reiella

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Please use this thread to discuss the recent <a href="/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=13368502" target="_blank">announcement</a>.

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Does this mean that we can actually have an alternative to the Updater to get the new patch ? I normally don't like Steam but I have to admit their Patching technology would be very helpful for COH

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Steam will not replace the City of Heroes Updater for "regular" City of Heroes customers.

The current build being delivered by Steam has to be patched to our current build on our Live servers.

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But can current players link their accounts to Steam without buying the game there as well?

If not, is this possibility being looked into at all? I love Steam, and having access to CoH through it would be perfect for me.

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Just to clarify stuff here. Steam is just acting as a point of sale for City of Heroes. The package distributed by steam is the retail package, that you still gotta update using the CoHUpdater.

What I'm finding interesting is that Positron's posts aren't appearing in the tracker .

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I assume it might be because they never spawned any minions, ever. Meaning that the ticket gains and XP and blah blah blah would be higher for missions with prisoners than a mission with say, council.

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XP gain shouldn't be. Unless they ever changed the base xp scale on Prisoners.

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Ive seen some Missions that are lvl 54-54, Ive been trying to get some of my missions to do the same and cant quite get it.. Ive gotten up to the 45-54 range, but, I dont really want an AV in my mission... hmmm... Do destroyable objects have a lvl range?
Edit: nope.. objects are 1-54 =/

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Add a Longbow Cataracht rescue option, passive. If you're specifically looking for 54 at least.

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its an ugly looong map that no matter how it spawns is ALWAYS the same size / length with only minor details differing...
(otth i remember 3-4 varieties but thats only due to running so many of them)

it also is a 'room' too big... and waay to many kill alls on this horrid map...

to describe this map in relative terms... the cake room aka room of doom is bad but only sometimes do you encounter it...
you always encounter the cargo ship map the same way

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Hmm, there are 5 variants for the cargo ship, most aren't really significantly different [and pretty much all have the same last room].

The cake room though? Really? The problem I have with the cake room isn't too big or boring, it's spawns that are a pita to get to with certain powersets.

Re Clave:
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After spending a LOOONG time trying to work out which maps work best for my first arc, I realized why people use the cargo ship map: laziness.
1) It is linear so you know the front/middle/back placements will work 100%
2) There aren't ten, fifteen versions of it to consider and have to test
3) It's also at the top of the list.
At this point, I'm starting to think that seeing the cargo ship when I step into a mish is an instant sign of upcoming crapiness - but I will keep an open mind and not quit-right-there-and-one-star. Hm, that action needs a good acronym or slang term...

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Actually, 1 is wrong. Floor collection objects do not work well on any of the cargo ship maps. I just absolutely cannot get a floor-spawn collection item to show up in the last room [prolly the other reason I'm a bit "blah" about the size admittantly ].

[edit/add] Thank you for reminding me why I actually had temporarily set my cargo ship map to the long one too, was trying to find a way to force the floor collections to the last room.

And thank you, I forgot Striga. I've been playing Villain side for a while and had forgotten that Striga really heavily uses the cargo ship map.

Makes me wish the two room cargo ship map [I really wish I remember what mission I saw that in too] was available.

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I think they're talking about Footsteps Initiative. Strangely, it seems like it's been removed. I can't find it using search.

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Footsteps got 1000+ votes before HoF, and has had it for a bit, I don't think that is the mysterious rapic accelerating arc that they are refering to.

It's currently Hall of Fame [doh, now it isn't, just fell off again :P] , Arc Id 2291. As others mentioned, make sure you have I haven't voted on turned off .

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Anther thing if you want a higher rating you might want to make it so a cool map works. You can get a great story in with out doing the generic "There is a ship carrying a ton of weapons. I want you to ambush it and steal the weapons so we can win the war." kind of thing.

Keep in mind that there are other things like warehouses and stuff like that. You can make it have a timer to steal the stuff before the trucks come to pick up the goods.

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*shrug* 'bout rating, that's a lost cause anyway.

Although I am confused, the complaints I see about cargo ships seem to apply about as well to Warehouse maps. With the only difference being that Warehouse maps can be tiny, the ambient noise [which is non-trivial with cargoships, gah :P], and the layout pool being larger if you use random [by a factor of 4, which is a fair bit].

