Ukase

Anecdotally, I find my farm brute does better when I change maps, regardless of whether it's Dev content, or AE. Not saying results are poorer over time, only that they are better when I change maps.

You would be mistaken here. Rejected recipe progress was made on my badger in AE maps.

I think my biggest peeve is folks that will say in LFG, for example: Level 50 blaster lfg. What? If you are looking for a group to team with, there's a the Find Member button right on top of that box you just typed in. That's where you look for people to join your team. Or, if you can't see that, type /search (/sea for short). Nobody should be broadcasting "LFG". Form the darn team! If you're not comfortable leading, nobody cares. Simply state that you're new, but you want to do whatever it is in your mission list, or a tf, or whatever it is you want to do.

The thing about lag from a player perspective is that most players won't really know what's causing the lag. Suppose ac9999 had never had any lag previously playing on HC until Derek the Mender goofed up. While it's not proof positive, odds are something in that code doesn't agree with ac9999's system. If that is the case, what is to be done? Sure, all the suggestions made might help. If not, what then? I'm not sure we can ask volunteers to fix stuff the same way we would if were paying for the game. (and actually expect them to do so)

I like to play where defeat actually means something occasionally. If your character suffers defeat - you delete it. I make allowances if I'm on a team with others to finish the task at hand first, but otherwise, respec the IOs out, and start over. Further, I may start at 1 player, +0 difficulty, but at level 10, I raise it to 2 players/+1, level 20 will be 3 players/+2, level 30 is 4 players/+3, level 40 is 5 players/+4. I'm doing this now with a blaster and am level 15. So far, so good. I do not like my chances, as I'm having to get leadership and fight pool long before I'm really ready for it endurance-wise,, but I'll be needing the defense a little more, I think. I am on Goldside now, so I don't foresee any teaming until maybe when I get to red side. I anticipate hitting blue side at level 40 or so. I was able to do this once before - and got to level 50 +2, only being defeated in a DE monster scrum in the Hive during a hami raid. I should've let the tanks go in first, lol. If you really want to go hardcore - don't use p2w. It's been since shut down since I've done gold side content as a lowbie, so this time around I opted for some p2w assistance. Depending on how things go, I may forgo p2w next time around.

A notice of the well can be upgraded to 40 threads, all day. If you no longer need threads, you can, as Apparition pointed out, buy some Team or Super insps. Get the team reds for more frequent sales. Most folks only use the ultimates when pursuing the RHW badge efforts. (Well, that's all I use 'em for)

Must have been back last August or so...I was selling catalysts for 5M each. Good times. It didn't last long, but long enough for me to make a billion or so.

What Yomo is experiencing is likely similar to what many folks who've been successful with the market are experiencing. When you bought zillions of Winter packs when they were on sale, and realized how tedious they were to open (when you literally have 1000 or more, it gets quite dull...) you find your character email filled with Winter-Os, Reward Merits, unslotters, catalysts, boosters, respecs, tailor tokens, team inspirations, and a lot of other nifty (and not so nifty things). I was on a level 35 blaster yesterday and was looking for one of the Overwhelming Force IOs in my base. Somehow, I didn't have one of them stashed. I have 1000's merits in character email, hundreds of hero merits (on other alts) and I thought...do I want to blow 10-12M on the one I want, or just chunk down some merits which by now are not that meaningful to me...a good problem to have, for sure. I almost used merits, then quickly did the math in my head and figured I could make more by using the merits to get converters, actually use the converters on the drops I had on that character. A no-brainer, really. Just a question of whether I wanted to actually take the time to craft and convert. Having well over 100 billion, even though I've stopped afk-farming, (and every other type of farming), I'm still comfortable for the next 100 or so alts before I'll even think about needing inf.

As you can see, opinions will vary. You have 1000 slots. Make both! That said, the Sentinel, while fun for some, is simply an AT that was released too soon. Same armor as a scrapper, same status protection...but not the same damage. The rub is, if they had the same damage as a scrapper, why would anyone play a blaster? With HC's version of CoH, it's so easy to make a blaster with significant defense and dps, there's really no reason to ever play a sentinel, unless you just like toggles. Worried about mez? Go see p2w, get a defense amplifier when you get your 2xp, assuming you can afford them. That's not to say you can't enjoy a Sentinel. You certainly can. My first 50 when I came back to the game was a fire/rad sentinel. I really enjoyed it! I thought the damage was kind of low, but years had passed, and I wasn't really clear at that time how uber blasters had become. HC certainly improved them, for sure. More HP - which took me by surprise. And with my ice blaster, I was surprised to see my Freeze Ray on my blaster actually dished out moderate damage instead of minor damage. While the Sentinel has a freeze ray -- it's not a hold, it's a sleep. That took me by surprise, too! So make both. A sentinel is good for a learning player, likely more forgiving. But a blaster is a real hoot, especially once you learn how to build them.

