Mjolnir875

Originally Posted by PGC I Bloodspray

i can't seem to find a way to subscribe to the game..do they not do 15 a month anymore?, do they just take gametime cards n such now?

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I have a couple of things to say on the matter.

First of all, people who don't get stressed physically cannot appreciate what people who DO get stressed feel like. It's not just a case of simple confusion or lack of experience, it's a case of genuine discomfort, and as Oz explains, the easiest, most natural reaction to that situation is to simply shut down. For an outside observer, it's really hard to tell and, moreover, really hard to appreciate the full scope of the situation. More than anything else, this IS NOT FUN.

I don't have a pre-existing medical condition of the sort, myself (none that I'm aware of, anyway), but I fully understand the stress that comes inherent when situations spiral out of your control, yet at the same time you are compelled by circumstances to keep acting without chance to pause and gather your thoughts. That's one big reason why I avoid "fast" teams and why I get so pissed off when teams start employing some complex strategy without explaining what they're doing. Because in those situations, my reaction is to take my hands off the keyboard and close my eyes, but I CAN'T as I've taken on a responsibility to the team by joining into a task which requires my help.

Secondly, people don't appreciate how stressful dealing with large groups of other people can be. This seems to be specifically the case for those who thrive in such environments. However, the mere fact remains that even if a group is sitting idle, doing nothing but chatting, this can still be a very chaotic, very stressful situation if you happen to end up in a large group of "quirky" extroverts. That's one reason I almost never do voice chat if there are more than two other people in the channel. The way people behave in large groups is very different from the way they behave face-to-face.

Not everyone is good at dealing with large groups of people, and even those who are often pay in stress for this ability. I'm in the awkward position of being pretty good with people, meaning people I team with never appreciate how much effort being as cooperative is costing on my end of the keyboard. It also means that when we're done with a large, gruelling team task and everyone's pumped for more, my desire to just shut down the game, lie down and recharge is seen as ungrateful. Did I not have fun? Was the team not good enough? That's not the point. Dealing with people in itself is taxing and stressful for some of us, even if we've learned to be good at it.

Finally - and this is speaking purely for myself - I care about my fellow players before I care about my game, at least when they're not calling me mean names. That's one reason I don't want to team as often - I don't want to have to worry about other people's experience. What this means is I'm far more concerned with looking after other players than I am with "winning" at a task, which is what I believe Oz was talking about. My mentality is that if you're not teaming for the company and benefit of others, then you're playing a single-player game that just happens to have other people in it.

That's one reason I don't like high stakes, dangerous team tasks - the imperative to "win" at those is so high that it sometimes overshadows what I consider to be the bigger imperative: We're all here to have fun, and we team together to have even more fun than we could have alone. When I get on a team, my prerogative is not to draw some kind of meta-game advantage out of having other people, and I worry when game systems are designed to promote that as it leads to sacrificing other people for the sake of my own fun. My prerogative is socialise with said people and find a way to have fun together, even if we ultimately fail.

I've often said that City of Heroes is the most fun when things go wrong. What I mean by that is that I don't like the game when it's all going by the numbers, everyone is quiet and following the perfect plan step by step and I may as well be playing a bot match. It is when things go wrong and we on the team end up needing each other in more ways than just power balance - when we end up needing each other for moral support, for organisation and for actual cooperation - that is when I have the most fun. The team game in City of Heroes really shines when the actual people behind the characters step forward and act on their own personalities. Watching a jumble of weird costumes bathed in a soup of effects isn't nearly as interesting.

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If we should take anything out of this thread, it's that not everyone is right for Trials, and that's OK.

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

At some point reading comprehension will kick in and the people who keep bringing up this tired old argument will realize that we don't care what other MMOs do, just like nobody cares how Grandpa had to walk five miles in the snow to school every day, uphill, both ways.

Originally Posted by Hatonastick

Ah thanks guys, sorry missed the announcement plus I thought maintenance was on Thursdays. Oh well, try again tomorrow then.

Originally Posted by PoisonPen

I'm a new player here at CoX, although I've been MUDing since the early 80s. It also marks the first time I've paid money to play an MMO. As a huge comic book fan who started reading back when they were still 20 cents each, I was really excited about playing CoX. Imagine my disappointment, then, in what I've experienced.

The first disappointment is that the game feels like a ghost town. I will see a handful of people occasionally, but what few people are around all tend to be level 50s -- and this brings me to the part which annoys me most. The vast majority of the level 50s I've encountered seem to treat this game as just another kill-the-monster, get-the-treasure MMO where the idea is to min/max your power potential. They create stupid or boring names (some of them don't even bother to think of superhero names, they use what appears to be a name chosen randomly from a phone book), and can't be bothered to create even the most basic background. Reading through the various fora here, people seem to be interested solely in obsessing over "toons" and "shards" and "IO builds" and which "AV" slots out best and other arcane trivia. You could replace the supervillains with orcs or Imperial stormtroopers and I doubt they would even notice the difference -- or care if they did.

