TonyV

Oh, boohoo, go pop a purple.

Oh, come on now, I think it's actually a fair criticism of the game. When was the last time you ran a task force where people actually read or talked about the missions? Almost all the conversation in every one I've been on anywhere close to what could be defined as "lately" has centered around the subject the OP is referring to, either getting stuff or getting done quickly so that they can get the end rewards and move on to getting more stuff.

To the OP, sadly, people treating this more as a game to be "won" is much more typical than people treating it as a role-playing experience.

Having said that, though, there are good role-players out there. My suggestion would be to post a message or two on the server-specific forum, found below, asking for some decent role-playing supergroups on whatever server you want to call home. Try hanging out with some of those folks, and your experience will likely be much better. I assure you, there are people out there worth finding. If there weren't, I wouldn't still be playing. Once you run across a few, they can introduce you to others, and the game becomes a very worthwhile hobby.

I have an ATI card and have the same problem.

There. Fixed it for ya. (Clickable, too!)

Maybe, but in-game, Praetoria is referred to as an alternate dimension. (Repeatedly.) Therefore, alternate dimension is what I go with. Who am I to argue with the people who live in Paragon City, have studied it extensively, and who have personally gone there themselves?

I've had this happening for quite some time. For some weird reason, Vista and Win 7 seem to not be able to copy the game output to the clipboard.

The game itself actually has a mechanism by which when you hit that Prtsc key, it saves a screenshot of the game under the City of Heroes application folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes) in a subdirectory named screenshots. If you've been hitting the Prtsc key, look in there and you'll find them.

If you want screenshots with the UI included (e.g. chat windows, nav window, status window, heal/damage numbers, "Level Up!" messages...), you'll have to use a special slash command, /screenshot_ui.

For more details, see the Screenshots article on the Paragon Wiki. It's got some great advice on creating great screenshots.

Also, as a side note, the in-game screenshot functionality doesn't work for some cases, such as on the Enhancement Management screen, the loading screens, etc. If you want to get screenshots of those things, you'll probably need a third-party utility, such as Fraps (which probably most well known for video captures, but which can also take screenshots).

Don't think of them as literally the same person, think of them as twins. Twins are genetically identical, but each one has their own unique life experiences to draw upon, and many of them wind up completely different. It's entirely possible to adore Mary Kate and despise Ashley; just think of how easy it would be if the two grew up in entirely different dimensions. There's a good chance that although they superficially look alike, they wouldn't be very alike at all.

Huzzah!

Oh, and you all owe me five dollars. Pay up!

Back when base stuff was reeeeally expensive, I proposed they should just have a double prestige weekend that would take place more often, like once a quarter or so, to encourage supergroups to come together and work on task forces and such. This always struck me as a much better idea that would actually encourage camaraderie than just a "Shut up and farm faster!" weekend.

Okay, I know you're just messing around, but I'd seriously recommend against calling people "Bishes," even in jest. At best, it's a bit offensive, and at worst, it could cause you to get moderated.

The word you're looking for is tres, followed by cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, and diez. (Just in case you need a few more for your next post. If you need more than that, either PM me or make your post shorter. )

Welcome to the City, and I'll see ya around!

I think a little clarification is in order here.

First of all, I distinctly remember a dev post a long time ago, probably four years or so now, almost certainly long since pruned, by either Positron or maybe Castle, in which he was specifically asked about farming. His response was that they do not like it when people do the same thing over and over again. The gist of it was that if you're doing something over and over because you enjoy it, that's fine; but if you're doing it over and over just to get stuff (a textbook definition of "farming"), they don't like that.

Second of all, they have repeatedly taken steps in the past to curb farming. Personally, I don't do it so I can't sit here and recite all of the actions taken from memory. But if I'm not mistaken, they have made changes to at least three missions that I know of: the Dreck mission, a Family mission, and a War Wolves mission. Farmers can probably rattle off even more. I also know they've done things like eliminated experience from spawns, such as from the Circle demon portals and the Rikti Communication Officer portals, specifically to prevent farming. They've also nerfed experience from various things (the Krakens come to mind) to prevent farming of high-value enemies. And, of course, don't forget how they removed a crapton of badges from a live build to prevent AE farming. Occasionally, they even take actions that aren't negative, actions that make obtaining farmed rewards significantly easier to effectively do away with farming, such as the substantial reduction--orders of magnitude, in fact--in requirements for healing badges and the Rikti Monkey badge (Zookepper).

Third of all, there is a fine line between "farming" and some types of "exploiting." Whenever the devs comment on AE missions or players notice some change or nerf, there's always a s***storm that brews because of the whole, "How much is too much?" argument. The fact is that the devs have in mind that a player can only earn some amount of reward for some period of time. They may not have exact numbers documented, but they most certainly do react when they think the amounts are too high or the period of time is too short.

