uberschveinen

If we're getting serious about just bypassing NCsoft entirely, you've got my suport. I'm an international lawyer, so not much use in IP stuff, but I can call in a favour or two for the scud work of figuring out how to protect the project.

Depending on where you incorporate the entity, you'd be surprised at what you can just do and get away with. There are some countries out there that we'd be able to get away with literally hijacking the game code and reconstructing it word-for-word.

I'd prefer a less-extreme option, of course. Reverse-engineering a similar game is much more defensible, and won't require funding an office in Kazakhstan. Almaty has low start-up costs, strong internet support in the major business district, and the traditional -stan country's 'go to hell' attitude towards legal attacks on its businesses.

NCsoft will not make any arrangement to keep any form of City of Heroes running. It's that stark and that simple.

If this was a business decision, made on the grounds of making more money per year, then they would be open to negotiation. Selling a property is more valuable than torpedoing it. But it isn't. CoX is still profitable. Not hugely, but profit is profit. And it's not like they can 'use the talent elsewhere', as they've kicked them all out. From the standpoint of business interest, this decision is stupid.

This is an executive decision. It's based on what's best for the executives in charge, and that is not at all the same thing as what's good for the business.

Here's what's happened and what will happen.

NCsoft reported lower quarterly earnings. There are reasons for this; obvious ones. Like making a big-game title that has reported all its costs but none of its profits. But an executive has to justify themselves to a board. And if you just say 'ignore the losses, we'll make money' on a game you didn't greenlight, you don't get to take any credit.

So they've looked for a game they can justify cancelling. An old game that went F2P is a perfect target. Not because it's unprofitable, but because you can easily pretend that it was the problem. They kill the game, and talk about how they've taken decisive actiopn to save profitys. And then when the profits of the huge new game come in, they can use their action to try and take credit for the profit.

This action has been made so some executive can spin a story of their decisive action saving the company lots of money and making it even more, so they can get a higher salary in the next job. It has been made solely for this purpose. It serves no other purpose. It does nothing good for the company on any level, and in fact has cut off a small but reliable revenue stream.

And that is why they will not sell the IP.

As soon as they sell the IP, they will have to concede that it is still valuable. As soon as they sell the IP in a movement initiated by the players, they seem reactionary and foolish for having not done that themselves. If they do not torpedo the IP, it will be tantamount to admitting that their actions were those of sociopathic greed.

Executive business is the most egotistical level of industry in the world, by orders of magnitude, and would rather literally destroy itself than concede being wrong. And that is exactly what they will do here.

But there IS plenty of big damned heroes moments, even in the darker arcs.

In the Indigo/Crimson plots, you discover the secret conspiracy they've killed thousands to keep quiet and publicise it to the world, breaking the cover of crucial members and some of the reins they hold over the government, save hundreds of people from their crimes by crippling their organisation in Paragon, and when the ***-kicking you hand them makes them go Full Retard and try to blow up the city, you save it too.

In the Portal Corporation arcs, you singlehandedly defeat an ENTIRE DIMENSION and its invading armies.

In the RWZ super-arc, you reveal the truth behind a plot that brought humanity on the edge of annihilation, save an alien species from committing genocide because of a simple mistake, save the last (at the time) surviving members of the greatest team of heroes the world had ever known after they've been behind enemy lines or brainwashed for a decade, and SAVE THE WORLD (POSSIBLY TWO).

And these are the 'grey' arcs.

What I want to know is how could it me MORE heroic without it being just silly?

Probably a good thing. Dopplegangers can still have it, and each tiem I've fought mine it basically destroyed everything. Arc of Destruction just instantly killed me each time it hit. So, evidently, there's tweaking to be done.

The problem with Dual Pistols is that it's a gimmick set whose gimmick contributes nothing to the set. You'll spend almost all of the game using plain ammo, and even when you do swap it up, you'll only use Incendiary. It's also a weak AoE set until 33, when you can slot Hail of Bullets. The biggest problem is that because it has no distinct gimmick you can build around early, unless you have a strong secondary you will have a miserable time levelling it up. If you take Thermal or Pain particularly your solo play will just be painful.

Given they operate outside of the U.S. superhero program, and that they are both engaged as members of an earth-is-screwed-shut-up-and-take-our-mandate crisis paramilitary unit under the UN Security Council's Ch. VII powers, it'd be more surprising if they WERE registered.

I turn on bosses as soon as possible, because it's just not City of Heroes without them. That means as soon as I get status protection for melee, and usually level 12 for squishies, sometimes earlier. Having the occasionalhard target that challenges you is important for me to enjoy the game, because jus trampling everytyhing is really tedious in short order.

