inktomi
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Quote:Both 1.0.3068 and 1.0.4462. I first noticed the problem with 3068, but downloaded 4462 yesterday to see if that helped. I didn't transfer anything from the old installation to the new. I didn't change anything outside of the .app packages; I'm not sure if CoH places any of it's files outside of it's own package.Originally Posted by CuppaManga
Click on the CoH application and use the Get Info command in the Finder's File menu - which version do you have? -
I've just returned to CoH after a break of several months, and I find that now when I switch from windowed mode back to full-screen by using command-return, or minimize the game via command-tab then switch back to it, my screen blanks out. The screen seems to be a random color, there is still sound in the background, and the keyboard is still responsive, but the entire screen including the UI and cursor blank out. Moving around will cause the color to change and I can hear movement sounds, but the screen will remain a solid color. Switching back to windowed mode puts everything back to normal, but going back to fullscreen causes the problem again.
The problem only occurs on 3D screens. For example, I can switch on loading screens, the login screen, the server selection screen, or even while displaying my characters ID card without encountering the problem. But any time I switch while in game or on the character selection screen, the problem happens. Switching to windowed mode on a 3D screen, then back to the game on a 2D screen will cause the problem. Switching to windowed mode on a 2D screen, then to full on a 3D screen also causes the problem. While switching to windowed mode then back to fullscreen on a 2D screen does not cause the problem, switching out on 2D, then switching to a 3D screen, then back to a 2D screen before switching back to fullscreen mode still causes the problem. If at any point I display a 3D image while in windowed mode or minimized, my screen will go blank when switching to fullscreen.
I hope that's clear enough; I tried every combination I could think of for switching to windowed mode or minimizing then going back to fullscreen to try and narrow the problem down.
The problem persists when I start in safe mode. The problem persists after re-downloading and installing the client.
I've used both versions 3068 and 4462 of the Mac client, but I wasn't playing for about 3 months before issue 20, so I couldn't say exactly when the problem was introduced.
System Profile:
iMac (iMac 7,1)
OS X 10.6.7
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz
4 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, 256 MB VRAM
The problem is kind of a nuisance, but I can work around it by just leaving my character's ID card displayed whenever I need to minimize the game for a bit. -
Quote:No, you are confusing "enemy" and "evil". There aren't the same thing. What you are talking about are enemies. There is nothing wrong with having enemies, or trying to protect yourself from them.Originally Posted by Lord_Kalistoh
You are supporting my point: the society doesn't approve it.
In a possible society where the cruelty is the basis, that wouldn't be seen like evil.
You think you are an ant. You would think that humans are evil: they destroy your lands, they kill your people (sometimes just for the lol), they're everywhere. Are we really evil?
But I've been in a country where the insane asylums and prisons were dumped out into a war zone, and that bred a ton of evil. The type of thing that you don't need to be told by anyone to realize how screwed up it is.
Most of us just don't see real evil in our daily lives, so we misapply the word to things we just don't approve of. But that doesn't mean that concrete, objective evil doesn't exist, just that it is effectively suppressed in most cases. -
Quote:They get used so much because they are field grade. They're the highest ranks that still see the close-up picture.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm lumping this all together in the same quote as I don't know how to care it up appropriately. But this is interesting stuff, and in a lot of ways, exactly what I was hoping to hear. You say Majors and Colonels are field officers? Is that why movies use them so much, or is it just that they have the easiest names to say?
There is likely to be a headquarters tent miles away, but the Colonel might or might not be in it. They also usually have whatever type of vehicle the unit they command uses (a tank or armored car of some type usually) outfitted with a ton of radios which they can use to get closer.Quote:This is interesting, though, in that from what I've read so far, I was led to believe that a Major or a Colonel would spend all their time in a tent ten miles behind the front line doing clerical work and organising operations. This was what I was afraid of, but what you're telling me is a bit more to my taste. I can certainly see how a Colonel wouldn't pick up a rifle and go shoot people in the head because he'd have much more important work to do, but putting him at the field, rather than in an HQ somewhere back home, only to occasionally visit the front lines is encouraging.
As a rule, any commander should be wherever most of his troops are. For a colonel that doesn't mean right on the very front, but close enough to communicate by runner if needed.
Majors are more likely to be the ones sitting in the tent, but that changes too. If the unit has two major focusses then a major might be sent to oversee one of them.
What I mean is that majors don't typically have a permanent command. They might have a driver or a runner, but they can be assigned or reassigned as their colonel sees fit. They do lead different sections in a headquarters, but usually the NCOs could run their section in their absence, so if someone needs to go talk to a general, talk to an allied commander, or supervise the construction of a power plant, a major will get sent to do it. They tend to be liaisons.Quote:The big thing, though, and what got me really curious, is why you say they're kind of outside the normal chain of command. Certainly, I don't know how things work, but whenever I see a list of ranks, both Major and Colonel show up in a line with the others. If you could elaborate on that a bit, that'd be really cool. I especially like the notion of the rank Major being given to specialists without specific command, but in need of a rank.
It's common for pilots, medical personnel, and dogs (military dogs are one rank higher than their handler). Other than that it's rare-ish.Quote:Say, here's something interesting to ask. I keep hearing that rank may not always describe direct command of personnel, but may instead be given to a specialist in order to grant them the authority of this rank, even if they aren't assigned any troops to command. This is where my eye was all along, and I just wanted to ask how likely it is for a high rank to be given out like this. Say Major or Colonel. How likely would that be? And keep in mind, I can exaggerate even "somewhat" into "Positively will happen!" if need be 
Higher enlisted ranks are more common for "specialists". I've met snipers and dog handlers who were Sergeants First Class (usually that would be reserved for platoon sergeants) and I've heard of Master Sergeants who are basically just riflemen on special operations teams.
Among commissioned officers, you might find a Captain leading a team of a half-dozen special operations guys, but otherwise the rank usually accompanies command.
The thing is that officers change jobs about every 18 months, so they usually wouldn't be given a rank just because they were a great sniper or something.
In the Army, that sort of thing would go to Warrant Officers and Chief Warrant Officers. They aren't in the chain of command, they have no authority outside their specialty field, but in their specialties they are highly respected. They are like the enlisted grades in that they might remain in the same job for a decade or more. Army pilots and other specialists are usually WOs.
Overall though, it's a game so I don't see a problem with making a character whatever rank you like. Any Sergeant or anything Captain through Colonel would imply a character with some experience in their field. In the US Army commissioned officers are pretty strictly "management", but it's believable enough that a captain or major might be on some special mission to work in a comic-book setting.
Heck, "Captain America" was supposedly an actual captain while in uniform during WWII. In his secret identity he was a PFC, and his sidekick outranked him. That obviously worked well enough for a comic book
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Quote:Officers are very likely to be in the middle of the fight, they just don't need a weapon to do their job. An officer needs a map, compass, and radio, and needs to direct the soldiers around him. Weapons are optional, and personally fighting is optional. It happens, but should only happen when there is no one around for him to direct.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Let me see if I get this straight - a Non-Commissioned Officer is someone who enlisted as a soldier and rose through the ranks, whereas a Commissioned Officer is more a commander and less a frontline soldier essentially commissioned by the government? Do I have that about right?
