Judgement_Dave

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Heroes is also shown on BBC3 on Sky digital,this station takes advertising and also shows Heroes a week in advance to BBC2.


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Let me repeat: Don't think the BBC explicitly takes sponsors for TV shows - so Heroes sponsorship in the UK would seem a non-starter.

And the explicitly is only there as it's possible (note: possible) that some unofficial 'product placement' may go on.. though I'm pretty sure that the BBC aren't allowed to.

AFAIK it doesn't matter if you watch your BBC feed through terrestrial, cable, satellite, iplayer, holodeck you still shouldn't be seeing adverts/sponsorship carried by the BBC (whether BBC1, 2, 3 or 2097).

Of course should ITV, channel 5, sky or any of the other many commercial channels start carrying heroes then they may show adverts - but that ain't the beeb.

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and more to the point 13,000 active players

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Got a linky for where that figure comes from?
Or are you misunderstanding the peak concurrency figures?

If the latter then please try to understand that maximum active accounts at any one instant in time is not the same as number of active accounts.

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Not too sure on being unable to heal in the Cytoplasm, I think thats limited to the LGTF Hamidon.


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Gawd - it seems so long ago that I tried a Hami that the old memory may be playing tricks, but...

If I do remember correctly there was some form of heal blocking going on for the full Hami.

(I had an empath on the Hami tank team on a post-I9 failure... sure that we kept getting heal ability blocked.)

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Footnote;
Can they not try better marketing, hardly see anything at all in magazines, or on TV. Have heard it before in a post not sure by whom, can't they sponsor "heroes"? Sure that would make more people aware of the game and possiblely increase the player base.

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Don't think the BBC explicitly takes sponsors for TV shows - so Heroes sponsorship in the UK would seem a non-starter.

I wonder quite what the best timing would be for a marketing campaign given the competition upon the horizon - whether it's better to try grabbing players before the competition lands or wait until after and hope to grab people who were attracted to a superpowered game by the oppositions marketing but then didn't like the game setting/mechanics/play etc...

Either way, I'd hope that we'd see something by way of marketing/advertising. And maybe a new boxset (around I15 if that's a big story issue?) and the resulting magazine reviews could help...

I'd guess that this may be linked to the new forum software coming soon... Pretty sure that the new software has been delayed and that may be why we're currently misisng the what's on thread.

About time the manual gets updated.

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Did they not update for Good vs. Evil?

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I didn't think they did..

The current manual downloads on the US site still seem to be seperate (the old, possibly original, CoH manual and its CoV equivalent) - and I'd have thought that a GvE update might have looked at producing a single combined manual.

But even if they did that still predates the invention system, which is quite a big game mechanic to be totally missing from the manual.

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Thank god however for the fact that next issue they are adding a temp jetpack to be available for purchase in the zone

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I might just go back to the shard, being a SJer (lets just leave it that its my preferered travel power shall we) I hate the Shard and I've only bothered going once. With temp fly I might try it again, and that means the TFs might at last be an option.

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Whilst still more of a pain than tp/fly, SJ isn't too bad for the SSTFs. The usual advice for gravity geysers is to turn off travel enhancing powers (sprint/cj/sj/ss) or you'll overjump, but switching on CJ or SJ mid-geyser-jump gives a level of mid-jump control that's unavailable to superspeeders. With that control you can at least make sure you always hit the island that you were aiming for...

If you try this it really, really helps to have a decent sized map of the zones showing the gravity geysers so that you can plan your route.

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ANY, tell about powerlevelling, filling or farming will be Ignored.

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I find this in particular insulting and annoys me... its a similar situation when I look at /search..

I see search comments that say "I WILL NOT FILL / FARM / PL so DO NOT ASK"

To be honest people with hostile search comments like this would encourage me to send them tells saying "fill plox" ~ lol


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Well, tbh, if you follow through with actually sending them tells then that attitude would stink - and may even help turn players against any (more reasonable) filler requests that they may get.

If people say in the search comment that they won't do something then respect their wishes and don't even bother asking them.

Past that, It's a shame that people may respond rudely/curtly or not at all. But why are people doing this? Part of this may be:

* people not responding as they're too busy/missing tells - fair enough. Even if some people chose to respond in 6 keystrokes others may want to give a full answer or none at all...

