Neuronia

Speaking of that, this would be a great time for @TMK - The Mighty Kraken to make a glorious comeback...

No, and I'll love you more if you /em dance during our Freedom ladder matches. <3

Just to confirm they are dropping, had a Glad Net drop last night when some friends were sparring for fun. Just very, very low drop rate.

Pretty much.

I don't know if people would really want changes. We got a lot of that with Issue 13 when all we wanted was for a few powers to be examined, and Arena bugs to be fixed. We did get selectable maps which was great, and a bunch of options.

Playing other games (admittedly with bigger budgets), they tend to balance (Read nerf, alleviate, change, overhaul) powers and so on on a fairly regular basis, so that nothing remains overpowered for too long and thus a new grind is created, etc. There are just too many powersets, scenarios, etc. to think of in this game. They'd probably just be best adding some mini-games in Arena that aren't kill-focused (Capture the Flag, Escort games) to spice things up now and then. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like PvP will be on the radar for some time...and with the Rare and Very Rare slots unlocking soon, as well as other games on the horizon, it may not matter much anyway.

I bid an Ambrosia, a Nucleolus Exposure and a Glad Net triple on Philly.

Agree with seebs, and don't forget the top hat as well.

(You can sell a lucky PvP IO drop for two billion as well, so that throws a wrench in things. Mostly, it's easier than ever to make oodles off cash so go nuts and enjoy!)

To be honest, Arena probably has had the most sustained player involvement, given they went live in Issue 4 and have been used by the same players pretty much ever since.

Your point is well-taken though, that a miniscule portion of the playerbase participates in these activities overall.

Lold hard.

I don't need the badges, but if you need help throw me a PM and I'll be there, time permitting.

P.S. Go in global hide/hide from searches once you start your hunt, or someone on BMT/your global list will go: "Hey, why is PvEr12689 in RV...let me tell my friends!"

Ideally.

When I first wandered into Siren's Call on a Warshade, no less, years ago I got teleported to a building top and clubbed by several Stalkers. Definitely wasn't fun and didn't go back to PvP until someone asked me to try the Arena, where I was hooked.

Ideally, you'd have a kind of 'team assembler' that would add you to a queue in a zone and put you on a team. Yeah, I know you don't want to be with n00b over there, but at least people talking to each other and learning is better than someone walking in with their Dark/Elec Defender and getting completely steamrolled. The problem with 'team only' is some items in PvP zones (Shivan Shards, for example) are available solo, and some servers just don't have the 'pop' for teams and so on.

That's stuff you could work out through other means, by making Shivans and Nukes available through a high Alignment Merit cost, for example, or a PvE event of sufficient difficulty.

The drop rate is insanely low, but it's meant to be that way.
If you look at it, a bunch of PvP recipes are in the 30,000,000-100,000,000 range. For example, look at the hold sets, the pbaoe sets, the targeted AOE, they aren't eye-popping in price. It starts to break down with the procs like Glad Jav and the -RES proc and the +3% defense ones...since the latter, especially, is quite useful in PvE as well.

We got one in a practice the other day, and it was the first drop in about a month and a half of arena matches. Just market to get your cash for them; the farmers will put theirs on the Market, the circle becomes compelte.

We've had this argument many times before.
Even when Test was open to everyone, you had 6-8 teams in the Hero Ladder, about same amount on the vill ladder in its prime. But the people that showed up consistently were the same group of hardcores...like Victory Reborn, dUmb, Integrity, Whirligig, JAL, Velocity, Old School Legends, until teams began fragmenting and such.

A lot of the new players just didn't want to change their builds or put in the time. I remember on Healing Hank's team, we had one person with a Fire/Kin and we were like...."Wanna roll X, or maybe we can Acco out your fire/kin and help you out?" and they ragequit out, never heard from again.

Whether the League is on test, Freedom, wherever...you'll have the people who are hardcore showing up week in and week out. Some groups will try it, not like it and drop out. Others will just show up and play for the ***** and giggles. We had people genuinely focusing on weaning in new players on Test...like Hank's team was just for newbies, and it still ended up being mostly Hank, Robo, Shad and a few others that were from other Test teams.

Sad to say, but the IO curve and learning curve and time commitment may be too much for the average video gamer to put in. What we have is what we have, plus any one else who catches the bug.

Think it was 8 v 8.

Doyler (and Trez I think) was on Stalker, we had Slax, Pixel and Lib on Storm me and Siolffir (or was it someone else...) on Emp and a Blaster. That adds up to 9, we might not have run a Blaster. Kinda foggy on it now, but the Stalkers scored a kill on the VEAT and I got a lucky Blind kill and we won 2-1 or 3-2 on that map or something ridiculous, which was incredibly close as I ran out of greens at the :15 mark with Phase already used, heh.

dUmb also used that Storm team on Eden, iirc, turtling on one of the pathways. I think Pixel might have died though...

Anyways, to this league:

Basically 2-3 Stalker limit, usual map picks/limits.

For ties, caps will have to discuss but I'd prefer to avoid replaying ties more than once or twice...would hate to have tie, tie, tie, tie...hour later still trying to resolve a draw. One way to get around this would be to keep same line-ups from the draw, someone should get defeated at some point.
Basically, one tie replay would be fine...but replay after replay would get annoying.

Can we get tats & piercings for both genders and "breast and package modulation" too please, we're not all C/D cups.

It's been 6 years and I still occasionally run to Hollows for that delivery, still rearrange my trays "Just so" (Tray 1 attacks, Tray 2 Buffs/Debuffs/Shields, Tray 3 Accolades, Tray 4 temps/vet powers).

Two teams of players that know their roles, are on Ventrilo, play their roles to the best of their ability and have a good fight. That's pretty much it.