Mjolnerd

The issue there is that DfB has a minimum of 4 players, and the queue starts the trial as soon as it hits that minimum. Pre-forming guarantees a full team (and some control over what kind of a team you're forming, not that team composition is a huge deal in DfB). You can always choose to join in-progress events, I guess, but that's just another level of "but if I do it this way, I get exactly what I want/expect" you're asking people to ignore.

Check the most recent announcement in the Announcements forum for the, um... announcement.

Imagine being the guy who delivers the water there. "Okay, I've got a pen, I'm ready to write down the directions. Alright, so I go in, then left, up the stairs, down the hall, to the elevator... which only goes up one floor? Wait, is that right? It is? Okay, sure, whatever. Then I cross the lobby, up two more flights of stairs, through someone's office, and down another hall, to another elevator that also only goes up one floor. Hold on, do all of the elevators in this building only go a single floor at a time? And none of them are located anywhere near each other? And you need a dozen ten-gallon bottles delivered to which floor? The thirty-fifth, you say? Yeah, that's not happening. Have a nice day."

This is going to cause me to re-think... well, a lot. I've been waiting until 35 (or, y'know, 32) to switch to IOs. Man, planning was so much simpler when I was loaded with more Inf than I knew what to do with from several years of play. Thanks for this!

People are using the Sewer Network zone on purpose for DfB staging lately -- there's usually only one instance of it, so you don't have to constantly worry about which copy of Atlas Park each individual member of the team is in, and you can use the Broadcast channel to reach everyone there at once. Everybody just goes to the sewers as their "all in the same zone" place. Plus it keeps them all from crowding Ms Liberty and getting in the way of everyone else (at least in theory); most folks are running several DfBs in a row, and there's a trainer inside the trial first thing, so there's really no need to run back and forth anyway.

It was never really a major issue on the whole until trainers started offering tailoring services too. That was supposed to make things easier, but it just means that now people trying to grab a quick level and move on get stuck navigating a huge crowd of people spending twenty minutes or more tweaking their costumes to perfection. (There's an Icon in Atlas Park now, people! Make use of it!) The worst I remember was on Virtue, before Dark Astoria was converted to an Incarnate zone; people used the Vanguard base in the Rikti War Zone as a staging area for trials since it was hero/villain neutral (most servers used Pocket D, but Virtue being the RP server, there were other things happening there). So OF COURSE sixty or so people would end up just gathered in front of the Lady Grey, who also happened to be right next to the trainer, who also happened to be right next to the vendor, so anybody who needed to access any of that had to fight their way through an enormous throng of bodies and mastermind pets and auras and powers and lag. At one point I tried suggesting on the old forums that maybe Incarnate raid staging could be done in one of the many large, empty conference rooms in that same section of the base instead of directly in front of things others needed, and was pretty much blown off. Luckily, eventually all that moved to the special Incarnates-only zone, but for a while there it was really rough.

Not that I don't understand the sentiment, but I see that currently your post count stands at 1. You've chosen to post one thing here, and to make that one thing a behind-the-back attack on someone you had differences with seven years ago. Classy.

Yeah, all glibness aside, the point of the old test server was for the developers to test things -- that we got to transfer non-permanent versions of our existing characters over and use it to try before we'd buy was a side benefit, but never the purpose. I don't see one happening in a version of the game with no active development.

No, I got it. See the literal first sentence of my previous post. The rest was just me expanding on that point. And? See my previous "two minutes" comment, then multiply my support for the policy as-is by... what's it take to do what you're describing, fifteen seconds? Let's multiply it by eight then. The math works out nicely. Nope. Nope nope nope. This defeats the purpose altogether. It would be fine in a ten-characters-per-server situation, but a thousand? And the ability to create more accounts for free? This would allow someone (let's say me) to sit on an effectively infinite number of names, and lock all of them down, preventing anyone else from having access, all for two minutes total once a month. Tying it to the slot/character forces people to, at the very least, only do it with the names they actually care about enough to spend a little time and effort to maintain. It prevents hoarding. Every new server launched dilutes the player base a little. For a while, we needed that -- we had too many players for the server(s) at the time to handle. Now that we've got that evened out, adding too many servers creates the opposite problem. Especially since time, lack of active development, and the presence of other, non-Homecoming servers will eventually thin out the total number of players anyway. A new server is not the answer to every problem. You don't like the naming policy? New server! You don't like Enhancement Diversification? New server! You don't want to play with AE farmers? New server! You only want to play with AE farmers? New server! At some point people just need to accept that they aren't going to get a special server tailored to their personal likes and dislikes unless they set one up themselves.

I don't have enough experience with Ill/Rad to properly compare the two options here, but I did run a mostly-solo level 50 Ill/Dark back on Virtue, and from what I remember, it was fantastic for soloing... past about level 30 or so. Before that was pretty painful, but there was a point where it all sort of "clicked" and suddenly everything was very smooth and a lot of fun. I may not have been soloing AVs like you hear about /rads doing, but it was quite solid for everyday mission play and the occasional task force with friends.

