Golden_Avariel

Oh that's cool, a different souvenir? Wish we could do that in MA.

I have lots of problems with the red-side.

The biggest is fewer contacts and fewer options on things to do. I frequently end up with nothing to do but newspapers and this almost never happens to me hero-side.

The next is the role-play feel (yay! on-topic). I frequently feel betrayed by both contacts and arachnos in general. But there is nothing I can do about it. I completely agree that I frequently feel more like killing my contacts than helping them. I hate that my supposedly smart dominator is constantly being duped by her contacts - heck even the Cap SF is based on that premise.

I don't like puppy-kicker type missions, I'm not into being a straight bully. I want missions that are selfish for my character with no regard for others and there aren't a lot of those. A lot of them talk about all the money you are going to make but of course it isn't like the influence is better in those arcs... you still have to make influence the old fashioned way. Apparently it is true that crime doesn't pay.

The person who said it is geared toward mercenaries is spot on. I designed my Master Mind from the beginning to be strictly a mercenary and he's the only villain I have that "works" with CoV as presented.

However, with the right roleplay and right group of people in a regular red-side group, it can be a lot of fun to play villains even with those problems. We read up in the wiki so we can be more picky about which contacts we do run for the most fun and roleplay. When that doesn't work and we have to work for a betrayer we simply assign the stalker to take him out and assume it happens between sessions

It is when you are only 3rd or 4th level with a single hold and a single immobilize and neither one recharges nearly fast enough for the five zombies that inexplicably decided to be smart and hunt you down - yay, even unto the ends of the earth to smite you for your temerity.

I had to be told the skull's text was a clue starting a scavenger hunt. Once I knew that I was able to find all the lobby items just using the clues. After that I needed help because some of the clues in the back halls are just... strange.

Even now I can't match up every clue to every object.

I find their intelligence to be in direct proportion to their ability to kill me quickly. The higher their relative level the smarter they get, the more squishy I am the smarter they get.

This was obvious when we ran Posi for the first time at 11th level and got swarmed by a gang of purple zombies who just wouldn't quit. We dropped the TF and went back a few levels later and in the same mission when they were "only" yellow and orange it was a little easier to separate them. By the end of the TF they were back to their usual stupid selves.

I've also noticed that when I have a melee type the even-levels by themselves are pretty dumb. When I have my low level controller, whose immobilize is totally useless, they swarm me. Or maybe it is related to how quickly I kill them.

But that's just my experience. I can almost guarantee that the one time you need to depend on them being stupid they won't be.

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No, Doc Delialah level 20-24 gives it.

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Both do, I think.

Edit: It's for Doc Delilah and Agent G's arcs. There we go.

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yepper, them's it. I only mentioned Doc because she introduces Agent G and so is technically first (as far as I know) even if they are for the same level range. I've never gotten the portal from the G man. It has always been her or a friendly portal trip to grab the badge.

I agree that being with someone that actively dislikes gaming is bad news.

But he did say he was spending 3+ hours every night playing. That would be a definite crimp in any relationship even if the SO would be completely understanding if it were only... less. Most women would understand if it were no more time consuming than watching a few games and/or some tv shows.

Luckily, my wife plays with me so I'm golden

I've always been the leader on our SG TF's hero-side and I had never run any of those either. I planeed on being the leader for the VG as well... But everyone in both groups are just as new as I am so no chance of judgements being made.

I'm not totally averse to having the star, and I have already read up on the SF in the wiki, but if someone more experienced wanted to lead and show me the "right" way to do it I'm all for it.

And some prime members already have plans for Monday so another VG activity shot down I'll start trying to organize something here as soon as I know what my wife has planned for me Monday so I can pin down some time ranges. If not I'll suggest it as a Saturday Matinee.

Thanks all!

If I can't get it done Monday with my VG I'll try that but like I said, I have never run this SF and don't want to be the leader.

The earliest Saturday I could do it would be June 13th so I have time to organize or whatever.

I'm not very familiar with the Saturday Matinee process though. I guess I haven't really participated much in this forum, a fact I'm not particularly proud of but it always seemed a bit like going to the Monty Python Camelot - a bit silly

No, Doc Delialah level 20-24 gives it.

