Golden_Avariel

I don't roll random because I see them as too valuable (at 42nd level, Justice Fencer has only 478 merits). To me a merit is worth a LOT of influence because it represents freedom from having to pay 10's or 100's of millions of influence I don't have on the market. I also avoid anything random on principal because historically my luck is awful in any game going back to D&D 1st edition sitting around a table rolling dice.

I have rolled random recipes using AE tickets but not knowing which ranges or options are best I ended up with 20 recipes that were worthless. I did find one I could craft for enough to make me feel better about my choice; but overall the experience just confirmed my opinion that my merits were too valuable to risk on random rolls since there are only a few recipes I really want anyway.

Maybe as time passes my desire for IO sets will increase and that will push me to get more comfortable with forming my own TF teams to increase my merit income. Maybe then I'll roll randomly and get more involved in the market... but certainly not as it stands now. *shrugs*

I think merits, especially getting them for running story arcs, was a huge boon to players like me that don't run a lot of TF's. I can now get the specialty IO's I could never have afforded in the past. True I can't afford a full build but that isn't something I've ever wanted to do anyway, at least for the present. I just wanted KB protection and maybe a Regen/Recovery ... stuff like that.

I don't feel like I'm affecting the market at all since the 1 or 2 recipes I earned pre-i13 wasn't adding to the recipe supply anyway. That plus the merits I'm spending now are earned in a way that wouldn't have given a reward under the old system at all.

One time someone invited my dark/dark defender with "we need a healer". I told him that I only had one heal and that I was much better at making sure they didn't need healing to begin with. He declined to invite me. Right after that I got invited to a great KR radio team no questions asked and got complimented on the heals... go figure.

That's the only time I've experienced that but then I don't join pug's very often. I'm much more likely to "accidentally" form a pug by getting tells from people wanting to join me. I never care what AT they are and I only look at their power sets so I know how they fit into the team. It's my opinion that you only need active players who want to be a contributing member of the team to have an awesome fun time.

I've never kicked someone but I have made excuses to leave sooner than usual. That's normally because some guy thinks he can solo the mission without the rest of us and I hate that. Even if he CAN solo the mission (usually they are just making the mission harder than it needs to be), how do you think that makes the rest of us feel? I want everyone in my team to feel heroic. But I still just leave rather than make a fuss.

Obviously her evil clone or other-deminsional duplicate.

I didn't say it was impossible - I did learn after all and had figured out some before meeting the Widow. I was saying that it was confusing to me when I was new. I'm very familiar with the Info button but it is cumbersome when you have to look at every single enhancement in an attempt to find the one you want, especially if you aren't sure what you want.

I do know I bought multiple enhancements in the early days (even with a working mouse-over) that wouldn't slot because the names listed in the power didn't exactly match the names of the enhancements. I look at it now and wonder how the heck I could have been confused but the fact remains that I was. Sadly, the more familiar we become with the system the less help we are at coming up with ways to help new players learn unless you deal with a constant stream of new players.

I think one of the reasons the speed runners skew the numbers is that they do a LOT more TF's than the rest of us. That means 50% of the runs are done by 10% of the population. Those are obviously made up numbers but the point is that a typical speed runner is going to run 3-10 TF's a week while I run 0-2 in a month. A median calculation would be more fair if everyone ran them at the same rate or each player were only counted once at their best time. I'd also think they should figure out the ratio of started vs finished tasks and assign a difficulty modifier based on how many teams gave up after getting half-way through.

I've been thinking about starting my own TF/SF's and trying for a "kill most" approach but I'm not sure if I could really put together a PUG that would do that. I guess I should give it a try. Up until now my experience is that story arcs give me a better rate of return on merits than any other content.

Of course the problem is a new player isn't going to know any of that and the names of the DO's and SO's are terrible. Knowing they are in the same order doesn't help a lot when you can't figure out what the order is (I still have only a vague idea). The colors on the DO's and SO's are not as clear as the colors on the trainings because of the artwork so sometimes that doesn't help and that's assuming it dawns on you that the colors are the same. Then there is the problem of knowing what enhancement you are looking for (Enhance Endurance Cost vs Endurance Discount vs Endurance Reduction vs Endurance Modification, Disorient vs Stun, etc).