I know you're sick of /Dark, but Assault Rifle/Dark is basically a small-scale superweapon. The synergies are almost alarming. You have a crapload of extremely powerful cones, and hey, here's this huge AoE slow and resistance debuff. Ignite is a gruseomely powerful power, and with your own holds and the pet, you can hold up-levelled bosses in the Circle of Death. The set is fully-functional the moment you get Flamethrower at 18, and from there only gets more powerful. As someone who despises how weak corruptors always feel to me, this one actually feels like one of my mroe devastating characters. Weak, but astoundingly destructive.

HIP POUCHES

HIIIIIP POOOOUCHES

I just don't even care about anything else any more. I WANT HIP POUCHES.

I'm against ruthless farmers because they AREN'T keeping to themselves. If I never saw them and never even knew they existed I'd not even care, but there have been at least eight different ways in which farming have caused problems for conventional players. Architect is one of the more visible examples, because farmers are actively and visibly making it harder for the system to be used as intended.

Farmers are making it more difficult for AE users intending to play stories to find stories. This is an incontestable fact.

Farmers are causing the implementation of caps, changes, and 'fixes' that take away options from arc crafters intending to use the system as intended. This is an incontestable fact.

Some especially idiotic farmers are downrating good arcs because they are personally too stupid to identify LONG - STORY HEAVY - ACTUALLY HAS DIALOGUE IN THE INTRO as NOT A FARM and for some reason I don't understand aren't happy to play the existing farms. This is very likely true.

The fact that SOME arcs are getting Hall of Fame means that the developers think the system is working, when it demonstrably isn't. These are farm arcs uprated by farmers beyond what they deserve according to the intended use of the system. This is arguable.

The sheer overuse of the system by farmers has created the impression amongst the bets part of the playerbase that it is only for farming. This is not only ensuring that the intended use of the system is slowly choked off for lack of new players, but also ensuring that the developers aren't pressured to fix the manifold serious problems in AE. This can't be actively proven but it's entirely reasonable to assume.

Do you see that there are real and significant problems in AE that are caused by, attributable to, exacerbated by, or overshadowed by the notorious use of the system for farmers? You can't ignore these issues away. Farmers are using the system in a way outside its explicitly-stated intended use to the cost of the effectiveness of the system and the cost of those attempting to use it as intended. You have no moral position or self-righteousness to claim here. The farmers are in the wrong, and the only variable is how wrong. Any attempt to blame someone else requires to you off your own personal decisions to farm as somehow someone else's fault. That the developers do not stop you makes you behaviour accepted, not acceptable. It certainly doesn't validate the self-righteousness you have in coming onto the board and blaming the few legitimate authors left for being ruthlessly griefed.

To make it clear: I have nothing inherent against farming. It's a playstyle decision. Not one I understand, but that's immaterial. As far as I'm concerned they can farm all day and night and I won't care AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T AFFECT ME. And right now, it IS. It is SERIOUSLY affecting a part of the game that I have a personal investment in. So I'm going to continue to stand against farming in AE until it stops affecting me.

The point of the mobs that stop showing up as you level is that you've moved entirely beyond them. At level 50, the enemy groups you face are the elite of the villain world, and their missiosn generally pose a real threat to entire cities and occasionally threaten the entire world. The low-level street thugs, organised crime figures, and rotting zombies are so far below you that they aren't worth your time. You're leaving them for the smaller heroes to handle, because you have more significant threats to face.

You don't send TAG-EAST to handle a school hostage situation, because at the least it's a waste of money compared to a police response team, and at the worst while they're busy there a major terrorist strike takes place that you could have otherwise stopped. Your hero can save the world now, and with the number of world-ending threats in the CoH setting, every time you do something that ISN'T saving the world, you're putting it at risk.

OR it's just like the way it is here; expensive, risky, and prone to overload such that only particular and particularly valuable individuals have access at all. You no more give every conscript a heinously valuable piece of limited-infrastructure lifesaving equipment than you send CSAR for every lost soldier.

AR is already a hellishly devastating set, thanks to two fantastic cone powers and Ignite. It doesn't NEED any more damage.

My mostly-human AR corruptor isn't an Incarnate thematically, but I've still chosen the powers, and just refluffed them. Spiritual Core Paragon is an incredibly potent combat drug, and I turn it on only for Icontent to represent that. Pyronic Judgment is an intense artillery barrage of hyperthermic warheads, designed to do inflict catastrophic harm to even the most potent foe. IDF Lore is her calling on a friend from her former unit to help. Rebirth Destiny is a cloud of surgical nanites capable of instantly healing most wounds at substantial risk. Reactive Interface is just high-intensity incendiary rounds.

