carroto

I used to play mostly villain-side. The forays I've made blue-side at low levels have made me swear off of wasting time with any of those contacts. It seems like the devs learned from their mistakes making heroes and applied them to villains. I much prefer the red content. I'd like to gain more exposure to the blue content, but I just don't have the patience to go through all the endless patrols and deliveries and defeat alls. I'm pretty sure that back in the day I had a thread bookmarked in which people listed the contacts in various level ranges with enjoyable content on blue side. Is there anything like that out there now? Failing that I wonder if I could get a close enough approximation by just going through paragonwiki and finding what contacts were added later in the game's life, and simply presuming that those would probably be worth my time. I already know that this wouldn't be perfectly reliable, because Twinshot is new and has way too many "go talk to this person on the other side of the zone for no good reason" missions. Any suggestions are welcome, even if anyone just wants to share a few contacts whose missions they enjoy and tend to make time for. Edit: Trying to keep an up-to-date summary of everyone's suggestions below. Regular Contacts Level 1-7 (AP): Mathew Habashy, Sondra Costel Level 7-20 (KR): Shauna Stockwell Level 5-15 (Hollows): Everything? Level 15-24 (SC): Graham Easton Level 15-24 (SC): Laura Lockhart Level 15-25 (Faultline): All contacts Level 20-29 (Talos): Field Agent Keith Nance Level 20-29 (Talos): Roy Cooling Level 25-34 (Croatoa): All contacts Level 30-50 (?): Provost Marchand Level 40-44 (FF): Indigo Level 45-50 (PI): Crimson Task Forces and Trials Level 10-15 (SC): Posi 1 Level 11-16 (SC): Posi 2 Level 20-25 (IP): Penelope Yin Level 24-33 (IP): Respec Level 25-30 (Striga): Ernesto Hess Level 30-34 (Croatoa): Katie Hannon Level 34-43 (FF): Respec Level 38-40 (AP): Abandoned Sewers Trial Level 39-41 (Eden): Eden Level 44-50 (PI): Respec Level 45-50 (FF): Dr. Khan Other content not exclusive to heroes: Level 15-50: Drowning in Blood trial Level 35-50: ITF Level 35-50: Lady Grey TF

There was Linux install information at one time. Without it I never would have been able to start playing. Now I just looked at the main post with install instructions and there's no mention of Linux, so I guess it was removed? There are a couple of alternatives to the Tequila launcher that seem to have been created for Linux users so clearly at some point there was a push to support Linux. No updates to install instructions in a long time though, so I wonder if those of us using Linux are going to be left behind soon.

If the safe mode client goes away the game will be unplayable for me. I'm running it under wine on Ubuntu Linux. I've tried both the 32 and 64-bit clients and can't get either to run. They crash and exit immediately. I've been hoping that there would be a new guide for Linux users but haven't come across any updated instructions. Same for Mids', unfortunately. It seems that Mac users have better community support getting all this stuff to work.

Is it possible that the map your were on had a jail or similar in it? You know, the type that when you rez instead of exiting the instance and rezzing in a hospital, you immediately port to a jail cell on the map and have to break out? Those have an anti-teleport field in them, but it's possible that you were rezzed and ported before the field could take effect.

I just got the same error. This is the only hit I got on a search for the error. No one else has run into it?

Yeah EA got reworked a while back and since then it's been a really strong set. If anything the devs maybe went a little too far in compensating for its lack of popularity. It's got a lot of goodies. I don't play it because I don't like defense sets with psi holes but if it wasn't for that it would probably be my go-to defense set. I like stealth powers. I hope if it gets ported to Tankers that it stays as-is. It's an optional power and there are plenty of other ways to get the attention of mobs. There are only two armor sets with those powers and it would be a shame for Tankers to not get both of them.

