MTeague

I doubt GM's did it by hand the first time or an ongoing basis. I'm sure they have a Loop or SQL Query they run to identify salvage with seeded inventory less than X, X-Actual = Z, add Z much more stock at seeded price to bring it back up to their preferred levels. Whether they truly do this every 24 hours or 1xWeek or even 1xMonth is irrelevant. They can do it, and if salvage levels dropped to a level they considered to be threatening the stablity of the game, thye would act. Doesn't necessarily mean they'd act to preserve what player-posted pricing has been... maybe every so often I'd need to pay 10,000 for a piece of common salvage. Would I blink a few times in disbelief at first? Sure. Would it really be anything even remotely approaching a problem as long as there is still some available? No.

I don't object to a refusal option existing. I'd never use it, but really, what is the difference between an annoyed player right now every so often taking time to look at their salvage and delete stacks of white salvage vs a happier player having an auto-refuse option?

Yep. A year ago I watched The Princess Bride with someone who had never see it before. I thought they'd love it, and they did, but she was also "OMG, Buttercup is completely USELESS! She's pathetic, why is Wesley even trying to save her??" And well, she wasn't wrong lol. But that was the norm of the times when the movie was made. Doesn't mean we should keep it going forward, but we do all need to keep in mind, "When was this produced?"

Warriors I could see going either way. I could definitely see X percent of them sticking with Sparta and historical facts of ancient Greece. OTOH, toss in a Diana like amazon, and they would absolutely respect their strength and prowess. I do think warriors would probably make sense for it be a less-than-50/50 ratio for reasons like this. Maybe 1 in 4 female or something. The Outcasts though absolutely. Mutant powers are all genetics and would presumably manifest in approximately equal numbers. Not just that. There was likely also a factor of discomfort at portraying women as criminals.

I also get very nostalgic for it. Back in EverQuest, crossing from Freeport to Qeynos to Erudin on a lvl 14 Enchanter was ... daunting. Less so because I had Bind and Gate and Invisibility, but it was gonna take me at least an hour, probably more, and I might end up doing a few corpse runs on the way. It really made the world FEEL more epic in size. And I definitely remember hanging out with people at the docks waiting for Boats and chatting with them on the boat travel, because what else were you gonna do? Was that all cynically put in place to keep us logged in longer? Probably, though lets face it, most MMO players log CRAZY amounts of hours anyway, and did even after they had friends who could teleport them across the world. I definitely remember the MMO worlds feeling more vast, feeling more worthy of being explored, and taking joy in finding nooks and crannies I discovered for the first time before instant ports and bamph-there-now became the norm. You could argue some of it was also that I was a more naive gamer fresh into MMO's for the first time, and there is a kind of "you can never go home again" effect in play. But I don't think so. Because I still enjoy travelling around single player games, like Fallout series, or the Elder Scrolls series, and finding new things off the beaten path, and I still enjoy leaping around paragon city and spotting plaques I don't remember seeing and reading the lore as I go. Teams have no patience for that, but solo it's all still there, if you take the time to smell the roses.

Hm. Well I've spent less time in Dark Astoria. They only had males in the classic Steel Canyon, etc zones

Groups that hire exactly one sex: PPD Outcasts Tsoo Family Knives of Artemis Council 5th Column probably lots more

A heall.... that ... chains.... oh god... the flashbacks... I can't stop.... (we were not by any means a top-ranking guild, not even close, but I still remember this fight for how narrow the margin of victory was.... glad Kas still has the video up)

Clearly what we need is a giant Bioshock style underwater city and sprawling complex of underwater tunnels connecting Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. And underwater 3D zones and combat and *is roundly pummelled into submission by players who have seen underwater zones cause all kinds of rage in other games*

We'll just handwave and say you used Ouroborous to get there only 2 days after he gave you the mission. 😉

Soloing most content, I'm quite happy several characters. Most recently, I've focused on my Plant / Psi Dominator, my Spines / Regen Stalker. Now, I *did* trick them out quite well with enhancements. You say you have two farmers up and running so I'm assuming you won't have any issues decking them out. But caveat emptor for the next guy who may read this. Both also worked quite well for me for Group DPS role. For Just Plain Fun and Group DPS, consider a Anything/Martial Kombat Blaster. It is VERY blappy, so if you prefer your blasters never get anywhere near melee, it may not do it for you. But I think it makes a great run-and-gun-and-boot-to-the-head set. I also run Speed of Sound with it, and the super-fast animation teleport in Jaunt every 10 seconds gives me tons of manuverabilty even if Burst of Speed happens to be on cooldown. Group support, you can never go wrong with a Defender. Though lately, I've taken a second and third look at MM's and like what I see, particularly since pets no longer block other players.

