Wobegone

"I deserve". You're either trolling or an entitled ninny. No vote from me.

Another vote for taking a break. I've been on an extended sabbatical myself, although it isn't entirely due to game fatigue. It's ironic. I found the game during the pandemic when I was out of work (I'm a casino dealer/dual). I played the hell outta Homecoming for about 2 years. Then I got game fatigue. Then I got work at a different casino, although I have an hour commute. That combined with family has made it difficult to fully come back to the game. But what makes this game remarkeable....after playing from launch to sunset, and again with Homecoming; I still love the game. So....take a break, keep in touch, and come back when you're ready! This is a special community, warts and all.

I've seen this complaint many times over the years and it's still false. You still get the majority of xp using Confuse if you or the team does at least some damage to each mob.

ZemX's comment was rather ambiguous. You inferred they were referring to one of your specific playstyles. That's on you. Of course different playstyles are boring to different people. You're starting an argument without a basis for doing so.

There was a terrific thread in the old CoH forums about confuse and xp. The TLDR version of that is simply make sure you do at least a little damage to as many foes as possible. You still get partial xp for enemies primarily defeated by Confusion. The other take is your xp per hour increases if you solo using confusion provided you follow the above.

Seriously, head to the Market forum and read a few threads. Yomo's path to a billion is a worthy start and may still be on the first page. I targeted yellow recipes that with one conversion became a rare or orange recipe. The travel recipes are one example. I converted a ton of yellow taunt recipes for another example. Then convert by rarity to anything that would sell for around 2 million. I wasn't picky. Eventually it became a game within the game with me and I targeted specific IOs....flooding popular IOs to lower the price. Which reminds me. There are certainly a few who try to manipulate the Market. There are just as many or more who do the same kind of targeting to keep prices lower. IO prices have been pretty steady for years. Any dips and peaks you see are probably normal spikes in supply and demand rather than any kind of manipulation.

OK, probably not what you're looking for, but anecdotally: As much as I was swimming in Merits while leveling, I was constantly using them on my crafting toon. This was after leveling several toons on generic IOs and frankenslotting. My first 50 became my main in many ways, including spending a few minutes every session buying yellow recipes, crafting them, rare roulette, and selling. At times it became tedious, but I made a ton of money. But I was always short Merits. They were gold for marketeering. Eventually, I soloed melee projects to fund Merits to fund crafting to fund Squishy alts who didn't solo as quickly or easily. Then I had 20 Billion or so and....stopped. I haven't needed any more. Some of that real world stuff like not being able to play as much. Even so, I doubt I'll ever need to farm or grind for money again. OH! Edit: I also ran that farming toon quite a bit as something different. Sometimes I just offered free Powerleveling. Sometimes I solo farmed for drops and money. Sorry, one last edit. Still anecdotal: I rarely powerleveled my own toons. The ones i did I rarely played.

I never bothered with calculating efficiency. I (mostly) soloed story arcs a number of times because it suited me. I made plenty of money, enough to buy whatever I want with any toon. I got to test powers in real time so I could decide what to keep and what to sacrifice. I also spent time while leveling buying yellow recipes and converting them. A few minutes at the beginning and end of each session can make tons of money. Sometimes I go old school and run a toon without any seed money. Most of the time I just grab 500 million from savings and just kit out in ATOs and Winters, just so I have less to worry about on the way to 50. I also made a Spines/Fire Brute and did a fair amount of farming. Put on some music and just jam out for an hour. Whatever's your jam, it's there if you look. It's not hard to level, whatever the method. It's not hard to make money, whatever the method.

This simply isn't true. The game certainly isn't more difficult that it was on live. Toons run perfectly fine on SOs....although I'd buy generic IOs starting at level 22 rather than use SOs. Sure you should be 'fully kitted in sets' for Hard Mode stuff, but nearly everything else absolutely doesn't require it. There are a variety of ways to make money. All of them take a bit of time and a bit of effort. My advice? I'd follow Yomo's advice and solo a melee character to 50 running solo story arcs and Task Forces. You'll accumulate over 1000 Merits doing so, along with a bunch of recipes, which you can craft, convert and either sell or use. I'm a big fan of newer players frankenslotting their first few toons. If you want some specific advice on making money using the Market with little time investment, head on over to the Market forum. Put those Merits to use!

