The_Alt_oholic

lol
Most of us don't want to suffer because of the farmers' behavior.
Blame the farmers, not the DEVs. Even more so, blame the exploiters - some (maybe many) of which were farmers (or, at least, acting in the manner of farmers at the time).

The Mitos were used as exploits in every instance that I ran into them in the AE. Albeit that there are 300k+ missions and I haven't run 1k of them, but still, even so.

If it is a good enough story, you can find a way to work around not having the Mito's regardless of what the story is about. If you can't have that visual image in the game then find away for the image to look different or explain that a fight is going on versus these things in a text instead of actual battle.

i16 had some great improvement. Anything that was removed from the AE was to improve the game in one way or another. I'm glad to see that they finally did what they needed to do.

The [Help] channel aka /hc is server wide.
No one appears to be using it now on many servers, just start using that.

.

Neither are the case for me. I'm glad for all the i16 improvements. I think there were some great improvements to the AE and the MA interface.

I made a new arc in test and ported it over to live. I pulled down one of my three arcs to put a the new arc I created on test up on live. I only have the three arc slots, so I rotate them. I have about 5-8 arcs that are done that I can post up.

I'm not going to buy any more arc slots, and I'm content with rotating arcs in and out of those three slots.

It is only fruitless to make new arcs if you don't enjoy making new arcs. I like making new arcs. I think it is fun - regardless if anyone is playing them or not.

I agree.
I search with key words usually.
Generally, from a mission description, you can tell if it is going to be a farm or not. Farmers in general aren't very good at even writing deceptive descriptions - most of the time they are just flat out blatant.
I've played some good arcs.
My arcs posted arcs are pretty much always story arcs or training arcs.

I was going to run a series of "all enemies" arcs which basically has an enemy group with pretty much all the games stock enemies in it. I wrote about 3-5 of these one mission arcs and then decided that it was pretty much an exploit and just in bad taste all-in-all. The plan was to post a new one every Monday. Since almost all enemy groups are in the mission, the mission changes every time - you don't know what enemy you will be facing in the next mob.
They had stories, but really it was just kind of silly fighting all the groups at once and a waste of a slot if I had serious story missions to post - or at least that is my view point.

You know, if you make a story arc and you don't make a farming arc, you can still get pretty decent xp in the MA.
The easiest way to make sure is to run arcs without custom critters - which is a shame, since the story arcs that are the most fun are the ones where players created the enemies - I'm not talking about enemies that have been created to be easily killed ...errr...arrested...I'm talking about enemy groups that are creative and different from the normal game content.
That being said, custom critters are not necessarily low on xp. It all depends on how they are built, and the majority of story driven arcs that I have seen have custom critters that are worth good xp.

Remember, that farmers were actively farming the MA and that means that many wanted to get full teams for their farming. Now the Farmers are out of the MA and farming elsewhere for the most part.
Some of the players that came to CoH for the sole reason of farming in the AE have moved on.

There are still people looking for AE teams - there are also players that are still gun-shy of the AE.

The MA rating system is much like the forums REP system. It sucks.

Pretty much the only ratings that are given are 1 or 5 - or so it seems. And yes, giving a mission a rating of anything less than a 5 pretty much dooms it chances of play.

The only people that are profiting from the rating system are those that farm their own MA missions for ratings. It is truly a sad state.

At this point, I don't see the rating system needing any more than three choices;

1. It's Fun
2. It needs Work
3. It's a Farm

Yes, DEV's Choice and Hall of Fame are good concepts until Power-gaming, Mission farming, and active anti-mission rating come into play. Unfortunately, all three of those have won out over story content.

Some of the DEV's Choice/Hall of Fame have okay stories, but by-and-large, I don't see them any better than many mission arcs that I have played that have less than 50 plays. In fact, I've seen quite a number of mission arcs that are better than the DEVs Choice/Hall of Fame arcs that I have played.

Also, short arcs have a great advantage over longer arcs for both DEV's Choice/Hall of Fame. Too bad most good story arcs are long or very long.

The MA doesn't need to be revived. It is good as it is with i16.
I don't want to see a resurgence of farmers in the AE.

If we can't get farm missions out of the MA. Obviously, they are stopping the MA from being used as it was intended. They need to be required to be labeled farms or face banning in addition to slot locking. They aren't supposed to be farm missions in the AE - period.

