Aura_Familia

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The kicker is dealing with it all. At times I roll gold just because I can't be bothered with processing 53 recipies and crafting the 30-odd good ones.

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I agree but I also consider crafting then selling (AKA crapping) as fun. You could also just sell the recipe instead of crafting it to save time.

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plus the crafting badges, if you are into that.

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Getting Broadsword isn't what I would call getting shafted

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beat me to it. LMAO.

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Damn Stalkers got the shaft in proliferation... Wanted Fire Melee so bad.

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Head Splitter is the shaft? (assuming they get head splitter)

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Best change ever:

Updates to the difficulty settings so you can spawn all maps for teams of 8 at +4 combat level.

Awesome. Pure awesome.

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LOL a certain someone vehemently disagreed with this when it was made as a suggestion by myself and others in the suggestion forum. Let's see what they have to say now.



Even if such an option reduces the rewards in a missh when you are solo, I would still whole heatedly use the new difficulty options.

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Not only does the newly updated Character Creator allow players to jump directly between Archetype, Powersets, Costumes and Character ID in any order without losing progress

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YESSSSSSSSSS

I've always hated having to jump all the way back to change something (hopefully this also includes Origin; I'm the type of person who WILL reroll if my character concept changes after I picked Origin and I forgot to go back to change it).

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I wonder if this tech can be implemented for the respec screen.

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I'm just wondering how that would even be workable. You seem to want to define a Team by the leader and how many people are in it. But both of those things can change. A team is a fluid object that can change completely over a period of time. You could start a team with members A B and C, over time gain members D E and F, then lose members A B and C. Is the current state of the team the same as the original state of the team when A first formed it? How do you organize these objects for searching? How do you organize them at all?

I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense to me at all.

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I think it would be possible to make the team search window dynamic enough to handle such things. Would be up to the devs to decide how to implement it.

EDIT: The danger that the OP overlooks with the private team option however, is if what if most team leaders start marking their team as private?

THAT part of the suggestion could make finding teams even harder.

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Playing Blasters and Scrappers has taught me one thing - if you hit what you hold, you just wasted the endurance you used to cast that hold. There's no point in holding something for 10 seconds if you kill it in 2.

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At no point did I recommend holding a target then killing it. The issue is that the targets you're holding still need to be killed at some point.

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I honestly can't imagine how it's even possible to keep a spawn of, say, five minions and one lieutenant (I seem to see a LOT of these for some reason) permanently incapacitated such that they cannot respond.

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You're not trying to hold everyone forever. You use your AOE control (in the case of gravity, wormhole), to buy you enough time to whittle down your enemies' numbers to the point where you can casually hold what's left with your single target hold.

With your putative 5 minions and a lieutenant, I'll use wormhole to port them all next to me, immobilize the lot of them to keep them from wandering too much (and get a couple procs from the stuff I've got slotted in my Crushing Field), then proceed to use the next 25+ seconds to rip apart minions. About halfway through that time period I'll start mixing in my single target hold, so as to get the minions I know will be left under control by the time wormhole breaks.

By the time I've finished off the surviors and reached the next group of enemies, wormhole should have recharged.

Now if you're not slotting and using wormhole, and trying to avoid using your hold because it's 'not efficient', I can see how you'd get the impression that it's hard to manage a spawn of 6 guys.

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Yep. Basically both the primary and secondary matter.

You do need to control to be able to be effective. The mentality of only playing doms as a blaster, just isn't going to work all that well.

At least not if one wants to fight spawns of greater than 3. Which doms do easily.

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Most of your posts are indistinguishable from the streetcorner rantings of an escaped mental patient.

