MHertz

If there's going to be a money sink, then it probably shouldn't turn money into power — better gear, better protection, faster earning potential — money already does that, and we haven't managed to solve the sink problem that way. Therefore, money is going to have to turn into something else. Two things come to mind. The first thing money can turn into is vanity. Imagine being able to pay a pile of cash and get your name on one of the buildings in the game (for a certain amount of time). Instead of "Cook's Electronics" in Blyde Square, we'd get Yomo's Tech Haven, with a lighted sign and everything. Or you could put up a billboard advertising (or bragging about) your SG. Your character's face on a flag. Yes, this would take some developer time, but it wouldn't have to take an abusive amount of coding or excessive testing. It's a texture; it just has to be evaluated for content. You'd be Bruce Wayne. Imagine being able to pay a pile of cash to rename some IOs. You pay for 1,000 Ukase's Blast recipes to drop, and suddenly people are talking about your character like you're a big-time Iron-Man-style arms dealer. This would take some dev time, too, but it would be a way for your character to live forever. You'd be on all the wiki sites that talk about what gear to buy, what build to pursue. And maybe your branded version could be 1% better than Positron's version — just that much. Another thing money can turn into is political power. Suppose you could invest a spectacularly large amount of money into a corporation or a country which is part of some macroeconomic mini-game. After all, if you're the kind of player for whom money is a game, then the developers should create a financial end game that deals with large sums spent on specific political or economic effects. Maybe your corporation is pushing magic stuff in an attempt to make magic better or more plentiful. Sale prices for magic salvage at all vendors goes down by a small amount. Meanwhile, someone else is pushing science, which negates part of your efforts to push magic. It'd be a macro-scale economic game that doesn't specifically make you more money (but from which more money might be made). You'd never be able to push prices down to zero, but there would always be one origin that was "cheapest" and another that was "more valuable." Billionaires would be able to fight over this, mostly for the sake of bragging rights. Or, you know, some other macro mini-game centered around money could be imagined, like founding a corporation that is now fighting with other corporations. Do real monetary PVP. Yes, this would take a lot of developer time to make. But it would provide a real financial end-game for those who have too much money to spend and nothing to spend it on.

Some people power-level through content. Some people join farms. Some people sit by the door, and some people steamroll the whole map and destroy it. Some people run Trials and Task Forces. Some people run missions. Some people street-sweep. Some people have to be on teams. Some people solo. Sometimes it's the same person at different times. If you're in the mood to form (or join) a team that has a particular flow or pace, carpe diem. Make that group. I bet there's somebody out there who'd rather be playing your way than playing solo.

Last two for now. Colt Soulwalker: And Stickbonker:

Two more. Winterdove: And Ty Flare:

Two more. Chaney: And Skyvixen:

Two more. Carmen Astra: And Caxino:

Since bios are the fun part... Mistress Hertz, based on my main from Live: Mr. Crunch:

It seems like the hardest part about this suggestion is deciding what farming is, so you can decide whether someone is using the channel "correctly." I always thought of farming as doing one kind of content over and over for a certain kind of loot drop. Depending how you define "loot," this rule would ban Trick-or-Treat teams from using LFG (temp costume powers, Hallowe'en loot, badges), as well as Death From Below (lowbie temp powers, badges) and many task forces (temp power, badges, merits). Or if by "farming" you mean "power leveling," I have no idea how you'd manage to police that. You'd have to ban Grandville and Peregrine Island radio mission teams, just for a start, and then ban ads for AE missions. Oh, and certain mission teams, because they have temp powers and badges too. Where exactly do you propose drawing the line? How many players would agree with you on where that line should be drawn?

The Stone Armor has always looked like a character fell down a muddy hillside and landed in some Cocoa Puffs. Would it be possible to have a version of Stone Armor with minimal FX, that is, without the blobby rocks look? I'd like to create a character that is made of stone, instead of one who happens to be glued to some.

I generally mock the tragic darkity dark orphany death doom backstories, but that's because in my superhero bios, I tend to mock everything. My only goal, like Roger Rabbit, is to make people laugh. I have one character who clearly wants to have a tragic backstory. This is Skyvixen: And I have a dark/dark Defender who can't figure out how to be dark, Carmen Astra: When it comes to RPing with people, I generally don't like any RPer who feels the need to be at center stage, with a spotlight, for every single interaction. Your backstory may be dark and gritty and "real," whatever that means in a world where alien meteors turn ordinary citizens into jelly people of doom, but that doesn't mean your character's personal tragedy makes you the Main Character in everyone else's story. I didn't sign on to be a cameo in your Darkity Dark Drama starring You. Or, for that matter, to be a cameo in a Sob Story Drama starring You. I got over that when I was 9. Remember how there was always that one kid who wanted to be an Alien That Nobody Understood and would run away, so all the other kids would chase him and try to make him feel better? Yeah, don't be that. It's my opinion that we should plan our RP backstories so it can integrate with that of other players, so we can sometimes be a cameo in their piece.

