ClawsandEffect

Well played, sir.

Yep, I enjoy a good slasher flick as well. Hell, I usually enjoy the bad ones too.

Still haven't found any that top the classics for me though. The original Halloween is still my all time favorite movie. It's more about the psychological fear of being stalked by an unstoppable killing machine than it is about the gore (there's almost no blood depicted in the movie at all).

Michael Myers is, to me, an excellent example of a villain who just IS. He exists, and if you live in Haddonfield, Illinois, he is going to kill you. And that's really all you need to know. He wasn't overthought, and they didn't go out of their way to explain things other than "he just snapped one day and killed his sister". He was meant to be an incarnation of the "bogeyman" that children are afraid is lurking in their closet at night, and in that regard they did a good job of it.

Sometimes, that kind of villain is exactly what a story needs. I have often felt when watching the movie that if they had tried too hard to explain his motivation it would have kind of ruined it. He's killing people, he seems unstoppable, and no one really knows WHY he is doing this. You've got to admit, if a guy like that was stalking your neighborhood it'd be pretty scary once the bodies started turning up.

Don't forget to mention that if you pay for the game in large blocks that give you a discount per month, THEY are paying YOU to play, essentially.

If you pay for a year in advance your subscription costs about $11 a month or so, and you still get $15 worth of free stuff each month.

Plus you'll still be getting powersets for free that others will have to pay for (Time Manipulation). And everyone who has been subscribed for the past 2 months should have 800 points to spend right off the bat, so if you want Beam Rifle right away, you can have it, right away.

I don't understand the "I'm getting less now!" argument at all.

Sitting in the corner?

I like socializing. I enjoy the company of other people.

But that doesn't mean I have to be at a rock concert to consider it socializing.

Sometimes I'd rather go out to a movie with some friends, or hang out at a neighborhood bar or something.

There don't have to be thousands of other people at the same place as me for me to have a good time.

And you have made a classic S&I mistake. You have come into this thread with the assumption that your way is the only correct way to play the game, and that everyone else is wanting to be drowning in people too.

I do it differently. My characters are constantly evolving, even if it's only in my head, because I created all of them, with a couple exceptions in the context of the game-world.

My main, Claws and Effect, barely even resembles the character he started as. He has developed both a more maniacal berzerker side and a deeper sense of honor simultaneously. And if anything his hatred of Crey has grown stronger.

If it comes to pass that Crey is ever considered the good guys, he will cross over to becoming a vigilante at the least, if not a true villain, simply because he knows that Crey is irredeemably corrupt.

As things change in the game world, or new things are introduced that are relevant to their history, my characters can and frequently do evolve and get more detailed with it.

If this were the Marvel or DC universe, my characters' history would reflect that as well.

See, the addition of Going Rogue to the game now allows for the ability to redeem a villain in the course of the game.

My Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper that I mentioned earlier in the thread is a good example. When I run tip missions with him, I'm not just going for Hero Merits, I'm actually deciding which side of that mission to run based on what the character would actually do. He will eventually end up a vigilante because that's the way his choices will lead him, but he doesn't agree 100% with all the vigilante missions, so it's not a quick shift.

Conversely, I have a villain (SS/EA brute) whose sole reason for continued existence is the absolute annihilation of the human race. He's a brain that was placed inside a robotic body against his will, and he's decided that any race who has even one member capable of such a thing deserves to be wiped out of existence. And he has set the goal of killing every last human being personally, one at a time. With his power source having a half life of just over 5,000 years, it is an eventually achievable goal. Since the scientist who put his brain in the robot neglected to add any means for him to hear anything, it is pretty much impossible to divert him from his course (can't talk someone out of something if you can't communicate with them).

Then there's my stalker. He has the singular mission of tracking down my main hero and killing him, because he hails from a future alternate dimension in which my hero was the catalyst for the end of the world. He doesn't know that he also shifted dimensions when he traveled back in time, so he views anyone who protects a man he sees as a monster as his enemy. He's an example of a misguided villain who is unlikely to change, since the event he's trying to stop hasn't happened yet, and he doesn't see the fact that it hasn't as proof that it won't. He's unlikely to change because he sees anyone allied with my hero as part of the problem. He's convinced that HE is the good guy, and the rest of the world is just being duped by his target. (and since my main hero is effectively immortal, he is extremely unlikely to achieve his goal) The end result will be he will end up as a Rogue, because he's mostly trying to achieve one goal and isn't really interested in world domination or robbing banks and such.

There are plenty of ways to write a misguided villain and not eventually make the face turn.

Misguided basically means you are making your decisions based on misinformation, or flat out lies.

Now, if you were indoctrinated from a young age to believe a certain thing, and also told the entire time that anyone trying to convince you otherwise is your enemy, you are going to be VERY resistant to ANY kind of change of heart. The harder someone tries to show you the truth, the more convinced you will become that everyone is lying to you and that the people who were indoctrinating you were right.

It is entirely possible to have a misguided villain who will NEVER change, no matter how much truth they are shown.

And Tex was right. We shouldn't break down villainous characters into only Column A and Column B, because that leaves out millions of possibilities that fall between the columns.

You say that the villain who just IS is distasteful to you. Well, unfortunately sometimes that's REALLY how it is. Sometimes the villain himself couldn't tell you WHY he's a villain if he tried. Alfred said it best in the Dark Knight "There are some who just want to watch it all burn."

I always took it to mean that Paragon City's public transportation system is so advanced and well-implemented that no one has felt the need to buy cars since the 70's.