I've been noticing this as well. I get on TFs and everyone moves so fast it's been surprising. I was a fan of speed runs back on live, but this is a whole other level. My recollection is that on live you would sometimes have a small number of heavily IO'ed and incarnated-out toons who could run ahead and solo spawns, but most of the team would move together and needed to work together to handle things. Now spawns just disintegrate so fast it's been a bit of a shock. I guess it's the ease of IO acquisition on HC, as well as the ease of incarnate progression, that means that most everyone is overpowered relative to the design of the content. I did an LRSF the other day and that really drove it home. Less than 20 minutes to get what at one point was one of the more sought-after rewards. The final fight went so fast it was hard to believe. I remember failing that mission more than once on live. With the wrong team we just couldn't take down the heroes. People would get nukes and shivans and maybe add in vengeance to give themselves a better chance of succeeding. Here I was watching the heroes drop one after another, in seconds like it was nothing. Then the reward popup and I'm just wondering WTF happened to this game? Looking over this thread it seems that most people enjoy the power creep, and running into spawns and spamming attacks to try to get one or two off before they're all defeated. I've been musing on how to get back the experience of a team working together to overcome a real challenge. The best I've come up with so far is maybe stick to lower-level content where people don't have incarnate powers and most probably won't have been able to fully IO their characters yet.

As has already been stated, the set bonuses tend to be so weak on those that is it really a problem that they don't go to 30 or beyond? Is anyone really going to start slotting them if they do? They're only use is for low-level frankenslotting and I doubt that extending them will change that. However what it will do is increase the amount of worthless garbage in the higher range drop pools. People often set a lower bound on their random recipe rolls of 30 or higher because they want to exclude those worthless lower-level sets. This change would further clutter up a range that already has a lot of stuff no one wants. I would go a different direction to make those sets more useful. Change their salvage requirements. They are for low-level characters, but many of them require rare salvage. Back on live when most low-level rare salvage could be had on the AH for 5-6K, that wasn't a big deal. But now that everything is unified, a low-level character has to come up with half a million inf to craft a single IO. That puts them out of reach for anyone not twinking with a higher level alt.

Hopefully one of the devs can chime in but aren't they using a Microsoft tool chain to build the thing? Good luck getting such a project to run on Linux natively. Not a small task. I'd love to see it. I'm still running the "safe mode" version because the new one crashes under Wine for me. Haven't been able to get Mids' to run either.

In addition to level shifts not working, the pylons are still level 54.

It's been quite a while since I read any of those books but I seem to have an impression of him more as an agile finesse-based fighter. Dodging attacks rather than standing and taking them. So I'd think that Super Reflexes would be a better fit. Maybe a Ninjitsu Scrapper, since that would emulate his ability to surround his enemies in darkness and strike them unguarded.

Isn't that the only manip set that has a sustain that's an enemy-based click attack? I think that puts a lot of people off. Then again, based on what I'm seeing in the numbers, most people seem to be making their choices more off of theme or recreating an existing hero/villain, rather than based on an understanding of the mechanics of the set. So who knows? It seems like like dark sets are usually popular. I haven't seen any Drizzt clones in this game though.

I don't think there's any knockdown proc in a set that will go in that power. If Mids' is correct your only options are chance for -recharge and chance for smashing damage.

This is the same sort of thing I was talking about. I'm not sure how you're defining "more generally usable", but whether or not the changes are an improvement are going to be dependent on the individual player. Coming from a narrow viewpoint about how the game is/should be played, it's easy to say no one is losing anything here, although you have no idea.

If I remember correctly this is an old bug going back to live. Been that way a loooong time. Not saying it shouldn't be fixed, just FYI.

It's not consistently providing 70 ft. of stealth though. I noticed that I could stand near mobs and they wouldn't notice me for a while, and then suddenly they'd start attacking. So it's like it's double-stacking, but not consistently. So probably it's double-stacked most of the time so that's what shows but occasionally there's a gap where they don't overlap and suddenly you can be spotted.

