I have just started the 12.1 collector missions and I'm at the point where I need 10 function fragments to get the 12.1.3 mission ticket. I personally think this is too much and it's a huge leap in difficulty from collecting just 1 Override Trace for the 12.1.2 mission ticket.

I understand the items being a grind as they're something to aim for, but for those of us who care more about the story it's not really fair seeing as in the old days you just had to complete the previous mission.

Keep a bit of collecting since it's part of the sequence of events but probably just 1 function fragment is enough. Save the big collections for the big rewards.

I have uploaded another tutorial video, this one is on combat. I hope the information on attributes is correct, I looked through some old posts and articles on CR2 but had to interpret some information. Here it is on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdhi91Qr-I

But it's not the best quality so both of the tutorial vids are also available to download here.

The System

Rep 1-40: 40 points (1 point each) 
Rep 41-80: 80 points (2 points each)
Rep 81-100: 100 points (5 points each)
Rep 101-120: 380 points (19 points each)
Rep 121-126: 300 points (50 points each)
Rep 127: 100 points

Total points needed to get from 0 reputation to 127: 1000

The Acquisition of Points

Standard Missions:
Easy - 1 point rewarded
Medium - 1.5 points rewarded
Hard - 2 points rewarded

Critical Missions:
Easy - 1.5 points rewarded
Medium - 2 points rewarded
Hard - 2.5 points rewarded

CQ Points:
5 cq points - 1 rep system point

This is just a draft of a rep system I put together quickly, the point acquisition would probably need some adjustments (maybe taking account of level or what rep players are currently on) and the system may need some adjustments to make it more logical. I think a system like this would be better than the game of chance we currently have.

I would like some of the commando gear you get in the white hallways quest, mainly the shirt and pants and maybe the goggles too. I would get them myself but nearly every quest requires a team and I'm online during the quiet hours of the game. I have 60 million doing nothing so how much commando gear you think is worth that I'll consider buying.

Character Development

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9sER3tjLHg

Download: http://files.filefront.com/Tutorial...;/fileinfo.html

Based on the old training videos from the old combat system but covering more topics in the up-to-date combat system. I'm planning on making this a continuing series depending on how much time I have. This was something I had planned for a while and only got round to recently. Youtube seems to have degraded the quality making it hard to see some titles so I've provided a download too.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/a/Aliens...ex-3687454.html

There's a trailer and the first 5 minutes of the movie. Definately looking forward to this.

Ok so I've got a new laptop (Acer Aspire 9520) with Windows Vista Home Premium and it should be powerful enough to play MxO. At first it works fine with absolutely no lag (which I'm very happy about after suffering lag on my desktop for over 2 years) but it has a graphical problem. When I first login to the loading area it can be fine but sometimes after clicking a few of the tabs it happens and it always happens when jacking in.

Here is a picture of the problem

Here are my specifications:

• Intel Core Duo processor T7200 (2.0 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2 cache)
• 17" WXGA+ Acer CrystalBrite LCD (400 nit / 72% Color Garmut)
• Up to 784MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 shared memory
• 240 GB Dual HDD (120 GBx2) RAID 0, 1 and Intel Matrix RAID supported
• HD DVD drive (support 13 optical media formats)
• 2GB DDR2
• 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

And I am using it wirelessly.

• Find Data Node - caps at lvl 30
• Hyper Jump - caps at lvl 25 (not sure if this one is still true)

When you hover the cursor over an item in your inventory or hotbar a screen pops up to give you information about that item. My question is what do the colour fonts on the item's name mean?
For example:

Why is Fly in Amber in a purple font?

I think they are to do with things like whether it's decompilable, whether it loses stability etc but which colour goes with what?

Other colours I've seen are grey, white, green, yellow, orange and red.

Life of a Bluepill

A video showing a bluepill's boring life in the Megacity.

Some more ideas for how CQs can be used. This time to gain reputation:

1. Org rep. There should be another way of gaining rep than just doing missions because it gets boring and it gets hard and frustrating to earn when the chances of earning them drop. You are helping your org by defeating hostile players so you should be rewarded and rep is something you can gain out of it. You wouldn't trade them in so you can still see how many CQs you've got since playing but every lets say 50 you get you earn 1 rep point.

