I think it’s called “Suppress FX”.
I found “Suppress FX When Close” in the Advanced Graphics Settings, but the tooltip just says it suppresses effects that are on my character when the camera is close (like when I’m backed up against a wall). I enabled it anyway, and I’ll see if it makes a difference.
On another note, is it just me or are some of these missions a little sparse on instructions? Detective Becktrees in Kings Row sent me on a mission to stop a bank robbery in Atlas Park, and it just dropped me in the mission zone with little more than “protect the bank” for instructions. No indicator on the map, no clue which building was supposed to be the bank, etc. Naturally, I failed, since it was time-sensitive.
There should be a dollar sign where the bank is. However it might have been bugged; I did a Mayhem yesterday (the villain equivalent) where the bank symbol didn’t appear on the map for several minutes. First time that’s ever happened to me.
Heh - best random villain NPC chatter I’ve seen so far:
[NPC] Blood Brother Chopper: No, I didn’t call you stupid. I said your comment was an oxymoron. It’s a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are put together. Am I the only one who reads the books we swipe around here?
Huh. Had no idea.
You’re supposed to explore the area and stop the random vandalism, which earns extra time. You’ll also encounter some vandals who aren’t like the others, these will drop keys to doors that will also grant extra time when completed (like disarming all the bombs in a building). The bank will likely be somewhere along the far wall.
Unfortunately, the vandals were all I could find. Then after a while a message came on my screen that said something like, “The bank robbers are getting away! Stop them!” and of course I had no clue where they were.
Somewhere between the bank and their getaway vehicle. It sometimes helps to go to the getaway vehicle (marked) and work your way towards the bank. Safeguards are not as much fun as bankrobbing.
They are however a lot more team friendly. I never team on Mayhems; there’s always someone who rushes right to the bank and triggers all the Longbow ambushes at once.
Oh my … I’ve just discovered how much fun Mind Control is. I made a Magic Dominator - Mind Control/Electricity Assault hero named Cerebolt. With only three powers to her name (Mesmerize, Levitate, and Charged Bolts), I quickly figured out that she could take on and defeat a Lieutenant/Minion pair of enemies without either of them ever getting off a shot at her. The key was realizing that Mesmerize is a Hold effect, not an Immobilize, and that after I use Levitate to pick up and drop an enemy, they have to stand back up before they can try to attack. So it goes like this:
Mesmerize the Lieutenant
Immediately target the Minion and Levitate him, then hit him with Charged Bolts while he’s getting up. This usually finishes him off. If not, Mesmerize him and then hit him with another Charged Bolts.
Once the Minion is down, leisurely wait for everything to recharge. Levitate the Lieutenant, hit him with Charged Bolts, then Mesmerize again. Wait to recharge, and repeat as necessary.
I felt like a WoW rogue stunlocking an opponent.
Also, instead of having her train Flight, I decided to try Leaping. Whoa. Super Jump is faster than flying, and a whole lot of fun!
Hey, does CoH have anything similar to the WoW Armory? It’s a bit of a pain having to launch the game and keep it open in the background when I want to mention specific things about a character.
In terms of speed, it goes:
Teleport > Superspeed > Super Jump > Flight
The trade-off being maneuverability and flexibility. I believe the “booster” (I guess now you buy them direct) powers Ninja Jump and the animal one are slightly slower than flight but a couple slots in Hurdle with jump enhancers makes it about as fast as unenhanced Super Jump.
Nope. Folks have been clamoring for it for years.
The best you can do for offline review is download Mids’ Hero Designer, manually set up your character (though I think there’s import tools available), and make sure it stays up to date with your character. Bit of a pain, really, although the program is a fantastic planner.
And yeah, the nice thing about Controllers and Dominators is their high survivability due to straight-up lockdown. They can be as survivable as tanks played well, simply because they just don’t give the enemy a chance to attack.
That’s really the big philosophical difference you’ll find between City and WoW, or most other MMOs. WoW is focused on 1-to-1 ‘fair’ combat, though tanks can solo a modest group of enemies. City is very much about a hero versus a horde of mooks. AOEs are excellent and nearly all playstyles can beat the crap out of a single enemy who’s ranked as a Boss or lower. A single Minion is zero threat to just about everyone.
