Ukase

Tuesday at 02:44 PM

It'll be awhile. I know this is probably supposed to be an inf sink, but having consolidated all my prismatics to one character, it's not really an issue. But the opportunity cost, it's like 2B inf, give or take. That amount shouldn't bother me, but if it didn't bother me, then I probably would have a lot less than I do now.

Tuesday at 02:40 PM

Probably been reported already. Spirit Drain, a power from Dark mastery for a corruptor - I think it should read "Ranged AoE".

Tuesday at 01:47 PM

17 hours ago, Intermipants said:

can’t believe that I’ve been playing for this long and I’ve only discovered in the last month the add note feature

Just so you don't feel too badly...Okie was giving instructions last night for MoBAF. Preceding the prisoner phase, he types out "set to aggressive - stay".

Now, the aggressive part..been doing that since day one.
The "stay"...I swear, I'd never used that before and although I'm sure I "saw" it, it never registered. I've never used it until last night.

Tuesday at 12:05 AM

I've only ever given two 5* ratings. One to @Tort - as he's the guy that led the first RHW on Torchbearer, I want to say that was before Excelsior existed. The other was @ST1TcH.

I do put a lot of notes on people.

Things like: "This player went afk during the beatdown on Hami" or, "This player was afk during the Labyrinth"

Mind you, if you're afk long enough for me to see the AFK bubble over your head...that's more than just a minute to get a drink or something. And yeah, things come up. But it's just a note. Now, if I see it again...then it's a bit of a pattern, and then I rate you 2 stars. Then, if I see you on a TF team - I make an excuse and leave the team before it starts.

I'll make other notes, like: recruits, but doesn't reply one way or the other. Rude. And give 2 stars.

And sometimes, I'll give 4 stars like "was on successful master run of XXXXX TF/SF."
I don't normally give 3 stars, I don't think.

Monday at 11:34 PM

4 hours ago, momentarygrace said:

I want to apologize, I almost never do this (I think) but rather than address the actual intent of the post Ukase, I'm taking one tiny part of what you said and responding to that. I'm ashamed of myself but not enough to stop apparently.

Just tell me that the word was "Die!" and make me happy, please? #^_^#

Ha! I wish it were. It was something in Hebrew, I think. Something to do with faith.

Monday at 04:54 PM

Well, the OP's not wrong. When someone reacts with a pizza...I really don't have a clue what that means. Fortunately, I don't really care. The only ones that kind of bug me are the confused ones, because I feel like I'm way too wordy to be confusing. I go to great lengths to over-explain my thinking, because there's a lot missed in the written word. Intonation, pitch, etc.

Monday at 04:51 PM

On 7/12/2025 at 3:01 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

Who would you play more of? Or am I unique in this?

You are not unique in this.

I have 4 accounts. The primary account @ukase had almost 300 characters, which I've whittled down to a mere 137. Of the 137, only 4 are not level 50. Now, on my other 3 accounts, I have one character at level 10 sitting next to the candy keeper to get the Winter recipes at level 10.

I've got a fire/regen sentinel that's just ...well, it's not fun. So, it sits there until I decide to somehow make it fun, or delete it. I've got at least a dozen, maybe 2 dozen characters that are like that.

From time to time, I'll have a character with the Unlucky artifact mission and just keep them in stasis for the next account to get it before level 30.

I've got a scrapper with the Sister Solaris finale specifically for the minos and cyclops, as an example of why some characters don't really do much but log in, invite an alt, and log out. I've got probably a dozen characters across each account that have the mayhems, safeguards, AM, Siege, Multidimensional, Shrouded so characters can get accoladed more quickly.

I certainly have no intentions of ever playing any of them through content again - they've got their purpose. One such character that holds AM/Siege has no enhancements. And literally auto-completed over a series of a few months. I don't think that character has ever fought anything, lol. but it serves a purpose.

Monday at 04:33 PM

3 hours ago, MTeague said:

Just /jranger, which had become forum shorthand for "This is a terrible idea, under no circumstances do we ever want to see anything like this, and the poster's intellect is highly suspect for that matter."

I'm glad you stated this, because until you did, I had no idea what that meant. So, a retroactive raspberry to whomever replied to any of my suggestions in that fashion.

Monday at 02:24 PM

So, right now, if you look at the SG registrar, unless you're looking for a specific group, or something similar to a name you type in and search for - you pretty much just get an alphabetical list.

Now, I get that we have the forums, and the HC Discord, and even occasionally some recruitment through LFG, and even a persistent kneeling character in Ouroboros (on Excelsior, anyway) to recruit for SG membership.

