sturm375

Got a bunch of friends together, all 8 of us had many many many experiences with the Statesman's Task Force. We were not prepared for what we faced.

In the last mission, where you face the 4 patron AVs, the Flyer and Lord Recluse there appeared to be several changes none of us knew about. If they weren't changes, then bugs, or just extremely rare random behavior that we weren't expecting.

Flyer: We defeated the flyer, and it respawned within seconds. Defeated it again, same result.

Flyer II: Since we could not keep the flyer down, we fought the towers and LR with the flyer attacking us too. We'd wait till the flyer was all the way on the other side of the area, as far away as it gets. As soon as we started our assault, the flyer seemed to teleport into position were it could attack us.

Towers: None of us had seen this before. Once down, the towers would be re-built by the techs. I knew they could repair damaged ones, but we've never seen them rebuild them before. Also they always rebuilt the orange tower in the wrong spot. They put it closer to the ledge, closer to where the flyer patroled.


Are these changes, bugs, or just stuff that has been there before, but we've never seen?

Thanks in advance.

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I made up a SD/Axe recently and am really enjoying him, but I haven't picked up Sands or the Axe because I was unsure if I should, with redraw and the like. Is it better to go without, or if not, which would be a better choice?

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Do not overlook the vet powers. All 4 of the vet powers (Axe, Sands, Nemisis Staff, Black Wand) do more damage than all but superior and extreme attacks from tanker secondaries. Granted they aren't as accurate since you can't slot them, however they won't be affected by damage debuffs (like granite) either.

While you may find them "extra" late in the life of a tank, they are a god send through the low 20's. Simply put, tanks don't get enough attacks early on, and with these vet powers you can do more to focus early on your defenses.

Tyrant's Throne Room map, with the lava pools, and (please please please please) the ability to put a captive/ally in the same place Statesman is in the real mission.

Perhaps you could make a custom Bots/Whatever MM and say in the story somewhere that this "Doomsday Robot" seperates into pieces when attacking to more efficiently kill/destroy/maim.

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A bit more pricey, however you'll save a ton with not having to buy a ton of extra software

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Uhm. No. Essentially, if you don't like the way the system's default software functions, the entire culture is "buy this other thing". Not "try and buy". Buy.

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You won't have to worry about viruses or spyware.

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Again. NO. Simply because the marketshare of the system is so small as to not making viruses worthwhile to write for doesn't mean the system is virus proof.

Also, your statement is only approximating reality IN THE ABSENCE OF OTHER PLATFORMS ON YOUR NETWORK. Translation, there's nothing stopping a Mac from passing on a virus load that doesn't affect *it* to one of the Windows machines on your network.

Please be very careful when making recommendations like this, as they do not, in fact, mirror reality.

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The only "virus" out there in the wild for the mac is one where you have to download a pirated copy of iLife, run it, and use the adminastative password to install.

Yeah you can pass a virus on to other computers through email. However if you don't want to become a semi-expert in computer security, a Mac will do all you need and then some, a lot safer than a Windows Machine. ESPECIALLY a WinXP machine.


Have you ever looked at all the free/share ware for the Mac OS? There's a ton of it. And there's a hell of a lot of "try before you buy" stuff to.


I used to be with you, however now that CoX is on the Mac Platform, there is no reason, other than extreme lack of funds, to buy a Windows PC over a Mac if you don't want to study your butt off learning about PC/Network security.

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I need to buy my son a new computer, so he can play CoX without lagging, rubberbanding, freezing, crashing and screaming at me because his computer is a "complete piece of garbage, Mom!"

Would any of you be so kind as to recommend a reasonably priced desktop computer that will run CoX decently? I'm not looking for the cream of the crop, but I would like to find something that I'm not going to have a lot of problems with. Building a new rig is waaaay out of my league, so any help identifying a complete set up would be greatly appreciated.

I asked this questions last July or August, but I'm sure stuff has changed since then.

Thanks, all, for your help. You will make a 13 y/o boy very happy, and maybe I'll get a chance to enjoy the game instead of always trying to figure out what's going on with his computer.

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You want something w/o a lot of problems, runs CoX fine, and will have excellent customer support?

Apple Refurb

A bit more pricey, however you'll save a ton with not having to buy a ton of extra software, the stuff it comes with is great. You won't have to worry about viruses or spyware.

Granted, I'd highly recommend adding ram, but using www.crucial.com should solve that easily and cheaply. It's by no means top of the line, however it will do all you need and much more.

