Memphis_Bill

Yeah, the scale was a bit extreme, I admit, but after the hundredth "Oh, by the way, you win, bad guys (or good guys) gone, nobody else hurt, didn't even scratch the paint in the halls," there's no... excitement, I suppose, or development - going to the next point -
/agree on Evangelion. That was just... yeah. That said - your last sentence is the entire point, to me, of where we don't agree. I would *love* some "Guess what, sometimes things just don't work out" endings finishing up a good story arc. Or, yes, even in the middle (I disagree, obviously, with Alpha's take on the sudden-10-minute-mission. For one, it's a personal challenge to beat it, whicih I usually do and for another, there's *reason* for the overall goal of that mission to fail - whether it's by your personal defeat or the defeat of that mythical "other team."

"Decent ending that provides closure" is not automatically "shiny happy ending." Jumping to TV shows, one of my favourite endings is Blackadder Goes Fourth. The series is placed in WWI, with the usual Blackadder/Baldric/rest of crew shenanagans - but it ends with the order for them to go over the top, chase across no-mans-land ... and then cuts to a shot of the flowers in Flanders Field. Alternately, though it's not the end of the series, just a character's run - Henry Blake's departure from M*A*S*H. All we have is him taking off in the helicopter to go to the airfield - then life proceeding as usual until Radar comes in and announces his plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan with no survivors.

Now, should every - or even most - stories have this sort of ending? No, obviously not. That, in its own way, is as wearing as "Oh, don't worry about it, everyone but the bad guy comes out fine in the end" gets boring.

re: Dragonball/DBZ - Cut out all the time someone's floating in midair, glowing and screaming "aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH" getting an attack ready, and you'd finish the series in a week.

Then you've missed some good stories. Of course, the definition of "downer," too, can be a matter of personal taste - not just "everyone dies."

Now, is it *rare* to have it as an ending, versus a cliffhanger (again, Empire Strikes Back?) Sure. I'd say it's probably much, much harder to write (write well, that is) than "Bad guy gone, hero gets girl/guy/whatever, everyone lives happily ever after." But that doesn't mean it should be excluded as an ending, or failure for the reason of a story should be avoided or be reason for calling that story "bad." Failure doesn't even have to be complete failure - "We won the war!" is shiny-happy-a bit naiive. "We won the war - now what about the orphans, wounded, all we need to rebuild" strikes a more realistic chord.

Eh, I never wasted the placate. Hit some yellows (MA/SR,) run up and hit them as I go past. Might eat a shot or two, but kept the placate ready if needed for whatever was with them.

/allofthis.

Seriously, what's "Becoming harder to solo?" I must have completely missed the Gimp AT in my list, it's certainly not any of the existing 12. (or 14, if you want to consider VEATs 4 instead of 2 because of branching.) And I tend to lean towards support characters... all of whom can still solo. Are they killing at farmer-build speeds? No. But I don't care.

(Preferred characters - controllers, dominators, various squishies. Most boring to me - threat-what-threat scrapper builds.)

Which last 15% are you talking about? You can't be talking about content - it can all be done on SOs simply enough.

Now if you're talking about "see how much you can softcap/break recharge/etc," sure - but that's nowhere close to necessary, just a personal goal or preference. Ferrari vs Focus.

And I've got to disagree - because if you always win in the end, what's the point? Where's the actual risk? Why not just reduce missions to "You walk in the door and everyone surrenders, here's your XP-in-a-box?" (I'm looking primarily at the game, yes, but - well, for instance, my favourite of the Star Wars trilogy (original) is the second, ending on a decidedly dark note. Now, yes, we know - even when the movies were new, we knew - that the rebels would, in the end, win somehow, just not how they'd get out of the mess they were in, how they'd get Han back (or if!) I think it's part of the appeal of anime for some, too. American cartoons, nobody's ever really hurt. Suddenly this japanese animation comes along and - what's this? A main character, killed? Not just sitting there with a lump on their forehead? Woah!

It's part of why I like the longer arcs, too - more room to tell a story, go through highs and lows instead of trying to rush through in 5 missions or less for the sake of the "streamlined" (cut down) arc.

Give me a good story. Let me see that no, I can't always win, or even that when I do, not everyone does - we're solving problems by fighting, after all, and there's always the risk of bystanders getting hurt, innocents in the crossfire. (And yeah, one of my early MA arcs has this - you defeat a Coralax/DE plot, but the contact knew one of the victims. Her last words to you mention going to tell a child her mother's not coming back.)

Being invincible, always getting the perfect win and having everything go exactly my way = boring.

Since when? It's never been all that difficult to do.

Excuse me?

