Quinch

I meant the effect of the SSK system on the actual problem, rather than the proposed solutions. With the ability to fine-tune your difficulty, there's no more need for padding, and if you actually can solo eight-man spawns of bosses, well, props to you. Farmers aren't interested in lowbies, helping them is just a side-product of spawn size control and with that removed, their need for broadcast spam is greatly reduced.

Oy vey.. I just saw the original post date.

I can even deal with the ticker, it's the power activation time that's murder. Why not make it like a tar patch and have it explode on taking damage instead?

Quick check for the OP - are you familiar with the super-sidekicking system currently implemented on Test and did you factor it into your theory?

Hell, let's go with what's been damn proven to work.

• Cursor goes automatically to the password field on opening
• Enter closes the "incorrect password" window.
• On incorrect password, the password field clears and cursor goes to the password field again.

It's not that complicated, dammit.

Hey there - bit late to the thread here, but I'll try to throw in a few bits of information that might not have been covered yet.


1} The endgame - yes and no. The vast majority of content is evenly spaced across the level range, which means there's little to no reason to rush to the top. Once you're there, some of the things you can do are;

• Make a different character and do it all over again. Different powersets {or even same powersets} can have profoundly different playstyles, giving you a wholly new gameplay experience.
• Run any task forces you might have missed or want to re-run.
• Run any story arcs you might have missed or want to re-run via the Ouroboros system.
• Explore the Architect Entertainment system. Despite some who use it exclusively for farming, it does have quite a few quality stories, with more being constantly created.
• Badges!
• Explore the city. *coughshadowshardcough*
• Bullet points are sexy.
• Exemplar and team with players running their content - there's enough of it that, unless you've been running with the XP handbrake on most of the time, you've missed most of it.
• Hamidon and Muthaship raids.

2} Very little. On the whole, the players are welcoming and openly helpful, though to be honest, this benefits us as well - not being the 500-pound gorilla of the MMO world, it's in our interest not to drive people away. Keep in mind that, sooner or later, you will run into a jerkface, but also keep in mind that they're outnumbered ten to one. On the whole, the only thing that will get you mocked is willful ignorance AKA "noobity". We're all well aware that we were all newbies once, and thus the currency of respect in the game isn't knowledge itself, but the willingness to accumulate it.

3} It varies from server to server. I'm going to extrapolate a bit on your question to guess what you might have had exactly in mind. With the sidekicking {and eventual super-sidekicking} system, you shouldn't have trouble forming a team. Interestingly enough, you should even have less trouble than joining a team, as there's a surprisingly low percentage of players willing to lead and a counter-proportionate number of players willing to be led.

4} That's a bit of a vague question - are you referring to story depth, world or gameplay? Being a comic book setting, there is a vast number of plots and power struggles going on at any point {it's all a Nemesis plot, really}, so immersion-wise, it's fairly deep.

5} See point 1.

Well, the alive bit is so you don't unnecessarily target the already defeated targets, and the enemy parameter doesn't hurt - for example, to target sorcerers, you could just add "sor" and not worry about targeting your teammates Masor, Sordid and Usorper.

Your wish has been retroactively granted.

By the way, as far as tells go, there is a flood control - send more than X over Y seconds and you get silenced for Z minutes. That, unlike emails, would slow down the spam somewhat.

Also, you can't send a non-global tell to an offline player - and a global tell shows your global. Which does have an "Ignore as spammer" option in the context menu.

You know, "Spartuchis" is available...

{hides}

A built-in VOIP would be awesome, but how - and who - would deal with the bandwidth involved?

I believe you are referring to "enhancements". Inspirations are the little squarish things that give you a temporary boost. Enhancements vary with level, but the general rule of thumb is "higher level of enhancement, better the effect". You can slot a regular enhancement within three levels of your current level {i.e. if you're Lv14, you can slot a Lv17 enhancement, but not a Lv18 or Lv9 one}. There's also the Invention System - swing by Admissions Officer Lenk in Steel Canyon for a tutorial on IOs. Also, various enhancements are compatible with various powers - your archetype {scrapper sounds about right, icon's an orange boomerang?} is largely irrelevant in what enhancements you can slot.

