Ukase

Just like the old NCSoft CoH, the HC CoH has a diverse population. Folks from Europe, Australia, Canada, US and who knows where else folks may be from. It stands to reason that there will be a lot of differing expectations when teaming together. Obviously, we're never going to like everyone we encounter in game. Some folks can make it really easy to dislike them, while others, for whatever reason, are a lot easier to like. I am probably more in the former category, as I tend to speak my mind, without a filter. Sometimes, I'm wrong. But, from where I sit, I don't think so, or I wouldn't express myself in whatever way I felt the occasion warranted. This morning, I realized it was Sunday - last day to get that weekly in before it changed. Now, I can solo a moonfire with rad/dark defender, I suppose. But, the character hadn't done market crash, so I got a spot on one of those. The leader was an affable sort. Polite, and clear on what they wanted. I don't relish a kill all usually, although sometimes, I'm in a mood for one. Today, I just wanted the purple, and well the notice of the well would be a bonus. As I entered the first mission, I see that our team of 1 tank, 2 blasters, 2 defenders and 2 controllers and 1 dom are facing +4's. This is really not a big deal, but it just means instead of taking 10 minutes for a speedy run, it's going to take 40 minutes because of the low dps. (More on that in a bit). When I play a debuffer, with a weak heal and a decent buff, I try to cast these powers where I think they'll do the most good. Most of you wouldn't be too surprised if I told you one of the blasters died a few times. Still, when we have all these holds and debuffs, nobody should really be taking much damage, at least, not until we face an av. And nobody was. Except this blaster. I finally realize that he's level 34. Not vet level 34, I checked. So, big deal, right? I check for powersets while I'm in the blasters info tab, and no powersets - which means they're using SOs - which is fine. Or, they're unslotted. Or, I suppose, it's possible they're using common IOs. No way to know without looking under the hood. My issue is with this player joining a level 40 minimum tf -- fighting at +5 for this player in question. I think it's fine, if you're level 40 and trained up. They clearly were not. I didn't make a big deal out of this, I just brought it to the leaders attention via tell. They said, "So what? Who cares?" I said I did. I find this to be either ignorant or selfish. I'm really not okay with either one from a teammate. I mean, they can't be totally ignorant. They knew how to get to Kallisti. They obviously knew how to train, or they wouldn't have gotten to 34. That leaves selfish. As if they are entitled to be carried about in the game without hustling for resources like everyone else does. Some of you know me as having a lot of inf. This is true. The only reason I worked to get all this inf is so I'm not "That guy" that leeches off the backs of others. It's just a game, but this is like going to a bar and letting all your friends buy you a round, but you never buy them one. Obviously, it's not my place to tell someone how to play, but is it okay to do this? I think in this case, it's not okay. We spend a horrid 40 minutes in this tf, and I'm grateful it wasn't more - but even a kill all Market Crash shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. But, our team had weak dps and half of the higher scaled dps we did have (the aforementioned blaster) was defeated and useless more often than not, aside from a lot of Vengeance. I feel bad for the leader, a little bit. But only a little. They should have checked that idiot from the start and refused them an invite. PUGs. Ain't they great? I already know some of you are "who cares" and some of you are "Dude, I'd have quit right then" or something along those lines. But is there a proper way to team up for a task force? Did this player violate unwritten societal norms, or am I just expecting too much? It's not hypocritical - I expect as much or more from myself to be kitted out as best as I can be with the resources I have. I just would never be okay with 7 strangers carrying me. Friends - that might be a different story - but on a PUG of unknowns?

So, in short, we need more of these for everyone!

I have no idea what a hogger raid is, but it made me laugh.

Someone seems to have dumped quite a bunch at a "reasonable" price. So, the community (the folks that use those, anyway) thank you. As far as I can tell, there are 1319 of them in the AH that are listed for 5M or higher. 5 reward merits to exchange for one booster, right? Maybe they are of the mind that a reward merit is worth a million, based on the merit vendors conversion rate. I would hope most players are aware that's a sucker rate. I can't think of any circumstance in which a person would exchange 1M inf for 1 reward merit. Perhaps someone more eloquent than I am should make the suggestion to disallow that from happening, for their own protection. To those whom have assisted in adding supply - thank you!

Thanks for pointing that out - I did mean boosters.

