Llewellyn Blackwell

Its a Nemesis Plot!

Back on live my one and only chat ban came about for simply discussing the previous nights freshly aired episode of Southpark. When someone asked so what terrible crap did Cartman do this week, I had simply responded by describing cartmans actions on the episode, and repeated some of the terrible jokes he had made. Id even prefaced my posts by saying, " this is what cartman said/did" yet I ended up with a 3 day chat ban, and while it did chafe me a bit, I also understood that no matter it being me just repeating something Id seen and describing things, it still was me saying rude and crude things in open chat. When in open chat, one should always keep it as clean as one would around any civil minded public company which may include children and their rightfully protective parents.

They gave us a thread and let us go 10 pages talking about that subject. We had our chance to vent, and there was actually a pretty decent conversation in that thread, but ofcourse some folks had to throw a temper tantrum in the thread to force its closing. I will say that at this point its people trying to stir the pot no matter which side they may lean on. Come on guys you could even keep it couched in role play like some of the really bad actors do, that at least makes it tolerable to encounter to some extent. I mean hey if someone wants to role play as a fascist we have at least a couple in game villain factions they can RP being a member of and most of everlasting ime would suffer it in the spirit of RP.

There is a quaint song by an ol american country singer me thinks is applicable here. " Oh you got to know when to hold them." "Know when to fold them" "Know when to walk away" " Know when to run!" Have the good sense lad or lass and take yer medicine. And if you are going to try and argue against a injustice be sure to do so with deference and civility.

yep report if truly abusive and inappropriate for open chat channels, put em on ignore and trust in the GMs.

While I totes am in cuncurrent pov about reporting such abusive word usage in open chat, your final line basically ruins the rest of your post. Its not whataboutism, as it is the default and in my experience on MMO forums highly accepted way to respond to any suggestion with a " Meh I dont really want dev energy spent on this kinda thing personally". Their suggestion to the devs to not do something is equally valid. In fact the way you do keep telling posters that they cant post such because you dont like it has been enough to get folks banned on no few game forums Ive been a member of.

Ill be honest, imo we shouldnt be able to filter it out beyond the profanity filter, because words like this being used are more than mere profanity and are something you need to report when you see so that the GMs can deal with such problematic members of this community head on. Ill deal with anything even bigotry in closed RP circles because hey I am an anti space parasite bigot myself in RP so cant give too much flak in those scenes. But on LFG or in general chat,local anywhere but closed circles, such things need to be reported if seen. Its just like they are not going to ban the red hat sg and they are not going to filter out the words red and hat, or make it so we cant see that obnoxious symbol of their fealty.

Uhm no its not, you maybe are unfamiliar with wider MMO culture, but farming is not deemed playing by MMO gamers in general. The only time one is playing in MMO is when they are actively engaging with the community while also working through story based content. Farming, grinding, doing chores like selling or cleaning up ones storage, are all seen as non play, filler activities people do when not actually playing the game. Even RPing is considered one of those filler activities in the wider MMO world, and CoH has always had a pretty atypically high RP scene, yet its still not really playing the game when we are having hours of interesting RP chatter at the D or SG base city scape etc. And yes even soloing is deemed a filler activity, though likely the most contested of all of them as those who prefer solo even on MMO, tend to chafe at being told what they represent to the community by being a pure solo player is someone who may as well not be playing at all.

To be fair the final team composition may have altered what character they felt like using. For example when I am building a TF team on a stalker, but get lots of blasters, Ill be like brb guys I need to get my blaster now so we can play a real game of who is the better blaster. Likewise if the team is looking like it may have troubles Ill get on someone like my PB or scrapper that offers a lot of team aid in their build on top of being tanky dps dealing monsters. That way I can help make sure even those who might struggle end up feeling effective and having fun, and can do my part to improve a players game session rather then treat them like dead weight.