Edit: Also, just on the off chance you hadn't, run the beginner tutorial, the one you get the option to when you create a new character. Also, the regular enhancements are grouped in three tiers - Training origin {TO}, which don't have that much of an effect, Dual Origin {DO}, which are twice as effective as TOs and Single Origin, which are twice as effective as DOs.

Does someone have the stock guide to ED they can paste?

No, that was a big announcement.

I dunno, far as I'm concerned, not having to worry about having enough mentors for a PUG is one massive problem removed.

You covered empathy's strengths and weaknesses in the first three lines. I don't see a problem there. Besides, at Lv10, you get a Summon Scrapper Sidekick inherent power, though he tends to be a bit hard to control.

Also, don't mess with my AP.

And lastly, CM, while it would be useful as AoE, will not happen - according to a post I can't find anymore, is intended as reactive and limited prevention measures and thus not something you can reasonably keep on everyone all the time. CM covers every single mez, and that comes with a downside.

Yep, same principle, except since I tend to use it to target specific troublemakers {sorcs, engineers, etc} I just delete the "enemy alive" bit when I'm hunting objects.

Eva, I'm not sure if it works that way - for example, when being exemplared in AE {running with lowibies who exemplar me so I don't wonk up the mission level}, I gain my new power as soon as my aspirant reaches the appropriate level, which is usually inside the mission - they don't need to train for me to reclaim my power.

Okay, can someone run this scenario for me?

Most of the time I run with XP off, because lately I've been on a content kick and have been running every single available mission and thus don't want to outlevel anything I haven't done yet. Now, on marathon teams that means that sooner or later {especially in low levels where dings flow like water} my teammates are going to outlevel me. Previously I could mitigate that with upping the rep to compensate for levels above me, but how will the super-SK system affect that now?

When in doubt, spam the Search window. Start with the LFT-flagged players first, then work your way down others who match your level range, throwing in sidekicks as the mentor situation allows. Be polite and informative - start with a greeting {hey, hi, hello, etc.} and follow through with what kind of missions you're running {arcs, radios etc} and what type of enemies you expect to encounter. Throw in the actual story arc premise if you feel like it.

Takes me about five minutes to assemble a team of three or four that way, with more becoming available as time passes and new players log on. A modicum of politeness and showing that you know what you're doing {or faking it convincingly} can go quite a long way.

Sure, sounds cool and it'd give me the option of making a renegade {or just traditionalist} Rikti.

• Premise 1: Endurance management is a handicapping factor to be considered at all levels of gameplay and should remain that way to maintain gameplay complexity.
• Premise 2: Outside of teammate buffs from a few specific powersets, most powersets lack the ability to increase their recovery and regeneration rate.
• Premise 3: Bullet points are sexy.
• Premise 4: With Premise 2 in mind, it is considered mandatory for most characters to take pool power Stamina or slot heavily for endurance reduction to remain functional.
• Premise 5: Any aspect of the game that forces a character or a high percentage of characters into investing into a specific part of a build takes away from gameplay complexity.
• Premise 6: There's no such thing as a free lunch.
• Conclusion: There needs to be a secondary {or tertiary} avenue for managing endurance consumption and recovery available to and for non-buff oriented powersets.

Discuss.

My proposition is that of a pool power which allows a character to augment a teammate's recovery rate at the cost of his own. "But!", you might say, "Isn't that what empaths and kineticists do? They put in their endurance to buff your own?" Well yes, but that falls within their specific portfolio.

Instead, what I propose is an ally toggle power, like the Sonic Hulahoop {I forget the name} that simultaneously increases the target's recovery rate at the commensurate and drains the user of his own endurance. There might be some math-fu needed to equate the numbers {slotting for endurance mod would increase both the boost and the drain}, but on the whole, I believe it might be a good way to close the gap between the have-lots-of and have-nots as well as tightening relations between teammates.