Change the rating system to list votes :

1. It's Fun
2. It needs Work
3. It's a Farm

...and the total number of plays.


Locked slots and missions that can't be played need to be removed from the interface unless they are your missions. They shouldn't show up when someone searches for playable missions. This is obviously a design flaw. Hopefully, this has been fixed and I just haven't noticed it.

There are far too many copyright infringement arcs. Paragon Studios needs to have someone in place to hunt down and remove those arcs before the game is sued again.

Rotate or Randomize the order of DEV's Choice and Hall of Fame arcs so that the same arcs aren't always at the top of the list.

Some how get players to understand that "story" arcs can be fun to create and fun to play.

etc...

During the whole AE exploit period, there were players that were moving their characters off Freedom and/or starting new characters on other servers due to the rampant farming and pl'ing on Freedom.
Of course, how that the rampant farming/pl'ing or gone - they players that only wanted to do that are gone as well.

Since Virtue has always been the RPG community, it probably held that community through the whole AE debacle so I wouldn't be surprised if the population really is higher than on Freedom now, but I cant' say that I've gone back to Freedom or Virtue since i16 dropped. (was talked into joining a team on Freedom, but the server was so glitchy that my character kept getting tp'd under a mountain in Talos.)

Pretty much the same here in the US, Techbot Alpha.
I've been pointing that same thing out for quite a while now.

This is one reason that I think that some COH presence should hit Cons on the East Coast of the US and over in Europe. Even if DEVs don't show, a both with some REPs could go a long way to help the population in this game.

I also don't understand how hard it is to send out a small mail packet of CoH free-trial fliers or cards to Comic book/specialty stories. I'm not talking about all the time or dozens to one location, but even 10 or 25 cards to a bunch of comic book stores as giveaways could go a long way.
I don't know about the rest of the people that play CoH, but I have had a standing comic book subscription with a local comic book store for years. I have my own "box" where they put my comics until I come to pick them up. I know at least 5-8 other stores that use this same procedure.
Sticking a free-trail flier or card with game specs and the web address in each box could go a long way in getting new subscribers or at least getting new players to check out the game.

Right now while Champions Online is "new" and through to when DCU Online release is a critical marketing period.

Something really needs to happen soon.

Server populations do seem to be down to me, but the crowds under Atlas, the broadcast chat there, or crowds in the Atlas Wentworths are not good indicators.

We know that there was a massive increase in the population in Atlas due to the exploitable AE. Now that the AE has been somewhat fixed and SSK'ing is in effect, the crowds that were once all huddled in Atlas have once again spread out across the zones.

I, for one, am very glad to see this revision back to the way things were pre-AE. I am not an AE hater. I did, however, become very anti-farmer/pl'er due to the rampant AE exploitation. The AE is a great tool for what it was intended to be, but probably 90%+ players weren't using it as intended.

It is going to take some time before the damage that the months of the AE the way it was caused to the new and existing subscriber base begin to be repaired.
Of course, to get new players, they have to be exposed to the game. When CoH:GR comes out, at least there will be a new box on the shelves again. I think that will be better exposure for the game than MA was.

I'd really like to see some advertising go on at least once a year and seeing the free-trail listed in every ad is an essential.

I'm an old timer.
I don't have a tight circle of friends that won't play with anyone else. My sg/vgs tend to be just myself and a couple of RL friends - but that doesn't mean that we won't team with other players.
I run a lot of PuGs and join PuGs. I also play a wide range of characters in regards to AT, level, side, and server. With the SSK system, I'll pretty much invite anyone that is at my level or below to a team (well, honestly, I tend not to invite tankers or scrappers when I run a team - I get enough of that dynamic when I'm invited to a team).
The SSK'ing system makes it a lot easier to recruit and lead teams.
It seems much easier to get a team going quickly now.

I guess it was a good thing that the DEVs increased the leveling speed through level 25! hah!

Some players think that the game doesn't even start until you get Stamina. Of course, there are others that think that the game doesn't start until you are level 50.
I seem to have fun and find plenty to do at any level.

As far as I'm concerned that's the 30-day jet pack is the only micro-transaction that CoH offers. It is a micro-transaction - purchasing a single power that works for a limited time.

