Ukase

Anyone recognize who this might be, and what she's doing with the Warriors (Mortimer Kal SF)? To the left is a twin of this girl. They look kind of Cimeroran, but I certainly have never seen women hanging out with the Warriors before. Anyone familiar with a lore reason for this? Just curious. Edit: Looks like her name is Persephone, and the gal to the right is Aphrodite.

But that's t-3. I go to t-4. When the RNG doesn't show favor, the number of emps for the t-4 (30 for the VR) is obviously a larger requirement. I'm on my tank right now, ready to t-4 my alpha, and I did it all with shards. All of it. I will need two more Notices, tho, and will have to wait a couple of weeks - 1 notice from kahn, 1 from Mortimer Kal (prometheus conversion) ...and I'll see what the weeklies are the next couple of weeks. The threads I save from using shards saves me a fair number of threads to go towards the t-4s. And I'm sure we all do things our own way - but I am in the habit of t-3ing Destiny, Lore and Alpha before even bothering with any of the others. Then I'll t-3 the rest, and then t-4 Lore, then destiny and the others - and by that time, I generally have enough shards to finish t-4ing alpha, but will need the Notices.

Just my point. That's not nearly enough time. Heck, that's enough time to get the word out - not enough time to test things and consider how the changes will impact things. At least, not enough time for folks who only play a few hours a week, with some of that time already ear-marked for specific events. That's just my point. Making them available on the AH was just stupid. Not complaining - as I bought them at just about the lowest point because I could for my primary badge character. Still have 4 more badgers that aren't in a rush. I just don't think it was a good idea. We'll just disagree on that, and it'll be okay. I hope that's not the takeaway. I'm not disappointed in the release. I'm disappointed in the diminishing returns on different content, something I'd have pointed out if it had been on Brainstorm for more than a minute. (yeah, that's exaggeration. Still, 6 weeks isn't enough time. Granted, just my opinion, but 3 months would be better. Why the rush? ) I fully recognize that I'm a guest here. And the GMs are volunteers and the HC devs are also volunteers. I've also given proper kudos and thanks for them actually listening (and acting) on the vet rewards in the AE maps. Generally, the only thing I look for when I come to the forums is insight into the "why". When I know "why", it makes the "what" a lot easier to digest, and I really wish they would lead with the "why". Heck, 30 pages of AE squabbling could have been prevented if they just led with "why". (well, at least a couple of my posts, anyway) And remember (or realize, if you haven't heard) I can be obtuse. I want things spelled out by HC. I don't want to read between the lines. And no, thank you! I made a billion inf over the weekend selling the pvp IOs! Damned tedious, but it only took 4 sets of 15 minutes. Now if I could just get my competition to stop outbidding me on the recipes, I could lower the price some more!

So, no need to worry. I don't even know what stress is, really, unless it's on the erg. And this is where text loses something when someone like me is writing. Intonation, pitch, etc - without it, some things get lost. I'm really not that upset over the prismatic. The only thing that I'm finding a bit annoying was the rush to publish. Got a day when you think an issue/page is ready to go? Wait another 60 days. If they had waited, I could have seen more stuff in brainstorm and expressed my concerns. Heck, it was only a couple of days ago, my obtuse brain learned how to actually see what was new on Brainstorm to know what to test. It is true, the prismatic is a minor thing for me. But what's also true is I still need a lot more of them for various badge characters. It bugs me that because of poor planning on the devs part (it's my thinking - not an absolute truth) I get a penalty for doing more than one iTrial on any given character. I find it so obvious that this isn't a good idea, that I'm struggling to understand why they went about it in this fashion. With that, opinions vary. Mine isn't going to always be based on logic. Sometimes, it's just because I'm irritated. I did a BAF after a Lambda, and no prismatic. Not the end of the world. But it's damned petty. So, I'm not going anywhere. But even if I did, pretty sure nobody would even know I was gone until they tried to buy some pvp IOs and saw the prices creeping up.

