ioctl

Mmmm... pancakes.

I hope that this whole farming situation has made it apparent to the devs that a lot of people perceive the game's slow leveling speed to be an issue. I don't like farming, and I'm glad they're taking a hard line on it, but just dismissing the whole thing out of hand without examining why it became so prevalent would be a mistake

CoH and CoV are the most altitis-inducing games I've ever played. I've been playing for almost five years and there are still dozens of powersets I've never tried. And I probably never will, because every time I think about creating a new character, I look at all the ones I already have that have been mired in the 20s and 30s and 40s for years. I love playing every one of them, but it's hard to keep at it when you feel like you're not making progress.

Maybe it wouldn't have been such a good idea a few years ago, but I think the game is at a point now where a faster path to 50 wouldn't such a big deal. You don't have to worry about missing content anymore, thanks to flashback and TF exemplaring. And, if you want to be cynical about it, now that we can buy character slots, altitis is good for NCsoft's bottom line.

Farming is bad, and it needs to be curbed, but people do it for a reason, and ignoring that reason in the rush to condemn would be a missed opportunity.

That's right. You can only have one souvenir, and it gets awarded whether you succeed or fail at the final mission.

I have a timed final mission in my arc with two very different endings, and I had to be somewhat... ambiguous with my souvenir text to make it work.

There's a computer in the first mission of my arc that someone has been playing NetHack on... poorly.

Agreed. I really wish they'd remove ALL of the player-specific effects from the MA powersets. Most regular critters don't have those, so why do MA ones? I thought the whole point of those bonuses was to give players an edge.

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Okay, this one puzzles me. Why are Prisoners exploitable?

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Very very low risk (they only have a punch and throwing rocks). I don't know how much xp they gave but it must've added up when people load the whole mish with them. Obvious solution would be to make them worth almost nothing at all, then we could have them back for the flavor.

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The lieutenants and bosses do have guns, and as far as I know, the minions never spawned in architect missions. At one point I tried to use Prisoners as the main enemy group for one of my missions, and I ended up with a map full of lieutenants.

In fact, I suspect that if they were in fact removed for being exploitable, that's probably why. Prisoners do give lower XP than other groups, but their lieutenants still give quite a bit more than an equal-level minion.

Still, it would've been nice to at least get some acknowledgement on this, even after the fact, so people could at least know why their arcs are randomly breaking....

I logged in this morning to find my story arc unplayable. I edited it and got a "The required option Enemy Group One is not set." error for a battle in one of my missions. The battle was supposed to be Prisoners vs. Security Guards, but when I tried fixing it, Prisoners weren't in the list of factions. So I removed the battle, republished, and it works now.

I did a quick search for other story arcs involving Prisoners, and all the ones I tried were similarly broken.

Is this a bug, or did I miss a patch note somewhere?

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AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.

In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!

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Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand times over.

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Please add a functionality into the Badges that allows us to view the Souvenir text from an arrow just like Souvenirs.

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Or just have the TF contact give out the souvenir to anyone who has the badge.

- wf