Biowraith

I use the looking for any flag, but I have trouble noticing a difference between looking for a team with it set and looking for a team without. I get the impression a lot of team leaders don't bother looking for the flags any more than people bother setting them (possibly the former is due to the latter mind you).

I'd love to see an LFM interface where people can get a list of teams flagged as LFM, their current team size, level range, etc. Bonus points for being able to "self invite" onto the team (which would be an option the team leader could enable, and would allow setting criteria - e.g. level range - on who can join in that way). I'd be more inclined to "lead" teams that way (I'm lazy), and obviously it'd help finding them (assuming people used it of course).

My planned Dual Pistols Corruptor would very much like to have Poison available for a secondary.

Also, Sonic for Masterminds.

(edit; and Kin, purely for speed boosted ninjas )

I'd like to thank whoever just gave me 20mil for a Photonic Weapon.

But only with words, not with any kind of refund.

I'd really like to see this too. I'd be a little concerned about how welcome it'd be for general teaming given its single target focus, but on the other hand it'd be pretty sought after for AVs (and by extension TF/SFs).

I admit I am a tad biased in that the pistols character I have planned would thematically be a good match with /Poison. I could make him Dark or Rad instead but I already have 3 of each of those and I prefer to avoid reusing sets too often. With the only source of Poison being MMs that kinda limits your concepts a bit due to the pet focus (or, it means making a comparatively gimp petless MM - I did dabble with the idea of a petless Thugs/Poison but I couldn't bring myself to do it).

As you say, it's only really Noxious Gas that'd need any kind of reworking (though I'd not say no to Poison Trap having less suck), so I'm relatively hopeful that it could happen - just a question of when.

Also, Sonic Resonance for MMs!

I haven't encountered any obvious advocacy of the Empath/Psi Defender in the same post(s) as discouraging the Mind/Empathy Controller, so I'm not entirely sure where the OP is coming from. However a couple points that I don't think have been made - at least not explicitely - on this thread that might explain why such an argument might be made.

The reasons to suggest picking any other primary than Mind have been fairly well explained - you get more use out of the Empathy part if you have something to use the buffs on, so when solo it'll provide greater synergy with a pet. I gather the OPs confusion is as to why this wouldn't also result in Defender being discouraged - why separate the advice between the two ATs.

One reason is simply that the two ATs do play/feel different. Exactly how different is probably at least somewhat in the player's mind, but it's a factor nonetheless. So when making suggestions as to powersets people will naturally split it into suggestions-for-Controllers and suggestions-for-Defenders. That the suggestions-for-Defenders are all equal at best to the sub-optimal suggestions-for-Controllers won't matter if it's Defender gameplay the subject would be happiest with. There's also the concept/aesthetic difference between a character that blasts and a character that mezzes - if you're wanting the blast aesthetic it won't matter that the control version is superior. Anyhow, if someone is giving advice they may not know whether the subject has a preference in these areas and so will cover the bases by providing the Controller advice and Defender advice separately.

There's also the "pure" healer (or healer/buffer) phenomenon. It may be heavily discouraged on these forums, but the desire to create a character that does *nothing* except heal and buff (and sometimes just heal) is still a fairly widespread one among the playerbase. For a person on that path the fact Mind Control may provide superior mitigation than the increased heal/buff modifier on a Defender is simply irrelevant - this group includes those who'll take the medicine pool on an Empath rather than even one decent blast or mez. As sub-optimal and ill-advised as this may be, it can still be a factor in any advice given (either because they're being catered to, or they're giving the advice).

Lastly, the levels at which each power unlocks. While it in the long run it may not matter - once you're 40 you can have anything opened and slotted - there's quite a lot of people who spend most of their time in the lower levels, never getting any one alt that high. Also a lot of people are frequently exemping down for task forces and the like. In those situations it can make a difference and so factors into the decision.

They may not all be "good" reasons, especially from a minmax point of view, but for some people they're significant all the same.

I've had a number of placeholder characters waiting for GR since well before GR was ever announced

Most of my MM pet names are either totally generic (Steve, Dave, etc), or references to totally unrelated sources (e.g. Simpsons necro pets).

