TheStarscreamer

I'm afraid to say that this game IS too easy. These days I can lvl a char in an unreal amount of time with no farming, PL etc and barely die ever. My very 1st lvl 50 took me just under a year which was Starscreamer himself. Recently I've been leveling my new corr and since launch of i13 he's got to 42 already. No farms, no PL, no endless freak grinding, and not even that much hardcore teaming. And yes I crank it to relent even solo as tbh if I don't it bores me with how easy it is. When in a few weeks I can almost hit 50 with THAT much ease ya know its too damned simple.

Yes, I am a more experienced player but thats the issue here - if you have played for a while the games more recent smoothing of xp, the addition of IOs made this game horrendously easy. My friends and I have been long asking for a setting more difficult than relentless as its just not hard enough. The normal penchant for making things hard as someone said was to buff the foes, but I would like to perhaps see an AI improvement as that last time they did that they just made enemies run away more, which isn't too complex if ya a dom. I'd like the greater AI as mentioned earlier in this thread as at least then I wouldn't be able to stand in melee range with my corr and just blast away with total ease - I might have to actually think then. Heck if ya wanted you could add this new superb AI work to some new 6th difficulty setting so those who are happy as-is won't be overwhelmed and those like me can get the challenge as we had it back in 2006 or so.

Bring back the challenge! And to the comment earlier about nerfing, most of the recent nerfs I agree with actually. But they've not made the game a greater challenge as the xp curve means I can negate the harder regions of leveling. The patrol xp stuff and even day jobs to help it mean the only reason my corr isn't 50 yet is because I'm staying with my relatives over Xmas lol

There are 3 powers that give def debuff, the amount they give also scales with your lvl so will give a greater amount at lvl 50.

I have a shield brute and know a few much higher than me and tbh they have basically no issues whatsoever. To me mate, sounds like there need to be a few more tweaks to ya build as atm sounds like its more a slotting relational to lvl of foes problem here. imo /shields is a frankly brilliant set and I have a mids build planned that is frankly awesome - bring on the merits!.... oh wait I'm a villain... nvm....

Personally I think its disgusting that you weren't notified and is a reflection of very bad customer service. I know as I personally am an IT technician in support and customer service so know what standards should roughly be. To universally ban an account with no notification in writing is incredibly bad practice.

The fact this has been ongoing technically for like 3 weeks now, have been paid and haven't still contacted you is not a good reflection on their views of a loyal player of 2 years. The fact they have no other communication method bar their automated responses... well I won't use the words I used when I was told by you on the afforementioned 2nd account as the forums wouldn't allow it. And if I got banned for it who knows how long it'd take to get a human response rather than an auto eh.

I also hope this does get sorted out as it'd be a crying shame for UD and the whole of the redside to lose someone thats a big community oriented player. Lets hope they get their proverbial in gear and resolve this quick eh Katet.

Crazy Idea below so bare with the ramble.

Rogue Isles Pirate Caves!!!! Underground cavern netowrks that were once used by the pirates of the rogue islse but were long ago abandoned becoming home to other beasties. Pirate Ghosts, Corallax, Snakes, Infected, Lost and maybe some of the rare stuff like say Hydra, Igneous or Coven could have areas amongst it (at least give us vills something other than the same 4 groups pre lvl 10!!!). Plus could easily have mishes, trials and objectives to get. Heck, maybe even a decent new trial to recover some long lost pirate treasure guarded by scary things. Make it say 10-15 and you instantly fill a villain TF lvl gap too with a new big monster/demon/big scary thing of choice at end for us to go "ahhhhh its massive and i have no powers" at :P

And I rarely have to solo ever redside regardless of lvl - last night past 2 am was teaming with my brand new alt easily Worst case - start a damn team of ya own lol That said if ya have that much team issues fire me up @Starscreamer if ya on union - I got (too) many chars that ya can team with.

On the ninth day of Christmas, a villain sent to me...

9 MMs Lagging
8 Wenthworths crashes
7 Noobs whining
6 Hydra Farting
5 Arachnos spiders
4 Freakshow rezzing
3 Trolls fighting
2 Clockwork bots
and a laser fired from a pear tree

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Just wondering if anyone knows which powers and who uses em which are untyped to melee/ranged/aoe.

Like Arachnos fortunatas, night widows, mistresses/queens they psi attacks eat thru my defenses like they not there.
with other psi users like Rikti etc seem to be classed as ranged/whatever so i can defend against em.

Seems tied to certain groups, anyone know these more in detail?

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The NPC versions of these all have buffs similar to their VEAT counterparts including a variant of Mind Link. So +tohit for them and if they are higher lvl they are very capable of getting past def. They aren't untyped positionally speaking its more the buffs they have with them.

