Northwoods

After almost a year now of playing an Elec/Elec blaster, I've come to the conclusion that the AT is lacking focus.

The blaster is a damage doer, but not quite on par with a scrapper. The blaster has holds and imobilize effects, though not as good as a defender or controller. The blaster is a master of range, yet every foe out there seems to have a better range than we do and our lack of defense, well, goes without saying. Oh, and a blaster can draw aggro like the best of tankers, but usually when we're not expecting (or wanting) to and there's that defense problem again.

In short, it's a jack-of-all-trades AT. It's pretty good at a number of things, not great at any of them, and not generally survivable against more than a few foes without serious help.

How can you resolve this issue? Give the blaster some focus, while at the same time, flexibility.

You want the powers to be balance between long range, short range( melee), support (holds, et. al.) and a fourth special class, which I'll go into later.

Blaster should have an inherent defense against ranged attacks. This is their area of expertise and they should be able to avoid ranged attacks as well as dish them out.

Melee attacks should deal sufficient damage to counterpoint the natrual lack of melee defense. They should be there to get a blaster out of trouble, not to play scrapper. Minus the damage, secondary effects such as stun should be an option.

Support attacks--these actually aren't too bad. Some long, some short, good but not as good as defenders or controllers (as it should be).

Now, that special attack I promised; This is the jewel in the blaster crown. The blaster should have 1 or 2 special attacks. The attacks have a base of a short range, moderate damage, and moderate secondary effect. It's how you slot them that makes them special. Add range enhancements and it really boost the range, making it an effective long range attack. Add damage enhancements and it's a devastating short range attack. Add secondary enhancements significantly boost the secondary effects.

This allows the jack-of-all-trades AT to specialize. A range expert can become an effective sniper, picking off foes at a distance. Slotted differently, you can create a "blapper," powerful close in with good range support. Slotted yet differently you create a good support AT, with a mix of range and melee, and excelent secondaries thrown in the mix.

This would allow the blaster to become the consumate battle support AT: a master of it's specialty, but only an average generalist.

Difficult to pull off, I'd imagine, because you'd have to rethink how enhancements work on the special attacks. One or two slots should not give you much effect, but five or six would change it significantly.

Maybe I'm just daydreaming, but wouldn't it be fun?

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If the dev's want more respect then they need to be the first to give it. They made the game, but we paid for it and continue to pay for it.

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If your ISP suddenly decided to reduce it's max bandwith to 300bps, would you continue to pay for the service and complain about it? I understand people have time invested in their characters. Just what does that really mean, though? In the big picture, real life scheme of thing, of what worth exactly is a character in a game? If you no longer enjoy it, if it's no longer fun, fuind something else which is fun.

The dichotomy I see, especially on the boards, is that what differentiates MMORPGs from console games is the social aspect. It's what has kept me playing this past year. Yet the behaviour I see all to often is decidedly anti-social. It's all about personal entitlement, personal grandeur, belittling others (esp. the devs) while expounding an "I know better," attitude...

Do you see the connection? There's way to much "Me" going on. This game isn't about "Me". It's about "We". To make it work for the "We" some of the "Me" gets tweaked in ways some of us may not like. Sorry, but that's just how it has to be. This can't be all things to all people. It's just not possible. There's a much larger community out there than participation on the boards would indicate, and their needs need to be served as well. And no, we here do not proportionally represent the entire player community, so even if you see a large number of complaints/comments here does not meam thet everyone in the player base feels the same way. People post here because they have something to say, and usually complain about. What you read here is a skewed version of the community as a whole.

I've been on the other side of the firewall. I know what it's like to have customers demaning to know how something was done or why it was done. Honestly, they go on unknowing because it would take too much time to explain, and most wouldn't get it anyway. Most wouldn't care if the next guy gets royally screwed so long as they get what they want. That's fine for them, but not for the other guy and you have to be concerned with the majority, not just the loud ones.

We expect the devs to have thick hide six-slotted and be able to take any insults we throw at them. Guess what? People don't like to be insulted. When they are, and feel hurt, do you know what they're likely to do? Yep. Welcome to the ignore list. Now you really get to know what it's like to be ignored. And reputation counts for a lot. If you develop a reputation as hurtful, insulting and not constructive, it won't matter when you are helpful and constructive because you've already been shut out. That's just human nature.

If you want to be read, post in a calm, objective and thoughtful manner. Will you get a response. Probably not. If the devs spent the time to address each of our issue personnally they woudln't have time to develop a game. Will the read the posts? Judging by changes we've seen this past year resulting from player feedback, you can bet on it.

So keep in mind that the devs are not our personal valets, here to respond to our every wish. They're doing the job they're supposed to do, and doing it rather well I might add. And let's try being more social. If you really need to be anti-social, stick to single player consoles.

(If I was rambling a bit, it's becasue I was up late working off debt from no less than 8 face plants in one day, and haven't had my tea yet. Cut me some slack too, OK? )

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Boost their damage some? Sure. Boost it enough so they can one- or two-shot anything up to bosses? Please, god, no. I'd never team with a blaster again.


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Just to counterpoint this: my best attack is my Zapp, with a 3 second activation time. You you know how may times this attack hit's nothing per day because the scapper/tank has taken down the whole mob before I can lock a clean target and fire the shot? Don't blasters deserve some of the fun, too?

So, which of us is going to take the time to plot this on a graph and post a screenshot? We need an executive summary!

OK, I understand what the devs are trying to do here, and I'm not in total disagreement with the concept, but here's a scenario that needs addressing.

I friend and I just finished up a train mission. I don't remember the speciifc mission but is was a "rescue 9 people from rikti" in the level 35-39 range. It was also a HUGE freaking map. My scrapper friend was the mob killer, I (the blaster) was the scout. I helped out where I could but spent much of the time looking for the rescuees. As it was, we spent over 2 hours on that map. I've been on TFs that didn't take that long.

