Bad_Influence

We have one on Guardian which I avoid like the plague. I despise every single person in it. This sounds harsh, I know. But they all seem to operate using a Hive mind or something: its like a hill of ants, and to disobey the queen is death. I hear that if you are at work and have to miss a SG meeting, you get bounced from the group. Don't know if that's actually true, but I would not doubt it for an instant.

That's just hilarious. I dislike them even more because they tried to take over the SG I am in by force. [This did not work btw. This is the thing that first earned my ire.... the first of many]. They also like to show up at hami raids and tell everyone which team they should be on, and if the team is led by someone not in their SG they take tremendous offense. "We need you to be over there with Hive Mind X. Drop team now and he'll pick you up."

Such crap makes me mourn the fact that as of yet, we lack a middle-finger emote.

With that said there are several SGs whom I am always pleased to see a representative of on the team, because they're full of great players. Into every life a little rain must fall though

Here's the funny thing, though: my villains have many more merits than my heroes.

They have them because my villains will happily run contact mishes, while my heroes will do almost anything but run them, because killing 45 Crey/Freaks/Council/you name it every other mission gets so old, I can't even tell you. Defeat all! Then hunt. Defeat all! then hunt. Defeat all yet again! Then another hunt....

I forget which contact it is, I think its one of the Talos contacts has you clear out a succession of Tsoo warehouses. In a row. One right after another. And those are big warehouses.

Whoever thought that arc up needs a Doc Marten to the shin. Repeatedly.

Move.... villains... to blueside?...? Bwahahahaha.

Why on EARTH would I do that? So I can do stuff like, oh say NOT run Technician Naylor's arc so I CAN run the stunning wonders embodied by the Janet Kellum arc? [am aware these contacts are in two different level ranges, just sayin'.]

You mean I should be planning on NOT clearing out Mole Point Bravo so I CAN defeat a whole base full of Crey, then kill 45 Crey, then kill another base fulla Crey, then hunt 45 more Crey, then go to a third base full of Crey.... ad nauseum.... This sounds like an excellent idea! How. About. No.

The markets have been merged, or will be in a few days and I keep people blueside because I have many friends who, for some unknown reason, vastly prefer the blandness and repetition of blueside contacts. If I tried to move my villains over there I would have to sleep with one [virtual] eye open. Some of those folks are short-tempered

The equation of some idiot running around in a Hulk costume to real-life crime, including the actual threat of death = epic failure of argument.

Really? So if they disabled the concentric circles on the round shield, removed the Wolverine Claws weapon option and removed the Bat-Accessories, there "would not be much left"? OK, sport.

There are others, but these are some of the most egregious offenders in the Clone Wars, pardon the pun, and NCSoft knows what they need to do to halt the problem [almost] in its tracks.

They keep not doing it, which leads me to believe this is less important to them than it is to the Hall Monitor crowd. Suits me fine; I like all the costume options I can get.

But lets not be hypocritical about it. People tattletale because deep down... they like it. All this moral fluff is just that, fluff.

Haha... I find that both hilarious and ridiculously overdue. The forum ratings system merely enabled attempts at bullying; in-game it is useful, allowing me to avoid the undesireable while my target has no clue. Which is as it should be; I just want to know who's good to team with.

Not that the forum version didn't have its funny side, because nothing gets a snort of derision out of me faster than a wannabe-scorching attempt to flame one's opponent down to the ground... anonymously. Now that's courage....! Got something to say? Sign your name, cowboy. [general "you," there.] Then I MIGHT - note, might - at least take the time to read it. PROBABLY not, but I might.

Funny how that simply never happened. At least, last time I checked about a year ago when I turned it off, it hadn't. Should never have been implemented, let's hope it never returns.

This would be wonderful, if only people trying to form PuGs paid one scintilla of attention as to whether or not one has any sort of a flag up.