As a frequent TF leader I think one of the things that does legit annoy me is when someone joins but doesnt immediately hall arse to the zone the tf starts in. Like if you need to swing by p2w for the xp booster or whatever fine just say something after joining like hello all omw but need to swing by x first, apologies for the delay. Next up would be those who QQ about things like the cave maps on a Citadel or Moonfire run. Or really QQ much about anything at all. When in a team bring some positive energy people. People who act a downer to a teams morale are imo the biggest bane in any team RL or gamewise. If your not having fun just go be on your way if you cant be part of our merry band. My final and biggest pet peeve is more foccussed on players on the forums here, asking for changes, buffs, nerfs and more without having played anywhere near enough to have a valid viewpoint on how things need to change. Like when people who admit to only ever playing a couple ATs and power sets, yet they chime in on sets they have little first hand experience with, or ATs they never play and feel need to be nerfed to proxy buff their favored play style. Or those who only use mids and theory crafting to try and argue vs those who have played such first hand from 1- I+4 and know the practical rather than the theory based on pure math.

Yeah uhm OP you kinda undermine any point you tried to make when you called something celtic paganism. Words have meaning, and the actual meaning for Pagan is a rural roman who chose to keep to the old greco/roman pantheons as the urban people of Rome converted to the new kid on the block of worship at the time Christianity. Its just as inaccurate as modern neo pagans just calling themselves pagans. Dropping that neo is quite wrong as very few in this modern age follow the pagan gods( Zeus, Hera etc.). Its called a dead or ancient religion when one studies comparative myths and legends because just like the ancient celtic faith traditions, most of which are simply lost to the sands of time and modern people who call such their faith while certainly free to do so, are not part of some ancient faith tradition, and have no actual connection to those long lost to us. Oh and the HC dev team have pretty clearly stated they will not be altering, or removing any faction, or NPC from the game. I mean really I cant tell if your trying to troll and bait with this thread or what because I cant take the above as a serious effort in reason. And this coming from someone who made a suggestion for a far more controversial character in the game lore. But here is the thing when it comes to any form of legend or mythology, its all open to personal ideas, and this game is in no way required to reflect any specific of the myriad variations on one of many archaic belief structures. I mean in the end its CoHverse, where Zeus appeared in modern times via his avatar Statesman. All gods seem to be nothing next to the power of the Well!

Cant say you seem to make any real counter point and actually undermine your own by using a single simple word. Work! any game play loop that gets called work should likely be examined and at least alternate routes to the same rewards offered for those not interested in engaging that sort of content. I mean badges and the accolade powers are nice but no one can claim they are more balance altering or build defining then the rarest IO sets, and in most MMO and games in general the traditional work would include having to do such to get the BIS drops. Likewise we would still be having to pvp to aquire pvp io sets if the HC team felt as you did about truly balance impacting build enabling IO sets becoming as easy as grinding zone badges and casual story arcs for merits to negate RNG. The game needs real inf sinks quite badly, and my above suggestion doesnt hurt game balance, offers players who dont like to spend play time searching for silly badges or reading up an outdated wiki on were they are. You cant honestly say the time it takes to earn inf especially for the more average players we see constantly struggle to amass the inf needed to make top tier builds in game are going to use such a system lightly, and players like us who have no trouble affording a billion inf build obviously need funnels for inf. I personally only bother with badges that give accolades, and dont find many much of a hassle to do, but its certainly not actually fun like it is to engage in active game play with my friends, and I badge hunt solo as to me thats the kind of boring arse activity it is that I would never want to ask a friend along and inflict that boredom on them. It would certainly slow down the rate at which I can kit out new alts if I then let my ocd kick in and I started fully badge buying for every alt, which under my proposed system would drain hundreds of millions of inf from the game per character. I just find it damn silly anyone would think badges worse then PvP IOs being made easy access outside of pvping

