Renjiro

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I simply do not understand what you are trying to get at. If you are not a power leveler you can safely ignore this thread as it does not pertain to you. If you are a power leveler you will select whatever AT can be best tuned towards that end, it just so happens that AT is a blaster.

Given the dynamics of the game power leveling is linked to kill times and blasters are by design the AT that kills fastest. It seems unlikely then that you could ever change the fact that blasters are the best power leveling AT without redesigning the whole game or breaking the whole blaster AT. Either of these would simply make some other AT the power levels AT of choice and change nothing.

Since you seem to be saying you are not a power leveler my advice to you is to compare your scrapper to blasters who are similarly not power levelers. I think you will find they are much more comparable.

Put another way, what you seem to be doing is saying hey that guy is playing a blaster and made it to L40 in three weeks, while my scrapper is going to take three months. What you are missing is that that guy happens to be power leveling while you apparently are not.

He isn’t making it to 40 that fast because he is playing a blaster he’s making there that fast because he is power leveling, playing a blaster is just one step down that road. Blasters played the way you play your scrapper would take the same 3 months you do.

If you wanted, you could even build a power leveling scrapper. My guess would be that it would do about as well as the single target blasters and use much the same techniques. But from a true power levelers standpoint, tanking 3.5 weeks to reach 40 simply isn’t as good as taking 3 weeks.

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Again this is a very very common mistaken assumption powerlevellers/FOTM players make about regular/roleplay players. When regular players demand balancing they always resort to the wierd accusatoin that we are just powerlevellers in denial. Like I said you probably will never "get it" because your mindset is so different from the rest of the gamers who aren't FOTM rollers.

I can however tell you that if you seriously think the developers will not care one way or the other that an archetype is attracting a large number of powerlevellers because it levels "so much faster" than the rest of the archetypes then you're either living in a dream world or simply naive and haven't played too many online games. If indeed what you say is true (that blasters just naturally make xp much, much faster) then you can bet that they will be nerfed.

What is the threshold for what is an acceptable discrepancy in XP rates? Of course the developers are willing to tolerate a slight discrepancy and they probably won't mind if the best blasters are levelling 5% faster than the rest. But you and I know that its far far more than that. Blasters can XP at rates 2-3x that of other archetypes, that's not an exaggeration and you know it. So again if you seriously think the devs are going to say, "Ooh, one archetype is levelling at 2-3x the rate of other archetypes. That's OK, let's keep the powerlevellers happy." you've got another thing coming!

Powerlevelling is all well and good, but if its because of some overpowering combination or an exploit or both then you're setting yourself up for a rude awakening a la burn tanker. An XP discrepancy of this magnitude will never escape the nerfbat's attention for long.

I also take offense to your insinuation that other archetypes aren't gimp relative to blasters because leveling rates are not a useful gauge for measuring archetype balance. There is nothing in this game but levels do you even realize that?? Again whats the threshold before it becomes plainly obvious that your position makes no sense? If an archetype levels at 1/100th the rate of a blaster will you finally concede that? Why? XP rate doesn't mater right?

Let's face it, something is very broken with the game mechanic currently in game. Its OK for people to want to level at the fastest rate possible but it cannot be at a pace that allows gamers to cap in the span of two weeks. That could only mean one of two possibilities: one that there are serious exploits undiscovered and two that there are extremely overpowered abilities in the game that trivialize all the rest.

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And to the person above who asked the question why not just play a blaster? The answer is simple but probably beyond your FOTM mind to comprehend. It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters. Wow, wasn't that simple!

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The point is that no one is forcing you to play a scrapper. If they are SO bad, why are you playing one? Since its a choice whether to pick that archetype and continue developing it, IT CANT BE THAT BAD IF YOU KEEP PLAYING A SCRAPPER. Your actions dictate it. Are scrappers worse off than blasters? Maybe, but they arent so far off that you wont play one any more, so things arent that bad.

Get real and realize that you are just some schmoe who has very little to contribute to this game. If you think that blasters have it so easy just play one and be happy. It's like voting. If everyone would just play a blaster the devs would have to make the other archetypes better. It would be obvious in their data mining. But you keep playing a scrapper, and reinforcing with hard data that scrappers in fact arent so bad. They whine a lot on the boards because that's the scrapper mentality right now, but the data just doesnt support the kind of changes you want right now. Deal with it.

