RikOz

Ah, okay. Montague Castanella sent me there before I was 40. I left when I couldn't find anything to do, and did some missions from Founders Falls and some Tip missions to hit 40. Now that I'm 40 I'll go find Daedalus. Thanks!

Is there any actual storyline in Cimerora? I did the initial introductory mission, meeting a bunch of NPCs. Only two of them seem to have anything for me to do. Marcus Valerius just keeps giving me the same random missions over and over, and Imperious wants me to form a Task Force.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough in my OP. The "odd" bit was that it censored the chat bubble, but not the chat window. Also that it would censor the game's own text. True dat. I decided to disable it, but then discovered that this is not a global setting and so I'll have to manually disable in on every character, and it's just not worth the hassle.

I was thinking about this just today, while once again whiffing my way through CoT ghosts/daemons/whichever they are. I came to the conclusion that there were certain design decisions early on in development that were either lazy, or just poorly thought out, and this is most blatantly evident in the Accuracy/ToHit department, because this one area in particular directly leads to intense player frustration. The "lazy" or "poorly thought out" decision in question here was making "hit or miss" a straight (to all appearances) yes/no question. You either hit and do damage, or you completely miss and do no damage. This is a "user experience" issue. I'll compare to World of Warcraft, since that's the only other MMORPG I'm extensively familiar with. In WoW, there are multiple mechanics that determine defense. There is your Armor, which is a number. There is Dodge, which is a number. There is Block, which is a number. And there is Parry, which is a number. All of these come into play when determining whether an attack hits or misses. And here is why I call this a "user experience" issue: When the target mob (or player, in PvP) causes you to "miss", there is a relevant sound effect that plays based on why you missed, and often a corresponding animation. You hear and see different things depending on the result of each "roll". You hear the sound of your weapon clanking against armor, clunking against a shield (for Block), or sliding off the other guy's weapon (for Parry). The point is that, while you may not be dealing damage, you are still making some kind of contact. The only genuine "swing and a miss" (assuming an opponent of roughly equal level) is when your opponent Dodges (and that still produces appropriate sound and/or animation). All of the other MMOs I've briefly tried (none for more than a month or so) did more or less the same thing. In CoH, by contrast, you either Hit (POW!) or Miss (*whiff*). So if you end up with a series of unsuccessful attacks, the only audio-visual feedback you get is swinging at air, over and over and over and over, not to mention the word "MISS!" in big bold letters every single time. This is the psychological difference between a basketball player missing shots that bounce off the rim or get blocked, and a player repeatedly failing to even hit the backboard. A baseball batter who grounds out is probably considerably less frustrated than another batter who strikes out on three pitches without even getting wood on the ball. I mean, this type of discussion doesn't come up all that much on the WoW forums, because in that game the attention to user experience means the player never feels like they're just uselessly flailing at an enemy, when that enemy is at or near the same level as the player.

I never got around to turning off the "mature language" filter. Because of that, I got this amusing bit of censorship today. Halfway censorship, that is. Here is the relevant NPC dialog, as it appeared in the chat window: Uncensored, nothing needing filtering, right? Right? Well, I happened to notice the actual chat bubbles coming from the 5th Column guys on the other side of the wall, (alas, no screenshot of those), and was surprised to see that, in the chat bubble, the word "slit" was replaced with "****". Very odd.

For some reason, my Screenshots folder, and indeed the CoH folder itself, is marked as Read-Only, and unsetting does not "stick" for whatever reason. I unset the Read-Only, and when I then look at the Properties again, it's reset to Read-Only. Would the fact that my install is on my SSD have anything to do with this?

I'll try that out.

*sigh* Now the problem is back for me. I tried switching to TGA screenshots instead of JPEG, and now the client doesn't crash ... but it doesn't take a screenshot, either.

