RogerWilco

I think that's what I mean by tweaking. It sounds very similar to the Mac issue and probably that needs a similar "solution".
I'll see if I can get access to VS 2010 then.

I'm not level 50 yet, but I've been playing with Mid's to get an idea which Sets I should start looking for. Getting perma Dull Pain and ~600% regen is relatively easy, even without incarnates or any purples. Should I focus on defence beyond that? I've made a build that focusses on +recharge and it gets perma-Dull Pain without Hasten, but it's defence and resistances are quite low (~ 10%). The Recharge get to crazy levels if I include Hasten or start to look at puples or incarnate stuff.

Mechanically I'd prefer resistance over defense, as smaller hits are more manageable than fewer big hits. At least my experience in other MMOs is that I prefer armor/mitigation over evasion. But I understand that getting resistance is hard and less effective than Defence?

I don't want to hijack the thread, but what's a train mission?

The calculation thing works using the link you have above. (I think the Basic Generator is 200.000 Prestige, not 50.000)

If I click on the edit field or the Browse button in the Load/Save dialog, I get a dialog where I can only Open a file. (It's in Dutch, Annuleren = Cancel) I'm using FireFox 3.6.28 on OSX 10.7.3.

In my experience the amount of base storage you need doesn't really scale with the number of alts you have, as each alt has it's own Personal Vault access.
The need for Storage does scale with the number of accounts there are in your SG, unless all members agree that salvage stored in the base can be taken by all, but the problem there is that some items are needed a lot by all.

I find the need for storage also scales as you level, as more types and tiers of salvage open up. I store stacks of 3 for common salvage, 2 for uncommon salvage and 1 for rares. In total that means 7.2 rack or 8 storage racks once I have characters in all three tiers. So I'm fine for a 1 or 2 person SG, but more will put strain on things. I store stacks of 3 for common salvage, 2 for uncommon salvage and 1 for rares. In total that means 7.2 rack or 8 storage racks. So I'm fine for a 1 or 2 person SG, but more will put strain on things.

We use the Personal Storage a lot, as we're nowhere near having access to /vault.

But I'm a new player, there might be uses for Storage that I'm not yet aware of. I mostly use it to move stuff between alts, as using the mail system for that is a pain.

How do others use the Storage?

You're playing the game for free. Of course you're going to have limitations. Paragon needs money to pay the programmers to fix the bugs and run the servers.

It probably would. But management usually doesn't like redesigns, because it often takes a lot of manpower and doesn't add revenue. Making something that people will go and buy in the Paragon Market will keep the servers running and the salaries paid for another month.
Usually a redesign happens with a new version of the game.

My guess is that if we would still be using Pentium 4s with a GeForce 2 on Windows XP and DirectX 6 at 1024x768, that the game would work very nicely now.
I make software for a living. It can become very complex very quickly, especially when performance is an issue and previous programmers have used all kinds of obscure tricks and shortcuts.

I think that WoW has made some very good design decisions that cryptic didn't. Next to that WoW had a lot more money to redesign things over the years. But just your example: I think that by only allowing a few speeds made the code in WoW a lot simpler than in City of Heroes, where your speed can scale with level and enhancements. Blizzard made a lot of choices like that to keep the core engine simple and efficient when doing the initial design of the game. Would you be happy if all travel powers just were 50 mph and unenhanceable, if that would make the rubber banding less? It's things like that where Blizzard has really shown in each of their games that they're really good at designing these things. The core of WoW is actually a lot simpler than CoH. There is a lot less variation and customization. I think Cryptic designed the game to be cool, but didn't think enough about efficiency, and those decisions still plague Paragon Studios now.
The lag tracking in WoW was only a fairly recent addition during Wrath of the Lich King. It is a very nice feature though.

As I understood you need a lot more Prestige and unlocked badges before you gain access to any of that?
But you're still limited to 18 storage items per base, right? It doesn't add anything beyond what two workshops already give I think?
yay!

How would I find those?

Thanks for the reply.

So then it heals 35%. Still not very much. And you don't have a nurse to buy insprirations. Even when you unlock the Auto-doc and the combat logs, you don't get a full selection of inspirations like a Hospital Nurse sells, right? There is no way to buy an Awaken or Damage/Accuracy/Defence inspiration in a base, as far as I could gather.