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the gall to call you uptight? umm yea i guess... not really sure what a gall is but yea i can go with that.

look obviously you are becoming a little obsessed with this thread and honestly i don't know why. at this point you just amuse me to no end. sorry but i just don't take this stuff seriously like you do.

my opinions are based on what i have seen. i play on liberty. not the most populated server but it was always steady and with lots of really solid people. the kind that like to play for fun not turn it into a substitute for real life. anyway it used to be pretty easy to find a team or a TF or whatever. almost every zone had toons zippin all over. now its like a ghost town. my friends list which was comprised of dozens of solid long standing veterans that were always around is now reduced to a long grey list with a green name now and then.

sure theres still stuff going on but no where near the scale it was before AE.

the 20x times faster comment obviously isnt some exact science. but when i see someone claim they rolled a 50 in 6 hours then yea id say thats pretty damn fast. actually sounds faster than 20 times but i suck at math so yea.

and this post of course is entirely based on opinion.

im not anti AE (think i might have stated that but maybe i didnt) i just think its abuse should be managed a little better.

so that should give you all you need right there right? so you wanna hug it out? or just allow ourselves to have differences of opinion and move on?

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lol if you call most teams doing nothing but mostly newspapers to be stuff going on, I have a swamp land to sell you.

LOL

Oh and newsflash, you can still easily find a tf on most servers anytime of the day. JOIN A SERVER CHANNEL.

Or I don't know, form you OWN TEAMS.

Personally couldn't care less if it does or doesn't.

However, I will say it would be a hilarious mistake if it did.

1-50 in 10 hours, pfffft.

With DXP on in AE, I would say you ain't seen nothing yet.

With that said patrol XP doesn't work in AE, soooo....

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Does it really need it?

Jeebus, you can take a shower, PL some, grab some food, PL some, get drunk and then finally hit level 50, and all that is done in less then 5 hours.

I really don't think the AE system needs DoubleXP. And I honestly hope it doesn't get it. I would much rather see mainstream content get the DoubleXP that way it may entice people to run content now rather then the AE junk.

We need some serious help in the Market when it comes to recipes, and hopfully running real content will fill the markets for a little bit.

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You must be using a different market than me. There's MORE receipes on the market now than when that completely idiotic merits system was released.

Either that or I must be blind or something.

Now if you are talking about purples, you should have specified.

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Many people seem to want this game to be less like Superman vs Lex Luthor or Superman vs Bizarro -- an epic battle where the superhero is more or less evenly matched, whether by similar or different powers -- and more like Superman vs Scut Farkus, where the Man of Steel beats up (or "farms"?) a dozen schoolyard bullies in every episode. "Hooray."

Personally? I'm only interested in reading, watching, or playing the epic battles where even the super-est of heroes are evenly matched. If Superman isn't taking any risks, how much of a hero is he really? I'm not terribly interested in playing a "superbully" who picks on the weak and helpless.

(And no, not even on CoV. Interesting supervillains go up against superheroes.)

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Interestingly enough this is one of the criticisms of Superman and authors being able to challenge such a character.

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I rate Arcanaville even higher at Highly Reliable/Functionally Accurate. While not a dev his posts have been more accurate than theirs, and unlike the devs since he is not an NCSoft employee he has no motivation to disemble.

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I have a weird extra advantage here over the devs. Every time I say *anything* about Paragon Studios or the devs, even in jest, I think very carefully about whether or not I'm inappropriately misrepresenting them. Psychologically speaking, most people don't think nearly as hard about whether they are about to misrepresent their own selves.

In other words, I'm always thinking "will Castle agree with this in principle tomorrow" but Castle probably rarely says "will I agree with this in principle tomorrow." Its just not something most people do.



Also, it helps that I'm always right. Like when I said it wouldn't take very much code changes to implement power animation customization and BaB (long ago) said it would? Yeah, its like that.**

(Of course, it will still take thirty-two billion man hours to make new animations for everything, but that's completely irrelevant to me being always right)


** Its a bit more complicated than that, but that's *also* irrelevant to me always being right so that's the story I'm sticking with. Also, I know BaB is hard at work on I16, only reading the forums irregularly, doesn't save PMs, and unlikely to be in a position to contradict me. And he's an incredibly wonderful human being who wouldn't take revenge on a small joke by replacing all my power animations with whirlwind. And he's currently on probation and can't kill another forum poster without invoking the three-strikes rule.

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LOL.

I like when the big bad math lady gets funny.

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It still hasn't been denied that I16 is the synchronization patch for Going Rogue.

As was pointed out in a different discussion I6 was not City of Villains, it was Along Came a Spider which added 3 PVP Zones to the Hero Game and included a graphical update.