@Bionic_Flea raises a good point. But I still think it could work with proper implementation - whatever that might be. Who knows, could even be a badge or a reward merit tied to defeating a level 10 hellion boss in Atlas, lol. (assuming you were between levels 1 and 5, of course. Can't have your incarnate self laying waste to these NPCs just cuz you can. )

Granted, I know this is temporary, but it still irks me. Oh - well let me back up a bit. Someone in my SG tried to buy a booster, and was upset because he bid 1.3M and it wouldn't sell him one. So, I got my marketer, and I tried to see what the lowest price actually was. Not 2M. Not 3M. I actually stopped, thinking that the bored marketer that did this probably bought them all at about 1.2M and then tried to double their inf plus some for fees & time, and tried to relist them at 3.6M. Nope. 5M is what it took. Yeah, I pissed away 3.75M, cuz I resold it at 1.25M. Look, if it's one of you folks - you got me for that 3.75M. Big deal. But you are hurting your fellow players who aren't as market savvy/wealthy as we are. Think about who you team with. That tank may die because they couldn't afford those boosters - and then you might suffer an ignominious defeat. Shame on you. Really. You should be ashamed, and I am hopeful that our fellow marketers will see this as an opportunity to flush the market with more boosters leaving you with too much invested, and you have to pull them out and relist them at a more reasonable price, like 2m or so. Just disgraceful. We do what we do to get a profit, sure. But we aim to just wet our beaks a little, not take a full bird bath. Shame on you, whomever you are.

Sort of a tie in to that Dark Astoria arc with Tub Ci, where as you fight him, he gets stronger, increases his incarnate level by one for some unit of time or dps dealt to him - not really sure how it works, only the longer the fight, the stronger he gets. But...just suppose, you're zipping down the street in Steel Canyon, en route to a Positron TF, and a Lead Shocker Outcast Boss defeats you. Now, on our side, we know what happens. If over level 10, we get a bit of debt, we rez, or hit the hospital and continue on to our business, or perhaps clobber the NPC for their intrusion. But, I had a thought. One tiny thought. Just suppose you weren't the first player this NPC defeated since he spawned. Suppose it got enough XP to level up? Suppose further that perhaps this is in a mission, and your team is fighting Frostfire at level 13. Suppose further Frosty gets lucky or you or one of your teammates got careless and got defeated. Then, suddenly, Frostfire levels up to 14! And if he defeats another of you, level 15! It's bad enough these poor npcs can't use inspirations, but aside from Tub Ci, I know of no circumstance where they improve, making things a bit harder. Whether the mechanic would be utilized within a Task Force, iTrial or mission -or out in the wild, doesn't matter, but I do think it would be interesting.

I've been playing with the market for some time. And, I'm not too proud to admit I don't know everything. But, I really felt like I knew just about anything having to do with the AH. Then, re-watching @Dahle's video, after re-visiting the Iron Man thread, I came across this little tip that I never, ever noticed before. See that bit on the bottom in white letters? "Search for Salvage used in this recipe"....I never, ever noticed these words before. Had no idea they'd portray the salvage used in the recipe. All this time I was using the tool tip from the mouse cursor over the recipe icon. Ya just click on it, and it shows you. I'm sure many of you already knew about this - but me being the obtuse person I am...I never noticed! So, for the one or two of you who may also be a bit obtuse, or simply unobservant - here's your pro-tip for the day.

So...here's some feedback. Take it with a grain of salt, as the way I think isn't the way others think. My first thought was - this person is almost the opposite of me, in that, I solo more often than not. When I do team, your powerset and AT are irrelevant to me. I welcome your buffs and debuffs, but I don't need them. Soloing has helped wean me off dependency of such luxury. My second thought is a cold/dark defender. Cold has some good shields - which can offend folks who spend more time at the tailor than I do. They will insist you go to the tailor and minimize these effects as it covers their costumes. Avoid these people. They are silly. Cold is a great buff set, and it has a nice power called Benumb. I have no idea how effective it is on an AV, but in pvp, it kills my characters recharge timers, where what used to recharge in 6 seconds now takes over ...well, no idea, because I usually die before they recharge. In short, it's a great debuff. That's really all I know about it, other than what it says. Alternatively, Sonic/dark would be good, too. Good buffs, nice single target debuff for AVs.