As a regen fan here is my advice. if poor manning the build focus on a simple end game slotting of 2 lvl 50 recharge Ios and the same for heal IOs in all the click regen powers which is basically everything but their mes pro toggle. Id suggest pairing it with something like Dark melee for the natural synergy of to hit debuffing giving regen abit of breathing room to do its thing, and both benefit heavily from a global recharge set theme should you enjoy it enough to want to fine tune and invest heavily in it. Other good options imo are Kat/BS for the parry attack which can be stacked for substantial def to melee/smashing/lethal. the lethal and smashing are actually a big deal in that, as that basically means you can parry any ranged attack that uses either of those types as part of its dmg such as bullets and energy blasts, along with aoe effects of those 2 dmg types. Or good old Claws/Regen. claws unique variation away from build up of an attack that grants a dmg buff, can like parry above be stacked and in the case of a heavy global recharge build stacked a fair bit. A claw regen really will feel like wolverine in full on rage mode with such an attack being able to be use every other attack It also has a nice mix of aoe and attacks that knock foes around which again helps give regen abit of buffer space to do its job.

Sorry but you as the player not the dev do not get to simply dismiss the very real motivation the devs had for each of the ATs. The Brute was not made to be the primary tank on a team no more then a blaster, but my blaster will out tank and spank most brutes, because blasters got the aoe dps 2nd to none, and can be more than tanky enough if built right to handle plenty of content at max dif if they so desire. MM are the damage sponge AT of red side no matter your personal feelings on the subject. You are literally trying to argue based on emotional bias rather than the factual truth of the purpose each AT was made for by the Devs. There isno need now for direct comparisons, because both AT can solo base level content effectively which is what the game balance is built around, not about what content a max tuned AT can do solo. Players like you always seem to forget, a toon with all the trimmings is the equiv of a character on wow having completed all the raiding needed for BiS items, and will be maxed and over power content till a new level cap increase renders all that gear obsolete. They dont make a new raid at the old cap with no new gear just so the completed character can choose to run it for fun. Once youve got a toon decked out here, it doesnt even matter what content they do or dont do, they are done, they have completed the game as it were and are now there to be played for fun or left to gather dust if not fun. And we certainly dont need to balance around such characters. I mean hell even your power combo choice for comparison is a laughably bad one. Obviously a Dark/SR would be far more appropriate test as that combo is considered a true power combo that leverages the strength of SR and covers its weaknesses. Not to mention was able to for scrappers let them solo upwards of 14 AVs at once back on live using just a SO build. I mean SR isnt even considered a good set for tanks otherwise. Id sooner find the comparison of a WP/war mace tank and a tw/bio brute. When you really want to stress test 2 ATs to see which surpasses the other, you use meta power combos for each AT. In the end tanks are finally fun to play for more players, and brutes by and large can solo the toughest of content when used by skilled brute players. So any point your trying to prove is moot. I still never ever ever will let a brute be the tank for any team on any content were a real tank feels needed for whatever reason. Id sooner take an Offender over a brute for that role.

For Nemmy and Requiem it the blame can be laid at my well worn feet. They just really really want my sweet arse what can I say. For the Malta, well hard to say they are as shadowy and indistinct as the Way. As for the Cot its pretty easy, the ancient ruins of their culture are literally under Paragon, which is also at the crossroads of the Earths Ley lines or something along those lines. One has to keep in mind the reality of the game world shifts dramatically beginning at the end of WW1. It may seem on the surface like our real world in many ways, but it is not. Now maybe its not a total ruin around the world, but really any area that would make sense as a major strategic target such as Paragon was, but lacked the number of Heroes of our city, surely a fair bit looks a fair bit like original faultline and boom town.

Well personally I think your whole premise invalid because the poper test would be between tanks and MMs, and brutes and scrappers. You seem as confused as many about the actual design goal of the brute by the original devs, it is not meant to be the tank, making a brute into a tank can be done, just like you can with a scrapper, but its you going against the grain from the get go trying to think tank as brute. Ultimately its no different then think DPS as a support AT, yes we can bloody well build offenders and rightfully so, but we sure as hell are not going to use them as the new standard to balance the game around. So frankly imo you want to run some balance comparisons, mae an SO tanker and MM, and compare them by running them at level through content. See which one takes longer to cap leveling the old fashion way, as that back on live was always my main benchmark for any AT back on live, how easy to solo them to 50 via normal play.

