Wicked_Wendy

Add in the fact that beginng with Issue 21 anyone can start any of the non-epic ATs in the new combined tutorial zone and based on the result of a sort of morality mission they either leave a villain or a hero. And as long as they have a 20 level on the red and blue side..they can start all 14 ATs there. So it will soon be possible to start a Warshade in tutorial and wind up a villain at zone 2. So it becomes even more unfair that a BRUTE that leaves the tutorial at level 2 and heads to Atlas park can just automatically start picking epic powers at 41 but a BRUTE that becomes a villian has to run an arc from a Patron to get access to those powers.

It just makes sense to do away with the special arc and let them simple start picking powers at 41. I do like your idea... Lets say that Heroic Brute wants thepatron powers rather than the ones assigned an heroic one then run a special mission and earn them and visa versa.. much better than running a whole arc for them.

Oh I have seen worse... Just like BrandX described I ran across a defender in Talos one time actually advertise the "Ultimate" healer. He did in fact have every power available in the empathy set. I too see no need for all of them and only take the Aura and Heal Other .. I skip Absorb pain reasoning that any power that forces me to give up health points to aid the team has the potential to aid in my death.. and I can't heal or buff anything if I have faceplanted.

But taking absorb pain for a third heal was only the start for this guy. As mentioned he had taken the medicine pool for the extra heal and rez and I can't remember but possibly even stimulant. And then it just started to get strange.. He had recall friend, not completely unusal for a support toon I have many that add that as well, but then instead of taking a SINGLE attack other than his tier one this guy seemed to decide he would be the transport KING.. he had Teleport from the tp Pool, he also had hover and fly, I think hasten along with Super Speed and I can't recall if he still had options that alllowed him to get into the leaping pool or not. It was as if he was determined to make certain he had absolutely no way to assist a team but to heal and buff them.

I couldn't help but wonder if that was his intent why on earth instead of wasting picks on three different types of travel powers he didn't at the very least take the leadership pool and add addition methods to BUFF himself and his team. Now in his defense this was years ago back when enough players had only recently crossed from other HEAL heavy MMOs that the general team building phylosophy was "I mus haz H3alz, i mus haz Tank!" I assume that if that same player is still active long ago he discovered how lame his character was and either deleted it or did a serious Respec. Either that or he's that 50 (+X) level that also has rebirth, picked a set of Lore pets heavy on heal/buff not damage, has judgement but only slotted to tier 1 or maybe not at all, and did the same with interface since there is no benefit at all in debuffing stuff ..LOL Of course another possibility is he's developed into one of the many homeless NPCs we see wandering aimlessly in game.. anyone ever spot one of them muttering to himself over and over.. "I heal you.. I heal you.. PLEASE I heal for food"

I'm with the OP on this one.. Okay so maybe some of it woulod be wasted but if it brought me back to full health from 80 or 90% dead I'd be willing to waste what's left rather than wait to DIE so I can use a super revive Now think about this.. you decide to do a Keyes trial, head off to the astral store and load up on greens that can litterally bring you cack from the brink of death and head inside. Between healers that manage to be close enough and your inspirations suddenly your complete a Keyes and dont die even ONE time.. who wouldn't pay for that

Now I am curious does that take in all forms of insane moms or do we also get seperate Lore Pets .. Stage moms and Cheerleader moms.. keeping in mind the cheerleader moms are the deadliest If I recall correctly wan't a mom in Texas, I believe, arrested for trying to arrange a professional HIT to eliminate a potential threat to her daughter's position on the cheerleading squad.

Opps thanks for the catch.. Don't know why i said that.. I was researching on Wiki as I wrote for accuracy and somehow managed to be totally inaccurate.

As mentioned though quite a few of a defenders secondaries have added effects that make skipping them seem at least a bit silly. if you WANT to support you team.. support it every way possible... grabbing attacks that add damage and debuff the mobs the face just makes sense.

I'm with you Flea and this is exactly what I have been ranting about. Players like having the ability to accomplish things everyone SAYS can't be done...

A blaster solos and defeats Lusca

A dou completes a Master of run on the ITF

and the fact is for the most part we are even talking about the spectacular feats that earn you bragging rights.. Just stop failing trials for no reason other than.. one member of your teams has quit the trial . you now have 11 total members and the minimum required TO START is 12.. sorry you fail!

