DrunkFlux

It's unfortunate that it becomes to easy to pick on them, but we cannot really blame them. When a human being relies on anything specific for an especially long time they get so accustomed it becomes impossible to develop new skills. It's unfortunate human beings are ingrained to get specialized but it's a fascinating trait we all have really, because in the old days it did help us survive. Nature expected us to learn how to hunt and gather and never have to learn any new skills after, so we had to force ourselves out of that and begin farming and writing so we could record our progress on the path that is scientific and technological progress. Of course they never actually knew that we as humans love to get comfortable and we humans also hate being pushed into the unknown. Many people do not like having to change, even if we(and also they)do enjoy stories where protagonists are forced to change to achieve their goals. And it's unfortunate that many have never actually tried to change or objectively look at themselves and how they play, even making the claim they refuse to do so on the premise of how they play. But of course without carefully watching every detail and an unwillingness or inability to self reflect ultimately prevents adapting. The only solution left for them at this point is to try and rightfully protest in the forums against the change.

Honestly farming is about adapting to the changes as is 'anything' in the game. When it comes to the meta of 'anything' in 'any' game in fact, the meta can generally be expected to change. Now I understand 100% if you don't like the direction of the new meta, I mean, I didn't like champions onlines heavy handed forced balanced changes towards effectively melee only. In comparison to here, I feel the changes in this game have at best, if a nerf happened, mild at best. On afk farming, yeah, this game isn't factorio/minecraft/starbound/terraria. And honestly the existence of AFK farming made me wonder about players with extremely high veteran levels that are just not remotely realistic for anyone. I mean compare two players both working 40 hours, and have maybe 20 hours free time, the afk farmer in an extreme circumstance, especially if working from home, could easily make an afk farm and restart it constantly the entire shift. Thats a LOT of experience compared to the other player, even if that other player has effective farms of there own, the fact they aren't afk farming would mean they could never possibly cover such a gap. It'd be like cheating, and I have had, as I'm sure some here may also have shared, experiences with being accused of cheating for simply doing well and playing honestly. Honest players who are good look bad, and afk farming far as I can tell it easily makes anyone who has 1000+ veteran levels look very dishonest.

Heres a pic of someones response to me. Quote on quote: "Unfortunately Griz94 seems to take any critique of there given RP style to which in my experience is based on his character being a Mary Sue, in that Kara seems to have unlimited capabilities at least in a military or confrontation, can't be approached stealthily, can take out dozen of aggressors single handedl, is engineered to be superior, has access ot vast arsenels, I could go on for an hour. All of which he seems to willing to provide evidence of establishment with his own documentation." "One the one hand I appreciate such an attention to detail when it comes to characters and development, but the take away has to be a certain ammount of leeway when it comes to RPing with others and Griz offers none. I have tried to compromise in the past and was met with rebutle and lectures on why they can't change their character. 'It's already established' is what I commonly hear." (mispellings included from screenshot)