I am gonna post on this as I am a fan of relentless. For me and everyone I know its not really to do with the xp - its the fact the game is TOO EASY. Even when I solo I throw it on relentless. Its nothing to do with xp at all - some of us actually NEED the challenge. And yes this is PuG's too not just teaming with regular SG mates etc. If it is a team of all my SG/coalition/global mates it never goes below vicious or we'll all fall asleep from boredom.

The fact that people are going for the "I must get the optimum xp per minute to level up ASAP" is really very sad. I personally enjoy playing this game for the games fun factor, its the "lets go kick some bootay and have a good laugh" element of this game thats keeps me playing like the loon I am. Also worth noting every char of mine can happily solo relent and are actually all team specs specifically. Naturally if it is too hard for the teams overall lvl range (be they lackies or just a bit lower), then the diff will always drop, no point having the lower peeps on ya team getting turned to mush every 5 mins (except on my pain corr as I notice I am addicted to Starfrenzy's Conduit of Pain's super buff ^^).

In my opinion its more common sense really and more about enjoying it, but sadly this game lacks any new mish type modes so once you got your 5th or 6th lvl 50 the game for me has got a bit easy. Thats why I love cranking it up all the way.

The real thing here is whether the rest of the team is having fun, because if they ain't then I won't either.

1440x900 and 1024x768 (2 setups)

I just think its unfair atm. I've basically been duoing with a mate a lot since i13 started. His brute is a shade higher than my corr so we've been doing his mishes most. So far I've managed about 14 merits and he has FAR more. This is solely because the mishes belong to him.

As it stands merits are rewarded to all members of a TF (regardless of how few there are vill side but thats a side rant) is a fair system. Everyone works, everyone is rewarded. Currently the new merit system doesn't encourage people who want merits or to set out their chars to do PuGs as they will do their share of the work for NONE of the reward. Its been stated that mish owners get xp and drop bonuses from arcs anyway, so why do they get ALL the merit reward?

A far better system would be to reward half the merits that the mish owner is awarded to the rest of the team rounding down to a minimum of 1 merit.

Another way of doing this could be to tie it to the completion of the arc to inhibit an area of exploitation - if the arc is available in ouro and you have out leveled it you cannot get the merits unless its your mish. This would be flaggable and mean people could not farm them anymore than they can now (like everyone on a team keep doing the last mish say rather than auto complete to get everyone merits would be an exploit method via what i propose). Same for badges, you could tie arcs also into badges from those arcs so if a teammate has the badge they have done the arc and are exempt from the bonus ally merits.

This would allow a far fairer distribution of merits and mean people who enjoy lots of PuGs wouldn't lose out. As it stands at the moment there'll be lots of "lets do my mishes" calls so people can get merits for themselves - bit detrimental to being able to do a nice relaxed PuG eh?

So lets hope theres a serious review of how teammates are rewarded with merits rather than being shafted as they are atm. Lets face it - not everyone has enough hours in their life to replay ALL the content again just do get merits for themselves.

Don't get me wrong I think merits are a very good idea, I just think they need to be rethought in how they are distributed as atm it doesn't work in practice.

This is one of the many i13 bugs that drove me up the wall last night. I was team leader and could select some mishes and not others while one of our team who is known for slow loads and zoning, was stuck in limbo loading meaning we spent a few minutes standing there waiting to just select a mission that was only around the corner.

This is not the worst one - the worst is the highly bugged chat window. I'm getting lots of ilegible tells from people where only a few characters of their name come up and no actual message and I can't click the name or use backspace to reply.

It took a friend of mine 4 attempts last night to send me one tell asking a question! And the new way the actual chat box behaves is awful, it was driving everyone I teamed with up the wall - gone are the days where clicking ESC would cancel what you're typing or even clear the text - trying to talk to people and it randomly leaving text from a prior typing, and jumping the cursor among other things got me killed 6 times last night as I had a fight with the chatbox and not what was attacking me. This was a bug that was on test for weeks and amazingly never got fixed. Neither did the humongous non-shrinkable Recipe Window that takes masses of my screen - again one from test that didn't get fixed.

Now my angry buggy rant is over, I do pretty much love everything else, the new sets, new missions and everything else so far I think rocks (although I am still unhappy regarding the massively lower amount of potential merits earnt from Vill TFs and the far lesser amount of vill content means we have a fraction of the potential to earn them).

I would like to thank the world of NC for the glory of Pain Domination.... pain we want... pain we want... pain pain pain... You Came To See the mOBSCENE!

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If they were to add some rocket packs or something, I could get behind that.

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Only on the condition that they actually LOOK like comic book rocket packs, like the Rocketeer, and NOT those hideous Raptor Packs.

