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And spotted dick! 🤣 Yes, I'm incredibly juvenile. I'm refraining from posting half a page of spotted dick jokes because I'm also incredibly mature. 😛

All of the purple sets use the same enhancement design outline. Primary Effect Primary Effect/Recharge Accuracy/Primary Effect/Recharge Accuracy/Recharge Primary Effect/Endurance Reduction Proc None of them are really good for toggles, from an endurance management perspective, unless you only slot 5 of the set and use the sixth slot for more endurance reduction. You can push Damage, Hold Duration, Sleep, whatever, and Recharge back up to the red line if you +5 the Primary/Recharge IO. You can do the same to the Primary/Endurance (more applicable in your case) for slightly better endurance reduction (41% instead of 33%). Boosting the others doesn't really pay off much. The single effect enhancement can then be dropped in favor of a different IO, or the power left at 5 slots if you're only pursuing the recharge bonus.

It is known as blood sausage in different places. British "chips", Americans "fries", same thing, different regions.

Pudding? Red? BLOOD PUDDING CONFIRMED! ... I've never tried blood pudding. Does it go well with coffee?

DO NOT INTERCEDE BETWEEN ME AND MY DREAMS OF DELICIOUS CHOCOLATEY GOODNESS. And the pizza is a given. So we're getting pizza AND chocolate pie. They're going to have to rename the release to Page Sex.

It's a PvP set, so it provides set bonuses even when exemplared, the same way that purple sets do, as though it were attuned by default. In regard to boosting, I haven't tested it on a PvP set yet, so waiting for a more informed response would be wise before using boosters.

Ah, fame before I hit 50. All thanks to a nipple. 🤨

She doesn't care. Her interest isn't in where the money is going, she's asking the HC team to engage in criminal activity by increasing the donation cap, falsifying the records and pocketing the difference, so, in her mind, they'll have justification to work on the game full time. She's asking them to be transparent with her, but lie to NCSoft, to their families, to the U.S. and British governments so she can have a new shiny to play with. The fact that such an action could lead to drastic changes in the negotiations with NCSoft, that they could lose their jobs, their freedom, their homes and even their families, is irrelevant, as long as she doesn't have to be patient or understanding.

Pie? 0_0 We're getting pie? Is it an Edwards Hershey Chocolate Creme Pie? I LOVE THOSE! 😄 ❤️

If you read their finance reports, you'd know the answer to that.

Stop. They can't accept payment for what they're doing. Not at this time, in the middle of negotiations with NCSoft. It's not only not on the table, it's not going to be anywhere near the table until the negotiations are concluded, for better or worse. Furthermore, you don't understand how the money they are getting is being used, why their server expenses are higher than other groups', and you don't seem to be willing to educate yourself. That's a very poor position from which to launch snippy comments and weak insults. You're also being ungrateful for the time the HC team has invested and continues to invest in this, at their own expense, at the expense of spending time with their families and other hobbies, and that's an even worse position. Take a breath, calm down, read up on what you're shouting at them, and me, about, and come back when you can discuss it rationally.

*reloads catapult* FIRE IN THE HOLE!

I beaned her with a pineapple. Just loot the corpse. 😉

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/59-finances-donations/ They aren't hiding anything from anyone, they aren't taking money and laundering it through some obscure off-shore bank, they aren't doing anything shady. They set a hard limit on the amount which they'll take in donations, cut it off the instant the goal is reached, and tell everyone exactly what they spent the money on every month. They very clearly lay out where the money goes, breaking it down by different expenses, explain why something might change from the previous month, they even point out any overages in donations and apply it directly to the next month. They not only list where the money goes, they say why it went there, why spending it there was better than spending it elsewhere, what we're all getting out of that expenditure, etc. They're open and honest about the finances coming in or going out, in every way possible.

*loads a catapult with pudding* ... *throws a pineapple into the middle* INCOMING!

