srmalloy

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They really should make it so that you only get credit for a kill only if you get XP, otherwise, yeah the low level zones will have these level 50s killing all the greys just for a name on the kiosk. I feel bad for the lowbies....and what's the point of those kiosks?

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That will shaft a couple of badges redside -- hunting ghost pirates for the two badges and to unlock Veluta Lunata as a contact; you need to be 15 or lower to get missions from her. However, while the pirates around the fort and 'chained' inside the fort spawn lower, when a ghost trap blows, all the ghosts spawn at level 15, which can be a rude surprise to a lower-level character trying for the badges.

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Top Ten Things I like to do When I get Bored with arresting bad guys:

10. Goto PI and harass the powerlevelers. (ask a lotta questions... ie; why would some1 PL that guy, he's only got one badge?.... whats a farm? Does old McDonald live there? )

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Go to Cimerora and lounge around, occasionally spouting off witty comments such as "Ecce Macdonaldus senex, qui fundum habet, E-I-E-I-O."

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Most fun thing to do with a Bubbler:

Go to the hollows to the rim of the sink hole, switch force bubble on and begin a troll and outcast launching session. Continue this session till insupressable giggling subsides.

Just make sure you do this during off hours when you least risk throwing baddies into some poor lowbies lap. They will fly for nearly a quarter mile in some cases.

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Unfortunately, with ED and the nerf to Power Boost, it is no longer as much fun to play Hellion Golf, where you take your high-level En/En Blaster into Atlas or Galaxy, light off the Vanguard Medal and Power Boost, then use Power Push on a level-1 mob for distance; back when you could six-slot Power Push for knockback, a level 50 character could just about get a level-1 Hellion all the way across Atlas Park from north to south. The old-style AoE Nemesis Staff temp power was almost as much fun; you could launch an entire spawn of Hellions or Skulls, but the damage done would defeat them before they get launched, so you just had bodies getting flung around. The single-target version and the veteran reward power would let any character play, but the reduction in the veteran NemStaff knockback has nerfed its utility to play Hellion Golf.

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I haven't leveled my Ill/Kin enough to test this out (having too much fun with my Ill/Rad), but it seems to me that Deceiving a villain before applying Siphon Speed should make the latter much more feasible as a travel-power replacement: you don't have to worry about return fire as you run off, and you'll be long gone by the time the confusion expires.

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I deliberately delayed taking Flight for my Ill/Kin Controller after I realized that with occasional usage of my safeguard-mission Raptor and Zero-G packs, using Deceive to distract a target before hitting them with Siphon Speed gave me all the travel power I really needed at that point (and at level 8, too); it lets me get pretty much the length of Steel Canyon before I have to look for another 'volunteer'. Although I've found that not paying attention to Siphon Speed coming back up for too long results in a *cough* *sputter* *wheeze* *gasp* feeling, as if the caffeine finally wore off, when it runs out.

On the other hand, running out of speed with no mobs conveniently placed to donate is annoying.

Voice mail = Voice spam. It's going to happen.

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Wooo!

We San Diegans MUST set up a meet 'n greet this year!

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There's a Dave & Buster's under the 5-805 interchange if consistency of venue is important...

It occurs to me that outrage against the Rikti incursions would not be confined to player-controlled heroes/villains; it seems to me that at least a fraction of the members of the various NPC groups would hang around to take out their feelings against the invading Rikti, whether from an attitude of "It's our world, and you're not going to take it over", or resentment at the Rikti interfering with their plans, or whatever. For example, whatever the ultimate goals of the Malta Group are, they're not going to be served by the Rikti overrunning Paragon City and undertaking mass conversion of its citizens.

It would flesh out the event somewhat if, during an invasion, the event code spawned some number of mob groups appropriate in affiliation and level to the zone that would be neutral to the players and would fight against the invading Rikti, then run off and despawn when the invasion ended. Ideally, the number of spawns would be inversely proportional to the number of heroes/villains in a zone, so that the density of NPCs is managed to reduce server load and the attendant lag

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9) More Catgirls. There are not enough Catgirls in the game.


