Samuel_Tow

The paradigm here is that I'm pretty sure even those who HATE Rikti raids wouldn't object to them being improved. What's better for the game is better for the game. What I and others are objecting to is being FORCED into doing something we don't like based on what somebody else believes we should want to do, despite us not wanting to do it. And so we rail against the idea.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - give me an out of the event, ensure its outcome doesn't affect me, keep your hands off my gaming experience, and I'll endorse any change you propose. Anything better than "Why not?" usually gets an approval of me, because... Well, why not? But as soon as you start trying to tell me what I should be doing and how I'll have "incentive" to do it because otherwise I will be punished, then I'm already seeing plenty of reasons why not.

Rikti raids suck. If they were more interesting, maybe I'd participate in them more. Then again, maybe I wouldn't, and I don't want to bet my gaming experience on the offhand chance that I would.

P.S. This is a quick reply.

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Any AI effecting powers (as you mentioned Burn, or Caltrops, etc) give the pets fits. AoEs in general are especially nasty against them (more-so in bodyguard since they're taking normal aoe damage and some from you being hit) as are controls (lower tier minions are controlled for longer periods of time due to the purple patch, for example). Minion AI can cause them to do stupid things (ranged pets running into melee, melee pets spamming ranged attacks, chasing runners into mobs, etc).

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The big thing is that Masterminds don't survive on just their pets. It's true, and I've said it many times - for the most part, a Mastermind can forget he has a secondary and not slow down much for the most part. But while a Mastermind can work entirely on just his primary, the secondary does help a LOT. In my case, 15% defence against everything from Forcefield Generator on top of double stacked 12.6% to-hit debuff from Seeker Drones, on top of 20% damage resistance debuff and 20% defence debuff from Acid Mortar makes a LOT of difference. It's usually the difference between an elite boss spam-wiping my henchmen and one-shotting me and an elite boss struggling to take down more than a couple of henchmen at a time and failing, for the most part.

Masterminds are more than just pets. They have a LOT of support which, though not as powerful as support-centric ATs, is still a significant strength on their side. Though the henchmen, both individually and together, may be weak and fragile, with enough support they CAN survive and deal some impressive damage. Imagine taking, say, a Dark/Dark Tanker and giving him access to Dark Miasma. It's not quite THAT bad, but that's pretty much how I see Masterminds, and how I see them play. They may not be the fastest out there, but they have... Well, EVERYTHING. Range, damage, defence, support, control... What else is there?

As for bodyguard and focusing fire, it's true that can be problematic, but it's also true that a Mastermind can go a long time without actually GETTING aggro, himself. The henchmen don't have any means to control aggro themselves, that is true, but they still have a higher threat rating than the Mastermind himself, and if sent into the thick of the action first, can do a pretty decent job of tanking for the Mastermind and, by extension, for the rest of the team. Direct Mastermind attacks have the tendency to incur aggro, but pure controls tend to do that a lot less so, especially with a secondary that's more buff-centric and less debuff-reliant, like Traps or Forcefields.

I don't pretend to be an expert on Masterminds, bit I'm a sworn Scrapper at heart, and if even I can admit Masterminds are as close to tank-mages as we're going to get, trust me that this counts for something.

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Sure they're durable, but not when they're trying to max their offense..no bodyguard. The longer a fight goes, the more likely a MM is going to lose henches, leading to a decrease in both offense and defense. Sure, they can get close to awesome survivability, and yeah, they can lay out serious hurt, but generally speaking not at the same time, and not for very long.

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I've seen this mentioned a few times, and it doesn't reflect my play experience at all. The fact of the matter is that the only thing a Mastermind really loses for going into bodyguard is basic convenience. He doesn't get who should die first, but with the amount of support, control and survivability an even halfway decent Mastermind has at his disposal, that rarely matters. About the only things of any meaningful threat these days are Longbow Flamethrowers and, to an extent, Malta Titans, with Scrapyarder Demolitionists serving that role in the 20s. And even then, they're not dangerous because they can kill you, they're dangerous because the AI goes bonkers from Burn patches. I'd sooner my henchmen held their ground and burned than run around like idiots.