I had no idea Marshal Brass could give out the O-Portal. I've run his arc 3 times and never did... oh wait... he has two. I guess I've always outleveled him before he got to the second arc.

*rushes to turn off exp on newest villain so he can keep running Brass*

[edit to correct Doc's level range, she definitely doesn't start at level 2 ]

I would love to run my fire dominator (17th level) through the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force - mostly as a rp thing.

I can't seem to get enough people in my little VG together at the same time to get one started. I'd just do a broadcast but I've never run that (or any) SF before and so I don't really want to lead it.

What's the best way to get in on one? The Justice For All channel? In all the time I've been in Cap I've never seen a call for the SF over general broadcast.

I'm going to try one more time to get my VG organized for a run on Monday but frankly I don't have high hopes.

QR

I used 4/2/2 in my custom group and added in a few skulls to keep the minions from being too repetitive. Add in 2 bosses, an ally and the contact together with the ... you know... story... and I'm at like 98%. And I have 4 missions too.

I can't imagine the limits you'd be under with 4 missions and 2 unique groups... or did I read that wrong?

QR

It is very sad to hear the star system is being used as a form of pvp. In all the player-generated content systems I've used before everyone was very supportive of everyone else and the true masters of the craft rose rapidly to recognition.

I'm guessing that the devs need to remove any and all rewards (except maybe tickets) from the rating system to make it more of a point of pride than anything else. They need to come up with some other way of rewarding (or better yet selling) new story slots.

I guess I knew the hallway sort of wraps around the reactor but I'm pretty sure that front area is 90 degrees away from it and the reactor's safe room is a lot closer as is all of the hallway... but I could be mistaken. It isn't like the map is enabled and I had left my surveying tools in my other pair of tights

We did fine the little side room and checked it out at the same time we cleared the hallway. At that point we had no other ideas and called the GM. She pointed out we missed a room... which we knew... and convinced me that we had to clear the area to finish the mission. Others on the team who had done the Trial before protested but she was insistent.

She teleported me to the closed door and everyone converged on me. We bulldozed them but still no joy and she informed me there were more enemies to defeat. We all scattered to the four cornsers and one of the team finally found him in the room where we had originally found the key. I happen to be nearby and held him while she blasted him to smithereens at which point the mission complete finally popped up.

From now on I'll use my keyboard's build-in stop watch so I know when the ambushes are finished instead of hanging around the reactor waiting for another ambush that never comes. That was sort of anti-climatic to a section of the trial that was otherwise pure awesome (this was my first successful run).

I have the enhancement screen pointer problem on my brand new computer with a new ATI card on a standard screen.

I assumed it was a VISTA or mouse problem because I didn't have it on my older computer with the same screen and a much older ATI card.

I've sort of gotten used to it but it is very irritating since sometimes I grab the wrong enhancement.

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Well, GMs are trained on multiple games. They're not necessarily experts on any one of them.

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My first clue should have been when she asked what contact gave me the mission instead of knowing what the Terra Volta Trial was.

Still, she was nice and best of all prompt. She answered the petition within 5 minutes. I had a good experience for my first time to encounter a GM.

There was a porter we found all by himself in a previously cleared side-room all the way back at the front. Seems incredible that he would go all the way back there.

But that does make more sense than what the DM told me. She insisted that we had to kill every mob on the map. She kept leading us to mobs we had purposely skipped.

[Edited for clarity because I shouldn't try to post this early in the morning ]

My SG did the TV respec trial (the 1st, level 24-33 version) hero-side.

The strategies I had read led me to believe that all we really had to do was follow the mission objectives as they came up - rescue security, scientists, get the key, protect the reactor...

After waiting around for about 15 or 20 minutes after the last ambush (we had all lost count) we finally called in a DM. She was very nice but pointed out that we had not defeated all the mobs in the hall or in one of the rooms back in the entry.

Sure enough as soon as we tracked down and defeated the final teleporter the mission completed.

Has this always been a defeat all? Should the Wiki be updated so it no longer suggests stealthing the hall leading to the control room to bypass those mobs?

Just curious. Everyone on the team was surprised to find it was a Defeat All. Several had done it before and didn't recall that being a requirement in the past.

Is there *any* chance this will ever get fixed? Any confirmation or even rumors that the devs are aware of this enhancement being bugged?

