ClawsandEffect

Obviously I can't give a definitive answer, but if the attitude of the people who want full access to IOs for free is any indication, the answer is very likely "YES".

You've read the replies in this thread. If IOs were fully accessible for free, do you honestly think any of the people in favor of free IOs in this thread would ever give this game a single red cent? I'm thinking probably not.

It goes farther than that as well. If IOs were fully accessible for free, there would be very little incentive for ANYONE to spend money on the game, especially if you don't care about Incarnate content.

Free IO access is, in all seriousness, a bad thing for the long term survival of this game.

Game makes less money, we get less new stuff. We get less new stuff, more people leave. More people leave, game makes still less money. Eventually NCSoft will decide the game is costing more to run than the revenue it brings in justifies. Voila, they pull the plug on it, no more game.

It's simple business: Give away too much for free, and you run your business into the ground. And the devs are very aware that if someone is not willing to drop $2 on the game to get their IOs back, they probably aren't losing anything when that person chooses not to play.

Question for you.

If you are leasing a car and stop making your payments, do you get to keep it?

If you are renting an apartment and stop paying your rent, do you get to keep living there?

You did not BUY those characters....you were renting them. You have not in any way paid in full for those characters by having maintained a subscription in the past.

If you stop making your car payment or paying your rent, the dealership or landlord damn well will take your car back or kick you out. What Paragon Studios has done here is the equivalent of a landlord letting you stay in your apartment for free....but shutting off the cable and air conditioning. And he offered you a deal that lets you have those things on a conditional basis for a fee that was less than your rent used to be.

If you spend a lump sum on points you can unlock the IO system a month at a time.

If you spend enough you can unlock it permanently.

Unlike the tokens given to VIP players, which are given on your billing date each month, tokens earned through buying points are given to you NOW.

"Piercing" wasn't the property of a scalpel he was trying to reflect in his metaphor.

Scalpel was a metaphor for "precise".

I would have used a sniper rifle and a B-52 carpet bombing run if I were to make the same metaphor.

Eh, I can't see it being too feasible to speed up a 2.33 second animation to fit a 1 second cast time power.

A 1.67 second one? Sure, they've done that before. But there is likely a limit to how much they can speed up or slow down an animation.

I do it the other way around.

I move the character I want to rename over to a different server and create a character with it's original name on the server I want it on. Then I transfer the original back and get to rename it because the name is taken now.

Serves a dual purpose.

1) I get to rename my character.

2) If I still like and want to reuse the original name, it's already placeheld in case I don't get back to it immediately.

I think they were kind of limited by the variety of cast times in the various sets.

Like if the cast time is between 1 second and 1.33 we can use this animation, between 1.67 and 2.03 we can use this one, and above 2.07 we can use this one.

But we can't use the 1 second animation for a 2.03 cast time power, because there would be a 1.03 second gap where the character is just standing there and can't do anything.

Similarly, they can't use the 2.07 second one for a power like Blaze, which has a 1 second cast time, because the animation is significantly longer than the amount of time the power takes.

That's probably how they planned it out. They had a selection of alternate animations and they matched them up by cast time.

This.

It's actually a huge benefit against an AV or GM.

By lowering their max HP, you are also lowering the HP/Second of their regeneration. Just like how your HP per second regenerated goes up wen you use a power like Dull Pain, it goes down if you subtract from max HP.

For many characters, this is the only way available to affect a GM's regeneration rate.

Cynical much?

I'm expecting the sets that lack a snipe to get their adjustment at the same time as the rest of the changes. After all, they are already tweaking things in the same area, so it just makes sense to do it then.

I opted for soft-capped S/L defense and extremely high passive regeneration so I can click my heals as seldom as possible.

And when those two things fail, I have perma-DP capability and a decent chunk of recharge.

It generally IS followed.

We got alternate animations for MA and SS, and alternate animations that were shared among all the blast sets for the most part.

In 8 years, what else have we gotten that was not just a replacement of an animation that didn't fit a revamp?

I can't think of anything else. In 8 years we got.....fewer than 30 alternate animations for existing sets, and they were all very recently. Doesn't necessarily mean we'll never see alternate animations for Broadsword, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

So.....you want to level quickly by staying at level 3 the entire time?

You DO realize that as a Premium player you do not have access to anything at level 50 that makes skipping the entire game worthwhile......right?

Levels 1-49 is where 99.9% of the story progression is at.

And speaking for myself, if you PL yourself to 50 without ever having used a power beyond what you can have at level 8, I do not want you on my team.

Not elitism at all, I just expect my teammates to actually have some idea what their powers do before they fire them into a crowd of +3 enemies.

This.

It would take the exact same amount of time to create new animations for an existing set as it would to create a brand new set. This is because the vast majority of the time spent is in coding the animations, the people who actually come up with the powers and the numbers for them are a separate department.