I used to get most of my harder to earn badges with Cosmic. For now, they're dormant. So, I'm looking for another one. Cosmic was great, because once I joined the discord, I didn't need to park any alts in the SG proper. Which was good, because their base was too large, and caused lag upon entry. (a nifty looking base, mind you)
So, I thought - what SG is there that focuses on badges, primarily? Well...a lot of them do - but I'm not a role player, and while I enjoy reading some RP, (I'm thinking of you, DMK, and alleged imposter DMKs) some of it is quite painful to read, (referring primarily to this one guy who spammed the same word three times every time he killed an npc) because the characters are just not enjoyable to me. I'm sure the players are fine people - just don't care for the RP of some characters.

I know I'm barking up what's likely the wrong tree. But rather than make a suggestion that's wholly generic "Make the SG register mean something", I need to narrow it down. I need a metric for the top 100 list to actually track. Can it track number of characters to last be online? Or even accounts? I've no idea.
Since prestige is no longer earned, let alone meaningful, is it even worth the hassle of having a counter track the number of characters that log in within an SG?

So many of the SGs are likely solo SGs, as there's no description. And I get it. I love having a place to stash my stuff. Makes getting stuff for alts so much easier.

I could certainly be wrong. But if I'm looking at the SG registrar for this purpose..I'm probably not the only one. Am I?

Monday at 01:18 AM

9 hours ago, Crysis said:

the Labyrinth of Fog is already all but abandoned.

Not a dev, and I have the joy and ..I'll even call it a privilege to join @Laucianna on her daily labyrinth runs. While it is true it's not run as often as something like ITF, it is run daily, sometimes twice a day, or more.

Monday at 01:04 AM

What gets under my skin on a given day varies with the amount of sleep and coffee I've recently had. Some days, I want to reach through my monitor and smack people. There have been a couple of times, if I'd been able to do so, (once in retail, once since HC opened) I'd probably have been arrested for assault. I can't even articulate what they did that made me so mad, but I remember the rage. They just pushed the right buttons to get me pissed.

Now, annoyed - that's happens a lot. But it happens so often, I don't really even notice it anymore. I've typed out so many "Are you serious?" And "Who cares about this?" posts, and deleted them, or worse, posted them, then hid them a minute later, realizing what a jerk I was. I'd like to think I've improved. I haven't had a GM tell me to chill for over a year.

Saturday at 05:36 PM

Ty kindly!

Saturday at 03:34 PM

I was on Brainstorm. I kind of liked the look of the "undefined" mode that also has a mini-undefined mode thrown in. For 1500 prismatics, that's a nice extra to toss in.

But what I'm missing is the option to make the undefined green look into a red look, or a purple look. Or some other color.

I wouldn't expect HC to finagle a way to let us color the costume toggle ourselves, but I think purple or red would be fine choices to expand on this pricy option.

I would make this a suggestion, but I'm obtuse. Before I do that - is this option just something I missed? I got it on brainstorm, and didn't see anything, even went to the tailor, but the tailor told me to turn the toggle off, so guessing it's just not an option there.

Saturday at 03:28 PM

2 hours ago, battlewraith said:

I think this is the most common objection to proposals to skip grind and I think it's pretty clearly false. I think things like farming and PLing actually have kept players around that would have left if those options weren't available.

Hey - my perspective is that those options are investment. Farming and PLing aren't the same as insta-50 and free loot.

The farmer typically invests heavily into their characters, as much or more so than you're typical 4* hard mode player. Now, the sitter..lol, not so much.

But - the sitter. I know there are sitters who should have made a 2nd account to PL themselves, but for whatever reason, they haven't. Some folks - this is like a 2nd mistress, not even the first one they think of. They're just not going to invest that much into their characters or time into the game. I'm sure these players have something they bring to the table. Maybe it's just the added number for a random league. What I don't know is what % these types of players represent on the server. Maybe 30%? It may be higher.

I do know they're either going to play or they won't. My uncle Bob (literally, Bob is my uncle) says, "Money is not a motivator. It's the lack of it that pisses people off."
So, at his restaurants, payday was on Fridays, like most restaurants. And most cooks piss through their pay by Monday, so they work the rest of the week looking forward to pay day. I know I've seen players say, "I have a job. I don't log in to work another one".

The content that gets the player loot is either fun and/or immersive or it's not. I know that some players, given free stuff, like @Snarky, he'll make a character, find some overall theme/concept, and play it through most, if not all content. And there are other players, you give them 100M, they can suddenly buy what they want, they get it, and they log off because it was too simple. Or maybe..just maybe, they weren't that much into the game in the first place. Nothing wrong with them, or the game. It just wasn't a match.