Specifically, against a title battle against an elite boss or an AV, the difference between Bodyguard and not Bodyguard is practically moot. There's only one enemy to shoot at, and the henchmen will shoot at him regardless of given orders. Short of ordering them to move away or hold fire, they're gonna' shoot at the one enemy anyway. People talk about this as though a Mastermind in Bodyguard suffers a damage debuff or something, when the fact is that outgoing damage doesn't change while combat is going. It's simply harder to direct, but in my experience, the situation where Bodyguard is actually merited don't really have all that much use for directing your fire.

And then there's the fact that, as the fight goes on, you start to lose henchmen. Yes, that is true, but that's what support is for. A lot of Mastermind secondaries have heals and the ones that don't have lots of buffs and debuffs. A lot of Mastermind primaries have heals - Mercs have the Medic, Bots have the Protector Bots and Repair and Necromancy has a self-heal on every henchman. Even failing that, henchmen can be resummoned, and the longer a fight goes on, the higher the likelyhood is that your summons will recharge. Yes, it costs a lot of endurance to resummon and reupgrade, but that's what blue inspirations are for. I've fought battles where I went through three full sets of henchmen and I think a couple of extra sets of Soldiers on the side, a full tray of blues, but I still won and killed stuff I should have had no business even looking at.

A typical setup for my currently 49 Mastermind, when the situation calls for it, is Bodyguard with henchmen protected by a Forcefield Generator, enemies debuffed by a pair of Seeker Drones, compounding the forcefield's defence, debuffed by an Acid Mortar, making them easier to kill, and wallowing in a cloud of poison gas, killing their regeneration and stacking holds with the Spec Ops while my own henchmen are getting healed by a Triage Beacon, a Medic and myself with Aid Other. About the only problem is certain EBs with massive, massive AoEs, but even single-target heavy-hitters like Valkyrie aren't THAT big of a threat when they're well and truly debuffed.

I honestly don't see what Masterminds give up for all this, short of the need for some finer micro-management, and even that isn't really as bad or as vital as it seems. Heck, some people just run around in Bodyguard and play like Tankers.

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The point is that a hero who is incredibly tough and practically immortal, but also largely harmless, is not cool, not threatening and not interesting.

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Tell that to the people that keep making stories with Vandal Savage.

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Vandal Savage is anything but "harmless".

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Of course, but that has nothing to do with his POWERS, well not exactly.

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I was specifically speaking about characters in a combat situation, and like Lex Luthor, Vandal Savage is not "tank." The plots a character weaves, his personality and vision and so on and so forth are things that aren't really very easy to depict, or indeed even relevant, when it comes to discussing combat mechanics and how they reflect the different themes of combat.

Take an in-game example - the Nemesis. He's written as forward-thinking criminal Mastermind who has infiltrated probably all there is to infiltrate, possesses unmatched technological resources and has plans going back 50 years. In actual practice, when you face him as an AV or EB, he isn't actually all that hard to beat, because his power isn't found in having monstrous strength and being unstoppable. So in terms of concept, he's one of the biggest bads, but in terms of combat mechanics, he's one of the easier ones, largely because he's noting more than an AV-tagged boss.

If we're talking realisation of combat themes into combat mechanics, a target that cannot be killed but barely fights back is pretty much a piece of the scenery.

Keep in mind that, with the upcoming power customization, it may be at least POSSIBLE for current Mastermind attacks to be given new animations, new effects, new weapons, or even all of the above. Rather than mess with power balance and give Castle a headache, we could instead wait and see if we can't give BABs a migraine.

Johnny actually has a point, though his mannerisms tend to obscure that. The point is that a hero who is incredibly tough and practically immortal, but also largely harmless, is not cool, not threatening and not interesting. He is an object. I'm reminded of a hero from... Somewhere, I don't remember, whose entire super power was that he was immortal and could regenerate any injury. He literally could not be killed. But aside from that, he had no actual offensive super powers. Any two-bit thug could just walk up to him and beat him up like a little girl, he just couldn't be killed.

"Tanks" in fiction are not intimidating because they're hard to kill. A steel safe is hard to kill, yet people aren't terribly intimidated by those. No, tanks in fiction are intimidating because they are dangerous AND cannot be stopped. They pose a danger that cannot be averted - the tank will keep on coming and keep on coming, though anything you throw at him, until the danger he poses turns into your own personal reality. A hero who is unstoppable... And pretty much just that is lame. For a hero's unstoppability to actually matter, there has to be a reason why stopping that hero is important and, by extension, why the impossibility of stopping this hero is intimidating and... Well, cool!

