Smurch

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The only one I've never been a part of is the GM in Cap au Diable, Caleb. I'd like to do that one once. It is really difficult to get him to spawn though.

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Part of the problem with getting him to spawn in Cap might be that he's in Nerva :P

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I'll go one farther on prioritizing.

For Controller/Dominator/Defender types I would say that Juggling is an important skill. Not the practice of throwing things in the air and catching them smoothly, but the skill of switching from target to target in a fight keeping holds, slows, debuffs, ect. running where they will do the most good.

For example: Sleep target A, Dominate Target B, Confuse Target C repeat as needed so that your teammates with better damage capability can focus on offense instead of self defense.

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I call that "Plates on Sticks", because it's kinda like being this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpjj5...eature=related

I think he goes into Domination Mode around 7:22

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It's all about knowing your enemy, knowing what your guy can do, and having a good feel for recharge times, damage, resistances.

Any good CoX player can figure out almost exactly what he can and cannot do.

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Though there is a significant rush in the "almost" part of that equation. Standing there with a pile of defeated opponents littering the ground and a sliver of health left, thinking "I didn't really expect that to work."

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Those are indeed great moments. "I can't believe I pulled that off!"

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First of we have to define what skill is.
Apparently, you don't think that strategic skills or tactical skills are skills.

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Cuz we all know, Chess requires NO SKILL at all.

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A successful pull drags one or two enemies that are on a fringe of a group away from the rest of the "mob" to another location where the team can ambush them.

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Slight terminology pet peeve:

1 single foe = Mob (short for "Mobile". This term comes from early MUD games)
a group of foes = Spawn

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Players tend to hate energy/energy blasters because of their power sets knockback. It takes skill to utilize the power set so that the set's knockback is an advantage to the team instead of a disadvantage. You can use blaster energy attack skillfully to "control" mobs in the same way that hurricane can - if you know how, are skillful in your targeting, and can time the right time to activate your attacks.

I can keep going. I don't think it is necessary. I've proved my point on these situations.

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Using the right powers at the right time in the right way under the right conditions and knowing how to do all that is definitely a skill.


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It definitely takes skill to make a complex base.

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Oh gawd yes.

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If you are able to do that and don't think it takes skill to accomplish it, I applaud your skill in evasion.

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I see wut you did thar.

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I think that good CoX players are very skillful at adaptation. They learn how to use different power sets and archetypes to blend in with ever-changing team compositions to fight foes with varied powers.

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Yep. When a team runs into a tough nut, the team will often need to stop to discuss tactics and plans for tackling the big bad. If someone drops the ball in doing their job then the whole team can be in trouble. Thats a clear sign of how skill can make or break a team.

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I've played "twitch" games before. I've played snipers to head shot opponents. I've played game where I had a button to push in order to block.

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I still do! And those are all a different kind of skill.

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Calling into play this disparity, how much do you think hardware goes towards "skill" in a "twitch game" versus player abilities?

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It honestly depends on the game. There's plenty of twitch games that don't require much in the way of hardware and hardware doesn't matter very much in the end equation (i.e. the NCSoft title Exteel for example, which I play occasionally).

If the game engine is limiting you to only being so fast, and the graphics are lite enough for most hardware to handle, a faster controller or peppier processor or a bigger screen is only going to give you so much, and really it's not likely to be all that much.

A better mouse, keyboard, or controller isn't going to make you a better player by itself in those games. What they may do is make it so that you can hit the buttons faster by letting you customize a bit more where those buttons are so as it speed your response time. But a skilled player with the generic keyboard and mouse that came with their computer certainly can still kick your sorry butt.

My Saitek Cyborg Command Unit game pad has sped up my game by putting the keys I need to press the most often right under my left hand, and yeah that makes the game more comfortable for me to play, but it didn't turn me into a superstar overnight.

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Are you tring to compare actors who get paid millions to act to people on the internet paying $15 a month?

lolz

Oh.....my......lord.


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Ignorance..the point had nothing to do with money and if it had...MMORPGs yearly net far excedes the "milllions" made by Robin Williams

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Most actors make very little money. Many actors, such as those in community theater, don't even get paid at all.

And RPing in a game and doing improv in a community theater aren't terribly different.

