ShardWarrior

What threat? Outside a few edge cases, most all of my characters can handle just about anything inside or out of AE. They are mowing through missions regardless of where I am playing them. If you need some build advice, there are plenty of available builds to study from in the appropriate AT forums here.

No one was speaking about back end code. Outside of AFK farming, there is no behavioral difference between farming an AE map and a non-AE map.

There is a lot to unpack here. I think you are blinded as to the myriad of reasons why people are using the AE and not really examining why AE being used so much. One could just as easily say that the rest of the game is a boring, repetitive slog and it takes far too long a time investment to level a character and gain the materials desired to build them out. This investment of time is magnified with each desired alt, and it definitely impacts experimentation with alts. Or one could say that people just want to build out complete characters before exemplaring to run the rest of the content since they perform better. The "normal" content being boring for them is a problem. The game being 18 years old and using out of date technology is a problem as well. I personally do not think this is as simple an issue as you and many others believe it to be. This simply is not true of everyone. I also completely disagree that it does not promote playing other content outside of AE. That is demonstrably false. Some folk like using AE to more efficiently and quickly build out alts who then get played frequently in non-AE content. They have posted as much in threads like these and I know quite a few of them myself. Making things more difficult for them is not conducive to keeping them around, which I am fairly sure is a goal. I know there are a very few, very vocal people here on the forums who just cannot fathom how anyone would find the repetitive content of the game boring, but there are many, many people who do and AE provided them an outlet. Again, whether the NPCs were player created enemies or developer created enemies makes no difference. Builds are easily attainable that make the player nigh indestructible against just about anything the game can throw at them. I understand and appreciate you are in the camp that everything should be "worked for" and "earned" by "playing the game". What I never see from this side of the debate is what is an acceptable amount of times a player has to play through the same content before it becomes boring? I completely agree with you on AFK farming, however I will never tell anyone they should not do it. It makes no difference to me personally and if they are indeed doing nothing but AFK farming all the time and never leave the AE building, I will never be teaming with them for any content outside of AE anyway, so complaining about that is just silly. Everyone wins in that scenario.

Just want to point out that what is or is not desirable is entirely subjective to the individual.

Most of the ire appears to be coming from AFK farmers from what I can see. It is not something I participate in, however far be it from me to tell them what they should or should not do in the game. If AFK farming is what interests them, brings them joy and lets them have fun while logging in, more power to them. Again, not everyone cares about farming incarnate materials. Emp merits gained from Vet rewards can be converted to merits to buy a whole host of other things. And back in the day, players could still get recipe and salvage drops from those non-AE farm maps as well as XP and influence. They were used to power level alts all the time. Beyond that, AE was just slightly more convenient than PI portal mission maps. You are making a very large assumption that there will not be people moving back to those PI farms, and I still fail to see there the difference is between letting people continue to farm as they like in AE versus farming something like PI radios or portal maps. I do not think you are seeing that there is no difference in that regard and since there is no difference, why is this change even necessary?

Given the magnitude of the amount of word combinations that can be used in the English language alone, two million character names is insignificant. Sure, only a fraction of those characters may be actively played, but I will also bet real money only a fraction of a fraction of them have names someone else may want. This is unsympathetic and ignores quite a lot of the feedback provided here from role players who may be keeping lower level characters for any variety of reasons. Not to mention there are those who have no sympathy for others who cannot use a thesaurus or apply a little creativity to come up with another name. At least if the person who has a name you might want is still active, you can contact the player and work out some sort of deal for them to release the name for you. That seems fair too.

Incarnates did not exist when these maps were farmed prior to AE, so the comparison there is not an accurate one. Players used them to dual box and level up alts then just as they do with AE now. It just traded one venue for another. Whether that content was developer made or player made, players could then and still do make builds that easily overcome anything that can be thrown at them, regardless of who made the mission. New players can make a very simple hop into a public base from Atlas, spawn right at portal corp in PI and get into a portal mission farm and level to 50 with zero risk much like they can do with AE in Atlas. It is just a tiny bit longer of a trip to get to PI, but not much. That short trip really is not that much of an inconvenience. It is a trivial one at best. Also, as I recall, post Issue 9 drops were not any different on these maps as they were elsewhere, so not sure what you are getting at there.

As tiring as it is to keep saying this, I think it worthwhile. Farming Infernal, Dreck, Council portal maps etc all existed long before there was an AE. All of them allowed people to multi-box, progress everything worthwhile faster than any other method without ever having to leave a single zone. All AE did was put it under a different roof and make it a little more convenient. The net results are exactly the same. I am most likely in the minority here, but I do not see a reason for them to explain themselves here beyond "this is what we want to do, so take it or leave it." It is just going to lead to endless debate that will not change anyone's mind or affect the outcome of their decision in any way, so it seems a pointless exercise to me.

Are there any plans to add scaled up versions of existing weapons to Titan Weapons? Such as Katanas, Ninja Blades, Chinese swords etc?