Agreed. This description of how actual battles go passes the sniff test. Whatever might be theoretically true on paper, you gotta compare it to what you see in the game. Even running the Death From Below trial at level 5, the minions and lieutenants go up like a magician's flash paper, and the bosses are swarmed under in seconds by everyone else's concentrated fire. AVs are pretty much the only exception. It's just how the game is balanced. I can totally see why melee types would be unsatisfied with the role of getting one good AOE in, and then everything else melting away. If that. It's a problem, yeah. The incentives for different archetypes to have a satisfying combat experience may be too different.

Yes, and I did say "I don't understand" and "it seems to me" rather than "you're only saying that because you feel X." The former I can condone as an opinion or a viewpoint — we all try to understand why others are motivated the way they are, or why we hold certain opinions — but the latter isn't helpful. One is telling you how I think unspecified people might feel; the latter is telling you how you feel. This is especially unhelpful in a context where some people have implied that "feelings" are not a valid argument. But I recognize that could be unclear, and I apologize. If you have a hard time telling those two modes of expression apart, I'll try to do better to put a little blue sky between them.

This topic amuses me, because last night I created a character that is the most freakin' fun to role-play, ever. He is a staff/willpower Brute, and his name is Stickbonker. He bonks people with sticks, and he's obsessed with it. When he runs around, he talks to himself in /local constantly. "Green Shirt Lady say I gotta go talk to Doctor Man. What he know about stick bonkin'?" "Man, stick bonkin' in dis city gets complicated." "If at first you don't succeed at stick bonkin', stand closer." "If it bleeds, we can bonk it with sticks. We prob'ly do dat anyway." It would never occur to me to try to role-play an all-powerful being of any kind.

This is true, but a player who is experienced enough and wealthy enough to create a build capable of soloing an eight-man team's worth of enemies probably has a pretty good idea at what level grouping becomes unpleasantly futile. Don't tell me you haven't checked the powersets of a team going into a TF and said, "This is gonna be bad."

That is certainly one strategy when you have a player that can absorb the alpha strike. When there is one. 🙂 It isn't the only such strategy. And if, as you say, the team is able to steamroll the content without the need of someone to fulfill that role, then that Scrapper or Brute or whatever doesn't have much purpose on the team. They may as well go off on their own, if the team is otherwise not in need of that function. I have no problem with that. I'm still not sure why a Scrapper would want to join a team where a) they don't feel useful and b) they can solo the same content, if more slowly.

If they can't acknowledge the reality of combat mechanics and team efficiency, that's just foolish. Still, it's not particularly helpful to tell people what their feelings are. Contrary to some of the squabbling that's been going on, feelings do matter. We play this game because, well, it's supposed to be fun (for a certain personal definition of "fun"). If we didn't like it we wouldn't be here, so we have to figure out what it is that makes us feel good and why. Part of the problem is inherent AT imbalance. This leads to support types wanting to team in order to play that role. The player might get anxious if the meatshield is off doing his own thing, not paying attention to the team's catastrophe curve. And it could lead to the solo-ready ATs wanting to go off on their own, because they don't really need that much support. At heart, both of the players want to be useful. Both players want to feel like they're making a solid difference. Unfortunately, the ATs were built with opposite tactics in mind for achieving this.

Isn't a melee player much more than a damage hose? Yes, in theory, if the remaining team members are steamrolling the content without any difficulty, there should be no problem in letting one particularly well-built Scrapper run off and do his own thing. In that situation, I got no problems. I've been on TFs with no meatshield at all, and nobody's in any trouble because the DPS and control are through the roof. I've also been on teams where I'd have traded my left arm for just one competent Tanker. I get how it can feel like there's nothing to target — and I get that feeling on a Blaster. By the time the animation cycles, the target is already well dead. I understand that. Still , looking at the problem purely as one of wasted DPS is to diminish melee's entire role to that of a one-dimensional squishy Blaster, and it's not.

I can see how this argument makes sense. The extra damage is wasted. This applies even solo — the bad guy has a sliver of health remaining, but you've got to waste an entire fully-slotted attack to dispatch him. However, in any realistic world, you can't whittle down the team to the bare minimum of DPS producers and expect the same results as you get with a full team of diverse ATs. You can do 200% of the damage needed to destroy a spawn and still not kill the whole spawn. That's because success isn't entirely about attacks, it's about soaking up aggro and centralizing the enemies for AOE attacks. It's also about finding the stragglers and mopping up efficiently. It's about watching your teammates' back and having more eyes on the prize. As I said in my post, I recently played on a task force where the melee artists and DPS hoses had moved on to a spawn down the hallway, leaving a Controller to face a +4 boss alone. I only had a FF Defender, so I used Force Bolt to keep the boss knocked down, but the Controller and I couldn't do anything to take it out. We had to call for the team to return and do its job. I guarantee you we had already done more than 100% of damage needed for the spawn, as a whole.

