Sitriel

Hmmm, just thinking... two high-level traps corruptors stacking the maximum amount of Trip Mines in one spot should quite easily be able to set up a very big bada-boom. I wonder what might be able to survive such fireworks.

My answer is simple: Going Rogue.

Hehe, nice one... although I would definitely hate the torment of the Third Circle that I so rightfully deserve.

Morality is not only relative, it is individual. Ethics are no matter of democratic vote. What is "right" or "wrong" is up to everybody to decide for himself. There is no such thing as "absolute good" or "absolute evil" outside of comic books and fairy tales.
Pretending your own views on good and evil apply to the rest of humanity is the ultimate act of hubris. It comes right next to pretending to know the true nature of god or whatever divine principle one might follow.

Take a look at the City of Cute thread to see some more examples.

Oh, ich glaube, die Gründe dafür wurden schon öfter diskutiert. Ich fange einfach mal mit ein paar Gründen an, die mir spontan um diese Uhrzeit einfallen:

• Superheldencomics sind in den USA sehr viel beliebter als hierzulande. Das sorgt natürlich auch dafür, dass dieses Genre in MMORPG-Form dort eher für volle Server sorgt als in Deutschland. "Klassische" Fantasy-MMORPGs ziehen einfach mehr Durchschnittspublikum.
• CoX hat schon ein paar Jährchen auf dem Buckel. Da gibt es auch immer etwas "natürlichen Schwund".
• Den meisten Content bekommen wir als kostenlose Updates. So schön das für uns ist, so ungünstig ist das für das Marketing, weil einfach die Shelf-Time fehlt, also die Zeit, wo das Spiel bzw. Erweiterungspacks in den Marktregalen ausliegen und Aufmerksamkeit erzeugen. Going Rogue könnte da mal wieder helfen.
• Bedingt durch den vergleichsweise geringen Marktanteil ist entsprechend auch das Werbebudget begrenzter als bei gewissen anderen MMORPGs.
• Einige deutschsprachige Spieler, die eher vollere Server mögen, spielen überwiegend auf Union und Defiant. Das wiederum reduziert die Population auf Zukunft. Ein Teufelskreis...

Ich kann sogar immer wieder beobachten, dass CoX auch der eigentlichen Zielgruppe oft völlig unbekannt ist. Erst letztens habe ich mich zufällig mit einem Mitglied einer befreundeten GW-Gilde auf unserem TS-Server unterhalten und dabei herausgefunden, dass er ein begeisterter Comicfan ist. Das Resultat des Gesprächs war, dass er einen CoX-Trialaccount eröffnet hat, der ungefähr 5 Minuten bestand... Dann wurde daraus ein Vollaccount.
Aus meiner Erfahrung gibt es zwei entscheidende Faktoren, mit denen man Freunden CoX am ehesten schmackhaft machen kann.
Das erste ist die Aussicht, dass sie nicht allein sind sondern dass sie als Freunde aufgenommen werden, d.h. Einladung in SG, jemand mimt den Erklärbär und man nimmt sich generell etwas Zeit zum Teamen, Lesen etc. damit die Neuen das finden, was ihnen an CoX am besten gefällt.
Das andere ist der Kostümdesigner. Die meisten Leute kennen fast nur Spiele, wo man denkbar geringen Einfluss auf das Aussehen seiner Charaktere hat, vor allem, wenn man dazu noch Ausrüstungsqualität bedenken muss. Und wenn es zwei Stunden dauert bis ein Neuer genug mit den Optionen herumgespielt hat und zufrieden mit seinem Aussehen ist, dann dauert es eben zwei Stunden. Ich bin sowieso der Letzte, der sich über lange Schneiderzeiten beschweren dürfte.

