Abigail Frost

Signed up. I'll bring cheesecake to the next meeting.

Unannounced extended maintenance: Check.

No patch notes: Check.

Server status page displaying last month's information: Check.

Business as usual. Nothing to see here citizen, move along now.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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This has been an problem since at least issue three. Fixes have been promised. Still nada. I think I have the right to call them on it now.

Forgive me for offending you.

An unannounced stability patch with no notice given or explanation until well after the servers were brought offline.

Perhaps protocol for emergency maintenance announcements needs reevaluating?

At the least, if the ingame admin channel announcement tells us to see the forums for infromation, the information should be available at the time of the announcement, not 67 minutes afterwards.

I bid ten inf for the name Smurphy.

What? I'm gonna flip it...

I'd still be here even without the market. Its the friends I have made here and the fun I have writing and roleplaying that keep me here. On the other hand though, I love the market. Getting those big scores, logging in and finding a patient bid on a shiny has rewarded you, the joys of playing a billon influence build scrapper, all thanks to Issue 9.

Long live the market, it is a magnificent means to the end of having toons that do stupidly difficult things with style.

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You learn a lot about the Carnies on Madeleine Casey's arc

Paragon Wiki Article on her missions, yes there are spoilers

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Thanks. So it looks like the answer is yes, a Carnie can be reformed if the psychic link between the Carnie's soul and the head Madame can be severed. There's a magical ritual that would need to be performed; it would be more than just taking off the mask.

Yes, no, maybe so?

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And in addition, there is Praetorian Earth's Carnival of Light. They're freedom fighters against the Praetorians. I used that backstory as a foundation element in my Carnival of Light SG (Triumph...and spread to at least two more servers). I suspect in that case the masks serve as more of a benign psychic (and probably empathic) link. That's how we RP it, anyway. =)

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Of all the people to meet in here... Greetings, Ring Mistress.

The Pinnacle branch of the Carnival of Light has a few members that are reformed Carnival of Shadows. Of course, canon for our SG is hardly as weighty as official canon, but official canon does seem to endorse the idea that it is possible.

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And the person that flips the LotG (Example only for prices) buy buying them at 30mil, and re-listing them all for 100mil has artificially created that price knowing that eventually people will want them enough to pay that much.

Its the sad reality that greed affects MMORPS where the money isn't even real.

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That's just fallacious right there. If a flipper can get it for e.g. 30m, so can anyone else. You don't have to be a market-lover to see that!

Well I tried keep my thread on track. It's too bad this helpful forum has to devolve into petty squabbles on every [censored] thread.

I now understand why all the marketeers voluntarily take on the "ebil" mantle. The choice it to either relish in it or have it thrust upon you regardless by market-haters who confuse the people for the mechanic. If we have to be labeled ebil either way, why not be a dickhead to everyone who comes in here spouting ridiculous [censored]? Being offensive is much more fun than being defensive and it seems that's the only choice marketeers have.

Well [censored] all you luddites. If you're too [censored] stupid and lazy to make money on the market, you deserve to have a terrible play experience. And if you hate this game (and guess what, the market is PART of the game!!!) and yet continue to play, you deserve to be unhappy and bitter. You reap what you sow.

Anyhow, I'm done with this thread and probably the whole market forum for a while. I'm off to go make casual players miserable, steal from the poor, manipulate prices, force the devs to make the game less fun for everyone else, block reasonable changes to the game that would make it better, and club some baby seals. o/

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Another fantastic post.

Have some cheesecake. It has the tears of casual players that can't purple their warshades in a week in it.

::slow applause::

Well spoken, Milady's Knight. Well spoken indeed.

Shinies require effort. Whether that effort is learning to use the market, running AE missions and cashing tickets, taskforces, story arcs, or maybe just going to a hazard zone and shaking drops out of everything in sight. I have stacked zombies like cordwood in Astoria to get my billion influence build scrapper. (all hail Lord Nethergoat) It took effort. Lots of it.

Shinies require effort. It is what it is.

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R-type.

We are getting Plasma torpedos to go with our cloaking devices. Thats a huge buff for /devices.

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If they let us shotgun load Type F Plasma Torpedoes in an R launcher I am so going to send the dev team fresh cheesecakes.

As a long time player of an Ice/Storm controller I'd like to weigh in here with a few thoughts.

Ice/Storm is very dependent on pet damage, especially soloing. Jack Frost and Lightning Storm being the two biggest sources of damage solo. I personally have LS slotted with 6 level 50 Thunderstrikes. This provides decent damage coupled with a slightly increased attack rate. I probably will not notice a lot of difference. Oh, I do not have hasten either.