Thank goodness when I was brand new the mouse-over worked. I don't know what I would have done if the current bug was active (When IS that getting fixed?).

All of that was one reason I forced myself to learn the IO system (besides being broke from replacing everything every 5 levels) - I recognized the icons from the training enhancements and I didn't have to figure out the DO and SO enhancements.

But what really helped me was an awesome Widow villain-side who teamed up with my friend and I in the pre 10th level range and helped us slot up our characters by providing the cash and advice. After that I understood a lot more than what simple experience had taught me in the 20 or so levels I'd gained on my 2 heroes.

*Grumbles about his fire/shield scrapper not being quite high enough... STILL* Darn alt-itis.

Wow I didn't know you could get stuck on the wrong side of the door. I was in the main area but my blaster couldn't get out the hero door to the exit hall.

What a nice surprise, Bring your alibis

I don't know if this is still a problem because I've gotten so used to it... but I remember my first month was a mass of confusion about which enhancements in the store corresponded to the enhancements the power indicated it could accept. They didn't use the same words to say the same thing. I also had no real idea what some of them actually did so I didn't know if I should slot them and if so how many. The "Sets" list on each power was totally confusing too because I had no idea about inventions.

"But I want the Accurate Healing enhancement and I can't find it!"

I did read the tutorial closely but having absolutely no experience in the game (or any MMO) I was lost on multiple points. A lot of the jargon and acronyms I read or overheard in the game might as well been spoken in Greek for all the help it did.

"PBAOE? Gehsundheit."

Of course now I look at all of it and think it's fairly simple, but I do remember that I didn't think that once upon a time.

I'm with you Eiko-chan. It doesn't seem right. Next up... all the people saying/bragging that they can do all those you just mentioned in 30 minutes or less.

I would use the prestige sprints more (at all) if it suppressed Sprint's dust trail.

I remember reading that Dark Melee Taunt (along with a couple of others) for Tankers had scrapper confront numbers in it. Does anyone else remember that and was it fixed? That could certainly have an effect.

Slow link and I can't see them today but I saw them yesterday and they are very nice. She's one talented girl.

*blinks* wow

Another artist I need to watch.

Last night I logged into Pocket D and the hero-side door was jammed open. I couldn't get a hand or get through it at all. The villain-side door looked fine and I could get a hand on it although of course I couldn't open it. I wasn't having any lag or other graphic glitches at all.

I was filling out a /bug report when someone raced past me to the door. I saw the doors suddenly close and open and she disappeared. The doors remained open and I still couldn't get through. It was obviously just me so I closed the /bug dialog and spawned an Ouroboros portal.

It was kind of surreal. I could almost hear the Eagles singing Hotel California in the background. I think I've been on Justice too long and gone crazy. Yep... that's got to be it.

Scrapper confront with a shield is still doing the tarzan yell, both live and test.

Put the shield away and it is quiet (at least for fiery melee) but activate the shield and they yell.

As far as I can tell, without the shield, all the scrapper confront powers are totally silent and don't do the usual "Aha!" sound of the emotes or my tank's taunt.

A lot better than the Burger King commercials we have in the US. Imaginative and fun.

I have the 512MB version of the 4850 but yeah, that sounds exactly like what I'm seeing.

When I exited tonight I saw a scene from when we were a 3-person party standing outside a finished mission. It was at least 30 minutes since we had said goodbye to him and run another defeat-all mission in a different zone afterwards.

At least I didn't get it any other time tonight and I was even alt-tabbing back to Windows.

Since the 4/7 update, I sometimes see a flash of an old random scene (the login screen, or me in an old mission or standing around talking to others but not the current scene). I cannot consistently reproduce it but it usually happens when something new is coming up like the map, enhancement screen, ID, etc. It usually happens again as I exit.

It's pretty annoying although not a game stopper. It flashes the random scene then immediately corrects itself. It doesn't seem to hurt anything so I was just curious if others see it.

I'm running 64-bit Vista and a 4850 ATI card running the 10.1 drivers if that matters at all.