Talen Lee

Part of the problem with 'I've seen it with my own eyes,' Ultimo, is that that statement is only considered proof if we trust you.

You've made erronous statements multiple times and flat-out lied in others. You have no reputation on which you can stand, no weight you can lend an assertation with 'I've seen it with my own eyes.'

Enemies don't scatter out of the snowstorms my stormies or my blaster use. I'm bereft of explaining what you've seen, but then, I'm not asserting, you are.

Have you ever read the works of Daniel Gilbert? You might find them very interesting when it comes to understanding how your brain files information, and why what you remember might not actually be true.

Edit: Also, I didn't say you have threatend mod action. I'm saying that if you think people actually are making personal attacks, it is entirely up to you to report it to the moderators. You can't have it ala carte - either we're making personal attacks, in which case you should report it to the moderators, stop responding, and let them get the personal attacks out of the thread, or we're not and you're just wrong but really, really don't want to admit it.

I'll admit, I did think you'd given me negative rep in this very thread, primarily because I noticed you had rep turned off and it was a post against you that had done it. And it seemed entirely within your character to take anonymous pot-shots at something.

Someone just peed my pants :O

A friend of mine and I have oft-bemoaned the way the 'masters of' badge actually discourages thoroughness on TFs, and the way most ITFs are not run for the experience (lower-case e) of the ITF but for the merits at the end. This means that most things are done in very dull ways (fly over mish 3, etc, port to the top of the map after the rescue in mish 1). A badge for killing every ****** in every major room would be pleasant.

The people who have requested naked pics of me beg to differ!

If you're hoping we hit a point where we 'agree to disagree,' I'm afraid that I'm philosophically opposed to that. If you can't prove me wrong, and you're saying something I think is wrong, I'll agree to think that you're wrong. I'll even let you walk away if you want to. But 'agree to disagree' is an annoying intellectual aphorism that assumes that both sides of the argument are of equal weight even at their conclusion, and it feels like a disohnest attempt to houdini one's own way out of a losing argument.

As far as protracted periods without change indicates balance, it's a pretty good yardstick. Big problems do get dealt with proportionate to what can be done. Buffs and debuffs have gone almost unchanged aside from the -regen changes in I7.

... That's hellishly funny. If Grey rep means the people have their rep turned off, it's just a wonderful, wonderful example of cowardly criticism. I've never been positively repped by a grey, but I have been negatively repped.

I hope that's true. It'd just cement my worldview about the people giving me -rep.

While we're at it, for any of you who fancy ever criticising me, and you don't think it'd work out well in public, or can't find an appropriate place to do it - feel free to PM me. I'm not nearly as scary as you might think.

I've used a lot of terminology before that I figure has flown over your head because you're not listening to me, and to actually ask for an explanation would be to admit you don't know what you're talking about, and that I do.

'You're a newb, gtfo' is inappropriate posting - and indeed, you should happily report such posts as they are against the forum rules - because it does not explain the problem.

I explained the problem. You are simply not paying attention to them, because to do so would be to approach this situation as anything but an authority. You keep shifting the goalposts back to your original premise, assuming a priori that you can simply assert what you want over and over again as though they are proof. When that fails to convince, you attack the people you disagree with, demonising the position of those around you. You act incredulously, shocked and stunned that anyone would oppose something so reasonable. You are, in essence, not engaged in a discussion - you are simply asserting your opinion over and over again, and it shows because when you're called upon to produce evidence, we hear such things that apparently, Storm and Rad aren't good for soloing.

By definition, individual powersets have differences that determine how the play experience constructs itself. Most of the time, these powerset choices are simple and intuitive, and pull the player towards emphasising their strengths over their weaknesses, in a simple gaming process designed to both assist the player in achieving, and to give him latitude to approach larger challenges, those things he is not given to achieve so easily. This is very basic and a common practice, part of making gameplay flow naturally. In fact, in game design, for differentiated sets to have no actual differences is considered a failure - it's creating layered design space, which wastes player currency and diminishes the potential interest they might have in one set or another. Consider how Katana and Broadsword were once, identical, and now are very different while still sharing quite a lot of mechanical themes.

The thing is, this is not an MMO where everyone has to do the same jobs with a uniform reliability. This is a game with a lot of freedom and flexibility. Therefore, the developers took two sensible design directives:

First, the game isn't all that hard. Operating on the idea that even if you got eight incompetents together and they all played as if they were soloing, they'd still get to the end of missions, the game content is geared to be relatively simple for any team. You can generally achieve anything if you throw enough people at it, assuming nobody is actively harmful to the gameplay experience of other players. Eight people with no synergy can still complete content, as the content is simply the same as solo content, but more of it.

The other is, this game is designed that just as much as you don't need other players to complete content, you have options if you want to. There is a sliding scale of characters; on the one end, you have things like stalkers as an archetype, energy and dark melee, or trick arrow, who for the most part don't care about teammates at all. These sets are wholly team-agnostic, focusing instead on doing the exact same thing in team situations they'd do in solo situations. The only distinction for these sets is that there are now more people who can benefit from the effect (dead people don't attack teammates, after all, and debuffs multiply by the teammates). That these sets are good on small teams or even on large teams is incidental to their design. These sets eschew team support abilities for consistant solo performance. Energy Melee is a headliner in this front. I've never felt it a weak set, but people complain quite vosciferously about the potential for kill-stealing having two long animations can cause.

