Ukase

A lot of people do things differently. There's no real right or wrong - except attuning purples is a bit silly, because you can't boost them. And, they're already attuned. And if you try to attune a boosted purple, you lose the boosts. I have a few sg bins that hold a few sets of what I call "temporary" IOs. Right now, I'm on a fire/dark controller. At level 50, it's going to have a very rare/purple set of unbreakable constraint in it. But until I get 50 and can slot them, I'll use the winter set of entomb. I never use TOs or DOs when I start. I'd rather go naked then spend inf on enhancements that do next to nothing. So, at level 2, I use the START vendor 5 free enhancements that are all dam/rech/chance of XYZ, and accuracy SOs. I'll fill in end reducers and recharges as necessary. And I'll upgrade every level. I tend to use purple sets for characters that will rely on a certain power as their "bread and butter". For this controller, Fade is a nifty power. And Coupling it with power boost might also be part of it's future, but power boost might make it clickier than I want. Either way, it'll require a fair amount of recharge. I slot them at 50 and boost them. (unless it's a damage proc) Hamidon/D-Syncs, Titan-Os, Hydra-Os, those are a different kind of thing. The acc/dam usually goes in one power that's got damage procs, so no set bonuses to sweat over. I might use a Cyto or two in Tactics. I might use a membrane in fade (Defense/Recharge). Not sure yet. But they are generally in a power that might take one or two slots.

To hoard, of course. Not to mention - if people just drop the inf to buy these - the prices won't go down. But, if people just start burning a couple of unslotters instead - the price will drop. When it's more along the price of a cyto, then I can stomach paying for 8 of them, possibly 9 if one fails.

I didn't play Plant before the latest change. I've made a plant/natty, and a plant/dark. Of the two, Plant/dark is more robust, but they are both super easy to play and I could up the difficulty in my early 20s. In many ways, these controllers outpaced my blasters in leveling speed. If this is nerfed, I'm pissed I didn't play it before the change. In my mind, plant is the best controller primary, but I've yet to do symphony or pyrotechnic yet. (when I say best, I don't mean best dps. I mean ease of play. A clearly subjective opinion. There's no way to say one is best, because we all slot the various powers differently and play differently.)

Plant/Dark is super easy to solo, and by level 20 or so, you can ramp up the difficulty.

My grandmother once told me a story that many of you younger folks would call bigoted, or even racist. And perhaps that assessment would be fair. But the moral of the story remains. I'll edit it, hopefully to avoid such labels. One man makes 50K a year. He spends 45k a year and has 5K in the bank. Another man makes 24K a year, and he spends 16K a year and puts 8k in the bank. Who makes more money? Well, clearly the first guy makes more. But the 2nd guy has more, because he saves more. Do not be foolish and buy expensive hami-os for more than one character. As an example, I have 2 characters I want to have Fold Space. But, to 53 those d-sync provocations, (or hami ectosomes), I need 8 of them. Right now, there's 36, I think on the AH. Odds are about 20 of those are still listed at the older prices of like 1B or so. To heck with spending one more inf on those. I will remove the D-syncs from a given character that already has them, and put them in my email. I have more unslotters than I can even bother to take out of my character email to sell, so I'll just take two each play session, pull the d-syncs out, put them in email, and then the next character can retrieve the d-syncs, use them, and at the end, put them back in email. I could certainly buy them all, but that would be putting my hard earned inf in the hands of those who would seek to fleece me. Nope! I could, I suppose, buy them all at whatever price, and then relist at 1B or or more. Wouldn't HC love those AH fees sucking the inf right out of the economy! Don't do it, folks. Get what you need for one character, and if you can stomach using a couple of unslotters, use 'em. Why spend that kind of inf if you don't have to?

Personally, I look at BS ideas like I look at a single converter drop. A nice enough thing to get, but hardly worth getting excited about - unless it's one of my challenge characters.

Another option is to just join it. Like you, I don't really see the value in joining these, particularly if I already have the badge and am level 50. But - often there are a number of players who are lower level, and sometimes they need an extra 50 to make everyone's attacks a little more accurate, with a little better recharge, etc. Of course, even my level 16 character will go there and get some attacks in without a team and be just fine. I just have to wait until I'm much higher level before I get the badge, unless I join a team. And sometimes, the people in these leagues are ...well, off-putting, I guess is a nice way to say it. I mean, I'm sure they're nice in their own way, but some mornings I really don't want to here you're an insane kitten 30 times before Adamastor spawns. (that's just an example - I think I actually heard the insane kitty thing in the abyss or an msr) So, sure, I can see why you'd want that option. Unfortunately, I think this is just a fairly rare thing. Maybe you could just grab an ouro arc on your way in? That would prevent team invites, and when you're ready to go, you just quit the ouro arc.

