Where are the casual players?

So every new system we added that had in game descriptions and on screen help text come up you just click past and ignored?

If that is the case then reading up on paragon wiki is your best best as you have an quite a bit to catch up on.

If you have market questions the market forum is very helpful. Those that post there are very willing to help someone learn the ropes of how to make piles of inf for minimal effort.

By your definition of casual you run a fair amount of TF's. From those TF's you likely have the resources on hand to build what ever you want.

You have to understand that out of the 100,000 players that play this game very few come here to post. The ones that do are going to trend toward being the long term dedicated player.

To burrow a little further down that rabbit hole the scrapper sub forum is where you go to meet the top end min/max power gamers and talk out max dps builds that can solo multiple AV's using only brawl on auto while you post exploitable images of Zwillenger. Ok maybe it isn't that bad but judging your build against the regulars of the Scrapper forums is a recipe for IO envy.

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Its designed so you can, but not so you must. You can step off that treadmill at any time.

There are some players that appear to be "slaves to numbers" but in my experience most of the good min/maxers that know what they are talking about are not snobs about it: I've seen few people actually good at number crunching tell people you *have* to in order to be good at the game. In fact, I consider that a warning sign the person you're talking to *isn't* good at min/maxing in this game because a good min/maxer would know just how little effort it takes to become competent at most or all of the content.

Casual Vet and going strong right here. Just got my first Live 50 after over 350 patrols and 450 play hours. I have over a hundred alts, all of whom I love. Rarely log more than 15 hours a week in the City. Don't even have my Alpha Slot filled on my energy/energy Blaster yet.

Having plenty of fun, and in no particular hurry.

I think you make the mistake here of assuming that everyone who builds an AT using Mids is a POWER gamer. That is certainly not the case. I use Mids all the time to make effective builds but I am not a POWER game by any stretch of the imagination. I use Mids to help me make an effective and fun build which will not necessarily fall in line with a lot of what you see on the boards. Keep this in mind as well. These builds might not even be peoples ACTUAL build live. Sometimes that are " What If " builds or things that people ASPIRE to but do not actually have.

and NO you are not the only casual player who is a complete newbie. I have friends that have been playing for years and could care less about crafting IO and some who have no idea how to use them and dont care to do so.

In all honesty money is very easy to come by in this game and I am not a marketeer but there are things I have learned to do.

1) SELL SELL SELL. If its not a recipe or salvage that I am going to use.. SELL IT

2) Use reward merits for rare salvage and recipe rolls and SELL IT.. When you do TF;s you get reward merits. Turn those into items you sell for influence. Thats stuff you get in NORMAL gameplay at ALL levels not just level 50.

3) AE missions.. do them.. do them for fun.. turn the AE tickets in and SELL THEM !!!!!

4) Hero and Villian Tip Missions.. do these and get the Hero/Villian Merits.. again this you can do as NORMAL gameplay.. And many tip teams will take toons of ANY level.. you get xp.. drops.. influence..

4) SELL PURPLES... thats right.. sell em.. I almost NEVER save purples recipes.. I have brought some as I needed them... but I usually sell them... I made a billion inf last week selling off purples that I got as drops.

5) Turn off XP !! (OMG NO HE DIDNT !!) Thats right when you turn your XP off you get DOUBLE the influence.. use this to build XP at certain levels.. This is really good to do around the time that people start running certain TF's as they level like Sister Psyche, Numina, LGTF etc etc.. Esepcially good with the ITF.. Lots of mobs.. Lots of fighting.. earn double influence..



Well here is the reality of this game.. You cannot see my build.. You can see what powers I picked.. But you cannot see what I slotted. Sure you can see some of my set bonuses but that doesnt really say anything about HOW they are slotted nor does it say anything about HOW effective I am at using them.

Case and Point.. a lot of people are building these defense heavy builds for non melee types. I have ONE build like this.. ONE.. I see a lot of softcap blaster builds out there.. I dont have ONE of these builds and I never will.. yet I am no less effective on teams because I know what I am doing and how to do it.

You can put the most purpled out, IO'd out build in the hands of a moron you know..

I will let my signature answer this

If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-

Fair enough. Sometimes it requires a lot of patience to wait for bids to fill. I play so many different alts it can be weeks or even months before I get back to claim what I bought on the market for a particular character, so it doesn't feel like I'm waiting for my purchases to go thru. I place my bids and when I eventually get back they're there.

