Dr. Gemini

First of all, though I agree with jubakumbi in the bulk of what he had to say I don't feel that anything in this was a put down or insulting to me. However, I do feel you misunderstand my point. As I said, I have numerous heroes running around fully formed in my head. I can most certainly alter a character's origin to fit into the Rogue Isles setting, or Praetoria for that matter. That's the point. Alter. There are several hero concepts I have that require villain ATs to come close to their powersets. I'd have to completely change who they are supposed to be in order to have them even do any of the early missions. Blueside, I don't have to alter anything. Its not about what CAN be done. Its about WHY should it have to be done. What is the payoff for having those ATs only available redside? What do I gain as a player? There is no story, no lore, nothing that makes any sense to tie them only to one side.

Which is why I said "MMOs I've played". So, you're saying that in these games you choose a faction or class and cannot play with any other faction or class? Never played WoW, didn't know you spent the game completely seperated from any other faction like City of originally did it. From your description, SwtOR is the exact opposite it was in beta and early game, as you only shared the tutorial zones with one other class and the rest, aside from some story missions tailored to your class here and there, shared zones and missions with every other class. Though, to me, the phrase "can have you go through the original content and never share content that another class can have" implies player choice. So if I CAN do what you say, that implies I CAN also do shared content. I see many similar qualifiers in your post that implies choice. Here's the bottom line on it all. I don't care what any other game does. I've run a tabletop FRPG since the late 70's, elves in my game bear no resemblance to elves in WoW. If I go to play an elf in WoW, I'm playing an elf as defined by the creators of the game, in a world defined by the creators of the game for a faction defined by the creators of the game. I cannot create my own backstory unless it fits within the lore of WoW. In SWtOR, I'm a star wars character in the star wars universe. I can't account for my jedi powers being due to being bathed in the radiation of a damaged hyperdrive or anything of the like. I am inside a story with very close boundaries. In City of, I can play whatever I like. As a creative person, I had an entire line of comic book heroes I created as a kid. I've recreated many that I remember in CoH. While City has its own lore, the boundaries within which I can operate are on the horizon. I can come from a secret city at the center of the earth, or a hidden land in the South American jungles or an undiscovered island in the Pacific even though none of these things appear in City of lore because none of these things is contradicted by City of lore. City of Heroes is about choices, about building the character you want. The only limit is the AT structure. For a game that is made to allow you to build the hero you want to try to restrict that by putting certain ATs redside only is ridiculous. Starting in the Rogue Islands, which is a very specific setting, completely destroys the ability to create the story you want. With no return on that restriction. City of Villains forces you into a specific mold, especially at the start. You cannot start as a hero in CoV. You can try to twist and justify your actions to be heroic, but if you actually read the text and follow the storylines you are at best a rogue. And what is the payoff for that restriction?

Which is why I said "MMOs I've played". So, you're saying that in these games you choose a faction or class and cannot play with any other faction or class? Never played WoW, didn't know you spent the game completely seperated from any other faction like City of originally did it. From your description, SwtOR is the exact opposite it was in beta and early game, as you only shared the tutorial zones with one other class and the rest, aside from some story missions tailored to your class here and there, shared zones and missions with every other class. Though, to me, the phrase "can have you go through the original content and never share content that another class can have" implies player choice. So if I CAN do what you say, that implies I CAN also do shared content. I see many similar qualifiers in your post that implies choice.

I put up several low volume recipes this morning for 100 inf. 1 of them sold. Others with bids outstanding did nothing. Its not about the inf, 100 is nothing, its the principal of the thing. I'm taking my time to list them, I could vendor or delete them faster, so at least throw me a few pennies for my troubles. If you won't even spend a measly 100 inf then why should I bother?

Where this thread belongs is one of those crey areas. I would council not being a luddite and leaving it right here with the rest of its family.

Most MMOs that I've tried have different starting areas for different classes. Those zones take up very little of your playing time and mostly act as tutorials before you are thrust into the mix with every other class. Then, later in the game, there are places or stories only certain classes can enter. Big difference between that and being forced into a certain area for your first, what, 20 levels, 30? I forget where tip missions start. You're comparing apples and oranges there.

