Venture

Holsten Armitage is not a confirmed time traveller -- it is entirely possible given the facts that he could just be crazy.

The only absolutely certain confirmed time traveller in the game is Wolfgang Ubelmann.

The people in teh FUTURE didn't know, either - the guy responsible only knew because, well, while things were changing, he was not a part of the timestream.

That's a crock -- the metaphysical equivalent of "a wizard did it". Time travel would be a part of history. Your actions in the past will not change history, because they did not.

If a time-travel scenario isn't headache-inducing ... then trust me, you've got it wrong, and/or haven't thought of something important.

Actually it just means you haven't made a mountain out of a molehill.

Given the facts as we know them, I could float at least any one of the following scenarios if I were GMing this in a tabletop game:

<ul type="square">[*]The majority opinion: Echo is Aeon, attempting to prevent some future disaster involving the PTS.[*]Echo is not Aeon. He is an Arachnos operative, sent back to put you and Aeon on a collision course. Recluse's Victory requires that Aeon be removed from the picture retroactively, but Aeon is too close an ally for Recluse to do the job himself or order it done directly.[*]Echo is not Aeon nor is he a time traveller. He is a Rikti shapechanger attempting to sow discord in Arachnos' ranks and/or cause you or Arachnos to destroy or shut down the PTS and deprive the Rogue Islands of much of its power supply. Any "future knowledge" Echo has was actually obtained through telepathy.[*]As above, but Echo is a Nemesis automaton, as per "Automatic Villany". Nemesis has always been shown to be able to know things he's not supposed to know.[/list]
In short, it is impossible to know what is going on here from the facts we are given. Perhaps there's an arc or mission in the upcoming 41-50 material that gives more information.

That site is evil...it resized my browser window. :-P

Other than that, very impressive.

Activating MoG without warning? &lt;...&gt; Also, usually the scrapper is scrapping for their life as well as yours when it gets activated, doubtful there is time to send even a quick memo to the group.

/bind ctrl+e "powexec_name Moment of Glory$$g Moment of Glory activated, 3 minutes to power loss!"
/bind alt+e "g 15 seconds to power loss!"

There you go.

As for the second one: I use a countdown alarm with any crash power, set to give me 15 seconds warning. I have yet to be killed by a crash.

A couple of years ago, someone got the idea to create "taxibots" which would offer to tp you where you needed to go for influence. And yes, their costumes usually had the colors/checkers of a taxi. &lt;...&gt; I haven't seen them around at all lately which is a shame.

Taxibots are still seen on Virtue, particularly in the Hollows. We also have a Taxi Otter running around; she has a Hitchhiker's-style Encycolpedia Galactica entry for /info....

If you haven't done a single one of your missions since your character was created, and you're level 40.

Actually this means you might be a Stalker -- they're better off closing newspaper missions than trying to deal with most of the mainline content. Or, as already noted, a support character who spends most of his life in groups.

I had several years of online gaming behind me even when SOE had Meridian59 and were just testing things before coming out with EQ.

SOE didn't have M59; that was 3DO. Remember when they were going to (metaphorically) take over the world?

When someone sends me a tell asking me if I want to team up, when I CLEARLY have myself on the "Looking for team" list, I have the urge to reply: "Gee, do you think THAT might be why I have "Looking for team" turned on?"

I never simply invite people or just say "want to team up?" I always say what we're planning to do. The fact that you are LFT does not mean you want to do a respec, or help me swat an AV, etc.

I'd love to see the ability to make all archetypes on either side from scratch, too, even if it requires a copy of both CoV and CoH on your account.

Because the balance between the five CoH ATs is so good, throwing another five into the mix won't hurt. /em rolleyes

Assuming I've done the math right (possibly a dangerous assumption before coffee :-) ), the difference between the number of possible teams with five ATs and 10 AT's is something like 10 orders of magnitude. That's a huge increase in the size of the problem space and it is beyond naiive to think you can do that without breaking something, or more likely many somethings. The problems you can forsee will be nothing compared to the ones you can't. The ones we can forsee are non-trivial.

If the devs are smart, they will leave this money on the table and abandon the feature.

If I wanted to make an Archery/Trick Arrow character right now, I have to make a corruptor.

