Judgement_Dave

Standoff:
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On the other hand, it looks like MA Tickets are redeemed at toon rather than account level, which undermines things a bit.

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PRAF:
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The unlocks that are purchased with MA tickets are account wide.


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Everything I've read so far seems (to me) to show MA tickets as being account level. There's been talk the (MA-ticket) purchasable add-on packs being account wide and indeed how they need to be as some things are mutually exclusive for any one character to earn.

My impression is that about the only things that individual characters do are:
* be the character to actually play a MA mission
* (Possibly) be the character at the AE building designing/submitting a mission (which is submitted by the account, but I suppose that a character may need to be involved in the submission process)
* (Possibly) be required to visit a MA-ticket vendor to redeem tickets

True it's been said that you could play your entire career 1-50 in MA missions and not be any worse off than someone playing normal missions, which seems to imply that salvage, enhancements and recipes will be available to buy from MA-ticket vendors as well. These, obviously, would be applied to a single character - but I can't see anything to worry about with that.

Am I missing a downside?

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Pretty sure that this is possible

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There would have to be some restictions, since some mobs use non-humaniod skelletons, the animations wouldn't work.

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True - no doubt there will be some restrictions. Can't recall exactly where I saw it, but the main MA discussion thread on the US boards had some comments re: non-normal-human skeletons. IIRC one of the dev comments was about warwolves and energy bolts possibly being ok but possibly appearing to shoot from shoulders.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that this was a comment regarding the different, but related, issue of customising powersets on existing in-game NPCs, which isn't being allowed (at least in v1.0).

Though your original comment was:
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What I would actually like to know is if you can assign NPC sets to a custom model. I want to create robot EBs with malta sapper powers for one of the missions I have planned.


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And I think that my answer still stands that yes I'm pretty sure that this is possible (to assign NPC sets to custom NPCs) but, as with anything, there may be restrictions; it's unlikely that every NPC set will be available this way and past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

Although it's possible that they will allow mixtures that could look odd on some custom NPCs - much as they allow clothes that can cause clipping issues with certain other clothes. I'd guess that if the option is there but it looks bad it could be a possible mark against the mission... and if it really doesn't seem to work then the mission designer has the option to not use the set or to try altering the costume/NPC scales/bodytype to get something that works better.

Well I won't get into some sort of contest on who burns the most cash... be depressing for some and seems too much like explicit boasting over wealth. Actually - with multiple accounts it'd probably be depressing for me and not good if Mrs JD ever saw the total!!

But I will ask if your calculation of how much time paid on your main was correct - if you pay monthly then if you've just got the 36 month Vets badge you've only paid for 34months as you had 2 months free with CoH and CoV boxsets.

Ain't that that famous scene in the Slaughtered Noob from A council warwolf in Paragon?

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The level that you choose your mob to be should at least affect what powers are available. Other things might affect it to (e.g. rank). Tweeking the AI (melee or ranged) will affect wether or not a power is actually used. There are a few dev comments dropping hints around.


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I may have missed the dev hints! The last few days up to Saturday were mainly TR-based whilst I could, although I managed the odd trawl through the US dev posts...

Not so sure about the level - the NPCs have a habit of having powers and selections unavailable to players, and if Frosty can have summonable pets at lvl 10...

I'm guessing that things like AI/fighting-style selections will affect which powers are normally used, but my guess so far is that it doesn't alter which powers the custom NPC has it just alters which it has a preference for. i.e. a ranged NPC will use ranged attacks and try to stay at range, but I'd hope that it has it's full complement of melee powers and uses them when you immob it and close in!

So it's not so much a user-selectable alteration to powers picked from the set as it is a user hint as to which powers to prefer using.

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What I would actually like to know is if you can assign NPC sets to a custom model. I want to create robot EBs with malta sapper powers for one of the missions I have planned.

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Pretty sure that this is possible - as evidenced by the US redname responses to their being no kheld/SoA PC powersets. Pretty sure it was stated that you could use the NPC powersets on your custom NPCs, with the example being using NPC kheld powers on custom NPCs to create a rough approximation of your PB/WS character for use in MA missions.

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The Thug powerset is on the screens... So it will be in.

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I think it will be in, but all I'd say for certain is:
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The Thug powerset is on the screens... So it is on the screens.

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Although I'd guess not, the screens could be mockups or taken from a dev-only version where they are still working on the thugs set. The thugs set being in the beta or live release appears most likely, but hasn't been confirmed.

