Ukase

As has been mentioned, there is a confuse effect in the final room of the Underground Trial, when fighting the Avatar of Hamidon. The 10 dollar label for the source of this confuse effect in this room are Discordant Spores. It's a PBAoE confuse with a whopping 600 foot radius, mag 20. It spawns every 20 seconds, lasts for 10 seconds. Without Clarion, or enough stacked tactics, or a tier 3 break free, you will be literally confused half of the time. I have often thought about making a macro to target these things, to see if they are in fact, targetable, but it's typically quite chaotic during the final fight, and I'm often too distracted in that moment to do this. But I digress. Just figured I'd share a fun fact about the Underground confuse situation.

Blizzard. Nuff said.

True story here, bear with me. I once teamed with someone who was knowledgeable (about the game), a bit sarcastic, but quite funny, It was just a pug thing, I made a note, and left on my merry way. Fast Forward, another friend asked me to an Apex/Tin Mage combo. I get there, and I see this chap again, and I see a couple of other players I had teamed with before and had a good experience with. One of these other players starts just talking like crap to the others. I mean, if someone said that kind of thing to me, I'd have found some way to meet them in person and slap the taste out of their mouth. So, in an effort to try to keep the tfs drama free, I sent the offender a tell, espousing the virtues of the other player. Turns out, they are friends and have been gaming with each other a very long time, and are always talking smack to each other. Sometimes, I'll see disparaging remarks in help, and then...I wonder...maybe those two know each other and are just ribbing each other. For the most part, that's usually the case. The exceptions are when someone asks an off-topic question that should be in help channel, but they ask in LFG, or an lfg request in Help. There is one thing that tends to be met with abuse in either channel, and that's the requesting of PL in a repetitious fashion. Like, every 20-30 seconds for several minutes.

Hmm...I hadn't actually thought about it like that. Thanks. I sit corrected.

I've been busting my head, trying to figure out how to walk a player through the IO conversion process in an AE mission...but that seems impossible to me, as there's no way to show what the AH interface looks like. I mean, no point in crafting that trash IO and turning it into an LotG 7.5% if you've no idea how to sell it, the various pricing strategies, etc. With streaming now being allowed, I've thought about just hosting a demo for my sg. But then, I asked myself how I would measure it's effectiveness. Price of PvP IOs dropping to 3M, with all the competition? A bunch of angry sg folks because they wasted all that money on salvage and recipes & crafting only to discover they were being undercut by another SG mate? It didn't seem politic - in that context. I still think it's a good idea for everyone to know these things - even if they choose to never do them. Same with procs. While some may choose to never use the damage procs, the information can only help them. At least, it certainly can't hurt them, other than the math-induced headaches that may occur.

Same way they do cutscenes, I imagine.

Surely, most of us have heard the clever marketing regarding a "Masters Class", often hosted by someone of reknown. Gordon Ramsay for culinary skills. Steve Martin for a masters class in comedy, and I think it's Gary Kasparov that has a master's class for chess. I was reading in the forums about how most of us players learn what we learn about what's behind the figurative curtain of CoH from other players. Like Procs. Bopper, MacSkull and others have done a good bit of research into procs, how they work and shared this information freely. Yomo has made numerous guides that have taught other players how to go from rags to riches as they level up. The descriptions for various incarnate powers are often a bit vague as to how they work, what they do, what they do for your pets and your teammates. The poor newer Mastermind players are almost always asking these types of questions. In the Twinshot arc, a solid effort is made to introduce various things to a newer player. Same for the invention tutorial. But, what about a Master's Class? We get the costume files for @yomo and have his avatar behind a room, and players can enter this room and literally watch a video of how to craft and convert an IO, how to boost an enhancement, how to attune a crafted IO. How to make an ATO or Winter-O "Superior". Bopper's avatar can be in another room and players can learn what a proc is, how it works, and the painglorious math behind it. I'm not smart enough to generate dialogue or a suggested syllabus beyond what I've mentioned already, but I think it would be useful for newer players to not be told "Go to the forums" all the time. It could be a really good thing for newer players (which we seem to have a lot of lately) to learn these things from the game, rather than from us players. And while I am quite grateful we have folks like Yomo, Bopper, UberGuy, AbovetheChemist (and many others), it would be fantastic for newer players to get these key points from the game itself. A brand new player isn't likely ready for Yomo's meandering guide to a billion inf. Nor are they ready for procs. But when they are, it would be great to refer them to a contact in the university. By doing it in this fashion, instead of letting the players continue to be helpful, we can avoid the controversy of "Shards vs threads" for the Alpha slot. Instead of the newer player getting confused about what's the optimal way, they can learn that it all depends on the content they run and what drops for them. And, it certainly would be preferable to someone trying to be helpful but missing the mark and giving the wrong answer. There'd always be a place for the help channel, but I think a master class would be a good thing to add.