Actually you'd have to make a Ninjas/Trick Arrow Mastermind and take the attacks. Corrupters get neither Archery nor Trick Arrow.

Other powers which can Placate (Smoke Flash) only apply the First part. The Hide like stat is not granted at all -- in other words, it is 100% defensive, not a Set Up power.

Perhaps it would help alleviate confusion if Placate (the power) had its name changed to something like Distract.

FirePlug, FWIW, is a guy I gamed with occasionally in UO, EQ and SWG. We never got the chance to hook up in CoH and AFAIK he's retired now.

He was actually somewhat exaspirated that "Kill Skuls" went on to become the folklore juggernaut it is now. But we all get our fifteen minutes of fame...whether we want them or not. :-)

Also, there is one other slight error in the post: The run speed boost from Quickness is about 10-20% less than what you get from Swift. This is easy to test as there are lots of people with Swift in the game.

Yow -- a pool power that outperforms a secondary?

in what way? I have a hard time thinking up ways to break the game this way....

Neither PvP nor PvE were balanced for cross-AT play. Villain ATs will make a sick joke out of a lot of CoH missions and such, and the same will be true of the other side.

And I don't even want to think about the consequences for PvP. Just adding Empaths to the villain ATs will make the whole thing go nonlinear.

Much better, very well done.

* If you think that "doing X" while going rogue will be abusable in ANY way, you can bank on X not happening.
* If you think that "Y happening" would seriously break something, you can bank on Y not happening.

The problem is that I think side-changing will be abusable and seriously break things....

Anyone see anything that I missed?

Nope, looks good.

Wiki on Mary Sues

Basically, a character who is an obvious stand-in for the author. I've always felt Tom Bombadil, for instance, was an obvious Mary Sue.

Hey Venture, read some DC comics. If you can make any sense of them, nevermind, you can't. That's why they keep coming up with more Crisis storylines. Seems people make mistakes. Maybe revisions is a better word for comics, but whatever. Happens.

I read comics until, um, just before Zero Hour. I've only peeked at them since.

Professional work should be...wait for it...professional. Inconsistencies like this aren't supposed to happen, and when they do it is fair to criticise them.

I agree that the story on the website is better, but really, these inconsistencies are getting old. We keep getting told about the Huge Story Bible, and yet it seems no one bothers to actually read it before doing anything.

"armor piercing arrows"

Is this something currently pending to buff up archery and AR?

That's what you're currently using -- if the ammo wasn't armor-piercing, super-class opponents wouldn't even notice you were shooting at them....

Please tell me since WHEN did a single 8 man spawn - half th map? :P

Hyperbole aside, it would represent a significant portion of a single-player map.

BUZZ Wrong, see i was in CoV Beta...ED was added in th e weak before it went live...it was /never/ intergrated with it

I was there too. It was turned on, maybe, in one of the later patches -- or maybe just the mouse-overs with the exact percentages was turned on, I don't remember now if there ever was a version of CoV without ED. (Positron was using ED-compliant slotting on his Mastermind powers even before the ED announcement.) In any case, the devs made it clear at the time that CoV had been designed with ED in mind. That means rolling back ED requires redesigning CoV at the least -- not gonna happen.

As for the several pages of blatherscite about ED -- it doesn't matter if the devs BSed us about its implementation (they did) or whether or not it was necessary (it wasn't). What matters is that it is here to stay, and people have to get over it or get out. They're not changing it back. They can't.

if by bad old days you mean when the server was chock full of people and teams were easy to find and the game was really fun to play- I say bring me back the "bad old days"

The servers are chock full of people, and teams are so easy to find that many of us find the sudden intrustion of the invite box without so much as a "hello" first quite annoying.

Essentially incorrect. MMORPGs can be a social activity but how fast you level and how fast I level are not related.

Yes, they are related. For one, how fast you level is how fast I can level, or how fast anyone can level, if he chooses to use the build and tactics you are using. Thus, we can't have a godmode class on the grounds that you being able to utterly destroy everything in sight doesn't affect anyone else -- because they can do it to, and history shows that they will. Then they will get bored and quit.