In this game, and indeed in many other MMOs, a Tanker is, at best, an annoyance. Yeah, he's big, fat and hard to kill, but he can't actually DO all that much. Artificial Taunt mechanics aside, what does a villain stand to lose by simply ignoring the Tanker and ripping his team a new one while the Tanker puffs his cheeks and swings his fists? Not a whole lot, let me tell you. Not compared to what a Blaster or a Defender can do if left to live for too long.

Interestingly, the Thing was mentioned already, and described as someone who's very tough but not monstrously strong. Which is interesting, since the Thing, in all occurrences that I have seen him, is proclaimed to be the strongest man in the world, and that's in a universe that has wet dreams about the Incredible Hulk. "World's strongest man" really ought to mean something there, and while I don't know about the comics, what I've seen of him in both the Fox cartoons and the recent Cartoon Network cartoons is a lot more of him punching things really, really hard, throwing really, really heavy things around and breaking really, really big things apart. If there were any instances where he stood between the Fantastic Four and a ray gun or a Hulk punch, I've missed it. The way he protects his friends is by ensuring that HE is the one engaged in hand-to-hand combat and anyone who's not fighting him but instead aiming for his friends is in trouble. He doesn't do that by being hit a lot. In fact, whenever he is, he's usually thrown across the room. No, he does that by kicking serious amounts of [censored].

Which brings us all the way back to the tank-mage, that "perfect character," that night terror of all men, women and children. Surely a character who can do everything would ruin the game and make it so no-one ever plays anything else. Except... Masterminds can do pretty much everything. They have SIGNIFICANT survivability, easily on par with a lot of melee ATs. They have serious damage output. Not the greatest, admittedly, but pretty damn good for how hard they are to kill. They have support. Maybe not the best support there is, maybe not the second best, but still PLENTY. So does that mean that the whole game can be played with one Mastermind to tank them all, one Mastermid to heal them, one Mastermind to bring them all together, and in darkness kill them? Well... Yes! Strange, then, that everyone isn't playing Masterminds all the time. Oh, but they're weird, they can be hard to use, they have all these pets, they need a lot of micromanagement, they don't do enough by themselves. There are plenty of factors that make Masterminds just plain weird, and a lot of people don't want to hide behind henchmen. But then if we have an AT that's pretty much as close to a tank-mage we're ever going to see and people are STILL playing other characters, shouldn't that mean that it's possible to have a "perfect" character such that people will still play other things?

Personally, I feel the notion of a Tanker as it is executed here is flawed in its inception. The very idea of aggro control and management is a kludge designed to justify creating all ATs with one arm missing and avoid having to make each of them a threat on its own. The simple fact that "threat level" is an abstract variable entered by hand based on how threatening a character is supposed to be, rather than a result of actions demonstrating how threatening a character actually IS, is clear evidence to that. This whole thing is a kludge to make Tankers APPEAR threatening without actually BEING threatening. And though it may fool the AI, players aren't as easily convinced by intent when they can see the reality of the game.

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Have you tried purging your codecs and reinstalling the latest ones? Over here, I use the CCCP, and it hasn't failed me yet.

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Probably a good idea, though i don't actually know how to purge and reinstall codecs.
What's the best method?
Wasn't CCCP the cyrillic initials for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

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Back to font, yes, these letters, if taken as Cyrillic, do stand for USSR. That's why the people developing the codec pack have a red theme on their site In this case, though, it stands for Combine Community Codec Pack.

As for how to purge it, that would depend on which version of Windows you are running. Under XP, that would be Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs, then look for some version of DivX, XviD, FFDShow or CCCP. At least those are the codecs I'm aware of. If you take it over to the Tech Issues forum people will probably give you a full list of what to look for. Get rid of those, then just goggle just google CCCP (or go here) and download the pack applicable to your operating system. The installation process is pretty self-explanatory, and though the setting up of the codecs' options is pretty complicated (too complicated for me), you can just leave them at the suggested settings and not really have any problems.

