Ukase
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Posts posted by Ukase
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On 4/22/2022 at 9:00 AM, biostem said:
The hardest part, IMO, is getting people past the hurdle of this being an MMO that doesn't have some of the QoL features that they may expect from more modern games. Don't get me wrong - I love CoH, but as I'm sure is the case for many players here, our ability to work around or see past those lacking features is second nature at this point. Simple things, like being able to rotate our character model on the costume creator with just a click and drag of the mouse, or being able to zoom in and out of said character freely with the mouse wheel, simply aren't present. As for which server to play on - I say just try whichever you like - character transfers are free, anyway...
I am no clothes horse, nor a coh fashion plate. But I must be mis-reading something. I can zoom in on my character in the costume creator. I can rotate the character, too. All with a click of my mouse.
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On 4/18/2022 at 9:40 PM, Apparition said:
I know that soloing a Mastermind gold side is unwise. Praetorian ambushes completely ignore your henchmen and lock right onto your Mastermind itself, leading to a very dead Mastermind.
Despite this, I attempted soloing all of Praetoria on a Thugs/Time Mastermind a few months ago. Got up to level thirteen, and did the second Resistance Warden morality mission, "Mind Freedom." I believe the difficulty was set at -1x3 IIRC.
Any suggestions of how you'd handle that situation differently?
First, I applaud the sense of adventure. And the determination to face ignominious defeat (well, that's an exaggeration, lol) however many times your character did is creditable.
The thing that sticks out at me is the X3 part of the equation. I'd have reduced difficulty after the 3rd defeat.
Now, I'm off to make a Thugs/Time MM just to see how this plays out for me. Maybe I can find a tactic that would be helpful for others. Bear in mind - I have played an MM on live...but the servers shut down when it was somewhere in the teens. Made one on HC...but it had only teamed with others until the all MM team got distracted and it stopped meeting.
So, leveling one up solo should be interesting. There's a LOT I don't know about MMs, so should be fun to be a rookie of sorts again.-
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18 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:
Rage crash doesn't disable procs and procs are also not affected by damage buffs/debuffs. A proc heavy build can certainly circumvent rage crashes.
I only started using procs a few months ago. And haven't played SS in a couple of years, so these were things of interest. But, it seemed to me that they probably shouldn't work during rage, which was my reason for posting initially. But, I guess I can take the good with the bad, lol.
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Also of interest (to me, anyway)...the procs I've got in burn also work during the rage crash.
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I still have a dozen or so characters on torch. A farmer, and my first fire blaster. I also have a character that was supposed to be a copy of one of my favorite characters on live - a spines/regen scrapper. Heh, I looked at it- and it didn't have ANY IOs in it. Level 26 and nothing but SOs. Small wonder the stats were really bad. I stopped playing it because it didn't seem nearly as robust as my scrapper was on live, post regen nerf. But my memories of that character are at 50, not 26. Still, I hate to PL it. As someone who gets the 4 passive accolades on each character, I already run Maria Jenkins at least twice a week, and that's really about 2x as much as I'd like to.
Maybe Torch and Indom should join up.
I had initially moved to torch because of some friends who reached out that had settled there, so I moved. I always felt like the folks at Torch were better speed runners, more of the min-max type. Excelsior slowly began to pick up some of these folks, or some of them simply "caught up". But there's no question with more players comes more casual players. And some of them are so casual, they genuinely have no idea what they are doing, and are quite blissfully ignorant and don't even know it. -
We all know Rage Crash is no fun. But, Rage is fun, so we deal with it.
While I noticed that Foot Stomp doesn't do any damage while Rage-crashed, I do get the damage mitigation.
So, I figured I'd try to see if I can take advantage of the Nem Staff KB while crashed. Well, I missed, but Sands of Mu allowed for full damage, despite the rage crash still showing as active in Combat attributes.
Perhaps this is WAI. Perhaps not. Figured I'd report it. -
On 4/12/2022 at 4:58 PM, roleki said:
To be fair, HC is 64-bit now, so people running a Cyrix proc on an EP-MVP3G-M may experience trouble launching the game.
Anyone still using a motherboard that has a floppy drive connector is likely deceased, I'd think. I'm 55 now. I haven't played on a system that old even when coh was in its infancy.
