Father Xmas

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I'd be interested to know how you guys justify investing all the time required in revamping a Hero zone (which they have PLENTY of) vs making a NEW zone for Villains, new trials for villains, and new SFs for villains.

Sure, villains get a (much delayed) EAT with some story arcs, but, come on, at least revamp Lagville, give us something closer to a true hazard zone, and more team content before you screw around with the Hollows. Last time I checked there were PLENTY of players in that zone. It's not like it doesn't get used in its current incarnation.

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You guys live on a series of islands. Unless one suddenly springs up out of the ocean you are SOL.

As for a "true" hazard zone, CoV's zones were designed to include areas with hazard zone sized mobs along with standard solo player sized mobs. Part of the whole social Darwinism (and zone streamlining) of CoV. In CoH they go out of their way to protect low level heroes from getting too far over their head and get boo-boos.

My experiences come from patrolling the Hollows with my tank since his 30s, watching players play and jumping in to heal (or rez if I'm too late) as well as escorting them out of the pit if they fall in. Got the first healing badge this way.

New players simply don't learn the limits of their characters, knowing when to run away when the odds get overwhelming. Learning to take the 15 odd seconds to rest to full before jumping into the next large mob. Keep fighting when with 0 endurance.

As for aggro, well aggroing +2 or +3 mobs in Atlas may result in a good chunk of your health disappearing but doing that in the Hollows will result in a not so quick trip to the Hospital. Adding a MASH unit in the Hollows will simply remove the negative reenforcement of learning what not to do.

I liked the Hollows when it first came out. Self-contained zone with contacts, no running across multiple zones and back to do a mission. A challenge in getting around (great for learning aggro distances and using cover). The Ice slide. The first time Igneous pop up out of the ground as you run pass. Learning the importance of retreat to avoid needing to rez in Atlas. Learning to PUG.

What annoyed me most with the Hollows were missions that sent you there, usually into the hills in the southeast corner, from other low level zones. Getting the Jewel of Hera mission spawning in the level 6 area of Galaxy near the PP gate is one thing, getting it in the level 12-15 area of the Hollows at level 7 is quite another. Also at the time it came out, debt started at level 5, the same time you first get sent to the Hollows were all the large mobs were +2s right near the Atlas gate. Oh, the pain, the pain.

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* Eight configurable new power trays let players customize their User Interface by placing them anywhere on the screen.

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Great for all who have large monitors/high resolution.

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* Contact display redesign: Contacts are now listed separately as Active and Inactive, and players can sort contacts by a range of criteria including Name, Zone, and Level Range.

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Yea, no more excessive scrolling, no more seeing old contacts with partial filled bars.

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* Inspiration Conversion: Right click an inspiration to convert three of that kind into any one inspiration of another kind.

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As others have said, Horadric Cube. Wonder if it'll work if face planted to make a wakie? I also first thought, because of the obvious comparison to a Horadric Cube, of making higher tier inspirations from multiple low level ones. Well if it allows me to get rid of all those blue ones off of my regen scrapper who has both quick recovery and stamina 3 sloted with lvl 30 IOs and turn them into something useful then great. Some reason I swear the game will drop inspirations you never use more often, of course this is only an perception problem.

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* Level Up Boost: Upon reaching enough XP to level up (at all levels), one of each type of large inspiration is immediately cast upon your character, and health and endurance bars are immediately filled.

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Ding! All right, charge! (temp scrapper lock/rage for everyone).

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* Chat improvements: Right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.

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OK, not sure about the whole "drag any item" bit? Preview recipes before trading? Can that be done already in the trade window? Well I guess if you aren't standing next to one another it could be useful. Next useful step would be trading via Mail.

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* More Real Numbers: Players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.

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Yea, choke our dial-up bandwidth even more would ya! The power stats while choosing is a nice QoL fix.

Well considering it was the west coast, I would assume a problem with their router or ISP.

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2- Suggestion
Stating the obvious: Freedom needs an upgrade. It's by far the most populated server, so that server needs to be bigger to allow for it to never EVER be greyed out.
Virtue could also use this.

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As others have pointed out already, for maintenance/sanity sake every game server except maybe test is configured identically. There is probably one additional backup server at each of the three (don't forget Europe) data centers encase of a catastrophic failure of one. There are also most likely separate servers to handle global chat and the market in addition to the account server that validates that the account is active and where billing is done. These last three are most likely located in their main data center.