If you're running Vista or one of the pre-launch Windows 7 Builds, I'm not sure what the renamed version of Add/Remove programmes is called. "My Programmes" or some such. It works in much the same way, though.

Seriously, post this over at Technical Issues and Bugs and give it a day or two. I'm sure someone with more intricate knowledge will give you a step-by-step guide.

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The difference between the ranger and the fighter are moreso in that the ranger is the more dangerous and maneuverable fighter, and the enemy is intended to know this, but the fighter's purpose is to specifically act as the equalizer saying, "You can either attack me even though I pose a lesser but harder to hurt threat and let the ranger do his higher damage thing or you can attack the ranger and give me the opportunity to hurt you in new and interesting ways that will make you regret hurting my friend". The concept is that, while the fighter is harder to hit and will deal less damage than the ranger in a vacuum, making the ranger the much favored target not only because he's easier to hit, more dangerous, and squishier, the fighter's presence serves to make that normally obvious choice less obvious by making the obvious choice riskier.

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Precisely. A ranger is dangerous at range, always much more dangerous than a fighter is in melee. Generally speaking, ranged fire you mostly want to avoid, where as melee attacks you can parry, so a ranger at range would be much more dangerous than a fighter in melee... When you are actually FIGHTING the fighter. If you turn your back on the fighter, you suffer. Really, really suffer.

This then puts the question in a much more meaningful, less cheesy context. "Do I want to fight that guy who isn't hurting me much, but whom I also can't hurt all that badly, or do I want to risk letting him MURDER me for the chance to MURDER his helpers and so it's just me and him. Because if it's just me and him, I win." As I said, taunt mechanics emulate that, but do so by compulsion, rather than by choice, and, more troublesomely, do so without the need for a fighter to pose a credible threat. This is the backdoor developers use to make all tanks in the history of tanking gimps when it comes to damage. Because the "threat" they pose is generated via artificial taints, rather than by... Well, letting them pose a threat. Hence the term "taunt bot."

As a very design, I HATE the Tanker concept. It is incredibly stupid to expect a character with little offence but much defence to provide any sort of protection to his team-mates, short of them crouching behind him or him standing in a narrow doorway. In a stand-up fight such as what you will see in a comic book, the "tank" isn't standing between himself and his team-mates, taking punches on the face, he is actively fighting because the only way the bad guys can get past him is if they can pin him down. If he is not pinned down, then woe betide anyone who is not actively fighting the big strong tank.

There's a reason that in fiction and in games (when enemies are concerned) the "tanks" are the ones both dealing the damage and surviving the damage. That forces players to choose if they want to suffer the "tank's" attacks long enough to kill his support troops, or if they want to suffer his support troops' damage long enough to kill him. Believe it or not, taunting players isn't as simple as taunting the AI, even when an actual taunt mechanic forces a player's target.

As for making a fighter stronger than a ranger, this was specifically for a game system which relies on direct combat skill to determine victory. A game where running, jumping, dodging and even aiming is done manually, not as a random roll of the dice. It takes a certain amount of player skill dependence, but with the right system, range CAN be made a meaningful asset and, at the same time, not an overpowered one.

Simply think of something like Star Control, where some ships were faster than others and some had longer range weapons, even homing missiles. There were always ways to catch up to a fleeing enemy and there were always ways to evade a pursuing enemy, regardless of your ship size. The more direct, real-time control a player has over character and pace of battle, the less the system has to emulate and the more the players can be allowed to simply act out.

Sometimes I think MMOs should learn a little more from arcades and single-player games and a little less from EverQuest and Diablo.

Have you tried purging your codecs and reinstalling the latest ones? Over here, I use the CCCP, and it hasn't failed me yet.

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Having recently finished another session of my D&D campaign, I'm rather fond of suggesting the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons model. Defenders (the nominal "tanks") don't actually force attacks to come towards them. Rather, they simply generate rather impressive consequences for not attacking them. If you are marked (re: taunted) by the Paladin, you're going to get hit with some radiant (re: "holy") damage that you simply can't avoid be you're breaking the little duel he called on you. If you are marked by the Fighter, he'll get to take a free swing at your face because he's focusing on you and you left yourself open by attacking his friend. If you are marked by the Warden (re: nature powered Paladin), the earth itself will get pissed off and either hold you down or crack you upside the head. If you are marked by the Swordmage (re: self explanatory), you just activated a contingent magical effect that is going to make you wish you hadn't done that.

