Eiko-chan

Oh no! *dies*

Alas, no.

I don't hate Bad Horse. I love Bad Horse. I want to be an achiever, like him! I dream of one day having a title as cool as the Thoroughbred of Sin.

Bad Horse and his horrible Death Whinny approve.

I said I was morally superior to people who had to be paid to team. That's something entirely different from what you said.

Only in the face of the claim that teams have to have better rewards or no one would team. I don't believe that's true; I think it's a grossly invalid argument.

If it isn't an invalid argument (if, in fact, teams would suffer if people could do as well solo), then yes, I will gladly play the moral high ground card, because I think there's something terribly wrong with that.

I don't believe it's actually the case (for starters, the number of people that can solo x8 is incredibly small; most people can't, so the "need to team to face and overcome bigger challenges" thing will always be there,) and resorted to hyperbole to make the point.

If the only reason you team is to get better stuff (while still facing the same challenge you could alone), I do, honestly, believe there is something wrong with your value system.

(EDIT: I want to be perfectly clear, so I'm going to state it explicitly, I have no problem with people that want to team because a team lets them face higher challenges than they could solo and still come out triumphant. This is only referring to (as a hypothetical) folks that can already solo x8, but join an eight-person team because it means they get better rewards (and no other reasons that would still make them team if they didn't get better rewards.)

I'd prefer to get all eight shard checks the team gets if I overcome the same challenge solo that they do as a team.

It is something new that applies only to shards. It is a bonus for teaming. Not having it is not a punishment. Having it is a bonus. Removing a bonus isn't a punishment - it's removing a bonus.

Actually, from a shard standpoint, they do get more rewards, because every time I get a chance to get one shard, they get a chance to get eight. Statistically, that's going to work out to eight times the rewards over time.

I have nothing against the Task Force component awards (which is, essentially, four free shards for those participating in TFs, independent of drops). It's the inherent "teaming bonus" that bothers me. If I can (and I can) solo the same content as eight players, why should I be rewarded less than them for doing so?

Task Forces often have arrangements where the challenge rises above what a "standard" eight-person team would normally face, and this is rewarded by Merits, Components and other such rewards. But outside of Task Forces, I am tackling, by myself, the exact same challenge and difficulty as an eight-person team.

Why should that team be getting more rewards for overcoming the same challenge, simply because they are teamed?

Why? What's the justification for why this must be?

Well, I can only speak to it from the side of villains, because I don't do a lot of heavy group RPing with my handful of heroes, but we generally operated on the assumption that there were thousands of heroes in Paragon, which was a large damper on how we would play in-game actions.

This excuse, for instance, is how we explained fighting the same heroes (like the Phalanx and the Vidicators) over and over again - we would always pull the killing blow, or be thwarted the killing blow, so that the hero would live to fight again. If we actually went around killing heroes, instead of just "defeating" them, we'd quickly have the entirety of Paragon's hero population descending upon us to put us out of commission - permanently.

As powerful as we presented ourselves (at our height, we claimed to be on par with groups like the Council and Crey), we never claimed the power to take on a thousand heroes ourselves (eight, sure - we proved our ability to do that in game when we completed the LRSF.)

As far as forum response around here goes, actually, I think the "there really needs to be solo Incarnate stuff" vibe has been incredibly strong, even when flavoured with "but team stuff is good too".

The tiny minority here really seems to be the "team only" folks, not the "solo only" folks. "Team and solo" is definitely the vast majority.

The best character I have ever seen in this game was Time-Travelling Teddy Roosevelt FROM SPACE. Seriously the best thing ever. Teamed up with Zombie Kennedy and Cyborg Lincoln.

It's a good thing I didn't really need those three hours ...

Curse you!

Lisa, just making sure: you don't solo on -1, do you? Level 49 enemies will not drop shards, period, full stop. You must fight level 50 or higher enemies to even have a chance at a drop.

Also, drop rates without Bosses is abysmal. If you're soloing, you should at least turn on Bosses; that could be another factor in not getting shards.

But .. the whole reason I'm a criminal mastermind is because I build robots. That makes me evil, doesn't it? They always told me building robots was evil, so I was evil. Was that wrong? *cry*

The only time I really make an issue of gender is when I'm helping folks while playing my signature character (Eiko-chan), because her name has a giant "I AM A GIRL" tag attached to it. And yet people still insist on calling me "he".

Otherwise, I don't get ruffled, even though I do play pretty much exclusively female characters.