Timer is a neat idea, that said, personally not one I would be willing to use due to personal preference. That and lack of branchability with the arcs currently make that feel 'irksome' anywhere but the final mission anyway. Again though, that's personal opinion .

Re Vermain:
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All of these things. My biggest problem with them is that, even on non-kill-all missions, it's way too easy to just hop/fly through all of the spawns and get to the end, which makes the whole thing feel very anticlimactic.

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Maybe it's just because I'm used to having some ability to blitz missions [teleport, freebird, stealth, PFF], but short of using a kill-all or escort, that's always going to be the case.

Again thanks though, I realize I'm coming off a bit argumentative, and I'm sorry, just exploring the grump a bit.

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Only reason i see is that many many many people use cargo ships for some reason. All i see in MA is cargo ship and ninjas. I'll just say I'm kinda of getting sick of cargo ships and there all the same thing same layout too which kind of makes them boring to me.

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Overuse, I can understand ya. I think I've found out at least the common overuse for it [really densely populated maps].

That said, there are a few different layouts, but they largely look the same [only I think 4 different layouts for boat?].

The other common reason for overuse I suspect is the reason I want to use it; there not being many maps for 'intercepting a shipment'].

Although, thanks for the comment, shed some light on it for me.

Just an honest question here, I've seen more than a few folks grump about them, and I really don't know why. Since I use one in one of my missions, I'd like to know so I can properly weigh the pros/cons for it .

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Pop a non-custom mob into the mission (as a hostage or something) that doesn't spawn below level 50 [or the 50 range like 45-50] - this will 'hard' set the mission to that level and anyone entering will be SK'd up to that level... though low levels will have a tough as heck time (For little to no reward) fighting level 50's.

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Neat trick for 50 if you don't want an ally or whatever.

Add a non-required defeat boss objective, use random Followers of Tyrant for the group. Nothing will spawn for the boss [ if you make it required, the mission is not completable].

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I think right now in the MA there's a major disconnect between those who have been involved in critique of creative things and those who haven't in both critiquing and receiving. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve this disconnect, though.

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To be fair, you need to solve it on both ends, hence not really feasible.

People will be jerks, and that's ok.

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... I can't figure out how to do some things. How do I:

1) Escort to object instead of exit? I am trying to make it where I rescue a hostage that I then need to lead to an object instead of to the exit. I have created the escort goal and assigned them dialog/actions for when I reach the escort target, but I don't see antwhere where I change the target to an item instead of the exit.

Thank you for whatever assistance you can provide.

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I've been thinking about this one, and it may be possible to simulate it.

Have the objectives chain. Have a locate object or protect object objective spawn after you rescue an ally, and make this objective necessary for completion. If I am right, you can set the Ally to not fight (it may still draw aggro, so you would need to keep it alive). After you are done with the mobs around the Protected Object, have the mission complete clue be the Ally telling you what you needed to know.

I haven't tried it yet myself, but one of these kind of things is in an arc I have planned.

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Collection Objects at least have to be objectives from the beginning, I believe Defendable objects are the same as well.

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I heard you were able to have crystals on maps (you know those blue/red/green ones) but I am not sure how to or if it really is possible. Does anyone know?

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You can't control their placement, they're a fixture of certain oranbegan maps.

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Uh, no. That's in fact the opposite of my point.

You might get lucky and have your arc be above 4.5 at 1000 votes. (expected value 3 variance 2, 300 samples, not outside the realm of possibility.) Or there might be a Markov Chain model where someone can get a temporarily higher sane:insane ratio than 70:30. But in the end it regresses to the mean, which is 4.4 and out of the Hall of Fame.

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Which is where it should be, if it's true value was 4.4, the problem with flucation around that value is a different issue and leads to volatility yes.

I'm not thinking we're disagreeing on this. I suspect I misinterpreted your post. So to explain myself will just state how I read it .

I read your earlier remark as one saying that there would be a problem in trusting that as additional votes are added to an arc that has achieved HoF status that the arc would return to HoF status, if it should.

Yes, on specific points, the apparant value may be lower than before as the negative case has more of a percieved problem than the positive case. But, as more votes are added, the value should continue to approach normality.

It's odd, can't really debug by proxy for it honestly. Only thing I could think of was it had some customized content that the editor shouldn't have let you use enabled.

