concreteshift

Ok, is that in a story arc I'm missing? Because every context I'm getting, the Well isn't afraid of anyone. Its just attracted to dynamic individuals which it wants to control in some way. Or fashion.

It's also disconcerting that it seems they don't really think things completely through. The badge was created to incentivize players to log onto to Freedom during a certain period to create a stress test of the server. So, it can go one of two ways:

1) The server survives the stress test; everyone participating gets the badge.

2) The server fails the stress test; many players will either get logged out, mapservered to oblivion or the server crashes. Then MANY won't get the badge regardless of them putting in the time to show up.

Well, what happens if the server fails? How are they going to award the badge now? Anyone can say that they were there, just couldn't log in because the server failed. What's the contingency plan? So you promise something and if it doesn't work too bad so sad?

That's what causing some frustration. The promotion was extremely short sighted in its planning.

(in order of highly used first)

Pinnacle: RWZ, Pocket D

Virtue: RWZ, Pocket D, Cim

On Virtue, the most dominant area is RWZ but it's becoming a huge problem with Mothership raids and other Trials going on at the same time such and people running LGTF, Apex and Tin Mage. Multiple RWZ zones get packed and certain Leagues have to adjust because their members can't enter to start a trial.

There's a move to start it in Cim. I prefer Cim to avoid the traffic jam but it certainly doesn't have all the amenities of RWZ with the costume creator, quartermaster, auction and rikti crafting.

Pocket D is a problem because all your tp powers are rendered useless so you have to hoof it out to a permissable tp zone. Not a huge problem but annoying as I like to tp as much as I can.

Given the significant ToHit bonuses from both powers, I would activate them every single time. Your attack chain is built to generate high cumulative damage over a period of time. Missing your target severely hurts your DPS. Against +level opponents and crazy AVs like Marauder, you want all the ToHit you can get.

It burns me every time I miss with Power Burst or Golden Dragonfly. Because I know that was a significant chunk of damage missed plus the attack time I just wasted.

I'm right there with you. At the end of the day, you lose some effectiveness but it's too cool of a power that's not going to break the build. Keep soul storm. I love it!

Okay. Now after 13 (!) pages of debate, can we all just go to our corners and sulk?

Both sides have very valid points. I play significantly solo and I'm in a good coalition that runs TFs/Trials all the time which I try to be a part of as much as possible.

I am absolutely sympathetic to the solo side. Again, I play solo 50% of my time that I am on CoH because of family obligations. I have to be able to log off at a moment's notice or I have work obligations too. So I completely understand. I would like to have all sorts of avenues for everyone regardless of their playing style to get their incarnate slots, threads, whatchamacallit uber doodads. I get it.

That being said, I think two points need to be made:

1. Notwithstanding all that has occurred so far in development of this game, it has been, and probably always will be a multi-player oriented game. Unless some paradigm shift in philosophy occurs, development will be made to accomodate multiplayer first, solo second.

Programming and coding costs money. So does resources to art, animations and environments. For every solo game development aspect we ask it is a real dollars cost. So is multiplayer aspects. Now that Paragon is a wholly-owned NCSoft sub, the emphasis will be on catering to multiplayer first as it is the most efficient and generates the most sales.

Am I comfortable with this? Pretty much yes. Believe me, I am very sympathetic to the solo side. When purple IOs came out and I saw the outrageous inf. prices going for them I knew I was completely priced out. There was no way I could afford to kit out all my alts with purples. That sucked. But that's the way it goes. The rarest aspects of the game sometimes won't be achieveable right away or even achieveable at all. There will be elite parts of the game where a minority of players can go or do or get. This will always be the case. Is it bad? I don't think so. That's how MMOs work. That's how real life works. Rares and elite status gameplay designs drives people to continue playing the game. If it was all solo content people would get bored faster and not play at all. They will switch to the next shiny game.

In addition, from past practice, there will be a solo solution eventually that caters towards some balance. It took years, but I can now get purples for my alts by grinding hero/villain merits. It works, half my alts now have purple sets. It's not ideal in any way at all but it certainly is better than farming to generate inf. to buy the purples.

Which brings me to point two...

2. There will be a more reasonable solo solution to the issue. It still won't make people happy.

A solo option that removes the dramatic exchange rate right now for generation of threads and incarnate thingamuhguffs will have to reflect the difficulty in the Trials right now. They will not be an easier option. Right now the BAF and Lambda aren't as hard as the STF but not as easy as morality mission. There will be failures and an unorganized league is one that will be defeated. Any solo content will reflect the failure rates and difficulty of the Trials. It has to be that way to keep it balanced. And this will make people unhappy. Seriously, people were complaining about the difficulty of Mender Alpha mission unlock. It wasn't that hard. It was soloable but not a cakewalk. I did it solo on all my alts, from blasters to brutes to defenders. And the forums still blew up about it.

