Eisenzahn

I'm copying over the most recent versions of my favorite characters to test things with now, and will probably sit up all night waiting for the thing to go live in the morning. Then I'll spend the remaining weeks until the actual event goes live freaking out, as I always do when my test characters have badges and goodies my live ones don't.

Anyway, I take it from all of this that the event has been planned this time with enough room on the schedule for actual fixes to go in before it goes live, rather than this just being a double check to make sure it doesn't blow up the servers like last year? If that interpretation is accurate, that's very good news! Thanks!

I believe in the possibility of utopia, and that a world in balance is a world free of evil, that evil is the guy showing up to the symphony uninvited with a bullhorn and tourette's syndrome taking a seat behind the conductor. I don't believe that it's within human capacity to achieve a state of utopia unaided, however, and the specific sort of aid I anticipate (or at least hope for, on my more frequent and less optimistic days) is of a supernatural/religious nature. But that's really beyond the scope of the discussion.

The Quixotic Paladin (Broadsword/WP Scrapper), bereft of human foes to vanquish, would travel the world building schools and orphanages, secretly hoping for a new batch of monsters to fight. He really defines himself in opposition, and he'd have the hardest time of all my characters with the end of his crusade. I can't imagine him ever hanging up his sword. True to his name, there's a good chance he'd imagine some new villains up and wind up institutionalized.

Euroclydon (Storm/Elec Defender) would return to his family castle in Scotland and do silly things like try to conquer Death with Magic. But he'd be clear witted enough about the process to avoid falling into the evil apotheosis trap, and likely die an old man without having made any significant progress. This is provided that someone else manages to kill his sister, who's stolen the family secrets and used them to make all sorts of infernal pacts. If he has to do the deed himself, as he has sworn to do if the opportunity arises, he'll drink himself into oblivion within a few months thereafter.

Pandemonika (Elec/Elec Scrapper) would probably make sure she didn't outlive the era of violence. She's the sort to look for a noble last stand to throw everything she's got into. If she did survive, she'd lead a life of quiet despair almost certainly ending in suicide. She fights to avenge her dead love and honor his memory as a fellow hero, and that's really all that's keeping her going. Interestingly, this would likely be enough of a shock to her Earth prime native counterpart, Lunaticia (Pandemonika is a Praetorian refugee) to get her to accept psychological treatment in prison and turn her life around.

Otto the XXIX (WP/Axe Tanker) would get sooooo drunk you guys, you have no idea. And then he'd get in fights. And then he'd be dragged before a warcrimes tribunal, because he's the sort of guy who's only a "hero" because some frat boys filled out his hero license registration for him as a prank. They would likely try to execute him, figure out quickly that no magic or technology exists on earth that can actually do the job, and eject him into some dimensional abyss in exactly the same manner he got kicked out of the fantasy universe he originated in.

Violentaur (SS/WP Brute, but a future candidate for Going Rogue) would carefully select a location for maximum aesthetic value, pose his robotic body into a monument to his own bad self, and power down for good. He just wasn't designed to have much function in peacetime, and doesn't believe he could adapt or alter his programming without ceasing to be himself. He would also assume that there could be a need for him later, and not want to deny future generations the option of powering him back up for a new era of mechanical *** kicking.

Sturmlanzer (Elec/Elec Blaster) is the one happy ending in this mess. Like many of my characters, he is an Mu-blooded sorcerer. Unlike most of them, he stumbled across the martial applications of his abilites as an accident, rather than a primary subject of inquiry. He developed his lightning magic abilities in an attempt to provide an alternative power source, but threw his hat into the ring when he discovered his theories were being stolen (or, as Doc Aeon claims, independently rediscovered) and used as part of the Cap Au Diable PTS system. Cleanly transforming magical energy into electrical power is a good thing, but siphoning that energy from an imprisoned sentient being against its will isn't (even if said being is a hostile demon). Post-villains, he'd return to his research to reduce global dependency on fossil fuels, hopefully without introducing a whole new host of magic-related environmental problems in the process.



The trend I'm starting to notice is that few of my heroes, as people willing to resort to proactive applications of violence (hunting the badguys down and beating them up, rather than just defending themselves and others), would have much of a place in a post-villain world. They all seem to wind up becoming targets for removal, if they don't take care of it themselves. This is a big part of why I don't believe in Utopia without divine intervention. The people who will work the hardest to create a perfect world can so easily become the sort of people who won't belong there when it's ready.

