Judgement_Dave

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We'd do the same. Welcome them and make some friends

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Yes - although surely there'd probably be the odd idiot on the French and German servers who would let their xenophobia show itself.

You get idiots everywhere - with so many people on Union/Defiant (especially around Atlas) there's just more chance of meeting the 1 in 20 who must have been dropped on their head at an early age...

Likewise, you get decent people everywhere - ignore/report the idiots and team again with the friendly people. Just as you would if you met them on Vigilance or Zukunft...

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GhostRaptors new job offer?

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Pretty sure that GR had the chance to apply for a job US side - but unlike Avatea he didn't fancy moving to the US at that time.

Of course, he may have changed views on that.

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Do seriously think a part time mod for our forums would be an ideal situation for all parties though.

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Or they could merge the forums with the US and use the set of mods that keep the US in order.

Oh - they are.

The 5TF is an odd beast so far - I've been on 6 live runs and most are either about 50-60 minutes or just over 2 hrs. There's only been 1 run in the middle at about 1h20.

And I've seen high damage teams coming in at 2h to 2h10.

The main difference that struck me was the (regen) debuff - in the fast runs 1 run had 2 kineticists, 1 a /rad controller and another a sole kineticist. Transfusion spamming or lingering radiation may have been great helps. Too often when shivans have been used they played up and didn't act as desired - so it looked to me like the player debuff was required.

Of course, I've not been religiously recording all details of team makeup or times - but the debuff (possibly coupled with player dmg and recovery buffs) stuck in my mind.

Heck - one of the noticeable differences in the battle itself is that when each caged AV is defeated the fast-finish teams return to Reichsman and he isn't back to anywhere near full health. That strikes me as regen debuff since it was usually just a single tank left on him. (IMO when dealing with the cage AVs it helps greatly when the regen debuffers still debuff Reichsman's regen whilst mainly focussing on the extra AV).

As PyroclasticNinja says - it'll get easy when it's been cracked.

I remember a few weeks of people complaining that the ITF was way too hard (even 'impossible' except for teams exactly matching a single setup) before it was cracked - and then it became hard, very hard in some circumstances, but generally doable - and doable by one of several ways.

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This may seem very crazy, but I'll say it anyway. First off, I seem to remember a Dev post or interview or something which explained that the Devs were thinking of taking down the War Walls, or it was something they may have been planning.. Don't quote me on that, but if anyone else can find a source that'd be awesome.

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I think this has always been accepted as being the rikti invasion ships in that the walls do come down but only for a temp timeframe.

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The rikti invasion temporarily dropping the war walls has been mentioned many times on the boards as a possible meaning to the 'war walls coming down' dev post - but I, for one, have never accepted that as the intended development behind the original statement.

It's just mentioned as it's the only way (to date) that any war walls have come down.

It is possible that it was the original intention, but I don't buy it without further dev statements. IMO The devs know better than to make statements about the possibility of removing the war walls if the rikti dropship runs were all they mean - it's just setting themselves up for a lot of unhappy players who feel a little duped.

More likely imo that either the removal of war walls was being looked at and deemed impractical, or that it is practical but a big enough change that it's not been implemented yet.

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I'm not sure there is a link between the Iggy's and the DE but I'd like to hear evidence to the contrary. From what Manti has said it's possible the Igneous have been underneath the hollows for decades but the hollowing has unearthed the tunnels leading to the caverns where the explorer was to meet an untimely end but was healed by the native Igneous transforming him for keeps.

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Like I said in my post, have a look at the recon officer report when you enter the Hollows - it states that there's believed to be a link between the DE and Igneous.

To quote:
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Highlights
- 'Rock Men' It is believed that these cave guardians are connected to the Devouring Earth in some way.


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This recon officers report is afaik the only place/info that's ever suggested a link between the Igneous and the Devouring Earth. So I guess that's why the original questioner asked about the link as well.

Only just noticed today that Niviene seems to have been added to the list of forum mods (alongside Avatea and Moon_Witch). Looks like she registered at the end of May but will probably be the same Niviene that mods the US boards...

