Samuel_Tow

Do I really need another AoE, though? I'm trying to save slots since Electric/Willpower is quite slot-heavy, even if I skip Lightning Clap (and why the hell wouldn't I?), so if I can skip Dark Obliteration entirely, I probably will. I'm sure it's a decent attack, but that'll make a few too many.

Here's something else I just found, though: Brutes don't get access to Soul Storm but Scrappers DO. That's actually a VERY strong argument for going with a Scrapper over a Brute

Actually, I do want to say a few words about "the community." I put that in brackets because I know what I'm about to say isn't actually representative of the PvP community at large or PvP-ers in general, but it's anecdotes like mine that inform opinion regardless.

Throughout my entire gameplay in City of Heroes, I've never refused to keep any chat channel in my tabs. I kept Broadcast in even when passing through Atlas Park, forcing me to experience the absolute dreck that that used to be. I kept it in, just in case. I didn't remove Help from my tabs when the game went F2P and it became essentially a channel about the DFB. Maybe someone's asking questions, who knows? I've never taken a channel off completely, they all get recorded somewhere.

Except Arena. I kept an eye on that channel for about two days after I4 launched, and I rolled my eyes at what was going on in there more than the rest of the eight ******* years I've spent here combined. I don't even remember all the crap that was said back then - I've blocked it from my mind - but it was like a zoo. It was like the parents of a whole class of 8-year-olds just simultaneously left the house and the 8-year-olds were all on sugar rush and trying to outdo each other with how badly they could behave.

I'm sure Arena isn't like that these days... I'm pretty sure it's completely dead, but like I said - it's out of my tabs. Hell, I'm pretty sure it wasn't like that for more than a month after I4, if it was like that for more than a week. But this kind of crap is the one that sticks out in my mind the most about what represented PvP in this game. That god damn channel full of the kind of ******** I want to reach through my screen and punch.

And then there was the... What was it called? The PvP forum that was essentially free for all? Yeah, the one people went to to be jerks to each other, and they all thought it was cool. I set foot over there once, saw what was being posted and got the hell out of there in a hurry.

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I know the PvP community is not evil or full of jerks. The problem is that a lot of people have had experiences like mine, which make it feel hat way. I can deal with a few jerks in a community when it feels like the community itself disapproves of their actions. Even here, when we get the occasional dedicated troll, people will mostly either ignore him or otherwise put him down. You don't have other trolls coming out of the woodwork to cause even more trouble. That's never been the impression I got from any PvP-centric boards that had to do with strangers. It always feels like being a jerk is condoned and expected and asking others to play nice is like pulling your pants down and bending over.

I'm sure it's just a case of a few very vocal ********, but if that's my first experience with PvP, I'm probably not going to want to have a second experience.

Granted, that's still a big leap. However, I feel that a cooperative-only environment is more likely to produce a friendly community than a competitive-only environment, and that's not because either is "better." A competitive environment is just not fertile ground for ********, and I'm saying this speaking as an *******. As I said, I play a few PvP games, myself, and every time someone chats something to the effect of "voli go bot" I have the urge to ask who the hell this person thinks he is to go ordering me around. I've caught myself having this reaction more than a few times, though I usually have the good sense to not act on it.

City of Heroes, by contrast, predisposes me in a much different way. When I come here, I know that this is a game where people generally don't NEED me to do anything specific unless I specifically commit to do something with them, I know other people can't hurt me so there's no tactic too cheap, so... Yeah, why not take five minutes of my busy schedule of idling inside a mission watching Ice Road Truckers to explain to someone how ED works?

Decent people will be decent in PvP just as they will be in PvE. It's just that competition leaves more room "antics" as you're always dependent on other people, be they your friends or your enemies. It kind of comes with the territory. Cooperation most often either puts social pressure on ******** like me to behave, or otherwise causes us to leave. A game that strongly discourages you from hurting other players is a game that generally develops a community that doesn't have that as a major attribute.

Again, nothing against PvP players in general. I just find it's harder and takes more work to get a LARGE PvP community to behave once it grows past the point where it stops being directly personal.