If you do decide to use the basic IO's at some point please remember that you can use your main build for SO's and your second and third builds for IO's. That way you'll never have to worry about IO's not working if you drop to Premium.

Truly casual players are not reading the forums. They're just playing the game.

I recently looked at the powers chosen by all the characters in an 18-man BAF, and only about 12 of them had any IO bonuses, and of those four or five had only a few IO bonuses.

I can't tell if they were using SOs or common IOs, but we had no problems completing the trial successfully. On large teams with incarnate abilities, being IOed out just isn't as important as when you're trying to run content solo at x8/+4.

If people are kicking you from a 8-man team for not being IOed out the wazoo, they just don't understand how the game works.

Maybe my enhancements aren't optimal, but both before and after ED my friends and I had done the math and figured out, more or less on our own, that optimal attack slotting was 3 Acc and 3 Dmg. Even before ED made slotting more than three of any one thing rather pointless, we realized that 100% acc + 100% dmg meant 4x the DPS, which was better even than 6 dmg pre-ED which was only 3x the DPS.

Anyway, the slotting strategy I've always settled on is 2 Acc, 3 Dmg, and 1 Rend. I can't always count on recovery buffs being on hand and so minimizing the gasping for endurance is big with me. 2 Acc always seemed ideal to me because there are so many sources of ToHit buff in the game. As far as secondaries, I usually slot 3 of a power's main effect enhancement, plus 1 Rend on any toggle. For things like Build Up or Rage or Dull Pain I usually slot 3 attack rate enhancements so it recycles as fast as possible.

I tend to like Scrappers and Tankers best, and my L50 Scrapper is DM/SR.

Working out optimal builds was sorta fun, up to a point, prior to the introduction of IOs and set bonuses. What used to just be a minor exercise in a little math became almost like a science with too many variables. I know some players like that (its why they love WoW and all those talent trees and finding Uber builds and debating them like religion with each other), but I can't summon any sustained interest in it. I just want to play the game and not have to worry that giving up 12% resistance in order to play a Scrapper (rather than a Brute) is going to make some huge difference in mission success, or worse, overall enjoyment of the game. Instinctively I find it hard to believe so little a numerical difference can really matter that much during play, but adherents seem to treat it like the difference between life and death. It is that intensity of caring that leads to the mistaken impression (on my part) that these issues matter more than, perhaps, they actually do in practice.

No, I don't overclock my PC. I guess I'm as casual in computer usage as I am in game play.
I also don't do anything special to my car; driving in L.A. is anything but recreational, and to me a car is just something I use to get to work and back home.

Most of my characters are on Virtue, and like I said before I tend to lean towards Scrappers and Tankers. I like the melee classes. However, there are times when I feel like being in a support role, and then I like to pull out my L50 rad/rad Defender. Before I stopped playing I found my 50 rad/rad in high demand, though in many cases the mobs were steamrollered so fast that I rarely had time to lay down a debuff much less fire off an attack. I sometimes wondered why they wanted me on the team so much. Maybe they didn't care about my AT so much and they were just filling in the ranks for maximum drops or something. *shrug*

I have always loved COH both for how solo-play friendly it is and for the incredible player community that actually likes to team up with total strangers. Ultimately I am hoping my old teammates will re-join the game when Freedom goes wide and we can pick up where we left off (we had an all-Defender team that rolled through AVs so fast it was embarrassing, but they quit while their toons were still at L40, and I kept playing mine to 50; now may be the chance to get them all up to L50 and beyond). We played the standard TFs but never did any Trials, and none of us has ever experienced the Hamidon Raid or anything of that scale that has been added since.

Not at all! However, the in-game description of the AH and its mechanisms (to use just one example) still left me confused and did not instill in me a sense of how to make the system "work for me." I am grateful for wikis and forum communities like this one. It is these resources I turn to when I need help.

Very good observation, matches my own experience. This game is, once you've learned the basic mechanics, mostly pretty easy, and that is by design; after all, if you want it hard, the level and spawn size adjustments are there.

Based on what I first read here, and have personally proven a few times, it's completely soloable by characters with the kind of DPS generated by SO's and a handful of red inspirations for the Trapdoor fight.

I've soloed him on five or six SO'd scrappers and a couple of SO'd blasters so far.

