Fleeting Whisper

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I remember I always finished the mission (non-flashback) but didn't talk to the contact until the individual timers would run out. If teammates took the temp powers, then they would not disappear if the contact was called, but still had timers on them.
But now, the powers disappear as soon as mission complete comes up (and arc completion merits are rewarded).

[/ QUOTE ]Have you tried quitting the arc before then?

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Prior to MA we were hunter-gatherers, now we are an agrarian society.

The next logical step is interplanetary space, therefore a Moon Base cannot be far off!

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We need some sort of massive world war-like game-wide conflict first. Like maybe a bitter, protracted fight over farming custom enemies or something.

Waitaminute...

To the Moon Base!

[/ QUOTE ]fixed that for ya

Sounds: Cool idea. You can sort of get the same effect from HeroStats, but it's not exactly accurate (loading between zones throws it off), making it unreliable.

Custom UI: I don't know why anyone would disagree with the idea, other than the fact that it's nigh impossible to do if you don't design it from the start. That said, there are some UI modifications you are able to do, such as the Vidiotmaps patch, Vanden's Power Icon Fix, Leandro's Splasher program, my instructions for modding the QuickChat menu, and you can also change the content of the Help menu fairly simply.

Pretty sure they've dropped the Paragon Times. the last PT article was almost 2 years ago, and PT isn't on the website any more (I had to use the Internet Wayback Machine to get the articles on Paragonwiki)

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a character can gain rewards from defeating NPCs 6 levels above them

[/ QUOTE ]A character can gain rewards from defeating NPCs 60 levels above them, it's just not very likely to happen. The only level restriction is on people in your team, not on the enemies you're fighting.

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So, what I'm suggesting is add a bonus difficulty level 50s that causes NPCs in missions to be set at level 56.

[/ QUOTE ]Basically, screw over everyone playing defensive characters (+6s is where Defense breaks in comparison to Resistance), and keep people from playing with sidekicks (you do about half the damage and debuff to a +7 as you do to a +6, and have about a third of the chance to hit)

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Also give bosses AV/GH protection(Can AV protection just be switched on?).

[/ QUOTE ]AV resistance is just a power that the AV has, so it's theoretically possible. It just means you're shutting out Dominators and Controllers as well as defense characters, though.

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And have NPCs increase it's rate of attack by enough to not really affect its endurance usage.

[/ QUOTE ]Also trying to shut out ice and sappers from this 'challenge'

So, as long as you aren't defense based, aren't a control AT, aren't dependent on slows or endurance drain, aren't a sidekick, and are on a tricked out team of uber players, you might be able to succeed with a few faceplants.

Sounds like a great plan.

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I did note though that the Pieces of the Wheel of Destruction temporary powers have changed since Issue 13. The mission was changed to have a cutscene when Archos appears, and the powers now disappear at mission complete when Archos is defeated, rather than expiring after their timer wears out, or when you talk to the contact.

[/ QUOTE ]I believe they always expired at the end of the arc; people would just quit the Flashback or not finish the arc to make use of them.

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Haven't heard of it before. Is that all it is? Voice controls? From the trial part, sounds like it has a subscription fee involved. Not worth it, IMO, no matter how low the sub fee is...

[/ QUOTE ]Sounds like a 1-time $30 purchase to me, with a timed evaluation version

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I keep looking at that, wondering where to start

[/ QUOTE ]LOL, that's about where I am at the moment >.>

My two major gripes are that I don't really like the way it's broken up, and I don't like how it shifts from using colors everywhere to using no color at all.

Ooh, I like that set, Mouse Man!

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A very old one, but I have heard it nonetheless: forcefields decrease the shielded player's accuracy. I think that might have been true in beta 2004

[/ QUOTE ]The first version of PFF did that, instead of having Only Affecting Self.

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<QR>

One thing to take into account is that the majority of the CoH files, the pigg directory, are already compressed and you won't gain much space out of compressing it further.

For example, the biggest file in the directory, the texMisc.pigg, 202,293 kb, only shrank down to 197,812 kb when I ran RAR over it. Zip only brought it down to 199,792 kb.

[/ QUOTE ]On the other hand, he's saying that the drive is nearing full; it's not necessarily the CoH files that need to be compressed, but the drive in general.

As for access times, it does matter for files that are accessed repeatedly, but if a file is accessed only once, or infrequently, the fact that it's compressed doesn't really matter. As SG points out, piggs are already compressed, so the game must uncompress them to access the files they contain anyway. Compressing them again may add a little bit to your load times and/or affect your fps as you move through the city (with Windows uncompressing the file before the game uncompresses it again), but in general you should be fine.

I do know that some files placed in the /data directory will be read frequently, as I discovered recently installing Vanden's Power Icon Fix to Test while I had Test running. The icons in my tray changed before my eyes as the files were copied over. On the other hand, not all files in the /data directory will do this. My QuickChat mod only reads the file when you launch the game, for example.

In short, you shouldn't see much of a performance hit to a compressed CoH directory, but I can't say for whatever else you've got installed on that drive.

I assume you mean Theft of Essence, and it's a Gold roll.

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Don't crits ignore resistance anyway? Honestly, I never bothered to confirm but I always thought they did.

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Crits used to ignore resistance in PvP, but resistance always effected crits in PvE. (Crits are resistible in PvP now, too.)

