Luminara

Today is exactly two weeks since I started playing again. In that two weeks, I've accumulated almost 100,000,000 inf*, and every IO I wanted on my level 34 character, including several waiting to be slotted and some uniques for my other characters. I started with nothing. 0 inf*. No costume contest prizes. No random fly-by gifts. No friends to "help". No farming. Haven't teamed once, in fact. The sum total of my interaction with anyone else in the entire two weeks has been one /tell from a stranger asking if I "need some levels" (i declined). I'm not even playing above the default difficulty. And the only marketeering I've done has been to sell what I converted if I thought it was worth something, but didn't want it for myself. Frankly, I don't consider that marketeering, it's just sensible. Oh, and I have a pile of merits that keeps growing, despite my frivolous use of them. I didn't have a mouse until two days ago. I had to play on a touchpad. And I'm on a shitty Verizon pre-paid plan which makes it almost impossible to log in, much less play, between 8 a.m. and 2 a.m. because they "deprioritize" my traffic. Meaning, throw my data into the garbage. My ping time right now, if I were logged into the game, would be between 750ms and 2200ms, and I'd be up to around 5000 duplicate packets in less than three minutes. That's a whole lot of waiting and pressing the same key before a power executes, and rubber-banding back and forth fifteen or twenty times just to travel a hundred yards. By the time I'm working on Incarnate levels with my first character, I'll have enough merits and inf* to fully kit out the outrageous "dream build" I never could've completed on the original servers (not an exaggeration. my main's build, last day i played, was worth almost 15,000,000,000, and it was only 2/3 complete). Still without farming, or marketeering, or handouts. I've been so impressed with the ease of generating inf* that I've stopped saving "rare" IOs for my other characters. I know I can get them any time I want, with those characters, starting from zero. The market is clearly accessible, in every way, to every player. I didn't have to read a guide to make inf*, I just sold what I expected to be worth something when it popped up during conversions. I didn't have to spend six months learning how it worked, like I did when I was trying to figure out how to get water up to my cabin. And while I clearly made some mistakes, primarily pissing away merits on conversion rolls simply because I didn't want to stop until I had what I wanted, I still came out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead. And there's also, obviously, no need for farming to afford everything one wants for a character. My tastes, in regard to my builds, are anything but modest, and I'm easily accomplishing what I hoped for when I started planning my characters. LotG +Recharge IOs, 3% +Defense (All) IOs, Kismet +ToHit, full sets where I want them instead of frankenslotted powers that I couldn't fix until I'd been at 50 for a while and spent weeks grinding. If a player doesn't have what he/she needs to fill his/her slots, it's not the game's fault, it's theirs. The game throws merits at you. Grey-con critters drop converters. You can drool on your keyboard and make inf*. The only reason anyone wouldn't have what they want, far more than they need, for a complete and very "expensive" build at level 50 would be power-leveling, and if you decided to skip every last bit of the game to get to the end, you've got no-one to blame but yourselves for your "need to farm because I can't kit out my 50" situation. As a new player, I'm not seeing an income gap. I'm not seeing a problem with figuring out how to make inf* on the market. I'm not seeing outrageous and unobtainable pricing on the market. I'm not seeing a need for an inf* multiplier. I'm not seeing a need to farm to pay for anything. And considering that all of this was the driving goal of the changes, I'd say they worked. Marvelously. And as a long-time player on the original servers, I am seeing a lot of good things, including the efforts to control inflation, by the HC team. Things are so much more affordable here, now, than they were ten years ago, it's not even remotely comparable. I have four IOs which would've cost more than 12,000,000,000 inf* collectively on the original servers, here they're not even a drop in the bucket. Purples? Less than 12,000,000 inf* for the ones I would've had to pay 500,000,000-1,000,000,000 apiece on the original servers. And there are people who think they need inf* multipliers... that says so much about them, none of it good, and nothing at all about the game. If I can rake in inf* while leveling slowly, on a budget laptop, in spite of Verizon throwing away 90% of my packets if I try to play during normal times, solo, with a Trick Arrow character, anyone should be capable of doing as well, if not better. This isn't rocket science, lads and ladies, or manual labor, so stop acting like making ridiculous amounts of inf* takes a PhD or an 80 hour work week.

My main on the original servers. I've remade her here, going to start leveling her soon. Really looking forward to getting back to the "all AoE, all of the time" style of play that TA/Dark does so well.

