Acyl

[ QUOTE ]
Wow, quick answers. Ahh, so it's not a question of slotting, since you can't slot inherent powers.

It's a question of being able to use your primaries frequently and successfully enough to get Domination up, right?

Any tips on how that is best done?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, that's not it. A permadom character only needs to fill up their domination bar once.

So you're at full domination bar, right? You hit domination. Now, here's the thing - when you fire the domination power, the bar remains full. It only drains to zero once domination wears off.

While you can't slot the domination click power for recharge...it IS affected by global recharge on your character (Hasten, IO set bonuses). So the idea is to get the domination power to recharge before the first click wears off.

So you can fire it again while you still have a full domination bar.

How do you build a permadom character? IO slotting. You need Hasten, obviously, but that alone isn't enough. You also need as many recharge set bonuses as you can fit on your character.

The net result is a buff, yes.

Previously a broadsword user would swing the sword, stand there for a moment doing nothing, swing the sword again...hang around whistling for a bit...swing once more... do his taxes...finally attack again...

The pauses have been removed.

Drawing the sword the first time takes a moment, but after that everything is now much faster.

[ QUOTE ]
We should be able to pick what you want have like 3 options.

A) Day all the time.

B) Night all the time.

C) Day and night cycles.

And you just change it in options and now every body's happy!

[/ QUOTE ]

The thing is...while the game doesn't make a big deal about it, there are some things in the zones that change based on time of day. The ghosts in Croatoa are one example - they haunt the streets at night.

Moreover, if day/night were purely a local setting rather than a server-side setting, it'd be kinda confusing for some players.

[ QUOTE ]
I'll occasionally go "in character" if I find the others on the team are doing it as well, but many times I'll also just talk as "the person behind the wheel", so to speak. My character is my character and has a personality and backstory, but I'll just interact with the other players as a player.

I guess it takes experience to learn how to draw the line between the two. And perhaps, a bit of a split personality.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think most people who identify themselves as RPers really do that. I consider myself an RPer, and so do most of the folks in my SG. We call ourselves roleplayers. We accept the label.

But it's not like we stay in-character 24/7. Probably not even most of the time. 90% of our chat is regular person-to-person stuff. I figure that's the case for most RP SGs.

I do pick-up groups on Virtue. So do a lot of RPers. Most RPers, when in a PuG that's mostly folks who don't RP...will respond to questions and chat as themselves, not their characters.

Maybe they'll go through the trouble of putting their statements in (( )) brackets or whatever.

But nobody I know insists on RPing all the time.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
(QR) What really puzzles me here is that - after just two minutes glancing at the SG website linked in War Admiral's signature...

It looks like the group he leads is a cool bunch of people who take pride in their characters - they have neat and well-thought toon names, and they hold big costume contests on their server. These are clearly people who care about character concepts and stuff.

If you're just here to play a game, why bother with all that? Why not just name your characters with wild whacks on the keyboard and use the random button for costumes?

[/ QUOTE ]

We are a "cool" bunch of people and we do enjoy playing the game. We just don't get off on pretending to be someone were not. We're upfront and honest with everyone we play with.

Sure, we dont enter a group and announce we're male or female. But we do like to get to know the people we enjoy playing with and take the time to help anyone who needs it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a sentiment I fully agree with. I actually think you sound like an excellent and considerate SG leader when you're talkin' about stuff like this. You probably are.

There's been a lot of harsh words exchanged in this thread. I can't speak for everyone, but at least for me, I've just been trying to reach some kind of understanding.

See...if all that matters is the person behind the keyboard - why do you and your SGmates bother with designing costumes and naming your characters? Why not just use your real names and make the avatars look as close as you can get to your real-live selves?

Instead you make characters. Most people who play this game make characters.

At least for me and my friends, RPing in game is just a way of bringing our characters to life. And a way of having fun. That's all there is to it. There's nothing perverted or sinister about it.

I suspect, really...when you get down to it, the close-knit group of players I'm so proud of...we're probably not so different from you and your in-game friends. We're just folks who like playing an online game.

We just take our characters a tiny bit more seriously. It's not like RPers are aliens from another planet or anything - which is something you suggested in an earlier post. I'm from planet Earth, same as you. =)

(QR) What really puzzles me here is that - after just two minutes glancing at the SG website linked in War Admiral's signature...

It looks like the group he leads is a cool bunch of people who take pride in their characters - they have neat and well-thought toon names, and they hold big costume contests on their server. These are clearly people who care about character concepts and stuff.

If you're just here to play a game, why bother with all that? Why not just name your characters with wild whacks on the keyboard and use the random button for costumes?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What if these people talked to your child in a sexual manner? What would be your opinion of RPers then? Would it change? I think it would.