The superboosters, character slots, and MA slots do not add any significant power changes to the game and the game can be played perfectly well with out them. They also are continual and on-going once you purchase them.

I might have to buy a copy of the magazine and then write them a letter directly. This kind of mis-characterization of the game seems to happen with nearly every article.

As to the current population level, yes - it is down. But did the reviewer know which servers were the most populated or least populated? Did they even list what server they were on?

Yeah, well. The Rikti War is more of setting than a plot.

If this kind of thing were to be made, I would like to see it done as a bunch of short stories. Like Robot Carnival, Animatrix, etc.

Settings ::
Rikti War setting - sure. (explosions :: check. Aliens :: check. massive number of heroes in combat :: check)
Zombie Apocalypse - sure. (Zombies :: check. Massive number of heroes in combat :: check)
Pocket D - sure. (Character interaction :: check. Lots of time for costume shots :: check)
Streets/Zone - sure. (Character interaction :: check. Lots of time for costume shots :: check. solo or team combat :: check)
Missions - sure. (Character interaction :: check. solo or team combat :: check. dealing with contacts :: check)
The Market/Wentworths - sure. (Character interaction :: check. Lots of time for costume shots :: check)

Plots:
What is life like as a hero/villain?
Heroes or villains trying to accomplish a goal
What it like to be a low level hero or villain?
What is it like to be solo, PuG, and/or in a supergroup?
Working with Contacts
The life of a normal citizen in the City or the Isles.

Character interaction/development ::
leveling - getting/improving powers.
Goals and motivation related to each character (can provide plot as well)
Team dynamics (arguing over tactics is always a good one)
Going to the hospital (how could it be a CoH movie without awakens and going to the Hospital!?)



Um...since these occur in pretty much every team that I've ever run with... I have to ask why this would be left out...Maybe not huge explosions, but...well...you know the tailor's abilities...

Please not Signature heroes as main characters! Signature heroes or Cameo of fly-by's only please!

Lesser-known signature characters? Same as above!

This or new characters that aren't signature characters. These characters should not be uber characters that are part of the core game plot, but they should be "normal" heroes/villains like those we play in the game - and not all level 50 characters! They should be a range of characters including lower (if not lowest) level characters and have powers and costumes that can be generated by playing the game.

It think it could be cool. I also think it could be dreadfully horrible. Making it multiple stories with different groups doing each stories and allowing information to cross-over between groups during development would help everyone do a better job on their part and make the movie more consistent and balanced as a whole.

Oh, CGI for sure. Make it look as much like the game as possible, but higher facial quality and scene detailing.

If not, I'd be more open to animated than live-action. That being said, if it was live action it would have to have CGI effects in it. Live-action would be very expensive. I'd rather see the money go to good writing and voice actors.

Hey, I'm trying to stay out of this. I'm posting because this is off base.

A player playing a tank and saying that they are only being able to find tanks to team with is part of the problem with only finding tanks to team with.

It isn't accusing anyone of anything. It is completely valid.

If I take chips to a party and everyone else has brought chips, I'm certainly part of the problem of only having chips at the party.

New or not. Truth is truth.

Is it nice to point out that someone is part of the problem that they say exists?
I would want to know if I'm part of the problem.

So I'll state this again. If you have to insult other people's posts to prove your point, you must not have a very valid point to make.

I'm not a snob because I generally don't want to have tankers and scrappers on my team. That's my choice. I'm not calling anyone else a snob because of the way that they play this game.

Yeah, I did say that the people that were using exploits were cheating and, therefore, they are cheaters. People that break the rules in a game are cheating. That's a fact.

So before you throw snob around make sure you are willing to team with anyone without regards to anything - level, ability, age, years of playing, archetype, etc. - also be willing to do anything any team leader wants you to do - regardless of level, content, etc.

The OP is a new player here, but they stated that they are not new to MMORPG's. They appeared to want an honest answer, so I gave them my views honestly.

I really can't believe that people would rather have me lie and candy-coat what I have to say ... apparently, many posters (kind of like "many tanks") think that I should ... but I won't.

If I see people expressing one point of view and I have a different point of view, I'm going to express my point of view along with information in regards to why I have that point of view.