75% of the player base is gone? oh really? While I'm sure some folks have left, others have joined in. I have no way of knowing the numbers, and I'm curious where you're getting them from, and how accurate they are. Something new in game for people to work towards...what? The prismatic? Who cares about those? The only reason to care about those is the three badges. You think that's what the devs were after? To get us to work towards those three badges? While that's possible, that doesn't mean it makes sense or was a good move. The reason Jack Emmert wanted people to team up when they played CoH was in hopes that people would form friendships, so that when the game didn't necessarily fill their needs for adventure or fun - the friendships would. That's the reason why so many SGs use Discord. Sure, it's a fine tool for challenging content - but the real reason is the leaders of those groups are hoping the goofy jokes or conversation about some strange character called pokeman will keep the people coming back. (I have no interest in this porn character called Pokeman, and I cannot understand why my SG has a channel in the discord just for that. But hey, if that's your kink, no shaming here. ) Beyond the people, the single best thing to keep people engaged aren't things to earn, it's new content. Which is tough, really tough, because once you do new content, it's not new anymore. After that, the next best thing is a new powerset. New currency? Do I have stacks of these? I certainly could - but because I can buy them. But now is not the time for that, because the price is too high - meaning, I can get them more cheaply in the coming days. I wouldn't use them as a store of value like I might a converter or a hero pack. Again, while this new currency may have been introduced so that everyone was on even footing, it's flawed logic. I have billions and could have been one to spend all that inf for 150 of those prismatics to get the badges. That's not even footing. I've got the inf. If it weren't for the badge fighting the two robots in the hardmode itf - the only reason to do it is because it's new. Once I get that badge...there's no motivation. It only took 5 runs of 4*Aeon (going for combat dummy) to get those three costume badges. So..um...no. It wasn't really a great move. Reward merits would have done the same thing.

What are you on about? I ALWAYS use shards. Why not? Using threads for Alpha is just ..inefficient. I can always get my t-3 using alpha the first day I'm 50. It only takes a few TFs and an MSR and a hami raid. I will never understand why some of you bypass shards, and burn threads, making it take even longer for you to get the rest of your incarnate slots finished. But, I guess you folks are running iTrials instead of the other content. For me it's always the opposite. I get more shards than I need, and not enough threads. I can see the case for burning some emps to t-3 the alpha asap, but after that...I don't see why you'd do it. But hey, you do you. But leave my shards alone.

Wacky Races? You mean like rich white guys? Sorry.. I never heard of this Wacky Races. But, interesting to know.

I have to tell myself it's possible it was an extra zero error. But there were dozens that sold for 175M and 170M, price dropped to about 150M and held steady for a day or so. But the reason why is probably in two parts: they had it to spend, and they wanted to be done with the badges. Some folks have multiple badgers. One guy I know, I think, he's working on 15 of them. But he's running a relentless Aeon every day he can, acquiring 30 at a pop, and possibly alting to do it again on another badger. So, in another couple of months of running that, he may be done doing that. But, with the price dropping so low, maybe he's just gonna buy the rest, I dunno.

I will be transparent here. The only reason I ...attend/participate is to hang out with Stitch & some of the other TFJs. I don't get to do that as often as I'd like. I'm slower than most of them. Not as game savvy as some of them (but still fairly savvy with non-HM content), and yet they let me participate without telling me how slow I am, although I suspect the thought has crossed the minds of some of them. Occasionally the SG I belong to will host one, and I'll attend if needed, but if not, I will do something else. Just depends on who's there. I tend to do Cathedral of Pain once a week. It's fast, it's simple. No reason not to do it. It wouldn't matter to me if a Dr. Q dropped any prismatics. The question would be - would it drop fewer if you'd just run a Yin earlier in the past 18 hours? If so - then no, I'd pass on the Yin. It shouldn't drop fewer just because you ran different content earlier. Same content? I can see that, although I still don't see the big deal. But different content? That's just not making any sense to me.