So how likely would it be for a commissioned officer to willingly step out into a fight, rather than standing back in his command centre and commanding? How likely is a lieutenant to see action intentionally?
LTs have a bad habit of either freezing up or just behaving like privates, which is why there is a lot of overlap in their responsibilities. Between the squad leaders, platoon sergeant, and company commander, the platoon leader is pretty optional.
Good officers are focussed on commanding their troops, not on personally fighting.
Majors are more likely to be personally involved than most officers, because they usually don't have a command of their own. They are mostly just paper-pushers in a headquarters, but because they are veteran officers doing an optional job, they get put in charge of small details or sent to "help" junior officers pretty regularly.Quote:That's part of the reason I asked. In the info I found, the Major was described as essentially a paperwork rank, which wouldn't quite jive with what I had in mind. The amount of people under a Major's command feels about right, but if it's completely ludicrous that a Major would step out of the tent and, as you said "blow the smithereens out of something," then I may have to do some lateral thinking. -
Quote:That's not a bad example, but Sergeants will generally run a wider variety of personality types than any other grade. They might just be a highly proficient individual soldier, or they might be running a platoon of 30. They might be young, bookish, or eager to advance, or they might be an old guy who didn't do anything except accumulate enough time in service that they couldn't be a lower rank any more.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Sergeant - Big Joe from Kelly's Heroes. He seemed to be practically in charge of everything, though they kept talking about a Lieutenant (was it?) who was away for the entirety of the movie.
Sergeants tend to be with their units a lot longer than officers would be. In the US Army, officers get moved about every 18 months, so there are quite a few soldiers who have what it takes to be a higher rank, but chose to remain as NCOs because that keeps them closer to their buddies.
NCOs are also likely to remain in a role a lot longer than officers. It might take 6 years to make Sergeant, and might take 10 or 15 before an NCO is high enough that they are no longer directly involved in combat. It's not unusual to meet sergeants that are machine gunners, snipers, or anti-tank gunners.
Rasczak behaves a lot more like a Sergeant Major (the top of the NCO chain) than a Lieutenant.Quote:Lieutenant - Rasczak from the Starship Troopers movie, who seemed to act like lord and ruler of his men and the sole man responsible for everything. Of course how much of that is the rank and how much is Michael Ironside just exaggerating it I can't say. Am I safe to assume the Lieutenant is a combat rank, though, as in someone who suits up and goes out to shoot people?
Lieutenant is a combat rank, but it's basically the very beginning for officers. LTs do a lot of the same stupid stuff privates do. Q: What's the difference between a Lieutenant and a Private First Class? A: The PFC has been promoted -- TWICE!!
The relationship between sergeants and lieutenants in combat units is really weird. The LT is in charge, and he is likely to have a lot of education, but he isn't likely to have any experience at all. Sergeants on the other hand might or might not have the same education, are likely to have more experience, but need to obey the LT. In practice a good LT is a smart guy with a good education who is being trained both by his superiors and his subordinates.
The sucky part is that officers only stay in a job for 18 months on average, so right about the time a lieutenant is getting really good at his job, he gets moved elsewhere.
Lieutenants command platoons of 16-40 men, or act as assistants to higher officers.
Captains are basically lieutenants with a few years of experience. They command companies, troops (cavalry) or batteries (field artillery) of 30-120 men. They tend to get more respect than lieutenants. If an LT tells you something that sounds stupid, he's probably mistaken; if a captain tells you something that sounds stupid then *you're* probably mistaken.
Together, lieutenants and captains are known as "company grade" officers -- either of them might end up in direct command of enlisted soldiers.
Majors tend to be a bit outside the chain of command. They might end up in charge of something if something happens to their superior, but the usually have no command of their own. It's basically a "don't mess with me rank".Quote:Major - Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. Unfortunately, Ghost in the Shell is such an existentialist mess that I've NO idea what her rank even meant or what she was supposed to be doing. She could have been called a SpecOps and it'd have made as much sense. I'm drawing a blank here.
Majors and colonels are collectively known as "field grade officers". They might be in command of battalions or squadrons (cavalry) consisting of 3-5 companies, batteries, or troops. They don't directly command soldiers, but are still low enough in the chain that they might be directly involved in combat. They are "field grade" because they are the highest officers likely to be on the battlefield.
Majors might be an assistant to a colonel, but it's a common rank for officers that are somewhat outside the normal command structure. They are basically peers to the colonels without having to worry about who has seniority or whatever. Liaison officers and specialists are very likely to be majors.
Colonels are the highest ranking officers who are likely to be on the battlefield. While they aren't likely to pick up a rifle themselves, they are likely to be under fire, directing from the front. Any higher ranking officer is unlikely to interact directly with local civilians, enemy combatants, or their own troops.Quote:Colonel - Cambell from Metal Gear. He's an old man who spends most of his time talking and trying to give orders, but doesn't actually contribute much in a meaningful way. Ineffectivenss aside, he appears to be some kind of high commander who is supposed to have a lot of authority (even if it doesn't work out that way, damn flanderization of a good concept!), but I've no idea what his responsibilities actually are.
For a Colonel, I could probably also quite Colonel Carl Jenkins (seriously) again from the Starship Troopers movie, but his entire role in the movie is to resemble a Nazi officer and make a grand total of one order, so I've no idea what his rank is supposed to mean.
Can anyone help me out here?
If you want stories to draw from, this one is awesome: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/gates-of-fire.htm
It's non-fiction, but give a bunch of examples of various ranks. -
I PvP a lot in other games, but not in CoX. The system is just no good for it.
The big frustration for me is that PvP in CoX seems to rely too heavily on power sets and such -- too be able to PvP you not only need to use specific builds, but to roll completely new characters with certain power sets.
Then there is the level thing; you can enter a PvP zone at level 15, but you'll be fighting level 50s who are exemplared down. That makes the learning curve for PvP damn steep, you basically need to wait till level 50 to even try it out.
CoX is a game with tons of character control and many ATs can drop an enemy in 2 or 3 shots. Both those things are horribly unfun in PvP. Basically the PvE design of the game makes PvP pointless.
In every other MMO I've played, PvP was the part of the game I would spend the most time on. I'd love to be able to PvP in CoX too, but I've tried it out with a few different characters (an AR/traps corruptor, mace/shield brute, and a Crab Spider so far) and it's just no fun at all. I'm sure I could level characters with powers more suited to PvP, and I'm sure I could make better choices of pool and patron powers, but that's way too much work for something that I doubt I'd like anyway. -
Quote:You've never encountered evil if you believe that.Originally Posted by Lord_Kalistoh
You think Good and Evil are concrete, but that's not true. Good and Evil are relative to the society and environment of the individuals.
What it's evil in one society, it can be good in other one.