Flash Arrow is unresistable. It exceeds every other single power ToHit debuff in AV fights. RI plus Fallout works out to 1.1% more -ToHit with both powers maximally slotted for -ToHit, but Flash Arrow doesn't need a defeated teammate to work. For solo play, it's X% Defense one doesn't have to build for in IO set bonuses, and while it's not as strong as RI, Fearsome Stare or Hurricane, it also has no toggle cost, Accuracy check or long recharge time, so "good" depends on one's perspective. I agree with you, anyone who skips Flash Arrow is making a mistake.

So your conclusion is that TA doesn't meet your expectations when paired with Archery, and rather than look for the synergy you'd prefer by pairing one or the other with another set, TA has to be drastically altered from a team support set to a fan-created blaster support set (which is clearly over the top and in need of it's own balance pass). By that logic, almost every defender primary has to be completely revamped. Damage dealing T1s across the board, AoE damage in place of debuffs and controls, etc. Yeah... that's likely to be the least worthwhile thing I've lost time reading this week. Perhaps if you'd leveled one of those TA characters out of the single-digit range, you would've been aware that Archery/TA does not only have "one attack with some fire damage", or overlooked that most of TA's powers can be slotted with damage procs to round out your need for greater variety in damage types. Or missed the two -Res powers which would've helped you deal with those ghosts and robots much more effectively (one at level 12 as a defender). You don't understand AT design, or game balance, that's apparent. And you not only don't understand TA, you couldn't even bother to look the powers up in Mids' or PWiki before complaining about the set. Lame.

I find the comments about TA being awful in a vacuum very interesting. I've always found that exercising the options available to everyone else - the primary/secondary paired with TA, pools, IOs, etc., makes the game much easier, regardless of what set(s) I'm playing, and compensates for issues in just about every set. Including TA. But if you're trying to play with TA by itself, yeah, it's going to be rough. TA has a problem with end-game viability, in that it lacks sufficient -Regen to make it worthwhile in long AV fights, and doesn't bring enough -Res to the table to shore up that weakness (even with gross abuse of global +Recharge), but pairing TA with another set which provides -Regen/Res closes that hole. This is, by the way, the only "real" problem with TA. If it debuffed Regen comparably to other debuffing sets, it would certainly be more popular, because for everything else, it's fine. It's just the AV fights where it really falls behind. TA lacks the specificity of most other sets, but there are sets like Traps and Devices, and they don't have a specific focus on one thing, like Radiation Emission or Dark Miasma. Sets similar to TA are treated as "acquired flavors", though, while TA has negativity piled on it, amusingly. No-one says, "Oh, just do this, and this, and this, and it's awesome", like they do for those other sets, they just bitch about TA. TA doesn't buff or heal, but it does debuff ToHit (unresisted debuff, numerically superior to the strongest ToHit debuff available in any other power versus AVs), offers both a single-target and AoE Hold (one of the best available to any set), has a reliable Sleep (minions only, but that's significantly more than half the enemies you'll face), can keep most enemies at a distance without effort (Slows), and it provides excellent KD with OSA. What TA doesn't do is everything at a single key press, like some sets, which puts some people off. I don't know, maybe interactivity in gaming is dying and people really do like auto-play shit like the mobile market has become infested with. If that's your "jam", TA isn't. TA isn't reliant on toggles. There's no continuing endurance cost for any power in TA. There's never an issue with corpses despawning and powers suddenly shutting off, or endurance running out and leaving you defenseless because none of your toggles are usable. Unlike some sets. There is no redraw penalty for TA. The activation time with or without the bow is the same. The activation and animation times of all existing sets were equalized (on a power by power basis, meaning each individual power was examined and adjusted accordingly so the times matched) in Issue 11. It's been a decade since that change, might be time to get off the "TA only works with Archery" schtick. It's far more effective with other sets, like Dark Blast. TA's animation times are fast. All of them. You're not stopping to make a sandwich and coffee while you're waiting for an animation to end. You aren't stuck in a 3.3s animation while critters are hammering your health bar, you're getting the job of debuffing or controlling (or both at once) done and moving on to attacking. TA doesn't solo any worse than most sets, when played in conjunction with a primary or secondary (a real build, as opposed to imagining situations in which TA powers are used by themselves, that vacuum thing i mentioned above). Any given player's capability to solo isn't limited by a set, but by that player. I soloed a TA/A to 50 before I7. I've soloed almost a dozen TAs to 50. I've farmed, at every difficulty setting, with TA. Anyone who says TA can't solo well, or at all, is really saying they have a problem, not that the set does. Jesus on a pogo stick, I soloed a defender to 50 using only Kinetics and pool melee attacks, and TA is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more powerful and versatile. How much easier does this game have to be? The recharge times on some powers are, seemingly, prohibitively long, but that was by necessity, not malice. Many of TA's powers spawn pseudo-pets. Pseudo-pets can stack with one another. And there was no way to limit that when the set was designed. I don't know if there's a way to limit it now. But the recharge times were the only decent limitation available to prevent, for example, players from stacking 5-6 Disruption Arrows while solo. Yeah, it sounds heavenly, but it's bad for the game. Especially in the post-IO age, when -Res procs and massive global +Recharge are available. Allowing players to stack 200% -Res solo is not a good idea. Maybe the HC team has figured out how to limit stacking, and will reduce recharge times. Maybe not. But it's a fact you learn to live with as a TA player. We'd all love to have OSA available every 15s, but anyone with an ounce of sense realizes how broken that would be. Some limits are necessary. This, higher recharge times on some powers, is TA's necessary limitation. TA for masterminds needs some attention. It works for the other ATs with access to it because their primaries or secondaries can be used to complement TA. Masterminds have very little of that available to them, they're reliant on their pets to work with TA, and some of them just plain don't. And as for what I think of TA... it's good. It could do with some improvement to make it more palatable to teams in end-game content, but this isn't WoW or Everquest, there are no predefined team paradigms which have to be followed and, considering that almost every set debuffs and/or controls in some way, it's rarely, if ever, doing the job of supporting a team by itself, even in the unlikely case of being the only "support" AT on the team. It could also do with shorter recharge times on some powers (within reason), and a fix to the mistaken 10 target limit on Disruption Arrow, but those can be worked around easily enough (especially in the post-IO age).

