Barata

I'm curious.... are the subscription numbers increasing? Broadcast chat in AP is increasing, but that's because more players are spending their time there. Does anyone have the subscription numbers that show any changes?

You're right in that the devs ultimately make or break a game. Players do have an impact on it though too, but in the sense that games, under the control of the devs, will attract certain types of players because of their genre or mechanics and the type of players attracted can either attract other players or discourage other players. For example, a previous game I played was very hardcore PvP. The hardcore PvPer that was attracted tended to be a bit crude at times (to put it mildly). The effect was that the environment within the game was more hostile than what you'd normally find within an MMO. This atmosphere didn't attract a general audience, and the niche it did attract wasn't enough to keep the game in business. So yes, the devs ultimately were responsible in that they attracted certain types of players, but those players did further the impact.

What you say is true, but not to the extent it is now. I don't know of anyone who would team up with someone who is level 50 that didn't know how to get to a door mission! Or how about a level 50 defender with only the starting power from their primary and all of their secondary attacks because "the blobs never fought back"? Did you see the infamous thread in the Blaster section where someone was asking why his blaster is so bad now that he's trying regular content? When asked to give us his build so we can help him, he posted a screen shot of all of his powers, and not a single one had an enhancement in it. "What are enhancements?" Or level 50s who don't know what the train is?

I don't place much of an emphasis on purples. I have some toons that are specced out nicely enough now that I just don't want to be bothered with going through the work to purple them out. On my one blaster, he's being gradually purpled as the mood strikes me, but that's just mainly to see how far I can take him.

Yeah. I can't imagine keeping a toon at 24 just for DA when you can just visit Ouroboros and make him 24 at will, keeping any purple bonuses you have.

I remember that incident. Marvel claimed "look, there's copyright and trademark infringement in that game! People can make our characters!", and the defense said "they have a strict policy against it, and you went against the policy, created those characters, and infringed on your own copyrights and trademarks!" hahahaha

Interestingly, the term "superhero" is trademarked by both Marvel and DC.

Then it's not enough because the majority of task forces being run are done as speed runs. Anyone who plays the game knows this. The rewards (merits) at the end of the task forces overshadow the experience and drops you get throughout. If a mission could be stealthed, it is. All I want is to make the reward at the end not overshadow the content throughout, which it unfortunatley does right now.

Don't be obnoxious. I don't hide my intentions. If I said all I was thinking of was to give incentives to engage in combat in missions, then that's exactly what I meant and it's exactly what was in my mind. I specified clearly that I thought of this after I had a series of bad runs where several task forces in a row that I joined were sped through so quickly it wasn't an enjoyable experience. This is not some ploy by me so I can be more powerful while everyone stays weaker. If that's the thought that comes to your mind, it's because that's how you think.

Also, I never advocated removing drops from the rest of the game. I only advocated giving more incentive to combat so it isn't overshadowed by the reward at the final mission. If you don't want the drop rates fiddled with, then some other incentive may be just as nice. Maybe a boost to influence/infamy received from those instanced mobs. Maybe have a merit awarded to players after a certain amount of defeats. Maybe an increase in just uncommon IO drops instead of rare drops. Whatever. Something that will make people say "let's fight our way through" instead of "don't waste time with these mobs, we'll get merits faster if we stealth."

Actually, my recommendation was to alter the drop rates outside of the instanced missions so that the rarity of the drops doesn't change. I wasn't trying to make them less rare. I was just recommending a shift.

Right now, with merits being rewarded at the completion of a task force or trail, the incentive is placed on getting to the end of the mission. If you can get to the end faster, you can get your reward faster and get more rewards in an evening. There's actually incentive to not fight inside the missions.

What I would like to see is an incentive to fight in the missions. An incentive to engage the mobs instead of stealthing past them as fast as you could. You could still choose to do that and get the merit rewards at the end, but if you chose to fight your way through a mission, you would be rewarded in some other way. That's something that I think should be a goal. Give us a reward if we choose to fight.

I checked this out last night. When you summon the Gun Drone, you get an icon on your display that shows you have a summoned Gun Drone. It also says you get a 39% damage boost. It implies that the damage boost is there for as long as the icon is present, which is the life of the Gun Drone. What really happens though is that after about 13 seconds, you lose your damage boost.

Team teleport to monster island is another option.

