Mr_Wallet

Thanks for the tips everyone. Very informative.

I've been playing on and off since beta, and one of the things that made this game so awesome was how fluid and easy it was to drop into a pickup team. Back in the day, the idea of a specialized search system for LFG people rather than spamming the hell out of chat was unheard of!

Well nowadays the old girl's showing her age a little with declining server populations, but more importantly, since signing up for another go recently, I've been totally unable to find a non-AE-farm team in about 12 hours of time in-game. Even AE farm invites are EXCEEDINGLY rare if one doesn't send broadcasts in Atlas Park, relying only on the search system.

So obviously the game has changed since a new sewer team formed every 30 minutes, and I wasn't subscribed as it was happening, so I didn't get the memo.

My question is, do you guys have any tips for someone looking to like, save/conquer the world rather than be a lotus-eater to Aeon's fantasy machines? Or at the very least, to find an AE team that chooses missions based at least as much on content as on XP/minute?

EDIT: it's worth noting that I don't play enough with any one character or server to really be a SG/VG member, so this really is about pickup teams.

Subjective:
The current arc selection by default shows arcs that are highly rated - i.e., their creators have already earned huge rewards from them.

It would be nice if some elder unrated arcs were mixed into the default view as well, so everyone has a shot at getting noticed.

Subjective: Mez protection should be completely standard for custom enemies, with optional increase based on powerset.

Subjective: Remove inherent class abilities like defiance from custom minions and LTs, or lower-difficulty customs.

Subjective: Need greater control over the capabilities of custom characters. Ideally we would have access to common NPC enemy group powers as well, but at the very least, we need greater control over what powers each character has. As it is, we can't create a lot of enemy types because it's simply not appropriate, e.g. martial arts minions can result in chain-disorientation.

Well great, now I need a new hero planner.

Someone, get coding!

I'm not going to read all of this, so I'm just going to support what has probably already been said:

1. Stop taxing us in a way that creates, sooner or later, a prestige cap. That's communism. You're not communist, are you statesman?

2. Reward small, highly-active SGs more than enormous SGs with people who are rarely on; a simple time-based formula must assume a worst-case scenario (people who play long hours in huge SGs), and the result is inflated prices. (just look at the prices now... *cough*)

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Totally agree with BB here; not scaling prestige with level is RIDICULOUS. A <10 brute can go around beating the snot out of whites for at least 1 prestige per second. Granted, you don't get the big end-of-mission bonuses at the higher levels, but when 500 inf = 1 prestige, it doesn't get much easier than that.

This mean that to get a lot of prestige, your group must either:
<ul type="square">[*]Make loads of alts and repeatedly play to level 6-10, wash rinse repeat... or[*]Invite newbies like crazy, farm them for their prestige, then boot them and find some other hapless shmuck. People to scam will be in ample supply since being in supergroup mode doesn't adversely affect them at their level.[/list]
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Low-level characters don't get any more prestige than high-level ones. I don't see the point of doing this.

[/ QUOTE ] Because high-level characters usually don't take kindly to being required to run in SG mode 24/7. Lowbies have no downside and thus have no reason not to provide prestige. Also, the assertion that lowbies don't get more prestige is debatable. Mobs tend to go down pretty fast at low levels, before they get heals/controls/buffs/debuffs. The enemies get harder, the battles become more epic... hey, it's why we play the game. But 2 people slapping around level 1 hellions being more prestigious than 1 person taking down, oh, tsoo on the streets of Talos?

The base system bothers me because in no way can it be analogous to anything in reality, so it just doesn't make sense on a basic level. If you do something for a long time, you become more adept at it, and very adept people become influential and often rich; there's nothing wrong with the core gameplay. It makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is a fledgeling rock band playing in Nowheresville, Minnesota, being more prestigious and being able to have larger/more accomodations than Mick Jagger alone.

It's a pity that SG bases have to be very large to have any functionality whatsoever; I want a small SG with a small base. For me, a worktable seems more out of reach than the epic ATs. Which is saying a lot, since I've been playing since the 3-day headstart (of CoH).

I certainly hope the devs don't see this as simple whining; when all's said and done, I made good on my promise and cancelled my subscription between March and late October, and I might have to cancel again. Maybe I'll try EQ2.

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Should giant SG's have more nice things? Yes, they should, they have more people and therefore can accumulate the money for more nice things very quickly. But note the use of the word more. My SG can't afford barely ANY nice things. Really, all we have are two big, nice rooms with an awesome layout, but they are all decorative. So it's nice to look at, but I still have a huge amount of unusable salvage. I still yearn for base raids and the high points of having a secret lair in the first place.

[/ QUOTE ] *golf clap* I add a cookie to Bismarck's candy pile! I insist that after running his 100 miles, Bismarck be rewarded with no less than 300 calories of tastey treats! (hint: this is my Dev impression)

Anyway good luck getting a Dev response. I left CoH in march because they were affecting changes that would only significantly fix the game if some sort of ED system was in place. Now I come back to CoV and I read in the ED FAQ that ED was in the pipeline, with all changes having ED in mind since... MARCH! In summary: Cryptic lost out on about $100 of my cash because for weeks in march we couldn't get a statement on the possibility of ED.

