Tradok

Thanks!

Not exactly what I was looking for, but in many ways it's better.

I just wish I'd thought to take out the padding for time at the end of the file before doing that dump. The resulting folder ballooned in size very quickly.

I'm attempting to make screenshots from a demo file that contains a group shot of my alts, and after muddling through copy/pasting various demo files into the final file and posing them properly, I'm stuck trying to get the actual screenshot.

Printscreen works in the live game, but seems to have no effect during demo playback, and pasting into MSpaint results in a black capture. Reading around, I see that windows 7 users sometimes have to use the snipping tool to properly copy/paste from the clipboard, but that results in just a black capture as well.

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong or what else I can try?

Just patched and closed the updater, and ran my shortcut that bypasses the updater. I loaded fine into a character on Virtue.

My current shortcut target properties: D:\Games\CoH\cityofheroes.exe -project coh -auth 64.25.36.88

I've never edited the registry to make it work, just those two additions to the target field.

15 common
6 uncommon
1 rare

42 runs across two alts:

31 common, 10 uncommon, 1 rare.

I find it usefull on my Warshade for grabbing troublesome foes, or getting something to feed a pet, but more often I find it really handy on teams that would have trouble taking on an AV's spawn along side the AV itself.

I stand out of LoS and TPfoe the AV... it won't TP the AV of course, but it will aggro the AV on a hit, and almost never alerts the rest of the spawn when it comes over to punch me in the face.

Unfortunately, it seems you are only eligible for the notice on your first run of the weekly strike target... if you haven't unlocked the alpha slot yet, you cannot receive it on that first run.

An annoying mechanic, but I don't think it's a bug.

I pug almost exclusively, so I see no reason to rate decent players. I just run across too many people to bother rating the vast majority of people I wouldn't mind teaming with again.

I rate instead from minor annoying behaviors (1 star) to 1st class jerk on ignore that I never want to play with again (5 stars) and notes as to why.

Surprisingly (to me, at least) I rarely run into 1-2 stars again, which I'll play with if the rest of the team is good... maybe they just had a bad day when I made the note. I almost never run into 3+, but when I do I'm glad the notes are there so I can quickly excuse myself from the team and find something more fun to occupy my time.

I find player notes invaluable for those rare occasions, and I'd only change a couple things if I could... the annoying tendency to display a "blank" note (text scrolled up out of sight, forcing you to click and scroll it back down to see), and the way it stores names in such a way that it doesn't recognize spaces in names, and therefore filling up the known aliases field with redundant clutter.

It's one of the best features of the game, it once saved me from a TF with two 5-stars on it... Although based on the notes of those two players, it might have been an interesting train wreck in the making, I almost wanted to stay and watch.

--Start of long boring background info, skip ahead if you just want the meat.

I'm looking for a different perspective here, I created this character during the first year anniversary and it's remained my favorite alt since... but I seem to be stuck. I started out as a tri-form warshade, but after the GDN and ED I refocused and specialized on human form, with effort put into a decent nova form and dropped dwarf completely.

I went through a period were I attended every Hamidon Raid I could on Virtue, but stopped several months before they changed the Hive to a 50 person cap... Which was around the time of my last major respec. I seem to remember a minor tweaking respec not long after inventions were released, to reclaim a couple more slots, but it was pretty minor.

So I've been using this build since about issue 7 or so, and while I really like it, I know it can be improved. Unfortunately every time I've gone through Mids planner trying to improve it, I end up unsatisfied with the looks of it and put it off for another issue, hoping something compelling will appear that makes finding something new easier. I've given up on that, it's been 10 issues since my last respec, so I've come here for ideas on a second build instead, hoping playing the second build will give me the experience to meld ideas from both builds into a unified one I can enjoy.

---
---End of long boring background, begin of long boring thought process and goals

The goals of my current build are specializing in human form, without sacrificing much in the way of nova form. I like to jump into the middle of a group with inky and orbiting death up, mire (and eclipse if needed, depends on team makeup and buffs handed out), and go to town with my two fuzzballs in tow, with Nova form as backup when damage counts more than style, like AVs and such. My second build would ideally still allow me to do much/most of this.

My only major sticking points are that I don't want dwarf form, and I don't want to spend anything close to one of those fully purpled casual warshade types. I typically budget my alts to around 100-150million influence when I IO them out, but I'm willing to extend my budget to around a billion for this one.

My current slotting is a little wacky, I know... not even bothering to swap out many of my SOs for common IOs, which is sad because this alt is my badger and has field crafter... all my crafted commons went off for other leveling alts instead.

Looking back, the slotting in the nova power is ridiculous, but I hate the respec interface enough to avoid minor tweaks, so it's stayed like that too long. I have aid other for use on my fuzzballs, Aid self was just taken as a stepping stone for resuscitate, which I took for intermittent progress on healing badges and to lessen group downtime. The dayjob accolade removes the need for that.

With Ninja Run, I don't need super speed anymore, and with the stealth proc in TP, I don't need it for full invisibility. But it's fun and I wouldn't mind keeping it, but wouldn't break a better build to fit it in.

