twelfth

EDIT: Sorry, after consideration I don't think this is a thread to discuss these problems. Just a "DEVS LOOK HERE" consolidation of major issues. Taking the threadjack away.

My question at this point is: Do you want suggestions on a AT/powerset to take to 50 from scratch? Or are you interested in which of your existing toons you could take to 50?

Taking an existing toon to 50 is gonna be a bit easier because you know most of their strengths and faults. What do you have sitting in your character selection?

btw, my first 50 was a fire/rad corr, but it did take me a while (About 2 years) because I did lots of lolRPs and alted around. My subsequent 50s ran around 9-12 months, but I don't really grind-grind much and solo a fair amount.

This is a silly question, but is the voting limited to assigned judges or is anyone allowed to vote?

It'd probably be impossible to track, but after doing it so many times, I feel like there should be a badge for:

1. Chasing off Hellion/Skull girlfriends (the generic NPC notes, not hellion GfH bosses).; Potential Title: "No Time For Love".
2. Foiling Purse Snatchers; potential title: "Handbag Hero".

Thanks for the update WW. I'm excited for i19 party times, but I can wait until everyone can play without bugs.

In the meantime, I'm pointing my VG/SG-mates to the boards and asking that everyone jump on Beta to help root out the Bugs!

Thanks so much for playing the arc, and wow, what a flattering review. I submitted this way way back in the original first AE Challenge and have been fooling around with it since. I didn't feel like retooling it for the 3rd Challenge because it would have felt cheap to me. Anyway, you have some really great observations in here and I really deeply appreciate the contemplation you offered in consideration of the story. You've actually hit a few things on the head, and brought up other interpretations which, while they were not exactly what I was envisioning, are perfectly valid and well-thought out rationales and answers to the questions that the story brings up.

But! In answer to your comments:

Couple of comments here:

1. Why doesn't AS accept Interrupt enhancements? That should be a very easy design implementation that could help with the AS complaints. Yes, you'll have to balance your slotting to accept it, but why not? If you can pull down your interrupt timing, you might still be locked in the AS animation, but at least if you're hit outside of the interrupt time, you'll still get your strike off (and hopefully crit).

2. For people who are complaining that Stalkers need to be able to take aggro from other players, Stalkers do have a power for this - it's called the Presence pool. With i19, you'll be able to free up some power options for it if you want to play your stalker that way.

3. Good ideas: Hide/Placate inherent (although there's the matter of getting no more slots to spread between the whatever new powers fill those spots), increase the unsupressed portion of hide.

4. Interesting ideas: Anti-tanking placate power (I disagree that this is brute/tank griefing. Brutes and Tanks have enough taunt-effects to take back any aggro they would lose); I like shadestorm's idea of a "Distraction Bonus", but I'd suggest that it affects the re-Hide rate. The more stuff going on the easier it is for the Stalker to re-Hide and continue the crit-from-hide rate.

Man, now if we could get a Mids updated early so we can spec things out beforehand.
(I know there's a unofficial mock-up out there, but still...)

If you're already making an attachment using an outside email program, just have them attach the .costume file from the Costumes folder in your CoH drive.

I've had problems converting the "text" file to costume file process mentioned above - I've gotten errors and or problems with it getting all the pieces over (or recognizing the conversion at all). Just easier to do the regular .costume file.

Once you get high enough to begin them, there are also Task Forces and Strike Forces, which are dedicated storylines and team challenges which tell a story about some (relatively) large or important threat. These are challenging missions, however, which have mandatory level requirements (and require a certain number of players on a team to begin). In order to get all of the info from the contact, you generally should be the leader of the team - but you can read the mission briefing text and clues even if you aren't the leader.

+1 on Ouroboros & Arc Souvenirs (which are found in the "clues" tab on the Navbar).
+1 for Trying the Hollows, Faultline, Striga, etc. Again, you just might outlevel the contacts pretty fast though.

Blasters will, at base, give you more DPS than Corrs. There are always modifications to this as Corrs generally have (and /Rad in particular) have ways to up their damage potential by debuffing the target or buffing the team. Blasters will also have access to Build Up, which Corrs don't (and on DP/ they don't get Aim either).

Part of your disappointment with your DPS, I think, is actually an issue with your powerset. Dual Pistols is not an OMFGUBER damage set. It's not awful either - it's a solid, middle-of-the road set that provides a lot of versatility depending on what role you want to play. Just keep that in mind.

As for my preference? It's despite the above bit about damage, I'm gonna go Corr. /Rad is a great team set, easy to learn, and no one will really complain about you being on the team. Also, if you have a heal - use it. It's easy, autohit, heals yourself. You don't have to be the healzors, but your team will appreciate the steady stream of HP replacement you can give. Check out the Corruptor forums, and look at the guides out there on /rad and enjoy as you BOOMHEADSHOT an weakened AV.

Much of the backstory about CoX is actually told in optional objectives known as History Plaques or History Badges. These are scattered throughout most of the zones in the game in both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles (Paragon has considerably more of them than the Isles - which is due to City of Villains being added as an expansion after the initial launch of CoH).

The only problem with the history badges is that they are generally placed in oblique areas and in order to read them all linearly, you have to hop between zones to find them - sometimes going into areas where you're very underpowered in comparison to the roaming critters. You'd also have to know where they are, but the above links should help with that. You should save that website, by the way, it is the wiki for the game itself, which can provide a LOT information about what happens in game both mechanically and story-wise.

