Thirty-Seven

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I've been asking for a solution for this problem for years now.

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Technically, there is one coming.* Just wait for Going Rogue to hit.




* = Assuming that badge credit will not somehow be altered by side-switching that is.

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You are using "vanity" as a descriptor of items in a way different than the OP (and myself). You are meaning "vanity" as in "to show off" (stroke the ego). The OP (and myself) means "vanity" as in "has no use other than to look pretty".

A WoW equivalent are the holiday dresses/tuxedos/etc. They have no stats, no buffs, etc, but they look darn good. (And yes, I did read that you don't play WoW. I don't care (and I don't mean that in a hostile way, it's just the truth), and will continue to use it because it's the easiest to draw examples from.)

This is, by the way, the typical game usage of the term "vanity items". Not ego-stroking, but items that do not alter a character's performance (or do so only by a very small amount).

Please re-read all my previous posts with this in mind.

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I had absolutely no idea that the phrase "vanity items" had any sort of game-related definition outside of defining the words "vanity" and "item" and gluing them together. I have never heard anyone use the term vanity to describe things in the way you are. I am not at all saying you are wrong, but just that it is new information for me (CoH/V is the only MMO I have ever played).

I still argue that it is all unnecessary, but definately not vanity by your definition of the term.

Infinity is usually rated as third highest population (behind Virtue and Freedom). Plus I feel the need to plug my home server just a bit.

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Uhhh...no...HOs, set enhancements, and purples are the epic gear of WoW. They are not vanity items. They are required if you want to do crazy epic stuff (not regular content). SOs are the basic green stuff of WoW (good for regular content). DOs are white ("okay"). And TOs are gray (trash).

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I have no clue what your comparisons to WoW mean exactly as I know nothing about that game. However, I did use the phrase "ingame necessity." There is no "necessity" to do, as you say, "crazy epic" things. Do some people enjoy soloing Pylons, and other things that the game was not initially designed for? Of course. Do they need "CoH loot" to do them? You bet they do... but they are not required by anyone but themselves to do it.

So, gathering things you don't "need" to do things you don't really "need" to do, to me, is a form of vanity. Why do them unless you plan to brag about how good you are at this game? And don't tell me it's for the challenge. Saying that implies that they are so good that doing the game in a more normal fashion is below their level of expertise which is in and of itself, bragging.
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Having a set bonus as long as your arm makes your stats better than the SO'd person who has the same amount of percentages in their powers as you. Your HP, your end, your regen, your recovery, your accuracy, your recharge, your resistances (damage and status), your positional/damagetype defenses, ... heck you can even have debt protection that the SO'd guy can't. (Not that debt protection is worth much. But still. A dude with SOs can't get that out of their enhancements.)

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Of course it does those things. But people can play the game withot them, in fact they can get to 50 without them, complete every game objective without them, and help on every raid without them too.
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All that being said, I think you totally misread what I wrote and need to read it again.

1. Enhancements are items. We have loot in City.
2. Most enhancements are not vanity items. Most enhancements change your character for the better, either increasing the power they are in, or increasing your characters global stats like regen, etc.
3. Vanity items do not change a character's stats, or if they do, it's extremely minimal. CoX doesn't have much of that. I can't think of any unless you're slotting old level 50 TOs or something.
4. The biggest and best enhancements are HOs and set enhancements, with purples being the biggest and best of the set enhancements.

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1. I don't disagree.
2. Vanity does not preclude improvements. Improvements can be the source of vanity, in fact.
3. I disagree, see 2.
4. Indeed they are... all of which are unnecessary.

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Ok I feel better. So should I15 be released without these things being fixed or No? What are your thoughts?

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Before side-switching happens, I'd love to have one major issue that was ONLY bug fixes. Major bugs, minor bugs, as many as possible.

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That isn't going to happen, and I would lobby against such a thing vehemently. Besides, waaaaay too many people who don't touch programming would be sitting on their hands for months.

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3. Forbin, gotta disagree with you on that one. Enhancements are our items, and most of them are definitely more than "for show and vanity". HOs, set enhancements, purples especially...definitely not vanity loot.

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I beg to differ. There is no actual ingame necessity to have those "items" so having a set-bonus list as long as your arm serves only to make your character more "uber" than the next one and to show off all the shiny Purples you have farmed.

