Ultra_Violence

Well a mass exodus would do one thing. Generate a lot of revenue. No way I'm paying to move all of my characters plus lose my solo base with billions in stored stuff.

I can understand limiting F2P players to local though. Anyone who has played one of those games can tell you Gold Farmers will camp every store, auction house, etc. spamming in Local. You can't get rid of them because they just get a new account and are back 5 minutes later. Sigh - just when gold farming got under control.

If you think new players are going to have a hard time communicating with existing players wait until all the long time players turn off Local to block Gold Farmers.

I agree though, I don't see this working out very well for players or Paragon.

Actually as long as league leader can open/close league I don't understand how this was ever supposed to work. You make a closed league invite who you want till league is full for trial, open league then queue for trial. You get credit for doing trial with Open league without ever actually having to have one.

Another issue is people are on my ignore list for a reason. I DON'T want to play with them. Truely Open Leagues let all the squirrelly players in.

-- Fantastic a way to make Raiding even more painful. You wait 30 minutes for league to form only to have last 2 players be ones on your ignore list. So you can wait another 30 minutes or play with idiots. And anyone wonders why Queues are unused?

I think what the poster is missing is that EVERYONE has this problem they just don't see it as easily. When 24 people all attack one boss he is going down fast and most of their damage is corpse pounding but if they have a faster animation they won't be able to tell if their damage actually did anything or not.

As far as EM goes you could make the same arguement for Judgement/Ion. Often when you try to use it you target a mob and if that mob is dead before it fires you do no damage at all. So Judgement/Ion is worthless in trials? No I think not.

The answer, just as it is with EM, is knowing the problem and only using your power at the correct time on the right mobs. I run EM and even on full teams War Walkers/Commanders don't die before I can get off 1 or 2 of my big attacks. Just make sure to target the right mobs is my answer.

For anyone who thinks that support don't add much to trials:

Did a Lambda with like 10. No healers no buffers and no one staying together either for that matter lol. In Weapons/Grenades phase you can solo a box or 3 but even my Brute (Electric Defense with Surge) had trouble lasting much longer than that because you start attracting so much attention. First time my brute has died in that phase, died once or twice.

In AV fight I swear I died like 10 times. Once you get his attention if no one heals you, ever, it is hard to stay alive even with 90% resists. Actually there was a MM with traps for our healing LOL. Of course I wasn't alone in dieing, everyone except Maurader was dropping like flies.

Only had Judgement of the new sets open at that point though so even more survivable now, but without some support it is still hard to last out the battles. Basically it is like soloing a Monster, which seldom goes very well.

Is it me or is everyone playing Melee/Blaster characters lately? Suddenly getting a Healer/Controller for a trial actually takes effort. Last straw was a BAF with 24 players and it turned out none of them had any controls. BAF with only damage ATs doesn't go very well since you are constantly chasing down mobs. It is an interesting challenge if you don't mind losing I guess. All it takes in 1 ice patch in the middle of the sidewalk to cripple the escapees.

Has everyone gone damage happy with new Incarnate abilities or is it just bad luck that this seems to be happening more?

Do you find playing Trials to be more fun with a Tank/Brute/Scrapper? I grant that it is better in the Lambda search phase since getting a team to stay together usually only lasts until you zone in. But I am curious how everyone else sees this?

No LFG doesn't work on Liberty because every trial either starts out full or leader doesn't want any more people for lag reasons.

Times given by LFG are only accurate if you are like heavily drugged and can't tell time anymore.

My experience has been they have a lot of trouble succeeding because as soon as you have minimum it starts and doing Lambda with 8 is hard unless people really know what they are doing. It is especially hard since 2 people will always skip the whole search portion for grenades and acids so that they can get in the cut scene. Doing a BAF with no Controllers/Doms to slow and group mobs is near hopeless.

LFG doesn't work on a number of levels. Trials are not as simple as any 8-12 people. Regular missing might work with this tool or Task Forces, but not trials. So the only thing they can be used for is the one thing they can't do. Using this for Task Force of the Week teams would be VERY sweet. Also LFG was sold with "You can do whatever you want while you wait" which isn't true. You can't enter missions which basically means other than play the market or doing emotes you can't do anything. You can street hunt but the fact is at 50 most greatly prefer to be in missions because the rewards are better and faster.

One thing that is different from what most others mention is to have less of this "Me against the World" feeling. Basically every group in the game is against you and whether you are a Hero or a Villain it feels the same.

This is one of the few points that the fantasy genre has done a fair job of. Let me ally myself with the Carnies to the point where they have the occasional mission for me and randomly supply some aid on my missions.

On the opposite side if I take enough missions AGAINST a certain group they should send hit squads and hire Mercenaries to take me down every so often.

One man's hero is another's villain after all.

OK, without the splash screen how to you tell if the badge is being given out at logon time or if it was just given to whole account?

I guess having the badge auto award to account is just wishful thinking. I hate logon on all your toons one at a time. After 7 years there are so MANY. I still haven't gotten around to reslotting some of them for powers diversification LOL. Yeah I need more slots like a hole in the head.

Had same issue in Lambda. It seemed to cycle out all temp powers then enable them. Certainly an unique bug.

One thing I notice that may or may not be true is that I get better drops when I focus only on AVs and ignore support troops. If I help clear support mobs I get lower level rewards.

Again not sure if that is true but so far it has held up for me every time. Pets tend to get distracted REAL easy even if you tell them to attack a certain mob. You might try a Passive/Aggressive approach. Tell pets to ignore attacks and to attack target. (not a setting you would normally use much LOL) Don't know if that would work but its worth a shot.