Except for the "living" and the "breathing" parts 🙂

This would explain why they run so much from my Storm Defender whenever I solo. Hurricane is one HELL of a to-hit debuff Happily, on the Stormie, I can also generally catch most of them in Snow Storm and savage their running speed. Or, you know, toss down Freezing Rain and make them flop like fish out of water, or throw out a KB-to-KD Gale to drop them in place while I activate something else.

I personally refuse to use base teleport codes, but I'm pretty good at navigating all other available options, roads between adjacent zones, tram, pocket D, midnighters club, paragon dance party, vanguard, normal base port entrances, etc. Blueside will deifnitely send you far more often. Redside will do it some.... a Grandville mission sending you to St Martial, etc. It happens. But FAR rarer on redside. also for this reason, I'm much less likely to delay picking up a travel power when I'm blueside.

These do not bother me, but I am a Map-Clearing Fool anyway when I solo. Even if it's a Malta map or a giant Oranbega map. Very rarely, I'll let some mobs go when it's a giant Portal Corp map. Still. I know teams do NOT generally work that way, and it would be nice if there were some verbage to give you a heads up. Even if it was a generic line like "There might be more to this one. Keep an eye out for more instructions if the situation changes" or something like that. That wouldn't have to "spoil" anything specific, but the player could still know up front, the starting instructions are not all there is to it. (and maybe in a colored text like that, so it stands out in the description)

buying the set enhancements happens faster than you might think. Or at least, it can. most crafted set IOs can go from a 1-4 million on the auction house. each piece. And some very sought-after pieces can be 6-10 mil. That's a gut punch when you first start playing and you say to yourself holy mother of god, how do people afford this??? But you'll have it before you realize it. Just keep plugging away. Keep an eye on your recipe inventory. Some of them are quite valueable, and well sell well on the auction house (Wentworth's / Black Market). Never vendor them, always auction them, or craft them and then auction them. Keep an eye on your salvage inventory. Every piece of orange salvage will probably auction for 450,000 - 500,000 or more. Do taskforces (Posi, Synapse, etc) when you see them advertised. You'll get a big pile of merits at the end. Do story arcs (missions that have a blue mission title from your contact, with a book icon in your mission selection bar). Those give merits at the end of the story arc. Merits can be used at the Merit Vendor (which can be an ATM machine or a human NPC) to buy Enhancement Converters. These sell for 80,000 to 100,000 per on the auction house. They might not sell right away depending how much you ask for them, but they will sell. And if you're only buying a few enhancements at a time, every couple of levels, you don't need to get THAT many drops to fund it all. If you buy set pieces while levelling, I would strongly encourage you buy them from the "Enhancements - Attuned" section of the auction house. You do not have to. If you prefer to cruise to 50 on regular enhancements and not buy anything on the auction house until 50, that's very doable. But I'd still keep track of all the above bullet points to help you earn and stockpile influence as you level up, until you reach the point where you're comfortable buying them.

Stealth from the Concealment tree doesn't even hold a candle to Hide in how much stealth hide provides. I can literally run straight into a boss with hide and no aggro of any kind. Try that with Stealth pool power sometime. And Invisibility requires you to take either Stealth OR Grant Invisibilty before you can take it, and either way, no one gets them out of box. Illusion Controllers have Sup Invis, but not at lvl 1. Storm Defenders get Steamy Mist but not for several levels and again, it doesn't do nearly as good a job as hiding you as Hide.

Now, I could perhaps see a /Regen and /Willpower stalker getting some portion of a Quick Recovery effect melded into Hide... and perhaps some of the other trees, some other ability that relates to the power that gets skipped to make room for Hide in those sets. I am for the record, holding out exactly zero hope of that. But if an adjustment were deemed to be necessary, which I don't beleive it is, then that would be the route I would take. Honestly though, stalkers are in a crazy good place right now. They can do extremely good single target damage, they're scrappy as heck, and with the ATO procs they become at least twice as deadly as before. Several primary sets have good AE options to complement their single target stabbiness, and while yes, Hide by itself isn't going to provide much in-combat defense, out of combat, it provides a giant burst of AE defense and gives us a way to simply bypass any mobs we choose (unless it's a laser-targetted-ambush). No one else gets that right out of the box. We get plenty enough from Hide to justify it being part of the secondary tree.

