Ukase

Sent - but noticed that despite my saying I'd uninstalled the Halloween Event map, it wasn't uninstalled. Which probably explains a lot. I re-tried and it seems to have uninstalled. Map is still borked, but I think I can fix that with the vidiots reinstall And, strangely enough - when I reopened the modder to redo vidiotmaps, the modder shows it still being installed. So, retried the uninstall, clicked refresh, and that seems to have done the trick. Everything is back to normal. I DO appreciate your attention, and your time and your efforts. I thank you profusely. I'm sure it's probably some kind of USER error on my side.

This is probably a user error or something. Not sure. First, I installed the Halloween GM add-on. When I tried to start the game, I got a message saying I couldn't because of some error, and I saw the word Halloween in it, so I figured it was the add-on. I re-opened City modder, uninstalled it and was able to play. Now, despite the halloween add-on being uninstalled, it's there. And I can't see the badge locations anymore. I wish I'd saved the error panes that popped up, but I was in a hurry trying to log a character in to help someone out. Since I've never seen it before, I assume this is the halloween event overlay for Atlas? I dunno. I guess I'll uninstall vidiotmaps and then reinstall it.

Hmm...I remember using up the wedding ring on a character - because I forgot I had it toggled on. So, I redid the arc, and got a 2nd one..which I think only had a 5 minute timer. Better than nothing. I always try to ask myself when to make the most use out of these temps. Like Enchantment of Serafina. It's interesting. For one minute, it reduces Psionic damage and boosts Psionic Damage. If my math is right, a 25% strength to Psionic Damage on a fire blaster would be ...well...zero. As 25X0=0. I've yet to ever use this temp, as I usually have my visible trays filled with other stuff by the time I earn it. I suppose it would act like a psionic damage proc to all attacks, rather than providing no benefit, but I'll have to use it to find out. I should have originally mentioned my curiosity was about temps that cannot typically be re-earned. Like, the Wedding Ring. We get 2 hours of it - and when it's expired, we can redo the arc, and get another for 5 minutes, I think. After that, not sure, as 5 minutes isn't really that long for the duration of the arc to re-earn it. HVAS, while fairly inexpensive at 250 vg merits can be reacquired with no penalty, other than the opportunity cost of 8.3 reward merits. I like the 80 merits. Having it reduced to 71.7...too greedy to deal with that math. Other temps, once used - poof - gone. (or gone until you re-earn them by redoing the arc/mission you earned them in. Some only last a couple days of game time, some real life time, some have 20,50 100 uses. I recall I made a dark tank that had, flurry, Sands of Mu (prestige power), Shadow Maul, and the Sands of Mu temp earned from Miriam Bloechl or Laura Brunetti. It was as silly as it sounds.

Some of us hoard them, never to be used. Some of us earn them and honestly have no idea we even have them until something causes us to click on powers and look at the right side and see all those temps. Some of us seek them out and use them repeatedly. My question is when do you use them? I used to save mine for PvP. I never felt right about recruiting for pvp badges, because if the party I spoke with wasn't interested, they could easily just intrude and make my badge efforts more difficult. So I often solo'd the RV AVs/Heros. And I can tell you, it can take a lot of them when your build isn't quite right for pvp land. I noticed I earned the Enchantment of Serafina. It's a nice little temp. But when to use it? For solo play, say a solo ITF? Or team play? The times when it would come in most handy, the temps are disabled. When do you folks use your temps, if at all?

I wonder how Yomo would feel about this. I mean, if true, I'm Yomo also.

So...maybe he's just a bit above normal and the rest of them are just relatively shorter/smaller.

A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion, still. - Dale Carnegie

Eh, for me - a break free is much easier to get and has a lot faster recharge. The power itself is a "nice to have", but both hurdles for each alignment are too high for it to be worth it. You may now thank me for deleting a page of useless, worthless opinions.

So, there are two zones specifically I'm thinking of, where I kind of wish we had a say in where our teleport beacons would drop us of, or alternatively, where the SG portals would be in these zones. Primarily, Boomtown. For the most part, people might have a mission or two in there, and there may be a few lower level folks doing some street sweeping, but the rest of the folks are heading to Babbage and the GWW, in either order. Both of which are in the back of the zone. It might be nice to move that base portal a little closer to the center of the map. Or, even better, by the Council base. Additionally, I'd love to see the Croatoa base moved closer to War Witch - which in turn, is closer to the Grim Vale. Lastly, since about the only thing anyone does in Echo:DA is clobber Adamastor, can we either move his ritual site closer, or move the ouro portal spawn point closer to his ritual site? That'd be swell. I know, I know, it's me being lazy, but still.