As a result the only ones I'll bother posting here are my Bots, whose names are also references, but ones that I think fit quite well:

Problem Child (Assault Bot)
Use Psychology, Honest Mistake (Protector Bots)
Limiting Factor, Just Testing, Ethics Gradient (Battle Drones)

I'd have been tempted to have 6 Gravitas variants if the pet name lengths weren't so limited



Also my Ninjas MM has the Genin named Rocky, Colt and Tum Tum...

Keeping on the skull theme, I get a kick out of Gloom. I often find myself wishing Throw Shark (yeah yeah, Spirit Shark) had used this animation instead.

Omega Maneuver amuses me too, even if it's only so-so in effectiveness terms.

I won't be moving any of my existing characters I don't think (I *might* recreate a couple as ATs from the other side, but they'll all keep their current morality), but I do plan to create a villainous blaster & controller, and make a brute or two heroside. Hadn't really thought about any neutral(ish) characters; I guess a couple of my mercenary types currently redside might head for the middle ground.

In general I prefer redside somewhat, but I still try to play both sides for the variety (plus the larger blueside population makes it very appealing).

I had a mixed experience with PC Specialist. On the one hand, got a fairly hefty PC for a pretty reasonable price. On the other, when it arrived it had serious case damage - it looked like it'd been dropped from a good 4-6' as one corner was utterly smashed. I suspect it was the courier company (City Link) as I've had other pieces of equipment arrive via them with damaged boxes (though thankfully not the equipment itself), but obviously neither company is going to say "yeah, we drop stuff and don't bother checking for damage".

To their credit PC Specialist did get me to send the PC back for a replacement without any fuss. However, I suspect they just transferred all the components to a new case as when I got it back it fairly quickly started locking up and crashing on a regular basis (even just sitting at desktop with nothing but Winamp running). Long story short it went back and forth for 2-3 months with them always insisting they couldn't find a fault and me getting lockups and blue-screen reboots within a day or two of them returning it. Eventually got the memory replaced (no fix), motherboard replaced (improved, but still crashing) and then the soundcard (finally all was ok). One of the guys on the phone said they'd send me a games pack to compensate, but that never materialised.

All that said, it did eventually get resolved and while they were always insisting they couldn't find a problem they weren't actually uncooperative. And since it was all finally resolved the PC has been great ever since. This all took place about 4 years ago, maybe out of date as testimonials go, and that is 4 years of trouble free PC after the initial 3 months.

So, uh, I dunno whether to recommend or avoid them


(I actually had a Dell prior to this and while it wasn't anything special and probably 15-20% pricier than the equivalent from a place like PC Specialist, in the 4 years I had it only suffered one graphics card failure which they replaced within a couple days as it was still under warranty)

I don't think I would unless "worked better" meant complete redesign - something like Rodoan's suggestion might entice me, but just alterations to how mezzes work or what have you won't.

Generally I prefer to PvP in games where PvE either doesn't exist, or doesn't have any real impact on your PvP performance. I quite enjoy low level PvP in some mainly PvE games, just as the statistical difference between characters hasn't widened too much at that point, but the higher levels are usually a turnoff to me.

For reference, probably my favourite PvP game/environment was Planetside: you get a choice as to what gear you equip yourself with, there's some advancement/unlocking as you play and get xp, but the difference between a high level and low level char is more about flexibility/choice than actual raw power. Plus I just liked the scale of PvP there: big battles with lots on both sides with very little scope for one-on-one and the balance hell that that entails, but also not much of the 8v1 ganking that goes on in most MMO open PvP. I sit in hope that one day someone does a modern Planetside-like based around the WH40k setting.

I'm from the UK so when I first went online many moons ago I became a lot more aware of American spellings of certain words (mostly playing a MUD called Avatar, which although it had a fair mix of nationalities was still predominantly American). As a result I actually started to think that maybe "loose" was a genuine American spelling of "lose", just due to seeing it apparently being used as the standard accepted spelling online; I saw it used in the place of "lose" as frequently as I'd seen "armor" instead of "armour", or "color" instead of "colour".