Johnny

Total controllers: 1 Total blasters: 1 Total tanks: 1

With respect to killer martial arts moves, everyone's game needs to slow down, with the view zooming in on you (from their perspective) when you fire off your ultimate technique.

This sounds like the variation of Long Island Iced Tea that I'd enjoyed back on university campus, yet could never replicate. I'll give it another try.

When posting items, I recall commas being added to the UI after people complained about making such mistakes. Happened fairly frequently.

I find SJ to be fairly zippy if you can do short hops, rather than attempt escape velocity. As I recall from the classic Incredible Hulk comics, he'd more often than not do short hops...skyscraper rooftops, craggy mountains, passing airplanes, etc.

The heart of the issue is that people are playing the game to feel heroic, or at least "in charge of the situation." Escort missions run contrary to this, and come off as frustrating not due to a challenge, but due to a perceived pathing flaw in the game engine...not the desired impression. Escort missions are more satisfying when the NPC is somewhat capable in a fight. You kinda see this gold-side, sometimes, except when they go out of their way to aggro mobs that otherwise would have ignored your party.

More variation in how buildings and construction change over time. - Different store moves into the property. - Building is a husk after a fire. - Building is a shell after an explosion. - Building is condemned due to supernatural infestation. - Construction crews working at fixing or remodeling. - Magical wards and barriers around building being purged of supernatural infestation. - Streets sectioned off from through traffic due to (say) a burst water main, or just a crater in the street. Essentially, the maps would need modular sections, where assets could be scheduled to "go live." For people that enjoy base building, or constructing AE stories, form a committee that could highlight sensible map adjustments.

Levelling happens so fast by teaming for mission arcs and task forces, I don't see why you need an xp boost. But as you say, you're having trouble getting into a group. Good advice in this thread, including forming your own groups. Here is a basic recruiting method: 1. Have 2-3 contacts that you're able to call, so that you have access to mission arcs. You generally want to have door missions ready, as opposed to head hunting. Sometimes a door mission is followed by head hunting. Just have to deal with it. 2. In the Looking For Group channel, say something like, "LFM level X [blue/red/gold] missions...pst" 3. Whilst waiting for responses, do a search for players are either "Looking For Mission," "Looking For Any" or they haven't set their flag. People forget to set their search flag, so it's generally okay to ask them, unless they're tagged as not interested. 4. Sort the search results by level, and look for people that are kinda in range, above or below, especially those that are LFM or LFA. 5. Basic need is for aggro-management, but aside from that, it doesn't matter who joins your team. Tanks and masterminds are the best aggro management, though you might manage without; you'll need to learn as you go. However the aggro management is done, ask the relevant person to "take point," so the team knows where to go. This will help avoid someone going solo and being wiped by the mobs. 6. Sometimes you'll be doing your first mission with 1-2 people, sometimes you'll have a full team. Inbetween missions, state that you need a minute for recruiting, then repeat your recruiting steps. People will often need a couple minutes for levelling, or buying inspirations. If the team has been doing a lot of missions, then suggest a ten-minute break for drinks, bio, etc. Also ask the team whether any of their friends want to join. They'll appreciate being able to help out. 7. Over time, you'll find that the team is gelling well. At the bottom-right of your chat window, set your Notoriety to something like +2, or whatever helps make the mission challenging (i.e., mobs that con at least yellow, with oranges and red mixed in). Sometimes, a "power-leveller" will talk about efficient levelling. Ignore them; they don't know what they're talking about, and it's your team. You want a team that's having fun, and you'll lose track of the xp you're getting. 8. When you want to stop teaming, don't just pass the star to someone. Say something like, "I need to head off. Does anyone want the star? Otherwise, I'm dissolving the team." This gives people an opportunity to decide whether they'd like to continue. It varies, but after doing a lot of missions, people will thank you, and voluntarily drop from the team. Note that people actively dislike being assigned the star (i.e., too much pressure, not sure how to recruit, etc.). Hope that helps.

As people have said, make a point of clearing out what can be easily bought through auction. Just keep the *really* rare stuff, and get away from holding onto stuff "just in case." If you find yourself hoarding stuff irl, then just be consciously aware of what you're doing.

I didn't get involved with bridges and PL'ing. I was more interested in playing with people that wanted to play content. Actually, and Ironblade can vouch for this, we had a weekly forum signup for doing task forces, sometimes up to three groups at a time, and the runs were generally casual with full clears. Gata had originated the forum signups, and that was where I'd met Taxibot Belle and Ironblade. Of course, the task forces could be quite long, so we would sometimes take an hour break for the *really* long ones. For those of you that appreciate rocking missions with 8-person teams, these were the task forces that you wanted to be on. One time, I think we actually had Yahtzee on our task force (when he was living in Australia). At least, I'd like to believe it was him, keeping low-key. The thing was, doing an afternoon task force for us meant it was godawful in-the-wee-hours of the morning for him, and he had to bow out, mid-way. Doing these tasks forces is another reason why I advocate having Recall Friend because it helps tremendously in a variety of situations (and I'm obviously not talking about speed-running).