So...let me ask you something. First - understand that I accept (from what you wrote) why you feel farming isn't intended game play. I completely see your point, although I never played D & D, as my big brother told me it was Satanic, and foolish kid, I believed him! Oh..yeah, the question: I made a character. I avoided DFB, I'm tired of that, so I just clobbered some mobs around Atlas until I got to level 4, got me some explores and found an idle ouro port nobody was using and got the explores in Echo: Atlas and Echo: Galaxy. This is pretty much how I start every character. Go to the Hollows, run the 4 contacts there, head to Faultline, run the four contacts there - but before I tackle Doc Delilah, I'll head to Striga and tackle Peebles and Longman Jack. (what a name. I wonder if the ladies are disappointed or thrilled) Then, I make my way to Croatoa, and then finally, to RWZ, then to PI. I do this for pretty much every character. What's the difference between farming the same 26 contacts, the same story arcs the same missions with every character and farming the same maps in AE? They're both repetitive. What would you have me do? Go redside? I've done that too for a period. There's fewer contacts, fewer zones, uglier scenery, every bit as much zone hopping as blue side - and anyone who says differently is sadly mistaken. The only alignment where you don't do much zone hopping is Gold side, but even then they got you heading underground and then above ground fairly often. Are we supposed to quit for two years until the stories are not so stale? Now, this is just my perspective - and I still get what you're saying, but repeating the same content with different characters is the same thing as repeating the content with the same characters. It's all button mashing. The stories are the same. In my case, usually, the costume is the same, too! I have about 6 costumes I have saved. I generally will use the RNG but if I don't see anything catchy in the first few tries, I'll just load up one of the saved ones. The only things that change might be the AT and powersets. In most cases - like Defenders, Corruptors, Blasters, Sentinels - it's EXACTLY the same. Same strategy. At the lower levels, the defenses and resistances, recharge - all of that's the same. The only difference is the dps and hit points. Same with tanks, brutes, scrappers, stalkers. Strategy is the same. The exact same thing. I might elevate the difficulty because of the armors they get. It's all farming, my man. EVERYTHING in this game is a farm of some kind. And it was designed that way. Look at these folks doing iTrials. The same speed Lambda over and over. Sometimes, it's an iTrial train - Lambda, DD or BAF, Keyes, UGT, TPN, Magi. You don't think that's farming? It is. They're just farming something different. All by design. I realize this is probably semantics to you, and maybe others - but this whole game is farming. All of it. Just depends on what you're chasing. In your case, you're chasing adventure. But guess what? You're doing the same adventures over and over again, eventually. A different team might make the "experience" a little different, but the story is the same. It's all one big farm, with a lot of different crops.

The HC Wiki is void of information. I've only recently found a reference to read the old CoH comics and I've not yet finished them. I just completed Penny Yin's arc, and in the last mission, there are some Anethema, lost bosses within it. One in particular is called "Dastard of Fault". This is an odd name. Granted, all the Lost are fairly strange, but what's up with this name? I can grasp "Dastard of Faultline", but "Dastard of Fault"...not really sure that's a catchy name. Is there some lore/story tied to this name?

I get it. I wrote a lot. I am not new to DR. But the DR rules for different content for the prismatic is different than the rules for task/strike forces. Would you want to do an Apex for 40 reward merits, and then do a tin mage for only 20 reward merits? Or some value less than the 40 you'd get if that's the only tf you did? I would expect not. And while it's easy enough to swap out to another character, reward merits are convertible, any character can use them. But incarnate salvage - those are non-transferable, so if I swap out, what do I swap to? A character that doesn't need the incarnate salvage. So it's not really an incentive to swap. It's just confusing to be indirectly told "We don't want you afk-farming, we want you doing content, but only one bit of content per day". And yeah, I get that's a bit of a stretch.

That's quite true. I'm glad someone caught the irony!

You'll get no argument from me. I'm always running into trees trying to find the bloody forest. On the one hand, I completely get that prismatics have next to no value, inf wise. On the other hand, I don't like this idea of having to alt to get what someone else is getting who actually wants to alt. I don't want to feel like I have to cycle through characters. As for the whole new currency being intro'd because it would be a bit anti-climactic for someone to just buy whatever they needed/wanted - that, I really don't get. So what? I can almost grasp the notion of giving players something to work for, but then - there's that word "work". I work enough in real life. I don't like the idea of doing content for a specific reward. I much prefer doing content that's of interest and the reward being secondary; a bonus of sorts. That's the way story arcs are for me, in a fashion. Complete the arc, get a hefty bonus. It's not something I pursue, it's just gravy. Granted, that's just me. And it's not right for me to expect the CoH world to revolve around me. I'm just wondering the "why". Generally, Diminishing Returns are for the exact same task force/strike force. NOT different task forces. (unless they're both weeklies - but even then, you'd get the reward merits you're supposed to get, just not the doubled amount. ) The way it is now, you'd get 40 reward merits for Apex and 40 for Tin Mage. If the same rule applied to reward merits, we'd get 40 for doing Apex, then 20 for doing Tin Mage. But the rule is different for Prismatics. And as I said, if I want the prismatics, I can buy them. ALL of them. And Keep buying all of them for some time. My point is about the DR rule being for different itrials, and I don't think it's a good policy when you might be switching back and forth so much, you might forget which character has done what. I might do a BAF on Saturday afternoon, and then Sunday, not have a clear memory of what time the last iTrial was for that given character - and then feel ripped off when I get no prismatics. Much fuss over very little, I agree. I just want to know how everyone else is feeling about this petty DR policy. It doesn't make sense to me. So what if I got an extra prismatic from doing another iTrial. Is that going to break the currency? I seriously doubt it.

