Mister Mass

I just ran that mission on my villain & I can assure that he said too much... 😉

Absolutely agree with the commentary above about how comic artists used other articles of clothing & the like to generate cape-like effects. To a lot of younger artists, the cape itself may have seemed passé, but the sense of movement, mood, or mystery that a cape could engender remained key elements in comic book art - so finding other means to achieve those ends were found. Raincoats, dusters, jackets, ponchos - all could be used to evoke the same qualities of a cape, but seem new & original. And I never wanted to imply that the classic cape ever died. In fact, in the 70’s, as new cape-clad heroes were a rarity, Batman artists were turning Batman’s cape practically into a character of its own. They kept exploring ways to use the cape to evoke mood & to imply that the Batman was both wrapped in darkness & using the darkness as a weapon in his war on crime. So even if we saw fewer cape-clad heroes in the Modern Age of Comics, we saw new designs that carried on the heritage of the cape - & many of the caped heroes found the cape even more imbedded in their whole style.

[The Golden Age Flash was capeless as well.] So by the time CoH launched, capes were hardly a ubiquitous part of the superhero genre. But due to the almost universal familiarity of players with Superman & Batman, who did wear capes, there was an expectation that the game should offer capes as an option. So despite the fact that animating capes was a hassle, the devs bowed to public pressure & added the capes (& the cape mission) to the game. And since earning a cape then became a badge of honor & character advancement, it got enshrined in the game as a goal, which perhaps has led to capes being more common in the game than they are in the modern comics themselves.

Right. It is worth noting that capes were never as ubiquitous in comics as most people think. When Superman appeared in 1938, his spandex & cape look was inspired by circus strongman costumes & by sci-fi strips like Buck Rogers & Flash Gordon. When the superhero genre exploded in the next few years, spandex & capes were common given that most supers were inspired by/ripoffs of Superman. But many popular supers were capeless - Namor, the Human Torch, Captain America, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, & the Shining Knight, for example - or got new costumes without a cape, like the Sandman & Sandy, the Golden Boy. DC, as the owners of Superman & Batman, who were cape-wearers, tended to stick to that paradigm. But the Silver Age Flash, Green Lantern, & Atom all lost their capes in their new incarnations. And as Marvel re-entered the supers game in the 60’s, few of their characters wore capes. Out of the original Avengers, only Thor & (briefly) the Wasp wore a cape. Spider-Man & the X-Men also usually were depicted capeless. By the 70’s it was increasingly rare to see a new costume design with a cape, as it was seen as something of a relic. The 80’s & 90’s followed suit even more strongly, as a new wave of artists looked to depict their characters in new ways.

I just want to note that I picked up all of these badges on Torchbearer in runs organized by @Spider - so I can vouch that her approach works. I also want to applaud her on the hard work & cheerfulness in pulling this off. That was a lot of cats to herd! 👍

For me, I mainly use the monitoring to see if I am being debuffed (or if I need to consider popping a yellow to hit a target), so: Max HP (when tanking Market Crash - that giant bot drains HP like a vampire!) Regeneration Rate (on anything tanky) Recovery Rate Endurance Consumption To Hit Bonus Last Hit Chance Damage Bonus (on SS or Brutes) Stealth Radius (PvE) - (on anything non-tanky) Recharge Time Bonus Defense (most relevant to the character) Resistance (most relevant to the character) Only being able to monitor 8 at a time makes for some tough choices. I will say that the combat monitor has made me appreciate just how many enemies debuff - particularly Regeneration Rate. It seems that if an enemy can debuff Regen at all, they can usually floor it.

My recollection was that a very vocal group of people on Test insisted that, despite being a wonderful (& almost unprecedented in MMOs) tool to allow for player-created content, almost nobody would use the AE unless the rewards were commensurate with the rest of the game. The devs, after their hard work in creating this amazing new thing, understandably bowed to this pressure, despite warnings about how the AE would be used, in order to introduce the playerbase to their new baby, not wanting it to be orphaned at birth.

