Doc_Scorpion

No.

Well, that sucks. Thanks for checking!

Did the trial version of the MSR last night, and even though I had "earn XP" turned on - I earned no XP. Bug or WAI?

A swingin' jazzy tune that feels more like the 60's or 70's than ought-teens J-pop. I love it... (It has English subs, so feel free to check it out.)

It's funny... back in the days of Live, we pored over the quarterly financials from Cryptic to tease out the numbers for CoX. Almost invariably, the numbers were down from the previous quarter. And each quarter, we'd say the same kind of things folks are saying here. "It's the holidays, they'll be back." "It's back to school after the holidays, they'll be back." "It's summer vacation, they'll be back." "It's back to school after summer vacation, they'll be back." I don't want to be a Debbie Downer - but here's the thing. There'd be upswings now and again after a major Issue or a new retail box, but quarter piled on quarter the trend was clear. (To those few of us who pulled back and looked at the pattern rather than immediate results.) They never came back. What this says about the future of Homecoming (which has very different funding and operations models), I can't say and won't speculate on. But I wouldn't bet the rent money on "they'll come back".

Buying back... what? All the shops ingame that I'm aware of will buy back what they sell (and more besides).

I'd rather than the "Lightning Rapier" powerset...

Best at... what? Your whole scheme of balancing against IO's is based on the flawed assumption that there is only One True Build for each AT. Data mining will give you information on the most popular builds. What happens to my scrapper (who is increasingly biased towards being a killing machine) if it turns out that living bricks are the most popular scrapper build? By default, if you're building around the most common, you're disadvantaging those folks who don't play/build around the most popular philosophy. In the case of Brutes, there's a pretty good chance you'll be defining the One True Build as a farmer, almost certainly a fire farmer. Oh, sure, in theory you can balance by AT/primary/secondary... But now you've increased the amount of work required exponentially. Brutes have 216 different potential combinations of primary/secondary - add in power pools (of all flavors) and your potential number of builds to balance soars into four figures. (And you can't ignore power pools, they're a popular place to mule IOs.) Even the Live dev team (larger than the current one and likely larger than any possible current one) couldn't keep up with keeping even one AT completely balanced within itself... let alone against all the others. That's why, after multiple Issues across a span of years, we're even having this discussion.... because, as the game is currently played, tanks are disadvantaged in group play. And that's not even mentioning the question of what level you start balancing around IO's... Twinking is a thing, and I'm seeing heavily IOed builds as far down as the low teens.

/jranger

On the flipside of "that feeling when" - when the rare recipe you badly wanted but couldn't afford yet drops as loot. From a minion.

Seconded.

So, is there a place for a guy who hasn't done this raid in seven years and really doesn't remember/know what to do or how to do it?

That's what it is - a GM/zone event on par with Lusca or Eochia/Jack in Irons. It's not an endgame raid and was never (NAICT) meant to be.

Generally because they're custom art, not costume pieces. That is, they're not designed to work with character customization system.

I don't think it would be programming intensive... But it would be (very) artwork intensive. Sometimes, you just have to use your imagination and accept that CoX can't fit every possible that every player can imagine into the game.

Narrator voice: People can, and do, farm merits as well.

- No, we shouldn't balance around billion inf babies. Not everyone has a farmer. Not everyone is interested in farming. - Nor should we balance around the levels that billion inf babies are typically found at. Not everyone races to fifty then grinds out the vet levels so they can stand around bored. - Not to mention that not everyone is a min-maxer seeking that perfect billion inf build. This, ten billion percent. I'm not even certain a paid retail team could tackle the job, there are simply too many potential permutations of power sets and IO sets. (And that's just for tanks.)

You go to yourself... "Surely I've arrested enough Skuls by now" And it turns out you were supposed to be hunting The Lost...

The difficulty is largely dependent on your AT, your notoriety settings, and your experience at playing the game. I've found leveling melee toons on base difficulty pretty easy.

What's the first? I picked up Thunderstrike for lvl 10 on a whim, and it looks like once it's slotted it will a fun little toy.

<starts filing off serial numbers and shaking a can of spray paint...>

This.

Yeah, I'm finding that out... Not like my kat/regen who is pretty powerful single-target out of the box. But at base difficulty, it's working out so far. As I level through my teens, i suspect I'm going to end up alternating between choosing defense and AOE's. I definitely want as many defenses as possible by the time I hit my 20's & SO levels. In my experience, that's when things start to get really nasty. (Read: Freakshow.) I will be revisiting these high level builds later on! I could powerlevel past those levels... But then I'd have to Flashback to get a couple of badges I need for accolades and either dual box or trust to luck to find a PUG that's running the lower level Safeguards. YMMV... For me, it's just easier to spend a few hours/days running missions at low levels than to deal with alternate builds etc... at some point in the future. Plus with travel powers coming at lvl 4 and inherent Fitness, low levels are a lot less painful than they used to be. Slotting hasn't been a problem. Between the enhancements on the P2W vendor, the extra cash accumulated while level locked, and selling on the auction house it's been pretty easy to afford enhancements. So far on Homecoming the cash crunch comes when I get to SO levels. Those buggers are *expensive*. That was my next question... Good to know.

This. If you have to prove it to the world, you're proving the opposite.

Beginner's Luck: starts at 15% and decreases to 6% by level 12 (end of TO's/start of DO's). Hydra accuracy bonus: 12% through level 12 (end of TO's/start of DO's). Green +ACC TO: 8.7% 15+12+8=35 35/8=.23 Thus, at Level 1, TO's provide 23% of your available bonus. 6+12+8=26 26/8=.31 Thus, at Level 12 (end of TO's/start of DO's), TO's provide 31% of your available bonus. I would assert that either you haven't done the math or you don't know what placebo actually means.