added to spice them up a little bit. Throw in a 1% recovery bonus or a 1% recharge speed in or something like that if you are thinking of a costume only milestone.

Steve Dallas
The $6,000 Man
(Built from salvage and crud found in Crey garbage cans.)

Well, Captain,
Thanks for the mini guide, but do you know how to set a mission to lvl 50? I want it to be hard for lvl 50's, not a pushover if they let a lvl 30 pick the mission.

I just put in a battle between Family (45-50) and my custom group, and the family would die long before the characters ever saw them. But that only leveled the group to 45, not 50, which I would greatly prefer.

I also don't want a bunch of lvl 12's entering and getting attacked by the fire kins, Psi blasters, and AV's

Thanks,
Steve

Maybe we can do it all in Hexadecimally coded binary. 1's digit might be Challenge (1) or normal(0), 2's digit might be team suggested (1) or solo friendly (0), 4's digit would be Elite Boss (1) or no (0), 8's digit would be AV (1) or no (0). so a challenge arc for teams with both an EB and AV would be 1111 or F. :-) I am sure we could code everything in less than 7-8 hex characters.

I have had trouble with this as well. I can't seem to get it to take level 50 as the minimum so that the very difficult mission that I created can't be spawned at level 45 and taken out by level 50's.

To get them to level 45 has been easy. I just added a fight between my custom critters and some Family (45-54), and the family dies before the characters even get there (Having Fire-Kins, Emp-Defenders, and Psi Blasters makes the custom group a bit tough.)

I really wanted to up the difficulty as a challenge, and did not want to be considered a Farm.

Thanks to anyone that can enllighten us on how to make a custom Boss a certain level.

Thanks!

Since you will no longer be official, or a redname, I hope they give you the Name Ex-Ex Libris!

Hope you are happy with what you have decided to do now.

We have enjoyed your comanionship and remarks online.

Ex Libris is gone. Long Live Ex-Ex Libris!

Cheers,
Steve_Dallas
The $6,000 man

Feature Name or Description: Mission Architect

Operating System (Vista, XP, OS X version): Win XP x64 SP2
User Client (Mac, PC, Linux): PC
Server: Virtue
Zone: Atlas
Character name: Ann Lewis
Time:
Location: Mission Architect Building
Archetype: Defender
Level: 2
Power: N/A
Badge:N/A
Mission: Highly rated Dr AEon Into to Architect Mission (Can't remember exact name, sorry)
Mission Contact: Dr Aeon
Mission ID #:
Bug Description: 1 real bug, 1 interface problem.

Bug: We were in an architect mission, some of us died, we came back to the mission and could not get back in, as it said something about having to finish the existing mission first. We got everyone out of the mission, then we could get back in. This happened several times.

Later, we hit a 5 minute load time, and everyone quit. This was our first attempt at playing an Architect mission, and we were not impressed.

Interface issue:
It is not easy to figure out what missions are appropiate for a given level of player. We took a while finding missions that worked for Level 2 characters.

Is there some part of the interface that I am just flat out missiong? I'd love to see the best missions by the level range that they are good for. Some had first missions for level range 2-54, but the second mission would be lvl 5 minimum, and we were not sure that we could get that high from one mission.

I totally agree with those people that have posted about contacts giving the missions in order so that team members can follow along in the story and get their hard earned merits at the end of the arc.

I think this is essential, or just give every team member one merit for completing missions in the arc, and make the arc reward to the owner mcuh smaller (two maybe?). A little extra reward for the mission owner to go hit the contact for the first few missions and probably running the team deserves a small reward, but as it sits now, it is bad that the arc owner is the only one that can get the Merits.

This game has been great at always rewarding teaming, and the way things are, it seems to reward soloing. Teaming to me is what makes a MMO fun. I could go play Baldur's Gate again if I wanted to solo.

City of Heroes (Sorry Villians, I like playing the good guy) is such fun for me when you have a full team working together well and mowing down the opposition.

Objective feedback: Many fewer Merits are being generated by characters acting the same as they did before the merit system started. If you play like I do with a new charactr it goes something like this:

Level 1-2 Outbreak - No Merits

Level 2-8 Sewers - No Merits

Level 8-12 KR missions and the first two bank missions to get both jetpacks - No merits

Lvl 12-15 Hollows - You often outlevel it before you can complete the fourth story arc, and since some of the story arcs are random, it is impossible for a group to follow along and all get the merits.

Most characters will have played maybe 6-10 hours to get to level 15, with very few merits to show for it.

Subjective feedback: I think that all missions should offer 1 merit upon completion to every player that gets the mission completion bonus. Give the arc holder a little bonus, as he or she is probably running the team, and that does take a bit of extra effort. But the team leader should not be the only one getting merits. That is silly.

If we keep the current system, please at least stop the random order of missions. This makes it imposiible for the other players to "Follow along" in the story. It also hurts them when they want to get the temp powers from the Arcs like Striga and Croatoa.

I like the Merit system, it just needs to be tweaked so that it is more fair.

