UberGuy

That's... not correct.

SOs are four times the enhancement benefit of TOs. Getting just one SO accuracy or damage in a power is a pretty major upgrade over the usual effects in a game where the best we can usually do with slotting basic enhancers in powers is 2x or 1.6x the base effectiveness. (A single damage or accuracy SO is 1.333x as much beneft.)

Also, level 8 powers do not have "low values". Our powers generally offer the same base (pre-slotting) relative benefit across our careers*. Level 50 Blasters and Scrappers typically still use the attack power they chose at level 1, and the Scrappers certainly still use the same shields. What happens is we get more powers and more slots for those powers. Certainly at level 8 you won't have many slots to spread around, and perhaps that's what you meant. However, SOs will give you 4x as much bang per each slot you do have.

Given this goal and ignoring whether the goal itself is useful, getting SOs is going to be a pretty huge bump in effectiveness. What can be done with that is another question entirely.

*The major exception is actually damage, which slowly degrades in relative benefit. Even progressing from no slotting to full ED slotting, we end up needing to use any given power about twice as much to defeat a boss at level 50 as we do at level 1.

Hopefully the context of what I said made it clear that I was, in fact, talking specifically about costume pieces and nothing else.

As peterpeter said, what's fugly to one person is someone else's signature costume piece. Every time they change something that's already there they get a flurry of people who hate it. I know - they did it to me once, changing the geometry of the hair I used for one of my favorite characters. After that episode, I always want them to add new stuff, not replace it with "improved" pieces, so I very much understand the (probable) reason some things are left alone.

Whether you should like Jay or not isn't something anyone should debate. I do like his posting style, though I consider it very weird. If you can parse his posts, he's a straight shooter, and I appreciate that, even if I might dislike the message. I can readily accept that others might feel differently.

I have no objection to the Dev's stance that NPC costume pieces be, by and large, unique to the NPC "factions". I can understand players wanting it to be otherwise, and I don't think there would be harm in us having them, but I also don't see any harm in us not having them. Decisions like this are more about feel and concept than something like AT or powerset balance. The devs have to decide something in such cases, and sometimes they are influenced in the decision by things we don't care about and thus choose in ways we (edit: don't) want them to. We can't say our way is better except in the sense that it's what we want, so we obviously like it more.

You feel that the way costumes are handled could be different in a way that would be more like what you want. Whether or not that's better is subjective. Hell, I might even agree with you, but it's still an opinion. Ultimately, the devs' opinions trump ours. All we can do when their opinions don't match is to try to change their opinions. Telling them they suck (not saying you did that) probably isn't going to get real far.

In the very early days of the game, this used to be the case. However, it has not been so for a number of years. I really can't say when it changed exactly, but it was a long time ago. Presently, it's typical for a mission instance to seemingly "despawn" as soon the last person on the team logs out (or, usually, if the mission holder logs out with no one else on the map for a non-TF mission). If you're solo, that means it winks out of existence as soon as you drop.

I have CoH installed on a 10,000 RPM drive and always bypass the updater unless I need to apply patches. I can get back in game so fast it will sometimes tell me I'm already logged in when I select a character. Despite this, I can never get in fast enough to get into a mission I dropped out of solo.

Sometimes missions persist longer than this. Missions sometimes fail to "reset" even if you perform steps that normally cause it, such as using /leaveteam as the last person on the map or exiting and selecting a different active task. Sadly I've never seen this behavior happen usefully, always appearing when someone wants to reset a mission. Of course part of that is due to a happy problem; I've never had problems with crashing or disconnecting a lot.

From the perspective of a soloist, the above is packed with falsehood. There are simply too many things that can mez you to be completely absent a power that, if it hits, will let you be sure they will not hit you with a mez. I generally agree on your assessment that Dark Pit is not a good choice for this because its duration/recharge ratio is so abysmal (much worse than even PG's). Similarly, while any Dark lacking Howling Twilight is terribly remiss, relying on it as a mez when faced with repeated spawns with mezzing foes (Rikti, Malta, Longbow on villains) is impractical because of both it's duration/recharge and its endurance cost.

Absent being able to use these tools in a rapid, spawn-to-spawn fashion, that role falls to Petrifying Gaze. I do concede that PG's hold stats are the worst in the game, but despite that it still fills a crucial need when soloing a DM against mezzing opponents. Neither Fearsome Stare not Siren's Song in your case will prevent a foe from mezzing you, though various -toHit effects will make it less likely. My finding is that "less likely" is not good enough for the pace and difficulty settings I like to play solo at.