The only people complaining and insisting that a minimum be enforced are ones that have placed these trials on some pedastal and turned them into sacred cows. OH no You can't alter the trial in any way ... it MUST be left alone because it is perfect!

If its so perfect why have we already seen.. Changes allowing leagues to lock teams so no outsiders can enter when a league desires to begin with less than the maximum number allowed. Changes that finally distributed credit league wide for all defeats ... instead of only getting credit for the ones your team defeats. Changes that finally altered IXP to a decent level during a trial. Changes that allow players doing the BAF to skip the opening cut scene if everyone on the trial has done it before and viewed the scene at least once. And lets see what other changes can we look forward to seeing as soon as the bugs are worked out..

While not exclusive to the trials.. hopefully soon we can look forward to not having the team window bug to deal with where it appears a player is not in zone even when they are standing right beside the league leader.

Oh and at some point hopefully they will readdress the team lock feature since I really don't think the intent was to break the team down into small one and two man teams as soon as you zone into the trial.. forcing the leader, once he or she gets the star back, to reassemble the teams.

Yeah that's 4 changes already and HOPEFULLY 2 more in the works.. sounds like they are just absolutely perfect to me. LOL

IF this bug that is randomly failing trials based on team size is truly working as intended then lets Change the way it works. I have no desire myself to solo or duo a trial but would be really upset if a trial I was on was failed just because team size dropped 1 below some "magical" minimum. And if some one out there managed to complete a trial solo BRAVO..

Oh and I don't care if 24 players complete a BAF or ONE PLAYER completes a BAF the Astral and Empyrean merit rewards are just that.. a REWARD for completing each assigned task including successfully completing the trial. They are not mana that has fallen from the heavens to bless the appropriate sized team that does those same things.

Okay first off let me start by saying my very first EVER 50 level was an EMP so wha i am about to follow with is not some rant by a player who has no idea.

Don't dismiss you secondary... Note I didn't say YOUR CRAZY if you don't take all your attacks. but look at the added benefits (over and above the ability to do damage) you bring to your own character and your teams...

RAD.. Aside from AIM every single attack causes -DEF to any foe you face. You essetially become a buffer/debuffer when coupled with EMP

Dark ,, 8 or 9 powers cause - to Hit in additon to to 1 that immobs, 1 that disorients, 1 heals you and one that helps recover end (for you) Once again you added a form of debuff and a way to help yourself stay alive even longer,

Electric.. aside from Aim all attacks cause - recovery to your foes and some even transfer some of that lost end to you allowing you to stay active longer.

Ice .. which you have all but one have a -speed debuff attached so the more you attack the slower you enemies become. ost also have -Recharge so they attack less often and of course you have 2 holds and a couple that also have - to Hit. what is NOT to like

Dual Pistols.. Probably one of the most versitle powers in game, By swapping ammo you can go from having every attack slow your enemies -speed (CRYO rounds) to every attack adding a -Damage debuff (CHEM rounds).

Psychic .. 4 attacks add -recharge and you have 1 sleep and 1 disorient to keep enemies dazed and confused (no not actually confused.. different power set lol)

Sonis.. 7 of 8 attacks add a -Dam Resist debuff and once again you gain a power that puts yoiur enemies to sleep so they can be picked off one at a time.

Really of all the secondaries available, at this time, only Assault rifle and Archery are mainly damaging attack and Energy doesn't debuff either but almost all attacks have KB.

keep in mind as you get higher in level healing will become less and less necessary as many characters develope stronger defenses .. your buffs are still great but if you totally ignore all the GOOD secondary powers out there you are not helping the team as much as you could. Besides you have to have something to do while you wait for Fortitude and lear mind to recharge may as well help do some damage and debuff at the same time

There now did I even once demand that he had to take powers and slot them or he was a disgrace to defenders everywhere .. NOPE lol

Been a while since I posted here but was just going back through some old ones and saw yours.. LOL you are right of course I did te same thing as the OP and simply used ancient as opposed to Fuedal. I also agree we need to expand our reach beyond the walls of the city/isles. Even the lore surrounding the game includes heroes fighting along side the allies in WW 2, heroes drafted into service to battle the Russians during the cold war but now ABSOLUTELY nothing else goes wrong anywhere else in the entire world .. it all happens in Paragon City, RI or in the Rogue Isles.

