Excraft

Who's "we"? I don't think an insta 50 token is needed nor would it be something available to brand new players. With that said, the suggestion of making it unlockable after achieving certain things in game like badges and such plus an inf fee isn't such a terrible idea either. As far as it impacting the market, not entirely sold on that idea either. People are transferring stuff to alts anyway.

I've specifically said that using the graphics sliders and trying to use Suppress VFX when close doesn't work. I also said the game looks like total shit when turning the graphics down. So yes, avoiding teams with anyone using Seismic Blast is my only recourse. If you want to play a game that looks like shit, more power to you. My preference is to have some adjustments made to this at some point so it either doesn't obscure the field of view or have the suppress vfx when close actually work. Feel free to disagree.

I'm totally fine with waiting for updates to it. I'm not at all demanding anything or that changes be made this instant. No idea where people are getting that from. I can avoid teaming with anyone using it for now. Unfortunately that's the only recourse until there are changes made.

Encase or Entomb or whatever power it is that's enclosing the target in a giant rock that obscures the entire field of view. This is a real problem on teams with more than one blaster using the set. The animations are brief yes, but you have multiple people on the team firing them off in succession. It's real easy to lose track of what's going on and on Master of runs this is a huge problem. It's a big problem in caves and as @Tuft posted, large sized mobs. I totally agree it's great we are getting new stuff. It just seems to me how these couple of powers work could use some more thought and like you say ironing out. It's ok if there's only 1 person doing it. When you have more than 1, it gets annoying real fast. I'd really love a Null option to disable all buff VFX. Would totally solve the problem and doesn't change anything for people who like things as they are.

If Jack Emmert is involved my expectations are very, very low for this. Everything the man touches turns to shit. He's great at making promises that he never delivers on. See STO.

People should have expected this. The only way to make "support more useful" was to totally nerf everyone else or add stupid levels of mez, damage or -resists/-def to that you need outside buffs. Whether or not that's a good design decision is debatable. Personally, I'll be running this for the new badges and then never bother with it again. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid TF and definitely something different. The new environments and such are top notch and the team here did a great job with all of it. It's just that running it on higher difficulty settings is too long a slog for me. I just don't have a couple of hours to devote to running it when I can farm other TFs/iTrials faster.

Those too. Sadly, I think this feedback is going to get completely ignored as usual. SB is a fine addition to the game, it just needs some additional thought put into a couple of the powers or even better, have a way to disable the VFX via Suppress When Close. Would totally love an option to disable all incoming buff VFX as well. We can already Null how speed boosts, group fly, tarot cards etc. affect us. A couple of the powers in this new set are super annoying and badly designed.

There needs to be a way to turn off or disable the visuals for Entomb (and other Earth powers) that are totally burying our characters under a layer of rock. We are already getting buried under layers of colored VFX, this new power really takes it to another level. It's fine that it only lasts a second if it's only 1 player with it on the team, however with the amount of people leveling new Earth blast characters and firing these off in succession, your vision is totally obscured by this and can't see what's happening. This is a big problem on Master Of runs where seconds can count and totally exacerbated to the nth degree in cave maps. I tried using the graphics sliders and suppress VFX option when close, but no dice and the game looks like shit at lower graphics settings. Not at all looking to take away anything from anyone who are enjoying the set, I'd just love an option to disable those - and many others come to think of it - graphics for me. If the suppress VFX when close slider worked better, this wouldn't be so much of an issue. Appreciate the effort that went into it, however this new Earth blast set needs another pass IMO with consideration of how it obscures the action, especially on melee characters.

Not that I think you're entirely wrong, however it's your responsibility to speak up and let people know that you're a beginner/novice at these Master of runs and have a lot of questions. Speaking up and letting others know where you're coming from doesn't hurt either.

Absolutely need a way to turn off or disable the visuals for entomb or whatever power is totally burying our characters under a layer of rock. It's fine that it only lasts a second, however with the amount of people leveling new characters and firing these off in succession, your vision is totally obscured by this and can't see what's happening. This is a big problem on Master Of runs where seconds can count and totally exacerbated in cave maps. I tried using the graphics sliders and suppress VFX when close, but no dice and the game looks like shit at lower graphics settings. Not to take anything away from anyone who's enjoying the set, I'd just love an option to disable those - and many others come to think of it - graphics for me. This set needs another pass IMO.

This is great. You didn't read or understand what I wrote, but it's great.

Melee don't do you job and remain in melee ....

Speak for yourself. Teams I've been on haven't been trying to zerg rush it and have been "playing as a team", whatever that's supposed to mean. There's a fine line here between encouraging a specific team makeup/style of play and turning the game into yet another WoW clone with heavily scripted dungeon encounters. I'd hate to see this game become that.

I don't disagree with you at all. The AD settings are going to be more about this than increased in game rewards is what I was getting at.