2. Faction rep. They could be used for something new like faction rep. Players can still see how many CQs they've got but when they are in a faction they contribute to the faction's rep (again maybe 50 CQs to 1 rep point). It could be divided so that every crew members points are added to make the crew rep points and every crew rep points are added to make the faction's rep points. You can see how many points each crew has by going on the faction panel and this could decide how the crews are going to be ranked (either automatically or to help influence the faction leader). The faction rep can be shown with the name on every faction member to show off to other factions. If players don't like this they could use the command /facrep to turn it on and off (like with /orgnames).

It was suggested that to make missions more interesting more than one team should participate in the same mission and work against each other in PvP. But the devs said that was impossible to do so I think this is the next best thing. These would have to be separate from standard missions for those who mission solo and the devs don't want to risk breaking them.

You start a multi-phase mission with at least 2 players so there is a captain and a vice captain (meaning a new team rank would need to be implemented) and you start off in the same phase to find out what your assignment is. The contact will give details and say the captain and their group will go to this location and the vice captain and their group will go to another location to do something else. Then when all have left the mission area players are randomly put in either the captain's or vice captain's group. The contoller talks separately to each group (where they speak directly to the captain or vice captain) and they each have separate waypoints to follow to their locations.

For example in phase 2a the captain's group must retrieve a disk from a computer while in phase 2b the vice captain's group kill hostiles that might interfere with the captains group. The 2 phases could be set-up so they don't affect each other or they could link. If they are linked one group might have to do something to allow the other group to proceed. For example one group must deactivate an alarm in their area to allow the other group to infiltrate a network undetected.

Then they meet up again in the final phase where they complete the objective and finish the mission together.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/352476

Quite an entertaining little game.

Instead of just creating a new character like Binary Boy why not further the stories of existing characters instead? I'm thinking mainly of the mission contacts but it could be for the collectors aswell.

Alot of the mission contacts have interesting stories and I have hoped the devs would add more missions to continue them but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Appearances in live events are not enough as not everyone can attend and they only appear briefly at one occasion and that seems to be it, so why not make them have quests too.

They could have their own unique clothing/weapon etc which they offer you in exchange for items collected on a quest or perhaps a luggable. The exile hideouts in the neighbourhood of that contact could be the place where the gangs have the items the contact wants or where the luggable is guarded. Therefore you have to kill those gangs and collect the items as drops or get to the location where the boss holds the luggable and you have to kill them to take it.

Example: Silver offers 'Silvers headset' in exchange for his mainframe (a luggable) which is being held at Cormorant Casino in Camon Heights by Zero and the Uncleans. You enter the lair of the Uncleans and make your way to Zero. Once you kill him you take the mainframe and leave then take it to silver where you trade it for his headset. The headset could be like a program launcher with points to viral attributes or grant a bonus to reason to make you almost as clever as Silver.

I needed to find out about electromagnetic flux for my systems & control project so I put that in google and this was the first result:

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1629.asp

What do you think of this, could it be true?

I've probably got some bits wrong but there were details I had to guess. Still makes some sense.

http://blogs.cjb.net/btlmaster/94358/

I have made a blog entry about all the unique abilities, clothing, weapons and tools we have had from beta to the present. It shows what they do, how you got them and when they were available.

http://blogs.cjb.net/btlmaster/93845/

The reason I'm posting this for people to check that I've got it right or if there is anything I've missed. I thought about putting things in that are available now like the mission archive rewards and FM-1500 but they don't relate to a specific time in MxO history so I'm leaving things like those out.

I would also be grateful if you could post pictures of the items with no images like the Beta clothes.

Thought I would make a video to add to the collection, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mmUNqL73T4

Some contact and critical missions already have sub-missions in them where you can acquire an item by pick locking safes etc or gaining xp from hacking a computer. With contact missions they're sometimes more indepth than that where you can get a key/card from somewhere to get another key/card to unlock or access a safe/computer to gain xp or an item, which I think is better as it's more challenging and you don't have to have pick locks or hacker.

This idea could be expanded further where a key/card you receive in one phase unlocks or grants access to an object in the next phase or one of the ambushers between mission areas drops a key/card that can be used in the mission area you're heading to, this means the players who take the time to kill them will be rewarded.

