Bob

Inspirations allow for cheesing of this entire game. If people choose not to use them, then that is on them. A new player at lvl 1-10 should not be wanting to go above default settings right out the gate. Only exceptions are on alts when you guy buy those temp buffs with inf you already have from another character (and of course build). If someone wants to solo, then you pick a secondary that lets you survive; martial combat can allow this, though again not right away. If someone wants a nuke build, then /energy allows for build up + aim to start large packs mostly dead (assuming bosses eventually). At 40+, inspirations can be purchased very cheaply. You really only need smalls in the beginning, and just loading up on defense and break frees will trivialize the game. Again, if one chooses not to do this, then you actively choose to play the game on a harder setting than intended.

What is funny is that now excelsior has chosen to opt for worse spots that make afk MMs even better lol

I use to believe PvP was a detriment to mmorpgs. I wasn't big on it, even in WoW. Rolled on a PvE server (tried PvP a couple times, private servers are almost all PvP as well). Then classic rolled around, and PvP servers dominated the playerbase by a large margin. Games that still survived; OSRS, GW2 (though this game has a small playerbase now), BDO, WoW (although WoW sucks now days for many reasons) have some of the most PvP to offer, and have a large amount of people who partake in it. As time goes on and the gaming scene is "beaten" to death with information online not just in the form of text like it was 20~ years ago, but in video form, and even live... there is nothing to figure out anymore. All things PvE can be learned by simply typing in a search on a discord server, youtube, or by watching streamers that will go meta. It is not something I care for and I believe modern gaming to be fairly shallow, but it wont change at this point. PvP is the last bastion of overall challenge, since you need to adapt to people doing different things, rather than bots doing the same thing and us (or our groups) knowing EVERYTHING important there is to know, many times even before playing the games themselves. A lot of people want to be challenged again like it use to be. Just wont happen in PvE form anymore.

Odd statement to make in response to a clear joke xD Also, I hate to say it, but part of the reason quite a few other mmorpg's survived (or in few cases, thrived) is because PvP was a decent part of it. YOU may not like it, but WoW pvp servers being the dominant choices (when it even mattered) means it made the most money to have those things in the game. That isn't to say every game should have it, but it is what it is. City of heroes chose a 2 'faction' system, and did little with the PvP... which makes little sense. They tried to do it, which is why they added villains to begin with. Worth noting that even in open world PvP (keep in mind most games had SERVER choices for such things), griefers are not the majority, and some even like the threat and thrive on the competition. IF one joins a pvp server and whines about harassment, then I don't get why they joined to begin with.

I don't think the AFK masterminds are the biggest issue though, and if the devs ever find out the 5 masterminds hogging PI 1 on certain servers all belong to a single IP, then they will ban those accounts. Other than that, the overall problem as I see it, is that most people in general are not participating in the 'farm' and simply are sitting against the wishes of everyone else. I don't like the event. I think it is terrible. First time for me doing it, and people hyped halloween up to be some big thing in this game, but now I just assume it were the afkers saying that crap, because all that has happened is that group content has slowed down tremendously for everything else. I would be fine if it ended today. With that said, I'd want the option to speed up the reward gains by clicking more doors as I would do, not be forced to wait around a lot more time in hopes that maybe lazy people will stop being selfish. Get their chat handle, blast it, and if those moronic rules did not exist here or on discord, we should post it. Has little to do with them feeling the shame, but rather feel the consequence of them simply being known as someone not to group with. Not a perfect solution, as no solution is, but it is an option. Instead, the moment it is brought up in most ToT teams, people get annoyed at the idea of 'calling others out'. Also worth saying that even those with no sense of shame, can still get bogged down mentally by that crap, as they should. Anyway, my only real point originally was that changing the event to be even more passive would just make it even less rewarding for everyone else who is actively playing. Such areas do exist, like in KW there is a spot that is arguably 'better', but is widened and requires movement. The reason people wont join those groups in mass is because the tagging becomes a serious problem in a league. In a single team, its no problem, everyone sticks together, but that simply wont be the case. So for this "farm" to work properly for a league to exist, it needs to be condensed. With that said, I personally think having it be a raid based thing is dumb anyway. It simply devalues all other forms of content for XP/influence gains (excluding specialized farms or market play) for the entire month it is active.

Then the event itself would just be fairly garbage is the thing. I am not sure the solution is to cater to people who are too lazy or selfish to participate in hopes that they 'might' stop being lazy and/or selfish. The only realistic solution we have is that the leader of a group removes blatant leechers. Most choose not to, because the selfish people bark the loudest. I still opt for shaming these people in game if that is how they want to play things though... kind of what kept servers functioning in the 2000s in mmorpgs. Act a fool, be labeled a fool. Works that way in all aspects of life.

😕

Ok, but you are wrong. You are claiming I seem to lack reading comprehension. You picked a part of a sentence of the statement to make a point, without quoting the entire sentence itself to fit your odd little agenda here. I couldn't give a flying crap what your opinion on the matter is. If you are wrong, then we have to operate on that basis. The devs, understandably, will not punish people leeching unless they are multiboxing during busy hours (so basically just excelsior). Other than that, I half agree with you on starting your own team. Problem is, that isn't always an option if the available zones already have a ToT. I have done KW single team ToT, but those really don't come anywhere near the league experience. I personally opted for just not doing it anymore after the first week (and a couple days of the double XP). Also, it is very obvious when people are leeching. Anyone in that ball in the middle for more than a minute is straight up afk, or at best they aren't clicking doors at all. The optimal way to do the event is to keep moving, attacking in between door cooldowns (within reason), and moving on to the next door. There is virtually no reason to be in the middle for an extended period of time at all. Sadly, you rarely get to see optimal play due to how many afkers there are at all times. Only quoting this directly since you keep calling me out on it: "This is a bit of a tricky situation, as afk farmers generally aren't doing anything that the base game doesn't allow them to do. However, if someone seems to be multiboxing more than three accounts, or multiboxing at ALL when the server is at three red dots, we would definitely appreciate a ticket detailing the names and globals of all involved so that we can double check, and take action if needed. As for addressing the lag, that's also a population issue. Even without the AFKers, ToT tends to attract over 100 people at a time to the Murder Motel, all activating powers and killing hundreds of entities at once all in the same place. We've aware of the issue and have been discussing methods to reduce the strain/lag." GM Impervium posted that

