Frosticus

Crowded maps on freedom? we must have a very different idea of what constitutes a crowd. I haven't seen a crowded map in this game outside of a few special events that entail people gathering in a specific area of the game.

During a 2x xp I'd say freedom/virtue are busy, during normal time they are acceptable enough where I don't feel like I'm playing a single player game or at best a small LAN party. The other servers are so empty they should all be merged into 1-2 IMO. They won't be and realistically can't be right now, but man they are empty. The pvp zones of the respective servers generally reflect the overall server population (ie freedom zones are decently active, the dead servers' zones are unsurprisingly dead as well).

I find it ironic that rather than use the /ignore button at the tip of your fingers you choose to further perpetuate the "drama". The ability to "shut people up" is in your control. Take responsibility for your experiences instead of putting it on other people.

I don't ignore anyone, but at the same time I actually like the full spectrum of posts found on these boards and you probably won't find me whinning about it. If the majority of posters were as boring as you guys it wouldn't be worth reading anything here (other than some of the build threads), which would lead to more time spent in game and faster burnout.

All I can say is that when I post something inflamatory rest assured it was intended to evoke a response. It is also worth taking note of what particular sub forum you are posting in, that should help you gauge how far the stick should be situated. In this particular case we are in the "For Fun" section so for reference one would unclench and go with a minimum of depth. Or not, too each their own.

must be talking about two different threads. No worries.

Fire/storm still produces heaps of damage, for bosses and spawn to spawn it is still my favorite controller. It is crazy fast, safe, and visually appealing. But it takes a massive investment to run with a heavy hitter like fire/rad for AV's. And even after that investment is still trailing by quite a bit.

Post LS nerf the only storm I would recommend for AV's is bots/storm. I tagged about 15 AV's with my fire/storm just before Castle gutted the crap out of LS. The damage was higher than fire/rad (including the -regen), but the end cost and risk was also a lot higher. Post LS nerf the effective damage is generally lower and nothing was done to change the end cost or the risk...in fact because you produce less damage for the same endurance it has actually become more of an issue and because hard targets don't die nearly as fast risk has also increased.

For how unplayable fire/storm was while leveling prior to getting all of the recovery bonuses I personally wouldn't do it again now that the peak performance of the set has been lowered by such a large degree. Basically, that time, effort, and inf put into a different toon (ie fire/rad) will produce much better results in most applications. My first two sentences still stand though.

Is that list meant as a comedy piece?

The ONLY reason anti gank was removed was because of a very detrimental and exploitable bug involving spectators (both arena bots and even people just chilling around a fightclubbzor). If Castle could have solved this bug anti-gank would have been included with i13 despite every single person saying is was the worth thing they'd ever seen...literally

I once said Castle had the knowledge and ability to remake pvp into a much better environement. All I can say is that when it comes to pvp that guy just has no clue. At this point I'd trade in the GR announcement for an announcement of a competent pvp dev. Harsh, but for me at least, true.

If you are so assured of yourself that I am wrong then give me 5:1 odds and I'll bet you 1 billion inf that DR appears with GR or if they drop an issue 2-2.5 months before it in that one.

Doesn't tickle your fancy, how bout 2 billion?

I'm pretty sure it will be there, sure enough to put up or shut up with you. So what will it be?

Hopefully this won't be like the time you told another poster you would have to fall on your head to write a worse MA arc than them and that your were going to write a hall of fame arc under a pseudonym... that I'm guessing never happened.

Basically, if you are so convinced I'm wrong. Wrong enough to post multiple thousand word essays about it then put your money where your mouth is. I'm willing to.

Actually I'll go 1:1 odds on a billion inf if you really want Arcana, just cause I've never seen you post anything that waivers outside of a stringent 3% risk range.

GR will not significantly increase subs. Nothing this game has done in either direction has had a profound impact on the stable population. This will be no different.

On a different note, there was an article posted a short while ago citing CoX as one of the top 5 games in need of a facelift. The outcry that generated on these boards was a good read. It would appear that someone important was feeling the same as said article writer.

Don't feel bad. I get neg repped all the time for disagreeing with people. And while I'm probably not right this time (I've strangely collected only 1 neg rep in this thread) I'm usually right when I go around disagreeing.

Rep is usually funny. I like reading the negative comments much more than the positive ones.

Edit: you have your rep disabled, you can still collect rep?

Aside from the ability to one shot sleep AV's ime mind isn't worthy of cleaning fire's shoes. If you are relying on mass confusion to progress through a TF (including the ITF) you have a very long complete time ahead of you. Not to mention the joy of only adding single target damage for the most part. Now plant, that is an amazing set for sure and has an aoe confuse worth mentioning.

/psy gets my nod for GM class enemies, but not AV class. If we are talking a high recharge dom FE combined with fire assaults much higher damage/dpa powers is indeed as good or better than the -regen of DP. In a team setting, which is where most doms do their AV fighting I'll generally leave the -regen to other people as it is a pretty common effect. Additionally that extra damage becomes super extra damage with debuffers around.

Like I said though, varied responses. I probably look at perma dom differently than some other people. I look at it as opening up the ability to spend minimal time controlling and maximum time killing. So for me fire/fire is the clear choice.
Edit: fire/fire isn't that bad to perma. Definitely one of the more difficult/expensive ones, but there are so many more recharge options since perma first became an option that achieving it without sacrificing your build is a reality any dom should be able to accomplish.

If you perma-dom for the purpose of control then maybe earth/earth? I dunno though I don't look at it that way.

If you want a cheap perma dom then mind/energy is probably the easiest, but plant is good too and imo a much better set than mind.