I understand this is purely subjective and my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but I'll take those 20 BAF runs over 1 ASF at relentless difficulty any day of the week. The pace is much quicker, the action faster and it's 24 incarnates running through the content vs 8 potential non-incarnates under heavy debuff fighting buffed enemies. That's not to say the ASF isn't fun because it definitely is so don't take it that way. You all did a great job with it. I personally am more into the faster pace of BAF/LAMBDA/Tinpex. Running a trio of those wouldn't feel as long to me as an ASF on max difficulty.

Have to say this was a lot of fun. I want to give props to whomever designed the new maps. Beautifully done. This runs a little too long for my taste on higher difficulty though. The Council AV fight can be very overwhelming. Hero 1 seems buggy to me as well. Beyond those things, I liked it. Nice work. Definitely something different. Still going to be significantly easier/faster to farm these in BAF/Lambda than running ASF on higher difficulty.

This assumes there will be a large group of people who want to run higher difficulty settings. If it's going to add significant time to ordinary TFs/SFs without the reward table being increased significantly, personally I see this being more for bragging rights than anything else.

Ran it this evening. Overall I enjoyed it. We had a pretty well balanced team with regard to melee/damage/control. Whomever designed the new maps needs commending. Very beautiful work. As far as the difficulty settings go, I do like that it's encouraging a more mixed team without being overly punitive about it. The higher stats on bosses and AVs is nice. Not sure I would say that they are tougher, just last longer/more tedious. Overall nice job on it. Definitely seems like a rather large fib to me as well. There are definitely some 1 hit wonder auto kill you powers in there either as part of the higher difficulty or baked into the NPC design.

Sorry to be blunt, but this is utter horse shit. This ignores what several people have already pointed out - depending on the content, it is far faster to complete the mission objectives by splitting up. See the Shadow Shard TFs that were brought up as an example. Maybe you have 4 or 5 hours to waste on a play session, but not everyone does. Splitting off into separate groups to complete objectives faster is helping the team, no matter how much you want to deny it. The same lie can be repeated over and over again as many times as you want, it will never make it true. This statement is also purposefully disingenuous in that it doesn't take into consideration any number of possibilities with team makeup with regard to level, slots, enhancements, AT makeup etc. If I'm on a team of lowbies with minimal slots and enhancements (if any at all) running a Positron TF and I'm on my fully decked out level 50, believe me, I'm doing more damage than they are at a faster rate than they are. This can happen all the way through the game. And what happens when that mob is defeated so fast I didn't even get a chance to fire a shot or apply a mez? How is that me helping the team? Because we're arm and arm? It's not helping at that point, it's leeching and isn't fun. I'm guessing you missed the last part of my post? If you did, please go back and re-read it. And being considerate of others goes both ways. So long as someone isn't running off and doing stuff to intentionally grief others, there's nothing wrong with what they are doing. This thread and others like it are very superficial, thinly veiled attempts to define the "right way to play." They're getting old to be honest.

Your argument doesn't work either. Many if not all of those written examples follow real life behavior. People work collectively without needing to be attached at the hip. Where I work everyone has their own phone, laptop and other office equipment at their desks. We work collaboratively with people in other offices all over the country every day. Projects are broken down into various tasks and people will go off and work on their piece. If we were to be expected to be huddled together in a room all day working side by side, we'd never get anything done. To sell more comic books.

Depending on the makeup of the team, their builds, mission settings etc it may very well be faster to solo a mob than it is to wait for the team. Threads like these never once can explain what exactly is the benefit of huddling together to go from mob to mob. They also neglect that sometimes if groups are wiping out enemies before an individual can get a single attack or hold in, that isn't fun either. No matter what anyone tries to say, dividing and conquering is a perfectly reasonable and viable tactic and it is helping the team to complete objectives. People don't need to be arm in arm skipping from mob to mob. If you want to play a game where you need a complete team to cross the street, there are plenty other MMOs on the market for you. City of Heroes never was like that and never should be in my opinion. As others have said here, communication is key. If you want everyone to huddle together and jump from mob to mob, make that perfectly clear when forming. Otherwise let people play as they like and enjoy themselves while contributing to the team.

Well buddy you're more than welcome to go back and read whatever you want. You're certainly entitled to your own spin on things and to be wrong. Sorry, I can see you're sensitive and got triggered. Feel free to read things however you like.

There's a difference between disagreeing and pretending to speak for what the development staff can and cannot do and should or shouldn't be doing. They're adults and can do that themselves. I understand you want to be anal retentive about definitions of words and that's fine, I'm just pointing out this is a common thing on forums for various communities. Sorry if that triggers you.

People don't need to be developers to be gatekeepers. There's forums and communities for various IPs all over the internet that have rules against this and don't allow members to gatekeep. You see this a lot in the Trek, Star Wars and Tolkien community forums. STO has gatekeeping built into their forum rules. See item 22 here. The forums here could use a similar rule in my opinion.

Yep I know it has, no matter what the gatekeeping brigade tries to say. Hopefully this is something that's a simple fix to just move the spawn point a little to the left or right of the portal itself.