[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

 

Nope.  They weren't lying.  I said "partly because."  Zone performance definitely was another significant reason as well.  You can see it and feel it for yourself how much better Atlas Park on Excelsior feels.

Oh I see. Where did they say it was related to AE babies?

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

Except it's not just a hypothetical situation, and I'm not the only one bothered by it - if that were the case, then we probably wouldn't even be having this arguement.

Yes it's hypothetical--there isn't an option to instantly level to 50. That's what I was referring to. 

Now if this is already happening to you, lol might as well offer a leveling option because you're getting bothered whether it's a thing or not. 

 

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

I mean, it's not like Mission Architect buildings were removed from the two starter zones two months ago, partly because AE babies had no clue how to zone.  Oh wait...

 

Oh you mean they were lying when they said it was about the zone performance?

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

Ultimately, I don't care how people get to 50, as long as they know how to play said 50 on at least a basic level. I don't care that people are being PL'd, I care that there are people that have no idea how to play their characters when they should. And again, I'll oppose any instant-50 suggestion because, while I am happy to help new players, I do expect that any random 50 in a team has at least some idea on how to play. (And yes, "basic level" is subjective, and its definition varies from person to person.  It's one of the reasons we keep having these discussions.)

 

You're under no obligation to play with to play with someone who doesn't know what they're doing (or is stoned, drunk, has to go afk, whatever). You can kick them from your team or leave a team that has someone on it that bothers you. I get that a lot of people are hung up on this issue. A lot of people can't seem to update their expectations of the game from when it was live and actually had a subscription fee. But the problem here is that you're opposing a proposed benefit to actual players that are actively creating alts because of a hypothetical situation where a new player somehow bothers you because they don't know what they're doing--a situation which is also kind of farfetched in the age of incarnates.

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

2 hours ago, Akisan said:

It's not about whether you can, its about which ones are easier to remember.  I'm not saying alting is good or bad, I'm betting that it's easier to remember your non-PL'd characters vs. your PL'd characters. 

 

No. It's not. First of all, the vast majority of my characters were pled, even before AE. When the arena was added, I spent most of my time pvping. The characters that are easiest to remember are the ones that were successful in pvp. There are also characters I remember more clearly because they figured into game related art or fiction. Conventional leveling does not endear me more to a character or make it more memorable. There are characters on Homecoming that I have that I know I spent a fair amount of time doing lowbie content and they are not more memorable for that reason.

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

While true, the sheer number of "AE Babies" that people have encountered isn't an imaginary thing.

Corpse punching isn't an imaginary thing either. Neither is routinely completing BAFs, steamrolling radio missions, etc. I've had one failed team experience all year and it was honestly hilarious. Talking to some people on the forums, you'd think incompetence was everywhere. I only hear about it when I engage in these discussions.

 

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Now for you, a highly experienced player, that learning curve won't take long, but you're not the entire player base. There are people who learn slower than you do, and some who really won't learn how to play their character at all if they haven't played it while leveling.

 

But the people you're worried about are getting pled already. Or are leveling through the early content very quickly. So with this change, a variety of people with different levels of experience spend less time pling. They all go straight to 50. How is the end result any different than the way things are now? The only significant change I see is that people don't have to spend hours on a farm grinding a new 50 to play the way they want. That's it.

 

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

So why would the developers deliberately give players the ability to completely end-run and entire system that they built from scratch for a reason?

 

Because they want to retain players and they can adapt their system to fit with new conditions.

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

59 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I'd prefer they continue to make the levelling game more fun, as they have been doing with SOs earlier, t2 at 1, t7-9 by 30, etc.

 

There's no reason they can't do both. They could also provide some sort of meaningful rewards (maybe costume options) for people that level the traditional way.

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

This could seriously hurt sub-50 teaming.  Pretty much the only people adding non-50s into the pool of characters would be roleplayers, people running challenges, and people that disagree with the instant 50 option. 

 

In other words, the people that actually want to play that content. You oppose this proposal because you want to make people do the content they don't like in order to support your preferences. Except that doesn't work anyway because people pl through it in various ways already.

 

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

And yes, it builds character (pun intended).  I've found that I'm far more attached to things that I worked hard for, and things that are just given to me tend to be shelved and (eventually) forgotten.  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that regard, and I while I may not have many alts (and only one 50), I challenge you altaholics to name all of your 50s, without looking at a list of them, and see which toons you remember more easily.

 

Why do I have to name all of them? What if I can name more 50s than you have characters?

 

Also, if you only have one 50 and not many alts maybe the fear that people using this option (or getting pled) are clueless is making an unwarranted assumption based on your habits. I've played pretty much everything to 50. There are some things that I haven't spent a lot of time on, like warshades and dominators, but once you have a general understanding of how the mechanics of this game work it does not take long to get up to speed on anything.