Now I am not asking them to produce entire new cities (/zones) but couldn't we hop an airlift to the desert somewhere and battle some terrorists or one of Admiral Sutter's submarines could deposit us on a desert isle where we'd battle modern day pirates. Hey in some cases we wouldn't even need new villains.. Isn't Malta supposed to be a GLOBAL organization ,, and both the Council and the 5th Column are out to control the world NOT just Rhode Island. Actually the same is true of Arachnos.. what we need is a few new maps (outdoor and indoor) to give us a different feel and a new story arc or two that sends us off to the four corners of the earth to battle the bad guys.. Hey come to think of it even Nemesis is constantly showing up everywhere including the Shadow Shard ... why can't we go fight his troops in the sewers below Paris instead of below Kings row LOL

Look this could be much much worse.. I dont recall of anyone mentioning want Manical Mimes yet. ... [waits the appropriate amount of time for the cringing in disgust to end] See now clowns don't seem nearly as bad!

Sort of the same way every other task force and trial in the game have been doing for years.. exactly how are the ITrials any different in that respect.

Wait aren't you the same person that months ago argues against overwhelming odds that league leaders should not be allowed to lock league so that JUST any player could join the LFG and join any team. So have you changed you opinion since NC Soft decided we were right and now it is possible to lock a league... or is it just your teams that should be hand picked and the rest of us should take anyone and anything the game throws at us!


I wasn't aware there was a specific set of required or recommended power sets needed to complete a trial. I did a lamba a week or so ago with 7 blasters and 2 corrupters.. Between the two teams we had one tank and we managed to collect all 10 grenades and acids and with the damage output we destroyed Maurader before he had a chance to even move from his spawn point. Took the same team and added 2 more blaster to a mini BAF .. the Tank dc'c and never returned .. and yet we didn't allow a single prisoner to escape and defeated NS and Siege with NO problem. All any team needs is good players that know how to play and in the case of the trials know how to follow instructions. And I have been on BAFs that succeeded that had 12 players.. been on full sized 24 player leagues that failed miserably...


And yet in the same post you say "Ewww, yuck. I've been on some groups like that. It isn't pretty" Let us face the cold hard facts here..someone else already brought this up and at some point these trials are going to become OLD news as newer ones emerge. As an example how many 50 level players are still doing multiple Task Forces a week farming for shards and the weekly Notice of the Well.... I'm not saying they never get run but no where near as much as before 1-20 arrived and the emphasis shifted from shards to threads.

Already people are developing favorites among what we have

Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers Ect.. have no problem with Lambda since they have the survivability to get through the glowie phase with limited or even no deaths. Squishier ATs tend to view the LAM as a necessary once a day evil to collectthe additional Empyrean

Blasters and controllers in particular enjoy the BAF, well at least mine do since they almost always seem to score rares or very rares here. Melee toons like it too but the prisoner escape phase is tougher for them because unless a controller has immobed them.. absolutely nothing stands still and you have to chase everything to get in more than one attack. Of all three these is the most popular simply because its th easiest to complete and offers up the most Astrals without doing anything special.

It may be different on other servers but despite being new the Keyes Island Trial is the least popular. Not saying you don't see the hard core "I must earn 3 empyreans a day,.... because I can now!" from forming and running them but a lot of players are avoiding it like a plaque. I personally have been on 6 and 5 were successful.. we had Anti-matter down to 15% of his health when time simply ran out on us in that 6th one. Its not horrible but I can see how anyone fairly new would be totally lost and frustrated beyond belief as they die over and over and over again.

I'll be totally honest most of the time I run one Lambda and then stick to BAFs on any character I log on. Now we know a new trial will arrive along with issue 21 .. the Underground and as of yet all I have seen is the trailer but iy looks interesting and involves Devouring Earth.. OMG a chance to fight something besides IDT. Depending on how involved and difficult they make thatI am better a serious drop in the number of BAFs and Lams occurs for a while when we all get something new to do.