I put Shout at the end of my chain. It hits like a truck if you have some -res stacked on your target already.

Not great for DPS, but it's nice burst damage.

Pretty much trying for an acceptable compromise.

Johnny and I are currently closer to being able to agree on this than we've ever been. Which is saying something considering how far we are from actually agreeing.

And if you really want to know what I think about it, I think Brutes should be below Scrapper damage but higher than Tanker damage, and below Tanker survivability but above Scrapper survivability.

In normal gameplay, Brutes are pretty comparable to Scrappers in both categories. The survivability advantage Brutes have in the absence of outside buffs comes purely from their higher HP.

I don't actually believe that Tankers need more damage. I'm simply trying for a compromise that has the end result of bringing the 4 melee ATs closer to being balanced.

Scrappers and Tankers have roughly 75% of each other's strong points. Tankers could use a slight adjustment to their damage scalar to put them closer to being at 75% of Scrapper damage, which is about where they should be given that Scrappers have 75% of Tanker survivability (actually slightly lower after Tankers got the HP buff)

Personally, I think Brutes should end up at about 80-85% of Scrapper damage, and 80-85% of Tanker survivability. Since they are supposedly meant to fall somewhere between the two.

I haven't mentioned Stalkers much because I think they are actually pretty close to where they should be after the recent buffs.

I'm inclined to think that Katie Douglas is Praetorian Katie Hannon.

Her mother marrying and her taking on her stepfather's name could explain the difference in last name. They also bear a vague resemblance to each other.

Very plausible, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

S/L is always better for Regen.

Regen gets no debuff resistance, and most defense debuffs come from lethal attacks. If you slot for melee any enemy with a machine gun will strip your defense away pretty quick.

If the only sets you can say it kills slower than are Fire Blast and Assault Rifle, I'd say it's doing just fine on the second part.

"Not as good as Fire Blast" doesn't mean a set is underperforming.

The only thing I really want to see is the resistance cap lowered to 85%.

The damage isn't incredibly out of line, and in normal gameplay Brute damage is comparable to Scrapper damage.

Tankers getting a little more damage wouldn't break things, and Brutes being a little less tough wouldn't break them either. I still think increasing the Tanker damage scalar would be more beneficial to more players than a damage cap increase, as you wouldn't have to already be at the bleeding edge of performance to notice an improvement.

And the devs were already going to reduce Brute resistance to 85%. I'm sure outcry from the Brute players stayed their hand in that regard. It's not like it's an arbitrary amount either, EATs are already at 85%. Perhaps Tankers being the only AT able to reach 90% resistance would help make them feel a little more special, and strengthen their position as the toughest things in the game (since you can't really make them much tougher, the only realistic option is to reduce the max potential of their only challenger for the title)

Scrappers are fine as they are. My reason for suggesting their resistance cap be increased to 80% was assuming Tankers got a significant damage cap increase. If that doesn't happen, Scrappers don't need their resistances increased either. My reasoning is that Scrappers and Tanks are the only ones of the melee ATs that are visibly in balance with each other. Scrappers get 75% of Tanker survivability, and Tankers should have 75% of scrapper damage (which would work out to something like 80% of Brute damage). In order to make that balance point work, Tankers should get a damage scalar increase to .85 from their current .8. They would deal slightly more damage both at their cap, and in general gameplay. I would not argue with a damage cap increase to 450% from their current 400% either. That would put their damage for my hypothetical 100 damage attack at 462.

So, my revision is:

Scrappers unchanged
Brute resistance cap reduction to 85%, no other change.
Tanker damage scalar to .85, damage cap to 450%, no other change.
Stalkers unchanged.

I don't think I don't deserve to have rights.

But I also don't think I have the right to use an intellectual property I don't own inside a video game I don't own. Especially when I have been informed I'm not allowed to do that, and agree not to every time I log in.

There is a big difference between believing you have the right to do something, and doing it anyway after you've agreed not to.

Same thing as getting upset for being kicked out of a restaurant for lighting up a cigarette at your table when the restaurant has "No Smoking" signs everywhere.

Just because you want to do something doesn't mean you have the right to do it.

Heard about a guy in the game whose real name is Steve Rogers. He was wondering if he would get in trouble for making a Shield Defense character named after himself. Don't know how it turned out.

(Steve Rogers is the real name of Captain America)

The range is definitely getting increased, they've confirmed that much.

I wouldn't bet on the animation time not getting reduced. Since Sonic doesn't have a snipe power, they're looking for a way to improve it. Reducing Shout's cast time would be the easiest way to immediately improve the set's damage output.

If you look at Shout, fully half of it's cast time is spent sort of crouched over like you're out of breath. They could remove that delay and end the cast time as soon as the projectile leaves without too much trouble.