Just because someone wants to kill you or hates your way of life, doesn't mean they are evil -- you can still reconcile that if you can avoid killing each other. But when you meet a guy who skins kids alive, or who ***** a guy through a colostomy scar and gave him herpes, there is no society where that behavior is okay.
In the western world we just don't get much face-time with real evil because those people are likely to be institutionalized pretty early on. When you go to parts of the world where someone can get away with skinning little kids or forcing their parents to eat them, the society there doesn't "approve" of that behavior in any way, it's just that no one is able to stop it.
I'm not so certain of a concrete "good", but I've met enough demons to believe in evil. -
Quote:While I agree that the superhero genre requires a bit of moral clarity, there were a lot of shades of grey even in the Silver Age.Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
No, it's a fair point. When I said "superhero comics", I was talking largely about the Big Two's comics of, oh say the late Silver Age, because that's what I think of when I think "superhero comics" - because that was when I was in what the marketing people would call the prime target demo.
That said, the City of Heroes universe has always been pretty apparently reflective of that same era. CoH's world design, its... its flavor owes a lot to the Mighty Marvel era and its pre-Crisis counterpart over at DC. (I suspect most, if not all, of the original designers were also of about that same age, comics-fan-wise.) So what you just said - "it wasn't there before, so it feels odd to have it now" - holds just as true for the CoH universe, albeit on a more compressed "Internet time" scale. It just feels wrong to start screwing around with Deep Musings on the Nature of Right and Wrong after five years of two-fisted, punch-the-Nazis-in-their-face Silver Age-style action.
Spider-Man is a Silver Age character, and one of the big attractions of the character was that he often felt inadequate and lonely, and he didn't always feel that he did the right thing or that doing the right thing was even in his nature. What makes the character heroic is his response to the screwed up shades-of-grey world he is written into -- he makes a conscious decision to act like the sort of person he wants to be despite his doubts.
The end result is that Spider-Man would *act* with moral clarity, but there were "bad guys" he couldn't touch, bad things happened to good people, good things happened to bad people, and much of the character's strength came as a response to doubt rather than as a result of an absence of doubt.
I guess what I'm saying is that there is room for a superhero's world to have a bit of moral ambiguity as long as the hero personally doesn't, and as long as the "writer" assumes that there actually is an attainable "good" for heros to aspire to despite the apparent uncertainty. -
Quote:This sounds like a good idea.Originally Posted by Lazarus
Too be honest the new system needs more options so we can get back to the old settings that people liked. "Bosses when Solo" needs to be divided into something like "Only Named Bosses" and "Random Bosses Allowed" so that those who want to fight that special guy at the end as a boss can without the risk of having the mission take three times longer because every other damn spawn is a boss.
Personally I don't see the big deal with fighting bosses. Some power sets are a PITA, but if I'm vulnerable to a certain thing, getting hit by a few minions or LTs is as much a threat as a boss.
I mostly play red side, but I can't think of an AT which can't handle a boss pretty easily. Pulls with a boss + LTs or whatever might get hairy when solo, but if fights weren't challenging I'd rather just get XP for walking into the mission so I could get it done with faster.
I get really disappointed when I see a group of minions-only. They die in 1-2 hits from pretty much anything, which isn't enough to even get started with. LTs are a little better, but they take like 3-4 shots to down. Bosses are the first level that even takes effort, everything else just dies to AOEs.
Now if there were an EB in every group, then I'd be annoyed, but even named bosses are rarely EBs.
Still I wouldn't mind players having the option to see fewer bosses as long as I still could get them in almost every group. -
Quote:I've been playing for about 9 months now, but mostly stick to the red side just because it's a lot easier to level through. On the blue side I keep getting quests sending me to meet people who don't have missions for me because I'm too low for the zone, or people who would have had missions for me if I had been sent to them 5 levels ago.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I used to be on the gimme new stuff instead of redoing the old junk side of the fence, but lately I've been running through a bunch of launch content with a critical eye, and in the interest of retaining new players it's got to go- either replace it, or re-work it.
As one of those old timers who got bored with the low level game a long time ago and started farming or PL'ing past it I'd actually forgotten how bog-awful it really is. Yes, you can largely avoid it if you know which contacts and zones to visit, but new players don't know that. They get dumped off in Atlas or Galaxy, most likely talk to their origin contact there and are thus cast down into the mire of wretchedly cookie-cutter, ridiculously travel intensive and pointlessly repetitive original content.
With the recent changes aimed at opening up all the game's content to every character regardless of level it seems like a good time for someone to make a pass over the low level launch content. Even if they don't want to trash it and start over, a team tasked with eliminating pointless travel, sprucing up mission text, imposing some varity and eliminating the plethora of idiotic fedex missions would GREATLY improve the experience.
I'm not one to hold the game's age against it on the whole, but I make an exception for the launch content. It wasn't that great 5 years ago, and it's ridiculous and embarassing that it's the first game experience new players are offered in the year 2009.
One of the smarter things about the CoV design as opposed to CoH is that there is no where you can go from Mercy other than the zones you should be going to after Mercy. There is no where you can go from Port Oakes other than Cap and Mercy. So on red side you are around level 20 before you really have a choice about what zone to go to next, and at that point you have contacts calling you from Sharkhead.
The only way I know how I ought to be progressing on the blue side is by looking at which zones the villain mayhem missions send you to -- the transit connections, gates, and contacts you get sent to all have almost nothing to do with what levels a zone is appropriate for.
That's the big reason I just can't get into playing hero-side -- the starting zones make me never want to play again. -
It makes a difference whether you are playing heroes or villains mostly. Infinity for example is generally the third most active server, but red-side there can get very lonely for a new player who does not yet have a regular group that they run with.
I normally play my villains the most, and they are on Freedom. There is occasional lag, but it's easy to find teams too. On the hero side smaller servers seem easier to deal with, but I really don't play my heroes much. -
While CoH wasn't bad in Boot Camp for me, it does seem much smoother in OS X. I've got a 24" iMac, 2.8GHz, 4GB, Radeon 2600HD 256MB.
In Vista I didn't notice so much lag in Arachnos bases, but the game was choppier overall even though I ran it at lower detail settings than I do in OS X.
I think it's because CoH uses OpenGL, but Vista is Direct3D. When you play CoH in Vista the graphics go through an emulation layer. I think it's possible to download specific OpenGL drivers for Vista, but you need to enable a compatibility mode which disables the Aero UI. On top of that, OpenGL drivers have a lower priority since almost all newer games use Direct3D, Direct3D the default standard on Windows, and default Direct3D is usually faster than OpenGL on Windows.
(Sorry, if I'm fuzzy on how Vista works, both the games I used it for have Mac versions now so I really don't use it anymore.)
On the Mac side, OS X uses OpenGL heavily, and Apple is constantly tweaking it. All of the eye candy in OS X uses OpenGL, so when Apple works on UI responsiveness there is usually an OpenGL tweak involved.