I'm not going to claim PG is a great power, but I'm going to claim that it's important for the level of certainty it offers the soloist that any one foe is going to be disabled long enough for you to defeat it. If one's DM build is team-centric, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to skip the power in most cases.

That's not why the synergy is good. It's the combination of the fear cone and Tar Patch followed up by damage cones, one of which roots a spawn in the Tar Patch. IMO, needing to use DN on every spawn slows you down, so being able to skip it and just slather them in -toHit as you defeat them is a speed optimization, both offensively and defensively.

To be honest, though, Dark Miasma is such that I don't bother using DN on most mobs even when I'm not wielding Dark Blast as a blast set and before I'm adding mitigation with IOs. I take the damage on the chin and heal it with TG when I have to, playing my Miasmists like Regen characters who have to hit a foe to heal. I break out DN and my holds when I have to worry about being mezzed by my opponents.

To the OP: Dark Miasma is a strong generalist. That means its useful and survivable in a wide array of circumstances. However, it also means it tends to lack the singular focus that some players seek out for specialized, high-end play goals, such as soloing GMs with no inspirations or temp powers. It's also debuff heavy, which makes it a nice set for soloing with, but sometimes not as effective at protecting teammates from high-order damage the way a buff set might be. I love Dark Miasma, but it also fits my goals and playstyles very well. YMMV.

There are far more examples of things they could give us but haven't than things they have given us. While there are examples of them giving us things, that is not clearly a trend towards them giving us all of them. It seems perfectly reasonable to have hoped this was an exception to the trend, but not reasonable (IMO) to have automatically assumed it was.

How does dissatisfaction with marketing translate into jumping the gun on the notion of whether these were player costume pieces?

Also, forum communications aren't marketing. Marketing is the stuff that shows up on GamePro or in magazines. Stuff on the forums is the devs giving completely non-required communications to their players. Does it behoove the devs to give their existing players tidbits to hold their interest? I sure think it does. But remember, only a minority of the player base actually frequents the forums. "General dissatisfaction" with something they do on the forums that they could completely blow off is another example of a sense of entitlement. The devs in this game communicate with their forum community more than just about any other MMO in history. We're spoiled that they communicate on anything like the level that they do. We can always hope they do more and do what they do however we think would be better, but to be angry with them over it is too much.

It doesn't help that I consider the implication that the broad forum user is experiencing "general dissatisfaction with marketing" an unprovable claim.

Only some people in this thread expressed simple disappointment. Some went so far as to say how uncool they thought Jay was or how unimpressed they were with WW as a result. While those feelings may be true, I think they point to a significantly overblown sense of entitlement about what the devs owe us here on these forums ... and maybe in-game.

I love this game too, and I get very passionate about some topics, usually things related to game balance changes. There are things the devs have done that I disagree with intensely, so don't read into this that I have my lips attached to any posteriors. When those things happen I express my unhappiness, sometimes in no uncertain terms, but I don't go after the devs on a personal level. Some people in this thread did.

If people got their hopes up and then just realized they were mistaken, I'd agree with you. That's not all that's going on here. We've get quite a lot of bitter posts with people saying there's some kind of fault here and complaining that WW (and/or Jay) made a major PR gaffe by actually not saying anything one way or the other. Maybe they should have realized our community would have that reaction, but to me that's like saying they should have realized our community is extra childish.

I'm sorry, but it's the last bit that's preposterous. Being disappointed I can accept. Being disappointed to the extent that you have to declare fault and blame against someone for it makes little sense to me, especially in light of how it would be an exception to how things have worked so far (in terms of players getting NPC costumes).

I can't help but think you're looking at this with rose-colored glasses, because of the simple fact that SR up to level 10 or so is pretty similar to not having a secondary. Frankly, most Scrappers are like this, but it's especially noticeable on SR because (a) low values of statistical mitigation (by definition) fail you more often than not, and (b) because there are so many ranged attacks which debuff defense, and you start out with lower ranged defense due to the order in which the powers unlock.

The main thing the poweset offers these days at such low levels is the scaling resists, but you can't have much of them so early.

I don't really have a problem with any Scrapper before level 10, but that's mostly because it's so easy to kill stuff with the primary, not because the secondary is doing that much.

I think we all knew Werner went to 11.