All of the content that was on the original servers was balanced around SOs. The changes and additions made since the HC team started their server... I don't know. BUT, my experiences leveling characters over the last couple of months (i started with absolutely nothing, a functionally new player, when i bought this laptop), coupled with my experiences on the original servers and what I know about the game, suggest to me that the SO balance point has not moved. SOs are still the gold standard, and IOs, at any level, even frankenslotted and common IOs, put us well above that standard. The goalpost is still where it was, but the much greater availability and accessibility of IO sets, for those who make use of them, gives the impression of the goalpost falling over and disappearing into an oubliette. IOs open up so much freedom with builds, even if it's just allowing us to improve powers more efficiently while spending fewer slots. It used to take months, up to a year, to fully kit out a build with IOs and set bonuses. It can be done in a day now, by someone starting fresh and just leveling for the first time. That changes perspectives, creates the impression of ease where it didn't exist before, and probably wouldn't exist today if set IOs were more difficult to acquire, the merit system were more restricted, etc. For me, no, though I do believe everyone can be wealthy and have IOs from level 10 onward, based on having done just that on my first (and every subsequent) character. Balance isn't what IOs can do, it's what Set/Set can do, and can't do, in normal content. Balanced is my TA/Dark being capable of leveling without leaning on inspirations just to survive every mission. Slotted with DOs or IOs doesn't matter because the game provides options like the difficulty settings to adjust the balance for my personal experience. Unbalanced is my TA/Dark not bringing anywhere near as much to a team as a Rad/* or Storm/*, despite being the same level and providing similar tools. There are no tools in place to address that. Even IOs don't really address it. The imbalance isn't caused by what type of enhancements are slotted, but by the stats for TA's powers. Even with fantastic IO set bonuses and Hasten, TA has a lot of powers with recharge times which prohibit them from being used on every spawn, and the powers themselves have sufficiently low debuff strength that the player needs to use multiple powers on every spawn to provide half of the mitigation that other sets provide. The concert of power inavailability, and the necessity to use every power, creates a set at odds with itself. It's not balanced, in comparison to other sets or even within itself. That's where I'm coming from in a discussion about balance. It's not what enhancements do, but what the powers do, what the sets do and what players can do. IOs can change some aspects of balance management by allowing under-performing sets or combinations to do well, but they don't change the powers themselves, and that's where balance should be targeted, whether it's for idle conversation on the forums, or under the scrutiny of whoever's got Castle's hat now.

I wanted Castle to make the Omega ability summon an army of ducks, with little wiggly tails and with laser beam eyes. I don't know why, but I suspect he may not have taken my request as seriously as it was tendered.

Failure to live up to some internal expectation, poor rank on a DPS meter, lack of satisfaction with a class or set which couldn't accomplish the goal of clearing a difficult map solo when seeing first-hand that someone else can? Why are you asking me how other people determine whether or not their level of contribution is satisfactory? Isn't that for the person to decide? Or are you asking me to rate your specific contributions and determine whether or not you're dead weight? I'm not going to do that. I wouldn't do that even if we were playing together, because I'm not you, and only you can decide whether what you brought to the party was enough or not.

I'm not. You are, as the teammate in question. If you feel like you're contributing, then you're not likely to label yourself as dead weight. If you're making certain the floor doesn't go anywhere while one person solos the entire mission, and you aren't assisting because you can't, then you're probably not feeling terribly useful (since the floor doesn't have a tendency to go walkabout). If I were in that latter situation, I'd feel like dead weight, and not be happy playing that way. And if that represented the game experience in general, I wouldn't be happy with that game.

Something else of importance to note... We are talking about MMORPGs. Massively Multiplayer. Not single-player games, multiplayer games. Games in which people are expected to group up and play together. When people play together, no-one likes to feel like dead weight, and that's one of the things that occurs when you have over-performing classes or sets. If you have one class or set capable of soloing the content, and others without the same capability, you have a group with a lot of dead weight, and disgruntled players who don't want to be dead weight. You can't ignore that, it has to be addressed, and you can't address it by buffing everyone and the content due to time constraints. You have to nerf. It's the only feasible option. Yes, you piss off some players, but you make a lot more happy because they're not standing around with their thumbs in the nether plumbing, feeling useless. And the unhappy players, if they're intelligent and patient, will understand that balance isn't always achieved by giving everyone a bump, sometimes it has to go the other way. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. Cliche, trite, but true.

My left lung collapsed back in '09. The surgery to stick it back where it was supposed to be left me with nerve damage. The musculature and nerves on the left side of my abdomen are... wonky now. Including that region of my chest. It is!

