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About a billion influence in the bank for my severe alitis; at least if influence is all you're referring to. As for people who have more…I know at least one farmer who likely has more influence than any diety in the game. No clue what he does with it (aside from handing it out to newbies from time to time), and he simply has it because he finds farming fun and it just happens to accumulate. I hoard all purples for future alts, as that keeps me from some more extravegant spending (especially since I have tons of Converters). But…you know when I think about it and read the comments in this thread: one of the unappreciated riches is having folks in my Global who lead teams and like to have me around on those teams. That little gold star kicks off my anxiety something fierce, can't do it, so having team leaders in my Global is such a nice thing. And if my moods, puns, and sense of humor haven't turned someone off to teaming with me, that's huge.

I simply dislike "marketeering" as a concept, ever since it was announced. I do sell the stuff that makes some influence, craft some others to make a bit more, but I don't follow any of the guides for "getting rich quick" in marketeering as…they just break the "fun" for me. I built a dedicated farmer (with a bio that makes fun of farming and marketeering) based on some excellent guides, and if I have to do something that isn't playing on a team, I find solo farming more like actual playing, and relaxing in it's own way. Grind away, get some nice drops, make some nice influence, listen to music, watch a show, and alt when teams start to form. I have a severe case of altitis so I need the funds to build nice alts. And in the beginning I had to farm fairly regularly. But now my existing 50s get played enough at random to mostly supply the up-and-coming ats. And grinding for T4 incarnates keeps me playing longer on a given alt anyway, which means more inflience. This is even considering I probably pay too much for set IOs since I'm mostly a "get it now" than "wait for the price to come down" buyer. Despite all that, I farm maybe a few times a year when I get too alt-happy, or a bad combination of expensive builds close together, or I play alot of lowbies for a while, or whatnot. And I am happy I don't have to farm very often. Frankly, I used to be a bit down on farmers, not marketeers. And I still have negative opinions about some aspects of farming. Never farmed on Live, didn't need to. But the economy vs. what I enjoy about the game vs. what I don't enjoy conspires to keep me broke on Homecoming without a little farming for influence here and there. So my opinion of farming softened out of necessity. (And even when I thougth farmers were some sort of evil, it never reached the level at which some people hate them and the efforts the devs sometimes seem to take to nerf them.) I do not, however, think any less of the "marketeers." After reading the guides on doing this, I give someone props that they can make more money than my farmer by keeping all that marketeering information in their head AND enjoy it. Not my thing, but kudos for you. I'm glad enough that I make influence faster farming than playing for the times I need to top-off my funds. I never really understood the "destroy farming!" hate, and until now, I'd never heard of "markteering hate."

I have a number of alts with only Beast Run or Infiltration. While they are a bit slower than folks using Fly, Super Jump, or Super Speed, in practical terms it's not that big of a difference within a zone. Granted, I don't do speed runs of content or spend time on teams who are simply too impatient to wait a little for the last team member to arrive at a mission. If you combine it with a teleport-pad equipped base, Ouroboros, Mission Teleport, Monitor Duty, and Rapid Response Member you can get around between zones pretty quick. Sure I arrive last to a mission alot on these alts, but less often than I thought I would. I don't find it to be a huge penalty. But to be fair, 90% of my alts have the faster travel powers because…GO FAST! The others mentioned above are generally for concept reasons and since concept is king in my little world, being slow doesn't bother me if it fits the concept.

So I am generally a concept player. So I tend to pick powersets, powers, and primary/secondary/etc. powers based more on concept than min/max. VATs have always been troublesome to come-up with a concept that still fits within the game lore. I also tend to play non-human concepts. And I really want to try widows and soliders, but never have played one beyond level 24 for all the years they've been around. So I came-up with an idea for a Spider: what if one of the "people" inside one of the spider uniforms really was a spider? Maybe just a rare, sapient, successful Arachnoid? Maybe the backpack just serves as prosthetics to some poor tortured mutant? I've leveled-up to Level 24 just on intuition but now it is time to start the real build. So the first part is: the "spider legs" backpack is always-on since that's part of the concept. So with that in mind, it seems like Crab/Crab fits the concept best. Are Crab/Banes allowed? That would give a "web" power (concept) and a cloaking device (handy for setting an Omega Bomb). Interested in your advice, and since I can't build my way out of a paper bag, any builds you'd like to share that I could use, or use as a jumping off point for my own modifications. THANKS!

I appreciate the calls to either dissuade me or to go with a Brute, but I started him as a scrapper for my own reasons, and am quite fine with "as close as I can get" rather than some min/max perfection. Which leaves me with trying @Black_Assassin's build, unless folks want to jump on an try to improve it. Otherwise I have a petty nice Claws/DA scrapper build I figured I could adapt. But I am really quite aweful at the whole "DIY" thing outside of a couple decent frankenbuilds, so assume it would be even more sub-par than something y'all might recommend. I suppose I could "flip" a DA/Savage brute build…which is a thought. I've done "flipped" build like this (brute-to-scrapper, defender-to-corruptor) but I assume they are generally sub-optimal (though I've made them work!). THANKS! 🙂

Trying to build a Savage/Dark scrapper, anyone have a build they've enjoyed and would like to share?

