Ukase

This is probably a case of a player being inexperienced and lashing out at something they don't quite grasp. When they figure it out, I'm sure they'll feel bad enough without us piling on.

Ah...I recall the clamoring for CoH2 back in retail. So, in order for me to reply, I have to know what you mean by CoH2. Is it just a copy of CoH, only no lag during Mapserver events? Do the human characters look more "real", and less cartoonish? What exactly do you mean when you say CoH2? Instead of Paragon City, is it New Orleans? Whatever it is, if you want it - you make it. Look at how many people play the game now when it's free. If our volunteers were working 40 hours a week on the game and getting a competitive salary + perks/benefits, how many more people would the game need to pay to play routinely? And once you add that price...how many won't play because the economy is pretty rough for some folks? So, no, we're not going to get a CoH2, whatever that actually means. The cost of starting it up could be manageable for a proper game publisher, but it's already been proven that the demand just isn't there to sustain it at a profitable enough level. Yes, it could make money, but it wouldn't make enough money. Given the risks of investing all that capital, there are less risky ways of procuring a better ROI. Oh, let's not forget Missing Worlds Media. I remember contributing a small amount way back. They're still working on things, also on a volunteer basis. I have to think HC getting the license kind of took the wind out of their sails a bit, but maybe not. Maybe that can be a CoH2.

Short version: triple red is the cut-off for multi-boxing. If it's triple red, can only play one. So, I was minding my own business, looking through the HC discord - which I rarely do. And there, I saw a player had extended me and others a great courtesy. I read the CoC a long time ago. And it clearly stated that 1500 was the limit at which you could no longer multi-box. Since I don't multi-box much anymore, it's not at all a big concern for me. But - this player linked to Here So, there I was, all ready to explain to this nice player that the limit was 1500, not "triple red", or 1100. But there it was in...well blue and white on my computer. I don't know when this changed. But apparently it has. Most of you already knew this, but I didn't. So if any of you were or are as obtuse as me - you now know!

This is a complex question. Define "as intended". I say that, because the Paragon Devs when led by Jack were of the mindset that the only reason to log in was to team up. So, they were never intended to be solo. But if I take your question with a broad range, I think the worst with me as the player would have to be a mind dom. I made a mind/psionic assault dom once. It basically had me swearing off Dominators forever. (I later revisited..3 years later) For one, when you're a solo dominator, it takes a LOT longer to reach domination. No idea why, but it does. Now, I know a number of folks that play Mind doms flawlessly; or at least very well. But me...this would be the worst. I'm sure something like Mind/Sonic would have me logging off for good. Two horrible sets for ME. Others may shine with these sets. I don't see how..but they might.

I was literally thinking, "I wonder if there's any merit to that". Then an instant later, I almost laughed. There was a time when I'd retire the afk farm brutes and recycle the IOs so they could reach vet level 48; The time to get to Vet level 48 was maybe 2 hours longer than it takes to get to vet level 99 if you're not afk. If you are...well, who cares how long it takes? But given that these are probably characters you play outside of the farm, makes good sense.

I think this number is much higher. I could certainly be wrong, of course.

Cosmic Council did something in the arena maybe 3 years ago, where you brought level 4? I think. Maybe it was level 5. No higher than 5. And they'd pvp in the arena using various maps. I never did, because it was too late at night, and not really my thing. As for open zone kind of thing - you have to be kind of careful. If you post it - odds are someone is going to use their optimized build and lay waste to your rp builds. So, if you kept it quiet, and had each person use /ghide and hide from SGs, Friends, Searches (and remember to unhide when you're done) you might have a better time of things.

I remember asking my dad a question when I was a kid. I'd screwed up, and asked him when faced with the bad options I had, what would he have done. He said, "I don't know. But I do know I wouldn't have put myself in that position" So, if an AT I have isn't doing the AoE I wanted -I roll a character that does. Sometimes I'll shelve the character lacking, as things can change. Sometimes, I'll just strip it of the loot and delete it.

When you can spend 1 billion inf on each character you create and still have inf left over, I think that qualifies as being rich. Me, I qualify. But I still live like a poor person. Usually.