Now for the question I have.

Do players play on Virtue and Freedom because of the large population/load that the dots represent or do people play on them because of the unofficial reputation as the RP and PvP servers?

Are the other servers shunned because of their reputations?

Have bad PUG experiences discouraged casual players from teaming extensively?

Has the looking for team flags become become a counter indicator? Do team leaders avoid these players because if the player was any good they wouldn't need to advertise?

Has the nonofficial increase in hardware requirements made 8 man teaming something to avoid for players who had superior hardware when either CoH or CoV launched but is now noticeably sub par?

The reasons behind these questions is that the usual excuse I hear about "dead servers" is the lack of players to team with and that is why characters are rolled up on the servers at the bottom of the server list. More dots = more players = more large teams.

So are players who prefer to simply grind for XP naturally gravitate to the most populated servers to play on reinforcing the large population gets even larger.

I was chatting with a friend over the weekend and while chatting in KR on Virtue he was complaining that even with the "Looking to team/Anything" flag up he couldn't get a team. Not even with the SG he belonged to, he was lvl 16 at the time. On the other hand I had to keep swatting team invites away and I was lvl 11. We were both the same AT and powersets (Scrapper DB/WP).

So what can be done to attract more players to the other servers? Would officially classifying servers as PvP/RP/Casual like that other game balance them any better? Would an inverse teams that are looking for teammates search help players looking for teams but are hesitant in organizing them?

Just asking for ideas on how to deal with the obvious server population imbalance.

Edit: Oh and my friends and I roll new characters for 2xXP weekends because it allows us to skip the story arcs we've played time and time again and allows us to get a new AT/PowerSet combination to levels where they became "more fun" to play than taking one of the few low 30s we have and push to 40, missing out on story arcs we had yet to play even once and due to the time commitment less likely to encounter again (flashback helps this a bit).

We've been playing for over 3 years and I have the only 50.

You already have two of gibbain's videos listed, Dance Gun and Daydream but here are two more good ones.

My Tiki God - Another music video

and

Gift of the M.A.G.I. - A funny short, silient movie.

And here is his entire collection.

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This was an oldie made around Issue 2 by Desolate Joker.

Bring Me to Life

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WO.... oh wait, can't use the W word....

INCREDIBLE!!! I don't suppose there's a link to the "real" video anywhere?

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OK, I parked (uploaded) the wmv version up at Driveway. It's an indirect link, basically a page with google ads and a button to download the file. I downloaded it originally back in December of 2004.

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INCREDIBLE!!! I don't suppose there's a link to the "real" video anywhere?

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I found a link to where it was and strangely that site now redirects you to LotR Online main page.

I have a copy but it will take me sometime to get somewhere that I can upload it to a hosting site, it's a 44MB wmv file, one that won't auto-convert it to flash. And when I say get somewhere, well I'm on dial-up so I'll have to burn it to disk and bring it to somewhere with broadband.

This was an oldie made around Issue 2 by Desolate Joker.

Bring Me to Life

Hello, I'm The Doctor.

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I don't have a problem to begin with, but I am asking about, " Or is it that you get only 3 extra slots with each of your last two power choices giving you 8 slots to spread across two powers, maxing out your last power with only 4 slots?"

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Sorry, I should have said suggestion and not problem. And part of your original post could be as a suggestion.

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At this point what would be the point of re-posting it there to be "ripped apart" as you have pointed out. A thicker skin, perhaps, but what's the point of having a forum if a person can't ask a question. I did search for the questions I have asked on here under the search option using and not using quotes with the specific verbiage and it lead me to no where. Obviously I stuck my neck out doing this and well thanks for handing me my head back. I'm not in the habit of posting something to be "shame on you'd" in reply. Lesson learned.

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Well it would have a better shot at getting noticed by Devs than here. This is Player Questions in the Player Help section of the forum. The description for this board reads "Got a Question? Get an answer! Players helping players find information related to CoH/CoV." Devs rarely if ever show up here since this section is player helping player.

You weren't looking for help from a fellow player. You were either looking for an explanation to why you can't six slot your last power selection or suggesting that you get more than 3 slots when you level to 50 so you can six slot your last power. Then you asked why there's a level cap at 50. Then why can't you get more server slots. All of these are questions directed more to the developers than players. When long time players who cruise these boards looking to help fellow players with legitimate questions and problems responded, your response was less of a "thank you" and more of a "you are an idiot, I'm right, your wrong, my friends agree, the customer is always right, etc." You came off like someone who posts on WoW boards.

