RikOz

Clicked on a random pedestrian the other day and he said, "You'd think that with that gigantic police station in Kings Row, they'd reduce crime. You'd think."

In the Advanced Control window, clicking the Pause button and then clicking the Fold button seems to accomplish the same thing.

Johnson was effectively fired, at least from performing live. Def Leppard responded by noting, "Geez, our drummer lost an arm, and we kept him in the band!" Last I heard, though, the band was back in the studio, with Johnson.

I use Firefox, and the problem I'm having is that it keeps timing out while trying to connect to the app. I'm starting to suspect some Windows security feature is blocking things up. When I set up on my Mac, the Web Control connected immediately on the first try (though it did start going whacko later).

Me, I don't start plugging in basic IOs until level 26, ever since I noticed that the bonus on a level 25 IO is lower than a 25 SO right up to character level 25, but the IO is better as soon as you hit level 26.

A-ha! I hadn't actually played this particular character in a while, but I had her XP turned off at level 22 so that she wouldn't outlevel Agent G before getting to him. When I logged her in, she was holding Doc Delilah's first mission in her mission log, so I assumed that she had already completed Temblor's and Penny's arcs. Looks like she didn't! I've done the whole thing so many times, it can be hard to keep track!

I've only done the Provost Marchand stuff once, on my fire/fire blaster, at around level 35. I recall completing it over the course of several days. It took a very long time to get all the way to the ending, solo.

Maybe I'm thinking of Giant Monsters. I think I got 6 merits for participating in a Frost Lord (?) kill back in December.

I do the complete Faultline story arc, Jim Temblor -> Penelope Yin -> Doc Delilah -> Agent G, on nearly every character. The end rewards for Agent G's portion have always been 25 merits awarded after Penelope Yin destroys the PCM, and then another 20 merits when I do the final turn-in to Agent G. Last night, however, my character "Mother Sun" on the Everlasting server did not receive those last 20 merits. I thought I took a screenshot of my log, but apparently not. Did the reward change, or did something glitch?

I dunno, wasn't 6 merits supposed to be just the standard reward for beating an EB? The Protean arc that starts in Talos (with your mysterious double) is quite long and convoluted, and finishes up with a extremely-difficult-to-solo fight against Protean, all for a measly 6 merits. Meanwhile, Montague Castanella's arc, the last half of which is a series of non-combat, "go talk to this person" missions, awards 13 merits. I've been skipping Protean, and certain other storylines, just because they're not worth the effort. I mean, they're worth doing once, just to see the story, and perhaps the 6 merits were worth it on live when merits were more scarce, but now, with merit rewards greatly boosted for most things, arcs like that one just aren't worth the time and effort.

I had to consult ParagonWiki to finish that mission. I didn't even know that sphere was there! That should have been refunded to you. They refunded any cash purchases made in the 30 days prior to the announcement, though I can't recall if you had to specifically request it. I remember that NCSoft sent me an e-mail about it, and I did indeed receive a refund.

I sure does seem like it takes a while. My #2 computer has made 17 attempts to fetch a new work order since finishing the last one. I guess this is more of that server overload.

It took hours and hours, but mine was in my inbox this morning.

Well, I think it's pretty much a problem unique to Sky Raiders (and perhaps Tsoo) in that these mobs will literally teleport themselves clear across the map. Absent the teleporting, the worst you have to deal with is your "partner" dashing across the room, not the entire map.

LOL, you've reminded me of the most epic moment I personally experienced in WoW. Back in 2009, during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I was playing my fire mage and joined a random group to run one of the newish 5-man dungeons, "Forge of Souls". I can't recall the classes of the tank and healer, but the DPS were my fire mage, a balance druid (both ranged DPS), and a rogue (melee DPS). As I said, this dungeon had opened fairly recently, so none of us outgeared it yet, and it was a challenge. We struggled through to the end, and then the final boss gave us the smackdown. When the boss was at about 25% health, the healer got killed, and without the healer, down went the rogue, followed quickly by the tank. The druid and I, being ranged, were still standing, but I knew that wouldn't last long. The usual protocol in that kind of situation was to just take the wipe and try again. Well, not this time. For those who haven't played WoW, druids can fill any of the three roles (actually four - in addition to tanking and healing, they can do both ranged and melee DPS), though of course, each role requires different gearing and usually a different spec, and this druid was geared and specced for ranged DPS. But that didn't stop him. As soon as he saw the tank was dead, he shapeshifted into Bear Form, taunted the boss, and proceeded to tank (wearing, as I said, ranged spellcasting gear). And while he tanked, he simultaneously kept casting healing spells on my mage. So I just poured it on with my fire spells, and before much longer the boss was down. The credit goes to that druid - he went above and beyond.

