Ukase

That's some serious search-fu. The only time pvpers annoy me is when I'm trying to get the nuke. I do not want my codes stolen after all that hassle. Fortunately, while I don't like pvp, most of my characters are somewhat suited for it. The problem is usually only having one travel power.

Oh yeah: It is mind boggling to me how many people enter the labyrinth and never take the time or trouble to right click on these black icons to see what they're about. They just ask for tp. Lazy! On the one hand, I get it, but on the other hand, lazy! Reading is a skill, too. So is reading comprehension. I'm still trying to master that one.

So, I have to call BS on this. There is skill involved. Skill in developing the build. Skill in using the tools at our disposal - such as, Popmenus provided to us by other players. Skill in navigating the maps and recognizing patterns. Skill in recognizing positional awareness. If there were so very little skill involved, then the group of us that got clobbered by "the suck" (despite my best efforts to hide behind a pillar) have less than very little skill. And I just don't buy that. You'll never persuade me that speeders have very little skill. I get it, zipping around, ensuring you have an active stealth empowerment buff from the buff station that's across the hall from the labyrinth entry point, and using a draught of fog inspiration to get even more stealth so pretty much 90% of the bad guys in there can't see you - that kind of thing isn't for everyone. And it doesn't have to be! We had an MM in the labyrinth tonight. And when we were finally able to convey how to use Follow through the Fog, the malevolent fog was defeated and we went looking for more. I suspect this player was expecting to be with the league as a whole - not running off on their own looking for something they'd never seen before. (Malevolent Fogs) Now, we could easily have each team sticking together looking for fogs, but here's some issues with that: 1. a number of folks are looking for motes, and only shout out fogs if they see one. I get it. Initially, I confused the motes for the history plaques and thought I'd get a badge once I got all of them. Now I've learned they give tiny buffs. Nifty, but not necessary. It slows things down. I completely understand that some folks like a slower pace. But that can be done after the mino is killed. (and you're not worried about him clobbering you) 2. Time. To be fair, I don't think it's been tried yet, so not real sure how much longer it would take. As it is, when the fogs are announced, players port to the fog and help clobber it. The result is more fogs are beaten in a shorter span of time. At least, that's how it seems to me. When you have 8 players on a team, all with varying travel powers, their ability to traverse through various maps is going to change. Add to that - not all doors are going to lead to the same place for everyone. They're random. So, it would be pretty rough to keep the team together without using Follow through the Fog. And since we'd need to use that anyway, might as well have everyone run off and look, right? 3. Given the temporary nature of the buffs, it makes sense to get them as fast as you can and clobber the mito before they wear off. Being leisurely in this trial doesn't align very well with a smooth run. At least, I don't see how being leisurely could work out well.

Had some insomnia, and pretended to be oblivious to the minotaur and followed instructions, and found the "block"....if my cursor hadn't accidentally been upon it, I probably would have completely overlooked it! Much appreciated.

My usual path is Habashy, Sondra Costel, Aaron Thiery, and the hollows contacts. Unlike most folks, I speed through Frostfire. If I don't, I outlevel Julius. Then it's off to Faultline. I can generally get to Striga and start Peebles, then finish the Faultline arcs, then go back to striga. Fitting Croatoa in is fairly easy at that point. Then it's off to Bricks or whereever until 35, then off to rwz.

So, I have the /loc for the "Murder room", but thus far, I've only ever used Follow through the fog, or been incan'd there. When I use the /loc from inside the arena where the mino was clobbered, the way point directs me to a path - but I get the message that I can't enter. Is there something simple that I need to do? Is there some pre-requisite to get there? Just a bit ago, we clobbered the mino, but nobody knew how to get to the murder room. Seems like it has to be somewhat simple as it usually only takes about 90 seconds to get there after the mino is downed.

You're probably on to something here. If the game had various contacts listed in the same category as SSA, perhaps the newer players would more easily find them.

The bypass codes, as far as I know are seeded by the devs, and listed in the AH under special salvage. Last I looked, they were 250-500k.

This is just my anecdotal evidence; nothing scientific. When the recruitment message conveys that you have some kind of silly or fun personality, people respond more quickly. Well...maybe silly people respond more quickly. That can be a double-edged sword. Nothing against silly people, but if they're typing out "Paper Roses" by Marie Osmond instead of leading an npc to the door, it can be a little grating. The best way to get people to lead more TFs is for you (each of you and me) to lead more TFs. I have long suggested that our league leaders get a little something extra for the hassle of building pop-menus and dealing with all the personalities in "Tell Hell". Unfortunately, I think the adoration of the player base is all the reward they're going to get. Oh, if you cannot lead, or simply will not lead - the best thing you can do is to join someone else's team as soon as you can. The waiting is probably the biggest turn off from the leadership position. I do not want to wait 10 minutes for someone to wrap something up before they join. The older I get, the less patient I become.

