Ukase

I know that with the abrupt shutdown years ago, that many want to take time to absorb the environment, soak it in, and not take it for granted. But, honestly, I notice certain avatars and think - "Oh, clever name" or "Well, what a tart to dress their avatar in such a fashion". Beyond that, I am quite obtuse.

I know I'm not the only one to experience this. I'll be getting xp and threads, and vg merits on my vet level 33 Sentinel (That means level 50 with 33 vet levels) - and I stopped getting xp and influence. I did get some threads, but nothing else. Why is this happening only during MSRs?

I have to realize that it's not the case that players visit these forums. They used to visit the CoH forums, but even then, that was probably only 10% of the player base. But, I think it could be argued that the folks that read the forums were the best 10% of the player base, as far as knowledge of game mechanics, character builds and overall skill. In any event, I don't particularly enjoy standing around (or sitting, as the case may be) doing nothing, waiting for someone else to finish something up. It's a waste of my game time.

I'm sure I'm in the minority - but Battalion? I know some players have multiple toons in the high vet levels already decked out with tier 4's and they are honestly bored with running BAF and Lambda. Heck, I'm one of them. That said...there are still plenty of level 50 players - about 5 each time I'm on a BAF that have absolutely no idea how to do BAF, because they've never done it before. And most leaders don't take time to explain anything. Some do - and I make sure to make a note in game about how well they do, because those are the folks I look to team with for future trials. But if you add Battalion -- there's going to be a large chunk of the player base that gets left behind. I say, if it's not broken, don't fix it. We have our game back for the time being. Can't we just leave well enough alone? CoH could have left the game as it was in Issue 4, and given all the power choices, that would have been fine with me.

For the time being, given that it took an hour just to form the league last time, there doesn't seem to be that much interest in the time slot I've chosen. So for now, I'm putting this on hold - at least at that time slot. I'm going to try something before the hami raid, or after and see how that goes.

I had initially downloaded Tequila in my downloads folder for Paragon Chat. When the game came back, I dug up an i-23 copy of VM and basically downloaded it into my downloads folder. Probably not the most organized way. So I can just extract the new Moremaps into my download folder? Do we need to restart the game?

what's a discord? They have these beautiful forums here for that kind of information. Why would they use some other site?

I am curious as to how many of you have your screen set up. I was leading a trial last night, and when we loaded in, I no longer had the lead. No big deal, but there was a team of 8, and 5 other teams of varying amounts. 5 had crashed/gotten booted for whatever reason - and because I didn't have the lead, I couldn't reinvite those that got the boot. The fellow that did get the league star said he didn't have his league window open. Not sure why he couldn't hear/read the zillion tells and comments in broadcast, local and PMs, but eventually he did. Got a badge or two, but it didn't go nearly as smoothly as it could've been. Not really his fault, but it was a mess. When he said he didn't have the league window open, I was ...taken aback. Who else plays like this, and why? I know when I solo, I like to minimize the clutter. But when teaming, it's helpful to see who's taking damage, etc. For example - how do you know if your entire team got wiped out? I'm sure there are ways to see - defeated teammate at your feet, orange-ish triangle on the map, etc - but seriously, I'd like to know how others are organizing their screen. Maybe I need a bigger monitor.

Leading a BAF- and boy what a fiasco. I zone in, but I'm not the league lead. Instead of 3 teams set up with good team composition for the prisoner escapes, I get one team of 8, a team of 4 and the rest scattered in 4 remaining teams, and missing 5 people. Someone apparently (from what I was told - no idea if they knew what they were talking about) started the cut scene, and because some hadn't loaded in, the game forgets they were part of the league, and boots them. The guy that got the league star, "didn't have the league window up" (who plays with that not showing????) ignored or didn't notice tells, or broadcasts or local to give me the star so I could fix the teams. Finally, after the defeat of Nightstar, he does, and I reinvite those I could, but we're still short a few. Is this a known bug? Locking teams doesn't seem to do anything, is that a bug too? I'm almost ready to forgo incarnate stuff because I don't want to deal with glitchy things unless I know about them prior.

This happened to me on one of my characters, but not another one - it showed up. And I used it up, and I thought - let me redo that arc through Ouros to see if I can get it again. I did, and it gave it to me again but it had 5 minutes instead of the normal time. (an hour or 2) You're not alone.

So that's the difference then, it would seem. Makes sense. The less squishy my characters, the further from the bowl they go to bring in the ritki. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you!