Basically you're just going to need to adjust your settings down a bit if you're running Vista.
IMO, CoH is now the gold standard for Cider ports, and I really think that it's use of OpenGL (which OS X understands) rather than Direct3D (which would need to be emulated) is a big part of it. -
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Why is it that the replies in this section are so harsh? There's really no need for that.
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this was what american angel said. if you bothered to look my reply was to her question.
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Sharker_Quint:
for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
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[/ QUOTE ]And american angel's post was about your harsh reply to Jet_Boy. And you're reply to her referenced the OP of the thread (me) giving 2 suggestions (Jet_Boy) . In the post to which american angel was replying, you were responding to Jet_Boy, but said he was talking about red-side and Cap, which was me.
You got confused about who you were talking to twice, and and now you're just trying to lie about it.
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Or maybe when you see "AE" you go into troll mode so fast that you don't bother reading?
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what you did there was a personal attack as i wasn't refering to you in specific.
[/ QUOTE ]When you say "in this thread the OP", that would normally be interpreted to be specific to the OP of the thread. I'm not sure what the censored part of your quote was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't nice, and was directed at me.
In your defense, I don't think you were certain who the OP was and most of your anger is probably directed at "them" in general, but you made a point of singling me out.
You're first couple of posts are unnecessarily rude and obnoxious, and directed more at insulting posters than at the content of their posts. You didn't even bother separating who you were talking to.
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as for the rest of your response, i read perfectly and understand perfectly. what you are doing is trying to play both sides of the fence though. you say you don't want higher lv people in a certain zone in the AE then you say in another post that you are guilty of the same thing yourself and you don't mind it.
[/ QUOTE ]If you read and understood perfectly, you know that I don't think higher level toons should *never* go to low level zones. You are right that I'm playing both sides of the fence, and it's because I think there is room for balance. Lately I just haven't been playing my 50s so much, and I've got to question whether my "helping" is part of what makes things bad.
The main people that would move if the devs took my suggestion would be XP farmers. If you plan to do 50 levels inside AE, you need to keep up with your enhancements along the way (unless someone is just letting you doorsit, which seems unpopular recently). It's not a big deal to the 50s to go virtually anywhere, but if your focus is on maximizing your XP per hour then taking an extra five minutes to keep your enhancements up to date would motivate you to go elsewhere.
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That's why something needs to be done to make the lowbie zones lowbie friendly. Cap is a particular problem because there is no alternative zone to go to, and you need to go there to catch the ferry elsewhere.
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so what are you saying here? that the only reason you go to cap is to catch a ferry to another zone and you hate seeing broadcast flying by? and it is by no means the only zone to go to to go to somewhere else. read memphis-bills post up a few posts and you will see this.
[/ QUOTE ]For level 15-20 villains, yes it is the only zone. You don't get quests in that range elsewhere. And you can't go around it because you can't pick up the ferry to the other islands in Port Oakes or Mercy. (Though I guess you could take the Pocket D from Port Oakes to Sharkhead, but you'd still be left with the problem of nothing to do when you get to Sharkhead.)
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...when the level 40+ players spamming for AE can't be bothered to actually use the AE channel.
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have you actually bothered to tell people about this channel? most of them don't even know it's there. but then again it would be unreasonable to ask them to set up a different tab just like you claim it to be unreasonable to ask you to do the same.
[/ QUOTE ]Oh, I fully understand the irony. But it's a lot more reasonable to ask high-level players to fiddle with their chat than to do it to lowbies, since many lowbies are likely to be completely unfamiliar with the game.
Now if the devs were able to prompt people to use that channel by making it set up by default, then that might change things. But either way the problem is one for the devs to solve, not the players.
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"AE shouldn't yield XP", or "AE shouldn't yield tickets".
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your idea could have gone in any number of these threads seeing as how it deals with rewards.
[/ QUOTE ]Have you read those threads? Most of them are aimed at doing something so drastic that people won't use AE any more.
If there were a generalized AE suggestion thread and it were kept free of flames then that would be useful. But there isn't. -
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Besides level-appropriate arcs and such, I assume you mean. Some of us *do* run non-AE content.
[/ QUOTE ]Not saying you don't. The whole reason the AE spam is bugging me so much right now is that I'm in the process of leveling characters on a more active server (red-side on a low-pop server there are times when the search really doesn't show anyone in your level range).
I don't think that higher level toons should never go into lower level zones. But the lower level zones need to be made better for lowbies.
Honestly if everyone congregated at the AE in Nerva, St. Martial, or Sharkhead then I wouldn't be so bothered, because those zones overlap enough that you could skip one if the spam really annoys you. But for about 5 levels you're too high to get missions in Port Oakes and too low to get them in Sharkhead, so Cap is the only option.
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If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
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You talk about strawmen - and bring up "that was for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed," like that's an issue remotely related to "level appropriate zones." Outside of TOs, that's an issue for *everyone* (and I use "issue" very loosely in this case.)
Plus, you still get IO recipe drops and salvage drops - in fact, teaming with lowbies often helps in those cases (at least with salvage, and it certainly doesn't hurt someone like me to get the low level IO recipes. Saves me money as I don't have to buy as many to craft them for the "lowbie bin."
[/ QUOTE ]Which doesn't change the fact that you couldn't use your rewards instantly like you claimed.
Whether you have to go to a different zone to use the ticket vendor or the store to get something useful, you're still traveling. Inventions and salvage both require a trip somewhere else to be useful either way.
The thing is that as things are now, the ticket vendor is a *lot* more convenient for people that are leveling. You get your DOs or SOs right next to where you are doing your missions, don't have to pay an arm and a leg for them, only get the ones you need, and can mostly stay up-to-date on them while still saving up infamy/influence.
If you're doing regular missions, you while often need to go to whole different zones for enhancements, and you can't stay up to date on all of them without either trading inf from another toon or playing the market a lot.
My suggestion would just make either method equally convenient/inconvenient.
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If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
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Or, if you didn't want the recipe (standard IO or not-particularly wanted set,) you could sell them at any store, and as for crafting - I have yet to run across a base without the nice, cheap invention table, accessible in any zone with a portal.
You don't "have" to go to an auction house. Even if you feel you have to, that has nothing to do with level-appropriateness, as they're scattered all over.
[/ QUOTE ]Any of which takes you outside of the AE building.
I don't find making use of rewards from normal missions to be impossible, and the time spent running around is usually about the same as a typical beer/bio break. But AE removes that travel. I think that putting AE on more level terms with the rest of the game would help balance things out a bit without breaking the rest of the system.
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Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
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... what? I'm assuming you mean "store/auction house" for "useful." And again - stores are in every zone, base portals in every zone, auction houses spread throughout the levels - both above and below you.
[/ QUOTE ]If you're leveling instead of just selling things then the stores in every zone don't help you, just the ones in the zone which is appropriate to your level. And often those stores don't sell enhancements for the lowest or highest levels that might have missions in the zone.