I have doubts that anyone currently playing this game (other than perhaps you) would use real money to get costume pieces on an old low population game in which Influence/Infamy is trivially easy to obtain.

Interesting build. My main is a Dark/Dark Defender and I've gone through many different builds over the years. There are simply too many good powers and too few slots for perfection IMHO. I do have a problem with so few slots for Moonbeam and Shadow Fall. They're both terrific powers; one your best single target attack and the other excellent team resistance and defense. I also cringe when I see a such a build without the Leadership pool. But I kinda get it....I tried something similar at one point, mostly for soloing. Personally, I found that Fearsome Stare did the bulk of my work (with fewer slots) and I veered away from Stun altogether dedicating more slots to team buffs and less to AoE damage for my team build. One major caveat to the above is I've never tried this combo on a Corruptor. Anyhoo...thanks for the build.

I'd really dig an auto-sort of some kind for alts. By level, class, whatever.

You need Acc and End reduction in your attacks. Accuracy should be your first priority. Get rid of Range/Sleep/Slow. Your toggles should have End Reduction as well. I'd skip Hasten til later in the build and grab Hover and Flight as well, though that's personal preference. A typical attack for me is Acc, Acc, Dmg, End Reduction, Dmg. Recharge (in that order) if using SOs/generic IOs. This was just a quick flyby, hopefully someone (or myself tomorrow) can be more specific for building with IO sets.

Is there a significant difference in completion times between a +0 and +1 Manticore?

Hmm, definitely gonna try Fire/Rad for my next Sentinel. I had a great time (mostly) soloing Fire/Bio and Electric/Bio. Both used Hover. They were among the easiest solo projects I've ever done for casual difficulties. I settled on +2/+0-4 when I got into the twenties. As far as Influence, you'll get a ton of Reward Merits running solo story arcs, and you'll get plenty of drops along the way. I've done several solo projects that self-funded while leveling. With just those two sources, you should easily be able to afford level 25+ generic IOs by crafting most of the recipe drops, converting, then selling, and/or using the Merits for Converters and selling them on the AH. I'd also frankenslot IOs you find as drops after level 25 or so. If you take a few extra minutes putting in bids for cheap yellow recipes on the AH at the end of your session (just make sure they don't need orange salvage), and about 15 minutes crafting/converting at the beginning of your session, you'll end up a billionaire in your 30s or 40s. Starting this process depends on early drops. A lucky drop gives enough capital to buy more recipes to start. Check out the Market Forum or the Guide section for more detailed advice.

I didn't see this as an attack against all farmers. I'm pretty sure Biostem was talking about new or returning players whose only experience leveling was via AE. This isn't a defense or agreement with their statement, just my own interpretation of their post. I'm sorry your teaming experiences were abysmal. Each person's experiences are unique to them. In this case, however, I think you're attributing malice where none exists.

I don't have any scientific reason to challenge your experiences. But based on my own memory as a longtime forum lurker, and one who 'listens' to all of the public channels in game, the number of people who are anti-farmer are a tiny fraction of the playerbase. Most are ambivalent or uncaring. Some may express...distaste...for some farming activities, but most of those are against AFK farming. The rest simply don't care. On the forums, I can think of two posters over the years who have been xenophobically anti-farming and one of them no longer post here. There have been a number of posters on the forums who've posted concerns or even dislike of farming in general. None but the two I remember actually called for a ban of farming. This idea that there are factions that are against farming isn't based on evidence. It's based on feelings. The truth is far more nuanced than that.

You heard correctly. I've mained a Dark Defender for ages, and this combo became a favorite of mine 'til a change in job and hours (and fantasy football) mucked with my play time. It's a terrific combo but very busy. Almost too busy....I'm not a great gamer.

Maybe you have, but I haven't. I've found nearly every game forum to be quite similar in that they allow even aggressive disagreement, such as this forum, as long as personal insults don't interfere with the discussion. And, of course, that the discussion is on topic. Without that, forums tend to be chaos, with endless bickering. I'm not surprised in the least that some of the Mods got over-aggressive lately. You think they're getting paid to Mod? It's a thankless job with more headache than reward.

