Ukase

I second this - but given the time you're able to play - you should be able to squeeze in 1 merit every 5 minutes, taking your sweet time. 1 merit every minute or better if you're speeding, which from my understanding you're not. The exploration badges give 5 reward merits visiting each badge site, 8 of them per zone. If you can't do that in 5 minutes with vidiot maps patch....that's a merit per minute easily. At level 28: Atlas Echo:Atlas Echo:Galaxy Kings Row The Hollows Perez Park Boomtown Faultline Echo:Faultline Echo:Dark Astoria Terra Volta Striga Isle Croatoa Skyway Steel Canyon Sewer Network 180 Merits there. I didn't even include Siren's Call or Bloody Bay because a lot of folks prefer not to enter those zones. Not repeatable, but a good way to accumulate some reward merits quickly, no team is needed, either. The Sig Story arcs are all mostly about 4 missions, and give 20 merits. If you did nothing but SSAs once a week, you'd have a nice stash of reward merits. If you just did the hamidon raids (once you level up) that's 160 merits per night in less than an hour, usually.

So I am dabbling into this a tiny bit, having come up with a silly notion to make a character that will only use macros to communicate. Picture a walking Magic 8 Ball kind of thing. Admittedly, quite silly. Anyway - I thought I would write just a couple of expressions, load them in and just see if I could get it to work. My dilemma is that word won't save the document as .mnu (I'd have put a period to end that last sentence, but it would look funny.) It saves it as filename.mnu.docx I added the mnu after the file name thinking it would save in that format. When I looked at Save Options - it listed about a dozen different file extensions, but none of them .mnu Please don't tell me I need to upgrade my copy of Word. I'm cheap, and this version up to this point has done everything I've needed it to. Would Open Office work, or Google Docs?

In Sharkhead: [NPC] Wolf Spider TacOps: I have a weapon pointed at a man's head and I'm in the middle of an interrogation. Did it ever occur to you that MAYBE trotting past like an elephant could be considered an intrusion?

I appreciate that link. As I read it, I could take comfort in recognizing many areas where I am quite incompetent. Like playing a dominator.

I talk a fair bit with my work, doing interviews over the phone, communicating with work teammates across the country - throughout the work day. The last thing I want to do when I play is use discord and talk more. But - I have headphones and can listen in. I tend to only talk when I'm actually leading a trial. And I posted just the other day how Discord helped us immeasurably get master of underground when Excelsior crashed on Sunday night. (right after the bombs) The only reason to use discord for a task force..is if you want to. Task forces are mindless and simple. There are no difficult game mechanics that require talking. At least, I can't think of one, and I've done them all. They're all easy to do. That said - a lot of folks like discord and prefer to talk over typing. I get it.

Impatient fool that I am - I wrote about a full page - and then...scrolled back up and saw that Nemu and InvaderStych told you the same things I wrote. What they didn't tell you is that there is a player called @Yomo Kimyata on these forums who has more influence than everyone else put together. Well - maybe not EVERYONE, but he's pretty well off. He has a post here https://forums.homecomingservers.com/search/?q=Yomo&quick=1 where he states if you email him, he will send you 20 million inf, no questions asked. That would get you started. He also has written several guides on how you, too, can make a lot of influence, quickly, and fairly simply. In game, you can reach him at @yomo.