And that's why most folks don't do it. Heck, I only do that when I'm deleting a 50. I never know when some league leader is going to say, "Hey, let's go with this interface/lore/hybrid instead" Personally, I'm grateful to get emps in Hami. I only rarely choose them, as emps are like xp. They come as you play. Unless you're in some kind of a hurry, may as well just let the game drop them on you every 3 vet levels. But, the case can be made for having a lot of t-merits to prep a character you're excited to try out sooner than later. Rudra, whom I rarely see eye to eye with, makes one valid point. We could use more incarnate content to get different paths to get our incarnate materials. Frankly, I've been relying on the labyrinth and t-merits to complete my characters, with the odd run through DA. I am woefully weary of the iTrials.

Looks like we need to request access.

You folks and your costumes. The Random Costume Generator is tried, trusted and brilliant. The only thing I did was change a black to a green. Perfectly fine for any npc clobbering one is inclined to do.

So, my understanding was the original devs had a concern about the market. If everyone stored recipes in a base, then what would the state of the market be? Probably not that different, but who knows? They like the idea of players crafting and using, or selling the items that drop. It keeps the gears of the economy moving. I'm not sure that logic is sound or rational, but that's what I heard. As for this current regime, I think it may be more about additional memory usage. Having to keep track of this guys 5 accounts, and the farmers and marketers they have, and the who knows how many recipes they have in addition to everything else, maybe that's an exponential potential for memory issues. Not a math guy, but I think that's the issue. Besides, crafting and/or converting and/or selling at the start or end of your character's play time should be a habit by now. It's easy, and really, it's every bit a part of the game as is badging, base building and making a costume, and of course, clobbering npcs.

No, that's really my only issue. The other night, there was a point where we're about to do a hard fight, someone had to afk, and I don't want the pet to start something before the team was ready. But I didn't have the option to dismiss it. And there's no timer, other than the one in my head to know how much longer it's going to be up. 30 seconds...20 seconds, I dunno. Time in this game is hard to gauge. I mean, I see the computer time, but I wasn't paying it any mind when I spawned it. And I don't know for sure when it despawns after the initial timer expires. I see the gremlins just fine. And I suppose there is the petcom-dismissall macro I can use. But I'd still like to see it so I know when it despawns.

I don't know about the praetoria one giving 20 extra merits, but the rest certainly do.

I have something that may or may not be useful. I've made 3 characters since this new page. 2 were controllers. One is plant/natty, the other is plant/dark. A 3rd is a plant/martial assault dominator. At no time before this patch did I play a plant of any kind - although I've a dormant fire/plant blaster that's been at level 17 for a long, long time. The controller plant version is better than the dom. It's not that close, either. The problem with this feedback is slotting isn't the same. A dom tends to focus on recharge for perma-dom. (doesn't have to mind you) The creepers and seeds are really about the same, but for whatever reason, the controllers could amp up the difficulty much sooner than the dom. Leveling with the controller was fun - with the dom..well, it's at 42, and I haven't played it in a week. It's just not as fun because it's not as good. I just wonder if the changes made to plant were made considering the different nuances between controller and dominator. I'm not sure I understand why anyone would play a dominator in lieu of a controller. For stamina? That's easy to get. For status protection - my controllers only had to deal with mez when they were farming master illusionists for that kill the pets they have badge. Dominators - at least the way I play them - are not as good as controllers, and it's not even close. Don't forget, a controller can use the lockdown proc and lockdown bosses on the first attack just like a dom. And even if they miss it, the tools are there to handle it. So, yeah, my take is - don't know what it was like before, but the dom plant set is not that good compared to control plant set. Take that for whatever inf you can get for it.

What I'd like to see: The trainer recommend a power or power pool with a reason why when you go to train. (and visiting a 2nd trainer may or may not agree with the first) all invention set enhancements be available in levels 10-50. It doesn't make sense to me why sets begin at 35 or stop at 30. (that will shake up the market for sure, lol) I'd like to see zones/instanced msrs capped to 32 until HC can find a way to reduce lag for the people who are constantly complaining about it, even though I rarely have any lag. I'd like to give away tailor tokens that I have. I'd like to be able to give away team teleporters, work benches, ATTs, SG portals and other items we can purchase, but can't give directly away. I'd like for chance of damage procs to work every time the power passes an accuracy check - with limits of one damage proc per power. Enough with (me having to do) the damn math. I'd like to click on a contact and choose any mission they have that's not part of story arc, in the same fashion Lord Schweinzer lets us look at all the mayhem missions before choosing. I'd like the find contact list to include every contact within a level appropriate range, alphabetically, instead of by zone the original devs wanted to push us towards. I would like a "get all" button on the AH, for those times when I might purchase a lot of converters. I would like a "get all" button for character email so I don't have to manually remove over 2000 enhancement unslotters and other items. (Not all the items in the character email - just all of that category of item) I would like all of the purchased teleport powers to have a recharge time of 5 seconds. There's no reason to have it take more than that. Not a good one, anyway. Or let me buy a better one for more inf that has a faster recharge time. Or let me buy more than one so I can use them one after the other. If I ever got any one of those things, I'd be quite pleased.

