Snow Globe

As I explain in this post this time I didn't. War Wall badge, insta-fail bug upon entering the mission. This was last weekend.

When the knockback bug was active on live, I didn't get Bad Luck badge for until the next day when a GM succeeded the mission for me (the KB bug was fixed June 2006).

I posted this on my SG's forums, but others might find it helpful here too.
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After going through another buggy badge mission last night, I figured I'd pass along some tips on how to deal with buggy badge missions.

First off: Know that you are IN a badge mission. You might want to check out Nofuture's list of CoH misson badges and the Nofuture's list of CoV mission badges. Nofuture is missing the 40+ CoV badge info.

The 40+ CoV missions are: Party Crasher (40-45), Mage Hunter (40-45), Efficiency Expert (45-50), Couch Potato (45-50), and Usurper, the defeat Lord Recluse mission offered by your patron.

What to do if the mission fails due to a bug:
-Be calm, it isn't the end of the world.
-Send a /petition. Be sure to include in the subject line the [servername], mission failed due to bug. In the Description include the following: Mission Contact, Mission slot (Top, Middle, Bottom), Mission title (the brief description in the mission list), level, and the fact that you didn't go to contact (see below).
-Go do something else, either another mission, street hunt, or a teammate's mission. The chances of having all 3 of your mission slots eaten by buggy missions is really, really slim.
-Be polite to the GM, they are there to help you. That being said, they sometimes fail to read the petition description . Be prepared to repeat anything that you've put in your petition description.

What not to do if the mission fails due to a bug:
-Return to your contact. This is vitally important. The GMs cannot fix things if you return to the contact.
-Expect that the team will get the badge. The fix will only be for the mission holder.
-Expect an "instant response". Play, do other missions, go to sleep, whatever. Very rarely do I get a GM response in under an hour.

If you follow these simple guidelines, the GM will complete your mission, and you will have a shiny "Badge Earned" flash on your screen.

I'm sure people have asked for some options to come back here, but hopefully I can also provide a possible solution to my request:

Can the original City of Heroes faces (not the "blended" menu faces for CoH+CoV) be renamed to Herioc Face 1, Herioc Face 2, etc...? That way we get all the facial Goodness/Badness without having problems at the tailor. The tailor change at that point would not have the "reverting effect" every time a character made a tailor visit, and re-open up the friendly looking faces to the game.

Keep up the good work.

2 options:
Get a usb keyboard (full size) or get a usb calculator with a numeric keypad (like a Kensington Pocket KeyPad Calculator).

Well, I know that flight speeds in swift will buff Hover and Flight. As I posted earlier, an Acc/Mez in Blind buffs Acc, Hold, and Sleep. So I see no reason for Micros not to enhance both run and flight.

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With the latest patch, Microfilament Exposures are probably really useful for:
Fitness Pool -> Swift (Run and Fly enhanced)
Scrapper->Super Reflexes->Quickness (Run and Fly enhanced)

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Fitness pool -> Swift - Uses no Endurance, so slotting Micros would not give any additional benefit.

Quickness - it's also an Inherent, correct? So again, no End cost, slotting Micro would be a waste.

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Instead of slotting both with the "right" enhancements, ie
3 RunSpeed and 3 Flightspeed, you will only need to slot 3 Mircofilaments, thereby getting a 3 slot savings on either.

To look at in another way, the travel speed increase buffs 2 aspects of those powers, while not using the end portion.

Edit:
The same way that */mez Hamis are "Teh Ubarz!" for Illusion->Blind where the /Mez boosts both the Hold and Sleep portions of the power.

With the latest patch, Microfilament Exposures are probably really useful for:
Fitness Pool -> Swift (Run and Fly enhanced)
Scrapper->Super Reflexes->Quickness (Run and Fly enhanced)

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The difference being that GMs are supposed to be taken on by several teams

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You just hit the nail on the head! Now can someone explain the GM's in Eden scaled for 48 heroes only being taken on by at most 8?

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There are GMs in Eden? I thought there were just normal DE, some Crey, and some Nemesissies.

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I think they mean the Quarries and the other Giant Monsters in the Eden Trial who, despite protests from Cryptic/Positron/_Castle_ and others, seem to have gotten an unannouced boost when the rest of the AVs/GMs did with Issue 7.

Wasn't one locked thread enough, _S_R_?

Quit trolling.

