UberGuy

It's that bolded part that I was specifically referring to about being so very wrong about, and I stand by my claim. It's wrong to state that a playstyle choice is the only way to play. He didn't just claim it was the best way to play. He made an extremely strong implication that to play any other way was specifically wrong.

BaBs tried. He thought he had it working, and discovered that it horribly broke something with Shield Defense. We don't know what it was. For the time being, it seems to be a limitation of the power animation system.

The only way they could make it work with the current system just isn't practical. Every possible power that could force redraw would need a version of its animation with every weapon it might force redraw with, times three body types. It'd eat too much animator time, and every new weapon powerset or redraw-causing power would make it worse.

Actually, that's not true, even if I can only think of one example. It's very common for anyone who's not a Stone Armor character to pop oranges in order to survive Lord Recluse in the STF. You can pop enough purples to get above his toHit bonus from the Red (?) tower, but he still has a pretty meaningful hit chance even if floored. While damage buffed, he hits damn hard.

It's also helpful to pop oranges for the Freedom Phalanx at the end of the RSF.

Nope.

Imagine the Bonesmasher or Air Superiority animation, with your hands covered in stone, with a visible, spherical shockwave blasting out of the point of impact, and a deep thunderous boom as its sound effect. If you have particle physics enabled, it also releases a scatter of small stones (as all Stone Melee attacks do).

It does not use a mallet.

Ah, yeah, I was mixing it up with the booster power. Getting a travel power at level 6 is nice, but with the ability to get temp travel powers at level 1 (if you really want them), it's not that great in terms of unlocking travel. If anything, it's better for dropping a power from a tight build. Then again, I find most of the travel pools' gateway powers terribly useful, so I'd never drop them anyway.

Do you actually have City Traveler? Because the power it grants is not very useful. I maybe use it once a day I play. It has a two hour recharge time that's not affected by global recharge buffs (and obviously can't be slotted). Trust me, it doesn't do much for you.

You have to respec to get them if you have Fitness already
They are enhanceable and you can add slots to them (just like now)
They work in Kheldian forms (this is a buff)
They remain auto powers
Clarified overview description
I19 Overview Page (which has been updated to reflect Castle's clarifications)

The only thing I can't find is an explicit statement that they have the same buff percentages as the ones now on live. Not that I think they would have said all that they have said so far without mentioning an explicit downgrade in the powers, but I thought I'd seen that posted and wanted to include it to squash as much of that particular kind of pessimism as I could.

Well, if you could have done that before in, say, 1 or 1.5 months, do you consider being able to have done it in 3 an improvement?

I don't believe stealth powers are relevant in the usual sense in the example given. Stealth keeps mobs from knowing you're there. Once anyone on your team aggros the mobs, I believe they know you are there, irrespective of any stealth. If you are off around a corner somewhere or even just in the "back" of your group relative to the spawn, they may choose to ignore you regardless of this fact, but I believe that your stealth is no longer actually making the mobs unaware of you. At that point I think whether they attack you is all down to their hate calculations.

It may be that your stealth effectively causes the mobs either consider you as further away than you actually are or to have a lower threat rating, either of which may affect whether or not they attack you once they know about you. However, they definitely sometimes choose to attack you, and I agree with FourSpeed's example that being closest to the mobs seems to make it more likely. I have definitely been up in the front of the group, relying on Hide to get in position, and as soon as someone in my team opened up on the spawn a mob turned and swung or shot at me.

E_A, Castle posted on the open forums that the powers would unlock at level 2 and they they would have the exact values they have as a non-inherent pool now on live.

There is no "illegal" involved.

I really appreciate your work (and that of all the guys on the Mids Builder team), but I have to say, you seem a bit overly excitable.

Based on timing of the change, I feel it's pretty likely that the devs felt it was worth doing because of the impending merger of AT access across sides. They wanted to give Defenders more damage to make them a more competitive choice for solo play when someone could choose to create a Corruptor instead.