You have to kill his summoned clone thingies, as they power his regen. I soloed him on a earth/kin and the damage I have on that char is laughable compared to any scrapper I can imagine.

This. Any scrapper should be able to do it, but it is easier if you have a ranged damage toon along, as they can just target the clone quickly and boom, whereas a scrapper will have to run across the room and back to Trapdoor. It should be doable, though.

I've had more trouble with squishies on other parts of that map. Honoree was a pain, he can fly, is unmezzable and does energy damage. My Dark/Pain/Dark corruptor was pretty helpless against him. Even with a tray full of purple Insp, one lucky hit and I was down.

You say "toe-may-toe", I say "toe-mah-toe" and "Just use a bigger hammer. If it breaks, it needed to be replaced anyhow."

Defeating his clone army is the tactically preferred way to do it (and apparently what the devs had in mind when they gave him that army of clones); popping three or four medium red inspirations and then watching him drop before the clones even start to appear seems to be a popular alternative.

I think you hit it on the head with that. Not that Either of us are saying that people are crazy to enjoy getting that into it, but yeah... it's not for everyone and fortunately not needed. Such players generally push the bounds in order to really maximize efficiency and/or challenge themselves way beyond the default game settings and average experience.


Haha, exactly.
And my computer serves my purposes fine. I don't know if I could get more out of it... I turn it on, I can do what I want to and I have no need to try to get more out of it. Same with my characters.

Oh, Virtue! Great. You'll have no problems finding teams when you want them nor finding people running things the way you like them. Sure, you'll run into min/maxers and speed runs and all of that, but, eventually, you'll know what is what and what you do or don't want to join.

Also, from what I understand, Rad is especially good for taking on AVs, due to debuffing their regen rate. So, they'll always be popular, especially when expecting to fight some nasty AVs. It brings other good things as well, of course!

Yep, I love that this game is so solo and team friendly, along with the community. This hasn't changed! So don't worry!
The Incarnate Trials are, unfortunately, currently large team based, but there are very slow ways to get there (while you just do any content on your level 50), plus they have stated that they're going to add solo and/or small team content for it eventually. Still... they're quick and actually some fun content (opinions vary, of course). Half an hour now and then for a big battle with a few different phases can be fun. Regardless, the Incarnate content isn't anything needed or anything either. It doesn't sound like you'll hate it though.
AND... All Defender Teams will still wipe the floor with everything! IOs are nothing compared to stacked Defenders powers!!

Okay. No worries. It is understandable. A lot of people have a hard time with this arc (for as many people that could solo it, we had a lot of people complaining that they couldn't).
It is somewhat of a team-suggested bit of content.
The mission text suggests that you do this with a team (not that this always means much, but, in this case, it does).
The next mission is tougher (and involves two pretty tough EBs in the same room... with a bunch of Rikti as well).

Now... just for the record, this is the arc that I was talking about soloing on my characters without a single IO.
My Elec/Elec Blaster soloed this (I only say this to reinforce the fact that it isn't about having IOs in your build at all), so I'm sure you could do it, but I have also seen plenty of people not be able to (at least, not in what they would deem as tolerably fun).
However, with just one more person, these people were able to fly through it with little-to-no problems at all.
People are often very willing to join and run these missions together with strangers.

I think knocking Trapdoor into the lava really helped my experience. This actually happened by accident, but many people on the forums were suggesting it to people having troubles fighting him.
Also, taking out those clones, of course, is a good strategy.

Anyway, Ramiel's arc is fine with a team (Any duo I've seen can handle it).

And, take your time. You'll probably look over all of this in a month or so and feel like you're a much better player by then, hehe, I know it happens with me when I return to an old game (or, even a lot of times in this game, an old character with a powerset I haven't played in a long while).

One last thing... Have you joined any of Virtue's global channels?
We use a bunch of channels to help find and form teams and it can make a huge difference in finding teams.

Off the top of my head...
Virtue TFs 2010
Virtue LFG Alpha
VirtueUnited (is usually less teaming and more chatting... I don't keep it actively visible, myself)

Virtue Trials (I think)
And I think Virtue TFs is still active

I just add them all and check/shout out in that tab when I want to join/form something.