What disturbs me the most about this change is the way it was presented. I remember the changes to hurricane very vividly. And the changes to multiple instances of a pet summon. And the global yambagging to AoE holds. This has been mishandled the same way.

Would it be possible for us to be given a list of things that are not "working as intended" so we will know what to expect? Is building for perma or near perma Phantom Army the next thing to get nerfed? Or what about perma freezing rain? Is it "working as intended" that I can have Ice Slick out again within a few seconds of it ending?

Are controllers that are built for -control- not supposed to do any damage?

Just level with us. Its amazing how much angst you can head off at the pass with a little candor.

I agree with those calling for the triggered raids to be one hero and one villain zone at minimum. That way there can be no complaints of bias if the random generator picks one faction over the other for a few raids in a row, and it gives each faction a shot at an invasion.

Fairness FTW.

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Don't pull with AOE attacks of any type. That includes Tanker taunts, Provoke, Fireball, Rad debuffs, Fire Rain, Grenades, Ball Lightning, etc.

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Bunk.

Toggle debuffs are some of the greatest pulling tools in the game. I know they do not pull singles, but if you are comfortable fighting an entire spawn that is debuffed to the gills, this works very well.

This technique is most effective with Dark Miasma, but it is quite doable with Radiation Debuffs as well. You just have to drop Enervating Field on them as they cluster. Use Radiation Infection as your opener since it has the -acc debuff attached to it.

Step 1 Select the highest threat target. You want him to be the anchor so he stays debuffed.

Step 2 Announce that the pull is beginning.

Step 3 Activate Darkest Night (or Radiation Infection), IMMEDIATELY break line of sight by ducking around a corner or behind some other obstacle.

Step 4 Drop a Tar Patch at the corner. (Rads skip this step)

Step 5 Wait for the spawn to cluster at the corner.

Step 6 Activate Fearsome Stare, if it is available. (Rads use Enervating Field here, following up with Lingering Radiation is optional.)

Step 7 Slaughter Spawn.

My SGmates in Dark Shadows refer to this as the Yank-N-Gank. Give it a try, it works very well.

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Teamed stalkers crit 40% when teamed with the dominator and 5% when not?

Actually.. 40% when Dominate held, 20% when held, 5% when not teamed. Yeah.. I know.. Stalker nerf.. but I'd team with a Dom knowing I could crit 20% to 40% of the time.. and the Dom would love me knowing I'm hovering close to them and waiting.

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And this paticular Dom would love to team with you, but I doubt you are on Triumph...

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Unresistable anything would be nice for Doms.

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QFT QFE

As the proud owner of 8 doms ranging from 8 to 33 scattered over 4 servers I endorse this statement. Out of all my toons the only one I PvP with anymore is the 33 Ice/Ice Dom. Unresistable anything would indeed be nice for Doms.

Or better yet, how about an unresistable inherent that makes SOMEBODY offer me a team in Sirens... All the stalkers want me to play bait, but none of them will share the bounty...

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The devs made some significant misjudgments early on in the process of adding PvP. I4 brought us the arena and it bombed horribly. It bombed because it was unforgivably broken when it went live and remains unaddressed to this day. With the arena in this state, most of the playerbase gave up on it.

I5 gave us no arena fixes, but brought massive nerfs. (I am including ED in I5 even though they were seperate patches.) Rightly or wrongly the majority of the playerbase blamed these nerfs on PvP. The Devs badly mishandled communication with the playerbase in regard to these changes in the game and the belief that PvP = nerfs remains the majority opinion to this day.

I6 gave us zone PvP. And zone PvP was based on flawed assumptions. The Devs assumed that the zones would be full of players and that combat in them would center around things like the Sirens hotspots. They apparently envisioned 40-50 heroes vs 40-50 villains at a time. Under these circumstances, any decent PvE build would be able to contribute meaningfully to PvP combat. They banked on World War II and they got Vietnam. PvP in the zones centers around guerilla tactics and small unit actions. This magnifies the difference between PvP and PvE optimised builds and placed Stalkers at a significant advantage. Most of the PvE population got their first taste of zone PvP by being oneshotted by a stalker and being unable to defend themselves. It took time to work out tactics and builds to overcome hide+stealth+AS. Unfortunately, by the time this information became widespread the majority of the PvE playerbase had experienced or had heard secondhand accounts of "Unbeatable Untargetable Stalkers" This served to drive much of the playerbase away from PvP. Currently, Stalkers are much more managable, but in the first 2 months of I6, they ruled the zones. Especially versus non PvP builds and those with little or no PvP experience. This stigma lingers to this day as well.