Didn't spot any other thread about her (or him?) joining, so thought I'd point out the addition and say: Hi - welcome to the EU boards. We don't usually bite... except for playful nibbles.



Though I guess it may not be long before the boards merge, so Niviene may not even get around to posting over here...

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I16 will be a major Issue, even if it has only power customization in it and nothing else - it's a feature that's been asked for over and over again by many players for a very long time, but it was such a huge project that the devs just didn't have the resources to do it until now, so it'd be extremely ungrateful to just say "is that it?" if I16 is just power customization.
It's like I14 - the MA was an enormous amount of work to create, even if a lot of the work wasn't seen by the players.

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And like MA I'm guessing I16 may have a longer-than-usual run in test. Better than the alternative of game-breaking bugs in customisation, but I can already sense some people getting restless...

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Hello again,

This week we have an action packed Canon Fodder post! Not only are some amazing facts about Blue Steel being revealed but I'm also posting a very small piece from the actual Story Bible to answer a question...and hopefully help answer some doubts as well.

Tally ho!

~M

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It's great to see part of the story bible (even if it is an old version or only part of the Igneous entry) So thanks for that.

But...

The question was "What exactly are the Igneous and what is their connection to the Devouring Earth?"

Your answer seems to leave out any reference to the latter part - i.e. What is their connection to the DE?

Any chance you can answer that? The link to DE came as a big surprise to some of us when it was included in the Hollows hazard zone info (from the recon officer). And I can't recall any Ig/DE link being mentioned or alluded to anywhere else outside of thois recon info.

Actually, I think you may have made a slight error there, Grouchy.

If you sub for 3 months, stop for 9 months then sub for 3 more it's 15 months total that has elapsed (3+9+3).

So you'd get the 6 month reward at the end of the 15th month after you started.

Was the freespec issued today with I15 going live? Or is it being issued in a few days time?

(Hope Avatea doesn't mind me using notify on this - but I'm guessing from a few comments I've seen elsewhere that I'm not th eonly one wanting to know and since we are given notice I guess it should be ok to press for an answer on this.)

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I have no real communication problems on either server due to them being linguistically well educated to as far as putting some English people to shame with their own language.

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Oh I know that. A high level of English from an EU player is often the giveaway sign of a non-UK resident.

And I've often been a little put out on past trips to Germany/Austria to find that I don't get much chance to improve my German as most people I meet relish the chance to improve their (already excellent) English and don't want to speak German...

But I don't like the idea of joining a team and messing things up from my poor understanding or trying to force them into using English... I'd at least like enough linguistic prowess to get by and show willing...

Failing that it's back T-O T-H-E W-A-Y W-E E-N-G-L-I-S-H D-O T-H-I-N-G-S W-I-T-H J-O-H-N-N-Y F-O-R-E-I-G-N-E-R: E-N-G-L-I-S-H L-O-U-D A-N-D S-L-O-W!!

IT'S UP - LOADING NOW

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Avatea has announced an issue with Vigilance/Zukunft:

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Attention French and German players,

we have identified a problem with the French and German client of City of Heroes that prevents us from opening access to Vigilance and Zukunft. We hope to have the problem resolved within the next day or so.

We apologise for the inconvenience. The English servers, Union and Defiant, will remain accessible while we work towards resolving that issue.



source

I wonder if this has been delaying them going live for the other servers.

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Gah!!

I bet THEY get the double ice cream w/e!!

GAH!!! I say!!

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Nah, but we get double XP for the week end (and maybe "more" according to Avatea).
But I'd rather have double ice cream TBH

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So I have 3 or 4 days to brush up my minimal German/French skills... I think I know where my Michel Thomas courses are...

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Avatea has announced an issue with Vigilance/Zukunft:

Quote:

Attention French and German players,

we have identified a problem with the French and German client of City of Heroes that prevents us from opening access to Vigilance and Zukunft. We hope to have the problem resolved within the next day or so.

We apologise for the inconvenience. The English servers, Union and Defiant, will remain accessible while we work towards resolving that issue.



source

I wonder if this has been delaying them going live for the other servers.

