Megajoule

What Razor said.

Check the Apex TF thread. Someone's tried Team TP. It... sort of works.

galadiman: Pity that two of the four characters I planned to make Incarnates are tankers, then. (And one's a brute.) EDIT: Sucks for the masterminds too, I bet.

SPT: It's not that I mind the debt, or even the dying per se. I mind spending so much real time pecking an overpowered enemy to death because we can't use our more powerful attacks without getting rooted and killed. A half hour of hopping around with Taunt on auto watching one AV's health bar inch downward, interrupted by occasional wipes and near-wipes which lead to further delay, is not fun for me. (See also: Reichsman.)

Charcoal: Well said.

Some people's ideas of valid price points seem like absurd hair-splitting to me. "Eight emotes is worth exactly... six dollars and twelve cents to me." How do you come up with that?

Maybe they think they're haggling with NCsoft? "Eight dollars? For this, sir, I will pay you five and not a penny more!" And then you settle on six, of course. But it doesn't actually work like that.

I've given up on AE, both writing and playing, until the Devs get around to fixing it. I fear they never will.

("Fixing it" - clearing out the farms, implementing a rating system that actually works, etc)

I was the Inv/SS tank on Gale's team. It was the second time I'd run Apex and my first success; the first time was on a melee-heavy PUG... yeah, but at least it helped in that this time I knew what to expect so I could tell the others. We did finally down Battle Maiden (who is still a cheaty *****), after many deaths and a couple of regroups and new strategies and some serious frustration, IMO. It was definitely an accomplishment, but I'm not sure I'd call it fun per se.

Tin Mage was the one I hadn't done before, but someone else knew what to expect and filled us in (like, enter the warehouse together and rush to the terminals for the badge, pull Neuron first and get all his clones, then wait for Lolcat to cool down). After we got over the hump of Director 11, his carpet of mines, and his inexplicably uber minions, the rest went pretty smoothly; even the robots at Portal didn't give us much trouble. (Though as noted, we did have a Rad along.)

I'll run these task forces again if my friends want me to, but I'll probably grit my teeth at Apex and resign myself to at least a half hour of dodging unresistable death patches (and half the time dying anyway because my attack animation was too long or I dodged into someone else's patch), and I doubt I'll seek them out on my own. There are better, more enjoyable ways to spend my time and get shards.

With regard to Apex in particular: I feel like they changed the rules on us, but didn't (and can't) change the engine, so we're stuck with rooting attacks in an encounter that forces us to be constantly mobile. I spent almost the entire second battle as a taunt-bot with laser eyes, watching the rest of the team slowwwwly grind her down by pecking at her with quick-animating low-tier attacks, interrupted by hospital runs. And as one of my friends noted, don't even THINK of bringing a mastermind along.

To the OP:

I don't care what your build is or how uber you are. Tell me about your character.

Also, I can think of some who might ICly start the arc, get to the part where the Well works States and/or Recluse like a puppet, and run as far and as fast as they can in the other direction.

(Heck, that's more or less what one of my characters always expected would someday happen to everyone taking bits of the Hamidon and sticking it in their own bodies... the players would have screamed bloody murder, of course, but it's perfectly in-genre.)

Most of my characters are not going to go through the Incarnate system specifically because I can't really justify the others having or seeking that kind of power; they're "merely" super-powerful beings. The ones who will take it to that next level:

a paragon who rightly should be as powerful as Statesman, given the chance;
a small god (of a single neighborhood), but a god just the same(*);
an ambitious gangsta (a Hellion by any other name) whose answer to every problem(**) is "MORE POWER";
and a psychic with the proven potential to lay waste to an entire world, if he ever lets himself.


(*) Gozer: "Are YOU a GOD?" King: "Yeah. What's it to ya?"
(**) including, of course, the ones that result from the power he already has.

At present, none - but I have deleted and/or rerolled a few in the past, and it was only a few days ago I decided not to do the same to another (see below).

The Watchmaker, your classic telepath and telekinetic, started out as Mind/Kin - but I soon found out that Kin wasn't a set I really liked playing, and most of the "telekinesis" stuff was already bundled into Mind. I also wrote the character for a specific story/arc, which ended at 20... and when it was over, I didn't know what to do with him (a predicament faced by many Praetorians recently). So I ended up leaving him on the shelf for long periods, trying to find some enjoyment in playing him. Finally I gave up on the powersets and rerolled him as Mind/Emp, soon getting the new version back up to the level he was before. The then-new Faultline content helped me push him a little further, and I muddled along with him until I found other things for him to do. He's now 50 and a freelance dimensional explorer, wandering the universe alone, rather like the Doctor.

(There were also times I was tempted to reroll him as a Mind/Psi blaster, or a dominator, now that GR lets you have them blueside. But while those are valid sets for the original concept, and if I'd had those options back then I might have, they don't fit what the character has become since.)

My first attempt at an Electric/Electric brute failed badly - not because of the powers, but because my character concept (an android with a very bad upbringing that left "him" a complete sociopath) just did not play well with others. Even on a team, it was as if he was soloing - said little, ran off by himself, etc. When roleplayed "properly", he acted like the kind of player I wouldn't want to team with. Rather than ask my friends to put up with this, or solo him all the way to 50, I punted.