I didn't need a character validated because they didn't exist, you clearly didn't read the post or took it out of context. So I'll clarify. Want the real reason? Read the post about there endless bragging about a super space station and my characters bringing up how easy it is to find for it. THAT is why I did what I did. Accused ME of god modding when she was literally spelling out every single thing about her space station in local chat. My character even HINTED at how sloppy she was as she was bragging quote 'well now I know what to calibrate my scanners for'. Like a villain explaining the whole plot and how to stop it on top of that before attempting it and the hero saving the day by foiling it, just imagine the villain crying mary sue when it inevitably happens. And they did that to other players a lot. The person was trolling practically the entirety of the rp community, if you want I can share a screenshot of the complaints people had of the person in question. We did that specifically to reveal the kind of person they were. The thing was they did all that damage to themselves in how they reacted to my bait drow; they could easily have laughed off my characters shenanigans, instead they(predictably) took things so out of context that they verbally assaulted me and my friend openly. The mary sue player did, in bullet points to be clear(Some was mentioned in the previous thread): *Gave themselves unlimited resources without earning any of it rp. Then gets mad at anyone who has a powerful or wealthy character. *Put a station in a spot, bragged about it's location, it's makeup ect and then blamed everyone else for knowing where it is. *Made there own originating faction ridiculously overpowered, and anytime anyone had anything that could be powerful they just one-upped them further. *Made there character impossible to sneak up on or engage in any way, unbeatable in fighting ect. *loaded up bad anime tropes. Then got mad at anyone else who ended up with any trope. *Bragged about boob size(Obsessively to) and then accused everyone else of having over-sized boobs(even characters with small or even flat-chested). *Bragged about being the ultimate gambler. *Tried to God-mode someone by murdering there toon. *Demanded everyone only make toons she approved, rules including nothing from outside of star trek. Yet dated a players toon that broke that rule she made up. break her rule and she'd attack you for it, of course it didn't apply to her. *Tried to do everything they can to get said friend of mine to defriend me and every, single other person in the RP community in an effort to isolate them from the rp community. A common tactic narcissists do. In fact, add any skill? They claimed the toon was the ultimate at it. Someone even joked "And you probably have Q countered huh?" to them. For IRL? They claimed to be super mercenary ex military, accused others of stolen valor(even though every story they told was to good to be true) and constantly also harassed said friend of mine. They also spout racist stupidity and everything else. That was on top of that last bullet point I made. AND frequently harrassed said friend bragging about how awesome there car was in real life going over 110mph on a highway(at night no less, and they included a screenshot), pictures of 100 dollar steaks ect. It got to a point where my friend was creeped out from it. We all ultimately concluded they were a major narcissist. Edit: A few edits to clarify, bunch across a few edits in fact. To clarify, the drow character I made was not even a character I had in STO until we decided to pull this stunt. I made her as part of the stunt; we knew 100% how they'd react in advance because they were especially predictable(verbally abuse players and when confronted, would be more than willing to justify it without even questioning their own actions). And it was largely to expose their hypocrisy and bad behavior. I actually expected to be banned at the time(they got others banned for far less). Honestly none of it would have happened if the person wasn't so hypocritical and mean spirited. I made the drow because they were dating a drow character while holding onto a rule that nothing from any other media from outside of STO was allowed. And we all knew exactly how she'd react. Any rules she made up just flat out didn't apply to her, at all.

Meteor > Upthrust > Rock Shards = dead mob, even without a KB to KD in meteor the shards will usually still hit, and the entire mob is dead. You just need to be willing to push forward quicker than normal on a seismic. Oh yeah, chain-kd-stun is glorious, enemies cannot do damage if they are constantly being chain-knocked. Really, Seismic is a defensive blast set, and I love it for it.

I'll make another comment on creativity: You'll be surprised how often you may come up with an idea, people even love it, but then find you accidentally had a plot similar to a popular work somewhere. When it comes to plotlines/stories/themes its very hard to come up with something because we as a people have come up with numerous crazy concepts in stories already. The only thing that innovation 100% perfectly exists, is in inventions and technologies in real life, and scientific knowledges of the universe/biology ect that we learn in science. City of heroes isn't the first work to visit on the concept of aliens turning humans into themselves, nore is it the last nore are the current last be the last, as an example. Heck, one idea of mine I found ended up being a plot in a few games on accident, but me and my friends(this is in STO) joked about it and moved on, and I came up with other ideas for that same character's direction. You know your a nerd when you recognize a plot from something right away being done, even if by accident.