For small fights the big guns aren't needed so "So what?" For things like Escapee's you need to work the paths and give yourself some space from others so you nail everything that gets by groups at doors. Yes standing at a door you won't get anywhere.

As was stated in AV fights the main problem would be AV Warnings (like squestered) since if you queue them both up you are unlikely to get away.

Every set isn't designed to work best in every situation. That is GOOD. Immobs and Sleeps were fairly worthless powers before. Now they have a Trial where they really shine.

OK There seems to be a bit of confusion here.

The components are for 2 reasons to look nice and to soak up threads when people make mistakes because they didn't plan out their build.

1) If they wanted to just make 4 components called common, uncommon, rare and very rare (or some such) granted it wouldn't look as cool,

2) BUT the breakdown conversion of one component to another means that you can't just swap them out since you don't end up with enough threads to go from one rare to another for example.

This is why I say Devs made an intentional thread sink. Just as they did for the Alpha slot, I got lots of Alpha components I had no use for when working on Alpha slots.

At least this time you can choose your reward instead of knowing your reward is on a TF no one else wants to do. Oddly so far I am having the problem of only getting Rares so I have to plan really far out.

I agree with Necro. It is an unpopular view for some reason but most MM attacks are just fine in my book considering the damage my pets are doing. Properly slotted you can do enough damage to draw a boss off of your pets solo (assuming you want to). As a group your pets do more damage but you are much more capable of focusing damage and can use inspirations.

I've never understood the "I don't ever want to resummon my pets" attitude. When you had to buff them individually yes it was a pain, but now it is better a pet should take the Alpha strike instead of a player when necessary.

MM pets are like potato chips. We'll make more.

Personally I feel the same way about ITF and LGTF too but they are the best way to get shards.

Important to remember that you can advance in ANY slot by collecting shards and converting them. So any level 50 content gives you additional Incarnate power, just not as quickly.

While I agree this is not the random 8 person TF Trial it was cooked up to be, I think it is important to remember that even a fail gets you a lot of experience and some threads. Even failing you can open up a slot after a few tries and start purchasing abilities.

Once 90% of the people playing have Tier 4 on everything (like we had with Alpha slot a week ago) it will be much easier (of course 90% of people won't care then LOL).

The real thing to fear is that in the next trials they make them randomize goals each instance. Then you REALLY will have people confused. "We're going in blind we don't know what to expect..." Imagine Trial where any of 5 things can happen at each stage. 5 stages each with 5 variations = 25 Trial threads.

Could actually be a lot of fun but those who don't check boards (and don't read the chat during the fight) will be like albatrosses around everyone else's necks unless it is very straightforward.

The other problem with increasing difficulty is, right now at least, all the Task Forces have become much less popular because high levels are in Trials. If you hit 50 now it can be quite hard to find a pick up group to get Call of the Wells and such from TFoW. If you make the TF so hard that you HAVE to have incarnates to finish it then things will get really annoying.

I'm sure as time goes on people will start doing "charity" TFs just getting groups of people who need shards/wells together and helping them blow through the content quickly but you shouldn't have to REQUIRE it. It is much like old days when people used to heal and TP newbies around zones. It was nice but you could get through the zones without them.

There is a big difference between the 2 trials though and some serious thought should go into exactly how future Trials should go.

Failed Lambda still gives lots of experience just for the initial street sweeping and clearing the courtyard. Even a team with no chance of completing the Trial get get 1/3 of slot opened on 1 trial. (one I was on BARELY took down robot and couldn't even get 1 box of grenades or acids, 8 peeps no healer or debuffer). But I ended up with 35% of slot opened and a bunch of threads.

Failed BAF depends on how soon you fail. 1st 2 steps are pretty easy and provide little reward, then you get to the escapees which is not easy. I've done team that failed escapees and one that got all the way to end bosses but couldn't take them both down at same time despite multiple tries. Combined those 2 gave me 35% of slot, but I got merits and threads.

The main difference is that initially Lambda is much nicer since you can open your slots up fairly quickly but getting the actual end rewards is harder.

I do have to question the new queueing system though, it basically doesn't work for Trials so why have it at all? Ad for it says new trials don't require specific team make-up but anyone who has done them knows that just isn't true, you need very specific powers. At least at this point. Once people level shift twice life will probably look differently.

I have used these on a number of characters and have never needed more than 1. If you are planning to be SuperTank I suppose you won't ever get knocked down but even with 1 it is quite rare.

You are lucky when I Microsoft send me an email saying my version of Windows was unauthorized they just crippled my system so I HAD to buy a new copy of Windows. Got my system (with Windows installed) from Comp USA who apparently went broke for a reason. :-|

You can upgrade to Vista for free though. Just throw your system off a 300 ft cliff, it has pretty much the same effect.

One very funny one I got from a Wolf Spider in the Fort in Mercy (you had to be low enough to trigger his attack and actually in the fort so it isn't something I trigger often):

Wolf Spider: "Don't you know this is a FORT?!"

That just made me laugh.

I would love it if they could give NPCs a different script when they are grey to players. That opens up all kinds of new comments along the lines of "Don't you have a galaxy to save or something?"

Anyone else enjoy setting up NPC spawns to start fighting each other instead of you?

I get a kick out of skipping spawns then having ambushes get held up fighting the spawns. Funniest is when Longbow starts fighting Longbow. I have no idea how that got in the game but there are a number of places you can trigger it. Usually it is ambushes that don't have their friend/foe set right but in PVP missions I have found that pulling Longbow out of last room into hall can also cause this.

I usually find it accidently when I get in trouble and start running to zone and I jump over a spawn only to have them turn on my attackers LOL.

I just find it funny when the "big end boss" finally arrives all shot up with no support.