peterpeter

$name and $hisher. There is a whole list of commands available from both the in-game help system (type /help in chat) and the instructor in the AE building.

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I can say for sure that if there are several for sale, dropping 1 inf on a 2 million last 5 will not be low enough to get the next sale.

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I list thing with flippers in mind.

Pick a price high enough to avoid their lowball bids, but low enough to undercut their asking price.

Make them work for you.

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When I'm feeling mean, I watch the bid history and then buy or sell for exactly 1 inf more than the flipper is buying at. Actually, I do that when I'm not feeling mean too.

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i know the frustration u are having, after having 2 of my own stories up their since day 1 and have yet to have anyone play them i just said frack that and unpublished them. It was driving me nuts b/c every time i would log on i would just have to go see, b/c u never know! But untill they find a way to delete all the farm and lol i made a mission!" missions its gonna be dam near impossible to get them played unless u have a big SG or a lot oa friends. Or money to pay people to rate your missions like i have seen going around a lot.

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There are two likely explanations. The first is that, for some reason, the missions can't be completed, or it becomes so painfully tedious that no one completes it. Not everyone will rate a mission if they didn't finish it, especially if it was a multi-mission arc and they got stuck on the first one. So it's possible that people have played your mission, but they haven't completed it or rated it.

The other possibility may seem a bit impolite, but it's worth mentioning. The people who aren't looking for farms are looking for stories. Well written stories. If the intro to your mission is written the same way your post was written, then I'm afraid you may be driving away the sort of people you are hoping to attract.

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*Where no were.. Its important nto only to the game but to our language that we correct stupid mistakes such as the secon word in your post.

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No, it's important to Heraclea that his/her idea is clearly communicated. It looks to me like Heraclea has already edited the post to correct the error you pointed out... without fussing or whining about the fact that someone pointed out an error.

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...for making mid-tier salvage prices skyrocket today. Hopefully some of you marketers made out well =) I was crafting for someone's characters and initiated a "gotta have it now" attitude. Paid too much for a lot of stuff just to make sure I got it, so, yeah =)

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Don't be silly. Everyone knows that the only time prices ever go up is when evil marketeers manipulate the market. You must have been shopping at the same time that someone else was coincidentally forcing prices up and making you pay more than you wanted to.

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Yeah I think I finally found it. I guess I get frustrated, it is as simple as hey post here instead, not crap like
/ignorethispatheticspammer

I mean geez I have been playing forever and badge hunting for what seems like longer LOL. I guess I expect something greater than that kind of response.

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I understand why you'd feel frustrated and insulted, but try to consider it from everyone else's point of view. Within minutes of I14 going live, we were buried by "please play my mission" posts. It was really out of control. All other topics were drowned out by the flood of people begging for someone, anyone, to play their missions. It didn't take long for people to run out of patience with that kind of post.

I find it easiest to think of it this way: I start with a copy of the file on my local computer. "Publishing" means copying that file to NCSoft's computer. I can either edit my copy or edit their copy, but an edit made on one is not reflected on the other. "Unpublishing" just means deleting the file from their computer.

It would work the same way if we were talking about Excel files or something instead of mission arcs.

You've already gotten your basic questions answered. I'll just chip in that, if you are full of salvage, you should probably sell it. If you decide later that you need it, you can always buy it back. Just try to sell it for a bit more than the average price, and buy it for a bit less than the average price. That's easy as long as you let your buy and sell orders sit on the market for a day or two, to take advantage of the way prices fluctuate.

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I have had people complain about dialog a few times. But it is mostly dialect, ie the use of "ain't", "gonna", "fixin' to", and "ya'll". I guess because I don't use "yous guys" they don't like it.

People don't normally speak grammatically correct. Which to me give more life to a character.

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I believe that's "y'all".

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It is. Stands for "you all" which is actually grammatically incorrect in itself but I love the South so I'm not complaining.

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One could argue that it is a shortcoming in the English language that we cannot differentiate between singular and plural second person pronouns. Words like y'all, yunz, and youse were all created to fill that gap.

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I have had people complain about dialog a few times. But it is mostly dialect, ie the use of "ain't", "gonna", "fixin' to", and "ya'll". I guess because I don't use "yous guys" they don't like it.

People don't normally speak grammatically correct. Which to me give more life to a character.

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I believe that's "y'all".

I cringed a little when I was writing dialog for some gangsters in a mission recently. I'm sure someone will point out the grammatical errors, but you're right. When people speak, they don't follow the rules of written grammar. On the other hand, written dialog should probably be somewhere between the grammatically correct ("I would like to invite those of you who are present to visit my home again on some future date") and the more realistic gobbledygook that most of us use when actually speaking ("Dudes, seriously. Like, yeah, we should... [waves hand, indicating their current location] y'know. Yeah.")

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I thought I understood the mechanics of the market when it was introduced, but now I am questioning myself.

...

I thought the lowest priced item sold first for whatever offer was higher than asking price, when there is a tie the earliest posted sells. Am I mistaken?