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I've not actually used the defend destructible object feature of the MA, but it would seem consistent that if you unclick it as a required feature it will not count as a mission failure. That's the way other things behave.

For example, in some missions I have bosses appear using the Defeat Boss objective, but for plot purposes I have them begin to run when they take damage. To allow them to flee without causing mission failure I unclick the "required objective" button on the feature, and it works fine.

The best thing to do, of course, is test it.

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How do you get them to do that? Every time I set a boss/EB/AV to run, they aggro on the player, and fight to the end.

QR:

Another fix I found, not documented that I could see:

Fly Emotes work now while you have toggles such as Blazing Aura on.

They left out:

Chat Bind Bug: Fixed

Fly Emote Bug: Fixed (at least the one where some toggles interfered with the fly emotes)

and although I think the changes, and proposed punishments are harsh, those above two fixes, totally aces in my book. So happy I could care less about the rest of the mess.

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Good Lord.

They do have patch notes located on the Test Server Forums. They even have them for for this particular build. The patch notes are always delayed from being posted here in case they have to revert. This is not rocket science. Honestly.

Must we have these threads every time?

--Rad

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Yes we do, as long as the install a patch w/o putting the notes in the designated spot, the one that's linked on the CoHUpdater screen.

And another fix: The bind bug is gone, at least for me.

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But if you know the cause of the delay and and know they will be one, why? Why post it to receive the exact same answer.

--Rad

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So, if I see something I think they are doing wrong and don't point it out, then I am good, but if I see something I think they are doing wrong and do point it out I am bad? What kind of world do you live in?

It's not that hard to give us some clue as to what they fixed, even if it just says "fixed some exploits" just post something.

You do realize also that most players don't ever go to the forums, that's why the designated "Patch Notes" area is not in the forums.

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Rikti Comm Officer 42-42 has been removed.
Rikti Comm Officer 30-54 has been moved to Minion Class.
Custom Boss melee sets now have a ranged power.

New Bug: When editting an arc, the MA editor is inserting "default" text into the description for hostages causing the arc to show errors (over size limit, only 300 characters permitted/Invalid HTML etc).
Workaround: Just delete the text and re-publish, but everytime you edit the arc, you will have to do this.
Workwround: Use a custom critter as a hostage instead of one of the provided ones (with a small description).

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Found that one too

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Good Lord.

They do have patch notes located on the Test Server Forums. They even have them for for this particular build. The patch notes are always delayed from being posted here in case they have to revert. This is not rocket science. Honestly.

Must we have these threads every time?

--Rad

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Yes we do, as long as the install a patch w/o putting the notes in the designated spot, the one that's linked on the CoHUpdater screen.

And another fix: The bind bug is gone, at least for me.

This is the third, maybe the fourth time in a row that I log into the game, it starts downloading a patch, yet there are no patch notes. It's got to be harder to code a patch than to write a few notes about it right? Why can't they get those notes up?

Just for god's sake please someone take plenty of screenies and videos for those like myself who will be working 12 hour shifts from tuesday through saturday. I'd love to be there as a 60-month vet, but I doubt I'll even be able to log in the evening when I get home.

and again, congrats to devs and community.

Yup, underlings, or whatever they call the rank below Minion are not available to the Critter Creator.

However I must say, the Critter Creator in CoX is so much better than spore, and they spent years and years on spore lol.

QR:

Congrats to everyone (Devs and the community).

I am sorry I won't be able to attend, will be working that whole day it starts. Kinda sad, almost wish I had some vacation left to take off for it, since I've been here since beta.

All I can say is: "Have fun storming the castle boys!"

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heh, so yeah. I dont know if this is a problem in the classic sense of the word, but it is pretty dissapointing when I log on and nobody has rated an arc I spent hours on.

I dont really know how to "fix" this eighther, I mean, there are so many arcs, many are bound to be overlooked right?

How do most people overcome this? advertise in broadcast or here? ask around in game? I asked my wife( infrequent player) to go through my two arcs and rate them 5 stars on her account just so someone did lol, but thats cheating in a way

anyway, if anyone is curious, my two arcs are numbers 107020 named Uberbots! and number 93496 A pawn in Time.

My Global is Eldagore.

heh, plug my own stuff!!

anyway, anyone else spend hours on their arc, only to watch it move into the middle of the crowd of unrated oblivion?

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The least little thing you do, or don't do, will leave your arc unplayed. With the shear number of arcs made per minute, you almost have to be "somebody" to get your arc played, let alone actually rated high. I've even offered influence to people to just play it, not looking for a specific rating, just play it, give it a chance. Not that influence is worth much these days, but they told me they dont' have time.

