Slashman

I generally don't team. And I play a lot of blasters.

If someone is telling you to team as a solution to your problems, they are probably not worth worrying about as they don't have the insight you're looking for.

If someone tells you to try x/y combo and doesn't carefully explain why this combo would work to do what it is you want to do, then you need to find someone who can(provided what you want to do is feasible).

The odd thing is that from my own experience, I have much better results working things out for myself when I try a new powerset combo. Look, we have Real Numbers in the game now that tell us exactly what our powers do. But I'm still amazed at how many people attempt to understand a power simply by looking at the description only.

I use people's advice as a frame of reference. I can't tell you how many times people both in the game and on the boards have told me x power is the crappiest thing ever invented. Then a different set of people on the boards and in the game tell me that the same power is critical. I usually find that the actual truth for me is somewhere in between if not something else entirely. Chain Induction was a good example of this for me.

In the end, no one can tell you how best to play a blaster(or any AT) if what you think you should be able to do with one runs contrary to the strengths and weakness of the AT. You'll end up trying to reconcile two opposite points of view and have your head explode instead.

That's because they are for different things in different situations.

One thing that people probably need to remove from their minds is that the blaster is a 'glass cannon'. The blaster is a precision cutting tool. You don't just aim it at a group of foes and have them all drop dead(although that is sometimes possible). You need to know where and how to strike and when.

I have a friend in the game who keeps complaining that her blasters are not as tough as her scrappers. But she keeps approaching fights like she is playing a scrapper. You cannot do that. It entirely depends on the situation and makeup of the enemy force you are fighting. That's not a strong rule for scrappers, brutes and tanks. It is, however, critical when playing a blaster.

If you leverage Defiance and always keep aware of your situation and enemies, you can do very well with a blaster. You will probably never be able to play as carefree as you do with a scrapper, brute or tank, but you can get the job done.

After ED hit, I was very pissed off about blaster performance, but the changes that came along with Defiance made blasters very playable again for me. This also applies to Dominators and their recent buff.

My fire/fire dominator is an absolute monster. I have to TRY to get myself killed with him these days. But I do not play him like a blaster or controller because dominators are neither. You have to control the fight perfectly with dominators too. The difference is that with a dominator, you have been given the tools for control from the get-go. Now with very decent damage output, dominators are another of my favorite ATs again.

I see what you did there...

Ah...broad, sweeping generalizations. I love them so...

For the record, I don't RP much and I'm running a Core 2 Duo 2.67GHz system(modestly overclocked) with 4GB RAM and a Geforce GTX 260.

I don't like Mystic Fortune on me when I don't want/need a buff. Or when I want to run a character vanilla(without buffs or inspirations) to gauge his/her performance. So the prompt simply makes sense to me. I'd also be happy with an option in the options menu to auto accept/reject.

So everyone you know in the entire game, everyone in your SG/VG on every server you play on, in both your local and global friend lists and everyone you've run into in the game, hates the pop-up prompt? Is that about accurate? And you've surveyed each of these people specifically to find out that they hate the Mystic Fortune prompt?

That's horrible.

I could actually support a self-buff...but it seems to thematically clash with having your fortune told by someone else.

I agree totally. Well...the resurrection thing is neither here nor there for me. But I agree with everything else.

Except you know, most superheroes don't do that. Most superheroes find a smarter way to defeat the big bag of hitpoints. Because no one wants to pound on Galactus for 6 months.

In most memorable superhero battles(with some few exceptions), heroes try to find the crack in the villain's armor or they trick/goad/coerce the villain into giving up or opening himself up to a crippling attack.

No...that seems to be what you're doing when you play. Other people seem to appreciate variety in gameplay.

Stop it with your clear thinking and voice of reason!

You're entirely entitled to those feelings as I'm entitled to mine about the whole thing.

And I still think that leveling speed being increased if the developers felt that overall progress to level 50 is too slow is one thing. But that increasing leveling speed because: a) You want to make sucky parts of the game go by quicker or b) It lets you get around adding content to the parts of the game where it is thinnest are both the wrong reasons for doing such.

This actually brings to mind a point I was thinking of posting in a new thread. We really need to look at storytelling mechanics for teams. One of the things that has not changed in COX much over the years is the way the story of our arcs are delivered to the players.

The problem can be seen when any player joins a group who are doing a story arc. Missions themselves do a very poor job of delivering the story they are supposed to be telling. In some ways, because of the randomization of maps and mobs and in other ways because of the front and back-loaded nature of the contact system.

It could be that some menu and interface work is needed to give a quick reference summary window for the story so far in a given arcs. But also I think that map design could use some serious reworking so that maps actually play a bigger role in delivering lore and additional information to players about what is going on.

Currently we have glowies for giving us clues. But once the glowie is clicked, that's it. Some persistent interactive objects within a mission(that any team member can use) would help a lot. Like computer terminals that offer information on what a facility is used for or notes left laying around by various members of the enemy group you are fighting. It's not like there is huge lack of games for the developers to draw inspiration from on this kind of thing.

Maybe even some voice recordings(although I'm pretty sure we'll never get voiced NPCs in this game).

As noted above, I'm more inclined toward our mission maps offering more than just static scenery to all members of a team.

