ForeverLaxx

It's things like this for why I suggested in my initial post on this topic that Bases need some kind of tutorial, even if it's just a manual to read through. Most of what you can do is unintuitive and explained nowhere inside the game, and many of the "secrets" aren't even widely known by the playerbase either.

My point was that your counterpoint was meaningless. The "existing reward structure" for Council Caves, for instance, isn't going anywhere. I never said "lower Council and raise Carnies", I just said "raise Carnies" because they're more of a pain to fight and nearly every time (I use nearly because some people just don't like fighting them for other reasons) people decline to fight Carnies is because of the relative difficulty not being compensated by an increased reward. In short, fighting Carnies just isn't worth the time if the reward doesn't match the challenge. So make it match the challenge. People might actually stick around for Carnie missions for once. Other reward sources don't have to be reduced and I never said they should. You can keep playing whatever fantasy you prefer and sometimes you'll get more rewards for it than what you're getting now, but you'll never get less than what you're getting now. How anyone can fight against something like that I have no idea. It's like you all believe that increasing rewards for content that's already more difficult will just make everyone do the harder content and leave you all alone in your Council Cave or something. For what it's worth, I play this game almost entirely solo and don't care what I'm fighting. The "reward" for me is just seeing my character do things and realizing my concept in motion. I'm not asking for the game to be harder because I don't think it needs to be harder; I'm just saying that for people who want to fight hard things, they already can but choose not to because it's not worth the time to them. Increased exp would push things into the "might be worth the time" direction. We already get more rewards for a higher difficulty or people wouldn't run +4/x8. How is that a fallacy when it's already true? How is an increase in exp gains for Carnies due to their relative increase in difficulty over Council not in line with how the reward structure currently works with team modifiers? Are you aware that the Freakshow give more exp per kill than usual because sometimes they stand back up and that's why they were the old farming target back when we could dumpster dive? "More rewards for higher difficulty" is how the system already works. The only place it doesn't work is across enemy factions where one faction is intrinsically more difficult to deal with than another and I think those groups having higher exp values to offset the added time and trouble it takes to deal with them seems fair to me. People seem to say they want challenge, but they ignore the challenge that already exists because it's not worth their time. So make it worth their time. There's nothing sinister, or difficult, about that.

Those options already exist. Notice I said nothing about making them harder, just making them more rewarding to fight to compensate for their innate difficulty. So? We're already in that situation. I don't see a problem if someone wants to build a full "psy defense/resist" build to tackle Carnie Farms if such a thing would even exist in the first place. My proposal of increasing rewards for difficult mobs is not meant, and was not intended to, "create variety" regarding farm locale. I have nothing against people that farm; the point was to offer reward incentive for playing harder content that's already harder than what people are comfortable running on +4/x8. It seems people who clamor for harder content aren't content with the hard content we already have because the rewards aren't commensurate with the added risk. So increase the rewards.

Honestly, if the primary concern is "more challenge for more reward", then we have an obvious solution that doesn't hurt anything going on today and only incentivizes/rewards players for stepping outside of the Council Cave every now and then. All that needs to happen is to evaluate the various enemy groups and adjust their rewards according to their difficulty relative to other enemy groups in that level. If that's too much of a blanket change, then adjust individual mobs within a faction that are more difficult than a more "standard" foe is to fight. Eidolons and Cadavers for the Vahz, sweeping increase in rewards for Carnie or Malta, etc. You get the option to fight the tougher enemy groups we already have while being rewarded more for it, without punishing people who just want to "punch Nazis", as it were. Would the xp/min fighting harder foes match the Council Cave runs? Maybe, maybe not, but the point of challenge is to be challenged, not put stuff on farm -- at least this would somewhat compensate for that challenge to at least bring up the question.

The old, now "discontinued" edition of Mids (version 2.something) never had a problem updating from the folder on my Desktop but I've considered this to be a potential culprit. Normally I wouldn't move it from the default location but it wants to put it into AppData for some reason and that annoyed me.

You do know that "Basic IOs" have a strength based on their level, right? 25s are slightly weaker than SOs, 30s are basically just SOs, and 35s are slightly stronger SOs. Where do you plan on drawing the line, and why does a line even need to be drawn when the system is already fine the way it is?