Why offer "Tank" as an AT power set filter in critter creation? As far as I know you cannot make a defensive primary critter. The only unique powerset that tanks have is Ice Armor I think. So why even show "Tank" as a power filter in the critter creator?

I just thought of another tip when creating a boss. For players, missing is not fun. Making a boss with extreme Super Reflexes results in a near impossible to hit boss. It sounds good on paper, might even fit the character you're building for the Arc, but plain and simple, missing = no fun.

I played an arc where the owner made a boss with extreme SR. With my level 39 BS/WP scrapper, with 2x level 40 ACC IOs in all attacks, and with BU up, I had less than 10% chance to hit. I spent maybe 2 minutes whiffing, with the very rare hit that was quickly regenerated by the boss. Then I quit the arc, gave it a 1-star, and sent a comment to the owner.

The next day they replied to my comment, apparently it was a mistake on their part to put the SR at extreme. They said they tweaked it, if I could remember what the arc was, I'd play it again, it looked pretty interesting what little I saw of it.

I think that you'd find that a boss that has impossibly high resistance would "feel" better than one with an impossibly high defense. But that could just be my opinion.

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Possible solution to 1: Make the running AV/EB a captive and play with the animations. Make freeing her trigger an ambush, so there are henchmen before and after her departure justifying why the PC didn't nab her.

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That's a good possible solution, though I'd have to play with it to see if I can work it into the plot. The custom EB/AV is supposed to be unique, and isn't supposed to have minions/henchmen. However your solution would definatly work for others with the same problems.

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Basically play on Heroic if you want AV's to be EB's.

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Unless you select a character that is hard coded to be an AV. If you look at the dev created AVs, there are some that show level ranges as for instance (52-52). That will spawn as an AV no matter what your reputation is set at.

As someone who has made a "hard" boss, here are some tips:

-Make it clear to your players that the mission/objective is going to be hard, even suggest getting a few friends together.

-Put in optional (not required for mission completion) allies. Also make sure the allies are not the main in the mission, they should focus on support if possible. Also make sure that they fit in the mission.

-Make sure the boss is not impossible. The "hard" boss I made is specific, and flows with the plot. He is soloable, at least with my fire/fire tank he was fairly easily soloable.

-Encourage feedback, and welcome suggestions. If someone plays your arc, and says they had trouble with the boss, listen, and be willing to make some minor changes.


On a side note, in the same arc where I put my custom "hard" boss, the first mission has a custom "modified" version of The Wretch. The non-custom one is (at the level I want the arc to be) hard coded to be a level 52 AV. He won't spawn as an EB. My custom Wretch does.

Post your problems (not readily available in the MA), Kluges, Fixes and other solutions.

Problem 1:

I wanted to have 2 EB/AVs in my first mission, one of which would run as soon as she sees the PCs. It's part of the plot that she gets away. If she was set to run at full HP, she'd aggro on the PCs as soon as she sees them, and not run after that. The other possibility was to set her to run when 12 or fewer of her minions were left. That would work, if the PC was solo or in a small team. Larger teams would spawn more than 12 in the last room, and therefore she would not run.

My Solution: Take the running EB/AV out of the mission, and have the dialogue for the second EB/AV reference her. This means that the PCs will never see the running EB/AV, and those not having the star can only see the reference if they are paying attention to the in-mission dialogue. Only the leader would see the reference in the Contact's dialogue. Kinda a bummer, but it works.

Problem 2: I wanted to have a custom EB/AV holding a captive hostage. The custom EB/AV is a group of itself, no other bosses, LTs, or minions, just that EB/AV. If I set the objective so that this custom group/EB/AV is holding that hostage by itself, it never spawns, and the mission completes as soon as you enter the mission. If I set it as not single, then multiple EB/AVs spawn around the captive, and this EB/AV is supposed to be unique.

Solution: I set it up first as a defeat boss objective. Once the boss is defeated, I have the captive objective trigger as above. This results in the captive being freed as soon as the PCs defeat the EB/AV, but they never see the captive, and only realize there was a captive if they pay attention to the system chat in their chat boxes.







I welcome other suggestions, as well as your own problems and/or solutions. Also here's hoping there will be more tools added and more functionality added to the MA soon.

****Unpublished****

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So far...so far. They're making us walk before we run.

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Why change?

sorry, couldn't resist a bad joke about how we still can't walk in the game.