Secondly, how fast you can level affects that grouping dynamic you were complaining about above. If people using the latest powergaming method are rocketing into their 40s and everyone playing the game as intended is still slogging through the 20s, you will essentially end up with two separate communities. As powergaming becomes more popular, the regular gamers become more and more marginalized -- encouraging them to roll up FOTM builds themselves.

Wether folks PL, cheat, exploit, run macros, or hire folks to level their toon, has absolutely no effect on the way you have to play your game.

This is technically correct but empircally false, as history has shown.

Either the PC's are balanced hero and villain, or they're not. If they ARE balanced, then rolling ED back won't alter that balance, just the way people can slot, and how slotting choices affect balance.

First off, PvP balance isn't what's at stake. PvE balance is. If ED were rolled back without a massive redesign of CoV, villain ATs would be insanely overpowered with respect to the environment.

Second off, it's just plain wrong that rolling back ED won't affect PvP balance. Removing ED will not "multiply both sides by a constant" -- it will multiply both sides by a variety of wildly different numbers in different circumstances. It would effectively randomize PvP balance.

Oh, and the element of surprise, and the concept of the pre-emptive strike, are well-documented and effective battle strategies in the real world of military doctrine.

Which has little or nothing to do with how a game works, unless that game is a military simulation, which CoX most assuredly is not.

This is doublespeak of Orwellian magnitude. The boards exploded in a way NEVER SEEN BEFORE over ED.

Please, they explode in a way never seen before about everything. They just exploded about knockback.

Isn't this a sign that you might perhaps be a awesome MMO player, and therefore have a skewed idea on difficulty?

No, the awesome ones had 60s in a few days.

After 30 years of gaming I'm pretty good at it, but I outgrew powergaming for its own sake ages ago. I'm more of an Explorer type.

Snoozefest? For great players like you, perhaps. I find the game an awesome challenge on Heroic with my Invuln/EM Tank, and may not ever reach SO's. Of course, that toon only has one slot in armors, and two in attacks...

What are you slotting, Brawl and Rest?

Er, you just said the game was too easy? I don't get it, if you crave difficulty, why not play your PB on Invincible?

Because she gets defeated just fine on Tenacious. Two faceplants last night doing the Revenant Hero closer (and a close call involving a +1 Power Protector with a +1 7th Gen and a +1 Void for backup). Pushing the difficult up would be pointless -- I could probably take an Invincible mission if I moved slowly and burned a metric buttload of inspirations, but other than nailing the coonskin on the wall it would be a waste of time.

He has not said so post-Issue 6. In fact, I doubt he will in the future, either, since they are designing Mobs better, as you point out.

Again, remains to be seen.

Uninteresting? To you? Certainly. Of course, the fact remains that there are ways to make the game harder for you, but the game remains too hard for me.

Sorry, but if you can't handle CoH on Heroic you are doing something profoundly wrong.

I feel the need to point out that an All-Blaster team, under the current Issue, is sub-par.

If you mean an eight-man team of all Blasters, good. Such a team should be nothing but a race to the debt cap.

If you're talking about small teams (2-4 players) then you're just plain wrong. Unbalanced small teams can function just fine.

As you yourself point out two paragraphs later, unbalanced teams are now broken. How is this good?

Because if unbalanced large teams can function, properly balanced ones will tear the game apart.

This is not a compelling argument. There should be no balancing based on scarcity of an unlimited resource. The base game design was broken, the economy never made sense, and this is a Developer problem from the beginning. There isn't any way to blame Level 50's from acting this way...

I am not blaming the 50s; I am simply pointing out that the economy is borked beyond repair. The loss of inf from mob kills for those who wish to contribute Prestige to their SGs may require they make a few sacrifices in the 30s, but by the 40s they'll still find themselves making enough to get by. All of this is predicated on the notion that players should be able to afford all the enhancers they want, which is a very shakey premise to begin with.

Your response is, when stripped of its veneer, simply a matter of "This is what you are saying, because I SAY this is what you are saying. It doesn't matter that I have no support for this, or that you deny it, or that your posts show otherwise. I am right because I am me, and to doubt me is sheer folly."

Simply put, your posts don't show otherwise. Even your .sig belies your intentions.

I never said, nor implied, that tanks should be able to provide as much damage as scrappers or blasters,

...except for later in the thread, of course, where you want them to be able to alpha-strike anything out of existence.

nor do I believe that they should be able to handle entire (or half) maps.

