UberGuy

I find mayhems easier and more fun to boot.

I agree with the general sentiment that redside missions make you feel the lackey. You're a super powered thug, riding along on other people's plots and plans, acting as their muscle for hire. Even if they don't pay you in cash or other loot, you're often paid in "attention" within Arachnos. Almost everything comes down to trying to climb the ladder of good graces in Arachnos.

This surely doesn't meet many people's notion of a super villain. Sure, some super villains are thugs who ride the coat tails of more ambitious masters. Its obvious those aren't the most popular ones for people to imagine their characters as.

I do agree that this has improved over time, and that Freedom is trying to change the early sense of it dramatically. I think these are good changes, and I hope they can continue.

Now, I could care less that the Rogue Isles are dingy. (And they are definitely dingy.) It doesn't bother me at all.

I always felt that the actual writing in the villain missions and arcs was better executed that hero missions of the time, even if I often disliked the "pro Arachnos" spin they had. I love the tendency to only give missions in the same zone as the contact, the lack of "hunt X" and fedex missions, the tendency for most missions to be part of an arc, and the lack of largely unused zones. I think all of those were great improvements over hero side. I still play my villains in their native missions, and do not take them heroside. In fact, all my villains are still at least Rogues by alignment. Only badgers will become heroes, and when they are done badging, they go back.

(By the way, I love the sense of the Rogue tip and morality missions. They're perfect for how I viewed most of my villains all along.)

If it was supposed to be reserved for some reason and it wasn't, I wouldn't storm out, but I would complain to the manager, and likely leave unless they had something very nice to placate me with.

Our characters aren't like first-come, first-serve seats at a restaurant. We have a reasonable expectation that they'll be available at all times that are not previously declared maintenance. Anything less than that is a failure to meet expectations. We know it will happen sometimes, but it is still a failure.

On the note of failures...

A hardware failure may not be anyone's fault. Failure to have a plan that prevents that from impacting service in a major way is either (a) a failure of someone to ensure there was a contingency for that happening, or (b) a decision by someone with authority that a contingency for that failure was not cost effective. Depending on how wise that decision really was, (b) might have been a failure in judgment.

I'm not sure why it's a surprising or really problem worth mention that the two are linked. Wanting to play a character at a given time and being unable to due to technical difficulties naturally leads to disappointment. Some people have expressed that disappointment in ways that I do consider overboard, and that may be worthy of comment. That said, I don't think the devs deserve some exemption from our expectations of available service because they experienced technical difficulties. Technical difficulties is an explanation, not an excuse.

It's the job of at least some of the folks at Paragon/NCSoft to avoid technical difficulties when doing things like this. It's understandable that they are not perfect and sometimes will experience difficulties anyway, but let's face it - when that happens they have failed at their job. I work in IT. No one expects me or my team to be perfect, and our system up-time targets reflect that. When we screw up, though, we still take a hit on our reviews, and quite possibly our financial reward at the end of year, even if we make our uptime targets. Outages are allowed, but that doesn't mean they're forgiven.

Edit: If your rebuttals are focused at the people who want compensation for this, I have no problem with that. If so, though, I think your arguments against that have fallen down a slippery slope into territory that are making other people, whether or not they actually demand compensation, say "hey, that doesn't sound right". That's certainly where I'm coming from.

Edit: Fixed, the Auth Server IP address changed. Anyone bypassing the launcher will need to update their shortcut or whatever they are using to launch the game.

I don't join a lot of pugs unless they're iTrials. But those I do join based on broadcasts for members seen in global channels.

The last thing I would be happy about would be the idea that I helped you send a character you enjoy (for whatever reason) to the bit bucket. CoH doesn't need maximal optimal team composition, even for some of its most extreme content. If you enjoy the character, you should play it! I understand your world view of performance may get in the way of your enjoyment, but just the fact that you've been able to enjoy it so long should be a hint that you don't have to be numerically optimal to have a good time.

That might have been me.

This is a radical position that surely makes assumptions that do not always hold true. (Edit: In rereading the context of the thread, I think you were making a point that I reinforce below, not disagree with.)

How about a somewhat simplistic example. Let's assume we had 7 characters that can each add +35% damage, apply -20% DR to foes, and have a 400% damage multiplier cap. Do they deal more damage adding another character just like themselves, or adding someone with a 500% multiplier cap who deals 1.7x as much base damage?

Assume everyone has attacks slotted with ED-"capped" damage around +100%, and everyone deals sustained DPS equal to their base damage times the same constant, so that our "damage dealer" deals 1.7x the sustained DPS of any of the buff/debuff characters.Assume all foes are even-level.