But hey, I'd almost love it if everything was free, then I'd fork over 1500 prismatics for that spiffy costume toggle. I got it on Beta and it looks super cool. But I just can't bring myself to spend 2B worth of prismatics on it, even though I have enough to get each of my characters that toggle. (mainly because I don't want green, I want to be purple or blue, or red. For 1500 prismatics, we ought to be able to choose the color. I need to go back to brainstorm and double check to see if I missed that as an option, but I digress)

Friday at 05:46 PM

Anyone ever seen that before?

In my tray - it is not boosted. So I know it's not a bug. It's just weird. For context, I was converting some boosted ragnaroks just before this soulbound into either arms or hecs.

Friday at 04:12 PM

My timeline is similar. I look back at the characters I have that have been dormant for over a year, and one of them...I can't even imagine what I was thinking 5 slotting a perf-shifter set in end mod. No wonder that character wasn't much fun, it was built by an idiot.

I had the same step 1. Rediscovering game.
Step 2, learning more about the mechanics, that's a daily process, really. Sometimes, because HC changes the rules, and sometimes because I either forgot, or never knew.
Never got into real min-maxing. I thought I was on a couple of characters, I wasn't.
I certainly did step 4. Going through and deleting them is tedious!
I've taken a couple of breaks. Never more than a few months.

Now, I'm at this point where I read from Project0r, and other smart folks that 45% is too much defense, because it comes at a cost of dps. But, since I don't team with the same folks week in, week out, building for survivability and some dps is what I'm going to do.

I've got a dual build system I'm going to try with a new ice/mc blaster. One build the way I normally do, and another build with fold space and proc'ing three powers, relying on league/team buffs to help me life. I did this with a one build fire/mc and it did fine. Even solo, without challenging it much, it did fine. But I did use a defense buff from start to get through a solo katie hannon. I wanted to use my mark and recall, and that can be tough on a pug when folks don't know how it works, and explaining it just means they'll have less fun.

So much of a blaster's survivability is more about positioning and strategy for the next battle..and wise use of inspirations. Defense can be important, sure. But it's not as important as I'd always thought.

There's a lot of newer players who don't have the resources to get the pvp uniques. That alone puts me ahead of the bell curve. I used to be motivated to make all the inf I could to compensate for lack of speedy fingers. I'm finding my fingers are speedy enough - if I'm focused and paying attention. Most of the time my defeats are my own fault. Just wasn't used to using Combat Teleport. Or used Burst of speed right into the circle of death in the labyrinth. Real smart play, there.

I'm of the opinion now that I need to be more open to teaming, and try to team with the same folks over time. This will free me up to be more versatile with my builds. But it's tough to team when you know you're likely going to have to afk at some random time. And there's so many badges I want to get on various characters, and much of that is solo work. I'm really not sure how many of you do it.

Friday at 02:16 PM

18 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

So why is it so important to preserve this annoying experience for future generations of players?

I'll try to explain. It's not really important to me that other experience this annoyance. But my concern is if they don't invest the time or effort into their characters, they'll abandon them that much more easily. Is Sunk Cost Fallacy real? It must be, or the term wouldn't exist. But, just as I say it, I'm sure there's also a portion of new players who say to themselves, or even in help chat "Screw this grind", and log off anyway, some to never return.

I wish I had a solution that would please everyone, but it doesn't exist. We cannot please everyone all the time. Hard enough to do it once.

There's a ton of new players out there. I've been doing what I can to help them - like giving each one 200M to start their journey if they actually adhere to instruction and get Cadaver Cleanser in DFB. I don't mention it at all until the badge is won, if it's won. If they don't get it, I don't say anything. If they do, I mention I'll help them with some starter inf. Most are thinking it's a paltry 1 or 2 m, which is a ton to a new player. But I know not all the folks in dfb are brand new. 200M can help a player get just about all the want except maybe a ton of purples and some pricy HOs, at least for that character. Or, if someone gets the kill shot on the drop ship in the msr. If I'm close enough to see it in my system chat, I'll just send to them. Sometimes, I even get a thank you, or a "Thank, but no need" and they send it back.

Friday at 01:33 PM

12 minutes ago, Andreah said:

We could also create new veteran level badges (e.g., at levels 150, 200, 300, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, and 1000)

Um...no thanks. One of the biggest strengths CoH has is the ability to alt and alt some more. For a while, I'd had my XP turned off on my "main", because there was no motivation to go beyond 99, and at the time, if you had xp turned off, you got 2x inf.