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If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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"Pretty frequently?" Please. Yes, I run mixed level teams. No, they don't have to leave "pretty frequently."
[/ QUOTE ]I would call you on that, but maybe blue side is different. I know there is a lot more overlap.
I know that level 20s can get missions in Sharkhead, but they can't buy anything there until they are high enough for level 25 SOs. So the lower level players and all the lackeys have to go back to Cap very frequently. And since they are lower level, everything is red or purple to them which means they need to keep their enhancements up to date to stay effective, but they level a lot faster than the rest of the team.
When you get to the other villain zones it's pretty much the same, there is almost no overlap at the stores. If you just run one mission maybe no one has to leave, but if you do a story arc or a bank then you see it a lot.
I really can't think of a regular mission team where no one had to leave the zone to buy enhancements.
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I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
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... you're kidding. Funny, Cap seems to be the place FOR PLing redside. And of course, nobody has to do so in any case. I see far fewer lowbies in the high level zones - post AE, it was almost spooky to go into PI and not see farm/PL spam. Then I realized how *nice* it was.
[/ QUOTE ]A couple of things here.
First, lowbies going to the top level zone seems to be a blue-side problem. On the red side if I pulled a level 16 into Grandville it's because *I* couldn't handle something alone but thought a squared-away lowbie was better than no help at all.
Second, whether you want to PL or not, Cap is the only place a young villain can go. The ferry and the black helicopters both only lead there. You run out of missions in Port Oakes several levels before you can pick up missions in Sharkhead. If you don't want to PL, you are stuck wading through the spam anyway. See the problem?
Third, blue-side rerolls go to Cap to spam for PL teams, the red-side teams form up in Mercy. Most of the farming is level 54 bosses, and those teams usually don't take anyone below 40 (though some make the cut at 30). I know that I don't do that on my 50 brute, but I could practically solo farms on that toon, and I'd rather notch difficulty down to match the players on the team than exclude people. It's faster just running normal missions or catching a LTs team forming in Mercy, but those just aren't as obvious because there's a lot less spam in Mercy.
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I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever.
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... so make your own team? I don't see the problem.
[/ QUOTE ]I do make teams, who doesn't?
It's pretty hard to manage in Cap because of the AE spam. You can work in tells, but if you're trying to talk to a level 15-20 player who's not already in a mission, they're stuck in the spam.
And you can't use the broadcast to set up a team, because the LFM will be off the screen before anyone can read it.
But just because I can do cheetah-flips to form teams in Cap, doesn't mean that's the way it *should* be. Especially when you consider that the AE spam wouldn't be a problem if the spammers were considerate enough to use a different channel for it.
It's frustrating when you can't use zone chat to talk to other people leveling in a zone because people that are much higher leveled won't just say "54 boss AE team LFM 40+, need kin" one time and then shut up.
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Most of the time they are polite, but a couple of times I've had people tell me I should level up more before joining an AE team. Maybe if they don't want to get tells from level 18s, they shouldn't be recruiting in level 18 zones?
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Or perhaps they're just happening to like being in a "crossroads" zone - Cap is the only zone wth ferries going to both lower (Oakes, black helicopter line to Mercy) and higher level zones. Not to mention the RWZ, Cimerora (which needs another exit, IMHO) and the university, portal, Bloody Bay, and auction house - all right together. It's pretty much "downtown" for redside.
[/ QUOTE ]The crossroads thing has a lot to do to it. Before AE it was pretty normal for mission teams to send at least one person to recruit in Cap even if the team was forming elsewhere. But that never got in the way of the lowbies leveling through the zone; not that I remember anyway.
I don't think the AE people are going there just to get in the way -- they are there because it is by far the most convenient zone to work out of on the red side. That's why my proposed solution is about making it a bit less convenient.
The thing is that for leveling, it's not a crossroads, but a choke point. Now that so many players are spending *all* their time in the zone, it's become a really annoying part of leveling.
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Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
[/ QUOTE ]You're trying to build a strawman by implying that I don't want higher levels to ever go into lower level zones. I didn't say that, I just think that there ought to be incentive for them to spend some time in higher level zones.
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Again, there already is - level appropriate missions. If people are tired of those, *shrug* let them team with whoever they want, where they want, without being penalized. No reason to try to affect peoples AE missions and teaming just because you dont' like what you're perceiving.
[/ QUOTE ]It wouldn't effect your AE teaming. Stores have been geared toward limited levels before and it didn't stop you from grouping with people of different levels. The worst "penalty" I suggested would have you work in one zone and then go to a different one at the end of the day to spend your tickets. It's no more of a "penalty" than you get for running regular missions with mixed levels.
You talk as if you would somehow be banned from ever working with lower level players. My goal would just be to make the convenience factor more similar to normal missions, and provide inventive for higher levels to occasionally go to higher level zones.
I'd be all for leaving everything alone if the AE farmers didn't get in the way, but they get in the way. They won't use separate channels for coordinating AE teams, which renders the zone-chat non-functional for people leveling in the zone.
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On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there.
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"Need" to? Other than it being the only entrance to Cimerora, no, you don't "need" to go back frequently. The only things I can do in Cap that I can't do elsewhere are:
- Go to bloody bay
- Go to cimerora
- Tailor missions (2 of the 3.)
- One strike force.
[/ QUOTE ]You're arguing against yourself here. You just talked about how Cap is a crossroads and everything is easily available there. There are many things which exist in some but not all zones, but Cap has all of them. While you wouldn't necessarily have to go to Cap in particular, you do need to go somewhere else and Cap has everything you might need to travel for. -
Jet_Boy:
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1) Set AE to auto adjust players running AE missions to be zone-level-appropriate. If you're above the level of the zone, you auto-mal... if you're lower, you auto-sk. (snip)
[/ QUOTE ]I think this would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It doesn't matter if people are using AE to PL or farm as long as they don't cause problems for people that aren't using it that way.
The auto-SK feature is great on lower pop servers or off-peak hours because it means you don't need to find 4 people of the same level before you can SK/LK the rest. It would be nice if AE story arcs would do it as reliably as the farms do, but I still wouldn't mess with it too much.
It's also a lot harder on lowbies to move up to more dangerous zones than on high-levels to move down. It's easier to hop in an Ouroboros portal for half the trip and make the rest with travel powers through safe zones than it is to hoof it the whole way while avoiding aggro and possibly without decent travel powers.
The fact that travel is so trivial on my higher level toons is a big part of why I didn't really expect people to be so upset about leaving the AE building
IMO AE has been a good thing for the game overall, which is why changes to correct the problem should be relatively small and easy to predict. We know what happens when people doing missions in a zone outside their level have to go to a different zone for enhancements, to buy, to sell, or to invent. We all dealt with it, and it wasn't game-breaking.
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And don't misunderstand... no one's saying that a high level toon shouldn't go to a low level zone. They're are plenty of reasons to go back and forth. But face it guys... clustering in starter zones, then demanding 30+ level toons is just lazy... move on to Founders or St. Martial where you'll find what you're looking for.