I can't say. I'm one of those that does "normal content". The only TFs I do are generally in pursuit of an accolade or because it's the weekly. DFB doesn't pay reward merits, so I only rarely do those. Once SOs became available at a vendor for level 2 characters, I no longer feel a reason to run it. People that do TFs tend to get less merits than people that don't - because often, a GM will give an alert, and if you're on a tf, it's a bit unlikely your teammates are going to be okay with you taking time out to kill a few Kronos. Now, the merits for the story arcs in atlas are low; but when you do all the arcs, you get a 20 reward merit bonus. Same for the hollows, faultline, Striga, croatoa and RWZ. The only way to fit all the stuff organically is to avoid tfs. Now, running solo is generally going to take longer, but depending on build, some players will keep up with someone doing TFs. Just depends on their teams and dps. I certainly wouldn't mind more incentive to do general content. But I think there's incentive enough. The only reason most folks do TFs is for badges, and 7 other people that are more likely to team with them for a certain number of missions, instead of folks bailing after the first one or two. The TFs tend to keep a team going for 30 minutes to an hour. And I think that's all that most folks are after - a team.

It could just be the teams I'm on - but after having done Posi 1 more times than I care to think about, I have yet to run into a doppelganger that has adequate KB protection. Nemesis Staff for the win! It's the single most effective tactic I can think of due to it's range and inherent kb. Mind you, one or two might miss...but it's a huge advantage. I can't be the only person that does this. There is no npc that attacks while trying to stand up as far as I can tell.

This was wonderfully done. I appreciate it very much! It just never occurred to me to stash the new stuff up top. I was so concerned about putting each one in the proper category and screwing up the formatting somehow. For others that may be also awaiting an update, I wasn't sure if the popmenu from CityModder would conflict, as the title of the popmenu is the same. So I uninstalled ATCs outdated one from citymodder, and placed this one in the usual spot (data/text/English/menu) and this one works perfectly!

My understanding is ATC is fairly occupied with real life and when he gets around to it, he'll get around to it. I know I'm not alone in waiting for that moment, however. I've thought about grabbing his older pop-menu, before the pigg file version and just updating it myself. But..one look at the formatting kind of scared me off. I also thought about just making a smaller one just for the newest badges. But so far, my needs for it haven't been heavy enough to take the time. And really, this is why I often look at things like our Fast Travel pop menu and wonder why HC doesn't just come up with HC's version of a badger pop-menu. On the one hand, I get that it's completely a volunteer staff. On the other, I'm thinking QoL stuff like this is probably in higher demand that many things they are working on.

Well, I certainly see the issue. I just now went to the Mids Reborn discord and just asked them to have an option to toggle the UI to look like it does in-game. Whether that will do anything, who knows. But, doesn't hurt to ask.

In an effort to have an alt take a look around, I set out to visit all the motes. I wasn't writing anything down, just using one of the popmenus to find them. I noticed that as I visited each one, there was an icon in my buffs bar, which I hadn't noticed before. Cool! But when I visited Indigo, I didn't get one. It's not that big of a deal, but I'm thinking this is bug, albeit a minor one. I'm not real clear if I got the buff, and the icon just didn't show in my power tray or buff bar, or the mote itself is inert for me. Just figured I'd report the experience.

So, much to my surprise, I dusted off a character I hadn't played in 4 years or so. At least, it was created 4 years ago. Not sure how long it was dormant. At least 3 years, I'd guess. And it's an ice/cold corr. So, due to the absolutely crap decision by whatever bully in the powers division decided to nerf burnout, I respec'd that power out. (and yeah, that's a little rant/vent. There was absolutely no reason acceptable to me to do that. And that's my only litmus test for power nerfs. If my character has that power, and they change it, it is woefully unacceptable) And, realized it was missing a lot of things I now do with all characters beyond the 4 passive accolades. So, I've been doing all kinds of stuff with it, including the labyrinth. I don't think it's quite as useful as my fire/natty in the Mino/Achylus fights. But I guess when people run into the center, there's only so much an ice shield is going to do for them. The new respec seems to work well. Or at least, well enough. The HP has got to be the lowest of any corruptor I've got, but it doesn't take many hits, so it's not that much of a concern. Yet. Just a few more characters to move to the front page...and then about 200 or so to find something to do with.

