Luminara

If @Snarky made a post about every pick-up group he joined, it would make the recent spam attack appear laconic. He's only giving us the highlights, not chapter and verse.

It's not gone. It's not disabled, every point is still counted. You just have to go to someone's profile page to see it. Yours, mine, whoever you want to know how much reputation that person has, it's still there and still counting up, one click away.

Proportional reward distribution isn't applied to teams, teaming has its own XP/inf* distribution system. A proportional reward system was never in place for teams because it would have disincentivized low damage archetypes, specifically defenders and controllers, and been contrary to a fundamental design element of the game. Solo, XP/inf* have always been proportional to damage dealt. When two or more teams are fighting the same enemy or enemies, the same rule applies. You can drop in at any zone invasion event or mothership raid, participate solo or make a duo and see it in action. The entity dealing more damage always receives more XP and inf*, whether that entity is an individual player or a team. Every member of the team will receive the same XP/inf* as his/her teammates, adjusted for level, but it won't be exactly the same as the XP/inf* that members of another team receive.

As far as I know, that's the system we use now. But I haven't teamed for anything but the Troll rave badge since 2011, and I'm always well past receiving other rewards when doing that, so I wouldn't know if it was changed. My recollection is that we originally had a tagging system, wherein whoever hit a critter first would always get all of the rewards. The purpose of that system was to prevent "kill stealing"... but it was ridiculously exploitable, and heavily exploited, for power-leveling (lowbie tags critters, 50 blitzes critters, lowbie receives full rewards, rinse, repeat). As Cryptic had an overwhelming hatred of power-leveling, they changed it to the proportional rewards structure we have today (presuming it wasn't changed shortly before or any time after the game was shut down. not something i care to test, either, so someone else can find out).

Then you also need a heal meter. And buff meters. And debuff meters. And control meters. And all of the meters will have to account for +/- Special so the appropriate player is credited, and each of the control meters will need to reflect exactly how they contributed to the team's performance... If you're going to open this can of worms, you need something for all of the worms, not just one.

Rough total is still displayed when you mouse over an avatar, and specific total is still viewable on the profile page. You can get your endorphin fix. As with anything, it depends on the people involved. Nothing is inherently good or evil, the use is the determinant. The reputation system isn't good or bad, it's just a thing. How we use it can be good or bad, and it can reflect how good or bad we are collectively, but that's on us, not it.

Polite. Like Po, but less... healthy.

Ahem. 'Twas the day after Spammas and all through the forum, Not a GM was stirring, not even @GM Impervium. The stickies were stuck at the tops with great care, In the hope that the newbies would read them there. The posters were nestled, all snug in their topics, While visions of @Snarky in a sheer teddy danced in their optics. oh god oh god oh god my eyes I'm so glad I can't see any of you guys. And here at Homecoming, there was no clatter, For @Cipher had finally quelled the spammer. Calmly, I leaned back and played Solitaire, And checking for new members named uselesputz124. This poem is too fucking long to adapt, So I'm stopping here. GMs, enjoy your naps!

I opt for the respec every time these days. If something's off, it's still going to be off when I level up and select another power, and I've probably wasted slots trying to fix it, which makes it twice as off. I'm never going to make it to 50 if playing the character feels like a chore, either. And every build is going to have other problems later, which can pile up and make a tangled mess if they're left unattended. Given that respecs are a lot easier to obtain than they were on the original servers, I've shed my aversion to using them. A million or two inf* is a very, very small price to pay for a more enjoyable playing experience.

I plan every build before I start anything. The level when I select a power, when it's slotted, everything all the way up to the post-50+ build, I plan all of it. Once I've started playing the character, understanding the synergies between the primary and secondary, getting a feel for the powers, then I start modifying the plan. Maybe I don't like the animation for this power, or there's an annoying pause at the end of that power, or I find that I'm just not using a power often enough to warrant slotting, or I have a feeling that the character would be "better" with this other power... whatever the reason, I'll revise the build, use a respec and move forward. I've usually used all of my freespecs by the time a character hits 50, because I adapt builds as I'm leveling them. So by the time a character does hit 50, it's pretty well refined and tested. But even at 50+, I don't consider anything to be "finished". Nothing is done until the servers are turned off. There's always some little improvement I can make, there's always another change to a power to which I'll have to adapt or can leverage, there are always changes to the game that will necessitate a response. And this is actually why I keep playing. Yeah, the butts look nice, the powers are like Christmas lights and the power-trip experience of smushing entire spawns is gratifying, but it's the ongoing process of building and refining a character that has had me hooked for almost 20 years.

My mother got me a job doing that when I was 18. I lasted two days. They fired me for being too nice.

And we appreciate all of the work you and the GM team are putting in to help keep our home safe and comfortable. You're the heroes we deserve, and the heroes we need. >.> Wanna buy some airline tickets?

NEER YOU. Clack hear.

What really bends the mind is that people fall for it despite how obvious it is. I've never seen spam, phishing attacks or anything similar that wasn't rife with bad spelling and atrocious grammar. How stupid does someone have to be to read, "I am for want to sand you grate binavalins of moneys but a guvorn mint is hold my moneys and you most halp me for reeleese it", or "You're a count is suspanded and you half to reset it by going to this sight", or "WE FOUND MANLY HOT MILFS NEER YOU, CLACK HEAR", and actually consider it even remotely possible that it could be on the level? Fucking pathetic.

The spam was piled high this morning. @GM Conviction felled it with one mighty swing.

Failed a respec, but that wasn't what prompted this report. This was. I think the respec code is about to gain sentience. Exciting.

Our GMs block spam like this.

BAN THE SPAMPIRE!

I think it's some script kiddie fucking around with a new toy. A Google search shows the same spam on multiple small forums, but it's not widespread, it's not hitting big sites, and it's not constrained to just one forum software. It's all very recent (nothing before a couple of weeks ago), too. The sites I'm looking at show the same slow, lackadaisical approach to the attack that we're seeing, nothing of the scale that a real attack would entail (hundreds or thousands of accounts all posting simultaneously). Someone with a small botnet or a single bot, testing it, finding out what it can do. That it goes dark for several hours between attacks suggests that it's either rotating targets, hitting a site for a while, then moving on to the next one in the list, or the user hasn't figured out how to fully automate it yet and has to be in front of the computer to make accounts and start the bot working. My gut tells me it's the latter.

Thanks, @GM Widower! You operated that bulldozer like a pro!

They took PSH to a taxidermist? Is that in the movie, too, or will that be a separate film?

Indeed. Makes me long for the days of Usenet, when we could grab an IP address, do a reverse lookup and pay a visit to the spammer in person.

That was @GM Crumpet. He's not waffling!