srmalloy

The Nemesis GM is triggered by the performance of the characters fighting the invasion forces; if there are only a few people fighting, they won't be causing enough mayhem to spawn the GM. So presumably if you're putting out enough damage to spawn the GM, you've got enough damage to drop it.

If you don't do anything with the shards/threads that drop after your Alpha slot opens, your 50 is just a level higher than 49s — and you can slot the purple enhancements. Just ignore the incarnate slots and boosts, and play your character with just enhancements.

There aren't many like this, but I concede that going through the mission briefings to identify the ones that are like "Run over to [destination] and pick up [McGuffin] from [holder]" may be an extended process. Although, while doing that, they could also fix Anton Sampson's stock "check out Nemesis base" missions to add "and defeat all soldiers inside".

Fake it by rolling it into an existing bind. For example, I have the following bind in my 'keybinds.txt' file, so it loads for every character unless I specifically unbind it: W "+forward$$powexec_name hasten" This tries to fire Hasten every time you move forward, so unless you're stationary for an extended period (and all it takes to trigger is a quick tap of the 'w' key that doesn't actually move you anywhere), it should fire off when it comes off recharge. Also, Power Thrust isn't really useful as a damaging power (and even less so for jollies, what with Power Boost no longer affecting KB, and ED keeping you from six-slotting it for KB, then going to AP and punting Hellions across the zone with a Power Boosted Power Thrust shot -- "Hellion Golf"); it's more useful as a "get away from me" power that knocks an overly-insistent mob back out of melee range.

Not to mention the current fad of "You're using [insert program name] and it doesn't have AI functionality? We'll have to fix that! Here, have a bunch of AI features you don't want that bloat your software, can't be disabled, hoover up your information, and send it to our servers so we can sell it!"

There are quite a few missions where the mission briefing from your contact is distinctly different from the actual conditions of the mission. Take the "appear at a science fiction convention" mission from Stephen Sheridan -- you know when you take the mission that's not how it's going to go down, and the moment you accept the mission, the mission header turns into "defeat all villains in building". Or in the Wheel of Destruction arc from Dr. Cheng, when you're sent to collect a piece of the Wheel of Destruction from the CEO of Vorhight Industries; when you accept the mission, the mission text becomes "defeat cult leader, his men". It would be nice for a touch of suspension of disbelief if missions that had innocuous briefings from your contact stayed as the innocuous text until you actually entered the mission, and found that things were not as they had been presented to you, when the mission text in your nav window would change to the actual mission goals. Thoughts?

With this year's reduction in the zone instance population limits to improve lag, an AFK MM not part of the league at the 'murder motel' is also chewing up zone population and could be preventing the league from filling.

Yes, and? Some of the defeat badges you generally go out and street-sweep to get done and over with -- the Skulls, Skull bosses, and Hellion bosses are examples. Others are 'incidental' acquisitions, that you pick up in the process of getting other badges, where you're clearing spawns while you're getting badges, like the one for CoT mages, and you get the one for Hordelings as a side benefit.

That's an argument for having the league rewards code looked at to change it so that, instead of XP and rewards being shared out within your team, they're shared out evenly among the entire league. This would likely need to have the reward rate reduced a bit to keep the Vmerit and other drops close to where they are now, but it would be a more equitable arrangement. Of course, this would allow leechers to benefit more from being in a league in a wide-area fight, but that's one of the tasks of the league and team leaders.

Unfortunately, Cipher's post on the Discord states "We've also enabled Double XP on all shards until at least Tuesday (duration TBD)." so the actual duration may be longer.

They're annoying, and they're randomly scattered across a number of zones -- Crey's Folly, Founder's Falls, Peregrine Island, Echo: Rikti Crash Site, and Rikti War Zone -- a sniper can just take exception to your continued existence and light you up for the temerity of daring to share the same neighborhood as them. I'd like to throw out for comment a proposal to create a new defeat badge, perhaps titled "Counter-Sniper" or "Spotter" or the like, for defeating 100 or 200 of the mobs tagged as snipers -- the thirteen different Comet and Tirailleur mobs belonging to Nemesis, Crey Special Agent Sharpshooters, Council Penumbra Elite Sharpshooters, 5th Column Nacht Elite Sharpshooters, and Freakshow Juicer Snipers.