An Elec/Elec Scrapper will have higher average damage over most of its career. And without having to worry about Fury, you'll be able to make more efficient use of some of Electrical Melee's powers with longer activation times, most notably Thunderstrike, than an Elec/Elec Brute could. And you'll have fewer endurance problems (during the early span where that's even a problem for an /Elec) because a Scrapper, unlike a Brute, can stop and catch his breath without feeling guilty about it. You probably won't, but that's because scrappers are crazy, not because they're driven by a specific game element.

An Elec/Elec Brute's advantages are more HP and the higher Resistance Cap, and to a lesser extent the higher potential damage that Fury can yeild. The major one here is that resistance cap. 90% vs. 75% is a pretty big deal, especially on one of only three armor sets in the game that can permanently cap a resistance value without using IOs or pool powers. Capped resistance to the 3rd most common damage type is a big part of what makes this set work (compare Fiery Aura and Ice Armor, where capped resistance is... nice... but not really game altering). My Elec/Elec Brute is the sort of thing they tell stories about to kids on the Rikti homeworld to scare them into obedience. My Elec/Elec Scrapper will be pretty impressively solid against them, but never quite reach that unstoppable solo dreadnaught level of power.

In the end, the two archetypes play similarly enough that it comes down to how badly you're interested in playing an Electric Melee/Electric Armor character hero-side right now. If you can be patient, I'd go for the Brute, just for the novelty value of the side-switching content.

__

They have an uncanny knack for announcing the things for when I'll have the whole weekend off to play.

Unfortunately, I loathe 2XP weekend, the lag, the manic completely unrelaxing style of most teams, the way it makes the market go nuts for the next week or so, the whole mess, and usually take the weekend off from playing the game. If I log in at all, it'll be to work on my VG base while hidden from searches, with all chat channels removed from my display.

Everybody else though, I really do hope you have a great time!

Grounded, on Brutes at least, used to shut off when one was standing on less than perfectly flat surfaces. It has been fixed since then for Brutes, and Stalkers seem to use the correct version as well, but it seems likely that the Tanker version of Grounded is operating according to the older style. Possibly the Scrapper version as well, but I haven't noticed any problems with mine yet.

Also, during the peak of the animation for Lightning Rod, you're far enough from the ground apparently for Grounded to fail. It shouldn't be a problem, but some enemies have an uncanny instinct for pegging you right during that moment of weakness (Longbow Ballistae especially). This is why my Elec/Elec Brute keeps a KB IO in Grounded itself, to avoid those occasional moments of weakness. Most really KB-heavy foes seem to appear on solid enough ground that I've never had a problem with them though, aside from the Lightning Rod issue.

So I'm pretty anti-farm, anti-PL, anti-bridging/filling/padding/whatever. I've got a very live-and-let-live attitude towards it all when the people engaged aren't actually crossing the line into exploiting (and when they bother to look at search comments before trying to invite me to participate) but I'm not at all interested in joining in.

This means I'd never known the joy of soloing maps spawned for full teams. Holy crap, is it fun to Lightning Rod into a massive swarm of guys! To actually make frequent use of all the fun but superfluous powers that I previously couldn't convince myself to give up "just in case of an emergency"! To be able to so precisely fine-tune the dangers I'm facing that I can be sure all my characters will have the exact right level of challenge that's fun for them!

Hooray for the new difficulty settings! And hooray for the SSK system too, for making it easier for me to run Super Group events with a wide variety of players. But most of all, hooray for two new archetypes worth of Electrical Powers! WHEE! LIGHTNING ROD!!!

So this thread got me digging through my old Bad PUG Story archives, and ran across this gem from a couple years back.

I was cruising around Grandville for the first time, enjoying the exploration (and not enjoying the lag). An invite pops up, and I swat it down immediately. Then I get the following /tell. This is all a direct quote, CAPSLOCK, txtspk, lack of punctuation, all preserved in its original glory.

"Y U NO TEAM"

"I don't accept blind invites, sorry", a fact that was stated clearly in my search comment.

"OH OK LFT", followed immediately by a second invite window, which I declined.

"U SAID NO AGAIN AFTER I SEND TELL"

"Right, see, the point of wanting a /tell before an /invite is to get some information about the team, so I can decide if I'm interested in joining."

"OK WE DOIN THE RADIO IN PO", the Radio contact, not the police radio missions blueside. This, again, was followed by an immediate invite window, which I declined.

"Y U TURN DOWN AGAIN"

"I'm level 40, and your team is running level 10-15 content."

"PLZZZ I BE UR FREND FOREVER", followed again by an immediate invite, which I declined.

"I'm sorry, I don't know you, and what I've seen of you so far doesn't really make me that interested in the sort of long-term contact that 'FREND FOREVER' suggests, much less the short-term contact of a team with you."