Bugs with unearned badge placeholders:
Raver, Dee Jay, Volunteer Firefighter, Firefighter, Fire Chief do not have progress bars or even placeholders.

While the fire badges might be explained with the multiple conditions (both fires & hellions), that does not jive for the raves.

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people arguing that they got the dmg badges without losing any hp to "accolade bug". the most notable being Ukaserex

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To interrupt here, if I recall Ukaserex's statements correctly: Ukaserex was taking damage while resting and being healed, thereby taking well over any +HP power. [edit: Removed statements that were incorrect]

So, not to put it too finely, this isn't exactly the proof we need.

I see no one denying that damage is getting through. What seems the problem is the very narrow range of damage in the +HP powers range. And in some cases in these discussions the specific +HP powers from the Accolades.

So, as far as I see here are the issues:
Does +HP click powers reduce the count towards the damage badge?
Does +HP Power Accolades reduce the count towards the damage badge?
If neither of the above hypotheses are correct, what does reduce what damage is counted or what is affecting the counter?

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If that test shows that the damage badge progresses as expected, then it would follow that either the damage badge does not care about your boosted HP at all, or it calculates correctly your boosted HP from Frostwork.

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While we can assume that all +HP powers work the same, this is by no means 100% given. Testing with Frostwork alone would prove/disprove that Frostwork works/doesn't.

This is why my proposed test did not include any character initiated powers. Does that mean I think player initiated powers shouldn't be tested? No, they should be.

I could see that a click power/toggle having something in the activation or even animation sequence that messes up the counter.

RE:Bugs with unearned badge placeholders

New one for everyone, I was just playing with a level one blaster, and on a whim, I started dropping him from heights, getting pummelled by contaminated, etc. Now his defiance meter was climbing, and hit 100% with falling damage taken, but no placeholder for the 1st damage bar appeared.

Did a street hunt in galaxy city defeated 2 mob groups, got beat up a bit and got a placeholder for the inf badge, but still no damage placeholder.

1. Other people are saying that, and have been saying that for months now. Since at least Feb 2006.

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If people can make that claim with a straight face, then they're not interested in the truth of the matter and obviously only want to cling to their pet theories, and can therefore be ignored completely.

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2. That is rather harsh. You are letting your feelings cloud your response here. Quite frankly, I have no emotional attachment either way to this. The reason I proposed the test was to calm things down on the issue. Your statements here do the exact opposite, belittling people for theories that have not been proven one way or the other.

As a programmer myself, I can see how one source of +HP could be accidentally be overlooked in terms of badge counts. Yes, it is more likely that all the the +HP powers are in the same group, but that would be an assumption that we the players can not verify. This leads to point 3:

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And, no, the simplest way would not be for QA to test this; they have better things to do with their time.

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Actually that is what QA is PAID TO DO. It is their responsibility, not ours.

Now, the test I suggested would, depending on how many different senarios, take a few minutes for a developer to set up.

<ul type="square">[1] Create a character test template: 5 minutes, tops. Nice thing about doing this internally, they do not have to name the character other than Test1, Test2, etc. They do not have to costume the character. They do have to activate a cheat code or choose a selection of powers one time.
[2] At that point make a few copies of that character.
[3] Activate another code &amp; presto, all badges.
[4] Put a spawn next to the test characters.
[5] Do other things for a while. Go have lunch.
[6] Check back in an hour or 2.
[7] Look at logs of the 2 characters, see if one tank/badge has more damage acquired than the other.[/list]10 minutes spent on this would clear things up. The rest of the time they can do other testing.

Actually that doesn't test the what everyone is complaining about: +HP Accolades.

The simplest way is for Cryptic to get a QA person to test this.

Here is a link to some test conditions that can be done by players, and another that Cryptic could do to settle all these issues once and for all. Below is the one for the developers, and Cryptic should get a QA person to run these ideally.

For Cryptic:
Create 2 identical level 50 tanks, again little/no defenses. Add all 3 +HP accolades (Freedom Phalanx, Portal Jockey, Task Force Commander) on ONE tank. No damage badges should be added.

Put them up against similar foes each in a seperate instance taking minimal damage. Let test run for a few hours or so. Run no defensive powers.

Check to see if the non-accolade tank has less progress on the damage badges.

Test vs flamethrower damage (Council)
Test vs malta turrets
Test vs malta sappers
Test vs carnie minions
Test vs lava (Tyrant mission, or Caverns trial map)
Test in and out of rest.