I slotted it on my tank after finding it randomly. I only found out it was bugged when it failed to work and finally looked it up on the wiki.

If it is not going to be fixed eventually... like maybe this year... then I'll just delete and re-fill the slot and chalk it up as a lesson learned. I'm just glad I didn't spend merits on it.

Is it worth the effort to petition it?

QR

This past week I did radios with a level-pact partner. We were getting two orange lieuys and one yellow minion in each spawn. When the spawns were bigger than 3 the extras tended to be white minions. The bosses at the end (if there was one) was red but sometimes orange. That sort of matches what the OP said but there were two of us. I remember thinking it was pretty odd at the time but since we are a tank/controller team it wasn't that big of a deal. We were definitely heroic as these characters are brand new and haven't talked to the Corps yet.

However, I ran 3 radio missions in KR yesterday with a level 6-8 scrapper. I was teamed with a brand new player who was one level below me and everything conned blue and white with maybe one yellow (white/yellow/orange for the owner). So that seemed normal.

This morning was the first time since the patch I ran a character that had toggles to run, and I did notice my toggle was inexplicably turned off prior to entering my 2nd mission. I know it HAD been on.

I didn't check after the 2nd mission as I was pre-occupied with leveling and exiting. I will definitely pay attention tonight now that you've mentioned it.

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Stay on target, folks. If this devolves into yet another farming discussion thread it's gonna get 08-locked.

Mood within my supergroup's the same as it's always been -- excitement about the AE's ability to tell stories and provide new content for us to run. We're a little concerned about the ranged attacks being the Hammer of God, they could use some toning down, but otherwise things are positive.

I have no problem with the hype machine dying down and AE becoming Just Another Part Of The Game. That's the way things should be; it shouldn't completely consume people's attention in the same way no one task force or other game system should be the total focus of the entire community. It's part and parcel with everything else in the game.

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Amen. This is my SG's attitude about it as well. We haven't done anything on SG Tuesday but stories related to the SG since the week after i14 went live.

1500 tickets/mission is plenty.

Getting to see and fight custom enemies is cool.

Getting to see and experience stories customized for your PC or SG... priceless.

[Edit] Also priceless - not having to turn Broadcast off so you can ignore the Meow farm team calls.

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Take a look at this thread.

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Thanks. I already tried downloading that hotfix as soon as I got Vista but it told me it was already installed. I'm using the 8.12 version of the ATI drivers which is what I've always used... granted in XP but still the same version level.

It didn't happen at all last night or this morning so I'm crossing my fingers that there was something hidden in yesterday's patch.

Thanks for all the responses!

That makes sense.

I take it you aren't having frequent crashes - like once or twice every long session? We were doing a TF the other night and someone crashed every other time we changed zones or entered/left missions. After defeating the Clockwork King every one of us disconnected on exit.

That seems more than a little coincidental to me.

If no one but us are having problems that must mean... *gasp* The devs must hate my SG!

Seriously though, if it isn't widespread I guess I should look at my machine. Vista claims the video drivers are failing and it auto-restarts them. Sometimes it claims it's a hardware problem. I haven't really taken those seriously since every diagnostic software ever made always blames hardware when it can't figure out the problem. Besides, it's also happening to my wife starting at about the same time. The coincidence seems incredible but I guess I've seen stranger things.

Since one of the recent updates (not sure which) I've been having a lot of problem with transitions. About 1 in 5 or 10 will hang at the loading splash screen. Eventually Vista tells me that the program is unresponsive (though sometimes the splashscreen hides the dialog) and I close and restart COH. When I log in it always tells me that I'm already logged in.

I'd post my stats but everyone in my SG is having the same or similar issues.

What is really weird is that it doesn't actually take your character out of game. They just stand there.

My wife dropped the other night and just decided to call it a night. After 20 minutes and I could still see her character in-game and in the Friends list, I called her back. As soon as she attempted to login the zombie finally disappeared. I have no idea how long she would have stayed there.

Anyone else? Surely it isn't just us.

I agree. I've never used my shiny new Amy summons but one of the others did during an AE mission and she immediately turned on us.

I assumed it was an AE bug but now I don't think so. I think I'll leave Amy in the bottle for now. I'm glad none of the shivans have ever turned on me.