Memphis_Bill

Maybe Break Free of their Furious Range, enjoy a Respite for a few, then Bounce Back with a Keen Insight about the reaction they got?

No character is "unplayable" or even "gimped" with just SOs.

Free, no. But they won't have IO access to begin with.
Premium, maybe - if they had Incarnates unlocked before they dropped the sub. They should still have the build available to use.

Typically, if Arcanaville's quoting makes someone look foolish, it's not because she quoted them but because they said whatever it was in the first place.

Playing without enhancements can be fixed without spending any real-world cash.

Level 10 - see trainer. Use second build. Slot regular enhancements.

Now, should they get a warning about it? Absolutely. I think that'd be fair. But given the fix(es) are in game (second build, or pay,) I don't think complicating it further ("I can use the IOs I slotted, but can't slot them in new powers" - and what about a respec? Especially if they have more than 30 (two purchased enhancement expansions = 5 sets) to use and can't reslot any after) would help.

Missions, then - no.

Though, compromise - 3 arcs. Now, if you blow them on 3 single-room farms, that's your own fault. But doing 3 arcs (still think 5 is better, honestly) gives time to actually go through a *few* player-written arcs in one go. Given some people want to (legitimately, as in non-AE-PL) try going 1-50 solely in AE, or run custom content in certain levels for their own story - it'd be a good balance between that and dev content.

They would, and they did. Even avoiding Freedom (playing primarily Victory and Pinnacle,) I *still* got tells just bombarding me. Characters I didn't go on for a while, I'd have to spend several minutes clearing out email.

Like you say, you're not familiar with "The old days." What you're saying is incorrect. The spammers got wise to this - they'd have accounts just grabbing peoples names that went to the market, or grab them as they showed up in atlas or zoned. Or join teams, grab the names and leave. (I think some even got into SGs.)

I was on /hide on new characters and got them. So, no, /hide was not a cure all - and again, has damaging side effects, since it removes me from searches I *want.* (Such as "I feel like starting X TF, let's see who's in range and ask if they're interested.")

But still need to be exposed to it in the first place to use those tools. Unless you just /gignore everyone you see the first time you see them (or their name.) And that list fills up.

Given I've had it happen fairly quickly (not a year, but "Concentrating on one server for a hair over 6 weeks, then check rent elsewhere") - and, actually, on the *same* base - and had others able to stay inactive for longer but be perfectly accessible, I'd call it more of a bug than an automated archiving feature.


See prior comments about hyper dogs and bouncing balls.

Y'know... that's not bad. People would complain, but really not be affected all that much (as long as we're talking 5 arcs, not missions, which I believe you are.)

Er...

I've actually found this rather interesting. I play about an even mix of male and female characters. I also play with several people that, yes, I know are actually women.

While the "guys make skimpy costumes" bit can't really be argued *against,* it's not hard and fast - I seem to keep my women more dressed than the women playing do in most instances. (Which is not to say they don't run around fully clothed on their characters, but they'll also tend towards more revealing outfits as well. Not "Eden +tiny bikini bottom," but more skin than I tend to have mine show.)

For a while, I was making characters female by default for one reason - the male run. If the sliders aren't *just* right, they look like they're jogging with their feet in buckets of cement, and it drives me nuts.

Admittedly it's a short drive, but still.

Don't remind me of the standard female dragon/lizard/whatever they call it head. Awful...

Yeah, we could use an "Animal Pack II." (Had an idea for a bear-themed character earlier. Then realized it wouldn't work.)

/this.

It was *really* bad for a while. As in, even on the servers that *aren't* the highest population, it would make /tells (and emails) pretty well unusable. (Send a message to someone, get a bunch of spam in between so you're not sure if they replied or not... since hitting backspace sends to the last person you got a tell from, so you'd end up "replying" to an RMTer.)

And email... yeah. The "Spam" button helped - as soon as you selected one, it'd block all from that sender (which could take out 10-20 at a whack.) But not logging in a character for a week? Ugh. Spend the first ten minutes just cleaning out email.

Really, the only time I ever see RMT spam now is the *rare* occasion I go to Freedom/Atlas park (and maybe Talos) and use Wentworth's. Given I tend to use the Kings Row one... that's pretty rare. I'd call the measures effective.

I wouldn't mind SOME way of loosening up the freemium players chat options (maybe a freemium channel everyone can see?) but I don't want to open that door up to RMTers again, either.

I wouldn't see it as "essentially the same effect."

Right now, I can use it to remove a group of enemies (say, another patrol, or an ambush) while I and/or my team finish up what we're working on. As an ally Phase Shift, we wouldn't be able to fight *anything.* (And if it's got a radius, which most do, you could end up leaving people outside of it who then find themselves fighting *far* more than they can handle... and possibly removing some pets from masterminds.)

That's about as optimal as curing a headache via decapitation.