Agreed. Jack was good for the start...but not so great once the game got going. CO seems to be a good example of his narrow Vision.

I nearly got crucified by Sam for voicing my displeasure with some of these changes. But my opposition to just 'making things easier', is that those changes never came with any balancing mechanics or a sense of we're adding new and different things to do.

I always tend to think that the need for quicker leveling may also mean that there is a lack of variety in terms of gameplay and content that would make people less concerned about how fast they leveled(not that quicker leveling is always a bad thing), but I'm not sure if it made the game measurably better or just that you now notice the sucky parts less because they go by quicker. To each his/her own I guess.

You know, it's rather hard to effectively market something that does not seem interested in marketing itself. If and when NCSoft decides that it might be to their advantage to let more people know about their game in the ways that make sense for a game of its kind, I might be more inclined to get on the player marketing bandwagon.

This is like eating in a great restaurant with affordable prices and good food, but the owners never bother to put a sign out front. Meanwhile, all the other not-as-great restaurants in the area not only have big signs, but are hiring cute girls to stand outside their entrances and pass out fliers. Gee, I wonder where the customers will end up?

I'm suspicious of if this mythical story bible exists myself.

There are only a few game devs I know of who I would trust when they say something like: 'We have a story bible.'

First and foremost is probably Bioware. I can believe that about Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Especially after seeing interviews with their lead writer.

I can probably also believe it about Blizzard. They are so anal about everything that it would just stand to reason. Plus have you seen inside their offices?

COX story arcs and lore are a bit too disjointed for me to take them at their word on this. I usually take them at their word on most other things...but not this.

It almost seems like self-sabotage. We have so many 'pound on x til it dies' end encounters. Do we need yet another?

And yes, it's stupid that every end boss has to do a truckload of damage for the entire encounter. Why aren't there bosses who depend on others to fight for them? Countess Crey is not some mega telepath. She is a normal woman who is extraordinarily smart, cunning and ruthless. Encounters like hers only serve to make the story content look absolutely nonsensical.

If she had that kind of power, why would she even need to try to make her organization look like a legitimate business.

This, this and more THIS! Stuff like this will only serve to make this game feel like last decade's MMOs. Why must we have more of it? I can only pray that GR will not bring more of this type of thing.

PSSST! This is too logical and sensible. You need to add in some hate and/or insults so that people can take it seriously and call you a lame whiner...

I already tried it your way. It apparently doesn't work.

To be clear here(and I didn't think I needed to be any more clear...but OK), I don't want Mystic Fortune to go away. I do not want buffing to go away. I can live with(don't really like, but can live with) the usual drive-by buffs that people normally throw around.

I have not asked, nor did I intend to ask that all buffs have the option to be rejected.

My only request is that we are given the option to reject only Mystic Fortune. And failing the feasibility of that, then let us delete the buff just as we used to delete the buffs gotten from Safeguards and Mayhems. That's it. People can continue to drive by buff as they have been since forever. People can buff people to the roof in WW or the Black Market just like before.

The ability to delete the buff seems like the smartest solution. The reject option can stay disabled and then everyone wins. I never called for any other changes.

I'm trying to understand why someone asking for this turns out to be such a big deal. It really isn't.

Sometimes I feel like it's not so much DOOM as it is kind of a slow decline into decrepitude.

Retention is a losing battle. People will move on. If retention is all they are fighting for, then resources will lessen over time until the scope and frequency of major updates to the game will dwindle. You can't truly retain people indefinitely.

It won't happen tomorrow, or next week or next month or even next year. Still, I also don't find myself wanting to be part of a game with a self-defeating attitude when it comes to the future.

I think that an MMO community should constantly have new people coming in and be expanding. I don't want to see less activity on the streets of Paragon and the Rogue Isles. I want to see more. And even though I'm not a big PUG player, an MMO world is made more vibrant when more people are there to share it.

Let me rephrase that then to me hating drive by buffing.

The majority of the time it is done, it is not helpful. Buffing me to the teeth at WW or the Black Market is absolutely worthless. And most people here know that is when most buffs of this nature are cast.

Regardless of if people think they are being helpful or not, a bit of common sense is all that is required to make a smart choice as to when to throw a buff on someone. If you meet someone fighting in the streets and they look like they could use some help, that is a perfect time to buff/heal them.

I have never posted before to complain about getting buffs from people in any case. But this specific buff does irritate me. It lasts too long to be considered a minor annoyance that I can wait to wear off.

If you have trouble understanding how other people could find that annoying, then at least ask yourself why the devs felt a need to have the buff be optional in the first place. If they thought that a 20 minute buff was OK to be held to the same rules as the other short duration buff, then why waste the time to include an option to reject it?

I'm just asking for that option back, or at least a viable alternative.

Well to be fair they can do wrong. But the right that they do kind of overshadows it. Which is as good as one can expect. There are no perfect game companies.

In companies like Bioware and Valve(for instance), you see studios that have their program together and flow like a well oiled machine. There is no question or hesitation as to if their products will receive proper marketing and press. They will, no matter how anticipated. Even now, Team Fortress 2 gets a ton of press, updates and constant attention. That's a non-subscription game that is 3 years old now and still gets more push than COX.

And yeah, I agree that I feel like Paragon Studios is sabotaging its own game.