Zhym

I wasn't going to post my general feedback because others have captured what I wanted to say much better. But since you asked to hear from more than a handful of people: I love /enterbasebypasscode. I love how the community has built Transportation Zones that have made an annoying part of the game less annoying (I agree with those upthread who have said that "travel is not the game"). I love how easy it is for people to help other players get access to the transportation zones—just paste a single line as a command, and you too can use it! I find the new powers a poor substitute for reasons others have already raised: they're confusing, they're expensive (in terms of inf or opportunity cost in day jobs), they use up quickbar space, and using them with any frequency requires having all of them. The word "baroque" is apt. Having five powers to replace /enterbasebypasscode isn't bad by itself. Needing five powers is. So my biggest feedback is that any one of those powers should, by itself, be enough of a replacement. Then it really is about player choice, not making people work for all those powers. That means, IMO, cutting the cooldown timer on all the powers drastically (90s would be my choice). My other bit of feedback is that I'd really appreciate it if whatever eventually gets implemented lets us keep using the community-build transportation zones. Because those are awesome, and I'd hate to see them become ghost zones.

Which is a different problem: for people to do what they're used to doing, they need to manage at least two powers, including finding tray space for those two powers. It all seems a very complex way of implementing something that's not necessary. But that's not really my point. My point is merely that if you're going to invoke data analysis, the median isn't the stat you want to be looking at if you don't want to risk annoying half your users.

But "X uses in 10 minutes" isn't as meaningful a stat as time between uses. I may need it twice in 30 seconds, then not use it again for half an hour. That doesn't mean that being able to use it only every 15 minutes wouldn't be a pain for me.

I'd suggest that median time between usage isn't a good metric if you're trying to avoid player inconvenience. By definition, half the playerbase uses the command more than the median frequency—which means having the power be available only twice every ten minutes will put a crimp in the play style of half your users. A better metric would be based on how 95% of accounts use the command. Even that steps on the edge cases. I've occasionally had to use the Teleportation Zone in rapid succession. Usually it's because I selected the wrong zone in the menu (e.g., I picked DA instead of Echo:DA). Being able to fix that error right away instead of waiting five minutes was awfully handy. So I'd also suggest that what you should really look at is how 95% of accounts use the command 95% of the time. That's the number that won't be a pain to too many users. But if this is about fixing a game-breaking bug, not PvP, why have a cooldown at all? You're deprecating (or severely limiting) a command that improves gameplay immensely for a lot of people, myself included. I understand that there's a good reason to do that—but nothing about that reason suggests that a cooldown timer is necessary.

I'm a fan of Goldside. It has more mature writing and an element of player choice that a lot of the earlier content lacks. I'd chalk that up to being later-issue content, but that was Issue 18 and the Dr. Graves and Twinshot arcs were from Issue 21, so not all the writing got better over time. I'm curious whether even with XP doubling turned on it's possible to level a character to 50 doing only Praetorian content. Levels 1-20 are covered, obviously, and you can do First Ward and Night Ward from 20-35. When you hit 40, Tina Macintyre and Maria Jenkins have a lot of Praetorian missions, especially with the latter's big arc. And then the Incarnate trials are almost all Praetorian, plus there are some non-trial post-50 Praetorian arcs. But I'm not sure there's enough content between the 30s up to the 50 to do only Praetorian content.

