UberGuy

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A bunch of heroes/villains standing in a spot, mashing buttons basically? I just don't get it.

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What part of CoH does that not describe?

I like the big pig pile fights with tons and tons of effects going off in a small area.

I wish the game servers dealt with it better, but I still enjoy it.

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Just out of curiosity, why is Rad/Sonic better than Dark/Sonic for AVs or general killing?

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There are several factors, among them in-set +rech, +dam and +recovery. However, I believe the most significant factor is that, with 1/2 the base recharge time, the -Regen in LR can be made permanent and even self-stack. The recharge time on HT makes that impossible.

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I don't really follow how being allowed to keep only a limited number of earned in-game items is being generous.

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It's generous when the devs in question have a preference that we couldn't keep any overflow at all. The generosity is that they are giving is something when their inclination is not to give us anything.

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I'm just kind of curious why they're so determined to attack Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Same for all the other "world conquest" types. What makes this place the focal point for everything they do? Why haven't they conquered the REST of the world yet?

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Presumably, the attacks are simultaneously appearing all over the world, just like they were supposed to in the original invasion. To us it looks like they're always attacking our home towns because, well, that's all we can see going on. The rest is pure roleplay/backstory.

So, while the villain market still is high-priced compared to the hero one in my experience, things have been on the uptick in terms of market volume pretty much since the AE explosion. That's an interesting combination - higher prices at higher volume means you can make a lot of money faster. Of course that's not necessarily more useful practically speaking. If you actually buy market goods then you also pay more for them.

However, it did let me reach a nice if gratuitous goal. In case you are wondering what I want you to look at on that screen, check the last stat in my attribute monitor, middle upper right. Yes, that's 2B inf, AKA the inf cap.

I've made some nice progress on other characters too, though I have no intention of driving for the cap on them all.

These are the other villains with wealth of particular note.
Night Widow: 1.6B
DM/FA Brute: 1.4B
MA/Regen Stalker: 1.1B
Ice/Dark Corr: 880M

As I've described in the past, none of this has been obtained by classic "marketeering". Only the rarest of flipping, no painting of sale histories or anything like that. I primarily sell drops, including ticket and merit rolls/purchases. There is some farming in there, mostly on the Widow. The keen-eyed reader would notice my mission selection, but my DDC isn't my favorite choice for that particular set of foes. (Fear protection and +toHit and all that.)

For the potentially curious, the character pictured is a Dark/Dark Corr.

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If you are self absorbed, then yes there is nothing here for you... do your farm, get your 50 and leave

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I disagree. I'm very self-absorbed, have been here for 5 years, mostly play 50s, and don't plan on leaving.

You just have to actually enjoy logging in and beating the tar out of things over and over and over, maybe hoping for a nice shiny drop from each one.

I'd like to add that you shouldn't confuse "easy" as in "yes, a fallen Tanker will be running missions in Sharhead being buffed by Corruptors" with "easy" as in "your tanker walks across the border and is automatically considered a rogue hero".

My expectation is that you have to do something to switch sides beyond visit a contact and pick from a list of what side you want to be on. It seems rather likely that this hypothetical "something" will be part of the content that you get with the GR expansion.

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Just my two RP cents but if you are talking "demons" in the classic sense then why would they want the souls of those already "dammed" as it were.

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Another counterpoint in the RP side of things is that demons don't get many souls running around tearing up the mortal realm. They get souls by convincing people to do evil things. Being summoned to fight tooth and claw by powerful mortals, be they good or evil, isn't doing much in that regard. There is the likely exception, of course, of the actual summoner. Depending on how you spin it, it can be argued (and has been in some game systems) that summoning such intrinsically evil beings is an intrinsically evil act, no matter then end to which it is a means.

Well, it could be worse. You could have done it the other way around. >.>

And while it may be very difficult to increase true supply, by which I mean the number of any given item that exists across all servers, it's not very difficult to increase the number that are put on the market. A lot of people I know, both here and in game, still hoard things, even on the hero market. When the price on something gets really high, those people become tempted to sell those things they're hoarding and have no specific plans for, and get that cash for things they know they want.