Question about Architect Entertainment user-created missions -
I’m getting the impression that a lot of these are just designed to be “loot” (for lack of a better term) farms. I’ve loaded up a number of them that have 5-star ratings, only to walk into the first room and find myself swarmed by a dozen or more enemies all at once, with more steadily popping out of a nearby portal. These look as if they’re intended for little more than AOE-ing until you’ve “earned” as many tickets (or whatever else they offer) as you want.
I’ve done a few AE stories that are actual fun, engaging stories, but those seem to be swimming in a sea of these “farms”.
Am I getting the right impression here?
Hah, that’s also known as “the Sith build”.
An important nitpick; Mesmirize isn’t a Hold, it’s a Sleep. Now, most sleeps are considered not very good but Mesmerize is an exception because it can sleep even a boss with one shot. Mass Hypnosis is also a good Sleep if you solo a lot; you can knock out whole groups and beat them down one by one. Keep in mind that any form of damage will wake an enemy that’s asleep, however.
Dominate is Mind Control’s single target Hold; the single target holds are considered central powers of the control primary sets and should be taken right off. A Hold completely disables an enemy (barring Blasters, whose first two primary and first secondary powers can’t be locked down).
Sadly yes; and it’s very irritating.
The AE would benefit magnificently if they just accepted that farm arcs will happen and added a Story/Farm selector. With the exception of some trolls, farmers don’t really want to get in the way of players who want to tell stories, and the need to dress farms up as story arcs irritates everyone.
There are some by City staff and Guest Authors. If you’re a fan of PvP Online, look for arc ID 337435.
Someone posted a story on the CoH forum. Someone he knew created “The Incredible Bulk”, huge body, green skin, purple pants, way back in the start of the game. He did it as a joke to see how long it took to get genericed. They were waiting to get a league for an iTrial together when the Bulk suddenly changed to a generic number and costume. Some on their league said, “Wow, that didn’t take long, I just reported it.” The guy played the character for years before it was reported. But he was caught eventually.
You can change the distance at which the effects are suppressed. For trials and teaming, I use the following
/suppressCloseFxDist 500 - You can set this distance to whatever you want. The larger the number, the farther away you can be and not see the effects.
/suppressCloseFx 1 - turns the suppression on
suppressCloseFx 0 - turns the suppression off.
Note that the addition of the Afterburner power in the Flight pool can bump your Fly speed up to SS levels. And actually enhances your control over position. But it does mean another power and some slots.
Sadly yes. There are story arcs, and some very good ones, to play, but finding them is hard sometimes. I agree with Bosstone they need to just accept the farming and give them their own category.
And speaking again of AE, I was a little disappointed to discover that there’s no equivalent for Going Rogue characters (at least I couldn’t find one, and people confirmed it doesn’t exist when I asked in Global). My primary Loyalist character, Green Shriek, has reached level 11 and is suddenly finding it difficult to defeat enemies (not doing enough damage, missing a lot), even Minions. I was hoping for a way to get some of those DO enhancements to give her a bit of a boost.
Then again, is there simply a subtle difficulty increase after level 10? My “main” toon (so far anyway), Flaminatrix, is level 14 and fully loaded with level 15 DO enhancements (and a few level 17 DO’s) that she earned via AE missions, and is starting to find the missions and enemies quite a bit more challenging. I almost gave up on one mission in The Hollows after being defeated for the third time, though that was mainly because I had to fly back more than a mile every time I woke up in the “hospital”. I am curious, though: if you’re doing a mission in an “instanced” location, do you have to be inside the “instance” to abandon the mission? When I pulled up the mission while standing in the hospital, the “Abandon” button was grayed out.
Green Shriek just did the Nova Praetoria version of the invention tutorial, and I got a big belly laugh out of the acronym for their program: IPECAC. That was just perfect coming from the smarmy, propaganda-spewing woman who got me started 
That’s weird; never happened to me. And I’ve never tried to Abandon a mission while inside it; I assumed it wouldn’t work.
If you never have it’s worth doing at least once while you are Resistance; starting with the second invention tutorial contact there’s dialogue differences and different Clues, some of which are amusing.
One thing I’m enjoying is the way at least some of the missions aren’t exactly the same every time you do them on another character. I’ve noticed some where the various objectives within a building are in different places around the building. The most dramatic change was with one of the low-level missions you do for that nurse. It’s after you talk to Ice-whatshisname (who looks remarkably like Booster Gold) and you go into the warehouse to stop the Skulls. The first time I did it, it turned out Iceboy had gone bad and I had to defeat him. On subsequent characters, he’s shown up and admitted he’d thought about what I said to him and he’d decided to help.