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Well, I think I heard that before, but I could never find anything to confirm it - and I am sometimes chronically lazy when it comes to investing time in what should be a leisure activity.
I actually passed Statistics..but not by much, lol. Given that info, I will remove the Chance for heal from Superior Conditioning and add the slot in foot stomp. -
No, I respectfully disagree.
I could certainly be misunderstanding how this proc in particular works, but I plugged that in to the proc calculator. That's with NO recharges in it at all. That's just not worth the slot to me. Ordinarily, in a single target attack with this high a base recharge, that'd be worth it. (as evidenced in KO Blow) But since it's AoE, the odds of firing are just a smidge over 1 in 4 times.
Some folks might think as often as it would be used, it would be worth it, and perhaps I should try it first - but my gut says the odds of firing are just too low.
With the avalanche set in, and just adding the slot from....somewhere, lol,
I encourage everyone to use Bopper's spreadsheet when deciding on if a proc is worth it or not. And also consider your alpha slot, as that does impact (negatively) if you've got an alpha that improves recharge. In this case, I think I'm going Cardiac - but more for the extra resistance that exceeds diminishing returns.
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3 hours ago, Apparition said:
Excelsior has a... reputation among the people that play on other shards.
I find this interesting. And, I think if I were to PUG as often as you may have, I would probably see more of that. As it is, I read some crazy dialogue just yesterday before and during a speed underground.
I can't quote verbatim, but the gist of it was:
Player: I'm debating on whether or not to call off work and do this trial.
Trial starts.
Just after the first phase (explained below) is completed:
Player: Sorry, I thought this was going to be fast. I gotta go.
Player logs off.
The first phase of Underground, as we all know is kind of slow, as there are two waves of two separate ambushes. And, no matter how quickly you clobber the first wave, you have to wait for the next, twice. It's like 3 minutes from entering the trial to finishing this part.
The recruitment for this was for a "speed" ugt. I know UGT well enough to know there are parts you can speed, and parts you can't. Not everyone knows this, I get it.
But at no time did the player in question ask "how long will this take?" And he quits after 3 minutes.
Did we need him? No. Finished just fine without that silly person.
If people had been turned away and he pulled that, I would have given him a proper verbal thrashing for being selfish and yes, stupid. He knew he had to work. And you've got to be some kind of stupid to think a UGT, even a speed one, is going to take less than 5 minutes. Even a speed lambda is going to be hard pressed to finish that quickly.
So, yeah, I can see where this might happen more often than you'd appreciate. I've been social distancing in game as well as in real life, teaming only with players I know. If I don't know them, the moods gotta be right for me to take the risk.
I do feel badly for the folks on Indom. While I farm there, I can see the questions in help and the lfg activity. Other than one player who moved from Excelsior to Indom because he burned too many bridges, I've never come across anyone that's a jerk. I've got a base there, more than a few characters leveling up.
But man...as much as I'd like to be the character I want to see in game, I try to be patient, but sitting in a zone for 20 minutes with nothing to do just waiting for others just makes me angry and resentful. I'm just not a cheerful giver in this regard. I simply hate to wait.
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Yes, I know - it's a dead thread.
In a feeble effort to be helpful, I've looked at these builds - but was too lazy to manually insert them into the current version of mids. It can be a bit annoying for the player looking for ideas to see links that are out of date, or involve installing build planners that are not generally used by most folks. That's not to say they shouldn't used - but I know most folks I know use Mids Reborn, and the idea of using a different planner is an annoyance for me.
So, since I'm currently playing an SS/Fire brute, I've made my own version. While it could fire farm, (I think, it's not even level 40 yet) that's not the purpose of this character. There are better primaries for a brute for that purpose. This was just about fun.
I went with fold space more for foot stomp than burn. Burn is capped at 5 targets although anecdotally, the mobs are so clustered together, I find it pretty much impossible to tell how many are burning up. Fire is such a weak armor compared to other sets. No Defense Debuff resistance. No KB protection. Gotta burn slots to tackle the latter, and Ageless is the ONLY defense, aside from defense against getting hit from the debuffing attack in the first place. (aside from any teammates you might have...I dunno if any team buffs mitigate that) Focused Accuracy can address the -ToHit debuff, but not any other. But, in exchange for that, you get burn, glorious burn.