...except for earlier in the thread, where you complain that you can't tank without healing. If you could tank group-sized spawns without healing, we'd be right back to the Bad Old Days.

(...)and instead focus on spitting baseless insults at people like me.

I haven't insulted you at all. I've pointed out the shortcomings in your arguments. As long as you insist on posting gems like this (I'll use the quote box for this one :-) ):

[ QUOTE ]
I'm gonna let you off with a warning on this one. But for future reference, you take potshots at me at your own risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

...I don't think I need to insult you.

Oh, and there IS no economy in CoH,

...because everyone has more money than they know what to do with, which is why the devs cut the supply.

your experience at level 50 isn't the "average"

You're right; I've heard of lots of 50s who ended up with more inf than I did.

you still didn't define what "ended up with" means

Xeno already covered this: what you have after you've upgraded your enhancers for the last time. At that point there is nothing left to buy, and any inf you have is essentially left over.

a three-man spawn is what you get when soloing, so there ARE no "2 other people

A three-man spawn is what you get when there are three people in your group. A three Minion spawn is what you get when you are soloing, at least on three out of five difficulty settings -- but if you're soloing, you won't get any +4's. Invincible only spawns +3s. Your original complaint called for "a +2-+4 three-man spawn", thus implying the former interpretation. I'd also have to say you don't have much chance of convincing anyone that even the weakest Tankers can't tank three Minions, post-SO, even at +3.

and most people would not, imface im sure the majority would not.

Of course not. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

and i still content i have enough trouble on HEROIC,

What are you doing, six-slotting Rest and Brawl?

In any case, who said anything about changing Heroic?

God its like the american edicatio nsystem except your not pandering to the lowest domininatior but the highest.

Speaking of the education system....

thats a falacy, yes their are other people on line but answer me this, in the real world when you are say commuting to work in your car you consider that a team activity when your the only one in the car?

Xeno's already covered this but it bears repeating. MMOs are a social activity. What one person does affects everyone in the society. If people can use exploits, design flaws or broken builds to trivialize content it doesn't just ruin the game for them as if they were cheating at solitaire. It affects the levelling curve. It affects grouping dynamics, both by affecting the curve and because the tactic in question will leak out and get used by groups. Even if everyone who ever used the tactic in question only ever played solo, its use would spread and trivialize the game for more and more people. That's exactly what's been happening to CoH.

victory has been repealed on groud of you beeing egotistical mine furrer :P

Godwin's Law reference. Or more properly, to the following convention that whomever makes the first comparison to Hitler or Nazism has lost.

a prfct solution that require you to make no mistakes, comand your full attention at all times and will broken no comprimizes isn't perfect by definition, its a second job that you pay for the priviage to do.

Whose definition is that?

You never programed a game have you, ok smarly if things are so simple i want you to provide in C++ the code scrip to account for gravity and groud collision. GO

Non sequitur, as we were discussing playing games and not designing them.

funny how i have a lvl 50 defender who cant solo at all

If that's an Empathy (or maybe TA) Defender you're excused; otherwise I'd have to wonder what the problem could be. The other Defenders are quite powerful, properly built.

Nope actuall hes says "I5 was over kill, i6 was kicking a wounded man"

Right: he wants to return to the Bad Old Days with a token reduction in power. T'ain't gonna happen.

hell we even located the problem (a bug in invincbilit ythat tripled its buff numbers

First I've heard of that.

actuall that is the definition of a tank in a MMO, the on e who takes the hit and has a few good ones of his own, often at a cost such as a movement penetry fro mthe heavy [censored] armor. Granit armo is the /clasic/ defintion of MMO tanking.

No, tank classes in MMOs pay for defense with comparatively weak offense. I haven't seen one yet other than CoH that assessed a movement penalty: who would care?

tanks were never popular, ever, why because folk liked bieing a fast kill or glass cannon better then something that takes roughly 38 levels to be good at combat.

Riiiiight, Fire Tankers were never a FOTM.