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You don't need to trace the person directly. The IP, even if it's a dynamic address given by an ISP can be traceable to an approximate destination and once the person knows something as basic as your name (entirely common when you play with friends), they can do the rest. Heck, EQ wasn' really an alt-friendly game so, many people used their most common internet alias to name their character.


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No, it's still not that easy if you're careful. Geographic location isn't good enough (and isn't even accurate most of the time... for a long time I had an IP that tracked to Seattle, WA when I live no where near there). Even with a name and geographic location you still need some kind of public record. Seeing as my own parents had to hire a private detective to find me less than 50 miles from their home (long story) I can assure you that a simple internet sleuth can very easily be held at bay with just a modicum of precautions.

Like making sure your phone number isn't listed OR published ANYWHERE, for instance.

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Erm... why would you be giving out your phone number to someone in a game? People can't stalk you if they don't have any personal information!


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Stalker are crafty, especially if they're really obsessed. Long story short: guild has a forum. It's incredible what you can get with just an IP.

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Not a response to you directly but to anyone who reads this..

Welcome to the internet: Nothing you do is secret. Determined people can trace anything you do.
Be paranoid.

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Yes and no. People can only find information that you have made publicly available. Don't want anyone to know something personal, don't put it online. I am continually confounded by the volume of personal details people want to share with the whole world. Social networking sites make me shake my head in disbelief (and make the social engineer inside of me squee with delight).

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Erm... why would you be giving out your phone number to someone in a game? People can't stalk you if they don't have any personal information!


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Stalker are crafty,

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Not as crafty as I.

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especially if they're really obsessed. Long story short: guild has a forum. It's incredible what you can get with just an IP.

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Not unless you own your own static IP registered to a domain name in your own name and don't use any form of spoofing and actually put your real home contact information in your domain name info (don't ever do that).

True Story: someone decided to try and scare me and looked up a domain name I had, and sent me a PM saying "I'm turning onto Golf Rd right now. What do you think of that?" obviously referencing the street in my Domain Name's contact info. I said "Great! When you get there be sure to wave 'hi' to the strip mall at that address!"

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Well i just like hitting things and its better to do that in a game then in real life.

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We do that too.
It's why I play brutes.

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QR
Over half my toons are female..
99% of the new ones I make are female.

Why? because I'd rather look at an attractive female than some guy for 50 levels.

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/whispers Psst! It's a cartoon character. It's not a real girl.

Seriously, if you're finding your CoX character's attractiveness to be an issue either way, then you need to get out more.

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I know I'm 16 pages too late to chime in but, I'd like to add three things.

A few pages ago, it's been mentioned that people who lie about their own gender may end up hurting someone when they date on the net for a while. Hum... am I the only one to find that internet dating is... silly at best?

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AT BEST. It's actually downright pathetic. No, seriously it is. Yes, it is. No, I don't care about your special case. It's sad. Stop it.

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Secondly, I'm not one to play Admiral's advocate but, I would at least ask, what is the point of lying about your gender? I just cannot see why someone would do that. You're a guy and want to play a female girl, no problem, I do that. You want to roleplay her too? No problem, I do that as well, and I enjoy it. But if someone asks me if I'm a man in real life, I'll have no trouble saying I am one. The person is not asking me my social security number or my phone number, merely my gender. I don't think that the "my privacy" argument really holds any serious ground there. If, following that, the person cannot roleplay anymore, then it's their loss. I may roleplay a female character, but I'm still a man in his thirties, married and with the same woman for a decade and a half, I have no intention of turning casual or intense roleplay into anything else

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I never assume I know anything about anyone I interact with online. I have been RPing with some people online for YEARS before I ever knew what their RL gender was for certain (although I can usually guess... there's actually clues that if you're around someone long enough you can guess their gender just by how they structure their RP and other in game behaviors). Ultimately it doesn't matter to me. I couldn't care less if it's a guy playing a girl or a girl playing a guy (which is almost as common, if not more so). My interest in them begins and ends with their RP.

