UberGuy

I think the thing is that the Tsoo and CoT robes outfits fall under Jay's definition of not looking very good.

The way they animate, for example, a straight leg kick, it's as if they are wearing giant rubber dresses that miraculously stretch to like 3x their original size... yet somehow do not tighten against the leg. I do think it looks pretty darn goofy.

Now I can get folks being willing to accept that to get longer dresses. But I can also sort of get Jay not wanting to do that.

Nooo! I like the unenhancable heals. You know why? Because it's not debuffable!

"What's that, mister Healing Mitochondria? You just hit me with a -heal debuff? Hah! (Oh, crap, a blue mito just terrorized me.)"

Oh, no, it's much worse than that. They have massive -toHit, too. Putting you on an Earthquake while standing in a Dispersion Bubble is just plain mean at those levels.

So, let me get this straight. You're not OK with people having to spend time obtaining gear by playing the game, but you're OK with players spending real world money for the advantage of skill unlocks? That's you're idea of a level playing field? Heh.

You'll likely disagree with me, but I very much discount the like 4 billion little free web MMOs. I should have attached the word "mainstream" to "every MMO". I'm talking about MMOs where there was a retail box, which have hung around for something like 3+ years, and which most gamers have at least heard of. Of those, GW is the closest to the ideal you seem to seek. It's also the only one I know of for which PvE can be said to not be the primary focus of the designers. GW feels like a PvP game with PvE attached.

I think you really just don't get the mentality of people on these forums. People frequently state build advice for achieving absolutely maximal performance, even if it's just a bit better than the next thing down. They paint total blue sky, explain why it's worth having. Then they expect people to pick and choose what they actually want and can afford. An extra 20% global recharge or 10% range or a missing proc in some attack aren't insignificant, but they also probably aren't the difference in a win or loss except in already close contests. (That holds true in PvE, too.)

You're seem to be saying that if you don't follow the blue-sky advice, you'll suck. That's preposterous. It's not like there is this binary state transition between "helpless" and "godly" that you won't trigger without doing everything people suggest.

I mean what I'm about to say very earnestly. You think that only because you truly, honestly are not grasping the mentalities behind the actions. You see people doing things, imagine everyone else doing them for only the reasons that you would do them (which are apparently negative), and prejudge everyone based on that.

There's just one problem: Your interpretations are wrong... but it's pretty clear no one is going to convince you of that.

PvP in every MMO that's existed disagrees with your conclusion. Of course, part of that is your wild overstatement of the challenges created by the loot, but I think we get that you aren't actually very familiar with how it all works.

PvP in CoH was never widely popular. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I think one of them is because it was added late, and some of the people who came here before it was added actually came here seeking to avoid PvP (in any flavor). That got ingrained into part of our core culture, and lives on even in new players.

PvP here wasn't very popular even before loot entered into the equation. When loot did enter into the equation, PvP participation didn't change much. It might have even picked up. In any case, it not dropping off really doesn't support your assertions about people avoiding this supposed barrier to entry like the plague. Participation didn't die off significantly until I13, when about 400 knobs on it were turned wildly by the devs all at once.

Given all that, concluding that people don't PvP specifically because they (or at least you) think they're going to be punching bags is quite the leap. Is it in there? Sure, of course it is. Some people won't ever go for something where they think they'll be a punching bag. Just like some people won't believe they could ever afford purples, or LotGs, or name-some-rare-thing-here; or how some people can't imagine ever hitting 50. There are people, I'm sorry to say, who give up before they even find out how hard something is.

Just because you don't get something doesn't make it broken, wrong, or even disliked by a majority of other players. Especially when you dislike it without fully understanding it.

Have a good night!

Talk about projecting. There's no bewilderment, except perhaps at your posts. We understand "fair" just fine. Fair isn't "everyone gets the same thing just by virtue of signing on". That's fair in non-persistent settings. This is a persistent one. By extension of your logic, we should all get 50s for logging on the very first time, along with every badge, every accolade, and enhancements and temp powers should be in buckets at the door to every zone. Do you know what that's called? That's called "hi, there's nothing to achieve here." It's also called "gee, I wonder where all our subscribers went?"

When you accept that there's no barrier to achieving any of this except time, maybe you'll be able to discuss this topic rationally. Right now, you're posting distinctly irrationally. Persistent MMOs are about time sinks. If you don't like that, you're truly playing the wrong type of game. You're also preaching to the converted of another faith. If we weren't OK with climbing time sink ladders, we wouldn't all still be here. Given that you clearly aren't OK with that, I honestly don't understand why you are here, raging against the machine this way.