Everyone farms at some point. There's always the drive to jump to that next level, get that last shiny, that new thingy, etc. I don't think the devs "hate" that at all, and when done occasionally, it adds excitement. There's also a fine line between farming and simply being an avid player.

But what they do hate, and what they do react to, is when people take it overboard and farm more than they play. It makes the game a boring exercise in tedium (i.e. not fun). It drives away new players who think they'll never be able to catch up. It is a nuisance when the chat channels are filled with nothing "--f lfm" and "--f lft" messages. Most of the obnoxious behavior in the game I've witnessed, such as people being kicked from teams for not going "fast enough," arguments over people's builds, arguments over how people use their powers or how they're not doing something "right," have centered around people farming.

So while I wouldn't say that "the devs hate farming" is absolute truth, I also would not put it in the "misinformation" category. At the very least, it's safe to say that they don't like many types of farming, which has consistently borne out over the years by their comments and actions.

On the other hand, what I would put squarely in the "misinformation" column is the thought process of: "Because the devs haven't nuked/nerfed [whatever], they don't mind it and/or they want us to do it." Just because a dev doesn't stop you from doing something right this second doesn't mean they don't think you're being incredibly stupid or that they won't stop you later once some higher-priority things get taken care of.

I predict that the State of the Game post will be in late April or May, not in January. (I just don't want people to see this thread and expect something forthcoming from the devs anytime in the next month or two.) They probably won't talk about Issue 20, because it will have been released for a month or two.

No. Maybe not mathematically zero, but practically zero. When Issue 9 was released (markets and the invention system), I thought to myself, "With 'loot' in the game now, they're opening the doors for RMTers." I had never received a spam e-mail up until then.

I know it's not going to happen, but I do wish we could roll back to the days when we didn't have a loot system, when we were topped out with SOs and it didn't really take that long to earn them, when a million influence was considered a hell of a lot and there wasn't this persistent drive to farm it because, frankly, there wasn't a whole lot you could do with it other than share it with the newbies to help them out.

The Imperial Defense Force.

Okay, I have to defend Joss Whedon, because he's one of the best damn writers and directors in the world. And as far as I know, he had absolutely nothing to do with the travesty that was Battlefield Earth.

There are movies that are cult favorites because they're so unbelievably bad, such as the aforementioned Battlefield Earth, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, etc.

Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse, and some of his other efforts fall into a completely different category, shows that were highly underrated at the time, efforts that were undermined by the very distribution channels by which they came to us so that they could pile on us the cheaper-to-produce dreck that is modern media, especially science fiction, instead.

If you haven't seen it, or if you've only seen bits and pieces of it out of context, I highly recommend renting Disc One of Joss's masterpiece, Firefly. Fire up the first episode (titled "Serenity," not to be confused by the movie of the same name), and watch the two opening scenes. I can almost guarantee that you'll be hooked. Bear in mind after watching it that this was actually the fourth-from-last episode of the series shown chronologically during its original run, because the pinheads at Fox wanted a pilot that was more action-packed and made them run "The Train Job" as the first episode instead. That was among many boneheaded decisions they made that killed one of the best shows ever. Along with schedule shifts, preemptions, and other shenanigans, it never had a chance to get its following while it was being broadcast. I have made no less than five die-hard fans since its cancellation by showing them the first episode before it became the cult classic that it is, when they had never even heard of the show.

Hopefully, you'll watch the series enough to get to the episode "The Message." In my humble opinion, that was one of the top five hours that has ever graced television airwaves.

Joss Whedon's genius is in understanding that good fantasy and science fiction, just like good anything, isn't about the genre or billion-dollar special effects, it's about the people. Nail that down and the rest is gravy. One thing I always liked about Firefly and never really considered until I heard him specifically mention it is that there are no aliens. Think about it. A space show without any aliens. As I recall when I heard him talking about it, he wanted to make sure the show stayed focused on the people, and "little green men" would have been very distracting to that end.

I have to admit, I thought the first two or three episodes of Dollhouse kind of sucked. I distinctly remember thinking after watching the first episode, "This is going to die a quick death." Still, being Joss Whedon, I knew he had more in store than just Eliza Dushku being a sex kitten each week. Sure enough, by mid-season or so, it ramped up the intrigue and deeper layers, and I was hooked yet again. The last two episodes were amazing, and I thought the ending was incredible. As a side note, every time I see Tahmoh Penikett in anything now, I can't help but say to myself, "Hey, it's Mr. Bal-LARD!" with Adele DeWitt's British accent on the second syllable. I didn't watch Battlestar Galactica until after Dollhouse was in full swing, and I could never call him Helo. It was always Mr. Bal-LARD.

Anyway, watch Firefly. You won't be disappointed.

I think I have a picture of him somewhere, in case you're curious.

Let's see... Oh yeah, here it is!



Awesome, indeed.

If you ran downhill at 35 miles per hour, it would probably hurt a lot even if you didn't fall...

Put 'em in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on 'em!