Frosticus

I think you grossly over estimate RoA assuming of course we aren't fighting +1's or lower. But if he is asking for a "challenge" then he must mean at least +2's, probably higher.

Your argument about blasting from range is sort of the exact opposite of playing a melee range arch/fire isn't it? If you don't think so then your suggestion of psy/fire is way easier because it is all single target (from range) with much higher mitigation meaning less agro and much more safety. Not to mention casting psy nado while jumping in and following up with fire sword circle while aura and hotfeet tick away is actually quite safe and very devastating if you were looking to venture in to melee and dole out aoe damage with the combo.

I thought a melee range blaster that does more aoe damage than almost anything would be self explanatory in its hardness to play. Which is to say, probably one of the hardest roads to take.

I think most stalkers take them upon themselves through personal choice, or by game decree, by solo'ing. You have the star then!

You make some great observations. The only thing I would like to add is that perception is reality because our reality is governed by our perception.

Are you using this as evidence that servers are well populated or under populated? Actually that question serves no purpose so don't feel compelled to answer it unless you really want to.

Every time I've seen anyone cite search numbers they get crapped on because it isn't admissible according to them. I would suspect that if it is deemed inadmissible for one side of the argument it should also be inadmissible for the other side.

With regard to people using /hide, they have taken themselves out of the equation and serve no purpose to be counted in any sort of population assessment. That is not be mistaken with subscription assessment, which aside from keeping the game running and growing, is irrelevant to players.

In the absence of hard evidence all any of us have is anecdotal reprisals. Both sides lack hard evidence. You are welcome to highlight that I'm speaking anecdotally, but be sure to hold up a mirror in the process.

Probably unlikely. As someone else pointed out it isn't a problem with stalkers but the game itself. However they won't change the game from a hack n' slash to some other format to compensate stalkers and other st specialists. They also can't address the concerns of stalkers without completely changing their foundation.

It's unfortunate because elec melee really demonstrates that aoe+stalker doesn't have to be a bad thing and should never have been avoided like it was during their design.

The also aren't strong enough single target specialists to emerge from the shadow of other single target specialized brutes and scrappers.

Maybe if they were increased again up to a 1.2-1.3 base modifier their weaknesses would be compensated adequately, but I also doubt that will happen.

There is nothing wrong with stalkers, there just isn't enough right about them.

The build I posted is decidedly not for pvp. It makes use of the pvp IO hold set because it is the best hold set for endurance hungry builds that still want solid global rech, but utilizing some pvp IO's when you specifically said "only the best for me" is a far cry from it being a "pvp" build.

While I can't speak for the OP I know you can do this on Freedom during a 2x xp weekend if you want. I know this because I have several 'lone wolf' characters on that server.

The game being almost entirely instanced content ensures one's ability to play in that style.

What a server like Freedom can't provide is playing in a twilight zone-esque landscape that is devoid of all life provided you are looking to do that specifically in one of the hub zones. If you are ok with going to any of the 10 or so other zones blue side you can still experience entire zones where you are the only person loaded.

I think the devs bend over backwards to supply us with a single player game MMO. Most of their changes seem aimed at furthering the single player aspect. That might be coincidence, or it might not be. I'm just not sure it is fair to expect the open game world to cater to that single player style even though it does in many cases already.

Being able to observe a dip of 20 people is more my concern than the ever present excuses that are perpetually made to justify low numbers. That said, I wonder at what point explaining away low numbers at any given time stops and is just accepted as the reality of the situation?

That's the same for both sides of any cyclical topic around here. Noticing that we are a very small group of lifers is satisfactory in some ways I suppose.

Scythus, you would have to get up pretty early to ever defeat one of my "highly flawed arguments". I see why you resort to what you do. Make your useless quips elsewhere or actually join in the fun of the conversation. thxbai.

There is little doubt that they intend to add more to Praetoria in future issues. For now though it begs the question; just what have they been working on in the last year or so that they started trickling out the content in hold for GR?

I think some people were expecting a lot of water held up behind the dam and were hoping it would burst forth with GR. I think those people are going to be disappointed.

