seebs

For what it's worth... I hate weather. If I could have turned it off in my previous MMO, I would have. Yeah, it can be immersive... or it can slow my frame rate and make it hard to see. One of these can be fun, but not always. If I had to choose between weather I couldn't turn off and no weather, I'd prefer no weather. Weather you can turn off doesn't help immersion much.

I really do like TP foe when I take it. Very nice for splitting groups up when you can't steamroll.

And I'm pretty sure facing affects perception -- people seem less likely to notice a friend disappearing if the friend is behind them.

The targeting issue hadn't even occurred to me! I came here from another game, where you could indeed self-buff.

I'm not sure how much of a balance issue it would be to let people buff themselves with some of these things; on a full team, it's pretty marginal, but on a small team, it might seem fairly significant. I am not sure how much, if any, nerf would be needed to current team performance to balance it; I'd guess it'd be fairly trivial, though, honestly. I'd think the need to click so many times would totally cover that.

I'm sort of wondering whether it might be smoother if the buffs were slightly weaker, but could be used on self also. As is, the sets with a lot of ally-only powers end up being effectively unavailable to me, since I rely on soloing a fair bit of the time. So they look really fun, but I can't actually make a playable character using them. Or at least, not one that will be as viable as a character using one of the sets that affects self also.

Nearly all my flying characters have hover with a Kismet +6% accuracy proc in it. I don't leave hover. The end drain from fly is a big deal to me still (most of my characters are lower level, and don't have enough endredux or stamina to make up for it), and I find the control of hover much superior.

I find it strongly anti-compelling when a buff set has powers that you can't use on yourself, only on teammates. I do a fair bit of soloing, so such a set at least gives the impression of being a very poor choice.

What's the rationale behind power designs that rely on this? I never quite got it.

In another game, there was a fascinating design decision. Early on, they designed the game so you got reduced XP after playing for a while. People hated this.

So they doubled all the XP requirements, and gave you an XP bonus when you hadn't been playing much recently.

People loved this.

Note: There was NO mechanical difference at all. There was no combination of when you killed stuff and what you killed which levelled you faster or slower after the change. None. It was identical to the last decimal place. But it was a bonus.

IMHO, ED was a "bad thing" because it was a huge nerf. However, if the system had just been designed that way to begin with, I don't think it would have been an objectively bad design. The problem wasn't that the resulting game was unplayable; it was that the game was no longer playable in the way it had been before.

FWIW, I came here late -- started in July of this year. From my point of view, the game is pretty cool. I came in to find lots of choices, a viable (if a bit weird) marketplace, an insane variety of options and customization choices, and so on. So maybe it took them a while to get here, but this is a Grade A experience now. The only thing I've found frustrating to the point where it prevents me from playing some characters is the Fitness Tax. Which will be fixed "soon".

I do a lot with things under/up-to level 25. Those things work off the 10-25 salvage. (Some level 25 recipes use 25-40 salvage, some use 10-25 salvage.) They're cheap to craft. Most of them are cheap.

SO: About 34% enhancement, give or take.
Level 15 IO: 19.2%
Level 15 dual-aspect IO: 24%
Level 15 triple-aspect IO: 28.8%
Level 20 IO: 25.6%
Level 20 dual-aspect IO: 32%
Level 20 triple-aspect IO: 38.4%

What this means to me: If I frankenslot level 20 IOs, at level 17, I am probably getting roughly the same bonuses I would get from SOs at 22. But wait! I also get some set bonuses. Things like 10% regeneration, 2-4% recovery. Global accuracy and recharge. By level 22, my frankenslotted IOs might be giving me 20-30% global accuracy, 5-15% global recharge, 20% regeneration... It adds up.

And yes, Kismet +6% for the win. Love it love it love it.

Yeah, it takes me an hour or so of futzing with the market to get those bonuses. Then I'm done; if I never put in another IO, my character has SO-level enhancements, give or take, on all those crucial low-level powers. I may even have enough global accuracy that, with my kismet 6%, I don't even need accuracy in most powers to have a consistent 95% chance to hit even-con targets. Enough endredux and +recovery that I might be able to skip Stamina and not totally lose my chance to succeed.

I'd agree that both PvP and the market are prone to strange emergent patterns, but I don't think that makes the market like PvP, any more than the market is like AE.

Cool example:

Go around explaining to people how the whole us-vs-them thing is harmful. Teach them ways to recondition their brains to reduce it or replace it with an everyone-is-us way of thinking. You can sorta pull this off; it can be done, at least in part, and people who start doing it are super happy.

So they tell other people about it.

Within two generations, you have a group of people who are devoted to the name they picked for their way of thinking about "rejecting the concept of us vs. them", and who fear and despise people who do not associate with that name.

You can't really beat this one permanently. You can improve things, somewhat, and if you work hard at recognizing it and confronting it, you can have a much better time of things.

It sounds more like enjoying raiding, but wanting to have the best raid gear so you can go do cooking dailies. :P

Okay, I was too lazy to go check, but if it's real, I'll go get it.

I thought they never had yellows, guess I was wrong. ETA: Sure enough, there it is.

Can that be bought for one a-merit? I thought res/def was a yellow, and thus not available for a-merits at all.