"OK LOL", followed of course by another invite window, which I declined.

"NOW UR MAKIN ME MAD"

"I'm sorry to hear that. But I'm still not interested in teaming with you. Maybe you'll get better results searching for people in your level range?"

"LOL I FORGIV U", followed, of course, by another invite. Which I declined.

"THAS IT IM REPORT YO"

"Report me? To the GMs? For not accepting your repeated and clearly unwelcome invites to a team going through content that would provide me no reward? If you feel you must..."

"THIS A MMO SO U NEED HAVE TEAM THIS THE LAST TIME ACEPT OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES". I was floored by the fact that he could spell consequences. But the seventh and final invite window was still declined.

The GMs still haven't contacted me about his petition.

This problem isn't new. I've had about a 50% chance of mapservering and dropping to the login screen with every black market visit since the damn thing was introduced. Usually, after I get a successful load, any future visits during that play session are ok too. This last issue has bumped that chance from 50% to more like 80% though, and I'm just vendoring most of my crap.

I've recently reversed my Blind Invite policy, at least internally, even though my search tag still reads "No Blind Invites". The thing is, I realised it had been far too long since I had any really wacky PUG experiences, and that I enjoy having the stories to tell enough to balance the headache the teams usually wind up being. If the team turns out to actually be functional, just lead by a blind inviter, then I politely withdraw.

The minimum-necessary-effort /tells before a rapid fire invite still get me pretty cranky, though. The ones that read "LFT?", followed a nanosecond later by the invite window appearing. It's like they saw the "No Blind Invites" tag, but couldn't understand what that actually means, like the /tell is just a ritual behavior for the sake of good manners rather than a request for some information about the actual team they want me to join. True Blind Inviters, at least, I can assume just don't know about search comments.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily a good thing. Freedom Server has acted as kind of a filter for the rest of us, Virtue included. If Virtue takes the top spot, we'll be absorbing a lot more of the people who just click on the top server in the list without bothering to learn anything about it first. It's kind of like the difference between Atlas Park and Galaxy City. I really prefer Virtue to maintain a solid 2nd place spot because people have been deliberately seeking it out, rather than 1st because it's just where people get funneled by the interface.

True story: all my positive rep comes from long off-topic D&D anecdotes. My negative rep comes from a lot of different sources, but never from long off-topic D&D anecdotes.

So... since this is already only marginally on-topic, you guys want to hear some stories about my Kobold Sorcerer?

I've got a few characters who come in on more of the Occult side of that style of storytelling. The thing with that era of Philosopher-Scientists is that they really didn't recognize quite so clear a division between "real" science and Magic. A great deal of so-called occult subjects were still being studied and examined as possible valid sources of truth, and several of my characters operate from the assumption that modern man was perhaps a bit hasty to cast so many of those notions aside. Think you guys may have a place for an partially modernised inheritor of an oldschool tradition of Gentleman Arcanists? Probably a villain to start, but just because Going Rogue won't be around for Brutes to side-hop for a while yet.

My Elec/Elec/Mu Brute can solo Carnies and Malta set to 8. Sure, it's with bosses turned off and only even level spawns (I can't bring myself to use -1 level, even if it would make my quest for More Purples a whole lot easier), but that's still quite a feat. She can also solo Rikti set to 8/+4/Bosses, but with /Electric Armor it sometimes feels like I'm cheating.

My new Elec/Elec is already in her 40s. I love that combo so very very much. I pretty much live full time in 8-man spawns of Rikti now.

I'd still rather be playing it on a Brute, though. I enjoy Fury more than Critical Hits, and all these recovery tools feel kind of wasted without a Fury Bar to keep full. Once GR is live, I'll probably wind up shelving this scrapper, but she'll almost certainly already be 50 by then.

Last night, 3AM mountain timezone, I found enough players on Justice Server to run a Barracuda SF. So that's a less populous server, very small level range, Villain side, far from peak time.

I see two key contributors to the OPs problem.

First, ignore lists. Even on Freedom server, a notorious haven of unmedicated sociopaths and incoherent trolls who insist on putting the English language in a pit in their basement and telling it what to do with the lotion, the OP would stand out as an exceptionally difficult individual to communicate with.