Interesting concept. I like the idea of a mage or warlock character. You've focused on an Evocation style character and that's cool. I dig the idea of being able to focus different elemental damage. Sorry you haven't garnered any better feedback, but don't stop fleshing out your idea!

At this point in the game, unless you're a new player, you should be aware how trivially easy it is to accumulate Influence. Sure farming, be even easier is simple marketing. There are a bunch of stories/anecdotes like: I played an Archery/Tactical Arrow character to the low 30s and easily and casually made 1 billion Influence in a week of playing.. Two on my Saturday. It's not hard nor terribly time consuming. Yea, I get it, it's not for everyone. But I have little sympathy for those that simply refuse to take advantage of such an easy path to financial independence.

You're right, sorry about that. It was a foolish question. I did think of this. I think farmers in general are actually good for the economy. What concerns me is the combination of factors I stated in my previous posts. A farmer that frequently power levels alts then kits them out can't possibly earn enough recipes to replace supply. In the past, that hasn't been an issue cuz people like me have been supplementing the supply. And as of today, supply is still good, and prices are stable. But humans being humans, many will look for the path of least resistance and bypass the market altogether and head straight to farming Empyrions and power leveling. It never even occurred to me to farm Empyrion Merits before, and I can see this as something that becomes a widespread pattern. I'll repeat, these are just my thoughts, and I could be wrong.

Almost all of my Reward Merits come from either running solo story arcs or Super Packs. Neither are team-based activities. And at this point I'm no longer playing the Market so I'm no longer adding bunches of desirable IOs. I suspect that's true for a lot of folks who play(ed) the Market. I also suspect that most players are casual types who neither play the Market nor farm for Empyrion Merits. Many of those are content with generic IOs, with perhaps a few Unique IOs thrown in. The players I'm concerned about are those who are both casual and want to fully IO their characters. As players like me wind down our activities, and players like Empyrion farmers ramp up theirs, the supply will dwindle and yes...lead to inflation. At least that's my thinking, but I'm also insane and often wrong.

If you're done with alts, why do you need more Reward merits? At that point money would no longer be an issue. Unless you wish to stockpile for...reasons. If money isn't an issue, you can get an endless supply of Reward merits with Super Packs....and even make a little profit. Granted, it's been a bit buggy now and then and it's time consuming, but no more so than farming. This also has the benefit of seeding the market with ATOs. (Although I get it...it's not very fun after a while). I like farming now and then. I throw on some music and zone out for a while. But it's been a long time since I did so for money or other rewards. I simply don't need them and have no desire to stockpile. I've had around 20 billion for a couple years now. When I make an alt I transfer a pile of money and they're set. By the time they hit 50, I email what's left, which is usually about the same as the original transfer, back into the money pile. Caveat being I usually only power level to 12/17/22 or so and run story arcs and Task Forces. Outside of joining Task Forces, I primarily solo story arcs. Nowadays travel time is a non-issue (for me). At this point in the game, making money is also a non-issue for anyone willing to dip their toes into the Market. It took a week playing an hour or less a day, plus two hours on a Sunday for my last zero Influence seeded character to reach a billion. Mostly by buying cheap yellow recipes and converting them with the Merits I earned from story arcs. This also has the benefit of seeding the Market with desirable IOs, which helps keep prices stable. To reiterate, I spent about 7 hours playing an alt to the low 30s and made a billion influence. On the flip side, say a player is power leveling an alt to 50 and using Empyrion Merits to fund that character. They're buying large amounts of desirable IOs while contributing almost nothing but Converters to the Market. I'm no economist but that seems bad.

This is unfair and untrue. The current devs DO listen and compromise. I don't understand the angst and anger. Like all changes to the current game, I'm gonna shrug and roll with it, even if I have minor disagreements. I love this game, but it's just a game. I also think that the current caretakers have done a decent job. I won't spend one second agonizing any changes they think are needed. I can't imagine being as bitter as you sound over development choices on a game that's free to play.