The_Killbot_5000

Nice job on these letters! An insight into the hearts and minds of heroes, and villains, who lay down their lives defending the very Earth itself! Excellent backstory information, with hints that the Tin Mage might be able to be rebuilt, tantalising.

Mission Title: In The Darkness Creeping
ArcID: 347709
Keywords: Custom Characters, Magic, Horror
Length: Long (4 missions)
First Published: 11/23/2009
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 20 - 25
Enemy Groups: Custom
Story Status: Looking For Feedback

Description:
You've been contacted by the renowned Helen Bach, hero of Paragon City. She has reports of supernatural activity at a cemetery in King's Row. Citizens say a permeating sense of evil pervades the neighbourhood and that unnatural moans can be heard from within. Time to investigate!


Rotting flesh and charred bones, sure signs of evil!


Plaid skirts and undead minions, another tell-tale giveaway that something ain't right!


Skeletal guardians and ritualistic symbols in blood, now you're certain someone is up to no good!

I trust you will enjoy this arc ... if you survive!
Please leave constructive criticism. Reviews welcome.

I back this call for mini-games. Recently I posted about how I had all this influence but not enough variety of things to spend it on. Adding things like this with small influence fees to play would certainly add to the game in my opinon.

There will be another test of the Winter Event I've been told. As for when, probably next week is my guess, although there's been no official announcement.

The only part in doubt is the video, and if Father Xmas is right about it being slightly less powerful than an Nvidia 9600GT, then personally I don't think that'll be a big problem. I run CoH on an Nvidia 8600GT with 1GB RAM and I've got sliders set to over 100% and all sorts of options set to ON and have no issues that bother me.

Apart from that (which you admit is potentially upgradable anyway) I'd say what are you waiting for? If I could get an Intel Quad Core machine with 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD-RW, Blue-Ray, all for $US750, I'd be all over that puppy.

Vista...yeah, well, I'm on XP SP3, still not sure why anyone bothered to leave it.

My Vanguard member the Purple Claw looks fan-freaking-tastic in his full regalia. How did I get there? I took his character backstory of hating Rikti with a passion because of what they made him personally. If it was Rikti, it was in pieces before I knew what I'd done. I mainly did runs through the RWZ just slaying anything not of this Earth, missions from Borea, Laventra and Serpent Drummer and a couple of Rikti Mothership raids.

It wasn't something I achieved in a day, or a week, took me a few weeks actually, but I had a goal and stuck to it. It's worth it!

Remember: Earth For Humans!

No dreams here yet, although the other day I was outside smoking after playing for a bit and kept 'hearing' the new tell beep and looking around for the source. I'm still not sure whether that was an auditory hallucination or there was a neighbour with a beepy thing.

I'd certainly back a call for Spawn Point numbering and specific placement of units at, for example Spawn Point 11, instead of Back. An arc I've got primed (and ready to go once somebody at NCSoft tells me how I can buy more slots with a NZ Visa Card) is almost exactly how I like it except that once in a while (every 4 or 5 tests) my Boss ends up in the Middle section in front of a set of closed doors where he should be somewhere behind them in the Back section. I'd be really happy with being able to make my creations and then go, "Right, you go there."

On the issue of exploitative behaviour, yeah, it's certainly out there and I doubt Dr. Aeon is accusing any of us, but rather as mentioned by others, keeping the broader playerbase (which does have exploiters in it) in mind. It's the sensible thing to do.

Oddness, I was just thinking about my days on IRC and a little helper bot I wrote for it. Then I come back to the forums, hit New Posts, and find this! I might just check you out.

I got mine! The badge art really is spiffy. The text makes me happy too, "Your shadow looms over not only the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, but the whole world."

Muahahahah!

I think the phase state is fine in and of itself. I went into this test with little foreknowledge and aimed to present my qualitative observations from the perspective of 'the average player'. If I had of known about the mechanic before entering the fray I would have had a lot more fun. Forewarned is forearmed. I think keeping the phasing and the Guardians in the mix is what makes the encounter interesting, darn, it pretty much is the encounter.

