Neiska

My personal favorite? Assault Robot. Why? Who wouldn't want their own 15 foot tall Killer Robot Machine of DEWM with Shoulder Rockets, A Flamethrower, and a Plasma blaster? It would be like having your own Space Marine Dreadnaught following you around.

(Note - I snipped his quote to talk about 2 points) Thank you for your well thought out reply @Sovera. I both agree and disagree with your points. 1.) I disagree with your first point, because "something" would happen, its just difficult to predict what. The biggest difference between then and now is we already have people with more wealth than live ever dreamed about. (Just a guess on my part, I did not play during live, nor do I claim any secret knowledge about how much INF people had back then.) And the "farm" would change. I imagine people would be pulling up logs and records of which missions had the best inf/time reward, and the farmers (who only farm for money) would just run those instead. Me personally I would still run AE's for fun, even if they gave me zero drops and wealth, because I like the gameplay. I can fight repeated waves of 100 mobs with little to no downtime - travel, contact juggling, so on. I am honestly thinking about making my own WW2 style "storm the beaches" sort of scenario where a person can fight an astounding number of mobs at a time. Just nonstop wave after wave after wave, unrelenting. Because to me? That's pretty fun. Anyway, the big brains would figure out what the new "meal ticket" is, and then just do that instead. Then people would find out about it, and calls for its nerf/change would be made, and the cycle just repeats itself. Which leads me to suspect the entire crux of their argument. Because its not "money" that's the problem here. No matter what tools, or implements they enforce, people will figure out the best X>Y situation. I would argue that's a part of gaming culture, and has been for quite some time. But that leads me to your second point. 2.) I have never played GW, and I find myself wondering if diminishing returns were character specific or account wide. I mean, lets say they had that here. Every hour you spend active you found less, or whatever. What do they expect players to do once they hit that point where its not worth the effort? I mean, lets say one person only has one account and a single character. Is that player just out of luck? Whoop! You hit your allowable money earned quota for the day! You best go work on skills, costumes, roleplay, or whatever. If they did that here, I doubt it would be received well. I would either play a different character or account, and if it was tied to something else like my IP or whatever, if it was "truly" enforced to "me" as a person, then I wouldn't likely stick around. That is far too much "play your way, but only how we allow or like" for me. Regardless, I don't hear people crying about nerfs to drops themselves, or incarnate materials, or experience. Only money. When farming isn't even the most profitable way to make money for your time, not even close. Which makes me suspect its might be more of a "I want less people running AE's, I want them doing the activities that I approve of" argument. I hasten to add I in no way believe that ALL anti-farmers are like this, many have legitimate concerns. But I also suspect they are not farmers themselves, or invest much time in playing the auction house market, because if they did, if "money" was the sole concern here, I think many of the anti-farmers might be shocked just how much you can make and so quickly, let alone over a period of time, and we might see "Something has to be done about the player market, regulate it" topic posts would be seen on the forum. Anyway, that's me musing while reading the forums at work.

I do something similar as well. I pretty much have between 3 or 4 sets of all the purples - Armageddon, Ragnarok, etc, As well as all the AT and winter sets. I have a few dedicated ATs who are more or less living "shelves" for me to store things, both in their inventories, but also on their auction list as well. I put things up, but I simply don't list them. It really is free and safe storage. So here is how it goes with me, when I make an alt. - I read about a powerset or build and think "Oohh that sounds fun, I'll try that out." Make alt #4125, spend the obligatory hour or so in the costume editor. Powerfarm myself, using 2 other accounts. I might use my tanker/brute to do it, or if I am in a rush, I will use my MMs since its faster. If I am afk leveling this can take 6-7 hours in total. But if I am rushing with my MMs, I can get a new fresh shiny 50 in just over 4 hours. Once that character is 50, I level them up, then swap to one of my living storage alts and pull out what I need. Play it until I decide I no longer want to, then I pull the Enhancement's back out again using unslotters. Pass them back to my shelves, and back into storage they go. So more or less, I only pay for unslotters to try out a new build. I don't have copies of everything, but 90% of the things used in builds I do. The only things that stick out offhand are Defender, Sentinel, Controller, and Warshade/Peacebringer sets because I have yet to play any of those. My favored classes are Masterminds and Tankers, but I have a few brutes and scrappers as well. One Stalker, one Crabbermind, one Dominator. So yea, I am wondering if this might have something to do with the issue as well. I mean, unless you are hard up for money why sell something you might need in a week? You that eager to buy it back at a higher price? I would rather sit on them for when I have an urge to try something out. Plus, its nice to have a fully geared character that you didn't have to spend a single INF on. Anyone else sit on things for alts? Or do most people flip things as soon as they get them/no longer need them? I am also wondering if "time played" on a character is also a factor in wealth. I mean, my main Mastermind I have had for a year now, she is vet level 280-something. I have not had to buy anything for her in quite some time now. The same goes for my other two main support MMs. And I play with those the most, so anything I find just goes into the pile. So I am musing that number of alts made, storing things you arent immediately using, as well as how much time you spend on geared vs ungeared characters are all contributing factors to player wealth.