We dont, blasters are too busy clearing the mission, while the brute grumbles about not being able to maintain their bar, and tanks grumble about not staying behind them. First rule of stalker club is we dont talk about stalker club. And really do you want to break a rule in a club full of stalkers?

Actually I think this a brilliant idea that needs to be expanded in scope. I think every badge in the game should be able to be bought say at 10 mil inf each, when one ponders the total number of badges, thats a pretty big inf sink per character even if they only buy the ones related to accolade benefits. In the end, its really just about freeing up people to play how they want to, and still be able to fully develop their character without being in content they find unfun. I mean we are not one of those games that we have to go run 1 specific dungeon for 1 specific loot drop that we have to do over and over just because such time sinks are a must in MMO forum. At its core it is no different than the merit vendors supply peoples wants rather than being at the mercy of RNG. Oh and obviously it would have something of a balance factor. since HC added merit rewards to getting all the badges for a zone, choosing to buy badges rather then go hunt them down would be an even greater cost. And they could vary the cost, say 1 mil for badges that are just badges, 10 mil for day job accolade badges, and 100 mil for badges connected to passive accolade boosts.

You wont fool me my dear old chap. We both know you still want this sweet arse of mine, so so very badly. But I got to tell you it wont matter how much you try to twist the timeline and plot against this ol berk of an immortal. I intend to prove Breaking Benjamin wrong and be here at the end with my beloved Earth so she wont die alone. And a place where all life is burnt out, hell Ill call that my retirement estate so I can finally get some rest.

Its hard to say for certain but one could surmise many major cities suffered far worse fates then Paragon during the first Rikti invasion, and Paragon suffered pretty badly even with the bulk of the worlds most powerful at the ready to defend it. Hell the Midnight Squad who had been investigating the strange lights in the sky trying to discern origin and nature still got completely blindsided by the assault and had primal Earths version of the midnight Mansion wiped from the world. In fact we can from that surmise most of the worlds mystical orders suffered a very similar fate, as that first rikti invasion was globe spanning, and they basically nuked any major source of magical energy, which they had the means to easily detect and locate. And ponder this, the Dawn Patrol was founded by british heroes, Hero 1 was basically this game worlds captain britan and maybe Statesmans closest peer in power, and they were here in Paragon not in London or the UK in general when the attack came. In fact considering how often I heard from the couple devs I chatted with back in the day, that primal and praetorian earth had more in common than not in a lot of ways, while our Earth isnt consumed by Hami, it likely is pretty wrecked world wide and more often than not would just need to reuse assest from Boomtown adn the Warzone for most other city locals. Even the bit of info we have on Crey's widespread control of the global corporate and economic structures, whats more likely that the Countess controls a world wide network comparable to our worlds own massive global corporate empires, or due to the rikti assault, so much was left in ruin world wide, that it created the opportunity to further expand Creys control hand in hand with the great PR their PP units gave them due to their being the reason Paragon didnt fall before the heroes could mount a proper counter offensive. I tend to imagine the majority of primal earth is more akin to something like the world we see in the tv series Falling Skies, with the big df being its a world with super powered beings who have consolidated their forces to protect the remaining bulk of humanity. That is why people flock to Paragon and the Rogue Isles, because the mortals need to live in the cities of the gods to be safe from those not so benevolent powers that be on the planet. One could imagine that in the wake of the rikti attack factions managed to rise up and seize power, my imagination leads me down the path of the council and 5th column being very strong forces in the old historically hard defended regions by them in WW2. So in my minds eye I see that part of the world over run with shadow cysts, war wolves, fascists warlords and a whole lot of ruins of what once was. I know I know I sure paint a pretty grim picture of the world outside the shining war walls. What can I say, as I dont see a whole lot of evidence to suggest that the wider world has done better in the post rikti invasion era than the city of heroes.