The other end of this is that there are sets who are willing to reduce their solo ability in exchange for greater team synergy. These sets receive, in return, amazing benefits. Empathy and Forcefields as two fine examples, offer unparalleled team buffs. While in many cases I regard either sets of buffs as overkill, they are undeniably incredibly powerful - Fortitude on its own is a complete world-changing power for lower levels. By standing solidly at one end of the team-assistant power spectrum, these powersets get to reap benefits above and beyond the other end when they do have teams. Neither is significantly ahead of the other - they are simply good enough, generally speaking, to all succeed in the format presented, which is the game that has been mentioned as not being that hard.

So, if the sets are balanced already, and I'll note the three years of pretty much no changes I"ve seen as a good sign that they are, any added power you give an empath or forcefielder for solo play would be applicable on teams as well. Congratulations, you've made two things that were already powerful in their chosen niche better, and in doing so, you have unbalanced them.

If you wish to add to them for solo, you will have to take away from them in teams, which is not a situation that those of us who do like these powersets are likely to tolerate. Nerfing my team-based empath so you can solo better seems to me like a very unreasonable thing - especially since I was here first, and since my empath is very happy the way he is without your 'help.' Selfish of me perhaps, but I can at least point to evidence that the game is working as intended, while you offer no such counterproof, merely offering the empty-mouthed platitude of 'it wouldn't be unbalancing,' or 'it's just for solo play.'

If you explicitly made teaming turn off the benefits you have an additional problem - the defender suddenly views teaming as 'losing' a benefit. He goes from soloing well to making other people play well. If the powerset stakes itself out clearly as team-oriented to start with, you don't get this illusion. Anything that turns off or reduces when you have teammates is bad design because it discourages social behaviour on a social game, and social behaviour is one of the anchorstones of MMO marketability. Very, very few people who play this game genuinely want to be alone while they do it - even if they play solitarily, they will socialise in some other fashion. Now, making a team-oriented archetype with a team-oriented powerset suddenly lose power in exchange for teaming up, and you change their focus from that of an ally-based team buffer who is supposed to buff teammates to a decent soloist with neat powers who punishes himself joining teams. This is how you already perceive the problem, I know, but that perception is entirely your own fault.

This is my stance.

Further to this, we have Ultimo's reputation of talking foolishness. He has claimed that tankmages aren't overpowered. He has claimed that he can run out of endurance just spamming one attack that actually can't run him out of endurance. He has claimed Rad's no good for soloing. And on and on and on. In essence, he either makes statements about the game based on highly flawed memory, or he is a deliberate liar intent on emphasising his own points and his own agendas, which are not made based on analysis or understanding, but on entirely emotive points, which he furthers by bolstering his position with emotional-sounding but factually-incorrect anecdotes that are typically fabricated. In essence, he lies. He also threatens people who comment on this behaviour, as I've found, further evincing that he is not a man given to reason and debate, but to emotion and threat.

You do not 'respectfully disagree.' You simply reject, wholesale. You have no reasoning behind your motivations, and shod yourself about with ignorance and emotive, sniping commentary that does nothing to expound or enlighten. You drape yourself with a shameful lie of politeness and act as if I'm the unreasonable one for wanting you to know what you're talking about before you talk about making sweeping changes to my characters after establishing you don't like them.

So if that's 'gtfo, newb,' might I add 'lrn2balance.'

There is so much of this game that is aggressively soloable, and you guys are here to try and change the tiny fraction that isn't, because you see being 'different' as being 'wrong.' This is why there is resistance. Because you think you can just flat-out add to powersets that already are strong. Because you don't understand the powersets you think are weak. And because those of us with those characters, who aren't obssessed about solo speed, knowing that it's just one point on a large scale, don't want to lose the effectiveness we built for in the name of people who don't even understand what they're talking about getting what they want when their desire is already well-provided for.

Good news; it seems actual obscenities, like 'person from the country of Id' is censored, but little things like accusing someone of trolling (against the TOS) and slurring someone's sexuality are fine.

It's not just a matter of 'special,' mate, it's a matter of 'feasible.'

I do like the end redux idea. I was musing on something similar. But then, IO bonuses need a bit of a tinker, in my opinion.

What I find really curious about this is it seems that you can break all the rules you like in the rep feedback. In the name of experimentation, anyone out there willing to help me see if rep references avoid the whole obscenity filter? It seems to be a pretty easily abused system then. Anyone mind if I send them some profane words - or want to send me some profane words - in the name of science?

Not that I agree with the obscenity filter's current settings, but whatever. I miss my ability to commit obscene tmisis.

Surely we'd be an Eebil Marketeer antisocial group?

Haven't actually read the Bible, have ya?

Ah, makes sense. Yes, I was using a similar chart and checking my numbers. By 40-50, I've gotten fed up with the buggers.

They don't? Is this an AE-specific thing, or have Freakshow been changed since my numbers were made?

It seems to only be kicking me on Longbow commanders, which I never really saw as being mez protected before.

Oh well, probably nothing as big a deal as I thought.