Lemur Lad

I know for certain that Silver Mantis Strike Force recycles the map.

There is a low-mid hero arc that used it initially, and I think that is Tsoo Shenanigans but im not positive.

Open your Combat Attributes window, and set yourself to monitor Damage Bonus. You can either keep the main window open and see all sub values and test when you click Rage, or you can keep the aggregate on in your monitor. Brute numbers may swing, but you can get a pretty solid idea of what they ought to be at different times, and see if it goes higher suddenly.

You. Mine.

no stealth component

It helps to think of the Macintosh Edition as "the version with goodies they released when they made a Macintosh client" as opposed to "the software and goodies for Macintosh users" because like anything CoH, the software is free, either version. You pay for an active account, and you can apply any goodies you want to it with a valid code.

The woman I love plays CoH with me. She understands all about MMOs. She still prefers it when she (a real person) is more important to me than a pretendy fun time game.

There's where your idea breaks down. She's not trying to control you. She just wants someone who thinks she's important because she's a real live person. If you think a game is more important than real live people, you have some bigger issues than finding a girlfriend.

Not as hard as you'd think. Self PLing or PLing with friends who don't care, running hidden, and keeping a low profile when not inside a mission would mean someone could level as high as they want without being seen to be reported.

Something I've always wondered, maybe you can answer Ocho. From time to time we hear stories about "someone reported my name so they could steal it" or similarly my name got taken from me but X weeks later I saw someone with it.

Can this really happen? Or does every name that get's removed for being offensive get put on a Master block list? I should think if that hasn't been done already, the engineers should really work on a GM tool for it. Seems like it could end up saving a lot of time and prevent a lot of GM So n So yanks a name but a year later GM what and who thinks it's fine.

Motion sickness can happen for a lot of reasons. Your eyes and ears work in concert to judge your position and motion, and when something happens to create a discrepancy between the two inputs, your brain can flip out.

When skiing in coh, you're moving through the world in a way that is only slightly in your control. That means your eyes don't necessarily know where to look as things change. When you're in a normal moving about the game, your brain and eyes can more easily anticipate because you're in charge of your motions. I often can't sit and watch my girlfriend play for extended periods, because when she's in charge of how she moves, my eyes and mind are always being pulled in ways they don't expect, and I get a little queasy.

Another trigger is that in skiing, the higher speeds and sudden turns mean there are quite a few rapid camera shifts. When your eyes report your head is turning fast because of what they see in a fast turn on screen, and your ears are saying "nuh uh, we're not moving" your brain goes "who is right?! check, recheck, check again!"

Ever see someone who tilts their controller or their head or their whole body while playing? This kind of kinesthetic response is your body and mind anticipating the motion onscreen and doing what your body would do if it were really moving. Your insides do the same thing, though you don't often notice that, except that your body is responding, then going back to normal when things report that you were fooled, then responding again the next instant because it's reflexive.

It's part of the same reason people can get ill watching 3D images. The muscles of your eye are trying to adjust focal lengths based on the depth of the illusion, but that throws things out of focus, so they go back to normal because the screen is flat (or curved in iMax) then do the same thing over again by reflex. If it happens long enough, you can get headaches and nausea.

All this all really means is that when skiiing for extended stretches ingame, your mind and body pass your threshold for tolerance, and you tip over into noticeable motion sickness.

Others gave you some good advice, I will also add that if you try to run the courses the same way every time, and smooth out your camera motions and turns because they're habit, then your body will get used to that set of inputs and not overrespond.

I've done it before with a paid rename (to a new server not there and back again) and it worked fine, so if there is a block in place it is a new change.

Perhaps the speed with which they made the alt and did the switch was too quick for the server to keep up with?

Since people have been doing that since paid transfers were put in place, I highly doubt anyone is surprised at Paragon Studios.

These are both the straight dope on skiing. I've also found that kicking up your camera turn speed (either mouse or keyboard, your preference) helps you get pointed in the right directions faster.

It's like any racing game (or even racing in real life). Drivers tend to do well on courses because they've done it hundreds or thousands of times. Try to do nearly the same thing each time. Anticipate your turns, and try to turn the same way each time. Get gate one right, then go on to gate two, etc. If you mess up a gate, don't worry about the rest of the run, there's often not a lot you can do to "save it" Just get your muscle memory and habits in places and don't try to force things if they go bad.

Since they've as much as said that creating multiple Sprints was never the ideal solution, it was just something they did because it worked at the time, I don't feel they had any "design goals" other than making some shinies.

I occasionally fast switch my Sprints too, it's about the only good thing you can do with them in multiple powers like that. However I don't really think because we came up with a couple ways to make minor use of a poor design that is any reason to stop them from fixing an admitted error. Especially when fixing it would be granting something they had to take away.

After all, people complained when they removed UT from Sprint in the first place.

Like I said in another post today, the devs can't please everyone. In a world of please as many as you can, I think my idea is less upsetting than some others, or even maintaining status quo.

No such thing. There is nothing a professional game developer can do that will be liked by every customer. The universe would implode.

So your solution to losing good threads amongst an avalanche of irrelevant drivel is to lose the good discussions and ideas in a single thread where everyone talks about multiple topics at the same time, and leave the rest of the forum to everything else?

No thanks.

Bug Reports in iambic pentameter doesn't count I hope.

I'll agree with Arcana vehemently about her two main points. Testing is most helpful when you think outside the box when it comes to what you look at and how you report it. You should keep in mind what the devs are asking for, but in order to help pin down bugs like animation bugs when PC hit, you need to think through odd situations and be able to report them clearly.

Also agree that Beta Testing (ideally) is work. I'm nowhere near as rigorous as she is, and I don't play for hours and hours at a stretch, but even so, I make a real effort to find at least one thing I consider a legitimate potential bug each time I login to Test.

I'll also add that it really helps everyone if and when you do make it in to beta to do your part in Playing Catch Up before you begin playing. The Beta Testers Chat is meant as a resource and discussion area, but it shouldn't be a substitute for taking a few minutes to look at Known Issues and patch notes. It's really hard following threads of people trying to pin down legit problems when people jump in and ask the same questions over and over about easily available info.

No, because the "slowness" is only apparent slowness. Since you're actually leveling two characters at the same time, it's in real terms faster.

My girlfriend and I have a lot of pact pairs, and while we do as you suggest, take a highbie and sidekick one of the pair, we have found other options to be more fun for us:

- Create two pairs, then pact, then level each with one member of the pair. That way we're essentially leveling 4 characters at the same time. Some friends of ours even went so far as to create a superteam of rads where we were all pacted to offline alts, essentially leveling 16 characters at once. Since it was a superteam we didn't feel any slowness.

- Another thing we've done is take advantage of Patrol xp and hop from alt to alt, reserving leveling until they have a good amount of xp to burn. Even when solo a pacted character feels like he's pretty much advancing at normal speed when Patrol XP is factored in.

Really though, pacting isn't about leveling faster or finding the fastest way. We have fun giving each other "present levels" when the other is offline. We have fun finding strong pairs that work well together, and using the difficulty system to our advantage instead of relying on the pacting system to speed things. It's about playing together for us.