My hope is that all those new hires are working on cox2 because the Freem 15 worked faster.

Context. Try it out some time.

Don't make statements when you have no idea. This is your speculation based on next to nothing, not a definitive statement.

All DCUO has to have is 4 zones, a few costumes, 4 powersets, lvl 1-20 content and it will already be pretty much neck and neck with GR.

The "quit" wasn't directed at you, but was in reference to earlier people continually saying any such changes would cause people to quit. I didn't mean for it to be a low blow against you and I apologize if it came across that way.

If you have 8 accounts and you log in 8 of the same named toons I could see that being a problem. But then it is all being played by you so conversation would already be quite entertaining in a Malkavian sort of way (not to be confused with Machiavellian)

Otherwise the chances of running into multiple occurrences of the exact same name would probably be pretty low. If and when it did happen I've noticed that when people chat there is this little bubble that pops up above their head. Useful? maybe. If people are in multiple zones with the same name (say setting up the Numina hunt) that could be an issue, but it is already an issue that takes multiple confirmations on a team with all different names so I doubt it would be much more of a roadblock.

For me Incarnates were the main attraction to GR. I have a lot of 50's so earning that single level for each of them probably would have eaten up a decent amount of the time leading up to the rest of the system being implemented.

I have no purchased GR because I don't buy things sight unseen. There are companies I trust far more than this one and I won't put that aside for them. I'm glad of that decision now. I'm leaning heavily toward not picking up GR at least until i19. The last determinant for me will be the new app/ppp choices upon side switching and if something I really like is unknown to me about it so far.

I've gone full reversal from being really excited about GR to being so meh that I probably won't pick it up. I'm not sure what to say about that as I would have figured an expansion to a game I've enjoyed for as long as I have would have been a sure thing.

It's like they almost believe what they are saying. That last sentence is rich.

That is sort of one method I've tossed around. I'd make it so the global doesn't even show up until mouseover though. It would of course be shown in the team search window. So the search window would have an additional column.

I'd make it so it displays as:
the infamous
Bill Z
Billz Inc. SG

Upon mouse over/highlighting:
the infamous
Bill Z
@BillZBubba
Billz Inc. SG

In the instance where a person has multiples of the same toon with the same global:
the infamous
Bill Z
@BillZBubba
Billz Inc. SG
Pinnacle

The inhumanity of it! Anyone that would quit over something like that is the same type of person that quits because the markets are being merged. I'm tempted to quit because I accepted an sg invite and it now appears under my name...grrr so mad. Well actually nothing shows on my character because I have that disabled, but I get so mad when I click another player and it shows their info. My immersion is of course broken the second their name appears above their head, but that is too easy to pick on.

This isn't changing the name system anymore than it is changing the name system when I choose whether or not to select a title at lvl 15.

You make a compelling argument.
I'd like to point out again that I'm not even pro-merger. I'm just anti "the way most of you argue against a merge".

I took his comment to mean "new" content/costumes/powers to play with. We decidedly are getting very little of that with GR, so DCUO will easily trounce it from that perspective.

Total hrs of content/costume/powers will of course be in CoX's favor. Most of it is old and played out mind you.

If "new" areas to explore, powers to use, and costumes to try out is something that is important to you then GR is probably going to fall flat compared to DCUO.

that would be the case if those were the only two options.

I'm willing to accept that the majority of new players are hyper-researching consumers, but the evidence suggests that is highly unlikely. The study of consumer behavior also suggests that is highly unlikely.

The fact that a small fraction of players visit the official forums and the game (like most) offers a free trial/demo strongly suggests that your embodiment of the typical new player is likely inaccurate.

The players you describe exists. Most definitely. I'd never want to come across as suggesting otherwise. However, nothing need be done for them because they are already hyper-researching consumers making informed decisions about their playtime.

