catwhowalksbyhimself

I walked right into that one didn't I?

The Rikti were at it again. Five minutes ago, Vanguard scientists detected a dimensional incursion in Atlas Park. Dozens of portals split the air and hundred of armored soldiers began to pour through.

The Heroes of Paragon City were ready for them. Vanguard soldiers from the nearby office and AP stations PPD were carefully stationed to hold off the initial invasion while heroes from all over the city continually appeared to reinforce their positions and push back the tide.

Officer Norton felt especially lucky this day. He was stationed on the fringes of Atlas Park, were portals only rarely appeared. His superiors assured him that someone had to be stationed there just in case. He was just glad to be out of the line of fire for once.

A burst of air and a loud clang changed all of that. A portal opened right in front of him. He barely had time to sound the alarm before something emerged from the portal.

He aimed his rifle, then froze as he got a look at the new arrival.

It was a dog.

His hair was clogged by mud and there were cuts and burns all over his body. That was not was really got his attention. Even the bent and torn pieces of metal hanging from the back of his front paws barely got his notice. It was the fact that he was walking upright. That and he was carrying a small blond girl on his back.

Stumbling out of the portal, he fell to the ground.

"Vanguard," he managed to cough out, "Take us to Vanguard."

Sorry to to have to spring this on you so suddenly, but I'm taking a break from the game and won't be around for a few weeks. It's just a break. I have every intention of returning after a few weeks and will rejoin you once I have.

If they start forcing me to team with whoever they want to, I'm probably leaving the game.

Seriously, it's no fun if they give us no choices. That being said, I doubt they'd do such a thing anyway.

One thing that I have personally started doing to help with this is that when I am forming a trial team (and I'm probably going to mostly form my own) I am trying to leave one or two spots open, so that a few people waiting in the turnstile will get picked up and come along. I left one spot in a Lambda, which was not filled, but both spots left in my BAF were.

Okay, some of you are good folks, while others of you, well I am quite angry, frankly.

I am a member of the OP's group and a mutual friend of the person he is talking about. I have played with him since I started playing and know him somewhat at least, so seeing some of you just laying judgement on him without having any clue what's going on--well, I just hope you're nicer people in person.

To explain a bit more, he's been playing the game for years. He used to have quite a large group of people to play with, but they've all left the game. Only two other people are left from his original group, and we simply don't recruit all that much.

He's also had a lot of bad experiences from pugs. So many, in fact, that he seems to have the worst pugging luck of anyone I know. That's the main reason why he avoids them now--they just never seem to go right with him.

We're also a rather social group. It's not too unusual to die from chatting too much. That atmosphere doesn't work well with pugs.

One way to combat such abuses on our end would be simply to alert our people to be on the lookout for low level "Help Me" toons and go out of our way to contact each and every one of them and welcome them to the game. That way, even if the jerks do show up, at least they know there are genuinely friendly people ready to help them.

In fact, that's one way our group could survive, even if the new system takes off--as an unofficial welcoming committee, using the system to seek out new players and welcome them.

Someone reported that using the walk power then turning it off has the same effect as unslotting and reslotting the alpha. Have yet to test it, but makes sense in theory.

I did a Lambda myself--my only one so far--and also had the 5th table. Of course, I spent a good deal of the supply search phase either lost or dead and never did get to destroy a crate, and died a lot during the portal destroying phase of the final battle, so in turn of powers used or whatever, I probably didn't do all that much, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

My guess is people are going to be getting this a lot from Lambda, because the common strategy is to ignore the mobs and go after the temp power storage containers, meaning that as far as the game is concern, people are doing basically nothing for that entire phase. I doubt it considers moving around "contributing."

There's a claim, which I have yet to verify, that turning the walk power on and off will fix it, as you're basically shutting off the alpha, like all other powers, and rebooting it. It may or may not be true, but it would be worth trying.

I got the 5th table from a Lambda run last night in which I spent a lot of time dying, and flying back in, or lost and not knowing what to do, it being my first. I'm wondering if the game gives that to players it deems as not having participated enough.

I dont' fully know what to think. Mind you the new system is great, but now that the game has a built in help channel meant to do exactly what we do along with a built in way to identify mentor and neophyts, although not under that name, I am simply not sure whether a separate group is even needed. It might be, it just seems to early to tell how the new system will be used.

Why is everyone saying there's a clone Durray? It was my understanding that the final AV's were Primal Durray and Praetorian Durray, since the whole story is that the two are working together.

The auto quit bug is the one they think they fixed.

The announcement forum is really the place to go. It is explained there. The devs do have a live show going on instead.

I asked in another thread, and they said there are two easy ways to deal with them.

1. Fly, cause they can't reach you if you're flying. Don't know what that didn't occur to us. A few jetpacks ought to do it.

2. Lots of def, cause their accuracy isn't good and they auto-hit, like a force fielder. We don't really have that.

Sounds like option 1 is the potential winner.

It does indeed include vet reward slots, as I had one unlocked that way and another unused, and both are now missing.

The option to change it is in the old help screen, so just press H when not chatting and you can freely set you help status to nothing if you prefer.

[sarcasm]Yeah, that is really weird that an Issue named Incarnates would actually be about Incarnates. What were the devs thinking![/sarcasm]

I tried to run it last night, but the ghoul bombs seemed to make it impossible. How did you all get past that part?

Indeed, I rarely bring a 50 into the lower level targets, I use the bonus xp to level lowbies up.

You need to join a server channel. Freedom has several. On those, you can find out about tfs and teams forming and it's far easier to join in on stuff, or to form them. Forming is far better that hoping one will form so you can join it.

On, the contrary, you should. They've always posted at least a month in advance.

This makes me think they they are hoping to release I 20 sometime before the end of April, in the two weekends left open. It only makes sense that the new tf/sf would be the target on the week they are released. Plans can change, so this doesn't really mean anything for sure.

Sorry I never posted that info I promised on my character's back story, but when I came up with the escaped killers storyline, I intended to just solve it in the midst of regular playing and haven't really thought it through. Still can't come up with much of a storyline for an AE arc or anything, so I may need some time to come up with something.

Anyhow, catch you all tonight.