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Gah!!

I bet THEY get the double ice cream w/e!!

GAH!!! I say!!

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I'd quite like that - I have 4 or 5 characters on Zukunft and Vigilance - but I need added motivation to play them since I'm English and so can only communicate with the French/German speakers by typing very slowly in capitals.

I said T-Y-P-I-N-G V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y A-N-D I-N C-A-P-I-T-A-L-S... gahh... Sprachen Sie English bitte? Parlez vous Anglais?

Avatea has announced an issue with Vigilance/Zukunft:
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Attention French and German players,

we have identified a problem with the French and German client of City of Heroes that prevents us from opening access to Vigilance and Zukunft. We hope to have the problem resolved within the next day or so.

We apologise for the inconvenience. The English servers, Union and Defiant, will remain accessible while we work towards resolving that issue.


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source

I wonder if this has been delaying them going live for the other servers.

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FYI - You can't launch the game in french, so there *might* be another patch soon (tm) to fix that. More downtime coming?

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Nor can you launch in German (if I'm reading MasterOfCeremony's post elsewhere correctly).

Looks like it's English only at the moment.

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But IIRC they usually tell us in advance something along the lines of :
* it's going down at 12:00 for an extended downtime
* downtime expected to last up to 5 hrs

My old memory certainly thinks we've usually been told in advance that it's going down and an idea of when it's oplanned to be back up.

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The whole thing is probably a CoX up at their end. Usually, issue updates to NOT happen on a Monday, when there's no one around for a few days to tell us what's going on. Odds are it got OK'd for live, and the folks who do the patching decided to do it Monday and sent an email to the Customer Relations folks to let us know; but there's no one there at the weekend...

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Doing early so any faults can get sorted before the US has a long holiday weekend?

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Historically, Cryptic/NCSoft/Paragon have never told us that they are releasing an issue until after that issue is live. They just take down the servers and let us suffer. Only when the servers are actually functioning do they tell us what they've been doing.


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But IIRC they usually tell us in advance something along the lines of :
* it's going down at 12:00 for an extended downtime
* downtime expected to last up to 5 hrs

My old memory certainly thinks we've usually been told in advance that it's going down and an idea of when it's oplanned to be back up.

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This is taking the [censored], hopefully we'll get a free double xp weekend from this downtime

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Unlikely and not needed imo.

This appears to be scheduled downtime for all servers - the only bad point is the lack of communication, which isn't really a good enough reason for double xp.

In the past most issue releases I recall have been in a downtime slot from noon til 17:00 UK time. So if they get the servers back up soon it's been the usual downtime for a new issue. So the actual length of downtime isn't anything unusual or unwarranted. Just would have been nice to be given a notice/estimate as has usually happened.

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Just come back from a 10 month GW stint.

LOVE the fact that all the DOOM sayers are still aorund as well as the Forumites of old :P

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Same thing surely?

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Not every longer term poster here is a doom-sayer

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Some don't say it - they just use the winky of doom.

Not to be confused with the winky of thread derailment.

so:
- do we reckon servers will be up for the Monday night run?
- If they are: do we still want a Monday night run or will we be jumping on 5TF/5SF teams?

The info blackout is a bad show - especially when the messages stated to read the boards for more info.

I wonder if they're not saying anything because of the I14 rollout taking about 4 hrs longer than expected and they're now hesitant about giving info with time estimates that may be wrong...

Still - a best guess estimate that may be inaccurate is better than absolutely zero communication.

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I'm betting that RTF/RSF get used, although I prefer 5TF/5SF!

But for now they will be newTF/newSF

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But RSF is already taken with Recluses

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I think 5thTF is ok, or BTF.

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Why BTF?

Barracuda has nowt to do with the TF...

BTW GG: How'd you feel about missing the better TF/SF if you stay on your single character?

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Well abbreviations US side are BSF (Barracuda SF) and KhTF (KaHn TF) from what I can remember...


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Yuck @ KhTF... that's not a nice abbreviation, and since it only saves 2 letters I'm surprised they didn't just go with 'Kahn' and omit the TF.