This is feedback. I'm playing an electric/electric dominator. I took Voltaic Sentinel. It's too soon to say if the power is good or bad...but I can't target it to even find it some cases. I know it lasts for 60 seconds - but what if I want to dismiss it? I can't. I think this is a mistake. Right now, it seems like a useless power. I can at least see the gremlins and what they're doing - and even though they're uncontrollable, I can dismiss them if they start wandering the wrong way. Since I can't even see the Voltaic Sentinel most of the time, I don't know what it's doing, how hard it's hitting, or if in fact it's hitting anything. For all I know, it's still trying to catch up with me after the last fight. Let's make this thing targetable so I can see it when I spawn it and see it when it despawns, and find it if I'm curious as to where it is.

The only issue I'd have with this is there are some players who'd turn off XP until right before the ding, and then turn it on right before what should be a challenging battle. Ultimately, what you're asking for is completely harmless and won't hurt anyone. But then again, what do I know about what impact a level buff might have on the price of prismatics? (or anything else) Maybe Rudra has some Ultimates for sale on the AH and hopes you'd buy them.

I'm not into math. And you can trust that I've lost in-game friends over my position on some of the things that were never even suggested and made it into Beta. Some made it to the game, and some, thankfully, did not. This is what little I do know: I know that there are suggestions that might look positive but be impossible to implement because of limited resources or knowledge on the part of the current volunteer team. I know that me, along with a number of other people, think of a suggestion, post it - and then suddenly we're swamped with "you forgot/didn't think about X, Y and Z". (and that's probably more polite than some folks will put it) The X, Y and Z, regardless of what they are, are sometimes valid points, and sometimes conjecture that came from the farts of the opposing poster. I know there are some suggestions that are fairly harmless and we think wouldn't have any impact on anything, like some new costume element. Let's say a horse's head. I'm ignorant, but for all I know, a horse's head would cause some powersets to not work properly. Or something else. I really don't know. I think that's the boat most suggestions fall into. On the surface they seem like decent QoL additions that would add some fun to maybe 3 to 5% of the players, but it isn't feasible for technical reasons, or coder ignorance of how to implement it where it doesn't cause Ms. Liberty's liberty belt to fall off. I do think the HC Devs read this stuff. They're volunteer and they're not likely to work on a given suggestion because they'll want/need to be interested in it. The longer/harder it is to implement, the more interested in it they'd have to be. It's amazing the additions we've gotten over the past 5-6 years! What we don't know is how many suggestions have been attempted, but were not accomplished due to it being technically impossible/improbable. And I think if our devs were to say, "We tried Okie's idea, but it fell like a cow patty on a hot day" for even a few of the arguably better suggestions, that would be a good thing. Or conversely, we tried Okie's idea, and if it passes the smell test on Beta, we should see it next patch.

You raise a good point. But, I am fine with the way things are now, but I am open to some change. I liked the lower SO cost. (for everyone, not just new players) But I certainly don't want things free. And I do want every player to at least know how to use a converter and a catalyst, even if they would rather not. After all, nobody's forcing me to get an accolade. That's torture (of sorts) I put myself through. Kudos to you for explaining your position constructively and not just telling me I'm a jerk.

Obviously, this isn't true for everyone. But I can't count on both hands and both sets of toes the number of people I've given a billion inf to that no longer play the game. They're gone. And now - it could be anything that kept them from returning, but I blame myself for removing the same challenge that kept me interested. Now, that's obviously false reasoning, and frankly egotistical of me to think that way. As if I would have that kind of control over another person's choice to play or not play. This is a really interesting take, and honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. For me - this talk of "this game is 20 years old" is irrelevant. But the last sentence about what other experiences are available is relevant. But let's not lose sight of the fact: this is free to play, made possible by consistent donations of a very small minority of passionate players who generate stories, new factions, new powersets, all on their own time. And, to a lesser, but every bit as important, financial donations by another minority of passionate players. I can only express my opinion, which you disagree with - and that's perfectly okay. You have a perspective that far beyond my narrow view. I've only tried maybe 10 other MMOs, and for whatever reason, uninstalled them within 10 minutes or so, except Champions Online, which I uninstalled after a few days. So, my views about those other experiences that are available are non-existent, really. But in the vacuum that is CoH - I think it's more than fair to let the players that don't find marketing fun to suck it up, and do it anyway. I didn't find defeating 200 vamps and 200 council wolves fun either - but I did it. So why can't they suck it up and just do it? It's part of the game. We don't have recipe storage for a reason - because marketing is part of the game. For me - it's a sometimes tedious, but other times endorphin releasing fun. I fully get that we don't see this the same way, which is fair enough. This is actually a fair idea. At level 2, they should cost like 200 inf. Level 10, 1000 inf. Etc. Resale value should be 1/2. That's just a suggestion, but as I see it, that's very cheap, but not so cheap that they can't sell the trash drops and get what they need/want. And as they level up, even though the prices creep up, they should still be able to keep up.