Any NPC that phases are the most annoying to me. Master Illusionists..and that darn phantasm decoy which doesn't phase, but can't kill it.

Only the ones that won't fit on the bottom tray - unless they're toggles; no need to macro those. And targeted AoEs. Having to select where to place the reticle takes a couple more seconds than I'd like.

Would you believe that I created the macro incorrectly? The description of it says I tend to copy macros and change the names of the powers. And I had the macro wrong and only just figured it out in the last mission! So, I now see more utility for this tree. User error. Darn it. I always thought the P stood for player, but in this case it stands for Plant, or Spirit Tree. My fault.

Seeds of Confusion. Sure, why not slap the purple set in there? Nice recharge, and I could be remembering incorrectly, but I think the only very rare set that actually gives some defensive stats if you slot the 6th one. The thing is, having only played 43 levels so far...I've never used it. I figured I'd take it as an "oh crap" kind of power. I just don't see the utility. I thought, use it when clicking glowies. But, there are always too many mobs for that, unless I reduce the settings. For a squish, the character has no fight pool, no leadership...and at 38 got Charged Armor. Seems like that's enough for +1/8. Not quite enough for +2/8. And while the confuse did buy me a little time, (to be fair, there was only one slot in it) it really didn't help. Anyway, Spirit Tree...why is this a PBAoE? I cast this - it has a taunt...so I get splash damage? Who thought that was a good idea? What a turd power. If it were ranged AoE, it would make more sense. The regen isn't even that good. Now, I say these things because it's the first time I've played plant control. I can see some utility for spirit tree, but not as a PBAoE with taunt. Maybe ranged, but not PBAoE. If it didn't have taunt and followed me..then it would be good. But it won't even take a teleport. Makes sense. It is a tree after all. Albeit a "spirit" tree. Can some of you who like these powers provide some utility for them? Like, 6 slots for a "set mule"...that seems a bit much. Is the contagious confusion proc in the very rare set really that good? Do I need to copy to brainstorm to get a better look at it? And fold space...is there utility there? Fold space, Vines, Creepers and whittle them down from there... Curious to know how others consider these two powers.

Statistics are useful, so is math. I dig into the numbers because I my reflexes are somewhat slower some days. I figure my poor character needs all the help it can get. The idea that someone who knows slope b regression analysis should be able to squeeze out more damage than someone who doesn't is not a good idea. We want transparency; not calculus or algebra. At least, I do. I could almost go with careful scrutiny. I think most people do that just by playing. Now, I don't want to take anything away from players that painstakingly look at the recharge times of their attacks, and somehow are able to have an attack chain with no downtime, using nothing but their harder hitting attacks, and further, have eked out enough endurance recovery to continue the chain, and the defense/resists high enough to survive long enough to complete the battle and go on to the next encounter. Those players undoubtedly have a desire to play as well as they possibly can. Most of us do - but I think most of us, when we log off don't want to pore over the various combat stats on a given character and eke out a few more points of damage for this or that. Fortunately, we don't have to. Now, I've stated that great players can take a trash build and still play well with it. And bad players can take a great build and still reek with it. The good players who I would rate high on game knowledge AND skill, those players are already a tier above the players with just good skill or just good game knowledge. Isn't that reward enough?

So, while I don't think the OP's solution to a first world problem isn't my concern...most of us cannot type fast enough to do this - and even over discord, because of the nature of people, you'd end up having multiple people talk at once, even if using push to talk options. There's just not enough time to discuss and coordinate unless you slow things down to a crawl. Now, for various badge efforts, or maybe certain hardmode TFs, folks might be willing to slow down, but for things like the labyrinth..that's just silly to expect people to coordinate when they're going to use their nukes. Last night, it was abundantly clear I didn't need to use Barrier at all from watching my stats. I don't think I went below 100% resistance in any category, and I was on a blaster, the entire time. So, I just didn't. And yeah, a couple of times another player used theirs at roughly the same time. Big deal, so what. And a lot of times, the same thing happens with Ion judgement. Big deal, so what. It's a good problem to have. I barely use judgements now anyway. But I do know I'm not slotting Ionic judgements anymore because the activation times are too slow. Pyronic is faster, but does have lower accuracy for some reason. So funny to use that on even con mobs and miss. Still, I've been picking it over Ion lately because of the faster animation.