Rage is essentially perma and stackable, just not quite all the time. There is the rage crash - but even then, the impact of foot stomp is enough to mitigate most incoming damage, as they're all bouncing in the air. At least, that's how I've dealt with it. Most of the time, the timing of the rage crash happens while taking an elevator or hopping from one fight to the next, so it's seldom a big deal.
I really wanted to proc out burn - but when you do this - it's at the expense of set bonuses. I also considered not using procs in KO blow, but there will come times when you need single target damage more than AoE - as in the case of AVs. There is a trade-off with using them, and they're not for everyone. I lose out on set bonuses, and for that exchange, I get 130 more damage (comparing the current slotting vs 6 slotted hecatomb)
I wouldn't have minded the extra recharge, but on the whole, I looked at the recharge for KO Blow, thinking that the hecatomb set might let it recharge a bit faster, but mids doesn't seem to notice a difference. I'll have to go to test and try it out to be certain, but for now, the KO blow stays proc'd.
I make no claims that this build is better than any other. From a numbers perspective, the S/L resists are as high as I could make them, and even that comes at a cost of regen, hp, defense and dps. All characters have a balance between chaos (dps) and order (survivability). This build probably leans more towards order than chaos.
But, so far, it's been quite fun.
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So, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I said I wanted to be helpful, but after a couple of times helping, I noticed that it isn't all that helpful.
And, when I think about it, any player taken from one server to assist on another server is kind of like whack-a-mole, isn't it?
Even on Excelsior, while the leagues do fill more quickly, they still take some time to do so. Even if I had the influence to sway a dozen folks or so to join me on indom ( I have the influence, but not the desire to spend it in that fashion) that would be at the expense of Excelsior. Then, instead of one league filling in 5-10 minutes and the other filling in 20-30 minutes, both would be waiting 15-20 minutes. That doesn't really resolve the problem. And really, as I look at my own behavior and inclinations, it's more a lack of patience problem on my end than anything else. That and a real lack of the block of time required when the wait to fill is longer than I'm accustomed to.
My best advice is to simply forgo your wonderful bases and transfer. (Beyond SG bases, I see no reason why that's not a feasible solution...other than maybe alt names)
Alternatively - consider a routine team up over on Excelsior or Everlasting, and entice players to join your group on Indom for various activities. And, over time, seduce them into joining you routinely.
Because the shards are identical, other than players, it's a small matter to get folks in the habit of creating new characters on Indom in lieu of other servers. It would take some investment of time, of course. And you'd have to be somewhat friendly and fun consistently. But, if you build the relationships, no reason why that wouldn't be contagious.-
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I have a 2 insp storage bins in my base. One is full of team insps, the other full of ind. insps. My alts will use the singles as desired. But...you've given me an idea, dammit.
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I managed to suffer through the hami last night on indom.
Had to leave after the first round because I had a standing prior commitment at 9pm Eastern.
I don't know what happened at 820pm when it seemed like 10 players suddenly showed up, but I'm glad they did.
I do think a firm start time and a firm cut-off time is what's best so folks know not to squeeze in one more mission/tf, etc. and keep folks waiting.
On an aside, someone said "pat pat pat Maiden. Some of these folks are lippy"And then Maiden said "And they're not from Excel?"
Maybe it's a fair point. Not desired no required, but maybe a fair point.
I still think you all would fare better just trying these types of things on Everlasting or Excelsior. -
On 4/7/2022 at 9:02 PM, Apparition said:
Doesn't matter. Even if there's only one pure villain, then you're still excluding one villain for no reason other than blue side privilege.
And I see it as villains cutting off their noses to spite their face, which is an expression I never thought I'd use.
The Dom with Frenzy is a perspective I hadn't considered - but that aside, everyone who's anyone knows that the players that are villain alignment are that way because they don't like blue side or they just haven't bothered with changing it yet. When they do, they'll change to rogue or vig.
The same is pretty much true with heroes. They just haven't gotten around to changing it to rogue or vig, where they can access any map. This idea that it's "blue privilege" is just nonsense. You prefer red side, there's no debate about that. So, you're certainly entitled to your opinion on that, and you're quite welcome to lead any raid in any zone if you wish.