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now more than ever I am filled with rage about the misleading instructions that led me to create a new CoV account when I bought the game, instead of just adding it on to my CoH account.

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Hm, strange. I don't remember that. Was that a common problem back at the time?

Shields has an extreme sort of binary thing going on in my perception. I consider the set kind of "meh" without IO investment, but godly with it. SR has this aspect too, but Shields swings further in the "godly" direction with IOs than Shields does, basically because of AAO and Shield Charge.

Fraud prevention. They only allow 3 purchases per 24 hour period to prevent them from handing out a cartload of game codes to people who aren't actually legitimately paying for them and would then probably do something untoward with them, like using the new accounts as disposable spambots.

It should have let you buy more than one, though, as far as I know, so either they've changed it (dramatically) or something else is up.

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How often have we all heard somehting like, " I was on an ITF last night with thie crazy XYZ, I wanna make one now but there is no way I could ever afford that build."

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So because someone said that, it's true?

Let me answer for you. It's not.

Yes, Purples are extremely high priced right now. More than anything, what that means is that they are not that great an investment for people with more immediate desire for improvement. For what you'd pay for one purple you could buy 5-20 other IOs that could do good things for your build. So buy the other things and not 20 purples. Hell, for the price of 20 purples for one character, you could probably outfit 3-6 characters in non-purple kit.

But even if you want purples, it's not impossible. You just have to want to do the things that can earn you that money in the time you want it in. If you can't abide those things that are "fast enough" or don't have the patience to do other things, then you can't get them. Given what else you can get for the price, I'm not sure that should be so disheartening.

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This is a super hero game.

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This is a subscription game, where the makers need us to stick around and pay them money. If we all get the best goodies, get bored, and leave, the money stops, the game ends, and none of us get to play.

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Why shouldn't it be expected that you should be able to maximize your potential in a reasonable amount of time.

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Who's the arbiter of "maximized" and "reasonable amount of time"?

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What I believe is that for a game who's end content is based on the concept of making a new hero that the time it takes to reach that level of performance should be easier for normal players. Not casual, I don't think they really exist, Just plain old normal guy who wants to have as much fun as he can in the time he has.

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That's based on a bad assumption - that the ultra uber super rare goods are meant for the people who are going to level up a new character every time that hit level 50. I can tell you, they're not. They were explicitly described as a means to continue to progress your character who might already be level 50. By definition, that's incompatible with the "normal guy" who's going to make a new character at 50. Its aimed, at least in part, at people who want to keep playing at 50 on the same characters for extended times, chasing the stacked bonus progression.

I mean, for heaven's sake, you can't even slot purples till you're 50. Shouldn't that tell you something?

I'll accept that analogy. Here's the problem - it's not what's being described. Just as you've pointed out that there are gradients in available cars somewhere between worn out crap and gold-plated luxury, so too are there in builds in this game. As I alluded to with respect to slotting Purple sets and ability to "solo" a TF while your team dies around you; there are an awful lot of very non-Purple things you can do with an arbitrary character to make them much better at surviving. Even just making a character more endurance efficient can have dramatic impact on play, and you sure don't need purples for that.

So while I agree with your latest refinement of the analogy, it's nothing like what was being claimed and which I responded to. The suggestion was essentially that Purples are the holy grail of enabling characters, and the difficulty of obtaining them makes people just give up on the whole thing. So either there's misplaced interest in purples (perhaps through ignorance of mechanics, which I could certainly forgive) or they really do want Purple-class builds, at which point I still contend they aren't casual at all.

Or with the display. It's impossible to tell which just looking at the numbers.

However, it's possible to test. Find a way to zero your end, and then see how long it takes to recover, preferably with no bonuses.

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Then they are not casual. I'm sorry, the moment you start craving the top end power in the game, you stop being casual and start being a power gamer. Any claim to the contrary is disingenuous at best.


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That really doesn't follow. Anyone who drives and covets a Ferari, is not a racer.

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That's a severe failure to invert the analogy in a way that fits the example.

What we've got is someone in a Ford Escort who now is so covetous of the Ferrari that they are disgusted with the Escort and no longer want to drive anywhere. They are no longer "casual" in their relationship with the car. It is no longer a means to an end, but an end unto itself.