The charging unit is fine. The problem is the inverter. It's not a quality unit. A friend purchased it for $12 and gave it to me, and it's all I have for now. I've got one last thing I can try on my old 1Kw inverter, and if that doesn't bring it back to life, I'll shop around for a new one. Or a decent UPS, they're just inverters with integrated batteries.

Archery blaster. All pink. No pants. Name yourself Eros (or some variant thereof). Arrows inject hot, viscous love into the targets, they faint from the extreme pleasure. I triple-dog dare ya!

You owe my cat an apology, @GM Tahquitz. After three years of off-grid living, I'd lost touch with the modern computing world and had no idea what to look for, or even that gaming-capable laptops existed at the $300-350 price point. But I'm posting this reply on a 15.6" laptop with a Ryzen 3200u, instead of the 8" tablet I've been using, thanks to the informative guidance provided here. It's not perfect (the screen is a TN panel), and I still have to iron out some issues (400w inverter shuts down if the laptop draws a full load for more than ten minutes), but it's downloading Co* and will be adequate for that... and having a full-sized keyboard is heavenly. And I don't have to quadruple my battery bank and PV array to feed it, nor did I have to spend all of the money I was going to save to make it through the winter to buy it. Still going to be a week or longer before the download completes, too, because I'm on a Verizon pre-paid line (read: aggressively throttled) with a weak signal (so, packet loss is significant), but it'll get there eventually. Oh, the apology... the only table I have is about 2' square, and this laptop is taking up most of the room where Jessica preferred to stretch out. She's both confused and displeased, which is a less than desirable situation for a half Savannah cat. Tell her you're sorry so she'll stop trying to eat the screen (not an exaggeration) and shoving the laptop off to the side to make room.

Names of historical figures are public domain, and the likeness and abilities of mythological figures are as well. Anyone can make a comic book about the adventures of Thor, the God of Thunder, for example, and not be subject to copyright violation because the name, likeness and the abilities are all public domain. What would invoke copyright protection would be plagiarism of existing stories which are currently protected under copyright laws. Making a comic book about Thor in a group of heroes who fight off an alien invasion in New York, that would be copyright violation. Making a comic book about Thor and Odin battling Níðhöggr in New York would not be copyright violation. Marvel would never have a case based on name alone, as the word is in public domain, and there's no plagiarism in our Valkyrie's back story or related content, so despite the two sharing a name, there's no case to be made for a copyright suit.

Knowing how to thrive without a crutch can lead to being the one still fighting when everyone else is down. Being reliant to and dependant upon the inspiration tray is a poor measure of "better".

God, Becky, you're, like, such a drama queen. The planet will be gone in 3.5-4 billion years, so they'd have to come to a decision before then. Like, no wonder Todd dumped you for Rachel.

No. Cryptic sold all IP rights to NCSoft about 20 years ago.

