Shenanigunner

Okay. This very much falls to the heart of the "why bother" argument, to me. Why bother to TF, why bother to team, why bother to play at all if the actual, you know, gameplay is such tedious torture, justifying any shortcut or exploit to avoid? With all due civility, don't spend time on an answer. I'll just concede that I am some kind of outlying weirdo who likes to play the games, not... uber-master them in an endless loop of tortuous speed-leveling. "Baseball CoX is a game. Games are meant to be fun" — Jack Elliott

Besides the stealth thing (undoubtedly accurate, at least for most such hassles), I do seem to recall some missions and some eras of hostage missions being bugged; I may have had one myself where the hostage just would not follow me for more than a few feet before going back to square one. I think I had to drop that mish.

Some of my favorite team memories are of having multiple stalkers, and without a word of coordination, lining up on the Big Bad for a combined first strike, while the rest of the team hovered just out of aggro range, ready to pound in while the squishies RLH. Ditto for multi-blaster teams. To me, that's teaming.

If you can stealth to the objective, why bother to team at all? I loosely agree in that team members should play to their strengths, but the emphasis is on teaming, not all clomping around while one player does some specialty trick. If teaming means "max XP and rewards"... see above comment about jacking your individual level instead. Unless everyone on the team is good with such speed/cuts. If that's a worthwhile evening to you, power on.

I think the Star should politely inform the team, at the start of the mission, to "play as a team or get kicked." Then kick the soloists. I know that causes other issues, but if we can promote and use this practice, maybe it will filter out to the dumbshites. The other alternative is to DM the idiots and tell them if they want the high return of teaming but don't want to play as a team, look into bumping their level settings. But, you know, Zathras, listen, nobody... we really need some kind of universal way to reach players with this info, and it doesn't exist.

Nice work. I've experimented with a controller on CoX at intervals over the years and concluded it's just not worth it. CoX is so resolutely WASD that trying to get much of anything besides movement on a controller is limiting. Just maybe on builds that are all autos and inherents and toggles, with only a few actual attack/combat powers that will fit on 4 triggers. But most of my alts need a dozen buttons just for basic powers and attacks, just because that's how the UI is designed. Even advanced binds etc. can only minimize the need for a lot of mashable buttons so much. I know some people are content with the limitations. I just... WASD. 🙂

Heyyyy, Abb-bottt!

Not in v2016, they didn't. I refuse to use 365 unless a client insists, and then I charge ITP fees.

"Let me give you a hand with that..."

But there are few (good) pages that tie things together or give overview/tutorials, and as I just noted, you have to know what to search for before you can search for it... or even know that you need to search for it. This is why I grind my teeth at hand-wavy suggestions that someone go look up [any complex CoX subject] in "the wiki." If someone is asking, they probably don't even know what they don't know, and it's tough to learn anything properly when the component paragraphs are scattered over many, sometimes dozens of pages. And counter-snark that anyone who can't find what they're looking for must be something like stupid or lazy comes from people who don't need to look anything up, and when they do, know exactly what cryptic page to go find it on. (I've been doing this as a primary rent-paying activity for mumble years. I have scars from battles with software and system engineers who insisted that their indecipherable code notes were all any user needed. 'Nuf sed.)

Switching from one commercial software package to another, even one with a nearly identical UI and features — think word processors, before there was basically only one — could mean days of hair-tearing trying to figure out a feature when you didn't know Company B called it something different from Company A's term. Until you stumbled on the exact term, you were lost. Things have gotten a little better, but even among games, the specific terms for certain elements vary, and searching for Game X's lingo won't help at all.

The biggest problem is that there's next to no comprehensive documentation. We have some good starts on new-user guides, and everything is documented somewhere, pretty much... but even an experienced player would know absolutely nothing about ED and slotting limits/strategy unless they knew to look it up... and knew the specific game terminology/lingo to look up the right stuff. But we know there are manymany new players out there happily six-slotting stuff, without a clue. Not sure what to do about it other than to keep urging newbs to latch onto and use the basic guides.

