BurningChick

Thanks for your hard work, Arcanaville -- you're one of my all-time favourite posters on ANY forum I've used.

Confession: I've taunted posters in the defender forum who claim to have developed metrics to measure defender performance to show us the numbers, Arcana-style. They never did, but would sometimes persist in proclaiming that they had the numbers just for the attention. Or the feeling of superiority in having spooky knowledge we didn't.

You will ALWAYS have my respect because you either backed up statements with proof, or at least gave us a plausible reason for why we couldn't handle the truth.

In some odd way, you helped keep me interested in the game -- I had WAY more fun playing with IOs than I thought I would (honestly, I was in the i9 closed beta and traded a post or 2 with Castle about why I'd skip IOs) ... mostly because you helped me understand the game.

Also: no sane dev team would allow a CC specialist to have enough recharge to have nearly perma-RoF, a spammable mez and root, high DPS, pets, and mez protection. And for this, I thank the devs for Burning Up, my beloved Fire / Fire dom.

I'm gonna get the double -- the covetted FPARN and SPARN. With one post.

Newb.



Edit: damn, beat by less than a minute

On the plus side, CO has Silverspar / championshewolf

On the minus side, Arcanville has a LT, but has never disclosed her forum ID

I also have a LT, but haven't played it for more than 10 or 20 hours in the last couple of years. I dredged up one of my old posts, http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/sho...yn#post1462975 , and this quote still seems to capture how I feel about the game:

I came for the PvE, but stayed for the community and the meta-games (marketeering, IOing, the Incarnate system). Other people I know stayed well past they had burned out of PvE because of badging or gaming the system (making uber builds, putting together super teams).

In a genre where it's tough to put together a genuinely fresh PvE experience, I think there's a lot of room for creativity in mini-games and out of combat "tinkering" (for lack of a better word).

I'd also try to make the math more intuitive (hello def, ToHit, and accuracy, I'm looking at you).

And, finally, if the game had a PvP system, I wouldn't half-azz it. PvP is like a delicate orchid that needs constant nurturing so it doesn't shrivel up 'n' die; having a pizz-poor PvP system is, I think worse than having none at all.

Uhhhhh ...

Hmmm ...

I wonder what the course of events was that led to this event?

I'm finding it hard to sift through the information with all the various axes being ground, conjectures being passed off as fact, anonymous sources, a writer moonlighting as a source, tantalizing tweets, currency exchanges, a Santa Claus imposter reading Korean financials, hints of secret (and, surprise!, anonymous PMs), rumours of skulduggery involving another studio, stories of white knights, the occasional flattering photo of a player, and ... oh my.

My inferior brain is left spinning.

i lik to post wile drink

I only saw the last few minutes. Judging from the fact that it was low-key and didn't have the sound of champagne corks going off, I'm confident in saying that there wasn't an announcement regarding a white knight swooping in and saving the game.

I'm not the only person who knows this, but it is obscure ...

KB powers can stack.

I've seen FF defenders, using Force Bolt and Repulsion Field (RF has KB with a duration), occasionally knock down monsters in PI. It was never practical to do since the end drain is OMG intense. And, of course, you're standing within melee range of a monster. RF and Force Bolt on their own won't KB a monster.

FWIW, I asked Castle once why RF has a duration, and he replied that it was to ensure the power worked properly. Weird thing, that.

Floyd Grubb / Castle / Fyndhal

I used to ***ch a lot about FF. I traded PMs with States about FF (he skewed condescending). I poked Posi about FF (nothing). I posted in threads, I made fun of the devs' former assertion that "distance = defence".

But Castle?

He actually did listen. After a PM exchange just after I8 hit, he told me to keep my eyes open.

Shortly after that, he gave Repulsion Bomb a 10X (that's right, a ten-fold) damage buff.

I don't think I had much to do with this change -- Repulsion Bomb was, legitimately, one of the worst powers in the game (it's also had some of the most radical make-overs in the game*).

But the 10-fold increase in damage was, as I found out, VERY hard to leverage on my FF / Rad (think Irradiate and Electron Haze). It wasn't worth the hassle, anything I did was either situational (hovering over mobs can't always be done, there aren't always convenient corners) or not as productive as hitting another button. I beat the power up in a variety of situations in the then new RWZ, and couldn't make a go of it.

I explained this, pointed Castle to a thread about the changes, and suggested a lowering of RB's KB mag.

That's the bit I take credit for.

So, thank you, Floyd, for listening to me, and the community, and being the only dev, ever, to take one of FF's lulzy bad powers and making it genuinely useful.

* at release, RB was ally-targetted KB > then it got a low mag, 100% stun > then it became mob-targetted with its recharge tripled and chance to stun drastically lowered > then it had its damage increased (to scale 1) > then it had its KB mag lowered.