I7 brought a new PvP zone, one in which the myth of the "Unbeatable Stalker" was utterly crushed, but the myth lingers on in the minds of the PvE playerbase.

Because of all of these things, PvP is one of the most if not the most polarising issue in CoX. Two camps have emerged and both camps appear to be unwilling to work with the other. PvP is very unapproachable for those who want to participate now. You must have specialised builds and learn tactics that require a steep curve to master compared to PvE. Anyone can take a good PvP build and be successful in PvE. The converse is demonstrably false. My Dark/Electric defender is poison in PvE but is hopeless even with a team in PvP. There are a handful of builds that are dramatically more effective in PvP than everything else and this serves as a further disincentive to get involved in PvP for the PvE crowd.

Anyway, sorry for the length of this rant. I have PvPed in the past with every toon in my Sig except the warshade. PvP is unenjoyable for me because of the narrow build requirements, the egos and immature attitudes of a significant minority of the PvP playerbase and the feeling that I cannot get an even break unless I follow the herd mentality and min/max a build specifically for PvP.

The Devs slowly let PvP slide into this state and it appears that they are unwilling to fix the errors that have led us to this point.

I hate to see you go Cuppa. But then again it does give me another excuse to check out Tabula Rasa...

Godspeed.

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Well, it's just that since we're promised "hard numbers" for PPPs, you'd think the Holds would be better than usual.

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And where are the numbers wrong? The problem is that no hold in the game is supposed to be unresistible. Breakfrees not working if you are caught in Soul Storm is not working as intended.

And I have no problem with Soul Storm outperforming, say, Ice Corr holds. But no hold should be better than a Dom's hold. Currently with Soul Storm being the only unresistible hold in the game, it is infinitely better than anything else out there for PvP.

You are bitter because your "Ha ha I laugh at your twisting body while setting up AS and talking smack and you cant do anything about it" button is going bye bye.

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Nice assumption, but no, I don't even PvP with my Stalker.

I just thought that we finally have what the devs gave us, something new and different, and then poof, it's gonna be turned into something "normal." There was a difference between me being upset it'll be changed into a normal hold and me being "bitter" because my ""Ha ha I laugh at your twisting body while setting up AS and talking smack and you cant do anything about it."

I was never adverse to the idea of making it weaker than usual becase it was obviously overpowered, I'd just thought it would outperform the normal Holds.

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First of all I was rude and snarky in my previous post and I apologise for that.


Secondly, you said above that you thought it would outperform the normal holds. What is your baseline for a "normal hold"? Ice Blast's freeze ray or Ice Control's Block of Ice?

I am of the opinion that no PPP power should outperform an equivalent power of the AT that the power is optimised for. Dark Obliteration does not outperform a Corr's AoE. Dark Embrace for a Dom provides less resistance than it does for a Brute. Soul Storm should not outperform a Dom's ST hold.

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Well, it's just that since we're promised "hard numbers" for PPPs, you'd think the Holds would be better than usual.

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And where are the numbers wrong? The problem is that no hold in the game is supposed to be unresistible. Breakfrees not working if you are caught in Soul Storm is not working as intended.

And I have no problem with Soul Storm outperforming, say, Ice Corr holds. But no hold should be better than a Dom's hold. Currently with Soul Storm being the only unresistible hold in the game, it is infinitely better than anything else out there for PvP.

You are bitter because your "Ha ha I laugh at your twisting body while setting up AS and talking smack and you cant do anything about it" button is going bye bye.

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But what would surprise me is if it was a bug for Ghost Widow and that we should be able to BF out of hers and they fix it so we can. That'll shock the hell out of me. 'Cause, see, then it wouldn't be har... uhh... I mean fun enough.

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Since the bug is in the animation, not the power, any fix will affect Ghost Widow's power, as well as the patron power version.

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So what are you saying Castle, that the power will become a 'normal' hold that can easily be resisted by anyone?

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Correct.

No PPP hold for any other AT should outperform a Dominator hold. We have enough issues with "We don't need any steenkin Doms" to continue having every other AT outperform us at our job.

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If it helps to date it I know we were using the term back in the early days of Ultima Online about what happened to characters between beta and live. So back before then probably. Most likly from MUDs.

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You are correct. The term "nerf" was in widespread use in the early days of the MUD.

I feel so old now...