I'd rather not take it as 'promised by the devs' status based purely on a small detail in a (more-or-less) promotional screenshot!

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The Dev's choice will only be the best of the best and the popularity of a creator will not effect it that much. This comes because the rating system is also global.

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I may have missed something on this.. but don't you mean the Hall of Fame (which uses the rating system) as opposed to Devs choice (which, funnily enough, uses a devs personal choice)?

As such it would be possible, although unlikely, that the devs really loved the humour/style of a mission arc that the players absolutely hated and so promoted the arc to devs choice even though it never got anywhere near Hall of Fame.

Practically, I'd expect a lot of devs choice to come from the Hall of Fame (and near-misses) as the devs only have so much time, so they're unlikely to spend it looking at every single arc... looking at ones that get some popularity from players would be an easy first-pass filter.


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If youre an incredible popular player/creator on UNION... you will not get enough ratings to get into the list even if you get all sub's on UNION voting 5 stars for you. This means you need to get the votes from the other servers too. As they never heard of you will get a better rating. Getting into the high ranks will NOT be easy.


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Ex Libris (US redname) posted that The Hall of Fame is where the best player rated content goes. To get to this rank you need to have over a 1000 votes with an average of 5 stars (we round up).

I'd guess that this means they'll be using a straight mean average and anything over 4.0 gets rounded up. But I'm pretty sure that the requirements will get tweaked in time as that's still going to be darn hard if people vote as comes naturally.

People vary in how they award ratings, and AFAIK it's pretty common to find people who stay away from the top-end ratings or away from both extremities of the available rating range. Throw into the mix the fact that you need more than 2 people voting 5 stars to counteract a single person who didn't get/like the mission and awarded a single star, and if enough people vote like I naturally do and very seldom give top marks then all you need is 1 or 2 people marking low and the arc will never make it to Hall of Fame.

Big example...
1500 people vote as follows:
100 1 star
200 2 stars
300 3 stars
400 4 stars
500 5 stars
The mean average would be c. 3.666 (=5500/1500). Rounded up that's 4.

So we'd have 900 people who rated it 4 or 5 out of 5 and they aren't enough to overide 300 who thought it less than average (if 3 is considered average).

So how many people would need to vote 5 stars just to move this arc into HoF territory?

Turns out that if an extra 500 voted, and all gave 5 stars, the mean average would just hit 4.0, so still not quite enough... so that'd give us the following distribution (which only hits a 4.0 mean):
2000 people voted as follows:
100 1 star
200 2 stars
300 3 stars
400 4 stars
1000 5 stars

So getting an average rounded up of 5 could be pretty darn hard... OK - it ain't meant to be easy, but not even making it in the above example (where 50% of the votes were for 5 stars, and only 15% were below 3) just seems ridiculously hard...


btw I've not seen anything about the dynamicism of HoF. Do HoF missions still get rated? Can they fall out of the HoF if their rating falls?

Over time I'd guess that the ratings will change as our expectations of MA missions change - something that is published within the 1st week and impresses people may seem like amateur old-hat a couple of weeks later...

Conversely something launched in the 1st week may be given conservative ratings (as people keep 5 stars back for something really great) but only later be seen as a really good mission when no-one is surpassing its quality a month later, but AFAIK once an account has rated an arc it cannot re-rate (even after the arc is edited/republished)...

BTW - no doom in this. I just think some things will change in what we know about ratings/HoF so far. It's a first stab at it by the devs, and it may even change before going live.

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Powersets, yes, but your ability to chose individual powers is limited.


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Don't think I've seen anything mentioning this, but I had the impression that you could pick the powersets but had no ability to tweak which powers were picked from the set.

PRAF - You spotted something I haven't (in which case can you point me at it please?) or are you just hedging?

Admittedly not able to customise which powers in a set are utilised could be described as 'limited', i.e. limited to the point of unavailability.

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And it's possible some powersets may be unavailable.

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More than possible. It has been stated that EATs (i.e. kheld and arachnos player charcters) powersets won't be in at launch.

Although I'd guess that you should be able to get a fairish approximation of a kheldian/arachnos character using the NPC powersets that already exist in game. I think a big thing missing would be the kheldian shapeshifting, but then I wouldn't expect that to be done too intelligently if the devs had to develop it for the player powersets!

Of course, dev positions may change - but this one was recent enough and specific enough that I'd guess we won't see them at launch.

