GM Crumpet

For any issues like this the best thing to do is to pop a ticket in as mentioned above. For obvious reasons we never discuss actions taken/not taken against reported players except with the player involved, but to clarify. Unless it's specifically requested by a player (which happens occasionally) we lock/ban accounts for only the most serious of violations. If a player does something against the rules and keeps doing it (such as creating IP violations then renaming them back repeatedly) the chances are they get a small three day holiday. To get a permanent ban it has to be something serious. We aren't monsters though and we try to work with the player before that happens. If your account is banned then you can appeal and put your case. You may have a point. You may not. But the lead GM's and admins will investigate thoroughly. We don't ban because you have decided to make W0IVER1N3 or Chucky Cheese Man. We just generic it. It's not even a strike against you as such, though if we have pages of violations on your account we might need to have words. There are occasions where accounts get locked by accident and if that does happen please let us know as soon as possible. This is an old game with a creaky database. Sometimes mistakes happen and we will do everything we can to put it right.

I think it's a combination of many things. I have a 17 year old living in my house (not my kid) and she has the attention span of a goldfish. YouTube is too boring, everything has to be a 30 second TikTok. You talk to her and it's like the lights are on and nobody is home. Yet she's not stupid, just really low attention span. And I've noticed the same thing with my nephews. It's like the journey isn't important, just getting there as quickly as possible. I'm at the age now where I've turned into my dad and don't understand the youngsters or their interests. I'm as guilty as anyone else of focussing on the screen and not paying attention to chat. Someone will ask me something (such as pass the star) and it can take a couple of tells before I notice. I am so busy trying to be a contributing member of the team I kind of zone out of anything that isn't fight related. As for new players, 99% of the time I see so many people on chat patiently answering questions and pointing new players to the wiki, or mids, or vidiotmaps. There are always going to be unpleasant people with no patience, but the majority are always really helpful. It's not the new players fault they don't know something, and it's not their fault they made questionable choices when they started playing. It's up to us as a community to get them on the right track. Someone the other day was standing next to the P2W vendor in Atlas and giving out free inf to help new players buy boosts and temp powers. That's the kind of community we have. Some games are really toxic, this game isn't. Most players are actually really great people and it's part of the reason I've stuck with it for as long as I have

As you say, there are a lot of people who are under the impression CoX is like some other MMO's where the game starts at level cap and everything to get there is a painful grind, so they do AE farming until they hit 50 then have no real clue how to play. Not their fault, it's a symptom of a lot of games, but it does mean they don't have much to do at that level and they don't understand the basics. I think we need to have patience with those people and help point them in the right direction, but I can see why someone would be annoyed with lots of people all messaging them 🙂

Please keep on topic and avoid personal attacks and debates about personal attacks. Or perceived personal attacks, as I know from my own experience that what I think I'm saying can read very differently to the way I intended it to come out.

I spoke to Number Six about seeding a while ago and the only thing the admins are willing to seed is salvage. Everything else is a free market and the prices do tend to stabilise. Some enhancements are meant to be ultra rare and expensive. Some recipes the same. You can make a really good build without ever going near D-Syncs or Hami-O's and while I understand the desire to squeeze as much out of a character as possible sometimes things are an inf sink. If you want to maximise your slots with multi purpose enhancements you can, it's just going to cost a lot of inf. I still think it's better than live where some of these were priced above the inf cap and people had to transfer 3-4 billion inf manually to a player to buy it. If we got to that point I think the admins would have to step in to cool the market down, but we are not in that position and hopefully never will be. As someone said above, you can always pop a bid in for much lower than the recent sale price. The chances are you'll probably get it, you just might have to wait a while.

I loved Incredibles and was excited for a sequel as I watched the end credits for the first one. I thought, OK it'll take 3 or 4 years, but it'll come. How could it not? The first one was wildly successful, but we had to wait so long a lot of people had lost interest. As you say, it just seemed to be "Everyone liked Jack-Jack, make sure he's in it doing wacky stuff". "Edna Mole was a hit, make sure she's in it". And the Jack and Edna stuff was indeed great. Unfortunately the story was just "meh". The first one was exciting, complicated, had fun characters, a great villain with superb motivation, exotic locations, and the sequel lacked any of that. I think they just went too simple. They had the set pieces they knew everyone would love then tried to make a narrative to link them all together. It wasn't a bad film, it just wasn't in the same league as the first one.