So let's say 6 months down the road you are trying to form a Lambda and it takes you almost 35 minutes to get 14-16 players together. Or maybe after 30 minutes you get tired of rejections and go with 9 or 10. You enter the missions and one player never materializes so now you have 8, the absolute MINIMUM allowed .. you clear the streets, you courtyard and then while taking out the gun turrents a player apologizes because his wife just called and he has to go pick up her.. her car died. Now you are just about ready to enter the facility, take on the security guard and start collecting acids and grenades but..WAIT. the league is now under the minimum and chances before we get a chance to defeat Maurader we will be kicked out because our team is too small to continue. You can honestly tell me that you are going to be perfectly happy quitting and heading back out to start recruiting all over again.... If so you are pretty much the ONLY person I know that would be.


Oh and to be TOTALLY honest.. the fact that you say you will not respond to my posts is a very idle threat since I really don't care if you do or not. Seems to me at one point when we had a similar discussion like this going on you put me on ignore and swore you'd never even READ a post by me again and yet here we are once again!

And to once again state what I did in my post.. who cares! The trials are not some holier than thou feature of the game just the latest one. Far too many players, here on the forums not in game, have elevated them to some pilgramige to Mecca. If ten players can successfully complete a BAF and supposedly incarnate powers make us GODLIKE then being able to complete with 10 as opposed to 12 should give out better rewards not less. People are attaching too much "AWE" on them.. So eleven people instead of 12 managed to complete a BAF and earned an Empyrean... I can use an Empyrean at the store in Ouroborus to BUY.. an Astral which is worth exactly 4 threads. Now WHY in heavens name anyone would do that instead of just running another trial and earning 4, 5 or more Astrals I have no idea. But one Empyrean = 20 threads in game and 20 threads = 1 lowly little common component. It is NOT mana from heaven its a reward for completion and if you do more than one trial in the same day it's replaced by an Astral.

my thats generous.. okay then here's an idea along those same line.. the next character you get above 45 and take on an STF.. unless the team finishes the trial with the requiered starting number of 8.. you recieve no XP toward making 46 for the entire trial and since you didn't have the required number don't receive any of the badges normally awarded. THAT is essentially what you're suggesting because of some inflated view of the trials. The Astral merits are awarded for completion of specific tasks in each trial... sure its easier to deal with the mob sizes spawned during say the BAF prisoner escape phase with 11 or 12 players than it is with 24.. MAINLY because the lag is gone and you can actually get your attacks to fire off and move. BY ratio the mob spawn with 12 players is the same, or very close, to the mob size with 24. And since we already have evidence that Astrals award even below the TRIAL minimum obviously the award is based on completion NOT how big the team is.


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...91&postcount=1

Read that and tell me it isn't occurring when a team SLIPS one below the minimum.. and again who the heck cares.. in fact there are probably as many players out there that LIKE the feeling of accomplishment by finishing something solo or duo that normally requires 8, 10 or 12 to do so THEY care just as much as the elitists shaking with horror at the thought of a trial being completed with only 11 players! LOL You know the worst part.. if you actually read what Leandro wrote.. this was not a case of player dc'd and 5 minutes later TRIAL FAILED. this occurred when they had probably just started and after completing 2 of the three reactors and startied work on the third.. TRIAL FAILED. In short the game allowed all of them to think everything was fine and they were doing well and then suddenly.. "Oh we are sorry we forgot to mention that unless you can maintain 12 players on your team you are not permitted to finish this trial.. You FAIL. We do hope you don't mind wasting the previous 20-30 minutes of your time. Go out and feel free to start over." That's not good business .. that's called ticking off your customers and that can and does result it them finding other things and other places to go for their amusement.


and when someone with a RED letter name stops in here and says that I will believe it and then continue to protest until its changed. Until then its just your opinion and last I checked you are just a normal player. And as to the "old content" remark.. so are you saying that 7 years of content and the RULES that governed them mean absolutely nothing now... people play this game because they enjoy it and the way it is set up. We are on the verge of going F2P and from what I see NC Soft is using that as a tool to eventually attract more players to become VIPs. Imagine the surpise when a former F2P player that now PAYS to play the game hits 50 and starts doing trials only to discover the same rules that applied for 50 level don't anymore.