And that "if someone seems to be multiboxing more than three accounts, or multiboxing at ALL when the server is at three red dots" that was bolded just before that in the same sentence, means nothing to you? It is very clear what was being said there. If it is causing strain on the server in regards to people doing something extreme, like multiboxing in areas where there is already going to be a problem with lag, that is the kind of thing they will take action against. NOT soaking reward, which is mentioned to be a tricky issue. I am not even trying to be offensive here, but since you called me out on that, it is what it is. The devs are not going to take action against people leeching in a league for reward. If we can prove that those MMs on PI 1 on excelsior (as of the time of this post) are all linked to the same person in some way (that is where the devs could look at IP or something to help verify), then they will take action. But the league that is half full of leeches as we speak on PI 2? No Brings up another interesting point though. Why are these league hosters not willing to kick blatant afkers. Some do, but it is rare. I'd say a lot of discord discussion I have seen tends to explain why, and it is because a lot of them are friends and just allow it to happen. People are getting shamed for calling them out, not the other way around, which is fairly pathetic, but oh well.

You misunderstand my posts. I am not blaming homecoming staff; I am understanding of the absolute fact, that they do not have time to manage thousands of players as a volunteer team. I have no ill will against them. I do, however, have a strong feeling of disappointment towards those (99.9% of whom are 35+ years old) who know better, yet choose to leech off of other people and drag down their gameplay, for the sake of their own gains. My post was simply a reply to the person mentioning that the devs will likely do something. They wont. For the record, I just stopped doing ToT unless I happen to recognize the leader (who actually does something). Leeching got so bad, that as a 50 the inf gains started sucking, and for lvling the gap had narrowed relative to other kinds of play. It is worth noting that there are only so many instances of the zone open at any given time.. and even if you want to start your own team, that may not be an option the majority of the time. So frankly, that is a bit of a cop out statement. At most you might be able to get a single team going for a KW session, but that is no where near as good as a league (though funny enough, I think KW would be better anyway if people chose it as the 'main' spot).

Yet even with more serious leeching, it was stated that it isn't so simple. They are not going to take time out of their day to deal with XP leechers if they wont deal with more serious matters. I am not even implying that they should, but I am implying that the solution is clear. Hold each other accountable for selfish behavior. Let there be social consequences for decisions that drag others down. Also worth considering that most of the event has now passed. Most of this double XP has now passed. Even 'if' they were to someday temporarily ban people for a minor infraction, it would be way too late to do so. It just isn't realistic to hope for that kind of crap. Either way, I see nothing wrong with calling people out 'in game' by name if they choose to do this, and let people blast them all over global chats. If they want to play that selfish game, then deal with the shaming.

Eh, only one thing kept people somewhat in line in mmorpgs in single, server based environments. Was name and shame. Remove that, and this is to be expected. Was basically happening in MSR anyway, except worse. You think most of that ball is actually playing? These people don't give a crap. They aren't technically breaking rules. They wont be punished by homecoming devs, and I would be surprised if the original devs would do anything. At the end of the day, the issue is core game design. Tagging in this game sucks. If the event would have been designed so that the door enemy spawns were given the tags to the person/group who spawned it, then it would solve the ungrouped problem. One of my biggest gripes of this game is how tagging works in a league. Why in the world did they design this game so that a team within a raid group had to also get their own tags? It makes no sense. It surely doesn't stop these hard grinds anyway. Sure would make it so teamed, AFK MM players are at least useful though.

The funny thing is that if you just join an 8 man to do it somewhere else in PI, or KW if you just want influence/rewards/whatever, you wont notice a loss, because having a team of 8 people spam clicking doors and all mobs being tagged, feels a lot better than a full league that has half~ the people not doing anything (or barely), including people on your own team within the league. I got sick of wasting my time in those groups. Once in a blue moon i got in a decent one (mostly on excelsior, everlasting has too many afkers), but even then you can still see around 10 people doing nothing, and no one enforcing even a bare minimum of standard regarding leeching.

In the rare occurrence I am in a group that can't butcher most trash, the worst I see happening is that an elite boss gets healed to full, but then someone almost always breaks off to go kill the healer(s). This game is not as fluid as other mmorpgs. You que your abilities, and you get locked in position. So if people are spamming away at anything that moves in a cluster of 30+ enemies being engaged, I'd rather them all be doing that and clean up the healers later, than some blaster wasting time trying to eyeball the surgeons or even have them targeted but them being around a corner (common). Meanwhile that blaster could have downed quite a bit of other trash before a heal even went off. With that said, if you are playing a support and have nothing to heal, your debuffs were applied, or your targets CC'd... then you should probably be the one to go volunteer to hunt the lowest HP enemy in the task force. Let the DPS actually down bigger threats, and the lower DPS ATs could go bring the surgeons down just as fast.

Just due to the fact they have plant manipulation as a secondary, I think it would at least make sense to have some kind of plant based primary. I imagine it would have happened eventually in the main game anyway.