Garielle

Honestly, I am hoping they make them Inherent Powers rather than just increasing move rates, jump height, Regen, and Recovery. If they are inherent, then they can be slotted, so your IOs could stay as they are and would offer the same benefits, including set bonuses. If they go with just increasing the base numbers, then there would be many builds that wouldn't even have powers where you could slot some of the stuff.

So what you are actually arguing is that they should not have provided early access to these two powersets then.

As much as I have enjoyed having them, I would actually tend to agree with you. The fact that they have been around for a few months already seems to have caused some people to completely forget that they are actually part of Going Rogue and not just powersets that were added as part of the regular Issue releases.

He's referring to the Pet and Turret's base chance to hit you, not your base chance to hit them, so he IS talking a Player's defense.

You may be over-complicating it. Instead of thinking of it as "4 options", think of it as "3 starting locations" and then just rotate between them. Here's what you end up with...

Start in Praetoria (going to Paragon)
Start in Rogue Isles
Start in Paragon
Start in Praetoria (going to Rogue Isles)
Start in Paragon
Start in Rogue Isles

Back to the beginning. This way you are not duplicating the same 1 to 20 content or the same 20-50 content in any two consecutive runs. It also ensures the group is not split between GR and Non-GR players for any two consecutive runs.

Ensign Jones? Is that really you?

I think it's more avoidance of the process of recruiting people to fill the openings.

I got ya beat. On the two servers which had been my "main" servers that would alternate back and forth between from time to time, I deleted ALL my characters, including ALL my 50s except 1. Making room for a whole new crop of 50s when Going Rogue hits in... SEVEN DAYS! ONE WEEK! Hmmm... sorry, was to see which one sounded shorter.

Of course, I could say it's "hours" away and just leave off the fact that it happens to be (roughly) 175 hours (assuming maintenance ending at Noon Eastern Time on the 17th).

Some of this has to do with human psychology. It has to do with "group think". If you are in a social group and things are going well, there are no major conflicts, and everyone is enjoying themselves, you want to stay in that group. You don't want to be the first one to leave because that would be going "against" the way the group appears to be thinking, which is "stay together".

I know I do this myself when I am in teams. I know have done it not only sub-consciously, but consciously as well. I may want to leave go to do something else and sit there for another half hour or more. It could be something silly, like go get new enhancements or go pick up a particular mission from a contact that just unlocked for me, or go switch to a different toon so I can keep them relatively close in level. It may be something real world related such as making something to eat, watching a move, or whatever. In any case, I, like many others, have a tendency to sit in the team if the team is going well.

As soon as someone else mentions leaving though, it's an excuse. You are no longer going against the group by yourself, you have someone else doing the same thing. Once that second person leaves, it becomes even easier, and it progresses from there. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if they are running from the star or not. I had a case today where a team had hit that point, I was willing to stay, someone was willing to leave, but the team fell apart anyway.

The idea for coloring the team leader's name is great. I love that idea. Not so hot on the idea of buffs though, and here's why.

There are only a few different things that can really be buffed. You have Damage, Recharge, Accuracy, Defense, Resistance, Movement Speed, and maybe a few others.

There are already powers out there that handle team buffs of the combat related stats. In fact, that is what the entire "Leadership" power pool is for. Something like this could weaken the need for ever taking that set. Especially since a buff of this sort wouldn't require any endurance like the toggled buffs in Leadership.

Why is this bad? Because it's one more choice that players don't have to really worry about when designing their toons. So they do away with leadership and they take this other set that some other people are taking. And therein lies the rub. They just took one more difference between their toon, and others--one more thing that made them a little more unique--and they threw it away cause they don't need it anymore.

And I know that two of the boosters already include buffs to some of these same attributes, but these buffs are random. The player has no control over what gets buffed. They aren't handing out buffs to team members by choice. Also in both cases, there are possible negative side effects.

I do have an idea though, and it is one that will easily appeal to many many players in the CoH/V community...

Badges

Don't need buffs, just badges. Stay in a full team for an hour, get the first badge. Stay in the same team for 2 hours, get the second tier of that badge. Stay in the same team for FOUR hours, and get the third (and final) tier of that badge. As an added caveat, any hour you do not gain XP does not count. This would prevent people from creating a team and hanging out in Pocket D (not knocking RP. I RP there myself sometimes. It's just that that's not what the badge would be about), as well as parking a team in a mission or SG base and logging off for the night.

There are a lot of people who would go out of their way to stay in teams for an extended period of time for the badges.

Also, there is already a buff for being in a team, and it's the best buff of all... XP. In fact, for an 8-man team, the buff is a 150% XP bonus.

No, it wouldn't. That's what the Leadership set is for. (See above)

They have done a lot to this game to encourage people to team. Some of the stuff from I16 like Super Side Kicking, better difficulty settings, allowing Exemplared players to earn XP and keep more of their powers, was specifically designed to make teaming more desirable.

Additionally, there is the XP bonus that is given to teams. The larger the team, the better the bonus.

There is plenty of reason to team already. Plenty of incentive.

Finally, the more free buffs you add to the game, the easier the game becomes. This is a bad thing. If a game is too easy, people become bored quickly. If a game is too hard, they become discouraged. The key is finding a good balance. CoH/V has done a good job of this, for the most part. I know there are some ATs and/or powersets that feel like certain things need to be changed (How ya doing there Bad Influence), but for the most part the challenge level (especially with adjustable difficulty settings) is in a good place.

