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If someone offered you $5,000 for your level 50, would you really reject them? How bout $50,000? .

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Of course, unlike most farming and other playstyles of which you disapprove, that WOULD be an explicit violation of the EULA.

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Well, this shows a pretty limited view of the game.

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As opposed to the view that since you don't enjoy taking 50s out for missions, no one else should.

Not limited at all.

People are entitled to like or dislike what others do (farming, playing 50s, whatever) - though I reserve the right ti disagree when they make a public statement about the moral values, or lack thereof, in other people's choices.

However, the suggestions that the game undergo major changes, and limit the options of other players because of their notions - sorry, these kinds of things need to be resisted to the utmost and refuted in the strongest possible terms.

So, no, I must disagree with your proposal.

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But that's just my experience. I can almost guarantee that the one time you need to depend on them being stupid they won't be.

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True. An observation on warfare worthy of Clausewitz.

Was very plesaurable as brute (levelled first villain to 50 with a DB brute). Nice with scrapper too, but having done the brute I don't spend as much time on with that scrapper.

Stalkers are not my thing, can't seem to get into them, so cannot comment.

The zombies in the absence of "brain caste" (Reapers, Morificators, and the bosses) do indeed lose a battle of wits with a sack of hammers. This has been the case from go-live as far as I am aware.

Translating Zombie to English:
Hero hits Vahz zombie. Steps around corner out of sight.
Zombie: Graaaah! (Where him go! It like fighting da wind!)

I assume this is to offset their high damage for lower level opponents. Also they are very effective opponents if you tangle with them and don't take out their controllers first.

In an old tabletop supers campaign, we had one hero whose handicap was that he didn't have a mouth. Gagged all the time. Also supervillains kept phoning the base to torment him.

Just A Player. Soloes sometimes, teams sometimes, PUGs or friends, collects recipes and other drops as they come, badges as they run into them, just...plays.

Grouper. Not the fish. Someone whose main interest, at least in one character, is interacting with their SG/VG, as an officer or just a member.

Changes to the internals on things like faces, hair, etc. over the years do cause this when taking a character to the tailor for the first time in a long stretch. No real way around it but to re-create the look you want using the current features.

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I only extend vendors limited prerogatives to dictate to their customers.

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Which is a bit odd as it's contrary to reality. Where did people get the idea that being a customer means telling someone how to run their business? 'Tis the other way around. Vendors do what they want and leave the choice for you to be their customer or not.

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And if they don't want my custom they can tell me so. One of the many things about MMOs that amaze me is the number of customers who seem to feel empowered to deliver the "why not take your business elsewhere" message on behalf of the vendor.

A customer cannot insist on anything, to be sure. His final sanction, such as it is, is to indeed take his business elsewhere. But he is certainly not debarred from telling a vendor how the product should be designed, implemented or supported. Nor does the vendor have unlimited rights over the actions of the customer vis a vis the product.

The relationship is complicated in this market since we also have the gamer-gamemaster relationship. Not in the sense of support staff as "GMs" - I mean the original gm/player/player-character relationship. Here the GM has significantly more authority, historically.

But the tendency of the shriller members of the would-be authorities in the player community to take some statement by the developers, extrapolate their interpretation of what is and is not acceptable, and then use that fantasy to browbeat others into hewing to their line?

Like saying "newbies should not PL ever" and implying, as Tony did, that this is the divine will of the vendor, and that their opinion has some overwhelming weight on how players choose to use the software.

I may be buying this service, but I am not buying that local by-product.

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So, what's the best place to post to find reasoning from the devs side?


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Small clips?

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Riiiiight

Life or password, death or deletion....hmmmm, toughie

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Cake please.

And here at the Olympic Irony finals, the judges are about rea...yes, yes, there they are...9.6, 9.8, 9.5...and a 4.3 from the Rumanian judge...

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So what do they do? Quit? Make another character and hopfully play thru the content and LEARN how to really play THIS game.


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It doesn't take long to LEARN how to really play THIS game.

Where do people get the idea that this game is some kind of byzantine cipher requiring years of careful study to unravel?


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In my least charitable moods I entertain the niggling suspicion that a player who fancies himself an expert at the game needs to invest that expertise with extra virtue as having been obtained by great exertions.

Now the folks who go out and crunch numbers and run different scenarioes to get esoteric number about the effectiveness of various designs and strategies have put in a lot of effort, and more power to 'em. But that degree of dedication is not needed for expertise.

I believe upthread a ways someone was trotting out questions like "how nany points of damage does this attack do when slotted that way?"

That level of minutiae is not at all necessary to design and slot a character who will do just fine in play, or to work out effective tactics for different powersets. And sometimes it does seem that most passionate lrn2ply advocates are implying that it is.

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My only concern with this is that there are *already* so many missions out there where the author seems to have just thrown something "cool" in without regard to difficulty.

"Your mission's getting one starred because it's just impossible."
"But I didn't die when I tested it."
"Were you using Unkillable mode?"
"Well, yeah..."
"Hello, McFly!"

... should not be a conversation that needs to be had.


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Variations on this theme are almost inevitable when works of fiction go to the general public without a going over by an unbiased and critical editor.