Yes, but that is a bit beside the point. If you build a tanker and build him as tankish as he can be you are not wasting as much as when you do the same with a brute who are more a mixed purpose AT. Plus, tankers are still the better tanks and with co-op zones in the game and GR on the horizon I would see no sense in creating a tank-brute now. If somebody does he is absolutely welcome to do whatever makes him happy, however.
I agree wholeheartedly with Deth when he says that granite brutes give him a sad face. In villain teams you usually do not need a "real" tank, so, when I invite a brute and he turns out to be a granite I get considerably less damage than I bargained for and more survivability than necessary in a semi-decent villain team.
Even worse are those granite guys who can not even tank as their inherent debuffs make them even worse at keeping "accidental aggro". So, at the end of the day we have somebody who contributes quite mediocre damage, does not care about any survivability but his own and then makes a big fuzz about him being the last man standing. Utterly useless and outright annoying.

Tank-centered strategies in CoV... What a waste! The typical teams I know just use whatever damage mitigation they might have and disintegrate spawns at a pace that makes any serious attempts at tanking meaningless.
And yes, stalkers do their fair share in the killing.

Reminds me of a friend of mine. When she was still a little kid she had a hamster that she loved very dearly, so dearly that one day she took the furry thing out of its cage and cuddled it to death. Literally. Even bulging eyes and legs popping out of her grasp did not tell her that she was squeezing too hard. (Actually, she is still very much like that... only not regarding hamsters. )
A single knife strapped to the back might have saved that poor animal. *sigh*

You mean, they would never implement a few new zones, in a paid expansion on top of than, and not place a few story contacts in those zones somewhere? A daring proposition!

You think burning dead people are sexy? Well, you definitely have a special taste there...

I think being a bit too optimistic with those calculations is more than justified considering that factors like guaranteed crits from Hide were left out. Keep in mind that - even in those "plain without extra crits" calculations - just because one team member is lagging behind or afk or whatnot stalkers crit chance is not reduced so much that scrappers would suddenly omgwtfpwn them dps-wise.
And the problem with additional overkill damage by the higher crit chance is well taken care of by the fact that the very same crits lead to more cases of "premature kills" where your crit saves you another attack.
So, following the calculations and personal experience stalkers are still able to out-dps and most definitely out-burst scrappers in many, many team situations.
The main difference is that stalkers have to consider more variables to reach those numbers than scrappers who basically just have to stick to their attack chain.

You mean, people were forced to farm Freakshow missions, because the evil devs gave them a too high xp modifier so that the only possibility to stop the abuse of Freakshow missions was to drastically reduce the rewards?
Yeah, that makes sense.

That's the spirit!

This reminds me of LÜBKE, something I posted some two years ago on the German boards. I would roughly translate it as iBITE (increased Brutishness In Ten Exercises).

1st exercise: Create a brute, any brute.

2nd exercise: Log in your brute and notice the funny bar below your health and endurance. This is the iBITE bar implemented into this game for our therapy by the cooperative devs. (Thanks again!) Watch what it does. Notice the difference between activity and inactivity. Notice how your xp bar behaves differently when you have high iBITE.

3rd exercise: Repeat to yourself "More iBITE means more awesome. Only a full iBITE bar is a good iBITE bar. I will never let down my iBITE bar." until you have fully understood the message and know it by heart.

4th exercise: Play your brute and try and keep your iBITE bar filled as much as possible. When it is about to reach zero do something, anything, to fill it again.

5th exercise: Repeat exercise 4 only without looking at the iBITE bar. Only look at the iBITE bar when checking your progress in guessing your current amount of iBITE.

6th exercise: Cover the upper right corner of your monitor with a sticker, a post-it or anything similar so that you can see neither your health bar nor your iBITE bar. Then repeat exercise 5.

7th exercise: Create a toon from any non-squishy AT other than a brute. Seeing the iBITE bar with these ATs is the tricky part. In most cases the iBITE bar is invisible, but if you try hard enough you will see it in your mind. This is a special kind of interface for this therapy only.

8th exercise: Repeat exercises 5 and 6 with your non-brute non-squishy AT. If at any point you receive comments from other players that acknowledge your awesomeness or insanity proceed to the next exercise.