Even if you don't get to the point were it gets so easy it's boring, as a company, it is bad business to make the leveling process too fast. The faster people level, the shorter the lifespan of the game. You know what I am referring to. The guy who leaves because he already has 12 level 50s on 5 different servers and just doesn't feel there is anything new for him to experience anymore. By the time you get to that point, there's almost no amount of new missions or power sets that is going to re-stimulate interest for more than a few weeks. Once you see it, you are right back where you were.

That's not a knock on this game or the devs at all. As I said, the game is just about where it should be right now. I am simply stating that care and caution should be taken before doing things that will make it too much easier.

I agree with you on this. Some of the color combinations on things like Fire Shields can take your museum worthy artistically created outfit and make it look like an inkblot test painted by a 2 year old with finger paints that had all been poured and mixed together.

One particularly annoying incident for me recently was in the Tailor shop of all places. Had just finished my latest Masterpiece. Accepted the changes, was just getting a glimpse of it in the "real world" when POOF! I suddenly turn into just an ugly black and...something... blob. Some of them remind of people who do webpages and think that #222 text on a #000 background is a great idea.

Maybe just an option to "Show Customized Effects". If it's on, then the person's customized colors show up on effects they put on you. If it's not, then the customized colors show up on their casting effect, but the effect on you is the default color. That way, everyone can still see that the ice shield, or Fire Shield or Bubble or whatever is ON you, but it actually has a color scheme designed by professional graphics artists.

By the way, the bits about my costumes being a Masterpiece are tongue in cheek. As I have said in another post recently, I am no artist. I am more of a logical thinker. In fact, I am not convinced that I MYSELF might not think #222 Text on a #000 background might be "cool". However, it's numerical values and the logical part of my brain tells me that those numbers are too close to each other to produce sufficient contrast to be easily readable.

Or we could revert to the grandfather of the internet based multi-player world, which was... MUD... Multi-User Dungeon (or Multi-User Domain... depending on who you listen to.) The ORIGINAL term was Dungeon, but Domain later replaced it as the genres became more diverse and not everyone was doing a Medieval world with "Dungeons". To give you an idea of how micro these things were, a decent one would average out at about 25-30 players online during peak hours. A really really busy one would max out at about 150-300. There were several hundred that would do 10-20 players on a really really good day.

Solos,

If you haven't already, check out the Going Rogue Preview at Ten Ton Hammer. They did a nice job of giving an actual example of a couple of the choices made early on. Suffice it to say, making a decision that helps the Resistance is not always the "good" choice, and making a decision that helps the Loyalists is not always the "evil" choice. The article gives an excellent example of this.

I try to avoid assuming fixes are as simple as that. It's easy for you or I to see here and say, "If you just do X, it will fix problem Y for this archetype". We, however, are standing in a box looking at the issue from one angle. The developers, have much more real data (not estimates or best guesses, but actual statistics) allowing them to look down on the problem and see the whole picture.

You say that the removal of PToD on EBs would fix the issue for Dominators, and it very well may. Have you given any thought to how this will affect the balance (either positive or negative) for the other archetypes though? Have you thought about what may be necessary to bring those archetypes back into balance?

If there is a problem with a particular AT, the first place you should always look is internal to that AT, and not externally. If you change something externally, then you are skewing everything. If you are visual, picture a 1" by 1" box. Now picture three pennies. Your objective is to place the pennies so that there is one penny directly in the center of the box, and each of the other two pennies is centered exactly one inch from the left side and the right side of the box. Now you have the box, and the left penny and right penny are exactly positioned, but the penny in the box is off-center. Do you move the penny, or try to move the box, and then have to move the other two pennies? Obviously, you just move the penny. Now, in this example, picture each penny as an AT, the one in the box being Dominators. The box itself is, of course, PToD. PToD is currently aligned fine with the other ATs, why change it? Instead just adjust Dominators slightly. Even then, you only do this if, when observed from above, it is indeed off-center and needs adjusting to begin with.

None of this does anything to mitigate that it is something that people paid real money for. That freed up power slot has absolutely no economical value at all.

There are those, and perhaps rightfully so, who dislike seeing pre-order powers/costume options/etc showing up as Veteran rewards. Why? Because these things were (and are) marketed as "exclusive". Ya know.. as in, "Because you are willing to buy the product up front and help us with development costs, only you and others who pre-ordered will be able to do this." That's what the word, "Exclusive" means. The argument of, "Well, there were people who weren't around back then and we should be able to get it too," is just whiners' bunk. People paid for these things, a deal between the seller and buyer was entered to. If the seller wishes to renig on that original arrangement, no matter how much time may have passed, they should be prepared to compensate those who were the buyers. No exceptions. No excuses.

Anyone who reads through my posts should know full-well that I tend to support the developers and publishers of this game, and give them the benefit of the doubt, whenever possible. In this case though, I can see no way to defend it. In this case, NCSoft was absolutely wrong in offering anything which was marketed as an "exclusive" in-game item through vet rewards.

You can use it on the personal crafting table to create the "IO" type salvage. Base salvage was done away with several issues ago.

Be warned... right now, you probably have over 30 salvage in your rack(s). The capacity was reduced to 30 at the same time the base salvage was eliminated, so just because you took it out, does NOT mean you will be able to put new salvage back IN. You may need to add an additional few racks. The conversion rate is not 1-to-1 though, so you will not need to accommodate the number of salvage you currently have.

Self quoting...bad form... I know. Anyway, I just wanted to add to this bit about Double XP. I tried to hire a nurse to install a catheter for the weekend, but she refused. Something about medical ethics or some such nonsense. Pah! Whatever!

Hmm... my sister is a nurse now. Ummm.... naw... we ain't going THERE!