Since Cryptic would have the numbers, not the progress bars, to use this would be ideal.

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I thought all that stuff was grey to you

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He's exempting .

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Just had a team of 5 in that eliminate kit'vul mission, second difficulty. Did not have a placeholder before entering the mission, did after. Monkeys still there.

[/ QUOTE ] let me clarify. I did not say there were no monkeys. Just not like they used to be a couple popped out of portals and like i said drones were in there instead with 1-5 players. Did not seem farmable like b4 when there would be 30 -40 or more in the mission

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Actually you did write that they were gone, see highlight below. Thanks for the clarification though. Maybe next time be a little clearer .

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I have a badge issue villains side perhaps. seems since I7 that monkeys have dissapeared from the eliminate kit'vul mission and another one that had them.

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Another badge related issue:
The captain &amp; crew of the Moraine need piloting lessons as multiple dimensional copies keep getting stuck in the walls, thus leaving a gateway from those other realms spewing forth ghosts.

This is having the effect of turning a rare badge (ectoplasmic)/zone event into a joke on the badge/monster channels.

Two latest: South west Independance Port, both paths.

As far as I remember, you always had to have 4-5 people to spawn them. Any more, and they are replaced by drones, any less none show. I could be wrong on this though.

Just had a team of 5 in that eliminate kit'vul mission, second difficulty. Did not have a placeholder before entering the mission, did after. Monkeys still there.

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Except player testing has shown that you have to take more damage then the accolades boost give you in order to get progress on the damage badges.

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and yet other player testing has shown that you can get the badge that way.
it's very hard to prove a negative. can you really prove it's not working? what's your setup? can you get a setup where you can do the exact same thing with and without accolades to prove it's not some other factor? (as an example, what if self-regeneration is offsetting incomming damage before it tracks on the badge? in that case, someone with 20% accolades likely has Health, too, and the +Regen from health is more than 20%.)

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Ahem, to settle this I'll suggest a test with conditions for players and Cryptic.

Proposed Test for players:
Create a new Tank, skip outbreak, get PL'd to 21 without taking damage.

During the power level get most of the requirements for the Freedom Phalanx and Portal Jockey for a total of +15% HP bonus.

Now, copy this character to the test server twice or have 2 test characters the exact same. The characters should have taken no damage. The characters should have no or minimal defensive powers.

On the test server level 50(s) will SK the test character(s) and sit in front of something that deals less than the +HP accolades in damage.

Leave characters for a few hours.

Check badge progress bars.

End of Player Test

For Cryptic:
Create 2 identical level 50 tanks, again little/no defenses. Add all 3 +HP accolades (Freedom Phalanx, Portal Jockey, Task Force Commander) on ONE tank. No damage badges should be added.

Put them up against similar foes each in a seperate instance taking minimal damage. Let test run for a few hours or so.

Check to see if the non-accolade tank has less progress on the damage badges.

End of Developers test.

Now, the following is for Developers only, because of the amount of time to get the test characters:

Test vs flamethrower damage (Council)
Test vs Malta Turrets
Test vs Malta Sappers
Test vs carnie minions
Test vs lava (Tyrant mission)

Proposed test build (purposefully gimped stone/stone tank), During test not allowed to use any armors:
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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
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Name:
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Stone Armor
Secondary: Stone Melee
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01) --&gt; Rock Armor==&gt; Empty
01) --&gt; Stone Fist==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
02) --&gt; Earth's Embrace==&gt; Empty
04) --&gt; Stone Mallet==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
06) --&gt; Heavy Mallet==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
08) --&gt; Swift==&gt; Empty Empty Empty
10) --&gt; Taunt==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
12) --&gt; Boxing==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
14) --&gt; Health==&gt; Heal Heal HealEmpty
16) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; Empty Empty EmptyEmpty
18) --&gt; Mud Pots==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty
20) --&gt; Stamina==&gt; EndMod EndMod EndMod
22) --&gt; Fault==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
24) --&gt; Brimstone Armor==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
26) --&gt; Rooted==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
28) --&gt; Hurl Boulder==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
30) --&gt; Mineral Armor==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty Empty
32) --&gt; Crystal Armor==&gt; Empty Empty Empty Empty
35) --&gt; Tremor==&gt; Empty Empty Empty
38) --&gt; Seismic Smash==&gt; Empty
41) --&gt; Granite Armor==&gt; Empty
44) --&gt; Salt Crystals==&gt; Empty
47) --&gt; Stone Prison==&gt; Empty
49) --&gt; Stalagmites==&gt; Empty
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Empty
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Empty
01) --&gt; Gauntlet==&gt; Empty
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Heal
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Level 21: Regular 832 HP, with the +20% that should be 956 HP. Difference 124 HP.