Actually their not, its been prooven, PROVEN that a invuln tanker can function on just passive and dull pain, when 6 sloted my invuln could not stad up without dull pain for more then 3 secods agains a common spawn of 6 cabal at lvl 32,

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.

and when i soloed a madness mage at +3 (who at mele range use just s/l) it took me /11/ minutes to down him and that was using DP and inspiration to last that long and iwas stil lbeing hammered.

Don't you think a +3 BOSS should represent a major threat?

Invulnd by nature NEED to herd one of theor poers REQUIRES them to have mobs on their back at alltimes.

That's kind of like the Dilbert strip in which the PHM announces they're going to pay the programmers a bonus for every bug they find....

Um actually since ED doesnt ADD anything it cant BREAK anything by remving it except leting folks 6 slot powers again.

ED did not ADD one thing to the game, not one.

Sorry, but you're just being obstinate here. ED is incorporated into the design of CoV, meaning that to roll back ED all of CoV would have to be redone.

I do not find the game to be too easy in its current incarnation and frankly I measure the game not buy the number but buy how much fun I am having.

Then what difference does it make if the enemies are +0 levels or +3 levels?

Seriously though, i've always found the "everyone else does it" argument a bit weak. This is probably because many of my favorite games have been those that deviated from genre norms.

Are wheels round because "everyone else does it" or because that's what works?

Just because MMOs are not physical things does not mean they are infinitely malleable. Games like CoH tend to follow similar patterns because that is what works. If your intent is to hold the player's interest with a PvE game, that game has to get more challenging as levels increase.

In WoW (which is not a difficult game, but people often criticize it for adds being fatal when soloing), my lower level characters can typically solo stuff up to a level or two higher with a bit of difficulty, but my upper level characters can solo multiple equal-level enemies or handle elites or normal enemies that are 4-5 levels higher.


WoW is a PvP game; its PvE game only exists to build characters for PvP.

I bought WoW the day it came out in November '04. I quit in the early days of January '05 with a 60 Hunter and 42 Rogue because the PvE game was too easy, except for EQ-style grinding in instances hoping for the 1% chance something would drop that would improve my character and someone else didn't win the roll for it. After five months of 2-5 Hate raids a week for Earthcaller I've had my fill of that. And I'd rather stab out my eye with a salad fork than get involved with PvP.

That would break the difficulty scaling and do so arbitrarily.

Obviously I would be in favor of reworking the entire system. The current system is nothing but a kluge intended to keep the game from becoming a total snoozefest.

It would also deprive people who try to push the limits of the ability to run invincible eight-person missions (with all eight in the mission defeating stuff), something that should be possible with teamwork and good builds.

They would certainly be free to try. They might even succeed.

It doesn't. Unyielding can easily provide more xp faster, depending on what your build is best at handling.

I said "more XP", not "best XP". Fighting on Invincible, if you can handle it, is more productive than fighting on Heroic. I am well aware that Unyielding is better; that's why almost all my characters fight on it post-SO. (I think it's hilarious that my oh-so-mighty "tank mage" PB doesn't dare raise the difficulty past Tenacious because +2 Voids will murder her.)

I don't think we've seen any indication that the devs don't want anyone to be able to solo invincible.

Res ipsa loquitur. The game is getting harder at the high end, both because of nerfs and because of the introduction of more difficult enemies (particularly in CoV). Whether or not that progression continues remains to be seen.

Just because you SAY it's "too easy" doesn't make it so.

I am far from the only person to point out that the game is too easy. The devs themselves have done so in these forums. I heard Mr. Emmert himself say it in person at one of the East Coast appearances.

There are various options with which you can make the game more difficult, even if the difficulty slider is already on the highest setting, such as not selecting the most effective powers, not slotting them, or slotting them with TO's or DO's instead of SO's, as well as going up against enemies best suited to kick your butt.

This brings us back to: games that only work if the player refrains from putting "X" in the center square are inherently uninteresting. Every player is entitled to play at the best of his ability and find the game challenging when he does so. Games that fail this criterion are conquered, defeated, unworthy of continued play.

I'd like you to quote the post where I said that.

You know perfectly well that discussion on I5 and I6 has long since scrolled off the forums. But this is not the first time we've met and my memory is longer than the software's. (For that matter, the bulk of your choice comments the last time around were purged by the moderators.)

Words mean things.