I think you misunderstand the (my) sentiment, and I fear others misrepresent it, as well. For me, it's less a case of "O, noes! I'm hurting other people and I care about their feelings so much!" as it is a case of "U-ho. If I can do that to someone else, someone else can do this to me, and that would suck!" I don't have a problem beating other people in a competitive much, to the extent that I don't feel guilty, even when it's clear I'm unfairly superior to them. What I have a problem with, however, and ESPECIALLY when I hand someone his *** for the fifth time in a row, is that I can't help but see myself in the same situation.

See, I'm a mediocre player, and that's on a good day. It's all fun and games when I'm paired up with people of well below my skill level just because I tend to not press and humiliate them, but instead tend to goof off. As I've talked about "enough" in terms of City of Heroes builds - i.e. I only need enough performance to do well and the rest I can use for fun but impractical powers - so I'll simply fight less hard when it's clear my opponents are weak. The problem is that, being a mediocre player, there are PLENTY of players much better than I am, and I just know that if I just trounced this guy so easy, then that means next game someone much better than me will make me feel the same way.

See, if I make another player angry by beating him, this doesn't upset me because I care about the feelings of strangers. I do and I don't, but why it upsets me is these feelings can AND WILL be my feelings. Maybe next match, maybe next week, but if he doesn't like it, then I sure as hell won't like it. I don't mind losing occasionally, but I do mind dominating other players because it just serves to remind me I'll be in their shoes next game, most probably. It's this realisation that in order for me to have fun - which I do by having a relatively clean, easy victory - someone else needs to be pissed off that worries me, and why I stray away from PvP.

I like PvE because in there, no-one ever loses. Well, OK, sometimes we do, but I do my best to avoid failable missions, and to drop them or "cheat" whenever I do. And when I say no-one loses, I don't praise this because I want other people to not lose. I praise it because I don't want I!!! to be the one who loses.

It worked out, but it was also pretty grim, and it made the development team pretty humble. That's more or less how it started, though. Jack Emmert stepped down as lead developer of City of Heroes to manage all of Cryptic Studios, but don't worry! He's still very much with the game, he just has some new responsibilities. Turns out he had pretty much entirely moved to the Marvel MMO that turned into Champions. Then people from the City of Heroes team started switching jobs, then all of a sudden we're left with a skeleton crew.

Now we have Matt Miller stepping down from the role of Lead Developer, we have another secret side project and we're seeing more people being diverted from the ones who used to be working here.

I'm not saying I'm worried, of course. Not yet, anyway. However, I can't help but see a pattern here.

Yes. All of the problems you listed are people going out of their way to be dicks, which is griefing. There's nothing to be gained from teleporting people high into the air, because the system doesn't reward you for it. Griefing is a fact of any game, I'm not trying to deny that, but not many games actively encourage it by rewarding it. Lineage II does, yeah, but that game is evil.

What I'm saying is that the PvE game in City of Heroes is not in any way competitive. In fact, going out of your way to compete with people in the few ways you can usually makes your own rewards WORSE. The game does whatever it can to make sure people almost not interact with each other in PvE. You can't attack others, you can't take others' drops, you can't enter others' missions and you generally don't gain anything for being better than anybody else. It caters an environment which rewards you for being helpful and stiff you for trying to compete. That what's bred such an easy-going community.

That wasn't to say PvP is evil, but it IS competitive, and competitive games breed a wholly different kind of community. Not better, not worse, just wholly different. You can't expect to "win" at a competitive game without being very good, because that's missing the point of the game. You CAN expect to win at a PvE game without being very good because the game isn't trying to be challenging so much as it's trying to be entertaining. City of Heroes happens to be entertaining, and I personally take great comfort in being able to "win" without being very good. And when I can, there are always people offering to "win" one for me, because they're rewarded and because they stand to lose nothing more than the time it takes to help me.

Right, that. I knew I was remembering something incorrectly. Still, that's why he has a rook on his chest

It's at times like these when not being a native speaker really shows. It's always the little things.

I don't know. I've been here so long I've seen most of the people that work on the game come, go, be replaced and have the replacements leave. Hell, even the community team went through a lot of people I remember Aura, though not that well, I remember when Cuppa was still here before NC Soft pulled her off to Tabula Rasa in time for it to tank, I remember Lighthouse and how he banned Golden Girl, I remember "SuperMod" and so on.

That said, I'm not sure David's been with us for very long. Maybe he was and we simply never heard anything about him since BABs had such tremendous presence in the community, but it seems like from when he started posting to when he seems to have gone to work on something else, it wasn't really very long. It felt like the guy was finally getting his bearings around the community's sensibilities and then he just dropped off the face of the Earth.