The policy as announced is fine. I camp names all the time, and even I'm happy with it. I can sit on a name for a couple days, even a few weeks, while I figure out what to do with it... but not forever. That's fair to me, and to others who might also want it. If I absolutely must keep a name but can't actually be bothered to play the character, it takes two minutes of my time to log in, then immediately log back out. (And no, a thousand character slots don't mean that's 2000 minutes of my time. It means two minutes today, two minutes tomorrow, four minutes the next day if I do two characters....) It takes less than an hour of play to lock down a name for three months. If I didn't use my cell phone number for three months, they'd give it away to someone else. I don't know why I'd expect a character name in an MMO to be treated as more valuable than that. It takes a single evening of play to lock down a name for an entire year. A year! If anything, this policy is too generous to name-squatters like me.

And an alarmingly formal posting format to you as well, sir!

Street Justice. Wait, no! Kinetic Melee. Or maybe Staff Fighting? No, I've got it: Beast Mastery. Nothing beats "arresting" a supervillain by throwing a bird at them. Nothing.

Personally, I like the name-release policy as-is. And that's from someone with quite a few names camped at the moment because I think I might possibly want to use them maybe in the future perhaps. Give me a little time, but if they go bad sitting in the fridge, I'm happy to have them thrown out.

I understand the sentiment, really, I do. And for new players, or players who weren't playing late in the game's life, when the DFB was introduced, I think this is (mostly, see below) good advice. For me, though? I played from a few months after the game launched until the day it was shut down. I created hundreds of characters and had dozens of level 50s. I've done all of that low-level stuff -- even Twinshot's tedious watch-instead-of-playing arc -- many, many times. I know how basic game systems like contacts and arcs and merits and finding a team work. I don't need to go through that again. So yes, in the absence of a method to skip that stuff altogether, I'm going to take the option to fast-forward past it. I want to play the character I want to play, at a level when they actually play as I expect/want/remember. I DfB'd like crazy when I made my Illusion controller a few days ago, because pre-Phantom Army, Illusion is a totally different (lesser) thing. I did it again for my Arachnos Soldier, because I wanted to play a Crab Spider and shoot lasers in all directions and do cool Crab Spider stuff, and was very, very un-enthusiastic about slogging through 24 levels normally as that most-common and least-interesting form of video game protagonist, "some regular dude with a gun," to get there. Besides that, DfB teaches one very important skill for, again, both new players and players who weren't around at the end: using the LFG queue/Team-Up Teleporter. "Hey, guys, which contact to we go to to start this?" We don't, we just start it. I went out on the LFG channel yesterday about starting the Summer Blockbuster and specifically said "Don't send a tell, just queue up" and still got a bunch of tells asking me for an invite. Because those people had never joined a team any other way. That's not a huge thing, but once those players hit level 50 and want to do Incarnate content, well, that's something they'll probably want to know how to do. DfB teaches that early. Microsoft included Minesweeper with early versions of Windows largely to teach users about right-clicking, then did the same with Solitaire to train people in the use of drag-and-drop. DfB serves a similar purpose.

To test what?

