Sitriel

Go for the toon you have the most fun with. If it was me I would rather choose the troller any day. (I am not boredom-resistant enough to play a stone/stone tanker, let alone solo one.)
I do not know fire/storm, but I know fire/ and /storm enough to say that the combination will hit 50 with no problems whatsoever, even if you have to solo some amount of it.

I am still waiting for the final version before I do the maths and can come up with precise numbers, but there are some facts to consider about this "big nerf":
- The former domination damage bonus is added to doms' base damage. Because of that slotted attacks will do more damage anytime than was possible before with domination's damage boost.
- Recharge times and endurance cost of many powers are increased. While this decreases dps and dpe for single powers the problem will probably be hardly noticeable for high-level doms with some sort of endurance management and bucketloads of active powers to click.
- PSW (among others) is still bugged as it uses the ranged damage modifier instead of the melee one. Damage should be higher than it now is on Test.

So, the "big nerf" is actually a relative one: a perma-dom will not be that much stronger than an other dom anymore. A non-perma-dom will feel stronger than before, especially with the attack sets that received even bigger boosts like /energy.

EDIT: Just did a short test run with two dominators. Results:
Algesis (Level 50 Mind/Psi): Hmmm, well... AoE damage is a bit on the weak side, but that is mainly because of bugged PSW. Everything else is just fine. Feels good in and out of domination.
Sadaqat (Level 28 Earth/Fire): Holy *bleep*! What the *bleep* *bleeb* happened here? Nerf me more! Nerf me! Give me names! NERRRF MEEEH! YEAH! ... Phew! Now I need a smoke.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
Is this some how surreptitiously suggested in the lore ? Or said in the lore at all?

[/ QUOTE ]
No.

You know, the answer is just that simple.

If you want to know if something is farming you just have to ask yourself "Why am I doing this?"
Are you a bit slow and unable to understand the story of the arc on the first (and second and third...) go? No farming.
Is the arc still work in progress and you are basically beta testing it? No farming.
The mission or arc gives stupidly high amounts of rewards for how easy it is? Bingo.
It does not matter if it is one mission or five that you do over and over again.

Now, if farming a certain arc can be called abusive that is an other kettle of fish, but again, the same criteria as for single missions apply.
Personally, I do not farm at all because I can not stomach the sheer boredom of it, but I do not mind others farming unless it becomes abusive, i.e. it affects the economy and/or community negatively.

Or an option to automatically change costume with each faceplant... well, basically the same thing.

That joke does not work for those ATs. Consider them gimped.
But seriously, I think we could use some powerset themed costume change emotes. There is lightning for electricity based toons, presto chango works for most stormies and ice machines and evil laugh looks nice with fire.
Others are left out so far. You already mentioned stone, but dark is also something that should be possible but is not in the mix yet. Something similar to the warshade cce only without the purple would be fitting. A green version of presto chango would give a nice "poison cloud" or "radioactive gas" etc.

"I think the tank just changed his costume. I saw him do that emote."
"How would I know? He is still in granite!"

It... misbehaved. And you...
Oh, dagnabbit, this gives me all kinds of wrong pictures.

Anyway, thanks for the information.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
How can you really tell what is a farm or not?

[/ QUOTE ]A lot of it is gut feeling. Farming is a combination of opportunity and intention. Missions that give great rewards for relatively little effort present the opportunity and players bring the intention to exploit that opportunity.
When a mission is badly designed and just geared toward maximum xp for minimum effort it is easy to tell that people do it for no other purpose than to rake in the rewards. It is a bit more difficult with missions that also give good rewards but are actually well written. If you do such a mission once you are safe. Do it a second time to accompany some friends and show them the nice mission you found and you are still safe. But if you find yourself doing that mission over and over again you should really ask yourself if the story is that good or if your motivation is something else entirely.

Du meinst, es gibt noch nicht genug Honks, die keinen Plan haben, weil sie ihre Toons auf 50 ziehen lassen?