You can say I have no life. I have 4 level 50s. An ice/ice blaster, a fire/rad Sentinel, a fire/fire brute, and a rad/stone tank. They've all done MSRs. My ice blaster will get ...1000? 1200? Vanguard Merits. As much as 1400 last night. Or was that this morning? I forget. My brute...maybe 400? My sentinel maybe 600. My tank got 278 Vanguard Merits. I pulled half the sides at least a dozen times, giving them either judgement, if it was up or several fireballs if it wasn't, as I pulled them to the bowl. This can't be simply a question of AoE's, can it? Are we going to now have to wonder who on our team has rain of fire, blizzard or ice storm? Do we fuss if 5 of our teammates do nothing but spam heals and buffs? I'm feeling a little discouraged for my melee characters. I can't hardly consider my fire brute a single target damage character. Consume, Burn, fire sword circle, Combustion, blazing aura - it's all AoE. Can someone shed some light on what the discrepency comes from?

That would be fantastic. I'm a bit old school - I don't particularly enjoy speaking while playing on discord or anything else. I talk all day at work, and honestly, I get tired of talking. I much prefer to use macros if I'm leading an iTrial that needs a lot of explanation. Earlier this weekend, although I'd posted what I was going to do, turned out there were a number of other things going on that others knew about, and I was clueless. Hami raid, MSR, etc. Certain folks have certain channels in game they use, and unless you go hunting them down - and know what they're called, you may never know of certain iTrials or other in-game events. It would be good to have them posted in the forums. There must be hundreds of channels in Discord, and I really can't spend all that time looking at everyone's posts there. Here, I can see them at a glance.

I'm excited to test this out and to see how it plays. That said, as one who has logged literally thousands of hours playing an ice/ice/ice blaster - aside from the UGT trial, I've never seen a need for snipe, but I sure wish it was an option for ice, or fire for that matter. Trade-offs, I guess.

Thanks for playing! That first bomb - I still don't know where it is specifically, just the general area. The rest of it went decently well, I'd say. I would've liked to have had the second av closer to the corner, that's for sure. But I've tanked him before - and unless the taunter flies at his head level, he doesn't seem to like the corner very well.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm not worried about any of it, really. It's not like it's real cash, you know? Starting from scratch - like all of us, I asked myself what was the best return to get the stuff I wanted for my characters. After all is said and done, actually just playing the game - getting merit rewards - that's all that anyone needs to do - is the best bang for the buck. There are lots of ways to maximize the return on our respective play time as far as the market goes. But - the market reacts (albeit slowly) to the changes made by the devs. The flooding of salvage at max prices of 10k, 50k and 1 million inf certainly had some impact. The Vanguard to reward merit conversion is another that will impact the market. Ultimately, if people enjoy "arresting" the NPCs, everything else will take care of itself.

Back before the shutdown, on Liberty, I routinely would lead UGT badge efforts. If my memory is correct, these efforts would be following an MSR (those didn't happen all day every day like they seem to do now). I've decided that with the increasing number of level 50 players that there is more demand for iTrials aside from BAF and Lambda. I ran UGT back then for several reasons: It seemed as if nobody else was, because it is the longest of all iTrials, and people are under the notion that they've got to have a t-3 clarion slotted in order to have any real chance to succeed. This simply isn't the case, provided that team composition is half-way decent. Obviously, the more level shifted players you have, and the more experienced they are in running the UGT, the better the league's odds are of succeeding. I'll just say this: the competence of the players overall I've run into is much better than I recall it being previously. This could be from only die-hard fans of the game returning, so I'm seeing the better players, or it could just be the easier path to slotting the characters with the good stuff, as opposed to simply using SOs. With that said, on Excelsior server, I've got a really fun Sentinel called Blister. Blister is simply a generic character, not ideally suited for any specific role in the UGT. No snipe for the bombs, no taunt for any AV's, merely a big fire ball and a few blasts that lack the range that most blasters will have. My Sentinel does have one thing going for it - it's more survivable than a blaster. Having played one for at least 2000 hours, I know a thing or two about blasters. So, on Saturday nights, at 7pm central time, in Pocket D, I'll be forming UGT's on a regular basis. This first run, on June 1, it will merely be to help folks get familiar with the trial. (And to help my addled brain remember where all the bombs are - I remember the 8 in the hallway, and the ones in the curved tunnels, but right before then, there's at least one that seems to take the leagues I've been in by surprise. So, if you're a badge enthusiast, I encourage you to come out and see if there's room for you. For best chances of success, I'll want a mix of ranged attacks for the bombs (and if I can't get those, we can "space-balls" it, with a similar technique used on the Ritki pylons - we just bum rush each bomb as quickly as we can, killing them before they kill us. It's quite tense and nerve-wracking, but it's a lot more fun than waiting on ranged characters to snipe the bombs, and a nice mix of buffs/debuffs. Just like any other task force or trial. Good composition tends to make for best results. I also intend to run some of the "newer" iTrials, like Magisterium, MoM, DD & TPN - but my experience in those is not on the same level as UGT. I also plan to do these on Torchbearer with my main, Ukase, but that's for a different post.