Best of luck!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

You know...i've stopped asking myself that same question...i tend to make characters myself, and really couldn't care less about numbers...only thing i ask is...don't rub it in my face that i have an actual life outside the game that i have to pay attention to every now and then...it would seem that besides numbers...the other thing they are really intimate with is how mom's basement apartment looks...my bad, i meant..."man cave"

It also occurred to me that this is the sort of thing you do when you've pretty much done everything else there is to do in the game, and finding ways to eek out the last 1% of efficiency is all that's left. Of course, now there's new stuff with Convergence and more to come every month (or, I guess, every week in some cases). But I bet that once you start, you just can't stop with the min/maxing.

Exactly. When it came time for each of us to pick our Defender power sets for the team, I chose rad/rad because I had read an old guide related to the Hamidon Raid that was titled something like, "What 24 Radiation Defenders Can Do That 1000 Blasters Can't". The guide was extolling the virtues of resistance debuffs as a way of maximizing damage throughput, rather than trying to use maximal damage alone (against creatures like Hamidon with 99% DR against everything, or whatever it has/had). That made a bell go off in my brain and made me see the possibilities, not only for the Radiation power set, but for the very concept of an all-Defender team. You wouldn't believe how many people laughed at us when they saw us; I guess they never made the intuitive leap we did (with regard to the power of stacked buffs/debuffs).

I was able to take down Trapdoor on my own the second time through. I never saw a "clone" appear, so you can imagine my confusion when it came up in this thread. I don't know what the difference was the second time around, but I was able to take him down before a clone showed up I guess (gotta love Caltrops!). However, I had to scrap together a quick ad-hoc team in the Vanguard DPO to take down the Honoree. From there I was able to complete the rest on my own (including doing the Minotaur mission twice for some bizarre reason).

Anyway, I have my Alpha slot unlocked on my L50 Scrapper; thanks for all the great advice! Now it's time for me to go study the invention system and the consignment house and see if I want to get into crafting IOs or not.

I had problems with my scrapper, probably because by the time I understood what was going on there were quite a few clones and I kept running around trying to kill them, never being able to do any significant damage to Trapdoor. Fortunately he fell to the lava, and after I got killed and went back I found him dead.

The rest of the missions were easier to win. That's on a scrapper with IO's, but mostly basic, certainly not purples or anything like that, and a far less than optimal build (fitness pool still wasting power slots, two travel pools due to conceptual reasons, and no min maxing).

A bit late to the thread but ...


I consider myself a "casual gamer" in that I am not bothered about having the best stuff and won't do anything I consider "Not Fun". Obviously eveyone's Not-Fun-List (NFL) is different but my NFL includes playing the market and any kind of farm. To prove my credentials as a Non-L33t player my favourite characters still all have legacy Fitness despite sitting on a stack of /respecs

However since returning to the game after a two year absence I have found a number of things have changed that make it easy for me to acquire stuff that previously would have meant entering the NFL teritory. Now I should say at this point that I enjoy the tip mission system and the incarnate trials. Not everyone does and depending upon how you use them they are very close to farming. Very close indeed. However I don't use them constantly. I use tips like I use radio missions and I only do Incarnate trials when the mood takes me. Tip missions and hero merits bring in enough influence that buying whatever you want from the market is easy. And Incarnate trials (well the BAF anyway) are a quick half hour of fun button mashing.

Reading these forums you could be forgiven for believing you need to grind hundreds of BAFs to complete the Incarnate abilities, well its not true. Maybe if you want everything at T4 level and loads of "different" Lore pets but thats not for me. It doesn't take long to open up all the slots (typically 3 trails each) and I usually had something to slot already created when I did. It doesn't take much to get to the level shifts and perfectly possible within what I would call "casual play"

There, thats my take

so I wanted to take a couple of minutes and give you a quick explanation. My explanation will assume that you know nothing about it so please don't feel that I am talking down to you. I just wanted the explanation to be clear and complete.

As you know, defeating bad guys gets you influence and XP (if you are under level 50). Occasionally they may also drop an enhancement that you can either use or sell to a vendor and inspirations that you can use to buff certain attributes. Initially those were the only rewards the game offered. There are a lot of new things that have been added since the early days of the game.

We now have recipes, salvage, reward merits, alignment merits, vanguard merits, astral merits, empyrean merits, and tickets!

Recipes and Salvage

If you look on your powers tray, you will notice that you have a little tab for salvage and recipes that, if you click on them, will open a window that reveals what you have picked up and are carrying in your personal inventory. If any of the words on the tab are red that means that you are full. Being full is generally bad because you are missing out on any future drops and you never know if the next thing that drops is going to be very valuable!