Someone who's "casual" about their car doesn't really care if it can't go 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, or has a leather interior. They use it to get places and see things. The person coveting a Ferrari wants either the Ferrari itself or the prestige it represents. That's not a casual view of owning a car.

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a player should not have the option of making their character sturdier with a path they choose because the Devs chose to play favorites when distributing bonuses among the sets.

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Except it has to.

The devs have three choices.

1) Everyone gets to buff themselves heavily with one method
2) Everyone gets to buff themselves heavily with both methods
3) No one gets to buff themselves with either method

We know the devs probably don't want to allow number 2, since that will let characters who can reach both caps be something like 2-5x tougher to kill than they are today.

Do we want to play tit-for-tat and say "if I can't use my preferred method, no one gets to play"?

The devs happened to choose the method that allows almost anyone to get pretty darn good average mitigation to some combination of 3 positions (and some people to reach 90% average mitigation). The alternative, DR, would always be damage typed, which would require us to choose from among, at best, 5 types even if paired (L/S, E/N, F/C, Psi, Toxic) and one would never have any resistance (Toxic). Moreover, most ATs would be at a 75% DR cap instead of the common 90% average mitigation "soft cap" Defense has.

Assuming the devs don't want to give us option 2, and that we don't want option 3, that leaves us with option 1. And given option 1, I think we got the better of the two things they could have given us.

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I disagree. Every body I know who I would classify as casual players covets a set of purples but doesn't think they have any hope of ever getting them. They believe they have no chance of ever putting together a full set without selling their first born.

They also don't think thats very fun. They see me on one of my toons nearly solo the TF they keep dying in and it just turns them off.

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Then they are not casual. I'm sorry, the moment you start craving the top end power in the game, you stop being casual and start being a power gamer. Any claim to the contrary is disingenuous at best.

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Why not enable everyone to have access to that same kind of gear through a friendly reward system. Just make everything purchasable by merits and increase the merit rewards for all the Not MA content in the game.

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Because then it would not be rare and hard to obtain. And it's powerful based on the notion that it's rare and hard to obtain. What you're asking for is flat out, direct inflation of the power of everyone, regardless of effort involved. That's not a great idea for the game's longevity and it's not a great idea from the notion of powerful rare gear as a time sink.

You may not like the idea of time sinks, but they're rather well proven. It's why they are so common. Should they all be horrible, impossible grinds? No. But I think you'll find that not that many people here will agree that purples are such.

Edit: As an aside, what are you that purples allow you to practically solo TFs? They don't give much in the way of survival benefits unless your mitigation benefits strongly from a lot of global recharge.

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Their own development philosophy has become currupted by lack of vision. Well except NCSofts vision of milking $$ through microtransactions.

They need to find someone how to make it fun again.

It time for new leadership on the dev team

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So because you don't enjoy it, it's corrupt and needs new leadership.

Mkay.

Based on what we've been told about powerset proliferation, you'll get it eventually.

You should not expect it to be a direct port of the existing versions, simply because of the unconditional higher base damage that Scrappers deal.

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The devs are not going to block the AE from new players. It's heavily been advertised as an alternative levelling method.

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Wow, 7th post, not too bad, tho a bit later than I expected.

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What, you're surprised someone could be so spot-on by their 7th post?

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's possibly the worst possible reason to keep AE, and the best possible reason for moving it OUT of Atlas Park.

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Yeah, except for that whole part where the devs promoted it as an alternative leveling option, 1-50, and then sold a boxed set of the game named "Architect Edition."

If there's anything's a bit later than expected, it's how long its taking people like you to get this through your noggins.

Heh. I always envision the current one as either shattering or ripping out your pelvis, so that's not too far off.

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Now if they could only 'fix' pvp in such a way that pvp toons that DON'T farm are at such a build disadvantage vs. pvp toons that DO farm.

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You might want to check out Issue 13's patch notes.

Also, assuming you're talking about IOs in general, farming is so totally and completely not the only way to obtain them. Not even really rich-blood stuff like Purples.

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I highly doubt either change will ever actually come in officially.

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More importantly, one of the devs recently posted that he doubts the change will ever come. Pretty much for the reasons you mention.