"Hey, remember folks, we don't have to do this, we GET to do this!" "AV ahead folks. Push yourselves. Remember. You won't die. You'll pass out first." "We CAN do hard things!" "Remember, God gives his hardest battles to his toughest soldiers. You are not his toughest soldiers, so this should be super easy!" And probably the hardest, "Follow me!"

I am probably going to change my method of play - at least in the short term. Get to 50 in the farm, and then acquire the accolades I wish and approach it that way, rather than the reverse. It's time for a change.

I do appreciate the sharing of appropriate uses. I just tried it out on the spelunker mission. Now, I just need to figure out if it's worth getting this accolade at level 10 and the more efficient way to do that.

I could be cited many times in these forums stating I'm not much for spending time in the costume creator. But I do have an anecdote that may be worth sharing. It was issue 3. I was very new to the game, and I made a stone tank. I arrived in the city, in front of Ms. Liberty, excited to begin my second adventure. I still had my first character a blaster, but wanted to try the other ATs out as well. I got to ...I dunno, level 6 maybe. And when I chose the armor, and saw it on my avatar, the first thought was I now have a s**t armor. That is what it looked like! The default for Abalative Carapace isn't any better. Once I saw it, I logged it off, never to play it again. While it's true that more experienced players can disguise or hide these more unsavory appearances, shouldn't the default be to have all the powers be unseen, and have the player choose the effects or not? Just a question. I've no idea how much of these effects are baked into the utility of the power. Like Hide, for a stalker. Everyone can see him, but the character is still stealthed? Or maybe, if such a thing is possible, only the player can see his stealthed character. I dunno. But I say, make no fx be the default.

Are you suggesting some of us might release our inner misogynistic tendencies? Because I'm pretty sure you're spot on.

Mez...it's not just for breakfast anymore. Hmm...catchy, but hardly a useful comment. Sorry. So, my thoughts are many, but on this topic: Yes, single target status protection powers like Clear Mind...a little annoying to have to cast them on each character instead of just spamming once. I play a lot of blasters. Always have. I used to use the defensive amplifiers so I wouldn't have to deal with 95% of the mez in game. And then...I found a method to mostly mitigate it. With the build. I'm playing a fire/Atomic blaster right now, and it's quite interesting to. I don't get held that much, but when I do, I just ignore it and use the two attacks I have...but oddly, because of the sustain, the holds never last more than the time of one of those two powers. Like 2 seconds at the most. I'm sure I can't do this with every blaster, but so far, the solution works for me. The only defeats have been in the Abyss for the required debt badge to get High Pain Threshold accolade. I think Mez NEEDS to be a pain in the ischial tuberosity. (Like that? It's my new 10 dollar synonym for butt) If the mez is easily mitigated, the npcs genuinely have no chance. They just don't. Mez is the only thing in game that ever gives my blasters any real trouble. I can take inspirations, but invariably, they run out, because in longer missions, the breakfrees don't drop as often as the others. Just my opinion, but I think having mez being annoying is crucial to the game. Otherwise, blasters would be the ONLY thing I'd ever play.

So, I just keep three instances of the game at the login screen, and then log in which one I want to play. Occasionally, I'll bring on one or the other for helping someone grab Anti-matter or Seige, or just to hand off catalysts or boosters, depending on the need. While it wouldn't bother me if the option were available, I don't know that I'd take advantage.

I would welcome the option to disable/enable group fly in Menu-options, rather than visiting Null.

