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Perhaps there is no miss message because one effect always auto-hits?

Like how some powers have a % chance of detoggling (or whatever), but have no miss message if it doesn't?

Thus far, my safeguard experience is soloing Brickstown, doing Brickstown with a team of 8 and exemping down to do Atlas Park on a team of 6.

Soloing Brickstown: relatively easy. Provided I stayed superleaping above the street mobs, I could do the side missions and stop the bank robbery no problem.

Teaming on Brickstown: Stopped the bank robbery pretty easily (although fighting the AV Ice Mistral was a close thing at times) but getting to the side missions / stopping vandals was City of Debt. Yes, a lack of coordination on the team probably didn't help, but with each team member aggroing multiple mobs as they rushed to reach the vandals (at least in part due to the increased range of AI perception) it became a situation of multiple deaths once we left the bank. I couldn't convince people to hang around to complete all the side missions because most players are chronically scared of debt and quit out after dying twice.

Teaming Atlas Park - similar experience to Brickstown, with the team splitting up multiple times to throw off aggro on their way to objectives (which in turn generated more aggro...). Lots of deaths, but players stuck it out and stopped the bank robbery and completed all the side missions.

Overview: I have found these safeguards to be pretty fun. However, the changed AI behaviour requires a new playing tactic that doesn't mesh with how you would normally play CoH/V. In normal play, you can take or leave the "street spawn" mobs on your way to a greater objective. Within safeguard missions, the street mobs won't let you ignore them due to their increased range of perception. Now, getting to the bank is relatively easy to do, but it's when everyone rushes to take on the vandals that the team splits up and things get messy.

I believe that if players adopted a turtle tactic (ie slow and steady, fighting your way through the street) in order to get to the vandal hotspot, most would be okay. However, most PUGs aren't that disciplined and end up getting shredded on the way (or sandwiched between the vandals and the street mobs in the area).

Alternatively, toning down the perception of mobs will also make these missions less chaotic.

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Cuts at NCsoft? No cuts at Cryptic at all? (Where's Geko, for example? I remember this being asked before, I think the answer was he's on another NCSoft game)

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Geko is on another Cryptic project.

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Haven't seen pohsyb in a while either. He's moved onto another super-sekret Cryptic project as well?

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But here's the 64K question: what the hell is it doing lately to evolve and revolutionalize itself or the genre?

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Hard to answer that without knowing what's in future Issues.

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Sorry Ilr, but you have to pick one. Either it is revolutionising the genre or it is evolving it.

Revolution is sudden and dramatic change.

Evolution is a slower process of change that builds on previous structures.

CoH/V is evolving the genre. It would be a bit rich to expect it to revolutionise the genre after it has been out for 2 years. A revolutionary change would have lots of established players up in arms.

I await I9, I10 and I11 in 2007. New powersets, hero / villain powerset crossovers, new zones, an ongoing storyline, inventions and whatever the heck we don't know about. Plus I may just finally get to lvl 50 on heroside. ;-)

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Not trying to act superior nor am I upset, just saying that you came in with all the *you* comments and choosing words to try to start arguments which from my view you clearly are trying to do. Don't wanna deal with it then please don't bring it up in the first place, jeezum crow. *eyeroll*


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Don't worry about Emnity. Emnity by name, enmity by nature.

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In an upcoming patch, here are a few things you'll see:
Increased EDIT:Maximum ranges for attacks like Blaze.
Some improvements for */Fire (No, no powers were switched out. No Fiery Embrace, I'm afraid. )
Some improvements for Fire/*
A very minor improvement for Gadgets...I mean, Devices! (Yeah, it was a dumb mistake -- typing in haste and all of that.)


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I look forward to the day that the patch appears on Test... and the inevitable, "That's not what Blasters wanted! Why didn't you fix this other thing instead!" responses, regardless of what changes were actually made.

And all the comments about the Gadgets / Devices mix-up are just getting old. It's really time to let that one die.

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SHAAAANE!!!!!!
SHAAAANE!!!!!!
COMEBACK!!!!!
SHAAAANE!!!!!!


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Thank you for going where I refused to :-)

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That's what I thought at first but it says he's leaving Cryptic and MUO is being developed by them.

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What about the DCUMMO?

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Also possible, I guess, but I thought SOE was doing that all in-house. Not saying that SOE couldn't hire him, but surely they've got in-house / DC writers they could rely on.

Another thing - does Mako really love the DCU so much that he'd quit one superhero MMOG to go and start another one? That I don't know.

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*waves*

Yenno, I'd laugh if the devs are leaving to join the MUO's development.

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That's what I thought at first but it says he's leaving Cryptic and MUO is being developed by them.

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Ah, very true.

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If I were to hazard a guess, I'd look at his comment

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I've been given an incredible opportunity to work on a project VERY near and dear to my heart

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and assume that there is a Deadlands / Weird West MMOG that's hitting pre-production. But that's just a guess.

Anyway, thanks for all your hard work Shane!

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I want to stess this:

We are NOT working on a Greek mythology game. Or an ancient history game. Just want to kill that rumour!

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Admit it, it's a Teletubby MMOG, isn't it?

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How utterly horrifying.

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You know not horror until a Boohbah MMOG comes out.

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...How about shoving some more down our throats in CoX?

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Celtic just loves having CoX shoved down his throat.

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All the better to serve Manticore...

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I want to stess this:

We are NOT working on a Greek mythology game. Or an ancient history game. Just want to kill that rumour!

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From this post I can only draw the conclusion that Cryptic is working on a future history game, based off the Roman Empire.

Imperator! Imperator! Imperator!

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simple rule of business, you never take something away from the customer. They took away the Cathedral, with no real explanation. I don't feel like they're working to get it back to us.