Here's another update from the slow path. This time: Sharkhead Isle! Things really do pick up here. The Dean MacArthur and Leonard arc (it's multiple arcs for merit purposes, but one big story) really is great fun. It also includes one of the tougher challenges in the game in the "Army of Me" badge, depending on your AT. I wouldn't start with MacArthur and Leonard, though. There's enough content in Sharkhead that you could spend a loooong time paused at 24 if you try to do most of it (I did). Since MacArthur and Leonard are both available from 20-29, I'd leave them for later just to avoid spending more time than necessary with XP paused. I'd add Darrin Wade (20-30) to the list of worthy contacts. He doesn't require a broker's introduction, he'll introduce Lorenz Ansaldo, Vince Dubrowski, or Captain Petrovich (letting you talk to one of them without a broker), and he introduces some lore that will come up much later. Well worth it, IMO. I'd also suggest doing Lorenz Ansaldo (20-24) > Operative Vargas (20-24). You'll need to do broker missions to do both Ansaldo > Vargas and the Dubrovsky > Cage Crash > Maros arcs, but Vargas in particular is just a hoot. Vargas is a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. At least, he thinks he is. He answers the question: what would you get if an Arachnos operative got an MBA? Grand fun. I'd also suggest doing Vince Dubrosky, Lorenz Ansaldo, and Diviner Maros before Vincent Ross. Ross's arc (which is great) lets you have a side contact if you want—but only if you've already worked with those contacts. So do those three, then Ross. To avoid pausing XP for too long, and to maximize your options for Vincent Ross's arc, here's the order I'd suggest for doing the Sharkhead contacts: Darrin Wade (20-30) > Lorenz Ansaldo (20-24) > Operative Vargas (20-24) Newspaper/Mayhem/Broker > Vince Dubrowski (20-24) > Crash Cage (20-24) > Diviner Maros (25-29) Vincent Ross (20-29) Dean MacArthur > Leonard (20-29) Doc Buzzsaw (25-29) Pause XP at 24 until you'd done with Vince Dubrowski's arc, then level to 25 to continue with Maros. There are some other contacts here that you can do if you're a completist, but IMO aren't worth pausing XP for: Captain Petrovich (20-24) is another in the "wacky inconsistent accent" series of contacts. His missions are nothing special IMO. He introduces Lt. Chalmers (20-24), who isn't much better (Lt. Chalmers also has a surprise escort mission, which I hate—both the escort mission and the fact that this one doesn't tell you it's an escort mission until midway through the mission). Both Petrovich and Chalmers are poorly written, too. They aren't worth having to do a second round of newspaper missions and mayhem mission, IMO. Operative Kirkland (25-29) is introduced by Operative Vargas, but he's not nearly as much fun, nor does he tie much into the greater lore. Henri Dumont (20-24) unlocks with the Strikebreaker badge. His missions are okay. They don't tie into the greater game lore, but they didn't annoy me, either. Archmage Tarixus (25-29) unlocks with the Lorekeeper badge. If you do his missions (which are a basic "find the components of the MacGuffin and do a fight at the end"), you'll get the Blackwand—which you can also get for free at any P2W store. This version of the wand is slightly more powerful and has limited charges, but most people won't be doing this arc for the power. Finally, a note on First Ward & Night Ward. First Ward really is great—one of the best set of arcs in the game, IMO. IIRC, there are a few parts where it's different as a villain than when you play as a hero, or where you get different choices. So I'd say it's probably worth doing once as a villain. But it also breaks up the isles progression a bit and kind of messes with the old-school villain vibe (like most "cooperative" zones, the missions here sometimes shoehorn a villain into being a hero). I'm going to skip these zones with my slow path character, mostly because I've already done it as a villain already. But these zones will fit quite nicely with a whole game Praetorian path. So I'm looking forward to your guide on that topic. :)

My slow path through red side (inspired by this thread) continues. It's been pretty compelling overall, and a much different view of the game than you'd get powerleveling through. It feels a lot more like what I remember from live (though without nearly as much travel time and getting my butt kicked). IMO, Bane Spider Rueben, Seer Merino, and Brother Hammond are the best of the bunch in this zone. Hammond's in particular is jolly fun. I like how unlike most other contacts, you can never call him—because Luddite! The Shelley Percey > Marshall Brass set of arcs is pretty good, too. So is Peter Themari > Willy Wheeler. I have a soft spot for poor Willy; he wants to be a player, and he so isn't. OTOH, Dmitri Krylov is—how you say—just plain silly, and not in a good way, with a poorly written Russian "accent" and a story arc that doesn't really connect to anything else. And Golden Roller is easily the weakest of the "object" contacts (which include Radio, Slot Machine, and Television). (I know, Golden Roller isn't really an object, it's just a guy in a car. But you're still interacting with an object to get the mission, so I'm counting it as part of the object contacts.) You can avoid some newspaper missions by doing Ashley McKnight's Origin of Power arc as soon as you hit 14. She'll introduce many of the Cap au Diable contacts, including Peter Themari, Dmitri Krylov, Marshall Brass, Golden Roller, and Willy Wheeler. She doesn't seem to introduce Shelley Percey (at least, according to the unofficial Homecoming wiki). So you can start out with Shelley Percey and Marshall Brass. Byt the time you're done with them, you'll have paused XP at level 14 and can do Origin of Power and/or use the "Find Contacts" button to get all the other contacts you need. OTOH, Origin of Power is pretty lame and involves a lot of travel (make sure you have a travel power before starting it). So some folks might actually prefer grinding newspaper missions. Finally, having finished all three of Dr. Graves's arcs, the best I can say about them is that the third arc wasn't quite as terrible as the first. And it does tie (clumsuly, IMO) into the broader story. But I consider it eminently skippable.