There are a number of things I understand. There are things that "I get", or make sense to me. There are many things I don't get, or understand. If you expect players to be competently equipped, you probably shouldn't be powerleveling anyone you've not teamed with before. You should have some idea about their knowledge of the game so that they aren't level 50, with no influence to slot their character due to p2w buffs. That said, I do get that for certain group events - like a super team or an SG sponsored PvP or Hami Raid, there may be some power leveling and suggested builds to help out lesser experienced players get a character to meet the requirements for certain content. No problem with that - as those players are getting mentored, and they have a friendly support network to answer questions. I do understand that some people may lack the maturity or patience to experience the lower levels to learn and understand various game mechanics, and/or tactics and/or strategies. Not to mention the overwhelming math behind ED and procs to go along with all the information about IO sets. But to have NO slots for a master run? That's just nonsense. John Cleese, British Comedian/actor has been quoted to say, "Those who have no idea what they are doing, genuinely lack the ability to understand they don't know what they are doing." Their ignorance has given them bliss. They simply did not understand how challenging it is to not be defeated for the average player. They lacked the understanding that a lot of people can only play for a limited time, and to invest that time for a master run and have it not work out because someone wasn't playing well - for any reason - can be quite frustrating. Especially if you learn a player lacked the respect to be at least minimally slotted. I get CoH is a game - that we're lucky to be able to play again! I get that some of you have a real life outside the game and that making a build isn't much fun for you. You just want to smash stuff. By all means, play the way that brings you joy. But - if playing the way that brings you joy brings other people you play with misery and frustration...you may wish to re-consider who you're playing with. Probably not a good match. That's the best thing about CoH. There are groups of players that are super chill - and have no issues with you dancing next to Dr. Vahz while everyone else is fighting for the lives of their pixels. There are also groups of players that create a build for a specific task/strike force just to finish it as fast as they can. And there are even badge nerds that spend billions of inf on their builds - just to do ouro badges with the setting "enhancements have no effect". Evidence that we're all a bit crazy, for sure. I just feel for the OP in this case, because he's already a mission into the tf, and it's too late to uninvite someone, and kicking them would be a jerk move, as we never really know what's going on the other side of the monitor.

So..we were running an MoUGT on Excelsior and had to that point gotten through the first part of the bomb badge with no issues. I had typed out the explanation for the staggered bomb section - hit enter - and nothing. Fortunately, we were using discord, (except one player) and I had already relayed things through Discord. Some thought we should wait for the impending crash - as I wasn't the only one whose league chat didn't work. But - one player determined that Local chat did work, so I used that to relay the instructions to zerg the bombs, as well as over discord. We got them all, without incident. Then - the crash happened. Much to my surprise (and relief) I was able to LFG queue back into the event, already in progress and relayed such to the league. We got to pick up right where we were when the server crashed! Moments later, we got our Master of Underground iTrial! I seriously doubt we'd have been able to do that without the use of Discord, (or some other voice service) I know many of you would prefer not to use it. And before tonight, I was in that camp! I talk a lot during the day for work. I'd rather not have to talk when I play. And, a lot of folks will swear, or react to things in game ...almost hysterically, with rather unpleasant pitch. Unfortunately, seeing that people listen far better than they read - I'm now a believer in using Discord when going master runs. Also unfortunately, I think it's the use of Discord that has led to some people being unable to read league chat. But, whatcha gonna do?

Given the limit of transactions in the AH, that's what...150*10, 1500 per character, with 1000 characters - 1,500,000 total salvage in the ah, plus at MOST 282 per character, (vault storage beyond the characters normal salvage cap of 100) which is 282,000. Unless we are deleting stacks of 10 as we pull them in...I don't see it happening. And I, for one, have better things to do, lol.

I don't know if the reason would fit in your case - but I find if a team or league window is "behind" the badge progress list, the percentages won't display. If I click the league or team window down, so it's not behind the list, it shows.

Well...that's a summation I could have used last year! I knew the one mission "arcs" from ouro didn't count. It never occurred to me to make the connection on badge arcs not awarding ouro badges.

So..not sure if I should mention this here, but figured it couldn't hurt. I have two accounts. Primary, and secondary. On my primary account, I had transferred a tank from Excelsior to Everlasting for a hami raid. After it was over, (like an hour, maybe 90 minutes) when I transferred back, the name was unavailable. Serves me right for not securing it as I left, right? Wrong, apparently. I had been retrying to get my name back about once a week since then...for the past 6 months, maybe. While on my secondary account, it just happened to be more convenient for me to try it from there. And it was available! So, I log in my primary account and ...it's not available! I go back to the secondary, try again and it's still available, so I figured I'd better save it and made a character with that name. I went to the discord, sharing essentially these details. But, while I was waiting, I thought to myself..if the name was available for my secondary, why not my primary? Then I remembered that in one of the posts about transfers, a dev had stated that there were no guarantees, anything might go wrong. So, what I figured happened was even though my character did transfer just fine to Everlasting, Excelsior never really figured it out and kept the name allocated to my account, somehow. So, what I did next was to try a long-shot and delete the newly made character on my secondary account. Then, I went back to my primary account and was able to make the character and get the name back where it belongs! Turns out the name has been available (I think) all along, just not to me, due to the server not being able to figure out what happened in the transfer.

Very happy for you!