This character's not an incarnate, and what little inhuman power she has hasn't increased. Most of her talent still comes from just being an extremely good soldier. It's just that she's able to go up against Incarnate-level threats because she has a vast array of powerful tools, and has these tools because she goes up against Incarnate-level content.

If you want to play X character, why are you pursuing something that is mutually exclusive with the character concept? Either you have the unstoppable power of a pseudodeific creature, or you are a street-level dude. Hell, why are you AT level fifty if you want to be a street fighty dude? Past level 35 the enemies you face and the challenges presented are beyond anything street-fighty-dude should be capable of unless he begins to become something else than a street-fighty-dude.

Either your concept is more important, or your in-game efficiency at killing is more important. These two are mutually exclusive, and will remain mutually exclusive no matter what developer decisions are made, short of radically changing the game to weaken everyone around you so that you can still be street-fighty-dude and not get upset about not being at the same level of power as Baron Deus von Machina and his dimension-swallowing Omnispecs.

Either you want godlike power or you don't. This is your problem to resolve, not the developers.

Doesn't bother me that there's no rolling kill-teams. Last time I wanted some badges, I put together a team to go hunt them, and within the space of two hours had a rolling group that had tracked down and defeated every single open-spawn GM on Blueside and was about to go Red before the server shut down.

You can still go get your GMs. You just need patience, and a sense of salesmanship for your recruiting.

Still all for extras to make GM combat a thing people WANT to do, but the problem is not as distinct as you imagine.

I like the autohit damage. It's different, difficult, and ACTUALLY REQUIRES YOU TO PAY ATTENTION, unlike almost all of the rest of the game. Plus, it strongly encourages teamwork and preparedness.

You're not MEANT to spam the trials. You're meant to play the content the way you did before, and look into the Trials as pleases you sand stop when bored. It's like complaining that your game console is boring because it only comes with one game, when you're refusing to play the thousands of others in your collection.

I like Keyes because it's fun. Fun is the sole reward you get out of gaming at all. Some people just have more fun playing a challenging and complex task than in the ephemeral sense of value that comes from getting a prize that doesn't actually exist.

I'd liek it if the drops were commensurate, but I don't care that much if they aren't. I'm all for Keyes always dropping a Rare or Very Rare, to stop the explosion in WE WANT MORE THREADS of straight-up increases, but to still give it a useful purpose. Likewise, Lambda should drop at least Uncommons.

I always assumed it was one of those ironic Supervillain moments of smartarsery.

"Okay, so defeat the Security Team and we're in? Easy!"
"GOLIATH WARWALKER ONLINE."
"...ah."

Why? It's not like Keyes is actually difficult. I can scrounge up groups in the dead of the AM and still easily win it. The only time it goes wrong is if you have at least eight idiots, nobody who knows how to play it, nobody who knows how to call things, or at least four griefers. The fact that people are complaining about the difficulty is just evidence of how sad some people are in this game. Just because it's a really easy game almost all the time doesn't mean the few precious moments that actually give some challenge and require basic thought should be dropped down to stupid mode.

The only thing I would see changed about Keyes, and to a lesser extent Lambda, is the rewards. Keyes ought to offer much better rewards considering the much higher time investment in starting it and running it, and so should Lambda. I would think it fair if Keyes always gave at least a Rare drop, and Lambda always gave at least an Uncommon drop. That way you're not upsetting the legions who will complain when their precious Astral farm BAFs are taken away, but still providing some reason for peopel to want the others save the novelty and the Empyreans.

Ion Judgment does the broadest damage, because of its jumps. It's the Farmer's Choice.

Pyronic Core does the most flat damage, because it has DoT ticks. Not that substantial, but an extra hundred damage over the 500 for my Brute at least.

All the others do identical damage, with chances to crit in core. The crits are unlikely and not Scrapper-style, so they don't add that much. Pyronic Core does that damage all the time. The differences are trivial, as are most threats once you hit Incarnate level, so just pick the 'coolest' or best for your character. I like Pyronic Core because it looks awesome, and I've made it look like everything from a Micronuke to a gigantic blood explosion on my characters.

The +3 you see below their name doesn't actually apply. It's just information.

You're forgetting the high-mag AoE Stun as the entire mob just stares at the Tanker trying to mentally process this turn of events.