UberGuy

Sorry, Arcana, that was humor fail on my part. I love Dark Melee, and I have and use Shadow Maul all the time. (But not as part of a ST attack chain!) I was referring back to earlier thread thrashing on arguing against pure opinions. I picked the statement I did because it was well structured as stating something purely subjective.

Whereas I'm willing to pay more if it maintains quantity and/or quality above what we received before. Now "quality" of previous powersets is super subjective and was probably not uniform in anyone's opinion, but I'd take a stab at roughly measuring it on the basis of a powerset that has enduring popularity after release comparable with existing popular sets.

I did think of something while typing this. $deity help us the first time they have to nerf a powerset people paid money for. I think the forum servers might catch fire.

* Tries desperately to argue against this subjective statement, but goes home in failure.

As seems to be vaguely common with popular but sub-culture titles, its producers didn't fund a next season which could have wrapped it up. At least, that's what I recall.

(I liked it too. It was weird, but cool.)

My opinion of it depends on the pace and quality of releases.

Right now, we've seen a lot more new powersets in a short time than we have seen for quite some time. The past release schedule has definitely not included to giving us multiple new powersets every issue. If the devs continue to pump out interesting powersets faster than we can save up points for them, then I think that's a net win. It's a bit more complicated than this, since they may also be producing new costumes and what-not that are also for sale. But if the total supply of stuff I produce continues to arrive at a pace and quality that makes me want to buy it rather than wait for it, I think their model is a success for me and for them.

If, however they lower the pace of releases*, or they start pumping out lackluster sets, I'm going to move into your camp. In the very short term, I see the "for purchase" items as getting quality for the money. It will be possible, however, for them to change my mind so that I feel more like it's just a money grab, instead.

* If they lower it to the point that I can just afford things with my monthly stipend of points then it's no longer a money grab, but it would somewhat devalue having moved to a microtransaction model. The model would make sense for Premium accounts, but VIP ones would pretty much be what they always were before.

Well, if you don't want to see people respond to you, not posting is the way to go, as opposed to insisting no one respond to you, which is what seems to be the most common approach.

You seem to think you're being picked on for having an opinion. I don't think that's the case at all. Here's why.

Statements of opinion, broadly, come in two forms.

1. I like X.
2. I like X because Y.

Version (1) is hard to debate - it is a statement of personal preference. Version (2) might lead to debate, depending on the form of "Y". If "Y" is a subjective statement, it's hard to debate. "I like SR because I enjoy surviving just because I dodge everything" isn't really debatable. "I like SR because it's better than everything else" combines an opinion with an objective justification, and that objective part is possible to debate.

Your opinion about SR, as stated, looks like my version (2). The way you wrote it makes it easy to infer that you think SR has survival performance beyond that of other sets. That you like SR is an opinion, and it shouldn't be up for debate. That SR's survival transcends that of other sets is something objective that can be tested. That's what drew responses from Werner and Arcanaville.

Assuming comparable enhancement and no other buffs, they work out the same.

Corruptor ranged damage scale is 0.75.
3 SO damage enhancements modifed by ED = 0.95

(1 + 0.95) * 0.75 = 1.4625

Defender ranged damage scale is 0.65.

(1 + 0.95 + 0.3) * 0.65 = 1.4625

With Scourge the Corruptor will gain more benefit.

With ally or self damage buffs, the Defender will gain more benefit, because their AT mods are higher.

Sort of. My feeling is that there may be more general "hero for profit" schemes. "Hero for hire", where someone actually sets out to pay you for services rendered, is a subset of "hero for profit", which is the more general case where you get some sort of reward at the end. More examples stand out in my memory of you planning to either grab the spoils for yourself, or at least rack up some reputation with hero-types. Ones where someone actually offers you a fee seem less common, or at least less memorable to me.

Edit: Your point still stands, though. Hero Corps seems like a reasonable outlet for this sort of thing.

An obscure (and IMO therefore, minor) bug sort of related to this ... if you replace a +4 or +5 IO with a HO, you get a +4 or +5 HO, which you naturally can't get "in the real world". I didn't test it, but I'm sure it probably does the same thing with SOs, DOs, etc.) The interface for adding pluses seems to work fine with non IOs, limiting them to +3, but the replacement deal seems to lack a validation for this sort of thing.