My argument is that if stuff is so well hidden that very few find it, or so hard to unlock that almost none bother, then it's poor game design, because there is too little return-on-investment. Some stuff is too easy, like finding new contacts, some stuff is just right, as you unlock it if you do something related or find it if you go exploring. Some of the other stuff is almost impossible to do at the intended level range.

If you want new players in the game, then you should make the first 10-20 levels have a high Wow-factor. But especially those levels seem very incoherent.
It seems as if the designers want to chase away players to the competition, and only the few who persevere start to get nicer things as reward for their loyalty. That creates a loyal fanbase, but a small one.

I haven't encountered either yet. And my mention of the Zig was from the Paragon Wiki because it seems related to the whole Destined One thing. I have seen no reference to the Zig in game.

Then it's doing a very good job hiding from me. I've been playing for 3 months, I've reached level 38 and have several alts in the 20-30 range. Again I argue, that if you want new players to become subscribers, you shouldn't hide most of the cool stuff.
Again: That doesn't help a new player get into the story and the lore and the universe you're trying to build. This is new player feedback, not 50(+x) veterans. I'm saying that as a new player the content gives very little immersion in the universe, except for a few great Story Arcs, like Seer Marino.

Great.

I might go looking in St. Martial then. I had the feeling the Marcone were more abundant in Port Oakes.


I'm a new player, why should I know about stuff from before I joined the game, but that doesn't get explained in-game.
Well, maybe that's the reason that right now it seems rather incoherent. But from what information I can get from the Paragon Wiki, an area like Mercy had major changes in i21. But there is no connection to the tutorial, and the major story is that of Dr.Graves, after first fighting some Longbow. Dr.Graves story is very annoying. After me and my friends had done it two times, we have avoided it on all our other characters, preferring to just run around the streets and kill things, until we're high enough level for Port Oakes. It's a horrible way to introduce new players to the game.

I only have one Hero, and don't remember that, but it's a while ago that I did Twinshot.
I don't mind that Praetoria isn't very visible in Paragon City of the Rogue Isles. At least the story in Praetoria is that the link between the two realities is very recent and when you leave for Primal Earth you're one of the first to do so. Arachnos and Longbow and the fight between them is pretty well established, especially with all the Mayhem missions and the starting story arc you get from Operative Kuzmin. But they're nameless mooks, not iconic NPCs. The game does a fine job of introducing the various factions, like Circle of Thorns, Hellions, etc. It does very little in giving any background. The Slag Golems and Marcone are about the only ones that I have a clue who they are beyond little morsels of XP for me to bash. With the various Praetorian factions excluded of course. I get more lore in 20 levels of Praetoria than I get in 37 levels of Rogue Isles.
I have found some references to the Galaxy city destruction in Atlas Park, none in the Rogue Isles.
They have?
I liked the Praetorian and First Ward story lines. I don't know what this Dark Astoria is, except that it seems to be a new zone released with i22 from the buzz it generated on the forums.
I have played parts 1 and 2 a few times. you can't do the rest until you're level 30+. I haven't really bothered with them recently, it seems you need to be level 50 for it to be worth it, now it gives an unsatisfactory feeling, as you can't follow the story.


Overall the reactions I seem to get from you are along the lines of "Wait until you get to 50, then it''s going to be clear/awesome/etc". My point is that especially the first 20 levels can use a lot of improvement, and that those are the levels you need to be fun if you want new players into the game. There is still a lot of fun stuff, as this game has lot's and lot's of content, but there are quite a few duds at important moments, especially if you don't have access to Praetoria/First Ward. If Trials are such a big part, then make sure new players enter them. I'm not advocating a lot of handholding, but I think you should make sure players are familiar with such key mechanics.

What puzzles me is that apparently the developers have done a redesign of Atlas and Mercy for i21, but the result is lackluster for Mercy and ok for Atlas. But for Praetoria they've done a great job, but no free player checking out the game is ever going to see that.

Thanks for the quick reply. So basically MoG at 60s is what you should aim for, and then worry about other stuff like defence and resistance if going for /regen?