Occasionally, I will bid/pay an outrageous sum just to help some random stranger out. In this case, though, the 60 million pay wasn't mine.

Actually - if the level 50 recipes you're getting are from drops, or random rolls - you're fine using them. Here's why: If I want a level 20 Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc - you can list your level 50 absorb proc, and when I buy it, the AH puts all the level 20 through level 50 absorb procs in the same bucket, and I can actually get yours. The level 50 Absorb Proc you put in AH automatically changes to the level 20 absorb proc. The only advantage in using the level 20 recipe is the cheaper crafting cost. This is why I buy level 10 pvp IO recipes - they are cheaper to craft than level 50 recipes. (like 5k compared to 500k) So don't sweat that. If the potential customer wants attuned, those are also coming out of the same bucket. So, if I'm level 24, want the Heal IO to go with the absorb proc, I can get it attuned, but it's in the same "bucket" as the level 50 crafted IO you put for sale.

This is probably why I settled in with arrow keys for movement - because I never played any other MMOs besides CoH, except to try them out after CoH shut down. It was always Leisure Suit Larry, Centurion: Defenders of Rome, Sims 4 or Madden NFL, and occasionally a game called Billionaire II. When I got CoH, I thought I would be playing some pre-fabricated hero character against NPCs. Had no idea there would be other folks playing characters in the same game. I didn't even realize internet service would be required, nor did I realize I'd have to pay $15 a month to play it! Good thing the first month was included in the price, lol. When the game shut down, I did think CO was the closest to CoH. Didn't really dawn on me that Cryptic had made both games, so it makes sense they were similar, to a degree. I think if I'd figured out what the equivalent to slotting was in CO, I might have kept playing.

Because I'm right handed, my right hand is on the arrow keys to move my character, with my left on the number row atop the keyboard for attacks. I only use the mouse to click open a door or a glowie. It just seemed intuitive to me - and when those other games didn't have that option, I just uninstalled them.

Love the costume, Yomo! And that's probably the first time I've ever said/written that. I hate the tailor! What's really amusing to me is Yomo probably has more inf. than ALL of us put together, lol. Pay it forward, even though you earned it!

I don't recall ever hearing that NCSoft stopped negotiating. I did hear they were asking a fortune. And, given that the code is in the wind, the code is now worthless, because whomever would buy it would have to play legal whack-a-mole to protect the IP, which would be more trouble than the game is worth, as is. The game *could* increase in value, if a dev team were hired and developed new content - and a lot of it. As it stands, the volunteer HC team, and teams on other private servers may make small contributions, but even still, the game has no value without a skilled full-time development team to make the game worth playing for a lot more people. But, even if someone were crazy enough to buy it, and developed more iTrials, added on to the incarnate power system, added a few new co-op and red-side and blue zones, with another half dozen or so task forces and another 40 story arcs distributed through all levels, only a small percentage would be willing to pay to play it with these other private servers not charging anything. That's all just my opinion, though. I don't know anything.

Seems to me that given there's no incentive to turn xp off at vet level 99, you're arguing there should be? As in, you don't see a reason to earn xp and tout high vet levels that give no badges, or emps or threads? I get it, see your perspective, but what did you have in mind? You already have your character t-4'd, I'm sure. You probably even have multiple Lores & Destinies t-4'd. So...you don't need inf because you already have your character slotted... You don't need IO recipes because you already have your character slotted. You don't need reward merits. You no longer need emps or astrals. Then again, you don't need XP either. The way I see it - there's no need for any rewards because they'd just take up space. Your character is 50+; it'd be useless. Play it for fun, or make a new character.

There is a contact - Ephram Sha - where you can do repeatable content. No arcs, just single missions. For the rest, there's Ouroboros. It really is annoying that we can't redo them though, outside of ouro. I really don't like being halfway through an arc, and then I see someone needs a hand with something, but my character is mid-arc, and I can't invite or be invited. Or, an MSR starts, but I'm in the middle of an arc. It kind of makes sense for content that was out-leveled, but at level 50, how have I outleveled level 50 stuff? Seems like I ought to be able to redo it, without it being through ouro.

Well...I understand the frustration, sure. But, every now and then, I'm actually in the mood for such maps. In many ways, my experience playing this game takes out some of the fun, because I already have an understanding of where I can expect mobs to be "hiding". If I let myself actually pretend that I'm my own avatar in the game - I'm in this oddly colored cavern, and I certainly wouldn't have any clue where the mobs are, and I'd have to be very careful to watch my step, lest I fall below and possibly be noticed without being ready to be noticed. So, I get it, but I think there are far many other things to work on before this should be given a moments thought.

