Turgenev

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Why I Love the J-Force, by Turgenev

[/ QUOTE ]Let us pause and consider. What IS it that makes the J-Force not only a guild, but a movement? A paradigm, amongst a field of poorly-shaped copies?

[/ QUOTE ]It is the unmistakable effect of the LEGENDARY J-Man on the easily baited nanny-posters on the forums.

[/ QUOTE ]It is the singular cacophany of musical randomness of the JFS thread, against the drab sterility of some random server's "RP in my lap" diatribe.

[/ QUOTE ]It is the fecund birthing ground of the COH participant-turned-meme, "/jr-ng-r", whose name I will not take in vain in these unhallowed settings.

[/ QUOTE ]It is the invasively painful wincing of hiterto-unnamed-yet-fondly-forgotten fury-posters whose threats, arguments and plane tickets are received with an awesome and inspiring 'lol', not just from the militant spokespeople of the J-Force, but by dozens of free-thinking and chaos-loving participants of the Freedom server.

[/ QUOTE ]It is the inexorable march of a single thread, for half a decade, through the good times, the bad times, and the friggin' INSANE times.

[/ QUOTE ]It is the spirit of relaxed camaraderie, whose unfailing smirk paints the image of our server over all others.

[/ QUOTE ]Why do I love the J-Force? Because in an odd way, they are the best of us, and the worst of us; and in that delicate fusion, against all odds and logic, everything just ends up fine.

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[/ QUOTE ]Pause, and consider.

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Seems odd that the badges are awarded account wide... I just don't see the point of it... but whatever. *shrugs*

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It's because the mechanics of the requirements are tied to your global account, not to an individual toon. If you read the requirement, it makes sense.

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you can change billing info and email contact but you cant change the name it was originally created with

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Actually, you can, but it requires a LOT more than just a phone call.

You may have "access" to the power, but you'd need to charge it. I got this on Test today, so no idea on how it works, but try reading the accolade text and get your hints that way.

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We have options in other places to allow retrieved mobs to stand, run to the door, wander aimlessly, etc.

Weirdly, this option doesn't seem to exist for normal rescues, though (i.e., not allies), and there really ought to be one.

I find it rather frustrating for captives to simply stand there; there are almost always story reasons why they shouldn't do so. At the very least, the default behavior should be to run away, not just stand there. But it would be preferable to be able to choose.

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I've seen this happen on certain maps, where an "exit" door isn't apparent (like the Boomtown map, which doesn't have a door, but a red zone you pass through). It got frustrating enough to where I just had to write the captive's staying there as "catching her breath" while the rest of the mish carried on.

Other maps don't have this problem. I've used Portal Corp 2 to some reliable effect, for instance. (i.e., the captive will run away on their own.)

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Not sure that counts...

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Sure it does. It's a new Dev Choice. Why wouldn't it?

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Wondering if it was functional. Im suppose to get it today and i havent yet. I did get 5year anniversary badge.

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Definitely functional. If you were supposed to hav gotten, it, I'd /petition for it and it'll get manually awarded.

Justing from the critter creator, no, it's just more powers. Basing this on the power details from each set as you toggle the hard/extreme settings.

You sneaky little babushka. Nicely done, son.

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Someone rebuilt the Calvin Scott TF in the MA, go look it up.

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That should be interesting. I'm sad to say I never had a chance to run this before it was termed. Thanks for the tip, Ian.

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My experience was AWESOME. For a week there I was bringing to life all the ideas that I'd been pondering since the Architect was announced -- fine tuning, tweaking, playtesting, WRITING. It was wonderful and probably one of the highlights of my year so far.

Then it went live, I published 3 of my remaining 8 stories, and I never wrote again.

Maybe once whatever microtransaction / vet reward / craftable slots go in with a patch or I15 arrive, I'll be able to use it again. Until then I don't want to nuke my ratings by pulling down what I've got up, and if I write any MORE I'll be digging myself deeper in this hole, so I've been putting it aside in hopes of using it again one day.

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This is what I'm afraid of. And because of that fear, I went in the opposite direction.

I have 3 full slots open luckily; so I'm taking my time with Act II, to make sure I get everything "just right" for my 3-act "maxi-arc", because I don't want to run the risk of missing something. I want each arc to hit the ball outta the park with people.

I'm hoarding those open slots right now: Two to finish my "Ghost" series, and then one more as a one-shot arc for humor's sakes. And then it'll be a wait and see. I don't want to take my arcs down, so what I'm hoping to do is get them DC'd or HoF'd with luck, so I can write more...