Man, I'm almost 54 and still can't grow a beard outside of a goatee. And ... I just shaved my head. Well anyway, getting this thing set up is becoming annoying, and I hope it's just the server load that is causing it and it will eventually work. I got the client installed on this Windows gaming rig, but it keeps "timing out" every time I try to open the Web Control. So, I set up my username, HC_RikOz, and team number in the client itself (from the Advanced Control menu option). I requested a Passkey, which they still haven't sent me, despite two requests sent ~four hours apart. Looking at the Protein Viewer, after several hours the Status window still shows "Connection: Trying" and it's just displaying the Demo protein. Meanwhile, my old iMac has been sitting here doing absolutely nothing, so I fired it up and installed the client there. the Web Control connected on the first try, so I was able to enter my username and team number there and get things started. Firing up the Protein Viewer, the Status window already shows "Connection: Connected", though it seems to be still loading the protein. That's only been a few minutes at this point, though. So I have no idea why my 2-year-old Windows 10 machine can't connect, but my 11-year-old iMac hooked right up. EDIT: Looking closer, it seems my Windows machine is indeed doing its thing. It's just the viewer not wanting to work.

First mission of the "The Mysterious General Z" arc, "Stop the Sky Raider assassination". I'm running into an issue where the hostages I rescue, when fighting a Sky Raider Porter, and the Porter decides to teleport halfway across the map, think it's a good idea to go chasing after them. This seems to result in them aggroing everything along the way, and these aggro'd mobs all descend on me for some reason. In my current attempt at this mission, I had rescued two of the hostages and engaged a spawn of three Sky Raiders that included a Porter. Next thing I know, the Porter was gone, my two hostage pets were nowhere in sight, and out of nowhere I now have six more Sky Raiders beating on me. Even worse, since they were already aggro'd before they got to me, their respective Engineers had their forcefields up and running. So now I'm hemmed inside a circle of Sky Raiders with stacked forcefields. I can't land a blow, and I can't even move to try to take out the FF generators. So ... is there anything you can do to prevent pets from chasing after Porters? This is kind of ridiculous. ADDED: I'll note that I have done this mission successfully on other alts. It was just "bad luck" this time that the first two hostages spawned very near the front of the mission, so there were still a whole lot of Sky Raiders remaining once I'd rescued them. When I've done this mission before, they've tended to spawn much further in, so I had already cleared out most of the mobs, and increased the odds that any Porters would teleport to an already-cleared area and not cause this aggro problem.

Since this is apparently "working as intended" and not a "bug" ... it annoys me. Mobs in missions constantly spawning at +1 to whatever my notoriety is set at. Recently, I was griping about this in Help, and a GM spoke up and said that this was intentional, as a way to add a few "more-challenging" mobs to missions. That would be all well and good if it actually resulted in "a few more-challenging mobs". The problem is, there aren't "a few". When it happens, in many cases, the only mobs on the map that have actually spawned at the "correct" level are the named "boss" at the end and the "guards" in his immediate vicinity (the ones who are part of the boss's spawn). In other cases, it's maybe only half the mobs spawning at +1, but for some reason they're all front-loaded; that is, all or most of them are in the first few rooms, which can be a real downer on certain missions, particularly on a "squishy" character, coming out of the loading screen right into a crowd of yellow minions and orange lieutenants. All of this is especially miserable when it's a CoT mission, and you're facing spawns comprised entirely of ghosts - and they're all yellow and orange, and there's no way in hell you can overcome their stacking -ToHit debuffs because you simply can't carry enough yellow insps. When I'm doing Montague Castanella's mission to meet with Lady Jane, I either make sure I'm 1-2 mob kills away from leveling up so that I level up on the first spawn inside that mission, or I just set my notoriety to -1 before entering, because that mission always seems to spawn +1 no matter what, and I have to face an orange-conning Ruin/Madness Mage who immediately spams Holds and Sleeps on me that I can't resist at all at level 14. What really makes me sure that something is glitched about this is that it's extremely inconsistent from one character to the next. Observing this behavior over the careers of my 90 alts, I have some characters that almost never run into this, and others that experience it in literally every single mission. Whichever type of "luck" a character has, it persists between logins, to the point that I've got Notoriety permanently set to -1 on some characters just so they can get even-leveled missions. Permanently, or at least until they're high enough level to have more tools at their disposal.