And don't expect the situation to improve. Mr. Emmert has been notoriously confused regarding cause and effect - on as many as a half-dozen cases - so when he got burned on the ill-fated "talents" expansion, he probably decided to be LESS forthcoming, rather then more so; i.e. not mention talents at all rather than admit that it's still in the conceptual phase, and the same for ED.

In summary... Cryptic doesn't mention changes until it's too late to rabble-rouse about problems. They think that this saves grief since we should "give it a few weeks" anyway... Yeah right.

I've come up with 3 or 4 great ways to get prestige so far, but since they all involve scamming/griefing, I'm just going to keep them to myself and hope no one tries one on me. But I've tested the methods in small doses with some account-laundering and trust me, they work. So, at least for villains, the prestige system kind of makes sense. Maybe they're trying to dull the hero side's head-start by makin prestige scam-friendly... Though I very much doubt that. LOL

Totally agree with BB here; not scaling prestige with level is RIDICULOUS. A &lt;10 brute can go around beating the snot out of whites for at least 1 prestige per second. Granted, you don't get the big end-of-mission bonuses at the higher levels, but when 500 inf = 1 prestige, it doesn't get much easier than that.

This mean that to get a lot of prestige, your group must either:
<ul type="square">[*]Make loads of alts and repeatedly play to level 6-10, wash rinse repeat... or[*]Invite newbies like crazy, farm them for their prestige, then boot them and find some other hapless shmuck. People to scam will be in ample supply since being in supergroup mode doesn't adversely affect them at their level.[/list]
And this is just off the top of my head. Basically if you try and conduct yourself as anything but a tightly-knit cadre of elite combatants, you're guaranteed more prestige.

One sec... dictionary.com defines prestige as: [ QUOTE ]
1. The level of respect at which one is regarded by others; standing.
2. A person's high standing among others; honor or esteem.
3. Widely recognized prominence, distinction, or importance: a position of prestige in diplomatic circles.

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So, by farming low-level characters - who have no ample supply of honor, esteem, or widely-recognized ANYTHING - we get more "prestige". By having high-level members who can kill foes with a sideways glance, we get LESS prominence, distinction, or importance. WOW.

I'm level 19 in CoV, and my main on CoH is 28; This is not an "oh noes my 50s r gimped!!!11" reply. This is an honest concern: How can I trust any supergroup not to kick me as soon as I stop spending 24/7 in SG mode? It's not as though I can get twice the prestige but be in SG mode half the time, since it doesn't scale with level. I've got my own SG in CoV. Am I supposed to mass invite/kick lowbies until I'm raid-worthy, and only then get decent members?

I'm just saying, this makes lowbies like me feel more like dismissable MM pets than up-and-comers.

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The rules for teleportation have changed in order to keep heroes from teleporting to otherwise impossible-to-get-to areas. Your hero can still teleport "through things", though. There isn't exactly a line-of sight check from the hero to the destination. Instead, there is a line-of-sight check from your viewpoint (the "camera") to the hero and a line-of-sight check from the camera to your destination. If both are clear (and your hero will fit, etc.) then we allow the teleport.

This allows your hero to teleport around corners and buildings, but not into solid objects. (Which includes objects with doors.)

[/ QUOTE ] Aw man the dev ignored my post! I said any lort of line check IS NOT TELEPORTING. Currently TP acts like a light-speed travel from starting point, straight line to camera, straight line to ending point. This means if you're on the ground west of a building, there's no way to get to the east side of that building. This is not a huge deal for me, it's the smaller problems, thin walls and doors, often that you an see right through, that's bothering me.

I'm not saying solving this is going to be easy but... straight line requirements and hover? Come on, this is just a variant of flight.

What about thin things?

I never knew this "bug" but I was pissed off already because of all these new doors. I should be able to tp through them, shouldn't I? Heck, in that low-level warehouse 5th column mission there were enemies RUNNING THROUGH THEM. But I digress.

If you travel from one point to another, and there is a pre-requisite that there are no breaks in that line, it's not teleportation. It might be speed-of-light travel, but I'm not teleporting.

I want to be able to turn on invisibility and TP through a door so I can scout the room behind without my team having to say, "Whup, a door. Everyone backtrack 50 yards so our invis guy can scout it." It's an inconvenience, and convenience is the reason that travel powers exist at all.

Wow, I'm sure glad I read this... I was going to get leadership with my provoking tanker, and here it turns out the manual is outdated yet again. -_-

All this hubub about Hasten and AM is because these powers can't keep up with the fast pace of the game. I say (and most seem to agree with me), no other powers duplicate the effects of either of them, why not make them weaker with a more acceptable recharge?

In fact, do that with most of the long-recharge powers, like focus chi; that thing is too short, too powerful, and has too long a recharge; when I put massive recharge enhancements in it I feel like I'm cheating every time it activates, even though it probably evens out during the downtime. (hey 2 semicolons in 1 sentence, booyah!) :-P