Let MARTy do its job. If a new monkey exploit comes along, it'll be throttled (and dealt with later.) If it's not triggering MARTy... so what?

Absolutely. There's no reason for a dedicated client's issues to get lost in the general "tech" section.

Guides will be created as they're created. "Encouragement" is from within the game itself - I'm sure we'll see Guides to Time showing up within a month, for instance, as people wrap their heads around the various ways to use it.

I'd *almost* think that the "official" guide/introduction to Beam Rifle might discourage some writing about it for some people. Others, of course, will completely ignore it.

Writing guides tends to be a fair bit of work - without, honestly, a lot of recognition in 99% of the cases. And part of the lack of recognition is, yes, the guides section is... rather disorganized. Which, in a way, is good - I know if I search the guides section for "Invulnerability," I'm going to get the guides for Invuln for tanks, brutes, etc. as opposed to just a subset for those.

If there were a way to automate the (currently volunteer) "AT Guides" posts in each forum to point TO each appropriate guide... of course, there'd have to be a way to let the guide author mark the guide themselves. Sort of like AE lets you select things... I'd *almost* suggest having them available from within the game with that interface. ("Issue:" "AT" "Powerset" and such as selections or tags... including "No issue" for some guides, like my Kheld backstory or early COH trailer guides.) But I think that all goes beyond the scope of what you're looking for.

As far as builds... this is kind of a personal gripe of mine, in general. When someone asks for a build here, they're generally given a "dream build" - purple/PVPIO'd out to within an inch of its life, multi-billion-INF cost sunk into it for an ideal *end-game* build.

Personally, I find those useless other than intellectual exercises. Interesting, sure, but useless. There are very few builds (or guides) that say "OK, from 1-20, look at doing this. From 20-35, these are really what you want to prioritize on" and the like. (I can think of maybe two guides that do that.) And with free/premium players coming in - well, some of the "old, useless" guides from between ED and I9 can be somewhat useful again. If anything, "Running on SOs" should be an encouraged category.

I don't think, right offhand, that there's anything PS can do to "encourage" that - it's got to be a VIP playerbase mindset shift. (Since, after all, we'll be the ones posting the guides.)

Edit:
As far as sharing "live" builds... if you want that, you need to either make Titan Sentinel an official app or make a "mini" version of it that can export (officially) JUST the build (in a similar format) from right inside the game to at *least* a forum profile page for that character - which can then be linked or displayed. City Vault is dead - but I don't think (just offhand) that this, voluntary usage and display format would be anywhere near as CPU/bandwidth/etc. intensive, and could serve some of the same purpose (without the avatar display, etc.)

Because I may not always want to team.

Because I may not always want to team with 500 of my closest friends, their friends, the guy that lives down the block from them, some guy they bumped into while walking to their car, etc. to run the blasted trial.

Because I'd like something with more story than "Well like cole. Well bad. Kill stuff" that we have in the trials now.

Because some people are completionists, as 7+ years of badging should make obvious.

Because there are powers that would "fit" a character in the trials.

Because there's no guarantee of NOT having an important part of the story come afterward that you *really* should have incarnate abilities for, or that will penalize you to ridiculous lengths if you don't have them set/slotted (hi Tin Mage II/Apex.)

Because I bloody well want to have them but am bored to death with the exact... same... trials.... over... and... over... and... over... and... over.... which even just running OCCASIONALLY instead of the dev-mandated 20X a day grind still leaves me burnt out on.

Fair enough? I can come up with even MORE reasons if you still don't "Get" why people would want to get the powers without the blasted trials.

(Note: most of the irritation in here is directed at the trials, especially at them being the only way to realistically get this stuff unlocked.)

/seconded.

There needs to be a solo Incarnate path. I'm enjoying (ab)using the first Signature arc for this, really - but they make me REALLY want a true Solo/Small Team path, and yesterday.

But buying this? No.

And that would be interesting to add. And perfectly thematic, IMHO.

Not all guides *need* updating. Or go "out of date." Yes, specific builds from i3 aren't going to be as useful, but other items are.

So, no, no purging of the guides, unless by author request (for instance, I have "v1" and "v2" (etc) of some guides - I should be able to request V1 go bye bye. )

Er... have to say...

"No, it isn't."

As it sits right now, sure, there are a fair number of AT forums. That's because we have a fair number of ATs. But if I were looking for information on a Brute, for instance, I wouldn't be looking in the "Tanking" or "Tank" or "Yo, hit me!" forum, because I don't see my Brutes as Tanks most times. I see my Masterminds hitting the Tanking role - "Tankermind" is not an odd portmanteau in this game, any more than "Blapper" is.

SIMPLER is better. But Simpler does not equal "Less" in all cases. And frankly, the way it sits *now* is simpler. Is there an issue with Stalkers? (Well, another?) Putting it in the Stalker forum lets all Stalker players see it - as opposed to having it buried under "How to modify your CEBR" posts and "Which Scrapper for XYZ" posts.