Zhym

That would actually be about the right price, IMO—if not still a little overpriced. Because the only thing Aether can be used for at the moment is to buy permanent versions of Halloween costumes, we can actually do a really primitive comparison: It takes four pieces of Halloween salvage to buy an NPC costume that lasts for 14 days. At the moment, Halloween salvage is going for 30k-100k. We're in the Halloween event, so salvage is probably cheaper now than it would be in, say, May. So let's use the high end of that range: 100k at that value, the price of a 14-day costume is about 400k. For about 10M, you can have that costume all year. It takes 10 Aether to buy a permanent costume. Aether looks like it's currently around 3M. So that's 30M inf to buy a permanent costume right now. Spending 30M to dress up like an NPC seems insane to me (so you can imagine what I thought of spending 200M to do it when Aether was at 20M—not that I didn't do it for the badges), but at 3M for Aether the cost of a permanent costume isn't ridiculous if you plan to wear that costume full time for three years. I'd maybe peg the "reasonable" price of a permanent costume at 5M-10M inf, which would put Aether at about 500K-1M value. Of course, all that assumes that the only thing you can buy with Aether is costumes, and that people care about how much costumes cost. I suspect that if the costumes had been rolled out in Page 4 at a cost of 200M each...well, we might have thought harder about it. (On the other hand, we had a way to get the equivalent of 600M inf from one 4-star Aeon run, so wealth was rushing into the economy as fast as it was getting spent. Possibly faster.)

That's not looking like a great gamble right now. With the new ToT badges giving out 2 Aether each, there's been an influx. The last price I saw was about 3.1 million, and that's before everyone's had a chance to get the new ToT badges on all their alts. IMO, the initial price of about 20M each was inflated due to (1) extremely low supply (at the time Page 4 dropped, no supply) and (2) high demand from badgers who needed 150 Aether each to get the new badges. Both situations were temporary. But there's also an argument that prices are going to be artificially low for the next month, since (1) supply is increasing from the ToT badges, and (2) demand is low because (a) most badgers have their Page 4 badges by now, and (b) temporary costumes are plentiful, so why pay for a permanent one right now? What will happen after that? My guess is that the price will dip back up in November after a big drop this month but stay fairly low. As the game goes on, the supply of Aether will increase. The big question is whether there will be enough interest in the things Aether can buy to use all the supply. Aside from the badge factor, I'm guessing there won't be. And if the pricing ends up what was used in beta—1,000 Aether for the mini-me costume, for example—that might actually be so high that most people won't even bother trying to save up that much. So, personally, I see increasing supply and decreasing demand. I personally wouldn't bet on it increasing in value. That's just my guess, of course.

To be fair (to...us?), it's not an illogical decision. You have to be a zone-appropriate level to go trick-or-treating, so it makes sense to run ToT in a level 50 zone. That limits the options for heroes to PI or Kallisti. Kallisti might be better since heroes and villains could both play in the same zone, but it would also be a damn big zone to hunt for GMs. Plus, in PI the hospital is right next to the motel, everyone knows where the GMs spawn, and the base portal is close to the motel. Lag aside, it's set up pretty well for the event. I do think there are some people who prefer to ToT in Kallisti, but for the most part, players have decided that PI is THE place because it's, well, pretty much THE place.

BTW, “lag” means something specific—it’s latency between your computer and the server. It usually shows up as rubber banding. What's happening in PI seems to be good old fashioned server-side slowness. There’s too much going on in the zone for the servers to keep up. So you get things like powers taking a really long time to activate. It’s not a network thing and it has nothing to do with your processor, memory, or graphics. It has everything to do with the mayhem going on at the motel. Basically, if the slowness drives you nuts, avoid combat in the streets of PI for the next month.

It's just part of the Halloween event and PI having room for all those leagues, monsters, pets, etc. Learn to love it (or, y'know, go hunt somewhere else).

With the new Ancient Vampires all over the place, I keep thinking Peregrine Island is being overrun by Snarkies.

Gotta work on your priorities... FWIW, the new badges are quick to get. Hop to Spookygon Island, join the mob at the Motel of Horror, and you'll have defeated five of each Halloween EB in no time. I was able to top off my badges in a standard 15 minute break period. Win!

How much does it cost to run an individual shard? The October donations thread shows a payment of about $4000 to OVH last month. Would shutting down one of the five shards actually save 20% of that cost? I'm not saying we should shut down any shards. But since saving money seems to be the only reason to shut down a shard, I'm wondering how much that would actually save.