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Ties are stranger than you think, but otherwise that sounds right. It could be a bug or a glitch, or it could be that you're consistently undercut. You could try buying one for 1,999,999 just to see if the others listed are below yours, but of course you'll lose money on it.

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Yeah I figured it out. In the span of about 30 minutes I've managed to go from about 300k inf to over 1 mil using this method. I would have had more but I got confused when I first started and thought I was buying natural SOs when in fact I was buying magic, so I lost a bit of money vendoring them at the natural store xD

But yeah that is an awesome method Memphis. Thanks again for sharing it with me

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Woohoo! Another instant millionaire!

I don't really understand the premise of PvP in a game like this. You're competing with someone, right? But what are you competing on? In a race, you compete on speed. The fastest person wins. Who is supposed to win in PvP?

The person who brings the most friends along?
The person who spends the most on their build?
The person who picked the best powersets?
The stalker?
The person who can actually understand all that diminishing returns stuff?
The group with the best teamwork?
The person with the best reflexes and instincts? And fastest ping?
The highest level character?
The person with the best tactics?

I'm not sure what the goal is supposed to be. It seems like the answer is a haphazard mix of lots of stuff. And some things are sort of paradoxical.

I mean, on the one hand I'm pretty sure no one wants a system where the highest level person automatically wins. But on the other hand, if being higher level doesn't matter at all, then what's the point of leveling? But if you take away levels, then you've pretty much broken the mold on MMORPG's.

But then you look at how the system is implemented, and it seems paradoxical too. The auto-sk/auto-exemp stuff in the zones suggests that levels shouldn't matter. A level 15 and a level 50 should both be on even footing in Bloody Bay. But then you get purple IO's, and suddenly the level 50 has a huge potential advantage. So are they trying to keep them even or trying to give the higher level character an advantage?

What's the goal here?

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Yeah..it's not easy for me though. To be both frank and honest I'm getting a little tired of everyone on the forums being like "it's so easy, I can make x amount by lvl whatever". Well I must be an idiot because I just can't do it. I've tried, I've read different guides, but what I read just doesn't seem to translate to the actual market. I'm either reading outdated stuff, or I'm just really really REALLY unlucky with prices......

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If all you're trying to do is buy DO's and SO's, then it really is that easy, so if it's giving you trouble then something must be wrong. It could be astonishingly bad luck with drops and prices and timing. It's also possible (and I really don't mean to cause offense here) that there is something missing from your understanding of the market or something wrong with the techniques you have tried.

I'm not sure if the Wentworth's 101 guide I wrote is one of the ones you read. It was a while ago, but I still stand by it. It's in the list of guides stickied to the top of the market forum.

Let's try a simple experiment. You saw the post from Memphis Bill above? Try that. Tell us how it goes. If it doesn't work, tell us what went wrong. Maybe we can diagnose the problem. Head to WW. Find SO's. Pick one origin. I like Mutant, because the mutant store in Steel Canyon is so close to the WW. Higher levels are worth more, but that may not be worth fussing about. Just make sure you are getting SO's and not DO's, because the price difference is so big. Set the filter so you only see items for sale. Go through and put in bids for 1500 inf on everything until your market slots are full. Cancel any of those that didn't fill and put in more. Keep going until you have bid on every Mutation SO currently listed for sale. When you're done, if you don't have 10 of them bought yet, leave up as many bids as you can and log off. When you log back on, some of them will probably have filled. Sell 'em all. Profit.

If that doesn't work for you, I'd be curious to know what went wrong.

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Yeah those were the ones that popped up. those three and something else. some kind of robotic valkyrie wings or something, i dont remember what they were called. i just went with demon wings because it looked like it went with my toon.

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Valkyrie wings come with buying the Mac pack. Sound like you hit the jackpot. I have the opposite problem. I got the 57 month vet reward badge about 4 months ago, but I haven't gotten the 60 yet. When I checked my account, it said I'm scheduled to receive it in December. Yeah, I already opened a ticket.

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That was it, thanks!

I notice that screen also gives the option of saving your published mission as a local copy as well. In case you didn't keep the original.

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Be careful. Once you hit the "save to local" button, you are working on the local copy. That means the republish option vanishes.

What I do is edit the published version, republish it, then open it to edit again, and hit the "save to local" button. That way I get the new version up to their server and here on my machine.

Very nice. So, did most of that come from purples and other market activity? Or mucho playing?

I'd say there are two considerations.

First, if the "enemy faction" you are fighting is the PPD, and if you assume that most players aren't going to read anything about why they are fighting, then it's villainous. Fighting cops for no reason is certainly villainous.

The second consideration, if people actually bother to read anything, is what kind of unpleasant plans the PPD have. If the plans are unpleasant for the bad guys, but reasonably within either the letter or the spirit of the law, or at least in the general interests of justice, then it still sounds villainous.

I would only say it's a heroic arc if the police are planning something absolutely villainous, in which case stopping them would be heroic.

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Except that leaves "excellent but unadvertised" arcs in the same bin as "terrible crap that 600 people have already played and abandoned".