CoH is the only online game I've ever played...outside of Chess. So, I don't have a frame of reference to expect such things from the game. There's a ton of things that most players will never learn about this game if they don't come to the forums. I was literally told by an SG member "Most people don't have time to go to the forums!" In context, they were a bit frustrated, as from the forums - I learned about vidiot maps, and the subsequent updates, the popmenu BadgeSetList, and Mids. The tutorial certainly doesn't cover any of those things. There are a few badges my characters get organically - not by hunting them. The HC devs have recently introduced the Exploration "tips" that reveal the locations of these. Unfortunately, you'd have to do an awful lot of street sweeping to catch all the tips. Makes me wonder if someone is actually doing just that to get all the explores in a zone. Still, it's certainly a step in the right direction, a fun way of introducing things to the player base that may not re-visit the forums after they make an account. But you raise an interesting thought - why not incorporate some "tribal knowledge" about the game into the game, along the lines of the invention tutorial?

In Bricks:

That has never, ever happened to me, and I craft hundreds of IOs a day, easily. Are you sure it wasn't some other recipe you crafted and misread? (have to ask)

First, thanks for updating the popmenu list so quickly, and making it available, and EASY to use! My method for tracking tends to involve a combination of using Badger https://n15g.github.io/badger/homecoming in conjunction with the pop menu. When I see in the pop menu a badge I'm missing, I'll type the name of that badge in Badger and see what details are there to determine the best method I can to get the badge. Unfortunately, I've made a mistake with at least one of my characters. In game, I have 1245 badges. And when I checked off the new Cim badges, I saw that I had 1289! Apparently, at some point in time, I've gotten confused and selected badges as collected that were collected on a different character - I think. Brainless, I opted to just delete the character and figured I'd re-enter it. Explorations, History, PVP, and a few other categories were pretty simple. Then someone mentioned the import/export function. I could be reading it wrong - but given how Pop Menu determines (with accuracy) what badges my character has, is there a way to export that to Badger?

What bugs me the most is I need to relearn reading comprehension. Words on screen: One plus one equals two. Brain interprets: Null pointer exception. The stress from real life has always been real, but when it impacts sleep, it's impacts my ability to process information properly. The information was there, I just processed it incorrectly. Kind of like being color blind, only instead of color it's words, lol.

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent". I should probably have remained silent. I have to recant my initial position, as I now have more information.