Ha! I meant more the actual Shadows... but a Morden pet would be awesome too!

I don't have a Mind/Empath. I do have a Mind/Kin. Perhaps the Mind Control portions may be of some use as an example. I took all 9 Mind Control powers. Every. Last. One of them. I have considered ditching Teleknesis, but it *has* come in handy in rare situations I do not use Mid's. I wing stuff and eyeball what will give more or less of a set bonus I want. Do I consider my built Authoritative? Hell no. Does it work well for me? Hell yes. Lockdown's in both single target and AE hold. The chance for +2 mag is hard to say no to for either power, and the six slot bonus is +3.75% ranged defense... not exactly hard to take. Could I adjust this for Even More +Recharge? Sure. But this guy is Mind/KIN. Siphon speed is going to give me lots of personal +Recharge, so I have less need to go completely wild slotting LotG +7.5% recharges. I like Stealth. Your milage may vary. But lets me very easily thin a herd with non-aggroing Confuses if I bit off more than I probably should chew when soloing. I should probably toss some boosters in fulcrum shift and maybe free up at least one Acc slot there. For Alpha, I use Nerve, because +Hold and +Confuse, and a giant heaping scoop of extra +Acc isnt' hard to take. The math may be different for a Mind/Emp, but for Mind/Kin, I never ever EVER want to miss with any of my attacks no matter what. Practically everything has an Acc check. For Lore, I use Polar Lights. Small, unobtrusive. Dont' look like they would permanent give civililians nightmares for the rest of thier life (/eye Banished Pantheon pets....). And still good AE. Levitate, Terrify, Psionic Toranado [yes, deliberate] are my bread and butter powers to do damage. (and of, course, Confuses...) Mesmerize and Dominate are inevitable parts of a rotation, but I slot those for CONTROL, not for Damage dealing. Also, if I'm exempted to 35+, I'll have a ton of stacks of Fulcrum Shift rolling, so I can boost my damage that way. Would not be the case for Mind/Emp. I probably should ditch Repel in favor of Siphon Power, but I've loved Repel ever since I used it to freight-train a group to safety in Perez Park back in the Elder Days.

I had flashbacks to a job interview. "What do you see your Mind Controller doing in 5 years?" 😄

In a real pinch.... buy some unslotters. unslot the enhancers. Stand far away from a Hellion on the corner of AP. Try to shoot him. Then inch in closer, and closer and closer little bit at a time, until you can shoot him. Count the number of sidewalk squares between you and him. Slot the enhancements find another hellion near a similar sidewalk grid. stand that far away back up a bit see if you can shoot him.

Don't do it. It's a scam. How do I know this? Simple. Have you ever seen a SINGLE child, anywhere, EVER, in all of paragon city or in the rogue isles? They don't exist. Therefore, there are no starving children. People in Primal Earth and Praetoria are genetically grown as adults. Probably by Crey. There's no other explanation.

I really don't think this was called for. EVEN IF every word you have said is true, which is really just a chain of assumptions that that was Zeraphia's motives, what do you gain from making a post like this?

Keep the confuse. I loves me some confuse. I really love the AE immob animation, how it's meant to be your OWN shadow extending forward to entrap enemies. That's just several kinds of awesome. I am personally ambivilent on Haunt. I don't mind it existing, but I wouldn't mind if it were replaced with something else, either. Dark Control waits longer than any other control set for their AE Hold I believe. Possibly swap position of Shadow Field and Haunt? Maybe not, maybe that's just something folks should be careful to note and be aware of as they roll up their character. I wonder if Heart of Darkness should be a Fear vs Disorient. You get no other Disorient power to stack magnitude with. On the other hand, it's still a PBAE that applies a -ToHit debuff, and those are always nice. It's effectively +Defense for every member of the team when you apply a to-hit debuff. While I love the look on Umbra Beast, (Dogs are awesome), the one thing I really really REALLY wish it could be, but can absolutely never happen because trademarks would be these guys: