RikOz

Playing at low volume, I've discovered that Static Field's sfx produces this annoying, irregular ticky scritchy sound just on the edge of my hearing. It's also stereo, so it creates the effect of random insects skittering around nearby.

My all-time favorite bit of NPC chatter came from a random Outcast in The Hollows, explaining things to one of his fellows: " No, I didn't call you stupid. I said your comment was an oxymoron. It's a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are put together. Am I the only one who reads the books we swipe around here?"

Sunset in Kings Row - this is currently my desktop wallpaper: And this similar shot from Independence Port is my lock screen background: Gotta say, though, that most of my "cityscape" shots would be greatly improved by the absence of those glaring war walls. Looking at them together, I'll add that having the AE building in both shots was not deliberate.

A Phil Collins pun would never have crossed my mind.

I'm running into an unusual problem every now and then with CoX screenshots that I take using the in-game screenshot function (as opposed to a 3rd-party solution). I open the image in Windows 10's "Photos" app, crop it to a reasonable size for sharing, and go to save it, except this error pops up: Wut? So I look at the properties of the image file in question (this is after moving it from my SSD to my HDD, which is why the path isn't showing \CoH\Screenshots): Notice the "Security" information at the bottom. Another computer? It most certainly did not. Also, checking that "Unblock" box does absolutely nothing. The oddest part is that this does not happen with every screenshot. It's just random, every now and then, and I have no idea what's causing it. EDIT: I'll also note that the only thing about it that actually seems to be "blocked" is re-saving the file after editing it. I can open and view it just fine. I can also upload it to my Google Photos account and then re-download it from there, and everything is fine.

Yeah, I've just noticed on newer alts that those origin attacks often do more damage than either of my first two attack powers. Kinda discovered this on a level 2 toon with slow-recharging powers. Fighting 2 mobs, used powers on first mob, and then Mutagen + Brawl on the second, who went down just as fast.

The visual effect of my Stone Melee brute's "Fault" power is frequently drawing in midair, instead of on the ground where it belongs. I don't know if it's specifically related, but this wasn't happening until the first mission after I trained up to level 17. I added a slot to the Fault power, and slotted it with a Knockback DO. It was previously slotted with an Accuracy and a Stun.

Since I was a WoW player for years (except for these times when I realize I'd rather play CoH), today I was inspired to roll a WoW "tribute" character. Well, sorta. May I present, "Epic Gear" (f10 battle cry: "FILTHY CASUAL!"):

Unfortunately happened to me while stealthed in a cave. Recharged too close to a big crowd of Tsoo, ended up frantically trying to hop away...

Last night I heard some villain chatter that I had totally never heard before. I was collecting exploration badges and history plaques in Atlas Park, and there were a couple Hellions sitting on the wall right next to one of these plaques. I assumed they would ignore me since my character was around level 15 or so, but no. As I approached, one of these Hellions told my character: "That dress makes you look heavy!" It was particularly amusing because this character's backstory specifically mentions that she is a former Miss California, a fact of which she apprised this thug before fireballing him. But yeah, my character got fat-shamed by a Hellion.

Yah, I had noticed that I can be standing right on the sub, hitting it with melee attacks, and some attacks will keep saying "Out of range".

I was rather surprised while doing a Safeguard not long ago. I was fighting the Lost vandals who were busy slaughtering parking meters and trash cans, when a panicked civilian ran right past ... and one of the Lost pulled out his shotgun and blew him away. Like, whoa, did that just happen? I mean, the civilians are usually completely ignored.

Perhaps simply add an "out of character" comment to the bottom of the Twinshot popup, indicating that her missions will teach game mechanics. This would be similar to the way some missions have differently-colored text after the actual mission text saying things like "This mission is more difficult than normal - you might want to bring some friends."

Thanks - I double-checked at that link and read Positron's dialogue, and I definitely did not talk to him during the arc. I'm curious what will happen when I get a Technology character leveled high enough to do the arc.

I ran my main through Percy Winkley's "Origin of Power" story arc. The arc purports to be explaining all of the modern origins, but I realized after it was finished that it never covered Technology. Percy sent me to speak with War Witch (Magic), Synapse (Science) Penelope Yin (Mutation) and Manticore (Natural), and then handed me the "finale" mission to stop the Circle of Thorns from doing something-something. I brought this up in the Help channel, and the person I talked to was redside and said that the redside version of the arc does include a Tech contact. So now I'm wondering if my run-through on blueside was glitched (which would be odd, because the arc progressed to the finale with no apparent hiccups), or if the omission of Technology was simply an oversight on the part of the original devs.

