soft cap obsession

I'd like more events similar to the mothership raid and less like Hami. Mostly because the Rikti Raid is easier to setup and run. Yes, I'm a lazy gamer at times.

But this has nothing to do with your earlier post about players with SOs being forced out of "end game content."

SO slotted players can easily take part in Mothership Raids and Hami Raids, and it's us Players that force this mindset of "must have IOs to compete" and not the developed content.

Lastly, skill is the best attribute to buffing your character. No amount of IOs will help a player that is terrible, non-team oriented or not paying attention. This last statement has less to do with the topic at hand and more to do with the coffee taking over my fingers.

Ahhhhh, yep.

Also, tt may be an obsession on this board, but as far as the total player population, it is not.

The IO set bonus stuff keeps the game interesting for the hardcore gaming types (i.e. Min/Maxers) who would otherwise move on to the next challenge/game to master.

I don't think it effects the playability of the overall game. Masters runs are still tough to accomplish with PUGs.

Like Hami...not Hami.

I'm expecting a raid for multiple groups, but not something that is as easy as Hami. If you know the strategy and can SOMETIMES pay attention, then you can be successful on Hami. As for the Rikti Raid, it's barely even deserves to be called a raid. It's more like a public mission. It's just mowing down mobs with effectively a lot of HP/damage because they're higher level and tend towards bosses/EBs.

What I'm thinking of is raids that will challenge soft-capped characters. And honestly based on the statements of the devs, that's what I expect. If the endgame content is just more mowing down mobs who the purple patch makes harder, then I think the devs will have failed and failed badly at creating an endgame.

As for skill, I would agree skill is very important. But a soft-capped noob is going to survive more than a veteran playing a similar character in SOs. Take my Fire/Shield scrapper for instance. Shield is so awesome because soft-capped, it's damage buffs and attacks make it an absolute beast of a set. Without that soft-cap, it's not nearly as survivable.

I'm a good player, I've handled some of the games greatest challenges. But I could give my soft-capped Fire/Shield to almost any player and they're going to do OK, probably pretty well.

Depends. Are they running at the same difficulty you were or do you tone it down for them?

Ultimately, this is merely academic and doesn't matter. The devs of this game know the amount of players that invest in Set IOs vs. Common IOs/SOs, and I would wager 100 mil inf that Common IOs/SOs outweight Set IO players nearly 2 to 1.

They aren't going to create content that forces players to get the "gear" they need in order to compete. That's for other games and one of the reasons players dislike those other games.

I can't help feeling like you're saying two opposed things here. Basically, there are two fundamental ways they can make a fight harder: require special tactics, or make the numbers bigger. The Hamidon raid requires specialized tactics, and as you say, once you've got the tactics together a fight like that isn't hard anymore. Bigger numbers is "mowing down purple-patched mobs", which you say you also don't want. What kind of challenge do you want?

As an aside, I think a consequence of this is that specialized-tactics fights are the only reasonable way they can possibly "challenge soft-capped characters" and still be remotely playable for non-bleeding-edge players. For all that people are saying "oh, softcapped characters aren't all that" to try to deflect accusations of overpower, a softcapped character without DDR is still about as surviveable as an SO'd character with it on top of whatever the actual AT/set features of the softcapped character are.

I don't really think that's true. I am beta testing the expansion to Everquest II right now so I've had an opportunity to consider the commitment involved in creating a very powerful character.

Here, merits have lowered the barrier to entry for having a very powerful character so much that people can have stables of them. I have four soft-capped character, and many more with similar levels of IO goodness. None of these took more than a couple of weeks of play past level 50. Some went into level 50 already about as strong as I wanted them.

By contrast, in other games, the timesink of earning gear can take many months even after the introduction of token systems.

Actually I want a combination of both. Scripted encounters with the kind of gear and skill checks so that the content isn't consumed immediately. Not saying I'm going to get it, just that I think that there's going to be little point to calling this "endgame" content if it isn't anymore difficult than what you're doing from 1-50.

I remember that argument being used against inventions. Inventions still happened. I don't think it's unreasonable for there to be a place where you can really stress those bleeding edge builds other than soloers testing themselves against group challenges.

Don't get me wrong, I've done all that myself. But why would it be such a bad thing to have some really fun raid or even group challenges that require significant commitment to complete?

In theory it wouldn't, as long as the majority of the playerbase can take part on a reasonable basis. Like I said before, I would wager that more players focus on common IOs or SOs rather then Set IOs/Purples/Uniques.

Installing such end game content that alienates a majority of your population and forces them to obtain the "gear" is not what this game is about, and should never be about.

I understand your wants and I agree to a point, but I would never advocate such end game content.

It can be, if it's not something enough of the community at large will make use of. Look at Hamidon. It's not hard once you figure out a method that works, and despite having a formula for it, a lot of people refuse to be bothered with it because it takes the commitment of having 35+ other people around. Or the commitment of spending the up front time to figure it out initially. Then there's the people who never get to 45+, the people who's computers can't handle it, etc., etc.

If you have something that only a small part of the community uses, is it a good thing to work on? There's no right answer, of course. I think there's value in making things that "work" for different bits of the community, because "the community" doesn't have some monolithic preferences block. Hami was set up once and left alone for a long while, then changed once and left alone another long while, etc. He's not soaking up a lot of dev time.

Given how they refer to this new thing ("End Game") I'm not assuming we're talking about one raid or TF here, but rather several things which may or may not be directly related to one another. Having various different TFs or raids with different commitment requirements that appeal to different parts of the community is a good approach, IMO, because it spreads the creative and development effort around. But if they're setting aside a focused dev sub-team just to develop something that uniformly appeals only to the hard-core ? That's a lot riskier.

