Mr. Apocalypse

I wasn't very satisfied with they synergy of these two sets as a brute, (could barely get fury going) so I scrapped it...literaly I re rolled as a Titan Weapon/Ice armor Scrapper New name is Vindsvalr

Van Gogh is a a obvious example, died penniless. unappreciated, his art only found critical recognition after his death. A large majority of his painting were discarded with other trash, only to be sought after vigorously after he was dead many were lost forever.

I re-read what I wrote and I did not reflect my thoughts with enough detail or clarity. I meant infer that only a select few become famous posthumously.. I agree with you on this 100%

mostly when people think of Picasso, and refer to it as unappealing, they are referring to his "cubist" and more abstract works. that's what I was referring to. I am an art layperson. I don't consider myself an art scholar. I recognize that he was a very talented artist, but the methods in which artist achieve fame is more of who you know, not what you did even. most artist never see an appreciation in their lifetimes, only to have their works be considered that of genius, once an "art scholar" decides to turn a profit with it by exploiting the name. I like Jackson Pollack's work, but all most of them really are, is the result of throwing paint at a canvas. Scholars attribute, lots of fancy words to his method and style, but at the end of the day, he threw paint at a canvas. But I still like them. I would attempt to copy one myself, before paying for one though, if purchasing one was even an option on my budget. No matter how art is perceived, regardless of anything else, it is subjective to the observer and what value he places upon it. That has been my point all along I Like some things, I don't like others, but simply putting a certain persons name on it, garners the work no more value in my eyes, regardless of any other factors. Yet I can still appreciate the other aspects of its origins, removed from my like or dislike of the said art piece, and understand why others may hold it in high regard.

Then you agree with me. I acknowledged there is an apreciation of its time and place, but yet you can still think its junk!

he did, whatever he did. Whatever its called. I recognize it as a profound style given the time in which it was done, but I also think it looks like garbage.

But going back to "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" Sufficient art education, can only make you appreciate the effort or timeliness of the art, but Cant force you to appreciate the style. Arts value to one vs another is purely subjective and no amount of education can or ever will change that. Snobbery alone sets the value of art in the gallery scene, so there is that. My 10 year old daughter actually makes better looking impressionist art than Picasso, but yet no one is lining up to buy her works.

Make what YOU like, if others praise you for it, then your ego gets a little boost, if not you still have a costume or concept you like, regardless of the opinion of others. I have posted up quite a few, some I spent many hours on trying to get the details just right to have no one notice, others I threw together in 15-20 minutes, and got positive comments from every angle, both in game and on the forums. Like others have pointed out, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So make what pleases your own eyes. I follow a few rules when I make a toon: 1. I attempt to be original, if at all possible (I imagine a backstory. I ask myself; why do they look a certain way?) 2. If it's not possible to be original, then I try to think outside the box for execution. (there is a 1000 ways to pull off a "Poison Ivy" , "Bat Man", or a "Mr. Freeze type hero or villain") 3. I steer away from using too many pieces from same sets. 4. Color pallet choices are key. I try to avoid colors that clash for the main majority, but i do use a clashing color as an accent sometimes.

I have not made an Ice toon in a very long time, I am also very surprised the name was not taken I give you my Titan weapon / Ice armor Brute - Vindsval -The Norse god of winter

This is one I did while back

My new Symphony/Dark Dom - The Singing Satyr

So far the changes to my farming routine are not an issue. (I never did AFK farming). I have not tested PL'ing a toon with the double xp buff to see how that has changed. Most of my time, was spent Pl'ing my own toons in an effort to reclaim the 35 or so lvl 50's I lost when the Paragon servers shut down. I hope the changes don't significantly slow the process down. I still have 15 or so more to go on top of the cliche' builds I was working on. I have been vocal about the conversion of Emp merits to reward merits, I am still not happy about that. but its not a big enough issue for me since I have plenty of reward merits saved up. I can still use emp merits to get incarnates done for other toons so at least they still have some minimal value. I logged into my main, (bots/dark/mu MM) and ran a few missions and didn't really see any glaring issues with my performance as compared to pre-update. I will need to spend more time checking stuff out. My only gripe so far is the ridiculous lag and rubber-banding that I am seeing. I am hoping that's just due to the extra server load of new shiny stuff, and nothing to do with coding.

It has been Complete Pandamonium in the Excelsior General Chat. It is a Pandamic, and there does not seem to be a cure.

Here is another in my line of tribal Witch doctors. My totally non gamer wife wants to try playing, but told me She wanted a female version of Shujaa W Giza, my War mace/Shield Scrapper So I worked with her and this is what we came up with. Her new Dark/Savage Dominator - Shetani Wa Usiku (Night Devil)

I would like to see more tribal inspired pieces. Items such as Banished Pantheon costume pieces and other witch doctor/pacific islander type items.

Like I said, there is an ignore feature. Right, Wrong.. who cares. I know I sure don't. Most often excessive chatting in the wrong channel only becomes a problem when someone starts complaining. Just ignore them and your problems will fade away! But when people start telling others to go away, is when the unwanted chat will continue for longer than it would have if left alone. At leas that's been my experience over the last 20+ years of playing MMORPGs.

I'll just earn more. But since there are no current indications that more incarnate abilities are on the horizon, I would prefer them to be able to be converted.

Some folks will just never be happy unless people bend a knee to their will. Example: A couple of nights ago someone was telling a Roll-Player on excelsior to take it to another channel, when it was the General chat channel. It was all good fun, no one was being rude or doing any harm. but someone got sand in their crotch about it, and had to be the channel police . If you don't like what you see in a channel, then there is an ignore feature. I use it occasionally, and have probably been subject of the myself.