I swear, the zombie ED arguments are reaching the level of the old PC-vs-Mac whinefests. I get a headache just seeing the subject line.

It's a two-part command/setting. First, you define the viewpoint distance for fx suppression. Then you toggle the suppression on and off. \suppressCloseFxDist feet sets how far you have to be from an fx source for the suppression to cut in. That is, if you set it to 50, you'll see the fx if you're more than 50 feet from the source. (120 feet is about the limit, I believe.) \suppressCloseFx {0|1} toggles the suppression on and off. Generally, you want to set this up so you can see fx from a distance, but not be overwhelmed by them in combat, etc. 35-50 feet is about right, and you'll probably want to keep it enabled most of the time. There's also \noparticles {0|1}, which will turn off most particle fx (that is, most of them) completely. You can try it, but it makes for a very dull landscape as a lot of dynamic details in the game use particles. It's also worth mentioning that there are almost 100 individual options that can be set and toggled using \option_set and other commands, allowing very fine granular control of things like player names, buff indicators, etc. Far too complex to include here but they're fully documented in the Guide. These mostly have menu equivalents but I long ago found those menus too vast, complicated and confusing to bother with. 🙂

I suggest G-for-'Grapple' but yes, this is the essential melee bind. It will keep your alt engaged with the nearest foe regardless of how insane a battle gets, especially with many mobs, multiple teammates, quick defeats, powers shoving both you and your target around, etc. Just whack G (or whatever) every time you're not engaging for any reason. Bam, you're back in action.

And if you drive over to the next county, gas is 25 cents a gallon cheaper. 😄 Making the jump is a good thing and the bribe is a good way to do it. Trying to go "mine" XP... maybe not so much.

Since you can get the boost with P2W Vitamins™, jumping servers isn't really worth the hassle;. Doing it with the intent of jumping back... nah. I applaud the Devs for trying to level out the population. If I were a more active player, I'd move some of my alts around just to be able to build some variant bases. But the "rewards" are just a token nudge, not a real reason to switch. Kinda like how the other lane in traffic moves faster... until you get into it. 🙂

Maybe that's why it's never really thrilled me. Feels like a Disneyland ride that hasn't started operating yet. I'll try XP braking next time.

Why? You run no XP to keep from outleveling the side?

Except for a few niche interests, it's my impression that SGs are all but obsolete in the HC game. With no need to recruit dozens of players to generate Prestige to build an adequate base, it's become far more common for every player to roll up their own base for their alts and a few friends, and move on. Getting a recruit means getting someone who has no interest in their own base (or maybe hasn't figured out bases are free and fairly easy to construct, at least on a utilitarian level), or the small crowd that will trade their own base for the 'social' advantages of a traditional SG.

Bwah-ha-haaaa. F12 "ah$$toggle salvage$$toggle recipes" Toggles the auction house, your salvage window and your recipe window. Position them in a nice grid and save your UI. But we really don't want to encourage newbies to become day traders, now, do we?

Gunner's Way-Cool Bind List And don't overlook the GABB bindfile, if you're just starting about. MUCH better key mapping than 2005. And, from there, pretty much the whole Tech Guide. 🙂

It's a kick to hang around an extremely crowded Atlas Plaza, doing little things like dropping an Ouro portal. Although, gotta say, dropping a portal and watching players stream in brings up the old Roach Motel ads... 😄

Oh, for Flying Frack's Sake. Um. Wrong, um. knothole. At some point the hard-learned memory that it's the LITTLE gap to the right of the doors, and not the larger one to the left of the doors, leaked out of my brain. Neeeeever mind. (Thx for all the help..)

Well, Originally, yes. (To the newbs: the colors you choose for your costume are probably of more significance than your alt's 'origin.' It's an aspect that long ago lost much of its purpose. There are one or two bonus powers that change according to Origin, and you have to select enhancements that match your Origin as well, but even then, it's just a matter of selecting one power or the other — such as Nemesis Staff vs. Blackwand Staff — and the stores only offer you compatible enhancements now.) So choose whatever fits your fancy and concept... it matters very little in actual game/alt progress.