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Someone actually suggested something like that recently (was it you?) and I can't say I disagree with it. At the very least, I can't find a good reason not to support it. To my eyes, there are two problems with "tanks."

One is a compromise between... Well, realism and game mechanics. In anything even resembling real combat, no combatant can afford to stand around and take blows to the face while he's shooting at someone half a mile away and no combatant can afford to turn his back on the guy with the sword to take a swing at the guy with the bow. One thing we simply do not have here, or indeed anywhere, is the fact that melee combat has the tendency to LOCK combatants in combat. You simply cannot ignore people engaging you in close-quarters combat.

The Taunt mechanic strives to emulate this, but it does so in a very [censored] backwards way, if you'll pardon my expression. Combatants aren't dangerous because they're hard to kill. A block of concrete is hard to kill, but you don't see people rushing head over heels to attack them, do you? Yes, technically speaking it is possible from time to time to make someone come charging at you because you managed to get under his skin, and you could perhaps get someone to turn around and make a mistake, but are you really going to get a combatant that's currently in a mutual headlock with another combatant to loosen his grip and turn around? Who is THAT stupid? Certainly not the evil mastermind who managed to get 30 plot threads to all converge into his ultimate victory.

The other problem, and that's an extension of where the previous one left off, is a very upside-down view on power balance. There's this notion that NO character ever should have both offence and defence, so you end up with... Well, caricatures. The typical tank may be nigh-on unkillable, but he is also pretty much harmless to anything powerful enough to merit a tank in the first place. On the flip side, your typical ranger is incredibly powerful offensively, but practically dead meat if anything should happen to attack him. What the hell? Where does that even come from?

Allow me to make an aside for a second. Who ever decided that archers are fast, light, agile fighters who are weak and ill-protected? Drawing your average non-modern-technology-enhanced bow actually requires MORE strength than swinging a sword around, and many, many archers wore chest plates and chain mail, if we want to go into medieval history. That's only still no match for a mounted knight plate mail armour, but it's hardly a flannel shirt and a green hat. And people keep making them acrobatic. What the hell?

Practically speaking, a melee fighter should be MANY times more dangerous to an opponent than a ranged fighter, unless the the opponent is actively protecting himself. A typical Fantasy knight will have heavy armour, a sword and a shield, but that whole set up isn't much good if he turns his back on someone with a longsword. Granted, in a super hero world like ours, it is possible for "tanks" to be naturally unkillable even if they cross their arms, grin and bear it, but come on. The "threat" of a particular target shouldn't be a function of how tough that target is and how loud its mouth may be, but rather of how... Well, threatening it is.

As long as we have the ability in this game to IGNORE hand-to-hand combat attacks coming at us without having to stop and protect ourselves, there will never be a "tank" threatening enough to actually tank.

Interestingly, Dragonica presents us with a curious solution to this - abolish the click-n-kill basis that all MMOs are built over and you can actually allow EVERY character to be very dangerous. Because survivability and offence is in the hands of the player, this means that it's technically possible to FORCE an enemy to go on the defensive and deal with what's pinning him down first, THEN worry about who he should attack.

Think of a simple situation where a fighter and a ranger face a very tough enemy fighter. The enemy fighter will, naturally, get locked into combat with the friendly fighter. But if the enemy fighter decides to attack the ranger, instead, this will mean turning his back on the friendly fighter, dropping his guard and, naturally, getting slaughtered for it despite his toughness. The only way for the enemy fighter to attack the ranger, then, would be to either defeat the friendly fighter or, at the very least, evade him for a time.

This brings us full circle back to the much-feared tank-mage, that boogeyman of the MMO world. Because MMOs want to promote teaming, they go the frankly absurd path of crippling every character ever made such that he will NEED help filling these holes, which in turn requires teaming. Heaven forbid a character can be at least moderately good at everything. Why would anyone ever play anything else? I happen to subscribe to the vision of a game where everyone is a tank-mage, though specialising in different fields. So an archer would wear armour and be handy with a sword, a warrior would have throwing lances or axes to smack distant foes, and a wizard would be able to use his protective spells on his own damn self for a change. Of course, a warrior would still curb-stomp an archer in close-quarters combat and an archer would turn a warrior into a pincushion over distance, but neither would go down without a fight.