[/ QUOTE ] That is stereotyping. What if person of random race A attacked you? Does that mean everyone that is random race A is bad?

Now obviously, racial stereotyping is worse than what you are doing. Let's make this clear: I AM NOT EQUATING THE TWO MORALLY.

However, it is the exact same type of backwards thinking and rationalizing. Exact same.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, a lot of people think the exact same way.

If you're pulled over and treated badly by a cop, odds are good you won't like cops from that point forward.

Stereotypes suck

Welcome to America.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, by this point, there's probably a lot of folks here who think you - and by association, everyone in your SG and circle of players - are rather uncool people.

Conversely, you might figure we're all a bunch of deviants with the moral standards of an inflatable children's wading pool filled with nails and rancid custard.

That's understandable, but just because it's bound to happen doesn't make it, y'know, right. Or desirable. Or fair. If you think stereotyping's bad, why are you doing it yourself?

I mean, yeah, folks have made personal attacks at you in the thread. No denying that. Yet at the same time, you've consistently been ragging on folks who RP. Obviously they're gonna respond badly...

I mean, as folks have pointed out, this is an MMORPG. We may disagree on how many people in the game actually RP, or how far the game caters to RPers. But there will be a significant population of RPers in any game of this nature. Maybe not a majority, but a significant number.

You don't have to understand that. But can't you accept people do it? Do you have to go around condemning it?

[ QUOTE ]
When I would play Mario Cart, I never thought I was Mario. I would just sit and race around the stupid tracks.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do this.

Player 1: *shaking controller* "LUIGI! DID YA JUST CUT ME OFF?! DID YA SCRATCH MY RIMS?! I'M GONNA SHOVE MY PLUNGER WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE!"
Player 2: "Hah, ya suck, bro. BOWSER IS MY NEW HOMIE!"

Or how about fighting games?

Player 1: "I shall hit you with SEAFOOD!"
Player 2: "Ah-HAH! Your fish are no match for me, little girl, for my mighty bare chest and GIANT HONKING FANS SHALL DEFEAT YOU!"
Player 1: "You fiend! EAT VANQUISHING ANCHOR OF JUSTICE!"

Guilty Gear XX. No, seriously. I admit the Guilty Gear session took place when everyone in the house was half drunk. But hey, it was fun.

And that's what RP's supposed to be. All in good fun. You're running around as a digital superhero in a digital city. Why not play the part?

C'mon, live a little. Why so serious, son?

[ QUOTE ]
<QR>

(lolz RP)

[/ QUOTE ]

I propose a new kind of RP.

lolcatgirl rp.

It will be epic.

You can get level 51-53 enhancements as regular reward drops; they aren't particularly hard to find if you play max-level content a lot. Especially with the difficulty turned up.

So yes, you can slot 53s, or combine with 51s and 52s.

I don't believe you can get 53 SOs from ticket or merit vendors, however; the slider seems to stop at 50 for enhancements.

But since there is some supply, I'm sure you can get 'em off Wents.

So you're saying he plays women who are people, not two-dimensional stereotypes or glorified Barbie dolls.

Fancy that. How unthinkable. Who on Earth does THAT? =P

[ QUOTE ]
Things were said that just dont come out of females mouths, even in a RPing enviroment. That's just the bottom line. Things were said to myself, my girlfriend, and my other SG members what were totally unacceptable and really crossed the line. It really was some disgusting crap.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree that it's completely unacceptable to use such language when it's clearly making other people uncomfortable. That's just rude and inconsiderate.

But I'm telling you, it's not proof positive that these folks are really men. I'm speaking personally here, but of my best friends, the ones who really freak me out are the women.

There are, quite honestly, some acts and subjects I'd never have thought of until they told me about it, and probably be a saner person today if I didn't know.

Now, yes, chances are that someone who's being...lewd and crude on the Internet - yeah, they're probably a guy. I agree. That's most likely.

But it's not a certainty. 'course, I've tried to say that a few times and it's probably pointless, so I guess this is just one final IBTL.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't need to assume they were male. They were male. Some of the things that came out of their mouths, females dont say.

Period.

End of story.

[/ QUOTE ]

I won't ask you to repeat them. And I actually do agree there are certain things - ways of phrasing stuff, points of view - that can betray a person's biological sex. There's plenty of verbal cues.

Having said that, though...

The most filthy-minded individual I know is a lesbian woman. She's got a mouth to match. She's one of the few people who can shock me.

Let me put it this way. I was in the Army. She talks more about sex, in more graphic detail, than all of my Army buddies. And that's saying something.

And yes, I know she's really female, because I've known her since we were four years old.

[ QUOTE ]
What planet do you guys live on where its a social norm (even online) for guys to pretend they are females?

I guess I'm just ignorant to the fact its acceptable. I can live with that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I just had a thought. What do you think about women who play male characters?