You're running into a few problems, and they're all rooted in a very simple fact - whether these are obtained via PvP or PvE, they ARE PvE rewards because that's where they're used the most often. I've certainly never seen them used in PvP, maybe you have. However, consider this - for a while after I6, EVERY ******* TIME I complained something was too difficult, do you know what the response was? "Go get a Shivan" or "Go get a Nuke." Recluse SF too hard? Get a bunch of nukes. Elite boss keeps killing you? Get a Shivan.

I call this goading PvE players because that's what it is, whether intentionally or otherwise. These are rewards that make PvE considerably easier, but require PvP to obtain. You then obviously have a situation where PvE players will go into a PvP zone looking for the reward, but trying to AVOID PvP while they're at it. You may say they're just PvP rewards, and I agree with you - it's why I never bothered with the things. However, you're still creating this situation where PvE players go into a PvP zone with the express intent of AVOIDING fighting other players.

When people engage in PvE content, they most often do so to fight NPCs, or otherwise engage in the content. That's the whole point. The problem is that for PvP to be successful and, above all else, FUN, you need to get players who are there to participate, who want to fight, who are ready to be taken out and who want to PvP. You don't do that by goading in victims, essentially.

Consider the following - if Shivans, Nukes and whatever the hell you get out of Siern's Call only worked inside a PvP zone like how the Arena jet pack only works in the arena, do you honestly believe people primarily interested in PvE would bother with them? I know I wouldn't.

Gating PvE power behind PvP is a mistake, as far as I'm concerned. I have no problem with PvP progression, so long as it's not presented in such a way that it makes ME feel like I need it when I don't want to PvP.

Wait, that was supposed to be a castle? It looked like a medieval fort to me. And anyway, Castle picked his name after the meaning of the chess piece I personally know as the "rook," rather than the architectural construct of an actual castle. That's why his namesake has that on his chest when you train with him in Peregrine Island.

I don't think it's the super hero genre so much as the fact that the PvE game goes out of its way to make any sort of competition impossible. You're given credit for any enemies shared with people not on your team based on how much of the enemy's health you took away, loot is distributed between team-mates automatically and anonymously, there's no duelling of any kind, you can't attack other players, and if anyone is bothering you, you can always just duck in an instance like you were going to be doing anyway, where the irritant can't follow you.

This kind of complete lack of competition just breeds a mentality where you might as well help if you're not doing something you can't interrupt. It costs you nothing and it usually brings you rewards anyway. At the very worst, people in City of Heroes can be indifferent, and that really hurts no-one. When helping others costs nothing, it just makes sense to help. When you never view other players as competition but rather as potential help, it just breeds a more friendly community.

When City of Villains first launched and advertised itself on its PvP, the community was swamped with a host of people who were here for the PvP, the challenge, the competition and the desire to play mean angry villains. It made the dedicated City of Villains forums considerably less friendly, but hey - to each his own. Thing is, most of these people eventually left for other games just because the bulk of City of Heroes doesn't lend itself to this kind of attitude. This simply isn't the kind of game you play to compete.

That's what I mean when I say "there's your answer." Why aren't you playing PvP? You can protect yourself from the nasty people. Well, there's your answer - I'm protecting myself from the nasty people by not engaging in PvP. It's easy to see this as overkill from the position of someone who likes PvP, but from my standpoint, I'm removing myself from something I never really liked to begin with, and in the process also preventing something else I didn't enjoy.

What I want to get across here is that if you ever want PvP to be widely popular and enjoyed by many people, you simply can't ask people to toughen up or go home. Experience has shown me that, when given the option, the vast majority of people WILL go home. When I was younger I might have seen this as a challenge, but these days, most of my energy goes into my job and the various other things I'm doing, so when I turn to games, it's to unwind, not to stress myself even further.

If the environment is welcoming and the people in it are nice, that stress goes away. Almost everyone who tries City of Heroes has nothing but good things to say about the community (in PvE, for obvious reasons). That's even when these are people who didn't really like the game at all. In his MMO Grinder review, ChaosD1 lambasted the game for a lot of technical shortcomings and for the hamstringing limitations on Free accounts, but he had nothing but good stuff to say about a community of people tripping over each other rushing to help him, guide him and give him stuff. That's a welcoming environment.