They don't. Maybe you do, and that's great. But 99.9999999% of PuG-builders out there don't, judging from what I have seen. In fact I remember one extremely amusing incident back when I was new to the game: I had had the LFT flag up for a long time, at the end of my session I was logging out after having taken the flag down. During the middle of the logoff countdown, I get a tell. Went something like this:

idiot: Join my team plz. [Team invite popup appears]

me: Thanks, but I'm logging off now. Ty for invite though. [clicks off of popup]

idiot: But you were LFT, I saw it. [re-invite]

me: Yes I was. But I'm logging off now, thanks anyways!

idiot: But I SAW that you were LFT, join my team!

me: cya, thanks anyways. [initiate logoff countdown]

idiot: You were LFT, you have to join my team. Join it.

[still logging]

JOIN MY TEAM NAO! [countdown continues....]

This went on until I actually exited the game.

He's aiming in the wrong direction then: they're on the ground, not in the sky. Typical Arachnos... lookin' good, but not all that bright.

I am never hidden unless I have entered a PvP zone, in which case I hide from everything until I leave.

I want casual friends to be able to find me and invite me to teams. Many times Ihave seen people begging to join task forces on global channels, and the leader can't invite them because they are hidden from everything.

I am on a comparatively low population server and am rarely harrassed by idiots these days. Usually people sending me tells are known to me, even if I don't have them friended. I have no reason to hide from them, this would prevent me from having lots of fun.

Natcherly. Having access to the Arachnos cape is also good for this; the boxed set that it came out of can be purchased on the Bay for a song.

Justice is also good because it goes really, really well with the Roman pieces you are going to unlock once you run the Imperious Task Force.

When was the last time? 99 forevers ago

I am delighted to hear this issue has been addressed; my lowbie heroes might actually peek into the zone for once, instead of avoiding it with the fervor of vampires avoiding daylight.

An excellent example of exactly what I meant re the easy acquisition of merits. I realize playstyles differ, but from my point of view, soloing in the Hollows is just.... gah. I don't want to be sent to the far side of the Hollows as a level 4.

I realize that I *could* go to the trouble of forming a team, and trying to lead them through the various Hollows story-arcs. This is a thing I choose not to do; I'm willing to forego those merits in the interest of leveling up quickly and getting the Safeguard jetpack.... and just generally getting the hell out of Atlas. Plus as has been mentioned earlier, if teamed then not everyone gets those merits.

What, if any, effect the new Jetpack recipe will have on my equation is currently unknown. But this strays from my original point: as a hero, I'm saying "no thank you" to troublesome/distant lowbie mission arcs. As a villain, I'll run them - even back when the Eliminate the Infected mission was all the way across Mercy.

Its VERY common for my level 20ish villains to have over 150 merits, just from running contacts. My level 20ish heroes have 50 or fewer - usually fewer.

Once I have access to a travel power I am more amenable to being sent noodling and doodling all over Paragon on what amounts to sightseeing journeys; cape mission, I am looking at you. Prior to 14, no wonder so many people hit the sewers.

Hmm. This has not been my experience, but I have admittedly not tried it that often.

I never said I liked redside due to a perceived lack of variety. I am a very goal-oriented person. It makes more sense for me thematically to go find out if those rumors about the Council Vampyre are true, than to be sent hopping, skipping and jumping across two zones to go talk to some fool in the Hollows, and then go hunt down some silly idiot's lost bracelet, and then to run hither, thither and yon to find out exactly how many Skulls are haunting Hell's Highway or whatever other banality lowbie hero contacts throw at me.

My level 33 tank recently endured a string of, I think it was four Council hunt missions in a row, for a contact. Four. Some may view this as "variety," people like me see it as poor storytelling. Its not really an inducement for me to run a lot of heroside contact stuff.

But especially as a level four, I don't find it compelling to be sent to an opposite corner of the map for each mission, or to be sent to the opposite corners of different zones - that's just a nuisance, not good storytelling. I won't even get into not being given a phone number until mission #12 of a contact storyline. Stupid?! I guess so, at least over here. Mileage will vary.

