konshu

I'm in the US, but I like the idea of a contest especially for overseas players as a way of highlighting their presence in the community. It's a way of bringing people together.

It could be called the "Architect of Merit" contest, with the winner having their arc boosted up to Dev's Choice status and a blurb about the arc published on the front page of the website. If there are enough players from the different regions, there could even be country-specific awards (like "Architect of Merit: Australia, 2010").

As for winning swag ... I was looking at what was being offered and wasn't really tempted. I mean, it's nice for Paragon Studios to be running contests and such, and giving prizes, but I don't think I'd even bother putting an ATI 3650 graphics card in my system. I'm fine with ATI, but that's an old card! The 5750 would be the comparable current model, and the 4650 would be last year's model. The 3650 is from 2 years ago and I think it is the oldest generation of graphics cards being actively supported in drivers by ATI. These are so old I'm pretty sure the price on them has actually gone up! lol

Maybe it's the keyboard, mouse, and the rest that would be the real value for someone. I don't know. Or maybe people just like free stuff.

As for winning the contest, clearly it's important to some people. I'm sure they have their reasons. Probably they just want people to play and appreciate their arcs. And let's face it, it's hard to guide people to your arcs.

My impression is that in the beginning people played AE looking for new content. When they found a lot of incomplete work with spelling errors, nonsensical plots and broken features they stopped looking. AE became primarily about farms. Now the farming is greatly reduced, and people still can't easily find the better arcs. Not many players are looking any more, I suspect. I have 3 arcs up, and while they are decently rated for quality according to the star ratings there's been no one playing any of them for months.

Now I'm aware there are forum threads that are supposed to guide you to the AE gold. But I think the in-game system needs improvement if it requires you to go to the forum to find out which arcs are considered "good." Also, just because someone reviewed an arc and decided it was good doesn't mean it really was. Everyone has their own way of measuring such things, and I can't say that I've been terribly impressed with any arc I've seen mentioned in the review threads. Nor have I been impressed with the few Dev's Choice arcs I've played. Maybe I've just been unlucky in my choices. Maybe I can't be impressed with ANY product of the highly restricted MA toolset. Or maybe I have +resist on my impressability that is impossible to overcome. (Quite possible.)

Anyway, back to the original complaint voiced on this thread - about allowing players from nations other than US/Canada to get recognition through a contest - why not remove the awards and simply give honors to the lucky winner?

Or if you can do it, give an in-game award, like a badge and/or some merits. Say 100 merits to each "Architect of Merit" ...?

Just my 2 inf, plus a little spare change.

I wonder how much the guest authors struggled with the various constraints we face in using MA. It had to have been an issue.

It is still super easy to pass 100% usage on an arc, and there are so few options for creative expression.

I know whenever I'm working on an arc I feel like I'm trying to program a Timex Sinclair, TRS-80, or C-64.

I'm all for it. If you ask me, inspirations should have been available from hospitals from the very beginning of the game. I expected it the first time I ended up in a hospital, back in 2005. To me it makes total sense.

I'd also make them available at the field hospital in The Hollows.

However, in my experience the devs just kinda do their own thing, and with their own sense of timing. Like, for years there were no stores in KR, but they finally arrived about the time we got the temp travel powers and it wasn't so important. And the field hospital in The Hollows was so late in arriving it's almost like "what's the point?"

So I wouldn't hold my breath. Inspirations from hospitals will probably arrive in CoH/V shortly after we leave Paragon and the Rogue Isles to play in some different dimension where inspirations are available from roadside vending machines.

Near the end of a defeat-all when the game cycles through the remaining NPCs to add their positions to the map ... maybe it could also issue a "/stuck" command to each NPC, just in case they are wedged into the map?

DA will still be a challenge end-wise, but just think ... you'll be a dark cloud with lightning pouring out!

Along similar lines, I'd like to be able to select music to play in MA missions.

I'm just glad that after years of being tortured by teams that had no idea of what to do in a mayhem or safeguard, or even that there WERE side missions, virtually everyone I play with these days knows about side missions and is willing to do them.