Lest it seem like the above is a complaint, thanks for adding this IO booster support. I and a bunch of people I know have been using it to fiddle with builds for days now.

The interesting thing about the approach here is that, instead of giving us more levels and new, especially tougher baddies to fight at those new levels, they've instead given us things that make us more powerful separate from our character's level in the form of Inventions and Incarnates. Incarnates are the closest thing to technically giving us more levels, since we can't access them until we're already 50, and they can grant what amounts to additional combat levels. But they also give us new, swappable powers on top of that.

Depending on when one decides to invest in them, Invention are progress that can be gained in parallel to traditional levels. Indeed, early investment in Inventions can speed traditional leveling progress meaningfully, especially if one primarily solos content.

Particularly in the Inventions case, this tends to allow a single character to tackle the existing content on higher difficulty settings, or alternatively, to individually tackle larger fraction of what a team normally faces collectively. While Incarnate abilities have their own dedicated content, they have the same effect for people playing the 45+ game. Mixing the two makes for incredibly powerful characters, relative to the SO baseline.

As you say, though, there's little mechanical need for this level of power. Instead, the mission difficulty settings are used to allow existing (non-Incarnate) content to scale across the player base's diverse survivable challenge thresholds. Someone with SOs and a small, low-buffs team can take on level missions at "standard" difficulty settings, while someone swimming in IOs might take on things that would otherwise only spawn for a whole team.

In terms of internally supporting their own progress, Inventions seem to be "more optional" than Incarnates. What I mean by that there is no content that specifically expects your characters to be equipped with IOs. Getting some IOs may make getting more later easier, simply through increased combat efficiency, but more powerful IOs are not locked behind harder content.

Incarnate powers, however, may be on track to follow a more traditional "end game" progress climb, where progress towards gaining later powers may depend to at least some degree on having already obtained earlier powers. This extrapolation is based on observation of the differences between the first Incarnate trials released (BAF and Lambda Sector) and the later Keyes and Underground trials. Even setting aside the possibility that Keyes is designed to "expect" the use of Rebirth Destiny, or that the UGT is designed to "expect" use of Clarion Destiny, the UGT unambiguously steps up the power level of the opponents compared to the other trials. All the AVs in the UGT have a +1 level shift (making them effectively level 55) and all the spawns in the trial are thick with Elite Bosses. This leads me to conclude that the UGT is not targeted at people who are running their first Incarnate trials, but rather at those who have already earned some Incarnate progress running earlier trials.

Definitely. Acronyms like "bbl", "brb", "afk", "afiak", or "lol" don't bother me at all. It's "phonetic spelling" of things like "r u" or "wat" that gives me a bad impression.

Free accounts and sufficiently low Paragon Rewards tier Premium accounts cannot receive PvP IO drops if they defeat someone, but they drop PvP IO recipes just fine when defeated.

The only notable exception, in my opinion, is the Gladiatior's Javelin proc. It's the only damage proc available for a "Ranged Damage" set outside of the purple Apocalypse proc (which, of course, you can only slot one of). If you ranged attacks don't have some secondary effect that has a damage proc in one of its sets, such as if you use Fire Blast, there's no non-purple damage proc you can use at all.

Combine that with the exotic damage type, and it helps explain why the Javelin proc is quite so expensive as it is. I certainly find the going prices not worth my while, but I can understand how they might have come about.

Like many grammar rules, it seems to depend on who you ask, but it seems the answer is "no, but it's widely frowned upon."

Reference 1
Reference 2 (Look for "Yes, you can begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction", near the bottom")
Reference 3

On the contrary, taking fullest advantage of the benefits of set bonuses typically increases demand for slots. Using IOs primarily to "frankenslot" can certainly decrease demand for slots, because you can get more total enhancement in fewer slots than with SOs or even common IOs. However, desirable set bonuses often motivate either the use of more slots than would be necessary using "pure" frankenslotting[1], or motivate the use of partial frankenslotting to obtain strong enhancement after getting a desirable bonus in less than six slots[2]. IOs also include numerous "one-slot-wonder" pieces, which motivate people to add extra slots in places they probably would not when slotting for enhancement value alone.[3]

1. Consider the defense benefits of sets like Touch of Death, Mako's Bite, or even something like Coercive Persuasion purple set. The five non-proc pieces of all these sets provide more than ED cap their primary effect, and decent slotting of secondary aspects of a power like accuracy, endurance and recharge. However, pursuit of the defense bonus compels one to include a sixth piece.

