Hyperstrike

qft

Dear GOD!

Actually no. Unstoppable isn't an ASAP. It's entirely optional.

Unstoppable, like the self-res for Willpower, is a failure mitigation tool.
What does this mean?

People keep calling it a God-mode. It's not. It bumps your resists and endurance recovery, propping you up a LITTLE longer, but it's not a tool you should use regularly. It's a tool you use when you're overwhelmed and need just another minute or two to either finish pounding down the bad guy or run away.

If you're ALREADY capped for damage resistance and STILL getting sawed through, unstoppable isn't going to help you a bit.

My main-scrank build on Hyperstrike is like this (and when I respec it, I'm dropping unstoppable). I've used unstoppable exactly ONCE in the last eight months. And while YES, it saved my bacon, once in an eight month span means the power is next to useless for me.

I'd say "I'll use Benito Mussolini to beat the tar out of Adolf Hitler."

Protector: The PervServ?

What I'd like to see is a checkbox (like for the co-op box when first entering Pocket D) that you could check and it wouldn't bug you again until you left the team.

Logged on and immediately got 11 badges.

Always a good way to start. Now I'm about 70 Tsoo sorcerors shy of Archmage.

Pulled down my respec to finalize my second build. Had a weird glitch where I couldn't pull Mutagen off my tray. Moved it to a higher numbered tray, went out and played a bit, then was able to pull it off later.

Going to be leaving Hyper's powers and animations alone. Some of my other toons will be getting tweakage though.

Yeah. This'd be one sticky point. Not sure what'd be the best way to make sure people don't try to get around it.

Failing simply would mean you'd lose that multiplier. You wouldn't degrade to the next multiplier down. You'd simply lose it. I don't think that the players should be penalized (other than losing the possibility of extra merits) for failing one of the challenge settings.

Again, this was written in a very preliminary format. And there's always room for adjustment. Possibly on a per-TF basis.

And what happens if they fail to the point of negative merits? Do they actually LOSE merits? I'm against this.

Again, as I said from the outset, these values are simply placeholders as a way to demonstrate what I'm talking about, rather than hard and fast values I'd like to see applied.

How attached to the current Granite appearance am I?

Not at all.

And, considering that an overlay method paves the way for power customization, I wouldn't miss the original Granite if you paid me to.

One caveat. It CANNOT be "Poo Armor 2.0"

Easy, simple, fun.

Essentially, most of the ways that these users have left to them opens them up to being reported rapidly and being removed quickly.

Not that they're not stupid enough to TRY. But the upcoming measures should wipe out a goodly chunk of these bottom feeders.

Betting their are business/legal/regulatory rules stopping this from happening.
If NCSoft NA and NCSoft EU (or whatever it's calling itself) are separate business divisions with separate billing databases, there may be issues in tracking players paying one service and and playing on servers supported by the other.

That said (sorry, not mocking you, just a most appropriate turn of phrase), I'd not say no to a merged server list.

This will search for anything with "Server" in the title, including Servers, Combine Servers, Consolidate Servers, and The Server At Mcdonalds Is Rude. it will eliminate "PVP," so you won't see PVP server requests, and the -re: portion of it removes replies, so you'll see the root of every thread that comes up, letting you see just how many threads there are on this. (The last helps for other subjects, as well.)

4. Click the "In subject" radio button. This is a search, not a cute blonde in a bikini. Here, you want to ignore the body.

5. Leave Username Search blank.

6. Date range, Newer Than, change the 1 to a 3, and the time to Months.

7. Result format doesn't matter. Click on "Submit."

As I try this now, (12/3/08,) we have:

• Consolidate Server
• Server Stats RSS Feed
• $server modifier ofr chat
• Fix the forum server
• Earlyissue server
• Merging low population server
• Combine slow server
• Server status
• Global chat on the Character and Server Screens
• Rated M server
• Add Ponies, Nerf Vills, merge Servers, PistolMelee
• Server Visiting
• Display Central Time on Server Status Page

Ignoring the smartalec reply, that's three full discussions about this topic.

You should have read one of them if (inevitably) something similar comes up in your search.

Now, on to the topic at hand....

Why server consolidation is not a good idea.

1. Just because YOU like living in New York City doesn't mean I can't like Kansas.

Yay, you love having huge lag spikes as you get near the black market/wentworths and a busy broadcast. Congrats. Enjoy Freedom. Some of us - many of which you will get replies from with this subject - like *low population* servers. If we *wanted* to be on Freedom, we'd *be* on Freedom.

I have characters on Freedom. I rarely play them (and actually moved a character OFF of Freedom to finish leveling it to 50) because *I DON'T LIKE FREEDOM.* I dislike the banality of broadcast, the high percentage of *horrid* teams I've come across there, the lag around any gathering point- and I've got a decent connection and system. For much the same reason, I typically startin Galaxy City instead of Atlas Park - I don't *want* to log in to a costume contest with several 50s spamming powers and nonsense arguments in broadcast.