There was the animated series and a couple of spin off movies, but yes that does sound fun. The problem is they rarely pull off a good sequel. I watched Frozen and thought it was wonderful. I watched Frozen 2 and thought it was terribly dull. They didn't really move the story along, they just tried to take what they thought people liked in the first film and make a film with those bullet points. Even the songs didn't pop like the first film. I didn't find any of them particularly memorable. At least some of the direct to video films tried something different. Aladdin, Return of Jafar and King of thieves at least tried to make a coherent story, but (I'm probably in a minority) they overdid the genie in my opinion. Robin Williams was very talented, a genius even, but he could go too far in his wild tangents and like Jim Carey I always felt he worked better with a bit of discipline from the director. I think it's just a problem with having a writers room. The films that work well are generally made by a person or small group who are all on the same page. Writers rooms smooth any edges over and act as an echo chamber throwing ideas out and going for a consensus. They always end up with the blandest and safest options instead of just telling a new story. They analyse why they think the first film was a success and then hope that giving the audience more of the same will make it successful. Then blame the fans when it's not.

Oh police academy. I remember watching the first couple on video back in the 80s

Oh the guy with the silly voice. No idea who he is. Is he famous for something? I'm not from the US so some people don't really register on our consciousness across the pond. I've had to google no end of "Famous Superstars" to see why they are a big deal.

who?

There is a lot to love about Hercules. James Woods is superb as ever, and you do understand his motivation. Meg is almost the anti-heroine, she really isn't that impressed with Herc and is very sassy while being funny and charming. "My names Megaera. But my friends call me Meg. At least they would if I had any friends". It's quite an odd beastie to be honest. Utterly brilliant and funny, but also with a lot of depth and soul. Plus the songs are absolute bangers. The artwork is from Gerald Scarfe so is a lot less "Disney" than usual, and it riffs on the concept of small town guy becoming a world wide sensation and forgetting his roots, with a whole sub thing about merchandising. It even manages to point out the Disney trend to monetise absolutely everything they possibly can, no matter how tenuous the link to the IP.

I have a couple of SS/invul and they don't appear that squishy, then again my SS/invul on live was after the nerfs so with all the delicious set enhancements now I could never afford then I'm pretty much awesome 🙂

well so far it's still polite and people are accepting opinions without screaming, so I'm quite happy. There does seem to be a massive discrepancy in Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic which kind of defeats the purpose of them, but ultimately it's like Twitter. Interesting to the people who go there, but for the majority of the rest of the world largely ignored. I've never had one person go see a movie because they've checked the reviews on those kinds of sites. Or not go see a movie. They will read a review in a newspaper and that's the limit of their decision making.

May 2019 for me. A friend who knew I loved City of Heroes when it was live mentioned Homecoming to me. I got terribly excited and didn't believe it would be as good as I remembered, but I went on the forum and made a game account, then downloaded Tequila and away I went. The excitement as I made my first new character in years was so much that when I appeared in Atlas Park for the first time and heard the fanfare I actually cried 🙂 And yes, it was not only as good as I remembered it was better as I now had a HD monitor, high speed internet and a great graphics card so was able to play on Ultra 😛

The original was crafted very carefully to give proper motivation to move forward, the new version removed a lot of that motivation. From Triton destroying Erics statue to Ursulas manipulation and gaslighting, even to changing the ending, it was all done to remove any trace of the possibility that Ariel was doing it to be with the man she loved. They also added several dreadful new songs that don't fit. Or sound good. The Skuttle rap is an abomination.

I was watching a video by Nerdrotic last night that made a good point. This was about the new Indiana Jones film. They have opened up review viewings to every tiny blog and newsletter they could find for Wednesday, and one of his commentators mentioned that you'll see the "all critics" score go up massively in the run up to the films release. It's currently at around a 50% critic rating so the top critics will be mid range rotten, but the all critics will be really high as the nerds with 10 followers will want to keep getting access in the future. The viewers score is tweaked to remove the lowest ratings, so the zero and half aren't counted, and a lot of the 1 star seem to disappear too. Media reports think we are stupid and compare box office takings today with box office 30+ years ago. I actually saw one crowing that the Little Mermaid remake had already passed the box office for the original film. Really? It has taken more than the originals 87 million dollars run? It made the equivalent of 250 million dollars at the US box office where ticket prices were a fraction of what they are today and didn't open in many countries round the world. so far the remake has struggled to make 211 million in the US and will be lucky to reach the same inflation adjusted figures of the original.