9th exercise: Create a toon from any squishy AT. As with the previous ATs you have to access the special mind-interface to be able to see the iBITE bar. If you are still unsure you might want to create a dominator as that AT has a special version of the iBITE bar called iBITE U. (U stands for "uber" of course.)

10th exercise: Repeat exercises 5 and 6 with this toon. Notice other players' reaction to your playstyle. Mind that most people find it unusual for a defender to rip his shirt apart, scream "HELL YEAH!" and jump headfirst into the next spawn while the tanker is still tieing his shoelaces. Remember that words like "nutjob" and "insane" have essentially the same meaning as "awesome".

I can proudly say I have mastered all ten exercises. Repeatedly. Sometimes I survive.

The words unobtainable and limit are not really made to be used together like that. When something is unobtainable it is not exactly a limit.

The argument that the maximum damage bonus was originally supposed to be 200% is hardly a good one. Many things are not what they were originally supposed to be, but the important question is whether they work or not.
So, if you were saying that brutes underperform because of this bug you had a point. But somehow I can not see brutes underperforming. Extensive datamining may prove me wrong, but I do not think brutes are weaker than other ATs and need those extra 5%ish more dps.
Since I mainly play villains and brutes are not exactly my least played AT I would certainly be happy about this bug getting fixed, but somehow I doubt it will happen without Castle taking a good look at AT balance first.

First of all, you do encounter EBs that early in the game. Off the top of my head I remember two level 5 contacts in Port Oakes that give EB missions.
And secondly, if you want to defeat anything EBish at that level you need to have powers, especially your holds, slotted and inspis at hand. And even then it is not unlikely to end in failure depending on the kind of EB, your power choices etc.
Dominators are late bloomers, really. Of three dominators all three felt quite weak early in the game, but all three finally came together somewhere in the 20s. In the late game you will probably be laughing at any EB. I know I did. And that was even before the damage boost.
Now that I think about it I remember doing a level 20 Tarikoss SF at one point with me (mind/psi dom) and a friend (dark/something corr) talking a bit too much good-hearted smack on TS which ended with us duoing Infernal in the last mission. He has no PToD at that point in the game and that was enough to turn the fight into a farce. Infernal was confused for the whole time we needed to whittle away his health while the rest of the team was watching and laughing on TS.

Actually, in Germany violence will get a game a more restrictive rating than sexual content (unless it is hardcore in which case both will be for adults only).
So, the blame is already on the parents... only that this is assuming that video games have a negative effect on nearly-adult youths which I highly doubt for the huge majority. Violent video games are only the most visible and most convenient commonnes of many cases of youth-related violence. That, after looking into those cases, you are bound to find out that neglection, mobbing and general mental and physical violence in the youth's social environment are even more common than video games ever could be and that, by extension, violent video games are rather symptom than cause allows for only one diagnosis regarding people calling for a ban: extreme stupidity. That is as if you had skin cancer and decide to hide the dark spots with heavy make-up instead of going to the doctor and thinking that such a course of action will eventually make the cancer go away.

And the part about politicians... please speak for yourself! I do not pay them to do something, I pay them to act reasonably on behalf of the people. Putting intelligent people under tutelage is not reasonable. Doing stupid things that damage the economy and the government's reputation and violate civil rights just because it might get you some votes of some unfortunately numerous stupid people is not reasonable. Oh, and just to clarify: If in a given situation doing nothing is the most reasonable course of action then I do pay them to do nothing.
Personally, if I actually had the choice I would cancel my tax payments just like I would not tolerate an employee who just acts for the crowd instead of doing any real work for the company.
Gah, at least in former times politicians had the decency to put some effort into their jobs, you know, masking their true purpose and in extreme cases even succeeding in governing the state well, so that you could actually pretend not to notice that their main concern is gaining and retaining power. Most modern politicians in Germany are a shame to their profession.