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Maybe all the Dev's should have to be catgirls at the wedding? Just to attempt to get into the good graces of your superior awesomeness?

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That's not kawaii... That's not kawaii at all.

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Is there any way you can redress the mouse pointer? I'd like something more ... visible.

I am using the "Ctrl highlights the mouse pointer" feature in Windows but it doesn't work well.

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As an addendum to this, I experimented with the 'mouse cursor leaves trails' option in the Logitech mouse driver settings, but it makes things worse -- yes, moving the mouse pointer does leave a fading trail of mouse pointers, which makes it easier to see, but when you stop moving the mouse pointer, it disappears, which kind of defeats the purpose.

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Starting on Friday, February 8th following our weekly maintenance period, all defeat rewards, including experience, prestige and influence or infamy will be doubled! This will continue through the weekend and conclude the night of Sunday, February 10th.

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So mission, TF, and story arc completion rewards will not be doubled, as they are not 'defeat' rewards?

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While I am admittedly hesitant about the idea of a PS3 port of Co*... it may be a good idea to incorporate a stable platform for gaming and a mass of people that haven't played it yet, infusing the game with more people (and maybe new servers? One could hope) and more money to give everyone even more awesomeness... Like perhaps grappling/wire/web/etc-you-get-the-idea slinging power set...

please note the "may" portion of this post, of course.

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Not knowing how the game logic of CoX is distributed vis-à-vis the logic distribution in console games that have online play features, I can only hope that a) relegating the client to a rendering engine and b) PvP being restricted to specific zones will rapidly discourage the potential flood of hacks and ganktards from other games. As the lag in the old-style Hami raids has shown, a MitM attack to allow spamming attack commands on the data stream won't let you attack any faster than the server will let you, or change the amount of healing or damage you do/take, etc., which eliminates one avenue of gamehacking; I can think of one other avenue that would provide, at best, a limited advantage to the hacker, but won't describe it (not wanting to give pointers to people intent on violating the EULA, but it would be detectable by the game engine, anyway). The lack of free and open PvP will, hopefully, discourage the twits whose only measure of their skill with a game is how fast and often they can smack down another player, preferably without warning, even more preferably using some marginally-legitimate loophole that lets them gank players without risk.

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I think another CoX feature that shouldn't be overlooked is the billions (trillions?) of combinations to customize the look of your character. I love the fact that we are free to be so creative with our looks. It has turned me into an altaholic.

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It's not so much the variety of combinations we have for our appearance -- from what I understand, there are as many possible combinations in, say, WoW -- but that the abilities of our characters aren't driven by what we wear. Everyone wants to fit themselves out with the best gear, but everyone's +27 Breastplate of Gonkulation looks the same in games like WoW, so unless you deliberately gimp yourself out when equipping yourself, you're going to look just like everyone else equipped the same way. In CoX, your abilities have nothing to do with your 'gear' (i.e., enhancements), so you're free to look like pretty much anything you want, regardless of how you're fitted out.

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Darkfall is looking at not only breaking the mold, they're talking about SHATTERING it into it's sub-atomic components

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I looked up Darkfall on Wiki and saw this.
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Darkfall is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in development by Aventurine SA that combines real-time action and strategy in a fantasy setting. Expected to feature unrestricted pvp, complete looting, and a player skill dependent combat system, Darkfall is highly anticipated by the player versus player (PvP) community.

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What is so mold-breaking there?

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Well, I suppose if they produced controllers similar to the Wiimote, and made players actually learn how to throw a blow with a sword or block with a shield... but then all the SCA people would rule the game through having an experience pool several decades deep to pull from... I wonder how complicated the sensor would have be to be able to correctly identify the motion in a Bellatrix snap... Probably price the thing out of the market.

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You forgot the godly customization, in almost every other MMO out there chances are you'll look at least 97% exactly like everyone else from your level, class and race (if this does apply).