Yea, I didn't want to out anyone, but I think the reason why some people look at the farmers is because they are so visible. If money is what I was after I wouldn't farm. I would sit down in my place of choice and play Stock Market Simulator with the auction house and make 4 times as much money in half as much time as I would farming. But that isn't engaging, fun, or entertaining to me. The absurdly wealthy people aren't the farmers. Its the AH players.

There are several arguments against this. Leaving aside the whole "play your way" which I would argue is the spirit of the game, please consider the following - But by this logic I could say Anyone against farming just wants everyone to be forced to play story mode, and want to force other players to team with them. (I am saying this because that's how ridiculous this point is.) For argument sake, lets say the AE was removed by magic pixies in the night. Poof, gone. Everything is magically better, right? Well, no. Not at all. I would expect several things would happen. 1. Some players would leave. There would be less people playing, not more. You may not care about this, but I certainly do. 2. The economy would certainly be affected. It's difficult to expect what might happen, but I expect that the flow/trade of goods would slow down considerably, making things for everyone harder to get, not easier. Which would likely affect peoples decisions making alts. 3. It is possible that since gearing up characters is considerably more difficult, you would find less people attending task forces and raids. This would go doubly so for the smaller player base to pool raiders/teams from. 4. Perhaps most importantly, is that removing the "tool" does not solve the issue, or find a compromise. 5. Lastly, I have seen other such actions taken in other games. It doesn't change the actions, only the Meta. If you remove something, such as the AE, the sub communities will just come together on other discords and figure out the next best thing, and then do that. It would be akin to "Hey farmer bros, AE is gone. What's the thing now? Soloing TFs? Sure sign me up. Invite people? Na. I'm good." Now for me personally - A.) I run AEs because enjoy it. Where else can I fight a literal army of enemies at once? Certainly not in open world. I "like" taking my force of multiboxed masterminds, and fighting 100+ enemies, at once. It's riveting. And to be blunt, much more exciting than the vast majority of missions and task forces out there. B.) I like helping people. I have taught around 20+ people how to play Masterminds. They see what I do and ask for help. I have written guides even. A large portion of my friend list are my fellow Mastermind bros. But if the AE tool was removed, I would not be as eager or willing to help random people as frequently. Both with hand me downs enhancements, money, or help leveling. C.) If this was removed, I most certainly would stop supporting CCs and donating to other player events. I mean if money was suddenly much harder to obtain, why should I be so free with it? Lets Scrooge it up then. What I find most amusing, is the feeling that some people think its an "Us/Them" mentality. Do people think that farmers only do just that? Farm? That they don't run TFs, Missions, Stories, Random PI's, go GM hunting, host CCs and other events? They would be wrong. And like it or not, you benefit from farmers. Yes. You. You way in back who says they never stepped foot in a farm. Yep, you benefitted too. You likely went to an event hosted or paid for by a farmer, or bought something from a farmer. And honestly the discussion is starting to turn into "Farmers are bad" which I find worrying. Don't like to farm? Great. Then don't. Don't like to raid? Awesome. Then don't. Don't want to team? Super. then don't. And if you trim all the contexts away from the argument, regardless of reason or logic, I will never support the "less is more" point. I do not support removing tools or options away from players. And to those so firm against farming, I would like to ask where is it written that Story Mode/Contacts/Raids/TFs HAVE to be, or is even supposed to be, the most economical/superior method of financial gain? The last time I checked, that isn't written anywhere. I actually have more to say, but I have to get ready for work. Best wishes.