I played Shadowbane for years. Shadowbane was a great game for very serious hardcore PvP action. It had some serious flaws and bugs and eventually closed down. The premise was that PvP was totally unrestrained for the entire game world with the exception of three safeholds. Players could form guilds, build their own cities, declare war on other guilds, and even burn enemy cities to the ground.

The devs decided very quickly that they would keep it up and running as a free game while they work on their next project, using experience from it to make their next one better. So it's currently available, free, and pretty intense. But it's very much a niche product appealing only to very hardcore PvPers. Since that's the only people it appeals to, it's unbelievably difficult for a new player to get started. The fact that it has the most customizable and intricate character creator of any game and allows you to make both incredibly powerful characters or incredibly gimp characters makes the learning curve even steeper.

Many of my experiences in Shadowbane have given me insight into other games' mechanics. For instance, whenever a nerf would get put into place here because something was too strong, players would come to the forums and say "you should never nerf, you should strengthen the other powers/items/characters". Well, I saw the result of that in Shadowbane as the devs would give boosts to many classes and professions because a few other ones were too powerful. Rather than nerf the one or two professions, they would boost the other ones. It still amounted to a nerf to those original professions and powers gradually creeped up to a point where already-fast combat became too fast and defenses had to be put into place, which effectively nerfed the buffs that everyone previously got. It became apparent that you're better off just nerfing the one or two things that are out of whack, rather than buffing everyone and making everything out of whack.

Wait a minute! You're saying that if I put out a Gun Drone, I get a 39% defiance boost for the life of the drone? I'm definitely testing this out tonight as it doesn't sound right.

If the only reason you run a task force, or any content for that matter, is the reward attached to the end, then you can narrow all of the TFs down to the one single one that gives you the highest merit-to-time ratio. Only one task force will have the highest ratio, and any other one will be "not worth it" because that one single task force gives you the highest reward.

But I'll ask you this..... what good are the rewards? Every reward in this game serves a single purpose... to improve your character or gaming experience. The reward, by itself, has no value. It's when that reward is applied to a character making it stronger or faster or better, and you apply that character to content within the game, that the reward has value.

In other words, don't forget that simply playing the game has an intrinsic value of being fun. If you overlook the fun of actually doing a mission or arc or task force, and facing different enemies, and being challenged but still overcoming the odds to emerge victorious, and instead just focus on the merits or rolls at the end, then you're going to be dissatisfied like you are now. You'll be in an endless loop where you purposely don't have fun so you can get a reward, only to repeat it again and still not have fun because all you want is another reward.

Your experience with the KHTF was unusual in that it was abnormally long. Even when I don't need merits, I'll engage in a KHTF simply because it's fun. It's a few relatively short missions that are unique with their own unique challenges, so I'll engage in them anyway. Just like I'll engage in a PUG when someone's going up against an AV and needs help. I don't get merits then, but it's still fun. Your first goal should be to do the things that you think are fun. You'll get drops and recipes and experience and influence, and they can all be applied to your character so that you can keep improving him/her and have more fun.

Like others have said, you just had an unusual experience on that particular night. Either the combination of characters on the TF were bad or they were inexperienced... it was unusual. Normally, you'd breeze through the TF in about a half an hour.

Did you read my post clearly? No. I stand by what I said. I never said AE didn't bring anything good, I said that it brought few good things. The ability to offer a greater challenge to the small percentage of people looking for it is one of the good things. The ability to be creative in storytelling is another good feature. There's several good things about MA.

I just feel the bad is still outweighing the good. You criticize me for saying that and for people latching on to a negative aspect and overlooking the good, but you latch onto the one of the few good things and overlook the bad.

With that statement, I don't think you deserve to have players on your team. The defender in the OP was looking at a potential team wipe and did what a good defender does..... anything necessary to keep the rest of the team alive. You want the rest of the team to die because it's not as much fun for you for a few brief moments while he's saving lives?

I'll be so happy when they put the new mechanism in place so people can choose spawn sizes. Then all the scrappers and tanks who feel a team just gets in their way can go play by themselves.

Why limit yourself to those three things? You can always join any task force or trial. Why do you feel that once you hit 50 you can never again exemp down?

What incentive do you need? With the thousands of arcs out there, why have you decided that your game time will be focused on just the same five?