Now I've tried to explain why your last two powers only have 6 additional slots to spread between them, a necessary evil due to they way they structured leveling for the last 10 levels. Now a similar leveling chart to the one I linked to is in the manuals of both CoH and CoV so it's not a surprise when you get there. I intentionally planned and took powers at level 47 and 49 that I knew I didn't need to fully slot, either one or both, on my 50. And now with level 50 IOs you can get close to the ED softcap with 2 slots and not 3. Also set IOs with their multi aspect enhancements, you can usually get the benefits of one additional slot for "free" (4/5/6 slots worth of normal enhancements in only 3/4/5 actual slots). It was a lot less friendly in the "old" pre IO days.

I've also touched on the number of character slots per server is as good or better than many other MMOs as well as the problems with bumping the level cap.

I think part of the initial problem was expressing what your complaint/problem was and it made you sound like someone complaining they can't make their character awesome and UBER. And those of us who read every post in this forum everyday, because we want to help those who want to play the game we enjoy so much, hate seeing rhetorical questions that are really complaints seeking support cluttering up this board. If you had started your post in a separate thread, we could have had it simply moved to a better location.

Good luck. See you around.

Well first of all Kellis is right, this should be reposted in the Suggestion board further down, where it will be ripped apart quicker than the public feeding of live animals to lions at Chinese zoos. So wear a thicker skin than you've shown here with AnotherDeadHero, they are less polite down there.

So is your problem is that from the time you have access to ancillary/patron powers at level 40, that with your last four power choices, you only get 18 extra slots to spread across them? Or is it that you get only 3 extra slots with each of your last two power choices giving you 8 slots to spread across two powers, maxing out your last power with only 4 slots?

Well lets look at the leveling chart shall we.

Once you got to level 32 the progression becomes power, 3 slots, 3 slots. Which works out well when the cap was level 40 (they always intended to go to 50 but as I pointed out in my last post, that's a lot of mission content to write so both CoH and CoV was first shipped with level a 40 cap with level 50 content promised in the next issue). If you kept this progression then your last power choice would be at level 50 with no chance to add additional slots so they swapped what you got at level 49 and 50 so you now you did get the option. Imperfect? Yes, but a better choice than last power at 50 with no additional slots possible.

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OK, here's my question, why dont' we get the rest of our enhancement slots for our characters once they reach lvl 50? I have space for most of my powers that I could put slots into, but I don't have any way of getting the slots for the powers. I think this is wrong, it took me 6 months to get my character to lvl 50 without power leveling and had to bust my butt to get here only to be limited.

What is the reason for capping our character lvl to 50 any way? I know there are other games that allow a character to go beyond that, so why does CoX not?

Another question I have is why can't we have more character slots on the server? If not for free than why can't we buy more character slots the way players can on Guild Wars?

As much as I love CoX these questions have been brought up by many people over and over again and I have not really seen any reply from the devs in regards to doing something about it. Unless I missed it in which case someone can point me in the right direction.

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I was going to treat you to the Bloody Vikings choir rendition of "Troll, Troll, Troll, Troll" but let me answer you question.

CoH/CoV is a game that provides a great deal of customization of your character. Not only we are treated to a wide variety of costume options and body adjustments we are also presented with a choice of multiple archetypes, each with multiple powersets, each with more powers available than we are allowed to take. Then add in the total number of slots we can add to our selected powers, which is less than half than we could use. This is to provide us, the players, a chance to truly create a unique looking character with unique powers. Decisions, decisions.

The available choices are simply mind boggling. Now if we simply allow a level 50 to be able to put six slots into every one of their powers, that will end up reducing their uniqueness. Heroes and villains in comic books do not rise to that level of uberness, at least not for long. Why should our characters be any different?

As for the level 50 cap. The line needs to be drawn somewhere. Right now, after level 38, you need to "arrest" or "off" about 3000 even level minions per level, soloing. That's a lot of missions. Missions that will have to be written by someone. 10 levels worth of missions assuming you bump the cap to 60. Then there are all the enhancements that may have to be replaced as you level beyond 50. These were meant to the the best that one could get, large amounts of influence was spent outfitting these or time spent fighting Hamidon. All for nothing once the cap is bumped up. In WoW when they bumped up the cap, equipment that people spent weeks and months raiding to get were suddenly outclassed by the first drops in the new areas. What was the point then?