Hello @CaptainAmazing My main character is a Robot/EA MM, and here is the build I use. It doesn't have stealth, but she does have teleport and fly pools. I drop bonfire to stack it with my assualt robots patches, and use fold space to teleport everything into it. It works quite well! Plus has all the perks of EA secondary. Sins Robot-Electric MM (fold space).mxd

My biggest hit is with an Energy Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper, with a crit for 1200. Not sure how that ranks up against others, (I usually play Masterminds and Tankers, she's actually my only scrapper.) but that's been my personal best so far.

Psst... I will share with you the horrible horrible truth of it. The secret of "Fast Travel", but you gotta kiss elbow promise not to tell anyone. Itsa S-E-C-R-E-T! Okay, here we go... this is what "really" happens when you fast travel -

I usually try to fit in fly out of the travel powers, because I use it for more than just getting from point A to B, there are some places where vertical is a concern as well. But there is one power I always have on my tray, regardless of AT, Powers, Build, Origin, or Inf Investment. So long as they are level two, I always always 100% of the time without fail have WALK on my tray. For RP purposes. It looks weird/ungainly even just flat running around.

@Diantane Here is what works for me personally. Granted, this wont work on all levels, but I am listing what makes me the most money to the least. 1. Farming. My main source of income is farming. I 3 box MMs and clear maps very fast (3 mins a map) and after an hour or so of farming each one has usually around 50-60 mil inf, plus whatever they managed to find. You can add another 10 mil per purple, 500k per rare/orange salvage. But the majority of my "selling" money comes from selling vast piles of level 50 white recipes to vendors. They are roughly 100k apiece, and I have finished up a farm session with 100+ of them on 3 characters before. I mean that's roughly 30 mil in just white recipes alone. The majority of yellow recipes aren't worth much these days. There are a few here or there but most of them are junk. So together they will have around 50 mil each in raw Inf for a total of 150 million, plus another roughly 30 million for a rough total of 180 million or so, thereabouts. This fluctuates a bit, depending on how many white, purple, and pvp recipes I find, but that is a good ballpark figure. 2. Converters. Converters always sell. They go for roughly 70-75k a pop, and you will find them constantly when you are 50. Now days I wait until I have a pile to throw them up onto the market. 3. Packs. You can sort of "gamble" using the winter/at packs. You buy them from the Auction house and get a random assortment of goodies. These can be character account items like EXP/Money boosters, recipes, IOs, and so on. Even brainstorms. You can convert the brainstorms into other things and sell them with all the rest. You then "flip" these and often net a profit. Though this isn't as profitable as it used to be. But you can still net enough from the IOs alone so that anything else after that is a profit. Luck is involved though, but rarely have I ever lost money. I have always made a profit or broke even. The trick to this method is patience. If you throw 100 things up on auction, don't be surprised if it takes a bit to sell. But, its a good time killer. 4. Catalysts. Similar to Converters, its special salvage you find at 50. Its what you use to turn Orange sets into the epic Purple stuff. They go for anywhere between 1.4 mil to 2 mil a pop, depending on how impatient someone is. Again, I usually save up a stack or so of them before putting them up. 5. Threads. Threads threads threads. Precious when you start out, but at the end, you could knit a scarf big enough to wrap around the world twice. You can use the them at a vendor to buy group inspirations and then sell them as people who run the endgame content use a lot of them. Don't be too fast to do this though as threads are non-transferrable, and you need quite a lot of them starting out. But eventually you will find yourself having a ton of them if you play the same character long enough. I have around 12-15k of them across multiple characters. Personally I wish we had more uses for them. 6. Stock Market Simulator. If you are patient, you can play the market game. The whole buy low sell high thing. But this takes a bit of time and experience to do, but it can be done. A few friends of mine are die hard roleplayers who play the market while they roleplay, and have never stepped foot in a TF, Raid, or Farm, and they are at INF cap. You don't have to be a high level to be absurdly wealthy in this game. Mostly what it takes is time. 7. Gambling. If you are feeling lucky, instead of selling your converters you can save them up and use to convert AT IOs from a cheap one into one high in demand. This is totally random however, but its only 1 Converter to reroll. You might turn an AT IO that is worth 6 or 7 mil into one worth 10-15 mil. Even more if you are gambling with purple sets. 8. Crafting. Instead of selling recipes/salvage, you can hoard them up if you like. Though this requires space and storage to do. You essentially save every bit of salvage and every high value recipe you find and craft them. For an example, if you have a purple recipe worth 10 mil and salvage worth 500k, you could spend the inf and other salvage to make it, and possibly turn around and sell that purple IO for 20 mil. This is especially good for the PVP recipes, as well as sets like Hecatomb, Ragnarock, Armageddon, and so on. This method is the "long view" though, but does give the most profit per INF spent. Personally I don't bother with crafting anymore as I could make more by farming than the time storing, organizing, crafting, and selling. But if you are patient, this is likely the most bang for your buck. 9. Merits. This is the standard money maker while leveling up. You complete story arcs or TFs and get merits at the end, which you can then turn into other salvage and sell. You wont be rolling in the moola like Scrooge Mcduck anytime soon, but it will pay for your leveling up needs with change to spare. 10. Base Building. If you are good at base building, there are some folks who pay INF for such services. Depending on the server, I have seen people shell out 1-2 billon for a skilled base builder to help them make their dream home. I have no experience in this myself however, but it is a note-able way to make money, if you are good with the builder. There you go. There are 10 ways to make some moola during your journey. I would like to add that a mistake some people make is as soon as they make 500m or so, they go out and blow it on their first build, and then find themselves in the first predicament as before. You can spend that 500m, and make much much more, and in a sense, bankroll yourself and your other characters/projects. As I mentioned before, you don't have to be level 50 fully incarnated out to make money. Mostly it takes time and persistence. I know some level 2's who have more money than I do, even though I farm and they don't. That's because they have played the market ever since HC launched almost 2 years ago. I might catch up to them if I cared to, but they play largely the same characters and I tend to like to experiment with alts, and try new powers and builds. Best Wishes, and I Hope this helps!