Two ticks & a pair of lice? 🤔

By the way, in my head, those lines are: 'Til we quit, 'til we got married We should've known, we'd never get far. I don't know if my lines are correct or are mondegreens, but they make sense to me! 🙂 Edit - mine are mondegreens. "Jimmy quit, Jody got married" apparently are correct. This makes me sad. 😔

I had forgotten that in this thread for stalkers we speak in haiku.

Heh. I have definitely suffered from “paralysis by analysis” on a few builds, wanting more information before deciding on a path, when doing anything would be better than doing nothing - especially nowadays when INF & respecs are plentiful- but I hate to make a move before garnering enough information to ascertain what is the “best” choice. So I continue to play with a clearly suboptimal build, because I’m not sure which better build is the “best.” Smart! 🙄

They are real, & they are Spectacular!

Black Scorpion in the Ms. Liberty TF likes to get in your face & do the same. But I wish the Black Knights would go all John Cleese & threaten to “taunt you a second time, you dumb English kuh-nig-its!” 😛

Yes. You can access all of the goldside story arcs & morality missions via Ouroboros if you start redside or blueside. The only thing you can't access via Ouro is the goldside tutorial. The first zone's arcs are in the 10-14 level band on Ouro, with the middle zone's arcs in 15-19, & the final zone's arcs in 20-24. The final missions where you choose to go to Primal Earth may be in the level 50 grouping on Ouro.

Yes, I was including the tunnel ramps as stairways in my complaint. I have never NOT lost or had to wait on a follower on those ramps or on the stairways in Praetorian office/lab maps. The fact that more people aren't complaining about this is the only proof you need that nobody plays goldside. 😛

Praetorian stairs are apparently the most complicated thing NPCs have even experienced. Please fix the pathing on these!

Quoted for truth. I used to be one of those shy people reluctant to form a team, just waiting for someone else to do it. Now I am that someone else, & I almost always can get a group up to do the thing I want. The tools are there to form a group. Just use them, & they will come!

2 minutes! That’s awesome.

Or three off! It is worth repeating that random does mean uniform. It is highly likely that within a random string of results, there will be streaks or even what look like patterns. Those streaks & patterns won't persist across a whole random set, but any sample may contain one. We just have to be careful not to draw conclusions from a small sample size. But it is the nature of the human mind to look for patterns. When we see clouds that look like animals or an island that looks like the profile of George Bernard Shaw, that doesn't mean that that is in fact what they are - it is a testament to the ability of the human mind to notice similarities or patterns in things that may actually be the result of random chance. That is both our strength & weakness as humans.

Worth noting, you get the Iron Blade in the 2nd(?) mission of that last arc. ( I had 2 redsiders sideswitch to do that arc back to back Sunday in order unlock Katie, so that they could lead the WST for my coalition buddy’s alts which never unlock anything. 😛)