see comment above


Once again when did you start working for NC Soft. This argument hold no more weight than saying a Statesman TF was never meant to be soloed or duoed... Fact is people can and do just that. Now personally I have no problem teaming, at the minimum level for a trial or the maximum, but there are players out there that like to FEEL like a superhuman and completing the BAF solo .. as opposed to having 23 of your buddies along to hold you hand.. makes them feel that way. It's never ever been an issue in this game before .. and IF we are supposedly becoming demi-gods it would seem to me we'd need less help NOT more. This is not an issue of players longing for a practical solo route to become an incarnate.. these players are quite happy to run with 8 or 12 players (or more when available) to do so.. what they are asking for is the ability to complete the trial after committing time and effort and not getting a slap in the face if one or more players suddenly disappear.


Exactly so even if a league leader wanted to TRY and find a replacement for a player that had to log off because OH I don't know lets say .. his house was on fire... He can't. So for no other reason that EITHER a bug or some stupid new rule.. His league is now destined to fail. They may as well just quit, reform and start all over. the ONLY problem with that is how many of those players will leave the league because now they have to go make dinner, or go to work, or wahtever.. and now their one chance that day to complete the BAF, LAM, or KEYES and earn their Empyrean is gone all because of some goffy rules that doesn't apply to any other content in this game.

THAT is precisely what it is Edana. An IF it truly is working as intended then the intention goes against every other established task forces and trial in this game...

I challenge anyone to give an example, other than these three new trials, where once a Task Force or trial is underway any number of players can quit and the trial or TF can still be completed by what remains as long as they are capable of doing so. That is 7 + years of doing things one way and then.. with no prior warning what so ever.. suddenly coming up with a totally new and, in my opinon, total bogus requirement for the three new trials.

If this is working as intended then we need to do the exact same thing we have done in the past... protest and make suggestions until it becomes VERY clear to the Devs we want his changed. I run mini BAFS a lot these days.. the lag is less of a problem and they are much more fun. Now in most cases these involve 16 players but i have run as low as the minimum of 12. And as we all know when the prisoners pahse begins the lag spikes and people can crash. Based on the examples I have seen if I was on a 12 man BAF that became an 11 because someone crashed or even if someone had a REAL WORLD emergency and simply had to leave and now my league was under this PRECIOUSm minimum and after pulling Siege and defeating him and then starting to battle Siege and Nightstar and having them down to say 10 0r 15 percent of heal each.. and All of a sudden I got a message saying trial failed not enough players I would be off line and it would be quite a while before I came back, At that point saying i don't have enough players to succeed is pure BS .. I am about 30 seconds away from a mission complete and having absolutely NO problem at all doing so.

The TRIALS are trials not the dang quest for the Holy Grail. They don't deserve any special considerations that don't apply apply to anything else in game. If we are going to put this sort of requirement on them then it applies to everything else as well. You are REQUIRED to have 8 players to start an ITF so if one member quits.. Trial fails start again. You need 8 to start the STF.. one or two need to leave because of RL issues..trial fails go back to IP reform and try again. Yeah I can just imagine how well THAT would go over with the player base.

Certain players have elevated these trials far above what they deserve. We are getting new powers by running new missions.. that's all. Do they make us more powerful.. sure they do. I get a kick out of taking any of my 50(+3)s on an ITF or STF and setting the level at +4 and STILL watching everything melt in front of me. my Tank stands toe to toewith Romulus and pounds on him totally oblivious to the nictus trying to help until poor little Romi wants to run home to mommy. But I don;t think of a single one of my characters as god like.. just more powerful super heroes.

Yes it has in fact Leanardo posted a thread on the same topic some time back and the general felling then was .. what the F....


It wouldn't be so bad if the game simply didn't allow you to start or continue if you dropped below the minimum.. with a small margin of time since we all know players do dc and suddenly being total you have failed the trial because 1 poor guy dc'd during the prisoner escape phase. Lets give him at least a couple minutes to log back on.. but the team Leanardo was leading was doing the keyes trial.. they lost 2 members almosy immediately and they never returned. They cleared 2 towers and were headed to # 2 when they got the same message as you.. Trial failed too few members to continue.