For me, I always felt like you couldn't serve "two masters". Every minute you spent playing one game was opportunity to play another game that you missed. I could never understand why anyone would play Star Wars or WoW, and then come back to CoH and say they "took a break" and came back right before the game shut down. I always blamed those people for the closure. If they'd remained subscribers, just maybe, the game would have stayed open. So, when the game finally shut down, I looked for a substitute. I tried Perfect World, WoW, Ryft, and CO. CO was close, but I simply couldn't fathom how to boost my character's abilities - as in, I was trying to figure out how to "slot" a given attack to make it more accurate, dish out more damage, etc. I couldn't figure out where to find out how to do this. There certainly wasn't a tutorial in game that explained it - or if there was, my character never came across it. So, for me, it was a dud. I think I stopped at level 12 or so, because I couldn't figure out how to improve my character. That's probably more telling about me than about CO, though. But, that's my reason for thinking CoH was better. Things were more clearly explained. There's a help channel for things that you're not clear about. I certainly never noticed anything like that in CO. It may have been there, but I didn't notice it. CoH makes the help channel very noticeable, in my opinion. As for the other games, I can't fathom why anyone would use WASD or a mouse to move their character. The arrow keys are far more intuitive, and easier for me to use. CoH has the ability to rig up different keys to do just about anything - macros, binds, - whatever you like. I really wanted to play Marvel, but with click to move or whatever it was, I couldn't get into it.

I once got four very rare recipes in less than 11 minutes. I thought I found an exploit by accident. Just the rng showing me some love, which it routinely does.

I'll say this - HC's "flavor" of CoH may not technically allow "botting", but I will openly admit that my spines/fire brutes can simply Auto-fire Burn, without me doing a thing, and clear the silly Comic-Con AE map. If I were so inclined, I could take the same brute and clear the Dreck map of Freaks as well, I'd just have to tab back in and move the character to the next mob. It would take a while, of course, but other than moving the character, I wouldn't have to do a thing. Is this any different than "botting"? I would say no. I am fairly certain that the original devs, if they'd implemented the spines/fire combination, they'd have nerfed something to make this improbable, if not impossible. Granted, it wouldn't be popular to introduce figurative candy and then take it away, which is why we have beta testing. The problem is beta testing takes time, and sometimes, while no glitches may be found, impact on the game economy wouldn't likely make itself present on beta. All that said, I see absolutely no reason why we couldn't allow for Auto-firing of Domination & Hasten, or Hasten and Rune of Protection or any other power that would be useful. Obviously, a full attack chain would just remove the need to pay attention to the game at all - and while that wouldn't make sense to most of us - some folks really want to kit out their alts and see these types of farming as a legitimate way to do so. My only beef would be that HC has already made it pathetically easy to kit out a character! How hard is it to explore for badges, get about 20 merits at level 4 with a travel power (or a jet pack from p2w for 5k) sell the converters from exchanging those merits, and then proceding to use AH to increase funds even more? It's not unheard of to make a billion day! Rare, but not unheard of. But two auto powers would be less "game-breaking" than the notion of trading merits for converters at a vendor, which is currently being done routinely.

Bonkleberry - you'll drive yourself crazy trying to saddle other people with your logic. It makes sense to them - even if it doesn't to you (or me). There are some that play at -1/1 to zip through content ASAP for the rewards at the end, all the way to those who play at +4/8 and clear every map. I'm just glad we have the option!

I can say the same thing. The only reason I played after I found out was the box included a code for the first month's fee. After that, it was easy to justify. So many learning lessons about slotting, powersets & tactics. I kind of wish I could go back in time and see it brand new (to me) again. Joined a couple weeks before issue 4 hit. What kills me is a girlfriend of mine had told me about the beta when it came out - and I passed at the opportunity because of grad school. I kind of regret that.

Genius!

I seriously disagree with your statements about "faceplanting most of the time" and "focuses on slowing things down". I have played my ice/ice blaster for thousands of hours -during live, and on HC and other private servers. The "slowing things down" is not a focus for the player. It's just something ice does. The player need not slot any Slow IOs - primarily because the bonuses aren't very good and the dps is so good, it's unnecessary. Once Frigid Protection is six-slotted, along with Bitter Ice blast and Freeze Ray - there's really no looking back. And when you get Blizzard...well, that's just more gravy. Ice Sentinel is a BIG mistake, because the freeze ray isn't a hold. It's low damage and needs work, in my opinion. With Rune of Protection on perma, the ice blaster will have all the status protection a Sentinel would have and do far more damage. Blasters really don't faceplant. Players do. It reminds me of a phone call I got recently: Me: Hello Caller: Hi, may I speak with Miss Gradenko? (name changed) Me: Nobody here by that name. Caller: Oh, I'm sorry, this must be a wrong number. Me: There's nothing wrong with my number. You are the one who is wrong. Snarky - but the point is - there's almost nothing finer than an ice/ice blaster. DPS, Damage mitigation, why it's just about the most perfect combination you can ask for.