* people being sick of rude tells from other farmers - in my experience for every polite tell asking for you to fill you get 5 or 6 tells that just say 'fill' or similar. People may not be responding directly to your tell in isolation, but answering from the frustration of several semi-literate tells.

* lack of relevant language skills - the EU servers get more than their fair share of non-native speakers (on all of them).

I'm sure that I've not responded to filler tells for both the first two - but I'll normally try and respond with a literate reply. Even on Zukunft/Vigilance I've tried to reply with a 'sorry - I speak English - you may not want me' type reply if receiving a tell and not quite understanding it...

If I'm travelling a fair distance or at WW/BM (or a similar low-activity activity) I'll virtually always fill - heck it's no skin off my nose; but I wouldn't expect anyone else to fill if I wanted fillers - it's the subscribers choice.

(Personally) I think that the key factor is that most filler tells seem very brief - along the lines of "fill" followed by an effectively-blind invite. These will always get turned down by me - not becuase they are filler requests but because they are effectively blind-invites or can't be bothered to phrase the request in (at least) semi-literate English.

And they can (if I receive enough in a short space of time) result in me turning down more literate/acceptable requests that I may receive shortly after.



ofc if I now start receiving a lot of filler requests after posting this then my long-term attitude may change...

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that's a stupid amount of money. I would kill any one of you for that money.

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Hopefully that comment will be picked up by the creators of CSI* and you'll become hideously rich from guest appearances as the prime suspect in any financially-motivated murder...

Hopefully because then you may not kill me when I finally earn those millions...




* and those of CSI:Miami, CSI:NY and CSI:Salford, Law & Order, Law & Order:Criminal Intent, Law & Order:SVU, The Bill, Silent Witness, Cracker, Prime Suspect, and whatever happened to Juliet Bravo and Z-cars?

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Dave, read GR's quote in my post 2 above from another thread (complex I know, but it was in reference to the monthly access figure) It explains it is the number of accouts that logged in during the month, including trials, but not including accounts that didn't log in.

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Must admit that I hadn't made it to page 2 (max posts per page FTW) when I wrote the post.

A little surprised that trial accounts are included - although it still doesn't alter most of what I wrote - it's still a number, just a number. Just that the nearly-meaningless-without-full-context-number is a slightly different nearly-meaningless number to the one I that thought it was.

It could really just be a case of lies, damn lies and statistics - the 2 figures (peak concurrency and Monthly Access) are just numbers without knowing more...

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How is it possible that these figures are correct and there not be a "population problem"?


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Not saying that any of these are the case, or not, but there are ways in which it'd be possible to see those two numbers falling, and yet for servers to appear much more populated than before.

Figure 1. Peak concurrency

I wouldn't neccesarily look at this too much - just because there were 200,000 people logged on for 1 minute at some point doesn't mean jack if for 99% of the time only 10,000 were logged in.

So all that means is that peak concurrency may not bear a great correlation to average concurrency (and I think it's the average concurrency that'll be most useful in determining how busy most people perceive the servers to be).

If we also remember that not all accounts online at once may be:
* individual, distinct user (i.e. 1 person may have multiple accounts online at once)
* visible to other players (hiding from search/tells/etc)

It's easy to see that even if peak concurrency is directly proportional to average concurrency then it still may have absolutely no reliable relation to visible players online at any time.

btw - I hate people saying 'average' but for concurrency I can't really decide if mean or mode would be most useful.. pretty sure that median would be a waste of time though.


Figure 2. Monthly Access

I'd guess that the figures are for accounts accessing the service (logging in) at least once (yeah - I bet the report would tell me for sure, but firstly it's probably dry as hell and secondly why should facts be allowed to get in the way of teh intehwebz argumentz ).

I'd also imagine that it's full accounts only, and not counting trials (if trials are included then it may be a dire situation).

So (presumably) we know how many accounts (not users) have accessed the game.

We don't know about churn in these figures though. If we have a figure of 120,000 accounts one period and 100,000 the next have we only lost 20,000 accounts? If so the game is dying...

On the other hand if we lost 50,000 but gained 30,000 the picture becomes more complex... were the 50,000 we lost very active, or did they only log in once every couple of weeks for 5 min then go? Are the new 30,000 recent addicts - having just discovered the game and playing it to death (and maybe even telling all their friends)?