A long time ago, it was actually more challenging to recruit people for a PUG because you didn't have the auto-exemplaring. Instead, you needed to manage a minimum of half the team being at roughly the mission level, so they could sidekick/exemplar the others to that level (when needed). It was literally a situation of, "Hey X, can you please sidekick Y, and then we'll all be on-level." Preferences vary, but I feel more comfortable when I can recruit a tank for aggro management (masterminds are good, too). In one case, no tanks were available, but we had two scrappers. So I asked whether the scappers could work together, both taking point, and spreading the aggro between them. It worked well. Funny thing was, through the process of people dropping and joining, we ended up with three tanks (they'd each asked to join), and we carried on to a solid story arc ending. In another case, I had recruited a couple people, and a tank (currently in a solo mission) was going to join us later. So I kept the mission difficulty normal because we didn't have anyone that could take an alpha at a higher difficulty. To my surprise, the tank joined us fairly quickly, then got angry with me because the mission difficulty didn't warrant them being needed. Despite being diplomatic, they left the team, and couldn't quite understand that I was building a PUG, and that I'd be increasing the mission difficulty when the team was more well-rounded. Ultimately, more people joined the team for a good time; the misunderstanding with the tank was just a little frustrating, but there you go.

Oh, and for low-level IOs that you obtain through playing the game, hold onto them if you think you'll be slotting them when you're getting near 50. This will require researching the sets and identifying the set bonuses that you want to min-max. If you decide to sell that IO, then don't let it go cheap. Look at the bonuses it provides, and consider how desirable it will be. You might be looking at something that would net you $5M+ influence for a level 10 IO recipe.

From what you're asking, you are clearly new and learning how the enhancements work. Good for you, and welcome. <wave> Here are some points for you to consider: 1. The strength of crafted IOs are the set bonuses. But as you level your way to 50, you won't necessarily have enough slots for certain powers, such that you can maximize your set bonuses. 2. Crafted IOs, especially the highly desired sets, can be expensive, so you don't want to be replacing a set after you've gotten it. 3. For whatever level a crafted IO is, you no longer have its benefit if you exemplar three levels below that, and it will cease being counted with respect to set bonuses. So if you find yourself exemplaring a lot, you need to keep this in mind (e.g., playing on low-level teams, completing low-level task forces, going into low-level pvp zones, doing old missions through oroborous). When exemplaring, even if you go to a level at which you don't have the given power, the IO still counts towards set bonuses, so long as you aren't three levels below the IO level. 4. As you level to 50, it is better (and cheaper) to be using SOs because a) their individual bonuses are generally better than that of a single IO, and b) you're probably not able to slot enough IOs to get the set bonuses you want (see (1) above). Having said that, I'd suggest a strategy where you just use SOs into your 40's, and then start transitioning into IO sets where you have enough slots in a power to get the set bonuses you want. And for the IO sets that you buy (from auction), get the lowest-level version IOs possible for the given set, so that you have the highest probability that they will be of use to you at low-level (i.e., you will be outperforming others on your team because the bonuses will give you an edge).

And again you're dancing around, this time like you're a kid having been caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. Next time, don't cherry pick your arguments.

I exemplar all the time, especially when new players are trying to find their way around the game. My key advice would be: 1. Get IOs that are the lowest level possible, so that you have their benefit at low leve. Sometimes the IO sets go down to 10, sometimes 30; it varies. 2. Carefully consider what powers you've slotted, and the level at which you slotted each power, knowing that it won't be available when you go below the level at which you slotted it. 3. Make note of the level that each PvP zone will set you at, and per (2) consider your slotting choices to ensure that you have certain abilities for the given PvP zone. 4. With respect to your main travel power, note that you won't necessarily need it at level 10 or below because running to missions will be viable. 5. If you intend to use Recall Friend, then I'd recommend slotting it at level 8 because that's kinda the sweet spot whereby you can really help to expedite teammates around the maps.

I wasn't criticizing you for expression an opinion. I observed that you quoted me with a response, and you clipped my original statement to omit key details about what I was expressing. This is textbook disingenuous. And now you're playing innocent. Yes..thanks for playing. <wave>

Well, you're being disingenuous, since within the context of my statements, I was seeking to highlight the tactical value of Recall Friend, and the ability for getting people to the mission doors faster, keeping things lively. For reasons stated previously in this thread, comparing Recall Friend with ATT is a false equivalence, which shuts the door on the ATT idea (it simply doesn't hold up in context). Looking through this thread, there are clearly differing perspectives, broadly delineated as those that prefer to play through game content (i.e., not PL, usually not stealth, and usually kill-all or kill-most), and those that want their toons at max-level (i.e., pro-PL). As someone else pointed out, PL is fine, so long as care is made to educate new players as to the distinction. The historical problem was max-level people presumably PL'ing new players without providing context, and perhaps selfishly with the aim of having fellow 50's to play with. (Just throwing that out there, so stop furiously clicking that Quote button). The other aspect are new players that are specifically asking for help in reaching level 50 (whatever their motivation). To be clear, I'm in the kill-all or kill-most camp. I've rarely felt it necessary to stealth a mission, so I'm definitely rejecting the notion that Recall Friend is somehow mainly a stealth-mission tool. I vaguely recall only a couple occassions where, due to the team getting fatigued, we started expediting things with stealth-completions, though this would have been after having a lot of fun just playing through missions. That being said, I don't appreciate the idea of "forum pvp" because it implies a strategy of being contrary for the sake of somehow winning some kind of argument. These forums are for a discussion. If your idea of fun is to twiddle other people, then you probably want to take that elsewhere.

