cohRock

I did my daily day job rotation this morning. When I quit, up popped the CoH patcher with 884M to give me. I'm guessing it's the i17 pre-download. They tend to do this 2 to 3 weeks before a new issue goes live.

Thanks for the excellent help, guys. I went with the Snipping Tool; it works great and allows me to pre-crop the part I actually want. (And <blush>, I didn't even know it was there.)

I wanted the capture so I could brag about My First Twenty-Two. Without it, I would have no proof.

I go thru a daily ritual called "day job rotation". I check each of my characters who have been offline for 21 or more days, and log them in. Then I move them to their next day job location. It's been going on for quite a while. That said,



I'm kinda happy. Colt Blue was my first 50, and now he's my first character with all 22 day jobs.

It's likely Going Rogue will offer him other job opportunities, but for now he can focus on the day job accolades.

I can't get the PrtScr function to work properly in-game any more. *Something* of the right size gets saved to the paste buffer, but when viewed, the image is completely black. I've tried activating it with both <Ctrl><PrtScr> and <Shift><PrtScr> . I used to be able to do this, but I don't know when it stopped working. I've tried to view it with both IrfanView and OpenOffice Draw. It could have stopped working after installing my HD monitor, or perhaps after a windows update. I don't remember when the last time I used PrtScr successfully from within CoH.

Here's some specs:

* CoH in full screen mode, native resolution
* LG 24" display at 1920x1080 resolution
* NVidia GeForce 9500 GT video card
* GeForce video: 196.21 (8.17.11.9621)
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 6002)
* DirectX 10.0 (6.0.6000.16386)

I have no problem using <Ctrl><PrtScr> to capture and view my 1920x1080 desktop. Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?

Bubble Gunn was my ff/dp defender, started during the closed beta for Dual Pistols. Now that DP is available live, I thought I'd post my thoughts.

I made three DP characters on Test. The first was a dp/devices scrapper, then Bubble Gunn, and finally a dp/traps corrupter. Bubble Gunn was the most fun for me to play. The force field and dual pistol sets seemed to mesh very well. I can't show his full build, but he ended up at 50 with:

* all dp powers except Piercing Rounds
* the three main bubbles, plus Repulsion Bomb. PFF and Force Bubble picked up late in build
* Combat Jumping, Hurdle, Health, Stamina, Manuevers, Tactics, Aid Other, Aid Self
* Domination and Mind Over Body

Endurance was somewhat of a problem initially. To help, he picked up the Atlas Medallion and four sets of 4-slotted Gift of the Ancients (GotA). He even had a bit more endurance and recovery via other sets. With Ninja Run boosted by Hurdle, four 7.5% run speeds via GotA, and other IO set run speed boosts, travel was a breeze, even without Super Jump. During missions, he'd run Combat Jumping though for the extra defense, immob protection, and lower end draw.

His Dispersion Bubble (DB) provided stun and hold protection, as well as decent defense. This was boosted by Manuevers, Combat Junping, and the two procs from SteadFast Protection -- def/res and -knockback. Thus he had scrapper level defenses. That's not even counting his Mind Over Body resistances. His teammates were even better off; for the most part they were dp blasters of some sort, buttressed by their individual bubbles, Manuevers, and the benefits of the DB.

Suppressive Fire (SF) can either provide an individual stun or individual hold, strong enough for minions and lieutenants. Domination provided the same strength hold, plus some damage. With SF set to a holding ammo, he could stack the two holds on bosses. With this ability to mez two Lts. or one boss, he felt a lot like a controller.

The various damage types available with dp gave a lot of flexibility. Most of the time he'd be using cryo ammo for the -rech secondary, but he could change in a moments notice to DoT, -dmg, or knockback. However, taking a boss down solo was safe (the stacked holds), but time-consuming. As with most defenders, damage isn't his strong suit.

With the required Pistols power (fast, low damage), I did what my defenders normally do. I three-slotted it with an acc, a dmg, and a range. Since there is no snipe in dp, the range on Pistols gave him an extended-range pull capability. Actually, all my attacks only had one acc. With Tactics and 27% global accuracy via IO sets, he wasn't wanting in ability to hit. The remaining attacks had 3 damage enhancements, though. If necessary I added an end reduction, and a few ended up being six-slotted with an added recharge.