As far as difficulty goes, if a team of 8, or even a soloist could potentially trigger the event, shouldn't they stand a chance of completing it? I can see how our trusty band of villains (trusty villains, lol), could have completed the encounter potentially once we knew what we were up against. I don't know how a solo toon could complete the challenge though.

Essentially it's a raid style encounter with a really challenging set of creatures which requires a little planning, some team composition to get a good mix, and a fair number of heroes/villains to complete. I'm looking forward further testing, now that I know what I'm up against.

Quick, an IV drip of Jagermeister for Tremorr....STAT!

Nice cartoon Frog! I can relate. Space Invaders at the local take-away outlet drew me into the sordid world of computer games, I spent boy-months worth of time playing that thing with it's silly plastic strips to imitate colour. When I could get a 'computer' at home (and I use the term lightly) I hassled the parents for a genuine Sinclair ZX81, membrane keyboard and all! Retyping programs was par for the course, going from 1K to 16K RAM seemed like a leap into the 21st century, and when I finally got a tape deck for it I thought I'd be joining Buck Rogers in the 25th soon enough.

Ahhh, the good ol' days.

I began testing redside in Cap Au Diable. This is what I found;

On Test Server at least, and probably on low pop Live servers, meeting the criteria to spawn the Winter Lord seemed to take a very long time. The group rose from solo to 8 players over the course of 30 minutes before the Winter Lord was spotted. I believe we were the only team on at the time. This was ... boring.

Once the Winter Lord was up and we were informed of his location we took to him with a vengence and promptly were looking at the Big Present, (it's a bike isn't it? C'mon you can tell me.) I clicked it immediately, like you do when you don't know any better, and then noticed the Preparation Timer. We were all there, so Preparation Time wasn't necessary, but I understand it's there to allow word to go out and other teams to arrive. This may never happen redside. We waited. Did you know that 180 seconds seems like a really long time sometimes?

When the Preparation Timer was over we zoned into the Winter wonderland and flew/hovered/ran/jumped straight to Lord Winter. A note on his appearance, could he not at least have a crown or something? We began the assault and I noticed that I was constantly getting Held, something I don't usually experience on this toon anymore. The Northern Lights were overwhelming in number, hard to target and we obviously had to eliminate them as best we could. I broke off to reduce their numbers while the rest of the team continued the assault.

The new Winter Guardian mechanic, was a complete surprise, and I don't mean that in a good way. I was mashing away on Lord Winter for a bit, with all the effects going off and trying to stay alive between being perma-held and detoggled, I hadn't noticed the lack of damage being done to LW. The flashed up messages I was too busy to read, and it was only when a fellow team-mate informed me that I knew what we had to do.

By this stage it was too late for us to defeat Lord Winter before the timer ran out. We tried, we failed.

Suggestions for improvement:

• If it isn't already, make the number of Frostlings defeats required to summon the Winter Lord a proportion of total zone population at the time. Obviously there would be a minimum number also, this should be quite low. This would mean that on low pop servers or at low pop times-of-day it wouldn't take too long to spawn the Winter Lord.
• Lower the Preparation Timer to 2 minutes. Didn't really need the time alotted.
• Lower the number of Northern Lights. There was a real swarm of them for a single team of 8. They were really hard to target using the click method, and Tabbing around I more often than not got a Frostie off in the distance instead of the Northern Light I was right next to.
• I don't know how you can, but the warning about Lord Winter being unaffected until the summoned Winter Guardian is defeated needs to be made clearer. Perhaps a zone-in popup dialog box outlining what's required would do it. With all the effects going off I didn't notice a thing, then turned around to see the Winter Guardian behind me.

Okay, this is already too long, essentially, this event looks fun, but is too hard! Mwah.

Q. I wish to spend $US19.99 to purchase an additional 5 MA Mission slots. When I try I am met by a message stating, "Payment could not be accepted for your order." I am using the same Visa card (New Zealand based) that I use for my monthly subscription. Why is this occurring and how can I purchase more slots?