If I need to, there IS always my second account... but yeah, for as awesome as Architect is, I'm feeling paralyzed by the publish restrictions. =/

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Hall of 15 Minutes of Fame?

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Why not? The same could apply to the Dev Choice badges, otherwise we'd be looking at potentially hundreds of DC arcs within a year or two. "Retiring" the DC/HoF status to something as easily-searchable but not with the "current" sentiment makes sense IMO.

I'm throwing my hat in on this, but honest stars please. I'm not looking for an auto-5 from people, but am hoping you play the arc and give constructive feedback.

Arc #1013 - Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine (Act I of III)

More info is linked in my sig. Thanks.

Okay, started up a "CoH (Unofficial!)" Steam group. Join at will! It'll be a nice way to open an effective chat client in between CoH players!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/coh-unofficial

I may put that in my sig somehow...

Hm. That could be an unofficial group, sure. I dunno, could "Nemesis Plot(tm)" pass general scrutiny for official hosting on Steam?... It's a great in-joke, but wouldn't benefit new Steam players trying out the game....

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So...

Who's starting the official Steam group, Niviene?

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Nemesis Plot.

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Son, if the official group was started with the profile "Lord Nemesis", I'd be epic.

"It IS a Nemesis plot!! ...and he's online right now in L4D!!"

So...

Who's starting the official Steam group, Niviene?

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Hey, more visibility with a rather popular download/online store site.

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Exactly. Someone gave their marketing team caffeine drops or something, cuz they've been on a fair roll the last six months. Good job, CoMarketers!

(And yeah, it'll help for finding out what your Steam friends are up to. )

Re-read the post, people. I'd already ghost-edited it to address that very concern before TwoF mentioned it.

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Edit: I don't think striking the MA will work. Remember, this is to make an adequately long and obscure combo of letters that you can search on. Searching on two letters is more prone to false positives. It's either the whole tag or no tag, to maintain consistency.

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I threw in another version after you posted that addresses that, TwoF. I think the inclusion of a "+" prefix (or any other uncommon grammatical character, like ~ or &lt is a fair compromise between querying and character conservation.

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At this rate, I could get out of actually writing a description for the arc, and just have all 300 characters taken up by tags.

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That's what I'm afraid of this system turning into. There's limited enough space as it is; the "Description" field should be exactly that, a "description", not a keyword dump. I'd rather dump the keywords if it would put my arc or desc limit over the top, but then I risk losing the "market". And this really only benefits players who READ the forums...

Looks like Greyhawke got something stickied to start a discussion there on how to make it work. I'll chime in there constructively, but yeah, I'm not fond of this idea. =/

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I do hope that in the future, we have an actual baked-in tagging system -- something coded by the devs, rather than jammed in by players into descriptions. My descs are pretty freaking long already.

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Agreed, but that's being argued elsewhere.

If you're going to do this, can you please strike off the "-MA" extension? It's unnecessary, we all know it's a mission arc, and for some of us, having to insert five acronyms in order to be recognized might push us over the 100% mark for publishing.

So, if someone had an arc that would qualify for all of the above, it could read:

[ SF LB PC TF ] or +SF +LB +PC +TF
vs:
[SFMA] [LBMA] [PCMA] [TFMA]

...which basically nearly doubles the character length.

I'll add my own suggestions on this later if this takes flight. Thanks.

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Unfortunately a tag such as "XP-based mission" would very quickly be appropriated by farmers. While your giant map populated entirely by Rikti might not be an exploit, it would end up sharing the same tag as a giant map populated entirely by Comm Officers, and would get removed anyway.

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There's nothing to stop a farm from containing "story", or "drama", or anything to mis-flag it if they chose to do so, too. That's why I don't see this system as being viable.

1. It bases its validation on what the community decides, which is mercurial at best. The "description" should be for the "description", not as a rummed-up keyword box to guarantee the most hits (either from the badge cartel, the forum cartel, the haterz cartel, etc).

2. The Devs could offer a hard set of queryable values for their missions that would allow mix/matching of different tags (like the current system, that lets you search on 3, 4 or 5 star arcs at the same time).

And sure, any system is abusable; I just think the suggested method is less capable and more abusable than a hard-written flag from the Developers. I'd rather see everyone's energy go into THAT rather than encourage a workaround designed by twits like us.

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If you're gonig to play a story, be able to GIVE constructive criticism.

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"Okay. You're ugly. But, they probably have a surgery for that." (Sorry, that's what I thought of when I read the post. )

And /signed - Real feedback is always appreciated! I respond to every one I get, even if it's just to say "thanks!" About 20% of them have comments that invite further dialogue, so IMO, the "comments" utility of running Architect is a great way to help the author's work BETTER.