The rewards you receive from sub-missions are just common items so that exploiters won't stock up on a special item by aborting and redoing the mission. This problem could be solved by rewarding them at the end of the mission for example:
- The NPC you have to kill to complete your objectives has the key/card as loot so you can't leave without completing the mission.
- The item you have to find to complete your objectives is in the same place as the key/card so you have to take both at the same time (one good use for the 'Take All' way of getting loot).
- You find the code for the item instead of the item itself and once you complete the mission your operator replaces it with the item.

When I remove an ability from the hotbar I drag it off and get the message you can't drop any objects in the world but since the new update it has said only luggable objects can be dropped, what are luggable objects? Also I couldn't see anything in the patch notes that could explain this.

http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...on+versus+james

Two of my friends who have created movies where they fight with light sabers. I've given them the idea of fighting matrix style next so there may be more.

These are not reviews like Sugaree's articles, they are more analytical in explaining why I think they have been given their names relating to their personalities.

The Elements - From the chemical elements

The Spectrum - From the light spectrum

(sorry about pop-ups can't get rid of them)

We already have critical and archive missions where you meet the contacts and fight the gangs, which is good because they are taking part in the main storyline instead of just having their own separate story. The problem is to have these missions they would have to be district specific and thats always going to be Richland to be fair to the lower levels. This means only the gangs in Richland and the Elements (Richland contacts) are in mainstream missions.

So we can't have gangs and contacts in other districts in criticals (unless they're visiting) but why not have them in standard missions. They have their own stories too but because they are not in the mainstream no-one cares. This is probably part of the reason few players do contact missions so if they see them in their standards they might be interested to learn more about them by doing their missions. They will also learn more about the gangs because players are unlikely to read their details on the street.

Lets say you are in Kowloon and you activate a standard mission. The hostiles in that mission could be the local gang the Chang Wings with a small chance to meet Mr. Po the local mission contact. If you move into another neighbourhood on that mission the gang and contact could change accordingly. Obviously this shouldn't happen all the time because if someone likes missioning in a certain neighbourhood they are going to get bored so have a percentage chance it will happen. If it doesn't happen it will be a regular standard mission with normal redpill and exile hostiles.

This not only adds interest to the gangs and contacts, it makes standard missions more fun and could help players mission all over the megacity and not just congregate in Richland. There killed three birds with one stone.

For someone who has a schedule when playing might find this useful. There could be another option in the loading area that takes you to your personal planner where you can write yourself reminders about things like:

• Buying or coding abilities or items once you reach a certain level.
• When and where an event is happening.
• Doing something you have been meaning to do but keep forgetting about it.

For the first point you could specify the level you want to be reminded about getting an item or ability (for example when you're level 10 it reminds you to get the Kung Fu ability or to load it). Experienced players probably won't forget but it might be useful for the lower levels.
For the second point you could specify the date and time you want to be reminded about an event so you don't miss it (for example when its 1.50pm GMT 12/9/06 it reminds you there is a player event in 10 minutes and where it is at). If you're not on at this time it could be sent as an e-mail if you log on late.
For the third point you could be reminded about a contact you have been meaning to do or an archive mission you have been meaning to get. You could specify a time interval for this (something like once every day) and you deactivate it once you have done the task.

These reminders would be what you have written yourself and maybe the operator could be the one to remind you and send you that e-mail.

The main things are new objectives and new ways of doing them. Some new items instead of map disks etc would be nice too like something with sentimental value which you have to return to its owner.
There are already some different objectives that exist in the beginning of the archives which could be added to standards for more variety. For example in the archives there is an objective for tearing down posters that morpheus' followers put up because they're subversive to the bluepills. Well in standards EPN could do the same thing to try and get the bluepills to awaken. Maybe the cytherites could do the same thing but for the opposite effect.
Also in one of the archives your objective is to destroy data on a computer. This would make a change from always doing searches on computers and mainframes and removing disks.
More risks are also needed to make them harder. Escorts already have the possibility of the escortee dieing but criticals have things like don't get spotted and don't set off an alarm which could be added to standards.
Missions shouldn't always need to be in a mission area especially if its just to kill someone. They could spawn somewhere outside with guards surrounding them. This can be done because we get ambushers. One idea I have is to kill a courier before he makes his way to the mission area and if he does the mission has failed.
This is also an idea I had for a new mission type.

There are other ideas like destructable environments and rescues from fires but they would probably be too complicated and take time. The rest of them I think are feasible.