Grouchybeast

You're splitting some weird hairs, here. Whether or not they went live back then, the blaster changes were created by the live devs. They were part of their plans for the future of the game. The changes were on the player beta when the shutdown was announced, There were two revisions on the player beta, during which the Blaster changes stayed basically untouched except for bug fixes. There's no indication that the live devs weren't perfectly happy with what they had. Compare them to, for example, the proc changes which got a lot more attention and tweaks in the player beta. ETA: Sorry, I was futzing around and didn't see that @Jimmy had already said it before I posted.

I wouldn't want everyone to be working together on one server, anyway, If we're going to have the downsides of playing a pirated game, then we should at least get the advantages. Different communities suit different people. The more dev teams are working on their own version of the game, the more choices players have to get the gameplay experience they prefer. And the more servers that are running, the more time-consuming and expensive it is for NCSoft to shut them all down.

Don't forget pooling IO levels, which instantly created supply at all levels, and funnels inf from high to low level characters. The changes on the HC market are, frankly, genius.

The blaster love actually came initially from the devs on live, not HC. Most of the blaster changes, like non-crashing nukes, sustains and the core of the snipe changes were in I24 and about to go live when the game shut down was announced. IIRC they were the result of data-mining by the devs that showed blasters were one of the ATs most frequently abandoned as players levelled them up.

A bit of help for MMs would certainly be nice. I levelled up a MM to 50 and incarnated it for the first time on HC. Eventually the tier 1 pets just turned into an annoyingly clicky Absorb shield. Okay for helping to soak up the alpha, otherwise basically useless.

At the moment my hypothesis is that the devs are hoping the forums will chafe themselves into exhaustion over completely theoretical changes, so that when the actual changes hit test they'll get less nonsense and more real feedback from people who have actually tested the changes. I think they underestimate forum stamina.

I think a one-step no incarnate powers toggle for team leaders would be a great option. Instead of potentially seven other people having to futz around with their characters, one person changes one setting. It moves the burden of organization to the team leader, makes it extremely simple to operate, and means that the incarnate players don't need to waste their time unslotting abilities or remember not to use their incarnate powers. New players who join the team will automatically have the right settings applied. Then when players leave the team the character will be automatically restored to how it was before. Nice and streamlined for everyone.

That is an almost magical combination of efficiency and inefficiency.

If you scroll aaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom of the forums, there's a board called Reconnect. There are threads for each of the live servers you can check, or you can just post a general shout-out. Good luck finding people! :-)

Although when being inclusive, it's nice to be inclusive of everyone, i.e. don't forget the people who like to solo.

Archvillan Resistence is a power possessed by AVs. It's separate from and additional to any purple patch effects on the player's powers. So a defense debuff on an AV will be reduced by AV Resistance AND purple patch effects. Resistance debuff would only be affected by the purple patch.

You wouldn't even need to waste the work if you used the phasing tech.

Which they can do, every time, in the Beta forums. Lots of players donate their playing time to give feedback there. You should have a look around in there sometime. I think it might help to alleviate your worry that the HC devs don't listen to players when they make changes, because they manifestly do.

The chance that Streakbreaker actually affects a heavily Def-reliant character is tiny. If a mob has a 20% or less chance of hitting you, then the Streakbreaker will kick in only after they've had 100 consecutive misses. That's per mob. With a 20-30% chance of hitting per attack, an individual mob would still have to miss 8 times in a row before they get the Streakbreaker auto-hit. The 5% To-Hit floor is vastly, vastly more significant.

You have that one backwards. It's the set bonus that you lose once you exemplar more than 3 levels below the level of the IOs. The actual enhancements like acc, dam etc will still apply, although the values may be scaled down using the same rules as all enhancements obey when exemplared. Common IOs just about match even-level SOs at level 25, and exceed them at level 30. Level 40 Common IOs are better than +3 SOs. Using cheap sets to frankenslot is even more efficient. Dual-aspect set IOs beat +3 SOs at level 24, and triple-aspect IOs do so at level 20. Set bonuses can indeed be pretty sweet, but with Attuned IOs being so cheap and easy to get hold of these days, frankenslotting is an extremely attractive option.

The bonuses on TO/DO/SO Enhancements are determined by their RELATIVE level. A level 35 Damage SO will provide a 38.33% Damage bonus if your character is level 32, a 33.33% bonus if your character is level 35, and 23.33% if your character is level 38. Common and Set IO bonuses are ABSOLUTE. A level 35 Common Damage IO will provide a 36.70% Damage bonus whether your character is level 32, 35, 38 or even 50. So one of the advantages of IOs is that you don't need to replace them as often as DO or SO Enhancements (or even at all). They will provide the same bonus no matter how high your character levels. Many people will slot Common IOs at level 25, or 30, or 35 and keep them until the character reaches level 50. Quite late in the run of the game on live, the devs introduced the idea of Attuned Set IOs. This is the HCWiki page about Attuning. Basically, an Attuned IO will act as if it is an IO of level equal to your character's level (capped at the maximum normal level of the set). On Live, Attuned IOs were bought on the Paragon Market for real money, or made by using a Catalyst. On HC, the best way to get Attuned sets is via the Auction House. The HC Auction House functions differently to live. On HC, the Auction House pools each individually named type of IO together. E.g. every crafted Thunderstrike Acc/Dam IO is treated by the AH as interchangeable with every other Thunderstrike Acc/Dam IO. If I place a level 35 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam on the AH, and you bid for a level 50 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam, then the AH will automagically convert my level 35 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam into a level 50, and use it to fill your bid. This pooling ALSO happens for Attuned IOs. I.e. if I place a level 35 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam on the AH, and you bid for an Attuned Thunderstrike Acc/Dam, the AH will invisibly do the conversion and deliver my IO to you as an Attuned IO. So you can buy Attuned IOs on the AH, and they will level up along with you.

Welcome home! (If you head over to this thread, you can find instructions for how to take advantage of @Yomo Kimyata's kind and generous offer to set you up with some starting inf.)

Because it is a type of pudding. It's the same basic principle as butterscotch pudding. The mix begins as liquid, and is heated up to change the structure of the protein part and thicken it to a gel or solid, just with different proteins. (Although 'pudding' also has different meanings in different places. In the UK at lot of things are called puddings: suet puddings like Christmas pudding that are boiled in pudding cloths, steamed sponge puddings, rice pudding, Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pudding...)

You need to read @Jimmy's post again, The hardware demand isn't determined by the number of SHARDS, it's determined by the number of PLAYERS.

That hasn't been my experience at all. Even with very big emotions, like grief at the loss of a parent, I might not be able to make the core emotion go away, but by choosing what I think about and focus on I can profoundly change how I experience it.

I've also always thought they were gears, but now I look at them more closely they're clearly too irregular and don't mesh properly. They definitely look a lot more like bullet impacts surrounded by lead splashes. To be fair, if someone told me to draw the concept of Serendipity in the context of defense, I'm not sure what I'd choose. A bullet stuck halfway through a pocket bible, maybe?

I think it's supposed to be a speedometer, like this one:

I have an american friend who says that it's a shame they don't make pizzas in Chicago, but at least they do make tasty casseroles. It took me quite a while before I realised what she meant.

You're welcome :-) As @MTeague reminded me, you do need to enable it in options: Menu --> Options --> General --> Team Options --> Collaborative Missions [Enabled/Disabled].

Ah, thank you! I don't remember doing that when I restarted playing, but I think I copied over my old settings files, so if the option is stored locally the game probably just loaded up with the option already turned on.