So, I've mentioned this before. I believe sometimes, the Page drops are too large. With Page 4, there were some changes in the pipeline that I didn't like, and somehow, some way, I wrote out an objection, and whether it was me, or others like me, or a combination of that and other variables, one of the changes was rescinded. Yay! Right? Right. So, now, with all of that stuff on Page 4, I missed something. I mean, to be fair, it's super easy for me to miss something. I am very much obtuse. Short memory, too, because I no longer read anything -- at least, not like I used to when I was younger. I skim things, focusing on keywords that are in my areas of interest. This whole Prismatic Aether Particle - I still have no idea why this was implemented when a reward merit (or a number of them) could have done the same exact thing. But, who knows, maybe there's some future lore at work to explain these rather useless objects that some people actually thought were worth 180M each. They are worth less than 10M now, it seems. The price may go back up a bit if future costume unlocks are made available, and it's my understanding there may be. Still my guess is that they will stay in the 7-12M range for a while, until they drop even lower. All that said, I am still very disturbed by the diminishing returns for these. I'm accustomed to diminishing returns for reward merits when doing a task force. And I can even understand the diminishing returns for doing the same iTrial. But I do not understand why there are diminishing returns for doing different content. What was the objective? To get people to swap characters? What is the benefit to the game or community there? There certainly isn't a benefit to the player, that I can see. I'm sure there are some people who play different characters each day. Play a dom to level 7. Get on a tank, play that until 14, get on a blaster, play it to level 18, etc. And some folks might have any number of characters that ding 50 in a week, when they play them organically, or even PL them to 50, getting several characters ready for the incarnate journey. I'm not one of those people. I play one until it's done, usually. Unless it sucks for some reason, then I don't delete it, but shelve it. Maybe I'll revisit it later, and see if I can't choose to play it differently so it's more entertaining. Still, I do not see the reason for these diminishing returns on the prismatic. Yes, I can buy all of them if I want to. I don't want to buy them. I will if I have to. I have another 150 to get on one character, and about 130 on another. I could get them all today. But, there's no rush. The price of them is only going to fall. So, may as well earn them while I deck out the incarnates on my latest 50. But my mind cannot bring me to do more than one itrial a day because of these stupid diminishing returns. I already detest iTrials as I've done them what feels like thousands of times. It's bad enough that I feel like I'm getting ripped off I do a second one in the same day. Oh mysterious HC devs - what is it you were trying to do with these diminishing returns? You wanted me out of the farms and playing iTrials I thought, but I am not so sure now. This diminishing return rule is making me thing that not only am I supposed to not afk farm, I'm supposed to play 6 or more characters each day. That's the path of madness for me. There's no mechanic in game for seeing which trials a character has done in the past 18 hours, so sorry - you really need to rethink this diminishing returns policy - at least for the prismatic. At least, I think you need to rethink it. It's having an impact on my in-game behavior that seems in contradiction to what you wanted. Less farming, more itrials. But now, with the diminishing returns, you have limited the number of iTrials I'm willing to do to one each day. The reason I farmed was it was efficient. That is the key word. And not getting a prismatic because I'd already done a different itrial earlier - that's inefficient. So, there's only motivation to do one a day. Is that what you were after? Enquiring minds want to know. I already know that to maximize efficiency, I have to shelf this character until I get several more level 50's ready to go. And I will have to alt out dozens of times just to be sure I get what I have coming to me, my full award of prismatics. And I'll have to do that at the cost of time-efficiency, annoying league leaders by having to alt out after each trial. Granted, there are always people who do this, so it's not that big of a deal to them, but it's always been a big deal to me. Incarnate trial leagues already take longer to form than they should. The less alting, the better, unless the league needs something specific. And generally iTrials are fairly simple, so nothing special is needed. Why do I feel like I'm being penalized if I don't alt? (because I am being penalized if I don't alt - I lose out on prismatics) Clearly, this was something you knew would happen. People would suffer prismatic penalties if they didn't alt out. Why are you encouraging people to alt out and play multiple alts in a day? Where is the value to the community in this? I can be obtuse, I grant you that. What am I missing?