I actually have a clear memory of one of my classmates telling me they were doing the beta for CoH and asking if I wanted in, as we were both in the masters program for computer science at the time. But, because I had more than just computer science in my mind when I was with her, I passed, not wanting to get in that friend zone. She ended up transferring to Georgia Tech and is actually part of a game design team. I ended up doing something with nothing to do with gaming and very little, if anything, to do with computer science. Should've done the beta!

If I happen across such a player, I will do what I can to be helpful. I know what this feeling is like.

What are you looking for in an SG? And what do you mean by casual? You play once a week? Or you don't like to mess with IOs or speed runs? Knowing how you play might help me point you in the right direction.

I'm going to digress, forgive me. But when I first bought this game at the now defunct Circuit City, I had no idea what the initials MMO stood for. I was 35, I think. I'd always loved Marvel Comics. DC not as much. Certainly a childhood fan of Captain Marvel of Whiz comics (and later DC). I was a bit dismayed to read through the EULA and other rules to learn I couldn't make a Spider Man or a Thing. When I made the first character, and I figured out there were other people in MY game, I was bit pissed. I'd be wailing down on a clockwork, and some other player would see fit to "help" and still my kill when it had just a sliver of hp left. This didn't just happen a few times, either. I was completely ignorant of the forums then. I had no idea how to slot beyond the tool tips that revealed which kind of enhancements would be accepted. There's no question in my mind this game should have been developed for solo play, without requiring an internet connection. (truth be told, without those "other people", I would have never learned how to slot with any purpose or efficacy)

I remember those days. In retrospect, I can blame my issues with speed boost (I'd constantly run into higher level trolls or igneous) from a well-intentioned fellow player on my system's inability to render the npcs in a timely fashion. I literally didn't know what hit me until I was dead. My system simply didn't show the npc to me until I was defeated. Without speed boost, I could safely sprint my way through most of the time. With it - and I'd run smack into them because I never saw them until it was too late. But through all of THAT frustration, it never occurred to me to quit, and I'm having a hard time accepting that someone would quit over having to travel with sprint, or hover until level 14. Not saying it didn't happen, it's just hard to wrap my head around it. But then again, I do know that getting those ouro badges by completing arcs without a travel power are not my favorite. So glad those badges are optional! But quitting? May I argue that they really didn't like the game for other reasons as well? It can't just be that.

Why don't they type and spell the way I like? Those capital letters in the middle of a word make my eyes hurt.

Well, I can dream, right? It makes sense, I suppose. I'm going to assume that means we'll never get that actual bank account to stash inf for all our alts to access unless the account is capped at 2B as well..which would defeat the purpose. Thanks for the replies. I knew there must have been a reason, but couldn't remember what it was.