I'm not up for clearing zones, though ... too much like farming for me.

Defeating the Rikti on their own homeworld would not be easy. Remember that Paragon's medical teleportation technology is derived from Rikti tech. We can assume that Rikti defeated on the Rikti homeworld simply go to hospital.

So you may not be able to defeat the Rikti on their homeworld ... but clearly you can farm them. Just set scrappers and fire/kins outside each Rikti hospital.

Yes, unfortunately the devs listed a receptionist at the AE bldg as a "door" on their list of mission doors for Founders. You can click on the receptionist as much as you like, but she doesn't let you enter the mission.

I was with a team doing an arc in Founders a day or two ago, and we ran into the bug. We had to petition a GM to fix it, which involved sitting around for about half an hour (we were doing an arc in ouro).

It sucks, and they should fix it, but I don't know if or when they will get around to it. It's probably not real high on their list of things to do.

I'm playing an /elec scrapper, and I'd have to agree about the sense of squishiness. However, along with what someone else said, it's not so much that the Circle have your number, it is the Vahz. Avoid the Vahz at all costs! lol

Seriously, I just leveled up a traps/arch def soloing a couple of Vahz arcs (including Dr. Vahz) and it was a total cakewalk. I figured I'd do the same with my new scrapper - a juggernaut by comparison to my def - but man ... even blue and green conning Vahz had my number, if they caught me en masse. I'm pretty sure they started smiling when they saw me.

Last night I ran my /elec scrapper through the Synapse TF, which features scads + oodles of Clockwork. It was a much more gratifying experience. No healers or buffs of any sort on the team, just rolling with another scrapper and two blasters. I had to use insps a lot more than normal, and I lacked both Stamina and Health, but I found I was able to herd and clear decent sections of map by myself. That redeemed the toon in my eyes.

Also, once I hit level 20 I was able to grab the self-heal / conserve end power. It recharges pretty quickly, at least with Hasten running. Once I had that I didn't really feel the pinch of not having Fitness (though of course I'll take Fitness now or respec to work it in).

45 here ... unless you subtract the years I spent trapped in an iceberg.

One thing that might be fun would be a set of Oranbega maps similar to the sewer network, which you could use for travel. Just rework some typical Oranbega maps, make all the hallways 50-100% wider (!), and have portals in them that take you from one map to the next. Then have maps that break through into the sewer system or something, allowing egress to a Paragon zone.

Obviously this would not be the best mode of transport, but it could be a sneaky way of adding a new story zone that underlies many of the other zones.

There are several watery areas in zones. Should swinging work over open water?

Should swinging work only in urban areas and skip grassy areas like the Hollows hills and parts of Striga?

Right now I find wasabi peas works best. It's inexpensive, fairly clean, no fuss, and it brings tears of joy to my eyes.

Okay, if any devs are reading this, please note the consensus is:

1) Male run animation looks bad, bad enough to cause players to not make male toons.

2) Male costuming is uninspired and too limited.

Most of my 60+ toons are female, and I'm an older male. If you'd asked me what the gender ratio is in any zone of the game, I'd have guessed that females outnumber males 3:2. But then I have a tendency to overlook the male toons. Just as in real life, I tend mostly to notice the women.

I've been reading thru the various posts here and wondering why it is I've made mostly female toons. I think it boils down to a few things.

1) Costume options for male toons are more limited than the options for females. Either that, or it's just that *I* find them more limiting. For example ... no loincloths, just briefs. Just the one set of wristbands. No denim jackets or vests. No open plain leather jacket, only dress, military, lab, or motorcycle. I never can seem to find the right hairstyle. Stuff like that.

2) The same costume features mean less when used by males. When you put shoulder spikes on a male toon he seems aggressive but ordinary (for a hero or villain), but when you put spikes on a female toon, she seems ultra-aggressive and subversive. When you put skulls on a male toon, to me it seems comically overdone. When you put skulls on a female toon it looks threatening. Somehow, most of the male toons just end up looking goofy to me.