Frankly, I doubt anyone in power at NCSoft cares one way or the other at this point. Someone handed it off to their legal staff and said, "Talk to these people", and as far as the company is concerned, it's handled. It's almost certainly down to whatever agreement can (or cannot) be reached by the attorneys now. As long as the HC team isn't asking for anything "outrageous", a deal of some kind will probably be reached eventually. It's far, far more likely that the Homecoming server will operate in legal limbo for another 3-5 years, and eventually achieve an arrangement which allows it to continue, than it is for someone to order the talks to stop and C&D notices sent out.

I don't believe this is about purchasing. A large development studio or publishing company might convince NCSoft to sell the IP, but that was never in the cards for any fan-based operation. And given the small change value we can offer as donors, or even subscribers, there's no real money to be made in licensing fees for a company the size of NCSoft. Most likely, the negotiations are simply for use of the server code and absolution of NCSoft in the case of liability issues. NCSoft would retain IP rights, but wouldn't be dragged into any disputes over copyright issues. That's a different approach from an attempt to buy the IP, and given the all but dead status of the IP, one they're likely willing to permit, as long as their collective ass is covered.

That's what she said.

Oh. Well, serious response, then. There are fine points and niggling details which must be examined, considered and discussed in any legal negotiation. Questions which must be answered, scenarios proposed, liability determined, etc. Even a simple query, such as, "Can we use this software?", requires lengthy analysis, proposals, counter-proposals, definition of terminology (in the U.S. judicial system, exact wording is almost always more important than intent, thus the phrase "letter of the law"), and can take months to refine to the point of an actual contract being written, and then said contract will be subject to further refinement, which can also take months. And in this instance, we're dealing with an overseas firm which specializes in corporate contract negotiations and legal responses, so there are the matters of translation, legal definitions, technical definitions, interpretations of phrasing, differing perspectives of intent... before the contract negotiation even begins, they have to agree that they're talking about the same thing, in as precise legal terms as they can. Between two entities with practically unlimited funds and full-time corporate representatives at their disposal, such discussions can take over a year. For the HC team, who are acting as volunteers (meaning, they also have jobs and families to attend to), and who are paying a small firm which only dedicates a small portion of their time to the case, it could take a few years before the details of the proposed contract are agreed upon and written down. That contract would then have to be reviewed, extensively (again, "letter of the law"), before a final draft is issued, further reviewed and more details discussed and clarified or changed, and only then, eventually, signed. Don't lose sleep over it. Nothing's going to happen for a long time. NCSoft, even if they're not interested in squeezing any financial consideration out of us, won't agree to anything until they have as perfect a contract as humanly possible in their hands, in order to ensure that they have no potential repercussions which might cost them a single won in the future (such as a lawsuit by Marvel). Since their legal team is on retainer, it costs them nothing to negotiate, so it makes no difference to them if this takes a day or a decade, financially. So it's not going to be a swift process, but as long as the negotiations are proceeding, there's little threat of legal issues. If they eventually decide not to allow public use of the Co* server code, it will still be a long time coming.

Stuff.

He doesn't. Last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph in the post linked below. He's just here for the same reason someone would go to a French restaurant every day and complain about the lack of tacos on the menu, then leave without ordering anything. As for blocking, dodging, pausing to chat with the Pointer Sisters, whatever, it's a console mechanic, designed and used as a means of providing developer-controlled response to enemy attacks which have also been specifically designed with blocking as the intended response. It's unsuitable in computer gaming in general, as even the most basic keyboards offer an order of magnitude more user input than a handheld controller. It's even less suitable, as others have pointed out, in online gaming, due to latency. And as has also been mentioned, that suitability declines yet further when the combat system allows 16 foes to attack, not simultaneously, but according to class scripts and power availability, resulting in rapid-fire attacks with no timing or order imposed. And here, in our game, a block mechanic would necessitate reworking, if not outright removing, Defense buffs, Resistance buffs, ToHit debuffs, Damage debuffs, all status effects, range and all forms of healing, as well as significantly reducing spawn sizes and redesigning critter AI in order for the mechanic to have any value or utility, which drops the suitability to something on par with "refrigerator at the North Pole". Blocking is a limited mechanic, designed for limited systems, used as a workaround to dealing with limited input options, and of all of the potential complaints about Co*'s combat system, not having to sit through long enemy animations (long by necessity, to act as tells so the player knows when to block) and slowly fighting one opponent at a time would definitely not be on the list. Any list. Fewer limitations and faster, less repetitive combat is always better, from player perspective and for the longevity of a game. But for people who can't function with a superior combat system, there are always console games with carefully controlled combat situations which can be learned by rote (or watching a video) and which offer the satisfaction of referring to oneself as a master twitch gamer because one managed to press a button after 4-5 seconds of tells.

