Ukase

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.

I am ...what's the word...well, maybe dismayed. This doing away with simul-clicks was a step in the right direction. There's nothing difficult or challenging about it, other than requiring a teammate - which can often be more difficult for some people than others. Sure, anyone can recruit, or ask for help on the lfg. But there's a number of us who can't always be fair to teammates, due to having to go afk with no notice, and be gone for a moment, or two hours or more.

So...I ran into this today...no big deal. The Just Said No to Supradine History badge. I had already gotten this badge by clicking on two plaques in steel, one in skyway, one in boomtown, and one in Faultline(plaque 3). I was in Echo:Faultline, and also saw a plaque (3) that supposedly is part of Just Said No to Supradine. I already had the badge, so I don't know if these two are interchangeable. Anyone else know? Might make an alt just to see. Also...I notice on the Badger site, none of the plaques in Echo:Faultline are listed for any history badges. Guess I'm wasting my time. Disregard.

I kind of wish HC would come up with a way to actually use the banks in paragon as a repository for the wealth accumulated, accessible by any alt on our accounts. But we already have a badge leaderboard. Too many leaderboards, and folks might get frustrated.

Given the frequency of hami raids and ms. lib/lrsf - has anyone done the math and determined how high the micro needs to be going for to determine whether the hami- (or synth-hami) is the better choice over the merits?

Excelsior is the most populated server. Everlasting has the largest role playing population among all the servers, and they are fairly close to Excelsior in terms of player population. When Excelsior went online, a lot of people took advantage of the server transfers. Sometime around July or August of 2019, there was a steady migration from Torch to other servers. I've no idea why. Still, Torchbearer has some of the more highly skilled players across all shards. Excelsior has some very, very competent players as well. (with a lot of newer players who have never played before!) ( I define competency & highly skilled by my own interactions with players there. You may play on Everlasting and be the best ever - but I may be blissfully unaware. No insult is intended.) I have little to no experience on Reunion or Indomitable, so I can't speak about them.

One thing I've never understood with this game is the animations certain powers give characters upon zone entry. Tough, from the fight pool, makes characters beat their chest and roar. On a Shield tank I have, the character will make some odd animation like he's opening his chest, much like Fire Shield does. I've never understood why they do this. I do get them doing it when the toggle gets turned on...but when it's already on, I don't see the point. I'd love to visit Null to disable these animations.

I notice my scrappers and stalkers tend to take all primary and secondary. Occasionally, I'll skip the secondary t-9, but I've usually taken them to use as an IO mule. Broadsword/invuln, Dual blades/invuln off the top of my head.

When I was trying to amass influence, this is how I did it, but keep in mind, the market is fluid; the opportunities I took advantage of may not exist anymore. After about 3 months of playing, I made a 2nd account. Primary account lent the secondary just enough to get SOs. I planned on doing certain things for accolades, and the rest through a fire farm. But - before that - I would take merits and get catalysts. Sell the catalysts for 5m. (Well, 4,777,777, but I'd routinely get 5m.) This is just not going to happen now. Too much competition in the market, unless some crazy person wants to buy them all up - but even then, with all the farmers, they drop routinely, so any hike in price wouldn't last long. Then, I noticed that Superior Brute ATOs were selling for 20m to even 30m! So, as many hero packs as I could afford, I bought. I converted them from whatever the ATO was into a brute ATO. Unslotted my superior ATO, slotted the new ATO, catalyzed it, making it superior, then listed the superior I had unslotted to the AH. I did this to the tune of several billion over the course of a month. I had never paid much attention to Winter-Os until I had made the farmer on the second account. Before I learned, I was running everything at +1/8, and had heal on auto instead of burn. I did look on the forums for fire farm builds, but those builds didn't look like they'd survive in non-game content. My farmers do; and they can handle the afk-farm at +4/8. They may not clear an asteroid map in a minute, but two minutes if I'm paying attention is plenty fast enough. The other thing I do - and it's where I've made probably the majority of my influence has been in pvp IOs. I started with just active bidding - which means, I'd creep my bid upward until I bought something, as I was eager to make the inf! I'd open up the AH, bid on level 10 PvP recipes, mostly Javelin Volley. For whatever reason, folks listed those more cheaply than others. I'd get them for about 4m usually. Then I'd craft and convert to a pvp proc (glad armor 3%, Panacea +HP/End, Shield Wall 5% res) and list them for 9.7m, when everyone else seemed to be posting them high enough to get 11-12m. To me - 10M was a nice starting number, nice and round, which made the math easy for me. A level 10 pvp IO recipe will craft for about 6k. The level 50...around 500k. So each one, given the odd way the HC devs have the market configured into various buckets, I saved close to 500k for each one I made. On the salvage, I started just buying what I needed. No sense in having inventory taking up space or influence. I wasn't sure how this would go, but it certainly seemed like a good way to make some inf. The procs (unlike now) sold instantly. 4m, plus 6k crafting cost, plus 500-600k for a rare salvage piece, 4-10k for two uncommons, and 600 inf for 2 common salvage. All in, just less than 5m, selling for 10m. Double my inf. Once I saw how fast those went, I got a bit bolder, and began passive bidding, in lieu of active bidding. I still had plenty of badges to get on the primary account, the active bidding took too much time. So, I began first to bid on 5 of each type of common salvage in the lower level tiers, 5 of each of the uncommons, and 5 of each of the rare salvage, and would leave them in the AH, with 5 of each in my inventory on my character. Then I bid 4m on each and every level 10 pvp IO. I was able to check in twice a day, craft, convert, sell. I soon realized that I was losing money by not checking in more often, as there were never any that hadn't sold. No sooner had I opted to check back in 3x a day, I found that none of my passive bids had gone through. As you know - marketers are ebil. They will see past history of 4,000,000 winning the recipes, and they will come behind you and place a bid for 4,000,001. Gradually, winning bids on recipes rose from about 4, to close to 6m. Then the price of the procs rose to about 12-14m. This went on for a bit, but after the higher prices seemed to hold, bidding 6m and getting 12-14m was even better. So, I then put passive bids of 5 of each pvp IO recipe. I then went and started low-balling attuned PvP IOs on another character that I would check on only once a week. Oddly - some folks pay the recipe prices no mind, and craft them and sell them as cheap as some recipes. Maybe they lacked the inf to get full value, or just listed at 1 inf like a foolish person who only cares about playing the game and not the market at all. Their loss was my gain. Buy at 5m, convert, sell at 10.7m Then it happened. I added up all the inf I had across the accounts and exceeded 100 Billion, which I'm learning lately is more than enough - but not even close to what some of you have amassed. Like not even close. I suspect that some of you more focused folks have closer to 1 trillion than 100 Billion. But that's just conjecture. When I'm spending a lot of time getting badges, many of you are laughing at how foolish I am and making serious bank. So...that's a LOT of damn words, but the question HOW was asked. And this was how.

Seriously? Thank you for that correction! I guess I have to admit that I can not read, nor do math very well anymore, if I ever could at all. That isn't the way I remember it at all, but I'll take your word for it.

Redacted reply on account of my being an ignoramus in this post.