 

 

[End PL allow characters to begin at 50]

1 hour ago, El D said:

When everyone is on the same path, they have to work together and communicate to advance. The person who skips to the end is just going to be hanging out alone waiting for everyone else to show up (and it's entirely possible that they'll just give up and leave before that happens).

 

I just quoted a couple standout parts of your post, but the majority of it--almost everything you say about how people play the game and are motivated to do things--is contradicted by my actual experience of playing the game. We are not on the same path and don't need to rely on other players to advance. When I pl a character to 50, it is not the end. It is the start of playing the fully fleshed out character that I had in mind. When I get the character to 50, I'm not hanging out alone waiting for other people to show up (wtf lol?). 

 

These general points your making would've made more sense in 2005. They don't have relevance to everyone now. If you want to play that way, more power to you. But it's a ridiculous expectation to lay on people who have been playing for over a decade and probably have their own very specific reasons for why they still hang around.

1 hour ago, El D said:

An instant-50 button for PvE won't broaden engagement for players, it'll just make them increasingly discerning to the point where they won't play at all if they can't do the specific thing they want. 'Let me skip to the end, I promise I'll play the rest of your game later' puts the onus on player investment, and if they skip all the content and all the teaming up with other people that came with it then what is there to be invested in?

 

Playing the game at level 50. Exactly what happens now when they pl a character past all the content that they know they don't want to play.

Proposals like this don't mean more skipping of content. People are doing that already. The actual gist of it is skipping the hours required to pl, that is the only thing that would be different from the way things are now.

[Devs, please explain why you are nerfing one of the most popular activities on Homecoming]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

*sigh*  Older players were in the game back then.  And we're still here.

 

You're the spokesperson for older players?

[Ever build for +DMG?]

1 hour ago, Loc said:

So yes, it's the best damage but it's a huge trade off to do so.

Yes there's a sweet spot in relation to how much you slot for proc dmg. But the reason I was commenting in the first place was in regard to +dmg buffs from sets. I think the point still stands that proc dmg makes those buffs largely irrelevant. Certainly not all bonuses from sets.

[Ever build for +DMG?]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Jeez, one proc got nerfed and there are long time players who have completely changed their game time.  You advocate changing them all?

Slow your roll my dude! I'm not advocating anything. If I was, I'd put it in the suggestions forum where it would've no doubt devolved into some sort thematic debate about what procs actually represent in the game world.

 

I do feel that the evolution of the game in the age of procs make something like +dmg not only skippable, but actually a kind of trap that people can fall into when making their characters. Damage is king in this game. So it's not stupid to think that +dmg is a good thing to go for. But it's generally not the case and you need a fairly sophisticated understanding of slotting and set bonuses to know when you're wasting your time. Likewise I think you still have a lot of people running assault and thinking that if they all huddle up in a little group the dmg buff will be good. I think it's actually just a waste of end.

 

 

[Ever build for +DMG?]

4 hours ago, Loc said:

Slotting for +dmg is one of the most inefficient ways to actually get more damage. A min/max damage build would go for procs (giving up set bonuses to get more damage output on the attack) and recharge (enough so that you can easily rotate your high dmg procced powers). The impact fully slotting for +dmg would have compared to procs and recharge is negligible.

 

Yeah I think that's generally accurate. I only ever slotted to max damage once, on a character that already had a lot of dmg buff--just to see if getting buffed to around 200% was worth it. But the whole discussion is indicative to me of how broken procs are in this game. The fact that you can take any pissant single target hold, for instance, and turn it into a highly damaging attack on any AT is a real deviation from the original game design. It makes +dmg largely irrelevant and it also reduces the importance of damage buffs from other players.

 

If they did something in the future like restricting each individual power to one proc effect, I think +dmg buffs would be probably be relevant again.

[Fire farming was nerfed]

1 hour ago, Songseven said:

thread after thread of negativity, and people wonder why i tease and troll..

Part of the reason there is thread after thread is because of glib morons trolling. And a lot of these people can't seem to put 2 and 2 together lol.

 

1 hour ago, Songseven said:

you don't get to gate-keep my reactions,

It's just holding up a mirror more than anything else.

[Fire farming was nerfed]

1 hour ago, Songseven said:

its not tho is it battlewraith

Yeah it is. It's pretty close. I'm not reading your mind, just what you wrote on the page.

 

1 hour ago, Songseven said:

my enjoyment was never compromised...

 

Great. Some other people don't feel the same. Don't pointlessly aggravate them. If your wonderful advice is sincere, now would be a good time for you to take advantage of it.

[Fire farming was nerfed]

2 hours ago, Songseven said:

seriously, Neiska.....why not just play the game, nerfed farms, ToT, iTF, PI radios, what ever you like!

 

will be far more enjoyable than playing victim all day.

 

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Take your own advice, stfu, and play the game. It will be way more enjoyable.

 

Take out the shade, it's the same statement more or less. 