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Hmm. 5 years and I still learn things. Cool.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm a bit late to this thread, but according to City of Data, [Exploding Shuriken] and [Fire Blast] used by Genin and Oni deal non-resistable crits in PvE
(Use Smoke Flash on the pet, of course, and only those two attacks are non-resistable)

Frostwork is useful to cast on a perma DP Tanker >.>

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Move DJ Zero around and change his costume one in a while. Maybe we can occasionally see him out on the dance floor enjoying the club, having a drink at the bars, or even find him filling out paperwork related to running the D. (I know this might be tough since he's a contact, but it's not like you're being asked to scour an entire city zone for him.)

[/ QUOTE ]What if he has to float there in order to concentrate on keeping his pocket dimension stable?

If he moves around, the entire dimension could blip out of existence, and us with it!

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I highly suspect that IF model changes end up happening, they'll be a total conversion, meaning you can't have one slot be Huge, another Male and another Female. You just do a full switch. At least, that's how I see it.

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Would be kind of a waste to do, then.

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Which is likely why it hasn't happened. Not much point to making it, as people don't often get their gender wrong at character creation. Full model swaps are one thing, but they don't alter the record of your character in the database. If we haven't been allowed to do it yet, then I'd say altering it is not a trivial matter.

[/ QUOTE ]While I realize most people asking for it want per-costume genders, I don't think per-character gender changing is entirely unreasonable. I believe you can purchase a gender change in Guild Wars in the NCSoft store, so there's at least enough demand there for it to put a real-world price on it. Of course, I realize that GW is a different game, with different needs and capabilities (infinite and free re-speccing and no costume slots comes to mind), but hey.

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Frankly, I'm surprised that you say Freedom doesn't do Hami raids, given the relative size of its population. Before I14 and everything that came with it, Pinnacle was running Hami raids at least once a week. 40 merits = two TF pool random rolls, for something that takes anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and a half to run. Not a bad deal.

[/ QUOTE ]Freedomites don't generally do Hamidon raids because the STF/LRSF is just more efficient. It requires less setup, is completed in the same time, and has a generally lower chance to fail.

QR

New subject:

If an electron oscillates left in 1.36 moles of oxygen gas and no one is around to observe it, does it still have a quantum wave function?

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Who doesn't like COX?

[/ QUOTE ]Straight men?

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Co* covers all names very nicely.

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Still, I remain fond of CoX. Co* is impossible to actually say, unless you say CoStar, and that sounds funny.

[/ QUOTE ]In many of the official releases, they call it "City of"

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I'm still an advocate of a simple feature: You shouldn't be able to rate an arc unless you've finished playing it. I think that would cut right down on that sorta griefing.

[/ QUOTE ]While I can see the reasoning behind such a suggestion, I've also personally experienced a very good argument against it: 5 defeat-all missions on extremely large outdoor maps. Not simple maps like City 02, or farm enemies like Rikti Kitties... more like Carnival of Shadows in large St. Martial maps.

I did end up finishing that arc, but it felt like I was soloing the Quaterfield Task Force.

I've also encountered arcs whose mission text consists solely of "a", "b", "c", and similar, or text which is utterly incomprehensible or stupid. There are cases where you don't need to play the whole arc to know how bad it is.

A suggestion I've seen before, however, is to weight a rating based on how many missions were completed. Something like a (C + 1) / N weighting, where C is number of completed missions, and N is the number of missions. Then, a rating without completing the first mission will still count, and completing every mission would count much more.

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I told ya, never start an ITF with too many sidekicks.

[/ QUOTE ]Half the time I run a team in general (TF or not, ITF or not) it's got 4 sidekicks on it.

Then again, I don't try to run around with 5 sidekicks...

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Get a second build and get on an overnight lava/red gem farm, from what I hear those badge numbers are insane.

[/ QUOTE ]Do gladiator farms still work? In that case, any AT will do, you just need to get 400 rep in PvP first (which you can get on anyone if you PvP on teams or get people to suicide for you)

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He wasn't even a medical student, IIRC. He was just some guy with a lot of time on his hands who liked to sit in on lectures about dead bodies.

[/ QUOTE ]He was a college dropout, and he studied Chemistry while at the University of Ingolstadt.

Anything/Force Fields Mastermind would probably be the most laid-back character you can build.

5 of the 9 powers in your primary (the summons and upgrades) need only be used at the start of a mission or in very difficult fights when your pets die, and 3 of the remaining 4 powers (the attacks) are not very useful, particularly in the later levels, and are frequently skipped entirely by MM players.

In your secondary, your 3 buff powers are a toggle (Dispersion Bubble), and 2 single-target buffs Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield) that only need to be used once every 4 minutes. 3 of the other 6 powers are toggles (Personal Force Field, Repulsion Field, and Force Bubble), used strategically if used at all. Force Bolt helps position enemies more precisely than is possible with Repulsion Field or Force Bubble, or to keep a single enemy out of action, Repulsion Bomb helps keep multiple enemies out of action (AoE KD) and does some damage, and Detention Field will keep a single target out of any action for 30s (phase shift).

Personally, I find /FF Masterminds boring as I just watch my pets go to town, rather than really participating much, but going to the extreme may help you find a comfortable spot you enjoy the most. Or you may end up loving /FF MMs

Edit: For the primary, I strongly recommend Thugs, Mercenaries, or Robotics. Necromancy and Ninjas are both melee-centric pets, which require more micromanaging in order to have them perform at their best. For the ranged pets, you can generally just leave the pets in follow/defensive, aggro an enemy, and let the pets take care of things, rather than trying to direct their every move.