There's only so much resources to go around. Issue 20 was all about the new incarnate slots and the multiplayer gameplay around it. Eventually there will be a solo solution offered and many still won't be happy about it.

So I leave everyone with a question:

What is a reasonable amount of difficulty for a solo player to get incanate rewards and what do you think is fair?

Because I have a feeling your opinion on fairness will not agree completely with the developers opinion on solo fairness.

I can confirm this happened to my League run on Lambda last night too.

We collected all the acids and did not use any of them in our fight with the Marauder. After completion nobody received the Antacid badge. So this is still bugged.

I would suggest you petition support. I did and I'll let you know what support says.

Agreed. I want the old, REAL classic team window back. It was perfect.

I toggled the new team window just to see what it looked like. Hated it and toggled to the "classic" window and thought I was doing something wrong because I wasn't getting the team windows I've been playing with for 6 years(!) now. Who thought this was a better "classic" view??

Why are we trying to change things that don't need to be changed at all? We have so many huge bugs in the game. Instead of working on the team windows how about fixing all the wrong icons in the powers tray?

Also, can we finally fix the gigantic fixed Chat Window now and let it be adjusted like back in all previous Issues?

Unfortunately I've tried all the methods and they don't work to where I think the game is playable for me. It looks like I'm forced to buy new bigger monitor just to play this stupid game. Lovely.

Is there a patch coming soon? I20 is really needs it now.

Agreed. There better be a fix soon. The stupid *** chat window throws off my entire gaming screen. How could they mess this up and not fix it for release? This needs to get fixed. Screwing around with the window scale and font size doesn't address the fundamental problem. It just creates a new problem of the font being too small to read once you radically adjust the window scale. This really needs to be fixed.

I have the EXACT same issue. This looks terrible. If you shrink the window scale in the graphics options the FONT looks absolutely tiny. But if you try to enlarge the font size, it gets too large.

I'm sorry but I can't play with a chat window that takes up almost 1/2 of my gaming screen. Who thought this issue should go live again?? Crap as always.

Forget Issue 20, not playing a game like this.

Is there any reason we couldn't just continue with Incarnate shards?? Really?? Such lovely game design.

Well, it would help if it works. I don't mind change but frankly, it needs a lot of work.

1. Grind to get all the Accolades. The extra +HP, +END and Tier 9 powers are a godsend against AVs.

2. Get the Envenomed Dagger temp power. Great damage, good -Regen.

3. Get as much range defense as possible, some sort of fly (hover, jetpack, whatever). Don't be limited to 2 dimensions when you need range.

4. Pack as much +Damage as you can.

5. Inspirations -- Reds, Purples, Breakfrees.

6. Knockback protection IO.

I don't see why you would want to auto que Domination. It's most effective when you hit certain spawns like bosses and EBs/AVs. You don't want to continually activate it when it comes up because there are always more strategic times to click it.

My understanding is that it does not. From what I gathered the Alpha Slot increases the recharge, for Spiritual, on your enhancements in a power. It does not affect the global recharge in a character.

As a visualization, look at the numbers in your Power management screen and the Powers attribute. The global recharge number doesn't change even when you slot the Alpha. But if you go to the Powers management screen and place your arrow over a power, it shows the "recharge" on a power to increase a certain percentage.

I would say BM's attacks are as designed, meaning she will render even top-level /SR scrappers to mincemeat. With the intro of the alpha slot and the incarnate levels, the new end level content we've been moaning for is starting to come and it's at a whole different level. These encounters are going to be designed to push experienced to the max. Most TFs/SFs in CoH are rather easy, pedestrian even. If you played any high level raids in other MMOs, they are punishing and require massive amounts of coordination between players. We've been used to blitzing through TF encounters. So yeah, your Scrapper isn't going to be able to stand up to BM and will probably go down in 3 strikes unless you got a plan and a team to back you up.

Remember when it took awhile for strategies to take down Rom in the ITF to be discovered? These new TFs are going to be like that from now on, except even harder. I believe the days are gone now where a single scrapper/brute/dom is going to be able to stand toe to toe with an end level encounter on a high level raid.

Down at least four purples. Use the envenomed dagger temp. power which is dirt cheap on the BM. Go to town on all your attacks. If you have any temp pets. Use them too. Really, it works on all my alts even the squishies.

It is still worth it to be upset because we were punished, severely, for their game design mistakes. And it was their mistakes. It boggles the mind that the Devs did not expect that players would try to squeeze out every ounce of maximum performance they can for their characters or play them contrary to the Devs' envisioning.

We paid for a broken game while the Devs got their act together. That wasn't exactly fun.