HM on the one hand, yep private chat channel, so its creator should be free to set the rules as they prefer within reason ofcourse. On the other hand the fact its creator has chosen to name it something that makes it sound almost official might lead some to think its moderator has been given some kind of special status by the HC team. IMO a personal channel should be named after its creator or creators main SG if they want it to be seen as more than a single persons chat channel. Finally when it comes to joining raids, well the MoM raid days Ive joined, have had tons of fun great banter in zone/league/team chats including games like the one were someone says a word and others come up with words that word reminds them of, and yes that included plenty of words that likely got filtered for those who keep their chat filter on. Or text singing, which can include songs with explicit content, and all this in open zone and league chat, and not one person seemed to have any issue with such. So personally I wouldnt bother joining this private channel, and despite the grandiose name given is just another private chat channel, it seems like it barely needs to exist as I suspect the claims that the coc are being violated are not nearly as spot on as some might think. Things like words that the chat filter blocks, always ok to use because if you have the chat filter off thats on you and not something to report. Saying things like lets go commit genocide on these space invaders, yep thats ok to, After all as a defender of Earth who is anti alien parasitic scum, that is exactly what my character Skylord shall do, wipe every alien off the planet or drive them from it.

They are very story driven content, and yeah changing them to how youd want they would have to gut the rewards, whcih for us who are far more casual about how we approach content would be the ones to lose out the most. When i am only logging on a few times a week for short burst of play time the sig story arc chapters are my go to way to have fun and get decent rewards for my shorter play sessions. More so they are differing level ranges in parts of Who will Die's case, changing them again only caters to power gamers and it will be those who level casually who are losing some content that especially caters to their play style. Pandoras arc I am abit more willing to consider but again its some of the lvl 50 content that is fun and well suited to the casual 50 who doesnt want to spend their time doing PI radio teams. I just dont see why it needs to be changed, when it logically would make these short arcs have to give very few merits if the timer that spreads out replay is altered. You basically want to reduce some unique content down to just another story arc, when they are a lot more then that in their substance. Frankly Ive never had issue building teams to run the entire series if that is what people want. But in general most players I meet prefer shorter bite sized content vs long haul runs. I suspect that is the real reason why, along with the nature of the arc making the leader the star, well most I know favor experiencing those arcs solo even on re runs for that reason as well. Its content that really feels meant for the casual solo player imo. Thats even the main gripe I hear most often about task forces, the forced longer game sessions. Like myself a lot of gamers in my age range just have too much always potentially ready to tear you away at less then a moments notice, to really want to commit most play sessions to long runs. I find few who ever have even my level of TF running which when the mood is on me to play daily usually includes at least 2 to 3 different tf runs of the shorter sub hour TFs like those out in striga. So frankly I just dont see any reason for the proposed changes as it only appeases those who already have tons of arcs and tfs to run for long haul play sessions, and would mainly take something from the casual half hour here and there during the week players.

Well we know Brickston seems to be Creys main area of control, and they being basically the focus of all corporate and industrial activity, it stands to reason that area is where such districts may lay as well. There are many neighborhood zones. One such was once called Paragon Heights and later renamed Galaxy city ( odd name should likely of made some kind of sub island area like Manhattan and called Galaxy Island or the like) Fault line seems like it must be abit of a town kind of area with a donut shop I always felt talos needed like a big old Mall. Id of swapped out the arena for something like that years ago meself. Its very much got a kind of downtown shop vibe to me Always got the Feeling Astoria was very much a kind of apartment heavy suburb zone once upon a time. Steel canyon seems a real kind of centralized bit of everything zone. you got areas that seem like apartments, businesses, warhouse districts etc. due to the boardwalk in talos Ive always seen it as something like the santa cruz boardwalk I went to as a kid. Perez park is very much a kind of central park equiv. Just some ramblings

