ZemX

Contaminate is, all around, not something you should pay much attention to because of its somewhat unpredictable (or at least difficult to follow) nature. It feels kind of like an argument I was having recently in /help about Scourge. Someone was deeply concerned they couldn't "make" a Corruptor work because they were annoyed by the unpredictability of Scourge. Instead of trying to make the most of Contaminate (or Scourge on a Corruptor) just forget about it. Let it, statistically, do its thing and it will provide some benefit. Slot Siphon as an attack and treat it like a low-tier attack that just sometimes has a little bonus of healing you tacked on. I wouldn't slot it or use it primarily as a heal. Just put it in your rotation and it will sometimes heal you.

Synapse, Manticore, and Citadel are all zone-hopping kill-all adventures. Synapse even has creaky old patrols in it and perhaps the worst phoned-in copy-paste missions in the whole game and yet, for double merits and/or TFC badge progress, people will do it. So rewards DO work. Not just saying that. Also, important to note, the goal is not for everyone in the game to drop what they are doing and go run mission arcs. If boosting rewards a little encourages even a few radio teams to diversify, then it was worth it. This is about making unused content a bit more attractive. Not changing the whole world. Granted, I've no idea how tedious this might be. It might involve hand-editing hundreds of mission reward tables or something, in which case... tough sell. But if not, then it might be worth doing. Or maybe it can be scripted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This. Mostly if I know what the enemies are doing, everybody else should be fine, but I keep half an eye on those health bars if the fight gets messy (double pull, spread spawn, knockback artists plying their trade, etc.) Generally, I prefer to keep an eye on enemies more than I do on my own team, which is probably why I've never played a buff/heal support or an MM, My ideal PuG toon if I'm in a mood to just do my own thing though is a Stalker. Nobody expects anything of a Stalker. I am not protecting anyone. I'm not buffing or healing anyone. No one even notices that bosses are dying faster. *placates* "I was never here!" *poof*

Almost nobody cares if you are merely "sub-optimal" with build choices. It's when someone's powers start affecting others negatively that people get called "rude". And you don't need a bunch of offline community research for that. You can see that happening right in front of you and learn.... or refuse to.

So after 18 pages of discussion we've arrived at.... the exact thing that happened to the OP as the solution? Well done everyone!

I think just switching Group Fly to opt-in instead of opt-out is the simplest solution unless there's some technical reason that couldn't work on a new toon. Nothing wrong with the Null solution we have other than people either not knowing about it or forgetting about it after character creation. And it's probably a situation where 99.99% of people want it disabled or would want it if they knew about it.

It's a figure of speech. When someone is playing up the virtues of something or somebody, especially themselves, it can be said to be akin to "selling something". "Up to date"? We're playing the same game, man. Don't know how else to say it but you are kind of smoking your own exhaust here. Same thing with repeatedly harping on misinfo. What misinfo? Where do you see people saying things that aren't true and are going unchallenged? About the game, I mean. Generally, any time I see someone being wrong about how something works in game, they get corrected whether that's here or or in help channel in game. This isn't exactly brain surgery, you know? It's just an old game we're ALL quite familiar with. The first part of this is undeniably an advantage and that's why they hang out there. It's what Discord is good at. Immediate communication. Nobody here is denying that. But again, misinfo? Where is this rampant misinformation? How are we out of date? Are we somehow playing an older version of the game?

*checks cubicle for listening devices*

Just as "power creep" implies increasing power, I'd say "rewards creep" implies a reward that is greater than what is currently available. While we're suggesting increasing rewards for mission arcs, I don't think anyone is suggesting making those rewards any greater than rewards already available for other activities. This is more akin to power proliferation than power creep, in other words. The point of it is also the same. To encourage more diversity in content played. Not to make things easier or faster than methods already available. I'm sure that describes a lot of people... just not most people. Not from what I've observed. At least just watching LFG channel, what you see most advertised is the stuff that seems to provide the most rewards. The rewards don't matter as much to me either but if setting out a little bit more candy attracts more people to team with, I'm for it.

I don't think anyone is claiming absolute facts here. I doubt all that information is publicly available. But they are not unreasonable assumptions. Discord is just newer and hence likely to be more popular with younger gamers than a lot of us old farts. That doesn't mean nobody old uses Discord. Of course they do, but I'd be not surprised at all if it skews younger than people who hang out primarily on forums. That said, I'm sure the Homecoming Discord itself skews older than the average Discord community.

I don't think this "Discord is where all the people who are better than you hang out" is quite the selling point for a community you seem to think it is.

I probably haven't run any of the original Atlas mission arcs since Live. If I'm doing anything at that level besides DFB... it's Habashy and Twinshot.

What mechanisms exist on the Discord that prevent this misinformation and drama?

No self-respecting tank earns a badge for avoiding damage!