I think powers change depending on the AT they are taken with. As an example, the Tanker vs Brute vs Scrapper vs Stalker comparisons, the Brute often stands apart due to Fury and Damage Buff interactions. For Melee: Generally I have found both Radiation Melee and Claws balanced. Claws is more focused on speedy attacks with a fantastic AoE at a very low level. Radiation is slower, but its energy. It has a great single target and area damage, and is also one of the few Melee powers with a Damage Aura, plus it has the Contaminated mechanic. I also found Katana to be oddly satisfying, and was one of the smoothest 1-50 journeys I have experienced. Personal Melee favorite: Radiation Melee For Armor: Shield is great, with not only defense but CC as well. But it cant be taken with everything. Invulnerability is also very good. Bio Armor is also very good with its different stances, and its regen/absorb mechanic makes it very effective at all damage types, something not all armor sets can enjoy. Bio Armor only gets better with recharge, so it pairs very well with recharge melee sets. Personal Armor favorite: Bio Armor.

If you multibox, I have found it is actually faster to 3 box Masterminds than it is to play 3 Brute farmers. The reason being you can engage so many more targets at a time. I did a write up awhile back and have been performing tests for roughly half a year with Masterminds. Here is a link - I've been able to clear maps in 3 minutes. My fastest 3 Brute team was 4. The Brutes were easier to manage though. But for sheer speed, Masterminds win, at least for me.

I like boop noodles...! 😪

I have had all kinds of roleplay, from normal day to day teaching another super being how to make the perfect meatloaf and program their entertainment center, to visiting a friend in the hospital whom is recovering, to planning a bachlorette party with a friend. Not all rp need be epic in scope. But we have had more important things as well, which also combined as learning the lore for some as we discussed the various wars and invasions over the years, the whole praetoran thing, and more. So, a bit of everything really. From "how many eggs again?" to "And on that day we set aside our differences as the sun stood still.." and everything inbetween.

