Solarverse

It's about risk and reward. More risk, more reward. This is just the way MMOs are and it's what pulled players like me to them to begin with. It is simply how I, me personally and other players who are like me enjoy the game. We once had that, but sadly, players took issue with it on the live forums and convinced the Devs to take all of that away. They did not care how that negatively impacted a lot of us in those days, they wanted it their way. They came to a game that was designed a certain way, they did not like how it was designed, started taking issues with the way it was designed and had it changed. All I and people like me want...is a small piece of that back and allowing other players to have optional ways to get it. I mean, my idea already gives these players a way to not have to work to get the same thing. I mean, we gotta meet half way here somewhere. It feels very unfair to take away something we once had and then take the stance that is currently being taken against the idea. To me it's like, "Wow...I never asked for this to be taken away to begin with, I am giving an alternative way for us to get what we want and giving a very easy way to get the same thing without having to work for it and that's still not good enough?" That really does make me feel like I am being kicked while I'm down and honestly makes me feel pretty defeated here. It's like even a small semblance of getting back what we once had is being shot down...how much more defeating can one get.

It's not about shoving anything in anyone's face though...it's about earning something and knowing that you did what it took to earn it. This has been the driving goal of MMORPG's from the very beginning. Even old school (and new) quests have a shiny at the end of them. The "Complete this Quest and you will get the Chest Plate of Arggonn!" type of thing. So this is nothing new and this game had stuff like that by way of costume unlocks, capes, auras...and most notably badges. Having said that, I can most certainly be happy with a higher merit reward for higher difficulty, however, I think people would feel that is also unfair if they aren't the type of player who builds in such a way that can accomplish that kind of goal which puts us right back at square one.

Exactly. It doesn't have to be a grind, this game has never been a grind IMO, even at its most difficult stage it was far from a grind by many MMO standards. The game absolutely does not have to be a grind to be a challenge. I really hope that is not what people are reading in to this. 😞 I'm not saying you, but I am starting to think that they might. The poster above thought that and if that is what people are going to take out of this then my whole point was completely missed and that book I wrote is utterly pointless. 😥

The game was never a grind...at least not by my standards. So yeah, you won't find anybody who would prefer the game a grind. So nobody on the team said anything about how much they used to love the Hollows before they changed the hollows? Nobody said anything about how much more fun the Hollows were before the Power Creep? Hmmmm....maybe it is just the luck of the dice then and I just happen to be getting team after team after team week after week after week pf players who view things similar to the way that I do. It's possible...stranger things have known to happen.

Woah! Not looking for a fight at all...that was simply how I interpreted it. Sorry, that is just the typical response that I am accustomed to getting from people, so I guess I was projecting there. My apologies. Let's get back to our happy voices now. 🙂

If you go back to the previous page and read my book that I wrote (haha) you will see that I did indeed take everyone in to consideration. If asking people to spend 100 merits is asking them to much to unlock a costume piece without having to run the content to get it for free, then bad on them, especially since they undoubtedly do the same thing to get enhancements from the same vendor and especially since it is a one time purchase account wide. I mean really, I can't think of a better way than that to make these types of missions fair for all. I am talking Werner Rules ITF, not some country bumpkin ITF that people steam role. Werner Rules are as follows: Solo No Deaths Buffed Enemies No Inspirations No Temp Powers Max Difficulty X8 Mobs That is what some of us are doing to feel challenged in this game. I have attempted this on 5 different Tanks so far and have yet to beat it...I have spent countless hours doing this and the furthest I have gotten was the second to last mission not even making it to the AV fight and I was able to pull this off on three of the 5 Tanks who attempted it....two of those three I am convinced can achieve it with a good strategy and with no kids in the house to interrupt my attention from the game, lol. What sucks about this...is the fact that even after I finally accomplish this go, I will have diddly squat to show for it...I will have bragging rights....and honestly, who cares about bragging rights. This is the kind of challenge we are placing on ourselves that this game simply does not offer us and that is completely unrewarding. So how is this fair to us? We have been here the whole time this game has been around and that sense of accomplishment no longer exists since now everything is handed to the players on a silver platter. However, I am a fair man and I believe I have truly devised a way to make it as fair as possible for everyone. As it stands right now, the only players that it is fair for are the players who wanted this change that we currently have in game now. however, the players who did not want these changes and who very much were against these changes have been negatively impacted by these changes and when we ask just for a tincy wincy part of the game to be made to bring us back that small piece of the game that we so much miss...we are being told that we are the ones who are being unreasonable? You see how that becomes insulting? Like I said, I know people do not mean to be, but it is pretty damn insulting when we express how we feel and try very hard to come up with a way or us to get back what we once had and have taken everybody else's play-style in to consideration and yet we are the ones being told that we are being insulting. That just adds salt to the wound. It's like you have pulled the knife out of my back and are now plunging it into my heart, lol. I hope you can understand. 😞 This is true, however, many of the changes the Devs make are based off feedback from the players. And even though a Dev or two may agree with me, that change will not happen if people keep dumping on my idea. 😞 Yeah, my head has quite a few knots on it, you wouldn't happen to have a small bag of ice would you? 😄 Meh, at least you didn't write a book like I did, lol. Take care, EmmySky. 🙂