I've been able to make my missions for story purposes without experiencing and drawbacks due to i16.
In fact, my arcs have remained the same except for minor tweaking - objects or critter restrictions due to level options. (and writing a new for i16).

Perhaps, your story missions aren't as much "story" as mine or you are creating custom critters that have extreme power sets.
I have no problem getting minion/lt/boss ambushes to spawn. Tweak the ambush difficulty setting.

I'm glad to see that farming and power-leveling are no longer thriving in the AE.

Hurrah for i16!

I know, but it was a fun thing to do!

I hear there are lot of Aussies on Justice.

I can't tell you much more than that. I play on most of the servers, but I have played a good bit on Justice over the last week or so (new character project).

The /hc aka [Help] channel has seemed kind of dead, but that is the way with most servers.

Welcome back!

Your experience may vary as you enter the game.
The AE - Mission Architect - has brought in a good number of "rude" players. These have concentrated more on certain unnamed servers.
That being said, there are still plenty of helpful, friendly players that may or may not be misunderstood more often than not - or so it seems.

Sarcastic point taken.

Why bother?

The point of the thread was about Tankers. Too many Tankers. So many tankers that the OP thought that they might not be able to find a team. My OP was about that.
I shouldn't have debated my opinion of tanks, what appears to be their behavior, and how that would effect a players ability to find a team as a tanker at any level.

My fault.
I won't discuss it or defend my points here further.
It should be perfectly clear that it is related to the OP initial post

Obviously, there are a few players that don't appreciate my posting here - regardless if I play on Victory or not and regardless if I had run into a situation that was directly related to the OP's post.

Be joyful!
You can now post the final word on this without my further interference.

Seriously.

Unless it is food, water, or shelter :: if you can't pay for it, you don't need it.

The game was designed to be played with SO's. You don't need Purples, IO sets, or even IO's if you can't pay for them.

To make it clear. I didn't say WANT. I said NEED.
You don't HAVE TO HAVE purples in order to play the game.

They are very Rares.
Whites are common
Yellows are uncommon
Orange are rares
Purples are Uniques = Very rares

Are you claiming that purple recipes drop as often or more often than orange recipes?
I sure haven't seen this to be the case.

Excuse me?
If the price shows a purchase at that price, how exactly was it purchased for that price if someone didn't pay that price?

And yeah, if someone did "price fix" then they had to pay that price for the price to show that high. So someone did buy it for that price.

Which side?
And for how much?
Maybe not 1.5 billion, but I'm assuming 10's if not 100's of millions.

I have bids up for IO recipes for 250 mil that haven't gone through and they aren't posted on purples.

Just because they are available, doesn't mean that there are more of them. It just means that they are posted and that players aren't willing to pay what they are posted for.

And those people can pay the huge prices, so let them.

Honestly, I slot very few purples. It is much more worthwhile to me craft and sell purple IO's than it is to use them.

And yeah, purples are rare enough so that the price can be increased.

The sector I market increased yield by 300% since AE launched due to no other reason than increase laziness on the players part. I have even started rewarding lazy players that help me by purchasing their product at 100% more which equates to 2% of the value I sell my product for.

I just wish I could figure out how to translate my CoH market skills into the real world. I would be very wealthy.

The powers you pick for your custom critters affect the xp as well as having minions, lt's, and bosses in your custom groups.

Basically, anything you could think about doing to make your custom critters easily defeatable and worth more xp has been nerfed - for good reason.

Important parts in Chaos Creator's post

I think it was set so that if you have an enemy with normal primary/normal secondary you would receive 75% of the xp that you would for the same enemy that was part of the "normal" game.
A hard primary/normal secondary or normal primary/hard secondary would yield a higher percentage of XP than the normal/normal.

So the calculation is like 37.5% for the normal primary +37.5% for the normal secondary to yield the 75%.

The extreme is maybe worth 50%, so
an extreme/extreme enemy would be worth 100% xp
an extreme/common would be worth 87.5%.

if you completely customize the powers, then they are related to what is in each set and the percentages are built based on what the custom power selections are versus the normal, hard, and extreme...

If the enemy has no attacks, it is worth 0 xp.

I'm not sure I have all that completely strait, but that's the jist of it.