It's interesting to see everyone's different approaches here. Mine is idiosyncratic, evolving out of the way I played on Live. I joined the original game at Issue 4, the one year anniversary, & learned the game as a dirt poor noob working my way up the ladder, & never really having a wad of INF. Not having a "friendly 50" to throw cash my way, I got used to scrimping & scraping to afford DOs & SOs as I leveled my alts, each mostly earning his own way. Then I got invited to the Closed Beta of Lord of the Rings Online, & basically stopped playing CoX for about a year & a half, just logging into my characters often enough to pay the base rent. While in LotRO, I got used to using the crafting & Auction House systems. All of my characters had a different crafting specialization, so I could theoretically supply all of my alts with the crafted gear they desired as they leveled up. By collecting raw materials, crafting, & buying & selling on the AH, I made enough to keep all of alts well supplied. I finally returned to the game after the Devs had introduced Inventions & the Market, but before most of the playerbase had really begun to appreciate the opportunities those additions offered. Being a badger by nature, my main immediately set out to earn all of the crafting & marketeering badges. A lot of badgers were willing to lose a lot of INF on crafting & marketeering in order to earn the badges as fast as possible. But not being sitting on a small fortune myself, I set the goal to earn the badges while making money, even if that meant taking my time doing so. By the simple expedient of earning all of badges for crafting generic IOs of each level & then selling them on the AH, I began to make INF. I remember the satisfaction of earning the accolade that awards the workbench. Being able to craft right at Wentworth's (pre "/AH" command) was a huge QoL improvement. Within 10 weeks I had hit the 2 billion individual INF cap, simply by crafting selling generic IOs. Once there on my main, I had my next alt run the same process, continually handing off the crafting reins to the next alt in line. I think I had over a dozen that completed the process before NCSoft pulled the plug on the game. When I discovered Homecoming in May last year, I immediately began the process over with my main, Mister Mass. Starting out dirt poor, he slowly earned the crafting badges as he leveled, again feeling pride as he earned the workbench. The INF he earned was used to send as seed money to my alts - at first 1 million, then 10, then 100. At first my alts were expected to earn mostly their own way through selling drops on the AH. But once I began to see the value of attuned sets (which I had never used on Live, as they seemed indicative of a "Pay 2 Win" mentality) in making the leveling process more fun, my main began to buy more of those for my alts. And, as on Live, as my alts leveled, they serially took over the crafting/marketeering reins. At this point, I am on my 4th marketeer, who just crossed 1.7 billion, & my seed money level for a new alt is up to 300 million, so they can buy their own sets as they level up. I was amused by a conversation I had this weekend in Cimerora with another player who noticed my crafter's workbench out. He was surprised to notice that I had earned it the old fashioned way instead of just purchasing it. He noted that it was probably cheaper to just buy the workbench than to earn it (I agree - I think it costs each alt about 200 million to earn it given the losses you have to take on mez IOs of all levels & the high level IOs) but was pleased to find a kindred spirit in the game who does it old school. 😎

Exactly what I did as well. And I am signing your request for pads to Praetoria.

Basse Croupier offers missions in the 35-39 level range. You should be able to access him as a villain or a rogue in Ouro. He isn't an unlockable contact & you don't need a tip to access him either. The Skip Tracer badge mission is actually 2 missions, with the first being a hunt for 20 Freakshow.

I have had characters not be able to get the Bonefire Plot out of the appropriate contacts at the proper level range. But I have had no problems with getting the Clockwork Captive story arc going. I try to do all of the story arcs & badge missions while in the appropriate level band, & level lock until I do so. There are several reasons why you may have issues with this. The first is to make sure you did not outlevel the arc. For older content like these, locking at levels ending in 4 or 9 is usually correct. The second reason comes down to patience. Each contact has a dozen or so missions, including hunts, that it can randomly offer you. So if you are unlucky, you may have to play through most or almost all of their other missions before you get offered the first mission of the story arc. Contacts now are coded to offer you a choice of missions - with a hunt the top choice & a door mission the lower choice. Keep choosing the lower mission until you finally get the first mission of the story arc (which now helpfully has an open book icon & the name of the story arc) & you can finally get started. It is worth noting that once you start the arc, you don’t have to stay in the level band in order to continue it. You can continue to level & do more missions in the arc as you go, although the story arc mission levels will be capped by the story arc level band. But this can lead to the third reason that you can’t start a story arc - there is a cap to how many story arcs you can have open simultaneously. If you have reached that cap, the contact can’t offer the story arc to you until you complete one of your open story arcs. Note that only major story arcs suffer this limitation - mini-story arcs do not count against the limit & appear to have no limits at all. Zone arcs like in the Hollows or Striga are mini-arcs. The major story arcs are identifiable by the blue bookmark on their icon. So if you are still struggling to get your story arcs open, checking through your old contacts to see if they have open book icons with blue bookmarks & then completing those arcs may help.

Tanker Bruising (now gone) didn't stack as well. But most buffs & debuffs in CoX stack. That is really one of the defining differences between this game & most others - that & the fact that most buffs & debuffs aren't so miniscule as to almost not matter at all. And with stacking, even small buffs & debuffs can add up to something quite significant. This is City of Buffers/Debuffers - & I am happy to be in it! 😎