It can be annoying when going against CoT with their -30% Accuracy Debuff plus the CoT Bubble from the Earth Mages...but other than that...none really.

As I have stated multiple times throughout many various threads, that right there is kind of a smack in the face to me. I know you are not intending to do so, but that is the same beat down we have been fed for years and years, even before server shut down. The whole argument of "if you want a challenge then stop building your character and go without enhancements" truly smacks us in the face when people say this. You simply cannot understand how insulting that is to us when people tell us that. It's just not the same...like at all. I should not have to purposely gimp myself to feel challenged in the game. The idea is to play something challenging, hit that challenge with everything we've got, then learn from our mistakes and try again until we finally get it right...or with a bit of hard work and good game play, beat it the first time and then feel accomplished for doing so. We as players should not have to play Werner Rules ITF to feel challenged especially since doing so rewards nothing but bragging rights. Want to know what players are doing to feel challenged these days? They are playing ITF at max difficulty, no inspirations, no temp powers, buffed enemies no deaths and then soloing it. That is how desperate people are to feel challenged. No...just...no. We need something more than this...we really do and my request is honestly not beyond reasonable. It is a very reasonable request that takes everyone in to consideration. All we are asking for is a small piece of the pie and we are basically being told no....that we should gimp ourselves instead. You see how that can be insulting? At this point we can take pride in knowing we gave it our best and it feels amazing to have something to show for it. We never had to purposely gimp ourselves before, why should we have to start now? It was not us who wanted all these power creep changes and mob changes in the game, in fact we very much protested against it before it was even implemented in to the game. So why should we have to deliberately gimp ourselves in light of all of this? With any other game that presents power creep, they almost always have more challenging content to allow people to feel accomplished. Not this game. The Devs kept introducing more and more power creep but they did nothing to adjust for it. And honestly, who goes in to the Hollows fully geared out? The Hollows has been changed. When I go in at level 5, the mobs are fricken white conning to me now. They didn't used to before the revamp. The best I could hope for was orange con minions in those days. The game has indeed changed. A lot of things have changed, not just the one aspect, however, the revamp of the Hollows was one among many.

Honestly (this is going a bit off subject here) but the only thing in the game that bothers me mechanics wise is when you attempt to spawn a pet based off a dead body and that body vanishes before the spawning is complete and the pet never forms. You get charged endurance (which is what made me think of it when you said it) for it and your power goes on cool-down. It drives me as insane as the target based Heals used to before they fixed that.

What is the point though? I mean, how often do we really miss wtih 95% chance? Let's just auto hit anything Grey Con and call it a day, especially since they are insignificant to us anyway. However, the way this game is balanced depends on that 95% chance. If we are going to do away with that, we need to do away with the Defense cap as well. Good luck hitting my SR Stalker if that's the case, I don't care what your tohit is, lol. Seriously though, I am not a huge fan of this idea and I for one hate games that have auto hit, it was one thing that drove me insane about Champions Online. Sorry Vanden, I like you, man...I really do, but this is not one of your greatest ideas.