How long were all these accounts playing for? How old are the accounts? Do we know if they're new players or secondary/tertiary accounts for existing players?

As Londoner said active accounts are no longer a measure of playing players - but that could work both ways. Is it worse for server populations if an account that's been effectively unplayed for months is finally cancelled? NC lose the sub, but it doesn't actually impact server player populations.

I'd guess that the old 80/20 rule probably plays here - that about 80% of actual play time logged is probably done by about 20% of the players (who possibly account for 30% of the accounts). I'd guess that that stays pretty static.



So I'd say:
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How is it possible that these figures are correct and there not be a "population problem"?


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It is possible, maybe unlikely to many. But it is possible.

I'm not saying that the figures are a reason to panic, nor blindly stating that everything is rosy in the garden of CoX... but without more info we can't start to understand what the figures may mean - so jumping to hasty conclusions is about all we can do with them if we decide not to ignore them!

I'd guess that NC will have a lot more data on this than has been picked up on by the boards. They'll know whether they need to be worried/taking extra action.

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I speak to a lot of folk in-game about how "lame" they alegedly are and from what I can tell the frustration usually stems from them trying to make their Kheldians do everything they could and spread their slots to thinly on the ground to actually be able to excel at anything.


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Though I suspect that a good number of those who hate Khelds dislike them because they were expecting an "I win" AT to match the "Epic" moniker.

Khelds do seem to be CoH marmite. And like that yeasty-spread, they can be darn fine if you do like them.

Best bet is to try and get rid of any presumptions or secondhand opinions and try both to at least mid-20s... And definitely both as they do play differently (heck - 2 different builds of the same kheld-type can play very differently).

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I would like my own lair for my characters, SG bases imo suck as they are all the same, and only used now for storage or as a shortcut.

I would love a fiery lair, or a rotting pit etc so I could personalise my homes.

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I'd guess that's probably coming before the Mac edition to help lure in Mac-using 'creatives'.

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Remember it aint me saying we are getting 1 thing only in an issue, it's our illustrious leader Positron, and the sooner he realises thats a [censored] idea the better.


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Pretty sure that the devs have said before that Issue X wil be 'just' this and that and by time we get hold of it we find that there is actually a lot of smallish things included...

I'd also be very interested to see exactly what the schedule turns out to be - I've got the impression that (timewise) MA is going to be more like a major patch and less like an issue. It wouldn't surprise me if we see MA hit US closed test a week or so after I13 hits and then I15 at the same position within a month of I14 on live.

On the other hand, it would appear to be a big mistake if I14 does end up as purely MA and then there's 3 months to wait until I15...

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Looks to me like the first column is the highest number of users online at one time for that month, and the second is the total number of times users logged on that month. However, they are both at their lowest (barring the dec 2004 figure).

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Think the 2nd number may be numer of accounts accessing the service (i.e. logging in at least once) - not quite the same as number of users nor number of times users logged on.

Course I should really go and read the report and see what it says there...

Collapsed data mines can be bad news... try digging a multidimensional analysis and drill down parallel to the original collapsed assumptions. Also best to get hold of any of the miner's close corelations just in case the worst case scenario comes to pass.

Whatever you do though, don't resort to kai square to help...

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I also have some Minor Data if you want it?

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You keep data on minors????? You'll have such a tough time inside...

Gratz to efan78 on their 1st 50.

And gratz to Fulcrum and spouse on their 6th wedding anniversary.

Past the gratz about the only notable thing about this thread is the reminder to slot flash for damage. I always forget.

We got a linky to a guide/plan for this?

And hopefully one which omits self-destruct shenanigans...

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Does our Levelling Pact ever end?

At Level 50, when you get no more Experenice Points, your Levelling Pact will end.


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Are you certain that hitting 50 actually ends it? Or is it just ineffective whilst 50 is the cap and so xp is no longer earnt? If the devs ever increased the level cap would 50s who hit 50 in a pact find that they were still in the pact?

Just wondering... and I'd guess that a guide writer may have some insight on this.

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I know my guides are rubbish, but this time I'll try to make it as good as possible.

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It was entertaining, as always, but possibly not in the way you intended...

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Its strange how PVPers moan that not enough people PVP. Yet we have 2 in this thread showing exactly the attitude of elitism that actively discourages people to try PVP.