Pine's says no. They only take generic IOs, not sets. Sadly, that one has to go in an actual chosen power. (Sprint and the various Sprintlets won't take it either.) I do question taking Mystic Flight so early, though. I know we can take travel powers at level 4 now, but it seems like other things would be a lot more useful when exemping, especially with jetpacks and such available from P2W vendors. Most content wasn't designed with the assumption of a travel power until level 14 anyway. I'm pretty new to doing anything with a build besides finding one on the forums and shamelessly copying it, but here's my take. I dropped Mystic Flight for Combat Jumping so it can still take the -Knockback IO, but with added Defense and Immob protection (End use increases a little, but should be manageable -- could a Performance Shifter proc fit in here somewhere?), and I moved that to level 14, with almost everything between 4 and 14 moving forward by two levels. Should make things more effective when exemped, and make this one a little more level-able in general. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1508;721;1442;HEX;| |78DA6D94CB4F135114C6EFB403B585B6941628EF8720D8C2B49547625C9868D5980| |0214ADC361319606498369D36D19D9AB8C447DC2BB07265E20B8CAEFC170C0A287F| |800F50D7BEEAE99CAFD0C44E32F9CD9C7BBFEF9C73E7DE99B89AAC7D7CEEC64921F| |94E1BAA65A592DAAC66CE6859D7A49ACB675543142F17DD9DA591D4A9FCECAC32AD| |2F6AA909D5D4337943CDE969B36D7FFC826ACE69334A32AF1AA929DDCAA50D2B70D| |E9CD7B29A99534A0FB553E9B4A18C6B6A4637E7FCA517925BF37AC663BF5FCC68DA| |0CCF3BABE74CCDB2026732FA6525A9661728B595D3B2D7C254D900DD1B2181AB204| |40B21218B44DD7EAC4A2C115A64E1B8CD94EF807799D5F78841E21B87106E591C23| |AD04AD74C569CF092F305B0C7091D9668269E630699DD03A4708D54E71A8C4886CC| |FF10C813166ED2DCA1B92C53BEAA30ADAAA4FECD7F119FCC2ECFE0AEE827BCCF7A4| |7549AC75AD39D8779DE97B09BE62D6BDE67C754F25BBEF11AAD9CDDAC226F9D4602| |D6B26247B2D1B690B78795C78771C766C8BE6F951ABFF04F7575FE213C9CE13827F| |689BD7B5F127B15D16DBA40DB0D619D8E09A7ADF839BCCFE2DE618D516E4B952708| |CFD63E007F269E0BA1C0DA31C6B04C3C581B02C4649DFC47AB9E9197FEFC3CFC117| |E01AB3779DF9917C9B91B3F92DF79BC0DE08D05AB4A2EF560FF7D95FC33CEA057DA| |09F19412D3DA46D876F7B94F76907B843393BB91767E712E7ECBA0F4EF277E89A66| |06C9A7073DF53CE0758A3C049799832BE02AF338AD431F347D51DE7747064105DCC| |5DAEF31AF3B8BE74BB23503BF28D6417EBF99437FC0BF6081F9C82B4414FB271AE7| |DE6E928F021F053E31F8C4E093804F023EF5D4631C7B2EDECD3E6DF2FFE73C521E1| |BE258BC422C5121365C21365221365E1E73537D3E594C1663383353F2FEFF4248F8| |9EEE83FF4061CF43E3E84582E7F7F2D825C93E17DFCA63033CEFC7414C92BA38E60| |097E910B99163A5EC79B5ECF91F2BA7D3AE| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

I'm about 80% sure the in-game text on the respec screen when you first get the choice to go Bane/Crab literally warns you that this exact thing will occur.

EVE Online has turned into a trash fire several times due to lack of oversight/control/accountability. Good thing this is an entirely different game; maybe we should even treat it as one.

I don't really know about other servers, but on Excelsior(!), the P2W rep in Atlas Park is surrounded by a near-constant mob of people, to the point that it's sometimes a pain to maneuver over to her and/or click her instead of another player. This is only going to get worse the more things she starts selling. Besides that, since the XP/Inf adjustments she sells are going to be timed, it's going to be a pain for higher-level characters who want to take advantage of them to constantly travel back to Atlas (increasing load in that zone and forcing even more instances of it to be created), then return to whichever zone they're currently doing missions in. Adding a few more vendors in other zones -- I'm thinking one near Blue Steel in King's Row, another at Blyde Square in Steel Canyon, maybe someone near the train station (or outside Wentworth's) in Talos, and at Portal Court on Peregrine Island on blueside, and around the arena in Port Oakes and outside (or inside!) the casino in St Martial on red -- would spread the load around, keep the line for any given vendor shorter, and not force people into unnecessary travel.

Don't characters at the level cap earn "double inf" anyway since they already aren't earning XP? This shouldn't affect them one way or the other.

It's very, very easy to do in-game. Assuming you want to move things one at a time, and that them switching places instead of actually re-ordering isn't a huge pain. But we have effectively infinite slots now. It's going to be a huge pain sometimes, for some players (me). If I had seen this last night, it would have saved me 20 minutes. Bookmarked. Thanks!

Does there exist anywhere a guide to creating a build via Mid's/Pine's? I mean, I understand how to use the program, I just don't really know what to do with it, if that makes sense. I know which buttons to push and what the different features do, but I haven't a clue how to even start actually putting together a decent build in terms of method. (Like how I know how to play chess, but don't know how to play chess, ya know?) Is there a typical procedure to it? Do you usually start with one or two specific IO sets based on what you're trying to accomplish and sort of work backward from there to figure out how many slots to give each power? I'm sure a lot of it comes down to experience, and the technique is different depending on the build itself, powersets, AT, goals, and a hundred other things, but man... a little nudge in the right direction would go a long way toward me being self-sufficient and not having to comb through the old CoH forums via the Wayback Machine to find what other people did years ago.

I've suggested this too, and I still think it could work. As before, I nominate Indomitable, because it's also the unofficial PvP server, and the two designations would naturally help each other grow; more villains mean more opponents for heroes in PvP zones, more PvP opponents for heroes mean more villains.

I play both heroes and villains, depending on the character. The heroes see vastly more play, though, because teaming is such a pain redside. Unfortunately, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and/or vicious cycle: People like me play heroes more because it's easier to find teams of heroes. It's easier to find teams of heroes because people like me play heroes more.