battlewraith

Used it for new builds, as it says in the part you quoted,

Like OMG BECKY it's only been 20 years, how can be tired of stuff already! LMAO. Well that tracks. You got a ton of cash and don't play the market, but you're gonna die on this hill to have your dream of fun preserved for everyone. From days ago: "My main interest is making new characters. I plan the character in mids and then level them. Probably 75% get pled straight to 50 and the others are a mix of standard missions and PLing. To finance a new build, I run weeklies, Tinpex, Market Crash, radios, or whatever random shit seems to be going on. Also Incarnate stuff. During the Valentines Event I ran that blue wedding on 8 different characters every morning. " It's not a case of "blame the workman and not the tools". It's a case of you wanting to argue for your preferred status quo while being unwilling or unable to respond to any point made to you. Also, inb4 Brainstorm (again).

One of the things I liked about this movie is that I pretty much agree with Luthor in that, at least in a comic book world, intellect should be able to overcome Superman's abilities. Superman is not a supergenius and he tends to react in predictable way. But Supes' most defining feature is his moral character and he acts almost like a moral hub for other characters. So when things get bad for Superman, he draws people in to help him. Whereas Luthor's an asshole, so when things go bad for him his support base crumbles.

It can be poorly reasoned. Which is why people will change opinions on things when presented with arguments, information, etc.

My assumption would be that you sink a lot of time into this game (or have) and that proportion of time you spend outfitting characters is much less--it would pretty much have to be if you are spending 3 weeks leveling one up. If it were still a retail game, you would be their ideal player. The Brainstorm thing has been responded to, no just by me. You just stick your head in the sand and then repeat it, so there's no point in rehashing the argument. Yes I get drops and do respecs and all that jazz. There is no mystery to any of this. I simply have an interest in reducing repetitive tasks that I've already done ad nauseam. And your self interest dictates that other people need to be doing these tasks so that you can make a buck off of it. Things are so so easy to accumulate but you'll argue till your blue in the face to keep people paying for stuff. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

It's the Market section. So this the area of the community least likely to agree with this kind of proposal. If the game is still here in 5 years, it will be interesting to see what the population is and if the hardliners are still making the same arguments.

FFS tidge it's not that hard to understand. Planning and executing a build, which is a part of the game I enjoy, is not a flex on other people. Particularly in a game full of longtime players like you who are drowning in inf and could do whatever the hell they wanted. Back in the day, I only played for pvp and I would have to do all the same grind as everyone else just so I could do a fun activity I liked that had very little in the way of material reward. Eventually, developers came along that understood the problem and did something about it. But back in the day there were tidge's running around that made the same arguments: the game is fun. Leveling is fun. Why should they be able to skip stuff just so that they can do...whatever that thing is that I can't relate to. Calling me judgemental while speculating that I don't have fun in other aspects of my life because I disagree with you about a game---LOL what?!?!

The people that respond with thumbs down to my posts do so predictably and regularly. So If I post something and they don't respond, I know it's time to send a wellness check to their house.

Grinding, which is something you refuse to acknowledge as a thing, is essential to understand why people would want a proposal like this. Yomo, in the first post mentions that there are players who don't like the game's emphasis on earning inf. He suggests as an example making enhancements available as on beta. So about me derailing anything...***** please. After pages of dragging your feet, you post a list of things the devs did to alleviate grind (you left off patrol xp, a reward for not even playing). You stress that this is optional. Well there you go Tidge. They could provide optional vendors for people who want these enhancements--the same way they have for other anti-grind adjustments. You can just ignore them and go along your merry way however you like.

Somebody here has a business model based on making doomsaying threads? How does that work?

That wall of exposition is an argument, in what's supposed to be a discussion. The reason I wrote it is that there were people denying that grind is a thing. For anybody. So not only did I have to define grind multiple times, I then had to describe a very familiar reality for anyone who actually pays attention to what other people are doing. Now that I've done that, you're shifting the goalposts. You're right, I don't know what those players standing around want because I haven't asked them. But your "people-that-don't-play-like-me-are-lazy" mentality has been overruled time and time again in the evolution of this game. People railed for years against farming and pling, but they became cornerstones of the community anyway. And it did not cause the game to fall into ruin. And you haven't shown any evidence that it would. You haven't shown any evidence of anything tbh, other than the fact that you're flush with merits and can kit out characters whenever you like.

Stay classy.

When you start the game, you can barely handle a few enemies. And it's slow. And you have to rest inbetween. In contrast to an enhanced lvl 50 character that can blast the crap out of groups of enemies and has far less downtime. If you look at how people are actually playing the game--it looks to me like a lot of people, if not the majority, want that lvl 50 experience. To the extent that a lot of people will stand around waiting to get on a farm or lvl 50 radio team rather than work their way up through normal mission content. Not to mention the fact that you can get the xp boosters to help you get past those early levels faster. Why? Because people find them too grindy. And it's clearly the pre-50 game because if these people thought post-50 was just as bad, they wouldn't bother. And yet people are trying to gaslight me that there is no grind when anyone who has played for a reasonable amount of time can see people trying to skip over it. Someone might like that early content and want to play it through. Or not even level to 50. There's nothing wrong with that. The point is not that there is a right way to play. The point is that there are different players with different preferences, priorities, and motivations. What's grind to me might not be grind to you. So I believe, after 20 years of this game's history, it's appropriate to have a conversation about incentives. That conversation is not "I play a certain way, it's not grindy, you're lazy, go look for another game."