When I go into a game and I find myself belittled, insulted and tea-bagged, I'm disinclined to return. Yes, I could curtail the more negative aspects, but this still leaves me with no reason to return. As someone before said, it's not a question of why we aren't playing PvP. It's why we SHOULD play PvP in the first place, and mitigating the negatives does not answer that question.

Not having to watch it is precisely the point.

Personally, I think they picked the Knives because they're all women. I don't know if we can attribute this to the Talons or on the WRITERS, but there really isn't much that's specific to the Knives of Artemis which the Talons would care about above and beyond, say, the Carnival of Shadows or Crey. I guess their being a cult or their being somehow related to Artemis might offer a tangential relationship, but no explanation is given in the actual game.

That's kind of what bugs me about a lot of stories, and not just in this game - the question of motivation just isn't given a lot of thought. I just threw my hands in the air and gave up on Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, for instance, and one of the reasons is I had no idea why the **** I was doing any of the stuff I was doing. I was just following the map marker and going where game mechanics would let me.

Why are the Talons of Vengeance recruiting the Knives? We don't know, and we're not supposed to wonder. They just are. Possibly so we can have a "Destroy the X of Vengeance" mission twice in a row. Because, say what you will about the Talons being sideways of the plot, but at least they're part of the plot. The Knives really aren't. They're just extras, more NPCs in what is essentially the same villain group. They're padding. We could have had more about the Circle of Thorns, but no. They're all gone. We could have had more to do with the Legacy Chain, for instance, or more to do with the Midnight Club. No, they aren't involved. Hell, I could have accepted the Knives of Vengeance if at least their involvement brought Malta into the zone, with some kind of super-advanced new mechs and magitech enhanced soldiers. No. There's one guy with an inexplicable mohawk and he has four missions total, of which I only needed to run one. In essence, the Knives don't bring in Malta, but rather Malta is just mentioned to get rid of the Knives.

Honestly, I'd have been happier if the Knives were swapped for something else. Again - Incarnate Circle of Thorns would have been AWESOME, even if they were just recoloured Ice Thorn Casters and suchforth. Maybe stick them with a few Blade Princes as bosses, Death Mages as lieutenants and maybe Behemoths as minions.

Willpower also has Heightened Senses (which currently toggles on with the Dragon's Tail animation O.o), and that should be enough to tick the "omniscient" box. It's not nearly as strong as it is for Super Reflexes, but truth be told... I'd have probably used Focused Senses in there for that anyway. It gives extra perception, anyway, which is what matters in this case.

I have a level 50 Energy/Energy Brute, myself, as well as a level 30-something Electric/Electric Brute, and neither has really struck me as weak. Well, Electric Melee hasn't since Chain Induction was unbroken to jump off defeated foes, anyway That's not saying I won't go with a Scrapper, just that I'm not worried about performance too much. Even the worst of my Brutes still does well enough when I don't play like an idiot, and I actually think they do quite well for damage with the new Fury mechanic. Yeah, Lightning Rod may not benefit from it, but it seems to do enough on my Electric/Electric Brute.

Electric aside, I really like your argument for Willpower.

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I still don't have a character to play with, but I'm thinking I could busy myself creating Praxis' companion gods and their accompanying stories. I already have a few ideas, actually, and some of what I rejected for Praxis, I think I'll use for them. I'm thinking Titan/Regen Brute, Demons/Time Mastermind, probably some kind of Stalker and some kind of Scrapper. I'll try to go as far and as wide in terms of concepts, too. That ought to keep me busy for today

Different people have different tastes. I don't share them, myself, but I know people who do. It's probably best to try and not be outraged over other people's tastes unless they specifically intrude them on you.

All of a sudden, I'm getting flashbacks to the "Surviving 15" of pre-NCNC days. It also makes me feel old.

That's the description of it, yes, but based on the animations, the sound, the effects and the general tone on the set, it looks like a hitting set. And even if it weren't, I just don't want this kind of arm waving.

This is actually a problem I had when designing my demon-possessed psychic little girl - I didn't have a set which was mostly static, which could depict things happening around her without her actually doing manual labour to cause them. Yeah, even Psychic Blast (she was and is a Psi/Psi Blaster) still had lots of the character grabbing her head, thrusting her arm and otherwise posing.

