BellaStrega

I agree. I thought I said so in my response, but I apparently forgot.

I actually do watch very closely. I'm aware of these things. Most often people seem to think that Idiocracy represents some philosophical truth or reality about the "stupidity" of easily led "sheeple" which often includes them portraying themselves as part of the "intelligent few" who can see the truth for what it is.

Further, it seems to me that many people buy into at least some of the ideological stances that would qualify as ignorant, and refuse to consider this possibility. So of course everyone has different definitions of what would constitute a true idiocracy.

I would argue that things are not always as they seem and that the situation is both more dire and more dystopian than Idiocracy's bland attempt at cynical humor. Those people in power may not be as ignorant as they seem and know exactly what they're trying to sell as the ideal status quo - that is, a nation where you essentially have two economic classes, and the poorer of the two exists primarily to support the wealthier of the two.

I think that when people come away from Idiocracy thinking it represents reality in any substantial way, it says more about them than it does about society.

There have always been players who held opinions that the game should be developed and managed in a manner that both caters to their personal playstyles and is bad for the game overall.

My reaction is similar to Arcana's - you don't seem to be participating in the same conversation as Arcana, despite quoting her post.

There are people who use the CoX channel while playing STO.

They don't really bother me although sometimes it gets a bit confusing.

I took a Grimoire through the tutorial a few months ago and Black Talon was a tougher fight than I recalled. I suspect that Black Talon wasn't changed, however, and a part of the problem is the lack of any gear whatsoever dropping in the tutorial.

Point of order: You fill a role in CoH's community similar to that filled by the players Lady Grimrose encountered in CO.

This channel makes the game more fun.

Also fun is running into people who are in the channel in the game world. And killing the same spawns they are, faster than they are...

That patch may hit tomorrow morning, too.

It tells me a lot of people probably purchased points a few days beforehand thanks to nature affinity and NCSoft doesn't want to refund more than it can absolutely get away with, even though someone who purchased points on the 17th or the 10th or had a balance left over is as out in the cold as anyone who purchased points on the 24th or later.

I was countering the statement that THB's kind of enjoyment was the only objective, rational way to enjoy the game. I was not using it to establish where balance should fall. I think that balance needs to take more into consideration than individuals' satisfaction levels because what I enjoy may not be what you enjoy, what THB enjoys, what Arcana enjoys, what anyone else enjoys.

I enjoyed playing my DM/DA before inventions but I enjoy her a lot more afterward. I enjoyed her a lot with inventions, but I enjoy her more with incarnate powers. Heck, I enjoyed playing her pre stacking armors, but making the armors stack made her more fun.

I do not see why you keep trying to link my argument to balance points, because that's not relevant to the point I was trying to refute, and the arguments I made are not relevant to whether powers and ATs should be balanced.

It might come as a shock, but there are other democracies in the world, and nations that are actually more democratic than the US.

For example, every Commonwealth nation that has more than two political parties with enough influence to contend for office.

What does "everybody is satisfied" have to do with anything? The problem wasn't in terms of which groups were represented on the forum, the problem was that blasters were the least played and most abandoned AT, that they died more often than other ATs, and took longer to reach level 50 than other ATs.

You're coming out of left field in these responses and I don't see what the connection is. I certainly never said that "everybody is satisfied." All I said was that TwoHeadedBoy's metric for fun was neither objective nor the only rational way to play the game.

Actually, my post had nothing to do with changing anything. It was strictly about THB saying that there's only one logical way to play CoH (his way) and that another way was pointless and illogical. I was trying to explain why this is wrong. You've taken this argument to an extreme interpretation that is not a logical progression from what I posted, and I have no idea why you would want to do that.

^^^ This. The logical conclusion of my argument is not that balance is unnecessary. The logical conclusion is that if you're having fun, you have a logical, rational, pointful explanation as to why you enjoy the game.

I may have liked my Peacebringer fine prior to the buffs, but the buffs were necessary to balance Peacebringers with other ATs. Many people in this thread may enjoy their blasters just fine, but the buffs were necessary because the AT as a whole was suffering and this was statistically and empirically demonstrable even if individuals could manage consistently high performance.

You can also edit your nemeses' henchmen types and powers, as well as your nemeses' powers, outlook, and appearance. You can also reactivate a previous nemesis instead of creating a new one.

Your enjoyment is just as subjective as anyone else's. You just get your enjoyment from trying to manage the highest performance you can get in the game, whereas others do not. That others do not view this in the same way or seek the same fulfillment from the game does not make it unreasonable and pointless, and logic should not lead you to the conclusion that it is unreasonable and pointless since - as it is a subjective measure of enjoyment - you cannot quantify these things through an application of logic, even if you can quantify some of the things in question in numerical or statistical fashion. I would argue that there are many things in the category you've determined is unquantifiable are actually quantifiable as well.

I personally do not care if my character is the most powerful or not. That's not what grants me enjoyment in CoH. What does is having characters who can solo reasonably well and who can contribute measurably on teams. However, not all of them will be able to solo to the same degree of efficiency, nor will all of them be able to contribute the same amount on teams, and these two things do not correlate directly to each other.

At the level of performance it seems most people play at, most missions get rolled over very quickly and efficiently with few defeats. In that context, your build's solo performance is not really all that relevant, and on a team you're contributing to make rolling slightly faster than otherwise. Or, that is, not a sufficient improvement to really justify any claim of superiority.

If you have fun with the way you play, more power to you. But just because you rely on numerical and statistical performance for fun does not make your preference inherently more rational or logical. It does not make your playstyle superior. It does not demonstrate that other playstyles are pointless, especially as fun as a goal in and of itself is a perfectly rational and logical goal, and automatically means that goals other than your own automatically have a point and are automatically reasonable.

If you want, I'll explain in PM.

This is an inaccurate reading of what was there.

They didn't have time or resources to do some things because they had to devote that time and those resources to other things. It comes down to stuff like "Should we revamp Grandville or should we introduce new content?" and often new content wins out. It's not that they didn't want to do these things it's that they constantly had to prioritize. And "No time or resources to do it now" doesn't mean "never." Well, it does now, but it didn't when the future wasn't so bleak.

I am not angry. I still think this discussion is pretty darned funny.