And I'm more than happy to join, regardless of zone. But I will always say that I don't like The Abyss, because unless it's for Invader accolade, or the badges for HPT, or patron pool, I'm simply not on redside. There are no pleasing zones in redside. None of the neighborhoods are places I would ever consider pleasant. They all look creepy, or impoverished. I have no desire to see it. That's just my view. It doesn't mean anyone is wrong if they don't see it the way I do, just means it's different.
But I don't like red side. Never have. -
On 4/12/2022 at 10:45 AM, Apparition said:
Also, FWIW, most good Dominator players that I know stay pure villain for the Frenzy alignment power. It's the one truly useful alignment power, especially for Dominators. So The Hive locks out a lot of Dominators.
That's a perspective I hadn't thought about. Good tip.
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On 4/7/2022 at 7:23 PM, Dazl said:
The Abyss is the only hami zone available to villains, they can't enter the Hive. So if you wanted to be able to get the max number of people you would hold it there. The down side to the Abyss is the giant monster hunt is harder because the GM's are spread out and not clustered together like the Hive.
The only raid I know of on Excelsior run in the Abyss is Confusion? raids run on some days around 6-6:30pm ish. That raid tends to fill pretty fast when it's run, so not sure about the raid you are talking about unless someone else was trying to run one there.
I keep hearing this incessant whining from villains about not being able to get to the hive.
Fools! Do they not realize that's what Null the Gull is for? Of course they realize it. But the only reason is this:
1. I'm a villain, I don't want to be a rogue or a vigilante or a hero. A villain!
Then stay red and quit your complaining. The hive is more convenient to more players, simple as that.
The Hive offers a fantastic advantage, particularly if you're farming the GMs for EoE - they're already in a scrum/group. It's faster, easier to get hami to spawn. Saves time.
That time saved may be offset by Hamidon bud searching when you have idiots that are not with the league at the time of hami's defeat. In the Abyss, the buds are far easier to find - but it only takes one player to be above, on the cliffs at hami's defeat to make searching for a bud every bit as problematic.
Now, if you're a villain, vig, rogue...getting to the Abyss is rather simple. Pop in Grandville, head to the sub that's fairly close to the drop off point from Ouro, and you're there.
If you're a hero, however - there's that very far away sub in IP, or the far away sub in PI. Not convenient in the least.
I think most players go rogue or vig at some point, so it really isn't about "I'm a villain" anymore. People that take that position are just being lazy, or they're being true to some theme at the cost of merits. Which, from where I sit, is fine - just don't whine about it. You chose to do that. You want it in the Abyss, you lead it.
As for Confusion? running raids in the Abyss - one glance at his name tells you why. He may be confused. But, he does a good job, and they're pretty quick. If you see attempts to recruit after an hour, it's far more likely that they're doing multiple runs, rather than waiting an hour to fill.
I think in order for population to pick up on Indom, the key is to have a lot of visible players when people load in their characters to Atlas. If it's a ghost town there, most folks will just log off and go to another shard.
At some point in time, your players either got pissed and went to another server or another game, or they got bored and went to another game.
I need more math skills to figure it out - but I suspect in order to bring Indom's recruiting time to a more reasonable level, you'd need another 100 players on the shard, all day, every day. Out of the 100, it's reasonable to assume 10% will be interested in the larger events.
But, if you take the 100 from Excelsior and/or Everlasting - how would that impact these two servers? During the Mapserver event, seems like word got out pretty quickly, and all the servers were doing pretty well - at least weekend evenings. Even then, it probably didn't help for Hamis or MSRs because the folks wanted XP more than merits.
To me, it just makes more sense for the folks on Indom to just start playing on Excelsior or Everlasting. But, I can get why you wouldn't if you've a great sg base. Other than that...I figure you just like waiting.
I have made some new characters on Indom, but it really isn't helpful because of my work responsibilities during the weekdays. Nobody wants me as a teammate when I have to tab out at a moments notice and take a call. And, there's just no way I'm going to show up early to an event that's going to take 30 minutes to recruit. That leaves too much time wasted doing nothing. Why would I want to do that? The game is a time sink as it is, when things are going great.