The recipe will call for a certain set of three or four salvage pieces and some influence in order to craft it into an enhancement. But you can't just craft them anywhere, you need to have a crafting table. Crafting tables are available in any of the universities in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. I mainly use either Steel Canyon or Cap Au Diable as they are each close to a market. You can also add crafting tables to your Super-Group base and most super-groups like to dedicate a room to crafting and storage. Finally, there is an accolade you can get from collecting a series of badges related to crafting that allows you to summon a portable crafting table.

Some recipes are for "generic" invention origin enhancements (IOs). They kind of look like the original training origin (TO) enhancements and they buff one aspect of a power, like accuracy, damage, endurance, etc. Unlike dual origin (DO) and single origin (SO) enhancements, they can be used by any character origin, cannot be combined, and never expire. Generic IOs run from level 10 to 50, in increments of 5. A level 30 generic IO provides better enhancement (generally 34.8%) than an equivalent SO. A level 50 generic IO generally 42.4% enhancement to most categories (some things, like range, run on a different table of values).

Set IOs are crafted in the same way as generic IOs but they have additional benefits. Most of the set IOs enhance two, three, or even four aspects of a power. Additionally set IOs grant bonuses for having more than one of the same kind slotted in a power. For example: Thunderstrike is a set IO for ranged damage powers. The set has six pieces:

Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage,
Thunderstrike: Damage/Endurance,
Thunderstrike: Damage/Recharge,
Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge,
Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance, and
Thunderstrike: Damage/Endurance/Recharge.

Slotting more than one would get you the following set bonuses:

Two enhancements increases Recovery by 2%.
Three enhancements increases Energy and Negative Energy Defense by 2.5%.and Ranged Defense by 1.25%.
Four enhancements improves the Accuracy of all your powers by 7%.
Five enhancements improves your Run Speed, Flight Speed by and Jumping by 4%.
Six enhancements increases Ranged Defense by 2.5% and Energy and Negative Energy Defense by 1.25%.

So if you six slotted this into say shuriken on your scrapper, you would get an additional 3.75% to ranged defense on top of your existing defense, all your powers would have extra accuracy, you would move faster, and recover endurance faster. If you slotted 5 complete sets into a blaster you start talking about some big numbers -- 18.75% ranged defense is nothing to sneeze at!

Set IOs and salvage are colored depending on their rarity, white for common, yellow for uncommon, orange for rare, and purple for ultra rare. Additionally, we have PvPIOs that grant extra set bonuses when facing other players. Set IOs can be dropped by defeated enemies, completing missions, purchased off other players via the market, traded by players off the market, or purchased off special vendors with merits.

Reward Merits

Completing story arcs or task forces will grant the player a number of reward merits. The number awarded is based on a develop assigned amount that corresponds to the average amount of time needed to complete the set of missions. These merits can then be traded in to merit vendors to purchase certain set IOs directly or you can take a chance and "roll the dice" within certain designated bands to see what the random number generator throws your way. A random roll costs 20 merits and has a chance to reward you with some of the best non-purple set IOs in the game. Purchasing a recipe directly with merits costs anywhere from 75 to 250 merits.

Personally, I always chose the random roll. Even if I don't get a valuable rare IO I can usually craft it and get 5 to 10 million from a market sale. Just by vendoring my generics, crafting my random rolls and my better drops nets me 100 to 200 million on the way to 50, after accounting for all the purchases I made with that same character.

Alignment Merits

Defeating any NPC higher than level 20 has a chance to earn you a "tip." A tip is a mission that lets you chose your morality. There are four moralities: hero - vigilante - villain - rogue. A vigilante is a "morally loose" hero and a rogue is a villain with some scruples. In order to change moralities you have to run 10 tip missions of that morality type and then run an alignment mission where you make the choice. Players are limited to getting 5 "morality points" per day. You can run more if you like but you will not get credit.

The first time you complete an alignment mission you get 50 reward merits, the kind we discussed above. But if a hero chooses to remain a hero, reinforcing his alignment a second time, then he earns an alignment merit. Same thing for a villain but the morally ambivalent vigilantes and rogues can't get alignment merits. Alignment merits can be traded in at special vendors Fort Trident (off of Atlas Park) or The Crucible (off of Cap au Diable). One merit can purchase most decent recipes, two alignment merits can purchase highly desirable IO recipes like Luck of the Gambler +7.5 recharge, or Numina's Convalescence +regen/+recovery. You can also buy purple and PvPIO set recipes from these vendors for 20 - 35 merits.