EDIT: and/or their effectiveness as a team mate. A good RP who sucks at the game isn't going to last on my team long :P


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I used to, a lot. I am a roleplay addict, do tabletop and larp quite a plenty, but online roleplay burned me every single time. Starting with the old EQ days where every guild had to have its token crazy girl who flirted everyone and stalked people and left messages on their phone and

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Erm... why would you be giving out your phone number to someone in a game? People can't stalk you if they don't have any personal information!

Hell, I don't even give out my STEAM ID to strangers.

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But lately, the biggest reason is that it has been next to impossible for me to find a roleplay partner that would simply roleplay. Every single time, the person would eventually start pouring their personal life into the chatbox and every single time, it was someone with very bad personal issues. No, I do not want to hear about your drug addiction, your chronic lack of employment, your sexual problems or the fact that you have eight kids and that you allow the TV to raise them while your husband is with another chick because you're now 500lbs because you play games and eat chicken wings 18 hours a day (true story),

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Wow. Never once had that happen to me. But then I'm a stickler on keeping OOC chatter to a minimum and insist it be all in a special OOC global channel I made. I really have zero reason outside of in-game tactics or for expediency about metagame things (i.e. team stuff) to speak to anyone OOC.

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all I want is some fun, anonymous, clean roleplay.

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There's plenty of that.
There's plenty of people who use it as an excuse to have cybersex too, but those people are easy to avoid (just stay out of Pocket D!)

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I have probably been unlucky,

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Yeah I guess so.

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Permanently weirded out. [/oops]

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Maybe this is it. Nothing weirds me out. Nothing. I'm too jaded I guess. The only thing that offends me is abject and willful stupidity (which there still is plenty of). Otherwise, I'm perfectly capable of typing /ignore when someone goes off the deep end, and I'm pretty cagey about any personal information online, so really, whats the worst someone can do besides momentarily inconvenience me?

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That and, CoH is way to fast of a game to spend time typpity-typing all day long.

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I can type while fighting. I can que two attacks up, get one or two sentences out, then que two more. As a result, I RP even in battles. In fact, inside the mission is my favorite place to RP. But then again, I can type fast with a reasonable degree of accuracy. ;-)

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What do people do in RP? I see so many people talking about them but i still don't really know what they do. Do they like really get into there toons and always talk like a hero or something like that?

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Well for me and the wife, what we do (we play villains) is conspire, plot and plan, we make friends and enemies (PCs and NPCs alike), we develop intercene conflicts, alliances, and intrigues between our characters in our coalition, we make commitments and betray them, we quip at heroes, and in general try to weave a larger and deeper story than the game itself does by default. That story - that SAGA - is what keeps the game interesting for us.

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and Age of Connan for a month and wasn't interested in sticking with any of them.


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Age of Conan is one of the best single-player games I ever tried.

... what?

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Like I was saying, after playing 40+, I hate reverting to pre 20 Mal or Ouroboros... it is so frustrating.

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I won't do it. I'd rather eat broken glass than go to pre-20 again on leveled characters.

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Play Villains. The contacts are more interesting and the arc stories are better, and the mayhem missions (where you rob a bank) are an absolute blast.

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The ATs are more fun too in my opinion. I don't like the hero ATs very much, but love the hybrid ATs of villains. Plus the visuals are so much nicer looking villain side.

Since I run relentless or ruthless all the time I like to have 2 ACC in my key powers. You can't do damage if you can't hit! wiffing cuts my dps hard and dps translates directly into survivability on the harder challenge levels.

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any guides to avoiding bad pugs?


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Honestly most of the PUGs I've been on in this game in general have been pretty decent. Every once in a while you'll land on one that's totally clueless or has one or two absolute morons whose actions kill the whole team off. The best solution for those is first to ask them to stop being idiots (in the nicest possible way "hey would you mind not aggroing another spawn until we're done fighting the current one?") and failing that either kick them if you're team leader or just leave if you're not.

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I enjoy leading radio pugs. 9 times out of 10 the team doesn't have a death except in rare circumstances.

I dunno what it is about me and leading, but I can get a group of 8 with the above statistic going in about 5-10 minutes.


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Oh it's not just you. I don't think anyone else's experience is different. It's not the 9 out of 10 that we remember. It's the 1 out of 10 with that one guy who really stunk up the place and got everyone killed that not only stands out, but is funny in retrospect.

Its to that 1 out of 10 (or less... the really really bad ones are even more rare) that this thread is about.