2. Consider the total enhancement of a set like Kinetic Combat, which gives a highly desirable bonus in four slots, has an often skipped fifth (proc) piece, but does not have very high enhancement values. It is common to supplement slotting this set with 1-2 more enhancements, often from another set to achieve well-rounded slotting.

3. Consider slotting Combat Jumping, which needs very little enhancement outside of seeking IO benefits, is often slotted with Kismet: +Acc (toHit); LotG: +Recharge; and/or 1-2 pieces of BotZ. Also Health is frequently five- or six-slotted with set IOs, where it would take no more than 3 slots at most with SOs or common IOs.

Agreed. I very rarely correct anyone's spelling in game, or any other chat. If I do correct someone for some reason, I make an effort to indicate that I'm doing with good intentions, not to make them look inferior. (That usually means I send the correction in a tell.) I normally only go to the effort because I think the person in question (a) doesn't know they did something in error and (b) would actually want to know how to correct it. Since that combination doesn't come up very often, I just don't correct people much.

As I mentioned in my first reply here, while absence of capitalization and punctuation does tickle some irritation nerve in the back of my brain, I readily tolerate it from most people. It is very common. If someone asked me for help, or a team, and all that was wrong with their /tell was missing capitals or commas, I probably wouldn't even consciously consider ignoring their tell on that basis. I don't like that sort of typing, but I don't judge it very harshly, either.

Given that, and that I seem to care more than the vast majority of people, I'm pretty doubtful that you're missing out on much. I'm sure you're pretty doubtful of it too.

Just to be clear, when I said earlier that I'd ignore people, what I meant was just that I wouldn't respond (or would at least respond in the negative, if it was something like a team request), not that I would go so far as to use /ignore on them!

It's like the choice between wearing grungy clothes or nice ones to a nice restaurant. Sure, old, torn and stained clothes meet the legal requirement most restaurants have for being clothed. They also are likely to be interpreted to mean that either you don't own anything better to wear or you don't care what other people think of your appearance. For better or worse, both either of those conclusions can set negative impressions of someone.

How one types, in its way, sets the same kind of impression, perceived in different ways by different people. "Proper" capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure is a convention much stronger than any "rules" on how one should dress. Adhering to that convention can be seen as pointless and stodgy, or both respectful and respectable, depending on the viewpoint of the viewer. My background is such that I am more interested in behaving in a way that will be noticed by the people who view it the latter way.

I must say I find this utterly perplexing. You find doing the technically correct thing immature? To me, using my earlier example, this is like finding people who dress well at restaurant immature. If they show up at the local family restaurant in a tuxedo, then sure, that's kind of weird. To me, that's not the analog of using correct punctuation, it's the equivalent of typing in chat like V from "V for Vendetta"

Remember, there doesn't have to actually be that much demand in terms of volume.

Imagine that, because all the PvE substitutes, all the PvE players are actually ignoring this piece. That means that the bid competition is only PvP players. That still doesn't preclude them from competing, even just among themselves, with bids in a way that leads to comparatively high prices.

All it takes is a small number of players with enough money on hand who want this item relatively frequently to set a high market price. As you have already noticed, though, this situation is unstable for small demand populations. A small population of bidders is more subject to abrupt bid threshold shifts, as its more likely that a majority of people in it might randomly all stop placing new bids at the old (high) price, which causes the price the market will bear to find some new, lower threshold.

See, to me that triggers that "this person is lazy/dumb" thing.

There's a threshold here that we all have. The OP's example "r u lft" conveys enough information that most of us understand what it means. (At least it does in an MMO context - someone outside gaming would probably be confused by "lft".) Everything that was omitted there is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. But everyone is going to have a threshold of tolerance for that sort of omission. Mine is above wanting capitalization and below wanting sentence-ending periods.