In the market, supply and demand will always have sway over the costs of items. I noticed with catalysts that the number of bids has been reduced by about 20%, with the number of units put up for auction being increased by about the same margin. The big money makers from the past - very rare purple recipes - those days are over with Market Crash Trial awarding a guaranteed purple for a character's first run. (which gives incentive to a degree to level up those alts) MSRs, which in my experience had been a maybe 2x a week, possibly 3x a week occurrence are now run pretty much all day, every day. (allowing a lot of reward merits to be cashed in, and thus, more enhancements which don't require salvage or crafting costs) Am I the only one thinking that simply playing your character will be the primary way of making influence in a few months? I'm sure salvage will continue to be a decent nickel and dime profit center for those who play a lot and earn the drops. Just wondering about the big chunks of change and where (and if) they'll come from.

I don't know that I'm qualified to speak on this, as there are power-sets and AT's I have yet to play to level 50, if at all. My thoughts: there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Sentinel. In fact, the Sentinel - my Sentinel, a fire/rad/fire Sentinel IS the most fun, most survivable character I've ever played. More survivable than my fire/fire brute, or my fire tank. Not as survivable as my invuln scrapper used to be, but where is it written that an avatar/character has to be survivable when you play poorly or make bad decisions in game? We talk about "tanking" as a style of play. The alpha shots are what make tanking very hard for tanks with their high health points. Trying to do this with a Sentinel is a bit foolish. The Sentinel "can" tank, to a degree - the same degree to which a scrapper can tank. However, that depends on the circumstances and your slotting, your power selections, even the order in which you choose those powers. Do NOT touch the Sentinel class. It's perfect as it is. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. That's just my opinion in having leveled to 50+ well over 50 times on a number of different characters. I've never had so much fun with a character, including my "main" ice/ice blaster, Ukase. The blasters used to serve a great purpose (and still do) and that was damage. But, the secondaries just didn't work well with most primaries, in my opinion. Other than ice path and snow/ice storm, (and the forced to take chill blain), I never chose any of them. With the Sentinel, I took almost all of them! The Sentinel is the fixed Blaster, in my opinion. If you're not a fan of the Sentinel, that's fine. Play something else. I see no reason to play a character, note things that aren't quite to your liking and keep playing it. Play something that will meet your expectations. It's out there, you just have to find it. Perhaps if I'd made my first Sentinel a water/invuln, I might have a different idea, but I'm in love with my fire/rad.

So....most of this is my fault. I mean, I'd like to think I'm literate, and have at least decent reading comprehension skills. I was at an MSR, and noticed that my vg merit count was rather low, so I thought I'd take a look at my teammates to see what/if they were doing anything. And lo and behold, I see a Level 1, and a level 14. Turns out, they were both VETERAN levels 1 and 14. And while looking at them my eyes went to the numbers 1 and 14. I put the wrong two and two together and came away with the wrong 4. I'm wondering if there's a better way to make the Veteran designation stand out. Maybe have the level 50 + players con orange or something in the league or team list.

Sounds like your team is full, but I'm always ready for a Dr. Q. 10 million inf for a task like this is inf well spent.

Forgive me, I'm technically...challenged, I guess. Or lazy. I know how to make a macro. At least, the macros I wanted to make, I've made them. What I'd like to figure out, is how to copy a specific set of macros from one character to another without having to remake all of them from scratch - without copying over binds and such. Is that possible? Thanks!

It seems like just a short time ago, the old dev team came out with a difficult challenge - The Really Hard Way, earned by taking out Tyrant without using the quills on the well lights. Tonight, happy to have been part of the league that did it, and pretty sure, did it "first", as in first since the game came back. And honestly, with the team we had, it wasn't that hard at all.

Set the date and time, and I can bring my Sentinel. I think I even have an EoE from tackling Jurassik yesterday.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply. I did finally catch some incarnate action over the past week. I just had to change the times I played by about 90 minutes. I had been bringing my character on too soon, and logging off too soon.