Quasar is another weird one... I almost wanna drop it, but it's handy sometimes despite the annoyance of popping a blue, hunting for the biggest pile of scattered bodies to Stygian off of, and then retoggle. It's also got a long windup, since it's rather weak without using Mire first. I'd not miss it if it was left out or under slotted.

I've never needed Fitness, and on the current build will likely just stick a common end mod in stamina and a Miracle unique in Health just for giggles when issue 19 hits, but I don't mind the idea of slotting them up in the new build.

---
---End of long boring thought process and goals.

Short version: Several year old but comfortable Warshade build looking for interesting second build to try out and gain ideas from. Willing to spend up to 1 billion, willing to ditch aid self, resuscitate, super speed, and quasar, other drops will be considered too. I like to specialize as human form, with a usable Nova. Dwarf form is a pick I don't want.

Thanks... I'm rather disappointed the devs tossed in the goofyness of Bobcat to what was up to that point a really well written and engrossing arc of stories.

With confirmation it was indeed part of the Power arc for some reason, I completed the mission... but I made Bobby do all the work. I turned on Walk, and casually strolled through the map on my brute while she kicked butt. Since we didn't even attempt to disable the cameras or steal the recordings, I can only hope the public will believe the lie that I could be held hostage by a Lazy Catgirl if it it ever hits TPN.

*SPOILER WARNING*


I've been doing the Power arc for the Loyalists, and having a great time with the story, it really gave me the feeling of being a corrupt public servant looking for personal power and glory... However, I'm concerned after finishing my first contact in Neutropolis, working for a doctor who eventually betrays me and tries to trick me into fighting one of my former squad members. After killing the moron, Bobcat appears on my compass... but this can't really be the next arc in the chain, can it?

She asks me to wipe out some syndicate guy for her, because she's too lazy to get off her butt and do it herself. Ok, I can go crush a badguy, it fits with trying to look concerned with ridding the streets of thugs and terrorists.

But then she asks me to rob a bank with her, so her boyfriend will like her more. Yah, she's promised to introduce me to him, and Neuron would make a valuable contact to have in my quest for power... but robbing a bank? That seems like more than a little bit risky for the public image that's been groomed in every other arc in the series, and there's no justification given for why I'd actually want to accept such a risk.

Have I somehow diverged from the Power arcs of the Loyalists? The rest of the arcs were so well done, everything was justified as gaining me public support and the favors of people in high places, that this seems like it will run entirely counter to my goals. Or did I just miss something that makes it fit nice and neat into the rest?

I really don't want to continue with her if it means missing out on the rest of the Power storyline.

Right click that chat window, and select "Edit Tab". From the pop-up that appears, you can remove villain events, and add the hero events channel instead.

Considering that any player that only uses Preatoria as a starting zone can't create an EAT even if they've unlocked them, I don't see it as an issue.

My desktop machine does the freezing thing when tabbing back too, whereas my laptop has never done so. Both run Win7, although my laptop is running Ultimate while the desktop is on Home Premium.

Personally, I think it's a driver issue, since the desktop machine periodically disables Aero when CoH is running, stating incompatibilities with it. On my Laptop, Aero runs perfectly fine with CoH.

It's not really been important enough to me to diagnose the true cause, I've just gotten used to tabbing back into the game twice on the desktop.

To avoid the UAC prompts you have two other options, renaming cohupdater.exe to remove the updater part will work, but you'll have to rename it again on every patch to continue bypassing the prompt.

You can also skip the updater entirely by creating a shortcut directly to cityofheroes.exe and adding the " -project coh " switch. Using this method, you'll get an error on patch days that your game doesn't match the server version, but exiting and running the updater will fix that untill the next patch.

Then I'd suggest picking up a cheapy keyboard as a backup for your current one. Being unable to access boot menus and restore methods sounds awfully inconvenient.

If you've already tried an alternate keyboard, then I don't know what to say... that's an really strange problem and I'm out of suggestions.

If you are using XP, then according to this thread, http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...c-e292b69f2fd1 the problem is KB977165 and the current workaround is to uninstall it via the recovery console.

I don't see them as necessary or even useful. People that can't be bothered with proper protection of their authentication aren't going to be any more secure with a gizmo like this.

People just need to stop doing stupid things that compromise their logins. The twit that logs in at an internet cafe with 3 people looking over their shoulder is no safer with one of these, it just takes the extra step of picking their pocket. They'll feel safer, but they are still an easily exploited twit.

In a corporate environment, or in online financial transactions, possibly more secure, but they have multiple levels of authentication... but an online game? No, not the slightest bit more secure than a good password properly protected from their own bad habits.

If this game ever required them to play, I'd seriously consider dropping my sub. I'd probably end up playing anyway, but I'd be none-too happy at carrying yet another useless gadget that makes other people feel more secure without actually changing the behavior that gets them exploited in the first place.

I'd try making sure the file is not read-only, or perhaps just delete the file and let the game recreate it.