Ukase

Do I dare reply? Of course I do! I see different sides to this. For me, and it's a damn good thing I'm not in charge, cuz I'd be the only one here most likely, if I saw a brute with 7 MMs in tow, I would get my account ban hammer out. If I saw them with just 2 in tow, I'd check the population levels and be poised to use the ol' ban hammer. Forget warnings. Thankfully, for me and all of you, I'm never going to be in charge. In all seriousness, there are many ways to solve different problems/obstacles/goals in game. I'm sure I've shared that most of my characters make their own billion. It's not like it's hard. It can be damned tedious, and the market and those other marketers can make things challenging, particularly the insane people who just dump stuff for cheap, undercutting my prices. But, inf can be earned in game so many different ways. It doesn't have to be by tedious crafting/converting. It can be done just by selling the surplus of what the game provides. 100 hero merits is fairly standard, I think, for most characters to earn as they go from 1-50. If it's not that, it's probably close to it. That might not net a full billion, but it would be close. As Snarky posted himself not too long ago - farming, marketing...all of that is unnecessary to have a full, rich, enjoyable gaming experience. But - some folks just like farming. They like feeling invincible, going afk to get the beverage of their choice and still be dishing out damage, and then continuing their savagery. I have no beef with these folks. Sometimes, I'm one of them. Not often these day, but there was a time when I had a farm running on two accounts while playing a third. That got tedious quickly, burning through 3000 converters a day, roughly. Made a ton of inf, though! If I'm reading Troo's original post properly, the big beef seems to be against those advising new players to make a farm to solve their in-game struggles/opportunities/goals. The problem is those folks who give this poorly thought out advice aren't on these forums. Anyone who has a decent farmer understands that ATOs are not cheap for a new player. Heck, nothing is cheap for the new player. I strongly suspect that if CoH came out today as a new release, the idea of folks reaching level 35 and only having enough influence to put SOs in 1/3 of their slots...well, that would lead to a lot of players logging off and finding something else to do. I could be wrong, of course. Fortunately, we're in an environment where guides make it quite easy to earn enough influence to get what you need - if the player can be directed towards those guides. I suspect most players dislike the idea of tabbing out and reading for 10 minutes to figure certain things out. This is why I'd love for more information that we get from external sites like City of Data and HC Wiki to be in game. Even if it's just a click on a contact that brings up that same site within a pane while I'm in game, that would be better in my opinion. It would be a marvelous thing for a new player to not have to rely on the kind, thoughtful, concise advice from another player, but to merely click on a contact and make their own decisions. As for getting levels quickly, to me, AE farms are out of date. I wouldn't use them for levels. They give 1/2 the xp of content outside of AE. And they are boring unless you're the farmer. Maybe even for the farmer, depending on the farmer. Mind you, I will use them on alts that are afk, while I play on my primary account. But those occasions are now very seldom. Right now, an MSR will outpace an AE farm, if you can stomach the waiting for it to fill. And for a limited time longer, the ToT if you have a decent league will outpace AE if you're not hopping back and forth to get GM kills for the merits. (based solely on my anecdotal experience, nothing scientific) It should be said that most msrs will have a rough time if there are too many lower level characters. As for what is "too many", that's probably more than 2 per team under level 20. But, I'm pulling that out of thin air. No idea what the number is, but know it when it happens, lol. There are more than a few players out there that recruit for level 50 stuff that any level is welcome to join. That XP would be better than an AE farm. The only hitch is getting those invites, and making your way to that zone. Not so easy for newer players learning their way around. For now, AE farms are just an easy solution. Sadly, or not, those players that take that path...I have a feeling they will stop playing as they don't really have anything invested in their character. I hope I'm wrong about that. I hope they get a chance to play something fun outside of the farm and learn different things. If not, then they'll probably be gone in a couple of weeks anyway.

I am left to wonder if the name Naughty Zoot was always available, or if I got it from some long-dead dormant account. I wouldn't have thought of it, if the MSR chat wasn't filled with Monty Python references. It's not a great thing to go afk during an MSR, but I had to tab out and make it quickly, lest someone else get it.

Good stuff. It's hard to tell when one is scourging and one is not, so I appreciate the insights!