Under that system, I don't want to be the author of the "excellent but unadvertised" arc, and I don't want to be player #601 of the "terrible crap" arc. We need to do something, but I don't think this suggestion is it.

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Not if the number of plays is also displayed. One of those would be played 0 times and rated 0 times. The other would be played 600 times but never rated. That would be a huge red flag to person #601.

Which, sadly, gives a new way to grief: start the mission, then quit. Over and over. It will look like the mission is unplayable, or not worth finishing.

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Is there any indication that these concerns will be addressed? I am still concerned about the 14 seconds after it was published "0" votes that I recieved....repeatedly (please see my earlier post on this thread)

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Yeah, that stinks. One things the devs promised early on was that they were adding a lot of datamining tools so that they could find and punish people who did this. I haven't heard anything about that since the system went live, though. If they are punishing people for ratings griefing, they are doing it very quietly.

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For some reason, the dialog doesn't seem to trigger, ever. I'm not sure what's up with that.

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Known bug... inactive dialog proximity seems to be the same as active dialog proximity for certain detail types.

It's really annoying, too.

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Yes, I'd heard of that one, but that makes the dialog trigger too early. In this case, I'm not seeing the dialog trigger at all. I tried putting it in active and inactive for both the target and the group around him, but no dice. I'll play with it some more. Maybe it was just a fluke.

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Extra people on the team don't create extra spawn points, they just cause the spawns to get bigger.

My advice would be to try to separate your groups by floor. If there are never any enemies on the same floor of a map with the slumping allies, you shouldn't have their animations disturbed.

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That is proving difficult to do, mostly because I refuse to use one of the larger maps. I really want the player to have to escort someone to the exit, and doing that on a big map is just a pain. I think I have it, though. The only problem is that the "bodies" are a little off to the side, and I'd hate for the player to miss them. I thought of putting in a bit of inactive dialog along the lines of "Arrrr, they got me!" to draw the player's attention as they pass by. For some reason, the dialog doesn't seem to trigger, ever. I'm not sure what's up with that.

Still, I'm making progress. Thanks for all the advice.

Controllers seem less chatty than scrappers. Anyhow, I hit 'focus chi' to buff my search-fu and turned up some older posts on fire/therm. Not a whole lot of discussion, really. Mostly a lot of people asking the same questions, and getting just a couple of responses. Here's what I found:

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13136529
A little discussion, one proposed build with no feedback.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13129871
Advises someone to keep playing until they get fire imps. Mentions a couple of power combos, and the pet resistance IO.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...umber=13290829
Advice for low level power choices (skip ring of fire, bonfire, smoke, postpone hotfeet) and a sample build.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13190870
Advice on which fire powers are skippable (bonfire, ring of fire, maybe smoke).

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13297781
Advice on early build (take the two shields and two heals). Sample build.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13245933
Discussion of powers to take in a post-imps respec (hot feet is recommended). Sample build, with empty slots.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13241734
One sample build with one post of valuable feedback.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=12977364
A sample build with a little feedback, some of which seems iffy to me.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/show...umber=13010114
A sample build with a little feedback.

I just got into the 40's with my fire/thermal controller. I'm having a good time, with no particular problems, but I thought this would be a good time to look for some advice. I don't see any fire/therm guides. Any suggestions for ancillary powers? Favorite IO's? I only team with this character.

First off, I'd like to object to a few assumptions in the OP. Just because your friend didn't receive any tickets does not mean he received a 0 rating. A rating of 1 or 2 stars wouldn't produce any tickets either. Second, I don't know how long you waited to look. The tickets may not show up immediately. In my own experience, the lag between rating and tickets can be huge, hours or even days. Third, it's not griefing to give someone a low rating. There are a lot of reasons why someone might have given your friend's arc a low rating. Maybe they just didn't like it. Everyone seems to assume that any rating below three stars must be griefing. Different people have different tastes. It's not a crime to dislike someone's arc.

As for the rating system itself, I think it's trying to do too much with too little. If the purpose of having a rating system is to sort the arcs by quality, then tying the ratings to badges and ticket rewards was a mistake. It's effectively bribing people to undermine the system.

A simple 5 star system also ignores the reality that there is no such thing as absolute quality in something as completely subjective as mission arcs. Imagine asking everyone on earth to rate all of the music the world has ever produced on a 5 point scale. What good would it do? How would someone who loves bluegrass music use that rating to find something they liked?

One system that might have been more useful would be "people who liked this mission also like..." type thing. It's not trivial to implement, but it would do the job pretty well. Another option is the "trusted reviewer". That's really in our hands, though the game could support it. I could review arcs, and post my reviews, and people who decided that they like the same kind of thing that I like could rely on my reviews to help them find new arcs to run. Someone who hates the stuff I like could use my reviews to make a list of things to avoid. It would be like movie reviews. Unfortunately the sheer volume of arcs, and the fact that they can change or vanish, make arc reviews more difficult and less useful than movie reviews.