You're preaching to the pastor of the church in regard to playing less than optimal sets. 7 years of Trick Arrows. My first level 50 TA before the Issue 7 bug fixes. But that also emphasizes the point I made previously. There was a time when a lot of the game was challenging. No difficulty slider. No guaranteed lieutenants instead of bosses to help solo players with under-performing sets. No IOs. What we have today is different from what we had yesterday. Co* in it's current, modern incarnation isn't an accurate model for balance, because, as you note, every development team who's ever worked on the game has gone the distance to make it easier, because that's what the fans specific to this game wanted. We do have some over-performing sets, and some under-performing sets, but all sets can solo capably and rapidly, and the people with the over-performing characters aren't lacking challenge, they're either creating challenge for themselves (trying to beat pylon times, or limiting themselves to SOs, or never using the market), or avoiding content which would present a challenge (First/Night Wards). Challenge doesn't necessarily mean bigger bags of hit points, either. There's more to challenge than hitting and being hit (or soft-capping Defense to avoid being hit). Challenge in Co* comes in a variety of forms, and what helps keep players coming back is that a surprising amount of it is self-created. We make many of our own challenges, and we can do that because the developers gave us that option by making the game easier across the board. And, again, you're correct, Co* is balanced enough, from that perspective. Nothing under-performs to any degree that makes the game "impossible", so anything we can imagine within the confines of the engine and mechanics, we can do. One of the biggest reasons players stay here is because they've been able to create characters they love. They love the way they look, they love the powers, they love, as you said, feeling super. This is one of the challenges we've made for ourselves, exercising our creativity and watching what we create grow, flourish, become powerful and reveling in that. But that doesn't mean it's truly balanced. If it were, there wouldn't be under-performing sets, there'd be sets which simply do different things, or do similar things in different ways. And there wouldn't be over-performing sets, there'd be sets which might excel in one way, but not in others. We do still, absolutely, have balance issues here, but those balance issues have become less relevant because the game is easy enough for anyone to level anything without struggling. If a patch were implemented today, and set all content at x4/+8, I guarantee you there'd be a massive outcry. Not because the game became more difficult, but because it became nearly impossible for players using certain sets, and practically unchanged for players using other sets. That's not balanced. Not remotely. We ignore the lack of balance, but it's still there, and it threatens to come back and bite us on the ass some day. And this is why balance is necessary, even if it means making some players unhappy. Yes, we have it easy here. Now. What happens when we don't have it easy? If we buff everything that's not performing up to the new standard, the older content becomes even easier, and less appealing. We already have a sizable portion of players power leveling characters because they're no longer interested in older content. Do we throw away the older content, replace it all with new content? That's a few years of development, at minimum. A decade, at least, with volunteer, unpaid developers working on the game as a side project. The only reasonable and fair solution, then, is to nerf the over-performers and reduce the difficulty of the content to a point where everyone can experience it equally. Additionally, it's often the case that imbalances aren't evident until new content is delivered. A previously under-used power may suddenly gain favor with players because it makes that new content so easy that they can roll through it on autopilot. A class or set which was considered good, but not the best, may have a minor tweak which has an unintended effect, improving it beyond what testing showed (and this is especially applicable in this game, because we all have two sets, up to four pools, a *PP and Incarnate abilities). When PvP was added to Co*, the developers discovered that there were a lot of ways powers were over-performing, unexpectedly, and had to fix them. There were a lot of bugs which had never shown up in testing before, because critters can't give feedback. Every change to a game alters the balance. Balance is equality. Yes, you are absolutely right, we have equality in abundance right now. But "now" is ephemeral. It's not forever. In any game. And every game has to have balance to ensure the equality is maintained. When something is over-performing, it's better to rein it in than to redesign the game from the ground up, to make it equal for everyone, so everyone can enjoy it equally. If you're not balancing your game, you're doing a disservice to your entire player base, treating some as favored children and others as unwanted orphans. That's really what's it's all about, trying to treat all players equally, even if it means hurt feelings occasionally. You can't please all of the people all of the time, not even in video games.

My good nipple just went erect.

The focus of balancing a game is to ensure that everyone can have fun regardless of how they approach it, not to ensure that the game itself is fun, or more fun. This is a notable and worthwhile distinction. An MMORPG has to be fun for players in every class, not the one class which over-performs in every aspect. It has to have content which is equally challenging for all classes, and equally rewarding in accordance to the challenge. When there's an imbalance, players naturally gravitate to the over-performing class. This leaves fewer players in the under-performing classes, which makes the content even more difficult for them, which, in turn, drives them to either move to the over-performing class or leave to find a more balanced game. Additionally, if the game is "too easy" with the over-performing class, there's a risk of high turnover as players leave in search of something more challenging. Sometimes balance adjustments are always necessary. I'm not a fan of nerfing, I think every development team should start with content which is too difficult for everyone, then adjust it downwards until they achieve a good middle ground, and all classes should be designed to be under-powered from the outset, and adjusted incrementally until a good balance is achieved with them, too. But every new bit of content added, every improvement to classes, means an adjustment may be necessary later. MMORPGs aren't static, despite the appearance of being so. They continue to grow and change over time, and, objectively, nerfs are part of that cycle. If the game isn't balanced, people who aren't playing the over-performing class aren't having fun, people playing the over-performing class are becoming bored, and the game suffers. A nerf can be a good thing for the health of a game, even if it's unpleasant to experience it on your favorite <whatever>.

No, it'd be perfect. Reskinned Gang War with a 3 minute cast time and an animation of the clowns driving up in a tiny car, getting out and tripping all over themselves for the full duration. The recharge time could be set to 1 second, just to throw the clown players a bone. All of the powers could work in strange ways, like the lead clown accidentally hitting minion clowns and defeating them, and the mastermind's attacks could all be making different kinds of balloon animals... none of the clown mastermind powers or pets would actually do anything, no damage, no debuffs... but every power would have a mag 50 Placate with a special "stare in disbelief" or "scratch head and look around in confusion" animation forced onto every critter and player within 100 yards. And then the entire zone aggros onto the mastermind and beats him/her to bloody giblets. Twice. See? Perfect! 🙂