My next character with those powersets was a Praetorian double for one of my other characters, made years before GR was even announced. (I'm pretty sure he has the 2007 badge.) The character played well, but sometimes suffered from lack of focus other than being The Evil Twin. When GR did come out, I jumped at the chance to play out (on another server) his backstory in Praetoria before being sent to Primal Earth. Now Issue 19 is out, and the original character (who just made 50) can actually "go back" to Praetoria ... except of course, he's not recognized there by his Loyalist contacts. For a day or two, I strongly considered deleting or transferring the 50 and moving the true-Praetorian 21 over to Virtue, even though it meant leveling him up all over again... but then I realized (1) there still really isn't that much reason to go to Praetoria, and (2) I could easily spin it that during the three years he was undercover in this dimension, he'd been written off, disavowed, even declared dead back home. So the character has now turned in his "formal resignation" by beating down his old boss in a mission, and is out only for himself. (Incarnate powers? Aw yeah, gimme some of that.)

Two other characters were deleted in their early 20s because I wanted to change one's origin (from Tech to Natural) and the other's build (from Male to Huge - again, this was years before the Science pack).

There have been times when I wished my Dark/Pistols defender was a blaster. There were times I wished my AR/Dev blaster was almost anything else. And there were times when Stone/Stone's bog-slow soloing frustrated me. But I've gotten through them all.

And the character in my forum pic? FF/Energy Blast, played about half-solo (so I could read the arcs and play at my own speed) all the way to 50, back in 2004-06. I still pull her out now and then.

A ghost town, you say? Most of that is because of the new Incarnate stuff, true, but I wonder how much is due to the latest big exploit being closed at the same time. We'll probably never know.

*facepalm*

No, you cannot actually see Atlas Park from KR. You see mock-up buildings behind the War Wall, which are still part of the Steel Canyon map and load along with the rest of the buildings in the accessible part of the zone. You cannot really see into Atlas from an adjacent zone any more than you can see into Talos from north Founders or vice versa. This game does not work that way.

Mission 2 of Apex takes place on a single map, which is divided into two locations - much as the "floors" of an office are all actually on one map, but spaced far enough apart that you normally can't see them. (Rarely the in-game map glitches, and you can see all the mini-floors at once.) The transition from roof to street is exactly like taking an elevator, and in my experience, takes a similar amount of time. I suggest that if it takes much longer for you, it's because your computer is now being asked to render the enemies, attack FX, etc which it didn't have to when you were far away and not in the thick of combat. But I assure you, you are fully in the zone for the mission as soon as you appear in the helicopter, and no amount of immunity while zoning in will protect you from the consequences of moving from one part of the map to another without exercising some caution and common sense in an encounter that is designed to be more difficult than most boss battles.

I'm sorry your computer apparently isn't up to snuff for rendering a pitched battle without lagging.
I'm sorry you don't understand how zones work in this game.
I'm sorry you apparently just can't be bothered to not charge, lemming-like, into the fray. (It always worked in AE, am I right?)
And I'm probably going to be sorry I just spent ten minutes of my life trying to educate you a little.

*plays theremin music*

With regard to the Apex TF in particular:
You zone in at the top of the building, in the helicopter, not the bottom. When you take the stairs, you are already in the zone that the mission takes place in. If you look down the side of the building, you can actually see the exit, and whether it has an aura around it - a clear indication that it is all one zone. Your ignorance of this is unfortunate and weakens your argument for the general case.

A good player would be aware of the possibility of a damage aura at the door in that mission and take prudent steps to avoid it, rather than charging in like a n00b - or, if they insist on doing so, have the wisdom and courage to accept that it's their decision and their fault and not whine about it or demand that the game be changed to allow them to act carelessly.

Like death, a truly random number generator is completely fair, especially over the long run. That you feel otherwise suggests to me that you are suffering from perceptual bias, a run of bad luck, or perhaps just simple greed.

If Paragon's RNG is not truly random, that's a matter for their programmers to resolve. But I suspect that it is, at least to a reasonable approximation, and you're just unhappy because you aren't able to tilt those odds in your favor.

Sad, as others have said.

Thank you all for your kind words. When I saw the first mission of the new Apex TF, I knew I had to do something with it, respond in some way. After so many years in the city, the sight of what the invaders had done to KR and Blyde Square really hurt.

I was tempted to play Barber's Adagio for Strings over it all, just to hammer in the Homeworld ref, but I figured I'd leave the choice of music to the reader.

Nalrok: No, not at all, though he'd probably just stand there all stiff and uncomfortable-like as you try to get your arms around his chest (or maybe waist). Go run the TF instead.

Happening with me too. (Win7 64, ATI 5770)

My suggestion to the OP is to wait until January or even February of 2011 and take stock of the situation then, after things have settled out a bit.

Great idea, well described, but probably a technical nightmare to implement.

Understood, but at the same time, right now it's a zone for nobody (in practical terms). Furthermore, IMO, there's nothing that says it has to be hero-access only except for accidents of timing and historical inertia; it was added to the game before there were villains.

If you made it open-access tomorrow, I still doubt anyone would bother to go there on either side except to grind out Rularuu weapons or accolades. There's no real reason to keep it closed besides the overall passive neglect the entire zone has gotten since that issue.

(One thing you didn't mention in your first post is that, in addition to being terribly inconvenient to get around in, it's full of enemies with attacks that bypass your usual defenses. One more reason only fools and masochists bother.)

EDIT: Oh yeah, you also might want to check whether Inherent Fitness breaks all the geysers...

Trip Mine is, IMO, okay as it is. Not great, not perfect, but doesn't really need a change (and as you can see, some people like it just like it is).

I don't think there's anyone who likes Time Bomb as it is. Almost anything would be an improvement.