ClawsandEffect

So, in other words, someone who has NOT completed the LGTF can never team in RWZ with someone who HAS? Since they're in different versions of the zone, it stands to reason that they wouldn't be permitted to team together.

Now spread that idea across the rest of the game. All the Task Forces have an effect on the zones you enter.

To use my example before:

I have completed the Synapse Task Force. The effect of completing this TF is that Clockwork will never spawn in open zones anymore. You have defeated the thing that allows them to function, so they just don't work anymore. Don't have the Knight Errant badge? Too bad. Paladins don't get built anymore because Clockwork no longer function.

Since Clocks no longer spawn in open zones for me, I now enter different versions of Atlas Park, Galaxy City, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, Perez Park, Boomtown, and Faultline than someone who hasn't done the Synapse TF. Now no one who hasn't completed that TF can team with me in any of those zones.

Also, since Clocks no longer spawn in open zones, I just made the Numina TF impossible for me to complete. Because you have to kill clockwork in the streets of Steel Canyon in order to finish the TF. If I didn't get the Clockstopper, Knight Errant, and Gearsmasher badges prior to running Synapse, I can never get them, because I will never again encounter the enemies I need to defeat to earn those badges.

If I didn't get Gearsmasher and can't complete Numina, that's 2 accolades that I can never earn.


Another problem: The servers would start crashing a LOT more.

Why, you ask? Because now the server has to check every single character's badge count every single time that character zones to determine which version of that zone they enter. Since people are constantly zoning somewhere on the server at all times of day, it's going to put a LOT more strain on the system.

See how something like this could become a problem?

But what about the people who haven't completed the LGTF yet? Are they not allowed to do it because the purpose of the TF no longer exists?

So, ONE team gets to run the TF in RWZ like it is now, but everyone else after that has to go through Ouroboros to do it? How is that fair? It would eliminate the cooperative nature of that TF because Hero and VIllain Ouroboros zones are seperate.

Also, once the TF gets moved to Ouroboros upon completion by that first team, a new player may never realize it even exists, because the game does nothing to tell you what missions are available in Ouro.

Pretty much this.

Every time you add a new powerset, or IO, or Archetype, or mission, or story arc, or task force, or pretty much anything else that wasn't there before, you have to look at the entire game and see if there's anything that gets thrown out of whack by it.


Look at it like a see-saw. If both sides have equal weight on them it will be balaced. If you add something to one side, the balance will tilt toward that side. So you need to either add something to the other side, or move something from one side to the other.

Hence, every new thing you add has potential to throw off the balance. The only way to really finish balancing the game is to stop adding new things to it. And I think I can speak for the majority in saying that would be an unpopular solution.

Not to mention the 4 or 5 freespecs that have dropped since 2007 when he registered.

HP capping a blaster is easy. Really easy.

But, since the hard cap on blaster HP is 1606, it doesn't have as huge an impact on regen as capping a scrapper, brute, or tank. Scrappers cap at around 2400, tanks and brutes both cap at around 3100 or so.

With all the agro you're likely to draw, regen alone will NOT keep you alive. It will extend your lifespan, but if you hit a spawn with an AoE and don't kill all or most of them the return alpha will shred you.

Add some defense so that regen has a chance to DO something and you'll be in better shape. Regenerating 100 HP a second does no good at all if you take 3000 damage in 5 seconds, which large spawns in the late game are capable of producing.

Bull.

I've soloed quite a few AVs, and not even with that stellar of a build. I can point you to the build I did it with if you like, it's posted over in the scrapper section.

There are a few GMs I'm confident I could solo as well if I felt like sitting there for an hour beating on it.

As far as the NEEDING of accolades: There is not a single accolade in the game that you cannot progress through the game without. My brute is sitting at level 50, moderately IOed into an AV soloing capable build. He doesn't have a single villain accolade, not a one.

As far as the game is concerned, a NEED is something that you can't progress any further without. There is almost nothing in this game that actually qualifies as a need.

A WANT, on the other hand, is just something that you would like to do or have. It has ZERO bearing on your ability to progress.

NO.

The reward in the PvP zones (Shivans, Nukes, etc.) is greater to make up for the greater risk of being attacked by another player. A player is much more capable of defeating you than any computer AI will EVER be, therefore the rewards that can be found in those zones are better than most other repeatable rewards.

A Shivan is a temporary pet that comes with 5 uses. It is the same strength no matter how may times you get it, while other temp pets decrease in effectiveness when you get them more than once.

A Warburg nuke is an extremely powerful attack/debuff, that you can acquire as many times as you want.

The risk is equal to the reward. You are asking for a reward scaled to that particular risk, while removing the risk entirely. (That's why things like MM pets in AE are considered exploits, the reward is too great for the risk involved, which is effectively zero)

So, NO. If you want your badges and temp powers, deal with the fact that you can be attacked by other players. I'm not a huge PvP fan, but if I enter a PvP zone, I accept the fact that I can and will be attacked while I'm looking for a badge.