[/ QUOTE ]This I agree with.
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2) The other suggestion: Make AE it's own entity (A shard taken over by Doc Aeon?), like Pocket D, the PvP zones, and the RWZ. (snip)
[/ QUOTE ]This is a pretty good idea. The only issue I'd see is that it hurst the "up for anything" players, but then again they weren't paying attention to what was going on in the zones their level if they were camping out in lowbie zones.
I think better would be to give AE it's own chat channel, with a button on the chat box so people don't ignore it like they do now, then link all the various AE buildings together. Make it so you can enter the same mission with your team from any zone. Since AE missions are supposed to be virtual, being able to enter them from different places makes sense story-wise. I just don't know if it's practical to program that way.
Either way you're getting into a lot of work for the devs.
DMystic:
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I like your first idea but there is a problem with it in regards to the villain side.
Grandville the only Villain 40+ zone does not have an AE building(which makes sense for story reasons)
So how would St Martial be handled?
[/ QUOTE ]I actually hadn't thought about Grandville because my higher villains spend so little time there. Part of why I don't is that I'm used to it not having the basic things you need to "live" in a zone, so once I hit 50 through the missions there I don't bother checking back. My newer characters haven't even been doing 40-50 there.
I could see one of two solutions: either put an AE building in Grandville or just let the St. Martial one sell up to level 50 items.
Frankly, I don't know the story for Grandville very well at all, so I'm unsure why an AE building in Grandville wouldn't make sense (my 50s are on a low pop server so that whole level range was too dead to really get into the story). Or why it would make less sense than the one in RWZ at any rate
I think making the AE in St. Martial cater to toons up to level 50 would still solve some problems. Most importantly, level 49s or 50s can still work reasonably well with level 30+ as long as the lower levels are SKed or LKed. By 30 power sets and enhancements are complete enough that sidekicking is possible without just giving those toons a free ride. So anything going out on Broadcast would at least be limited to players that might be interested, and who might be allowed on the team.
The zones prior to St. Martial would still have a bit more normal population distribution, and putting levels 30 to 50 all in one zone isn't nearly as bad as putting 15-50 in the same zone. Also Nerva overlaps with St. Martial a great deal, so if a player wanted to go to a less trafficked zone there is at least an option. My problem with Cap is that you can't avoid going there; you can skip St. Martial if you want to.
Making the St. Martial AE "end-game" for the red side seems like it would work well-enough if putting one in Grandville is out of the question.
Another effect of spreading out the level range a bit is that it would make AE story arc teams more viable. Right now if a player is not in the zone with the AE, it's a pretty safe bet that they want nothing to do with AE, but in the AE zone it's hard to get past all the farmer spam. AE missions are like regular missions in that they normally don't auto-SK, so being able to use the zone chat to recruit people of similar levels might be a help.
Sharker_Quint:
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for 3 months now there have been about 1000 threads just like this started for no reason other then to [censored] because people aren't playing with the OP's. in this thread th OP decided to address 2 different things. one of which will end up hurting the game and the other which i just mentioned before this sentence.
[/ QUOTE ]Or maybe when you see "AE" you go into troll mode so fast that you don't bother reading?
I did not address 2 different things in my OP; I made one suggestion and separated it into a single paragraph. If it were a TLDR issue you would have read and understood the single suggestion. Jet_Boy made 2 suggestions, and your post is tagged as a response to him, but you made references to Cap and "since you play red side" both of which were things I mentioned but Jet_Boy didn't.
So either you failed to comprehend my post, or you failed to comprehend Jet_Boy's. And in either case you didn't let your ignorance make you more careful about what you say. And in both cases you let your emotions cloud what you believe about someone else.
Are you really able to say that "there are 1000s of threads just like this" when you are unable to read and understand two posts in the same short thread? You just see "AE" and come out with canned responses without bothering to read.
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many of us are getting sick and tired of these threads popping up for no reason other then the OP's of all these threads refussing to follow the rules and search first before making a new post.
[/ QUOTE ]You are assuming I didn't use the search on the forums the same way you assumed I didn't use search in the game -- you were wrong on both counts.
Search on the forums and on Google didn't reveal any suggestion about limiting what you could purchase with AE tickets to what you could normally purchase in the zone. What I did find was a whole ton of plain hate threads, or "suggestions" like: "AE should be removed from the game", "AE should only be available to level 50s", "AE shouldn't yield XP", or "AE shouldn't yield tickets". The most constructive discussion I can find is about removing the auto-SK, but that's still a whole different thing than just changing which zones the rewards are available in.
I've actually been thinking about this for several days, and have done quite a few searches to see if there is an appropriate place. Maybe their is and I'm just missing it.
Look, if you want to argue my idea, then go ahead and argue it. But drop the false assumptions and the bad manners.
The whole reason I'm leveling a bunch of new characters through the AE spam zone now is that I wasn't happy with the activity level red-side on a low-pop server, so I searched different level ranges on other servers and found one that was active enough for my tastes. I think that spreading the AE rewards between zones a bit might help with general lack of activity outside of lowbie zones, but I can't say for sure because I specifically picked a server that was active enough for me.
Something to bear in mind is that the lowbie zones still have a *lot* of players that are: new to the game, coming back after a break of "X" years, trying their first villain after 4 years playing heroes, or just trying CoX for something to do while waiting for CO. When you run level 2-15 teams you meet a *lot* of people like that, and it's really unreasonable to ask them to set up some sort of alternate chat for working their way through a zone when the level 40+ players spamming for AE can't be bothered to actually use the AE channel.
That's why something needs to be done to make the lowbie zones lowbie friendly. Cap is a particular problem because there is no alternative zone to go to, and you need to go there to catch the ferry elsewhere. -
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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... which your suggestion would *dis*courage.
[/ QUOTE ]Only if you never group with people outside your level range. And never use the bank, auction, or university.
There is plenty of incentive for being in zones outside your level range, but little incentive to go to level-appropriate zones.
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Besides, you say that's how it was "before AE." It hasn't changed with AE. And exemping down, I get immediate rewards in the drops - as opposed to having to go to a "level appropriate" zone to cash in tickets.
[/ QUOTE ]BS.
If enhancements dropped, you would be extremely lucky to get something that was both for your origin and an enhancement you actually needed. You could trade or else go sell them, then go to your level-appropriate store and buy something you could use.
If recipes dropped you would either have to go to a zone with an auction and sell them, or go to one with an auction and a university to buy the salvage you need and then build them.
Not to mention that the places you had to go to make your drops useful were often in completely different zones and almost never right next to your mission entrance.
If you run missions with mixed levels, people have to leave the zone their working in pretty frequently. Especially if you're taking a bunch of lowbies through high-level missions.
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it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level.
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Best take off those rose-colored glasses before looking at the past. If anything, having lowbies *staying* in lower level zones (because, after all, a higher level may be running a mission there) means they're more likely to be picked up by a level-appropriate team - instead of finding their way to PI or Grandville to be PL'd.