Both my ex-girlfriends did that, in another MMO. You can tell we're in the 21st century when a guy has to smile and nod politely throughout dinner...while his girlfriend talks about a video game.

("Yes, I'm listening. Dual-wield daggers, you said? Are you going to finish that soup?")

Last time I ran a tabletop game, Dungeons and Dragons, dice and paper - most of my players were girls. There was one guy. But y'know what? Most of the characters they made were men.

[ QUOTE ]
I can accept there are people who have no problem with guys playing girls. I know by posting in this thread, I was gonna shake the hornets nest so to speak. But my experience with RPers in this game was NOT a good one. It was terrible.

Therefore, I have strong opinions about those who RP. How do I know when you're RPing? How do I know when you're being honest?

As a small SG, we like to "know" the people we let in. We dont stand outside of Atlas asking every new alt to join. We dont recruit at all. We accept quality over quantity. I said before, they were great players. But I just don't get off on being around those people pretending to be someone else. I guess I'm out of the loop of todays generation. Maybe I'm too old to understand.

Or maybe you guys are just weird!

[/ QUOTE ]

So you knew you were going to get angry replies. You accept that you might be out of touch with...well, I suppose folks that are younger than you...

...and you started this anyway?

I honestly feel you are entitled to your opinion. Hell, I can understand where you're coming from.

But, firstly, as many people have pointed out, you don't know for sure that those two players in your SG were lying to you. My SG had a Vent server, but we stopped using it because a lot of us didn't like it. Some refused to use it at all.

I agree that it's most probable your two SGmates were really guys enacting some kinda lesbian fantasy. That's the conclusion I'd reach too. But you don't know for sure, do you?

Innocent before proven guilty, guv'nor. Right to a fair trial!

Secondly, throughout this thread you've basically been saying I'm right, and all of you people are abnormal freaks. Your view of acceptable behaviour is correct; everyone else must be wrong.

Even if you're half-joking here by calling people 'weird' or whatever, that's still quite arrogant. Or at least it comes off as arrogant. Aside from the content of the posts, it's also a tone people are gonna take offense to.

I actually think you've made some very good points, and are justified in your beliefs. I agree that the situation sounds incredibly awkward for you and your SG, and - assuming your suspicions are correct - it's not very nice of those players.

But that's different from condemning all people who roleplay, or pretend to be someone else online.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What planet do you guys live on where its a social norm (even online) for guys to pretend they are females?

I guess I'm just ignorant to the fact its acceptable. I can live with that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if you look at today's news, the whole same-sex marriage debate is still going on in the United States...

The fact that it is a debate demonstrates that there aren't universal social norms regarding sexual identity and gender concepts.

If everyone agreed on an acceptable standard, there wouldn't be a debate.

Now. You don't think men playing female characters in an online game is acceptable. Fine. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm sure a lot of folks think like you.

But you must also accept that there are many many people who disagree, and don't see any problem at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, the US is pretty conservative in this regards compared to most of the rest of the 1st world.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, there's plenty of European countries who think the Americans are a bunch of Bible-thumping primitives who, for goodness sake, still have the death penalty!

And yet at the same time, there's plenty of Middle Eastern and African countries who see Americans as Godless liberals who have no moral values at all.

Funny, innit?

There's no such thing as one universal standard of right and wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
What planet do you guys live on where its a social norm (even online) for guys to pretend they are females?

I guess I'm just ignorant to the fact its acceptable. I can live with that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if you look at today's news, the whole same-sex marriage debate is still going on in the United States...

The fact that it is a debate demonstrates that there aren't universal social norms regarding sexual identity and gender concepts.

If everyone agreed on an acceptable standard, there wouldn't be a debate.

Now. You don't think men playing female characters in an online game is acceptable. Fine. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm sure a lot of folks think like you.

But you must also accept that there are many many people who disagree, and don't see any problem at all.

[ QUOTE ]
Assuming all RPers are worthless players is also wrong. I'd bet anything I could play through missions solo on a Defender that you have difficulty with on teams as a Scrapper. And I do it all with style worthy of a blockbuster action movie.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh yeah. My SG, we're solid in the middle of the top 100 on our server. Have been for years. We pull in a lot of prestige for a small group. Most of our members have IO'd-out characters. We run superteams. We PvP.

We farm. We do all-boss missions. But we use hard bosses. With the map maxed out for ambushes and patrols to make it more challenging.

And we're dirty no-good lousy little RPers. Every single damn one of us. Why, we even write fanfiction. The horror!

RPers are players too. We play the freakin' game just like anyone else.

You come here, express intolerant attitudes, insult other players - basically, you start something - and then call the responses sad?

Huh.