Level 50: Regular 1874 HP, with the +20% that should be 2248 Hp. Difference 374 HP. Should recover 112 damage per tick.

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Strikebreaker badge is bugged. I have the mission waiting in my mission slot for my Supergroup, I know I have not done the mission needed to get the badge, and yet I have it.

In fact I got it while teamed with someone that did have it. I was in the Sea Witch mission.

Then my brother was duoing with me, we were trying to get his Strikebreaker badge mission, and he got it. We were in the mission where we had to find the scrapyard trouble makers.

This is the badge info:
Mission: Bust up the dockworker's strike
Contact: Lorenz Ansaldo (Sharkhead Isle)
Level: 20 - 25

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Ok, just to be absolutely we are talking about which badge is which (both have VERY close names and might EASILY be confused with one another:

Strikebreaker - Accomplishment - Complete the "Bust up the dockworker's strike" mission by Lorenz Ansaldo.

Strike Buster - achievement - Defeat 200 Scrapyarders to earn this badge. I believe the bar reads "Break the scrapyarders backs for this badge."

It is entirely possible to get the achievement badge in the Sea Witch mission, as she is, if I recall correctly, a Scrapyarder and has scrapyarder spawns in those missions (the later ones).

Now if you are correctly ID'ing the badge, then: when you are on a mission and it awards an incorrect badge, you should /BUG it.

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Can you re-faction the Marcones &amp; Mooks away from the current "Family"? I'm thinking specifically of the Gangbuster badge. This question comes up way too often. From what I see it would require a few text edits, mainly the Slot Machine contact's hint texts would have to changed to Marcones from Family.

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When were Mooks ever factioned as part of the Family? They have nothing on them that says "Family", why would anyone think they count for a Family badge? This is like Wolves faction wolves and a badge that refers to Council Warwolves - they're obviously not the badge requirement.
I agree with your other two points... improve the Gangbuster badge meter (and perhaps the other meter), and change the Slot Machine to say "Marcone are to blame" not "Family are to blame".

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Maybe I should have just used the word change instead of re-faction. This is what I get for posting just after getting up .
Edit: You're right, mooks are mooks. Marcones still need a faction change.

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As far as Disruptor (and longbow gladiator) without Reinforcement, not everyone agrees that it is a bug, but rather that we fullfilled the requirements as they were at the time from Issue 6 release to the end of January 2006.

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If that was truely the requirement (and not a bug that awarded it for that action) then shouldn't the credit for what you did apply to the new badge? (What is it? Vigilante?)
That is to say, what you did was COMPLETE THIS MISSION, then you should currently have the badge for COMPETE THIS MISSION, whichever it is. The Mantis SF gave Scorpion Clan to people, at the time that was what the system did, but it was corrected. That removed the first badge and gave the proper Air Pirate badge - I don't think anyone still has Scorpion Clan. So instead of having the incorrect Disruptor, you would have the correct Vigilante badge.

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I would have been happy with your explaination, if at the time the PVP badges were changed it would have translated to the appropriate badges. It didn't. I then had to re-get the other three. Like I have said before, at the time of the change they could have swapped the badge entries and we would have had zero problems. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. This is now over 5 months after Cryptic set in stone the pvp badge requirements.

Oh, btw Positron, if you are still reading this, someone needs to run the hero/villain-only badge flag scan on Triumph. Several of my villains still have some of the hero-only gladiators, and multidimensional .

First off, thank you for taking the time to post here!

While you are checking things out, can you check the unearned text on the first 3 debt badges? I know that at least villain side there is a bar but no text for them. I'll edit this post in a few minutes after I check a hero character.

*EDIT*: Yes, the text is not there hero side as well, see picture here.

Can you re-faction the Marcones &amp; Mooks away from the current "Family"? I'm thinking specifically of the Gangbuster badge. This question comes up way too often. From what I see it would require a few text edits, mainly the Slot Machine contact's hint texts would have to changed to Marcones from Family.

As far as Disruptor (and longbow gladiator) without Reinforcement, not everyone agrees that it is a bug, but rather that we fullfilled the requirements as they were at the time from Issue 6 release to the end of January 2006.