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The flawed assumption being made is that the relative score will instead diverge from normality after reaching a certain point into approaching normality.

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Uh, guy? What do you think "random" means? It means there's no way you can predict what's going to happen. Working assumption is that 30% give random ratings and don't know about 0 stars so they rate a 3 average. This means your arc's at 4.4 if the remaining 70% all rate it 5. If you can get a temporary influx of "sane" people (through word of mouth or whatever) then your arc can crest above 4.5 but after that influx fades the randoms will drag it back down. Or you just get a small stretch of good random luck and you go above 4.5, but then as more people play you hit a bad stretch and drop back down.

I mean, you could make the argument that a hall of fame arc needs constant promotion if it wants to stay hall of fame. I don't think it's a good argument but you could make it. I will continue to say that the steady state of a "perfect" arc is going to be 4.4 or slightly south.

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I am making no argument, I am making an observation and comment on a flawed assumption.

Restated in terms of statistics, the flawed assumption being that as the sample size increase, the margin of error also increases.

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HOF missions losing their status is ridiculous.

The bar is high enough that getting over it represents a major achievement and a guarantee of a certain level of quality- where's the logic in 'losing' them at some future date?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]Any arc that deserves HoF will keep it regardless of what happens. If HoF can be lost to bad ratings, HoF arcs that achieve that rank through means other than deserving the status will drop off the list.

However, regardless of what happens to the arc, the author should keep the extra slot.

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Uh, no, see above about people making random votes.

They can make your arc fluctuate above 4.5 and back down and there's nothing you can do about it.

This includes the people who will rate an HOF arc 1 on principle.

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The flawed assumption being made is that the relative score will instead diverge from normality after reaching a certain point into approaching normality.

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I made a 3 mission arc today and when I finally wanted to test it I got an error saying:
" Attempted to use unlockable content name that has not been rewarded to the entity."
I tried to search for anything about this error but I couldn't find anything. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? The only ticket bought anything I used was capes and auras.

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What this means is your arc is trying to use something you haven't unlocked yet. Did you transition from test or something?

And since the thread title reminded me of something.

Here is a website to help folks with the topic.

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They can only PFF if they are standing up

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High burst damage + Fulcrum Shift... Yep.

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Hall of Fame being loseable is ludicrous!

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This is bizarre to even contemplate. If your slot counts fluctuate like this you could easily end up with more arcs then you are allowed to have, requiring you to unpublish multiple ones to put up a single new one...

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Which is why I suspect it's not intentional function.

Possible consideration/suggestion, require a higher score average to achieve HoF than to maintain it, to help keep 'border' items from jumping back and forth so much.

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This is funny and sad at the same time. Some people did point this kind of thing out during test and the usual suspects said it would not happen. Well...

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Strange, I remember it being said that it wouldn't be a big deal. *shrug*

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It's already becoming an annoyance, each time I log in I get tells "AE farm?" in the past few days, it's a bit harder to get ITF and paper/radios going right now, or even sewer teams in AP. On top of that, MA pugs are usually a horrible disaster.

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What's bizarre to me.

Is I have heard the exact same thing about ITF, paper/radio, and sewer team PUGs.

It's new, it's fresh, give the culture time to settle down before judging the mass. I mean really, look at how populated the servers are now, [can't see them, because they're all in VR but hey].

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and it's not directed at you. i really love players who refuse to say they "farm". doing the same tf more then once is farming. doing RWZ raids more then once is farming. getting defeat badges is farming. doing your friends missions after you have already done the same ones is farming. get the point yet. anything can be considered farming. i'll tell ya what, ill do your arc and if i get more then 1 ticket or badge it's a farm.

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Posting more than 1359 times is farming on the forums!

Really, it's a subjective term.

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You must have this board confused with the WoW boards, dOOd. Here, we treat each other with respect.

I'm saying that yes, some people should not be allowed to rate missions -- mine or anyone else's. The opinion of the village idiot should not be given the same weight as that of Aristotle. I am not saying that I am Aristotle, only that there needs to be a method to qualify people to rate missions. On Yahoo Answers, for instance, they have a simple "level" system that allows folks to do more stuff the more qualified they are. This is not rocket science.


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I disagree with you on an inherent level.

Although I must question, how exactly are you treating each other with respect when you deny them their opinions?