battlewraith

Egads you're confused. Really and sadly confused. And apparently trying to get this thread locked.

It's a game. The purpose is to entertain people. If something is popular, it's an indication that people are being entertained. If you completely divorce your notions of what is "good" from what is appealing to your audience--then you could drive this whole thing into the ground and still pat yourself on the back thinking you did good work. Likewise, you could hold what you have as the best thing ever, ignore any call for change, and just let it be a stagnant museum piece until the remnants of the player base wither away. You still have the the same slots and number of powers as before. Wanna take tactics at lvl 4, knock yourself out. Power creep matters. It's just not a convenient excuse to shoot down everything you don't like for whatever reason. There's a middle ground that can found. On one hand you want to roll everything back to the good old days, and on the other you fly off the rails and say well why not get rid of all restrictions.

What you're asking for is way more radical than changing the structure of the power pools. Those were not bad decisions, they were popular with the playerbase. You wanna tap the game in the knee with a lead pipe and fight power creep by slowing everything down and inflicting...actual creeping. Ain't gonna happen. People would be pissed and it wouldn't be any major improvement. In contrast, skipping some more prerequisite powers in the pools would likely result in a couple less power slots wasted in some builds. No one has made any substantial case for how this would be gamebreaking other than the generic hand waving about power creep.

The pools don't all follow the same rules. I thought that was the whole point of this thread. Also, the structure of these pools was established back in the beginning--when fitness was a separate pool. That pool was considered mandatory for most people and it was a drag to have to waste picks on it--so the devs made it an inherent. It was a drag to wait on travel powers, so again they loosened the requirements on that as well. The idea the initial rules are set in stone and cannot be changed due to thematic, progression, or whatever justification that relates to the initial plan of the game is nonsense. It's factually incorrect. And it's ridiculous to say that in a suggestion thread.

Then you play Y. You play what is fun for you. It's always been that way. There has always been disparities between classes and builds. Back in the early days on live my dm/inv scrapper kicked ass. My friend's blaster was truly a glass cannon and constantly was drowning in debt. He had fun though, so he stuck with it and when we teamed he had even more fun. We should not all be able to have the same amount of fun playing regardless of AT or powersets unless we are all clones of the same person.

My dude, it's a game. If the point of the game is not to have fun, then what is it? If the pursuit of balance leads to it being less fun for the playerbase, then what is the value of pursuing balance? This strikes me as a fundamental question, not a separate topic.

I think the plan was that people were supposed to purchase them. Hence them being better.

I'm not saying you're wrong that balance is off, but I find the complaint hard to really relate to. Like, I don't enjoy the other ATs because tanks are OP? It's bad for people who have that mindset? If people are in love with a given AT and it becomes city of (insert fotm), doesn't that indicate a certain excitement and engagement? (I don't play tanks btw) Why should it matter to people playing other characters? They can obviously play solo or assemble their own teams can't they? I think part of the reason I can't relate to it, is that I've been on the receiving end of nerfs so often because of this mentality. Unless you're pvping, there's no real competition. Certain builds will do certain tasks better under certain circumstances. Sometimes the devs introduce something or make a change that rocks, and people like it. To those tanks I say--enjoy your day in the sun before it gets ruined. There's always going to be a meta, especially in this game with so many variables to balance.

Yeah I think openly calling me a troll and telling other to treat me as such is probably a violation of the code of conduct.

But there are other characters that are essentially unkillable while plowing through content aren't there? When you say this is unwarranted, by what standard? When you say it's bad--in what way that is detrimental to how people are playing the game?

Ok humor me. Explain the nature of this bad thing. I had the impression that people like these tank buffs.

There are ways to raise the difficulty isn't there? I thought that was the whole point of that recent TF they added. But the impression I get on the forums is that the general reaction to the new content is lukewarm. I wouldn't be against a general reassessment of the power pools in general. But again, naysayers are going to be against that on the grounds that it's power creep. I don't think anyone is going to be in favor of weakening builds.

It's Rudra. He's got real strong opinions about how you should play. Fervent thematic opinions. He can't really support them, so he's going to complain about me instead of actually answering objections. Coddle him and tell him what he wants to hear and his life will be much less aggravating. Maybe. This is a typical Rudra sidestep btw: 1. Rudra--argues for the current progression on thematic grounds. 2. BW--points to thematic overlap with other sets and that the current progression is unrealistic, both in real life terms and comic book fantasy. 3. Rudra--misinterprets/misrepresents the objection as saying that certain builds should be able to skip these prerequisites based on AT (wtf?!?)