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And the amount of detail that goes into that customization, both from the sheer number of different costume pieces and the variations on them down to the attention to tiny details -- how many of you have noticed that virtually every different boot piece has a different design for the sole of the boot, for example? The amount of artwork design that has to go into coming up with different shoe soles, from classic lugged boot soles to different track-shoe-like soles, is amazing... and for a part of your costume that you won't see for any protracted period of time unless your character has Flight.

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The announcement says:
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By simply logging in and visiting Paragon City or the Rogue Isles between December 17th, 2007 and January 6th, 2008*,

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But there is no explanation for the * after the date?

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"Time approximate after football."

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I got 5 influence says...

Issue 12: "The Storm Arrives"

You heard it here first.

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Doubtful. Mender Silos says he comes from a time over a million years in the future, and he speaks of the storm as something he witnessed. I've seen the speculation that he's mucking about in time in order to bring this about, but I doubt even then the timeline will be shortened from 1000000 years to 4 months. Unless the storm is meant to rage for a million years, I don't see this as something that we'll see resolved (or even significant progress made on) in the next issue or two. I think this is a storyline that will be slowly played out over the next few years.

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It was a bit incongruous to have Silos talking about him coming from a million years in the future and the destruction that had occured while the video was showing the burning ruins of Atlas Park... the idea that the Paragon City buildings would last for a million years and still have something flammable in them that hadn't been burned out is a little hard to swallow. Although a case can be made, looking at all of the buildings in Boomtown and Faultline that got knocked out of vertical but haven't suffered structural failure from the transverse force of all that weight hanging out of true, that the reason Impervium is a rare salvage drop is that it's been used to build every single building in Paragon City, and that's why the buildings are still around a million years in the future...

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Well, when things reach a temperature of 32 °F, the water in the cells freezes. This causes the cell walls to collapse in on themselves. Ice takes up less volume than water, so you end up with wilted lettuce and separated sour cream.

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Ummm, LadyK, if that were true, then we would have no aquatic life across large parts of the planet. Have you ever seen an iceberg? Icebergs exist because ice is about 10% less dense than water; water expands when it freezes, so an iceberg floats. If ice was denser than water (i.e., contracted when it froze), water at the surface would freeze and sink, exposing more water to freeze and sink, until the body of water was frozen solid to the bottom. Instead, water freezes on the surface, forming an insulating layer that keeps the water deeper down from freezing.

However, that expansion is what causes the effects you describe. When the cells in food freeze, the water in them crystallizes and expands; ice crystals are sharp, and cut through the cell walls. When the food is defrosted, the cell walls, having lost their cohesion, leak, allowing the cells to collapse, causing the wilting. Sour cream is a type of emulsion -- fat globules suspended in water through the intervention of emulsifiers -- molecules that have one end that is attracted to fat and one end attracted to water; when it freezes, the ice crystals expand and rupture the layer of emulsifier molecules around each fat globule, breaking the emulsion and letting it separate.

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So, I'm wondering if I was wrong about that all the time. Do other people's click affect other players timers on a door? Is it really better to run around than stay put and camp one door?

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Each player has a 60-second door timer; if you click on a door less than 60 seconds after the last time you successfully ToTed, you'll get a 'You cannot enter' popup. Each door has a 30-second timer; if you click on a door less than 30 seconds after someone successfully ToTed at that door, you'll get a 'You cannot enter' popup.

Note that each door in a multiple-door group is a separate door for purposes of ToTing. So a solo player can ToT at one door every 60 seconds, and a team of 2 can ToT at one door every 30 seconds. A team of 4 can ToT at a pair of doors every 15 seconds (Player 1 clicks on door 1, 15 seconds later player 2 clicks on door 2, 15 seconds later player 3 clicks on door 1, which has had 30 seconds to recover, 15 seconds later player 4 clicks on door 2, repeat), and a team of eight can ToT at a block of four doors every 7.5 seconds by staggering the click times for each door in the same way as a team of four does for two doors.

I hope one of the customization options that Robotics Masterminds get is the original pulse rifle from beta; that, in my opinion, looked much cooler than the one we got when it went live.