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"No in game necessity"? You try running missions at 50 without any enhancements and tell me there isn't any "in game necessity" for them.

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I meant Set IOs and Purples. As in the vanity loot that was mentioned in my quoted post, and that the text of my post addresses. Regular enhancements do not produce a list of set bonuses.

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3. Forbin, gotta disagree with you on that one. Enhancements are our items, and most of them are definitely more than "for show and vanity". HOs, set enhancements, purples especially...definitely not vanity loot.

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I beg to differ. There is no actual ingame necessity to have those vanity "items" so having a set-bonus list as long as your arm serves only to make your character more "uber" than the next one and to show off all the shiny Purples you have farmed.

[Edited for clarity.]

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So, then, they should make us pay for Power Customization via a booster? And should have done the same for Weapon Customization?
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IMNSHO, the Height Change shouldn't be part of a paid anything. The Model Change, sure, but height? No. That one little thing doesn't belong in a Paid Booster. That's all I'm saying.

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I have to pick at your argument here. It doesn't exactly make sense to me that you state one type of customization should be free... but the other is okay to spend money on? This kinda screams: "I want one to be free because I would use it, and not the other one because I wouldn't use that one." If you are going to argue that one should be free, by that same argument so should the other one.

And, I agree that they should both be free. That would be great. However, I do understand why they included it. They want us to buy it!

On a seperate note, the Devs are really in a horrible spot aren't they? The players are never happy about anything. If a Pack contains cool things people say it should be free, if it contains some decent things, people compain that they are useless and it's a waste of money. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't!

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So...you want to act like a juvenile idiot? Leave that crap in HALO where it came from.

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That's the same thing I was wondering. Why would anyone want to help you annoy the playerbase? One reject doing it is enough.

SOP aside, it doesn't really make much sense to me that you have to send money before you get anything in return. Ultimately, it is the only thing that gives you (the customer) any power in the situation.

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(I'm sure that a lot of people will not agree with me on this topic, but this is my opinion about it.)

I have been playing CoH/CoV for well over 4 years now and have seen a lot of changes to the game, the zones and the missions. Though I peruse the forums, I have never really posted anything here - until now...

IMO, The AE system as it currently is, has wrecked this game for me. The AE has made more players who have no clue about how to use their characters powers and has made more people more concerned about PL'ing than about actually playing the game. For new players, the fact that the only team that they can find is an AE team in Atlas further exacerbates this problem - this is only teaching the new players that CoH is only about doing AE missions and PL'ing. It is virtually impossible to get a normal mission team nowadays at any level.

The AE system is ridiculous. IMO, the AE buildings should be moved out of the lower level zones and should be for level 50 players ONLY.

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Why is this thread not in the Official Farming thread posted by Mod 8?

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Honestly, who is so sensitive that they would get offended by non-living graphics exploding on their monitors? If those people do they really need to step outside of their closed little worlds and realize it's just a game and no one was really hurt.

I'm shocked someone even suggested this. Honestly, what is the IQ lvl of someone who would get offended?

"OHH NO! YOU KILLED KENNY! YOU [censored]!"

I take it said person who get's insulted also writes letters to Comedy Central everytime Kenny bites it too.

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I think you are missing something here.

I don't think that anyone is getting "offended" in real life about pixels. Rather, those who RP have characters that would get offended by those things. In other words, the RPers would be mad that a hero is doing unheroic things not because they are actually grief striken by the loss, but because it breaks immersion and is unrealistic with respect to the genre.

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I remember getting a huge [censored] map with my purchase of City of Villains* when it first came out in a Box.

I knew from visual comparison with a map that it was Rhode Island soon after purchase. Now I've been to Rhode Island multiple times and never found Terra Volta, Independence Port, nor Striga.

Edit: *

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Totally false advertising isn't it?

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Actually, I generally start lots of characters then lose interest in some of them when they hit the mid 20s (like my tankers, usually - I really do want to like them better, but I just can't get into that mindset). I'm kinda proud of myself that I now have 3 characters in the 40s and 6-8 in the 30s - that was a little bit difficult for me because I like "levelling" and the levels are so much slower on those poor girls.

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That is so completely me!

I think I have found out why I don't ever agree with people that say they don't enjoy a character until they reach 22 or 25 or even 50 sometimes.