I thought it was jarring too. It seems more like an Invincible plotline than Superman.

If you don't like the endless back-in(?)-forth, just stop. Don't complain to me about it. It's uncouth. Everyone chiming in is advocating for some version of laziness that they prefer--which makes sense. This is a game--it's not a damn job, though grinders tend to forget that. The game changes over time and you float along with it. When the waters settle at a certain level, you'll get used to it and then insist that things can't change and it has to be this way. There have been people like this at every stage from the beginning. I always find the "I win button" argument amusing. If I got some free enhancements, I win the game or something? That's all it's about? I pvped almost exclusively from the introduction of the arena until shutdown. There was virtually no reward for doing this. We did it for fun. I won if I defeated another player or my team got more kills in a match. If you tell me that getting free stuff is an I-win button, the only way I can parse that is that you think accumulating a bunch of stuff is "winning." It isn't though. Anyone can do it assuming they want to spend time doing it. And the person sitting on a mountain of unused merits in their vault has no more won the game than some penniless vagabond that has fun roleplaying.

People have been fighting on the coh forums since they were a thing. I think it was worse on live than on Homecoming. Remember that the guy who ran the secret server after shutdown got doxxed and received death threats when word got out -- over a game.

This guy is not you. In fact there are many players that are not like you. That has long been a strength of the game, that it can cater to a diversity of players. And yet here you are fuming and telling people what they should enjoy, while not actually offering any argument why things should be one way and not another.

It's not really my definition. I linked to wikipedia earlier, here is an AI overview: In video games, "grinding" refers to the act of repeatedly performing the same tasks or actions to achieve a specific goal, such as gaining experience points, in-game currency, or unlocking items. It often involves engaging in repetitive gameplay, like defeating enemies or gathering resources, to progress in the game. While grinding can be a necessary part of many games, it can also be perceived as tedious or boring. So a classic example is a lowbie mission where you would need to go out and kill 10 rats (or skulls in this case). That's fine when you're starting a new game. It gets old when you've done that task for years. Another example is having to run around to talk to contacts in order to proceed in a mission. To compensate for this aggravation, the developers made team teleport options readily available and introduced radio missions so that you could skip contacts altogether. The point, imo, is not to make people who don't enjoy certain content to like it. It's to make content that people actually do like, less grindy.

You asked a question. I answered, You apparently didn't like the response and got pissy. Go figure.

Well, back on live there was a time when there was a pvp community was situated on the test server. There were regular pvp nights, there were leagues, and so on. The devs basically killed it off by taking the server down, wiping it, etc. So there is a precedent for that being a bad idea. Not to mention the fact that, as is always pointed out when this comes up, people want to play with friends. If they wanted a single player game they'd probably go elsewhere. Look at the current state of the game. Lots of changes have been made as concessions to people who want to skip grind. They added the temporal warrior option and unlocked accolades at pvp zone vendors precisely so that people could skip meaningless grind. They were not told to go to Brainstorm. So let's say they took away all the xp boosters. And when people complained, they said "hey you wanna get there faster just go to Brainstorm tee-hee-hee!" The game has changed since 2004. Some people here just opining in favor of the current status quo, ignoring the fact that people like them in the past got overruled to arrive at where the game is now.

Last time I checked, you get free stuff on Homecoming. You can pick up some stuff right away from the START vendor. There are also contexts in this this game and others I've player where things are unlocked from the start. Guildwars 2 pvp for instance gave you access to everything that would be available upon entering the arena space.

Well, I guess I could go try it and then talk to some arbiter of fun to see if it qualified. If it did, then I could repeat it daily for the next twenty years.

At 50 you have all your powers unlocked and the greatest variety of build options. If that's something that concerns you, then post-50 is less grindy. TBH, I have no expectation or even really a desire that they make everything free. I do always have an interest in things being less grindy. I think the rewards are pretty ridiculous. You get virtually nothing from something like pvp but can be ridiculously wealthy from playing the market. People can afk-farm, but even something as trivial and innocuous as that flying disc thing has to be bought. It's game design meant to cater to worker bees. So for the sake of argument--which is why I think this thread was started--why not make things free? The answers seem to be: Pro: Cut down on meaningless grind. Cons: There is no such thing as grind. You should try other content. When I play, I like to do this (explains some playstyle). Or just basic incredulity at the prospect. Oh and let's not forget this tired canard: This has already been commented on. Try to keep up. It's a testing server, with no population. If you're going to recommend a single player game, there are far better options available.

And thanks to your myopic vigilance, there will always be a little carrot dangling in front of the noses of players to get them to do stuff. Good lord to think what would happen if people could just get free stuff. It would all come crashing down like a house of cards. There would be no reason to play the game at all. (Shudders)

LOL Beesleywraith? Damn you are bitter.