I think some early talk about MM powers not being available, but these seem mentioned on the screens released last week. Good old devs - seem to be underpromising and overdelivering as I thought they would.

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When i first joined up to the forums most of my views were ignored/taken as wrong (or noobish?) and were often shot down in flames.

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You say that as if it has changed. You're still as wrong as ever!

If I thought these were unfriendly forums where that sort of comment would be taken seriously I wouldn't of put it, nor would I likely be here


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For people this can be seen as ignorant or "elitist" in that we only respond positively to posters we recognise and thus they'ld no longer read the forums.

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That may actually be more telling of your own attitudes and perceptions of the forums.

I don't think it's the case that 'only posters that we recognise' get any special treatment one way or the other. btw who is this 'we' anyway?

Of course there are bound to be the odd people that any individual considers a good/intelligent /kindred poster and the odd one that they think of as complete eejits. That's just natural for any group, but I don't think that name recognition per se means a darn thing.

The content of a post... now that's a different matter.

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The chainguns could be horrendously expensive to run. At low levels of proficiency that is.

At high levels you did a lot more damage with them and the 'per round' cost was effectively a lot lower.

That said; elite rocket prices still stung a bit.

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But you're referring more to the recent (past few weeks) red weapons, which used the higher/highest grades of ammo and seemed to be introduced mainly to help people to level quickly for the end event (though they were also a devs nod to many well known players).

Sorudo was talking about playing it a while back - before these red weapons existed, and so wasn't talking about trying to afford ammo for a red weapon as a lowbie.

Frankly even if the game was still going it would be a waste of time complaining about ammo costs for mega weapons that have effectively been included as part of the server shutdown event. Normal chainguns were more affordable, although they weren't always that way and tbh I was never their greatest fan!

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Irony that alot more people seemed to enjoy the game knowing that it was going down.
Err... not much sense I made.
But that more people where having fun while it was on it's last breath.

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It may have been because of the +2000% xp and red armour.. for the last couple of weeks or so

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It was a couple of things - many new people seemed to be in the game as there were a load of people (in the past 2 or 3 weeks) saying 'wish I'd known about this game earlier' or similar.

I think that TR got more people hearing about it because it had become free and was being closed down. Heck - sure there was even the odd one from these forums who'd never heard of it trying it and enjoying it.

So the good thing to note is that NC may be terrible with advertising, and they may force games out before they are ready, but they do end up with decent games that people enjoy when they eventually find out about them from word-of-mouth about their closure and moving to F2P.

I know it was - but someone (wrongly) expecting an FPS would probably jump at the chain gun (heck - chainguns are better than rifles/pistols, right) and then be pretty darn shocked at how expensive they were to run. If so: it's a criticism based upon wrong assumptions about the game, but if Sorudo thought that then it's very possible that others did too.

They never learnt that at lower levels a few rifles/pistols/shotguns and pumping firearms and lightning were your cash-friendly dps friends!

Though to be fair it depends when Sorudo tried it - iirc the cost of ammo was altered (over a year ago I think) as it was pretty darn expensive. It got a lot of people moaning over the cost.

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I'm pretty sure there will be one, if the Invention System and Macs got one.

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There's a forum for trench coats and related mens outerwear?

Look - I know it's not good but I'm trying to work through loss (of TR) at the moment. It'll pass.

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A video message saying 'thanks for all your hard work' on the company intranet site

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A video?? You're lucky, we got an e-mail and a bloody teddy bear

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Define the size of this teddy bear . . . . . yes its crucial.

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Yeah - it could be one of those huge ones you can cuddle like a real person

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Awww, that would be a real Kodiak moment!

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What, the one where it rips your head off with one swipe, or the one where you're still alive as it mauls you beyond all recognition?
/ruinthemoment

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A huge bear that cuddles you? regardless of whether you're male or female? But then rips your head off????

Bet it's got translucent fur as that sounds more like a bi-polar disorder!

Good event - though the very, very end was anti-climactic as I'd expected a bikini atoll moment with the penumbra doomsday device... had factor 1000 suncream ready.

And I don't know about anyone else, but Hydra (the US server) is showing as offline to me even though it should be up for 6 hrs more...

Oh well - there goes a fun game.

Looks like the world of CoX gets me back on Sunday/Monday.

Managed to see most instances before it closed, even though soloing means I've had my backside handed to me more often than I care to admit. If only NC had left it running for another couple of weeks I'd have cracked the lot. Sad to see what turned into a very enjoyable game die off so soon...