The Crab Spider backpack is working as intended.
See, those extra armes are actually fused to your spine, so when you decide to concentrate more on your other powers for a time (i.e. switch to your secondary Bane Spider build) you just have to pick up the old Bane Spider mace and start swinging. But you will not undergo major neurological surgery to get rid of those arms just because. Such drastic measures are reserved for respecs.

Diese deutsche Interpretation der ursprünglichen Pressemitteilung ist etwas missverständlicher formuliert als das englische Original. Tatsächlich kann man den bislang veröffentlichten Informationen nur entnehmen, dass der Wechsel zwischen Held und Schurke in Praetoria stattfindet. (Oh, Überraschung! )
Inwiefern dieser Wechsel über den Aufenthalt hinaus Bestand hat, darf Posi noch nicht verraten. (Er meint, die Jungs aus der Marketing-Abteilung tun ihm dann schlimme Dinge an. ) Auf Englisch liest es sich auch eher so, als könnten Helden dann die "richtigen" Rogue Isles und Schurken das "richtige" Paragon City heimsuchen.
Storymäßig wäre es sicherlich nur schwer zu erklären, warum ein Held, der sich in Praetoria zum Schurken wandelt, beim Zurückzonen in unsere Dimension plötzlich wieder mit unbeflecktem Cape dasteht... und bei seiner Rückkehr nach Praetoria sofort wieder böse wird etc. Von daher wäre es sinnvoller, den Wechsel "echt" zu machen (und damit auch wahrscheinlicher, dass es so sein wird). Man wird sehen...
Und was Dämonenbeschwörung und Akimbo-Pistolen angeht: Beide Sets stehen schon lange genug weit oben auf der Powerset-Wunschliste (der Devs und der Spieler). Es würde mich sehr überraschen, wenn Maelstrom und Desdemona in I16 damit herumspielen dürften aber Spieler nicht.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
With all the stupid invention badges and now the MA badges etc noone that didn't get on the badge badnwagon from the start years ago has absolutely NO reason to grind badges.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a slightly odd argument. It like saying that because there are people out there with thousands of stamps, no one new will ever taking up stamp collecting. It doesn't have to be about having more than other people, does it? It can just be about having more than you had last week, or completing a set, or suceeding in a challenge.

I'm collecting Ouroboros flashback badges right now, and planning to make a start on the Invention badges on the same toon with the recipes I pick up running through arcs. So, the answer to why start now is, because it still fun for me to do, even if I'll never have the mostest.

[/ QUOTE ]

Except someone who collects stamps can buy them. Badges aren't tradable (and shouldn't be)

[/ QUOTE ]
Buying collectors' stamps is a completely normal way to acquire them, just like fulfilling the requirements is the normal way to acquire badges.
Can't afford to buy your most wanted stamp? Sorry, mate, won`t get it for free.
Can't fulfill the requirements for a certain badge? Sorry, but why should you get a badge that says you were there on CoH's first birthday when you were not? Or why should those who were there lose theirs because you were not?
I am very sure that most stamp collectors do not have bad feelings about their collection because they can not get a hold on some stamps that are far out of their financial reach. To the contrary: They are probably quite proud of their collection when they have managed to get all (or most of) the stamps within their possibilities. And I am absolutely positive that no stamp collector would demand the Blue Mauritius to be burned because it is too expensive for him.
Demanding that others should lose something just because you can not get that something yourself is the absolutely worst form of envy.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
Das es ne verwirrte NPC variante ist wage ich aber zu bezweifeln, da ich annehme das die Texturen für die Schneiderauswahl explizit aufbereitet werden müssen.

