RikOz

I finally got my second character to level 50 last night. When my first character leveled up to 50, she got that cop in PI who starts the DA stuff added to her contacts list. This new 50 did not get that contact (she only got Mender Ramiel). Did something glitch here, or does my toon need to fulfill some other requirement first?

WoW is the only other MMO I've played enough to make direct comparisons, and it happens that CoH has been the only MMO since 2008 that has been able to steal me away from WoW. When it comes to game mechanics (so ignoring the costume creator, which I love so very very much), there is one biggie for me: Every aspect of character building is not balanced around endgame or PvP. That is the big one for me, as somebody who prefers to play "DPS" classes but does not particularly enjoy "endgame" or "group content". I prefer to play solo, and so I hugely appreciate the fact that every scrapper, brute, blaster, sentinel, and stalker I roll is, to one degree or another, completely viable for solo adventuring. This kind of thing contributed to WoW driving me away back in 2011, during the Cataclysm expansion. My #2 character at the time was a fire mage, and I'd had a blast playing that character during the previous expansion. But Blizzard has a tendency to completely redefine classes with each expansion, and when Cataclysm came out the changes to fire mages ruined my character, at least as far as it fit my playstyle. They decided that, since a mage is supposed to be a "glass cannon", they would completely nerf its defenses (among other changes). After all, why does a mage need strong defense when there's a tank and a healer in the raid? Well you see, jackasses, there isn't necessarily a handy tank and healer nearby when I'm leveling. They took the mage spell, "Mana Shield", which previously absorbed a good chunk of damage before failing (you still had to play carefully - if you let yourself get overwhelmed by multiple enemies, they'd take that shield down in a hurry and you'd find yourself unable to cast it again because it was still on cooldown) and nerfed it to the point that it would absorb damage about equal to a single hit from an even-leveled enemy, but retained the same long cooldown. The other change they made to Mana Shield is that it no longer improved with your level. It was the same at level 85 as it was at 80, and so became more and more useless as your character (and the enemies) got more powerful. Instead, they thought mages should use crowd control. Which, again, is great in a raid where there are multiple players with CC abilities. Not so great for solo leveling when the single-target CC has a long cooldown and the AoE CC has this nasty habit of hitting every mob around you and aggroing all of them, including nearby "neutral" mobs who usually ignore you unless you attack them first. So when the CC breaks you now have twice as many angry mobs attacking you. And CC wasn't even a useful "escape mechanism" to CC and then run away, because once you'd CC a mob, you were considered "in combat" until either you or the mob was dead, or else you'd run (on foot, because you can't summon a mount in combat) halfway across the zone. So, once CoH shut down and I returned to WoW, my fire mage stayed retired and my shadow priest became my new main spellcaster, and she was awesome. But then, *sigh* a couple expansions later, they redefined shadow priests in such a way that their DPS now depended on a "charge up" mechanism. So now, instead of having a good "sustained" damage output, it required making a series of weaker attacks that would build up a charge, which you could then unleash for a massively devastating attack. Again, that's fantastic in a fight against a raid boss. It completely sucks for leveling, because it translated into "spend a stupid amount of time killing these three normal mobs and then nuke the everloving !@#$ out of the fourth one". That may sound like how brutes work, but no. The nuke would completely drain the built-up charge, and you'd have to start over again with your weak attacks. I hated it so much that I respecced my priest from shadow into discipline - a healing spec that I discovered was actually great for leveling as a damage dealer (the spec has this weird healing mechanic that I never really understood, where you would cast one spell on your allies and then they would receive healing based on how much damage you did to enemies, but that damage was really good and turned out to be great for solo play).

Indeed. Like Fusionette in Faultline saying, "Oh WOW! $Playername!" as soon as you walk in, and then you find her clear on the opposite side of the map.

I'm just happy I went from #296 all the way up to #98!

Wait, so the Luddites are actually on to something?

Attempted to use the Contact Finder on a level 17 character while standing in Atlas Park, and got this: I went back to Steel Canyon, tried it again, and it worked correctly. It seems to imply that the Contact Finder only works when you're in a level-appropriate zone?

Open "Advanced Control" by clicking on the app icon in your system tray. Click "Configure", and select the "Identity" tab. Passkey can be entered there.

Redside, Mr. G stuff. The second "Yin's", last word of the second paragraph, should just be the plural "Yins" I saw the same mistake earlier in this arc, perhaps earlier in the first part of this same mission, but I didn't get a screenshot.

I've noticed that his happens pretty consistently everywhere. I see it all the time in missions, when the NPCs in there are having a conversation. It actually reminds me a bit of something in WoW. There are addons that will automatically post a "congratulations" message to guild chat when somebody in the guild earns an achievement. I've seen guildmates insist that they're actually typing the message and not using an addon, but their fib is exposed when I earn an achievement and their "congrats" message hits my chat box before my own notification appears 😄

I posted about this a few months ago, and yeah, it's still not solved. Something weird seems to happen to the permissions on random screenshots that are made with the game's built-in screenshot function and saved to the default Screenshots folder. Just moving them to another folder doesn't seem to fix anything. I've stopped using the in-game screenshot function and now just use the screenshot feature of my Geforce Experience software.

This one made me take notice, because it was the last "Personal Story" I had to do. I had already done all the others, on the same character in the same costume and aura, and it didn't happen with the others. I have noticed what you describe in Matthew Habashy's first arc, where you're disguised as a Hellion.

Now you've reminded me of NPCs in WoW putting out fires by hitting the burning thing with axes and hammers.

And mobs that are guarding a hostage, because the hostage can't be rescued until that last mob goes down. So you have to chase him across the map, or wait and wait for him to come back.

My sister, too - RN at a local nursing home.

I'm wondering if new quotes have been added. I've started seeing Skulls Girlfriends in the Hollows complaining about, "When do things start getting real fun? So far all they do is rip off purses and fight each other."

You too, huh? My whole job revolves around large gatherings (conventions), so my last day of work was March 14, and I haven't left my apartment since, except to take out the trash and check the mail. I've got my wife's caregiver to run errands for us 😄

Stepping into Praetor Duncan's body for her "Personal Story" mission in Dark Astoria, it would seem that my own character's aura (Bio Plasma, Body+Eyes, in this case) remained active on Praetor Duncan's body:

Well, I had this idea for a character name, "Ant Overlord" (Simpson's reference!). I settled on a Savage Melee/Energy Aura scrapper, and got to work fooling with the Insect Armor and Insectoid pieces, but couldn't really come up with anything I felt said "ant". So I started adding pieces that only seemed to get me further away from the "ant" concept, until I decided it made sense to switch from Savage Melee to Katana. The result is this guy, "Katanamushi".

As somebody who is a trained musician and prefers complex, melodic music like prog and metal, it's a nightmare for me at work when it's a coworker's turn to choose the music and he insists on late-90s techno/dance music. You know, the stuff with a kick drum that goes THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP without variation, synths repeating the exact same riff over and over, and a female singer repeating the same four-word phrase over and over and over. It's music that's meant for dancing, and it's perfect for that. It's not designed for listening outside of that context. Unfortunately, as a trained musician and lifelong music fan, it's literally impossible for me to "tune out" music. My ears detect even the faintest music and my brain wants to focus on it, and when it's utterly mindless and repetitive it drives me insane.

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.