Chad Gulzow-Man

Semi-stealthy grammar-semi fix (you still shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, but meh, this is conversational speech).

I'll be making a Dual Blades/Ninjutsu Stalker to start in Praetoria as an alternate version of my Katana/SR Scrapper (same character, different powers, long story short: it's magic) to spy on the Praetorians. Once it's time for him to leave the zone at 20 or so, he'll be going Hero.

I'll also be switching my main Scrapper and Stalker's places, as they will have a body swap forced upon them by some contrived plot device or another. This is largely because I wanna get all the badges. >_>

Very cute, by the way.

If you click the "User CP" link on the top left of the page, you can go to "Edit Signature" under Settings & Options. That will allow you to input a block of text or a small image that will show up every time you post.

... ... *sigh* And my inner Grammar Nazi wants you to know it's "you're," not "your." Stupid Grammar Nazi brain... grumble grumble...

Not to be rude, but you did say a few pages back that you were Autistic. While I'm certainly no expert on the subject of such disorders, I do know that one of the major symptoms is an inability to understand other people's feelings.

So I will do my best to explain to you my personal feelings on such a situation occurring in PVP.

*****
I have a TF to run tomorrow, so I'm gathering Shivan Shards in case we have debuffer issues. Suddenly someone appears behind me and stabs me. Because I did not see you coming, and had no time to mentally prepare, this activates the "flight" portion of my "fight or flight response."

As I run, I turn and see that you're still following me, or worse, you've disappeared again and for all I know you're right on my tail. Since this is a PVP zone, you probably have friends, because past experience tells me that's how it goes. So I head for an area I absolutely know will be safe, and head to the drones in my base.

Once I get there, I finally have a moment to think clearly about what's going on. There is a Stalker in the zone, and he definitely wants to fight. I think back to previous encounters with Stalkers and my own experiences playing them. As a Stalker, your job is to use Assassin Strike to do massive spikes of damage from concealment, and you have the ability to use Placate to minimize the opponent's ability to counter attack. I also clearly recall the time a Stalker engaged me, so I turned to fight and just as I was about to win, two more Stalkers appeared and took me out.

I also think about my personal experiences with PVP. I've won quite a few 1-on-1 battles in the PVP zones before, but I didn't get any enjoyment out of it (and this was before the i13 changes). I've lost even more battles, and losing definitely wasn't fun. PVP is a zero-sum game for me.

I think about all these things in the matter of a few seconds. Admittedly, I wonder why there's no trash talk in Broadcast yet, because it's par for the course. I can only assume that the Stalker (undoubtedly hovering out there, waiting, watching) is in the midst of writing a five paragraph essay on why "Chad is teh suxx lolulz."

Right about this point, I think to myself, "I've got better things to do than deal with this jerk," and leave the zone. I will come back the next day before the TF if I have time and get Shivans then. If I'm attacked by another Stalker, I'll probably just forget the whole thing.
*****

Alright, here's some reasons why people (who as you say could probably beat you) would have run that I haven't seen yet:

1) Fear of the Unknown: Your character's most distinguishing ability is that it can turn invisible. On top of that, attacking while invisible gives you a damage bonus which becomes outright ludicrous when you use your Assassin Strike power. You also have the ability to instantly become invisible again to that target by using your Placate power, which also makes it so they have no way to attack you outside of landing a lucky shot with an AOE power.

In the later PVP zones, people will often have abilities or IO bonuses that improve their perception and allow them to see Stalkers, which somewhat negates the above point. But while limited to level 25, those abilities are rare, while it's unproportionately common for a Stalker to have access to Super Speed and/or Stealth in addition to their natural Hide power.


2) They Don't Know You: You just walked up and stabbed me in the back. How am I supposed to know that's your way of saying "Hello, what are you up to?" It's an aggressive act, and as mentioned earlier, it forces my brain into a "fight or flight" response. As I'm not a PVPer, my scale balances towards "flight," so I run. Which leads to my third point...


3) They're not PVPers: An experienced PVPer, when surprised, would likely jump just outside your attack range to quickly analyze the situation. When they realize you're not a threat, they would undoubtedly use your face to polish their boots. Even if you WERE a threat, it's unlikely they'd break off the engagement completely, and instead coax you into a situation where they have the upper hand.

Non-PVPers, on the other hand, don't have this experience. You're a Stalker; you stabbed them and then chased them when they started to flee, and you're really hard to find because a few seconds after your attack, you're invisible again.

Let me ask you a question now. Say there's an invisible man who sometimes goes to your grocery store. He is completely incapable of harming you, but he can still pinch you, pull your hair and flick your ears. You know for a fact that he can't follow you if you leave the store. Wouldn't you leave until he got bored and left, or just go to a different store (i.e., run different game content) altogether?


Finally,

4) People Assume the Worst: This one HAS been touched on before in other posts, but I felt it needed to be brought up again. If you stab someone out of Hide, and they immediately retaliate, likely one of two things has happened: you've brought down the wrath of an experienced PVPer, or you've startled someone with almost no PVP experience at all.

The majority of players in between those two levels of experience have dealt with sudden Assassin Strikes from nowhere, and they know it's followed up by a) griefing and/or harrassment, b) surprise gank squads, or c) the Stalker who instigated the fight running away, only to return and do the dance all over again once his health has returned and his powers recharged.

If you poke a cat when it's hissing, it claws you. You poke another cat when it's hissing, and it claws you. You learn that when a cat is hissing, you don't mess with it or you're going to suffer a negative experience. The same thing applies to PVP in a way; if you have enough bad experiences, you learn them as the rule instead of the exception.

This is not entirely true. 400 rep is the cap, and you have to hit the cap to earn the badge.

