DrZeus

I am curious what people find are the most expensive non-purple enhancements. I've been surprised at trying to sell some enhancements only to have them sell for a surprisingly low amount (assuming I want an immediate sale). Something like positron's blast might only sell for half a million while basilisk's gaze sold for two million. Defense sets are said to sell well, but some more than others obviously. Is there a pattern to look for, or do people often just go with what they know to be mean prices and not do the immediate sale?

To turn and move the camera I use the right click. And that's fine when soloing. But when in a group - especially as a melee character this doesn't work well because right click does two things: it changes your orientation and camera, and it also clicks on a character, enemy or even a dead body or NPC. So in a large group I try to turn and I often find I can't. I right click and instead of turning I just get a window because there is - anything there. A dead body, enemy, another character, and I may not even know they are there. Often I right click, see the dialogue box, have to click out of it to make it go away, try to turn again, and do this three or four times before there doesn't happen to be a hit box where I'm right clicking. I don't remember having this issue on live, but I admit I didn't play the last year or so when they started to make a lot of changes. My memory could be fuzzy. Is there a way to turn off the ability to select a MOB when right clicking? Or is there a different button I could adapt to using to turn? What am I not remembering?

I have noticed a good deal of people using discord. To some this is a good thing, to others, not so much. Whatever method you use is going to limit your interactions. In my case, I saw a supergroup that would have been perfect for a character. I inquired only to find out they use discord, which eliminates me as a member. While you may have the drawback of not being able to type quickly... I have the drawback of rarely playing a character with a voice even remotely like my own. People like me... we're not looking for a discord server, we just want to have more immersion while we play the game, so roleplay is natural, but that only works if we type instead of use our own voices, which don't match the characters in any way. I'm curious what percentage of people use discord compared to not. Since each one seems to limit your interactions, which one is more limiting I wonder?

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I'm not sure where the cognitive dissonance is... perhaps you could be using the word incorrectly. (typically happens when words and actions are not aligned, and in this case... there are no actions to align, so the term cognitive dissonance isn't really applicable) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your personality involves... some extremely lawful tendencies. (to mix both psych and D&D). The metric they're using is measurable. Just not being measured in this instance, how it would be measured was already spoken of. And it is clear that most people in the discussion seem to understand the definition - and have tried several times to explain it to you. I thought their analogies were quite good. The issue isn't with them.. it's with your lack of understanding on what they're saying. They seem to be understanding just fine. The entire point of communication is to get across a certain message... and to receive it. People have tried to re-explain what they're talking about (their job as a sender). You as a receiver might just not be able to understand what they're saying. It happens sometimes.

This sounds very similar to my mainish character on live. I just wanted a puncher. Martial arts didn't work... because there you mostly kick. Super strength doesn't work because there's no punching involved... just odd animations from someone really strong and really uncoordinated. He was a hell of a scrapper actually... flurry from superspeed helped round out his punching, and with that and shadow maul (they didn't have sands of mu at the time) he had a pretty well done rotation. Add sands of mu and there's a lot of AOE for a scrapper. These days I might also do energy... minimize the glowie hands, as the animations are pretty punchy. (now that we can alter the look and color of the powers)

For your first point... yeah, you really have to be careful with how much you ask. It would be great if we could just ask everyone 500 questions... we'd cover everything. But it would be so long we wouldn't get honest answers (people just click through). There's a happy medium there, and a lot of science behind how to make the perfect survey. And... while your second point is obviously correct... I didn't want to bother get into it. I don't care to argue semantics, and blackbird is specifically saying "argue semantics with me". Bird has an understandable reason for it... but again... I don't think this is a thing you can apply logic or argumentation to. There's simply no need, and to do so is to miss the important stuff... facts. Blackbird.... The fact is... it doesn't matter if we're not doing a survey HERE. Because when humans are given surveys... they respond in a particular way that proves they do consider the two things different. So to say that they don't... and to try to apply logic to WHY they might not... it just really missing the fact in front of our faces. And honestly... scientists don't argue why you should beleive science. If someone doesn't want to... it's either because they don't understand it... or they just don't want to (often out of fear). I don't talk people out of that. To a point I try to make them understand it... but only to a point. Also.. keep in mind that humans have variability. If asked two questions, one with enjoyment and one with fun... perhaps you would answer the same with each one. On every subject. You'd be the exception to the general rule, but hey, humans are all different. Just know that if you do work this way, most other people do not. That's the first rule of statistics: they don't apply to individuals (and you're an individual)

And... they will debate it. Mostly because people enjoy doing that. You are trying to apply logic to the idea... but I'm not talking about logic, I'm talking about what we find in emotional research. Logic is a great way to guess without having facts on hand, don't get me wrong, but it's no substitute. Prediction never implies post hoc knowledge. And... during research you don't have to establish the operational definitions of every term beforehand. Because ultimately... you can't. If I use Embarrassment and Humiliation ... I could try to distinguish between the two all I want. But that distinction won't actually alter any of the results. When I ask someone "In X situation, on a scale of 1 to 10, how embarrassed do you feel"... and then "how humiliated do you feel"... the fact is... they give different answers. It is the person... the subject who decides they're not synonymous, not the experimenter. Which is fine... we're studying the participants, not the experimenters. So my guess... based upon years of reading emotional research literature... is that "on a scale of 1 to 10, how fun is it" and "on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I enjoy it"... would get two completely different responses. They'd be correlated to be sure. But they'd get different responses. I'm sure a confirmatory factor analysis would put them in the same category, and show them as distinctly different too. It is interesting someone above said that in order to really figure this stuff out, NCSoft would have to hire some full time psychologists. They almost did. I only had my master's at the time, but I did interview and made the short list for being hired on at one point... due to my pitching that psychological analysis would be utilitarian in this regard. I'm not sure I would have been a good fit at the time, but at this point (doctoral education behind me and a lot more knowledge under my belt) I'd think a game company with an MMO would be a fool not to hire people like me to study what people want in their game and why... and then design how to deliver it.