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You saved me a post there.

btw - On the odd occasion that I've gone there I've usually found the broadcast in PvP zones enough to put me off even though it's never (to my knowledge) been directed at me.

It's like walking into a bar or shop and it's full of gobby, rude kids who are shouting insults at each other. Even if they aren't shouting insults at me I'll probably leave because it feels unfriendly and there are much better places to be.

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Thinking about it some more, 55 for posi?

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That's partly why I was questioning Eden only being 2 earlier...

On larger PuGs I've seen Posi take up to about 7 or 8 hours. Even smaller PuGs of low to middling experience will often take 4 to 6 hours in my experience.

On large teams of experienced players (though not ones who necessarily play together as a team) it'll take maybe 3 to 4 hours.

On small teams of experienced players it'll often only take 2 to 3 hours.

The winning TF Omega team did it in 1h41 iirc (though TF Omega teams had to be 7 + characters).

So let's guess that 60 to 90 min is possible with a purpose built small team...

I'd guess that for Posi you're probably looking at:
* purpose built merit farming teams could earn 55 merits per hour
* average PuGs are probably at about 14 merits per hour
* some poor beggars will be looking at 7-8 merits per hour(or less)... assuming that they don't give up.

Compare that to the Eden Trial. At only 2 merits I'd guess that a lot of farm teams would only be hitting the low PuG level attained from Posi... And a non-specialist team could easily be looking at well under 1 merit per hour.

I really think that recent farming has skewed the devs risk/reward ambitions.

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Which is exactly why I don't do most of the TFs. I quite like Hess, and the witch one in Croatoa. Eden was boring. The one time I tried Posi I gave up beofre the end due to time, but it wasn't exactly thrilling me. T/SF's and Trials seem to be a lot of exactly the same kind of mission you nromally get, strung into a story which quite often makes no sense, and extended to the point where it's irritating. I don't find them fun.


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Could well be worth trying the modern ones (statesman, lady grey and imperious) - I think the standard improved heck of a lot.

Before them it is only Katie and Hess that really stand out - and Positron is really only in the game to provide newbies with a bad introduction to TFs! Much the same as the 1st SSTF is there to stop 40+ characters thinking that the shard TFs will be any better than the lower TFs...

A little surprised you found the Eden trial boring though... although it's nowhere near as good as the 3 newest TFs.

All said and done though, they all come down to go there, hit this, go there, click that rinse & repeat. It's just that the newer TFs have some variation in foes/maps/tactics that aren't seen in the rest of the game...

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It will be done for fun.

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I hope so - but a lot of people would rather see numeric ingame rewards than have some unquantifiable reward like 'fun'...

I think that's why you can see PuGs doing nothing but paper/radio missions - they're easy ways to get fast(ish) missions.

It doesn't help that a lot of people still seem to over value xp, and the Eden trial doesn't exactly have a wide xp-earning range.

Simple fact is that some people will be put off doing Eden, and so it may be much harder to get an Eden team together...

Shame, it's been quite fun whenever I've done it.

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Maybe it's a shame that the merit reward doesn't contain an extra variable portion that's proportional to the time spent upon the task (e.g. 1 merit per hour). This way at least the hastily thrown together PuG that struggles but keeps at it can still get a reasonable reward for their long slog.

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Yes, that is a shame. I'd love to be able to sit in-mission AFK all day and all return with 12 hours worth of merits accrued.

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Y'know the few people doing that really wouldn't worry me. If people want to earn merits there's plenty of ways to earn them far quicker.

I'd rather see a few people get low level rewards for doing nothing than see people work at a task and get a substandard (almost to the point of being insulting) reward.

I'm sure on this we have differing viewpoints though.

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People have been doing the Eden trial in under 10 minutes hence the low rewards.

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I know - but the simple fact is that teams who do it the 'traditional' way are effectively getting penalised to a great degree.

With this merit reward: Who will want to do the Eden trial anyway but the fast way? Will PuGs ever want to just try it?

And with such a low merit reward will the people currently farming fast Eden still want to do it? Or will they move on to find a better merit per minute pasture (I'd guess some of the Oroborus arcs would be ripe)?

Will this low reward effectively make Eden an unattractive proposition for any team??