I suggest a firm start time, and if you don't get the bodies, kick everyone and do something else. Let word spread that you're happy to lead the events if everyone shows up on time. If they don't, no merits for them. If the interest isn't there, then it's just not there. Do something else.-
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To my surprise, after publicly denouncing any kind of Dominator as being just useless team trash (AT/Powersets that are only half-way decent on a team, but rubbish solo), I found two combos to be quite enjoyable. Earth/Earth and Grav/Earth. Of the two, I liked Grav/Earth a bit more. The Singularity is by far the best pet in the game.
Also, after denouncing Scrappers as weaker than Brutes, I re-learned a forgotten lesson - a scrapper with defensive armor is every bit as good as a brute with the same armor. I still think Critical Hits aren't consistent enough to outperform Fury, but they're still quite welcome and quite good. And, I realized also that I afk during the day enough that in some cases, I'm better off with criticals than fury.
Recently, made a claws/SR scrapper. It was quite good leveling up; a bit of a stall in the mid-40's, as despite focus/follow-up/slash being a preferred attack chain, the damage seemed quite insufficent to me in contrast to this ice/shield scrapper I'm leveling up now. A smoother leveling curve, and far, far better dps and survivability. Now, there's no scientific evidence to back that - just my anecdotal perspective. The combo of Fold Space/Build-Up/Frost/Shield Charge/Frost is quite good against +3/6 Rikti, Nemesis (could use a bit more accuracy due to vengeance), council, Carnival, DE & Tuatha, to name a few. The defense debuff resistance offered by Shield Armor is as good as any other set I can think of, off the top of my head. Even the CoT spectrals don't succeed in flooring my accuracy, except the one time I took a team invite into a +5 scenario. And I was the only one left standing, including the tank in several of those skirmishes in that stupid mission, accepted by an XP greedy leader who had no thought or concern about how they were going to complete the mission at that difficulty with that team. But, I digress...
In summary, Earth/Earth Dom, Earth/Grav Dom, Ice/Shield Scrapper and what should go without saying for reasons that may not be as obvious to everyone as it is to me - ice/ice blaster.
Ice/ice blast is just the BEST AT/Powerset combo in the game for me. And it probably would be for you, too, if you thought like me and played like me. But since you don't, you go ahead and take the fire/fire and die a lot while I never (well, only very rarely) get defeated.
Ice patch in lower levels to help mitigate damage. You can respec out of it, and probably should, once you figure out how to navigate battles safely.
A quick freeze ray to hold a boss with two applications that generally take less than 8 seconds, while you kill everything else - and that's at level 8.
The sustain, Frigid Protection is just crazy good.
Blizzard is like Burn, a phenomenal Psuedo-pet that is larger in area and does more damage. The only reason it's not better than burn is a slower recharge.
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7 hours ago, arcane said:
Which quietly functions as an arbitrary Tanker proc rate buff, it’s pretty nuts.
I think I mentioned, I have a fire/ice tank, (not a farmer) and the way frost performs on it is quite good. And really, if I take a few extra seconds, the frost for the Scrapper is also good. But it's just irritating me that if you imagine I'm "frosting" at three bowling pins (the first one, and the two behind it) and sometimes, it will not damage the one in the second row on the left, and sometimes it won't damage the one in the second row on the right - even though as far as I can tell, my avatar is in the same position.
I did have very good luck using doorways as a funnel for the frost, if you will. Got to 38, so I have Shield Charge, so making frost effective is less of a need now. Still, I think the powerset is quite good, even if it takes a bit of practice. -
26 minutes ago, arcane said:
Freezing Touch is obviously the actual defining power since it’s like the best DPA melee attack in the game or something (post-EF ET excluded).
There’s a reason it has top tier single target DPS potential even though every other single target attack in the set is average to bad.
As for Frost, there’s no way in hell it’s hitting with a smaller cone than than 90. Definitely perception bias or picking bad targets. One of the easiest melee cones to feel effective with after Arc of Destruction, Crowd Control, etc.
Freezing Touch is nice enough. But it's single target. Frost is superior in that it gets more targets in less time. Simply put, it's better. But that's just my opinion. Why they made it a hold, in addition to being superior damage, I've no idea, but it lends itself to more slotting options, so not complaining.