Sorry, meant to come back here - but in the bugs section, saw a post like this, and stated how I overcame the issue. Log off, reverify the manifest, log back in, no worries. Everything worked.

Here's the thing about the Help channel, from my perspective. Certain players are noted for their knowledge. Bionic Flea comes to mind. There was a time when his voice was very active over the help channel, often selflessly going out of his way to verify various tidbits of knowledge if he wasn't 100% certain. And then there are other players who give well-intentioned, but false statements. Others may give well-intentioned half-true statements. This whole mess about shards vs threads. I could elaborate, but that is not the purpose of this thread. And some folks, I dare say, are giving knowingly false statements when it comes to the market, either because we can't detect sarcasm the way they've worded things, or it suits their purpose, as they may have some figurative skin in the game. In a few cases, I suspect they're just trolling someone, trying to get a reaction. <shrug>

So, it's no secret that our esteemed HC dev team is all volunteer, but since this area is here for suggestions, as well as feedback, I have one. Certainly won't be the end of my world if it doesn't happen, but it may be simple enough to implement. In each Portal Corp building, there are two portals for missions. On the left side of one portal, and on the right side of the other, there are a set of doors, that would presumably lead to the other portal, without having to go up the stairs. Granted, it's not at all a big deal to go up stairs, but I think it would be interesting to simply let those doors open and...I dunno, go through a portal to a different set of portals at the other two Portal Corp buildings. Maybe even have them unlocked account wide once you complete Multi-dimensional or Portal Jockey. I mean, they call it Portal Corp for a reason. I would think we could use the tech there to go just about anywhere, no? Just a thought.

This isn't always true. It's mostly true, but there are a couple of threads with clear frustration at the inability of some folks to read, particularly when it comes to Triple Threat in the Magisterium trial. And in Kaizen's defense, he clearly stated he did ask the tank to slow down, but didn't push the issue because he didn't want to potentially ruin the tf for other folks. Even when you try to be polite to some folks, they don't always see it like that. They want to play "their way", even if it means the rest of the team doesn't have it as easy. In most cases, it's easy enough to overcome. But damn, re-toggling is annoying, even if it's just a few toggles. A tank should be paying attention to the health of teammates. It is literally the only reason they are on the team - to help keep folks from unnecessarily being defeated. Unfortunately, there really is little that can be done, other make a note to not team with that particular tank in the future.

Anecdotally, I understand the annoyance. There are a lot of ways to handle this type of thing, and none of them are perfect. People are gonna do what they want to do. For the most part, a lot of folks in CoH are "Monkey see - Monkey do". They're playing the tank the way they've seen one played. The best solution might be to make a tank and play it the way you think it should be played. You might even go further and whip up some keybinds that you can use to explain where you're going and why you're going there.

I appreciate the explanation. I wouldn't think distance from the servers would have had such an impact, but I've confessed previously, I'm no expert.

I recently made an SS/Fire Brute, and had so much fun with it, I made a second one, just a bit differently. I never even notice the rage crash. I don't see why it's such a big deal. It's 10 seconds, and I'm usually done with one mob headed to another while it's crashing. And if I notice it, I just slam judgement or foot stomp or burn. Rage only partially impacts them because they're procced. Then I fold space the new mob into position and rage crash is over. It's really a trivial issue. Would I prefer to not have a rage crash? Sure. But I'd rather have my fiery armor characters have status protection from KB more, and stronger mez resistance. When I do the first mission of moonfire at 0/8, a few times during the map, my fire brutes will get mezzed. My electric and shield brute - never get mezzed. But then, it takes them about 50% longer to clear the map, too.

The solution is very simple, but I don't know how popular it would be. Just solo them when you encounter them. And if you can't solo them, bring out a summons or a lore pet. But if you want a challenge, solo them. Some folks might be a bit fussy because in the case of some GMs, they may spawn more rarely than others. Or alternatively - Make a vow to only fight GMs at level 30 or below - as in, nobody over level 30 can join you, or if they do, they're stuck at level 30. Or some other level. You find the gm, tackle it your way.