I'm in the same boat - I just *don't care.* Good for you if you're "rich beyond your wildest dreams." Not everyone is. First 50 ended up at about 35 million (back in I4.) Most of my others have ended up around the same, or rather end up slightly higher (40-50m) not counting the occasional good drop. I don't chase it, and generally don't care. If they took the same amount of time to level, yeah, they'd probably be richer (first 50 = 500+ hours, latest ones, 150-200.) And if I concentrated on playing those 50s more, sure, they'd have more INF... but I have more characters to work on.

My goals (and ending INF) not being the same as yours is not "fail." If the INF I end up with @50 doesn't meet your expectations, too damn bad. Worry about yours, not mine.

It's not "opinion," it's what I'd expect to see from the dev team if they did change buffs this way, given past experience. Assumption, perhaps. Opinion is covered solely in the "no" and "it would make it less fun for me," not in the bulleted points themselves. (Yes, I know I added the "imho" at the end. That's the separator, where the opinion *starts,* with the likely rebalancing that would be done *before* it.)

In other words:
Expectation, based on observation: The strength of the buffs would probably drop for this "convenience."
Opinion, added as an aside to the mention of conveneince: I don't think the idea as a whole is all that convenient.

Edit:
Honestly, I think they'd be less likely to adjust the powers noticably downward (in either lower effectiveness or higher cost) with your "Just make them five minutes" you mentioned later.

Minimum specs? $50. You're at minimum, unless you're talking ultra mode. (Honestly. Had a system .... two systems ago, 32 bit Sempron CPU, Geforce 6800, 1.5 Gb Ram, ran "ok." The system that replaced *it* I could probably build for under $500 now, and even though it's retired - acting as my TV - it still ran COH rather well.)

Follow the links to FatherXmas's guides, for a start. $600 and $1200. Here's the parts list (minus win7, monitor, etc.) for my current system - it was a bit cheaper with the sales I used, too. (Doesn't show the G110 keyboard added later, either.)

This is because masterminds had to go through that *every time* just to be ready for a mission. It'd be like stepping into a mission and having all your powers have to recharge. The henchmen are, basically, the MM's offense, defense, and a chunk of their HP, all rolled into one (or six.) Prior to the "Pets zone with you" change, other classes could deal with a door ambush right away - the MM was essentially defenseless (and offenseless.)

Buffing's simply adding to someone's capability, not getting them up to a minimum level to be able to *do* anything.
How about... no.

Buffing just isn't that big a deal - and yes, I play quite a few defenders, corruptors, and controllers (don't forget, sharing buff sets.) Including, yes, FF, Thermal, Ice, and Sonic. Buffing times just don't take all that long.

Turn those into a PBAOE, and:
- END cost goes up, as you note.
- I'd put money down the strength of those buffs would *drop* as part of the price for the "convenience" (which, IMHO, isn't that convenient,)
- I can't selectively buff - or avoid buffing.
- I can't catch people I missed for whatever reason (slow zone, AFK, out of range, etc.) on the fly.

Quite frankly, turning these into a PBAOE buff would make me enjoy these sets *far* less.

/this.

I don't think I have a single character who's seen 200,000,000 inf. 100 million is rare for me until the high levels, and that's generally thanks to a nice drop I don't need (and I just put them on for, say, 5 inf, so don't point to that and claim I'm "part of the price problem.")

Having apartments? Great. Having them "drain inf?" Hell no. There are more people out there who'd be interested in apartments than there are multi-billionaires.

How to find a roof in three easy steps:
1. Find building.
2. Go up.
3. When there's no longer building parts next to you, stop.


COT: Rooftops
BP: Ground.


Just sayin'. Future reference and all that.

Missions in Warburg.
Mobs in RV.
Player kills.
And, it has to be admitted - twinking by the person's other characters/sg mates/etc.

/this.

About the only time I've been fine with "Just let me start at 50" is regarding PVP. If they could be restricted just to PVP zones and the arena (with some sort of recourse to the market, and of course bases if raiding ever comes back,) I'd be fine with that.

But generically "give me a 50?" No. No thanks.

(And yes, it's good to see Power posting coherently.)

How is this difficult? Look on the rooftops. Usually there in good sized groups.

Because the greater number of people typically *don't.* They're there to go "oooh, look!" and do a lot of talking. The focused reporting needed early on tends to get lost in the noise, and the direction of testing requested gets ignored. The difference between an early closed beta and a late closed beta, as far as what's talked about, how it's talked about and such is quite different - and even moreso when it goes from closed to open, where frankly I'd be surprised if it's seen as anything more than a stress test.
Sure, if you want "Do you like red or blue better?" When you need more detail, no, they aren't anywhere near as valuable.
Again, you don't know you were the first to post about any specific bug. It might have been the first post you saw on the forums - but others may have /bugged it, plus, frankly, there were still closed betas earlier (before it was released to us - call them alphas.)