Honestly, Dark Melee could be considered "hands off" if Dark Maul weren't such a good attack, and after that it's pretty much Electric Melee only. When it comes to the primary, I think this one has the best argument for it, though I'd have to pick an AT and look through the full list of primaries to make sure.

Kinetic Melee has far too much arm-waving, I'm afraid. You're right, the concept is not bad, but the visuals just don't match up to what I want. Granted, Electric Melee also has a more "physical" appearance to it, including Thunder Strike which is a jump up. However, it's still a slower, more conservative kind of motion, and it looks like there's less physical exertion to it.

They can be, but they don't have to be different for no reason. Moreover, they don't have to be different because the existing maps ere copied over without any obviously needed adjustments.

That's OK then I just know that I can come off like having one specific idea I want and pretending like I'm asking for advise, but the truth of the matter is I'm trying to "tick off" as many ideas as I can so as to narrow the pool of choices and make the eventual unassisted choice easier.

Cloak of Shadows doesn't, yes. It has am Original version, a Colour Tintable version and a No Fade or Pulse version. If you choose this third one, you can still tint the shadowy tendrils, but your model never goes transparent. That's what I chose for Artegor, my vampire dude. He was supposed to have a sort of glamour spell that prevents people from recognising this pretentiously over-dressed weird guy as anything out of the ordinary, but he's not supposed to be functionally invisible.

Can't stick with Kim. I burned out on her, and HARD, to the point where I can't stand to launch the game if I think I'll be playing her any more. It was worth going through Dark Astoria with her, but I've been playing her exclusively for, what? A month? Two months now? I need something new or I need to play another game. I like Kim, believe me, but I just can't play her any more.

Funny thing is I wanted to play a villain but not a Stalker and not Dual Blades and not high-level and it turns out I plain don't have one of those. I've been playing heroes for something like six months and they all seem to be high-level, so I want to get as far away from that as I can.

Also, unless you know of a powerset that's coming soon which might fit better - and I don't know if you could speak about it if you did - then I really don't see a reason to wait. I mean, sure, Darkness Control Masterminds might come out next week and I'd use them, or they may never come at all, and I'd be waiting for nothing. I'd rather make Praxis now, and if a better set comes out, I'll reroll. Not much else I can do.

You make a strong argument for Stalkers and Scrappers, really. I'm not sure which one I'd want to go with, but "Stalkers play dirty" sort of undermines the concept, I think. I know I said I didn't have an argument against Stalkers last time, but I think I've found one in Praxis' concept - there's nothing subtle about her any more than there's anything subtle about Shuma-Gorath or the Anti-Monitor. This is a creature which cannot be killed, cannot be harmed and cannot be stopped. Once an avatar of Praxis has manifested fully, it is essentially a natural disaster when it acts openly.

A Stalker, at least the way I play Stalkers, is an unseen, devious killer who exploits people's weaknesses and strikes them down from out of nowhere. I'm not saying that's not worthy of being a god - far from it, I might even use that for this purpose - but it just doesn't seem applicable to Praxis, the extant-reality being who sees life in the same light as she sees a rock or the force of gravity and in the same way we see harsh language. The thing with Praxis is that her power comes not from the strength or health of her avatar, but from the state of suppression on her prison. She doesn't lose power for having her avatar dispersed, so there's no real reason to hide.

The reason I originally wanted to go with a Brute is that this is the closest to a "tank" without having to use the actual Tanker AT, which I just don't like the mechanics of. Praxis' avatar is a lot like Mot's Sentinel (that's not a spoiler), in the sense that defeating that avatar doesn't really hinder Praxis outside of what time it takes for it to reform. Said avatar is no different from a Phantasm, as it were, and that's what the character I'm going to make will represent. There's a certain "in your face" nature to a god this unconcerned with the state of her avatar. Stalkers just seem to be more serious about their self-preservation and more liable to taking opportunities.

And this is another thing. Praxis does not exploit opportunities and take advantage of situations. She does not care about the best way to go about doing things, or even a good way to do things. Instead, she will simply plough whatever course she had planned on regardless of circumstances. I realise that in the Oban clip I posted, Kanaletto is shown as cunning, devious and plotting, but Kanaletto was a mortal, just a very powerful one. This "thing" that is Praxis just doesn't see the universe on the same level as Kanaletto does or as we do. What she is limited by is isn't really within the control of any of her enemies, thus she has no reason for subterfuge.

