Memphis_Bill

And between I9-I13? (Admittedly that doesn't apply to incarnates...) Besides, I still hear 30ish as the sweet spot for IOs, specifically for exemping.

I'd still stick with WB and Siren's being dead because of the state of PVP, frankly. The exodus occurred then, and those zones population have never recovered. (And, again, the +5 levels of powers make the level 30 cutoff in Sirens, and 38 cutoff in WB, pointless - and make BB, effectively, a 15-30 zone... which would be rather unbalanced, if anyone were ever in there to do anything but farm PVP IOs or get Shivans.

(And again, "One of the zones is sort of active on two servers" isn't a glowing recommendation.)

Edit: Yeah. Sound a bit bitter, I know. *shrug* But you did suggest he head into "a PVP zone," and that used to be fun in almost any of them. I'm really aiming the "That's not a glowing recommendation" at the devs, not you. Used to love being able to pick pretty much any PVP zone on any server I was on and have at least a 50/50 chance of finding a fight if I stuck around a little bit.

... where there's nobody else around?

ESPECIALLY when we're looking at a newcomer to PVP, that's a horrible thing to have them experience. At least (as the old complaints were) getting "Ganked" meant there was someone THERE.

Do any of the PVP SGs even spend time regularly in any of the zones? I'm pretty sure all I ever hear from them is Arena/Ladder... which can, I suppose, be fun in itself, but it's nowhere near the same.

This, at least, I think can be agreed on.

More reason to hate having Siren's be so dead. (And the 5-level-bump in powers thanks to SSKing kicking in thanks to the zone auto-sk/mal.)

No, one of the things I *like* about blueside is that I can take wholly separate paths from 1-50 - arcs and zones. Redside, if you add more contacts, just feels more cluttered.

New zones would be nice there.

Um...

The hollows has pretty much always been a hazard zone. Still is.
Faultline was an unused trial zone. For all intents and purposes, a hazard zone. Now it's more story focused.
No. No more co-op zones, especially the way they get written for villains in most cases. And yes, redside DOES need more zones - hopefully ones that don't look like trash heaps in the middle of the ocean.

No, it's pretty spot on.

Where's the action in Siren's, which used to be a heavily populated PVP zone pretty much regardless of server? There is none.

How about people looking to give you a hard time if you go for a Shivan? Shivans are risk-free outside of the NPCs now.

Warburg's generally a ghost town.

"RV is sort of active on two servers" does not mean it's on anything but life support - and that's probably just because the devs don't want the bad press of officially killing it off.

There was no condescension in that post. Annoyance at the continued broken state of PVP which has driven off even most of the people who ARE interested in it, yes. That there was plenty of.

I was genuinely interested, though never more than casual - but interested enough to put together a guide to help PVEers get into PVP. Not really any more. The zones - which I find more fun than the arena, or used to when there was a population - are dead. I think I've seen five people in them, total, over the past year (that I haven't brought in myself.) None have been interested in fighting. (Edit: Wait, one was. That's it.) And no, I wasn't on a stalker for most of them, nor do I have a PVP "rep" or build.

The few times I've done any PVPing lately has been with a friend or two out of boredom.

The zones used to be interesting. You never knew who or what you might find from one time to the next (which is why I liked it over arena - a pickup game versus "organized team sports," if you will.) You could be worried about someone you spot, and win when you thought you'd lose. You could wind up with a really oddball combination of powers and ATs that works better than expected against the others in the zone. You could end up greatly outnumbered and still hold the zone. It was *fun.*

Now, it's dead.

Then perhaps you should be up in tech issues/bugs.

You're complaining about *zoning.* You're in a city. Yes, you may have to cross the street.

We've got another thread whining about ambushes. Yet again. Because, OH MY GOD, my powers might not be up yet! I may have to do something other than stand still, take a nap, and pick a target after a while!

How much easier and more *dumbed down* does this game have to get?

Hell, put my suggestion in place and someone would complain that OMG, we have to PUSH a BUTTON!

If you want that as "Review spawn points," sure. If you want "Detect where the player is and move elsewhere," that's more problematic. (For instance, the honoree mission in the Alpha slot arc, I'll tend to run back to the start to ambush the ambushes - having them spawn elsewhere because I was "too close" would be highly annoying.)

If it's just "go to location," what's the point of an ambush? Besides, the homing makes it easier to ambush the incoming ambush. Coming for me? Let me set up a surprise around the corner...

Yes, I mean this as a Stalker, too.

Are you saying the same as the above, or the occasionally odd-seeming aggro splitting? If the second, it's really not an "ambush" problem.

Why bother with ambushes at all, then? Just stick the mobs somewhere in the first place and have them standing around picking their noses like every other mob.

It makes sense for SOME ambushes to be location-targeted ("Someone hacked the mainframe/broke into the safe!") Making that the sum total of what they do, though? Boring, bland, and pointless.

But we're not talking "hard." We're talking "needless annoyance."

The decoy phantasm's not supposed to do much but... be a decoy. And it hangs around doing nothing but prolonging a "Let's see how many times the AI can't find its way down a ramp" rescue that's already irritating. And I'll bring up caltrops again. Really... quaking in terror at *caltrops?* walk over them and freaking follow me, don't make me stand around for several minutes trying to make small talk and pretending to admire the bizzarre paintings on the wall while waiting for the damn things to despawn.

You do realize everyone else is talking about NPCs, right?

NPCs can certainly have the "same" powers as players behaving differently (see the various NPC MOGs, for instance.)

... except that's not true.

The "fast and easy" (sometimes) way might be dry (the market,) but just playing the game will get whatever drops/salvage you want, either directly or via various types of merits.

"One of the key elements to this great cataclysm is the Rikti War that is currently occurring."

It could be any number of things, especially being asked to assassinate a specific general. They defeat someone who otherwise has a key to changing something that will slow or stop the invasion, or it pushes another event forward (or back,) or the general is one of those that still wants to eradicate Humanity instead of making peace when peace is what unlocks tech to humanity...

Pebbles, ripples, all that.

You may want to re-read that. Especially the colored, bolded part.

What would coming from another planet have to do with it?

Would (or could) everyone have the abilities in the same situation/with the same training? Natural.
Were the abilities granted by devices? Tech.
Were the abilities added by scientific experiement? Science.
Are the abilities due to genetic change? Mutant.
Are the abilities magic? You figure that one out.
Is there overlap? Yep. I've got "natural" magic characters - the abilities are magic, but everyone like them would have the same abilities. Magic use is like breathing. So "natural." Robots could be called "tech," but every robot of that sort would have the ability, so "natural." Is a mutation mutation if it's due to a science experiment?

Find whatever you like for whatever reason you like, and pick that.

About the only one I'd call ya on (if it mattered) would be "naturally magic because I read a book." I'd lump that over with Magic, as it's due to something external. But the argument could be made that *anyone* reading that book would have the same powers - the magical equivalent of training for a marathon or learning to use a gun.
See my "Guide to the original COH trailer" for info on when origin actually did something. Rather glad it doesn't, now.

I still haven't heard about it.

Don't have all my boxes, but with that change I searched through emails, snagged the codes, tracked down my COV collector boxes (since I *did* keep those, after all) - then grabbed the info from the two accounts and played "Match the last 4."

Should be enough, I'd hope, should I ever need it.