Second, Freedom server. Every other server seems to be maintaining the status quo if not picking up numbers, but Freedom has definitely seen a decline in popularity since I16. Virtue was always a close second and occasional first, but Virtue has held onto first consistently since I16 went live. Based on the OP's complaints we know he was fond of one of the specific exploits removed in this issue, which gives some indication of the type of player who he likely teamed up with. And that's the specific sort of player that the developers just came down pretty hard on. AE exploiting was going on on all servers, but Freedom was definitely seeing a lot more of it. It's no wonder he can't find anyone to play with, if all his AE exploiting friends are fleeing for the hills, and everyone else reacts to his nonsense the way most of us have.

Eisenzahn was my D&D character's name back in the late 80's. A lawful neutral rogue who operated as a state-sanctioned covert ops guy for the government of our campaign setting, until the lawful government was overthrown and he became public enemy number one to the usurpers. When he died in the final battle to restore the lawful order, a ninja academy was established by his descendents training "noble assassins" to protect the common people and to serve the state (provided the state continued to satisfy their requirements of honor). Each successive leader of that community earned the right to wield his dagger, from which his name (which is German for "Iron Fang") had originally been derived. He was widely rumored to have been a werewolf, although the GM and I were careful never to confirm that to the other players, and his descendents (several of whom I've played) have occasionally been saved from great peril by a huge ghostly wolf with scars matching those the original Eisenzahn had at the time of death.

When the Rise of the Zilart expansion was released for FFXI (shortly before the North America PC release of the game, but after I'd already talked myself and most of my friends into giving it a try), I was absolutely thrilled to see it appear on the list of names selectable for the Wyvern Pets of the Dragoon Class. I devoted a great deal of time and effort to the Dragoon class because of that, despite it noticably underperforming and being a ridiculous pain to get teams with as a result (in a game where Soloing was simply not an option for most).

In this game? He was my first villain, a Nin/Nin Stalker. His backstory there is almost unchanged from the D&D version. Former US Secret Agent, wetworks and security expert, gets burned by an administration change looking for a scapegoat to dump the previous people's mistakes on. Goes on the run, not so much to clear his name but to bring the ones who betrayed him down hard... even if it tears the entire rest of the government apart doing so. He's a lot of fun to roleplay, but he's from back when I played mostly on Justice and didn't know that Roleplayers were concentrated so heavily on Virtue. And sadly, the name is taken on Virtue so I can't just move him over.

My main character has in her bio that she's partially resistant to psychic contact. 40.5% Psi Resistance as of her current build in fact, provided that Static Shield is running. So when people try to read her mind, I only give them three out of every five words. And when people send her telepathic communications, I only have her recieve the same. I used to select the specific words based on what would be most fun for me, but now I keep a few dice by the computer.

I run her resistance to other effects based on the magnitude of her mez protection. "You are now my loyal slave, and you love me, and want to get sweaty and nekkid with me down by the monkey cages" gets hit with "Is that meant to be a Confusion or Disorient effect? Also, what's the magnitude, and what's the recharge rate on the specific power, so I know if you could stack it sufficiently to overwhelm my mag 10.38 protection to either? And does it cause aggro, or is it like Confuse without a damage portion? Because if I'm aggroed, I'd like the duration you'll need to apply it for my character to respond with violence."

This usually gets a "Wut?", followed by "BLAM! I'm using Power Sink, slotted to siphon 80.3% of your endurance! What's your drain resistance?!" from me.

If Static Shield isn't running when they send those tells, I eat a Break Free and turn it on.

If they dare to use the word "Pheremones", I'll actually hit Power Surge so my Toxic Resistance will shoot from 15% to 90%. The lovely Lunaticia has pretty bad allergies, after all, and even a minor exposure to airborn toxins and irritants can make her reflexively activate her only relevant defensive technique.

By the time the three minutes are up (during which time the character's apparent sex appeal to draw these kinds of whackos is diminished greatly by her transformation from a pretty lady into a semi-humanoid jumble of coherent energy) they've usually wandered off to auto-seduce somebody else. Or if they've figured out how this is going to work and are hanging around to exploit my post-crash weakness, I can just make a run for the base portal.

I don't like to PvP, nor do I really like to Text Fight usually, but I do like to Text Fight as though I were PvPing. People either think it's awesome, and have fun figuring out how our actual character abilities would interact in a more flexible roleplaying situation than is presented by actual combat, or else they storm off in a huff.

Anyway, these days outright free-will stealing nonsense is pretty rare. But it does happen, and it's unpleasant enough to roleplay through that a little overreaction can be understood.

My existing characters have visited the tailor one by one... and found that they look best with the default colors. Even the red lightning on all my electric villains is staying (probably because they're all roleplayed as Mu initiates). The only exception is my SS/WP Brute, who's going to be trying to minimize the flashy strobe effect of Rage, swapping in some of the alternate punches, and shutting off WP entirely.