Greycat
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Posts posted by Greycat
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Something like the arc that finishes Croatoa gives more - I'm *not* sure, honestly, if it's tied to "you've completed all the arcs" (the Storyteller badge) or not, though.
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On 8/9/2021 at 10:31 PM, DoctorDitko said:
IIRC, Tips were one of the last bits added right before the Snap.
Alignment and alignment-changing tips? That was the point of Going Rogue.
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So, do we build another tutorial zone, or just remove GC?
(Also, I'd frankly like to see Boomtown dealt with, as far as reconstruction. It's got the barest start. But that's a lot of work... Also also, ugh, battalion...)
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Well... yes and no.
On the one hand, some of those characters appear everywhere because they have a story being told through those tip missions - Doc Quantum going more and more off the rails, Frostfire's turn (and supporting cast.) People shouldn't miss those.
On the other, yes, more of it (including people staying just as they are) would be welcome, absolutely.
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Eh, I don't know, it's already trivially easy to kite enemies. That somewhat annoying fight with Protean, for instance? Even without SS or SJ, queue attack, run, jump, sail past, animate well out of range, never get hit with his siphon...
Besides, why should that be limited to SS?
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4 hours ago, SuperPlyx said:
I always found it interesting that you can not slot any invention set enhancements in Rest, Swift and Hurdle. They will only take regular enhancements and Hami.
I originally thought it was them being inherent and at sometime some of the inherent powers were changed to allow sets but not these 3. But that's just a guess. I do wonder what the real answer is.
It's to keep them from taking the travel sets that have the Stealth IO in them. You can turn off Sprint (and thus the Stealth property,) but not Swift/Hurdle, so any rescue/hostage taking mission where they had to follow you would be insanely frustrating if not impossible to complete.
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4 hours ago, Techwright said:
Portal jockeying is all fun and games until you run into the Axis dimension. There's always an Axis dimension in multiverses. Webb should have realized this.
Well, it would kind of fit, though...
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Yeah, I'd suspect the first step would be "fix whatever system from the pits of hell is used in text entry currently" with its behind-the-scenes almost-HTML, surprise vanishing (but still taking text, since it sticks it in when you click elsewhere!) cursors and the like. Then work on tweaks like window size and scrolling - though those are also needed.
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There is (was?) a copy online. As well as various AMAs.... not sure if I have a link.
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Superadine, as I recall, has a *very* small chance to let its user see into other dimensions. As I recall, it also drives them insane at the same time.
I *believe* (but might be remembering incorrectly) that this is what's hinted at in a Boomtown plaque about something the Phalanx, BAB, etc. swore to keep secret... which, headcanon-wise, makes me wonder if Dr Webb knew about it and disagreed, but waited until he had something he could announce.
Edit: And no, I'm not aware of any AE arcs. Yes, they would be awesome, as would an Ouro mission... We really need to take more advantage of Ouroboros. We have missions through Portal for other dimensions, Ouro should have more "see this moment in history" items.
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11 minutes ago, aethereal said:
That doesn't stretch my suspension of disbelief at all? I mean, what does it mean " clear all that out" for gangs? Presumably they get put into the justice system, some of them get back out immediately, some of them serve relatively short sentences and get back out, and they continue to recruit new recruits.
Obviously there's a level of artifice necessary for an MMO in how ominipresent the gangs are and how there are multiple violent crimes going on every block of the city 24/7, but the idea of it being impossible to stamp out gangs that can offer their recruits supernatural powers doesn't bother me.
And, to be clear, having some Rikti around doesn't bother me either. It's having this downed mothership in the middle of a US city for 20 years that feels kinda ridiculous.
... ok, let's ask this. Why does *that* bother you and not:
- Boomtown barely having cranes in it to start reconstruction after just as long? If nothing else (since straightening buildings require time, inspections and money) the *rubble* should be cleared out by now.
- The Hollows still being The Hollows (and yeah, I know, they wanted to have ... part of orenbanga erupt into it, which... *cringe*)
- Arachnos - which you can either view as a foreign army or a terrorist group - having a significant armed presence, including time and supplies to build significant bases in *multiple* points in a US city (Atlas, Faultline, Siren's Call) - and yes, the flip side, Longbow being in Nerva and invading Mercy (though the Isles could frankly label them as terrorists)
Of all these, honestly the Rikti mothership still being there is probably the least bothersome. It's a technologically superior (at a baseline) armed group, they've set up defenses and have had shielding around it the full time, they have teleportation technology (and so can bring in supplies, deal with medical issues and the like) - they'd be a much harder nut to crack than "US armed forces + metas vs Arachnos invasion."
I'm quite honestly curious where your (and anyone else's) lines are on those. Of all of them, Arachnos having anything besides an embassy, maybe a company fronting a warehouse that operations are run out of, in sovereign US soil bugs me the most.
