Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Lascher

The pot callin the kettle black! Lol

Originally Posted by MunkiLord

Now in all fairness the poster didn't put anything out there I couldn't have gathered from AP in like two minutes. But it was new info to me, so I was curious.

Originally Posted by MunkiLord

I can agree with this. Also, people should avoid posting any details about exploit farms on the forums. Somebody did it in this thread and I was able to find it just using that information. This one is bad too, I expect it to be dealt with the next patch or I19 release.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

Anyone with an iota of motivation would be Incarnated in about 30 seconds under that system.

=P

Originally Posted by Celestial_Lord

So, in Issue 20, in addition to a new 24 person public quest, we get... more warehouse maps! Sweet! Just what this game needs.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

[I]

being true at all. Arcs that are well written, dev and Player alike, get played more. Wether they give 'leet rewards' or not doesnt matter; what matters is that they are fun.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

I've been trying to get good base screens to post, but I have a strange problem with my game where I take screens in widescreen, but if I log out they get compressed down to a square format, which looks terrible.

The only way I can get 'good' ones is to alt-tab out, open them in an editor and 'save as' to my desktop...which is a PITA and the reason I haven't posted any lately.

I might just change my resolution for one night, take a pile of screens and then change it back to wide...

Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards

[/INDENT]And there we are. Help yourself to a free month of CoH/V, or whatever you like with the $15!

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Despite, or perhaps because of its flexibility, it's hard to say what DP shines at other than looking good. And to be honest, looking good has carried the set what I consider to be surprisingly far.

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

I repeat that citing the HERO system as something that is balanced in regards to superhero gaming is sheer folly. The GM balanced the game, the system itself was balanced about as well as you can balance a Chevy Silverado on a knitting needle.

Originally Posted by Biospark

This has been a very interesting thread to follow, and I have to say that my entire opinion on rewards has been changed because of it. At least in regards to "Direct-Purchase" style rewards and conversions.

Prior to this, I wanted to see more direct-buy options and more conversions and MORE specifically for the AE tickets, because I feel they (AE random rolls) stink from a non-farming standpoint. AE (for me) is about getting my hands on salvage whenever the market fluctuates to retarded prices for things like Iron. Other than salvage, I feel my time is better spent on regular content, which is WAI according to most commonly held opinions.

My current opinion is that "random" rewards should be a "by-product" of simply participating in various game activities and can remain the same as they currently are. Direct-Purchase OTH should be focused/limited to specific in-game activities that make sense for the level of the reward. Here is a sample of how it "could have" been done.

PVP Recipes : Direct purchase ONLY thru the use of special PvP merits gained from actually participating in PvP activities. They can still drop randomly while participating in PvP.

PURPLE Recipes : Direct purchase ONLY thru purple Merits gained thru specific events like the STF, where each player is awarded 1 Merit upon successful completion of the event. There may need to be a cooldown period for each event, but not necessarily for the "A-merit" itself. These recipes can still drop randomly from level 50+ enemies in the PvE content, but completion of "Tip" arcs would result in regular reward merits for all 4 alignments.

RARE Recipes and Salvage : Direct purchase with Reward Merits which are gained thru completion of regular story arcs, morality arcs, and even regular missions. I believe this is fair for all four alignments to recieve an equivalent reward, and further it doesn't lock neutrals out of the "A-Merit" direct purchase system, because they could participate in End-Game TFs to get them just as Heroes and Villains would. These (Rare recipes and Salvage) would still drop randomly at the completion of any door mission or off any critter of Boss level or higher.

NON-RARE Recipes and Salvage : Direct Purchase thru AE tickets. These can drop randomly off any critter in the PvE game.

And finally, NO CONVERSIONS of any kind. No conversion of PvP merits to A-Merits, or vice versa. No conversion of Tickets to Reward Merits, Reward Merits to A-Merits, etc... etc... etc...


Keep in mind, this is simply my opinion, so be gentle on the flames.
I do not seriously expect or advocate this kind of change in-game. I simply have a newly formed belief regarding how rewards "should" be earned using a direct-buy method.

Originally Posted by SwellGuy

And/or work on gaining r-merits/a-merits and buy them directly.

Personally I think at this point since merits can buy everything including PvP and Purple recipes complainers about the market aren't worth the bother to educate. I just laugh at them as I get everything I want.

Originally Posted by Wavicle

There is already enough waiting for things, both ingame and IRL, I don't want to wait to play my toon with his new slots with what I want in them.

Frankly, although the A-Merit system is an improvement, I wish most of the 1 A-Merit items (or maybe just all or most of the 50 R-Merit items) were available from a vendor for Influence.

It's a GAME. Why should it be reinforcing lessons I learned in kindergarten that I apply constantly in stressful situations IRL? Is that fun?