The point, I suppose, is to make melee DANGEROUS unless you're specifically engaged in it, which would in turn lock people in melee like it really should be. The click-n-kill system that transforms melee combat from a lockdown duel into a battle resembling an artillery duel between two battleships, only they're smaller and 5 feet apart. Trading blows is NOT melee combat, and as long as that's all we have for melee, then we will never be rid of tauntbot tanks.

Possibly, and I will certainly appreciate whatever we do end up getting, but as a look at the future, pool customization is a BIG thing that would allow concepts to extend outside of powersets without breaking theme.

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Fair point though. I do slot for Damage in most of my ATs, but only after at least 1 Acc and 1 End Redux. Similarly, other powers, especially toggles, get End Redux early.

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Toggles are the LEAST of your problem when it comes to endurance management. Oftentimes an entire defence set's worth of toggles costs less than a single attack from an attack set. Let me give you an example of something I've calculated before. Let's take my Archery/Devices Blaster. Targeting Drone costs 0.31 endurance points per second and Cloaking Device costs 0.26 endurance points per second. Together, all the set's toggles cost 0.57 endurance points per second, around the same as a damage aura. JUST Snap Shot costs you ~1.179 endurance points per second if you spam it. That's one attack, and it costs twice as much as both toggles combined.

Toggles do use up endurance, but not nearly as much as everyone makes them out to waste. About the only thing they DO hurt in is recovering after a fight, because attacks stop costing when you stop attacking, but toggles stay on unless you shut them down.

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As for the idea itself, yes, I would very much like to see that happen. I love it! It's such a simple, elegant idea, and yet it adresses one of the biggest problems I have with this game - Stamina. I would very much love it if slotting for endurance were more meaningful than it currently is, and this accomplishes that. As was said, D may be a bit too much (not that I'd refuse it), but C certainly does feel right.

Make it so!

Personally, while I like the idea, I have a general problem with "banked boosted experience," in that people never treat it as a nice benefit or even an aside, but something they HAVE to do or they're wasting their time. I predicted this would happen with Patrol Experience, and while it isn't wide-spread, I have at least one friend who starts getting antsy when he uses up his Patrol Experience and is very likely to switch characters after that.

The problem is that this might drive even MORE people to the Architect. "Oh, hey! A couple of hours of boredom in the Architect can give me double experience for the next 10 levels? Sign me up!" Hell, that could convince ME to go farm in there, and that's saying something. Trust me, that IS saying something.

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You may scoff, but as I said, for one of these raids, as I described them, to be unstoppable, there would have to be literally NO players on it.

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That logic has a big hole in it. There would have to be either no players on the server, or no players WHO WANT TO PARTICIPATE. You would do well to stop coming from the standpoint where EVERYBODY wants to fight Rikti Raids and it's only a matter of how many obviously willing people are currently on. That's a fantasy. Yes, you see a lot of people on every Rikti Raid. How many? 10? 20? 30? people? Out of 500 usually online, that's not a lot. What are the other 470 doing? Beyond "not fighting a Rikti raid," does it really matter?

You cannot base an idea for an event on the assumption that everyone, or even most people, are going to like it, want to do it, and care to respond to it every time it occurs. I live in Europe. A lot of the time when I play is either the dead of night for the US folks or smack-dab in the middle of their work days. At these times, not a lot of people are on, especially villain-side, and of those people, I can't count on too many to respond to a raid. A week ago I decided to break habit and respond to a Rikti Raid. I went to the zone and there were all of four people there, not counting myself. Four players. That's half of one team.

Do not design your events assuming people will participate, and do not design your events with consequences if people don't participate. It doesn't matter how small those consequences are, if they're anything over purely cosmetic, don't even consider it. Don't ruin other people's game to improve your own.

I don't believe that's worth it, or indeed even possible. And even if it were, it opens up a can of worms of people wanting to mix-and-match their attacks on different sets. Mastermind attacks are thematically tied to the whole Mastermind set. I don't believe they should be customizable in terms of theme any more so than, say, Assault Rifle's Flamethrower attacks should be allowed to be replaced with the Arachnos Mace.