That's better that half way through the trial and apparenty there small numbers didn't prevent them from succeeding nicely until the game decided they were too small to continue.

Of course there were arguments that the trials were "SPECIAL" and the minimum number was some golden rule that could never be broken.. B.S.... at this point someone. somewhere on probably every server has soloed the ITF, Kahn, LGTF the STF along with the Barracuda and LRSF. every single one of those has a minimum number required to START as well but if players have to log for RL or simply log because JOE wants to test his new purpled out build and solo the ITF .. the game has NEVER caused a Task Force or even any of the other trials (Eden abandoned Sewer, etc) to fail.

At that point it seemed like the first time anyone had seen it and it was assumed to be some crazy new requirement. I think, I HOPE, that now its just a random bug they need to fix.

Sort of what I figured but the problem is even if the web site or the person breaking TOS and selling INF is caught and removed they stay ON the list and when i put someone new on someone comes OFF. Now most of those are other illegal players trying to sell me something and spamming from years ago ,.. But I do have players on that list that for whatever the reason.. earned a trip to global ignore for being REALLY obnoxious, in some cases even being SO bad as a leader i wanted to be certain I NEVER had to deal with them again much less team with them.

So how about this as a revision.. leave the size of the list alone but automatically remove names that no longer appear as live in the game.. lets say if that global name has NOT logged on in more than a year it is simply removed from the folder. Since I can now limit, when i remember to, who can or can't email me, the number of people going on the list has gotten much smaller so if we can simply find a way to eliminate names that were probably fake accounts only created to advertise those illegal sites anyway.. the people I REALLY want to ignore will never fall off the back end and I wind up on a team with them again.. Pardon me but Ewwwww LOl

Hey if it can't be done fine but I just figured I'd throw it out there. thanks for the update Stone

hehe Tell that to some of the leaders I have seen advertising when forming Keyes island trials.. the requests actually beg for Empaths and/ or .. and I quote ... "anyone with t3 or higher rebirth" curiously since incarnate powers are not listed in your profile how does one tell that a player has Rebirth and if the do how does one tell if its tier 3.. yeah I know tier 3 averages about 750 hp of heals.. so do they have to aduition for a spot on the team by hitting heal so the leader can see the green numbers flash....Ummm so my Blaster that has a t2 rebirth and heal like 500-600 HP every 3-5 minutes doesn't count. Okay I'll take my HUGE MOUNT OF dps and find another trial where i am appreciated

Semi seriously though the OP along with anyone else that feels the need has the right to gripe here on whatever issue.. hey its how we have managed to get a ton of things changed/fixed over the past 7 years!

And the bug does not just affect huge teams I duo with a friend and lately we spend as much time running in and out of missions so we can actually see one anothers triangle on mission maps as we do fighting villains.

On a recent BAF a all but one team mate was in RWZ 1 and the leader asked the lone hold out if he'd be arriving soon. As it turned out the guy was not only in the zone he was practically standing next to the leader.. there's about 2-3 minutes of all our lives we will never get back lol

But now back to the OP .. I started out my support toon days with defenders and my first ever 50 level was an ILL/EMP Controller. granted in the trials even 50 (+3)s can take damage or die... personally I don't waste time on rezzing unless they are right beside me.. HEAD to the hospital and get back to us. But most heals only carry so far and if that team mate is clear on the other side of the compound, or in the Lambda in the lab while you ar in the warehouse, chances are they will either pop a green and be fine or be long dead and rezzed in the hospital before you can get there. When its recharged I fire off my healing aura (s), yeah my Incarnate Emp has Rebirth, and continue to buff, debuff on attack.

Years ago I drove myself crazy in missions trying deperately to keep the entire team alive. not hard when they stick together but when they split and end up battling 2 mobs at once I'd be trying to keep one half alive with my aura and the other half healthy with my long ranged Heal Others. The mission would end and I'd realize I'd spent 90% of my time healing people too dumb to stay together like a TEAM and never got to use my attack chain at all. Now if you want my heals ... you better be on the same part of the map I am because I will be attacking and using my BUFFS to keep the players around me healthy, without heals, so they can keep my cute squishy butt alive. And I am NOT running through a pile of unfriendlies to save you.. that just gets me AND you dead! LOL

Its a serious enough issue that I am sure they are hard at work on it and it will be fixed when its fixed.. until then adapt and overcome!