Right? MA has always been a bit subpar IMO. It's still enjoyable to play due to theme, but not exactly the brightest crayon in the box of an assortment of colors.

Yeah, that sucks, man. If I played Doms I would be a bit more upset about it so all I can do at this point is sympathize. I don't understand why they could not give you the buff that is coming while letting you maintain what you already had. But, I'm not a Dev either and I have no idea what they discuss at their round table. 😞

Something I forgot to cover. I don't think you should have to do this on every character minus the badge. If there is a costume unlock, I think it should unlock for the whole server. It's only fair. However, if it is the badge you want, I think you should have to do this on each character, but that should not be an issue since most players only have 1 badge whore. This kind of thing can be worked around is all I am saying.

Oh wait, never played Energy on a Dom. However, if memory serves, Doms had a special proc where if the enemies were stunned it would do proc damage or something, right? If so, are you saying that no longer applies? Have you tried taking this info directly to Captain Powerhouse in a PM?

Wait, didn't Whirling Hands get a Damage increase from scale 1 to 1.1819? That's actually a buff. As far as I know, there has been no nerf.

They were so full of it!!! More visually impressive? To who, a monkey scratching its behind??? I don't even take Bitter Freeze Ray just because of that animation!!! The ONLY reason that was nerfed was due to PvP and Stalkers running around 2 shotting people in PvP....what really pissed me off is that the Devs said they would not nerf anything due to PvP but then turned right around and did it anyway, after feeding us lame excuse after lame excuse that dodged the real reasons they were nerfing crap. Anyone with half a brain could see right through them. Thank...God! 😄

Sounds like a valid complaint. You could have (I'm sure you have missed your chance by now) went to those forums when it was up for discussion and expressed your concerns and perhaps requested a 50% damage bonus or something in its place. otherwise though, you shouldn't have it too much since nothing really changes for you on a Dom. So at least it's not a nerf. It could e worse.

I would be willing to try alternatives. I simply used Hollows because I felt like it had the most potential to bring people in. But hey, I can compromise. 🙂 Edit: Or lke you said, maybe an Echo Hollows but revamped to be made much in the way as described?

Ah man I fricken LOVE times like that...and it's rare because most teams will complain like crazy if you set it any higher than +1. It sounds lke you had a blast, man. That's why I am trying to get at least the Hazard Zones changed in a way that attracts people that want that kind of challenge, without players having to self impose restrictions on themselves.

Everything we have now does make it easier. However, the zone was also made easier. The amount of NPCs per mob was decreased, the levels of the mobs were decreased, how many of them that were in any given area were decreased...that did make a difference on top of the power creep. As far as the other hazard zones...well, let's see here. Faultline was changed, but that was a pretty decent changed. I just think they should have increased the difficulty of the zone. Dark Astoria was changed, perhaps for the better as well, but same thing with that, I wish it had been made a wee bit more difficult and more interactive. Task Forces seem to be the main driving force on traffic in to a zone. Paper/Radio missions seem to be another major driving force. It's hard to say really but all speculation, which is what gave me the idea to add a TF to the Hollows that actually takes place in a revamped Hollows. However, I do not want the Devs to waste any time on the other Hazard Zones until we see how this new version of The Hollows works out. If it works out great, then that should green light he other Hazard Zones. If it fails, well, no biggie. Minimal effort would have to be made to change it to my idea since really you are just combining three contact in to one TF, raising the level and intensity of the mobs in the zone and changing a few Bosses to be either AVs or EBs. The cut scene is already there for Frostfire (which did not always exist, but the cut scene fits nicely for a TF) so there would be no need for that...it just seems minimal effort required to see how well or bad this would play out. Then that opens up the doors for more content as well, which is something that almost every player has been wanting. So why not give it a shot?

Damn airplanes! 😠 Do me a favor. In game, on a few pugs here and there, while running Frostfire, strike up some conversation with people and reminisce about the "good ol days" and see what people say. I have been doing this for a long time on many many many alts and they all generally say the same things. They miss the days when Hollows were difficult and pretty much everything else I said. Give it a try, you might be surprised how many of the overwhelming players you interact with will say. And I promise you, none of it matches what players on these forums say. Just do that and hit me back sometime. I am interested in what you might find.