So if you have just bosses = 25% rewards of the percentages above.

So an all normal/normal boss mission would basically be 18.75% of the percentage it had before.

Sure.
I can see your posts are valid because you have to insult mine in order to make your point.

I have been on teams other than the ones that I've run that are no tanker/no scrapper teams for one reason or another.

And, yeah, I've been playing 6 years.

I'm sorry.
Where I come from it is "fair" to be honest with someone.
Honestly, that's my opinion.

Take time to read my original post instead of glossing over it.

Did I say I did?
Or did I say that every post was an opinion.

In my calculations, the percentage of "tanks are about themselves" is about 90%. And that's including the amount of time that I play my tanks.

My experiences may differ from others.

But in my opinion 90% of tankers ::

1. think that they know how to play the game better than the other players on the team.
2. Think they are leader regardless if they have the star or not.
3. Won't listen to advice from another player
4. Run blindly into combat and expect the team to follow
5. Don't have Taunt
6. Rush into the next group before they group the started fighting is down because it is the job of the rest of the players on the team to fight the ones that get behind the tank as they rush forward
7. Don't try to help other characters
8. Get upset with the "healer" if they fall in combat

and 25% of tankers :

1. can't quit yelling "sb meh!" or "heal meh!"
2. laugh when their teammates fall in combat

But like I said, your numbers may vary and all posts are the opinion of the poster.

I made a stone/stone tank because I wanted to check out the AT. It's okay, but it does take some toggle flipping and/or tele-tanking.
No worries! It's part of the fun of playing a different kind of character.

At the same time, I'd rather play my way to 50 than to be power leveled. There really isn't that much more to do at level 50 than there is a level one. In fact the lower level characters have more to do unless you include the Ourboros and then you won't get to use all of your level 50 powers sometimes anyway.

I enjoy the progress of getting to 50. When I complete the "challenge" of leveling, I get rewarded with becoming more powerful.

I understand that some players want the "insta-50" button, but it bypasses most of the game. Making the game life-shorter for some players. The game is here to support long-term players.

Do you really think that the DEVs should put aside work to help long term players from having more enjoyment in order to appease the "flash in the pan" player that just wants to have a bunch of 50's so that they can say they "won" the game?

I like City of Heroes. I don't want to see an insta-50 button installed in the game.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=191169

Volken - all posts are a matter of opinion. SuckerPunch has no numbers to back up his opinion of what "most" is.
And - All ATs are very useful throughout the game.

Matter of opinion.

If the prices are that high, then someone is willing to pay it. If you can't pay it, you don't need it.

You don't need any purple in order to defeat level 50 content. In fact you don't need to have IO sets or even normal IOs to defeat level 50 content. SO's are sufficient.

Purples are Uniques aka VERY RARES.

Things that are VERY RARE are hard to come by, so, of course, they are expensive.

If there were a lot of them around, then the prices would drop...but that's not really true either.
Some players are just too lazy to craft things.
I would like to thank those players - *cha-ching!*

Well, I have to assume that you are playing a Tank.
If you are playing a Tank and there are nothing but Tankers, aren't you part of the problem for being unwilling to play another AT?

I'll say this.
Honestly, if I'm running a team and I have my choice about which AT's to pick to fill a team, I don't pick any Tankers or Scrappers and, if possible, I won't pick any Warshades or Peacebringers either (because they have Dwarf forms).

Why?
If you invite a character that thinks that they can get away with charging ahead and taking the agro, the player thinks that they are running the team and it is the rest of the teams duty to keep up with them.
This is not the case, this is not the only way that a team can be successful.

Would you like to chase around another character all the time?
I don't.

I play Tanks, and I don't treat the other players like that.

I've been playing a long time. I just dinged a empathy/electric defender to level 50 recently.