[Fire farming was nerfed]

2 hours ago, Songseven said:

you WANT to feel insulted, i suggest doing some introspection and thinking about how you come across when you continually talk of this 'so-called' division and 'us and them' mentality,

You don't know what this person wants, fail to show any empathy if you do, and are just being pointlessly aggravating. 

Take your own advice, stfu, and play the game. It will be way more enjoyable.

[Ever build for +DMG?]

I have a SS/bio brute that has a default 168% damage bonus from rage, the bio armor, and then all of the set bonuses. That's without activating adrenal booster which brings it to 200%.

Footstomp is procced out, but crosspunch, ball lightning, and electrifying fences are not. It's hard to say whether it's worth the investment in dmg or not but it gets the job done. It has decent surviveability and a lot of recharge despite the janky ragecrash mechanic.

[Fire farming was nerfed]

5 hours ago, Vanden said:

Posters like OP have completely convinced themselves that what they believe is true. No amount of facts or logic can dissuade them, and they looove playing the victim. What else is there to do but snark on them, and maybe get some forum points for the trouble?

 

Yeah Sneakers is convinced that he has been screwed over and is getting shit on by other posters. I think the latter part of that is pretty obvious given posts like yours. He's got 58 posts (as opposed to your 3.2k). For me, that's not really enough to indicate what he loooves doing. And I'm not sure what posters like him are like, other than some people get pissed off and go on rants.

 

To answer your question: if you're going to troll people, have some self awareness about it. Then try to have some ambition about it. At least try to do something clever. Jumping on a dogpile in a thread where someone is complaining about being abused is lazy, low hanging fruit. Do better. I know you can. I believe in you.

[New forum: "Farmers Only"]

3 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

My take is that this suggestion is not a way to segregate the community - it would be clearly open to any forum goer to post and participate in. So, no division whatsoever.

I said divide, not literally segregate players into different areas of the forums. The forum is open to anyone to post anywhere right now, yet there opposing camps that are bickering over the course of the current game development. If there were a farming subforum, I think that would end up being a pretext to moving complaints over farming adjacent issues out of general discussion and I don't think that would go over well with a lot of posters.

[Farm nerfs]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

I am reminded of Robert Heinlein's statement "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

 

They are not obligated to please me or anyone. They would be within their rights to remove xp boosters altogether. A lot of people on these boards are trying to characterize criticism of this decision as entitlement on the part of players. There's an undercurrent of ad hominem that flows through a lot of these replies. It's nonsense. Investment in the game involves feedback from players about what they like and don't like.

 

Perhaps you would prefer that people only said good things in response to changes? Or said nothing at all?

[Farm nerfs]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Then you've accomplished nothing. 

Oh ye of little faith.

[Farm nerfs]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

They? The Homecoming Team started three or so years ago and started working from that point on to make this game follow their vision. A bug, exploit, cheat, hax, whatever you want to call is not an intended feature. You aren't going to get me to change my mind on this because of semantics. The rationale has been provided by multiple HC staff members, that is fine with me. 

 

I don't care about changing your mind. It's more about the judgmental way you're framing the issue and mischaracterization of other players. 

[Farm nerfs]

5 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Alienating the handful of people who want bugs to exist in the game instead of fixing what is not working as intended? Oh no....

 

So years ago, they intended to do something and made a mistake. And apparently the consequences to this mistake were so negligible in the greater scheme of things that they did not become aware of the mistake they made until recently. So in that time, this unintended parameter become the normal experience of leveling for not just a handful of people--a considerable portion of the playerbase that uses xp boosters. 

 

So now, in the face of other changes that affect farming and pling, they decided to revert this bonus to the intended amount. Why? What is the benefit of reducing the rewards for an activity that people have been routinely doing for years? Well, I'm not seeing any stated benefit other than the delayed satisfaction of someone on the dev team having fixed a bug or ensured that things are working as intended. In other words, nothing related to the consequences of using said booster to voluntarily get through the early grind quickly.

 

Not only is this flimsy ass justification apparently convincing to some people, it's got posters righteously pointing their fingers at other people in the community--"you must want bugs to exist in the game!" LOL wtf. "Working as intended" is whatever the team decides it is at any given moment. The intention years ago when this happened was not part of a secret contract with an eldritch deity. It was a decision. And the choice to now revert to that initial value is likewise a decision.

[New forum: "Farmers Only"]

Sure, but if we're going to further divide and radicalize the forum community can we add some more categories? Here are some suggestions:

 

The Creepshack. A forum for people obsessed with power creep and the suspicion that small changes will lead to the destruction of the game.

 

True Grit. For people who earned it. They paid their dues. And they don't want that accomplishment cheapened by letting anyone else skip the grind they went through to get it.

 

The Cleanse. For people who are absolutely over toxicity, drama, and unpleasantness in general. Everyone else in this forum is on ignore by default.

 

Shitposter's anonymous. 

 

 

 

[Fire farming was nerfed]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

One of the most tribal posters we have wants to play victim. Cute. 

Not as cute as this post on so many levels LOL.