Sure who does not like getting some good vibes sent their way. As a regular TF leader I am always trying to keep the group morale up by telling the team good job after every mish, and calling out players for noticed actions to send them extra vibes. As for getting them, well yeah gotten plenty on live and now for my characters for one reason or another. Honestly though no random props really compare with having some of the original Devs end up in my social circle in game back on live. I mean I know Ive mentioned it, and I really hate to come off as a braggart, but thats kinda the spirit of this thread right? So yeah my oldest toon from live, last of my year one toons was T'Keron Valmaz, created based heavily on the lore of Infernal's own origin story. When I met him at an official CC by chance and greeted him by saying Hail and well met K'Varr old friend it made an impression that turned into chatting now and then about the game, lore, even abit of internal dev drama now and then, whichis maybe why I speak about Jack sometimes as if I know him. I dont but Ive heard enough first hand stuff about the guy to have an idea of the guy I suspect most have more of a vague outline of. Rest assured if you thought a guy who would create an avatar like Statesman had a serious ego trip, you would be very spot on. And maybe more awesome was my random encounter with Ghost Falcon. By sheer chance one day as I was leading amoonfire TF back on live, and doing the run to skyway for the talk to, I was passing through Ozone, and saw GF. I was caught off guard and even taken aback, as he wasnt in GM mode, which had a distinct color/title applied to ones character. At first I thought it was a player using the upper case i trick and sent a tentative tell saying uhm are you the GM ? because well you dont seem to be but that is def a CoC viloation. He laughed and was like oh yeah I am, but was had GM mode turned off because he was going to be running with an SG on a TF due to a contest one by one of the players at a convention. He actually toggled on his GM mode just to show me lol. Anyways we chatted for a few min, then I went and caught up with my team back in striga, and he headed to the warzone for his TF. But later we met back up so I could grab screenies of my character Invisible Falcon standing alongside his praetorian doppleganger turned primal ally;) Still sad about thta old tower dieing and losing those screenies. Now as for player compliments on game play. Yeah my blaster berk has garnered so many along the lines of how are you out tanking my brute, your blaster is a beast kudos over the years they honestly are status quo when on berk. I tend to appreciate them more when Im on characters that can help others directly and am acting as lite support while laying waste. Like when I toss heals on my tanky dps dealing PB. Or when Im casually leading a team of mainly lowbies on a PI council radio team, and not simply dragging them, but using a mixture of buffs to empower them up enough they feel useful and are having fun while I still get to be challenged enough by carrying the bulk of the load on my toon who isnt a solo selfish build meta maxxed to the gills, but a team leader build who revels in banding together random young heroes and forging them into something mighty. Its likely the thanks I get from players for that easy going casual leveling play I find most heartfelt because I know plenty hate AE PLving, and yet are also tired of the leveling content, so a good PI radio team when your a lowbie can really let you have fun and get up to the fun powers pretty quick.

Yep nope. Lets use another D20 inspired pc game. classic Knights of the old republic. One of the most popular "Challenges" players have created for that game is to not take any level ups after the first one is forced on a character, so that when they can go jedi, they have usually around 7 levels saved up to instantly go jedi with. To beat all the early quests as a lvl 2 character is indeed very challenging, and the main tricks most use to pull this off is strategic use of consumables. This is especially true doing the arena quests to beat Bendak Starkiller and get his special blaster, as only a lvl 2. It is all about skillful use of the limited options one has that allows one to beat the arena master as the lowest possible level( and about 4 lvls lower than the contents challenge is designed for) Hell in PnP ones consumables and items are factored into a character/parties ECL( equivalent character power) So a DM is going to be basing encounter strength on all possible resources a party has access to, and thus those who never use their precious potions because someday will be a greater need then now, are far more likely to party wipe if the DM isnt pulling punches and expects the players to think and use every trick they have to survive. Let me guess when you toss dice, you prefer point buy stats for character building instead of 3d6 in order no re rolls unless you roll a shopkeeper( lacking at least 3 stats above 12)? I only ask because I meet a lot of 4D6 reroll 1s and put them in any order types who think they know what challenge is but actually are clueless cutters and more barmy then this ol berk.