Carnifax

Found this nice post on the US boards explaining how to register your current version of CoH with Steam.

It also gives you the Steam Overlay which means you can chat to people, they'll see what game you're playing and it's got Voice Chat.

Us Board post detailing how to set it up

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Personally I find the boxed versions, with their fragile, scratchable DVDs and stupid losable Manuals with the Product Key on them to be more annoying than just logging onto Steam and saying "I want that. Come to me" and just letting it automatically download and install for me.


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That says more about how you store your retail boxes then how 'convinent' this is for the consumer.



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In general for most games to me as a consumer it's miles more convinient to be able to download the games and play them without worrying about having the correct DVD in or if I'm reinstalling worrying about a Max Number of Installations or where I left the Product Key.

I agree with you in CoXs case though. In the case of CoX the benefit is simply the attention and advertising it brings to an interested audience via the Steam platform since CoH does update itself anyway and doesn't need the Product Key to hand to reinstall or the DVD in to run.

By the way if any reviewers want a teamie along to see how a mish scales with more than one person I'm happy to volunteer during the evenings (generally after 9BST).

I'll start using the MA Channel to see if anyone would like an extra body in running review or proofing arcs (I'd obviously prefer published ones though for the shinies).

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And still they charge retail prices.

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Oh the sheer CHEEK of a retailer daring to charge the full retail price for a product! It shouldn't be allowed, you know! I demand that they instantly sell everything they have for a fair price that doesn't exceed 1p!

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I think you missed the point. I believe the issue was that a high-street retailer (for example) will sell you a box with a hard copy of the game and manuals and goodness knows what other stuff with it while, from a consumers point of view about all you get from steam is a code but for the same price.

This is not to say that I agree or disagree with the point personally.

*stays on comfortable fence*

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Personally I find the boxed versions, with their fragile, scratchable DVDs and stupid losable Manuals with the Product Key on them to be more annoying than just logging onto Steam and saying "I want that. Come to me" and just letting it automatically download and install for me.

Plus it saves me walking.

I'm a self-confessed Steam junkie though.

I think the Steam versions tend to come without horrible DRM rootkits and the like too in many cases which is also a plus (Steam is DRM too of course, but not intrusive / What-the-hell-are-you-doing-on-my-system DRM).

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Actually, the Extraction power is stronger when used on higher-ranking henchmen. You could, at later levels, send the Lich into a spawn and Detonate him, then raise a Wraith, possibly.

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Yep, that's a nice synergy between Necro and Traps.

Personally I look upon it as a plus if I get to Extract a Knight or Lich and tend to just use the Zombies for it in general. (or a particular zombie in my case, order him in Aggressively to take the alpha and die so I can extract him).

The higher ranked Ghosties have more HP and do more damage but other than that (and the apperance) they all have the same powers.

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The thing i don't get is whats actually wrong with farming/power leveling and why are some forms of the 2 more acceptable than others.

it seems that OK to farm Specific mobs for special badges.

it seems Ok to farm MA missions if your doing it for the badges

it seems ok to power your way through missions to lvl faster

but its not ok to do the same mission multiple times to get XP?

I personally don't see the difference in any of these.

A lot of people don't seem to like farming and so believe it should be band/removed why? whats it doing to harm you? is it stopping you from playing how you like to play? are the farmers forcing you to play a specific way?

In short i seems to be a case of
"I do not like it, So you should not do it"

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In my case it's not as simple as saying "All farming is bad".

However excessive farming & PLing to the point where when a new person joins the game in Atlas just to see reams and reams of "Farm farm farm" and can get from 1-20 in an hour or 2 without moving from the MA (thus missing out on the learning experience of teaming and doing normal missions) is so badly flawed that the game could be said to be plain broken.

Also at the moment the Risk/Reward trade-off is so hopeless broken towards Reward it's just not funny.

I'd love to see a valid argument as to why allowing a new person to join the game, ignore all the content the devs have crafted over the last 5 years and hit 50 in 8 hours mindlessly grinding (or more like mindless stand there while a Vet or two grind) the one mission Rikti spawnfest over and over can be seen as anyway good for the game?

Like I said if Vets / experienced people want to farm / PL then fair enough, within reason. Maps packed full of relatively harmless spawns of level 53 Rikti (my level 24 SOed Brute could withstand them for the most part, which is ridiculous for the XP they award) who are generally nothing more than bags of excessive XP/Tickets is not "within reason" IMO.

The title of this thread is "Too much farming", not "All farmers are the ebil and must be wiped out", that's my stand on it too.

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Even though i farm and i'll happily admit it, i have to say that it is just TOO easy as things are.


My friends and i wanted to see how fast a really poor team (by poor i mean using things to farm with that aren't usual) could farm. It turns out it's not much slower than a proper farm team.