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense. That was a TF I played through, not a "story arc".

This why I sacrifice defense and always choose attack powers at levels 2 & 4 (and sometimes 6, depending on powerset). There's an AE XP/Inf/Ticket farm I like that exemps me down to level 1, so taking nothing but attacks at 2 & 4 ensures that I have three attacks available when exemped down.

I made an interesting discovery yesterday: Positron hands out a level-15 story arc called "The New Recruits" that ends up awarding 60+ merits. I only discovered this because I was on my main running down the list of arcs in Ouroboros. I currently have 90 alts, at least 80 of which are heroes, and most of those are level 15 or higher. And I have never once been introduced, in-game, to talk to Positron as a "contact". Sure, I get sent to speak with him as part of the "Origin of Power" arc, but aside from that all I knew about him was that he had a taskforce. Since I don't really enjoy group content (I know, weird in an MMO), I'd never seen any reason to go talk to Posi. Toward the end of the arc, Posi clued me in to the fact Numina (I think) also has something for me. So, did the original devs just assume that everybody was going to flock to the TF as soon as they were at the appropriate level, and spot Posi's arc that way? Because otherwise, the natural flow of leveling via contacts is just gonna level you right past ever seeing his arc.

How did you get that quilted effect on the cape?

Yeah, figured it was something like that. It's the same thing with attacks like Sands of Mu, where a miss means you get to continue missing through the entire animation 😄

How about the mechanic that makes it so that, once an attack is started, it's going to finish, no matter what? It leads to some serious "suspension of disbelief" issues: * I defeat that Troll or Strongman an instant after he begins his Hurl attack. He falls down, unconscious ... and three seconds later this boulder comes flying at me out of nowhere. * I defeat that Family goon just as he starts his machine gun attack ... and his gun continues to fire, precisely on target. This is even funnier when I hit him with a KB - he's flying across the room, arms and legs going every which way, yet he somehow keeps his gun accurately aimed at me the entire time. Those are the kinds of attacks that should be interrupted/canceled upon defeat. * I defeat a Tarantula Mistress in one shot with an Aimed/Built-up snipe, yet she still manages to Blind me. * Other general effects that you'd think would be canceled upon defeat. Like illusions that persist long after the Illusionist goes down for the count.

Most of these click-to-activate things require that you've completely stopped moving. If you're running toward the clickable, when you "stop" your forward movement, you still haven't completely stopped. You stop moving forward, and then there is a brief "rock back" in the animation that is actually realistic: IRL, if you were running full speed and then literally stopped on a dime, you'd topple over forward, so your body naturally incorporates a little "rock back" when you come to a stop, to shift your body mass backwards a bit to counteract the forward momentum. If your volume is high enough, you can hear this in your footsteps when you stop: step-step-step-step-stutterstep. You're not fully stopped until that "stutterstep" finishes, so if you're clicking the instant your character hits the object, you're clicking ahead of the "stutterstep" before you're fully stopped. This goes all the way down to Hellions and Skulls - that one guy in the spawn with a shotgun whose only power is the KB/KD shot. You can literally watch these guys standing there doing absolutely nothing but waiting for that power to recharge so they can do it again. Combine them with the "slammers" (guys with sledgehammer), and you're spending the entire fight on your back. Then comes the Circle of Thorns with entire spawns of ghosts stacking -ToHit on you. I remapped it to TAB, so that it's my default tab-target.