Originally Posted by BrandX

When you get exactly what you want, it tends to cost more.

PvP and Purple IOs cost even more so.

I'd say with the current system the 5000 tickets equals 1 Reward Merit is likely the most likely outcome for such a system being added.

Figure there are farmers who can zip through the content and be racking them up if it was much lower.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

Honestly I still fail to see how allowing exploiters to trade tickets for merit rewards would allow an AE exploiter to gain greater rewards than they can already get by just trading in the tickets.

Originally Posted by Noxilicious

The idea of making the toons with the least amount of HP and resistance/defense also the one gaining the most aggro is very, well, it won't be fun at all for people playing those toons.

Maybe debuff-heavy Defenders and Corruptors might be able to deal with that, but most buffers buff, you know, the rest of the party, not themselves. So we have an AT with powersets that are meant to make others more resilient and more capable at taking and dishing out damage, and then make it all useless because the enemies will focus on you anyway?

It may be smart or realistic or what-have-you for enemies to focus on the team's buffers and debuffers first, but it will make those ATs a lot less fun to play. Of course one might say this simply requires a change in tactics, like killing the entire mob immediately before the Defender dies, but who really likes fights that last five seconds? Or instead of a Tanker we just get two or three Controllers and lock down those mobs, but then we're at the same position where enemies cannot do any reasonable damage against the team, it just changed from only attacking a nigh-invincible AT to not being able to attack at all.

So what do we do know? We can just make every enemy a lot more mez-resistant and make Controllers and Dominators another priority target, but then we just neutered another couple of ATs to make things realistic and intelligent or whatever. More useless ATs to make the game more challenging, brilliant design.

Now don't misconstrue this as me saying that challenge is bad. Far from it. It's just that this idea of challenge isn't fun. Instead of making Tankers useless by having enemies ignore them and making Defenders useless by having them get killed immediately, why don't we give enemies more AoEs? Many buff-sets have PBAoE buffs and buff-toggles requiring them to be close to their melee compatriots. It could make it so that position becomes more strategic, like say, this enemy group has lots of cone attacks, so it's best to buff your buddies from behind enemy lines, whereas the other group uses PBAoEs so now the Defender wants to stand as far as possible from the enemies while still being close enough to sufficiently buff their buddies.

Of course even that would have several flaws, but I'm just throwing out ideas here. What I'm trying to say is that challenge is good, but challenge should promote proper team-synergy, rather than by changing combat mechanics in such a way that several ATs get neutered and we're left with the bare-minimum to defend ourselves.

Put differently, you can make the game more challenging by giving us tougher foes, so that we feel more powerful ourselves for toppling them, or you can cripple the players, at which point we'd just feel frustratingly weak and derive significantly less joy from the challenge.

Originally Posted by Mr. DJ

we can't forget that Batman originally used a gun

Originally Posted by GMan3

Yea, sucks doesn't it.

"Hey Skybolt! You just saved the world from total annihilation but your still a murderer!"

"Hey Electro-Kid, thank you for killing those men before they could **** my daughter, but you still a murderer!"

"Hey Batman, you just killed Two Face before he could murder thousands of people, but your still a MURDERER!"

It's all about perspective.

Originally Posted by Bad_Influence

And Wolverine absolutely kills enemies all the time, because he's a hero and that is what a lot of them do.



See above, sorry. I'm pretty sure Batman does as well - he's killed the Joker at least once. I'd call Batman a pretty iconic superhero.

A few superheroes such as Spider-man do not kill their opponents. A great many DO, however, and you can argue that they DON'T till you are blue in the face, but the fact is that everyone with even a small knowledge of comics knows that.... yeah, they often do. This is the reality of the comics genre.

If you ever actually read Mark Millar's "Wanted"... I dont think you could handle that. It is about villians, granted but I dont think you could handle that well at all. Metahumans are a murderous bunch, villain OR hero. In the Marvel UNiverse a lot of people actually do not like heroes much, because they are seen as massively destructive of property and of life. If the Hulk rampaged through your apartment during a battle, would you be ok with that? I sure wouldnt.

As a matter of fact, I well remember the Anniversary event where "name" heroes were spawning all over the place. Back Alley Brawler showed up at the Cap au Diable BM and started killing everyone in sight. People were mildly going about their businesss at the market and he was one-shotting 'em... Now that is a hero for you, lol... but VERY TRUE TO THE GENRE.

As for whoever made the comment about our opponents not dying because their bodies vanish after a minute or two, my understanding was that this is not due to the fact that they miraculously got teleported to a hospital, but that the more bodies are lying around, the more graphics-intensive things get = increased lag. They vanish as a service to us, to reduce lag.

I know all of this accords ill with your hearts-and-flowers worldview, but sorry.