Seems to be the only thing that works for me, unfortunately. But hey, I got a screenshot this time. The "ring" around Complete never stops circling and I have to kill the process to get out of everything. Just thought I'd give you a heads up, again, about this problem. EDIT: If you were wondering why the update download notification is cut off, it's because it pops up like that on its own. For some reason it's never centered on the program, but I don't think that actually matters

Part of it is to allow easier clicking on allies during group content, in particular, group content where said ally isn't in your team so you can't just click on their name in the team window. If players could stack their models on top of each other, clicking someone would be virtually impossible. It could also just be a simple matter of applying an impermeable box to the players so that they can't overlap with trainers, shop NPCs, contacts, etc for the same reason at outlined above and that caused the "side effect" of players blocking each other too. With PvP in the game, the inability for player characters to share the same space is even more important. Interestingly, enemy NPCs used to be able to stack on each other in the same spot, or nearly in the same spot, and that was changed after "dumpster diving" PL methods became widespread (in combination with an aggro cap, since you could also aggro an entire zone/mission at once back then). Unless they can find a way to "flag" the box on or off for specific areas and specific NPCs/player models, it's probably not going away. I'm sure any change to it right now would change it everywhere.

Yes, it would bring things closer to homogenization by definition, but "only 3 points" just changes what gets through and what doesn't. The entire Mez system is binary by design; it either works or it doesn't. Three points might stop minions from affecting you easily without enough around to stack the effect, but LTs and higher will likely override what meager defense that is and render it functionally useless. At worse, the existence of even that small amount of mez protection could pull on the "power budget" table and cause other things to be adjusted to compensate for the added "safety". I'd be more willing to accept a level of mez protection themed to individual sets, such as Stun protection if you use Energy Manipulation, but not every set has an easy mez to flag "immunity" to nor does every AT have the sort of powerset something like that could slot in. As a primarily Generic IO player due how slowly I actually level (intentionally, mind you), I just don't see the overwhelming need to push everything into the category of "can easily tackle +4/x8 content solo". My personal opinion is that too many ATs can do this already and would prefer power be lowered rather than raised, but I'm aware that's an unpopular opinion. Highly specialized builds for soloing tough content should be the exception rather than the norm, and this comes from someone who actually does raids solo in other games. There's a level of knowledge, prep work, and personal skill and timing involved to pull that sort of thing off, and while CoH has the knowledge and prep angle down, that knowledge is so wide-spread and accessible and the skill required to pilot it is so functionally nonexistent that many players just seem to assume that "soloing raids" is the baseline for comparison between character capability. Frankly, I feel like much of this debate is centered around some idea that every AT needs to appeal to one particular way to play and I don't really ascribe to that notion. This is a bit of an aside, but I left those two out because I'm fairly certain you didn't play Stalkers due to the nature of the Hide mechanic "ruining flow" and Sentinels need work to find an identity.

I was on the previously most recent version, whatever number that was. 3.0.2 or whatever. I didn't take a screenshot but I put in the relevant information. It just says that access to /.zip is denied and the updater "circle" doesn't advance past Complete regardless of whether or not I close the error window. The updater never stops, does not restart the program, and the only way out is to End Process in the Task Manager. Not even a right-click/close from the active program bar would work. I selected the Check for Updates option in the program. Interestingly the window that popped up saying there was an update was completely different from the one prior, as was the update progress indicator (which, again, never got past saying it was Complete). Win7 Ultimate 64bit. I'm going to point out as well that whenever I run the installer, the default location wants to send it to the AppData folder and I always choose a different installation path for it to a folder on my desktop instead. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I don't like stuff trying to put itself into AppData since I don't have that folder visible.

I don't know what you guys have done to this thing, but every time you push an update I have to uninstall then reinstall with the new update. Every single time I run the in-program updater it throws some error that blocks it from updating. This time is said access to the /.zip file was denied and the only way to get out of the program was to kill it with Task Manager as it hung on "complete" indefinitely. Thankfully a clean install seems to work but I fear I'll have to do this every single time from now on and I don't know why.