Rickmann would make a great Nemesis.. cold and calculating like he was in Die Hard

He'd also do well as the voice of say the Clockwork King or even Anti-Matter. He does have the acting ability to poull it off and i have seen him do CRAZED roles in the past.

I apologize if you took my comments as a sort of joke or dig at anyone with problems seeing .. my point was there are, for lack of any other term that feels right, morons out there that simply have no clue at all how to be a decent team mate. When 12 of 16 people all wind up in the LAB trying to get acids chances are it is not because they can't see which team number they are on ..its a case of not bothering to even read league chat instructions or worse.. simply deciding they don't care what the leader wants they prefer to do acids over grenades.

The same applies on the BAF.. I used team numbers as an example but you can see the same basic lack of regard for ANYTHING the leaders asks. When the instruction is "Please don't attack Siege until the tank pulls him to NS's body" And moments later 5 or more players are 50 yards in front of Nightstar's body attacking Adds and Siege it has nothing to do with seeing numbers well .. its all about not listening to or not bothering to follow instructions.

my favorite is on the rare occasion that a trial fails, and when they do its usually miserably, and the same idiots that didn't listen to a word that was said suddenly can't understand why the trial failed. Want a classic example I was witness to.. a mastermind that outright refused to assist with either grenades or acids because, as he so POLITELY, explained he'd just get killed. So as my character ran back from the hospital for the third time and spotted him with his pets out and waiting to pose with Maurader I wondered why it was okay for me to die multiple times but not his character. The LEADER had already asked no one to get in the cut scene but there he was and when all the acids and grenades were found and the cut scene ended the next thing we saw was

MAURADER HAS LEFT THE FACILITY.. TRIAL FAILED. Yep his pets managed to aggro the AV out the front gate and we failed because he didn't feel like paying attention to instructions.

Again if my comments upset you in any way I apologize but as you see they had nothing to do with mocking anyone with vision problems.

I really dont think so.. my tank was not my first incarnate so I had some idea of what the different Alphas had to offer. When I pulled him up and did a respec on him so Stamina became inherent i purposely went power by power to see which were end hogs. Those got a single slot of end reduction.. then when I opened cardiac low and behold . all my powers dropped 33% and the ones with a reducer dropped 75%.. Now at tier 4 its a 45% drop on all powers and over 80 on the end guzzlers.. in short I was able to dedicate MORE slots to things like defense and damage and still wound up with a tank that can run 8 toggles, stand toe to toe with Reichmann for ever in the Kahn TF and never runs out of end. Plus all his damage resistance powers are higher making him even harder to hurt.

I gear my Alpha selection to filling holes in my characters or improving things even more. Now Muscular is another option for a tank since it does increase damage and using the right tree branch also increases End mod.. But End Mod only helps you recover end after you stop using it.. cardiac allows you to use less to begin with. I have used Spiritual and Nerve on other characters but I try to find the best possible power that will provide the MOST benefits for each character.. Giving a TANK a power that increases its holds or immobes, fears, ect.. is pretty useless but all tanks use end (all ATs use end0 and almost all tanks have some form of damage resistance. cardiac seemed the perfect choice to me

Isn't he... Just so cute and niave. I currently have 36 characters on virtue .. on my PRIMARY account and about 16 more on my 2nd. Now I did PAY for most of those and earned others as vet rewards but I have NO desire to lose characters by becoming a premium player.. I have every intention to keep paying... might turn the 2nd account into a premium so I cut my cost in half.

Now F2P, as I understand it, allows a player a GRAND total of 2 (that is T W O ) characters.. and I am still not sure if that is per server or per account. All F2P will be is an extended version of the old 2 week free trail accounts.. and I am sure the hope that NC Soft has is once the new F2P players arrive and see all the cool stuff they are missing because they don't subscribe.. they will open the wallets, pull out credit card, and become VIPs. We MIGHT see a few old friends return as premiums (probably will not just might) .. ones that simply couldn't afford to pay anymore but will gladly come back, with limitations, if they don't need to pay to play in the future.

In short.. as stated above.. JUST SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!