[/ QUOTE ]
Das ist nicht zwingend so. Dir ist vielleicht auch schon einmal aufgefallen, dass viele der Texturen, die es für NPCs gibt auch so beim Schneider zu bekommen sind. Da ist kein großes Herumschnibbeln nötig, praktisch nur Copy&amp;Paste.
Ausnahmen sind NPC-Teile, die keine reinen Texturen sind (z.B. Arachnos-Modelle).
Was mich mehr zweifeln lässt, ist, dass ich die Textur nicht wiedererkenne.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
Aber da mir dies auf den LIVE-Servern aufgefallen ist, halte ich es für unwahrscheinlich das daran noch gebastelt wird. Also ist es entweder 'ne Ulterion-Tanker variante (hatte irgendwo gelesen es gäbe da was in die Richtung) ODER ein Kostümteil des Superscience-Packs, das als nächstes rauskommen soll.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wie gesagt: Ulterior ist es nicht. Das sieht anders aus. Superscience sollte, wie von X schon erwähnt, eher in eine andere Stilrichtung gehen, lässt sich aber natürlich nicht völlig ausschließen, dass da sowas dabei ist.
Tatsächlich ist die "work in progress"-Theorie sehr viel wahrscheinlicher als du denkst. Ich lese relativ häufig in den US-Foren und du würdest dich wundern, wie oft Spieler dort (auch auf den Live-Servern) Sachen finden, die da (noch) gar nichts zu suchen haben.

Diese Rüstungstextur ist nicht im Spiel. Die "Ulterior"-Rüstung, die mit I15 kommt, sieht auch anders aus.
Ich kann nur vermuten, dass es sich um eine verirrte Textur handelt, die sich zwar in der Datenbank aber noch nicht im Spiel befindet (oder nur als irgendeine obskure NPC-Textur, die ich gerade nicht erkenne). So etwas passiert manchmal, wenn ein Dev an einer Sache arbeitet, die noch nicht freigegeben ist, aber trotzdem irgendwie in ein Patch-Paket rutscht.

Hmmm, nice, so there is still hope. Maybe if I wait another one or two days...

EDIT: Everything working fine now. None of the toons I tried to copy last night arrived, but just now it took only a couple of moments for them to be copied.

Is the character copy tool down or is it just me and some friends who can't get even a single toon onto the test server evern after waiting for hours? (Tried the first time a few minutes after the announcement of the test server going down for the patch.)

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
If you make it optional, who would opt in? There's no benifit to opting in, so why would you? Either make it so you got no choice or make some pretty big incentive for opting in.

[/ QUOTE ]High Pain Threshold (10% higher max HP for villains). I am getting a little sick of intentionally getting my toons killed because it takes much longer to amass 1.2 million debt than it takes to get to level 50.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
I'm not sure, though, why an imbalance in total inf is a reason not to merge the markets. If people haven't spent their huge blueside bank balances in the last two years, why would they suddenly start spending them if the markets merged?

[/ QUOTE ]Unfortunately it is not that simple. You see, people did spend their huge blueside bank balance... but apart from a small fraction that disappeared via Wentworth fee and other expenses the money went straight onto the bank accounts of other blueside players who were not necessarily poorer than the ones spending the inf.
[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
Market merging would also tend to even out the amount of inf red and blueside by making it much easier to transfer inf between sides.

[/ QUOTE ]I do not know the numbers from the datamining, but I am quite sure that if they had merged the markets in the beginning there would have been quite some time without many villains getting to buy anything worthwhile because of the average hero being able to afford much higher bids. So, for that time villains would have been reduced to a quasi-sellers-only status which is not so great for villains looking to improve their builds with IOs etc.
However, it has been some time since then. Villains have not been lazy and earned some nice inf accounts of their own, so that the difference in percent of inf owned should not be all that big anymore. Add to that the fact that many players are very eager to switch sides and we can safely assume that with Going Rogue inf should be divided much more equally between blueside and redside.
In my opinion not merging the markets does not make much sense beyond that point, so I expect a market merge then or a short time after that.