Outside of that, my suggestion is to just start with your starting contact and work through the storyline of their missions. I will say this - given the speed at which the early levels go - you will outlevel the contacts pretty fast, or be given access to other contacts (which sometimes makes new players think that they have to abandon the first contact; you don't). This means that you might outlevel missions from your contact before the "story" of their mission arcs are completed, and they will not let you proceed. The only way to be certain to avoid this is to Disable XP* (yes, you can turn off gaining XP in this game) until you're finished with that story to your satisfaction.


ASIDE:

Being a new player in CoX at this point, some six years after launch means that there are a lot of veteran players. These vets usually have quite a few alts, which means that a large subsection of the player base have been through the same missions and storys several times over - so they are looking for fast levelling, steamrolling through missions for the maximum amount of XP in the minimum amount of time. On Hero-side (aka Blueside), a lot of people start "sewer runs" for this purpose. This is just "street sweeping" in the sewers to get through the first eight to ten levels - if you want to do "story based" content - SKIP THESE TEAMS. There's nothing wrong with them innately, but they'll be moving at a high speed and there's no "story" to what is happening. It's just grind.

As a new player to the game, you may also wish to put a call to the Mentor Project and there is a New Player Global Channel (which I think is N_P_C; but I'm not sure of that). You should see someone from either of these player-run mentoring groups post in here pretty shortly.

ETA: Oh, I forgot about an easy way to learn more about the lore of the game. When you're walking around or in a mission, right-click on a targeted critter/enemy and select "Info". Pretty much all of the critters, enemies, allies, and NPCs (except wandering citizens) will have a short-write up describing who and what they are. Sometimes this description will give you a general idea of their abilities in the game-world from which you can guestimate what they will do in-game.

I'm just thinking that random drops is random - TOT'd on an eight man team and got nearly zilch for drops (costumes or tips) after a while of grinding, but solo I was getting costume salvage, 5 costumes, and a tip within like... 30 mins.

We do seem to be getting costume salvage a lot easier this year, which seems to make sense as the devs are probably expecting a higher-than-normal demand for them with lots of new Praetorian toons, and an increase in playerbase numbers with people who reactivated accounts for GR.

Honestly, I suppose we should get it for having the 5th anniversary badge.

I can't tell from the video, but are snowflakes & the cryogenics aura the same/modified from each other or are they distinct, separate auras?

Marketing, read my lips: Six Bucks. Hell, I'll buy two at that price.

Two Notes:
1. Got a very nice nod a few weeks back from Arrowrose on playing the completely unrevised version of the arc. Again, issues with the final mission came up.

2. The reason for post-bumping this: with i19, looks like we might get Praetorian Clockwork - which might be a good way to deal with mission 4. If so, the whole arc might get dropped down to hold at the 15-20 range. This would mean dropping Mapserver down to an EB (which is a little underwhelming for Mappy's importance in the world of CoX - but whatever).

Hey everyone. I've had two MA Projects that I've had on hold pretty much since i14 - I got part way through the 3rd mish of the first one, and only sketches on the second mission arc. While I did get busy with other projects, I'm looking back at them now and wondering if they are worth continuing.

While I have the plotting of the stories basically outlined (the two arcs are supposed to be Hero/Villain versions of the same story), I've become troubled that I can't seem to think of a good way to integrate the story into the MA, while keeping it an engaging and play-worthy piece of gaming.

I tend to work on my arcs in secret until there's at least a reasonably polished draft up, but I can't seem to break through on these one-or-two cases. In thinking about it, there's no imperative to keep the project underwraps when maybe getting some input from others during the drafting phase could be useful for knocking ideas loose.

So, question is - do you think it's worth it to put up an obviously, completely unfinished arc up in order to have people make mechanical suggestions on how the story should be executed?

By unfinished I mean that the story does abruptly end without resolution, Big Bads remain unrevealed, plot threads are not resolved, etc. Basically I'm concerned about how to fiddle with making missions out of the story or being able to convey the important aspects of the story (rather than editorial opinions on the plot itself). Is this worth while, is it kosher from an MA etiquette standpoint, etc. Or should I continue to just poke the inert thing privately in test mode?

Worse comes to worse, if all else fails - talk to Mongoose and select "Complete Current Mission from this Contact". This will autocomplete the mission and allow you to move on. You can only do this once every three days, however - so it is usually a last resort.

Also, if you use the Fateweaver (check your map, its the blue-"person" symbol; in Mercy she's pretty much in the middle of the map, she's under the clocktower), you can "reset" the mission to your new difficulty settings by returning (or calling) your contact and select "Abandon Current Mission from this contact". This will remove (but NOT complete) the mission, allowing you to re-start it with your new difficulty settings.

However - I hate Mongoose. I hate his missions. They don't get any better. Just skip him. At level 7, you're perfectly capable of handling Port Oakes. Head over there, speak to the Broker Contact and get a "newspaper". This will allow you to select from three random, basic, short missions you can play. Eventually you'll get access to the Mayhem mission.

By the point you get to that bank mission, you're gonna forget all about stupid freaking Mongoose and all his stupid freaking snakes.