I'm sure it's been mentioned in this thread, and if not - for shame! Here's the truth about an IO "Proc" like the -res. How consistently it fires depends on a number of factors. To get it straight from the source, use the forums to search for @Bopper. Find his post about all his stuff here: PPM - the larger the value, the better odds of firing. Activation time - the larger, the better odds of firing. Base Recharge - the longer the recharge, the better the odds of firing. Recharge Slotting - the more recharge you have slotted in that power, the lower the odds of firing. The dilemma with all this math is it can be quite overwhelming! To get the recharge slotting value requires a solid understanding of basic math - but more importantly, how CoH calculates the buffs of each enhancement in a set, and accounts for enhancement diversification. (For newer players - this is a fairly deep rabbit hole. If I went into it here, it would take up quite a bit of space and likely bore you to tears, because I'm overly verbose, as I try to share ALL the details. Trying as best I can to be concise, but that's not a natural tendency of mine. Even though Mids may have errors in it here and there, I will open mids, and use it's math because those folks that built Mids are better at math than I am. See a pattern? A LOT of people are better at math than I am! So, you have options. You can do a lot of reading and master procs yourself, or you can look for boppers spreadsheet, pull up mids and fill in the blanks and let his calculator do the work for you. Or, you can look at from the long term view. Rumor has it that procs are going to be changed in a future issue. I don't know how, but odds are that whatever the changes are, you'll have to burn some unslotters at best, or perform a respec at worst. If you're like me and you have a lot of alts, you're thinking about this potential change and wondering if maybe a damage IO isn't a better option. Only you can answer that question for yourself. Also, keep in mind that your Alpha slot is basically an extra enhancement in every power you have that will take that kind of enhancement. So, if you have Agility - the percentages will vary with Core or Radial, but you'll have some recharge in it. So, that recharge is effectively slotted in that power with the proc, so it can effect the math, and as a result, impact the odds of the proc firing. And I'm not convinced Mids takes this into account, as I've never checked for it. I only use a proc if the odds of firing are 95% or higher, and figure Agility would change the odds from 95% to about 75%. I can live with that. There are other Alphas that will have no impact at all, but there are other alphas that could. Just depends on how much recharge they give. That's a lot to absorb, I get it. Short answer, like always..."It Depends!".

What I am wanting is something like...say the Experienced power that we get in packs. Let us buy that - the inf is spent, and nothing replenishes it - it's vaporized. It doesn't improve my character's abilities to do anything, other than get rid of debt and possibly get XP 50% faster. (which I like) The packs aren't really inf sinks. They're inf generators. When you buy them, either they make you influence by selling the stuff within, or they save you inf by using what's in them - brain storm ideas, catalysts, converters, etc. I do get what you're saying - it's a wash - one spends, the other gets it, less 10% fee. But, I would prefer they be used as intended - bought cheaply, and used. Not reposted. Granted, all that clicking gets tedious. And it's a smart, efficient way to get some easy inf, if you're patient. Probably a moot point. For whatever reason, word is - they may not ever go on sale again.

No worries. Rest is a weapon. Be well-armed!

I just noticed ..it looks like there are 218 different possible items to get.

Aldous Huxley: “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” or, as it has been morphed to, "You pay your money, you take your chances"

Confirmed. Just bought a dozen packs. Conf

That was back in live? I can't recall them ever locking XP gain at a certain rate.

I like the way you think, at least in this regard. Perhaps, they could be persuaded to simply not allow the packs to be relisted at all? If such a thing is possible. You buy 'em, you open 'em and resell the parts like a proper marketing genius, as opposed to the ...well, lazier marketing geniuses. Or give 'em away. That's not unheard of either. The idea is for them to be an inf sink, really. Not a money maker, right? Remember the reasoning behind the noXP, 2xinf removal; the bottom line between those who farmed and those who didn't was supposedly getting larger, not smaller. Citation below: Now, what I find super interesting is there must be some internal tracking to determine the influence between those who farm, and those who don't. (or it could be a fair assumption, just comparing the inf earned from running missions for an hour, and then farming for that same hour. ) Either way, given that's a concern of theirs, it makes sense if they can prevent them from being relisted, or better yet, to be relisted for the same price you bought it for, if that's possible. You know, in case someone makes 1000 mistakes, lol.

I completely understand the distinction. But, I have always considered the "Procs" to be a set bonus, it's just that only 1 is required for that bonus. Just Semantics. I finished Worthy Opponent just a bit ago. The leader was crazy enough to try for Master of at the same time, and lol, he died in the first minute of the first mission. I suffered two defeats in front of Kronos, when my end got drained, I got stunned...and for some reason, couldn't use a break free. I think I was dead already, but my monitor didn't show it..yet. Used a large wakie, and got clobbered in an instant. But then, I got up and remained up right for the rest of it. I'd gotten so used to that defensive amplifier!

I looked there. It stated "No enhancement set bonuses"... so it could be that Flea is correct and it's WAI. And I suppose that's the case. Just seemed odd to me.

Nope. I could see my defense drop from 42% to 11.15%, figured the limitation had taken effect already.

As long as it's optional, everyone will be fine with it. Well, most.