I agree for the most part with what you've said. Although I strongly disagree with the way the snipe changes were implemented, I mostly favor the other changes that have been made. My concern is more the overall trend I'm seeing. Although the new devs seem to be hewing to the old damage formulas, and also respecting the cottage rule (although pushing hard against it at times), they are more free with sweeping changes than anything I remember. So far I see this as positive on balance. My concern, and I suspect others', is for the future. If we're seeing such large changes being made so freely now, what's going to come later? The shutdown of the live game left an indelible impression on all of us. Of course there is concern about having the game taken away again. But that doesn't have to come as the sudden throwing of a switch. It can also be more insidious, as a slow changing of the game out from under us until it's no longer the thing we love. So I think some of the responses we're seeing are out of this concern. On live there was at times a frustrating resistance on the devs' part to make changes that seemed to be obviously needed. They were very cautious (usually) in a lot of ways. I think they applied the spirit of the cottage rule very broadly. The advantage of this is that they didn't inadvertently break people's favorite characters more often than absolutely necessary. I know some will disagree with this because of course there were times where they did exactly that and it seemed gratuitous. I believe that for the most part what I said is true though. One advantage of this is that it helps to build trust. Looking at the process some of these changes went through, what I saw was devs who are coming from a specific, limited viewpoint about how the game is played, and making changes based on that. There were many times where someone chimed in and say "Hey what about me and the way I play? This breaks that.", and they would then address it. But what about the people who did not provide feedback, who are blindsided by these changes and how they affect the way their characters play? Too bad for them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the live devs' overly cautious approach had the benefit of making it less likely that they would accidentally piss a bunch of people off. The new freeballing approach I'm seeing here seems to mean that it's only a matter of time before you're the one who gets your favorite toy broken.

The fear instilled by Acid Mortar was the primary thing that killed the set for me and caused me to give up on it. Web Grenade is single-target, and Caltrops cover too small an area and do too little slow to keep enemies from taking off to the far corner of the map in terror. I was spending too much of my time just trying to keep mobs from running to the point that I'd lose target on them. Unless the set gets some way of dealing with that, or the fear gets removed or reduced, I don't expect to ever play it again. The FFG was probably the second most bothersome thing. I don't have a good internal clock for 4 minutes, especially during busy combat situations. So I never knew when it might self-destruct in the middle of combat when I really needed it. So I ended up resummoning it a lot. It got tedious. On top of that it did a poor job following me. It would get hung up on geometry or sometimes seemed to just sit around pondering if it really wanted to be near me. All of that is if it didn't just get destroyed by AoEs or targeted by mobs. It's a set I really wanted to love. It's so different from all others and seems so full of potential. If it ever gets reworked I'll look on with interest but I doubt I'll roll another trapper.

I seem to recall that there was an exploit that was discovered using Walk shortly after it was released. Can't remember what it was though.

Not surprising. Mobs tend to get way more range than players. Not just AVs, even all the way down to minions. I recently got outranged by an Lt. on a level 3 Psi Blast Corruptor. I thought the crazy range mobs got didn't start until later.

I won free cake for a year. Got fat, had a heart attack, and died.

From the August 17th patch notes : Icy Assault: Chilling Embrace: increased radius to 15ft. Added -10% damage str to affected enemies.

You're missing a slash in your path. hc-bin32cityofheroes.exe should be hc-bin32\cityofheroes.exe I'm not sure how you got it installed, which loader or set of instructions you used, so it's hard to say which specific steps to take to fix it. If you're using Play On Linux I'd say try to make a new shortcut in your virtual drive and see if that works. I could not get the new 32-bit client to run for me under KUbuntu. It crashes on load. So I'm still using the legacy one (homecoming.exe). You could try that one as well.

The new 32-bit client crashes in wine for me on linux. The old one still works. Hopefully those with a deeper understanding of wine will find out how to get the new client to run before the old one is sunset.

So you're saying that if you click on a power button that's not refreshed and the client plays the "not recharged" sound, it's still sending the command to the server? I have no knowledge about that, but if that is true it would be a surprise to me. I don't recall ever experiencing clicking a power that shows it's not refreshed and having it activate anyway.