Adeon Hawkwood

Well, there's nothing to buy unless you decide to get into doing IO builds. You can easily spend over a billion Inf on a top end build if you want to although if you're happy with SOs then yes 28 mil is plenty.

Soft cap means a cap where it is technically possible to go higher but there is no real point in doing so (either due to diminishing returns or because there is simply no benefit to doing so).
Hard cap means the point where the game mechanics will not let you go any higher.

For defense the softcap is 45% since going above that does not impact and NPC's chance of hitting (ignoring the possibility of defense debuffs or to hit buffs). I'm not sure what the defense hard cap is but it's high enough to be functionally irrelevant.

To answer the OP:
1. No, I have a high defense AR/Dev blaster but he isn't softcapped since I don't like the sacrifices required to soft cap a blaster
2. I'll probably try and soft cap but BS/SD Scrapper if I ever get around to finishing him
3. Not really

It's a neat idea and I would love some better market tools but I see two problems. First it's impossible to make it non-reproducable since worse case people will take screenshots and share them. Secondly you end up with a rich get richer situation since better market tools would make it easier to make money through marketeering

Any power that deals either energy or fire damage will light the oil slick. The most amusing one I've seen was on a team with two TA defenders using one Oil Slick to light the second .

How do you sharpen a rifle? *confused*

I agree, the best Inf sinks are the ones that take money from players who have lots already but give very little benefit in return. Yes it will no doubt results in complaints from people that they can't have Cosmetic Item X which is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for their character concept but in terms of the economy it's the best way to destroy wealth.

The problem that CoH runs into is that as a non-item based game it's hard to implement Inf drain rewards that are either highly visible or very useful without breaking game balance. One option is of course costume options, in particular capes since those can frequently be added to an existing costume without impacting the overall costume as much.

What I would really like to see is "vehicles" although I realize that it would be a major hassle for the devs so I doubt we'll see it. However I think that it could be made to work without to many disruptions to either the mechanics or the balance. Essentially the Vehicle would be a new inherent power that you acquire through some means (crafting, inf purchase, random purple recipe drop etc.). When activated it functions like a standard travel power except that your character is shown on the vehicle and you can't use any non-toggle powers (for animation reasons). For speed I'd say make them equivalent to normal travel powers with full enhancement slotting since these will be rare and the no powers thing makes them slightly worse than standard travel powers.

Possible ideas:
Motorbike
Flying carpet
Gyro-copter
Horse (or other large animal)
Winged Horse (or other large winged animal)
Miniature Hot Air Balloon (since otherwise people will realize I just listed all of the types of mounts available in WoW)
A platform with a rocket engine on the bottom that moves in long hops (because Super Jump should be represented on this list somewhere)

When you cancel a bid you have to cancel all bids in the same slot at once so if the bids in the slot total up to more than 2 billion you would lose the excess.

WoW does have faction changes but it's not an ingame function you have to pay real money for it (similarly to a server transfer). WoW seems to have put a lot of effort into it since everything gets switched to what it would have been if you'd rolled that faction from the start. In addition to changing your race everything, your flight paths, mounts, faction reputation etc gets changed to the equivalent for your new faction.

So what? This exists in pretty much every MMO simply because it is good business sense. Different people want different goals to accomplish in an MMO and having different tiers allows MMOs to attract a wider audience than they would otherwise. For some people the acquisition of high end loot that is hard to achieve is a goal, they feel a sense of accomplishment upon attaining and using it. For some of them the fact that it "proves" their superiority over other players is a factor but for the majority the simple fact that it is hard to acquire and is proof of their skill/commitment is all the reward they need (witness the popularity of hard to obtain items of no utility in many games). If the devs increased the drop rate of Purples it would no doubt increase the enjoyment of those players who have no interest in working towards acquiring top end loot (but want it anyway) but other players like them rare since it increases the enjoyment that they get from working to acquire them.

CoH is unusual amongst MMOs in that any activity that provides any rewards can be used to obtain top tier loot, the only variable is how long it will take to do so. There are no Bind on Pickup items so as long as your activities generate Inf (either through combat or marketeer activities) you can acquire the top tier loot.

Yes, certain activities do generate the Inf required faster than others but I really don't see that as a problem (although as others have noted the team drop rate probably could use a boost). There is no way the devs could make it so that all players obtained rewards at the same rate and I think that they are smart enough not to try and simply limit themselves to slapping down any cases where players are breaking the risk/reward ratio (i.e. Comm Officers).

*checks Wikipedia* I'll have to remember that one

I'm pretty much the same. I buy Globals at the lowest level possible (even if it means grinding out the merits for them due to low supply), and regular set IOs at the highest possible. The only ones that I don't care about are procs since the IO level doesn't matter.

Well I guess it's real money for the inf farmers and people who buy from them.

It's the thought that counts .

Ultimately Required?