In my experience on Homecoming the biggest obstacle to making a meaningful contribution, especially on pugs, is the fact that things melt so fast that it's sometimes hard to get your shots in. You've got incarnates, IO set bonuses, procs, additional bonuses from other sources, etc. My old builds that were great on live wouldn't do well now either. But I don't see the logic in upholding this one restriction, which is a holdover from an earlier era of development, and saying that you have waste a power slot on something that you don't want and won't use so that.......things won't be OP? Someone's thematic foibles won't be rankled? I don't see it mattering. If you have a strong build now, lifting this restriction won't make it godlike. If you're build is more mid tier, maybe it will improve somewhat. People are arguing power creep on principle. I'm not seeing any particular instance where this is going to be hugely impactful--you have the same number of pools, same number of slots, etc. You could put it on test and let people play with it and see if anything crazy comes out. I just object to the idea of planned waste being part of having a competitive build. If you're not worried about having a competitive build, then none of this should matter to you.

The request to skip worthless prerequisite powers could reflect a lot of scenarios. Hate to break it to you, but scrappers, tanks, brutes, blasters, etc. already have hitting things in their primaries or secondaries. And we're talking about superpowers here. Someone that has invincibility goes into the fighting pool for some more resistance--so they need to learn how to throw a jab in order to get it? Whaaaat? You do realize that punching and kicking irl doesn't make you tougher right? And you also don't need to punch or kick to train defensive movement? What you're fervently demanding here is that people treat the label on the box as literally and restrictively as you are for thematic reasons that make no sense in a comic book environment. They needed a description for these powers, there's no indication that these power choices are some sort of thematic baggage that gets added along with the backstory of your character.

It's weird. It really is. You are so self-righteously myopic that you literally cannot understand and/or relate to the suggestion. There's a situation where you have a power that you don't need, and will never even slot in the tray, in order to take something that is necessary for a build to function at a certain level. The suggestion is to lift that requirement (or maybe make these prerequisite powers less crappy). I think this is certainly less impactful than making the fitness pool inherent was. You can have rational objections to this change: you're concerned with power creep, you're concerned with build diversity, etc. Or your favorite--"this is what I think they wanted with power pools back in 2004 and it needs to stay that way until the end of time." Regardless, these objections can be debated. Also things could actually be tested on the test server. What can't be debated is these idiotic character aspersions: "You just want your cake and eat it too." "Get your cheat codes elsewhere." "you just don't want to sacrifice and only get the powers you want" Piss off with that. It's lowkey flaming other players for not subscribing to your theory of fun.

Never said that. But I think your bad arguments generally speak for themselves. No need to twist the knife. Poor poor fellow. Life's tough on a video game forum. But I have listened and taken note of your whining.

Well ad hominem is the last resort of people that don't have an argument. If it makes you feel any better, I don't set out to troll you--I generally forget you exist until a confused emoji shows up in my notifications.

That is literally what he asked. "Why aren't people willing to sacrifice for their builds?" If nobody in their right mind would do this sacrifice if given the choice, then it isn't really about sacrifice is it? That's the point kiddo. "Go find your cheat codes elsewhere." The current iteration of the game is full things that would've been considered "cheat codes" in earlier iterations of development. The judgmental vitriol of these comments in light of the actual history of the game is hilarious. Old man yells at cloud level hilarious.

That makes absolutely no sense, unless you think that everyone playing this game is supposed to be doing ALL the content that is available. Furthermore, compare what you just said with what he was complaining about:

Ok, so let's frame this issue in terms of willingness to make a sacrifice. Assume that the devs went ahead and made a change that allowed people to skip something like boxing in order to get tough. You would still be able to make that sacrifice. Don't change your build, still take boxing even though it's relatively worthless in terms of power choices, and so on. If that's not acceptable, then it sounds like the issue is not "willingness to make a sacrifice." Sounds more like mandating what sacrifices other people are required to make. "Willingness to make a sacrifice", if we're going to be righteous about it, is the ultimate answer to the specter of power creep. Think something's OP? Don't play it. Don't like meta builds? Don't play them. Play the game you want to play. Digging your heels in about the status quo is the opposite of making any kind of sacrifice, so you probably shouldn't call out other players for requesting pretty minor changes.

Thanks for looking! She's actually inspired by a Tom Waits song called Such a Scream.

Lol my dude, I went back to review that thread and you participated. Did you forget?

Except I'm not the one who bowed out complaining about it, was I? You are completely lost in all of this. The double standard has to do with the extent to which changes can be made to an IP while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material. As outraged as you are by the whole situation, the answer to that question is subjective. And it has jack shit to do with the twitter beef between the Amazon team and the portion of Tolkein fandom that is outraged by this production for whatever reason. Jackson made the LOTR prior to twitter existing, so he didn't have to deal the same level of social media hysteria. But imagine there had been a big backlash against his trilogy and he went online and called all the haters bigots, or whatever. Would that have somehow have changed the quality of the films. No. Btw, it's hilarious when you rail about talentless hacks and bring up something like Star Wars. Those three recent movies made over 2 billion dollars.

That's really all I get out of this discussion. Pretty much any change could lead to negative consequences...so we just have to embrace poor design, like wasted power selections...and convince ourselves that this is some sort of plus. Consistently applied, this ethic will result in no substantial changes more or less indefinitely.