Edit:
Thanks for the link. So the limit on MoG is actually 48.5 seconds. That is the most defining power of /regen, right? Someone described /regen to me as getting MoG up as much as possible, and using your other stuff to survive in between. Or are there other strategies for /regen that focus less on +Recharge?

I have only used my PayPal account for all my purchases, so far. So my suggestion is:
1) Get you and friend a PayPal account if you don't have one yet.
2) Transfer some money to the account of the friend.
3) Have friend spend it on store points or VIP.

Auch! Sounds like a web programmer or someone with very little experience in UI building. I haven't done a UI like that since TurboPascal 6.0 arrived in 1990.
I'm saying it mostly works in the WineWrapper as is. With your description I'm thinking it might still be possible to track down what's causing the behaviour on Mac and fix it. I'm not saying you should rewrite the entire code, it works on Windows and nearly works on Mac, except for this one thing.

If the whole UI is basically a stack of bitmaps, with a mouse map to determine where the mouse is, then I can think of three things causing what I see on the Mac:
1) The stacking order going wrong, so that the invisible elements end up behind the background image. It might be that when it's done it does a final redraw of the background image, and Wine has misinterpreted the stacking order.
2) Transparency. The invisible elements are somehow set to transparent, or there is something in front of them that should be transparent but isn't.
3) A draw/paint function isn't properly executed for these specific elements.

I'm not sure we can solve this, but maybe one of these rings a bell with you, if you're familiar with how the UI code works? Is it using transparency somewhere, is it drawing things on top of each other to hide/show things?

I can understand that it's really hard to track down an issue like this, especially if you don't have a system to test and reproduce the issue on.

But largely the UI works. All the hard stuff, like the interaction with the mouse, pop-up menus and such those are fully functional. Just one UI element isn't drawn properly when the bitmap is constructed.

Providing the files in a .zip would make updating the WineWrapper simpler, as it would just be:
1) Delete files at location (might even be optional)
2) unzip this file at that location.

That is, unless the registry keys do something important?

I've heard mixed results with people relying on Mono. The only two ways that I've had good success in making cross-platform programs, is with Java, but then it's a pain to make it look decent, or with C++ with Qt. In both cases using Eclipse as the IDE. Once you get into it, Qt is very nice, although I've heard WPF is slightly easier.

If you'd offer some minimal support for the WineWrapper, that would do the trick as well. It's basically now Paragon supports Mac, the Mac client just runs in a custom WineWrapper, just like what U_Dark made. Their support consist of making sure it works.

I'm not asking to open source the code if it's not. I'm bascially asking, that if I'd get access to VS 2010, I could become a temporary "Mids developer", so I could have a look at the code and could see if I can find what the problem with the Mac version is.
I don't have recent Visual Studio experience, last time I worked with it was in 2003. But where I work we make a lot of software, and I should be able to get access to a licensed version fairly easily.

Right-click: Open With -> Property List Editor.

Usually this will be the default, and just double clicking on it will also do the trick, but people do weird things to their machines, so I explicitly mention which program should be used to edit it with the instructions I've provided.

I haven't had any serious problems with that in Praetoria, and I'm a total newbie, didn't slot things anywhere near optimal. Mostly TO and DO enhancements and until recently I didn't even know to slot Stamina and Health. (less important on a /regen, but at least the free slot should get some love).
The only guys I have trouble fighting now that I'm in the Rogue Isles are stuff like the CoT ghosts that drop your accuracy and some of the Mu adepts from Arachnos, as they eat endurance. Nothing else slows me down from keeping my Fury and Combo Points up. My Praetorian is level 37 now, and also did First Ward.

Both my SS/Regen in the Rogue Isles and ,y StJ/Regen in Paraetoria can go on for a very long time. My Fire/Fire Brute a lot less so in comparison.

Quick reply! Thanks.

Yeah. You have to know Going Rogue means Preatoria and that the logo's are actual UI elements, not part of the background. It confused me at first as well.

That just sounds silly. I almost exclusively play with a team of friends. If we wanted to do a trial, we would like to all be in the same group.

I think your thinking is counter productive. I think to make LFG work, you need to facilitate how people want to use it, not force them to use it in a way that's no fun to them. Forcing players into behaviour that's not working for them is not going to solve anything.

I don't know how the LFG system works, but I see lot's of people not using it, so its not doing it's job right now.