Now, I enjoy playing my main ice/ice blaster. But if you're telling me there would be new badges to get, and I'd have to go through 900 or so more levels to get all the badges...I'm going to be predictably pissed. Yeah, I can hear it. "Nobody says you have to get those badges." Um, yeah, I do. So, even though I've tried to delete my stable of hundreds of characters, trying very hard to whittle them down to just 50, I've still got another 100 to clean out before I can delete them. And then I can cycle through the ones I've been playing instead of taking up room and resources (and names) with the ones that just sit idle. But that's just me. I can't imagine how someone like Voltor would feel having to put 25 characters to vet level 1000.

A very easy No thanks from me on that front.

Friday at 11:06 AM

On 7/4/2025 at 4:49 PM, Ghost said:

Once new players make it to their first 50, and actually play it - they’ll forget all about ever having money woes.

I never forgot. I still remember being level 40, talking to Ghost Falcon or whatever the store name guy is on PI, and I had enough for 10 SOs, maybe. That was it. I wasn't happy. Not that it mattered much. But I wasn't smart enough at the time to know how little it mattered. I got there fairly quickly though.

Friday at 11:01 AM

16 hours ago, Water said:

my troller or dom isn't the problem

Maybe not - but it is your problem to solve, isn't it?

Friday at 10:56 AM

There are many folks who franken-slot. The idea being that when pursuing a couple of combat stats, it's easier to do when you take 2-3 pieces of this set, and 2-3 pieces of that set. Or just the 3 pieces of one set, and use an HO to get the overall dps numbers, or other numbers like accuracy up to snuff.

And then there are folks who either really like a full set due to personality reasons, or, really like those bonus numbers when the 6th piece is slotted.

So, I'm doing a build on a character in a concerted efforted to leave defense alone, and focus more on dps. Some survivability, of course. I mean, it's going to have a patron armor of some kind. (although, none of them are really very good, but better than nothing, I guess)

And many use Mids Reborn. I do. At least, I try to use it. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting the most out of it. But that's another topic.

I was looking at the enhance portion in mids:

When they design these sets, are they aware that accuracy is low? And that damage is too high? I guess they are, because I don't think there's a set in this game that I've looked at where the numbers were green. Like, not any of them. I went with the full 6 for this set because I wanted that recharge buff. But now, I'm rethinking the entire build to prevent these kinds of diminishing returns.

But, the thing about diminishing returns, there are still some returns, tiny though they may be. I tried frankenslotting, and if my heart is set on grabbing that extra recharge for no reason other than I want it, it ain't gonna happen.

Now, I don't know the answer. Not with certainty. But the very rares are also like this. High on damage. Low on endurance and accuracy. Somewhere on these forums, it's probably all been discussed. But I missed it.

Why can't we have a set that's properly designed with no wasted stats if you use the full set?

Friday at 10:42 AM

1 hour ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Ok I guess I'm gonna have to type slowly

I had to read that slowly, too.
And I certainly didn't grasp that you meant ranged.

If I was forced to play ranged only, I'd go ice/energy blast, for obvious reasons.

Friday at 02:08 AM

On 7/8/2025 at 2:43 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

other sets that are great at stand off combat for characters with few defences.

I'm imagining a scenario where you want to do reasonable damage (not many controllers' fortes) and yet not get clobbered by bosses before you've had a chance to deal with minions.

What would you choose and more importantly, why?

I don't think I understand the question.

"Stand off combat"? Isn't that every character in the game?

July 9

Just a QoL request. Made a build to test on Brainstorm, and apparently you can't get via custom level a level 53 HO. It just gives you a 50. Which, as we all know you can simply combine 3 more to make it 53. Well, this particular build is using a ton of HOs, so it's taking some time. It'd be nice if the 53 HO were an option. Obviously, just a QoL ask. No idea if it's impractical or not in implementation.

July 8

22 hours ago, Andreah said:

I'd like to see a bunch more accolades with small, permanent stat boosts on them. Tie them into substantial sets of badges you get along the way and at end-game, especially those that encourage running content.

As much as I'd like it...I wouldn't like it. And I'll tell you why. I've got a ton of alts. I barely have the desire to get the 4 passive accolades on each character I make. Now, what might be interesting is different pathways to the same stats. Like instead of doing the katie hannon TF and the defeat requirements for geas accolade - just complete all 4 arcs and the tf.
Or, if on red-side (and I have no idea why Croatoa isn't co-op) set up something like do all of X and Y's story arcs, and get an accolade. The whole Defeat X and grab these plaques gets pretty dull after a few hundred alts.

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Posts posted by Ukase