I can definitely say, that if the DA arcs were nerfed and put on a reward cool-down timer, It would be a death nail for me and my account, and would be the single largest mistake the Dev team could ever possibly make for the "solo player". Good job for realizing this and shutting down the notion, before it got out of hand. kuddos

It is far faster to run speed run the Heather Townsend arc in Dark Astoria, and take the random incarnate reward roll than it is to convert Emp merits to rare and very rare incarnate salvage. All of my tier 4 incarnates except for my first incarnate toon were done this way. My first toon was done the hard way with trials, and conversion etc. It now takes me between 35 and 50 runs at about 10~15 minutes each to complete all 6 incarnate slots to T4 depending on my power set choices. i do convert the few i earn during this process to salvage if needed, but its not normally needed. I cant earn enough emp merits in that time to do but a couple of the salvage pieces at most. I tend to use the Process of running the arc in DA to learn how to play my new lvl 50, that I PL'd via AE farming. its a good way to get familiar with the powers, try out combos, etc and get a reward at the end. what I am always left with is a bunch of extra emp merits after T4s are all unlocked, so what else is there to do with them, but convert them to help finish out my builds. I could email them to another toon, bu then that denies me the opportunity to learn to play the new character. Basically, my motivation and playstyle is different than yours, but who really is to say, yours is right, and mine is wrong. Do you have fun when you play? I do, and the way I play is what makes my time Fun.

Here is my latest Mind/Time Controller - Professor Deja Vu

This is just another Skirt around coming outright and saying "We hate farmers, Play our way or else". Why cant you just leave the merit system as is, and improve upon the reward system, rather than nerf one type of currency and boost output of another to compensate. I just don't get it. It is an improvement over the build one version, but it still sucks. does nothing, other than force prices up and supply down on the market for rare sets. I don't want to run trials to earn merits. I don't have time for all that. I farm for inf, the vet rewards along with the empyrean merits come with them are converted to reward merits so I can afford rare sets. That is my only goal when farm, infamy and empyrean converted to reward merits so I can buy stuff. What is the point of getting empyrean merits with you vet levels if you are already T4 incarnate in all slots?

Here is my farming routine, I build new character on main account. I load up my 2nd account and PL that toon up to 50. Train them, then pl the incarnate slots to unlock. that gets me 3 vet levels and 20 Emp merits. I sell everything I get except for common/uncommon salvage on both toons for 1 inf. Whether I can get more or less at a store does not matter. Since I started farming a few months ago, I have put up over 5000 recipes and rare salvage for sale on the market. When I decide to flesh out a build with IOs, which is not every toon I level to 50, I purchase all of the IOs already crafted from the market, or I convert Empyrean Merits in order to buy winter set enhancements when possible. I have built 7 toons complete with all the good sets etc out of the 20 that I have PLd to 50. Not every toon gets expensive sets, or even any crafted I/Os. Even if I purchased all of my needed IOs for the 7 toons I have finished back from the market, that would only be about 500 IOs. Bottom line, as a farmer, I can tell you I put far more back into the system than I take, and I only receive in return what the market dictates as far as pricing. I am not alone in this, don't try to paint the picture that there is anything similar about the amount we inject into the system vs what we use, because there isn't. I dare to say, prices across the board are lower due to the greater supply that us farmers provide. Lack of supply and increased demand, coupled with greed is what pushes up prices. Having lots of infamy does not make me spend more for items, I spend what I need to when I need. But I can remember people spending far more for certain items, when there were non available, and then finally one popped up. I have seen LotG 7.5% recharge Crafted IOs sell for well over 50M+ each, now that there are loads of them in circulation and available, the costs have balanced out to pretty cheap if you factor in the cost of purchasing the recipe with merits. I would say the more trillionaires the better, because that is inf out of rotation, that is not affecting the market.

THIS!

I want to further clarify my position after a night to sleep on the changes on beta, My thoughts are still in a whirlwind after seeing the changes. so i may leave out some details. when the game was live, I had somewhere around 25 fully developed level 50 characters that I played regularly. I had one of the top badge hunters, I ran the largest SG on Guardian Server. Ran events 7 days a week. Yada yada yada. The point is, There is no content in this game aside from anything the HC team has introduced, that I have not done, multiple times. I use the AE and the rewards in place from farming in order to build back my old toons from live and to relive certain content arcs with said toons. I have no desire to go back to the days of depending upon others to get in game rewards. The main reason I came back and got hooked again on this game, was the ability to easily get back what was once taken away. I have not yet finished building back all of my former heroes/ villains, and these changes will affect that goal in some negative ways. they will also affect how I add to the community. I am sure there are others who are in a similar situation as me, in regards to just wanting their old toons back. 1.Cutting emp merit rewards via Vet leveling will force me to buy sets more often on the market rather than through conversion, prices will increase for IOs on market. 2.I will be forced to farm "Heather Townsend arc (Burden of the Past)" more often, I speed run this for emp merits/threads and incarnate salvage, so my recipe/salvage output to market will decrease, prices will go up This really just seems like a very poor decision. The type of decision that typically would come form a pay to play game trying to extend subscription times, on a player base hungry for the next big content drop. This is not a good decision in a 18 year old game, on a rouge server, that is primarily filled with those of us trying to relive our "glory days" I do not pay to play, there is no contract between myself and the devs. This is their project and they can do as they wish. I am however eternally grateful they have given me the opportunity to relive the past, without their hard work, it would have been lost forever. This just really feels like a "its our ball" type move and that really sucks.