EarthWyrm

I think if you search on something like:

cebr doc

It should come right up.

I was amused last night. I started this arc for the first time, talked to the contact, turned toward the insp vendor and there stood the contact again, but afk. Have fun slummin' it in Cap, Doc?

Not exactly what I was going for, at least.

BTW, before I saw the notation for the correct song to use this with, I was trying to make it work with the Queen version of, "I Want it All". It's much better with the proper referent in mind!

This. There's only so much teasing I can cope with. I'm having a hard time playing my main because he gets respecced in a major way with I21 (/Energy Aura...), and making new characters isn't attractive because I've got limited slots and want to be able to do something with them when the new issue drops.

I want very much to give PS moar monies. It strikes me as odd that they aren't in much of a hurry to take them.

edited to add: yes, I know, beta blah blah important roll-out etc.; there's a point past which tons of information that I'm unable to act upon becomes frustrating, though.

I don't have any problem with suggestions or opinions, and apologize if I came across like I did. I just happen to hold a separate but related opinion, that being that providing too many sources of +def(all) creates serious game balance concerns (and not just in AT-specific sets, though I can imagine a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth if one AT suddenly had a 6.67% (=3/45) easier time getting to the softcap for "all" than the others did).

I think both of us have the right to voice our opinions about the value of the set and any proposed changes to it. I'm sure that's why we're getting information at this stage - for our reactions and thoughts on whether the things that are coming are good, and how they could be made better.

Here's the problem with that bonus being included: It is demonstrably true that people are consistently willing to pay 2bn+ for that specific bonus already. Putting it in as a set bonus in a set where all the other bonuses are reasonably useful (or better than anything short of purples, as with the recharge bonus in the set) creates a set that no reasonable person would, when given the option, choose not to slot.

Tossing more opportunities for +def(all) would be a design error, IMO. I would not expect to see these pop up frequently in the future, if at all.

Building for defenses that far above the softcap is not worthwhile to me, but like I said there are some fundamental playstyle differences that I could see reflected in the build philosophy. To me, you're sacrificing slots and shoving them into powers that don't need them (e.g., taunt**) for benefits that in almost all cases don't get you to the incarnate softcap, which is pretty pointless to try to reach anyway given the buffs that are constantly flying around from Destiny. Darkest Night is an additional buffer that can work with minimal slotting to protect from cascading defense debuff failure in standard content, and as you noted, to minimize the pain when it does happen.

Of course, I wanted extremely high recharge, lots of +HP, good regen, and soft-capped to everything but psi. I was able to get that, but sacrificed things like slotting up the resistance powers, which I'm fine with. That may change with I21, since I'll probably open up several slots based on the changes announced thus far, but we'll see. I still need to find slots for Energize, too, and so far I only see 6 slots that I can clear, so...

I agree completely.



** = Full disclosure: I slotted Boxing, but that was for the purple set. However, slotting it for the 5 and 6-slot bonuses from Razzle Dazzle is potentially viable as well.

This x 1000.

I can't imagine my SS/EA without Rage. My solution to the crash problem is what was just mentioned - monitoring damage bonus in the attribute monitor window. Because it takes fairly minimal slotting to get Rage perma'd, you can negate the defense penalty with a click.

I'd offer comments on the build but am at work and don't have access to Mids. When did it become unacceptable to post more than data chunks? That's a weird trend.

That was my only thought. I 2-boxed on different computers with the same video cards and drivers, and would get occasional crashes on ambush farms (screen-freeze, game locked up, had to call up task manager to close CoH out). My problems went away when I went down to the 11.2 Catalyst drivers (looks like you're on 11.7) but if you've already done the full uninstall-safe mode driver cleaner-install older version thing without any good results, I'm at a loss.

Good luck to you!

Sounds like Goatrule to me.

Anyway, I don't think it's much of a market error when somebody who really wants something and can't buy it for 50m just says, "Screw it" and jumps to 100m. It's not like inf is hard to come by, especially with the pulsing of Blazing Auras lately making the AE buildings in Cap and Atlas glow in the dark...

You don't need the 45-50 badges for Field Crafter.

I also never said it was fast. As with most anything on the market, "patience" and "profit" are at the same end of the spectrum.

Dealt with by someone else, but gold spam isn't what concerns me so much as the hit the "signal to noise ratio" will take if free accounts get full posting rights.

I'd support their ability to post a limited # of messages per day in tech forums, though, to help with legitimate issues. Maybe a separate tech forum, though, just in case...

I wouldn't have a problem with this.

If you want to see the market go terribly, horribly, awfully wrong, then by all means allow people to make unlimited numbers of free accounts and give them full access to it. It would be a griefer's paradise. Sure, it'd cost inf to create artificial shortages, but inf is easy to come by and unlimited market slots are unlimited.

If you seriously believe that the new free player base will be any more willing to play the thousands of high-quality arcs that are not on the front page than the current paying players are, I think you are mistaken (and were I so inclined, I'd go find that Joker "Not sure if serious" image to stick in here). They will gravitate to the path of least resistance that the MA represents, in terms of leveling speed, will decide that the game is too easy and uninteresting because all they ever see is the inside of one building, and not be interested in paying because of how trivial MA can make leveling. They will not play all the other great stuff in the MA, because that's not what comes across as maximally rewarding, and they will not play the core game content for the same reason. There's no "win" for either VIPs or NCNC here.

Further, ending up on a team with level 50 freebies who were PL'd thru the MA and who have no investment in the game in no way improves the game experience for VIPs.

Let me be perfectly clear on this: I want the new players, even and especially the free players, that CoHF is going to bring. I want to play the game with them and help them find the same enjoyment that's kept me here for the past six years. But I don't want to sacrifice the community that already exists to do that. The decisions that have been made are for the good of the community (though again, I agree with you on the SG thing...), and I understand the logic. Players who really want to take part in those things are welcome to invest in the game to get them. It's the players who don't want to invest anything and who show up to be disruptive that my comments are generally meant to apply to.

The cursor also isn't over any of the HH images, it's over the (obscured by text) icons for the set in the power below it.

If you didn't turn a profit obtaining Field Crafter, you're Doing It Wrong (R)(tm).

The communication restrictions placed on free accounts seem to have those precise concerns in mind.

And therein lies the problem.

I think the release of information has been careful, but not so careful as to keep people from making assumptions. To be fair, NCSoft never said that VIPs would be given absolutely everything for free. Paying subscribers haven't gotten absolutely everything for free since, depending on how you date it, either the introduction of booster packs, or the release of CoV. However you look at it, though, a subscription hasn't guaranteed full access to all elements of the game in probably 3-5 years.

You're far from the only one who misinterpreted what was presented to us. That's the danger of releasing information a little at a time. Given the choice between having information released that was possible to misinterpret and having no information released, I'm in favor of the former. I am sorry if the system hasn't turned out to be precisely what you hoped, but I'm optimistic that it's going to be a good one for those of us who choose to maintain VIP status.

If that were the case, others would have made note of the high number of threads, and the responses to the OP wouldn't pretty uniformly be, "Wow, that was sure lucky before, I never saw that," but instead include, "Yeah, where'd all the threads go?"

I know that I never saw an increased # of threads while iXP was borked.

Actually, what they've said is that if you've purchased or earned something on your account, it won't be taken away. Feel free to go look it up. I'm amazed you don't have a link to one of the multiple posts with that language in your signature by now.

Robbed? For reals? Things you've been allowed to use by virtue of paying your monthly subscription get turned off if you elect not to pay your monthly subscription, and you're being robbed?

I'm more frustrated by your hyperbole and apparent lack of willingness to hear other perspectives than I am what you're saying in specific. I think you deserve most of the heat you've gotten.

Um... but if you follow your argument to its logical conclusion, the place you reach is something like this:

I've "paid for" everything so far. Therefore, when Freedom launches, I should get everything I've had for the last seven years for free.

That is so clearly inconsistent with the way the Freedom system has been described that there is no way to reconcile the viewpoint with the reality of what they have announced as the plan. None. It is feeling more and more like you're just ignoring everything that's said to you and pushing a viewpoint that happens to be getting you attention.

So, yes. What you're saying actually does sound an awful lot like, "give me give me give me".

I'm sorry you are confused by what seems like a pretty reasonable system, from a business perspective. However, stomping and shouting isn't going to change the fact that the phrase "anything you purchased or earned" (ref. the I21 thread for this specific language, multiple times, from Posi and Zwill) was never intended to include powersets, else they would not have announced the restriction on powersets for free/premium accounts BEFORE they made the repeated statements about "purchased or earned".

Huh. I'll have to go in and make sure I've 5-starred it on both my accounts. I've had 5-star missions demoted to the 4-star level of the abyss, so certainly feel your pain.

I'm sorry you feel that way. It seems like a somewhat unfair characterization of the community's response to you, which seems to have evolved from attempts to explain the system to a frustration with what some would perceive as circular logic.

To provide a specific example, you state that you know people who don't want to resub because of the AT restrictions. However, if they actually re-subbed, they would have no restrictions on AT availability. I understand that what you probably meant was, "So they won't come back and play for free," but if the issue really is, "You can't get everything a subscribing player has when you play for free as a returning player," then I'm afraid I can't say I feel much sympathy for the position. There ought to be restrictions on both levels of free accounts, else why would anyone bother paying a subscription at all?

I'm actually kind of annoyed about this. I thought they'd changed it so that it wouldn't happen, but I got lazy and hit "claim all inf" the other night with what I thought was a safe amount, only to find myself sitting at the inf cap all of a sudden. I probably flushed somewhere between 50 and 150 million through random carelessness, based on post hoc calculations.

Ah well. Yet another demonstration that the best way to lose money on the market is to be impatient.

I'm curious why you would quote me and say this, when I clearly said that I believed my concern "will be alleviated when we see all the patch notes". I have full faith that they know what they're doing, and don't feel that I'm being at all belligerent or unreasonable in expressing my concern with the information as originally presented.

Perhaps you "feel dirty being the voice of reason" because you're implying that the rest of us weren't being reasonable, when in fact some/most of us were?

I do appreciate your core point, which I read as, "Don't panic, it's probably already dealt with". I also happen to agree with it, and am not sure where in what you quoted from me you could ever conclude otherwise.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my concerns (which I suspect will be alleviated when we see all the patch notes and find out that the mez protection has been moved somewhere like Power Shield), but having to toggle on/off mez protection while being stealthy is a fundamental change in character (micro)management. Is it a big change? No. But it's also one that wouldn't make much sense to me, were it implemented.

If you didn't do the math from my earlier post, I have about 2000 hours on my /EA brute. When I say that putting the taunt aura into the mez protection doesn't make much sense to me, that's both from a lay game-design perspective ("Why would that be done?") and the perspective of a long-term player of the set ("Why should I need to toggle on/off mez protection on a melee character that's never had to worry about being mezzed while stealthing missions before?").

Like I said, though, this would make so little sense to combine that I'm guessing the mez protection got moved to another toggle and we just haven't been told about it yet. The original posting did say something about summarizing, rather than providing the detailed patch notes.

Toggling off your damage aura when you want to be stealthy makes worlds more sense than toggling off your mez protection.