Tsoo ambushers? Not surprising, the Steel Canyon clothing store creates a Tsoo mission with ambushers. Expect a lot of them, then to taper off.
Thanks to Caenopus and Athena’s Childe for some rollicking missions last night. I managed not to crash for several hours, until around 10:45 - near bedtime anyway.
Actually, I believe Strange is a level 15 title. So you’d be, like, The Strange CandidGamera.
We realized that you could not, for this reason, make a character called The Grim Reaper.
Oh, and the closed doors for the mission when you’re trying to leave, yes, we know about it, yes, we’re trying to fix it.
Meanwhile, we suggest clicking on Mission Complete when you’re done with a mission, or quitting to the character screen and logging back in otherwise. Yes, it’s a damn hassle when you’re trying to outrun a level 20 5th Column boss; yes, I’m sorry; no, we cannot refund your debt. 
Ninja - Are you a developer?
If so, does that mean we can get inside information?
I think you missed my point - because ‘Strange’ is reserved, it nixed my choice of character name : ‘Stranger’.
Unless ‘Stranger’ is also one of the reserved titles.
I don’t think ‘Stranger’ is one – I get the point, but because the letters that started it were S-T-R-A-N-G-E, it said Nopers.
At least, that’s the current theory.
Not quite.
I’m a GM. Which means that I’m the person you talk to when you’re in game and something’s bugged, or you’re stuck, or someone just teleported you into a mob of level 35 Devouring Earth…
Truly? I have no inside info to give. I don’t know when CoV is coming out, or how the PVP will work, or if we will ever have new costume choices, or what they will be, or if we really will add crafting, or if we’ll ever have new power possibilities (though I rather think we must eventually).
I cannot fix the bugs because I am not a dev, and I cannot tell you why precisely it is doing this because I am not QA. There are a very few things I can do, and those few things fluctuate every day.
Hey, Gamera. I’ve recently had some odd mission issues, and I feel silly petitioning about them, because they’re finished by the time the GM shows. It okay to ask you if you know anything about them? Like the one… was it Culex had? Timed mission, X packages. One’s missing. Leave. Come back. Presto, it pops up?
You want LPN, I think. One over.
Yes, yes I do.
So, do you get paid for being a GM? What’s it like, running around all day and giving VD shots to people? Do you do it all day or just some of it?
Uhm… Can I have a pony?
Gotta say I was mighty disappointed the other night on my Freakshow mission. I got the temporary power so I could sneak amongst the Freaks, and while I was stealthy, my Freakshow costume never appeared on my character. THAT, my friends, was a huge disappointment 
I gotta say, EM Pulse, the last power in the Radiation Emission power set, is incredibly useful.
Run into a group, trigger the EMP, back out, watch all the enemies wobble back and forth dazed for well over a minute while the party members beat them to pieces. It even hit some Rikti five levels above me and held them long enough for our scrapper to finish a few off.
Now all I want is Atomic Blast, and when I trigger these two back to back, anything left standing will be held, immobilized, and disoriented. With a huge defense debuff.
K, first things first. 
Some missions – fewer than you’d think, but notably the Tsoo Rage Synthesizers mission – spawn the clues inside the walls. We haven’t had a problem with all-but-one of the clues spawning since beta, and I’m pretty sure that bug’s squashed. Tsoo synthesizers are a b*tch to pull out of the wall, but reset the mission about five times and they’ll all spawn. Strange but true. No, I don’t know why.
Most of the time, even with timed missions, it really is there, just hiding. Yes, some of those maps suck. There’s even a current, really REALLY irritating problem, where the object is invisible – except, somehow, to GMs. Either this is a VERY big prank on us, or something very weird is going on.
I get paid. It’s a full time job. I drive to the office and stay there for nine hours, eight plus lunch. I get paid well enough to afford a nice apartment (well, a nice apartment at phenomenally low prices for my city) and all my bills and some pizza. What you expect to get paid on tech support, more or less, assuming you have some experience.
BeLIEVE me, as much as I like CoH, I wouldn’t do this stuff unless I was paid. There’s a lot of grief to put up with.
My whole day (why am I suddenly tempted to make an Ask The GM post?) is pretty much answering petitions and emails from the website. We get them in order of the time they’re sent, not in the order of anything else, so if you send in multiple petitions, we will get them all, but we will get the first you sent first, the next second, etc. So sending a petition when you enter a timed mission that’s fubared, another 5 minutes later, another 5 more minutes later…this is what makes hold times so long. If it’s a problem I can solve in the game, I come in game and find you if you’re on as that character. Otherwise, I send email.
At work, we…work. We almost never have an empty queue for more than a second. During lunch hour we can play or do whatever, and I know at least one guy who stays to play after work.
I have no pony.