Just a guess here. I'm not privy to the specifics of your mind, or life. But what I think what keeps people in this game is not the content or the powers or the loot or any of that. It's the other people they team with and get to know. If I hadn't run into really interesting people on retail like an SG called "The Debt Junkies", who considered a dirt nap as evidence you were actually playing and doing something, I might never have played as long as I did. On retail we had a ridiculous global channel just for our shard, Liberty. There were some bozos, to be sure, but there was always someone who could answer a question if the help channel came up dry. And you'd see the same names cracking the same lame kind of jokes. Most of them were inside jokes that you might not have been privy to, but the silliness was there. I could be wrong of course. It could be the game itself, outside of figuring out what powers do what just doesn't hold your interest. And that's fine too. Maybe just don't be in such a hurry to figure it all out. You could literally spend your whole life in this game and not figure it all out. Just make a list, and work towards it.

If you are in Excelsior, I recommend trying to get on a labyrinth team. Most are calling it speedy - but the only way to do it slowly would be to limit your movement - which might be bad, as the minotaur might catch you! There's a lot of information to absorb in the Labyrinth of Fog, but the rewards: 25% more xp than anywhere else in game ( which would certainly help you unlock your incarnate slots relatively quickly) When you defeat the mino, you get an incarnate award table, in addition to a choice of 5 Prismatics and 10 Monstrous Aethers ( you can sell the first one, and get a pet with the latter, or exchange the MAs for more prismatics - which you can also get a Costume toggle with) 3 Ultimate Inspirations (which give you a level shift for a minute) or 4 emp merits, which will certainly be useful in your incarnate journey. Various defeat badges, if your leader takes you to this Orange Font of Malevolence room. And, 75 merits if the Avatar of Achylus appears and gets defeated. I can't speak for the other servers. I suspect the others are also doing this as well, but can't be sure.

So, a lot depends on what you enjoy in game. There's one guy, and his wife who make a character, and do Frostfire. After Frostfire is done, they log off, make a new character. I think they've done this over 200 times. The claim I heard was they did level a character to the 40's, but they just didn't like the game at those levels. And that's fine! There's no rule that says you have to play one character until you've done every bit of content available! You can do what's fun, and log off or stop what you're doing when it's not. My solution (so far) has been to set a goal of 100 Hero merits. That's 5000 reward merits for the math-challenged. It's not even close to what a lot of folks earn in a week. But, Most of the day, other than hopping on and killing a GM or two, I'm not doing much. Maybe I can squeeze in a labyrinth run. I never know. So, goals, I guess are a way to keep you focused. Maybe you'd like to hop past level 10 and get to 20 before you start over. It might be helpful to identify why you stop playing the current character. In my case, it's often what I call "alt-envy". I'll see someone just destroying a mob with a series of attacks and then I'll wish I was on the kind of character they were playing. (I've never felt this way about MMs or Doms. Every now and then I'll be impressed with a Warshade, but those khelds are kind of creepy, and there's a dire shortage of slots, in my opinion (like every other build of mine, lol) I know when I first started to play on retail, I think my first character was a tank. And then I got stone armor, and it looked like someone crapped all over my character! (The costume options, and the options to reduce FX from various auras and such were not as they are now) So, I logged that one off, and never played it ever again. It eventually got deleted, because back then we only had 10 slots per shard. I think at some point VIP got another 10? But I could be remembering wrong. In any event, try to figure out why you're discontinuing playing the current character. Is it the content? Is it some confusion about what to do next? are there struggles with your character missing a lot, or being defeated? Once you share that with us, we may be able to help reduce this alt-ism you're concerned about. Just be clear on one thing, if nothing else: Making alts in normal! We have 1000 slots for a reason!

I just hop around using the aforementioned macro. Unteamed, this will take me about 6-8 events, teamed, maybe 2-3. Just depends how good your teammates are at spotting and destroying the bombs. When you spot them, it may be difficult to notice, but the longer the red line is, the closer the bomb is to blowing up! So, be sure to prioritize those if you happen to have multiple bombs dropping in the same proximity.