If we add an 8th buff/debuff, all 8 characters are saturated at the damage cap (+280% from buffs, ~+100% from enhancement, 100% base is 480%, capped at 400%.). Even-level foes they face will take 1+(8 *0.2) = 2.6x damage dealt due to DR debuffs. So everyone on the team is dealing about 4.7x as much damage as they would normally (where "normally" includes their enhancements and individual damage buffs), and the team of 8 therefore deals 37.8x the damage of one of the buff/debuff characters.

Instead, lets make the 8th character our damage dealer. Our buffs drop to +245%, which still caps the 7 buff/debuff folks, but not the new damage character - they're at 445% of base. The debuffs drop to 2.4x.

2.4*(7*(4/2.25)+1.7*(4.45/2)) = 38.94.

Adding one damage dealer increased the total DPS of the team more that adding one more debuffer. Only a little more, but it was still more.

Now, my numbers were clearly synthetic. They aren't meant to completely lack relationship to the game, but there are a ton of factors that will affect the real delivered DPS or average buff/debuff stats a team really produces - idealized team buff, debuff and DPS numbers like I used in the example never happen in practice in a sustained way. As a result, we might choose different numbers to make a "better" model, and that could provide different outcomes. But the goal was to show that we can't unconditionally say that adding someone who doesn't buff and/or debuff is always somehow making the team worse overall. If they do their job, they could easily improve it.

Now, even if my numbers were great, did the team need to optimize out the best DPS increase? Was it somehow going to fail if they didn't get 38.94 instead of 37.8? Not bloody likely. But not needing to maximize is not the same as the damage dealer "leeching" if they at least make the team break even compared to adding the alternatives. The only time I would even be open to that use of the term "leech" is if adding the damage dealer netted less DPS than adding another buffer/debuffer.

Using that (rather extreme) definition of "leeching", it seems more likely to me that a buff/debuff team is more likely to consider a Tanker a leech, not a damage dealer. The reason is that such teams tend to be able to buff themselves to such heights or debuff foes to such depths that they don't need aggro management. (That ignores that such teams also tend to be rich in control.)

For my melee characters, I could see doing this sort of thing. While the "primary" destiny I have chosen for them is often a big deal, it's not a complete game changer them. But Clarion gives my squishies functional immunity to all but stacked mezzes, and that is such a radical game changer for how I am allowed to play them that it would take a very narrow set of conditions. One of those conditions would have to be minimal exposure to mezzing. Now, it turns out that there's pretty minimal mezzing in Keyes, so it could meet my narrow condition spec. Unfortunately, I dislike the trial strongly, and therefore have zero intention of building anything just to prepare for it.

I should point out that the reason that MMs are bottom of the totem pole for me is not because I think the AT is functionally flawed. There's just something I prefer about my characters doing the defeating themselves, and not relying heavily on secondary AIs to do it for them. That's definitely just me. I do get the idea there are a lot of people like me, but I know plenty of people who love pet-centric characters.

Just a bit of an aside, but actually, unlike most other similar kind of non-inf reward, Ticket rewards actually do scale with foe con. A critter that's worth more XP or inf is worth more tickets, too. (Unless that's changed relatively recently. It worked that way for a long time.) As a result, I know farmers who do farm at +4. Now, I can't say that's actually optimal, since kill speed does decrease. However, with a level shift involved, a build with strong AoEs can probably be very near optimal like that.

Yeah, that 4 and lots of other posters said. It's nice, it helps, but a lot of leagues will get you there anyway with buffs. Also mentioned, you need 59% defense, not 45%, to get the same mechanical benefit in iTrials. (All the critters have what amounts to +14% toHit.)

Between the availability of Barrier Destiny, and changes making the buffs in sets like Cold Domination and Force Fields into AoEs, it's generally easy to end up with lots of +def buffs. If you do have a build with a nice starting cushion of +defense, then that makes it easier to be highly survivable even if your leaguemates can't softcap you on their own.

Yes, but his post was closer to mine.

That wouldn't achieve much. The iXP requirements are tiny, now. My latest character through the trials fully unlocked Interface+Destiny in 6 Lambdas, and fully unlocked Judgement+Lore in 8 BAFs.

The "slog" is running enough to get the components you want, or the Merits with which to buy them.

Not sure what you mean. As stated, the very definition of "VIP" in this context is "someone paying a subscription".

The only way you will not be a VIP is if you stop paying. Paying multiple months in advance counts as being subscribed for all the months in question.