I understand that it would probably suck to want to use Trick Arrow powers and having to alternate to a mini assault rifle, but this isn't too much different from how Archery Blasters have to redraw every time they use Munitions Mastery powers.

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I've found that this is the case for MOST teams, Sam. People, at least in this game, tend to lead themselves pretty damn well.
They just need someone else to pick the missions for them.

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To a large extent, yeah. When I team with friends, we usually don't even care who has the star, because we generally decide whose string of missions we'll do at the start and we just need someone who's on the ball to pick them as they come up. The star is usually with the person whose missions we're doing anyway. As we usually stick to missions from the highest level team member (to a maximum of 2-level spread, anyway, that's what SK is for), that in itself is rarely a choice.

I generally like teams where the only meaningful choice is "What are we doing?" HOW we are going to do it and what the team is going to look like doing it isn't something I enjoy making matter. If there are problems, people are dying, it's taking forever and so forth, then maybe. But most of the time I just like to assume everyone can take care of himself and work towards the common goal

Really, just trying to find people who will respond to your tells is the major hurdle of putting a team together. Again, it's that "I want people, not bots" argument coming back. Having played other MMOs, though, I can safely say that our players are, by and large, a LOT more open to communication. I'm currently moonlighting at Dragonica, and it is HELL AND HIGH WATER trying to get ANYONE on the team to speak up and tell you what the hell is going on. I think I'm supposed to follow the leader around in absolute silence and kill what he's attacking.

Yes, but it was a while ago. Plus, it's a good story.

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I wouldn't be surprised if Custom Critters in general were to get reduced rewards.

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That's an idea they could work with, since they seemingly insist on allowing all-Lt and all-boss maps.

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You're not going to see any real "nerfs" to Architect experience before they can see what I16's difficulty setting changes do to farming and the Architect Babies (the Winter Lord Babies of 2009). You might see another push to ban more farm arcs, but core changes to the system will likely have to wait.

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I think thats a bit of an extreme position to take, but remember that this is jsut what they are shooting for for issue 16, most likely the others will be done thereafter, either in another issue or just a nice patch , as was heavily implied in sm's post. there is no reason to get too specific in equine dentistry here, the main powersets were a lot of work, and undoubtedly more work is continuing. I want to give rian blue eye beams too, but lets remain reasonable.

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Well, I'm not saying customization doesn't have a point and now they ruined it I still love it for what it is and I'm going to use it a lot. But there is a certain disincentive to customizing a powerset if you want to pick a matching Epic, because then the Epic will NOT match. That's kind of back in the day when we got customizable Assault Rifles, but NOT customization for Munitions Mastery's rifle, leading AR/*/Munitions Blasters to say "Well if I can't change ALL my rifle powers, then why bother?" Of course, introducing redraw likely had a lot to do with that, but still.

If you'll remember back in the day, one of the chief complaints about Patron Powers (after all the "I'm a lackey to Arachnos!" business) was that while hero Epics could be used to extend a concept, villain Patrons didn't match absolutely anything in the current powersets. Even Ghost Widow's pastel darkness didn't match the regular Dark powers. Granted, they introduced Electrical Melee/Electrical Armour in a look specifically intended to match Scirocco's Mu Mastery, but beyond that...

Currently in the game, there is a functionality which allows you to take one (or both) of your powersets and extend them via a matching-theme Epic. If we can customize the powersets, but not the Epics, then this gives us a choice with two wrong options - either we don't use customization and retain use of this functionality, or we use customization and pick another Epic. Personally, I don't feel either of those is a good choice.

Here's the big thing for me, though - Epic powers are, for the most part, lifted absolutely wholesale from existing powersets. Does it make sense for, say, Personal Forcefield in Forcefields to be customizable and Personal Forcefield in Force Mastery not? They're the same power, both figuratively and literally, at least in terms of visuals. I doubt they're just pointers to the same effects script, but shouldn't it come down to making the effect of one customizable and then copying it over to the other? I'm pretty sure BABs would have done that at least for Energy Melee vs. Energy Assault.