Vicious/Viscous seem to get mixed up a lot. Famously, there's a weapon in WoW called "Viscous Axe". I'll note that the mission text linked by the OP also misspells "resurrect" as "ressurect"

This is mostly idle curiosity, and probably just a matter of perception bias: I'm starting to wonder if there is some sort of stealth ToHit debuff that gets applied when a melee character finds themselves surrounded or when a ranged character is attacking in melee range. I'm on a scrapper or brute, and I'm rock'em sock'eming my way through the mobs, when for one reason or another I inadvertently get myself backed into a corner, surrounded by three enemies, and suddenly I can't land a punch to (literally) save my life. I'm on a blaster or sentinel, and I'm bullseye-ing those two Skulls hiding behind that car over there, every shot successfully hitting. But then the third Skull runs right up in my face, and when I try to zap him I suddenly start shooting holes in the sky. Very frustrating.

Ah, so the same design philosophy that led to level 5-6 characters who only have two attacks getting put up against orange-conning Arachnos lieutenants that spam Web Grenade, which slows the recharge of those measly two attacks. (Talking about the first part of the Shining Stars missions.)

The last two times I have done the Hero Morality Mission, "Fire in the Hole", the spawn position of the kidnapped NPCs has been a bit wonky. I'm supposed to rescue the Company President, the Receptionist, and the Security Guard Captain, in that order. The second two don't spawn until the previous NPC has been rescued. This is usually fairly straightforward - I encounter each one in succession as I proceed through the mission map. The last two times, however, have been a little weird. I found and rescued the Company President fairly early, on the first floor of the map. After completely clearing the first floor, I proceeded to the second floor via elevator, where I located and rescued the Receptionist. Then this is where it's weird: the Security Guard Captain spawned back on the first floor in a previously-cleared room. The first time this happened, I thought the mission had completely bugged out. After rescuing the Receptionist, I finished clearing the second floor without ever encountering the Security Guard Captain. Assuming I had simply missed him, I spent a ridiculous amount of time going around and around the second floor, looking into every single nook and cranny, trying to find the spot I must have missed. It was only in frustration that I went back down to the first floor, made my way back to the mission entrance, and re-explored the whole first floor, finally finding the Guard Captain in a room I had definitely already cleared. The second time (just now), I remembered the first time, and after the Receptionist I just went back to the first floor and there he was, in that same room.

I'm really starting to wonder about these Circle of Thorns missions and the mob spawns therein. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the algorithm that populates the maps, or if I've just had a (long) string of bad luck. Basically, I dread CoT missions because every map is just wall-to-wall daemons. You know, the ones with the massive ToHit debuff. And sometimes the spawns are close enough together that I end up with six of those things on me at once, stacking the debuff, and there is just no hope of hitting anything when that happens. Very very few of the "human" CoT mobs by comparison. I don't remember it being this bad on live, so maybe I'm just having bad luck? I can't carry enough ACC insps to overcome this.

Weird. I was having this issue for a while after I first installed the game, but then it went away after an update and I assumed they'd fixed the problem.

God yes. Like that Shining Stars Part 2 mission where Grym sends you to kill Clockwork. You're level 10, and there may be a few you can kill atop the buildings just west of the university. And there may be a few on the buildings near the arson building past the tram station. And there may be a few on a couple other buildings. May. Be. All the other Clockwork in the zone con red or purple. If the level-appropriate ones aren't there, you can be hunting for a very long time. I especially hate it when I'm trying to see if a particular contact has a story arc available, but first I have to do an unrelated street sweep for them. I'm half convinced that this is just a "gimme" mission to get out of the way so that they'll give you their phone # so that you don't have to travel all the way back to them after the first story mission. An issue I think could have been better solved by simply setting the first story mission in the same zone as the contact. (Seriously, why does every contact send you clear out of their zone for every mission?)

Somebody once decided to calculate the size of the Eastern Kingdoms by literally running on foot from Booty Bay to Silvermoon City, in the most direct route possible, estimating the character's running speed, and timing how long the trip took. His ultimate conclusion was that the continent of Eastern Kingdoms was about the size of ... Manhattan. Of course, it was designed without flight in mind, and so they were able to use tricks of geography and terrain to make the whole thing seem much bigger than it actually is, as long as you're ground-bound. I was rather gobsmacked one day when I happened to be in that demon-infested canyon in Ashenvale (can't recall the name off the top of my head, but it's where you have to kill a couple big named demons) on a character capable of flight. I flew straight up out of there and realized I was like 200 yards away from Orgrimmar, as the crow flies. But when you're ground-bound, it feels like those two points are a long way apart.