People might argue about how steep the ladders should be, but only a few people complain about their very existence, and they're usually roundly mocked by the regulars. And I don't just mean in this forum.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. It was like a million purpled warshades, crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced.

What I've been doing is generally leveling with Acro (I already had it on old builds) or two KB IOs when I can get them, and then respeccing at 50 so I have both, usually with Acro taken at 49. Not everyone will need to do this, but what this gives me is endurance free KB protection that covers most of the game, and the option to spend endurance to get quite a lot more for end-game activity that exposes me to heavy-duty KB, like Hamidon or Rikti raids. In going this route with a respec build, it might make sense to put Acro somewhere earlier if you plan on running exemplar content that you know will expose you to a lot of KB, like KH TFs. Alternatively, you could go buy the base buff for that, unless you plan to make a carreer out of it.

IO sets, big-time. +Defense, +Recharge, +Recovery/endurance, +HP... I don't know what's in Silverado's build, but all those are staples of doing this sort of thing on any build capable of it. You have to avoid most of the damage, be able to soak it up well when it does land, and lay basically non-stop smackdown on your foes. You just can't achieve that combination of things on most ATs without IOs.

ED-slotted with heals, it's as good as the "big hitter" -regen powers that people ask for Defenders, Controllers and Corruptors on to get access to.

Also: whoops on the epic pool. I took a quick look and thought the color was a paler blue than Force appears on my monitor.

Hm, did you click on them? They're links to bigger pictures.

(The character is a Fire/MentalManip/Cold based on the larger images.)

In major league baseball or any major professional sport, revenue streams work nothing like how they do for players in this game (or any game I know of). They make money based on ticket sales, game viewership and advertising/marketing deals. Here, we make money by ... playing the game. The revenue sharing I spoke of is that if player A has the cash to buy a purple or whatever from player B, then player B now has most of the money they need to buy a purple, or probably a whole bunch of other stuff.

I mean, seriously, I know I probably overuse analogies myself, but some of these you're making are really tenuous.

PvPOs are only orders of magnitude better in sale price, not performance, and they aren't easy to get many of without farming a 2nd account. (Also, only a select few sell for that much - most of them are comparable to purple prices.) Maybe people don't go into PvP to get them for those massive sales because they find other ways of making money sufficient for their needs and/or they don't go in for farming an alt (or don't have a 2nd account to do it with). I know I do.

If you're a badge hunter in a PvP zone then yes. I agree. If you don't want that to happen, you shouldn't shop at the store on the 30-yard line. If you really want to buy the stuff you can only get at that store, then ask the owner to move the store off the field or learn to bob and weave like a pro.

Indeed. Did you know we have a revenue sharing system here? It's called... the market!

And in CoH, a non-purple IO only ever gives you a max of 42.8% enhancement to damage, endurance or recharge. (A purple always gives a max of 53%.)

There is no dealer here outside the RNG. There is no credit, there is only what people have earned through play. (Unless they payed an RMT site for in-game cash, which is pretty dumb IMO.)

No, it's not. It might be, but there a ton of other factors involved, like whether PvP here is enjoyable, whether there are enough people playing, or what the prevailing views on the very nature of PvP are among the larger player base. The counter evidence to your statement is that more people were playing PvP before I13's changes.

No, it's an unreasonable sense of entitlement for someone to declare that they don't want to do what others did to reach their levels of performance, even when they can. The system is fair in the sense that everyone has the same access, and what's fun is always subjective.

Edit: I think we've been dancing around the same points for long enough that we're not making any headway. I think having loot be part of an MMO's PvP is fine, so long as everyone has equal potential to obtain them. With that said, I'll bow out of this debate.

You keep making those kinds of gear analogies, and they don't apply any more than the 1st time you made them. If the grandmaster can get an extra rook, so can you. Even if achieving the title of "grandmaster" is a requisite to gaining the extra rook, the existing grandmaster can't keep you from attaining grandmaster on your own, and when you get there, you get a rook too.

Let me ask you something. How do people get better skill? How does one get to be a grandmaster? Do you think they pop out of their mother's womb ready to take on the world? Of course not; we all know they get that skill through time, effort and perseverance. Sure, some people have natural advantages through quirks of genetics or whatnot, but even they only get to the top tiers through effort or at least through playing many, many games, sometimes against better players.