Two big reasons for that: (1) There's no zone hopping, and (2) The rewards for the rest of the team are the same as running story arcs. That's why I think changing (2) up there could change the equation enough to encourage more mission arc teams. I don't think it would be any dramatic shift or anything but it would help a little and hopefully not be a lot of effort to implement. I wonder if the problem here is that the game can only do this in a Task Force mode like it does in flashbacks. But it would be nice if it could be done outside the flashback system like you say as it would open up that many more mission contacts to be run and nobody would have to worry about outleveling the contact.

That design isn't changing. Or it already did in newer arcs vs. older ones. What the rewards do is pay us off for putting up with that stuff. And it works. People do plenty of older TFs with zone hopping and defeat alls, even when they're not the WSTs (but yeah, especially when they are). My hope though is that offering team rewards for arcs is a simple enough change that even if it doesn't work tremendously well, at least didn't cost anyone a lot of effort. Another thing that could be done. Not sure if this is the case or not, but the merit reward that is offered for running a story arc as a flashback should be comparable to TFs in terms of merits/hr and XP. Given the commitment is the same from the team, reward should be the same formula. It might be fun to see more people running flashbacks like alternatives to TFs. I see people do this only rarely.

As someone who is lately mostly playing tankers... I don't let it bother me. If someone snatches away all the mobs I have gathered around me, I take this as them telling me, "I got this!" and I move on to the next spawn. Gives me extra time to collect them up. Same thing I do when someone uses an AoE knockback to scatter my group. "Oh, you're gonna handle this now? Cool. I'll move on to the next." And usually it IS fine. Not like many teams NEED a tanker these days.

Or just give everybody on the team the story arc completion bonus XP and merits that are already given to the story arc owner upon completion of the final mission of the arc. I don't think your checkbox system is necessary. I get that it's an attempt to make sure everyone on the team has earned the rewards but, counterpoint: So what? Main concern is really avoiding any exploits and in this case, I don't see any that are worth doing when one can just farm more effectively by other means. The main limiting factor in farming that last mission is getting that last mission. Someone still has to run through the arc. At best you could have a group individually solo the same arc in parallel up to the last mission and then collectively do the last mission as many times as there are people on the team but again.... you could just farm. And that exploit requires people to all be the same level and get the same arc. It's almost a leveling compact. Not something anyone really needs to worry about. Story Arc awards are already set less than Trial and Task Forces. The formula for merits, for example, is something like 60% the merits of a same length Task Force. I think that could even be bumped up to 80% without really discouraging anyone from running TFs, especially the WSTs. It's more of an observation than an assumption. You and I might be willing to do Story Arcs but anyone watching LFG can see people do orders of magnitude more DFBs than they advertise for story arc teams. DFB is a gateway to Posi and then you're off to the TF races. That's for people who don't just hop on a farm or PI radio straight-away of course. Boosting TEAM awards for Story Arcs is an obvious solution to encourage more diversity of content being run by teams.

This is good advice. I got on a PuG Tarikoss one time that wiped out just inside the FIRST door mission. Nearly the whole team immediately quit because the enemies were all waaaay above our level. That's when I noticed him lurking in a shadow. Not the team lead. That would have been too obvious. But clearly.... involved!

Great range. Great knockback. Shitty recharge. Yes, this will do something for a few seconds. As others have said, it's the party composition. And yes, @cranebump the mariners need to die first and fast. I think really any debuffers but we had two mariners if I recall right. I watch my ten power monitors including recharge, recovery, some resists, one defense, hit chance, damage bonus, you know... so I know when I am being debuffed. All that stuff went red and my 50 full-loaded tanker hit the carpet a few seconds later through half a tray of inspirations. Guess I should have ate em all. Sure, exemplar all the way down to Posi 1 levels does a number on all my stats, but still a beast and I got wiped out like a blaster. We HAD to single-pull that mess. Not like we were all walking around with bank accounts full of super team insps like the miscreants @Spaghetti Betty hangs out with. 😈

Thank you for both asking this question and then demonstrating the answer. I've been on +2 Posi 1 TFs that were a total steamroller blowing away anything in its path all the way up until that last fight... and then we get wiped multiple times by ourselves. This is the problem. The stronger YOU are, the stronger THEY are. I'm always encouraged when the team struggles a bit earlier in this TF. It means we're probably not strong enough to kick our own asses quite that badly at the end.

You get five server transfer tokens every three days so it's usually no problem on the day in question to transfer to and then back from Reunion if that's not where you call home for that character. If you're at all worried about reserving your name when you leave your home server, create a level 1 or give the name you want to keep to an alt on your home server. You can use the character rename button as often as you like.

But did the enemies hit by the damage proc remain placated or did they become instantly aggro again? You can be in Hide and still have enemies shooting at you. Hide won't drop until you are hit.

We need to start calling that a +7 Freakspec because that's how it ends. Maaan was that a slog in the last couple waves. Really glad I didn't bring the Icer. On top of everything else, those bosses are like 30% resistant to cold. Yikes! The Rad Melee however worked great and hopefully helped a bit hitting those highest level Freaks.