I admit I saw lots of drama to, and not just city of heroes homecoming, I can also think of the other game I rp in(though rarely now, due to hardly any rpers left), Star trek online, and I notice a lot of it happens with people on a power trip. But I also noticed it happen with prudes and lack of communication. In the case with STO, the worst person I met on an uncontrolled power trip made there character both very foolish yet insists they are super geniuses, stronger and faster than everyone else no matter what. With infinite resources. The ultimate example is the location of her personal space station that is supposed to be super hidden. That space station everyone concludes is in a briar patch(not the same as the one in the beta quadrant) in the delta quadrant bordering right on borg territory...in the delta quadrant. So that narrows it down super, super easy. Any of my toons could find it in the snap of a finger because lo and behold process of elimination! But no, if you point this out, the player instantly calls your character a mary sue. How is it everyone knows where it is though? Because his character CONSTANTLY BRAGS ABOUT IT, IT'S TYPE OF LOCATION AND THAT ITS ON THE BORDER OF BORG SPACE. Constantly brags, even bragged about it's material makeup. Could they give any more information? Nope, because they just spill the beans to the max. The old saying "Loose lips sink ships". But they call everyone who points out the stations location a mary sue. They also have major double-standards on whats allowed and not allowed in rp, like a drow-like toon? Nope not allowed, but there own sue is allowed to date a drow-like toon. Actually they had to insist on having a say on every toon other people made, and frequently took everything out of context, made zero effort to know the rpers they attacked ect, or make any effort for example to learn which of my own toons are my own creation(quite a few) vs those that have a loose basis on another character somewhere else. (Me and a friend actually plotted, and succeeded, in exposing them on this hypocrisy using there above perception of me, I made my own drow-like toon myself, rp'd some jokes, and boom, they exploded in local chat calling me a mary sue rper, saying I should stop copying from some anime(in actuality my toon was based on one I made HERE). Everyone caught onto the mary sues hypocrisy and they lost a lot of friends in an instant.) (To Clarify: They basically had a rule that any toon from another game/tabletop/anything not star trek that toon shouldn't be rp'd. Yet they started dating a drow someone made(thus breaking there own made up rule). This was one of a long, long list of hypocrisy in that, any rule they made up, didn't apply to them or the sue they rp'd. We were tired of the double-standards and hypocrisy they were shoving on us constantly day after day. So I made a drow, flew her to DS9, started interacting with someone about 30 feet away from them, my toon made some jokes about my other toons, and boom, they exploded in a verbal barrage, everyone in DS9 saw it in broad daylight, I elaborate the level of hipocracy this player was prone to in a post below. The stunt took less than 30 minutes and they took the bait on the first try, the didn't even hesitate). Then there were the other drama queens with no IC/OOC lines who couldn't separate in-character relationships with IRL relationships, me and my friends were creeped out by it, and they also went full karen on others repeatedly over it. They proved to cause major splits though in the rp community of STO. I'll have to make a different post about CoH rp, if I get time anyways.

Can totally work, just don't make said professor the only one teaching what they teach :). It's the same as anything, make sure your character is balanced out well enough they don't break stories ect they can work well with others. Edit: I'll elaborate a little since I feel I was just a parrot just now. One of my characters was a professor(just not ended her career to persue other things), a chaos mage who specialized in forms of chaos magic. Was she the only person on the topic? Not really, but she was balanced enough that I could include her in quite a few stories if I chose to do so. Some people like bringing her into plots quite often, even if a minor role. Her praetorian counterpart just got involved in a bigger plot and she to is a professor(with different personality, course, more chill/cheerful than the primal). It's true of all characters of any background, as long as they are not mary sues(or part of a mary suetopia) that will practically one-shot someones plot or problem, they can work fine.

Before the patch landed, I got rid of every single E merit on my toons beforehand well in advance. I still have a massive stockpile of merits across multiple toons as a result. I did this even on toons without fully developed incarnate powers, specifically since I still had plenty of vet levels that granted e merits left on those toons. My thoughts are two fold: E merits become less valuable over time as you have your chosen incarnate powers advanced to a point. Many tier 4 incarnate powers are actually not 'that' useful or enough of a gain. IO's however are a much bigger gain. So I often used E merit to merit to fund my toons IO's before going back to getting tier 4 incarnate powers. Cost opportunity; tier 4 incarnate powers are most part not enough of an increase in power per the cost of upgrading from tier 3 to tier 4. three hundred and eighty to 400 or so merits for a power that was about 10-15% more effective when I could use that influence to get 3-4 IO sets, world of difference. What changed for me ultimately is now many of my toons are far less IO'd out than before, and while I'm playing them longer before I max them out, I'm not as caring or valuing of E merits, in fact as far as I am concerned anything rewarding E merits, but not merits, certainly wouldn't be worth running at all. I mean why should I bother with them if i have almost everything or everything tier 4 by the time I'm even vet level 30-40 now? I know some people think E merits should only have been used, exclusively, on incarnate powers but all it means is they are simply way, way less valuable now.

I think I should repost it a bit here so it's now drowned out by my last paragraph in the post above to reiterate: AE should NOT become the only way to play the game either, but if it remains to good it could easily become that. When enough of a majority of players only play AE, it hurts everyone else who doesn't use AE, slowing and removing there ability to get any teams formed ect when everyone else is waiting around for an AE farm to form or is getting on board with an AE farm. That can be just as destructive. Plus AE has always had a hard impact on the economy, including especially on non-AE farmers. Because it's where a lot of influence gets printed(and the prices thus effected by it, in fact I worried quite a bit about inflation effects when E merit-merit nerf hit, i'm shocked the prices didn't skyrocket everywhere yet). It's probably a good thing recipies (including purple) can drop in AE now, otherwise we'd have half billion price tags on purple IO's like on live.

