Ukase

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.

Ty kindly!

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

I don't think I understand the question. "Stand off combat"? Isn't that every character in the game?

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.

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.

My favorite is the drops only/no defeats challenge. It really doesn't matter what AT. They all suffer. There's no teaming. I say this because if you're doing this challenge, and I'm not, I don't want to carry your gimp character. To team when doing this challenge would be rude. To team with others doing this challenge would be interesting, but ultimately a lot easier than doing it solo. Without exception, they all bottleneck in the teens because end mods do not drop, except in a 1 in 75 chance. So, how is a blaster supposed to repeatedly attack when his endurance goes out so quickly? If you make it 20 and get the sustain - you might be okay. But you have to get there. I've done rad/dark defender - which was my best effort because of AM being available at level 4. The dark/dark was cool too, because the snipe is available so early. But missing..that sucks. And when I'd get a kismet def/end recipe drop, and only have 2 converters, and couldn't buy the rest from the AH because the merit vendor is forbidden...that really hurts. I'd spend 20-30 minutes in perez park trying to kill as many as I could in hopes of picking some more converters up, just to try and use them on this recipe. But - even then, I'd need a specific rare salvage. And I can't use AE, either. (If I could, it would be too easy) And of course, if you get defeated, you get deleted. And there's no real harm done, because there's nothing of value on the character anyway. Although I would take the merits and salvage earned and liquidate everything for my other alts to use.

Fair question. When CoH shut down, I downloaded and tried them all. Most of them were unplayable because of this counterintuitive wasd or click to move setting that couldn't be changed. I will never use wasd or my mouse to move my character. There's absolutely nothing intuitive about either of those. I'm sure they're faster than my pressing the up (forward in my head) arrow and the left/right arrows to go - you guessed it - left or right, and of course, the back arrow to go ...you guessed it backwards. The only game that gave me that option that I found was Champions. But their forums were completely a mess, and I couldn't figure out their enhancement system, so I stopped playing at like level 13 or something. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't great. The only reason to play this game beyond some individual desire to experience a story line for me is the people that also play it. Some folks are fun. Some folks are funny. And we won't talk about those few who are annoying or just jerks. Or simply come off that way because maybe English is their second language and they're not real sure what they're saying. I'm sure I'm the jerk to some folks. Part of me plays it because it takes me back to a time when life was simpler. Part of me plays it because it's simple, and it's free. But I'm not playing nearly as often as I used to. Mainly in the afternoons for the labyrinth.

I played an Rad/SS tank and didn't even know there was a damage or end crash until I read about it here on the forums a couple of years ago. I never noticed it. But, I am obtuse. Once it was pointed out..I just used sands of mu during the down time. The end crash is still not noticed. So what's wrong with it? Beats me. I think it's a fun powerset to play. One of the better ones. Certainly better than street justice and dark. (for me - your preferences may differ)

So, the question is fairly straightforward. What's the best way to get reward merits. The answer is, sadly, like most things in game, "It depends". Best for a level 50 is not necessarily best for a level 12. But the real question is - what do you want merits for? What is it that these reward merits are going to get you that you want them? There is probably a better way to get what you want then to pursue reward merits. For me, a weekly tf with a speedy team is always preferable to a km TF. To each their own, of course. Following that, GM hunting is additive and profitable. Sometimes, you can get 10 or more Kronus in one session, which takes all of 10-15 minutes. Maybe it's longer, but I'm helping to kill, so it may be taking longer than it seems to in my brain. Time flies, and all that. Story arcs for Atlas, The Hollows, Faultline, Striga, Croatoa and RWZ, if you complete the arcs of that zone, you get a 20 reward merit bonus. (with Twinshot's arc being part of the Atlas requirement, this 20 reward merit bonus is probably not worth it.) The Noble Intentions arc by Dr. Stribbling that came in a couple of patches ago is super fast. Maybe 12-15 minutes once you know what you're doing. Certainly faster if you have the lrtp and mission transporters. And that gives 20 reward merits. Properly motivated, a level 1 character on it's journey to 50 can earn about 150 hero merits by the time it gets to 50+3, t-4 in all. Probably more. It just depends on what content you like to do, and how often you play that specific character. Oh, and it probably does matter the server you're on. Excelsior is easy to get merits. When I was on Indom, hami raids were an exercise in patience - of which I have very little. And you could get about 70 RMs killing GMs in fairly short order, every day, if you're on at the right time. I can't speak for the other servers.

Not at all. Ice Mistral's set is in the category of slow enhancements. I'm not sure what's confusing about what I stated.

I think it's not a bug, because it used to take slows (from what Troo posted). Someone decided it shouldn't for some reason. Now, if it said it took slows and didn't, (or vice-versa) that would be a bug for sure. Like @Glacier Peak, I would look to slot the Ice Mistral's % damage in there. Was very surprised I couldn't.

What I asked was that it be able to slot slow enhancements. Never said anything about a set.

I guess I'd call this a typo. Vigilante Tip Mission, "Dragon Embossed Journal" The objectives are to stop Crey Negotiators. There are no Crey negotiators. Just Sky Raiders and Banished Pantheon. So, perhaps adjust the "Stop Crey Negotiators" to "Stop Negotiators" or something like that. You actually have to defeat the Sky Raider and Banish Pantheon that are negotiating.

I've tried to capture it for a screen shot but I wasn't fast enough. I don't know what the range of a t-4 barrier is, but when you're in mini-mode, it looks super tall, and super narrow, compared to the standard sized characters. My character gets the buff regardless...but I'm wondering if I have to toggle off the mini-mode for the folks on the perimeter to cover them with the buff.

So, while working on an ice/ma blaster, it surprised me to discover that Freeze Ray doesn't accept Slow enhancements. I can't wrap my head around the fact I haven't noticed this in the countless hours I've played an ice blaster. But, I also can't wrap my head around the fact that freeze ray doesn't take slow sets. I guess, on the one hand, if you're held by a freeze ray, you're not moving, so you're pretty slow. But, on the other hand, for those npcs that resist holds, like AVs and such, that require a lot of mag, no slows for those scenarios. Probably wouldn't notice it anyway - but still, I think it should allow for slow enhancements.