The amount of options we can put in a base now when compared to live is incredibly daunting and difficult to really get a feel for what you can accomplish. I like the myriad options, don't get me wrong, but when I open the menu to finally work on my mega-base I just get paralyzed by options and end up opting out. Perhaps that's a failing of my own where I insist everything be as perfect and optimal in the design as possible, or maybe it's a fault of how overbearing the sheer number of options there are and what you can do with them. I run into a similar problem regarding Path of Exile and their passive tree, but at least that system has clear build goals and concise guides to achieving the character you're trying to make. As it stands, I think there has to be some kind of better way to sort and categorize objects but I can't readily think of one at the moment. There's just so many things to look at it can be hard to narrow categories down into something easier to parse. Something else to inform players about the "cheat codes" and methods to achieve specific things would be great too. I know some players still think they have to stack desks to get things above the floor, or don't know you can build outside the base, or don't know how to get outside the base in the first place, or don't know that power/control features aren't required for 99% of the objects any longer, etc. I don't know if it's possible to put some kind of "tutorial" for building a base, even in a basic text popup with an opt-out button (so you're not spammed every time you re-enter, like the "no fighting zone" popup for Pocket D), that details the modifications and improvements HC has over the Live version. But if I can only choose one thing, I'd really like a better sort/search option for the countless objects. A pipedream feature could be "pre-fab" objects/floors that come built as a single object originally comprised of many smaller objects to achieve particular looks/effects but I'm sure that's likely not even possible.

Tolerance for solo speed is going to change from person to person. I, personally, have had zero issues soloing my "squishy" ATs because I don't insist on running at breakneck speed constantly and carry a Break Free for emergencies. If you're going to judge an entire AT by how easy it is to turn your brain off, hold W, and roll face on your attack keybinds then of course you're going to prefer some kind of Scrapper/Brute/Tanker. Different ATs bring different playstyles, feels, concepts, and power fantasies to the table. There's nothing wrong with that and any change that pushes the ATs closer to some universal homogenized mean isn't something I personally want to see.

My biggest contention with the "the game needs to balance around IOs" is... what IOs? What builds? As soon as you start deciding that specific builds are required, those become the only builds anyone makes. Sure, most players are probably running Defense-capped, high-Recharge builds because they're numerically effective at gunning down Council caves with the highest level of efficiency... but when you start building the whole game under the expectation that all players are going to do that, you eventually craft a game where all players must do that. That's not a world I want to be in. One of my biggest draws towards this game, after I settled in way back in the beforetimes, was that I could play and build my characters however I wanted and still feel like I'm doing something. If you choose to "balance around IOs" then you're taking that feature away from the players. I cannot get behind that direction.

I just look at it from the angle one does when giving/receiving tech support. How many times are you asked to make sure the device is plugged in? How many times are you asked to just reset the device? How many times are asked to close the program and re-launch it? 85% of the problems brought up to tech support are solved by those answers even if the underlying problem that caused the error was never addressed. "Train your levels" and "don't be in an SG base" are the equivalent to "turn it off and on again". Whether it's a true solution or not, it fixes, at least temporarily, whatever problem was occurring. So why shouldn't they be suggested as solutions to get players back in the game having fun?

Mmm, necro threads. My biggest complaints with Dark Blast as a Blaster primary are the mismatched cone ranges, mismatched cone angles, and the primarily DoT nature of the set itself. The damage is actually very comparable to other sets, but the problem is that it takes too long to see that damage. That said it's still one of the "safer" Blaster sets due to the -ToHit and is strong in 1v1 situations because of it.

I only take the ST Immobilize if I feel I need the damage, and to that end, the damage they deal just happens way too slowly. 9 seconds for the full delivery is too long, in my opinion. And, because I only take them when I feel I want more damage, they're completely superfluous on Dominators for me unless the Control set I picked is very light on control powers that lock an opponent in place (read: heavy on stuns). The ST Immobilize is also often respec'd out of later once you have a more fluid suite of powers, slots, and enough damage from elsewhere to make the glacial damage of the ST Immobilize no longer necessary. Sometimes I keep them for AVs as I think they have lower resistance to immobilizes (though that might no longer be accurate today, I haven't looked), but not very often.

I feel like the point Ultra is making is that there are people who clamor for "more challenge" while they sit inside Council Radio Missions all day instead of fighting enemy groups that can actually pose a challenge. Vahz just happen to be the "low level" challenge enemy that everyone hates fighting.

Is there a reason why the Defense and Resist values listed in the power information window all seem to have their display numbers shifted by a couple decimals? Things like Fire Shield showing 0.32% Resist instead of 32% is weird. The totals tab still shows the correct values, but the individual powers all seem to be displaying improperly.