Would it be possible to modify the Tequila client in such a way that inadvertently clicking on the big Homecoming logo will stop launching Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge by default, and instead use the browser I have chosen in my Windows settings? I mean, I already have Firefox open, and the Homecoming sites bookmarked in Firefox. There's no reason to launch a specific, hard-coded browser, especially when I already have another browser open. I've noticed that launching a second web browser takes freaking forever for some reason, so I have to wait a stupid amount of time just to close an application that I didn't want open in the first place. I occasionally run into other software that forces IE, and I always wonder, "What, is this 1997?" (I realize you guys aren't the ones who coded Tequila, so maybe this is something to pass on to those responsible).

I think a big part of the complaint is that, when there are enough people in AP, it seems to interfere with mission mobs spawning. No Hellions to slap for Matthew Habashy's first mission, no Arachnos Commanders spawning for the second Aaron Thiery misson. As far as just having too many people, I think one improvement would be to disable the Tailor function on Miss Liberty. I've had several instances of having trouble clicking on her to train levels because of the solid wall of people standing around her fiddling with their costumes. Hey folks, there's an Icon right over there -->

Some of this is getting downright silly. Last night I exited a mission just one bubble shy of leveling, so I figured I'd do a bit of streetsweeping to get that last bubble. Spotted two yellow Warriors. Ran up to them, and before I even landed a blow on the first guy, the second guy said, "Farewell!" and legged it out of there. I didn't see where he ran off to, so after defeating the first guy I just moved on to another small group. I finished up that group, and when I looked around I saw that the runner had come back, and was standing there by himself. So I ran over, landed one punch ... and off he went again, making no attempt at all to fight back. Seeing that he ran into a fairly large group that I didn't feel like dealing with, I again moved on to a different small group. And again, the guy came back and stood in his original spot. So I tried one more time, and he ran off again. There were no -Recharge or -Endurance issues for him. He just preferred running over fighting.

Whoa, cool - that was one of my favorite swords, and I used it in a couple transmogs! Glad to hear the story behind it, because I always wondered about the name since it's not one I'd ever heard in the lore.

Yes! As I mentioned in another post elsewhere, when I get a Council streetsweeping mission in Steel Canyon, I want to ask the contact, "Why? Looks to me like the 5th Column has the situation well in hand!"

In ten+ years of playing WoW, I participated in a "current content" raid exactly once. It pretty much cemented raiding as something I just wasn't interested in. Aside from one boss where my job seemed to be to stand there and mindlessly flail at the thing for 20 minutes until it finally fell over, the other encounters featured what I came to call, "mechanics for the sake of mechanics". Stuff that made no sense whatsoever, other than being an arbitrary obstacle to overcome. Like this one boss in Naxxramas who hung out it a room with an exploding floor (Self: Why the hell would he even have that?), which was overcome by the physics-defying expedient of all 25 people in the raid group occupying the same physical space to stand in the one, tiny, "safe" spot on that floor. Or the giant stone golem boss in Ulduar who is, for some reason, guarding an impassable chasm, and whose body, once he's defeated, falls over and serves as a bridge that now allows you to cross the chasm.

Something WoW does better that I haven't seen mentioned: Sheer variety of enemy mobs. You can easily encounter twenty or more completely different things to kill within a single zone. And then 20 more in the next zone. Literally hundreds of different things to fight, all uniquely animated and with their own fighting styles.

Yeah, what's with those things? Are they programmed to always run around behind you?

Could be. In Steel Canyon, at least, I'm going to say "overwhelming blue light". I was just there on a character with a blue & yellow costume (the colors of the Ukrainian flag, as the character is Ukrainian) and the night lighting turned the yellow to a sort of brownish color, which is what you would expect at night. But it "enhanced" the blue parts of the costume into a rather lurid, glowing blue. In this case, the costume is just "tights", with a blue & yellow pattern, so no reflective metal pieces.