SpittingTrashcan

I would say that true wealth is being able to get whatever you want, whenever you want it. By that standard, per Rhygadon, no amount of inf equates to wealth, because even with amounts of inf I've never seen in one place he still can't obtain the things he wants. It's better to have a base well-stocked with crafted enhancements. And to the extent that this is true, the market is a failure.

Though the new interface doesn't help either. :/

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, everything you said about Stone Armor's strengths and drawbacks is true. On the other hand, I like that Stone Armor offers the unlimited opportunity to sacrifice a great deal of offense and maneuverability and gain a great deal of survivability. This doesn't appeal to everyone, but I don't think that it should be a design principle that all sets must appeal to everyone. What you're proposing seems to turn Stone into a WPesque mix of defense, resistance, and regeneration, which certainly performs well enough but is not what I bargained for when I chose the set. I picked Stone for its edge in extreme situations, not because I wanted a general high performer.

Incidentally, reducing the resistance buff in Granite from 50% to 17.5%, even if stackable with the other armors and even including the change to Stone Skin, would not be letting Granite retain "roughly the same level of survivability". That's a rather significant cut, and it's particularly significant in the situations where Granite shines now: when you're taking a lot of damage that cannot be mitigated through defense.

Of course in the end the developers will decide what the acceptable range of performance is for Tankers, and if Stone falls outside that range then it's going to be changed to fit within it. But I wanted to put out my voice here as someone who likes the set as it is, including the benefits and the drawbacks.

On reflection, I'd like to clarify some nuances before I'm criticized for a position I don't hold. I don't want *every* villain to be a world-conquering megalomaniac complete with fortress, minions, etc. It's a path I'd like to see more of, and I think the game can support it more, but it's not the only path. Some villains commit crimes for the challenge of it: stealing the unstealable, beating the unbeatable. Some are too simple, or too alien, to understand right and wrong and just follow their instincts. Some are just very, very confused.

One thing that they share in common, though, is that they're instigators. In pursuit of their goals, villains start trouble - it's what makes them villains. While not every concept can be supported by the text, the idea that villains are fundamentally active rather than reactive can be supported without making major changes to the game mechanics, despite claims to the contrary.

A side note: AE could have been a great way to open up the options for villain concepts that the official game does not cater to, but sadly this did not happen - though not for lack of trying on authors' parts. A poorly considered rating and listing system, and the fact that HoF/DC is an eventual death sentence, are among the problems.

5. Faultline.
4. RWZ.
3. Power customization.
2. City of Villains.
1. Super Sidekick. I am no longer willing to play any MMO that does not have this feature or an equivalent.

I see we cannot agree on a definition of "camp".

How's "flamboyant" work for you? "Stylized"? "Iconic"? "Outrageous"? I don't want to pretend to be an enforcer of a realistic dictatorship - I want to play a frickin' super villain, the kind that does not exist and could not exist outside of fiction. I believe it has been demonstrated that the game as it exists now is capable of supporting this paradigm to a much greater extent than it currently does, and I would like to see that trend continue in future content and in edits to existing content, if existing content is to be revisited at all. I really don't think I can make it much clearer than that.

As of I17, I have noticed that Rikti Drones are behaving in a most unusual way. The following screenshots are completely unadulterated.

Some Rikti, hanging out.
I throw Ball Lightning at them. That'll show 'em!
Drones: CHAERG!!!11!

The character in question does not have Taunt, so it's not the -range effect that is causing this. Instead, every single AI-controlled entity, including entities with no melee attacks whatsoever, now attempts to close to melee as soon as they have no ranged attacks immediately available.

Here's another sequence:

I've already gathered a nearby group. Let's see if I can get more!
That Ball Lightning sure makes a pretty arc.
I like my Brutes like I like my women: COVERED IN DRONES!

The other guys hang back as I'm over the aggro cap, but as soon as that's no longer the case they charge right up. The exception is the Mentalist: he has enough ranged blasts that he never closes to melee.

This issue also affects Mastermind pets: Mercs and Bots in particular have been reported as much more prone to fistfighting. And there's another issue which I thought was unrelated but might not be: in the last mission of the Ice Mistral SF, as soon as I hit the cavern lined with psychic crystals, the game starts exhibiting severe input lag (similar to the ITF mission 3 hill), whereas before I17 it did not. Destroying most of the crystals reduces the lag. If the AI of the crystals (which are technically enemies) is now seeking a path into melee range, that might cause the slowdown.

Has anyone else noticed issues related to AI controlled entities attempting to close to melee range for no good reason?

I always assumed it was Requiem.

All of them, as long as I'm not mezzed. In practice, this skews me toward melee ATs and far, far away from Blasters.

I don't know much about Masterminds, but I do know Rikti Drones. Prior to I17, they would quite happily stay wherever they could get a shot at me. Now they close to melee for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. This is great news for my melee characters, but indicative of a larger change to AI that is probably not good overall.

I ran an Ice Mistral TF just now. On the last mission, in the underground chamber encrusted with psychic crystals, I and the rest of my team experienced severe input lag, similar to what happens on the hill in the third mission of the ITF. Destroying most of the crystals reduced the lag significantly. I believe this is new as of I17, as the last time I ran this TF in I16 I experienced no such issues. If anyone else has had this issue, please reply here to confirm it.

I do actually have a question, Frosticus. A while ago you posted a theoretical Fire/Fire Dom build that, as near as you could tell, had the highest possible indefinitely sustainable ST DPS of any character. At that time I think you said that the prior contender for this title was a Fire/Elec Blaster. For this particular challenge, is there a controller build that comes in third? My uneducated guess for a contender would be a Fire/Rad/Stone or Fire/Kin/Stone, but I'd like to know your opinion.

Not every controller build is the most powerful build in the game, but the most powerful builds in the game are controller builds. This seems both clear and accurate to me.

By the way:

To quote Altered Beast:

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Just Virtue? Curious.

I did note that in the week following the I17 release, Virtue was the only server with two load dots. I frankly have no idea whether this has anything to do with anything.

I wish I could be as evil as the best of trolls: taunting people with "choices" between unacceptable options, standing just on the right side of the rules and daring all and sundry to go one step too far in coming after me, remaining utterly convinced of my moral rectitude - and most amazingly, being able to provoke people into blind fury or utter misery despite having no actual power whatsoever over what happens to them.

That's some master-class villainy, there.

This suggestion seems to be passing the picky people gauntlet. PM a dev.

I wonder if the devs are avoiding making incremental improvements to bases because they're not entirely sure they want to keep the system in anything like its current implementation at all. Remember, the last major changes to bases were ones that nobody was asking for. The problems that base users have with bases are not the problems that the developers have with bases.

Anyway, the whole idea of incentive disparity pretty much falls apart once you realize that, even if all other things were perfectly equal, there'd be a strong incentive to participate in a more populated over a less populated market, and the more people follow this incentive, the stronger the incentive becomes. Dividing the population into two mutually exclusive choices, with rewards that increase in proportion to the number of people making that choice, is going to lead to one choice being overwhelmingly favored - that's just how network effects work.

On a tangentially related note: now that I have a reason to send emails, I'm getting freshly acquainted with just how utterly terrible the multi-line text box widget is. It's shamefully bad. I have no idea how people manage to write mission architect arcs using this thing.