I'm not sure if this is the same bug, but here's what I got: 1. Accept Mr. Bocor's "Take out Hellions" mission. The way that's supposed to work is you defeat 10 Hellions (anywhere), then it creates a new objective with a mission door. 2. Accept "Defeat all Hellions" in Billie Heck's "Give 'em Hellion!" arc. 3. Do the Billie Heck mission, defeating at least 10 Hellions in the process. Bocor's mission will switch to the new objective ("Defeat all Hellions in hideout"). But when back on the Port Oakes map, that mission does not have a door anywhere.

I agree that the snakes are underwhelming. But at least those missions are short. I'm running through the Port Oakes missions now, and after clearing gangsters out of ship after ship, I'm starting to have fond thoughts of snakes. I misread this as a contact chain: Vendetti, who would introduce Bocor, who introduced The Radio. Bocor does introduce The Radio (so would Mikey the Ear, at the right level), but Vendetti, Bocor, and Billie Heck are all introduced independently by the Broker. I've only done Vendetti and part of Billie Heck so far, but you made a good choice omitting Heck. His story arc is pretty tedious so far: a defeat-all in a large office map and a ship's-hold kidnap mission. It looks like it might get better after this, though. Still, with each of the three contacts (Vendetti, Bocor, and Heck) requiring three newspaper missions and a mayhem mission to unlock, I'd argue that it's probably only worth doing one. Otherwise, that's nine newspaper missions, three Atlas Park mayhem missions, and a long damned time pausing XP at level 9. So I might suggest phrasing the quoted line as something like: Angelo Vendetti (5-9) and/or Billie Heck (5-9) and/or Mr. Bocor (5-9) > The Radio (10-14) Or just omit Vendetti and Heck entirely, or relegate them to short descriptions as "Other Contacts" under Port Oakes. ETA: The Billie Heck arc kind of grew on me. It still doesn't make much sense, but after those first two slogs of missions, it was kind of fun. Doing both Vendetti and Bocor might be a bit much, though, since they both have a lot of "defeat all the Hellions in the office" missions, which gets old. But they also both have badge missions, so some players might want to do both anyway.

Fort Darwin was a great, memorable starting location. No, it wasn't Atlas Park, but you weren't a hero—you were a virtual nobody. Sure, Arachnos busted you out of the Zig, but just so you could prove yourself against a whole bunch of other virtual nobodies. The Issue 21 changes broke the flow of Mercy Island, IMO. Starting at little Fort Darwin meant fighting your way through the broken slums with the massive walls of Mercy looming ahead of you. Just getting through Darwin's Landing to get to Mercy was something. When Issue 21 put starting villains right there in Mercy, there was almost no reason to go to Darwin's Landing anymore let alone Fort Darwin, which was virtually forgotten. You can still see some vestiges of Mercy Island being designed for a Fort Darwin to Rogue Isles Ferry progression. For example, the Darwin's Landing side of the giant wall has big "MERCY" signs telling you where the elevator doors go. Up topside, there's nothing—the game assumes you know what those are and where they go, because most of the players would have started on the other side of those doors. I often wish there had been an Echo: Mercy Island that preserved the original design.