Again, I am very, very happy with this, and my one Fire/Fire/Pyre Blaster is perfectly happy with yellow fire But sometimes the little things can prove to be big problems. Blue blasts, pink punches and greenish forcefields can sort of work together. Lagely blue fire with a few yellow fire attacks... Not so much.

Yeah, I was worried he would come off as too much of a jerk, but I hoped that would balance out with him being pretty much consistently wrong and often in real trouble, and by his final speech. Notice how he never actually does anything useful apart from translating one set of orders?

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In my experience as a guild leader, most people are quite happy to sit back and let others do the hard work of leading and organizing while they sit and complain and nitpick about inconsequential stuff.

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That's assuming people want organisation and leadership to begin with. I think it's fair to say that not all of us do. I, for one, am happiest when a leader isn't NEEDED. Such an exercise would be, say, a team on which everyone can take care of himself and where even lack of team play doesn't lead to failure because people CAN perform without being helped. This doesn't mean team play isn't possible or doesn't happen, but merely that it isn't NEEDED.

I like a team of all Scrappers or all Blasters. Everyone is good at looking after his own [censored], and even if you NEEDED support, there's no-one to give it. When you know that you don't need to depend on anyone else and that no-one else depends on you, that's when I have the most fun. That's when I can start cracking jokes, high-fiving my team-mates, competing for more kills and so on and so forth.

If people want to lead, they're free to lead. Just as long as it's accepted that some people do not want to lead, be led, or be in an organisation where someone is led by someone else, or in an organisation at all.

"When the Nemesis Army begins conducting a strange series of seemingly random raids, few suspect just how deep things really go. But when you get to the bottom of it all, will you have what it takes to do the right thing?"

This is my second arc ever, and it's built for heroes levels 45-50 (technically, 45-54). I really don't want to give a lot of the plot away because I slaved over that damn thing for a week But I am going to say that, as a 45-50 content, it may not be TOO easy, though I certainly kept away from any attempts at "challenge" where I could.

This is a story-focused arc that involves a lot of plot and a lot of text, so it's good to know that going in. It's finished, but it has had very little testing, so errors, mistakes, typos and things of that nature are bound to have slipped in. If you see them, let me know and I'll do my best to fix them.

Narratively, I tried to escape from the mould of the game's "go there and do that" contact system, though given what that system is, that's only so in writing. I still think I went at least part-way I've tried to keep true to the Nemesis, which I must admit is one of the hardest canon characters to write for both because of how he is written and how much he has been ridiculed here on the forums. I tried to keep a balance of these things and still retain an interesting storyline. Text length limits gave me a run for my money, but I've found somewhat creative solutions to those, as well

Any feedback you have is very welcome, as I really want to polish this as much as I can. I may test-ride it some more in the days to come, but right now I'm just too sick of working on it to want to do it all over again

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7) Blasters... Honestly, it's hard to screw up a Blaster. Even if their build or playstyle is moronic, they still generate what you want from them, which is damage.

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It's hard to screw up a Blaster... I think my brain just backfired while forming that thought...

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The big problem with a lack of customization of hero epic pools will be when "Green Fire Blaster Dude" turns on his Fire Shield and uses Char and Bonfire and they are still ordinary orange flames... or when "Pink Ice Controller Girl" is stuck with a blue Ice Blast or Hibernate bubble.
It is really going to break up the theme and the look of many characters. Patron pools won't be as much of an issue because they are so unique and most of them don't really match up with primary powersets like the hero pools do...

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Man I'm slow these days. That rather serious problem should have been obvious, yet it flew right over my head. Yeah, most pool and Patron powers may be designed to be visually different, but a lot of Epics actually look like extensions of the character's own powersets. Without customization to them, there really isn't any point to changing certain powersets at all, at least from my perspective.

I have a planned Fire/Fire/Pyre Blaster. If I can change the colours of Fire/Fire, but not of Pyre, then I won't be "able" to change anything at all. Let's hope for this in the very near future. I'd sooner have this than more animations, if that were ever a meaningful choice.

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I've been doing ticket runs on red side frequently to finish my brute build, and the most clueless AT I have run into are Masterminds. If I get on a team that has more than two, I jet. I just can't do it.

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Hit me up if you're on Victory some time. I'm in a Masterminding mood Currently in the process of getting one to 50, but making a new arc delayed him by about a week.

And no, I'm not a terrible player