So...just me thinking here. First - kudos to the OP for some entertaining story. But, please no. I don't EVER want to see any new NPCs in Kallista Wharf - and here's why: Hallowe'en. Spring Winter See where I'm going? It's nice to be able to take your character and just run around and click objects for the various events without wondering if you're going to have to engage in some other nearby NPCs. KW is a haven. It's got everything we need. And we don't need more NPCs. The variety of NPCs available to clobber is already a bit mind-boggling. I couldn't even name them all, I don't think. While I do think more stories would be useful, more npcs would not - and here's why: (just my opinion) The writing on the wall... Look at Aeon, ITF, Lady Grey - these tfs all have the option to further increase difficulty with increased rewards - although the rewards are essentially for costume tokens - the prismatics. A currency only as valuable as the demand for costume toggles go. If they were still selling for 100M, then sure, it's worth it. At the 2.5M...not so much. At least, not for me. I can make the 25M (the current equivalent of 10 prismatics at AH price) in a few minutes marketing or in 30 minutes playing, give or take a few. And I don't need to be selective in my incarnate power or build choices, nor the choices of whom I'd team with. It is this player's opinion - and only mine - that IF a new faction were to appear - they would have some unsavory abilities to take our current meta and diminish our abilities so that the fight would be more "interesting/challenging". Some of you genuinely love that kind of thing. I do not always favor such encounters. Every now and then, when I'm on a character I really like, as opposed to the "just trying things out" type of alt. Generally speaking, more challenging stuff requires I sit at the edge of my seat, play closer attention and think more carefully about the attack chain. I'm a fitness nerd. I literally sit playing on a stability ball. Sitting on the edge of my seat is dangerous! I might slip off and bust my ischial tuberosity. And, because I row daily, I need that to be healthy. Now, if the powers that be were to populate the zone with some level 7 Hellions...I wouldn't mind that so much. But some new NPC that drops toggles with a ranged attack, or some high mag stun that just ignores toggles, or some trickery where my range is debuffed...not no, but hell no! Until such time that I see evidence in future patches of focuses on new additional stories for the factions we already have...I just don't see any positives from adding a new faction. Again - that's just my opinion. And I don't think I can sell it for any influence, so that's about how much it's worth. Still clever story. Just not for KW. Slap that stuff in Nerva or the Shadow Shard.

Does one always win? I suppose it depends on how you define "win", right? On the one hand, merits drop from playing (or from packs). So, you exchange them for boosters, sell, then profit. But the profit from the sale of boosters vs converters, used wisely - I dunno if I call that a win. It is a win, in a fashion. You didn't spend time crafting and converting. You just slap them on the AH, maybe check back in a day. To be clear - it's relatively easy to compare the sales of converters vs boosters on the AH. But it's not so clear how much you make with converters by using them to turn trash into gold. I think Yomo once said he valued 1 reward merit as 1 million inf. And maybe that's true in the long run. I think you have to go through a lot of RMs to reach that average. But, I digress. One of the better things about CoH is there's so many options to play and earn the loot required to kit out your character and the many alts. Most of you are savvy enough to know this already. I just point it out for those who may not recognize the versatile ways to playing your way to in-game wealth.

And these rules of thumb don't even take into consideration that possibilities for incarnate powers. There is no one right way.. there are many right ways, and well, a lot of sub-optimal (but never wrong) ways.

If that used to be the case, it no longer is.