We did 1-50 in just over 8 hours Piccy*


That's absolutely stupid. Lower the amount of mobs in a mission and also lower the amount of rescues you can have. Also fix the aggro cap, because herding 5 mobs is obviously a bug. Back to i3 ftl!


*I took the time behind the personal info as it would be harder to fake and thus being more trustworthy.

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I don't think toons that couldn't farm before being able to farm now is a bad thing at at least puts every one on a more equal footing.

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I strongly disagree with this. More of something in no way makes it better. Most of the time (and certainly in this instance) it makes it far, far worse.

Quite simply if most people can exploit a system to get from 1-50 in a few hours fairly easily then that system is broken. And given how the Devs have reacted before to things like the Family Map Farm hero-side there can only be one outcome...

Harpies? Bugger.

*goes back to drawing board*

I would say that in terms of how they looked they were probably more influences by Clash of the Titans (at least mine are) than true myth. (although the Wikipedia article, along with most Fantasy RPGs I've played over the tears seems to regard them as half bird & half woman)

Excellent reviews Col, honest and well written. I wish you'd stop linking to TVTropes though, I keep wandering off and getting distracted (TVTropes is like catnip to me).

Steam is a bit odd in terms of what it offers the Eu and UK.

For some reason the Witcher fell off it, which was annoying since I was going to buy it (again! Stupid fragile DVD) for cheap.

Good move though, and hopefully coming to the EU too.

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unless of course you are infering that Cryptic were fishing for content for their possible sequel while still working on this game

[/ QUOTE ]Of course they were, was there ever any question about that?

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Yeah, knew I should of added the sarcastic smiley face. Colour me surprised... not.

Still, the equivalent content mentioned to compete on enviroments is there waiting to be developed and implemented. If official Poll suggestion finalists aren't implemented then NCsoft can't really complain about what I fear may be an inevitable choice by an awful lot of the Veteran subscribers who have experienced all the content thus far.

You see, after this Summer 'Soon™' stops working.

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Actually chances are you'll be swapping Soon with Soon, if you see what I mean. (if not I'll spell it out. At the moment the grass seems greener on the other side but the chances are when you get there all there is is fresh dirt, some seedlings and the grass will be coming 'Soon')

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This month its Roasted Hedgehog and Mint.

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I prefer scalded baby and asparagus.

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Daaamn!, where were you two when Walkers were running their 'Pick us a Winner' competition.

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I'd never desert Tayto in support of foreign crisps *spits*





*wipes monitor*

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I don't recall anyone asking for a Roman zone

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No, but you aren't the author, it's not your story. It's up to the developers to decide what direction they want it to take.

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And Sparta... erm, Romans were so hot right about then. You gotta be on trend girlfriend (note to self. Stop watching Gok Wan with fiancee).

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*is dense* FOTM? Flavour of the month?

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Indeed.

This month its Roasted Hedgehog and Mint.

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That's 30 "definite" powersets then?

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If I was going to put money on it, I'd say if they are planning to better the costume creator then I very much doubt they will shy away from bettering the powers on offer.
On release anyway I'll be very surprised if they don't at least equal the power choices of their competitor, of course you can't call them power-sets per say as powers are assigned on a player-designed flexible custom framework instead of enforced sets that you subscribe to.

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Given how badly Cryptic messed up some powersets in CoH initially this is going to be fun... Unless you happen to be a Cryptic programmer trying to figure out a way to stop 1000s of powergamers do foul things to your game.

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Never under estimate the power of the laminated book of dreams

Yes it does run COH....at max graphics.

It also runs very VERY cool...

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Bonus points for the quote!

Acer would be my recommendation for good value for money laptops too. Almost bought one 2 years ago but was won over by a Sony Vaio on special offer instead (Vaios are so pretty).

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Technically, old hami wasn't designed for 100+.

But current hami is designed for 50, and their are comonly that many on mothership raids, and 50 players with 3 capes each would cause the same performance hit as 150 players with one cape each, which is more than the old hami raids.

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You can't say 1 model with 3 flappy bits (steady) is definately as lag-inducing as 3 models with 1. You're ignoring any other factors (like Auras, certain weapon models, just plain rendering 3 models instead of 1 and the like).

Do Taunt enhancements boost the Mag or the Duration of the Taunt? I'm just not sure how it works. Taunt, Brute attacks and Damage auras all do mag 4 taunt (Taunts lasts longer) but Taunt is the only one which isn't also doing damage. So I dunno if that means Damage Auras and AOE attacks are better because Damage Caused is also used in some way to determine who gets aggro.

I you're right though, the fact it's a ranged AOE is great and means I can pop it before anyone else and force the alpha onto me as well as making the enemies close in.

Quick question. Will Taunt out-aggro things like a Brutes one-target punchvoke and Damage Auras?