I remember this set…the first introduction to how important tone is in Mandarin. And why I spent months trying to master the phonemes first before moving on to words. Mandarin fricatives were brutal. But as long as it's written in pinyin like that, learning and using the tones are not all that bad (they are tones use in English, just not in the same way). Hearing them is tougher if the speaker is native and speaks quickly. The proper use of the "questioning tone" (má) is the habit hardest to break coming from English, since it's just a tone in Mandarin, and not an indicator of the sentence being a question. I heard it referred to as learning the "song" of a language. Each one has a cadence, a rhythm, and certain flow. English's song is fairly simple, and Spanish isn't too tough for me, but Mandarin's song I was only just getting the hang of.

Mandarin has 5 "tones" and yeah learning to say them properly is one thing, listening is another. And if given a word without the accurate pinyin marks, it's a crap shoot for me (since I can't read Mandarin in native glyphic form). I understand Cantonese has 9 tones…yeesh. You don't have to be a high-level musician, but you do have to listen really carefully. And it helps if you properly learn to use the tones yourself so you then recognize them when listening. I'm not as good at listening, but have managed to say the words properly (been confused for a fluent speaker more than once). You do have to train yourself. Some of the aweful anglicization of Chinese words and placenames I suspect was from "lazy listening."

Basically the same. I was borrowing from the blend of "ts" and "tz" sounds used in words like "tsetse fly." Best I can descibe it anyway. American English is my native tongue, but my pronunciation of Spanish and Mandarin words is apparenty really good, so probably borrowing from a wider phoneme set.

You can certainly play with just SOs, I have a whole group of friends that tends to. When everone is at this level, it can be quite fun because you have to use your brains as much as your brawn. And you just don't turn it up to +4/x8 or level as fast. Not really an issue in the company of good friends and players. I used to run SO-only to 50 on Live since I was generally too broke and couldn't make a fancy IO-based build to save my life. So I'd level to 50 and retire the alt. The caveat is you really can't play with the big kids…incarnate content, Dark Astoria arcs, Cimerora all are quite tough on just SOs and can make you feel like a bit of dead weight. At least that's how I always felt in the post-40 game after IO sets were a thing. I'm not quite as old as you are, but no spring chicken either. I still can't build my way out of a paper bag, but I learned to find builds in the forum, use MIDS to view them, and sometimes make a frankenbuild. And I found ways to make the funds I need to build them and still satisfy my altitis. As for the "when"…I tend to wait until around 32 before bothering to kit-out a build with IO sets. I just run SOs until then, since I've rarely found trying to use a pre-made build was worth the time, expense, or awkwardness until 27–32 or so. I slowly go from 0-50 playing as near to the correct level as I can…no farming and only a very brief use of XP doublers.

Human nature? Ever send a bulleted or numbered list of issues to a typical support desk and notice they only tackle the first one, maybe the second one? Ever send a longer email to someone and not get any indication they read more than a handful of sentences from it? I changed my entire style of dealing with others via email years ago to accommodate this problem.

This is something more low-DPS alts should do to drive the point home with with the "DPS squirrels" (love that term). I do it all the time (just skip the stragglers if the bulk of the team has moved on), but there's aways that lowbie controller on a 50+ team who stays behind and hopelessly tries to take the boss the leader (or tank) left behind because the leader wasn't paying attention. I just figure I'm staying with the group where I'll do the most good and not die in a futile battle.

Being seeing the same thing, same room, multiple maps. It's particularly wild when you have Mastermind Pets at play, as the pets start running to the new location of the mobs and then back to previous location like a bunch of Keystone Cops if I try to get them to heel. They gete very fixated.

As a MM, I've seen glitches like this occassionally. For example, when as a Level 39 MM on a Level 50 team, I went to my SG base before quitting the team and I got "stuck" at Level 50. I quit to the character select screen and logged back in to get back to the correct level. I didn't think to see what happens if I tried to play…was I really stuck at 50, or was it cosmetic? No idea.

You don't need an 8-person team. I get mildly annoyed by leaders who wait around to fill a team because it can take forever and we could have done a mission or two in that timeframe. I log in to play, not stare at teammates who don't engage in discussion or banter (so many PUGs are so quiet). You adjust the difficulty and recruit as you go, as someone else mentioned. That being said, the annoyance passes if the leader is a good one I enjoy teaming with so…it varies. I always try to stick it out to the end of a mission. I have quit mid-mission because of prior commitments and a mission runs alot longer than I figured; and generally apologize profusely to the team and the leader. Most people (except OP it seems?) realize that IRL trumps gaming, always. The only time I usually see a bunch of people leave at once is for advertised activities like TFs, Hami, etc. or because it's dinner/lunch in a certain time zone. And most people who leave tell you why (at least on Torch). You should see the mass team-emptying for the daily HamiHamiHami runs on Torch; and good luck getting an 8-person radio or mission arc team during that time. All that being said…I have mid-mission quit teams who had crummy leaders, or other players whose behavor was just driving me up the wall. It's one of the reasons I have stopped doing TFs and iTrials because, as mentioned, it's bad form to quit a TF but I don't always feel compelled to stay if the team is irritating/stressful. So I don't join most TFs because of too many bad experiences and not wanting to be that player who bails mid-TF. PUGs are PUGs. As a leader or a joiner, you just roll with it.