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I personally would love a slightly reskinned raptor pack perma on one or 2 character, it would enable me to make specific costumes I wanted for ages (and no not anything like a sky raider - heck a recolourable raptor pack would be enough for me). I would like a Rocketeer style one as well though. The great thing is they could animate them the same for both SJ and Fly meaning that they can be jump packs as well!

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I would rather the coming storm was new group and not something we have seen before, but my bet is it wont be more like it will be a re work of an old group maybe the fith or even a new rikti faction.

Would be nice though if they did do a new group maybe something along the lines of a new race of aliens that have killed of the rikti and followed the last few to paragon.

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As cool as that would be, kinda makes the RWZ a bit defunct unless it had a MAJOR radical change. The story though most of all.

And I fully the support the b-movie golden age style! Post on suggestions forum dude and I'll give it so much /signed

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destroyed totally by toxic

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Most toxic attacks are countered by positional defense.

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no AS

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DPS is better than stalker anyway.

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not huge secondary effects on attacks/debuffs

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...apart from the massively useful -regen...

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2 hits from AV/Hero = instant death

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If they hit you once you are doing something wrong.

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I'd wager most NWs couldn't tank the last mish of LRSF

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Well no, few tanks could tank the last mission of LRSF. A team of 8 NWs make short work of it though.

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SO much roflmao at all of that xD I'd love to see a char NEVER ever get hit even by autohit powers or toggle debuffs. Nice to see you took my entire post in its full context and didnt at all edit bits out to remove even the vaguest context lmao

Oh and as you yourself have pointed out in threads in the past there is ALWAYS a 5% chance to be hit regardless so You will get hit once a blue moon. Try when its BAB, Manti, Posi and Sis all attacking ya - now thats a challenge and a half Fun as hell too.

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Hehe

Posi: any one Res
Player: No
Posi: Awaken?
Player: No
Posi: any one got a red so i can combine 3?
Player: No! Just go to the Hosp

or

BaB: watch me take on this assault suit 1 on 1
BaB: dam forgot shields. Res?

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Player then kicks Posi fom team for afk-leeching ftw

Hmmm no res to anything bar psi, non existant HP, destroyed totally by toxic, no AS, cast times they keep bloody upping, no ability to lockdown, and not huge secondary effects on attacks/debuffs.... love the way everyone thinks NWs are gods - they are only gods IF you spec and build them right and tbh the majority actually don't.

For instance lets see, hmm 2 hits from AV/Hero = instant death, 1 if its something like ET or State's lightning... the reason NWs have the def of the gods is its basically a tank with a fraction of the HP. Oh and strong debuffs actually own widows - /sonic, /rad and /TA are clear examples. 2 of which belong to hmmm oh yeah Longbow Wardens - not like you'll EVER come across many of those vill side though.... /endsarcasm

Be amazed what design took me to be able to reliably tank and I'd wager most NWs couldn't tank the last mish of LRSF... mine can tho but again my spec is ultra specific

And I actually enjoyed the veat arcs - lets be honest like they were EVER going to deliver a great deal of content for the villain side only - hero players moaned for MONTHS about the veats in every possible way imaginable as it was!

All I know is i12 gave me 4 extremely fun, versatile and strategically scalable chars which as anyone that knows me will know that what I desire most of any of my chars. I can honestly say I'll be thrashing this game with those 50s alone for many moons to come.

And now for a Jerry-stylee final thought: Lets just see how many years go by before we all get new epics for people to whine about

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Does it mean we won?

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You never actually win - you just do a little better each time

Don't mean to bump this but a few reported issues getting the file - turns out bandwidth got maxed for it for a few days lol However, few backend tweaks so it should not give any probs downloading now - apologies to those inconvenienced.

ENJOY! And as ever please give any and all feedback as this sets up the finales!

As someone who has now got every single veat branch to 50 and fully IO'd I think I'll comment here. VEATs as game chars are phenomenally well designed and balanced - people who believe widows are OP obviously have not played them properly as they have severe flaws that I spent an age through design plugging. Same goes for each of them tbh - they excel and fail in different areas (I could reel them off but it'd take forever lol).

Also this obscure myth that banes need a buff drives me up the [self censored due to too much swearing] creek. Mine is more than capable of taking aggro, playing as a blaster, switching to protect squishies and even go toe-to-toe with an AV with ease. He's also awesome in the arena and in RV - if yours sucks then its your need to learn the char and sort ya build.

I for one love the veats and think NC did a blinding job creating them - they made 4 new ATs effectively that is tailored for more than 1 task but each incredibly contrasting. They are also incredibly scalable and can be specced innumerate ways to suit a persons taste sooooo easily.