Yeah, I do this a lot. Thus, I have ended up with: Captain Kangaroo: MA/SR scrapper. Lots of fun to play. Was my "main" on Live and one of the first characters I recreated when I joined Homecoming. 70s Man: DP/MC blaster. He was an AR blaster on Live, but DP is so much better. This toon redefined what "lots of fun" could be and quickly became my main on Homecoming. Splendidman: SS/Inv tanker. 'Nuff said about this one. Crystal Cannon: Ice/Ice blaster. The name is a play on "glass cannon." Tomcat: Claws/SR stalker. Teal Ninja: Ninja/Ninjitsu stalker. A great powerset combo for soloing. Canned Heat: Fire/Fire Blaster robot cop (okay, technically it's "Canned.Heat" because I joined Homecoming too late to get the name, but I had it on one of the Live servers, so I'm going to pretend I have the real name) Pippi LePew: BR/Devices blaster. This is also a fun combo. Siouxsie Tsoo: Kin/Sonic defender dressed up like a Tsoo. Kin/Sonic is a great combo, of course, and this is a fun toon to play in groups. Gort Mk. VII: Time/Rad Defender. I had a couple of versions of Gort on Live, since I'm not sure what the canonical power set would be for the movie version of the robot. This combo works pretty well, though. I also have Gort Mark XII, a Rad/Atomic blaster, but that combo hasn't quite grabbed me. Mediocre Fred: Claws/Regen scrapper. Based on a Smothers Brothers song, he's a normal looking guy (or bicyclist) who turns into a werewolf. I like the character concept a lot, but he's not at the top of my list of fun characters to play. The Bureaucrat: AR/Invuln sentinel. This was totally a concept build, and it didn't quite work. Worked well enough to get him to 50, and even play some after that, but it's not my favorite. Which is a shame, because I love the concept. Dr. Pierce: Emp/Arrow defender. Modeled after a certain TV army doctor. As a playable character, he's...fine. Subordinate Claus: Ice/Time controller. Santa in bondage gear. Pretty fun to play, but I only bring him out in the holiday season. There are a whole bunch of other names that I rolled up characters for but haven't leveled much for various reasons: Statsman (Kin/Regen brute—don't do this), Human Trampoline (SS/Shield brute, with the idea that I'd pick lots of knock-up powers as he leveled, but I never leveled him), Andromeda Brain (BR/Mental blaster), Seismogram (Seismic/Earth blaster), Ninja Pirate Robot (DP/Ninja blaster), Sound Blaster Pro (Sonic/Sonic blaster), Laddie Liberty (Broad Sword/Shield scrapper), Celery Stalker (Savage/Bio stalker), Major Weakness (Mercs/Poison MM), and OVH Tech Support (Robots/Time MM). I also have one or two characters with power sets I like, but who I don't play much because I can't figure out a good name to go with them. I must have changed the name on my SJ/WP stalker three or four times now.

I’ve done both. Usually, I come up with a character concept and then try to fit an AT and power set combo to it. But sometimes I want to try a power set combo, so I try to come up with a concept that fits. I’d say I’m about 50/50 on how that works out. I’ve had concepts I loved where the powers just sucked to play. And I’ve had power sets that worked reasonably well but the character concept didn’t grab me. It’s the characters where the concept is fun and the power set works that I really enjoy playing.

Like that woman Madeleine. How does she know the exact number of hours my character has been online? Is she a stalker? Is there some deep level of surveillance going on in Paragon City, and Madeleine is our only tiny window into this hidden world? It doesn't bear too much thinking about, really.

I'd try it out myself, but I'm on a Mac, so I'd have to rewrite the whole thing in Automator or something anyway (I almost said "AppleScript"; that's how old I am).

I find it interesting, given your post about wanting people to ask for invites in broadcast rather than tells (hey, it's right there in your signature!), that this script sends a tell by default. Maybe you could add another keyword check to see if the message includes the words "tell," "PST," "broadcast," or "shout" to determine whether the text to paste is formatted as a tell or a broadcast?

Awesome tool. Just be careful, anyone, if you're playing CoX while working from home. It might be awkward to accidentally paste, "I'd like to join DFB!" into work Slack.

From the Lore AMA Archive:

This is fantastic. A deep drive down memory lane! I assume that making quote tags work is somewhere in the to-do list. It'd also be cool if we could link directly to posts. (I just stumbled across Positron's "All that crap is grey to me, no XP" post, for example. I can link to the thread, but not the post.) And it'd be really great if the archive had the same look and feel as the old forums, for extra strong nostalgia sake, but I'm just getting greedy now. :)

He's Vet Level 215 and my badger (and my profile image on the forums), so I guess that means he's my "main": I ran him through almost all the blueside and redside as he leveled, pausing XP along the way and using tip missions to do the alignment changes. I've played this toon a lot (Madeleine in Atlas Park tells me I've played him for a total of 1,047 hours, though some of that was AFK farming for a damage taken badge). As for why I've played this toon so much, I think it's because the toon hits the magic combo of theme and being fun to play. "70s Man" is a concept I can run with in RP when I feel like it, and DP/MC is an absolute hoot to play.

Thanks, but I wouldn't know what to do with it (other than buy Aether to get mini mode, of course). And I mean that literally: where do people with that kind of scratch even keep it? Mail? Alts that are nothing but inf mules? Market bids for items that no longer exist?

I have a Nature MM I really like, and a Sonic Defender who debuffs really well, so I recently figured hey, why not roll up a Nature/Sonic Defender? I will be heavily copying this build, so thanks! One question about Entangling Aura, which I really enjoy on my Nature MM. I take it this build doesn't have it because it doesn't really fit the support role, but if you had to give up a power for EA, what would you drop?

Whirlwind would make them scurry...but it doesn't scan.

I'm trying to work up some lyrics, but so far I'll I've got is: Trolls and Skulls and Lost gonna scurry When I take them out with my Flurry When I take them out with my Flurry with the Rage on top That's it. And, really, "Flurry" isn't the power to strike fear in the hearts of bad guys.

Okay. First “The Farmer and the Cowman,” and now this? Are people just trolling for @Oklahoman likes now? ’scuse me, all. I’m going to go see if there’s a post where I can reply with “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top” and be on-topic.

Yeah, that's the part I was hoping to avoid.

Does that mean making sure that slot 6 in tray 2 has whatever the current incarnate slotted power is? If so, I'm not quite getting how that's better than what I'm doing now, which is moving my active incarnate power to the tray slot once I've made the power active. Or am I missing something?

Is there any way (e.g., a fancy macro) to have a power tray slot activate whatever power happens to be slotted, as opposed to being tied to a specific power? For example, one of my toons has Ageless, both Barriers, a Clarion, and an Incan for the Destiny ability. If I try to put each of those powers in a power tray, that's five power tray spots, only one of which can be active at a time. It'd be great if I could just have a power tray slot for whatever Destiny power happens to be active. Is that something that's currently possible? Or should I be posting this as a suggestion?