My villains always have significantly MORE merits than my heroes do. Why is that?

As a villain, esp. a lowbie villain, I am pretty much soloing. Most of that soloing is running contact missions. I will happily run lowbie villain contacts due to their almost complete LACK of the following type of storyline:

*Hi. Go cross Atlas with no travel power and say hi to some idiot in the Hollows.

*Done with that? Cool. Run all the way back. Now go hunt some bimbo's lost bracelet two zones over. Still with no travel power.

*Mission accomplished? Great. Re-cross those zones and go talk to your contact again, because you can't phone it in.

*Are ya done? Excellent. Go see what's shakin' in Perez. Then run all the way back here....

....GAAAAH! Whereas redside, I have a concrete storyline which, while I have run it many times in the past, is at least less zone-y and less frivolous. As a result my heroes do not bother with contact storylines until Faultline, they go get the O-portal in Faultline and then keep studiously ignoring contact mishes until its time for Croatoa. This results in way fewer merits for blueside folks, at least until they begin seriously running task forces.

Meanwhile the villains studiously run every contact they can get their hands on, all the way through or until seriously outleveled.

Here's hoping they avoid the method used by A Certain Other Game then, namely release something new and then proceed to hit players with a serious of absolutely massive nerfs in the name of "balance." One could rightfully ask what is the point of a beta period if one is going to resort to such tactics?

A larger heaping helping of Epic Fail can scarcely be imagined.

I played almost exclusively on Infinity for about two years. I have almost completely left the server years ago due to the people I played with having left the game, and due to concurrently finding new friends on other servers. While of course any one player's perception does not create a reality out of whole cloth, it also seems to me that Infinity's population is a fraction of what it was. When I do a /search I see very few people on the server as a whole. Is everyone on Infinity /hiding, thereby creating an illusion of an empty server? Maybe so.

However the server I am on now has, if anything a lower population than Infinity does - so there you go. Next time we get free server transfers my last few active characters there will be migrating from Infinity to where the fun is.

Speaking in general, I couold perhaps think up a WORSE idea than forcibly moving players to other servers, thereby fracturing SGs, prestige totals and friend-lists, not to mention alienating loyal players. It would take me a while though.

Not all of us love Virtue, thanks. I for one enjoy being able to log on during zone events.

This statement typefies a very severe problem with these boards: all statements become zero-sum. No real discussion is possible, because everything turns into "Well if you don't like it, stop reading the boards/quit the game/shut up/stop whining/stop responding to the thread" etc. Attempts to question that mindset are met with attempts at reverse psychology, as seen above.

Evidently we are all supposed to accept every single thing that comes down the pike without question, regardless of the fact that feedback is actually sought by the developers - or forums such as the Training Room would not exist. As for the original premise of the thread, well OMG some guy wanted to know more about the new kinetic and electric sets. How dare he!!

I6 and I7 were a very long time ago. Also, the person who made that statement is no longer on the development team.

Can't say that bases have gotten that much love snce the aforementioned era, except a few degrees removed - as in, the post-level 35 Prestige adjustments; but we've seen one headdesk-quality TF revamped, and this gives us hope that perhaps more fixes are in the pipeline.

It does me, at any rate

I understood what you really meant; I was speaking tongue firmly in cheek.

I am absolutely in favor of any and all Shard TF revamps. I almost don't care what they do, as long as it involves switching up the maps and breaking it in half, a la Positron.

I will also sign on in favor of a Citadel revamp. I just decided the other day that I am not running Cit again until it IS revamped. Its not so much over the extreme tedium of the same map 50 times in a row [at least, it FEELS like 50 times], its that the floor of the Council Cave map undulates sharply up and down. After about 45 min or so, it begins to make me feel nauseous.

There are so many people in our coalition who are hell-bent on ONLY running the original Posi "because it has more merits!" Explainations that one could run the entire revamped Posi twice in well under the time it would take to run the original once fall on totally deaf ears. I like merits as much as the next person, but actually suffer to obtain them I will not.