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It hasn't?

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To be fair, BaB, you were a little ambiguous there. A little more clarity would have helped...

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Please, for the love of all that's holy, tell me you're joking when you said this.

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Your joke detection meter is borken.

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It still hasn't been denied that I16 is the synchronization patch for Going Rogue.

As was pointed out in a different discussion I6 was not City of Villains, it was Along Came a Spider which added 3 PVP Zones to the Hero Game and included a graphical update.

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It hasn't?

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To be fair, BaB, you were a little ambiguous there. A little more clarity would have helped...

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We seeing as someone mentioned he jokes too much with us and therefore anything he says shouldn't be believed when he says it THAT clearly, at this point he might as well be ambiguous.

And I'll leave it at that so as not to start a flame based on some "interesting" comments I've seen.

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Except the alternative of letting everyone get the shinies, letting every player have a reasonable (a loaded word, I know) chance of getting what they want. A shocking idea that a game should be FUN and not WORK, but as I've said before, other games already do the high-end powergamer-only loot thing. CoX was always great because it was a casual game. Introducing ultra-powerful loot wasnt the bad idea: making it ultra-rare was a terrible idea from what the game has always been.

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Everyone does get the shinies, if you mean an equal chance at them dropping. Everyone does get fabulously powerful enhancements easily available -- they're called SOs. You can get even more powerful enhancements that enable you to thrive against any content in the game -- almost as easily available: they're called IOs.

But to get the things intended to be very rare, no, you can't easily get them -- that would defeat their purpose.

I am of the opinion that the Devs did not design "very powerful" items and happen to make them very rare. Nobody needed more power than normal IOs give us.

It makes much more sense (from a "keeping you playing" perspective) to design ultra-rare things that are very hard to get -- and then they HAD to make them pretty powerful; otherwise no one would care if they were super hard to get but not any better then the easy-to-get stuff.

These things are a goal, something to aspire to.

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THIS. Tired of the inherent idiocy of it "should be casual enough but still be tought of as ultra rare" that I keep seeing spewed in the market forum.

Purples ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ULTRA RARE.

What of this statement that has been confirmed by the devs do folks not get?

Someone post BaB's joke about being casual, purples and warshades again pls.

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I can't speak for Nethergoat but I'm very anti-farm/anti-PL and I still think a blanket nerf to AE rewards is stupid and will cause people to stop using it.

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Counterpoint: I do powerlevel, I farm, and some might say I exploit bugs and imbalances to do so. However, I also have an interest in the game staying healthy, and the AE, as it is, is not helping. I do feel the rewards need adjusting.

I'd like to see a solution where maybe 1/8 or so of the population is in the AE at any given time. Basically what this means is that AE needs to be useful for something, but not useful for everything, nor should normal players be punished for using it. As it is you get superior exp (missions are optimized thusly by users) superior infamy/prestige, better "drops" via tickets (which are far more lucrative than merits, which are about right IMO) extremely low risk, and almost total elimination of travel time.

Cutting exp punishes casual players. As casual play is the intended function of the AE, that shouldn't be touched. Exploits need to be fixed, however, and I do consider all boss, lt, or even all minion maps exploits.

I would suggest removing inf/prestige from the AE instead; tickets are enough to keep a character well equipped from 1-50. This would help to curb the use of the AE for farming inf (though tickets->loot->market would still be viable) and hopefully get the 50s out in the game so we can get the markets moving again.

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You don't get superior exp if you don't farm and use it as intended. You actually get less as patrol xp doesn't count and there are no mission bonuses. You also lose out on the chance at a drop when the mission completes. You also see no purples. (Actually this tells me many couldn't care less about purples and specifically the market for them.) You also lose out on the chance at a pool C/D from bosses that was recently introduced in issue 14. You also get no badge credit for defeat badges or badges needed for accolades. You also get no merits from arc completions.

There are drawbacks to doing nothing but AE already.

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It's true! Everyone on the internet is a paragon of tolerance and *snerk*... sorry, I just can't say that with a straight face.

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LOL!

I have to get yet ANOTHER keyboard thanks to this forum!

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Making the low level missions less crappy would help, too.