Words mean many things. A "tank" is also something you put gasoline in; by that metric CoH Tankers are an abysmal failure as they hold no gasoline.

In MMOs, the word "tank" is jargonized. It means a defensive character with (comparatively) low offense whose primary function is to absorb damage -- a meat shield. That's exactly what CoH's Tankers are. You don't want them to be meat shields; you want them to be nigh-indestructible engines of carnage. Well, you can't have that, because history has shown that if you make an MMO class with both high offense and high defense it will ruin your game.

Don't presume to tell me what I know so that you don't have to give anything resembling a substantive reply.

I am merely pointing out the emperor's lack of clothing. You are equivocating, and you know it.

Note that infantry, air support, intell, and so forth can all be effective in their own element without tanks, as well, but when all are used together, the synergy makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

But that's not what you want. You don't want "synergy". You don't want to need a Defender backing you up and Scrappers or Blasters providing the real offense.

Or are you claiming that, before I5 and I6, there WERE no other AT's being played?

Of course there were. MMO players are a diverse lot; many will play weaker characters types out of sheer orneriness if nothing else. But people were gravitating towards the FOTM builds, and as long as a game has such builds the players always have and always will flock to them. FWIW, I've noticed as I've been levelling up my alts recently that the current crop of new characters is a lot more diverse than I've seen in the past.

Outgoing damage, which kills your enemy quickly, is the best way to mitigate INCOMING damage. That is, if your enemy is dead, they can't hurt you anymore.

There are a few Blasters who would like to speak with you about this principle.

The tanker's problem is he can't kill ANYTHING quickly nor can he survive for long anymore.

Tankers aren't supposed to kill things quickly; that's what the rest of their group is for. The group is also supposed to help keep him alive. Buffs, debuffs and healing are supposed to matter. That means a Tanker without such support can't expect to walk up to a spawn intended for an entire group and let it all hit him, confident of survival.

Now, if there are Tanker builds that even with such support can't perform their function, that is a legitimate concern. I am perfectly willing to concede that this may be the case with Invulnerability Tankers, and perhaps others (I don't have much experience with Ice Tankers). The solution, though, is to improve those builds so they can function with support, not to the point where they can function without it.

Again, where did I say that? I want them to be able to withstand a +2 - +4 3-man spawn as well as the supposedly "squishie" classes can.

And what are the other two players doing while the Tanker is taking all that fire?

Ummm...there hasn't BEEN any progress since ED, and once again you've made a statement with no supporting arguments.

The entirety of CoV is "progress since ED"; every CoV power and AT was designed with ED in mind. If ED were rescinded, CoV would have to be redesigned in toto, which is (to put it mildly) logistically infeasable.

Likewise, there have been changes on the CoH side that would need to be re-examined if ED were rescinded; consult the patch notes if you need a list. Additionally, all future as-yet-unreleased development would need to be scrapped and restarted. ED is a done deal and it's here to stay. Get over it.

If I take the time to respond to you, give me the same courtesy, or don't bother to respond at all.

I prefer digest-style replies to spamming the topic with multiple posts. I only used multiples above because I missed a few things. I've been too busy playing the game to argue about it. You'll simply have to cope.

Oh, and one other reason for digesting is that I usually make it a point to reply to ideas rather than people -- but in your case I've made an exception.

And for God's sake, learn to use the "quote" button in your posts.

I prefer a different style; deal with it. Those boxes are ugly. Oh, and yes, I've ignored the obvious ad hominems and unsupported rhetoric.

1) Again, you start your response with a conclusion: "this is how MMO's work". Care to support that?

No, I have neither the time nor the inclination to recapitulate the entire history of mud/MMO development for you.

2) Even if it IS how MOST MMO's work, this one was touted specifically as a solo-friendly MMO without the "grind" of the usual MMO.

That does not mean it should be a cake walk.

At the aforementioned public appearance, Mr. Emmert said (paraphrased from memory) "sales of the game have remained strong, but subscriptions aren't going up. What does that mean? It means we're not retaining customers. Why? Because the game is too easy -- it's a joke, it's a snoozefest." Simply put, the empircal data, not just from CoH but from the entire history of the field, suggests that the model of play you advocate doesn't work.