This might suggest that Corruptor-level damage was "right" and Defender levels were "wrong". Or it might instead suggest that Corruptor damage levels were set to something sufficiently different (to keep the AT from being a Defender "clone") without a view towards ever being in direct choice competition with Defender levels.

I believe your past position about Defender damage was not that it was too weak in relation to other ATs, but in relation to its own absolute performance. How fast did it defeat stuff? How fast could a solo Defender level? Was it fun? But it's not clear that the answer to those kinds of questions are why it was increased.

So yes, you may have been right in the sense that something you wanted done was done, but it's not clear that you were right in the sense that it was done for the reasons you thought it needed to be. It seems more likely to me that it was a happy coincidence.

I think that sort of thing applies to some of your other improvement suggestions as well. I'm not sure why you were reviled for suggesting improvements to Invincibility, as I think it was a weak set for quite a long time. Then again, I don't know what your suggestions were.

Care to explain how that would have worked?

If they hadn't allowed currency transfer between characters on opposite sides, how would using the market allow a hero buying something from villains done anything but move infamy between different villains?

How do you explain a "healthy supply" returning to the market at this time? ToT is still here until server maintenance tomorrow. (They say midnight, but events seem to almost always last until maintenance.) Where did this supply come from?

Why is that relevant? Because there's something that happens in this market because we're playing with play money and a lot of people don't give a damn not only whether they spend a lot, but also about how much they get. The last 5 history has a tendency to be "sticky". A lot of people tend to post stuff for sale at a price based on the last 5.

If the last 5 history is at a price point that's below "what the market will bear", it will sometimes stay there until something causes it to "unstick", in which case it will often find a higher price. The unsticking can be caused by an "attack" on supply, someone intentionally "painting" the price, or just someone impatient enough to over pay multiple times in a row.

I suspect that Alchemical Silver was underpriced based on its supply during the Halloween event. The intentional supply hoovering drove up its price to a point radically over what the market will "bear" - as evidenced by what happened to outstanding bids. Most people weren't going to pay those prices so they put out lower bids and waited. But what they were willing to pay was still higher than the original price. When the hoovering ended, the price point stayed high, because people were now acclimated to the higher "last 5" and still willing to pay more to ensure they got their supply.

Part of where you and I disagree is that I don't object to that, and I don't consider it a "disruption". Do I have to pay more for it? Sure. Am I nuts about that? No. Do I expect the price to decline as ToT activities cease tomorrow? Yes, assuming nothing else changes. If they drop I19 next week, prices may stay high, because a lot of people may devote time to playing level 50s to unlock and play Incarnate content. That will sustain the supply drought for low- and mid-level salvage.

Who knows, maybe someone was trying to manipulate it that whole time. It does happen. It's just not usually that profitable compared to a lot of less labor-intensive alternatives, so it's not that common any more. (People used to do it a lot more in the early days of the market. Then patterns emerged for higher-margin tactics, and a lot of people's notion of a big profit got a lot loftier.)

I think there's a problem of scale here. I scoff at the notion that either the Alchemical Silver or Ancient Bone examples are significant. They might be noticeable. I'll concede that the Circuit Board example is a lot more notable, but only if it was only possible to get CBs for around 200k, and not just that someone was regularly (re)selling them that high.

This is a fairly standard pattern in MMOs over the course of their lifetime. Generally the game is made easier, and things are done to make leveling faster/easier/more convenient

Part of it might be trying to draw in and/or retain players. Part of it may be looking to remain relevant in light of new games with lower perceived "grind", or old competitors making the same kinds of changes. Part of it is probably evolution in dev team collective mentality about appropriate leveling speed. (Our original devs had pretty strong opinions about their "vision" of how we should be playing, but even they relaxed some things before moving on.)

Heck, with a new "end game" coming on line, maybe the devs really want it to be easier to get to 50. That may be a big stretch, and it's a theory that's probably likely to get a big negative response here, but I think it's at least possible.