[ QUOTE ]
I tried to make a HP build, and I only got around 150-200 more hp. That aint worth it IMO. I tried making a regen build, and I got around 600 regen. I tried making a Def build, and I got 44 defense to S/L. Seemed to me like the only reasonable way to go was defense, even if I had to suffer the debuffs. And the highest I can get is 44, Unless I get the PVP IO unique, which I wont. I suppose i can always bring /colds and veats on my ITF's when I do them on my Scrapper to get those numbers up in the 80's. Oh and I can tell you another thing, when you're fighting things that dont debuff defense, even with only 28 defense I was unkillable, either on AV runs or on the boss farm i did where I would herd 3 mobs together and melt them.

[/ QUOTE ]

The last build I threw together was for a friend's Will scrapper. It has 386.5 (28.9%) HP and 138% (7.71 HP/sec) Regen. It's somewhat constrained by his concept choices, though.

My own Elec/Will brute is a little better. I have 472.3 HP (31.5%) HP and 160% (10 HP/sec) Regen from set bonuses. It could actually be more than that, but I compromised a little to get the attacks the way I wanted 'em. Plus I'm too cheap to pay for purples or PvP drops, so I'm just using regular IOs.

But yeah, you can get pretty good HP and Regen bonuses. And that's just the IOs. Once you add in the impressive HP and Regen you get from the actual powers, you've got massive tons of HP and Regen there. My brute pushes 800% regen with just one enemy in RttC range.

Thus I think a HP + Regen IO build is quite workable. I'm not saying it's the best or only solution, but it works fine.

Having said that, I'm not disagreeing with you. I admit that softcap S/L def on a Willpower character does sound very sexy. Hell, I'm tempted to try that myself.

But what I'm saying is...HP + Regen slotting is a perfectly fine choice. Maybe not better, but still fine.

[ QUOTE ]
In my experience, WP does pretty good on an ITF. It actually suffers more against the nictus groups than it does the Cims, because they do exotic damage types that you don't really have much RES to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's how it is for me as well. My mostly-SO'd BS/Will scrapper struggles on the ITF, but I think that's more to do with the fact my build sucks. 'cause my IO'd Elec/Will brute doesn't have any problems with the Romans.

I mean, sure, the Romans debuff defense, but for most Will users that's not a huge issue - unless you're BS or Katana, you shouldn't be relying on Defense versus Lethal damage anyway. For most Will characters, the main mitigation versus Lethal damage is resistance plus high HP and regen.

'course if you're BS or Katana, and used to having that defense up, then yes the defense failure can hurt. Same if you're using IOs to give yourself higher S/L or Melee defense numbers. But you've still got other tools to fall back on.

The Romans are tough on meleers, sure. But Willpower does reasonably well against them. The Nictus give me more problems.

Yeah. There's no reason to delete the content of your post, because it doesn't remove the actual thread, just whatever you typed at the beginning.

As Thirty7 said, 'nice-looking' depends on your tastes.

But Dual Blades is a newer powerset with fancier animations than most. You've already seen the first couple powers by now - that's a good indicator of what to expect. A Dual Blade user dances, spins, twirls, and swings pointy objects a lot.

If most of your VG is doms, brutes, and stalkers...

It's not so much that you need a healer as such, but a more support-oriented character.

Pain Domination is a good healer/buffer - that's the traditional kind of support. Pain Corr would work for your purposes.

I think Dark Miasma is a good option, though - that gets you a pretty effective AoE heal and a lot of debuffs - if your regular teammates are all damage-heavy, then having some debuffs would go well.

(Especially if you take a debuff-oriented Corr primary like Dark Blast or Sonic Blast)

[ QUOTE ]
What makes me cry is people being so jaded that they can't answer questions for people who don't sit at a computer playing a game for as long as they do.

Do not assume anything of anyone you are exposed to in game. If you're annoyed because it is your opinion everyone should know the answer to their question....simply say you don't know either and leave it at that.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with you. I myself try to be nice and helpful to folks whenever I can - even if the questions they're asking seem obvious to me.

But.

That's fine if the person is asking questions. That indicates they don't know but are trying to learn.

There's a lot of people who don't know stuff, and yet believe - or act as if - they know everything. Or know better. That's another kind of arrogance.

I once ran into a tank who didn't have their mez protection at level 35-40 or so. During the mission, he was mezzed and took heavy damage a few times. When I tried to politely point out the problem, he said that I was a n00b - that toggle wasn't necessary and a waste of endurance. He insisted he was doing fine.

Well, yeah...because I had him targeted and was spamming Increase Density and Transfusion to keep him upright. When I pointed out I was putting a mezbreaker power on him, all I got was insults for my trouble (heck, he even complained a couple of times when I forgot to recast ID - it's got a short timer). It's kinda hard not to be irritated at that point, y'know?