Honestly I don't mind farms as long as players can be active in them(in fact, the biggest beef I have AE farms is how they often discourage active participation, getting exp by just sitting, doing nothing while someone else does all the work used to be seen as leeching in the day, when I described AE farm power leveling to my father he stated "sounds like cheating".) I had a long conversation just now with someone who was defending fire farming zealously, all the while I was making numerous points as to why it cannot and should not be the only way to play, why specifically it being overpowered is bad for the game, as it slowly turns into the only way to play from existing as being to powerful. I mean, they nerfed E merit to merits on veteran levels being easily grinded up to 100, and then the toon being discarded after the E merits and merits were exhausted. That was probably done by a scant few players, but it was enough the devs felt they had to nerf that feature, it was probably AE to blame for it. That took away a key part of my strategy for funding my toons, I wasn't happy at all losing E merits to merit conversion, and I was left looking at AE as the culprit. Like i'm slowly being forced to only play AE to fund my toons, which I really rather not be doing, I want to enjoy the rest of the game. I prefer my income through trade, not having my toons sit around doing nothing while someone else(or me on another account) destroys mobs with a toon who's effectively immune to the only damage type on the entire map. Complacent Gaming Syndrome - TV Tropes So I was thinking of peoples reaction to the fix to AE experience bug that happened, and then came to past personal experiences ect, and I end up thinking of that trope. Players get very complacent towards only one way to play, and I also came to another conclusion about AE, that it remaining powerful for to long it left me worried and bothered its existence can end up slowly rendering and removing all other aspects of the game. I think the last thing we should want is to see AE become the literal only way to get a lot of experience and/or influence. We saw that happening to a degree on live, in fact I'd even say AE saw the decline of CoH, and before we blame the devs we have to remember, it's players using it and abusing it that also didn't help the situation with AE. Many players in mmorpgs don't see content as anything else but a way to get lots of experience and influence, and don't care at all about the games content or it's story. So devs had to nerf AE multiple times, I'm sure some players left even with the first nerfs out of frustration they were bound to experience when it'd be nerfed the first times, like enemies have to be given attacks ect. I'm sure some players went to a diff private server exclusively so they could have pre-shutdown AE experience levels, *shrug*. But theres a massive amount of content in the game that i'm positive just never gets played, at all, by 100% (not 99%, 100%) of the player base. Some of it may be due to it's quality being low, but then theres content I'm sure is only played by 1-2 people at all due to AE and PI+4. I know I certainly hadn't played Croatoa or faultlines story archs since homecoming started(even though they are some very fun archs).

The new inherent will be an amazing Archvillain killer. While stalkers are the melee AV killers of the game, sentinels will be the ranged AV killers. -resistance thats unresistable is nothing to sneeze at. Not to mention -defense will help lower level teammates hit more reliably to.

I should also mention many defense debuffs can hit through defense ratings easily, such as freezing rain and sleet; they only need 1 tic and the debuff applies. So it's not end of the world. If anything, leadership is most useful for alleviating weaknesses in support within a team.

