MaceVanHoffen

Has anyone gotten this badge recently? I cannot get any of the three to be a helper in the fifth mission, and completion does not result in the Connected badge. I've gotten this badge plenty of times before. I religiously talk to all 3 contacts before and after accepting each mission that Ross offers. Frequently, the radio won't even respond to me for the fourth mission. I've tried 6 or 7 times now, and I cannot get this badge to work. Did something break in the latest patch?

I ran Dap-dap's arc through Ouro using what I'll refer to as the "Voltor method", and it worked. Got the bonus mission, got the Brass Tax badge. I used the little room up the sewage ramp from the laboratory as a choke point and defeated all the spawned critters, including Dreck, in that little room. That kept them out of LOS from any defenses in the lab. I'd like to echo @lemming ... the ambushes take WAY too long to spawn. I used my lore pets at one point, and one of the ambushes took so long to spawn that my lore pets had recharged. Additionally, I waited around 15 minutes real-time for the sneaky freaks ambush. I finally started just moving around the map to see if I needed to trigger it. It didn't spawn until I moved back into the lab. The first time I ran this arc, these odd ambush delays didn't happen. On that first run, I led each rescued NPC back to the lab one at a time, and fought all the ambushes while staying inside the lab. The ambushes came fairly quickly. So, I'm wondering if something about using mark and recall or fighting the ambushes away from the lab causes some issues with the ambush spawn logic.

Adding some data in case it helps: I ran as a rogue, did all the extra content in the previous missions. I then brought Abby, Eida, and M3DUS4 back to the lab one at a time. The ambushes spawned, and I got quite a few hits in on Dreck but he went down very fast. I did see him change con color from orange to red briefly before getting defeated. No Brass Tax badge, and no extra mission from Dap-Dap. I took a selfie with him, then that was it.

Oh man, this is a lifesaver. I missed basically all those spawn points, despite flying around for several hours. I and my badge count thank you profusely!

This badge requires 100 prisoner bosses. I'm having a difficult time trying to find a good source of those. I've only found (1) spawn point in Brickstown where a prisoner boss will spawn. That's on the top of the Zig on the helipad. Some older sources claim that named lieutenants count toward this badge, but that is most definitely not true. I've tried looking at blue and red flashbacks, trying to find missions that spawn prisoner bosses. But that seems a dead end as well. So, other than the (3) prisoner bosses that spawn as part of the event in Brickstown, is there a better way of grinding defeats for this badge?

Thanks for everything you've done, Veracor! I wish you all the best. Your retirement is nagging at me a bit more than I expected. After all, I only just returned to CoX back in January after the HC licensing announcement. I'm pretty sure you and I teamed on live. But I can't remember and I can't find you in any of my old screenshots. So why is this bothering me so much? After thinking on it for a bit, perhaps you'll indulge my ramblings. First, there's the obvious: Years of leading daily raids, master runs, trials, badge attempts, et al shows just how selfless you've been. Relatively few people do that in real life, let alone in a virtual space where you get even less feedback for your actions. Next, City of Heroes was ripped from our hands. That has tended to increase the nostalgia for the game. It didn't die a natural death. We were all still enjoying our little heroes and villains with whatever crazy story we came up with for them when the rug was pulled out from underneath us. Those feelings come back to the surface when a prominent and well-loved member of the community leaves. We weren't finished with you yet! We also play a 20-year-old game that, even in its heyday, was a niche within a niche within another niche. That's no accident. Most of us were weird kids that were into weird hobbies that we didn't give up when we became weird adults. Despite the dramatic increase in the popularity of videogames, our little pocket dimension has become an even smaller niche. A highly driven person who takes on leadership roles is someone we can point to and tell ourselves, "See!? I'm not that weird! Other people get why this is cool too!". I'm probably being too maudlin. But I guess it really just comes down to this: I'm gonna miss ya. If you see me in some other virtual universe someday, don't be a stranger. Or, as my current, primary alternate personality would put it: Vaya con Dios, brohim! Catch ya on the next wave!

Fishhead Stu quickly became my main when I found HC. I had created him as a joke on live to try out Water Blast, and wound up loving the set so much that I kept playing him. But then, shutdown happened. So, Stu lives! He's a fish-turned-man who used to watch the surfers from the reef he lived in while he was still a fish. Righteous!

The OP mentioned Nic Cage in the context of worst flix and no one made a made a “NOT THE BEEES!” joke? I’m disappointed in all of you. My entry: It’s just so god awful. It’s one of those films that you keep asking yourself, “How did anyone on this film not see what I’m seeing now?”. It definitely capitalized on the whole Conan trend that went on far too long. But the brothers are a huge train wreck to watch and it glues me to the couch every time I see it on somewhere.

I'm more interested in this now that I've seen some ideas. It's been a long, long time since I played goldside. Not since live, in fact. But I do have a few character concepts rumbling around in my brainpan, one of which is the Praetorian version of a current character of mine. How would we stay IC when playing mainline CoH content? Or, would we even bother? I know there's some reticence for having time travel, but there are a few other options. The various Freedom Phalanx taskforces could just be a simulation 🙂

So much of my youth had Roger Corman movies in it. I remember at summer camp the counselors would have movie nights with actual reel projectors with Corman movies, many of which were probably not fit for 8-10 year olds. Battle Beyond the Stars was a minor obsession of mine in my preteen years. The local drive-in had "Corman nights" where they'd do double features of his films, which we'd have to sneak in to see (not hard when the drive-in is in a Texas cow pasture). I get that Corman was a huge influence on modern cinema and those who make it. But honestly I'll miss Corman more for personal reasons. A lot of my memories have some kind of Corman schlock in the foreground or background. It's hard to find a trailer for a Corman movie that isn't age-restricted, NSFW, or possibly in violation of this site's posting guidelines 😕 However, in tribute of his penchant for aliens, nudity, and horror, just imagine that I posted a link to the Forbidden World trailer here and go watch it. Sleep well, Roger. /em holdtorch

All controller teams are pretty amazing. We can truckroll highend stuff at +4. So I'm not quite sure what your problem was. In fact, given the current state of the game I bet any team of a single AT would do really well. But yeah ... dominators. I would lump them in with DPS and with control. But then, I just tend to team with whoever. It makes forming teams much easier 🙂

I didn't mean to imply you were hating. Just highlighting that no matter how the MSRs are run, someone isn't going to like it. And I'm including myself in the camp of not preferring the instanced MSRs. Totally agree on the "MSR zone" idea.

Why not set the RP in the current timeline? Spoilery:

I think we need to be very, very kind to the folks that run raids of any kind. It's a rough job. You will never please everyone. More than that, someone will always hate whatever way you run it. The risk of burnout is high, which hurts everyone. I don't really care for instanced MSRs. But are they that bad, really? No. Everything is just tradeoffs. It's much more important to support those willing to eat the pain sandwich of leading and organizing raids than it is to have every personal preference catered to. I'll probably attend many instanced MSRs and have a great time doing so. Hats off to all you crazy folks who organize things. It's one of the many bricks in the Wall of Awesome that make up Everlasting.

Thanks so much for all your hard work. The HC team is a good model for open source maintenance that I wish more of my colleagues followed. In "unrelated" news: you folks should leave the donation windows open longer!

Had to come here when I saw the license announcement. I was on Virtue for years. Some my characters were: Rendspire Gunnthra Mace van Hoffen Cher van Hoffen Hope to see folks I knew when!