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4 minutes ago, ZemX said:
If you don't think 50% of the names you try being taken already put together with the fact that probably only one tenth of accounts that exist are being actively played doesn't add up to a strong possibility that lots of wanted names are sitting in inactive accounts, then sure... we should leave it here. Because that's my whole argument. And I haven't seen anyone explain what's wrong with this logic yet.
First, you don't know what kind of checks I'm making on what kind of name.
Second, no, I'm not giving you any sort of statistic when I say "half the time." That's generally recognized as a fairly throwaway "sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not." I could have said "six of one, half dozen of the other." That does not mean I made 12 name checks and had half unavailable. It's a *figure of speech,* not a statistic.
(For the record, most of the time when I'm looking up something like that - like I said, mid-raid or the like - it's something *very* much in the "obvious name" window, or something that's a pun on something. Which does skew results on what I look for.)
But you go latching onto that instead of the *actual* portion from *actual* experince I can give numbers with, chuckles. Shows just how honest you're wanting to be in this. You're not listening, and I wouldn't have bothered replying other than you trying to distort what I say.
Also, don't make assumptions on the kinds of names I find. I have maybe 10% "name-names" (like peoples' names or a designation,) which would be highly unlikely to be taken, but the rest have a pretty wide range... none of which are zagapoidgh falskdfjadslf or whatever you had. And I'm primarily on Everlasting, one of the higher pop servers - and also an RP server, which tends to mean people *are* more picky about the names they get.
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Just now, ZemX said:
What happened that anyone on Live would notice?
They ... tried to get names after the script was run?
The devs reported the results? You know, something that doesn't rely on players self-reporting? (Not that players would know the name was freed up from another account, no.)
But, since apparently the only evidence you'll potentially believe involves me figuring out time travel, inventing a time machine, and hauling you back in time to 2007 to speak with the devs and look at the data personally instead of actually believing what they reported then, I'm stepping out of this conversation as it's fairly obviously a waste of time.
3 minutes ago, ZemX said:You are 199 for 200 on getting the name you typed the very first time? Because that's what I meant.
198, see addendum. That's not what you asked, so stop trying to move the goalpost. But even then, no, I rarely need to retry. Hell, my "hit" rate is probably better than that, as I'll come up with an idea (or someone will make a comment in a raid or mission) and I'll try to /friend that name and see if it's available. It is, roughly half the time. I rarely make characters FROM that, but for checking names? Yeah, they show available pretty often.
I didn't have to "try again" on live all too often either, and there were far more names used then.
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22 minutes ago, ZemX said:
It's a report of what happened and it stretches credulity, which is why I am questioning it.
And yet we have people from live here, when it happened, who can back it up. It happened precisely like that.
22 minutes ago, ZemX said:Hell, what's your own experience? When in the character creator, how often do you try to come up with a name and it's taken?
I can think of exactly one name in my hundred-plus characters (I'm probably coming up on two hundred, total, with all servers and both accounts) where this has been an issue. And I make alts... I'm not going to say "frequently," but often enough as a new idea comes along I want to try or an idea for a new character or plot comes along.
Edit: Eh, two, but one was so obvious it didn't surprise me. I've been more surprised at the names I *have* gotten.
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56 minutes ago, ZemX said:
I'm not saying it will free up any names *I* personally, want. But that anybody wants?
That's why I had the (generic) in front of "you." To indicate it isn't YOU, ZemX, specifically.
And whether you (non generic) want to believe it or not... that's what happened. Would some names be freed that someone else takes? Sure. The actual impact, though, would probably still be underwhelming.
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1 hour ago, aethereal said:
To me, it feels more naturalistic that the Hamidon is an undying threat that can be contained and stalemated but never truly beaten. The Rikti aren't that.
To what extent do you want to take that, though? I mean, if we start that line of thinking for an advanced, high-tech enemy proven to have biotech and portal technology, why are we still seeing Hellions and Skulls 20-plus issues later? They're not even portrayed as a national threat (like you can imply, say, the Family is - clear out one group, others from Miami move in to keep the business going) much less the level of the Rikti. One or two good concentrated sweeps from all the heroes should clear that right out.
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1 minute ago, ZemX said:
There has to be some context missing from this claim. Was there already an automatic name release for unpaid accounts? Or just that script? Because if it was just the script cleaning up abandoned accounts, it should have found TONS of names to release. The number of active accounts is a small fraction of total accounts in any MMO. At the point in time when WoW reached 100 million total accounts, it had 7.6 million active accounts. wever many characters were in each. Probably an average of more than one each.
There was never an automated name release. That information was copied directly from the wiki which talked (accurately) about both times that script was used. They kept the script handy (and could modify it,) but never felt it worthwhile to rerun it after the second time.