You do lose rep every day, whether you log in to the game or not though.

Hey, I'm in the exact same situation.

I have the Arena and PVP zone badges left to get on my main Hero (just started the PVP zone one on Monday evening), and I should be getting the second one on January 18th. My birthday is on the 19th!

... Now I just hope they don't add in any more Day Job badges.

I will say that yes, that line is probably true, given that most CoH players don't have a PS3 and/or Xbox 360.

For myself? Not SF4, I didn't like what they started doing to the series after SF2. But BlazBlue? Hit me up, I'll still have a good time getting my butt handed to me. Team Fortress 2? Sure! I have it on my 360, be happy to play it with you.

(From here on out, I'm no longer replying to Nightphall, FYI.)

But PVP in an MMO? Yeah... no thanks, ever. I'm not interested in any sort of PVP that gives any player any sort of advantage other than experience. If you and I fought with mirrors of the exact same powersets and enhancements and you beat me, that'd be great; I'd probably have fun whether I won or not. But I'm also not crazy purpled out or soft-capped (which apparently makes me the worst Super Reflexes player ever--hell, I didn't even take Evasion or Lucky! I have ZERO AOE defense on my Scrapper!), and I build my characters based on their background stories, not for performance. The majority of my enhancements are common IOs.

In effect, I have only the tiniest chance to beat any serious PVPer... and I absolutely have to be within 12 feet of them to even hit them, meaning that any ranged fighter will win 99.9% of the time.

As for why I run when attacked in a PVP zone, it's exactly what's been said a dozen times already: I DON'T ENJOY THE PVP IN THIS GAME. Yes, I am in the zone. Yes, I accepted the fact that I might be attacked. But there is absolutely nothing that says I have to attack any and/or every player that I can target, and so I choose not to.

The other reason I run has also been given already in this thread: I was having my own fun, doing my own thing. You interrupted me and tried to make me have your kind of fun. I am now going to spite you and not let you have your fun attacking me because you kept me from what I was doing. And as I exit the zone, I will think to myself, "BWAHAHAHAAAAA, see ya sucker!"... but I won't type it because that's just plain mean.

Yes. In essence, if you exemplar down 1, 2 or 3 levels below the level of the IOs providing the set bonuses, you keep them.

If you exemplar 4 or more levels below the level of the IOs slotted in your powers, you lose the set bonuses for any enhancements that are not less than three levels above you.

For a practical example, if you have 2 level 40 IOs and 3 level 50 IOs from the same set in a power and exemplar down to level 45, you'll lose the set bonuses (but not the enhancement values) from the level 50 IOs, while retaining the set bonus from the level 40 IOs. If you exemplar down to level 36 or lower, you'll lose all the set bonuses in that power, but still maintain the enhancement values.

Once you exemp down below level 30, your enhancement values also start degrading by a small amount, but you're still left with enhancements stronger than Training and Dual-Origin enhancements.

Edit: Just looked up the power on wiki.cohtitan.com, and they say the power is bugged and nobody is acquiring charges.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Master_Architect_Badge

I feel a little dumb replying to a two week old post, but I failed to see your reply before, and I'm very sorry for the delay. Positron (I believe) stated that switching sides does not exclude you from the special perks, it just makes it take longer to earn them. I'm pretty sure it's also been mentioned that you have to be full-Hero or full-Villain, not a Vigilante or Rogue, to take advantage of these perks.

Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, said post was made in the Issue 16 open beta forums, which has been purged.

While that would be nice, it's also possible to make a mission that completes as soon as you enter it. You would be getting a mission bonus for nothing more than entering a mission.

And even if they fix that, you could still make a mission with no enemies in it that ends when you click a glowie. Again, you'd be violating the risk/reward ratio the developers are working so hard to maintain.

Way to prove the game used to be so much better than it is now by complaining that it's harder to grief newbies now. That's a fantastic argument right there.

Also, nice of you to ignore (or even better, not even know) that when I was level 5-14, there was no Hollows. We spent hours lost in Perez Park and we liked--er... tolerated it.

Not every change may be a good one, but the game is leaps and bounds better than it was when it first launched.

Fixed Saist's post so people stop trying to poke holes in a good argument over semantics.

The devs said about a brazillion times between the announcement of the first real details of the Mission Architect and the time issue 14 launched that they were going to crack down on farming practices, because the AE was made for player developed content and warned us against exploiting it.

I'm getting really tired of people saying "I didn't know!" or "But if that's how everybody wants to use it, shouldn't you just leave it that way?" but I suppose that's another argument for another (very flame-filled) thread.

You can drag the page icons that represent missions around to reorder them within an arc, even after it's been published. So if you make a specific change and need to test it, you can drag that mission to the front and run it. When you're satisfied that it's working properly, you can go back in to edit and drag that mission back to its correct position in the arc.

With as many problems as you already seem to be having using the MA, you do realize that adding a spell checker to the interface would slow your system down even more, right?

It's also not really viable for the medium--unless it's a written clue or some other form of text, most of what we're supplying for an arc is spoken dialog. If I've got a contact who speaks with an accent (and I do) or one who communicates via barely intelligible "thug speak" (and again, I do), it's going to tell me that every word I type is misspelled. That only gets compounded when I throw in the fact that the contact wants you to go beat up Da Facepwner and his group of marauding Cybertonobots.

The average MA writer would make a spell check utility curl into a fetal ball and cry for it's electronic momma before it finished checking the first mission.

Also, the vast majority of grammatical errors these days have more to do with punctuation usage and the "to/two/too" and "there/their/they're" conundrum. Spell check would unfortunately do nothing for those issues.