Overlook is *exactly* the term for it. People *know* it is there, but they skip it, thinking their build will be "suboptimal," whilst neglecting the benefits of having teammates with it.

My perspective: Quite a bit of gameplay "experience" with CoH, Eve Online, lotro, ffxiv; with a smattering of other stuff that were "okay" but didn't really keep me engaged. Used various chat clients, going all the way back to ICQ text chat, alternating with Yahoo Chat, back then. Pretty happy with Discord, having done fairly detailed server configuration, though I'd say a current negative is that you can't customize your Discord avatar on a per-server basis, and there's a two-year-old feature request thread that is apparently languishing on this topic. For MMOs, text chat versus voice chat is kinda like the following: Text chat: Tends to favour communication that is in-keeping with the toons and situation (i.e., easier to have banter that is related to the context of what the players are doing with their characters). Voice chat: Discussion becomes business-only, with an emphasis upon what people need to be doing, and keeping the channel clear of banter. That said, I'd say I prefer text-only for both pve and pvp. You might groan at that, or not think it possible. But the thing is, a game is more immersive when people are going in with a rough plan, where only light guidance (via text chat) is needed. Voice chat simply doesn't accommodate an engaging experience. And when I say that, keep in mind that I led the Taxibots into the pvp zones, fully-scheduled activities so people knew we'd be there, and it was a lot of fun. We were mainly there to do badge-related stuff, and the minigame aspects of those pvp zones. We also got involved with arena duels, which was a real eye-opener about how one needed to optimize their build for pvp.

For low-level task forces, or teaming in general, people seem to overlook Recall Friend, which is fairly painless to work in around level 8. Recall Friend is a versatile tool for helping get people to mission doors, especially when they'd needed to level quickly, or don't have their main travel power. Sometimes, a player gets lost in the mission, or a defeated player can be yanked into a safe spot for rezzing.

Teammates outflying you is self-correcting though, encouraging them to stay with you. They somewhat need to fly faster, in case they're trying to avoid falling behind. However, to improve Group Fly, it would make sense that everyone automatically maintains position around you in the sphere of effect, even as you fly along, and they can adjust their position within the sphere. The nice thing about this is people can put themselves in formation around you without risk of falling out of the sphere of effect (unless they want to).

Oh, sure. PL'ing has always been a thing. The history of early MMOs was that all the serious content was at the max-level, and people came into the CoH expecting this. But CoH was different because the content was spread throughout the game levels. Of course, from a new player's perspective, they wouldn't realize that PL'ing would actually cause them to miss out on content. And it didn't help that there would max-level players actively encouraging and "helping" new players to PL. Of all the activities that the Taxibots became involved with, including some hilarious PvP outings, was that PL was not allowed. An emphasis for Taxibots was helping new players with the game, and PL'ing was counter to this experience. I remember one time, a friend reached out and invited me to a team. I liked being sociable, but it turned out they were PL'ing some newbie. And what a dull situation for the newbie, since they were forbidden to move away from the mission entrance, lest they be "defeated." Having a good sense that the newbie wasn't really at risk, I encouraged them to come play by my side; they had fun doing this, and everything was fine.

How about a combination of those two: 1- When the first click occurs, dialog lists all X clickies, with timer counting down for the one. 2- Second click occurs, timer counting down for that one, etc. 3- If all get clicked within ten seconds of clicking the first one, then reward bonus (i.e., everyone was coordinated, standing at the ready, and were communicating in advance). 4- For solo player, they need to hit all clickies before the first timer runs out. This method has extra benefit that, for an undersized team, there is a ten second window for racing to additional clickies in order to get the bonus.

To say there was no challenge is not a true statement. The reality is that having little challenges like this forces the team to take a moment to think, coordinate, and communicate. The game actually lost a bit of nuance by stripping out functionality like this (er, streamlining the game).

I have a dim recollection of saying, "Okay everyone, get ready to click in 3..2..1.." ...though I have to admit that I forgot this requirement had been removed. I agree not a good idea to reintroduce. However, I can see three workable solutions: A) For mission text, append "Note: The simultaneous click mechanic is no longer required." B) Add an option to Null the Gull, whereby players can opt to set "Simultaneous mission click" = ON, which would apply when that player is the team lead (i.e., has the star). I suppose that passing the star to someone that has this OFF is fine, as a workaround for unforeseen issues. C) Do (A), but if everyone does the simultaneous click without messing up the timing, they get a "Timing is everything" badge. Just give everyone on the team the badge, except for someone that clicks early (i.e., they were trying to screw things up, and/or were unable to follow instructions), who instead gets the "Early clicker" badge (or maybe that should be "Early clicker gets the worm" badge).