And yes, the script found "tons" of names to release (note, it didn't set all the characters to "generic," just marked the names as available.) If the account was inactive (due to suspension, not having an active subscription, whatever - don't forget, this was pre-Freedom) for 90 days, and the character was under level 35, the name was marked as available.
The second time it was run, they just changed the level to level 5 and under, as they found the majority of names freed were at that level. The second time, frankly, should have had more impact since it was run in preparation for people being able to transfer servers and rename characters.
But here's the thing. Even though all those names were *released,* they weren't necessarily names anyone *wanted.* As the article itself states:
QuoteLong before City of Heroes Freedom launched, the development team decided that running the scripts wasn't freeing up an appreciable number of character names, and has not run the script since the second wave.
Honestly, the script chould have had one more "ideal" time to activate - though I don't think it would have made a difference. The second time the script was run was August 29, 2007. They did a one time (that accidentally ran twice) Prestige grant for SGs, per-member, at the beginning of December 2007. So people set up temp accounts and loaded them with characters that never leveled, just to have the members for a SG to be able to build bases. However, I suspect most people who did that did what I did and used "non-names" - essentially serials (like MB-001 through MB-036) and the script would have had the same lack of impact being run (say) mid-to-late-2008 after those expired.
20 minutes ago, ZemX said:Just look at Homecoming Stats. Last posted in 2020. The Februrary 2020 total accounts was 160K. Active accounts? 32K. Granted that is just active for that month and we've been talking about two years inactive, but it hints at how many people who once created an account are probably not playing anymore. If even a tenth of those accounts hadn't logged in since late August 2019, a name release would hit sixteen thousand accounts times however many characters were in each. Probably an average of more than one each.
But, again... even if all those accounts were inactive, it doesn't mean the name (generic) *you* want that (generic) you're *sure* is being held by some name-squatting inactive account actually is and will be freed up. Plus we don't have the same definite "active/inactive" indicator we had on live. They had inactive accounts (as in either forced-inactive or not paid) for 90 days they could look at. Here? That 90 days is *nothing,* and can be easy to bypass even for people interested in (but not necessarily focused on) the game. Sure, that can be stretched out to a year or something... but then you're also marking fewer and fewer names as available, too.
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10 hours ago, RikOz said:
So what does a guy have to do to find a non-Freakshow story arc in the early- to mid-30s range?
Most of my magic-based (or interested) characters are finishing up Croatoa at that point.
... y'know, I don't think I've had Freakshow-heavy arcs for a while, even with my Brickstown/Founders characters...
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Flip side being sents have shorter range, so...
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19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:
I totally understand the reasoning for this suggestion - the plot end for the Rikti itself concluded over a decade ago...
I ... wouldn't go that far. There's nothing (as far as I recall) to say the Rikti that were banished back to their dimension didn't keep control over some significant portion of the population and decide to keep trying. We might have thrown things into chaos, but if you're counting that being a decade, that's a lot of time for "stuff" to happen there.
And, if we're using that as a justification, shouldn't we kill off Incarnate trials or banish those to "run them through the crystal?" That war's pretty definitively over, or would have to be massively restructured (Praemidon finds a way to try to invade Primal?) after all...
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8 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:
Forgive me if this is inaccurate, but didn't the legacy devs have a name policy related to inactivity? I could've sworn that existed, but I may be misremembering!
Not ... really.
They had a script they ran, twice. The impact of running the script to "free up" names was ... not particularly earth shattering.
QuoteThe character name policy is a tactic for recycling used player names from inactive accounts so that other players may use them. The policy only applies to accounts that are currently deactivated, not characters on active accounts that aren't logged in frequently. Additionally, accounts that are still being paid for, but simply have not been used for 90 days, are not affected.
Long before City of Heroes Freedom launched, the development team decided that running the scripts wasn't freeing up an appreciable number of character names, and has not run the script since the second wave.
Policy Details
The policy change affects all accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days. This only applied to accounts that were deactivated in some way, such as payment expiration or account suspensions.
Any character on such an account less than a certain level has its name set to "unreserved" status, which allows any new character on the server to be created with that name. In the event this happens, the original character under the name will be prompted to choose a new name upon login. In order to return a character's name to "reserved" status, the user must log the character in question into the game. As such, it is possible that a player can be actively using an account with characters whose names are still set to "unreserved" status.
When "unreserved" status is assigned to a name, the following changes are applied to the affected character:
- A new character name needs to be chosen (if existing name has been taken)
- The character's description and battle cry is cleared
- All mail received is deleted
- The character is removed from their Super Group, if any
- The character's Friends list is cleared, and the character is removed from others' Friends lists
- Mail other characters have received from an affected character reverts to having been sent from "Unknown"
Current Policy
On August 29, 2007, this policy was brought back. The re-enactment of this policy came in time for the Character Transfer and Character Rename features. This is a manual process run infrequently during a server maintenance period. Paragon Studios and NCsoft does not guarantee that the process will be announced before it takes effect, only that notice will be given if the policy is going to change.