That sounds like a lot but that's about 2 months of running 5 tips every night. If you find other players at different levels to run them with you, you can have plenty of variety. Or you can set them at -1 level/1 player setting and breeze through them. You can collect a-merits faster if you are willing to trade 50 merits and 20 million inf for a merit. Again, that sounds like a lot but if you run 2 TFs in a week and sell your drops you should have more than enough merits and money to make the trade. If you did that, you could have a purple of your choice every three weeks!

Vanguard Merits

Vanguard Merits are obtained by defeating Rikti opponents anywhere in the game, but only after you complete the Introductory arc from Levantera in the Rikti War Zone. It's very fast and mainly involves talking to a series of contact inside the RWZ base. Vanguard merits can be traded in at tables inside the base for Vanguard costume pieces, a few temp powers including the very powerful Vanguard HVAS pet, or a Gr'ai Matter --piece of incarnate salvage. Participating in a Rikti Mothership raid can get you hundreds of vanguard merits in a very short amount of time.

Astral and Empyrean Merits

The newest merits on the block are Astral and Empyrean. Both are obtained exclusively from participating in Incarnate trials. Completing a trial awards Empyreans and completing certain tasks or earning badges inside the trails earns you Astrals. Astrals and Emps can be converted into incarnate salvage to craft extremely strong incarnate powers or they can be traded in to one of two vendors in Ouroborous, one for each kind of merit. Michael trades Empyrean merits for costume pieces, emotes, vouchers that let you send some incarnate goodies to other characters on your account, and set, PvP and Purple IOs. Christy does similar trades with astral merits, but some items are unique to each vendor.

Tickets

Finally, you can earn tickets by playing missions in the Architect Entertainment System also known as Mission Architect or the initials AE or MA. Most zones have an AE building where players can design their own missions or play missions designed by other players. Some of these missions are very story driven and expand or throw twists into existing lore. Some of them are challenge missions pitting you against multiple AVs or large numbers of foes with over lapping debuffs. And others are straight out farms designed to highlight your character's strength, for example making a mission with huge numbers of enemies that only do fire damage and have no resistance to fire against your fire/fire brute. Instead of getting salvage, recipes, SOs and merits that you might get completing developer designed content, in the AE you get tickets. These tickets can be traded in to a vendor on the second floor of the building for TOs, DOs, SOs, generic IOs, and salvage. You can't buy set IOs directly, but you can once again "roll the dice" in several level bands in Bronze (stuff you would get from defeating NPCs), Silver (recipes you would get from completing missions) or Gold (same recipes you can get from rolls at a merit vendor, which were formally available from completing TFs and trials).

You can find out how many of the different merits and tickets you have by checking the "Special" tab in your salvage window.

Whew. So there you have it.

Even casual players can be rolling in their money like Scrooge McDuck and have strong IO builds if they take just a few minutes each play session to convert their tickets and merits to recipes, craft the recipes, and then sell the crafted enhancements and vendor the rest.

Since the OP said "Now either this is intended for teams, or for solo characters with the kind of DPS generated by IOs, and probably continuous consumption of big reds at the same time", I assumed that was not his preferred alternative and gave him the less inspiration dependent alternative.

Nice. Ad hominem attacks on anyone who gets into the numbers side of the game more than you do. Real classy there. Although it does suit your writing style, so there is that.

Incidentally, would Arcanaville's lair be a "woman cave"? What about all the min/maxing players who also have a spouse and two or three kids? i bet those basements get pretty crowded, eh?

Moving on...
Personally i'm more of casual numbers cruncher. i don't min/max for every last % and i don't record my play sessions and run a statistical analysis to determine the exact values. i'm very grateful to people like Arcanaville and Iakona and all the rest who've done the heavy lifting for me since i do enjoy trying to make characters who are good at soloing and very good at doing what they do.

Thing is, i don't feel i have to be able to solo everything in the game or have complete mastery of the markets. Luckily none of that is really needed and we have one of the most helpful player bases i've ever seen in any game, both on the forums and in the game. There are always people willing to help out. (We also have some idiots and trolls, but that's life everywhere.)