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Here's a question I've always wanted to ask:

By the 45-50 level range, the Nemesis has obviously gained the ability to spread his mind across multiple bodies, but how does that work? Is it one conscience controlling multiple suits of armour like he had a hundred hands, or is it multiple "people" all existing as copies of the same mind? At one point, the former appears to be the case, where two Fake Nemesis will finish each other's sentences. At another point, the latter seems true, as "Nemesis?" asks "Have we met? Or was this another Nemesis?" suggesting that the one I'm fighting now may not be the same despite sharing the same mind.

How does that work?

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I think it's both. The Fake Nemesis' can either be autonomous robots, or Lord Nemesis can directly involve himself in that one (or two) remotely. When dealing with a Fake Nemesis, you don't know if you're dealing with a robotic automaton acting on it's own, or Lord Nemesis' mind in control of that robotic automaton.

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Rum is for peasents. And Bourbon may be Whiskey, but it is NOT real Whisky


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Well I don't know, There are rums that will give the best whiskey a run for it's money as well, believe you me, and there's some fine bourbons out there. And Booker's won't put hair on your chest, but it may well remove it, along with most of your stomach lining. Still, a mighty fine drink. And I am partial to Knob Creek.

Although I am partial to Templeton Rye and The Balvenie Doublewood as well, those are a bit pricey to drink regularly, though, so I indulge in those only on special occasions.

My tastes in Irish whiskey run darn cheap tho, with Kilbeggan topping the list, with the premiums like Tullamore Dew 12 year, Redbreast, and Bushmills Malt 10 yr coming in after.

Unless I'm lookin' to just tie one on, then it's hard to beat Feckin' Irish Whiskey. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

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Son, if you're implying that rum is unmanly, forget about the Captain. Sailor Jerry and I may have to have a word with you.

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Sailor Jerry is too... fruity. Tastes like marachino cherries and not in a good way.

No, if you want good rum, Pyrat XO Reserve is a fine, fine drink.

In defense of the Captain, Captain Morgan Private Stock isn't too bad. It's no Pyrat XO, and the vanilla taste is a bit manufactured for me, but you could do much worse for the price.

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Rum???? Sorry all I have is 151. Hope you enjoy it.

*Puts out a couple of cases of 151*

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No true rum drinker considers anything made by Bacardi... well, ever.

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u wan join tema?

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R U HLR?
IL JION IF U HAVE HLZ!

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(Well, there may still be the "Don't modify your base" bug. Don't know offhand.)

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Bug long since squashed.

Was on a PUG with one of my MM's (low 20s), and we were running paper missions. The leader was a female brute who I am pretty sure was a G.I.R.L. Anyways, we had a pretty good mix, with my MM, the SS/shield brute team lead, two dominators, and a pair of corruptors. I figure no problem, I can help the brute tank and the doms can CC the mobs while the corrs burn em down.

Well the team leader had an obsession with being the first one to run into each fight. They MUST be the first one in a spawn. If someone else was close to an unengaged spawn, they'd have to run in IMMEDIATELY. Sometimes they'd leave the current fight we were in to go aggro a whole new spawn just so they could be the first, sometimes abandoning the current fight to do so.

Usually this meant that they'd be in serious trouble within a matter of seconds, and the rest of the team would try to rush to their aid - or worse, they'd realize they were in trouble and come running back with a spawn or two (yes in the desire to be first, they'd aggro multiple spawns) trailing behind them right into everyone else in time for them to die and give the rest of the team aggro . This often meant half or more of the team dying.

And as for sharing aggro with my MM? Forget it. If I'd start drawing aggro, the brute team leader MUST be the one to have the aggro, so s/he'd switch targets constantly to try and keep aggro away from everyone else. This usually resulted in them dying, followed by half the team who collapsed like a house of cards, since they were all trying to save the brute.

It took us over an hour to complete a paper mission, and most of the team died multiple times (except me... thanks to sacrificing my minions to cover my escape when need be, as a proper MM should).

The team leader seemed to think the whole thing was funny and made a bunch of "Rarrr!" type comments about how tough they were both throughout and after the mission. They even actually said "Rarrr!" at one point.

Everyone quit the team after that.