Several well made and spoken points all around. Thank you everyone for your input. I do agree that the "how" is just as important as the "what" where rp is concerned.

Thank you for your composed and thought out reply @Llewellyn Blackwell, which I do appreciate. But I respectfully disagree with some of your points. But I will simply summarize them by simply asking what you would consider "over the top" or "too much?" I mean, if everyone is Neo/Superman/One Punch Man/Captain Marvel levels of untouchable, how would even minor threats exist for very long? I do agree it makes for stale interactions and roleplays. I regularly find myself clubbing with beings of deity-levels of power and usually find myself thinking "So you are a demi-god, basically. Right? And you what.. spend your free time hanging out at clubs, sipping cheap booze and using bad pickup lines? Shouldn't you be off you know, fighting some galactic war/answering prayers/creating worlds/creating life kinda stuff?" My main concern about such beings is a lot of the times, that's all they are. A power level. No personality, no goals, no journey. A lot of them rarely create roleplay and instead only react to it. A lot of the time when roleplaying with such characters it feels as if I am roleplaying by myself. They ask no questions. Endure no hardships. Have no obstacles to overcome or current goals they are working toward. They often interact by giving blunt single word answers, which add little to the scene or story. Which makes me question the entire point of them being there. But I do agree that I usually don't go to great lengths to involve them in whatever else I got going on. Again, thank you for your reply. I do appreciate it.

Thank you @_Kai_, answers my question. Depends on the crowd you hang with!

Oh for sure, travel time, contact/request mission time, team gathering time, then you have the escort missions where you aren't actively killing things. That all adds up, where farms are almost nonstop combat. Which is why I asked. I was wondering if there were different drop values, or if it was other activities being slower than farms with kill times kind of situation.

I agree with several of your points hon. But I will try to expand - The multidimensional thing, well, the 2 people who did it essentially were like "this is only one of our bodies. whatever you do we just replace it" sort of angle. So they were effectively, immune to anything done to them. That is a pretty simple explanation that they gave. Most multi-dimensional folks don't play this card. But it did stand out in memory, sort of an "i win any argument/obstacle" card. Sure, bloodlines are a thing. Half dragons, sure. Half or even full demons? great. Werewolf? go nuts. But I have seen people roll like 8 or 9 things all into one. Half-half-half-half-half etc. Well, just how many "halves" can you have? To my mind, the more you added, the more "Watered down" features you would have from each thing, and you might very well end up weaker, not stronger as was implied. You wouldn't usually get the "cream" of everything you added in games.

Personally, I wouldn't object to Open world and AE being balanced. But this is not the first time I have heard of AE getting higher rewards than other activities. Is there a source for this? I am genuinely curious as to the details. If its a kill speed/travel speed thing, or if Mob A vs Mob B of exact same level/rank drop different values. There is also things such as party size too. So there are lots of variables. So is there actually any Wiki/HC post or source that says that, or is it just people guessing? Asking respectfully, not being snarky.

Oh, I am talking about a full level 50 with full sets slotted and such, some builds still have END problems. Even with the proc slotting and such. But already gotten some answers that will help. Working on a new Shield/Energy Melee tanker now.

I think you are misunderstanding me. I know and RP with people who are members of the skulls, hellions, etc. I am fine with that. What I meant is like, someone claiming to be equal/greater than established leaders of such factions, not the foot guys or even the lieutenants, but like, the leaders/organizers/founders of such organizations. Essentially inflating their importance in the organizations. I mean, how would you react to someone suddenly showing up claiming to be an Overlord of Rikti or Nemesis's right hand man? (had both happen)

I would call being a blood relative of Statesman, or Miss Liberties BFF Godmodding, yes. Any sort of intimate or insider relationship with established storyline NPCs would be overboard in my book. @PeregrineFalcon - I know, that is a thing. But my point was here in HC, is there a general level of power that's accepted, or is it pretty much anything you can imagine is allowed, as far as the rp community is concerned. How much is "too much" for the general community I guess is the question, because as Coyotedancer demonstrated, people have different ideas of what is and is not Godmodding.

