VirtueHero

...but I do.

I started playing just after my wife and I split. It wasn't pretty. CoH was my refuge. It was my escape.

Through the following years my life went through some really pronounced changes. I had to quit the game a couple of times but I always found myself back. It was my safe place where I had complete control, unlike much of my real life.

Now that things are winding down, I feel kind of empty. I'm losing a something that I didn't realize I relied on so much.

I should know by now that life IS change, but I don't like it...

I've been giving away my considerable stash to the good folks of Virtue this weekend. Most of my global friends are seemingly gone already but I wanted to extend a fond farewell to everyone. I've been here from the beginning, more or less and made lots of friends:

@Moya
@Bishop Creed
@Jude
@Labatt the Blue
@Sander
@Blind'
@Arkyaeon
@Plaster.
@Earth Kiss
@koko
@MisterD (no more fort for you!)
@Heart Shaped Box

There are countless others so don't be offended if I forgot you.

Take care everyone!

@Roger The Shrubber

Back in the day, when I was fortunate enough to encounter spammers in AP or GC, I would draw mobs to them. They often panicked even though getting attacked had no impact on their nefarious doings. Human nature I guess. Made me laugh.

I'm confused...

Here's another...

Using Siphon Power with my namesake Plant/Kin 'troller (@Roger the Shrubber) to draw mobs to the Legacy Chain NPCs in The Hollows then buff said NPCs with Fulcrum Shift.

I've been with CoX since the start, more or less. I've taken extended breaks along the way but I've always come back.

Along the way I have found myself bored with my toons but couldn't bring myself to not log on to the game. I'm sure I am not alone in this.

My question; what have you done in game to entertain yourself when the game didn't really hold your interest? I have a few examples such as going to the Shadow Shard with my En/En blaster (my first toon, Censored Man) and stunning the floating eyeballs just to watch them plummet into the abyss.

Please share your anecdotes!

Here's a thought... Roll an en/kin corruptor. Kin's buffs/heal/end mod powers are great and all but with energy you will often find your target KB'd away without the buff having any effect on you. Trust me on this one...

I hear Ellen left the show and Kara ain't coming back either...

Wait, wrong AI.

<Ahem, sorry about that...>

I took a brief respite from the game and am back leveling a bs/sh scrapper and I am puzzled at mob behavior.

On multiple occasions I have had a mob no larger than 10 baddies and 1-2 of them will not agro unless I attack them directly.

There are other minor things I have noticed that are too complicated to go into other than to say I have seen some really stupid mobs of late.

Has anyone else noticed? Has the AI changed over the last two issues?

One point that I haven't seen much discussion about is the collaborative aspect of MMOs. I run with a regular crew of 10 or so friends, all of whom I met while playing CoX. We have fun with lowbies or with our IOd out 50s. While the gameplay is obviously an important component, most of our fun comes from playing with each other. The variety of powers available and how we choose to slot them provides an interesting mechanic in our team building that still keeps us coming back for more.

IMO, PLing entirely misses the point.

OK I am a little confused.

Since the advent of IOs and the subsequent change in player behavior to maximize the rewards they receive, there have been at least two changes in the game that generated considerable discussion:

<ul type="square"> [*]Family Villain Group XP nerf [*]Merit Reward Adjustment for running arcs [/list]If I gave more thought to this I am sure I could come up with other examples but these two are enough for the sake of this discussion.

One theme we heard from the good people at NCSoft was that those adjustments were necessary for game balance. In short, the adjustments were made based on Risk vs. Reward and/or Time Invested/Reward.

My Search-Fu is a bit weak at this hour so I am unable to find specific posts about the XP nerf on the "Family Farm" but I think it is safe to stipulate that the reason given for this nerf was Risk vs. Reward.

Thankfully, my Search-Fu isn't completely decimated when it comes to the Merit Reward adjustment. Here is a link from a post by Synapse explaining the reasons behind Merit Reward adjustments after the patch on 2/10/09:

Merit Reward Adjustment as explained by Synapse

In Synapse's post he provides a guideline for Merits/Hour based on completion time:

[ QUOTE ]

What this boils down to is roughly:

Trials: 24 merits per hour of average completion time.
Taskforces: 20 merits per hour of average completion time.
Story Arcs: 8 merits per hour of average completion time.


[/ QUOTE ]

In explaining why some arc Merit Rewards were significantly reduced Synapse explained:

[ QUOTE ]

Q: Why did story arc X have its merit times reduced?

A: Well, again this isn't a simple answer. The short answer is that more people run them and find faster ways of completing these tasks. This in turn changes the average completion time substantially. However, there were a number of tasks--specifically the Kheldian story arcs--that we didn't have much data on. These tasks were literally run only a handful of times, so data was scarce. People started running these arcs to test the number of merits awarded and people realized that these tasks were giving out way more merits than they should. This caused them to be run A LOT! We then realized that these tasks could be completed much faster than our old data suggested. So, these arcs had their rewards adjusted accordingly.


[/ QUOTE ]

Lastly, in explaining why Merit Rewards had to change at all, Synapse offered the following:

[ QUOTE ]

Q: Why change merits at all?

A: We want our players to be getting appropriate rewards for the tasks they're doing.


[/ QUOTE ]

I have it on reasonably good authority that certain AE missions exist that yield the same reward (enough for one AE Ticket Gold Roll and then some) in 17 minutes that the Kheld arc yielded (29 Merit Rewards) in roughly the same amount of time for an optimized team.

Given the ability to customize a villain group in AE, it is hypothetically possible for a team of characters to play a mission in which the villains pose absolutely no threat because, hypothetically speaking, the customized villains would have no means to attack the characters. Yet the AE tickets would flow just as freely in those hypothetical missions, to say nothing of the essentially free XP.

I agree with the Devs regarding the basic tenant of appropriate reward for risk taken and while I might have disagreements on the particulars, I understand the motive behind various nerfs.

This why I am so confused with the glaring contradiction that AE has become.

When I read the posts complaining about the issue 12 content info tidbits from WW this came to my mind.


I want a ball
I want a party
Pink macaroons and a million balloons
And performing baboons and ...
Give it to me
Rrhh rhhh
Now!

I want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!

I want today
I want tomorrow
I want to wear 'em like braids in my hair
And I don't want to share 'em

I want a party with room fulls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don't get the things I am after
I'm going to scream!

I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don't care how
I want it now
Don't care how
I want it now

Guys, take your OCD meds and be patient. All good things come to those who wait.

Of course there are many ways to obtain influence in the mass quantities that the spammers purportedly are sitting on and are trying to sell. For my money though, it seems to me that an obvious place to start to investigate the originators of the spam campaign is to review the daily kill boards and work from there. There are several characters on Virtue (I only play there so I cannot speak for the other servers) that regularly show up there with fantastically high numbers of kills/damage dealt.

I am not saying that all of these characters/accounts are guilty of participating in spamming/farming for RMT but I would bet money that 1-3 months of data from these daily kill boards would contain at least some of the characters/accounts that are. It would be worthwhile, IMO, for the powers that be to gather this data and work through it. It seems to be a way to make a relatively short list of accounts that are potentially participating in these enterprises. It should also be relatively easy to identify the non-offenders.

I would also bet money that several Fire/Kins are involved. I have suspicions based on my in game experience of who some of them are but I won't post them here.

Censored Man

I Bet You They Won't Play This Song on the Radio

by Eric Idle.