EvilGeko

Costumes; Inventions; temp powers; content; character slots.

Personally, I think NCSoft could make a killing. The key would be making many of the things we take for granted ala carte. And giving subscriptions perks that make people want to upgrade.

We have plenty of microtransactions already though.

The Villain Epic ATs are, IMO, extremely well designed and have very few downsides. They are there though and they are different for each branch:

Bane Spiders - The squishiest of the lot. Banes have significantly less mez protection than the other three (at most 6 MAG protection - no KB protection) and less mitigation. Their armor upgrade is very good, better than the Crabs, but the Crab gets the yummy Fortification and Serum.

Banes ranged ST and AoE potential in their attack set (as opposed to the huntsman set which they can dip into) is very poor. Taking some Huntsman powers helps a lot, but it also forces redraw.

Banes have very good melee damage and make a credible Stalker.

Crab Spiders - Very nice. The only downsides I would suggest that Crabs have is that their ST damage at ranged is limited unless, like the Banes, you take the gun attacks. However, redraw isn't as much of a problem. Also you get Gloom as an PPP so that takes care of the problem too.

Crabs have no KB protection, but that hole is easily filled. Crabs have less defense than the other VEATs but they have substantially more resistance.

Crabs are the sole VEATs to have a heal with their Dull Pain clone which also helps with the HP problem that all VEATs have to some extent. It's very difficult to say that Crabs have ANY downsides really.

Night Widows and Fortunatas - Like Crabs, very strong characters these girls (I do not acknowledge male widows! ) They're only downsides IMO are the lack of a heal and low HP. Otherwise they are awesome.

I agree they should be sold. But probably only for 2-3 Alignment merits. I think given their actual value to most characters doesn't warrant a price equal to purples. They are much more akin to rare recipes.

I believe the OP is talking about the Alignment stores, not the normal merit stores.

In this game, being a ranged based AT is penalty enough.

I like these kind of fights. Fight club fights need a bit of variety.

This. I've never understood why we can outlevel content.

"Oh sorry Mr. Hero, I know somebody kidnapped the Mayor, but you're too powerful and wouldn't be challenged by saving him, so don't worry about it."

/fail

Give missions a maximum level and let people decide if they want to take lower exp or not.

Except for the defense to all positions they're giving each other and the Rad (and I believe his/her imps, but can't recall if it works on pets or not).

The buffs/debuffs given by the rad are extremely important, but controllers have to move VERY far before they start doing the damage a Scrapper does unbuffed. Buffed, as the two Fire/Shields will be, its amazing to watch.

I'm not sure why you all assume I have no experience in these matters. I've played on plenty of buffer overrun teams both as a contributing buffer and as a buffed DPS. Fire/Shield/Fire is not exactly like your common Scrapper. The level of AoE damage is really off the charts. In the configuration I've proposed you would have those two Scrappers two shotting spawns of mobs.

It would be much quicker than a team of all Fire/Rads, and nearly as flashy.

Yes. I have both a high level Fire/Rad Controller and a Fire/Shield Scrapper.

In the combination, I've selected, you can have two softcapped tanks throwing absolutely frightening levels of AoE. More than three controllers can do alone.

This can't be stressed enough. There were parts of I13's mechanics that were OK, but mostly it's a mess.

Loses too much damage and survivability. Rad controllers are awesome but controls and debuffs have to be applied first.

This would be win. Add common IOs too though.

I have a 50 Ill/FF Controller and a 50 Cold/Ice Defender. I would be fine if my 4 minute defense buffs were say 10 minutes and cost 2.5x the amount of endurance. That would make them about 20 end a cast unslotted. I don't mind buffing at all, but most buffs are a BIT too short for my tastes. I actually enjoy it sometimes over constant killing. (Hence why I have two 50 bubblers)

I think this would make both characters more enjoyable to play without a need to nerf the effectiveness of the buffs. It would also alleviate the "pay for buffs" problem that is one of the base reasons for the short timers on buffs.

/signed. That would be pretty funny against -40s.

Except he wasn't talking about mechanics. He was saying what HE the NPC character was told. It wasn't an instruction to YOU the player, it was a description of something going on in the story.

AT is not simply a game convention.

I just started a new character in Atlas and walked up to Antonio Nash. This is what he said,

Your AT is not simply a game convention is it part of the LORE.

Right. Death is a penalty. It's a marker that, "Hey hero/villain you didn't win."

It's interesting to me that every MMO out there with death penalties, including this one have made their penalties less severe over time. But the existence of death as a penalty, provides a good reason for making recover downtime as minimal as possible.

Death provides a time penalty in the form of experience debt (or eating rested exp) and possibly travel time back to the point of defeat. What's the difference there? You can play away the penalty. The assumption always has to be that the core activity of the game is fun so working off debt should likewise be entertaining. That plus the fact that the penalties for death have been lowered make death a reasonable penalty for defeat.

But recover downtime puts you in a situation where you have to STOP playing the game. You can go back for inspirations, perhaps, but that's often going to be longer than it takes for your health to recharge naturally.

Thanks for all the negative responses. Truly. I hate making suggestions that die immediately.

No, it's not my responsibility to provide statistical evidence that I have no access too. It's my responsibility to explain why I believe my suggestion is sound and for the devs to compare that to their proprietary statistical evidence and decide if my idea is sound.

This BS argument has been brought up in the various other arguments I've made over the years and it still makes no sense.