Garielle

Actually if you drop to Premium, your Incarnate Powers will become greyed out. No incarnate access at all for non-VIPs.

Freebies can't use the market anyway. If they buy the license, then they have spent money and become Premium.

I am pretty much on par with you guys. To me, what makes a role-playing game a role-playing game is that it is your character's stats and abilities that matter much more than your own. It's the nature of the beast that a computer based MMO can't rely ENTIRELY on character stats in the way that old school pen-and-paper RPGs do, but getting as close as possible is a "good thing" in my opinion.

One of the things I like about the mostly instanced nature of CoH is that it allows a player some control over the pace of the game and accommodates a variety of play-styles. This, of course, assumes that you are either running solo or teamed with like-minded individuals. If you want to be more tactical, trying to break up large groups with pulling, being careful not to take on too much aggro at once, you usually can. If you prefer to use brute force to steamroll, you can do that too. MMOs which use more "open world" content don't allow this because there's always the chance that groups can respawn around you at any moment and quickly overwhelm you.

Ironically, my girlfriend can't play CoH for an extended period of time because she finds it makes her feel physically exhausted. She says the game is too fast paced for her. She prefers that well-known, overrated, fantasy based MMO which is more open-world.

What you are missing is that unless they add more than six powersets in a year, ALL POWERSETS, EVEN THE PREMIUM POWERSETS will be FREE to VIPs. And even if they add even 6 a year, you are getting more for your subscription dollar than you have ever gotten in the past, even if you can't afford to buy all the powersets.

IF they give us two, as Nericus suggests they might, I offer one helpful tip to those who are new and may not have gotten or used freespecs before. Use the first respec on all the characters you plan to before they issue the second one. A character can only have ONE "Freespec" at a time. If you haven't used the first one, you won't get the second one. Of course, if you didn't use the first one already, you probably don't need two to begin with.

I agree with you fully Shadowe, but you are also making another common mistake those complaining about having to pay for powersets are making. You are assuming that just because something is Premium that it automatically means you have to spend more than your subscription.

A few posts back in this thread, I made this post which lays out why it is mathematically impossible for someone not to get MORE powersets and other features with their subscription than they have ever received in the past. All without spending a single penny more than their subscription. The only way for them not to receive more is if the developers top releasing any new content at all, premium or otherwise.

My description of the concept likely makes it sound much simpler than it would actually be in practice. That's the luxury of coming up with ideas, never having actually seen the code it would have to be made to work with.

Honestly though, given the fact that the Paragon Studio devs really do have a history of listening to the community and trying to implement features that the community shows an interest in, I can only assume the absence of a feature like this is, at least partially, deliberate. It's something that is discussed often enough that I am sure everyone at Paragon Studios is aware of it.

I can understand their reluctance. Statistics show that, while there are those who prefer to play MMOs as lone wolves, those who play with others typically have a longer retention rate. Yes, there are exceptions, but generally solo players don't subscribe for as long as those who team up regularly with friends. By not making single-person SGs easy to set up and maintain, it encourages people to either join an existing SG or to find one or two people to join yours.

Even with the current limitations, it is still not all that difficult to do. It's usually fairly easy to find someone willing to join your SG temporarily to recruit an alt for you. Once that's done, earning the prestige to pay the rent on a small-to-medium sized base is not difficult.

I started a private base just a few weeks ago (shortly before DXP weekend). Just using me and a couple of alts, I already have 9 Salvage store, Personal Crafting, Personal Vault, Full Energy and Control Rooms, the Pillar of Ice and Flame, and 4 teleporters. I have earned the beacons for all of the Blue side zones, including hazard zones, but can only have 8 beacons set up at a time until I add more teleporters. Hardly a huge deal since I can easily swap them in and out if I feel the need. As it stands, I just set up the zones that I find I go to the most often (AP, PI, Pocket D, and RWZ are the big 4).

When Freedom hits, I am gonna making a couple of new alts (neither of which will probably have Beam Rifles, believe it or not), so will probably just find someone that I can either ask or bribe to handle the inviting for me.

There are actually TWO reasons why they do this:

1. To protect customers against Credit Card Fraud
2. To Help Combat The Presence of RMTers

An even better guard against that already exists. Currently, you can restrict "Global" emails to "Global Friends Only". If the system were set up to use something akin to a Cert or Voucher, it could only be sent to those who had you as a global friend. That method may even provide a built-in mechanic for handling those invites. If you send the invite to a global name, it generates a cert/voucher instead of the typical pop-up.

Trapdoor is a breeze compared to the portal room. I made the mistake of running that with AVs turned on. Was...ummm..... not real fun.

Four is actually TOO many. Because of diminishing returns/enhancement diversification, the amount you gain after the second enhancement is reduced. After the third, the gain is small that it is not worth it. You are much better off moving that slot over to Stamina and adding in a second END MOD there.

For Endurance management, I typically 4 slot my Stamina. I either put in 3 END MODs and a "Chance for END" from one of the Endurance Modification sets, or I try to partially slot one of the END MOD sets to get the set bonuses, depending on the AT and Build I am working on. Someone who is better at number crunching that I am can probably tell you the "optimum" way to slot your Stamina.