I just want to take further advantage of Frost. It's not burn, but if it were PBAoE, it certainly would seem to be from where I sit. It's strange. I also will use my taunt aura of sorts (Against All Odds) to aggro, go behind a corner or dumpster or whatever, lay the ice patch. 3-5 npcs will flop around, but Frost will only hit 2-3 of them, usually. Not sure why they don't all get damage as they're all in the patch. Surely the patch isn't extending beyond the range of the cone. Maybe it is. I dunno. Just seems strange for it to capture the whole group sometimes and not miss, but not hit half the group other times.
And it could certainly be perception bias, but I don't think so. I just wish it were easier to determine the actual range of the cone before firing it. If it's player error - and that's likely, if I don't figure it out by 50 levels, well, I guess I just won't play it and consider it a non-learning experience.
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I wasn't sure where the best place to put this was, so General works as well as anything else, I think.
I'm currently on an ice/shield scrapper. My first instinct was to make this a tank, because tanks seem to do better with cones, and in my feeble opinion, Frost is the defining power of Ice melee. But, I've got a fire/ice tank, and the angle for cone on that tank is 90, same as with the scrapper.
And, with a defensive armor, the 15% difference in resist cap is less important due to the high positional defense.
I've opted with what I consider to be somewhat traditional slotting with this scrapper - aside from Frost, where I've got two Ranged IOs, extending the range of the cone. I do this based on my understanding, or lack thereof that the more range the cone has, the more volume it covers, hitting more npcs.
Cones are interesting. There was a time when I would take fire breath or frost breath on my blasters because, well, the damage was relatively good. But, the negative about the cone is you have to position your character, or the NPCs in such a way as to take full advantage of the cone. This can slow things down as you may imagine.
Enter Fold Space. I noticed the first time I got Fold Space and used it - the way they land after the port is pretty much in a cone. At least, that's what I remember about it. But, I'm not there yet. I'll get it in the next power pick, but not there yet.
One of the disappointing things is I can only find a way to use two sets Bombardier IOs (ranged AoE) in the build. Frost, and something out of the epics. So, that's 2 sets of 5% buff in the 10 foot range. Still can only get 10 targets at a time, but right now, I think the max I've gotten is 5, but the average # of npcs is two. The NPCs all scatter around my character like flies. With Burn, not an issue, as it's PBAoE, but with Frost...it takes positioning. Cardiac Alpha is in store for the resist buff as well as the increased range, but here's what I'm wondering:
When the Detailed Info tab says 90 degrees...what does that really mean in practice?
My last geometry class was...10th grade...1982-83. Isn't this an accurate geographical representation of 90 degrees?
I promise you, anecdotally, the angle of my cones are far closer to 45 than 90. Is it an error in the description, or my understanding of angles? Or am I just suffering from perception bias?
I kind of wish there were some type of reticle that showed the actual angle before I actually mash the button to execute the attack.-
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On 4/5/2022 at 2:43 PM, BZRKR said:
Maybe roll characters on Indomitable, level them up in small to mid size leagues, and then transfer them where you want to play?
I think we should all be in the habit of playing on all the shards. In the context of my comment, a full league brings no issues for me. Several leagues, however, does seem to cause some lag issues, where we're able to target the next spawn, but not able to hit them as they haven't actually appeared. Or something like that. It's odd.
Some folks claim the lag impacts their recharge timers. Only in real extreme cases have I seen my toggles stop "spinning". In any event, I think every system is going to bottleneck somewhere. With some folks, it's the tired old computer they played the game on 20 years ago. For others, it's their horrid cable service that throttles speeds up and down the line.
With all the 0's and 1's, it's amazing we have this much stability, really.-
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I feel as if I should say this: After a number of events, I found that I enjoyed the heck out of being bounced into the sky, easily 2x as high as the GM robot-thing's head. This was about as much amusement as I've had in game, ever, aside from my first successful MoUGT and the Apex mission where we play one-sided dodgeball with blue patches of death. And..uh, given how some folks hate that - maybe I should add I'm not being sarcastic. It was fun, 10xp aside.