I've been enjoying this thread so far. Thanks for making it. I might have a slightly different perspective... so far people have shared personal perspectives, but also game theory, game design, economics and philosophy... sometimes even debating if fun is definable. It's been great to read. But let me give you a different perspective... scientific. My doctoral education is in psychology and communication sciences, the latter part focused on emotions (of which fun is one) and video game effects. This is all... very measurable. Sure, fun is subjective, but that's where the science comes in. Humans have variability and you can define what is fun... statistically. As far as are you splitting hairs by differentiating between fun and enjoyment? I doubt it. Emotions vary widely - it is well known for instance that things like humiliation and embarrassment are two separate emotions, and when people rate them... yes they're in the same category and have a high correlation, but not TOO high (we always check to see if the correlation is too high - if enjoyment and fun are correlated 60% then they're related... but if they're correlated 95% they're just measuring the exact same thing and are not distinct concepts - we call this a collinearity problem). We have all these different words for emotion because they have different connotations for people and represent distinct ideas. By the way... an emotion is "any feeling that gives you insight into your internal motivations". You don't actually know your own motivations or why you're doing things... you only have emotions to give you kind of a gauge on that... so while fun is an emotion (gives you insight into dopamine and serotonin levels in your brain - among other things)... so is hunger (gives you insight into sugar levels and specific chemical needs your body has). Often measured are things like immersion... expression, escapism, competition, accomplishment and feelings of success. Various personality traits will determine what is fun for YOU. Sometimes, the best way to think about how you're having fun... is to figure out what you don't like. Having fun is the opposite of that. So in my case... I don't like it when I'm in a group and it levels up super fast and I don't feel I'm pulling my weight. I'd hate being a farm sitter. Why? That shows that I have a need for accomplishment and less of a need for success. The levels are a sign of success, but not accomplishment. I also don't care for one change that has been that there is now an unchanged established meta as far as how to build and slot your powers for maximum effect. On live they tried to get rid of this by adding Enhancement Diversification... but now that's gone. Now you have people building designs in Mid's and maxing out after farming for influence so they can even feel they're competing. I don't care for that because it removes the ability of expression... it removes the ability to really make something unique that might matter. So clearly... that must be very fun for me. Obviously to other people they don't care as much about that. I can tell you that I also much really like Immersion... because I like CoH more than CoV. CoV - has always had a bit more people trying to game the system. Farming, talking about builds, trying to min/max themselves... all that stuff removes immersion. I also like roleplaying, which also is an indicator that immersion is fun for me. (and honestly, it's just more FUN to be a hero - I can be a villian in real life any day of the week. There's nothing unique about that) By the way, we are horrible at figuring out what actually motivates us, which is why we use psychological measurement tools. For instance, I did one experiment where I asked people if they played PvP or PvE. Of the people who played PvP... they all claimed they enjoyed it because PvE was too easy and predictable and they liked a challenge. However, there are two types of competitiveness... goal competitiveness and interpersonal competitiveness. They describing being GOAL competitive... they want to be the best person they can be. This is like a jogger racing against his own best time. However, personality variables showed that those who liked PvP were actually way LESS goal competitive than PvE players. They didn't know it, but they had a significantly low need for this. What they DID have however, was high interpersonal competitiveness. This is the desire to be better than other people. This of course, would explain why PvP players are known to not... play fair. They will generally care less than others if the fight is fair. They just want to feel superior. If the other player is AFK... or a child... or a new player they're about to drive away from the game... these are all just different flavors of victory. but the PvP player doesn't know that's what motivates them. (and they generally don't like being told because in our human hubris we like to pretend we know ourselves pretty well)

Well... there are no rules. Just an idea. What I'm doing is "only damaging powers are temporary" I don't even use brawl or boxing for damage... although I do use fear and intimidate from the presence pool for control due to the fact that they do no damage. I suppose smoke grenade would have fit the concept but it seemed too... aggressive for an actual blaster power for my tastes. (although I do use injection from medicine pool) And I never bothered take travel powers... why bother when you can buy them. Honestly, in my mid-30's I have five blaster powers... I have the first assault rifle power... and web grenade and caltrops... never used, immediately removed from tray and one slotted... and then field operative and targeting drone. But hey... if you want to change it up... I'd love to hear how it goes. I've been wholly surprised by this and I'm really wondering about making a group version of it. Or one using only temp powers you can't buy (there are 12 hero side temp powers you can earn that have at least 50 charges... and four attack powers to cycle through that last days of playtime). Just because I'm not using land mines or smoke grenade... maybe that's how to turn this into a group thing. (although again with the long animation times). I'm curious though... I see that in your proposed build you've six slotted a few unused attack powers - but I don't recognize what the enhancements are or why you used them. What is the advantage of doing so? You've sacrificed putting a couple of slots into stamina in order to so - I assume there is great benefit that I just dont' know about.