Riskier, but ultimately it could be more rewarding for the long term. Right now a lot of people refuse to be bothered with Hamidon, because really there's no point. I've done both the old and new raid strategy dozens of time, but sometimes I don't bother with it because really the rewards aren't that much better than running a TF and it's really not compelling because it's so easy.

Inventions requires a commitment to get the most out of them, but ultimately you don't have to do it. PvP requires a commitment to get the most out of it, but ultimately you don't have to do it. Hell the Architect requires a significant time commitment to earn its rewards, probably more than the prior two combined.

But all of them have earned the devs' resources. Having some content for the hardcore PvE crowd doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable at all. I think there's this idea that everything in PvE has to be accessible to those who play with SOs. I think the devs' statements when Inventions were created feed that belief, although all that they have ever stated was that they didn't make the game (as it existed) any harder.

I'll be spitting fire if they replicate in effect what they have achieved with the AE. I consider the community utilization of the AE awesomely out of line with the resources allocated to its creation (effectively one and a half issue releases). A lot of the same could be said for PvP, though I think they were wise to try and create it and flubbed the implementation(s) badly. So in my opinion those are examples of things they should not do. Anything that gets as much effort as either of those examples damn well be made as desirable as possible to as many people as possible. If they want to target a subset of players, spending a whole issue on it is not what I want to see happen.

I think that they should adhere to that as much as possible. It's really simple common sense, IMO. If most people don't use bleeding edge builds, and most people want new content, you shouldn't facilitate a long dry spells where most people get content they won't use. Bear in mind that them doing exactly this has created long stretches in this game where I didn't get content I wanted - for what felt like ages the devs added new content in the 20-35 level range and not 40+. I didn't like it, but I had to admit it made sense to me.

You have 24 thousand posts. You have a lot of time to play this game. What might take you a couple weeks could take a more casual gamer a couple of months.

Post count has to do with play time how?

I actually don't have that much time to play. I do, however, have a job where I have my own office and can post on the boards while I'm working on other things and I've been active here for almost 6 years so I have 24,000 posts.

My engagement with the board community has nothing to do with the amount of time I play. The fact is that it really doesn't take a long time to earn invention sets. Doing one Positron earns you three rare recipes. 1-4 hours of play earns three pieces of rare loot for every member of the team. That's a far cry easier that just about any other MMO. Inventions are no timesink. They're just a reward for the content.

What nonsense.

I have a feeling that AE serve two purposes. The first you have alluded to-- the ability for players to create content. The second purpose was to create tools that the developers could use themselves to more rapidly create content. I read that missions used to be created in a very cumbersome fashion that also employed spreadsheets. The AE tools most certainly will have more powerful developer-excusive counterparts, and the AE "investment" will probably pay dividends for Going Rogue development and future content.

Hmm, I recall devs saying exactly opposite before AE release: they were modifying internal tools that they used themself to create content.

I don't know about that.

He offers a lot better proof than you did.

The answer to this and many of life's most profound questions can be found here.

Technically, if you really wanted to, you could create an entire AE arc in Notepad. The files that the game saves on your hard drive are just text files. You'd need the spreadsheets that have the exact variable names for the pieces you want (for example, you need to know what the system calls a computer on a desk, or which reference calls the office building you want), but it's entirely possible to write an entire arc without touching the game client at all.

Someone (I think it was Positron) said in interviews that the AE came from an attempt to create a better tool for themselves to use. They decided they could modify it so players could make their own arcs, and thus AE was born.

Before IOs, I leveled my character and bought SOs. I sometimes went and raided Hami and/or the LRSF for HOs.

After IOs, I leveled my character and bought SOs until level 32. Then I started investing in IOs by placing bids on the market and using planner's to propose a build. I then would farm certain TFs for merits to obtain the higher cost recipes and turn around and sell them on the market to buy the Sets I required for my proposed build. After I had obtain some recipes that could be slotted, I would find the salvage and then craft my recipes. At a sufficient level, between 42-47, I would respec one final time and place all available IOs into my build.

I'm not sure what you call IOs or how you obtain them, but they definitely require a time investment. Stating otherwise is ridiculous.

Without IOs, I would have left this game a long time ago because there wasn't anything to do ingame that was a good investment of my time.

EDIT: removed unneeded snarky snarkness.

Hey, that's all I was asking for.

Thanks.

It's kinda funny, Inventions themselves are a reward, but getting the IOs you want and building a character can be a time sink.

Within the past year, I've basically started planning builds and playing with Mids while my toon is leveling to lvl 22, at lvl 22 I start frankenslot or insert the cheaper sets (or more likely the expensive sets that are cheaper in the late 20s early 30s). I place my bids low and let them sit while I level. My characters grow into maturity and by the 40s are usually pretty close to where I want them to be. I never use SOs or even non-set IOs unless for end redux, (toggles), endmod (stamina), or rech (click mez protection).

I don't really spend a whole lot of time at the market other then stopping by to drop off or pick up stuff. Once in a while I go on a spending spree and will spend 30 min to an hour at WWs running to the university and back to craft and sell, but thats usually when I'm tired and am just logging in to chat with friends and sg mates.

The biggest thing I see that kills me is seeing people spend 200 merits on a recipe they need (say Perf Shift +end) and slotting it when they coulda bought a LoTG +rech the salvage and sold it for 200mil. They then could have bought the perf shifter for a 10th of what they made, and had another 190mil to spend on the build... I shake my head everytime. I just did this and it will pretty much finance the rest of my Ice/MM's S/L soft capped build.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Shhhhh. I still need to finance my Ill/Rad, Ill/Kin, Grav/FF and Blaster.