I did get a bit frustrated at having fared so well xp-wise in the first one, but from that one after, every other one was a touch more disappointing in that more and more folks brought out level 1s - who kill more slowly and at least, anecdotally had a negative impact on XP gain.
All in all, still a fun event. It was really the only thing in game that made me feel like pushing back sleep to do another and another.-
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6 hours ago, Indigo Blade said:
TL;DR: I've done my best so far to make the raid more organized and accessible on Indom. You may have to wait a bit, or even a while, but I ask that you please have some patience. Rome wasn't built in a day. I firmly believe that by rebuilding the raid base other server activities will rise as a result.
In case you revisit the forums, or even if you don't - everyone should be aware it's clear you know what you're doing. The raid's lack of ability to draw people has more to do with the server itself simply not having the population to fill the raid as quickly as it could, and well, should.
In no way should anyone make the mistake that I implied there was any lack of skill or ability. Just a lack of people.
What Can Be Done to Recruit Players?
in General Discussion
Posted
I reluctantly agree.
I'm really going to try and be concise - which is a struggle. But, here's the situation as I see it.
It's hard to add anything of quality to what's already been said, but I'll try.
Because our current cadre of developers are themselves unpaid volunteers, it's too much to ask for them to grind out new stuff every 3 months, even if it's small stuff, like a new story arc for an old contact, or a new arc for a new contact. (compared to a Page 3 type issue)
So, it seems simple to me. Enjoy what we have. Stop sweating the server load or lack of it. Can't find a team? Be the teammate you want to find. (I am stealing that, sort of from someone else, I forget who.)
There are still people who meet routinely and tackle whatever task/strike force or story arc that catches their fancy. The shard that's played on is irrelevant. It's all the same game.
Now, if you want to read everything - you can read below, otherwise, skip it.
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Aging player base - we're mostly older adults, I figure between 35 and 50, some younger and some older. Still, in this demographic, with the restrictions from the pandemic easing off, there are more demands on our time. If we were still 15-25, not so much. What's more, and I could be sorely off base - as older adults, well, we're smarter. We know what's under the hood now. Folks like Bopper have taken that mystery and revealed things that we simply didn't know before, essentially making things a bit easier when it comes to building for dps and survivability.
League/Team size requirements - these have been lifted for Task forces, but for incarnate trials and zone events like a hamidon raid, there's still a minimum. With Hamidon, the minimum isn't set by the game, but by the players' abilities and time to commit. Hamidon has been defeated with less than 8 if I'm not mistaken. And even if the lowest number he's been defeated with was 8, those 8 were specific ATs and powersets with specific builds and temp powers for that set purpose. In Underground and Magisterium - it's my understanding if the league size is less than 24, the HP of the AVs scale down to correlate with the league size. Doesn't make it easier, as you have fewer buffs and debuffs to go around, but there is some sort of system compromise for lower numbers. But for hamidon and msr - missing those dozen or so extra buffs/debuffs make things a little harder in the case of MSR, and a lot longer, in the case of Hamidon. A solution is possible, but if it were implemented, then you might have folks on the more populated shards able to take further advantage. (depending on the solution, of course)
Fire farms, or more broadly, farms in general have become more of a norm than a treat. Farm is now pretty much a verb, rather than a place to produce livestock and/or produce.
I can only imagine what the end result is for most players, if there even is an end.
Massive piles of influence can and are obtained by farming. With HC's generous 3 accounts to a shard rule, there's nothing, other than your system's resources to stop you from making a total of 15 accounts and having an afk farmer on a map. Even with minimal outcomes, that's a chunk of inf. Bear in mind, you'd have to find the inf to build 15 farmers, but it only takes one farmer to do that. I remember making my first farmer. It was a fire/fire brute. I wasn't even aware of spines/fire at the time. And it sure wasn't afk. I had tried it, but I had to have healing flames on auto, not burn. Granted, it was July, just about 2 months after the servers opened, and folks were still figuring things out. I leaned more towards marketing for influence. But I didn't want to spend time sifting through the AH looking for bargains. I figured I could just use what dropped in the farm, and that has worked very well for me.