Thank you for the responses. I usually do slot the Proc stuff like preventative medicine, paneca, numa, performance enhancer on all my characters. But taking my Shield Stalker as an example, or my Widow, they are both DEF capped with varying levels of resistance, and still get clocked, even when they are 45% defense to just about everything. @arcane - I perfer to not rely on things like ageless for 2 reasons. 1. in case i decide to run lower level content and I wont have access to it, a build can fall flat if it relys on it as a crutch. And 2. I perfer having a tool like ageless in the off chance of dealing with enemies like sappers, or END drain situations. If your build relies on Ageless to perform normally, then it may not be enough when you need more in some circumstances. @Erratic1 - Your point only goes to highlight precisely how little experience I have with the Invulnerability set! But yes, no END tool, but most sets don't have one either. But I didn't think of Dull Pain.

Hello Forums, First off, I want to say far be it from me to dictate to another player who/what/how to roleplay their character. That said however, it seems like there are more and more "Ultimate POWAH" sorts of characters as of late. And so I am curious if other people tend to run into characters that tend to be over the top, in terms of "power level", and how they interact with such people. Here are a few examples off the top if my head, what I am referring to. And yes, these are all very real examples that I have run into. - Existed before time/A Bajillion years old. - Can punch a healthy star hard enough to make it collapse into a black hole. - Automatically knows the thoughts/emotions of everyone within a 10 mile radius. - Knows every spell/get out of jail or problem card on a whim. - Their super power was literally, to be better than everyone else in every way. - Utter immortality/immunity to everything. - Can warp reality at a whim. - Multi-dimensional/immune to any negative/hampering effect in "this" reality. - Questionable "Bloodlines" that seem way over the top or that don't make sense - Half Dragon, Demon, Angel, Vampire, Star-born, Werewolf, all rolled into one. Isn't that just a bit... much? - Related to/knows X famous NPC/Monster/Group etc. Now to me personally, some of these are just a bit over the top. I mean, first off if they are level 2, then they haven't actually accomplished that much yet, despite their backstory. But to me overpowered characters is.. well, boring. I mean, where is the development? The obstacles to overcome? The trials that cause bonding and friendship? If you are an entire super league all on your own, then what's the point? For me, I usually give my characters a weakness or negative. My main character, well she's a cyborg that's super great with technology and robots. She may not be as powerful as others, but where she shines is she can be different each fight. She can literally swap parts and go from a melee specialist to a tanker to a support character. From an OOC perspective that was my IC reason why she was different classes. ICly, it was all the same "person", but OOCly I was learning the game and powersets, and I didn't want to loose my roleplay or friends I was making in my journey. She is settled on a main setup now though, a robot mastermind. But her drawback? Magic. She's 100% absolutely clueless when it comes to anything magic, be it races, people, items, spells, all of it. To her magic is rabbits from hats and card tricks. She relies on her friends for any and all magical problems and challenges, but in turn they rely on her for anything tech related, like resetting their microwave clock, setting up their new phone apps, and fixing their printer. I do have 1 "immortal" character, but not in the Divine sense. She can die, she simply doesn't stay dead. She is more or less similar to highlander. Physically? She's a normal human. It isn't difficult to put her down. The trick is "keeping" her down for good, that's the hard bit. I only use my characters as examples for context here. But I am really wondering if its just me, or are some characters essentially full on Omnipotent Gods just walking around, and if so, is that "too much" or "over the top?" I mean, where is the acceptable line drawn, as far as roleplay is concerned? I have no qualms against Strong or Super Impressive powers. But if that's all there is to a character, I usually find them boring and dull to interact with. Either from them being so aloof ICly, or having a lack of common things to relate on with one another. Again, I want to stress that I don't tell others how to RP their character, its their character. But honestly, some if it seems just too much. And I am hoping there is a sense of Plateu out there on HC that everyone generally deems is acceptable, in roleplay. Otherwise, it can just be Godmodding. So, is it just me? Or what do you do with the Superman/One Punch Man/Genku/Mary Sues/Joes?