Huh, must be a recent change. I originally made the character back on live and it wouldn't let me. I'll assume the filters would still stop me from using "Nazi" - back on live I made a character that I ended up calling "Grammar 5th Columnist". He was a joke character who did nothing but sit in chat, correcting people's grammar. It amused me for ten minutes 😛

As I understand it, that was actually one of the main selling points of original WoW - "More quests! Less grinding!"

WoW stops showing the yellow "!" over questgiver's heads once you are too high-level to get any XP from them (though a few years ago they added an option to "Show low-level quests" to make things easier for completionists*), but you could still talk to the questgivers and get the quests anyway. If you're RPing (it is an RPG after all, even if you're not actively and formally roleplaying), that makes sense because, while your character may be too "high level" for the quests, those threats are still threats to the locals. Contacts in this game telling you, "Oh, my missions aren't worth your time" basically encourages the exact problem Aaron Thiery was describing in his story arc - heroes becoming complacent. * A few years back WoW also added a special weapon for completionists: The Foam Sword. It does exactly one thing: "Mortallly wound trivial monsters". If you use it on a mob that is far below your own level, it reduces the mob to 1 hit point. The reason (which I discovered for myself many years ago when I was trying to earn the "Loremaster" achievement for completing every quest, and was trying to complete low-level quests at level 80), is that there are a good number of quests that require you to wound/weaken enemies and then use a magic item on them. Unfortunately, at a certain level discrepancy, you're going to kill every mob with one hit, even if you strip your character of all gear and just punch them. One-shotting the mobs made these quests impossible to complete. The Foam Sword solved that problem.

That's actually one of her more modest outfits. That's my character "Triple-N", a name I chose because the filters wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja" 😄 That actually occurred to me - I hypothesized that they were some sort of triggers for events, and weren't actually supposed to be visible. But the lighting artifact explanation makes sense. Thanks!

Ouro, heh. One problem I found with that is the limiting to level-appropriate powers while I'm leveled down. Due to rearranging things as I've learned more powers, some of those powers gained at lower levels are now scattered across three power bars, or even removed completely if I found them to be no longer useful (like my fire/fire blaster's Ring of Fire immob, which never ever worked when I needed it to). It results in awkward gameplay when the available powers aren't grouped neatly under my fingers, and I have to click some of them because they're on different bars now. I mean, doable, but annoying.

Not to mention that I've recreated several of my characters from live, and the new versions of some of them are higher level than I ever got them on live. We'd need the ability to pick and choose which specific characters to resurrect so that a lower-level old character doesn't overwrite their higher-level new version, and I'm guessing that would be a whole lot of work for somebody.

Er, yes, I mentioned that in the OP. These aren't abandoned warehouses - webs that stretch across corridors don't survive constant traffic.

I am, by choice, mostly a solo player, so availability of teams doesn't factor into my faction choices. I just ... genuinely prefer to play a hero. I'll agree that the writing and storytelling on redside is really good. Alas, it doesn't offset what I see as downsides. As others have pointed out, playing a "villain" doesn't really feel "villainous". Aside from a handful of missions attacking Longbow, you spend most of your time beating up other criminals. That doesn't feel like being the most villainous, that just feels like being a bully. Most well-written villains in comics (and other media) aren't just evil for the sake of being evil, they have a genuine, worthwhile (if only in their own mind) end goal. As it is, our villains have no goal beyond becoming the most villainous villain. We don't even have the option of a goal as simple as "getting rich", because even the missions that are framed as robbing a bank or stealing a bunch of stuff don't actually result in a "haul". We just get the same Inf and salvage drops we'd get from any other mission. To "get rich" we have to play the AH market the same way the heroes do. The environment also annoys me. After a while, "dark and gritty" just gets tiresome. I had a related problem with playing Horde in WoW, because while the writing was great, the environment was "all orcs, all the time" regardless of what race you actually played. This was really driven home for me during the Warlords of Draenor expansion, where we went back to the orc homeworld and saw that orcs are perfectly capable of impressive architecture, but our Horde orc aesthetic seemed to call for nothing but round, red-roofed hut after round, red-roofed hut. The actually impressive orc architecture on Azeroth, meanwhile, was all actually designed by a freaking goblin.

I was really curious about these way back during live, and I'm still curious now. I see these in the warehouse maps, looking like strands of spider silk. At first I thought they were just unintentionally-visible seams in the textures, but then I realized that something like that would be more of a straight line. Then there's the fact that these things are floating a couple feet above the floor.

For most of my female characters, I shorten the legs to the minimum, hips to minimum, and waist to or near maximum, then increase the Physique slider to bring their butts back up to where I like them. I mostly do this because it does a satisfactory job of mostly eliminating the monstrous bowlegged thigh-gapped run animation that comes with the standard settings, but I also like the aesthetic results.