Why is gaining skill through effort and perseverance OK, but gaining equipment not OK? Why is it not OK in an environment where everyone can do it, and gear is part of the larger progress game, along with levels, slots, power picks, etc? You keep throwing out these outrageous analogies with things where none of that applies. No one ever sees "L50 Linebacker LFT".

Ed from Maui probably wouldn't end up in an NFL game against the Patriots. Now, he might have the luck to end up in a shirts game where a bunch of them play. Hopefully, the Patriots would have the sportsmanship to not all play on the same side in that game. Ed might get the chance to ask some of them how they got where they are, and if he really liked the thrill of playing with guys of their caliber, it might inspire him to really apply himself to playing football well.

Edit: Here's the thing. You keep drawing analogies with stateless, non-persistent games, like chess, football. In theory, you start every contest with a level playing field. (In reality, pro sports teams with better income from ticket sales and TV earnings do sometimes have advantages in terms of gear, better stadiums, better staff, and even better players. NY Yankees, anyone?) Persistent MMOs have different rules. They're about building up characters from scratch, and retaining that advancement from day to day.

You know that set of rules examples I gave earlier? I actually made an error in them. Everyone is set to the same level in zones, but they may not have the same number of powers or slots, because all the zones let you in at a level beneath where they set everyone, and the new exemplar rules expand the upper band even higher. You can get into Siren's at level 20 but a level 50 in zone will have powers as if they are level 35, and will have more slots in their powers. If you want to actually compete with them on level ground, you need to get your butt to at least level 30, and probably level 50. Gear is no different. It's an additional dimension of progress layered on top of the leveling system.

Except that's ridiculous. It's nothing like that. This is that "side" you're taking that I was referring to before. You seem to be saying that because other people got to the "top" already, they can prevent everyone else from getting there. That's patently false. Everyone else is completely enabled to do the same things that those people used to get to the "top" in terms of gear or familiarity.

Welcome to every game in existence. Should someone who's only played chess a few times expect to win against a grand master? Even in FPS games where there is zero equipment advantage, additional advantages exist for people who have skill and familiarity advantages with a game.

For years before I came to CoH I was a member of teams that were formed to play FPS games in organized competition. We played a lot. We held practices multiple times a week. We worked on strategies for how to play on different maps, on tactical skills so that we could try to be better fighters one-on-one and in small teams. We assigned roles, studied map terrain, and played with internet voice communications. We recorded demos of our matches, and reviewed them to see what we could learn from both our play and the other team's. We used what client side modding was allowed without going so far as to hack the game. Most of us had good gaming rigs and low pings - you had to have them to be competitive.

Players like us murdered new players if we seriously went head to head with them, such as in pub matches. Most of us went all out even in such pubs, but we also usually held to an honor system with respect to spanking the other side - if we blasted them so badly that people would leave the other team, we would switch sides to help the guys who were losing. (As an extension of that, we tried not to gang up together on the same team.) We tried to show people who asked for help what we felt were good basic strategies and tactics. We tried to foster a good community in human terms, but also a highly competitive one. We strove to be tops in that competitive community, and in one case succeeded.

Player vs. player gaming is, by definition, competitive by virtue of the "versus" in the middle. Some people will take it more seriously than others. Those people expect to have an advantage from that effort, however it manifests in that game environment. MMOs are about progress - you have to spend time to gain "power", be that in levels, skill points, gear, or whatever your MMO of choice provides. People naturally expect more progress to mean better advantage. If there's no progress, then there's no reason to play an MMO.

Having a PvP game where investment in playing equates to progress is what attracts what people think of as "hard-core" players. It's having a core of such players that usually helps head-to-head games succeed - they're usually the people who form the leagues and ladders and the general sense of the game's community. That was one of the biggest failures in CoH's PvP 2.0: its handling gutted the core of CoH's PvP community as people left in disgust over some combination of the game changes, the seeming lack of attention to their feedback, and Lighthouse's poorly timed and worded post about who the changes were "for".

So does this one. It has attribute caps. It has slotting rules, like the "Rule of Five". Everyone has to be the same level, and everyone at the same level has the same number of powers and slots. (OK, except Khelds on the powers...) You aren't allowed to hack the client. You aren't allowed, in general, to bar anyone else from progressing in the overall game (and doing so is probably a violation of the EULA). You aren't supposed to pay real life money to buy gear.

You may dislike those rules, and think they are too broad, but the rules do exist and apply to everyone.

Edit: And Werner, I thought your edit there was spot on. PvP is not a mini-game. It's something we can do in the context of the larger game.