Confuse, Portal Corp courtyard, Possessed Scientists with KB attacks... Looks like you're homing in on something. Test some spawns of critters without KB attacks.

There's an enormous difference between Gen X culture and millennial culture. We both grew up with Internet access and social media platforms. The change wasn't numerical, though, it was in the trend toward (arguably fascist) control of how we're permitted to express ourselves. Gen X culture was blunt and direct, flame wars were the norm and we didn't have moderators stepping in to slap our wrists and tell us to behave. Our online experience reflected our real world experience, in that it was frank and sometimes unpleasant, but like real life, we dealt with it. Millennial culture is very different. It's controlled, processed and sanitized. Gen X was responsible for that evolution. The people who began moderating chat rooms and forums were Gen X. The people who decided there should be behavioral norms and rules for interaction were Gen X. The people who created millennial culture were Gen X. So when I express dissatisfaction with the nature of online communication in the millennial era, it's not an accusation of fault on the part of millennials, it's just what I said, a dislike of the culture that has evolved. It's dishonest, and it does more harm than good. And if I were pointing a finger at people, rather than societal behavior, it wouldn't be millennials, it would be Gen X, my generation. Now get off of my lawn.

I didn't "blame millennials". I said millennial culture, that being the current societal norm. There is a difference.

Ah, millennial culture. Everything is offensive, no-one should contradict anyone, the feelings of delicate little snowflakes are more important than truth or reality, and temper tantrums are mandatory. People fly into a rage, or incoherent sobbing, at the drop of a hat these days. That doesn't mean they should be coddled, or confrontation avoided. On the contrary, they should be corrected, with a sledgehammer if necessary. Being wrong isn't the end of the world, and they'll either figure that out (eventually), or behave like twatnozzles until no-one's listening any more. Correct more, worry less.

I understand the sequence. Your posts have been concise. It's not stacked Resistance debuffs. What Incarnate abilities do you have? What is your tray arrangement for all of your primary and secondary powers? Where is your pet when this occurs and what is it doing? How is the pet slotted? Do you have any procs in other powers, which could potentially cause the issue, or sets with +KB mag as a set bonus? What buffs are active on you when it occurs (including things like Day Job and P2W temp powers)? Have you double-checked the enhancements in your powers to be certain a proc didn't wiggle in accidentally (i've slotted a proc unintentionally more than once and had to waste a respec to fix it)? Each variable isolated narrows the search for the cause.

I'd forgotten about that. Thank you. A bug could've been introduced in that change, but if there was an unintended and unanticipated interaction between K* and -Res, there should be reports all over the forums, give the popularity and wide availability of -Res, and the increased of acceptance of KB due to the KB-KD proc. The vector change shouldn't have altered OSA's KD in any way, since OilSlickOil's KD was already radial from itself, being a PBAoE. None of the other PBAoE K* powers are causing KB, apparently, and there are more than enough -Res powers and procs for it to have been noticed and reported by multiple other people. There's just no chatter indicating this. @Redlynne's speculation is interesting, but the conclusion erroneous, since OSA is always first in the attack sequence, the reverse order of what she suggests might cause an increase in K* mag. If -Res increased K* mag when it was applied after the K*, it should also be much more prevelant and easily reproducible by anyone with -Res and K*. And, again, there aren't any other reports of that. And DA can't self-stack on the initial usage, and only self-stacks for 0.25s every subsequent 5s, so it wouldn't be capable of causing increased K* mag until 5s after the fact. @roleki's observations point to OilSlickTarget, not DA, because it only occurs when OST is present, but that's not actually possible. OST only has one critter-interactive ability, a -100 Threat reduction. No attacks, no K*, and the only -Res it applies is to itself. The only interaction between OST and DA is -Res, and we know that neither -Res on a target with +Res, nor stacked -Res (both would apply to OST), cause K*. There just isn't anything there to cause or increase the mag of K*. Unless the HC team have been toying with Threat reduction code. The increased frequency of occurence with Death Mages is suggestive. Kamikaze is Interruptible... but doesn't cause K*, as far as I can tell, and wouldn't be used at the beginning of a fight, or send the critter using it flying. No information is available (to me) on whether or not Death Mages are susceptible to K*, or have a power which provides status effect protection and can be Interrupted. That's something that can be tested, if anyone's interested. I believe there's something else going on. Another player in the background using a K* power, an overlooked proc, an Incarnate ability which increases status effects/K*, or use of a second K* power unintentionally (which would definitely be all but imperceptible in OSA's graphics). Those are the possibilities which seem most likely.