Memphis_Bill

And has been explained, again, they are not being said with regard to PVP.

Eh, I've taken characters all the way through Mender Ramiel's Alpha unlock arc on nothing but SOs. (That's right, not even common IOs.)

That said, getting commons crafted is not a big hassle. I'd generally do so at two points - level 12 (for level 15s, which will be fine for a while) and 30-35.

For the OP, head to the wiki. Look at the salvage. Look at the *badges* - not for the sake of the badges, but when you get levels memorized, you can craft them more cheaply (and don't need a recipe.) Get what salvage you can cheaply, and the stuff you cant - play with AE for a bit, get some tickets and roll the common salvage for the level range. Use what you can, sell what you can't. (My 50s will typically build up a stockpile of those common IOs for the lowbies and future alts in the various SGs.)

It's a secret beta. Shhhh.

Grandville is not "clean and pristine" once you step off the metal grates. They don't even attempt an "illusion," as the poster you quoted put it, of being so. Look off the side of the rail, you see slums, garbage, burning garbage and debris and worse.

The only thing in common with what the OP said and Grandville is that the higher ups of Arachnos are there.

... like the burning building. Or the snake pits. Or the fence with misc building materials stuck to it. Or the garbage dump... wait, that describes most of it.

"Many beautiful places?" Have to say, the Isles in general need a makeover to get rid of the Cheap Landfill theme they have throughout the redside zones.

I could go for that look in areas - to make them LOOK like the slums they try to keep hidden away and/or snatch people from. The dingy, drab, depressing look of the isles makes it impossible to appreciate what they COULD have been showing off (the "old city" look and architecture, which would bring St Martial and Aeon's little city into more contrast and make Grandville's Web/tower seem more of a shame.)

How about "Instead of waiting for endgame to become unbalanced, it becomes unbalanced and trivializes content much, much earlier?"

Right now,t he mobs are designed *knowing* you're not going to have everything, or even most things, six slotted at certain levels, much less have a ton of bonuses from IOs. Just being able to add more slots via credit card tosses all that out the window.

So what do they do - leave it so you could six slot everything each time you level (*Ding* level 18 - and you have 30 slots waiting still, thank you for your purchase!) or start balancing those mobs around the assumption you'll be heavily slotted/IOd early, screwing over the people who aren't?

No. No mass slot purchases. (I'll qualify I would not argue with a one time (per character) ONLY purchase of three at most - but again, I'd rather see what I mentioned going in. But "So you can six slot everything!" No. Absofreakinglutely not.)

I'd combine these two:

"Galaxy City removed from the game as a standalone zone, though still available in Ouroboros. Destroyed galaxy city used as setting for combined tutorial."

Why on earth would you NOT think that's vaild for the PVE game? IO builds can already be insanely overpowered - and that's with having to be picky about some powers. Buying more slots so you DON'T have to be picky?

Ugh.

It's bad enough Incarnate powers end up trivializing high end content even further.("Hey, let's do an ITF!" *zap zap zap* "OK, done, that was fun! And I still have 25 minutes of my half hour lunch break!")

There are only two places I think more slots should even be looked at - and not sold.
(1) Those last powers you get in the PPP - give two more slots, maybe three, at 49, and
(2) Kheldians, which should get more when a form is taken, since even with IOs they can be badly slot starved.

.... right. I'm referring to people using walk to keep these NPCs following them because of the dialog they have. Yeah. That response makes sense. I couldn't *possibly* be referring to them taking two steps and standing there, then running back for five and not budging while saying "I can't find you!" even though there's direct, unblocked line of sight and no enemies.

/this.

And if I can skip it by staying VIP. I really am not interested in "Crey Cola, sponsored by Depends!"

Yeah, well.... so's your mom!

... wait, that made no sense, did it.

No, it doesn't.

"<Charactername> has invited you to join a Super Group. Do you accept? y/n" is all you get.

This, as well, to be specific to the game on top of my prior comments. ... but the playing field *was* evened out - and the Villains, if they choose to do the Patron arcs, end up with more choices now. Heck, I was agreeing that villains should have the same "generic" pools for a while, and asking for heroes to get patron-style pools that unlocked as well. I like the idea behind them, mechanically and RP (or non-RP)-ly.

How many long-running villain-centric comic books are there?

Villains tend to be "This is who the good guys beat up for the next 1-10 issues," then they get rotated out while you stick with the same "good guys."

Add to that - how many times have the villains *permanently* won? Sure, they kill Superman... temporarily. They take over the world... which gets reversed due to some space-time its-magic hand-wavey nonsense.

Villains continually get written as "They will lose - maybe it'll get rough for the good guys, but they'll lose." I can't see that *not* playing a part - no matter how good the content, etc. - of why more people in this game genre make heroes as opposed to villains.

Not to mention that the bad guys that DO get away with things for a long time don't really lend themselves to games. They do... what? They plot and scheme, buy people off while looking like a respectable businessman who gives to the community, etc. while behind the scenes he's getting protection money paid to him and sending out minions to get beat on. Now put that in COH... how do you level? What are your powers? The closest we come to that is the Mastermind, and that's so far off that example (what's the last thing your character got to plot?) that it's not even in the same time zone.

The only games I can think of that came anywhere close were Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius... and even those were pretty limited.

Fewer people play villains because *we don't get to be villains.* We get to be thugs.

Couldn't see forking over $150 for the collector's - and a friend who was looking for it said the run on EA was out within an hour. (Though it's supposedly available still elsewhere. I went with digital deluxe. Really, I have too many boxes and other things anyway.)

/this.

And doesn't IMO. I find mine to be a great deal of fun. *shrug* So who's right?

... um... that's when you buy OEM. I don't mean a copy from Dell or HP. OEM is a generic full install. Only difference from retail is (a) no fancy packaging and (b) no tech support from Microsoft. (You do, of course, still get updates, service packs, etc.) (Well, and (c) you get the 32 OR 64 bit edition, not a copy of both.)

I build my own as well, and that's generally what I buy. $99 for home (vs $200 or whatever,) $130 for Pro (vs $300.)