Aett_Thorn

So...wait. You agree that there are far too many options for Defense from set bonuses, but aren't going to change it?

May I ask why? Or at least can you tell us why there are far fewer options for Resistance?

So we should all just be handed level 50s, completely purpled out? Because playing the game takes some amount of work.

Being casual friendly does NOT mean that extremely casual players are going to get all of the things that somebody who puts a little work into it will get.

No, it can't. There have been several graphical updates to the game since it came out. My comp could handle most things fine when I first got it. But since then, Wentworths was horrible, any Arachnos maps were horrible. Grandville I couldn't even move around in when it first came out. Even if those places were empty, I got bad lag. So please don't try to tell me that I didn't experience that. Some computers can't handle a large population.

Okay, going on /hide on a large server does NOT do the same thing as being on a small server, and you know it. I'm not just talking about getting team invites. I'm talking about EVERYTHING that comes with it. The inane broadcast chat that I might not want to deal with. Larger crowds in certain areas. More people standing around chatting in local when I'm trying to train. More people hunting in the same areas I am for the same type of mobs (or even just low-level mobs in general, when starting a new toon). And more. /hide doesn't take care of any of that.

Finding quiet is not what I'm talking about. If I actually wanted to run missions on my old computer on Virtue, I was always the last one there, because of the lag I got just traveling through the zones. On Pinnacle, I never had that problem. So Pinnacle was a better play experience for me. That's what kept me in the game. If I only had the choice of Virtue-like servers, I would have quit, and that would have been less subscriptions. That's bad, right?

Neither is it for you. We're not trying to find 'quiet space.' We like quieter servers. You may not, but it's a personal preference thing. You saying that we need to live with your preference, because you can't live with ours is not a good way to go for this. You will hurt people with older computers by doing a server merge. It's inevitable. But saying that they can just go to Boomtown or Perez to play isn't a solution, when they will need to move out of there eventually, and good luck getting your contacts (you know, part of the game) to only send you to missions in sparse areas. And since you can't start out there, that's a problem in and of itself.

No, the other is not an anomaly. Quit trying to say that your personal preference in a game is somehow better than others.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit into the business model, which is to get as many subscriptions as possible. Offering a VARIETY of experiences is what gets those.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit the genre, where only very rarely do superheroes appear en masse in a comic book. Most of the time they are alone or with a very small team. If you're talking about the MMO genre, then you have to see that CoH broke many molds when it came out, and attracted a lot of people to it BECAUSE it broke those molds.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit all of the advertising. Every video I have seen Cryptic, NCSoft, or Paragon put out features both group and solo aspects to it. Sure, many of the pictures and videos have large group shots, but most of them also feature shots of a single character doing things. So please don't think that only masses of people fit into the advertising scheme here.

[quote]I find it frustrating that you guys honestly think that finding population in an MMO should be anything other than extremely easy. It is an elitist attitude, which isn't necessarily bad, but it is clouding your judgment. This game has been marketed as the casual friendly game experience from day 1. If someone has to work harder than throwing up their lft flag and a few quick BC's then something is wrong with the core of the game design. The second M in MMO indicates that team construction should be well facilitated and effortless add that in with the approach this game has taken and it should be really really really easy.[quote]

Okay, here's where we're having the disconnect. I do NOT need to do any more than broadcast lft or set my flag to "looking for any" to get invited to a team. And that's on Pinnacle! Monday night I got invited to a great team when I wasn't even looking for it. When I do send out a broadcast, I usually get a team pretty quickly. If I set my flag to "looking for any," I can usually get a team by the time I'm done doing whatever I was doing before I set it.

But if you want to be ensured a great team all of the time, why it it against all logic to assume that you might have to put in even a modicum of effort to do so? I've never seen any MMO not feature things like Guilds or SGs. Why do you think that is? It's there so that you can make a modest effort, and have a group of people to play with. Before I was even on a global channel, I had found some very friendly people to play with, and joined their SG, which I'm still part of to this day. I found them through doing NOTHING but playing the game normally. We just kept ending up on the same teams, and eventually they started looking for me.

So please, get off your horse that a team should just be handed to you all of the freakin time for no effort on your part. The casual gamer knows that even a little effort can go a long way, and NOTHING that this game has done has made it hard for the casual gamer to find a team (and they do NOT need to go to any ridiculous lengths to find them).

Also, MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Massively comes from a time when most multiplayer games were limited to a handful of players at a time, maybe 20 total. Massively MOs increased this dramatically. When you can do a search and find 200 people on at the same time, that is pretty massive compared to 20.