[/ QUOTE ]I've seen more level 15s showing up in the higher level zones now than before AE because Cap Au Diable is their only choice for *not* power-leveling and it's too crowded to use.
I'm not sure what you mean about the lowbies staying in the lower level zones? Most of the AE teams I'm seeing won't accept people below 30. Every time I have a character hit Cap I end up answering one of the AE LFMs, and most of the time I get told that they won't take a level 18 or level 15 or whatever. Most of the time they are polite, but a couple of times I've had people tell me I should level up more before joining an AE team. Maybe if they don't want to get tells from level 18s, they shouldn't be recruiting in level 18 zones?
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Besides, both sides higher level missions still involve running to other zones, even those not "level appropriate."
[/ QUOTE ]You're trying to build a strawman by implying that I don't want higher levels to ever go into lower level zones. I didn't say that, I just think that there ought to be incentive for them to spend some time in higher level zones.
On the red side, you don't ever have to leave Cap Au Diable. In fact, if you go past Cap, you still need to go back frequently. It's the never leaving the lowbie zone that is screwing it up. It was fine when higher levels just came back there to use something there. -
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No. I shouldn't be penalized for seeing my friend playing in a zone multiple levels beneath me and going to join him or her. Conversely, would those lowbies - by going into higher level zones - be denied the rewards? All it would do is shuffle the players around a little.
[/ QUOTE ]This is the way things were before AE. I don't know about you, but my lowbies still got sidekicked into higher level zones and my higher toons still exemplared down to help friends.
Remember then? It wasn't awful, and it wasn't enough to interfere with you teaming with friends. What it did do was encourage you to go to more than one zone.
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If you're having trouble getting onto a team, why not lead one yourself?
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use the damn /search command and send tells to people your lv who aren't greyed out. I know it will be a new concept for you, but it works. try it you may like it.
[/ QUOTE ]Who said I don't do that? I've been leading teams quite a bit lately and I use the search quite a bit.
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oh and this may require you to actually make a new tab for just tells on your chat window which can be done by right clicking on the window, selecting add new tab, naming it tells, put only private tells into it and click ok. then your tells wont get drowned out by broadcast.
[/ QUOTE ]This would be a great idea, if every lowbie you might send a tell to did the same thing. And why shouldn't lowbies be able to use Broadcast to find or organize teams too? Working only in tells is a viable work-around if the people you are sending tells too have them in a separate tab, but broadcasting "Lvl 18ish mission team lfm" would get results a lot faster if it weren't drowned out by the spam of "level 54 AE boss farm LFM lvl 40+, need kin".
If people actually used the AE channels then spam wouldn't be a problem. But you need to actually set up tabs for those, and there is nothing to mouse over which makes the existence of those channels apparent the way the buttons on the chat box do. It's hypocritical that your solution for lower levels is to set up a different sort of chat when the AE spammers won't bother with the channel they were given.
Alternately if there were a way to just avoid the heavy farming zone there wouldn't be so much of a problem. But on the red side you can't. Anyone you might try to talk to who is not in a mission is stuck in the AE spam.
***
I'm really not against AE. Overall it's been a good thing for the game, especially for lower population servers where finding teams was a challenge. I don't want to throw out the baby, but the bath-water needs to go. Frankly I don't care if people were farming mitos or whatever -- that effects them, not me. I don't care if there are AE missions with the objective "Farm, farm, farm" and custom enemies named "Kill ME". I genuinely like the story arcs that people have put together.
But the game was not designed for level 40+ characters to spend most of their time in Cap Au Diable. The *only* reason for leaving Cap between level 1 and level 50 is to do your patron missions, but you can safely skip the patron powers if you wanted to.
The other thing that could help might be to redesign some of the higher level zones to be more convenient. All the things you need are in Cap and it is connected directly to every zone except the Pocket D, so there is no reason that a level 40 might be elsewhere unless they are already on a mission.
At any rate, my suggestion just makes the AE stores conform to the standards of other stores in the game. It's something we all dealt with before AE, and it wasn't a big enough problem to stop us from teaming with other levels, it was just enough to make us spend most of our time in zones that were appropriate to our level. -
Items that you can purchase with architect tickets ought to be in the same level range as those available from stores in the zone. This would mean a level 41 could still help lowbies with AE missions, but they would still need to go back to a higher level zone to buy enhancements and such. This would be a small incentive for higher level players to go somewhere other than Cap Au Diable or Atlas Park, without being any more inconvenient than going to stores outside of AE.
***
I don't play on the blue side much, but I know that on the red side AE has turned levels 15-20 into a major headache. This is because Cap Au Diable is the hub for AE farming, but it's impossible to reach level 20 without working through that zone. There is no alternative path; you go through cap or you don't level. But the players coming to Cap for the AE are higher levels, and generally don't allow players below 30 on the team. So as a lowbie working your way through Cap, you are stuck in a zone where no one recruiting for a team will take you and if you try and put up a recruiting broadcast you'll be rapidly spammed out of existence.
Past level 20 the red-side zones are a little sparse, but you can still get teams if you are willing to lackey (or be lackeyed). It's not as easy as before AE, but it's not impossible. I can imagine that blue side has more problems with low-population-density though, since there are more zones and missions are farther apart.
I think the root problem is that except for missions, there is no reason for going into the higher level zones. Cap Au Diable connects directly to every zone except for the Pocket D. Cap also has a tailor, bank, black market, and university -- it's the only zone a villain needs to go to, and you can go directly to any other if you want to for any reason. On top of that, the trainer and fateweaver are both a couple of seconds away from the AE building.
So if want to spread players between the zones a bit you need to give them some reason to leave Cap. Having to go to another zone to buy things with their AE tickets seems like a good reason. -
The only problem I see with MA farms is the accompanying spam. I can still find regular teams, or put them together myself. Except for the spam, nothing about MA gets in my way.
I mostly don't play blue side, so I don't quite get the fuss about Atlas Park -- it takes like an hour to solo enough to go elsewhere, and if the spam bothers you that much you can just go to Galaxy City instead. On the red side, Cap annoys me a lot though. The problem with the AE spam in Cap is that there is no other way for a villain to level from 15-20. Before you get to Cap you can find teams, and after you leave you can find teams, but for five levels no one that is in the zone leveling can penetrate the spam.
There are a few simple things that could be done to fix the problems:
1. Limit AE rewards to levels that would normally be available from stores in that zone. You could still bring your level 42 to group with buddies in AP or Cap, but you'd need to go to a level-appropriate zone to spend your tickets. This would encourage players to gravitate towards zones where they could play non-AE content, while still being only a minor hurdle for those who genuinely want to group with friends of lower levels.
2. Make an AE chat channel. Not something that you have to mess around with the chat interface to set up, but something with a button on the chat box. Something that every player mousing over interface items for the first time while learning the game will see. Announce it, and put it in the message of the day.