Actually, with the changes to how exempng works, I'm okay with teaming up to 5 levels lower than me. I still get to keep any powers I may have, and I still get xp, so I don't lose anything by it.

I don't mind teaming with those much lower than me either, as long as they don't have the star. My only exception is tanks, if I'm in the 40's and there's a tank on the team I want them to have enough of their powers to be able to do their job (exceptions are made if they are not the only tank). Expecting a level 6 tank to hold the agro of an 8 man spawn of Nemesis and survive it is kind of ridiculous.

This.

My Broadsword/Dark Armor was and endurance guzzling hog before IOs. Now he's softcapped and has almost no endurance problems at all. And I did it (relatively) cheap.

Katana/Regen is a solid combo though. Pretty much any scrapper is at least solid, even if they're not ZOMGAWESOME!!!!!1 out of the box.

But what happens if there's a teamwipe and you're the ony person left standing? You're completely helpless to do anything to defend yourself. And if there's a spawn standing over your teammates, rezzing them will do no good because they will die again before they can do anything.

A character with nothing but buffs is, quite simply, dead weight. I would not invite one to any team I was running because I don't like teammates that aren't self-sufficient in a pinch. Sure, that Empathy defender isn't putting out a whole lot of damage, but when the feces hits the fan it can at least do SOMETHING to defend itself. A Buff/Buff character would be completely reliant on it's teammates to stay alive.

I don't like inviting Empaths that only have 1 completely unslotted attack either. Everyone is at full health and all your buffs are applied, shoot something while you wait to be needed again.

You know this for a fact?

How many people play the game that never registered to the forums at all? I personally know at least 10. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who post on the forums know at least a couple people that aren't registered. Because you don't HAVE to register to the forums in order to play the game, you know. I know a guy that played for 2 years before he even knew the forums existed. The number of people registered to the forums does not necessarily reflect the number of people playing the game.

So, there are 165k registered forum users, and that means that the population has NEVER been higher than that?

I say there is no way you could possibly know that unless you have access to NCSoft's database....which I would be willing to bet you do not.

Quarterly reports aren't even that reliable. They show how much money the game has made over the quarter. People that paid their subscription up for a year 6 months ago aren't contributing to that number, they contributed to the report 2 quarters before.

And for the record: It is the 11 million people (or so they claim) that play WoW that I was calling sheep. CoH players are the ones (generally speaking) that play what they want to play, whether that's the "in" thing or not.

I know a number of people that play WoW just because their friends play, and they want to hang out with them. The game they're playing doesn't even matter to them, because they're not there for the game, they're there to socialize.

This.

People in general, are sheep. Mindless drones who will do what other people are doing for no better reason than the fact that other people are doing it.

No one wants to try something new, unless there are a lot of people doing it already. People always assume that millions of people cannot possibly be wrong. History has proven that to be false repeatedly, yet it is still assumed to be true. Galileo was mocked for saying the Earth was round, because everyone else believed it to be flat. Once it was PROVEN to be round, everyone accepted it like they'd always known. The fact that 5 years earlier they believed the exact opposite was never even considered.

Now people assume that an MMO is a failure if it doesn't get as big as WoW is. Which is ridiculous because WoW is not the norm for an MMO, it is an anomaly. CoH has around 160,000 players between all the servers (just look at the numbers at the bottom of the forum), and it's considered to somehow not be successful just because it doesn't have millions playing it.

Superheros have always been, and probably will always be, a niche market. When most people think of an MMO, they think "Dungeons and Dragons on a computer", whether that is the case or not. The same as calling all facial tissue Kleenex, or all adhesive bandages Band-Aids. The name of a brand that becomes well known becomes the name of the product. I wouldn't be surprised to see all MMOs called WoW eventually, because of that same trend. It's already starting, when I tell someone I play a computer game online, they assume I'm talking about WoW because it's the only one they realize even exists.

What if Smeg was working on the 400 rep badge?

That would mean HE was there for badges too. Who's badge takes precedence?

Every one of my characters is built from the concept first. Every single one. I have never looked at Mid's and said: "Wow, the numbers are great on that, I think I'll play one!"

I take a concept I like and play the character for a while to make sure I still like it. Then, if I still like it, I'll open up Mid's and say "Okay, now what can I do with this character?"

Using Mid's and having a character concept are NOT mutually exclusive. You say you build from concept and don't use Mid's, as though using Mid's somehow ruins your concept. It doesn't.

We get that you don't like Mid's (for whatever reason it is), stop railing against it like it's cheating or something. It's NOT.

The only enemy groups that have it before level 30 are (IIRC) Lost and Arachnos.

This.

Dark Armor's best resistance potential is, oddly enough, psionic (rather than the negative energy you'd expect), and it CAN be capped if you want to pick up psi resist bonuses.

Fiery Aura will cap Fire resistance by accident, but you're not going to cap anything else.

You've been watching me play haven't you?