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Personally I quite enjoy them.

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As do I.

Except on Villain side; I hate Kalinda's arcs. That's one bonus to the AE: I can make villain content that I like better and bypass Kalinda/Burke (although Burke mixes some good stuff in too).

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I did the first 20 times. After that I stopped caring about low level missions.

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Are 'real missions' paper/scanner missions?

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LOL. THIS.

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In small maps, there's nothing wrong with defeat alls. In large maps? I don't know how you could possibly rationalize it being fun or even needed according to the story, but to each their own.

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This.

Also if the map says "random" in the description or large, I just avoid the arc.

Couldn't give a flying [censored] what your story is. I only have limited play time nowadays as it is. If I wanted a tedious grind I'd re-sub to WoW.

So I am VERY careful in deciding whether I'll play an arc with a kill all. Usually leaning AGAINST playing them most of the time.

Those who love them, have at it.

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Well. Thats a tough one.

You have people that use it as intended that have to deal with the other stuff that goes on.

You have new trial members who don't realize anything but AE exists.

You have the Vets who just want to use it for whatever they feel like at any given time.

Suggestions for the AE trial debacle seem to be the primary focus of what needs to be fixed. Doing that without impacting or limiting the other activities and still keep it in line with what they want it to achieve is a tall order.

Like you said how it plays out may not be what some people end up wanting. Used as intended I think its a good thing. Used as it is now I feel like its just going to keep corrupting the trial populations.

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The issue though I don't think is just if AE is used as intended. Even if it were used as intended and a trial person did REGULAR non-farm AE missions from 1-50, there is still the high possibility that they might never see any other zone.

The issue is how do you expose these people to non-AE missions and get them to want to do those as much as the AE. As stated by others already, farming IS NOT the sole thing that makes doing nothing but AE convenient.

For COV travel is not an issue, as most content is contained in level ranges in the same zones.

For COH, where older contacts still to this day send you all over paragon and back, yeah I can see why the allure of having missions in one place is great for some folks.

Part of the issue is also that the older content (whether high or low--I mean when was the last time any new contetn was added to PI for instance--and that zone has existed for how many issues now?) hasn't been revamped in a long time. Though that's more of a vet issue, admittedly.

My point is even if AE were to be used as was intended (1-50 story content, no farming), it STILL would breed folks asking in b-cast asking stuff like:

What's Oroborus?
Where do I go to get my second costume?
What's Cimerora?

Doing nothing but AE from 1-50 (non farm or not), you would not be exposed to ANY of those things.

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AmazingMOO wrote:

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I want to exclusively focus on what steps can, should, and should not be taken to make... more friendly and more conducive to hooking...

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In a "Rated T for Teen" game? <gasp>

--NT

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LOL

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I have a different idea I haven't seen suggested in this thread yet (sorry if it has):

Expand the tutorial zone.

Add branching dialogue and contacts so players can learn more about their specific Archetype. Allow more leveling, up to level 5 or maybe even 10 should they choose to hang around there long enough.

Basically the tutorial zones would become the new "lowbie" zones, focused on the new player experience, which experienced players can easily opt out of should they choose (and head straight to the AE building if they want.)

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A certain OTHER upcoming game has a similar setup. Or so I have heard.

This is a good idea.

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I didn't specify the path I just used those as examples.

If the player base doesn't want the story based levelling concept as it was intended then all thats left is a power levelling service. Any focus after that concession is pretty much pointless.

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That's a question that just might finally have to be asked.

My fear is that we won't like the answer.

The forums WERE already asked that question and the general opinion (too lazy to find the specific thread) was that most forum goers WOULD NOT use an insta lvl 50 option.

However, I can only imagine what the answer will be if you asked the playerbase IN-GAME. Especially now with all the AE babies and new players in this game that seem to have come online, in the last month or two.

Now as to a "jump start service" for vets (start at lvl 22 or level 10) or a mini pl service that started you at lvl 10 or 15, that would be an interesting question to ask.

EDIT: Another question (as an aside) is, if NCSOFT offered a lvl 50 Arena/PVP Zone-ONLY character (with full IOs of your choice--excluding purples) for say $59.99, would folks purchase it?