PumBumbler

People who are running Dual Pistols right now have already pre-ordered GR. Now that we know the Incarnate system is going to require GR as well will probably make GR very popular among vets.

Most indications are that people who are fed up with the red market and/or feel that there are no teaming opportunities will go blue.

However, there is also a real chance that the new zones in Praetoria will be where everyone hangs out anyhow, evening out the playing field for blue and redside alike. Given the fact that all the new zones will be designed with ultra mode in mind, I think a lot of players will want to hang their hats and see the shinies versus the old zones.

Interesting discussion. I think that people have forgotten the original metrics of SFs and TFs benchmarking.

Originally there was no big reward for running a task force. A badge, a souvenir and a SO were all to be had. People didn't have a desire to run multiple TFs, let alone speed them. They complained.

Strike Forces were designed to appease people by making SFs shorter so people wouldn't have to take breaks in order to finish a long series of missions.

After recipes were added, Villains actually were at an advantage since a rare recipe drop was the reward for a strike force/task force completion, regardless of SF/TF duration. This led to speedy TFs and SFs, especially KHTFs and Edens.

Now that SF/TF rewards have changed to be duration based, strike forces suffer in comparison because historically SFs were sped through to get the drop (dropping the time metric), and there are fewer strike forces in general.

What I'd like to see is the development of Strike Forces based on Ghost Widow, Scirocco and Black Scorpion.

While I think that villain content is much better in writing, I think it is also harder to get a Villain concept going that is rated "Teen" friendly. Parts of the Vanguard stories and most of the midnighter arc is evidence of the shoe-horned nature of villain content lately. This leaves villains feeling gypped. Heroic motivations are easy. Villain motivations not so much unless you want to make them insane.

Eg. Barracuda Strike Force: When Mueller rescues Reichsman, he refuses to reward Mueller and pops everyone instead. Why keep the villains alive and kill Mueller?

I'm just hoping the villain writing gets back to the level of Westin Phipps. Now there's a Strike Force I would do...instead we'll probably get ebil emo vampires for the next Strike Force.

Leveling slower isn't just a function of uber builds. The player is a much better judge of how fast someone can level over what IOs they are slotting. It's mainly a function of people who want to get into the upper echelons of the game or feel they need some specific build for the sake of completeness that it is bothering them.

Why would you say it's giving up? Given the information that has been published about GR I'm surprised you're taking such a myopic view of the need to merge markets.

GR will have heroes who wind up to be villains and vice versa. Each will still trade into their respective markets, as far as I've heard? Are you implying that everyone is going to make a villain and then go heroside in GR and then every hero not switch sides to villains?

GR itself will likely be a boost to both markets and since the BM is slower than WW it will get a pickup. A significant one I believe. Then the point will be moot on whether the markets need to be merged or not.

Again, being PO'd isn't a good reason just to merge the markets. Lower teaming opportunities and lesser content are probably a big part of the reason on why the BM isn't as easy to fill out recipes than on WW. As well having Heroes around for twice as long may have something to do with the playtime differentials as well.

I don't see how one side is getting it in the rear versus the other. If you're *that* interested in getting an exact recipe for your specific toon, then secure them from an alternate source. It's really not that difficult, although it might take more time and work differently than the way you want to do it.

The gameplay experience from villains to heroes isn't exactly the same and I don't think they could make it the same. If you want to claim a degraded experience because things are not vis-a-vis identical, there are more than a few things that you can say that about, such as strike force level gaps.

Sorry that the BM has taken a dive, but maybe GR will have more heroes come over to the dark side and help it out. If not, I guess you can always use GR and go blue.

The game has been balanced around SO's so it's not like not having a huge selection is crippling either. Again, if you bothered to read what I had said instead of just feeling hurt that I'm not pushing for your cause, I think the markets should be merged but the devs have so many other things going on that it just won't happen.

Buses are better for the environment, btw.

The only things that can't be bought outside of the market are PvP IOs and Purples. Using merits and tickets is an alternative to items you can't find on the BM.

I still don't see where being PO'd because there are fewer goods becomes substantial harm.

I think part of the reason why they are being kept separate is the amount of effort needed to merge the markets. It doesn't sound non-trivial to do it.

The flip side then is if you are surmising that it costs 30% more to equip a toon redside than blue, it usually means that whoever is selling the items is making 30% more on the items they sell as well. I know my villain, who I played a lot less of, hit the inf cap way faster than my hero did. There's a lot of other things like drop rate/mob types and not just population that would reflect the higher prices red side.

The other question is, are villains performing worse than heroes on average? That is, are these builds 30% worse because the market isn't balanced?

Personally I think the markets should be merged but if you can't prove substantial harm (not benefit) to villains I don't think the devs will see it as a problem.

Hehe, you're scaring away the newbs. That would include being afk for 2 hours.

Haha, methinks I'm a bit flipped around thar.

Are you running booting the kernel in 64-bit mode? Parallels 5 will freeze the system if you are running CoX and 64-bit kernel in 10.6. 32-bit kernels work OK with PD5 and CoX.

Wouldn't surprise me. Used to be in i3-i4 there were 2 raids per evening on average and sometimes a 3rd midnight raid as well. Occasionally someone would run a mid day raid because people were feeling left out so Justice was raiding 1-4 times a day.

Just to be clear for everyone else, the raid I was referring to is actually a different one from the OP's. I just liked the title since it is a relative reference vs absolute.

Someone had made a comment about getting a hami raid together and I thought that Justice has the chops to do a last minute throwdown pug style public raid. Even though Justice was quite low on the population list (was about 6th spot on server loads where it is normally 3rd), I thought enough people were lazing about that we could put them to good use.

It took about 35 minutes for enough people to finish what they were doing and get to the hive but I'd guess that we started on GMs with about 25 people and it went quite smoothly from there.

Wasn't looking to compare servers but Justice has a very deep population of skilled players, enough to pug a hami given zero notice. Private raiding is possible too but given the open nature of Justice, it's hard to exclude joiners who want to hop in and contribute.

Wait! You're saying we're old?!!?

Champion folks.