He ended up with two single-target attacks, two cones, and the tier-9 PBAoE. Hail of Bullets is a fun power, fairly quick recharge, and it doesn't drain all end like many other tier-9 attacks. With all his protection, it was generally safe to rush into a crowd of foes and let loose.

Bubble Gunn; he was fun. I think I'll make another one.

My point was simply I'm not entirely crazy in my suggestion. There is a real world analogue to a consignment house dropping the price on items as a matter of course.

Wentworths ("WW", hero side) is experiencing a heavy market glut on many kinds of invention salvage. It is not uncommon to see 5,000 to 10,000 of the same piece of salvage for sale. It happens villain side too, but not at anywhere near the number of items seen at WW.

This leads to my two-part proposal to address the glut. Both parts would apply to hero and villain sides alike. The first part I expect to be popular, and has been suggested before.

* Offer an instant-sell capability of items at the NPC-store price

I'm guessing that the upcoming rewrite of the front end will offer this obvious quality of life improvement. It will also help immediately address the glut. When a seller sees that there are already 3,548 kinetic weapons for sale, it's likely they'll opt for the instant-sell.

The second part of my proposal won't be so popular, but I think something like it is necessary to address laggard momentum on some items, especially very expensive ones. It is also more complicated, probably involving some sort of market script that will be run each Thursday during scheduled maintenance. Several steps would be involved:

1. For the first two scheduled maintenance periods since an item was offered for sale, its offering price would be unchanged. This would be from 15-21 days, depending on what day the item was offered for sale. (I was going to say two weeks, but then I realized this would probably be done during weekly maintenance. So at even 15 days, it's longer than my first thought.)
   
2. Beginning at the third maintenance period, the current offering price would be lowered by 10%. WW/BM would refund part of their 5% surcharge of the offering price.
   
   For example, assume an item was offered for sale at 1,000,000 influence. During the third maintenance period since his offer, the offering price would drop to 900,000, and he would be credited with 5,000 influence (the difference between a 1M surcharge and a 900k surcharge). Next week, the offering price would drop to 810,000, and he would be credited with 4,500 influence.
   
   A player could avoid or minimize the price drop by removing it from market and re-offering.
   
3. The price drop would continue weekly until the new price was at or below the NPC store price, at which point the item would auto-sell at the NPC store price
   
4. Items with no NPC store price would be given some bottom value. For example, NPC's won't buy crafted IOs, but there is still a known value to them; a player receives that if he sells it during a respec.
   
5. After the prices are calculated, bids will be examined. Any item which now meets a bid price will sell to the highest bid in excess of or equal to the new price.
   
6. Any item which was offered at or below the NPC store price would instant-sell at the NPC store price. In fact, that could be one way to handle instant-sells without a new button. Offer something up for 0 or 1 gp, and it sells at the NPC store price.

Yes, I'm hoping that one effect will be to get the price lowered on the items being offered at 20-80 million or more. I don't believe these prices would even be possible without the inflationary and destructive influence of the real money transfer (RMT) dealers. That said, I believe the proposal is good on it's own merit, adding life to an often dead market.

Constructive feedback will be appreciated. Thank you.

There is a flaw in Tyrant's character profile. It says he is of Magic origin, but unless the Well of Furies is fundamentally different on Praetorian Earth than primal Earth, his origin is Incarnate.

The patch screen says, "character transfers within one server list will be free until the end of January!". Is that just another way of saying you can't move characters between North American and European servers? Or does it mean you can only move characters from the list on one server?

Bubbawheat,

Having participated in other projects involving donated time of volunteers, I can advise you to be careful of burnout. With the weekly nature that The Scoop had, I'm frankly surprised and impressed it lasted as long as it did. Consider publishing fortnightly, giving even your most dedicated folks plenty of free time.

Since you'll be on your own site, you can give a blog to anyone who really, really, really wants to write more often than that. Burnout is insidious, slowly shifting an attitude of excitement to one of obligation and even masked resentment. Blogging might help by allowing a volunteer to reduce his blogging rate and still be an integral, happy, member of your regular staff.