I just wrote a full page and never even got to the topic directly: When you get a drop from the sometimes fickle RNG loot god, specifically a Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage - how much thought are you putting into how much you're charging for it? So many different ways to deal with this! Craft and keep for later. Nothing wrong with that. But, for the sake of argument, let's say you want to make influence. The recipe has dropped; free, sort of. We could say we used time and resources to get it, so it wasn't free. But, in a fashion, since you were doing those things that allowed the drop anyway, and the drop wasn't your actual goal, it's basically free. The salvage to get it..that drops too. And while we may say they were basically free for you, we know there are players that will pay inf for them. So, we have a concept called opportunity cost. If I use the rare salvage to craft the recipe, the rare salvage is gone; that means I can't sell the rare salvage. So, instead of crafting, I can sell: Recipe - 10k at the vendor (and no tax) common salvage x2 - 250x2 at the vendor, or potentially a little more on the AH, but requires patience and a cost of some auction house slots. Uncommon salvage - 1k at the vendor (no tax) OR list it at 2200 or so, and wait for those other pesky marketers to start driving up the price again like they seem to do every so often. Again, may require patience and some AH slots Rare salvage - in general, I consider it a 500k item, but sometimes it's a little more or less. Crafting costs vary on the level of the recipe: this is where some folks will just list the recipe on the AH, and then repurchase it at level 30 for cheaper costs. (and different salvage) So, the wisdom of saving on the costs of crafting can sometimes be offset by not having the salvage in the right tier on hand. Much depends on how you organize your assets. Or maybe you just buy it again at level 41, to avoid that salvage issue. Using the oblit as the example, and these crafting costs are the exact same for all uncommons and rares - although the ingredients change. So, it makes inf to sell the level 50 recipe and re-purchase at a lower level. Or does it? There are so many variables. and while the marketing is the game within the game, it's not why so many people keep making alts! And over-thinking things can really suck the fun out of a game, right? But, if by listing these recipes on the AH, and grabbing 100K or even 1M instead of vendoring them for less - are we arming our competition? I would say yes. This is why I craft everything that's uncommon or rare. Except 1. Regenerative Tissue: Regeneration Ever look at this recipe? THREE rares if you craft it below level 25! (and isn't that recipe format change a little crazy?!) In this case, it would make sense to craft it at a higher level of 25, as there would be less cost involved. But is it even worth it? So many folks, myself included just take cheap uncommon level 10 recipes, craft them by the hundreds and convert them into enhancements like these to get around those costs! So, then - how do YOU decide what an enhancement is really worth? It's really a matter of subjective opinion, isn't it? I'm sure there's some kind of minimum value, but from what we read folks say, the minimum value is 1 inf. They truly list items that have subjective values of more than 1M for 1 inf. I'm sure many of those 1 inf sales get sucked up by the noob traps left by most of us. Still, am I supposed to believe these folks are selling all their drops for 1 inf, and relying on inf earned from defeats to finance their roster of characters? I guess so. It's not that hard to do.

Boosters...I can get boosters a few ways. Direct from Merit Vendor Hero/Winter Packs Direct from AH The somewhat unlikely prize/gift from contest or otherwise generous player. Cuz, they don't drop. But, what is the demand for boosters? Generally by folks who want the most out of their characters. Most casual players don't even use them. Of the 10% of players who do (and I just pulled that % from thin air), 95% of those folks just use them in certain powers, like Hasten, maybe end mod, or a specific category. Half the time, you're spending the inf on the booster to eke out a fraction of 1% more of an attribute. It adds up, I suppose, but the bang for the buck isn't anything great relative to the cost of the boosters. I have about 10 characters with builds that are loaded with them. The rest of my characters don't even have them in Hasten. So, ultimately - boosters are not in high demand for me the way converters are. And at 1M each, they're in even lower demand. I personally take the view that if someone wants to sell them for 850k, good. It means my stack of inf will go farther than if they sold for 1M. Now - if you are so sure the price is too low, and you're convinced the REAL price should be 1M, then simply buy all the boosters. All of them. 18576 X 1M is only short of 19 billion. Let's say I thought like you - they're too cheap! I buy them all as cheaply as I can and relist at the "right" price of 1M. You know what happens? Someone like @yomo, or maybe Andrea, or Troo comes along and says..."hmm...Ukase is being dirty! I don't like it! And Yomo pulls out some of his 10000 stacks of 25 reward merits from one of his accounts and puts 20K of them for sale at 800k. He gets all that inf - and I'm stuck. Because it will take folks forever to get through Yomo's big stack of cheap boosters. The moral of the story is - they are worth only as much as someone will pay. So, right now they ain't worth 1M. And honestly - they're really only worth 100K to me. Tops. They're trash. Nothing like the enhancement converter. Those have great utility. If you want to get real slick - go ahead and try to trick folks by purchasing 5 at 1.1M. Maybe the next customer will pay the "right" price. Maybe not. Welcome to market pvp!

First, we must understand and agree that "fun" is subjective. So is "challenge". What's fun and challenging for you may not be fun or challenging for me, and vice-versa. I do not see a solution to this "issue". If the powers that be read your posts and agree, then how will the rest of us deal with these HP pinatas for EBs? Will we get bored and find another game? Maybe. Will we ramp up the difficulty and get more xp? probably a bit more likely. Still, what about next week, when the next player with a post count under 20 comes and says it's too hard and not fun? Do they eventually find a level 7 Hellion to stand in for Hopkins?

That was my first try from a Google search. But nothing happens, as it is as you say, non-functioning.