3. Give higher level zones the same access as lower level ones. The reason that Cap Au Diable is the hub for CoV is that it connect directly to every other zone except for the Pocket D (and you can teleport there). In addition, the trainer is near the AE building, and the zone has a Black Market, Tailor, and University. End game zones ought to be the same; lower level zones will be populated by alts and friends of lowbies, so there's no reason that end-game zones shouldn't have all the same conveniences.
The general idea is to encourage people to go to the right zones for their level rather than crowding into a low level zone. It's especially annoying since many of the people crowding the low level zones will refuse to team with people that are the right level for the zone. -
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Honestly, modest costumes aren't realistic for certain types of fighting, for either male or female. Superheroes lean heavily towards hand to hand fighting, and when your enemy is close enough to lay hands on you they can easily avoid most protective clothing. In addition, things like body armor make really great handholds, making it really easy for your opponent to throw you around. It doesn't matter how strong you are, if you give your enemy a good enough grip to get your feet off the ground, you're going pretty much wherever they want to put you.
If a character has more than a quarter inch of hair, you have no business talking about how "practical" or "impractical" their outfit is -- if you have hair you aren't prepared to fight. Necks are weaker than arms, and hair tends to be stronger than neck muscles, so hair is nothing more than an invitation to getting your face slammed into the nearest hard object. Almost all heroes and villains have hair that is way too long to fight in, after which point it's just silly to worry that their shirt looks too easy to pull off in a fight.
Really, once a character has hair they're already so hopelessly impractical and vain that nothing else is even close in importance. (Which is why the Frank Miller incarnation of Catwoman shaved her head.)
Capes are straight out.
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You sound like you fight like a girl.
Take care.
[/ QUOTE ]I fight like I want to live, if that's what you mean.
On my last Iraq tour my platoon did a lot of snatch missions, helped quiet a few prison riots, and escorted tens of thousands of detainees from one place to another. I was always outnumbered, and usually armed only with pepper spray or a taser (which has 1 shot). So if trouble started the goal was to end the fight as rapidly as possible, and to do it without injuring ourselves (since we might end up fighting tomorrow and every other day for the rest of the year, even little injuries could end up costing). Losing one fight means you die.
Pulling hair like in a high school catfight won't do much of anything. However, grabbing a handful of scalp lets you control a guy's head, usually causes him to grab weakly at your hand so you can get control of at least one of his hands, lets you expose their neck for a brachial stun or a choke, and gives you great leverage for taking a guy to the ground. On top of that most guys don't defend their hair because they don't expect it to be used against them.
There's a lot of dirty things I might do in a fight -- grabbing hair is not the only dirty trick -- but my goal was always to get my enemy under control in 5 to 10 seconds so his 5 buddies wouldn't have time to figure out what was happening.
So yeah, I don't fight like a man, but I'm alive, my buddies are alive, and whenever there was violence I was able to end it so swiftly that it didn't have the chance to escalate.
Anyway my point was that it's really no more realistic to show someone that fights every day prancing around in a bikini than it is to show them with long hair. Either one is pure fantasy. People throwing punches rather than grappling is mostly fantasy too. Any kick aimed above the knee is fantasy. (To be fair, people do throw punches and kicks in fights, but that takes a long time to cause enough damage that you can't fight back.) But fantasy is fun and reality sucks. -
Honestly, modest costumes aren't realistic for certain types of fighting, for either male or female. Superheroes lean heavily towards hand to hand fighting, and when your enemy is close enough to lay hands on you they can easily avoid most protective clothing. In addition, things like body armor make really great handholds, making it really easy for your opponent to throw you around. It doesn't matter how strong you are, if you give your enemy a good enough grip to get your feet off the ground, you're going pretty much wherever they want to put you.
If a character has more than a quarter inch of hair, you have no business talking about how "practical" or "impractical" their outfit is -- if you have hair you aren't prepared to fight. Necks are weaker than arms, and hair tends to be stronger than neck muscles, so hair is nothing more than an invitation to getting your face slammed into the nearest hard object. Almost all heroes and villains have hair that is way too long to fight in, after which point it's just silly to worry that their shirt looks too easy to pull off in a fight.
Really, once a character has hair they're already so hopelessly impractical and vain that nothing else is even close in importance. (Which is why the Frank Miller incarnation of Catwoman shaved her head.)
Capes are straight out. -
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If everybody was SKed to maybe 3 levels below the person who set up the mission, that would do a lot to make regular missions attractive compared to AE.
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3 levels below?!
This might work in an AE farm, but not in a real mission where, y'know, the enemies hit back. Just imagine a level 10 trying to do Frostfire when everyone else on the team is level 7...
[/ QUOTE ]Running with pick up groups usually winds up in a bigger spread than that already in my experience. You end up with 4 or 5 players within 3 levels of each other and then the rest of the team lackeyed to them.
You act as though people didn't run real missions with a three level spread in the team before.
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A sidekicked or lackeyed character is -1 to the other character, not -3. The only reason you could possibly have to want most of the team to be -3 to the mission is for PL'ing.
I hope auto-SK is never proliferated to regular content. If anything I'd sooner see it gone from AE, because that's a major factor in making AE the farm factory it currently is.
[/ QUOTE ]Actually I was thinking -3 or so to give an advantage to regular sidekicks or lackeys.
I haven't played blue side past level 20, but on the red side you don't turn people away from teams because they are 3 levels below whatever the mission is set for. You'll never complete a story arc if you do that. You would be lucky to get a balanced team without going to an earlier zone to recruit a few lackeys.
Once my villains hit the mid 40s they pretty much stopped seeing teams bigger than 2. I could lackey one person to work with me, but finding 4 people (so we could then lackey another 4) was pretty much straight out. Occasionally I would malefactor down and help people in the more populous level ranges, but then I'd still need to go back to soloing in order to level or finish my stories. My regular way of completing AV missions was to take them early, then gain a level or two before doing the mission.
The great thing about AE is that it makes it easy to put teams together because of the auto-SK. It's not like there were ever 8 people my level all looking for teams before.
I don't understand what the obsession with farming is. Yeah, I would prefer not to do another "kill stuff" mission ever again, but the alternative was spending all my time soloing, and I like that even less. Auto-SK takes care of the biggest obstacle to teaming, because if you have 8 people from the same faction online at once and looking for a team, that's all you need. -
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If everybody was SKed to maybe 3 levels below the person who set up the mission, that would do a lot to make regular missions attractive compared to AE.
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3 levels below?!
This might work in an AE farm, but not in a real mission where, y'know, the enemies hit back. Just imagine a level 10 trying to do Frostfire when everyone else on the team is level 7...
[/ QUOTE ]Running with pick up groups usually winds up in a bigger spread than that already in my experience. You end up with 4 or 5 players within 3 levels of each other and then the rest of the team lackeyed to them.
You act as though people didn't run real missions with a three level spread in the team before. -
My Rad/Thermal Corruptor will be getting yellow-orange radiation, as close to transparent as I can make it. The idea is that she emits microwaves, which in comic books are generally represented by "warm" colors.