For this version of the policy, only characters that are level 5 and under are eligible for unreserved status.
Previous Policy
This section contains information that no longer applies to the current version of City of Heroes Freedom. It is provided for historical purposes. On October 27, 2005, the character name policy was changed in order to allow names used by inactive accounts to be used by new characters created on active accounts.
During this enactment, eligible characters were level 34 and under.
On May 4, 2006, the character name policy was changed again to lift the previous enactment, which once again meant all new characters needed a unique name upon creation. Any characters already affected will retain "unreserved" status until said character is logged in though.
So, yeah. With *many more* accounts than we have here, it just didn't do that much.
(Also I should point to the points that were a bit more severe, not knowing if this would necessarily have to be tied to name issues - losing mail, losing spots in a SG, friends lists being gone, othe rpeoples mail from you being listed as "unknown," etc. If that *can't* be avoided, IMHO that's reason enough not to do it - given I'd rather not lose mail and have characters kicked from SGs from at least one player who died. Death does make it rather difficult to log in....)
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3 hours ago, Apparition said:
IMO, if a person hasn’t logged in for two years or more (military or otherwise, level 50 or otherwise), then he or she is never coming back.
Not necessarily. I know I've found myself on hiatus and gone "Hey, I haven't checked on that game for a while, wonder if they've patched that annoying thing / that event is over (see: D3 randomly throwing storms/boulders/etc everywhere at a season start)" and logged in where it's been a year or more.
Given Homecoming (and the other servers) had the whole "Will they be allowed to stay? How many will stay? Which will have THE DRAMA?!" on startup, someone could very well have decided to wait it out before becoming attached again.
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9 hours ago, RageusQuitus2 said:
I dont get it. Short distance, needs line of sight. By the time I might even need to use it.... Everyone speaks so highly of it since the pool revamp but im struggling to see the improvement to pool period. Let alone this power that I thought was supposed to be a centerpiece of the revamped pool.
*Hovers over the blender in an MSR. Pops Ultimate. Drops big piles of rikti to be ground up. Rinse, repeat.*
Also lovely with a Warshade that likes Eclipse and Mire.
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Yes, I'd love to color and customize my henchmen, repaint my robots, use clones of myself, but there's one other thing I don't think I've seen mentioned as a customization request:
"When I finish here, I'm coming for you!"
Yeah. The command responses. For instance, the one above is from the Necromancy set Lich. Which fits, thematically, if you're a villain forcing it into service. But not everyone's character is the same - if I'm running around with willing assistants, or "actually robots made to look this way" or what have you, the response doesn't really fit. Same with robots - maybe you want them saying something else. Or beeping. Or not saying anything at all.
(Note this is looking mostly at response text. I have no idea if you can shut demons up without making them emote - I suspect that's under sound customization.)
I have no idea if this would be easy (since you *can* make them say other things with /petsay) or a real pain, but it'd be nice.
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The most fun to play
in General Discussion
Posted
Well... I mean, one person's definition of "fun" isn't necessarily someone else's. I could say (for instance) "I love stalkers and being able to sneak through missions, it makes me feel like I'm getting the better of the bad guys" but if beating down a ton of enemies and coming out with nary a scratch is what floats your boat, that doesn't help. :)
Honestly I think most of my answers would have nothing to do with abilities or gameplay - I lean heavily into RP for mine, so it's "I like this character because..."
If I had to pick characters due to setups I've liked, power wise (and not "I've put eleventy billion inf of sets in" and the like, either,) and look at sets and not RP reasons, I'd have to think about it a sec. But probably these.
Warshade. Just... yes. (I like both Khelds, honestly. This is mostly annoying in invasions where bodies fade faster, or against things like ghosts that don't leave a corpse, but otherwise, yes, Warshade.)
Mind/Fire Dom - I like mind to begin with. When I started this one up back on live, I started cranking the difficulty early... like single digits early. Still a blast to play.
Ice/Dark Corruptor - Takes a *little* bit to get going. But can chew up groups.
Pain domination. Paired with pretty much anything... mostly because I like going on mothership raids, I can help out in the center while still blasting away with two AOE healing powers going off, one of which doesn't interrupt anything. (Mastermind-wise, the toggle's a +regen, as I recall. But I don't like bringing MMs to raids. And anyone who's seen Rez Dispenser on Everlasting can tell I don't just sit still, either. )
Most of my Sentinels. Ice/ice, Elec/elec... just ... any of them. I like them.
Have to mention my Staff/WP brute. Yes, it's pretty much "you'll be tough without needing to think about it," and the character's also an RP staple, which is part of why I held off mentioning it, but it is also fun to play.