Now... As you can see, this isn't exactly a very strong argument, and I'm not at all opposed to hearing a counter-argument. That's just what I came up with having thought about this. Stalker and Brute are still on the table, though, and Stalker if I find a personally inspiring argument for it.

I'm sure it does, but from my experience, it doesn't take much to make Willpower just work. I already have a level 50 DB/Will Scrapper and she didn't exactly have much trouble getting there so I'm not worried. Granted, I don't know how much good that will be against the Dark Astoria critters, but that's a whole other problem I'd rather not deal with right now.

That said, I was mostly looking at this from the perspective of what protections it offers. I know Willpower offers protection from all damage types, but I don't know about any debuffs. I'm honestly OK with roleplaying great power without actually having the game's best build Writing stories and making costumes is easy. Making great builds... Not so much, and I'm kind of lazy about it.

The power level is part of what I fear would put people off, yes, and the fact that I'm using my own personal fictional universe's story of creation is probably going to rub at least a few people the wrong way. That's why I opened by saying that it's probably best to say Praxis doesn't exist in YOUR fictional universe and doesn't have to interact with your established characters if you don't want to. Because I know this is both ambitious and pretentious.

However, I know the pitfalls of ultimate power and how bad of a story it makes most of the time, so I've become quite adept at writing beings of great power, but finding creative ways to hamstring them and not let them just go wild and end the story with a single raised eyebrow. To wit: The imprisoned god story. I find this to be a very cheeky solution since it allows me to claim this creature has as much power as I want because it doesn't matter - she's trapped, her power is throttled and any additional level of epicness I can give Praxis is tacked on to the tail end of her power that she's not going to be using anyway. It's kind of like eating my cake and having it, too - I have a character who's of a decent power level to not break a story, and I still get to pretend she's all-powerful. Everybody wins

Huh... OK, you make a VERY strong case for SR that I hadn't though of. I'd have to think about it since I really hadn't anticipated that particular interpretation. My instinct is to reject the idea, but I can't do that in good conscience. Not when you make this much sense. It's still something I have to roll around in my head, though.

I don't disagree with anything you said, but I wanted to explain a point I never brought up: Mind Control. I want to give Praxis until amounts of power and control over reality, but mind control really isn't one of the powers I'm really interested in. I know that this is kind of the staple of the cosmic horror - Cthulu had it, the Reapers had it, Mot has it and so forth - but I just don't think it fits Praxis. See, this "thing" doesn't actually respect or even acknowledge intelligence and life in general. To Praxis, living creatures scurrying about on a planet are no different from wind rolling boulders around on that same planet. She's looking for control over things directly, not just control over their mind.

I should point out that in my story of creation, one of the key dilemmas was what to do about life in the universe, with some of the Creators arguing all of creation should be undone and remade so life couldn't exist and some arguing that this is no longer "their" creation and life should be allowed to have it. As Praxis exists above even these Creators, to her the argument is as meaningless as the entirety of reality. It's just a fool's toy of no practical value and of very little intellectual interest. Controlling people's minds requires a very specific, targeted, almost surgical precision, not to mention the care to be this precise. And this is a creature to which our whole reality is a toy in a toy box. Think the aliens at the end of Men in Black playing marbles with galaxies. That sort of thing.

Why I don't want to focus on mind control or tricks in general is Praxis essentially a bully in a sandbox of sand castles. What she doesn't like, she kicks over without needing to be clever about it. That's what I like about the concept - all of the things most of my other characters HAVE to do to achieve a goal, she doesn't have to do them, because to her, the rules don't apply.

Well, that's if she were completely free, of course, but even when she isn't, Praxis still has pretty much the same modus operandi.

Again, that's not a very strong argument, least of all against Stalkers, but I'm trying to give as much context as I can.

Can I control this, like is there a specific "No fade" option or is it just automatic? I don't see why there wouldn't be, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

And trash-talking people back is the solution? All you're doing is reaffirming preconceptions by calling people idiots. You're giving more people more reason to not PvP. And if your argument is that you don't need people like that - and I'm not saying it is, but IF it is - then there's your answer. Obviously, you can't be welcoming to everyone, and there are jerks on all sides of the fence. That said, you CANNOT discount people's experiences and you cannot dismiss their opinion. Heckling people for having that opinion helps no-one, you least of all.