Farming is such a trigger word for some. But there are so many things to farm for - influence, XP (the two don't always go hand in hand), emp merits, reward merits. In general, I think this latest page has done what the devs wanted it to do. It has taken what I would call the fringe farmer and led them to do other things, whether it be marketing or running the hard mode content when they can join a team, or get one together. I have no evidence to support this, just a gut feel. I know I've run more iTrials since Page 4 dropped than I did since Page 3 dropped up until page 4. Granted, that's only 4 iTrials, but that's still 4 more than before.

That's a good idea. I'll have to ask teammates what their starting number is, if they'll help me track and compare. So, I did an MSR on a water/atomic blaster, level 41 yesterday. I got over 2000 VG merits. No tanks or brutes on my team. Other teammates got the same, within a few. Obviously, I can't draw any scientific conclusions, but anecdotally - the lesson is to not take a tank to an MSR, and to try not have one on the team, if that can be helped. And that's a shame, because without the tanks pulling, then that will certainly limit the merits for everyone. But 2000 compared to 800? That's a huge discrepancy. And 2k is an outlier, as most of my characters get about 1200. But still...

My best advice is to play your 50, as mentioned by others. There's no law that says you have to craft, convert or sell anything, although small kittens will likely give up their life if they discover such things. Let's look at it from another perspective: If you enjoy teaming and killing through, for the most part, consider just teaming up for a kill most ITF or Aeon SF, if you have the time and can find others who are like-minded. If not, just do the weekly tfs with a group. Or recruit for story arcs like Provost Marchand, or really, whatever content you like. SSA's can generally be completed in less than an hour with a decent team and pay 20 reward merits. Some story arcs can probably be completed in the same time frame and may pay more, but the kill-most preference may impede the efficiency of earning merits. You can sell the prismatics, although the value of those has been dropping and will likely continue to do so. And, you can also convert your reward merits into whatever floats your boat. A lot of folks sell boosters over converters because it's fewer clicks and sometimes will net you more inf, although not as fast. Either way, if you play your 50 for a while, say you meet a vet level goal, or even a badge count or a inf-level goal, then play around on an alt. Think of how much inf you need to get what the new alt will need. Then, when you're on your 50 - start bidding a little less than the going price and maybe in the next day or so, you get lucky. If you don't have a base, make one, place an enhancement bin and place all the enhancements your 50 bought into the bin for your next alt. This way, your next alt will have all or most of the enhancements you'd want before you even create it. Then, you let the new alt start leveling up and accruing inf for the next alt.

So, just my opinions: Pros: you have a decent change of interacting with people that you might enjoy spending some time with over discord. Seems like most SGs are using discord as a tool to coordinate harder content, or just crack jokes, or mock people they don't like, or better yet, mock people they do like. Anecdotally, as @Snarky can attest, I am frequently told I'm mispronouncing words and my jokes are not funny. Cons: If you're not the leader, you're subject to the rules put in place by the leader. Sometimes, the SG is organized enough to share these rules prior, and you agree to them before joining. But sometimes, there's a rule that's just stupid and you don't want to follow it. If your character is in an sg, odds are you might use that base to craft, store, or travel from zone to zone. Or maybe even use an icon npc to change a costume. But - not all SGs are going to have the same attention to detail. Some SGs spend hours & hours making elaborate bases, but lose points on efficiency. Suddenly your fps drops to single digits because of all the extra junk they have in there. And you have to travel 200 yards to a teleporter, passing through a labyrinth to get where you want to go. You might be doing a respec, stash some stuff in an SG storage bin, only to find out that you have privileges to put stuff in, but not take stuff out. As shown below: That's my own SG base, by the way, and I just edited that setting to show it could be done, not that I've ever come across anything like that. In some SGs, one I know for certain, they allow you to take whatever you want, once you've been a member for a month. Other members routinely drop off hami-Os, purples, super inspirations and ambrosia or Essence of the Earth, depending on what events are scheduled in the coming week. But - now, we have global channels, like the Task Force Junkies. If you can make your own base, going with an SG is something you would do for the social aspect and the scheduled events. Beyond that, with a channel like TFJ, you don't really need an SG. There's more people using TFJ than in any SG, because most folks are members of TFJ and members or different SGs. They are in general, a speedy bunch, with a number of players who have a keen understanding of game mechanics, and how to get the most out of a build. There used to be a time when being a member of a given SG meant something. Like these guys are speed-runners, these folks are into RP, those guys over there are more into iTrials than anything else, that group likes pvp. Nowadays, it seems like an SG will take anyone, which basically means your sg is just a pug group. But, I guess once you team together a few times, you can iron out certain wrinkles so the pugness of the experience isn't that bad.