You made a point later about having more than 6 different types of enhancements that could be fitted into a single power. Again this is part of the customize uniqueness of your character over the next. You could equip all six slots with the same enhancement or mix a few. You may want to improve your attack's secondary effect or you may just want damage. You could improve your accuracy or increase your attack rate. You decide but you can't have everything. If you could then everyone would as well and the uniqueness once again vanishes.

As for the 8 or 12 character slots per server. WoW only has 10 per server. Everquest 2 has 4 or 8 character in total across all servers depending how much you are willing to pay every month. Lord of the Rings Online has only 5 per server, fewer slots than classes. Eve Online has only 3 all together. I think we're pretty well off in this compared to most. Our character transfer/rename costs are a lot less as well.

It sounds as if you either don't want to be forced into making decisions or fear making the wrong ones. If you are looking for a good PvP build or team build or solo build, check out the PvP and Player/AT guides for build ideas. By the time you are level 20, you have defeated less than 1/10th of the enemies you need to defeat to get to 50. If a concept isn't working then create a new one. If you need to adjust it a bit, do a respec trial at level 24 and rechoose the powers and slotting.

The strength of this game is the shear number of variations players can come up with. However if you rather be railroaded into a limited number of choices, then this game may not be for you.

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Smoothing the XP Curve
One thing that we constantly examine is the rate of advancement in the game. In a future version, we intend to smooth out the leveling curve by changing how much experience is given out for defeating opponents. The intent is to smooth out the “bumps” where players typically get stuck leveling up their characters. Keep an eye on coming patch notes for specifics.

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A few weeks back I quickly put together a spreadsheet using the XP leveling and even minion XP numbers up at ParagonWiki to answer the question about what is the half-way point in this game.

Yes I know it doesn't take into account mission bonuses, cranking up your difficulty as you get higher level, etc. but it was meant simply give an idea.

This shows what level you are when you arrested the listed % of even level minions.

% Total Minions - Level
5% - Level 16
10% - Level 21
15% - Level 25
20% - Level 28
25% - Level 30
30% - Level 32
35% - Level 34
40% - Level 36
45% - Level 37
50% - Level 38
55% - Level 39
60% - Level 40
65% - Level 42
70% - Level 43
75% - Level 44
80% - Level 45
85% - Level 46
90% - Level 47
95% - Level 48
100% - Level 50

It may look like irregularities but it's caused by it being slightly less than 2 levels worth of XP is equal to 5% of the total minions. That's why sometimes it's 2 levels, sometimes 1.

The reason for the feeling that leveling drops to a crawl is because we level so fast in the beginning, which is good, it lets us get a reasonable feel for the AT and powersets. 21 levels with the first 10%, 7 levels with the next 10% and then 2-4 levels for every 10% after that.

There are two entrances, one on each side of the dam (north side/south side).

This map shows the underground tunnels in the southwest corner of the north side of the dam.

The one on the north side of the dam is easily overlooked. It's at ground level (before Faultline's collapse) near the corner of the retaining wall canyon leading to the dam. There is a dead tree trunk sticking out of the ground near it. You need to be facing west to see the tunnel entrance.

The one on the south side of the dam is in the Arachnos complex just ESE of the longbow base (where you exit after talking to Agent G). It is in the NE corner of the sunken part of the Arachnos base, you need to be facing north to see the tunnel entrance.

Favorite thread is the only one I can figure out and that is by clicking on the "Favorite Topic!" link at the bottom of the page before the moderator list.

Test normally takes 24 hours to propagate account reactivations over to it. Not sure about weekends however.

Pull down your contact list, it will list all your contacts. Visit them. If you are too high in level they will point you to another contact (unless they already did). Continue until you have visited them all (start at the bottom of the list and work your way up, new contacts are stuck at the top of the contact list).

You can have up to 3 missions pending, each from a different contact.

Visiting a zone's police detective contact (note you only have to do this for one detective) will give you the Police Scanner contact where you can select relatively quick missions to do. The first is available in Kings Row, Atlas and Galaxy don't have detectives, neither do hazard zones. Doing them in the same zone will fill up that zone's detective's contact bar and when it is full, if you visit him he will give you a safeguard mission to do which is preventing a bank robbery and protect part of the zone from vandalizing mobs. If you prevent the bank from being robbed you will get a nifty temp power (the first time you complete it, no restocking the temp powers). There are safeguard missions in each zone with a detective.