Gonna have to say no.

I LIKE my low population server.

In addition to the things mentioned in Bill's Copy/Paste, I like feeling like my hero is important in the city. If there are crowds of hundreds of heroes and villains around at all times, my character feels much less important and much more like just another dork in tights.

There are a significant number of people, like me, who enjoy playing on the lower population servers. This is evidenced by the fact that those servers still have people playing on them. I have no problem finding teams for just about anything I care to do in the game, and when I feel like being left alone, that is an option as well. I don't like hiding from searches because sometimes I will accept an invitation if the person sending it is polite and/or genuinely needs help with something.

On the higher population servers, particularly Freedom, I'm getting inundated with tells and blind invites almost from the second I log in, and that isn't enjoyable for me.

The key point is: What YOU like is almost 100% guaranteed to not be what EVERYONE likes. Cramming a bunch of people together that don't WANT to be crammed together and giving them no choice in the matter would lead to a sizable chunk of the population moving on to another game, because they are no longer permitted to play this one the way they enjoy it. That would be a bad thing.

As it stands now if you enjoy huge throngs of people around you at all times, there are servers you can play on for that experience. If you don't enjoy that, there are servers you can play on for that experience too. If you take the option away from players who don't like large crowds, you're going to have a large number of disgruntled former players.

Not really, the PvP crowd was only 5% or so of the overall population, with maybe an additional 5% that dabbled in it from time to time.

Castle's changes were an attempt at increasing that population. An ill-advised atempt, I'm not disputing that, but when it failed to have the desired effect the devs pretty much decided that PvP wasn't worth devoting resources to.

The fact that they haven't touched it much in the last couple years is pretty telling in that regard. If the PvPers who left had had any kind of significant impact on the game you can bet they would have made more of an attempt at fixing it. Since they didn't, it can be inferred that the PvP population was never big enough to make or break the game, and whether they stay or leave is largely irrelevant.

It's not the level discrepancy I'm concerned about, it's the fact that the mechanics you suggested for the zone coupled with the way SSK works means that the system as you described would be HIGHLY exploitable.

If you cannot target a character too much higher or lower than you, what would stop someone from asking for an invite to a lower level team and leaving it sit on their screen?

Why is that a problem? You'd have stalkers and blasters doing that and going to attack people. If their attack failed to get a kill they'd just accept the team invite they left sitting there and instantly be unable to be targeted by their opponent.

It would work like an instantaneous, unresistable, and permanent Placate power. Then, once the danger of retribution has passed, they could just quit the team and have the team leader send another invite for them to leave sitting on their screen to do it again.

You'd have people abusing the hell out of that system to pick fights with others and just duck on to a lowbie team if they start to lose the fight.

Well, after Freedom hits you'll be able to start a Corruptor blueside after the new tutorial.

You'll also be able to play a Kinetics/Fire Defender then if that sounds fun.

Except for the fact that a lot of those times you might want more accuracy you may not ALSO want your "Oh crap!" power to be recharging. PFF has a long enough recharge on it that you can't just pop it on and off at will, you have to choose when to use it somewhat carefully.

Your slotting: 5% Recharge and 2.5% ranged defense in 6 slots.

My slotting: 7.5% Recharge in 3 slots. And as you can see elsewhere in my build, I didn't need the ranged defense bonus since I managed to soft-cap ranged without them.


More AoE is more AoE. The way you put that is the same as saying Thunder Strike OR Lightning Rod, and Foot Stomp OR Shield Charge. If you have room in your build, why not take both of them and have more AoE damage output?

Wasn't saying you had to take it, in fact I don't think it's on my live build, I just couldn't remember what WAS so I put it in as a placeholder.

Was just saying I've found uses for it in the past.

I like having people explain to me how an engine works too. Especially when they've never opened the hood of a car.

Because that's what's going on here. Someone with no real idea how teh game actually works is attempting to beat us over the head wit the fact that HE IS RIGHT.

And it's made so much better by the fact that he's already outright said he is purposefully ignoring anything that disagrees with his calculations.

"Clearing up misconceptions" is a fancy way of saying "Just shut up and admit I'm right" And he got bent out of shape when people refused to do so.

I like Slice. I needed to pick something at level 2 that isn't as end hungry as Death Shroud (my only other option), and it is trivially easy to hit 5 targets with Slice, as it is a very wide cone. It also contains the Eradication set I need for more End, HP and defense.

I opted against full sets of Red Fortune to save slots in those powers you have them in. 3 LotG is enough to get it nearly ED capped for defense enhancement, and it lets me move those slots elsewhere. Those LotGs are also the only source of recharge bonuses I have.

I took Confront at 49 for a couple reasons:

1) It needs no slots.

2) It lets me tank things like the autohit nictus in the ITF if our tank is defense based and Regent Korol on the STF if our tank is Invuln.

Is it necessary? No. Does it come in handy at times? Definitely. And there wasn't really anything else I wanted there.

This.

MAYBE put a single recharge in it as well if you find that you need to use it again before it's recharging, but otherwise it shouldn't need anything.

Hey!

We're not nearly as think as you drunk we are!

(hic)

That would explain why he dropped so easily.

My soft-capped ranged defense handled most of his attacks, only Dominate and Mesmerize were bypassing it, which my large amount of Psi resistance took care of nicely. I didn't end up even having to hit Dark Regeneration at all in that fight, because the few heavily resisted hits that were getting through were being healed back by my passive regeneration.