Blue_Centurion

You bring up a fair point Arcanaville. I believe I addressed the issue in my original diatri... er, statement. But I was knocking stuff around pretty fast. What i was trying to say is if people are going for high end builds they are pretty accessible, even without the Paragon Market. It is a really big "if." I played CoV for more than a year using just SOs. If you get into using I/Os, and specifically using them to create monster builds, then the avenue is fully open to you in game to do that (and has been for years) without spending a penny in the Paragon Market beyond being VIP or buying a string of invention licenses, or whatever tier Premium makes I/Os permanently available.

To sum it up, it is my belief it cannot be a perception problem. If you become aware (invention enlightened?) enough to be deep enough into the game to be building these types of characters you can do so pretty easily with not much more in game effort than it requires to tier 4 the 5 Incarnate powers. And I mean from flat broke to final build.

To make it very clear here is one extremely simple way to do it. Take 5 characters 20+. I suggest Brutes for the ease of this, and SS/Invul Brute at 20 is a monster vs. 20th mobs. Each Brute can be leveled to 20 in a couple hours in the DFB Sewer trial. Each day run 5 tips Hero or villain, I prefer Hero for this. Also run the SSAs. Generate 35 HeroVillain A-Merits for each of your 5 Brutes. It will take a couple hours a day work to do all 5 Brutes. It will take about 2 months to finish the project. Convert the A-Merits to Glad +3% def I/Os. Sell them for 10,000,000,000 on the market. Or sell them for slightly more off market and not pay any fees. Thats 10 billion to finance a build. Thats the way I would do it, I am very sure that other people have easier ways, that one is just very much my style. Set goal, look at amount of work, knock out the work, collect the reward, do the business. ps, do the tip missions solo, set at -1/+0. The hardest part of it each day should just be collecting the initial tips.

ps, most high end builds are less than 10billion unless you are talking Player vs. Player builds. And that is another thread.

So, pay to win? Nope. Pay to be lazy.

pps, if I wasn't sitting on 3 current City projects and looking at a 4th/poss5th when i22 launches I would start this right now myself. As it is I am halfway tilting at it with 1 Brute that I am soloing the entire game Blueside with. Doing his tips daily are nothing compared to soloing the game, and an extra 2 billion+ is always nice.

Because the Devs do. What causes me to believe the Devs think extreme range is a cheat? I looked at how they designed the game as a whole and the Blaster class specifically. The key was in realizing that from the ground up the Blaster class is designed to hit peak performance as a Blapper. This is especially significant when everything in the sales brochure talks about how ranged they are. Therefore I trudge onward in my tilting at windmills. Wish me luck.

Ah. That is a shame. I was trained in accounting first, math second, and Art third. I am very systematic, even in my chaos. I will try to keep this in mind when I start blathering about "do this now!"

But seriously, can you at least throw the banks into Ouroboros. Its a pain to grab those badges any other way.

Curse you for foiling my brilliant scheme Captain Obvious!

Its a 2 fold problem. The first being I have run predominately SS?Invul Brutes for over four years in the game. If I get even close to a Blapper build I tend to make critical errors because I start to act like a Brute, and then I am staring at floor. The second is conceptual, and also my fight with what the game designers call "ranged." I'll keep you posted.

Ach. Really? Wow. My global is Snarky and I bow before this statement. None of the writing is good? Ghost Widow's story and dozens of others are incredibly good. The entire Ouroboros metaplot, and Nemesis is/is not behind everything. Seriously. Back off just a tad on that?

A pure squid Tank build....I am off to research this tangent.


hrm, no Psi Resistance and no ranged attacks while in Dwarf form. Like ol' Stoney this one loses out because it is too restricting. I also don't like the fact that neither costume is editable, but I've never run a squid and was interested.

You did not affirm my opinion. You disagreed with it. However, you made a statement that confirmed a very large plank in the very small logic platform I built to make my argument. I am not disagreeing with you that getting I/O's the way you have described is not terribly difficult. I am agreeing with you. That is the part where we are both in agreement. Let's move on.

I choose not to get together with farmers and treasure farm. I develop new characters constantly and explore the game. Therefore it takes me longer than it takes you to fully kit out a 50. I also do not Marketeer. (I manage auctions in RL, and I am just not gonna do it with my gaming time) Therefor I appreciate the fact that NC Soft offers these products for a moderate fee. (Grande Latte or LOTG set, hmmm?) In fact I stopped charging my Starbucks card and am using that money on tuned enhancers. I have 51 on my current main, and will probably be able to squeeze 4-5 more onto him. I would love it if more of these were available. I have at least 4 "standard builds" for me that I would love to have all in tuned enhancers.

Well, really sorry you disagree with me. However, I want to thank you very much for disagreeing with me and then reaffirming the very fundamentals of my argument.

It is not "pay to Win" Anybody who wants to can kit out a few characters to really I/O'd status. Thank you for stating that. It is "pay for more variation among your stable of mains." And if people have cash, and people want to give it to NCSoft, I think we can make magic happen for another couple years. And do it without anybody in our community paying a dime to Chinese prison guards.

There it is. I was trying to put my finger on it and could not.

In making these Trials dependent on these shortcut "tricks" the Devs are robbing two groups of people.
First, people who are new to trials, or do them only rarely. Maybe only ITrial one character, or a few part way Incarnated. These players will usually struggle at every new trial and wonder what they are doing wrong.
Second, dedicated 50th content Playas. After a few (okay for me lots of trial, but for clever vet 50s a few) trials these folks band together with other smart players and beat the crap outta the trials. They can practically predict where the patches of doom will spawn in their sleep. The hardest part for them is getting their team together. You'll see them broadcasting. "Need 5 +3 for MoM prefer control" and it's cake. A challenge? Yeah, if you call recruiting a quality team a challenge.
Third, I know I said 2 but I thought of a bonus. Peeps like me. Completely robbed. I look at a Trial. I see/know how it's supposed to run. But I am on later than most of my friends, or on a slow server. You make as good a league as you can, but it's not quite "all that". Some folks don't read the 10 min of instructions you post. Others stand around doing nothing. One stays in the hospital. (Possibly catatonic after being obliterated in 1 sec?) You know how the thing is supposed to flow and.....it.....slowly.................fails....... .......................miserably.