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. I asked the librarian for a book on paranoia. She said it was right behind me! But seriously, I never asked the librarian about such a book. That said, I would rather not get names taken from me. But, at the same time, I've had plenty of time to level the names I want to 50. We can get to 50 in a matter of hours, properly motivated. What is the big deal? Even if such motivations (and the strategies that go with them) aren't one's cup of tea, it's still easily done, and if the name means that much, you do it. And then you can re-roll as a level 1 with a different name, get beyond level 6 or so, and rename both the PL'd version to something else and your level 6 to your desired name. And just keep playing it until you hit 50 organically. So many work arounds if it came to that. I keep asking myself how things would play out if I were in charge. lol, I'd probably be the only one here. But if I were in charge, any account dormant for over a year and a day would be deleted. You haven't played in that long, you likely never will. But don't panic folks! I am not in charge and never will be.

I know Snarky's already laughing because of how I pronounce Scourge, but that's beside the point. There was a time when there was some debate about playing a corruptor vs. defender. In a nutshell, the conclusion varies with how the character is played, how it's built and whether you're teamed or not. But wait - the title says "Scourge...", right? Why? Because here's the question: How does one make the most of scourge, anyway? I present this direct from the HC Wiki: I ask this out of some ignorance, as when playing, I tend to be obtuse. As an example, fighting Infernal, just killed his portal, but there is still Infernal and a few Demons that got through. So, I use Fireball, and then Rain of Fire. I see scourge numbers...but since some of fireball's effects occur a little bit after the initial burst, it's tough to tell what's doing the Scourge (maybe both?) without looking at the combat log. While the question doesn't really prevent the demise of Infernal in this case, it kind of begs the question, was there a way to do it better? It certainly seems like the targeted AoEs get more out of Scourge than single target attacks. But that's just my perception. What's the reality? Is it only the npc's base health that makes this determination to scourge or not?

Yeah, they had changed things with the instanced version at first to be 35+, and then they opened it up to level 1s. And you're not sk'd in the instanced versions, your level is set to 50. So the XP isn't quite as good, I don't think, as it would be in the open zone version. I could go on - and did, but deleted it all - so you're welcome, lol.

I thought that was the reason behind the XP boost, wasn't it? To take load off of Excelsior and put it on the other servers? I did the same thing initially. This is what I found: Because nobody would help with GMs when I found them, I had to either do without them, or wait until once a day, instead of multiple times a day. Sorry, but that's just not smart play if you're after the loot. Now, I have plenty of loot, and I don't need any more. But without reward merits, prismatics and such, I don't really have a reason to play anything more than once. Sorry, I don't. Now, that's just me, but playing on Indom while I did was an opportunity cost of about 300-400 reward merits a day. Indom has some smart, good people. Helpful people. But they can't make up for the lack of opportunity to pursue merits and team play. Unfortunately, I don't see a solution aside from folks on Indom moving to another shard - which I know many will despise that, and probably quit. And I wouldn't blame them. Another potential fix would be for new accounts to only see Indom, Torch or Reunion as an option. Just hide Excelsior and Everlasting from new players. That's not a great fix, or even a good one, sadly. And I'm not sure we are getting enough good players for that to even work. Another option might be for the rewards on Indom and Torch to be a percentage greater than on Excelsior and Everlasting. How much? No idea. Another possible solution is for the HC GMs to encourage SGs to branch out to Indom for certain nights. Imagine about 5-10 of the larger SGs from other shards recruiting for various things throughout the day, but only needing 2-4 players to fill their group. Plenty of players are already "nice" enough to do something like that, they just need a reason, and they need it to be easy. A transfer is easy, but I'm not sure an SG would want to transfer over and lose their SG affiliation - and their base. If a solution to that dilemma were possible (other than these SGs making another base) then I could see it happening. I think if incarnate reward tables for various trials were buffed to give a 40%-50% chance of rare/very rare - that alone might see more folks doing the higher level stuff more often. I can brainstorm until the cows come home. Some folks will hate the ideas, and some ideas would be impractical. The best solution is probably to do nothing.

Odd title for this post. Faster would be an MSR. And, probably ToT, since the EBs give 50% more xp than a standard EB, but only if the league isn't porting away from GMs every 2 minutes. Or, a team of 8 doing level 50 stuff would certainly be faster than yet another Frostfire. I can't remember the global, but there used to be a chap called Saint Nick...man, that dude knew where all the huge XP was hiding. I remember having dinged level 49, and he took us to the itsy bitsy badge arc. At +4, Lord Recluse as an AV gave me 4-5 bars of XP just by himself.

Possible? Sure. At least the nice bonuses part. But preventing transfers...well, that might be possible. No idea. I'm curious what you mean by "farming issue". What farming issue?