Recently, I joined a team as a lower level empathy/psi defender.
One of my team mates sent me a tell that they were really happy that I was on the team because they had only been on all scrapper and tanker teams lately and there just weren't many defenders around.
They proceeded to run through a Safeguard mission where I could barely keep some of them alive because they really didn't have a grip on playing the game. It was all rushing ahead, but I can understand some of that in a safeguard. I was scrambling to keep characters healed and hitting the squishes with clear mind. The mission wasn't set high and the villain was Orange. They went down quick.
Next mission they picked was one of mine, I think I was the highest level character on the team and some of the team was at least 6 levels below me. Before I can finish around of clear mind they are busting ahead. That may be okay sometimes when the team isn't ready, but these were Lost (one of the Midnighter missions), which immediately starting mezing the team. I think a couple characters fell I rezed one. I'm scrambling to keep them healed. It's nearly a full team but it was blasters, scrappers, and tankers. I am pretty sure that I told them not to rush in at that point. The next group is pulled, back, but many of the team insists on running past the pull point so far that they are not only in a middle of a group of enemy that is far enough down the hall from where the pulled enemies are that I can't reach them with my single target heal, but, I'm pretty sure, they managed to agro a second group. I get mez'd by an enemy that is on top of me in the backfield. I pop a break free and fall back and heal who I can that is in range of me while I'm still getting charged by the enemy. If I rush in, I'll fall, so I fall back and heal who I can but they are just staying there and falling and there is no way that I'm going to be able to handle the tide of enemies that are charging me since the rest of the team is falling. There is only so much end and powers only recharge so quickly. I end up heading out the door as the only character standing. While no one else even seemed to make an attempt to fall back.
A player complains that the mission is set way to high (they are 6 levels below me). I say it is set on "don't rush in".
To which one says, "no one rushed in." But that wasn't true, at least half the team had rushed in.
While I'm using Recall Friend to teleport characters back to the mission from across town at the hospital, the leader says "I'm going to find another healer".
I'm pretty miffed at that, but I want to see if anyone comes to my defense. I say "Yeah, obviously the healing is the problem".
No one says anything, even the character that said that they were so glad to finally have a Defender on their team.
Another Defender joins the team. It's a Storm defender.
I laugh to myself about this "other healer" and quit the team. O2 will do them a lot of good for healing.
The fact is, that if they had used tactics instead of rushing in like a bunch of lug nuts I could have easily kept the whole team going.
But they would rather insult the team healer then try to change their tactics.

So if you are going to complain about not having other AT's around because all you can find are Tankers and you aren't willing to play another AT, be courteous to the other ATs because you have no idea what they are going through.

I don't like rushing around chasing Tanker butt to keep them healed all the time. That is not fun. Tankers need to understand that.
Tankers are not the only PC on the team. The other characters are all PC's too.

And before someone says that it's Defenders job to keep the Tanks healed, I'll say this ... It's the Tankers job to be a part of the team as much as any other player on the team. And, Tankers, if you don't have the star, you aren't the leader.

No tanker/No Scrapper teams can be very powerful. Don't doubt for a minute that anyone needs to have a tanker or a scrapper on their team to be successful. Honestly, if you have to have one on the team to be successful, you aren't very masterful about playing this game.

Oh, btw, welcome to the City.

The dynamics are completely different here. Learning how to help other players on your team makes the whole team stronger. It's a matter of understanding the other ATs and not just assuming what they do. The best way to understand them is to play them.

I'm not trying to be harsh about this. If it comes across that way, I'm sorry. But I see it time and time again that many Tankers are about themselves and not about being part of a team.

And, yeah, that empathy/psi defender I was playing was on Victory.

It's not deficiencies.

Zones are created with villains for you to avoid. This gives you a sense of fear of these enemies and, as you level, thrill of victory when you can finally defeat them.

At the low levels, you will pass by mobs that are both too difficult to fight and ones that you can defeat. Picking an choosing your battles is an important skill to learn.

The game isn't about just running head-first into every encounter and neither is life - regardless of what some may say.

If you take time to be alert about your surroundings and plan things out, you can make it from one mission to another.

I think it has been a great step in the right direction.

Atlas broadcast has returned to sewer teams and costume contests - along with "where did everyone go" and "the AE is dead" debates.

Many farmers are fleeing back to Peregrine Island.

Some new players are spinning around in circles in the AE not knowing what to do without the insta-level button.

I've played some AE story arcs that were fun and yielded infl and xp.

The SSK system is great. It is really easy to get a team going when you don't have to worry about who's going to sk who and what is going to happen if a mentor drops out.

It is the first time that I've gone to the Hollows for probably a year and I had a full team going within a 1/2 hour - 45 minutes.

It seems like a win to me.