macskull

It would make everything more aquireable - that's part of the problem with it. Lots of this game's players have altitis: they'll play something for a while and then go on to something new, oftentimes never touching the old character unless they log it in for badges or something. If they want to IO those characters, they need to invest the time and inf into doing so for each individual character. With your proposal, they wouldn't, and they'd have no real need for the market as a purchasing tool. While the example you quoted might be a bit extreme, I don't think it's that far off base - when people have a few of each of the types of IOs they commonly use, they'll simply shuffle IOs between characters as they see fit (basically, as a particular character becomes their "main"). Would be interesting for those who keep a stable of characters, though. Basically, after a certain point, people would simply stop using the market because they'd already have access to all the IOs they could possibly want.

For a real-life in-game example of this, hop over to the test server and check out the market there: it's pretty much dead and prices are rock-bottom on most things, because people IO characters there by copying loot over from their characters on live. When I PvP'd on test (or was trying out level-bumped characters during closed betas), for example, it was nice to have essentially infinite amounts of enhancements to tweak a build exactly as I pleased. The devs have pretty much come out and said that copying IOs over from live to test is just the way the system works, and they're okay with it for testing purposes (heck, they even go so far as to recommend testing a respec on the test server before actually committing on live).

No, it doesn't. (Sidenote: MA missions containing ambushes that would be considered "challenging" would be something like the Freakshow ambushes in the Longbow maps, which is what I thought our good friend Alt_o_holic was on a holy war against.) Giving dumb AI-controlled NPCs access to player powers makes... dumb AI-controlled NPCs with player powers. That doesn't make them "challenging" in the AI aspect in the least, it makes them "challenging" in the "oh crap that boss just one-shot me with Build Up + Energy Transfer" aspect. There's a reason people tend to steer clear of custom characters - it's because if you want them to give decent rewards, they need to have some pretty crazy powers unless you cherry-pick what sets they use. What people are asking for here is NPCs with a standard power selection that would react intelligently based on a given situation (avoiding debuff patches, heal aggro, throwing mezzes at people running offensive toggles, etc.).

Wait until you know what limitations are going to be imposed on side-switching before you roll a character. Would kinda suck if you, say, lost all your inf or enhancements when switching sides. Me, I don't plan on switching sides except for certain accolades (depending on how all that works) so I'll probably just keep chugging away at what I've got.

I could get behind a "quick respec" system which would allow you to shuffle around powers and slots without having to train up from level 1, but I think one of the reasons we can't have a system like that is because the game doesn't keep track of when you place slots, only when you pick powers.

Currency is incredibly common in this game, yes. It's just that the majority of people who say "I WANT THIS NOW AND DON'T WANT TO PAY THAT MUCH" don't realize how common it is, or how easy it is to make. If everyone did, there'd be no reason to ask for the system the OP is wanting.

I'm going to guess you've never tried to pull every valuable IO off a character. I don't mean just ten, or just a few, I mean every one. I can only take ten at a time off, so I need to respec once, pull out ten, and make sure to keep my build similar enough to how I had it so I can slot all the remaining IOs. Then I do it again, until I have all the stuff off. That's not a "3 minute" process. Meanwhile, I need to shuffle the IOs I'm getting off to alts or base storage bins. Again, that takes time.

Right - inf is yet another time sink. Let's carry your argument out: the only difference between a level 1 and a level 50 is a few million XP. So they're really the same thing, without having to spend lots of time gaining that XP, right? I mean, let's take away the necessity to earn XP, so everyone can have free 50s!

Anyone can afford "to do this now" if they take a few minutes to read and get educated on the way the system works. It's really not that hard. I haven't done any serious marketeering in over a year and a half and I still make a billion inf a week on average so that shoots your "only the marketeers can do this!" theory right in the foot. If people want to toss IOs around all willy-nilly, they can do that right now, it just takes a bit of effort to do.

You actually are on a "down with marketeers" rant. Well, either that or the whole thing is just one big conspiracy theory by a bunch of collaborating marketeers who are sitting around rubbing their hands saying "Yesssss, let's keep all the inf for ourselves, to hell with everyone else." That this very forum exists is direct counterproof to your example - when I13 was coming out, lots of marketeers (myself included) said "Okay, merits would make me rich based on my playstyle, but it's going to hurt the market as a whole and the 'casual player' is going to get the worse end of this." All the "how to make inf" guides are just the marketeers looking for ways to benefit themselves, right? Nevermind the fact that many niches and market strategies are dependent on people remaining ignorant, which makes posting these guides directly in opposition of the marketeers' "interests."

So, again... this idea is nice in theory but it'll never happen because it wouldn't work well in practice. See my bit about "free 50s" for the reasoning behind this - if you take away the stick and just give people the carrot, they're going to complain every time the stick comes back around.

The mez system is the single biggest change in terms of high-end (lol) arena PvP these days because even with TS and HD off it's start-stop-start-stop and there's nothing you can do about it. I don't think the DPA balancing was all bad, it's just the weird things it did that make it suck (I'm looking at you, pool powers, AoEs, and Ice Blast). These days it's largely become a non-issue because people have just stopped using the attack sets that worked well before that don't work as well now (really there aren't many, Ice Blast is the big one here, and maybe the Defender version of Psi) and have respec'd out of the attacks that aren't useful under the new rules.

The mez changes? I'd love to see something done about the mez system because in its current form it's pretty bad if you've got two competitive teams going at each other. In zone it's not too bad (ok, I get tagged by a random hold, and it's worn off by the time I land from my jump arc) unless the other team provides a coordinated follow-up to the mez, but in arena against another organized team it's pretty terrible. The only problem is that many people won't be satisfied until we get a full return to the old system, but there's another group of people that thinks the best solution is somewhere between the new and the old.

Or, you could actually, y'know, read TD's post and realize that the point he's trying to make would be that this change would make the game too easy. Enhancements are locked onto a character with a limit of 10 pulled off in any given respec because it's the system's way of tying equipment to a character without actually locking it in. You can get it off the character, but it's time-consuming and arduous - and it's meant to be that way because getting the inf to IO characters as you like is a time sink in this game. Without time sinks, the population becomes bored and wanders off.

I slot 'em (3 Titanium Coating and a Steadfast -KB) just because I know that every so often I'll get someone on my team that's running a defense shield (Mace Doms/Corrs/MMs, Cold Blasters/Trollers) or a melee who can benefit from the extra resistance (for example, the 40% base resist a squishy gets is DR'd from 40% to about 28%, while the DR hard cap on resistance seems to be around 45% - tossing the Therm shields onto someone running a defense shield will get them up to about 40%).

I was talking about DR on damage, specifically. Things like recharge are constant across ATs, but things like defense, resistance, and tohit have lower DR caps for squishies. I'm simply wondering if damage follows the former or the latter in regards to the DR curve.

Fearsome Stare has a 20% (?) chance to add an extra mag. This is meaningless in PvP, of course, but the roll is still there.

Banes have more HP and the build isn't quite as tight as a Night Widow.