I know not everyone has the resources to do this, and I don't pretend it can be done on every AT, but when I needed a few of the badges that Aeon had when it came out - the cryogenetiwhatevers, and the lycanthrope or whatever that's called, I put my two accounts together, one tank, one blaster and used lores, summons, etc to get past the AVs. I didn't finish it, because I only did it for the badges, but I would suspect with enough trips to p2w in pocket D, it would have taken a while, but it could be done. Do I think it would be more efficient to find a couple of like-minded folks who want to take the time and read? Absolutely. But in a pinch, p2w is useful in that regard.

@Glacier Peak thanks for all that - I use HC launcher, and I've never noticed that information being there. Just never paid it any attention. As I've confessed often, I can be obtuse.

I cannot agree with this enough. It is ...difficult for me to admit I'm getting bored with certain parts of this game. When it last shut down, I was actually a bit bored before then. The shut-down was actually well-timed for me. But, I'd hate to fill the time doing something else and then miss something - like a new development or opportunity. I've often thought about base building, but man, that is super tedious. It's like worse than crafting a zillion IOs. I can't imagine the old base builders who actually had to pay prestige to place all the cosmetic stuff we take for granted. I wish we could find a way to put in our own cut scenes in AE. I've got some stories to tell, but I can't figure out how to do things in a certain way within the Mission Architect system.

I don't understand this comment. I don't want to read into it, as a lot of meaning can be lost in text, unlike a live conversation. I don't think the OP should "move on". The OP has a valid perspective and shouldn't be told to just move on, as if his opinion didn't matter. It doesn't matter how long something was on beta, it probably wasn't on there long enough. At least, that's my thinking on it. Now, for example. Is there something new on beta? I've no idea. I was just on brainstorm a week ago - and no messages popped up stating anything new could be tested for feedback. So, please, don't give us this "it's been on beta for months". How would we know? I never got an email or a pop up telling me something should or could be tested. I'm not a mind-reader. It's a volunteer staff. There's no reason for me to have anticipated anything was on brainstorm. How hard would it be for a pop up to appear in game to encourage folks to test things out, well in advance of it hitting the live server? Now your opinion matters too, but just because you wanted 8 seconds and (from what I've just read in this post) most folks wanted zero, that doesn't mean either of you are right, it just means you both had different thoughts on it. I see absolutely nothing wrong with the folks who want zero to keep mentioning it that the 5 second suppression is too long. Because, for them, it is too long! What's the harm? Squeaky wheel gets the grease. So let folks squeak all the want. Even better if they can clearly explain the rationale behind their request.

I personally wouldn't care, but let's say if the more hold enhancements you slotted a hold with, the greater the mag of the hold. Wouldn't that be a case where an AT like a controller might get left out in the cold, if other ATs could just match their mag with IOs? It would be an interesting thing to experiment with, but it would need to be thought out from more angles than I can ponder at the moment.

It would be insane to disagree with this, but I feel the need to nitpick. There SHOULD be nothing here so important that it is worth investing such emotional energy into it. I would go so far as to say, nobody SHOULD be spending hours upon hours investing in their characters each day - but it happens, and it happens a lot. When such investments are made, those with outside responsibilities, hot wives, families...we scratch our heads and wonder how/why something could be so important to them. But when you don't have those family ties or work responsibilities, and you've invested 14 hours a day into this character or that, and a change is made that impacts how you have invested in your characters and planned to do so for future characters, it should be pretty easy to understand how some folks can get bent out of shape. For some folks, during the pandemic, this game was all a lot of single folks had, sad to say. And even now that it's mostly over, it's still all some people have. For whatever their reasons - disability, disorders, just being a bum...whatever it might be - this is all they do. Stands to reason these folks are more emotionally invested than others.