I tried three or four different servers, just to make sure it wasn't a local phenomenon, and I've experienced the same thing on each one. I'm not a fanatical roleplayer, but I'm frankly baffled that on a game which is supposed to be about comic books, no one seems to have any interest in comic books. It's not helped that the costume creation system appears to be geared toward awful 90s "Dark Age" comics; you can get 200 different types of ugly spiky things for your shoulders, but try getting tassles on your cape or a swashbuckling tabard or animal heads other than "snarling death monster" -- Mr. Talky Tawny is not welcome here.

The final straw for me may have been the exchange I had last night with a "50" where I sent hir a message that sie had a few typos in hir background, and helpfully provided the corrections. Sie replied that if sie wanted someone to edit hir background text sie would ask over Global, and that I was now welcomed to (and I quote) "iggy." I was taken aback by the sheer sour rudeness, and it ruined all my sense of enjoyment for the evening.

This is only my second month playing, but I'm already questioning whether I want to continue.

Originally Posted by Chaos Creator

Maybe that Ill/ is terrible aoe?
Ill//Rad is great for soloing tough single targets not for soloing x8. Therefore NOT AoE heavy.

The newest FoTM? Ill/Cold. Even more single target.

The best dps scrapper?
DM/SD Incredibly single target oriented.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Your thread title means "why are you posting, devs?"

Originally Posted by Silverado

He knew the mechanics behind it, where to grab it, where to exert the right amount of force, he probably knew the manufacturer and year the weapon was issued, to know that it was flimsy enough to bend it.

Originally Posted by GuyPerfect

It was in one of the opening scenes of The Dark Knight. There was some poser dressed up as Batman and had a shotgun, then the real Batman showed up. Fake bats pointed the gun at real bats, and real bats grabbed the front of it and bent it upwards.

I couldn't find a video of the clip, but I did find someone with very little knowledge of movie making asking a question about it.

Originally Posted by Jetpack

Your tanks may not do damage.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

I just ran the Tin Man last night with CMA; I found it to be MUCH easier than Apex. Maybe I got lucky but Minx was a complete non-issue for me and we did pull & kill Neuron first. I did pop a medium purple as a precaution for her vengeance buff taking me to 75% def but she never hit me for any sizeable amount of damage. A few ~500 point hits but nothing serious.

The Director 11 fight was much tougher than either Neuron or Bobcat, even with the two AV level warwalkers added to the party. I think we ended up the TMTF with about 8 deaths, mostly from AOE splash on the two blappers on the team. That footstomp on the walkers is no joke for squishies.

Now the Apex TF on the other hand... that puppy's a serious ramp up in difficulty. I've done it twice, once with no tanker playing my Ill/Rad and ending up with 153 deaths on the team - mostly from the dreaded blue zones. The second run I brought CMA and we cut that down to 66 deaths. For any tankers thinking of running Apex, you MUST be very mobile... when (not if) the blue haze forms under you GET AWAY immediately, it WILL kill you. I wouldn't try it with a Granite tanker; you'll have lots of problems getting away fast enough.

Also, the hydra heads in the first Apex mission are seriously nasty; they deal massive toxic damage; something that came as quite a surprise for me when they planted me in 5 seconds. I'll give the Dev's this, they certainly went outside the box with the Apex TF to make it challenging. Standard tank & spank tactics will not work.

Originally Posted by Rylas

I've heard someone in-game say they had at least 40. I don't know how true that is, but you can take that for what it's worth.

Originally Posted by DoctorWhat

I think what he means if since they're adding a level shift to the Alpha they MIGHT (key word being MIGHT) add level shifts to the other slots.

They might not, but we have no idea yet.

Originally Posted by Angelofvalor

Yes I know how to use the auction house but the problem is you need multiple receipies just to craft, its expensive for one thing even the salvage is expensive right now, there is no buyout option which is very annoying, there should be regardless for people do not want to wait forever to enchance, some of us need to enchance at those levels.

The inventory system is highly annoying, there is no real assistence as far as inventory goes sure you have vault, but your not going to know exactly what you need without having to right down what you need from every receipie you need to use and that is allot.

Anyways I am level 35 and realized it was cheaper to just buy the io crafted enchancements its the normal ones btw, I heard most people wait till 40, does anyone have any advice here how to deal with all this?

Thank you.