Read my post a few posts back...it's long, I'm sorry, but it was necessary and it covers this very thing. The problem is, is that this game has changed in a way where it has literally left players like me (and I am not the only one) behind in favor of players who prefer it in much the same way as you. So this is very hard for players like me because we have truly lost what this game once was. So my suggestion attempts to give us what we want, while maintaining what players like you want.

Well, I did not want to include every single possible variation of category there could possibly be, I just wanted to mention the primaries. I covered the basics basically and left it at that. 🙂 This is why I say it negatively impacted the game for players like me. This is what caused that negative impact for players like me. Unfortunately, all the players who left the game because of this are no longer here to express their views...otherwise I do not think I would have such a hard time trying to get people to see why this affects players who are like-minded as myself. I mean sure, there are tons of things that negatively impacted the game. I remember when Jack Emmert told us on these forums that PvP will not be something they ever do with this game. They had thought about it during development and said no. Then, out of the blue, here comes PvP and once the first set of nerfs hit (like almost immediately, when they added in the -Ac while travel powers are active due to Arena complaints about Super Speeders doing fly-bye hit and runs) I watched 3 of my closest in game friends leave the game because of it. They were outright pissed that the PvE aspect of the game was nerfed due to the bastard (their words, not mine) creation of PvP....something the Devs said they would not be adding to the game but did anyway. There were all sorts of things that caused players to leave the game...however, for the crowd of players I have known over all these endless years nothing caused more of a mass exodus of this game of players who preferred a challenging game with high rewards....who lived by, "more risk = more reward." I almost left myself because I had nobody left to hang out with. So instead since all the people who knew left the game, I left the server I was on and created a level 1 Blaster on a different server in search of a new group of friends to hang out with. It was fricken sad, man. Really sad. Man, you can't really tell me that it was not all taken away from me and players like me when I was here when this game gave everything I wanted and I watched it all go away little by little. The only thing this game has left that I truly loved was the community, the theme and the general game play. I know it might be hard for some people to understand, but everything I onced cherished about this game has indeed been taken away in some way or another. I can't sit here and let anyone else tell me that is not true when this is coming from my perspective...and judging by the number of threads like this one popping up from time to time, I am not alone in feeling this way. Granted that. And I agree to that. Honestly, considering how the mechanics of this game has changed over the years, I would have asked for a revamp to make those zones actually challenging again regardless. It already has its own zone, man! How can somebody take a zone that is by its very design supposed to present more of a challenge, change it to being easy, then tell us that we need to create a different zone that is challenging? That makes absolute zero logical sense to me. We already have that, why do we need to create a different one? They are Hazard Zones, so let's make them what they are actually supposed to be. I would honestly think that you would see my point on at least that much. You're a sensible guy and I respect you, have never had any problems with you at all. So I honestly thought you could at least see my point on that much. 😞 You would have to delete the game forever to stop that. I don't think it's any big secret that I am not a fan of power leveling. So trust me, anything that I think up will never have power levelers in mind. What I think up will almost always have more to do with a regular level profession that comes with rewards, story and goal oriented. If I had to take power levelers in to consideration for anything I suggested I would never make another suggestion again, lol. 😄

You have no idea just how stoked I am for this, Troo. I have been waiting for this day ever since they first nerfed ET. Energy for both Blasters and Tankers have been my main two characters in this game since the very beginning. When ET took that nerf, it crushed me. I literally quit the game afterwards for about a solid six months before finally returning, and only did so because a friend had asked me to come back. It was not the damage that I loved so much about it, it was the animation...and being forced in to that hideous animation that they had changed it to was just too much. I ended up respecing out of ET and never used it again...until I herd ET was coming back. Now that it is back, I am sooooo hyped about it. Not only did they give us an optional way to get it back, they added so much more to the set that I am head over heals in love with whoever implemented this fix. If anyone ever says anything bad about them, i'll "cut them!" Hahaha

It's not obvious?