So, I've had discussions with others before about "alt bloat", wherein you have made a lot of different alts - usually in a very short span of time, and for any number of reasons, some or all lay dormant. Here's an example: Somewhere around 167 days ago, I had done something with the uncommon salvage they possessed, probably because I refuse to ever pay more than 2k for uncommon salvage. I've since taken steps to ensure I'll never have to log in to so many characters, but it should be pretty evident, just on this page alone, other than the one character that did a spur of the moment hami almost a week ago, these characters have gotten no play. Some of them will likely never get played again. So, what I've been trying to do is do a respec on those - unslot everything, and stash what's useful, and sell what's not. The dilemma is the value of some enhancements are not that great. Hardly worth the burning of converters, to be honest. And there's no way I'm going to just dump them for 100 inf or something ridiculous. So, in many cases, I'll dump the enhancements into a bin, where the next alt will pick and choose in that pile and use what would be best for that alt. And, candidly, I'm running out of room. Sometimes, a dormant alt is as good a place as any to stash enhancements. From the super/winter packs, I have so many unslotters in my character email, that any one of these dormant characters can just unslot what's useful. Eventually, the goal is to delete all but 10 of my preferred characters on each account. That would still leave me with 40 characters, lol. But I think it would free up some names, and when I want to make a new alt, a new name is easy enough, although I might not get my first choice. Some of them will get played again. Like if they're at vet level 14 or something, and t-4'd, I'll undoubtedly start playing each one of these until I get them all a certain amount of merits or badges. If they were enjoyable enough to get to t-4, I'll have fun with them again, I suspect. It's just kind of annoying to log in, and sift through 10 pages of level 50s to figure out what you're going to play. So, lately, I've been trying to increase the goals before I retire the alts. I think 100 hero merits is a good point to stop. But I may just pursue 1k badges. Or just whatever feels right in that moment. I just wish I could have another 5 storage bins or 50 more in my base. But until then, there's the 2nd and 3rd sg bases. Fixed that for you. And, I strongly suspect there are about 10-20 players with more than yomo or me. I think there's a number of players who look at Yomo and think, "Is that all you have?" I can't imagine how much inf I would have if I marketed half the day with an afk farm running for days on end, only stopping for maintenance and to vendor the stuff not worth crafting. Mind you, I'll have a day or so like that, and I used to have quite a few of those days back to back before page 4. But I'm kind of enjoying gathering the prismatics and monstrous aethers while playing. And the cheaper the IOs get, the farther my lil stack of inf will go.

@Water certainly nailed what I was referring to. It's a shame the temp is no longer available. I have a clear memory of being Recluse's Victory, and needing only to defeat Positron to complete all the PvP badges. I was reluctant to recruit, because...well, no telling who might want to actually PvP. So, I figured I'd try to solo Positron. It was totally ridiculous the number of times Posi killed me. I finally just said "screw it", and got the big pet Spider from one of those 3 spots in zone, my HVAS, my Shivan, a Summons from p2w, heck, I even released the stupid gears from penny yin, the werewolf, the Amy temp from katie hannon...every npc temp ally I could - including the knight errant. I finally killed posi, and that knight errant was the only pet remaining. Too chaotic for me to see why - could have been sheer luck. But I had been trying to get one for a while. Didn't realize it just wasn't possible any more.

Elitism...can I just say that if someone calls you an elitist, (referencing to in-game), that's pretty high praise. I would never consider that a negative. The folks that do the "meta" (I really hate that word. Game within a game? It's all the same game!) on advanced mode are people who have learned a lot about mechanics, builds and the specific content. I kind of envy their ability to enjoy the harder stuff in game. And I don't think for a second these folks didn't spend time on their builds and learning the content. I'd guess some folks put more time in learning this than any homework assignment they might have done as kids in school. I have a lot of respect for players like Projector, Makerian, Ammonia, and the lady from Wales with the nice voice...Parr? Para? (Weirdo me, I can remember she's from Wales, but not her character's name) who can just pop into any of the hard mode stuff and finish it as fast or faster than a pug can the standard version of the same TF. To me, that's a beautiful thing - to be able to do that. Thankfully, they carried me in one of their 1* runs so I can observe from the sidelines. The only way I'd run one again is if I knew the players and enjoyed their chatter over discord or team chat.

This is a LOT of information packed into a popmenu! Just the utility of the motes is super handy! I appreciate your going to the trouble. Thanks for sharing it.

I have never thought about the half way mark. I'm all about "Step-wise refinement". Take a big problem, make it smaller. Want an accolade? determine the badges required, take the steps to get one, then the next, and so on. I've never looked at leveling as a journey. I've always looked at my "play" as a series of goals. In some cases, it's accolades or badges, some cases it's reward merits. I rarely even consider XP, because we get it doing just about any fighting anything close to our level.