People play for all kinds of reasons and get their enjoyment from different experiences. Personally, I think the most fun to be had (combat-wise) in this game is when you have a team that's juuu-uust barely in over their heads. Life bars are turning yellow, then orange. Maybe a squishy goes down. Maybe the tanker is in trouble. An extra group got aggro'd or a patrol swung by and it's just slightly more than you're prepared for. You're clicking buttons frantically, spinning the camera, looking for the best targets, trying to drop inspirations on your teammates, flinging buffs and debuffs, clicking attacks as soon as they come up, and your team just barely scrapes through by dint of heroic effort, good luck, and the proper teamwork. You see a squishy that's in trouble and you bash the enemy that's going toe-to-toe with him. You throw the tanker a heal or a bubble. You realize the defender is taking too much aggro and you run to intervene with a well-timed hold. You see the brute's life bar is turning bright red and you laugh help. That's fun — to me. But not to everyone. I can see how some people might prefer to steamroll stuff without ever being in danger, because it would feel more powerful. I can see how some people are more impressed by watching orange damage numbers fly. That's fun for me, too, but not when it's too easy. Not when I don't feel like I make a difference. So I can also see how some people might get frustrated by constantly trying to target stuff and finding everything dead. Or they have to go on an unannounced AFK and nobody noticed. Or when your damage line is MISS! MISS! MISS! MISS! before someone comes in and one-shots the two +4 guys you're fighting. That's frustrating. So yeah, maybe I can see why some people would prefer to solo, because it feels like they're doing something. They're getting their adrenaline rush from taking on just slightly too much. What I don't really understand is why it's necessary to be on a team for that. It seems to me that teaming, only to go rogue, is trying to have the best of both worlds for the solo artist. Cake, and also eating said cake. Other people are earning you quick XP and frequent drops by steamrolling, while you feel important and cool and essential all by yourself, doing your thing, even though you're slogging along more slowly than the group would as a whole. (If you think Solo can defeat a group faster than Solo + Teammates, you're going to have to show me how that works, because it would mean Teammates have a negative net effectiveness. They would have to be making the enemies stronger.) And yeah, communication is the answer. "Hey, let's stick together for this first group, to see how things go. Let's see how well this low-level tanker can withstand aggro. Let's see what our DPS looks like. Let's make sure we're going to be able to roll pretty well." Because I've been on missions where people try to go rogue and solo whole groups, and they're Not Good At It. I have to run after them with heals or bubbles, chasing down a tanker, two brutes and a stalker who all want to do their own thing, except they can't really handle it, and the support team is getting nailed too because there's no meatshield. I've been on teams where I have to say in chat "Hey, dummies, there's a +4 boss attacking our only controller back there, stop aggroing that next group." Or where I have to say "Team is split, come back, we're in trouble here." That isn't much fun to me. It's stressful, because as a support type I feel responsible for herding those cats.

I haven't played with one since Live, but I never found anything wrong with Voltaic Sentinel on my elec/elec blaster. Sure, it doesn't divert enemy attacks away from me like a pet or soak up aggro, but I don't have to micromanage its targets, either. I can focus on other things, like keeping bad guys' endurance drained or healing teammates or whatever. The part I like best is that it's pretty efficient. It uses a relatively weak blast, but shoots fairly often, so there's not a lot of overkill going on. Nukes and similar front-loaded damage powers can sometimes do so much overkill that your DPS rating is deceptively high. Not all of that DPS is being put to good use.

Funny, I like the Blyde Square music too. When it plays. Often, the Copper District music overrides it. I also like ... I believe it's Steel Pier in IP.

I know you probably didn't mean for this to be a tutorial, Ignatz, but it was nevertheless a very clear explanation of the process. I can't say I'm a billionaire, but I was lucky enough to get some recipe drops to experiment with and made 8 million in a few minutes. That'll give my starter toons a leg up — in purchases, but also in making more cash. Thanks! Now I have an idea what I'm looking for.

The best part about playing an Adam Savage character is all the costumes. Pirate, astronaut, Macgyver, James Bond, Indiana Jones...

So how would you put together a group based on the cast of Mythbusters? Silent Walrus: archery/devices blaster Deathblow: robotics/kinetics mastermind But what about the others?

First, that's a pretty keen system. I was not aware of that feature on HC. It doesn't change the fact that playing on +0 earns you more drops than defeating the same number of mobs on +4. That suggests to me that the system is, indeed, imbalanced, regardless whether this has any long-term effect on market prices or item availability. Sure, the connection between this drop rate and the market is tenuous and I can't prove any direct causality to anything; that's not my point. If nothing else, people doing content on +4 have fewer raw materials to work with and fewer things to sell. Seems like an imbalance to me.