I gave a great deal of support in my statement. You gave none in yours. I win.

You gave a bunch of numbers you pulled out of your nethers. There's just one problem: your conclusion is contrary to the experiences of many players, myself among them. While it is true that the loss of inf from mob defeats and such is significant, it does not empirically present a crippling loss.

No, they didn't. I received XP for clicking a glowie in a mission just today. So you're wrong. Again.

Glowies in my missions that used to award XP did not, as the patch notes said. I expect it's certainly possible that they missed a few, or that missions allocated before the patch might still function under the old rules.

Again, where are you getting this info from? Who told you that the "average" level 50 "ended up" (whatever that means) with "about 20 million extra influence"?

That's what mine ended up with.

A level 50 is at the end-game. It was fun "giving away" influence to people with cool character bios and great costumes, and I don't mean in Atlas Park.

It may be "fun" but it was crocking the economy something wicked, to the point where they had to invent a whole new economy for base construction because there was no way to make the old one make sense.

So, technically speaking, a fully decked out hero with even-con SO's SHOULD be able to beat +2- +3 minions at the same risk level as a lvl 5 with TRAINING enhancements fighting those 3 even-cons.

Otherwise, all you've been doing for 50 levels is getting steadily wimpier, not to mention less useful in all ways to your SG.

Which is how MMOs work -- the mobs gain power faster than the players. The fac that this is a superhero game does not trump that principle.

And at level 50 (level 47, really) you don't need inf any more, so at the end of your career there is nothing stopping you from going to SG mode full-time, even if you were right about it crippling your income, which you aren't. (Losing inf from mob defeats is a significant but not crippling loss. )

The only real reason why a +2 Minion shouldn't be able to wench-slap a PC around is because of the way grouping works. In order to allow some wiggle room in terms of who can group with whom, level-wise, +2 mobs have to be defeatable with good play. That does not necessarily mean they have to represent as much threat to a post-SO player as a +0 represents to a newbie.

How does this coincide with Statesman's comment that at higher levels, three +3 minions (normal invincible spawn) = 1 hero?

It means Invincible needs to spawn higher cons, or (as some have suggested in the past) needs to promote mobs up a rank (spawning LTs instead of Minions, and so on), or in some other way be more difficult than it currently is.

The highest difficulty setting shouldn't just mean "yay, more XP!"

AFAIK, moving the line in the post SO game to three +2 or +3 Minions instead of +0s was a concession on the devs' part because the amount of nerfing needed to restore balance to the intended level was seen as prohibitive. I5 and I6 were clearly intended to push the game's balance back in the direction of the intended level, if not all the way back to it, and players should not be surprised if such efforts continue.

Yeah, because that sounds like SO much fun...

I'd at least try it, and I'm sure lots of others would too. Build a mountain, and people will try to climb it because it's there.

Uh, no, because they are PAYING to play a game where they can play a SUPERHERO, not part of a Cirque Du Soleil acrobatics troupe fighting crime on their night off.

That's got nothing to do with the issue. Just because it's a superhero game doesn't mean it should be mind-numbingly easy even at the highest difficulty setting.

Where in HELL do people get off dictating to others how they can play the game when those others are playing it ALONE?

No one plays this game alone, even if they solo all the time.

Jesus CHRIST, what is this, Nazi Germany?!?!

I WIN!

As for "perfect builds", in terms of the games that require and encourage them, and the attitude which seeks to create them, both are the producst of lazy minds which cannot be bothered to seek creative solutions to problems.

There is no need for a creative solution to a problem when a perfect solution exists. Games that only function so long as the player refrains from putting "X" in the center square are inherently uninteresting.

This is the Engineer's mindset which sees every aspect of every problem as quanitifable in mere numbers.

All problems are quantifiable in mere numbers. It's just that in RL, we usually don't know the numbers. Or the equations, and they'd probably be too complex to deal with at that level anyway. Games, though, are mathematical structures and nothing else and can (and should) be dealt with as such.

You "should" read entire paragraphs, to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I did.

Specifically, then, I am referring to the balance within the game AS IT CURRENTLY EXISTS, not as you would have it be at some mythical, far off time and place.

I am quite aware of that. I am merely pointing out that, your caterwauling notwithstanding, the game is still too easy.