I would split the power pools into at least three subcategories, and hand out one of the most valuable to each player after a TF that normally takes more than 3 hours, the middle section to ones that take 1-2.5 hours or so, and the cheapies to the Speed TFs, so that the recipies can still be bought at the market. Maybe for the real hard ones, one of each should drop. This is in addition to the Merits. A three to 6 hour TF like Positron (often takes teams I am with 5 hours) should have a very nce reward at the end, IMHO.

Often the longer TFs fall apart due to people having to stop playing, so maybe the completion percentage should be looked at as well as the length of time that the TF takes. Since the AV's were made tougher a few issues back, small teams just don't have the chance of taking them down like they used to.

Also, when people just log out and don't quit, the Team leader can't kick them, but the number of bad guys is still computed based on the number of players present plus those logged out. This also makes the longer ones hard to complete.

Feature: Leveling Pact
Location(s) Outbreak, Atlas Park

I made a leveling pact between two characters that were in Outbreak. One was level 2, the other was brand new. The new character did all the missions, received half credit for them, exited Outbreak normally while the other stayed in.

The new character hit 2nd level soon after, but stopped getting ExP, and the Old character was not getting it either, even though the old character was still logged in in Outbreak.

Bug, or expected behaviour? I just wanted to have the first 10th level fire tank in Outbreak. (I know, kind of silly, but I really liked herding the contaminated, helping people get the badge, but kept taking too much damage without the ability to rest.)

Thanks!

Posi, this is so freaking great to have the power trays so configurable.

My emp defenders will love to be able to wrap all the heals just to the left of the party list so people don't die while I move my mouse around.

Keep up the good work! this issue has a lot of things that I have been hoping for for a while.

If you have a few extra hours left before it hits, could you drop about half the missions from the Positron TF?

Thanks!

Playing well west of the Mississippi, (Australia), I have to take the Monday off of work to enjoy the weekend. Sometimes I can get it off, and sometimes I can't, but I always give it a shot. This one cost me coming in for an extra 11PM ro 2 AM shift and getting back in at 8:45 AM. Well worth it.

Well, on the issue of when the Server maintanace occurs, I do get a bit of a difference. I don't like the winter, when it happens at 11:00 pm (East Coast Time), but during the summer, at 1:00 AM it is a bit manageable. Looking foward to the time change coming up, since spring is here in full bloom.

Too bad the US is staying on Daylight savings time for more of the year. I guess part of the time, us Aussies will be getting our restarts at midnight. Since they don't do it on the weekends, I guess it isn't all that bad. I aught to be getting ready for bed by midnight so that I can work compentently the next day anyway.

I am pretty sure if they did the reboots at 8 or 9 AM my time, I would never notice.

[ QUOTE ]
Asia is not the U.S. (or Europe) and to state that City of Hero and City of Heroes can be compared equally regarding PvP popularity is like comparing apples to chicken. The forums and the player base of CoX have shown repeatedly that PvP is in reality not something they care too much about. Backburner, doubt they will do that, but thinking about PvE first with regards to CoX is a good business practice as it is targeted to their largest customer base in US/EURO

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, from the statistics that I have read, NCSoft has many more players for Lineage and Lineage II than they have players of CoH and CoV. Since Lineage games were never all that popular in the US and Australia (I have no idea about Europe), I would have to make a wild guess that maybe a lot of the players are from somewhere else, like Korea.

If CoH had the numbers of players that Lineage has, we just might have a much bigger set of developers creating great new content for us.

I have no idea about how the Korean market's preferences are. I would think that NC Soft would have a pretty good idea though.

Personally, I prefer PvE. Most of my toons would do rahter poorly in a PvP environment. If we can get triple the number of players by catering to the Korean market, then lets do it. There will be plenty of content for everyone.

I would say that I have noticed a change in the Devs in the last three weeks or so, or at least their actions and attitudes. We finally got that terrible AV/Giant Monster SNAFU fixed, We just had a great weekend, getting a bit extra Prestige for our SGs, and a promise of better stuff for small SGs and 25% more prestige in a patch to come, and even a hint that rent may be looked at for modification.

During the big problem over the AVs, I was almost ready to jump ship. Now I am glad that I didn't. I think the game has a great future if we can get some of the players to come back, and some new players to join up. We don't need 6+ million like World Of Warfcrud, half a million would keep the franchise nice and profitable for quite a while. I want NC Soft and Cryptic to make money, because as long as they do, they will have an incentive to make the game better.

Sorry for getting a bit off topic there, but it does help to look at the game not only as a game you play, but as a business, and how business decisions will affect your gameplay.

I am not a powergamer, and I do like to go through the missions and the story arcs.

I do love this weekend idea because I will be able to try out a new concept character and see how well it works. It will also help my SG, which is almost ready to make its first stab at making a base. Since Prestige will be doubled as well, I will be playing quite a bit this weekend.

I am actually more excited about the doubled prestige though. It means the SG will probably be getting the base built a week ahead of schedule.

Would it be too much to ask to make the prestige doubling permanant, so smaller SGs can have a shot at a small but nice base and some other SGs can get back into their base to sell stuff they can't afford to keep? (My guess the answer is yes, but I have always said, that if you don't ask, you don't get!)

I also like the idea of flowing hair. Can it be done without overtaxing graphics cards?

On the subect of hair, how about some more realistic men's hair styles? A lot of them like Parted don't look all that good. Needs more polygons, I guess.