That said, I can't think of any perma-dom combos that aren't very powerful.

I'm in this boat. Though I'm usually very concerned when he goes near something I like because for some reason both his nerfs and buffs end up with me not enjoying it anymore.

I don't have any hurt feelings to operate off of. I wasn't impacted by ED or GDN. I am upset about the gutting of pvp, but that has nothing to do with my pve experience.


You have completely misread what I said. So much so I think it is intentional.
Because of the massive divide that has been introduced into the game and because of the massive divide in forcemultiplication? In other words, because for certain arrangements the game is still far too easy. Brokenly so...
Pot, kettle, yada yada.

There's nothing to be accomplished from this. I'm either right and I'll be sure to let you know when the time comes. Or I'm wrong and I'll be sure to let you know at the time. I'm much more indifferent about it than you realize. I just stated what I think is going to come with GR, it's mostly you guys that are upset about it.

I joined the game right after ED. Well technically not as I bought it two weeks prior, but my kat/regen scrapper was only lvl 18 when CoV launched so I never felt the impact of that event in the least.

Maybe you don't get it.

hard to see a pattern when you deliberately miss it.

Why you have i4, 11, 14, and 16 on there I don't know. Heck i5 ranks higher than all of those except i14...maybe. Same goes for i13 on the negative list.

The largest of both categories is i6. By far. The next largest content update by a large margin will be GR. I happen to think the next largest performance decrease with be GR as well. GDR dropped a mere 2 months before CoV hit. I have also heavily considered the possibility of DR coming just prior to Going Rogue. If issues came more often I would have gone with that. The important part is being able to bury it underneath a mountain of positive information. That worked for GDN (as well as possible) cause CoV was literally on the doorstep begging for attention. If an issue is released just prior to GR I'll be watching it very closely.

All I'm asking is for you to mark it. If I'm wrong I'll gladly admit it. If you are wrong I hope you will too.

I guess you and I see at most a 20% reduction using the absolute highest numbers possible as different. I barely see the avg player even noticing it. You see it as a "serious impact on pve performance". If a peak reduction of 20% is a "serious" reduction to the avg player then what was ED and GDN? super serial?

Your blaster example is incredibly skewed too, defiance addressed their survivability issues (and by extension their xp gaining issues) in a much larger way than just giving them +dam buffs. IME shoot-while-mezzed is much more significant than the +dam while solo, which is what you are obviously referring to considering I specifically stated DR would be used to reduce some of the scaling issues encountered in teams.

Additionally, the only possible way to implement DR is with the pvp values. That is written in stone outside the paragon office I'm sure . They have spent considerable time on DR. The numbers you are sticking to if transferred to pve are the pvp values so all that time has been relevant. You can't argue it both ways. At the very least the time spent has been a test bed for a switch of the system over to pve and has been valuable to the purpose. Like I said earlier, I think DR will be implemented in some form with GR, you don't. Is there anything else to say?

Unless one of our names turn red and we say it with more conviction than it being a guideline then it is what it is.

It's not really that hard, it is just really different from pve. The decision was made to remove all intuitive understanding between the two aspects of the game.

Used to be a pve centric build could do decently in zone pvp or kickball arena. Now you need to pvp specialize almost entirely.

I don't think this is what players really wanted when they requested a second build option, but what can you do?

Oops, I'd actually be the completely wrong person to ask for evidence disproving it if you have been following the flow of the conversation.

If there was a documented history of world ending events that indicated a predictable pattern and it so happened to have the next one fall in 2012 I might be inclined to agree with the Mayans. But I don't think there has been an established pattern when it comes to apocalyptic events. Well, unless you are a fan of Nicolas Cage

I don't really think believing the next biggest batch of shiny will be accompanied by the next biggest batch of....negative performance adjustments is very far fetched. It is consistent with how the game is handled. If it is going to happen it is the logical time for it to occur.

rep said:
"It's not coming. They said so when they did it to PvP."
link?

And so does whatever view people see through their lenses. You have adequately described perspective.

I'm also not basing it off what I think should happen. That could not be any more inaccurate. I'm just saying what I think will happen.
You're second statement aside from that, is just repeating exactly what I already said.

Regardless, it is quite a way down the road. Further discussion of it will provide nothing more than "cause I say so's". Not that there is anything more concrete than that being said to support either position already.

I can assure you I have a much higher percentage of quality posts than you do.

If my "lol" post was a +1, what did you just do?

Maybe, but historically the big negative changes have coincided with the big positive changes. If something big is going to happen it will likely be with GR. I can't think of a single issue I've been excited for that wasn't quickly followed by a significant change that was hard to swallow. The bigger the positive change the bigger the negative change they can stick through. I hope nothing as heavy handed as ED2.0 (ie diminished returns) come down the pipe, but I personally feel a lot of indicators are pointing toward something significant occuring.


I don't think I'm all that far off in left field. I've read a number of comments from Castle stating his dissatisfaction with current implementations resulting in overperformance and I just don't think they put the time and effort that has gone into make Diminished Returns only to use it in 2% of the game.

The current chasm that exists in the game is astonishing, many characters have returned to nearly i4 levels of power, while many other players are effectivly licking their boots.

Also DR would have a trivial impact on the things you mention such as: drop rates, xp progression and such. But it would greatly contain the outliers (solo and teamed, IO'd and non IO'd) that over time become more and more prolific. All while having virtually no impact on the "casual player". I tend to min/max so I'm not looking forward to it, but for what its worth I think it is coming and similar to ED probably necessary for the health of the game.

Or they might take it in the other direction and allow everyone to be a demi-god, but I see that as less likely. But I also see the status quo as unlikely to continue too.