Had I not received any XP for my troubles, I would have had no incentive to assist, and both of us just working mobs would have added another hour to the mission.

I like a challenge. I'm a blaster who runs on "Invincible." This wasn't a challenge--it was simply tedious. Tedious is not fun.

I agree that risk should equal reward. Sitting safe and idle and getting XP isn't in the spirit of the game. But participation doesn't have to involve combat. Teamwork isn't all about fighting. Support has to count for something too.

I understand that this could be a difficult row to hoe. How do you measure participation aside from combat. Staying back 300' in essentially a street sweep is still a pretty safe thing since mobs don't spawn randomly during missions. XP will be rewarded for that. Scouting among +3 mobs is dangerous, and the liklehood of getting no XP in this case will be high. It kind of throws risk v. reward to the winds, doesn't it?

I understand why people like the reduced debt, and why it's being seen as an encouragement to run missions rather than street sweep.

Personally, I no longer mind debt. As a blaster, I've tasted my share of it. I used to get all bent out of shape over it, but recently I've come to accept it as a way of life and embrace the additional influence you build as a result. Besides, it seems that since I've made it into the 30s, debt doesn't last very long anyway. Get a good team, set your slider to "Invulnerable" and the debt just melts off. (get a bad team and it piles up, but I digress)

Since I only do street sweeps as a part of a "defeat X villains" mission, I'll almost always get the reduced debt. I'll like the faster leveling, but miss the additional inf per level.

Since I don't see on for Infinity, I'll create one.

Channel Name: Monsters Inf
Purpose: Monster sighting on Infinity

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I have a suggestion regarding the possible observer mode camera. Give the battling teams a prompt, upon entering battle, to either allow or dis-allow observers. If they "allow" then they choose a time delay for observers, say from 0 to 5 minutes. 0 being realtime (relatively speaking depending on server load). This ability-to-choose feature adds "spying" an interesting tactical feature as opposed to an exploitable cheat.

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That is a very good idea, in MY Opinion! I actually wanted to post something like this- but my account was inactive at the time.


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Or even better, when you set up a match, click on the button that says "No Observers". Yeah, it exists. Now. Really.

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Cesium's an actual element.


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OK, for a silly digression. (I knew that minor in Chemistry would one day come back to haunt me)


Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
Thy spectrum doth us please-ium.
Thy sky-blue lines in plasma's fire,
Do dreams of icy lakes inspire.
Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
Thy spectrum doth us please-ium.

Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
When held, you never freeze-ium.
Thy gently smoking silver spheres,
When dropped in water, please the ears.
Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
When held, you never freeze-ium.

Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
You put us at our ease-ium.
You tend the seconds of the day,
So that our watches never stray
Oh Cesium, oh Cesium,
You put us at our ease-ium.

---Songs of Cesium #34


And there's plenty more where that came from Skippy!


Oh I wish I had a pound of cesium.
Oh I wish I had a pound of cesium.
I would take it in the shower,
And I'd glory in its power.
Oh I wish I had a pound of cesium.

---Songs of Cesium #111


We now return you to your regurally scheduled topic.

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Not sure if this was intentional or not, but during a story arc (think it was World Wide Red), I was asked to rescue a Dr. Hedia Lamarr. Now if anyoneone remembers the Mel Brooks movie "Blazing Saddles", I believe the part played by Harvey Corman was named Heddie Lamarr. Coincidence?

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It's Hedley.

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At my workplace, all the servers are named after various gods of mythology. I conside one of my finer moments convincing networking that 'Enki' was a good name for our new server.

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Ours were Harpo, Groucho, Chico, and Karl.

From the description of the proposed changes, I'd say it looks good.

The CRTL key doesn't flow as nicely under the hand as the ALT (on my keyboard anyhow) so it would be slightly more cumbersome under battle conditions, but I expect the 3rd try to be less frequently used under those conditions anyhow. Besides, there is no better alternative I can think of.

So, overall, run with it. No arguments here.

I would like the ability to /hide from anyone not in my SG, but remain visible to them.

...the ability to select multiple members of my SG simultaneously and invite them all to a team with one click.

...the ability to subdivide the SG into squadrons.

Well, the first time I did the cape mission was very shortly after I2 came out. It was when the swords were still bugged to do double damage, and the Lost actually attacked the capsure instead of just admiring it.

I soloed it with my L20 elec/elec blaster, with no mez protection short of running away a lot.

When a friend did it recently (hist first attempt), he was commenting on how easy it was. Well, I just got an alt to 20 so let's give thiis a go.

It's not a cape mission, anymore. It's a tutu mission: a fluffly pink tutu mission.

I have no real opinion about the change in difficulty. It will help out some players/ATs/builds. That's fine.

So we will have people who hit L20 is two hours fighting WLs, and get a cape by fighting a few Lost. More power to you. Enjoy.

But we, who earned our capes, know who we are.

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Aggro = Aggressive (the Monsters got aggressive with you, or aggroed you)


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Etymologically speaking, I'm not sure which of the below is more accurate, though I favor the former.

ag·gre·gate
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -gat·ed; -gat·ing
1 : to collect or gather into a mass or whole


ag·gro
Function: noun
Etymology: probably aggravation + 1-o
1 British : deliberately aggressive , provoking, or violent behavior

In City of Civilians, residents of Paragon City finally get fed up with all the heroes and villains running around and take matters into their own hands...

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Colisseum.

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Cool! Colisseum was my favorite X-Man!

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So, we get to fight anyone dressed as Marvel characters?!? Now that's a PvP I can sink my teeth into!