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I think the developers made a bit of mistake towards the end of beta when they added so many improvements to what was certainly already the most popular archetype with almost no beta testing.

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Were you in beta? Blasters were not the most popular by any means. Axe tankers were a big issue for much of beta, followed by Reflex scrappers which were out of hand. Then Dark Melee scrappers, and after that Fire and Illision controllers. Blasters by comparison were relatively weak. The scrappers, tankers, and controllers were constantly at the top of the charts for levelling rates and kill acheivements. If you were in beta I dont know how we have such different recollections of things, unless its because you were only in the last few days or so.

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To me this seemed to be a bizzarre move and I had a feeling this may turn out to be a problem later. Lo and behold the first level 40 character came to reality in 2 weeks and he/she was a blaster. That was only the beginning, in the next few days more level 40's appeared and they were all blasters! As you can imagine this is not one of those times I enjoy getting a prediction right.

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Just play a blaster and get over it. Seriously. I recommend this to all whiney scrappers out there. Come back to your scrapper when they "fix" everything for you.

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You reinforce my belief that you are nothing but a FOTM player. Only a FOTM player would say something as ridiculous as "if you think X is powerful then just play it"

You really just don't get it. I don't like to play a class just because it is more powerful. Rather, I want ALL classes to be balanced and equal so that my choice of playing one archetype over the other will be based purely on style rather than on power. Its a simple concept but will forever be beyond your ability to understand because you don't care what archetype you play as long as they are the most powerful.

FOTM players don't care what archetype they play, heck they can have fun playing any archetype as long as they are powerful. Not all of us are FOTM nuts that's why we care about such things as balance because we really don't want to quit this game but would rather quit it rather than be forced to play a blaster just to be competitive. Stop being an idiot and start realizing that just because someone doesn't want to play the most powerful class it means he has no right to bemoan an imbalance!

Your recollection of the beta is different from mine probably because you have poor memory. Thats the only explanation i could come up with

Let's just leave it at that. You're right in at least one respect, the developers are datamining and it will become readily apparent that the last day boosts were far stronger in effects than they anticipated.

I think what people are looking for is City of Balance. Balance naturally includes a good mix of nerfs and buffs. As things stand now very few people could argue that Blasters by far outpace all the other archetypes in terms of levelling.

Its a combination of many things, first (in my opinion) and foremost that balanced teams do not yield the best XP as they should. But the second thing to consider is that blasters are simply so much better than scrappers.

And to the person above who asked the question why not just play a blaster? The answer is simple but probably beyond your FOTM mind to comprehend. It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters. Wow, wasn't that simple!

I think the developers made a bit of mistake towards the end of beta when they added so many improvements to what was certainly already the most popular archetype with almost no beta testing. To me this seemed to be a bizzarre move and I had a feeling this may turn out to be a problem later. Lo and behold the first level 40 character came to reality in 2 weeks and he/she was a blaster. That was only the beginning, in the next few days more level 40's appeared and they were all blasters! As you can imagine this is not one of those times I enjoy getting a prediction right.

I'm really beginning to wonder whether or not the people who played in beta are just plain idiots or devious or both. Lots of beta blasters whined that they had too little HP or did too little damage and now post-release we have blasters publishing how-to guides on achieving 40 in 2 weeks.

I bet the developers looking at their data mining are shocked to see a huge discrepancy in levelling rates pre- and post-release. Either lots of beta blasters were fudging gimpness or simply never reported exploits or the developers didn't listen to the right people.

Blasters now are seriously overpowered compared to other archetypes its not even remotely funny. All of this exploit XPing and overpowered combos have got to be nipped at the bud. Its bad enough that a /whoall in any zone yields about 90% blasters, 10% everything else. Must they wait until every single player is playing a blaster?

I'm really worried about this game. The devs claim they are watching the datamining information carefully. And yet nothing has been done about fire/fire blasters getting a bub of XP at 35+ every 15 minutes. Something is wrong, the last time I earned a bub in 15 minutes as a scrapper was the low 20's. This is unacceptable, I hope they do something about this soon because the game is becoming rather silly.