Well I also thought about other support powers, and the higher * ratings I do appreciate they increase the value of support significantly. My only issue perhaps is the feeling of leadership becoming a necessity, it can hurt build variety in the same way stamina did during the pre-inherent fitness days. It's easy to take that for granted. On the other hand, thankfully, leadership powers can be pushed till the end of your build, where your down to largely optional ancillary pools. It's also easier to skip travel powers if necessary with athletics/ninja/beast run available. Leadership is much more a "pool power you have to very, very strongly consider, even potentially feel you 100% MUST take". Instead of a key power in a primary/secondary it's a pool, which is kind of where I draw the line on 'necessary' powers. Even hasten is actually very optional in the long run; a heavily IO'd build could very well have so much cooldown reduction hasten may have little impact(like on my main blaster, hasten litterally only cuts a few seconds from geyser, not enough to warrent a full power slot, when I could, well, fit leadership tactics in). But to-hit is far harder to come by naturally and is very rare in main/secondary power sets, build up and aim do NOT count; they are not permanent, you will always have lots of downtime with them, and so less to-hit in those times, even with a max cooldown reduction build. Thats why Leadership: Tactics is so valuable, and useful. Support builds can consider, of all classes, actually skipping leadership: tactics, if they have strong built in to-hit buffs already. I actually only have TT: Leadership rather than leadership; Tactics on my widow, largely due to mind link also providing some +to-hit and I have TT: Leadership slotted for extra to-hit. I still have just about every other leadership and tactical training power, exclusing leadership: Vengeance(only need TT: Vengeance). The weakest leadership power though, is still Leadership: Assault, if only because unless they load a lot of enemies into the missions with taunt/placate, the damage buff is the only factor you typically see from assault, and it's damage boost is miniscule for it's endurance cost. So it's still skippable most part. At least leadership is only 2 powers to be effective, rather than 3 powers like stamina used to be.

I wouldn't call someone selfish or selfless for not taking or taking leadership, I would however add a few points. Leadership Maneuvers can level the playing field for non-incarnates at higher level difficulties. Leadership: Tactics can do so twice as effectively often, assuming it's just given an endurance reduction enhancement (usually what I do). Leadership Maneuvers and Tactics are must-haves for the new hard mode difficulties higher than the lowest setting. Enemies at the higher settings get lots of defense, if you cannot hit them, your damage PLUMMETS exponentially. A character with only 20-30% chance to hit just as well have almost no dps at all, as they just miss to often, enemies may even out-regen them. With a 20% increased to-hit from the mobs, you need the ENTIRE team to have maneuvers to reliably counter that to bring it within reason. I just flat-out don't like the new difficulty mode past the lowest setting purely for that reason alone. As a result, I can never recommend more than 2 star, purely on numbers alone. I drew the conclusion on the AEON hard mode TF, and also drew it even more-so on the hard mode ITF.

I'll have to watch later but, can instantly tell one problem; You need more leadership power stacks. You need SIX maneuvers stacks and 3 leadership TACTICS stacks. I only saw significant leadership stacking from you in that buff bar of yours. I honestly.....don't really have interest in the max difficulty for that reason tbh. It's just maxing the numbers for sake of inflating them.

One of the things i've noticed about farming AE is unlike on live, recipies DO drop in AE. This actually helps stabilize the market. On live, recipies did not drop, but influence was still being generated, and generated in massive bulk. This resulted in the value of influence plummeting severely, to a point it was almost completely useless.

I admit I'm not 100% in agreement with just making more and more hardcore content. If largely from my fear of the catch-22 it creates; Newer chars of mine are not going to get to level up with ITF anymore, everyone will only pick hard mode, which non-50s are not good enough for. This simply makes leveling them take longer. As it is, the rewards are nothing but cosmetics, why would I care for that as much? But also I feel a hair frustrated I guess. I only went into the ASF twice, due to it's length being a bit on the long side. While I might enter hard mode ITFs, i'm not honestly as interested in them. While they are appreciable challenges, I have alts to level to, and I don't like using AE to max my characters. It's not as fun or entertaining, the highest I'll PL a char in AE is around 20-30 level range, after that, I'd rather get a feel for the characters powers. At the same time, somehow I feel leveling can be faster in +4 PI teams and its even faster in +4 ITF classic. But no one will do +4 ITF classic anymore, it'll only be hard mode, guaranteed(complacent gamer syndrome, feeling of need to do hard mode because they can, and thus, have to).

I was hit 5 times in a row on my bio armor character for a 1-shot, and some players are trying to tell me it is auto-hit. Question Lemming was this not-auto hit on the new version? If so then that means the person telling me it is, is a liar.

Small Spoilers below. A thought/idea for the void crystals, because to me, they violated the most important rule of challenging gameplay; avoid auto-killing the player with no warning. Before the crystals only damaged players/killed them if they were not full health, but now it's capable of one-shotting players who are not high resistance builds vs dark energy. It's allegedly auto-hit also. This is outright unfair to melee builds who are using defense, as other than firing barrier off just before it dies or just staying away while everyone destroys the crystal theres nothing else that can be done. Contrast this to the final boss and his judgement, that can be avoided, is telegraphed and dodgable, or the nictus possession attempts that can be countered before disaster strikes. The void crystals just explode and can by-pass the one shot rule. Instead of having there explosion just do multiple damage-tics bypassing the one shot rule, let there be a bomb or something that drops for players to avoid so damage CAN be avoided. Unavoidable damage like that just means scrappers/stalkers or defense based brutes/tankers have to stay away from the crystals and let ranged toons or dark resistance tankers take the hit. Since it is kind of punishing, once again I'll reference the when difficulty is fun video: Solve that one issue and I'd say the ITF is very close to golden for it's hard mode challenge.