I routinely set the teleport prompt on all of my characters, because I take exception to someone else being granted the unrestricted ability to yank my character off to some random part of a map without warning. And I'm still bent out of shape over the fact that the game makes that decision for you with regard to your pets -- except for the 'untouchable' Tier 4 Radial Lore pets, every single pet a character has is unchangeably flagged as "accept all teleports" (the T4 Radial pets, presumably as part of the 'untouchable' status, can't be teleported). For most ATs this isn't too severe a problem, but for MMs, getting all your henchmen yanked away at the whim of a team/league member with Incandescence is highly irritating. A significant part of my attitude was formed during the first few months of the game's live run, where some некультурный сволочи discovered that the game as released incorporated a limited form of non-consensual PvP -- a character who was too low-level to take the power, or who had not taken Hover, was vulnerable to being teleported to appear next to the roof of a tall building, where they would fall helplessly to the ground, which, if they had even 1 point of unhealed damage, would kill them.

Supposed to run until Tuesday, from what I understand. Probably turn off with the Tuesday maintenance.

Both the Masters of Olympus and Monument bases were flogged in gen chat as generally accessible; the player pushing Masters of Olympus seemed particularly proud of their base, and having visited it I can see why.

Matching it against the popmenu, which I'd originally made from that list, I find that your list is missing 'Masters of Olympus' (OLYMPUS-30352, a well-done classical-themed outdoor base) and 'Monument' (MONUMENT-33650, an indoor base heavy on the statuary), both of which I found in general chat on Wednesday. Otherwise, the spreadsheet and my popmenu agree completely.

It was an entertaining juxtaposition -- I was in Kings Row with a Rikti raid beginning, and the warning sirens going off: [Vanguard] DANGER!: Rikti invasion forces have been spotted in Kings Row. Non-combatants are advised to seek cover. [NPC] Gravedigger Slicer: I think I hear sirens. I had the momentary thought "Your first Rikti raid, slick?"

There is also the issue that at least one attack only uses one pistol, so it immediately raises the additional overhead of deciding whether that pistol gets ammo type A or ammo type B. It doesn't seem to me as if it would add enough to the game to be worth the significant coding work it would involve.

Knocking down the pylons drops the shield; as far as I know, breaking the grates and setting bombs just summons U'kon G'rai — I think summoning and defeating him is peripheral to the raid proper, and you can carry on with the raid without setting any bombs; you miss out on the merits and badge progress, but it won't affect the rest of the raid.

Is there a list of the base names and codes somewhere? Should be simple enough.

I've been accumulating publicly-accessible bases and their passcodes, and have created the attached popmenu file. Save the file and place it in your Homecoming\data\texts\[language]\menus folder (replace [language] with whatever your installed language is, such as 'English'). The next time you start your CoH client, use the command /macro_image "Apparitions_Dissipate" "Bases" "popmenu BaseCodes" This will create an icon in your power trays that, when clicked on, will give you a menu listing the four bases that I've seen used as instanced MSR assembly points, followed by individual bases grouped in alphabetical clusters that can be expanded to show the bases in that cluster. Clicking on any entry while near a base portal or while in a base will transport you to the selected base. If you have any additions or corrections, feel free to respond here or message me in game. Update: Added Masters of Olympus base, Monument base, and corrected a format problem preventing access to some of the base entries. NewExcelBases.mnu

Many of the changes made to the way PvP works were done to make PvP less of a "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" game, where one AT can routinely curbstomp another particular AT, but gets curbstomped by a third. I remember (although I forget the terminology; it's been a while) the 'accumulating mez immunity' mechanic that was added that makes characters more resistant to mez effects after being mezzed, to prevent them from being chain-mezzed and pounded while unable to do anything as a specific example of this.

The report from the HC staff on the Discord is that the problem is being caused by an issue with the connectivity between the game servers and the database server, and that it's something that the hosting service will have to correct, not anything that the HC staff can fix.

Particularly when there is often a knee-jerk reaction to the term "open-world PvP", which for quite a few players with experiences in other MMOs, is a term that implies that your characters will be vulnerable to depredations from the sort of players whose sole measure of their "leet skillz" as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat monster in BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the tutorial zone, and who will run away from anything that even suggests that it might be an even fight. It is unfortunate that the term has become poisoned this way, but short, oversimplified descriptions can't accommodate subtleties.

That's a significant contributing factor, since you essentially have to level a character in PvE, then create a significantly different build for the character to fit the differences between PvE and PvP mechanics, and then learn and internalize those differences as they affect play, for you to be effective as a PvP player. It sets a fairly high hurdle, and having the experienced PvPers repeatedly tear you a "structurally superfluous new behind" when you first venture into a PvP zone (assuming that you actually encounter someone in the zone) can be discouraging to potential new PvPers.

To steal from the video clip posted earlier, "...with my speaw and magic hewm-- AIIEEE!"