Safeguard missions are a little tricky. You have at most 5 minutes after arriving in the mission to get to the bank before it's robbed. If you can't stop them mobs in the bank from escaping to a getaway vehicle in another part of the zone, you fail. If you do stop them you will get a 15 minute timer to patrol the part of the zone the mission takes place in stopping other crime, some that will give you more time. A warning, completing the bank robbery will put the exit mission button up in the nav bar. Sadly it's a condition response to click on it, causing you to lose out of plenty of XP and chances for other temp powers depending on the side missions generated.

Also the majority of players seem to select Atlas as their starting point and not Galaxy. I choose Galaxy myself due to the closeness of the hospital, trainer and tram. But Atlas has the gate to the Hollows and Wentworths. All low level characters have to go to the Hollows at least once and talk to the first contact there, note YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO HIS MISSIONS.

Sorry but a number of new players get "trapped" in the Hollows, playing there until they are in their teens and upon leaving have no idea what to do next. Even alternating missions in the Hollows with the rest of the city will give a player both the Hollows "experience" but maintain their contact tree.

Also remember that a fair percentage of players are in missions so you may not see a large number wandering the streets except around, the hospital, the trainer, the tram.

That's Shego making fun about embedded video solutions and reasonable gameplay and NOT BEING HELPFUL SHEGO.

A number of people have that problem, the psuedo B+W, vertical interleaved look on the select a character/create a costume screens. It may have to do with either trying to run the game on a widescreen monitor in Vista for the first time and/or problems with Depth of Field and Bloom settings in Vista. The problem is we, those who try to help out solving these problems in our spare time (we don't work for NCSoft or Cryptic, just players helping players here), don't ever hear back from people if our suggestions fixed the problem. Most of the hardcore techheads here have learned over the years NOT to upgrade to Microsoft's latest OS for at least a year after its release, so most of us aren't running Vista. Because of that we can't even try to duplicate the problem with our system and then write a definitive guide on how to work around the problem once we recreate it.

Here try the following.

EDIT First, first update to the latest Vista video driver for your card.

First, start the game up in "safe mode", the little check box on the updater next to the "I Agree" button. That will reset all the graphics their lowest possible settings. Enter the game.

Then login and either select a character to enter the game or create one, which can be anything right now, just need you to get into the game.

Once in the game world you will need to bring up the game's options. It's off the main menu where your health and stamina bar is.

Once the options window is up, select the graphics/audio tab. Change the game resolution to "Desktop". Save the settings and you will get a popup telling you to exit and restart the game. Exit and restart the game.

Please let us know if at this point if the character selection screen comes up OK or not.

Enter that game world again and bring up the graphic/audio options again. Now you can adjust the general graphics quality. You can use the slider but once you select the second or third tick on the slider, check off the Advance Graphics Options check box under the slider. This will make the slider go away and list a bunch more options. Near the bottom of that list is "Depth of Field" and Bloom. Either one or both need to be disabled. Again we don't get feedback if it's one, the other, or both or we're barking up the wrong tree. We just occasionally see a comment that the player thinks that solved the problem.

Good luck.

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I'm not sure if this question has already been answered in this forum before, but I'm not searching through 500 pages of posts for it.

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And adding your question to this thread instead of starting a new one is helpful for others how exactly? It got to be 250+ posts because of people tacking questions and not fixes and workarounds to the problems they found to this thread.

Please everyone, if you have a problem start a new thread.

Good guide.

A few things I've noticed.

Common IO recipes are bought at NPC stores for 25% of the buy cost at the inventing table.

Uncommon IO recipes are priced at 100 inf per level of the recipe at a store.

Rare IO recipes are priced at 200 inf per level.

Haven't been lucky enough for either a costume or temp power recipe to check out the store prices.

The three levels of IOs you can get during the tutorial.
Level 10 IOs are roughly a -3 DO in strength.
Level 15 IOs are roughly a +3 DO.
Level 25 IOs are roughly a -1 SO.

Level 30 IOs are roughly a +1 SO.

I too ended up with duplicate sets. I think that was because sometime after 10pm that evening I decided they weren't selling and removed them from the Wentworth's. After the rollback, tada, the recipes appeared back up for sale as well as in my recipe inventory.

They still aren't selling. Nobody wants level 29 IO set recipes.

The game uses Ageia physics, emulated in software if you don't have a card. Just a FYI.