So they punished non-farmers and nothing else. Well *Slow Clap*. Afterall, non-farmers deserve to be poor and never, ever get IO'd out to ever get to participate in the newer content. Why don't they farm more!? They deserve that! *Please note my sarcasm here since some don't detect it on the internet* Well, onto checking other avenues for influece I guess.

Honestly the change just makes it harder to max out chars who've hit vet levels 20-30+ where they already have a majority of incarnate powers maxed out. This really just devalues empyrean merits more than anything. Not sure why they did this when they already stopped people from getting veteran levels in AE.

Things will change little for me, due to my playstyle on my blasters. Simply, I never relied entirely on smash/lethal/energy defense, and my builds had high defense in other things to as a result. Enough so, that 1 purple insp can kick me to soft-cap vs everything. One blaster also has support hybrid(actually for teammates), which results in very frequently having very high defense vs everything. She still mops the floor with everything lightning fast on her own. It's just a change where a minor adjustment is all thats needed to deal with it. Funnily enough, I already played in the way players will have to adjust to.

I never built my toons to have only smash/lethal defense. Even my blaster(the "High overall performer") had high defense vs everything. She couldn't take a hit but I almost never got hit anyways, still carefully monitored HP through fights. Since I tend to try to cover all holes anyways, not sure this change effects me any.

Hmmmm, i'll share this video of some experience I had from star trek online, counteryolo explained two years ago a game-breaker that made architect entertainment look like a joke. Watch the last section: Admiralty System So, what I want you consider, and understand admiraly was nerfed for a reason. You could get 30,000 dilithium every 10th tour of duty, additionally, you could get extra dilithium for bonuses with the admiralty missions. You needed very, very little time to put these "admiralty missions" in. No cost, no drawbacks. You don't even need to play actual missions to use it. You only needed 1-2 minutes per character to get a bunch of missions. Counteryolo went absolute insane with the system, he wasn't the only one. I USED THIS SYSTEM LIKE HE DID. I wasn't anywhere near as insane the operation for farming dil like him but I used it for my first ships when I was unemployed. 500 dilithium was worth 1 zen at the worst the market has been for a long time. When I started it was aroud 250 dilithium per 1 zen. 1 zen = 1 real life cent so 100 zen = 1 dollar. He was earning 60 dollars worth of zen/month even if you went by the worst dilithium to zen ratio. Before the market crashed it'd have been more then that. Rich players with tons of characters and tons of admiral-rank characters could break it. Jem'hedar characters were instantly admirals on creation. Admiralty got nerfed to assure you got no free dilithium with tour of duty anymore. All you got was "bonus dilithium" from ferengi(still had to grind it) and fleet-only dil from kdf(only good for fleet holdings). Architect entertainment wasn't as bad as this but I'm in the same mindset as he was: I could think about that, whats preventing players from making an alt exclusively just to power level to vet level 100 in AE for free E-merits and then just convert them to merits? Then dump a ton of items on exchange for instant huge cash, and also still have extra influence? An AFK fire farming toon could easily be used this way, your making almost free money. Not as bad as what admiralty was in STO, but excessive farming imo does this to economies, it eventually breaks them. I've some thoughts: How will this effect pricing of items on auction that are purchased mostly with Merits? Will they go up drasticly in price or drop? Fewer merits means fewer items being purchased, this means those items may see lower supply and thus higher cost. This means general influence gains will become less valuable in content everywhere. OR will prices remain the same or will they go down because people cannot afford the cost? Prices rarely go down in my experience. They didn't with nerfs to AE on live. I'm still of the feeling AE was horrible for the game market. I share the concern some may move on but I'm also left feeling it was a ticking time bomb no matter what was done. Players are to dependent on it for influence and the economy was to heavily effected. Only time will tell I guess.