DFB = Death From Below. Its a sewer-like trial they added near the end of the game's life.

It boils down to this, IMO. If you have to use unique access to something desirable as the only means of getting people to play specific content, then its the content that needs to be fixed. If it was enjoyable to most it would not need to use restrictions to gain players.

Thanks for the tip. This is why we (or at least me) need a market section of the boards again.

...and for years you could only play villain ATs redside, and the redside population was still just as low as it was after that restriction was lifted. I highly doubt a significant number of people would have started redside just to get a villain AT to blueside. Further, what good would that even do? So, more grouping for low level content, and still vast emptiness for anything past the point that a character can migrate. I just can't see any benefit to those restrictions.

You can still get random common salvage with tickets. For rare salvage you need reward merits from story arcs. Its pretty cheap in terms of merits, and there are only 3 or 4 choices so odds are good to get the one you want (of course, I just spent 35 merits to get the one I wanted, as I got 2 of every other piece on the list first). In fact, with 10 merits you just get 2, if neither is the one you need sell them both and buy the one you want, with nearly 1 million inf profit. From what I've seen, I don't see any reason loot wise to bother with AE. Story arc rewards are far better.

The wiki lists that story arc is being worth 33 merits, not 55. Merit rewards have been buffed in this iteration. I have a spreadsheet listing story arcs and merit rewards and so far everything I've run is anywhere from 40 to 100 percent higher than it was before the shutdown.

Yes. There were many things we did that now have an air of nostalgia and a feeling like something was lost. The other day I did the Hollows arcs with a character who could fly, and was feeling nostalgic for having to Hover my way around the place in the old days. There are numerous experiences we've had in the game that are gone now, and its kind of sad that those who came after will never get to experience them. However, I also know if I had taken hover instead of fly, the "joy" of reliving the past would have worn thin after a few minutes. I can't think of any of those "fond old memories" that I'm not happy we're changed over the course of the game's life.

There's a transfer character option on the character select screen for transferring to a new shard.

It would be cool to cycle through the holiday events for a few weekends, just because it has been so long. After all, time travel is a part of this game, and that means every question, on any subject, such as "why is it Christmas in May?" can be answered by "because time travel!"

exactly where did i say this ? I was raising the question, nowhere did i say IT SHOULD. i stated that to me it feels that something is missing. i never once said this is how it should be. My apologies. It wasn't you that set me off, but the ones that piped up after. I should have quoted one of them to be clear where my angst was being directed.

I had 128 characters, 3 of which were level 50, and it took me more years than I remember to even get my first 50. Almost every time I played I'd play a different character, and more than likely I'd switch once or twice during the play session. Even now, though I'm trying to force myself to play one at least up to 30, I've got nearly a dozen characters. Just that, so far, every time I get a character idea I roll it up and leave it in the tutorial. So I have an 18, a 13, and a bunch of 1s.

I'm in the states and wouldn't even know the servers are not on the continent if we hadn't been told. Hopefully the reverse will be true for you guys.

I'm with you on this one.

Luckily I have a face on both sides of my head. Can't sneak up on or talk about me behind my back. I can, and often do, talk about me behind my back but that face is a jerk, anyway.

Entitlement would be not having to earn it all, just buy it.

They were likely right about that too, although I'm not sure they felt that way. At some point they added an option to exchange inf for prestige at some rate, I forget what it was, I want to say 10000:1. That change meant my alt only base went from struggling to build teleporters to being able to get everything I wanted, and that was on every server as I had characters and bases on them all. That inf just came from selling enhancements on the market, not playing market games, so I'd say the economy was very broken.

I tend to really hate having to do the same thing on every character for something, especially in one of the few games that have so many different mission paths to level your characters with.

I'm in the US, but the servers have been as smooth for me as if they were on this continent. Hopefully, if you're going to use one of the moved servers, they will be for you as well once they move.

I don't think that is the case. I used to do the same thing in my arcs as you're describing, made the mission feel more dynamic. However, if I understand the issue with farms, it was having too many entities active at once. If I understood correctly, the patrols and ambushes in farms were designed to make most of the enemies active at once. That was not my intent in putting them in my AE arcs, its probably a safe bet it wasn't yours either?