3) Female toons have a more natural movement when they run. The male toon running animation seems based on the Huge model, so even thin or athletic males lumber along like they've never run farther than the distance between their cubicle and the donuts in the break room. The parody of superhero running that we have for males is just pathetic. I can't watch it.

4) Unlike many players, I guess, I've never created a toon that represented me. My toons are all other characters, other people.

5) I don't RP. I play all my toons with the same voice and inclinations, though it's true that if I'm playing a small toon - male or female - I tend to jump around like a little kid.

6) I don't have a predisposition to think of heroes as male. It seems to me that anyone could be a hero, especially if they had super powers.

I have really only two complaints about tp.

1) You can't tp to a target, only to a floor, wall, or end-of-range area.

2) If you're using the tp stealth proc, your stealth gets broken every time you tp. Consequently, every time I'm tping across FF I get sniped, even tho I'm theoretically "stealthed." The irony is that if you want to benefit from the tp stealth proc, you have to stop tping.

I don't see MMOs as being an unusual case in storytelling. At some point someone in the industry brought up that thing about a game being about the player and the player being a cypher and how weird and unusual it all is ... and I think that notion has been a confusing red herring. It's not like that at all.

Stories in a MMO are not about YOU, the player, they're about THEM, the NPCs. As a player you participate in their story, and maybe you have the ability at times to change the course of the narrative to some degree, but it's really all about them and you play a role in unraveling the skein of their story.

As a player you move through this content in order to reveal detail about the game world and the characters in it. It may be told well or poorly, but the tale of the characters and their world is done with the standard tools of storytelling.

And if the storytelling isn't compelling or the content has been replayed too much, then the player is probably farming.

[ QUOTE ]
Perfect Pain is a Fire Thermal Corr.

I had all the debt badges (ALL of them) by level 40.
It was that bad

I rarely even play her now... Because of the Nightmares.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm. I have a Fire/Thermal corr that I don't play because it seemed too easy, though it's true I wasn't focused on soloing. I stopped around level 30.

I'm finding Dark Blast/Thermal to be much more challenging. I'll respec my Dark Blast/Thermal and see if I can get it working better.

[ QUOTE ]
You want WEAK?

I have, in my opinion, the weakest, most oh-god-my-mind boring powerset combo EVAR.

The Fire Armor/Ice Melee Tanker.

This, my friend, is something that, despite my hardest efforts to get above level 32, I could not do it! In fact, it was SO bad, it actually caused me to get sick enough of City Of Heroes to stop playing the game for several months!

Anything that is THAT painful should be considered in your ideas.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that!

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm. I have one of these and it seems much more powerful than my Ice/Ice tank, which is total wimp city by comparison (really just suited to herding). In my experience, Fire/Ice does pretty well solo and with teams.

One of the synergies of the set is that Ice Slick (and Slow in general) allows you to get more value out of Burn. The hold power in the ice tank set does decent damage and can also hold a foe on a Burn patch.

Another thing I enjoy about Ice offense is that you can make use of inexpensive Slow IO sets to gain Acc/Dam/Rech/End, with a side effect of Slow.

Hasten, Fiery Embrace, and Build Up help the Fire/Ice tank as well. I just wish my Ice/Ice had something equivalent to Fiery Embrace + Burn.

[ QUOTE ]
So far, my Cold domination/Dark blast Corruptor has been the most painful/annoying/weak ? character i've ever played. It is lvl 36 now, and im still waiting for the 'it'll get better later.. it'll get better later' >.<

[/ QUOTE ]

Probably the easier dark + cold/ice combination to play would be Ice Blast/Dark Miasma.

However, I would think Dark Blast/Cold Dom should be easier once you have Sleet, esp. if you've picked Hasten + SS as your travel. That way you'd have decent stealth (SS + Arctic Fog), and throwing frequent Sleet + Tentacles should be at least somewhat rewarding. If you keep your Dark attacks coming quickly (via Hasten), the -acc is more likely to take effect and protect you from damage.

I believe I have an even worse set. I've got a Dark Blast / Thermal corr with Flight pool, and I'm struggling to get it to work. Thermal won't give me anything as good as what you're getting from Cold Dom, at least not till I finally get my last two Thermal powers.