You mention latency and struggles with lag. A change in the location of the server would do what exactly? Why would anything change? I would imagine a "new" server would be the same size, speed, etc. Maybe even the same physical server, I've no idea. My thinking regarding internet & computers has always been there's a bottleneck somewhere. Could be your hard drive, could be your memory, the size of your page file (if you use that to pretend you have more memory than you do). Could be you've got ISP service from a cable provider who love to put a throttle on your uploading packets. Maybe even a throttle on your downloading packets too. Could be your ISP is burdened with other traffic that slows things down on your end. Or, it could be the server. I just find it unlikely because others play with no lag on the highest graphic settings. Some folks play with multiple instances on the highest graphic settings with no lag or latency. Obviously, some folks have a better system than others - but mine is easily 10 years old and seems to carry 3 instances without issue, with no lag or latency - except during those events like the Map Server event when it was difficult to target foes that you could actually attack. Having well over 100 folks in a zone might have something to do with that, too. That's a lot of flowing cape graphic math, I guess. In short - given that literally hundreds of players are playing this game without latency or lag most of the time - couldn't it be something to do with your system? Just asking.

Not sure. I opened about 30 winter packs earlier without an issue; but later today, my hero packs are just staring at me, unopened. Well, tried to open a winter pack - no failure message, just nothing happens. So...what I did, I shut the game down completely. Checked for updates (none) and verified the manifest, and am now able to open packs.

You're missing the point completely - probably because I didn't elaborate to make it. When you ask people to download an app specifically to communicate with you to play a game, you should probably understand that they have not used it before. As such, not only have they not had an opportunity to determine how far away the mic should be, nor would they even be aware that adjusting the sensitivity of the microphone is possible. Moreover, they will NEVER know just what you're hearing and what you're not from their end. You're asking someone to use a new program and then you get upset because they've no idea how to work it properly. You just dump YOUR problem in their lap and expect them to resolve it. And, the sounds of my breathing, if it is unsavory to you - it is YOUR problem. I like breathing. While I don't deliberately breathe into the mic to disturb you, I sure am not going to spend any time during my gaming to adjust these settings for your comfort. If it's such a hassle - use the team or league chat settings in the game. Then you don't have to hear anything. True story, and kind of amusing: I activated Push to Talk using Z as my push key. For several months, I would find my hasten was no longer on auto-fire, and I didn't really think anything of it, until it got me in trouble while I was tanking Hamidon. I needed the recharge for my self-heal and realized it once again had not been on auto-fire. Turns out the default key in CoH for cancelling a power is Z. Never occurred to me there would be a key for such a thing, but now, I have chosen to not use push to talk. I'm not going to go to the trouble to switch the z key to some other key on my 200+ characters. Screw that. Communicating over discord with folks with sensitive ears just isn't that important to me. Don't like it ? Too damn bad. I make no apologies. Next time you encounter such noises over a discord, perhaps you should kindly volunteer your time - holding everyone else up before this event - to illustrate using shared screen precisely where these settings are, and how to adjust them - because Discord's "Help" section isn't very helpful. Keep in mind - a lot of us are not old, but indeed older. Older folks haven't used a lot of these newer apps and aren't familiar with them. You should be grateful we're willing to use them in the first place, even if it is "improperly" or perhaps, rudely (from your perspective). The notion of anyone thinking my breathing is my problem is hilarious. It's your problem. I can go on breathing for a long time. Doesn't bother me a bit. And if I were to stop breathing at your request, I think the Catholic Church might take issue with that. And far be it for me to have a problem with the Church.

So, I had to remove my entire post because either I didn't understand what the OP was trying to say - or the OP didn't say what he was trying to say very well...either way: Using Discord to form up for specific team events is done in my SG's discord daily. Suggest you find some like-minded folks in game, and find out when they play. On one hand, I can understand your willingness to log in if something is going down that you're interested in. What discord channels do you belong to? Pretty sure folks use the HC Discord to team up routinely. Same with a few other discords I belong to. As an example: Cosmic Council posts events for the week in their Discord (some content may not be visible unless you're a member). Here's a snippet of last week's events. I cut off who was leading as I didn't see the need to make them famous. Is this kind of what you were talking about?

No. But, strangely, the older I get, the more I skim over things and don't actually read. My mistake.

you must be playing over a slow connection. My attacks fire instantly, unless they're something the game purposely slows down like Total Focus or Knockout Blow, which have longer animations. When I say "instantly", they're not truly instant, but I mash the button, the attack fires. I don't see a circle around the power unless it hasn't recharged yet. It's quite fast on my end. Maybe my brain is slower, lol.