I do not think a cap is necessary since it does nothing to improve the merits per played content ratio. Since the reward for the Quaterfield TF alone is 111 merits the limit would have to be at least that high which is already more than a villain can get on a typical day without serious SF/Trial farming. (Who wants and has the time to do a Lady Grey TF, a Silver Mantis SF, an Imperious TF and a Mender Lazarus Mini-SF all on one day?) So, such a limit would have little to no impact at all and certainly not improve the standing of villains in that regard.
Merits as an account-wide commodity on the other hand... Yes, I can see that having a positive impact on balance. That way players could spend their merits on a side of their choosing and it would relieve altoholics of the problem of having tons of merits but so thinly spread across toons that they still can not do much with them.

There are several factors that "ruined" the datamining in favour of heroes:
- Many TFs being longer than SFs means that teams have the chance to really rack up some time until completion with players getting tired and more breaks for all kinds of purposes with the timer running, so that TFs give a few more merits per actual content.
- With blue-side being closer to "traditional" MMORPG playstyle with tank-healer-damage as an option it lends itself better to a "slow and safe" method while red-side "peace through superiour firepower" is as safe as any other method most times. This leads to the average villain team going at a faster pace than the average hero team, thus further leading to a better merit per content ratio for heroes.
- I do not know demographic statistics, but I am quite sure that blue-side the average age is significantly lower than red-side. (Either that or it is just a matter of maturity, but the effects are basically the same.) I do not want to offend anybody with uncalled-for generalisations, but I think that many of us have already been in a situation where even one single immature player slowed down the team`s progress and if my assumption is correct the chance of this happening is higher for heroes.

These factors slow down average hero-teams in comparison and make it easier to be "ahead of schedule" in a good team. This can lead to some strange effects for those good teams, such as TFs netting more merits per time invested than SFs. Yet I know about one oddity which is the Respec Trial where it is just the other way around because of the fixed time it takes for all waves to spawn in the reactor room which is *cough* a little bit behind killspeed while the villain Respec Trial can be done quick and dirty for a nice merit per time ratio.
I can only support your idea that something has to be improved about the evaluation of mined data. (Only I am afraid that this would lead to lower merit rewards for heroes rather than higher ones for villains. ) Average values alone can be deceiving as the example of the hunter illustrates who tries to shoot a rabbit and misses by a few inches to the left on his first shot and a few inches to the right on his second. The average value says the rabbit is dead, yet in reality we still have a living rabbit and a hungry hunter.
The average team might gain roughly an equal amount of merits per hour on either side, but the potential that can be accessed by good teams is considerably higher blue-side.

Thank you for the best character planner I have seen in any MMO so far. Some of my toons might have never seen the light of day or suffered an ignoble end if not for the insight the Designer offered.
I hope Steiner will do you proud and carry on the good work.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort auf:[/color]<hr />
A buddy of mine uggested that we limit the MA for a certain lvl? She was thinking that it would be easier if the MA was limited to lvl 50s only. She thought that it would be something more to look forward to when hitting 50, rather than the HEAT's/VEAT's. She also mentioned that she thinks this idea will make players want to actually play the game more to hit 50.

[/ QUOTE ]Sounds counterproductive to me. This would only add more incentive to not play the game to hit 50 but to be PLed, especially for new players who have no MA-able toon yet. As I understand it this is exactly what we want to prevent. It does not matter if the PL is done via MA or not, it is the influx of players who don`t know *bleep* at level 50.

Levelling. Slow. Yea, sure.

Whatever that has to do with this thread...


So, back on topic: Positron has refused to put out a definition for abusive farming for a reason. People find their ways around such rules and still abuse the system.
Just one way to circumvent the levelling cap without anything changing about the situation:
PL not one toon at a time but several and switch toons every time you reach the cap. People are still clueless about anything but AE, the farming continues, but instead of having one 50 in a day the PLed have a "ding day" once per week when all their toons gain the final 10 levels in AE.