ShardWarrior

Not at all. 😁

To be fair, optional hard mode content is not exactly turning the game into City of Dark Souls. There has to be new content added designed with fully kitted Incarnates in mind.

Each of them have something unique that sets them apart other servers. The costume editor on Rebirth as an example is vastly superior to any other server. New Dawn opening up signature power sets and freeform characters are unique and interesting options. Homecoming modernizing the back-end code sets the foundation for future longevity. Personally, I think it a shame the development community is so fractured.

Completely agree on this point and would add that it is more than clear rules are in no way applied evenly. Very sad to see and in my opinion this kind of unfriendly, unwelcoming environment is doing more harm than good.

I believe you hit the nail squarely on the head. 😁

I enjoyed it. Ending was predictable, but a good movie regardless.

I am not far behind you on that point for sure.

Well no, I understood you fine. I just disagree with you on the likelihood of it ever happening.

That is how I understood it as well. With that said, it was more eye-rolling/groan worthy than anything else in my opinion. Despite how the right-wing media is trying to blow this out of proportion, this scene could use a few minor edits as it did feel a bit forced with the social messaging. You can eliminate the "being cat called" line and replace "incompetent men" with "incompetent people" and the scene would have worked just the same.

I liked it. So far, so good. It was able to keep my interest and I am curious to see where the story goes. Despite how much I truly despise/loathe/truly hate how GoT ended, I will still choose House of the Dragon over that absolutely awful Rings of Power.

Farming iTrials is great for those who are into that sort of thing. For the solo player who primarily earned merits through running story arcs, this change does not address the loss of those bonus merits earned by converting EMP merits from vet levels. Converting allowed you to receive merits above and beyond what you would normally get for the story arcs themselves. Now those solo players are being herded into doing iTrials or other content that they may have little to no interest in to make up for that loss, or more likely encourage them to start AE farming more to make enough to buy whatever they want.

I read your post just fine. As you said, people may literally have thousands of EMP merits. So what? This has never been an issue before nor is it likely to ever be one. Sure, it is possible every player would cash out every EMP merit all at once. It is also possible to get struck by lightning or win the lottery. Again, even if that did happen, so what? That does not mean it will crash the economy. It should be clear now there are quite a lot of players who were converting these to reward merits for Winter IOs, ATOs or Purple Recipes or to buy recipes from the merit vendor for their alts, which is not going to cause inflation or whatever other detrimental thing you seem to be concerned about. No doubt there are already trillionaires in the game and the economy has not crashed because of them.

What other people chose to do with their time in game does not bother me in the least. If they want to waste away their time making disposable characters, more power to them. Chances are very likely I would never be on a team with them anyway. Given the chatter I have seen about this in game since the patch, there has been an excess of EMP merits for a few years now and the in game economy has never crashed because of them. It would not have crashed now either. One can only hope they never look into fixing Regen. 😉

I really like this idea! 😁 Would love to see some all new enemy NPC groups too.

I liked it. There were a few bits of eye rolling dialogue that were a bit contrived, but overall an enjoyable first episode.

I am in no way a saint here either nor have I ever claimed to be. I agree, sometimes contributing to the crap is necessary.

Totally agree here. I never cared for this idea, but I do understand the lore limitations around it.

Sad as it is to say, no unfortunately. Compassion and understanding and mutual respect seem to be in very short supply here, which I find very unfortunate.

Well again, I think you are misunderstanding the post. But whatever, you seem to be stuck on that and just want to insult people so good day to you. So I can see by subsequent posts that I was correct in my assumption.

I could very well be wrong, but I believe @Excraft is saying the content is not too hard, just tedious and therefore boring. As I read it, he also has done a few runs on the ASF hard mode to get badges with those in his circle. I have to agree, hard mode is not in any way "hard", just tedious and boring. Insulting people's build or ability to adapt is not helping the situation and just makes you look quite childish in my opinion.

So anyone who plays for different reasons and has different views on what is or is not "super" means they have a bad build and do not know how to play? That seems insulting to me.

To be honest, I do not see hard mode content solving this problem. At the core, it is still the same mundane content, just dialed up a few notches in an attempt to artificially create "challenge" when "tedium" is probably a better descriptor for it. At least to me, the higher difficult is not harder, just more tedious and thereby boring. I have to agree adding higher challenge options does not appear to have done anything to bring in new players, nor from what I can see brought back any existing players who have since left. That is not to say that there are not those who enjoy it, I just do not see them being anywhere near the "silent majority" as I too never see this advertised anywhere, and I belong to quite a lot of the public and private team forming channels.

From what I have read from the HC posts, taking advantage of the early EMP merits from Vet rewards is not an exploit. They were questioned about whether or not there should be a rule against it or not. Exactly this.

While true, I can confidently say that during the times I am online, I never see any hardmode TFs being advertised. Not in LFG and in none of the teaming channels I belong to.

Same thing for me. I have no AFK farmers nor do I have vast stockpiles of resources. Losing out on the conversion is just going to make me farm more to make up for that loss.