The fact we got a special costume I thought was awesome, ok not mixing em up I don't like, but it fits more thematically with the game I feel. To the extent my Night Widow Starsixshot was the 1st veat I made at i12 launch and to this day he STILL always wears his widow armour as the look I got for it I love more than anything else I could create for him - and I spend eternities in the tailors and cossie creator!

Thank you NC for the following fun chars: Starsixshot (NW), Starscorponok (crab), Starskalor (bane) and Starseawing (fort).

Ok all kinds of bibs and bobs going on the background so heres a rundown of what springs to mind.

First I released Usurper 4 "Shadows" featuring the latest batch of the crazy story as well as featuring many more UDers old school and new as well as one of our wonderful Coalitions. Also a special tribute in there to those that deserve it (and creepy picture of some weirdo known to wear crazy hats....)

And yeah as my esteemed colleague says - I do really try to get everyone in lol And again thanks to all those that have helped me - my Creative Genius Award wouldn't have come without you all.

And yes theres the beginnings of founding a new series of regular RP events in UD catering to villains as well as hero alts via our blueside SG Ultimate Justice. Details of specifics are sketchy atm but I am frenziedly rebuilding our own UD forums to cater for all this new stuff

After some debate behind the scenes, we have also appointed a UD RP Ambassador - Static Phantom. So she's the one with the details regarding the RP events to come. You can contact her via ingame email and also me directly for more details via @Starscreamer.

Our site also had a small revamp lately and is going to get a major rework in due course due to our great pvp and budding rp peoples.

Ontop of the above globals you can contact you can also always use the guest area of the UD forums (site in sig).

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Every time that delete button is pressed, a fairy dies.

True story.

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Well with the reliability of PCs the way it is I'm amazed even Tinkerbell's survived then

Ctrl+Alt+Del

There... got the b****!

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Don't forget she can be rez'd with the CTRL+P uber reprint

OOOOOh I like this idea a lot!

And am amazingly humbled my name was mentioned by anyone - big up Bru.

Dr Death is a name I still remember so there's one.

PvP wise its most likely Sniff Stalker and Cylon Raider.

For SG communities: Graviton-x, Agent, Bru, Von and Max. These names all stood out immensely and all do their share all around for the villain side overall to this day.

There are so many names I could reel off its hard what to focus on.

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Well hopefully get more suggestions and I will get some of the creative geniuses villain side to work on a story.

P.S. Yes Bru one of them maybe mine lol.

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Look me up mate if ya want some input or a layout/writer. I'd love to add a little to this if I can. I for one wonder what format this could be done in. Detailed writings? Sort of 'Case Files' kind of thing? A comic if we can get a good generous vill artist to do it. I for one enjoy the method of using game screens but that only works if those people still play alas.

Well boys, girls and those less specific, I've been scurrying away in a dark corner and Part 4 of the current comic series is available for download now via:

http://www.udsg.co.uk/UD1/UDC_Comics.html

I've tried to out-do myself again so the story threads from all the last issues all start to get fully explained along with the possible consequences. There's new characters, a completely new group comes into the mix, new shocks as well as the enemy "waiting in the darkness" reveals itself. You also get an opportunity to see what horrible event set all this in motion.

There's also a special tribute as this project has all been going a long time so a special nod to those that deserve it.

Enjoy!

Feedback, comments, cheers and jeers are always welcome!

OMG Thank you very much I haven't been checking this section so didn't even know I was nominated roflmao xD

Also Usurper 4 "Shadows" coming soon....

Thank you /em dancingroundtheroominjoy

I'd like to thank as ever all of UD for their kind help and support, along with all of those that read and enjoy my comics, special mention to Mother's Love for the hlp getting new screenies and LeighB for nominating me in the 1st place

I for one relish this I've been playing CoX on a bootcamped MacBook Pro since the start. I also relish the fact I will basiclly never have to load Windoze now xD

However I do have a bit of a rant here. For those in the case as me who've been on bootcamp, what happens if want to use the Mac version specifically? I have all my vet rewards and chars on my current account which is of course the Windows version of the game. I would LOVE to use this on OSX as the drivers for the gfx are better than the tweaked ones for XP. BUT, I would be furious if I were unable to retain all the chars and achievements I've got over the 2 years I've been playing.

But thats that rant done with and I hope NC does those bootcampers out there proud. I also congratulate them for moving to a platform outside of windows.

*cough* CoX2 windows/OSX/linux compatible please *cough*

Sorry I'm posting late only just came across these - nice little story arc ya got going mate, keep up the good stuff and mooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre pl0x!

Also if ya ever need any real supervillains just send a PM - I know from my own comics it can be hard getting any screens ya need.