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You want a downside? Ok, Here ya go.

Because there are badges and rewards you get while running missions in test mode ...

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Which surprised the heck out of me first time I started designing an arc. Sure suppress them - in test mode (my preference) or god mode, either way.

Sure, have liked it that way for awhile.

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Of course the only opinion that counts on the question "should Player X powerlevel" is that of Player X.

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Zzzzzt! You forgot a very important group of people whose opinion counts very much: the developers and suits at NCsoft and Paragon Studios.


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I only extend vendors limited prerogatives to dictate to their customers.

I stand by my original thesis.

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The only reason I decided to tie the skins to origin is because because of one word - "theme." As dolphin mentioned, it is silly to see a technological hero/villain running around in lioncloth, just like it would be silly to see a magic origin hero/villain running around with a flamethrower.


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Your notions of what is and is not silly are not, however, an aesthetic imperative for anyone else.

PS - I haven't gotten around to picking up the Magic Pack yet. Does anyone know offhand if anything in this themed set of goodies is in fact limited to Magic Origin characters? I would assume not - the developers haven't shown any tendency to limit players in this way in the past, so I assume they are not likely to start, but could be wrong.

Stock answer #1: There are no healers in CoX.
Stock answer #2: You don't need a healer in any case.

Question of my own: What do you consider a healer? WHat powers does an AT have to take? Are you limiting it to empathy defenders, or can, say, kinetics play too?

Not ringing bells. Off top of head, close to the sound:
Pericles (Athenian ruler)
Pentheus (king torn apart by Maenads for insulting Dionysus)
Herakles (aka Hercules)
Pindar (or Pindarus, Roman poet)
Sophokles (playwright)
Penthesilea (Amazon, IIRC?)

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What the guy's asking for are the Iron Man gloves that have repulsors in the palm, Captain Cold's freeze ray (that pistol doesn't count as it's a 25 minute one shot), Weather Wizard's wand, or Green Lantern's Ring...

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Any or all of which would be unspeakably cool.

Tying them to Origin would be really bad (possibly unspeakably bad, but I would'nt want to go overboard).

I agree this would have been very useful when I was testing the flow, look-and-feel, etc. of my arc. Burning inspirations to survive the bigger fights seemed an irritating incidental expense. Not a real drain - I did my designing with high level characters, who could pick up more medium andlarge insps pretty much at will. Bit only if they went off to play something else or go shopping before going back to testing.

Running on heroic got around some of the issue, of course. But not having to worry about it until I was satisfied with the basic architecture of the mission would have been preferable.

/signed

PS - I see several "how do you know if it is too hard" objections, which would be valid if the author stayed in godmode through the whole design cycle. And one can argue that some authors would, as a negative to the suggestion. But it would speed up and simplify the process in some phases. I must admit, I didn't think of plugging in minion/lieut versions of the Big Bads during preliminary design walk throughs, which is certainly useful as a workaround. "AV stubs" as it were :-)


Though after-afterthought, doesn't that make it possible the Big Bad will pop up as a Joe Shmoe Foe during earlier stages of the mission, and can you still assign a demoted Boss/Elite/AV to a Boss Fight (might still be possible - just haven't tried it yet myself).

Of course I could keep the Big Bads in a Big Bad group all their own, and their goons in the general villain group. But now the tool seems to get unwieldy.

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Here's a question for you all to chew on- should newbies to CoH/CoV ever Powerlevel?

In my opinion, no.

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Of course the only opinion that counts on the question "should Player X powerlevel" is that of Player X.

This game is not rocket science. It can be learned on the fly. I know people who do not, as far as I know, PL, but who don't know basic tactics much less subtleties of play. I don' t PL and still find things I didn't know. How I got to the present level of the character who discovers the new thing does'nt really seem to be a factor.

But the main thing, again, is that no one else's opinion matters a darn on this question.

More customizable costume pieces, active props, etc. are always good.

But as soon as you limit certain pieces to certain origins, you lose me. Not all magic origin characters are magicians, or use wands. My archery defender Agincourt is magic, but derives his powers from a bow that was carried at the battle of the same name. My broadsword scrapper is magic, but derives his power from being...well, magical, an incarnate angel. And so on.

It would be a pity to go through the extra work of creating reactive costume pieces, on a par with jet boots, wings, etc., and then limit access to them based on origin. It is up to the player to make those decisions and roleplay the reasons for them if he feels like it.

PS - it is indeed power/weapon customization, but I haven't figured out over the years why a post saying "Oh, that's customization, so no" is particularly useful. The more customization the designers can get into the game the better. It is one of the most reliable selling points in CoX. Lot of work? Yes indeed - but so is any substantive change to the game. So don't be put off by inane notes that you should have searched or should know customization won't happen or that you eat meat on holy days or whatever the kneejerk rejection du jour for some posters may be.

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If anyone who is actively playing the game would like to post their opinion I would like to hear from them as well. Fighting over the star, LOL, when did you last play? 2007? 2006?

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Ah, a punk ad hominem response to a substantive objection - this adds a reason to disagree with your inane suggestion.