It sounds like all they're getting at is once people are IO'd out to the gills, "all teams" just rush forward with soft capped defenses and Nukes/AoEs used on a very short cycle for every single spawn. In that very specific case, Tanks have a hard time shining due to lower damage values even though they get wider AoEs, and their "advantage" of having higher base defenses and caps is offset by Brutes having the same cap (and really, everyone else regarding actual Defense rather than Resistance). That said, this is a very particular way to play and usually involves chaining the same easy, boring, radio/paper mission with Council or some similarly designed group since EXP rates aren't adjusted very well to account for enemy group variance. You don't see people doing this for Malta, Carnies, Rularuu, Nemesis, etc because those groups have quirks with who to target first that slows down a group and punishes people who aren't paying any attention at all. Even in the easier content, you're not "useless". You're still more able to shrug off any damage that does get through, when compared to a Blaster, and Taunt is great at bringing in ranged groups and stopping mobs from running off more often. If you do any other content, you're a good asset to any team. It just sounds like your buddy is very narrowly focused on running the simplest, safest, high-level content.

Chances are, your multiple endurance cost reductions in your attacks aren't helping as much as you think. While one is usually fine for attacks costing around 8-15 endurance each, powers that cost less than this by default aren't usually worth putting reduction into, and adding more to the ones that do cost more only drop your costs by 1-2 points or less. If you're strapped for slots, consider running 2 slotted Stamina and 2 slotted Health. Put the Performance Shifter Proc + Performance Shifter Endurance Mod (for an easy 2 piece movement bonus) in Stamina, then go for the Panacea Proc + Miracle Proc in Health. All of these procs perform better, or equal, to a standard Endurance Mod. Numina's is actually weaker for the purposes of recovery than a regular End Mod in Stamina, so if you need more than the above, then go with a third slot in Stamina before adding a third to Health. Bear in mind that if you have other +recovery passives in your powersets, you can add more Performance Shifter procs to them (up to 5 total), and if you have a +regeneration/health passive that takes healing sets you can put in a Numina's there without adding additional slots to your build. For reference, in regards to Stamina, the hierarchy for recovery bonuses is Panacea Proc > Performance Shifter Proc > Miracle Proc = End Mod Enhancement > Numina's. If a power that provides a larger recovery boost than Stamina is involved, the value of an End Mod enhancement can move higher than this flow (as it's modifying a larger base number), just like if it's weaker it can move lower in value than even Numina's. All of that aside, something seems off with regards to your issues. If you're slotting that much endurance reduction and you're still having problems, then are you using enhancements that are at least SO in strength? Are you leaving Hurricane on the entire time (it's very endurance-heavy, even when slotted)? Are you throwing out AoE powers even against single foes? Are your attacks slotted to also deal enough damage to defeat foes in fewer activations? There's a lot of questions here.

I'm going to guess it has something to do with being unable to purchase the Pocket D teleporter as it's been removed and replaced with LRT which requires one additional step to unlock Pocket D as a destination. Though, honestly, this person just sounds like they never want to leave Atlas Park if they can't just teleport anywhere from it after running DFB to 16/getting PL'd in AE and buying the appropriate P2W powers. I hate to be this dismissive but I have hard time wrapping my head around the idea that something having one extra, simple step is somehow taking things far enough to be a major inconvenience to them otherwise.

After reinstall/uninstalling multiple times, I decided to let it install to the default directory in Users/AppData. This time, when clicking the update option, the error still came up but when I just ignored that popup and the "successfully updated" window came up, I clicked "okay" to restart Mids and it restarted after a few seconds on its own. It did open the newly updated version, so I don't know what that error coming up is. It seemed ignoring it completely when installed to the default location allowed the updater to restart the program, though.

Frankly, I think all of the TFs with extended chains of "defeat alls" at various (and sometimes the same) locations need to be trimmed pretty heavily. Citadel and Synapse, for instance, come immediately to mind. Depending on the story of the TF, I think it would be better if they at least took place primarily in the zone that the contact is located in. Having 95% of Synapse take place in Steel Canyon is strange, particularly because most of the TF is done through instancing. I get that Steel is a lower level than Skyway for random mobs and you pretty much need a travel power to get around Skyway effectively so it was originally stationed in Steel, but those days are in the past -- you get travel powers sooner if you want them, jet pack/steam jump are free, Posi gives you a free jetpack that you can keep to use when needed, etc. That said, I don't think every TF needs to be split into two like Posi's was. I don't mind that Posi is split, as it was done in a way that makes some sense, but not all of them can support that design and retain the original story of the TF. As an aside, it would also be nice if redside got a TF in the Posi range, even if it was just a small one. Having nothing until 15/20 makes it more abandoned in the early parts of the game than it needs to be.

Problem is, I get the "update installed correctly and will restart" popup too, but the error box never goes away until I choose an option to close that window. Mids also doesn't restart either like it says it's going to so I don't know what's going on.