I believe you are missing the point of what I am trying to say. Not everyone farms for convenience sake. And yes, many will move on to the old farming maps which as I pointed out above will result in the same thing as just keeping this in AE.

Not everyone farms purely for convenience though. I think this is a point that is lost among a lot of people.

I understand that much and I understand one cannot AFK farm effectively in PI radios or portal missions as they can in AE. My question is more general than those couple of points. To hopefully clarify, my fire farmers are going to be able to mow through enemies with no risk in maps like Infernal's lair and such as they can in AE fire farms. My defense capped characters will mow through Council radios or Council portal missions just as easily as they would in S/L farms in AE with no risk. In that regard, there is no difference to me if I am farming in AE or PI or whether I fighting designed enemies or not. All this change is doing is making the old farming maps more desirable than AE, and those maps are going to be superior to anything else, just as AE was. It is replacing one map with another. The end result is the same. Personally, I alternated every so often between PI missions and AE farms for variety. Sure, AE was more convenient being all under one roof, but that is easily replaced by just keeping select portal missions and logging out in Portal corp instead of AE or Pocket D. Ultimately, I do not think this change is not going to drive people toward running a lot of other content, if that was one of the goals. Those who were interested in getting Vet levels and EMP merits and such from farming are just going to switch to another farming maps outside of AE. As I said, the net result is the same, they will still be segregated from everyone else, so I do not see any major difference here.

Fair enough on the AFK farming. However, builds that soft cap defense are just as effective in PI portal missions as they are in AE farms, so I am not sure there is any real difference in that regard. Yes, they are close enough to be the same and other than convenience, I do not see any significant difference. That is essentially my point. If the activity is generally the same, what difference does it make whether this is taking place in AE or in PI or wherever else? Is going back to Council map farming going to solve the perceived problems here? I personally do not think so.

To be fair, this is not the "play how you want to play" style as you were suggesting. I am just being honest here, I really see no difference in farming PI portal maps or radio missions as any different than farming in AE. They are both the same activity, just done in a different venue. It seems quite ridiculous to me to have wasted the time on removing Vet Levels and EMP merits from AE farming only to encourage farming outside of AE. I have yet to see anyone provide an acceptable answer as to what the real difference is. New players can just as easily hop on a PI portal farm and level to 50 as they could going to AE in Atlas Park. The end result is still the same, so in that regard, this change is a complete and utter waste of time in my opinion. If they want to stop farming, then have the courage, bite the bullet and just get rid of XP and inf from non-Dev Choice arcs in AE and be done with it. In doing so, accept the consequences of that action and accept it will drive a not insignificant amount of players away from the game. Those left can wonder where all those players went while trying to find seven other people to team with for content.

Have to say this is very, very cool. Draw animations for Titan Weapons and Katana are a bit clunky but overall far superior to what we have now. Dual blades looks sweet! With Katana, it looks like the sword appears in the drawing hand briefly, disappears then is drawn as expected. Overall very nicely done! 😀

I agree it looks very hokey. It seems like it is a strange variation on the weird run that the ghouls use in Praetoria. Definitely not something I would call "parkour" for sure. I understand that there is no changing it, so I guess all I can say is yes, it works. I also wanted to say the Tough walk looks off too. It seems like you have a load in your pants and are walking a bit funny from it. The rest all look good to me and work as expected.

I suppose the inverse of this is that if a name you wanted was already taken, you could add the Xs to yours instead.

Why not just have it update all characters as active on all shards upon login? There has to be some tie between account and characters on a shard.

Look bad to whom? Again, friends who know you already know your global handle and would easily see it was not you. Your global handle cannot be used by another player.

Well, many are advertised on the forums here and there are people who do advertise them in-game as well. Was not looking to start an argument over it. Just asking a question.

This may get cumbersome to keep track of having to scroll through several pages of characters on the character select screen. Since it seems technically "impossible" to link account activity here, would it be possible to have a button on the character select to flag all characters as active? This would save the effort of logging in and out of multiple characters.

City of Heroes is not Facebook (thank God), so the analogy does not work. Duplicate naming exists in other games I play like STO and I personally have never seen this problem. As you pointed out, the get global name command exists and most people will just ignore said person and see the global name getting added to their ignore list in the chat window. As far as someone spoofing the character of another person, I really do not see the issue here. Only speaking for myself here, but everyone I team with regularly already know me in real life and/or my global handles, so if someone were to be spoofing me my friends would know it was not really me. Add to that, the other account would be the one getting reported and moderated, not mine.

This is now offering a disincentive for new players to experience and use any of the wonderfully crafted bases built by players that are open to the public. Was that the goal?

Which begs the questions, why was this change needed in the first place and why is farming this better than just doing the same thing only in AE? Same activity, just a different venue.

If your goal was farming Vet levels in AE then yes. For those people, all this change is going to do is shift them back to portal mission farming in PI. With that said, I personally do not see the necessity for this change and I feel it was a complete and utter waste of time to do.