Some of us *like* nice, quiet servers.

2, Kansas, part 2.

In addition, servers have their own personalities. No, I don't mean that literally, there's no AI to worry about if you start hearing "Daisy, Daisy" over your speakers or headset. Freedom's a crowded mess. Virtue is the RP server. Pinnacle is the "Drunk" server. Others have specific communities, such as those from Australia/NZ, Europe, etc.

3. "I only saw one other person. World of Conancraft has eleventy billion!"

So what?

We don't run around camping spawn points in this game. People are in missions. People are spread across many zones. Search on a map or do a /whoall and you'll miss those in missions, as well as those who are, for whatever reason, on /hide. Your "search" there didn't give you a full picture, not in the least.

4. "I put up my LFT flag and nothing happened!"

Learn to search. Don't just wait. Form a team yourself.

5. "I AM SPARTACUS!" No, not any more.

Remember logging in and seeing all those slots? Everyone has those - some buy more than the base 12, you get an extra one each year, you could have a total of 36 on any server. Everyone does. Every one has a character with a unique name. Maybe not a *good* name, but a unique one. Every one has a character with a unique name. Maybe not a *good* name, but a unique one.

Now merge servers. Suddenly, CoolBlasterDude from server 1 is getting merged with CoolBlasterDude from Server 2. Who gets to keep their name? Nobody has been able to answer this with any degree of satisfaction. Add a number? But I am NOT CoolBlasterGuy1. And what if the name's too long? Does the older character keep it? What if they're not as active?

People are *VERY* attached to their names. They are, quite obviously, part of their character.

6. "This Is SPARTA!" Sorry, Sparta exists already. You are GenericSG 8734 287 9798.

What else has a name? Supergroups. And I can *guarandamntee* that the same name is in use on multiple servers. Sometimes it's 'branches' of the same SG, sometimes it's coincidence. But with *everything* involved in an SG - from its identity and reputation on the server, to everything stored in the database about what it owns, what its base is like and such, this would be a disaster in the making. And no, auto merging them when the servers merge, even if they have room to, is not an option.

This, of course, assumes that they *CAN* move supergroups as a unit. More than likely, it'd just be a mass character move, with bases, prestige, anything stored in bases and all SG affiliations just gone forever.

7. "I am... where'd Spartacus go?"

Remember all those slots? Well, you start with 1/3 of the available ones. You can buy up to 36 total (24 on top of the ones you get initially.) Now, what do you suppose would happen if you merged two servers, and someone has, say, 20 characters on each? Not unusual. In fact, before those extra slots, I had *filled up* several servers. Do those characters just disappear? Do they move? Free move to another server sounds great, right... well, except you now kick them from their supergroup, remove them from their friends lists and more. This makes for angry and unhappy customers. Or rather, ex customers.

8. I will play where I damn well want to. And you can too.

And that should be blunt enough. If I want a crowded server, I'll go to Freedom. If I want an RP server, I'll go to Virtue. I do NOT want to be shoved onto another server I *don't* like. If I wanted to go there, *I'd be there.*

If the server you're on isn't "busy" enough for you, you have two options that won't bother anyone else.
(A) If it's low enough, reroll. You have a ton of character slots for a reason.
(B) If you don't want to reroll, server transfers are available, and relatively cheap. They also finish fast - you should be up and running and being spammed to join someone's SG on the new server in a few minutes, in most instances. So YOU can go to the server of YOUR choice without screwing ME over.

9. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Last but not least (at least until better points come along to be added,) server consolidation is widely viewed in the industry as an MMO going on life support. No, we don't have WoWs numbers (and you should actually pay attention to when and how they got those.) They're an abberation in the MMO industry. COH has had and does have a very successful, sustainable population even at its lowest points, so there's no economic need to combine anything. The flip side of that, of course, has been suggested above - you crowd people together, break up their SGs and friends lists, cause characters to go missing and poeple definitely *will* quit, both out of annoyance and a sense of "The game is almost dead!"

In conclusion....

As stated before, when it comes to server consolidation... HELL NO.

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Original post by Memphis_Bill

ROTFLcopter.

Yup. Turning your taunt mechanism into yet another attack (albeit an inconsistent one).

Sign me up for the Burp Blasters SG!

Thing is, for me, the issue wasn't just binary. Was playing over on Freedom for a while this weekend and everything was fine.

Then, around 3PM CST, things would go to pot for an hour or two. So bad that I'd have to log on to one of the west coast servers to be able to play.

This behavior was consistent for me Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of the weekend.

I'd give it two hours and come back and everything would be fine again.

And I don't think we're looking at server population load issues here either. A (not so) quick trip (and a couple lag-crashes) through every zone red and blue side showed that none of the zones had a second instance.