Was on a PvE team yesterday of lots of Brutes (and a Dom) and found it quite hard to build fury simply because the combo of a lack of AOE and a poor aggro aura meant I wasn't really getting attacked too much. Was wondering if Taunt would help with that as well as encouraging enemies to close in to me to boost my regen.

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It was truly amazing before hand, pure awesome

Oh and I took the bodymastery epic because ET lets me knock foes down neatly and then stand in the middle of them before they stand up. I also run focused acc, I hate when Followup misses so I try to keep it at a minimum. Infact followup is the only power I have set IOs in its the core of my chain and all else revolves around keeping it active

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That's the one thing I really don't like about Scrappers. The Epics are truely, truely awful. They're so unexciting. Even the Mastermind ones are more exciting. I'll probably pick up Focused Accuracy because it's just a One-Choice option and spend the rest of the 40s completing the Fighting pool.

How come when Castle was fixing the rest of the pools the Scrapper ones didn't get any love? As far as I can see all he added was Targetting Drone, which looks to me like a copy of Focused Accuracy. Eh?

Compared to what he added to the Controller ones which were all excellent (almost too good).

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I love this game and want to see what it is capable of, but I must admit, CO is looking shiny, and frankly, I dont believe the "great things to come" rubbish any more, though if they want to prove me wrong and actually TELL us what is coming, I will eat my hat.

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Quoted for truth

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I'll top that by saying I'll eat my socks after I've ran a marathon in them...

...without condiments

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Come on Devs. You've got the chance now to make someone eat their own sweat-encrusted socks, without needing to resort to kidnap and actual bodily harm. When will you have another chance at this?

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The only way to do it is to get a redname (Avatea would be your best bet, but remember that she's busy) to update outside the 6 hour edit window.

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Av is off on hols so Ghostraptor would be a better choice. He's posted a fair bit today too so he's around.

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One question: Why don't you just change it from "Auto-SK" to "This level range ONLY" ?

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Presume that that's because of the standard mobs level ranges and allowing level jumping for access to those groups for storytelling purposes. If that is the case then, used as intended, it's a good feature.

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I'm not so sure. I think the system should figure out a "minimum access level" for your arc based on the missions and use that as the minimum level, but allow normal SKing to be used.

I remember a suggestion a year or so back saying people should be able to SK more than one person and it was shot down in flames (rightly so) only for the devs to introduce an even more lax version of it now with the MA.

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Too much farming hang on how many of you have played mmorpgs since they were releashed . I know i have and Farming has been around since the start moaning about it is not going to stop it happening .We/they find a way and to be honest i hate doing something over and over .But thats the way these games are to get anything you want or need , for your characters you are going to have to farm yourself .Otherwise you wont obtain anything

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Obtain what? Shiny purples? And then what? Phat Lewt? And then what? For chrissakes if the attitude of 'I need to be on God Mode 24/7 - or else I can't play the game' is the real reason for farming then go play 'Barbie Race and Ride'. I hear there isn't the faintest possibility of failing that game...

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My dear your getting very tetchy as the years progress how about improving the rarely used powersets which i use to make them better and yes they do need purples .
Though that statement was for ALL MMORPG's and it remains true to this date

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What powersets need purples to be effective exactly?

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when I see a granite tank

[/ QUOTE ]Fixed that for you.

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You implying all granite tanks are from PL/farming?

[/ QUOTE ]No, I'm implying they're useless compared to other tanks in the majority of the game.

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That's nice dear but it's not really what the person who brought it up was talking about. They were saying that Farming/PL affects them whenever they come across a PLed character with no idea how to play (like the level 30-something Grav/TA I came across before who admitted he'd been PLed and hadn't taken any of his Trick Arrows powers other than Net Arrow "because they don't do any damage").

[/ QUOTE ]And I was implying people who knew how to play wouldn't roll granite tanks.

I was also making a joke, but I guess I should have known better than to do that without one of these:

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One of what? I've got images switched off along with my sense of humour.

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when I see a granite tank

[/ QUOTE ]Fixed that for you.

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You implying all granite tanks are from PL/farming?

[/ QUOTE ]No, I'm implying they're useless compared to other tanks in the majority of the game.

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That's nice dear but it's not really what the person who brought it up was talking about. They were saying that Farming/PL affects them whenever they come across a PLed character with no idea how to play (like the level 30-something Grav/TA I came across before who admitted he'd been PLed and hadn't taken any of his Trick Arrows powers other than Net Arrow "because they don't do any damage").

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o.o

Heh i never used it for -To hit.

So why Spectral Terror still has it? It is also an auto hit power not like Terrify. Meh! Sometimes i think devs barely use their brains on some situations.

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Because Spectral doesn't do any damage I guess. I don't think it's auto-hit either, the aura is like Cloak of Fear. The Single Target Fear needs to hit but has bags of accuracy built in.

You leave it alone you. Don't be giving the Devs ideas to change Lil Screamy. I loves him (her?) just the way heshe is.