Thanks for sharing the pictures! Interesting names...Tobler One? Like Toblerone..the chocolate bar maybe?

Character? I had about 486 of them, but I've whittled it down to about 435 over the past months... No worries here.

Because I hate to put toggles back on. It seems to take forever. So annoying. Cowardice doesn't enter into it. Laziness does! Damn toggles. If I thought I could get done with objectives without them as fast as I do now, I wouldn't even take those powers, lol. But experience has taught me I need them.

Thanks for the tip.

Comes in handy on the morty kal SF. Might save someone a full 30 seconds, as opposed to clicking the glowies to take down the forcefields. So, it's not totally useless. I just wish SS were faster. Seems like it could be faster. On Brainstorm it IS noticeably faster for whatever reason.

Just conjecture, but it's probably a familiarity thing. I'm closing in on 60 faster than I'd like. Before HC opened the doors, there are two things I'd never heard of before. Reddit and Discord. If they were using Discord before, stands to reason they might just see Discord as a practical tool that solves a couple of problems. Fast notifications (that can be disabled) and who knows what else. I barely can get my mike and headphones to work on it. Not an expert in all the facets of it.

So, I'm not clear at all on how my post could be construed as making any kind of joke about you, or anyone else. I was just trying to suggest you make a suggestion to your friends to visit the forums. There was nothing sinister or mocking about it, at least, that was never my intent. I did stretch an analogy suggesting folks who don't visit the forums are missing out on things - like information. But you shouldn't take that as any kind of disrespect towards you, or anyone else. It's just a fact. They miss out on information. Not just from the HC team, but from players who have been on beta and know things about game mechanics that most of us can't be bothered to learn. I pick up new tips and tricks for slotting various builds that I would NEVER get in game.

That's awful. If I got a debuff like that, I would just stand in my base until it expired. I'm all for some kind of challenging monster, but the mechanics in play need to be where the player has to learn from the mistake made. Not just hide in a base until time elapses. And I don't think brand new characters need a new challenging monster. Let it happen in PI. Or Grandville.

Here's a snippet from Discord: Hope that helps.

So, we all know about the upcoming name release, which impacts characters that are not level 50. I have had a number of characters on the back burner, and frankly, while I'll be kicking myself in the future if some dramatic change occurs with how certain ATs and powersets will play, it seems like it would just be easier to come up with some new name if that should occur. I have no idea if anyone would even want these, but just in case: Comic Ozzy is now available. For those who've not had coffee, it's a bit of a play on the word Kamikaze. The character is was a blaster, of course. Optical Aleutian - hard to let this one go, but I think it would be better served for someone who can make more sense out of it than I can. The back story was an Alaskan Optometrist (ill/ice dominator), but while I never gave the character a real chance (only level 26 at time of deletion), I just don't foresee ever giving it a chance, at least not in the next couple of years. So, maybe someone else might like to use the name. I frankly couldn't believe it was available. Maybe I spelled Aleutian wrong, but pretty sure I got it right (google agrees). I will try to update this list as more names that aren't part of my naming conventions become available. (who's gonna want Ukase Burns anyway?) Grin and Beer it - a very ironic name for a character that often led me more into a pit of despair than a grin. I just do not play scrappers well. No matter where I place those ATOs, the crits don't occur as often as I think they should. Not a fan of gimmicks, and the critical hit is too unreliable for me. If you like 'em, great! Here's a silly name for you to use.

I did not know this, so thanks for the heads up!

This has got to be one of the most helpful posts I've ever read. Since I first heard of Netgraph, I have never understood what any of it specifically meant, other than green was probably good.

When did we vote? I was never told about this vote.

Look, I kind of get it. Folks are busy, and when they're not, they'd rather play than read about playing. But candidly, the information in the forums can certainly help make the best use of limited time. I suggest you encourage your friends to visit the forums and skim through things like the patch notes, and the various guides on making influence if they're not flush with inf. Playing the game and not reading the forums is kind of like getting in your car and taking a road trip with no destination. You might enjoy yourself, but you might also miss the turn into the forest because you couldn't see it with all the trees in your way. Like now, pending maintenance is a great time to visit the forums and read stuff.

<doh!> This never even occurred to me. Excellent point!

I'm stretching my brain to think of where this could be at. What UGT really needs is a big sign on the ENTRANCE door that we just came through, as newer players are often clicking on it and exiting the trial.