THis is the continuation of that thought. Quite clearly, I didn't say that a change was unnecessary, only that the change made was OVERKILL.

But now you are being disingenuous, as you argued quite vociferously against both the I5 and I6 changes, and you've made it perfectly clear that you want the game to let you throw mobs around with no chance of defeat.

The tank is, as the name would suggest, supposed to be the heavy armor with impressive guns of the group.

That is not what "tank" means in MMOs, including this one, and you know it.

Not the artillery with no defense (blaster), or the support team (defender), or intel (controller), or infantry (scrapper), but the TANK!

And who would play any of the other ATs, if Tankers were what you want them to be? The simple fact is that if you want Blaster or Scrapper offense, you'll have to live with the corresponding level of defense.

Yes, each AT should be able to contribute to the group, but the tank shouldn't be one of the least dangerous, easiest to knock down classes.

Which they are not. Even poor beleagured Invulnerabilty Tankers are more impressive, defensively, than Scrappers, never mind the squishies. (Invulnerability Scrappers on the other hand are now lagging that particular pack.)

Maybe there's a happy medium in there somewhere where the tanks can't herd an entire map and survive, but can solo at least as well as a controller or a scraper or a blaster.

Of course. But your idea of that "happy medium" is to restrict the Tanker to herding only half the entire map instead of all of it.

First you misquote me,or at least quote me out of context, then you agree with me, then you say I was wrong. For God's sake, man, pull it together. You just admitted I was right, then argued with yourself.

No, I merely conceded that Invulnerability was reduced too much, specifically in its resists to elemental and energy damage types. That is a far cry from agreeing that Tankers should be "the colossus of the game"...the game should not and must not have a "colossus".

What??!! How do you figure that? Because to change one's mind is to show weakness? The hyenas will pounce if they sense the pack leader wavering?

No, because once you've made a fundamental change to a complex system and proceeded from that point, reversing the change doesn't fix the problems it created: it compounds them. Rolling back ED would break all the changes made to the game since its introduction -- including all of CoV. It would be a disaster. Like it or not, ED was a committed move that can't be taken back.

Gotta Get a Goin' -- New Christy Minstrels
Take Me To The River -- Al Green, guest starring B.B. King among others
Solitude Standing -- Suzanne Vega
And She Was -- Talking Heads
In the Groove -- Kim Waters
Robot Hell -- from Futurama
Right Here, Right Now -- David Benoit
You Can't Lose a Broken Heart -- Louis Armstrong w. Billie Holliday
The Midnight Special -- Creedence Clearwater Revival
Puff the Magic Dragon -- Peter, Paul and Mary

The invincible setting, while difficult for some (like my rad/rad defender), should still be do-able with smart play and smart builds for most, if not all, of the AT's and powersets in the game.

No, it shouldn't. It should completely and utterly kick your assets. Invincible missions should make people cry. A regular (not outlevelled) Invincible mission should only be completable by players (solo or grouped) with the best possible builds of the strongest ATs using perfect tactics, heavy inspiration usage and massive downtime. Every mistake, no matter how trivial, should be terminal. The downtime should be sufficient to make the rate of XP gain a total loss. The ability of a build to consistently solo an Invincible mission at an acceptable speed should be considered prima facie evidence that the build is overpowered and needs nerfing.

The setting should only exist for bragging rights and to pump up outlevelled missions.

The tanker used to be solo-able on that difficulty level for the IN-experienced player, once he was slotted up and had a basic idea of how to use his powers, at least with MOST powersets.

Don't you think there's something wrong when inexperienced players can solo on the game's highest difficulty setting?

You are supposed to be the damage soaker, the strongman, the colossus of the game.

You're not. Not even close. You're the meat shield, and then only if you have a good defender watching your back.

Tankers are a group support class and should expect to require a group to function at peak efficiency.

At least, that's been my experience, with my inv/ss tank.

I will concede that they went overboard with the Invul nerfs in I5, and that was compounded by ED. But where Invul needs to be is still nowhere near where it was and nowhere near where you want it to be.

ED, itself, was a bad idea; they used a Patriot missile to shoot down a mosquito. But now that it's done, the only thing that could possibly compound the error would be to reverse it.