Unfortunately, or not - I now have options. Because of the inf I have stored up, I don't feel this need to run Apex/Tin Mage over and over with a different alt just to get those tasty merits. I will on occasion for the fun of it - but it's not really about merits for me anymore. I'll use them, of course, but there are no "carrots" dangling by a string and stick over this donkey's gaping maw. So what motivates me to play? And is it really accurate to call it play? I "play" to try out different powersets and ATs to see if they are suitable to my playstyle. On occasion I'll play something completely out of my comfort zone - like an MM - to learn more about what it's like to team with MMs. I tend to only see things from my characters' perspectives. It's time I figured out the reasons why scrappers get PO'd when rain of fire scatters the few mobs they had in their AoE damage patch. It's time I figured out how to make a controller more useful. And, it's time I figured out if the MM pets are stupid, or the player behind the MM. (I suspect in some cases it's the pets, and other cases it's both, and in a few cases, it's me. )
But, because of my success, I now pretty much don't team up anymore with pugs. I'll do the odd tf or iTrial, but nothing like when I was struggling to fund a build.
I can't tell you how many times I made the mistake of accepting a recruiting call for a free farm only to delete the character later because I simply didn't understand how to play it, or what the powers really did. A lot of that is my own fault, of course. But who doesn't want free XP? With the ease of making characters on the test server now, there's really no need to PL anything anymore, unless it's just the sub-50 content you're tired of. But, even so, after all these years, there's still content I'm not tired of.
I am weary of the Hollows. Not yet weary of Faultline. Croatoa continues to interest me, but I do hate the initial hunt missions. Good excuse to get fold space, though. I port them into the very neighborhood I'm supposed to remove them from. The contact system, at least on blue side, needs major work.
The idea of having origin contacts is outdated, and what's more - any contact that doesn't give a story arc should just disappear from the game, or be clear from the top that all they'll do is give random one-off missions.
The only reason I play now is pretty much out of habit. Things are just too easy in this flavor of CoH. Even the master runs, without set bonuses, WHEN you're on a team of other competent players make things trivial; no sweat. Mind you - when I say that, I need to make it clear - we're not doing master runs at +4/8. The only reason they're being done is for the badges, and who would want to make the effort as difficult as possible? Certainly not me. I just want the shiny. Not complaining about it being too easy. I like easy. But many folks savor the challenge. Easy is dull and boring for them.
There's something to be said for making things "as difficult as possible". I remember on live - The Really Hard Way. Accomplishing that was truly a big deal. Some of us even transferred servers to help other servers accomplish it. Here on HC - it's trivial. The ease of acquiring super inspirations certainly doesn't hurt the process.
Farmers would always have trouble getting a donkey to work. So, they had a choice. Use a carrot, or a stick. I'm not real clear on the origins of the idea, but someone eventually tied the carrot to the stick, and hung the carrot in front of the donkey to get the donkey to move forward. If the donkey gets the carrot, he stops moving.
A PL is pretty much giving the donkey the carrot.
The problem is simply that with veteran players, they've run the early content into the ground. It's like Monopoly now. We all know that Oriental Avenue costs $100, rents for $6 unimproved and charges $550 with a hotel. And who doesn't know that Boardwalk will cost $2k with a hotel? Humans in this day and age require novelty from time to time. CoH simply doesn't have it.
When Aeon came out, for 2-3 weeks, and a little bit more than that - Aeon was being run night and day, all day. Now...not so much. Still get some folks doing it on occasion, but even for new content, for most folks, it's every bit as stale as Flambeaux & Fusionette running off at the mouth.
I understand that many of you simply want a larger, more vibrant community. It could happen, but that's highly unlikely. For one, now that we're all older, who's going to tell their friends that they play a video game in their spare time? Certainly not me. I'm an adult. I know my father would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that at 55, I've even spent time typing on a forum instead of taking out the trash or some other mundane household chore that can wait until the sun comes up. And I know my friends would have their palms out waiting on that gift of influence, and then quit playing due to real life being more challenging.
This game was designed initially to get players to subscribe and follow the lore. But then they got smart and learned the free to play model would get them more money. But that meant new content coming out, routinely and regularly, as well as the "loot box", or super packs that you'd literally pay real world cash for.
Our players want new powersets, new ATs and new content. But most of all, they want quick forming teams and leagues. More players. But it's not going to happen until we determine a proper method for player retention, if there is such a thing.