Mark and Recall for the win. (not much help when you're under level 20, though, admittedly)

To me, the biggest problem with %procs is I've got to plug the values into the spreadsheet formula to see their odds of firing. One minor issue is an experienced player has a huge edge over one not so experienced. (I could even swap out the word experienced for smart, or knowledgeable) I just learned 2 weeks ago that % procs let you exceed the damage cap. Silly me, I assumed all this time that we had a cap on how much damage a given attack could do. Apparently, there's still a cap - it's 6 %procs with enough fulcrum shift to get you to your character's damage cap, whether it's 675% or 400%. How many players know this? It's been covered in these forums, but me being more obtuse than most, it's taken me years to finally learn it. And I had to be told - verbally over discord - before I learned it. While I don't think anyone is keeping these things secret, it seems like more clarity could be useful. For me - I think a % proc should taper depending on how many other of the set is used. If you use the full set, you get 100% of the damage from the proc, every time the attack passes the ToHit check. If you only use 2 of the set, only 1/3 of the proc...that kind of thing. It'll never happen, of course. Some people tend to see builds with full sets and discount them as valid for elite play. (Fine for general purposes, of course) I just think incentivizing someone to use the full set is a good thing. Make the slots scarce. It's one of the few remaining challenge left in the game, creative slotting. As I'm learning more about the dps meta, the more I think it's really fascinating - but - it's also not a great thing for everyone. So many of our players don't want to think that hard when training and slotting. They want the fat xp, and like the sound and visual of leveling up. They want to visit a trainer, and candidly, some of our players would benefit from the trainer suggesting what power and slotting choices they should make. (Might make for a great challenge concept, lol. Have Fusionette in Kallisti Wharf tell me which power I should choose next) It's great that this game offers so many layers. There's so much behind the figurative Wizard of Oz's curtain! And most of it I still haven't seen. Or if I've seen it, I don't truly know what I've looked at yet. But the % procs...man, this game could certainly benefit from making them all work more consistently. Like..why does the absorb proc from Preventative Medicine work in a power that's inactive, but a numina unique has to be active? I know it's because they're different and work differently, but they should be consistent in how they work. Granted, neither of those are %procs, but the suggestion is still decent. Consistency, and transparency in how they work. Having to tab out (and I'm grateful for that effort, @macskull @Bopper and whomever else spent lord knows how many hours on it.) isn't something any of us should have to do to determine how effective the %proc will be.

So, I want you to know that you're not crazy. Some ATs take a while to come into their own. That brute of yours is going to do great...and then it will taper off a bit. At least, my brutes have, right in the mid to late 20's. If you can afford to, the START Buffs make a pretty large difference, at least, anecdotally. And at level 1, they're super cheap. They can't be too bad at level 13. The other thing I might suggest is mitigation. While Sands of Mu, Nem Staff and Black Wand are fine, the plasmatic taser is ridiculously good to use when solo. It sends 95% of the mobs flying, buying you a few seconds to take care of what you were working on before the extras disturbed you. It's a quick activation, and the results are nice. Another temp you might try is the phase shift one. It only lasts 30 seconds, but that's time enough to vacate the area without getting shot in the back. So, here's something else I'll say. Teaming can make things super easy, or super tough. A bad team will leave you shaking your fist at your screen, if not screaming at it sometimes. (Or is that just me?) A good team will make things ridiculously easy. If you're like me and can't always team without having to afk far too often, then going solo will lead you to pick up some skills that most other players just won't. A team hides many of your weaknesses with buffs/debuffs. That said, by and large, the content was designed for teams. Sometimes, the 0/0 setting seems to have no effect on what's actually in the map. <shrug> Hope you get it sorted out.

There's not enough room. That's why I had to make another account.

So, as much as I'd love to have a bank, I'm looking at the troubles with the new badge tracker that seems to always run out of memory on the more populated servers. Can you just imagine a player depositing their funds into the bank, and then someone like Yomo deposits all of theirs, and the bank runs out of memory and nobody can get their funds back, except for a brief period after maintenance, and maybe not even then? Nope. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it, but because of Murphy's law, I'm not sure it's something I'd encourage.