For me, this game is a conduit for communication and fun team atmospheres as well as seeing new enemies (when they get introduced or when I play new content... i.e. the Spetsnaz who I have yet to see). It is also always unique for me. If I play a Controller for instance, my experience is different depending on who I team with... whether that be because of AT, powersets, or even just personality and playstyle.

In other words, even at lvl 1 I enjoy my characters. Would I give up my powers at 50? Heck no, but that is because I have grown into them and enjoy the things that I am able to do that I was not at lvl 1, but that isn't to say that I necessarily enjoy my 50 MORE than I enjoy my character who is now sitting at lvl 8.

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OOoo THAT long huh?

Thanks for the warning, taking my kids today...I think. It's the ONE movie we ALL have been waiting for!

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I don't think it is really a kids movie, unless they are well over 13.

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It might also be that they didn't want to have a huge amount of signature character that exist purely to stand around and train people (that's not particularly villainous). More than half of the heroes that survived the Rikti War have the primary purpose of standing around doing nothing. I think they wanted to avoid that. Personally, I wouldn't have been adverse to heroes leveling up at similar individuals in which they are simply registering their new powers rather than being taught how to use them by someone who should in no way have any knowledge of my heroes actual powers. Ms. Liberty should have about as much expertise telling my Fire/Therm troller how to use her powers as an English Literature professor has telling me how to build a computer database.

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This. I guess I can agree with you this once, Umbral. :P

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It's off the known issues list so I wouldn't count on it.

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Dang it! I was really hoping they would "fix" that at some point.

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Case in point of another 'good' necromancer: Doctor Orpheus from the Venture Brothers

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I don't think you can use anything from that show as an example of anything but parody.

It acknowledges it's own ridiculousness as well as the ridiculousness that preceded it.

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I think this whole fluffy bunny transformation is unneeded, and really doesn't make all that much sense to begin with.

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That's kinda the angle I was trying to question... I guess I worded it very poorly.

Wow, this is a hard decision. I really like most of my character's names for various reasons... but I don't know that any of them are above good. I have quite high standards for names, and will spend hours with a thesaurus and wikipedia trying to come up with something that fits.

I think one of my top choices is Mender Cocytus. He is an Ice/Ice tank who is (obviously) a Mender of Ouroboros. The Cocytus part is named for the frozen lake (or river depending on how you look at it) in Dante's Inferno in which Satan himself is frozen. I thought it was appropriate.

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What would a Hero Mastermind have for support troops?
Cops? Community Activists? Guardian Angels?

Seriously though anyone have any good suggestions for what a Hero MM would look like. I wouldn't mind trying one out on the Blue side.

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Trying out a Hero MM? That could be a trick due to the fact that there aren't any. And based on your suggestions, you seem to acknowledge one would need to be created.

<-- Confused.

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Might I point you to Going Rogue, City of Heroes/Villains upcoming expansion, where side switching and a morality system will be the primary centerpieces (as well as Praetorian earth!).

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I was well aware of GR. However, side-switching as far as I know it, will not change the fact that the MM is still using Villain powers as a hero, not new Hero powers as a Hero MM. The OP seemed to imply that somehow the MM would change into a hero MM (at least in the way I read it) not a villain who is now doing a hero's work.

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Soldiers (not Mercs)

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Aren't Wyvern mercs? And they're heroic, aren't they?
So why not mercs?

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The Wyvern are somewhat shady Mercs... they were brought together by Manticore to do jobs that other hero groups weren't willing to take care of (i.e. using more force and stronger tactics to get the job done, even when other "heroes" didn't think the job needed doing yet).

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What would a Hero Mastermind have for support troops?
Cops? Community Activists? Guardian Angels?

Seriously though anyone have any good suggestions for what a Hero MM would look like. I wouldn't mind trying one out on the Blue side.

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Trying out a Hero MM? That could be a trick due to the fact that there aren't any. And based on your suggestions, you seem to acknowledge one would need to be created.

<-- Confused.

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Kinda defeats one of the major purposes too: Avoiding the crab legs.

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Aisynia has a great Huntsman guide that I have followed to great effect on mine. He is about lvl 30 at the moment and I quite enjoy playing him so far. I may have an alternate Bane build just to see what it's like. I will definitely make that an Alternate Crab build when and if they have the Crab Backpack only appear when using that build.