I'm still up for fire/rad action, but was discussing creating some other fire based characters for the SG.

So... Anyone fancy mad action as fire blasters, fire scrappers, fire tankers and maybe the odd fire/ troller again?

You'll notice some new characters in the SG that I've created just in case the answer is 'yes'

Shouldn't really matter which server you're on - afaik server merge is still meant to be coming. I've heard tonight mentioned as when the merge should go ahead.

I'd guess that lvl 50 is a good idea if you want to join in the end-of-game event (whatever form it takes) as I'd think that that's partly why the devs introduced the massive xp multiplier drops for the last month.

I'd hope the Neph make a last minute appearance and there's been talk of a 2nd Earth instance...

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See, I really like the 'Freakshow territory' in Crey's Folly - yet it's usually flown over to get to EDEN, and there's nothing much to DO there.

It's a shame, becuase it's actually really well put together. Apart from missions and as I said, EDEN, there's very little reason to go very deep into Creys - imo.

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Creys Folly is probably not frequently flown over to get to anywhere. It's a CoH cul-de-sac.

It used to be the way to get to the Rikti Crash Site but that ended when RCS became the Rikti War Zone (I'm guessing it was probably due to a problem with the CoH gate in a co-op zone). The Freak circus is near what used to be the door to RCS.

Eden is easily accessed from Founders' Falls - and leads to the Hive, but I can't recall Freaks being there (in any noticeable numbers at least).

Hmmm... I could almost imagine that you misunderstood my post. Unless I'm misunderstanding yours.

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Medieval does not automatically means orcs and goblins...

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Nearly right - medieval does not ever mean orcs and goblins.

Orcs, goblins and similar beasties are at various levels of (primarily Western European) myth/fantasy/fiction - they never existed in reality, neither pre- nor post-1500.

Medieval refers to reality - somewhere between about 500 and 1500 AD.

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I'm not sure, but I always thought it was 3 major+unlim minor arcs, and clearly remember having Nemesis prototype+2 RWZ arcs being open simultaneously last week.

RWZ arcs and certain other (Ganymede?) count as "major arcs" irregardles of their length.


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Pretty sure that's correct - but, when in doubt, this wiki page is my usual reference.

Why I covered myself with the "Can't actually recall all the restrictions on trials" line.

I can't recall them, but it wouldn't surprise me either way on invites - though it'd probably be better if trials can invite other trials (so friends trying it out together could team).

Even if trials can't invite, the post still stands for new players who've bought the game (which is what I did - no reviews, no trial, no research - I'd just fancied the game for about a year ever since I saw it in a shop).

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An alternate dimension medieval-themed zone, yet with unique elements to the CoX lore to keep it from being generic (so it doesn't have to have orcs and goblins). Cool idea, would keep everyone happy.

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Not sure how the heck a medieval zone came up in relation to a dragon GM. Well, not sure unless lots of people have an issue distinguishing between (Western European) medieval and high fantasy.

Orcs and goblins often exist in the latter, whereas the former is full of undertrodden masses just waiting to be subdued by any villain wanting to get a reasonably early start on world domination.

Hmmmm ultra-power-death-ray mkIV vs a few men firing pointy sticks or waving bits of metal... Rack that one up as a win for the time-travelling badguys then.

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...ive had many blind invites when my search comment clearly says 'no blinds' usually from players level 1-10, which i refuse then get spammed over and over again. Usually these people have the same global name as the charecter so im guessing there trial noobs but it is very frustrating.

Now its got to the point where if i recieve a blind invite and i have no idea who its from more than once, they will just get added to ignore.

I dont agree with the snotty tells to a blind invite, but truth is, its common courtesy to at least be friendly towards people.


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Can't actually recall all the restrictions on trials but I'm pretty darn sure that trial accounts cannot send tells or use global - so it would be impossible for a trial to send a tell before inviting.

tbh if you think it's a trial it'd be better to reply - they may be more newbs than noobs (as you put). A quick reply saying 'no thanks' (and maybe pointing out the comment in search) is possibly a better impression for a true trial (i.e. brand new player) and may actually stop them annoying everyone else...

btw - it's fine putting 'no blinds' but this was my 1st MMO and I had no idea what 'no blinds' meant when I started. I'm guessing that some (not all but some) trial accounts will be in a similar position and so may be blind inviting through ignorance rather than stupidity/rudeness. I'd also suggest changing from 'no blinds' to something more like 'send tell 1st please' as that's easier to understand if you're unused to MMO terminology!