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While we are using the greek word "Ouroborous" for this, I don't recally greek art stylizing images in this manner. Of the top of my head, I'd say Aztec or Norse would be more likely with both Quetzalcoatl and Jörmungandr being depicted as unending serpents. Admitedly, neither culture used the lemniscate so this is either a confabulation with something else, or I'm headed of down a wrong tangent. The third Reich did study a fair amount of Norse mythology, however, and attempted to combine some of it with science, particularly with theories like Welteislehre that seemed to provide a direct conection between the two. Medieval artists also tended to sylize things greatly, so the idea of this being alchemical also holds water.

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More Norse or Celtic than Aztec; the stylization doesn't fit the Aztec or Mayan art I've seen, and abstracts too far away from 'plumed serpent' or 'feathered serpent' (depending on which translation you prefer).

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The Warriors can be nasty for a squishy, but I have NEVER seen them actually winning a street fight. They're always the ones cowering on the ground before the big bad Freaks or the Tsoo.

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It would take a lot of discipline in the ranks of the Warriors, but can you think of a better way to keep the Tsoo and Freakshow underestimating them than to deliberately take dives in the myriad of encounters with them on the streets? "They got away with the Necklace of Lyrion... but that was just dumb luck; last week we beat up a dozen groups of them around Talos."

I got one from "pkpkgliers", saying "Poor for living? Boring on leveling way? Come to [malformed URL deleted]. We are selling the cheap and fast infamy for you, and we promises the safety of your account on powerleveling. Thanks" (global name '@pkpkgsaera') They've been petitioned, /ignored, and /gignored... and I expect they'll be back as soon as they can create another account...

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Rikti transporters now shield incoming invaders from attack until they have fully materialized.

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All right, I can understand not being able to damage the Rikti before they actually appear. Have you altered the game so that we can't target them until they appear, or are those of us who rely on the tab-key "target_enemy_next" function going to have to spend all our time squinting at the screen to figure out whether the "Headman Gunman" we have targeted is really the Headman Gunman we see, or the one that's going to port in five seconds from now between us and the one we see, so we'd just be wasting our time trying to fire off any attacks?

I do agree that this makes clearing the Rikti in the beam-in portion of an invasion more challenging; however, it does destroy the balance that had existed previously where mobs could, for example, shoot up and possibly destroy all three of a Mastermind's summoned Battle Drones before they finish unpacking themselves (and before they can be targeted; I have, with one of my Bots/Dark Masterminds, fired off Twilight Grasp after summoning a replacement Battle Drone, which started taking damage while unpacking; the Battle Drone next to the newly-summoned one received the heal effect, but the one still in its unpacking animation did not heal and was destroyed before any protection could be applied). I have not played all the different powersets that can summon destroyable pets, however, I believe that all destroyable pets can be targeted and destroyed before they complete their summoning animation; I think that giving the same protection should be given to summoned pets prior to the completion of their summoning animation.

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This is gonna sound like a stupid question, but is it a 24 hour CONSTANT invasion of all areas? or just the same Rolling invasions that got us before (Please say Constant! PLEASE that would rock so hardcore! Maybe with some intermediary events, like having the emergency transporter shuting down, so healers would have to go around the city rezing people, at the risk of their own lives PLEASE!!)

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It's the same event that was running before at the launch of Issue 10: Invasion.

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If it's technically feasible to do, I think that, on a longer-term basis, it might prove to be entertaining for the players if there was a really low percentage chance (so it doesn't happen often enough that people will get tired of it) that, upon completion of the Lady Grey Task Force, instead of a single zone raid, the Rikti stage a 24-hour invasion. I don't think anything more than about a 1% chance occurrence would be desirable, depending on how often the LGTF got run.

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I love how Villian epic ATs are such a priority! "2-2.5 years and we MIGHT get around to making some" woot!

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I would rather see them work on giving the villains something comparable in utility to the heroes' APPs, which would benefit more characters than adding epic ATs would, since the devs have already said that 'getting a character to level 50' wouldn't be the method of unlocking villain epic ATs, so there would be relatively few players who would benefit from the creation of epic ATs for some time.