I make the logical leap that many new players expect to see other players because of 3 reasons:
1. The game claims it is the World's Most Popular Superpowered MMO.
- World's most popular, that sounds like a lot of people like it...
2. It's an MMO
- It's a Massively Multiplayer online game. There is no denying that the term drums of the idea of a lot of players. It's largely why the genre took the name.
3. Previous MMO experience
- CoX is one of the most heavily instanced MMO's on the market, but the problem isn't the instancing it is that the "hubs" cover many square miles. Take Guild Wars, which also relies on heavy instancing, even more than this game actually. However the hubs are geographically small so the population outside of the instances are quite condensed. It doesn't take many players for GW to feel like you are well surrounded by other players.

When the dev's took away any and all reasons to be "outside" in this game they essentially designated entire zones as vacant hubs. There is essentially no reason anymore for a zone the size of Steel Canyon. Everything it offers could be condensed into a GW's sized hub and achieve the same purpose because everything we now do in this game is instanced.

On somewhat of a tangent, but the enormous amount of wasted space in this game since the devs changed the paradigm of play is the largest contributor to "emptiness". They obviously realize this and have tried to introduce some excitement back into the open world with events and now TIP's missions*. I'm not sure yet how easily people will be willing to shift paradigms again without strong incentive. That is to say it was an easy decision to abandon the outside world in favor of instanced missions because they reward so much better. The same goes for AE vs open world. To get people to readily come back out into the world to partake in events would take a sliding of the reward scale in their favor. TIP's will likely be something you just grind until it drops though and then you go run it. I'm not sure how compelling that is, but I guess we'll see.

*Or at least it sounds like 'TIP missions drop outside.

No. And I've never claimed to. One side is making very bold claims about how we'd definitely lose our names/sg's/etc. That is fear mongering at best and outright lying to convince people at worst. I don't need to resort to that to make pertinent points.

To steal your line of bluntness, a satellite service has nothing to do with a merger. The only thing it serves to show us is that they would indeed need to devise a way to ensure players could keep their unique identifiers. But we already know that.

If preserving that information wasn't a priority they likely would have already closed down some servers regardless of the business reasons I covered earlier. The EU servers are indeed empty, they are remote enough to be buried without generating negative press about a merger (I think at one time there was even Asian servers) and they are probably not generating enough revenue to support the GM's monitoring them...

That to me is a pretty clear indication that unless there is a very substantial business reason to proceed they will first ensure that the players are taken care of in the event that they ever do merge.


Having a fear of the unknown and proclaiming absolute truth about that unknown are two very different things. We don't know enough to make any definitive statements at all. Which again, one side of this discussion resorts to frequently. It's doubtful the devs know enough about this to make any absolute statements until they really sunk their teeth in to the matter. And even then they likely lack the expertise to make strong forecasts about the outcome. They don't know and we don't know exactly what would happen or how it would happen.

I don't believe anything more needs to be said than that in conjunction with the business reasons stated earlier. Simply put, we don't know enough to take the risk and the ROI likely wouldn't be good enough to proceed. There is no need to come off like a religious zealot proclaiming the end of your sg's and all your names will burn in the fiery pit. It's unnecessary and frankly embarrassing. And to be blunt again, it is the reason I'll usually side with the merger people even though I don't think a merger is necessary or even the right way to proceed.

I wouldn't. More a subtle hint that they should be including a round of proliferation imo.

The circle breaks at this point.

What are some of these sites? Are they the official CoX site? Should any player, especially a new one, be put in a position that they need to scour the web to make an informed choice? Should then have to check out the official site before making informed decisions? Maybe, but you no longer have to do that when it comes to creating a toon, does or doesn't it stand to reason that that should logically extend to where you play that toon?

I can only speak for myself, but I would have never chosen Infinity as a server when I joined the game if I'd known more about it. It simply does not fit my preferences. It was only through sheer stubbornness and because I caught a glimpse of potential while playing there that I decided to give another server a try. Thankfully I had a rl friend that used to play the game recommend Freedom. If I'd just made another random choice who knows what would have happened. If I'd stumbled upon another Infinity I likely would have quit.

Is that the type of roulette you honestly want to play with your playerbase?

A lot of the questions I just asked are loaded by intention so allow me to propose one to support the opposite side. When does too much access to information become a liability where the potential for it to be detrimental outweighs the potential benefits?