Maybe using the tern neckbeard menace might not be the best thing. You might offend the neckbeards...... 😛

Sadly all the old accounts and characters are gone. We have not and have never had access to the player data, only the raw game files like everyone else. I've heard conflicting stories about what happened when the files were originally leaked but have no way of knowing which version is true. In one only the game files were released, in another the player files were released as well and the person they were sent to deleted them immediately in terror due to the personal nature of the details. There are other versions of the story but the end result is the same. There is no file anywhere containing player account data from live except possibly in the vaults of NCSoft. And that's debatable. As for names, we are 4 years in. The chances of a given name from live being snapped up is quite high. I came in around 3 months after HC went live and my two mains were already taken by someone else. I'd had those names since I started just after the release of issue 4. I had to move on unfortunately and start again from scratch.

Name calling is classed as a personal attack and is not allowed

I remember that on live, but due to certain changes in US legislation we have to have a hard 13 minimum age limit unless we really want to get into trouble.

I think people are trying their best to contribute so are watching the action and spamming buttons. If it's a support character they may be looking for the best time to spam a buff, or a hold or something. Unless I'm on voice chat I worry sometimes when someone is spending more time chatting than attacking. A lot of teams I'm on tend to be on the fast side and outside of a thank you for a gratz or TP or a call for a rez or a wakie most people tend to be too busy for lots of chat. The occasional comment happens like "I hate this map" or suggestions for tactics, or pointing out we all died because the team split, but outside of that most people are just busy 🙂 As for drama, I've seen it happen. I was on a farm where the leader had very specific ideas on how to progress, and it was way outside the normal sitters and hitters dynamic and insisted everyone, including the level 1 alts took part in the fights. Then proceeded to call everyone in the team all kinds of awful names because we either attacked too soon, didn't have our crystal balls on auto so couldn't read his mind, and team wiped. It wasn't even that good a farm. I blocked him and quit. Several team members followed suit and messaged me with uncomplimentary things about the farmer and also blocked him. Sometimes bad behaviour has consequences.

I have that a lot. I was in a MK a couple of days ago and we were having fun and being silly and chatting. It's hard sometimes as you are trying to keep up with the rest of the team and contribute so chatting tends to be limited

I have a lot of inf saved in my global email and drag it out as needed whether it's a level 1 or a level 50 🙂 I also randomly drop inf on new players in atlas

Just a reminder that everyone has an opinion and a right to play the game how they want, even if it's not the way you play, or even if it's not the way you think others should play. Jumping on a returning player because they are doing something you disagree with is not good. We have a responsibility to new or returning players to show our good side. Give them advice, point them to resources they may find useful. give them guides to yes, create a really good farming toon if that's what they want. Sometimes having the build for a horribly frankenslotted toon is welcome. I think farming has a place (I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise as I have farming alts) but I also think it can become the focus instead of a tool and someone ends up farming as the main or only aspect of the game that they play. Even then, that's up to them. If they enjoy it and get satisfaction from it then I'm not going to criticise. There really isn't that much content at level 50. It can get as repetitive as the low level content for someone with altistis who never gets past level 20. A player who only farms and does high end content is always going to complain there is nothing to do, they are bored etc. The trick is to mix it up.

I agree your original character pick may not have been the best. There are better combinations out there. I tried a few when I started on live before I picked my mains which were AR/Devices blaster and Invul/SS tank. It was such a different experience to my first couple, almost like a new game. As for starting with a farming toon and power levelling new alts as a starting player, I'd recommend against that. The point of the low level contacts is to act as an extended tutorial. Twinshot and Dr Graves are mirrors of each other, but get the basics down in a fun way without feeling like you are "learning". I'm sure we've all seen a level 50 player joining a team and asking "What's an enhancement?" and facepalming. Not their fault, but the modern idea of the game only starting at level 50 and the journey to the good stuff is a grind doesn't apply here. Inf is ridiculously easy to get. Just read a basic tutorial on playing the auction house (of which there are several excellent ones on the forum or pinned in Discord) and you are sorted. Just from merit conversions and good drops you'll get enough inf to slot a pretty decent character. Farming is actually a slow method of gaining inf. It used to be the fastest, but after the bug exploits and loopholes were closed it stopped being phenomenal and went to just OK. It is a good method of power levelling though. I'll often farm to level 22 so I can slot IO's. I've done the lower content to death and really can't face doing it too often now 😛 I agree though, play the game how you want as long as it doesn't impact on other players. I just think it's a shame when players think farming is compulsory and miss out on some actually great stories because they have levelled past it.