No one is seeing anything similar?

Sorry for the bad name I gave this thread. I can see how folks might skip over it -- "what's *that* doing in a tech issues forum?" I meant the unwinding of virtual memory, not that of a player after he exits the game.

Another, likely related, effect I've seen since Vista SP2 is a slowness to show the backdrop while I'm still playing. It used to be that if I wanted to bring up Mids Hero Designer while in game, it was a quick click of the Windows key and choosing Mids from the task bar. Now it takes many seconds for the task bar to come up, and sometimes it vanishes immediately after it comes up. If that happens, pressing the Windows key again then brings up the task bar fast, but the system had to do something the first time round.

Good news: I'm fairly certain that the Vista Service Pack 2 has fixed the video crash bug I had ("your video driver has stopped and restarted" -- something like that). It downloaded and installed itself several weeks ago, and that crash hasn't happened since.

Bad news: The service pack, and possibly the fix for this video bug fix itself, has added many seconds (20-40) of post-game shutdown, which I associate with virtual memory unwinding. The disk drive has tons of activity, the windows backdrop is essentially inactive for the first half of this time, and there will always eventually be a complete video refresh where the screen goes blank and then the backdrop will appear again.

I'm curious if other folks are experiencing this, and if there is an easy way to minimize these effects.

Some of the specs on my system are:

* Intel Core 2 CPU 6420 @ 2.13 GHz
* 2 GBytes RAM
* 32-bit operating system (Windows Vista Home Premium, Service Pack 2)
* GeForce 9500 GT graphic processor
* DirectX version 10.1
* 4.8 Windows Experience Index

I play in full-screen mode at HD resolution (1920x1080), which is also the size of my normal backdrop). I tried to go to windowed mode once, but nothing happened on the restart. This wasn't really important to me at the time, so I didn't pursue it. Neither Ultima Online (enhanced client) nor Dragon Age: Origins exhibit this behavior. When I exit them, they are immediately done. Prior to service pack 2, there was a much shorter post-game unwind period in CoX.

Well, my tray 4 is full, and I've got it standardized for all my characters. It has all the vet and inherent powers that are not quite useful enough to show in the always-visible first three trays.



It consists of:

* Jump Pack
* Pocket D VIP Pass
* Base Transporter
* Ouroboros Portal
* Demon Pet (whichever looks-only pet happened to choose)
* Assemble the Team
* Self Destruction
* Mission Transporter
* Walk
* Ninja Run

Their order is essentially that of when the power was received. I suppose one day they should be re-ordered by type or something, but I'm quite used to this.

Have other folks done something similar?

PS: Walking remains active while in Architect Studio B. Move even slower!

Ok. My mind is clearly cross circuited. Case in point -- a fantasy I had about how Walking could have been activated.

= = = = = = = = = =
Excited young hero Tyred runs up to BackAlleyBrawler in Galaxy. He says, "If thou art willing, sir, I should like to walk."

BAB looks him up and down and shakes his head approvingly. "I am willing." With a sudden swing, he strikes Tyred in the forehead, open-palmed. Tyred falls back on his a**. Says the signature hero, "Now, get up and walk."

= = = = = = = = = =
Anyone know where I can find a good mind-mechanic?

same problem. I'll wait until dev's comment and say it fixed.

I'm impressed too! congrats

Informative video. You learn a bit about likely changes to stone armor as well.

I concur.

Going beyond OP, IMO freespecs are given out too liberally. Like for issue 15, why was it necessary to give freespecs to anyone but dominators? Along with vet rewards (and to a far lesser extent, respec recipe drops), there is little incentive for many players to bother with respec trials any more. So I would suggest freespecs only be granted when there was a significant change to a given archetype, or some sort of global change that affects everyone. (An exemple of the latter would be the raptor-pack stores, allowing many players to opt out of the Fly travel power.)

{edit add}
ClawsandEffect, I guess the answer would be, to protect us from our own poor impulse control. But you do make a good point.
{/edit}