Oh, and don’t ask me anything about what powers go together, what Enhancements stack which way, etc, etc. You know how I get the answers for that? I look in the manual. Or in the Prima guide. Or I ask around the office, but what you know is what we know, for the most part.
Still, it sounds like it beats telecom.
Rats.
With a big thorny stick, yes.
Best thing about it is my coworkers. Truly wonderful folks.
Hey, Little Plastic Ninja. I just gotta say these two things.
One, I’ve worked tech support handling email queues. I understand the pressure of “contacts per hour” or many other metrics used to measure productivity of employees, and the need to get messages out of the queue because they keep coming in. That being said, though, when I submit a petition of “I fell through the floor of a room, I dropped about 500 feet into a pit, there’s no way up, here’s a screenshot of it at foo.bar.com, help?” please don’t respond with the script for “try /stuck”. /stuck only moves me a few inches. It can’t make me magically fly out of the oubliette of despair. (I did manage to teleport out, though, and now I’m trying to think of a way to abuse that … maybe fall in there, and Recall Foe to dump a boss in there, and port out … hmm …)
Two, is there any way to increase the size of the text buffer when submitting a bug? I ran into a problem with police drones in Faultline and I couldn’t fully describe the problem with the limitations present. My gut feeling is that the lack of detail we’re able to give on bug reports only results in more back-and-forth emails of “Ok, now what exactly was your problem?”
And finally, um, a friend has found something mildly exploitable. Really mild. Like, no one would even care, it’s so mild. Uh, what happens if it isn’t reported?
Hey, that reminds me… I’ve been using the Prima Guide, sucky as it is, as a way to A: think about powers, B: find stores, and C: check out baddie stats. The new areas and baddies… Anyone know if Prima’s going to do anything that way? Their web site or whatever?
LPN: Cool job, though. I just know that EQ did it with a volunteer community, then the lawsuits and the pain and the hurting…
Everyone: Glowy bits now have a sound associated with them. It’s not so good with your personal soundy bits on, but you can hear them. (I swear, we need a lot more granularity in the sound and graphics settings. I don’t mind the jumping noise, but the Combat Jump thrum is killing me.)
Love all the new environmentals. Walk through a park… run into a bathroom door…
So, LittlePlasticNinja, is the company hiring?
Bwaha. 
Our first response when anyone’s stuck is for them to type /stuck, because often enough it works even in weird circumstances where you’d think it shouldn’t.
Y…n…well, there isn’t a way to increase the text buffer, but there IS a way to get it all to us at once. Do this:
Play the game in windowed mode if your computer can support it (much less likely to crash your system this way, ha…ha…)
Send petition.
Put CoH in window but don’t minimize it, because the video card HATES that.
Open up your email, look for our autoresponse.
Reply to the autoresponse with the rest of what you wanted to say.
Don’t, don’t, DON’T be the guy who sends 20 petitions, one following the last, until he’s said all he wants to say. I got to answer him once. It took me about 20 minutes to sort out. :rolleyes:
Heheheh…
I dunno how many times I’ve been asked this, which should tell you something (actually, more often I hear someone say ‘Hey LPN! Can you take my character ‘Donkeypunch’ to Eden?’ and I say ‘Er, the only place that character’s going is into the freezer; we know what it means, too…’.
To be honest? Report it now and save yourself the trouble of looking over your shoulder. Depending on how nasty the exploit is, we might end up punishing the people who use it. If it’s a wee mild little thing, it’s possible it’s game design and not an exploit, though.
Still, I had to suspend a perfectly nice fellow’s account temporarily because of his first offense exploiting. He was quite understanding and apologetic, which is better than being belligerent and hostile (if you ever want the rules to be NEVER bent toward you, be belligerent and hostile), and he got 72’d anyway.
It’s not worth the risk.
I’m almost certain they will eventually, but content updates won’t be uncommon. I’d suggest going someplace like Stratics or Warcry (I think we’re on Warcry? We darn well better be 
) and looking there; they tend to play the hell out of the game and report their results.
And hee. The fun thing about the gaming industry is everyone in it has been in it for ages, except for this liiiiiiiittle tiny percentage. Which means that everyone but me and a few other people has worked for EA at some point. Many have worked for SOE too, to be fair.
http://www.plaync.com/about/jobs.html
Really the best I can do. Hell, I’m still amazed that I got the job.
Dr. Vahzilok’s insidious experiments have awakened an old soul - one dating back to the time of ancient China. Using a freshly-assembled body, unwillingly provided by the good Doctor, she will terrorize the streets of Paragon City, stealing priceless antiques. She is… The Ming Vahz.
She has chosen to partner with a rogue member of the Tsoo clan, a ninja whose methods are so cruel that he was cast out of that organization. Be sure to keep away from Runaround Tsoo.