Thanks for this! I recently created a villain to run through CoV somewhat old-school style (but with a few of the P2W powers and enhancements, because I'm not a masochist). This guide will really help. I do have a couple of comments about this from the early going: It's not entirely obvious, but the Breakout tutorial will give you either Kalinda or Matthew Burke as a contact. You can do both, but I don't think it's worth pausing your XP to do so. You end up with a lot of missions that look a lot alike: jump into a snake hole and kill all the snakes. Their missions aren't exactly the same, but they can seem like it (the only difference between some Kalinda missions and Burke missions is the name of the boss snake you're supposed to kill). After you're done killing snakes for Kalinda, she sends you to Mongoose to...kill more snakes. When youre done killing snakes for Burke, Doctor Creed gives you missions against Infected and Arachnos, so there's more variety. Although Kalinda sets up the "Destined One" arc, in terms of the actual gameplay I'd take Burke. It might also be worth noting that whether you take Kalinda or Burke as your initial contact makes no difference once you're out of Mercy Island (as far as I can tell). Either way, you'll get sent to the same brokers in Port Oakes. Re: Lt. Harris, I agree about his arc being distasteful and a little dark for this game. OTOH, if you do his arc you get a chance to clear the Longbow out of Fort Darwin. As someone with lasting memories of sending weak newbie villains out of Fort Darwin only to scamper back to safety after a few kills—port Darwin really is well named—I appreciated the opportunity to kick all those smug candy canes the hell out of "my" fort.

Revert to the old version? If you've been using Time Machine, you can open Time Machine, scroll back to a time before the update installed, and restore the old version of the launcher. If you haven't been using Time Machine, you'd have to install an old version of the launcher manually, I assume. BTW, you can bypass the launcher entirely by executing "islandrum.sh" from the command line. Of course, that only works while the CoH client version hasn't been updated. But at least it lets me feed my addiction tonight while Manga works furiously on patching the launcher.

Thanks. I can revert to the previous version (hooray, Time Machine), but is there any way to prevent Island Rum from automatically updating itself? Or should I just chill for a day or so and hope for a new update soon?

I don't even get an "Install" option. It's just stuck at "Scanning":

This all sounds pretty exciting. One request from a security paranoid Mac user. Could you test the new launcher to make sure it works on an account that doesn't have admin rights? It took me a while to get Island Rum working that way, and I have a sneaking supicion that any upgrade process for the new launcher is likely to freak out, run into a corner, and cry if it doesn't have full admin access to everything. Thanks!

If you’re fixing grammar issues, I’d be inappropriately happy if someone could replace all instances of “alright” with “all right.” I don’t have a list of all the places “alright” Is used, but it shows up a lot. One place I do know it appears, just because I’ve done the mission so often, is in the Heather Townshend arc. In the first mission, there’s something like, “Alright, I’ll take from here,” as a response in the opening exchange in the cave. Then there’s “Alright, I’ll check out the Tsoo,” in a later mission. There are many more throughout the game. 🙂

It looks like the trigger for this option is Master Midnight's story arc, "Revenge: Serve Chilled." I ran one of my toons through it in Orouboros, and the next time he ran the Heather Townshend arc he suddenly knew a lot more about the Talons. Mystery solved!

After that it's the same Part Two dialogue that you get after "I'm all ears if you have an idea" in the other branch.

Isn't that what the "Chipped Talon" badge is? Or is there a different one? I'm thinking maybe it's based on completing the First Ward (or Night Ward) story arcs.

In Heather Townshend's arc (you know the one—it's the one we've done over and over and over to get incanrate components quickly), one of my toons has a response option that the others don't have. After the first mission, when she asks, "Do you have any idea what caused these women to transform?", the only option for two of my toons is, "No, not in the slightest." But my other toon can also respond, "I have a feeling it's a group called the Talons of Vengeance": Paragon Wiki doesn't list that as a reponse option, either. So I'm wondering what triggers that other option. The toon who gets that option did all the First Ward and Night Ward arcs, so maybe it's something in there? I thought it might have been the "Chipped Talon" badge, for defeating a certain number of Talons of Vengeance, but that didn't make any difference. Thanks!

Is it actually possible to drop a mayhem mission? I can't find any way to do it.