Multiplayer, in no way means that it should be easy to find teams. Only that there are other people playing. It does not mean that teaming should be easy, or even allowed. By definition, Multiplayer only means that there are other people in the game with you. By definition, it has no impact on teaming at all. This game could be an MMO even if you were not allowed to talk to other people.

[quote] By definition the second I have to join a non-default communication channel to participate in default activities something is out of line.[quote]

But you DO NOT HAVE TO. It just makes it easier. And if your definition of casual is "never having to do any work," then yes, this is broken. But that's not the definition I think even most casual gamers would use. Asking people that if they want to team EASIER, to take steps to make it so, is NOT out of line.

No, it's not straying. Because, here's the thing: if they found the forums, and are asking a question on how to team better, then giving them an answer that takes all of 5 minutes max to accomplish isn't going to impact their play most of the time. They can be just as casual once they do the simple step as they were before.

45% Defense reduces incoming damage by 90%, not 95%. That's why, with the soft cap in place, against even-level minions, 1% Defense = 2% Resistance.

Reducing it to include the 50% hit rate of the mobs is a bit weird. With 90% Resistance, you are going to take 10% of the damage you would have with 0% Resistance. You are not taking 95% less damage, but 90% less damage. Thus, you have 90% mitigation to the damage you'd otherwise be taking.

I know what you intended it to be, but I'm telling you how it will be used by a great many players. Some sets will be able to get bonuses for no practical cost, while others would suffer a decent cost for only modest gains. There's really no way around that in an MMO this far along.

I have never, ever had my build critiqued for anything short of completely aberrant power choices, like on my Power Pool Guy. Most people, as long as you're playing even decently well, don't care if you have 21.5% or 15% Resistance to something.

For me, when I come up in these situations, I tend to bind one of the powers to the side button (button4) of my mouse, allowing me to click the power without needing to find the right button, or usually change anything I was doing.

I have not really seen anything from the Devs saying that they're looking into it. I still really haven't seen anyone demonstrate AT problems as a whole, except for endurance usage, so take that as you will. But no comment from the devs on Gauntlet that I've seen.

A few things:

1) If I have a lower-end computer, I shouldn't need to only be able to play in the sparser zones, many of which have very little to no actual content.

2) Right now, there exists the possibility to find a sparser or more populated zone based on your personal preference. Merging the servers eliminates that choice.

3) Right now, if you want to move to a more populated sever, you CAN. There is nothing holding anyone back from moving characters or creating new ones on a more populated server. Merging the servers would not allow for people to move to less populated ones, since there wouldn't be any.


Like an above poster said, Paragon Studios wants subscriptions, not just full servers. My personal story is that my old computer couldn't handle servers like Virtue or Freedom. It could handle most of Pinnacle just fine, except for things like Raids or Invasions, which I could usually avoid if I wanted to. But if every server was like Freedom, then I would have quit the game a long time ago, because my computer wouldn't have been able to handle it. I'm sure that there are others in my shoes. How many, I don't know. But having the OPTION for a lower-populated server, with less lag for people with lower-end machines is a good idea, because it means more subscriptions.

Even the more sparse servers are far from "private servers." Maybe that's why you don't get it.

If you think that the new benchmark for a character to be at is running at +4/+8, then I think we've got bigger problems on our hands.

If characters get bumped up to that new level, people are going to be able to increase themselves to make that not much of a challenge. Then, you need additional difficulty levels. Then, you need new ways for characters to be able to handle those difficulty levels, then you need to bump up whatever ATs can't get there, and then you do everything over, and over, and over again.

No, there are other reasons. Neither of which deal with apathy or selfishness. Bumping everything up, or even most things up, leads to power creep. Basically, the bulk of the game becomes too easy, and then needs to be bumped up itself to maintain some sort of challenge. Thus, you've just created a new baseline, but at the expense of all of the work involved to do so. Meanwhile, bumping a few things down to bring them closer to what other sets can do is much, much easier, and takes much less time.

That does not mean that nothing should be bumped up, just that a trend of ONLY bumping things up is a bad idea, as it's a neverending cycle.

I agree. For instance, an Ice/ Tanker can get 90% Resistance to cold just by running his armors, and that's without being able to enhance it. Cold damage from enemies is one of the rarest damage types in the game. Using a system like the OP suggests would allow me to, say, raise my psionic resistance, while cutting my Cold Resistance. It would be a large benefit, with very, very low cost.

Fire Armor and Electric Armor Tankers would be even better off, since they can actually go over 90% to Fire and Energy, respectively.

I'd agree with this, even though I'm not in your neck of the woods. Have you sent exactly that suggestion to Posi, or at least one of the community reps?

To illustrate this point, we didn't actually know how Threat worked in this game until about 2 years ago, when Castle and Ghost Widow went digging through the code, and found out that it wasn't how we thought it was.