First - to the OP - kudos for the initial post. Some of you...I agree with. Some of you, I think are very different from me, and that's okay. I have PL'd a character or two, sure. The only ones that I actually use are the afk-farmers. I Pl'd a fire/rad troller to about level 22...and when I was training it...there were powers to choose and I couldn't remember from live if they were worth taking or not. Essentially, I logged that character off, and there are still 5 levels left to train on that character. I may never play it again. Same with a warshade. I got one to 50, t-4 on live. It was fun to play. I still have the build, based on Dech's MFin' WS build. But it's been so long, that I almost have to turn xp off to learn when to use this power or that. It seems a lot more complicated than it did back in live, but I'm a bit older and don't get a lot of joy out of changing forms like I did then. Sure, there are times when even with 2xp, the gains come slowly, particularly on characters who require a bit of a learning curve. But for the most part, I've learned that going slower is faster. I know that seems like a contradiction, so let me explain: I like badges. If I skip content, when I ding 50, I will likely have to hunt for the defeat badges. If I don't use 2xp, I can actually do Stephanie Peebles, then go to Faultline and do Jim Temblor's and then go back to Striga, do Longjack Tom (or is it longtom Jack? whatever) Then at 25, go to Croatoa and start those arcs, go back to Striga and Faultline, finish those and back to Croatoa and finish those. And I'll come out of it with the defeats for Geas and Atlas medallion. Do some explores and plaques, and the katie tf, and some gms in croatoa, and I've got Geas and Atlas accolades done by level 35. I'm not suggesting that hitting 50 and then getting accolades is harder, or takes longer. It probably doesn't. But for me, it seems faster to knock that stuff out when it's level appropriate. No times were tracked or measured, it just seems that way to me. But that's me. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do things the way I do them. While I think my way is better, or I wouldn't be doing it, to expect others to see it that way is more than a bit silly. By PL'ing to 50, yeah, you get your inf and the nice drops. And you can always do stuff through Ouro, armed with all of your attuned IOs and all the slots, sure. But with Ouro - you're locked in. By doing the content when you're that level, you can stop, do a tf, whatever. With ouro...you're stuck, or you're re-doing it. But you do you. As for teaming during the lower levels, I don't seek them out. Most of the time, they want to do radios, which don't give merits. Story arcs give merits. And if you're doing a story arc - I don't get the merits, you do. So unless I'm doing the same story arc as you, and I opt for simultaneous completion, I'm leveling beyond my story arc, and missing out on merits. So, that's why I don't team up much. That, and I find so many inexperienced players taking what should be a 30 minute posi 1 (even if you kill all) and making into 90 minutes of frustration because they don't want to learn, they just want to kill stuff without regards to their hp. They don't consider waiting for a blaster to pull to a corner, or a tank or brute to taunt. As one other put it - it's like leading a cat to a bath. Just not easily done, and even if you can do it, the cat doesn't like you afterwards. Still, because of this post, I'm going to try and not sweat merits and team more. It's not like I need the merits for anything. I have my next 100 alts funded already. I would even consider mentoring beginning players on how to market, how to make a farmer to subsidize their character's needs, and how to get the 4 passive accolades in a fairly efficient manner. I've often thought about making a super team start off with ZERO from any alt, no assistance from anything other than what drops. How to get those first batch of converters to make enough inf to get your character into the 20's, and then how to get enough inf to get to the 40's and then to a billion before 50, and still be kitted out, and have about 750 badges. (amazing how many badges aren't available until 50!) Maybe I should get off my high horse and do that.

Perhaps this has been discussed, but I'd really like for a given character to carry 2 billion or more. While I have no compelling arguments to remove the inf cap, other than I don't want to carry it in my email and I don't want to create characters just to hold inf, I have no compelling arguments to keep the inf cap in place, either. I don't recall what the original Devs position was on keeping it at 2 billion. But that was then...why not raise the cap to 100 Billion? Or even 10 billion?

I give each alt 100million for a p2w set up. From there, they tend to earn their own keep. By the time they hit 50, they all carry 1 billion. Surplus is kept in 900m attachments in email. I suppose I could put 1 billion in the email and carry 900M. Or some variation, but it's what I've settled into. See what you did? You gave me the idea to suggest they raise the inf cap.

I've noticed that pvp recipes are selling a lot more cheaply, and what seems to be a correlation, pvp ios are dropping in price, too. The recipes are now going, on average for about 3m. (when I say average, I'm talking about the price most often seen, not an arithmetical mean), and the crafted proc PvPIOs seem to be going for 9-10, leaning closer to the 9, overall. Glad Armor at 9, with the Panacea closer to 10, and the Shield Wall in the middle. There's still the staggering profit of about 5m per IO, but I can definitely see a lot more IOs listed for auction. I expect the price of these to continue to drop a little - but I think 8M will be about as low as the procs will go. But that's pure conjecture. Buying recipes, crafting, converting...tedious stuff for many folks. Only a few crazy folks are gonna stick with that. I've also noticed that sets that aren't Glad Armor, Shield Wall or Panacea - some of those are selling crafted for about 4-5m, which just leaves converting & selling costs...and those are much faster and easier to deal with. Superior Winter sets seem to be fairly stable at 26-30M. I don't see many of these at all for sale, and I think it's because folks are waiting for the next sale, and there's no sense in selling something when the folks that would buy them know that in a few months, they're going to be more easily and inexpensively obtained. What continues to boggle my mind is how the process of slotting, catalyzing, and unslotting (not necessarily in that order) adds about 8M to it's value. Folks is crazy sometimes. It's the same with ATOs. The brute ATOs, which seem in short supply, sell for 8-10 fairly quickly, but when superior, sell for 15-17. (Admittedly, the time for the sale to close is longer) You'd think catalysts were selling for 4-5m with these differences, but they seem to be fairly cheap at 2-2.5m. Still plenty of inf out there to be gained in profit for the patient marketer who doesn't mind a little tedium.

In the zone msr, you click on a bomb too soon, it says "mintues" instead of minutes.