I have never shared I played this game with anyone. I'd be too embarrassed. They all think I row and lift in my free time.

I'm kind of on the same page as you, but I'm not going to presume that more than a few of these players don't need to learn it now. They've already learned it, and it's in their knowledge base. At least, given what I've seen, and picked up during the chat when teaming with some of them, that's what my take away is. After having slept on this topic, knowing that my first task today was to grind out the defeats necessary for Atlas Medallion. I enjoy this about as much as the folks that don't like to craft enjoy crafting. Now, I can choose to do a tf and have a team help me with the heavy lifting. And really, that's what I should do. But then I can't enjoy my coffee. I can only sip between missions and it gets cold (if I'm playing to contribute, rather than just ease back and let other folks do the work my alt tank would do.) So, my new position is, if we are to remove an obstacle/challenge for players that is part of what this game offers, then we should totally allow me to buy the accolade powers with influence and remove those obstacle/challenges for me. That seems fair to me, but just typing it out, I know there are going to be a lot of "Are you nuts?" and "You are nuts!" kind of responses. In their minds, if not typed out to needlessly have me question my sanity and intellect. (Both are probably fair game to question, tbh) My heart goes out to the newer player, it does. I want to help them. But - I know if you help a new player too much, there's no more challenge for them, and they just get bored and stop playing. That's a real thing. I like the sentiment as I said in my first post. But in practice, gifting influence and other goods doesn't work in the long run. (I'm sure there are exceptions) A new player needs to figure these things out by reading the forums - since the information isn't easily digestible in the game, (if it's even available) unless a player like myself takes the time to explain things in detail (sometimes excruciating if they're young, or really don't know the terminology at all). Even then, I'm careful to not reveal too much behind the curtain, lest they get overwhelmed trying to run before they can walk. The best thing I do for any player asking about inf is to either send them my old, obsolete guide from 4 years ago, or have them read Yomo's guide that's far more up to date than mine. I haven't shared mine because it is obsolete, and as you can tell - I'm terribly bad at being concise. I tend to explain things in great detail - because that's what I would want.

I do this after a respec. But when leveling, they go in the order that will do the power the most good. So, currently, if I take a level 20 IO (for example) that's the Preventative Medicine absorb proc, and place it over a level 25 Heal SO, the game will ask me if I'm sure I want to replace the stronger enhancements with the weaker one. I can't remember the terms used. It might have been "replace a higher enhancement with a lower one". So, the warning is there, but if they're both level 50 enhancements, the system doesn't ask. Sorry about your loss. DM me your global, I'll reimburse you.

I've just now taken to changing the default color for certain characters. I don't know that I'd want them changed now, even if it were temporarily. But, if it's optional, fine by me.

I feel bad for you on this. I guess what I don't get is there was a time a month or so ago, when on Excelsior our league leader would have 6 teams, and I'd hear about this lag. Now, I play with minimum settings, even though my card can handle the ultra graphics. I frankly don't see much of a difference between the two. And the only time I get noticeable lag is during the mapserver event. I might rubber band now and then, but generally, I mash a button, I see the recharge time, and it's ready when it's supposed to be. I'm not at all clear why everyone else has lag and I don't. But I do feel like the labyrinth is a lot of fun, and I disconnected due to my isp having a hiccup a week or so ago, and I couldn't get into the league either. So, I have felt that disappointment. On one hand, it's truly amazing that people across the world can all meet digitally to tackle various npcs. There's so many places for those bits and bytes to bottle neck. Each player's individual system could have a bottleneck from their ISP, or even their own memory, particularly if they're using some of the more bloated software applications in the background. And it is painfully true that some players are playing on machines that are just woefully obsolete. But, they continue to function so buying a nice new one is not on their agenda. I'm not smart enough to know the solution. I don't know if they paid more money for stronger servers if that would address this lag issue so many people have. I don't know if they all had U-verse if that would fix it - probably not. I hear the internet in Europe makes the internet in the US look like turtles racing. I don't know if it's literally this old code and the old graphic engine that runs the game that is the culprit. If so, I don't know that there's a solution that isn't time consuming and cost prohibitive in terms of time and money. What I do think is perhaps there's an opportunity for someone to run another lab event either several hours before or after the one that's normally run.