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The explanation was that there was an exploit within it that the devs felt was serious enough to pull the entire CoP experience.

The CoP probably isn't a big coding priority right now, given that it is used by a subset of SGs / VGs anyway, with the size of that subset to decrease rapidly once bases become raidable. Compared to say, Inventions and new powersets, it likely doesn't rank highly on the priority list of fixes.

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That's what the "new mantra" of "give the players what they want" really means: I've managed to let go of "my vision" and am now comfortable making it "our vision."

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Honestly, though, has there been much evidence of a concrete philosophical shift apparent in the game's development or in game changes? Perhaps it's the political skeptic in me, but I haven't seen that much of a shift. I have seen some spin and hype surrounding a shift, but I haven't really seen a lot of changes to reflect the shift. Maybe there'll be more evidence with after I8's out of the can.

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1) Happy birthday Clintonian!

2) I think we are starting to see the changes that reflect that change in dev mantra. The paid expansion got dropped and everything in it was / will be made "free" in later issues. Positron worked it so that wings came out earlier than I9 (which is when they will be fully available to all players). I8 is bringing a number of changes requested by heroes (and villains). Also, in the past few months we have seen a huge boost to the number of costume items availalbe to heroes and emotes have been added - sure, they are fluff, but they are frequently requested fluff.

However, I also think that changing direction within a MMOG is like steering an oil tanker - you might want to make that turn, but it's going to take a while to get the thing facing some other point on the compass.

Perhaps he's referring to the huge amount of customisation you have within your instanced base. I don't think that both the levels of customisation AND having an instanced base is something that appears within any other MMOG - feel free to prove me wrong.

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What about the global compensation/chat bug?
What about our Patron respecs still being borked?
Lag?
FPS problem?
Memory Leak?

Thanks.

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You forgot "No teleport surface detection beyond 100 yards getting teleporters killed because they can't get a valid teleport reticule in time to stop from falling to their doom."

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If you look elsewhere, Positron may have discovered / realised why that is happening.

The simplest way I'd see a drop mission system working is that it would just clear the mission from your mission list. The mission isn't completed and it would still be available from your contact, but it means that if you do have a bugged mission you can drop it and get one you can actually finish.

Otherwise, as people have said, I can see it screwing up a lot of content. SFs / TFs would be done in 15 minutes as every mission but the last one gets dropped...

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Artic Sun - I'd really like to know if we can ONLY use known Praetorians or if we can create our own (eg Copper Shield as the Praetorian Blue Steel).

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hmmm, i'd think praetorian blue steel would be Red Iron....

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It could be, if you were just going for opposites or related subjects. (Okay, iron isn't an opposite to steel, I know...)

However, a copper shield was the original representation of being a lawman and the reason we call police 'cops' today. Having Blue Steel's opposite as Copper Shield calls back to this law theme while suggesting that perhaps this Praetorian takes the law way too seriously.

Alternatively, he hides behind / uses his copper shield while doing the most brutal and corrupt things. It's a nice (imo, and if I do say so myself) image that shows Blue Steel through a dark mirror.

Artic Sun - I'd really like to know if we can ONLY use known Praetorians or if we can create our own (eg Copper Shield as the Praetorian Blue Steel).

First Aura, now Cuppa! Why do they always leave me???

... errr...

What I meant to say was good luck on the Tabula Rasa community (who I hear don't like coffee at all and prefer to drink tea) Cuppa and thanks for all your effort in keeping things orderly.

*wonders if the jokes above have already been used in the 30-odd pages he hasn't read*

Did you know:

- that the Christopher Chamberlain on the "Lone Hero" poster outside of Paragon City Cinemas shares the same name as an artist mentioned as working for Cryptic? I'm guessing someone got the job of doing the posters and thought they'd sign them as well!

- that you can find the name Mike Apolis on certain parts of the Rogue Isles landscapes? This is another zone designer who has signed parts of his work.

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Sure, you get an IOP, but what real use is that?

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Last I heard, it gives your SG / VG bonuses. That's not too bad.

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PVP and base raids had the potential to add some fun for toons that are capped, but it never really seems to work out for one reason or another.


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The PvP base raids are coming at some point. Ultimately getting used to having IoP may mean that some SGs / VGs are reluctant to give them up when the base raids go live, so it may have the effect of easing more groups into base raiding than would otherwise occur.

However, there still has to be a lot of work put into balancing the price of base raiding. Personally, I think base raiding should be as cheap as possible for the base getting raided, so even if every item in a base is destroyed during a raid, it would take minimal presitge to rebuild.

I guess we'll see how that goes.

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I love Cuppa's tats!



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Shame Shame

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That's right - her eyes are up here!

*sits back and awaits the gentle caress of the MODSMACK*

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Wow, this game is really turning into a "cult of personality". With ALL the stuff that is defective, broken, unexplained, unfixed, and just downright wrong in this game, it's hardly the time for a press op and back-patting.

Let's see if there's anything worth listening to.

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If you are going to criticize, at least have the decency to put forward the "tough" questions you want answered. List them here and see what happens - perhaps CuppaJo will save you the effort of having to tune in.

If I set the body sliders to give me the widest possible shoulders for a male and then select the non-fitted suit jacket, I can see clipping "lines" in the suit around about the shoulderblade position. This is less obvious when the character is doing something, but it becomes very obvious when he enters the hands-on-hips idle animation. I believe this was still an issue after I7.

I'll post screenies later, but all my graphics settings are minimised, which may contribute.

Also: if you go invisible with the Slacks / Boots combination, you can see the boots through your pants. Both are "invisible", but it's an odd look.

Finally: I can't say whether Ian or Jay are sexy without pics.