Just anecdotally, and I can't say definitively this is what happened in your case, but I'll have what I call a display lag. Happens to me when I'm in my base and unslotting an enhancement or three, or making ATOs or winter-Os superior. The enhancement that I pull out will not be in my tray, nor will it be in the power I pulled it out of. And sometimes, it's both in my tray and in the power I pulled it out of. When this happens, I just stop. I go to pocket D or RWZ and then things go back to normal. Something in my base seems to gum things up, so I try not to do too much stuff in there, except stash and pick up enhancements, or just pass through a portal.

Not always. By default, you should be able to. But it is crazy to me how many settings get borked either by the player or who knows what. Just a couple of days ago, an old retail vet came back to the game and was on an MSR. Dude couldn't find the pylons. I suspect they turned "special" off for some reason. I think there's at least one map where "special" being on hides a badge marker from vidiotmaps. Same goes with teammates or leaguemates. Courtesy screenshot, since I know you folks know this already. Just a reminder. I led a dfb this morning with a new player, and I was painstakingly describing what to expect in the most clear way I knew how, because I honestly have no idea what a new player knows, and what they don't. And after it was over, I felt like a 6 year old could have done a dfb as well as any adult if they read the instructions. Player quit right before Meinst. At least they didn't cost us the badge. Some days, you can't win by being patient or being a jerk. People can surprise us at any time.

Sure, I might get a level 53 Accuracy SO. But that's not really what I'm after. I don't play to get what I need. I play to get what I want. There's a clear distinction. I don't mind jumping through a hoop or two to get it. But I'm not going to grind for weeks/days/hours to get what I want.

I have considered doing this with more than a few players on these forums. But I never did. The reason why is because despite my distaste for their smug opinions, at least a few of them have shared facts about certain things I did not know, and probably would still not know if they hadn't shared them. So, I learned from them. One of them, I just couldn't stand. I hated his forum handle, I hated his forum icon/avatar, and I couldn't see where he was coming from with the opinions they had. But, as either I changed, or they changed, or the game changed, I began to see more of where they were coming from, and now I find myself in agreement with probably 30% of what they say now. Crazy, right? And even though I can't see myself being chummy with them, I do know that most of the folks that disagree with me aren't idiots. They have their reasons. I may disagree with their positions, but more often than not, they aren't crapping on me - just my idea. Several years ago, they proposed the change of not allowing vet levels in AE, and at the same time, they were going to remove the option to trade emp merits for reward merits. This was maddening to me, because I was burning through converters at the rate of about 3k a day. I needed all the darn merits I could get. And suffering through posi 1's to get them wasn't (still isn't) my idea of a good time. There were a lot of opposing views, and of course, many farmers were aligned with my position for their own reasons. Today, I see it more clearly. The change they made, even though vet levels are still allowed in AE, I no longer get them in AE, except on a farmer that PL's my characters from 30-35. It's just an awkward phase I don't want to play through. So, I don't. I tend to get my vet levels (and the emp merits from them) in the labyrinth. A lot more fun, and a lot faster, too. For me - that change, even though I hated it at the time, it forced/encouraged me to adapt. And the reason I bothered to adapt was due in no small part because the HC devs actually listened. It probably wasn't my post, but someone else more coherently summarizing it, but they still listened. It was the first illustration that they did take player feedback into account. They may not agree with 99 of my other opinions, but for whatever reason, they did make the choice to allow fools like me to get vet levels in AE if that's how we want to get them. But just feeling like I was heard was huge for me. I can't speak for Yomo. But for me, I recognize that the way I would change things would ruin the game because I'm just too short-sighted, and frankly too obtuse. Half the time when someone spells things out for me, I still don't see it. And given the fun I've been having lately with the labyrinth, (and this weird Psionic Armor on this tank I'm playing) I'm going to just trust in what they're doing. I don't need them to reply to anything on the forums. I'll see their responses, or lack of same on brainstorm.

The odd thing is there's an option in the tailor for "Metallic" that looks an awful like this undefined mode, but without the aura effects - which aren't available the way it looks with the costume toggle. Still, tailor token vs 1500 prismatics...