Solarverse

I agree with most of what you say here. Except for one thing. I'm not complaining. To be more specific, I agree with how to handle it, not that I agree that person A should not also be held accountable. 🙂

Well I do thank you for your thoughts on the subject. It's good to know all view points. I don't expect this thread will change anything, but I do believe that it will be a good debate either way. 🙂

To be fair, the general idea is to hold both sides equally responsible. It is each our own responsibility to keep ourselves in check. I simply feel that it is unfair that only one side gets the actionable offense while the other side slides through the cracks and gets nothing. It is my opinion that both parties should pay an equal punishment rather than the antagonized side who responded to get the actionable offense. I kind of figured that this may be a controversial topic, so I am trying to approach this topic as carefully and fairly as possible. Far too often the aggressor gets off scott free while the person they antagonized gets punished. I am in the belief that both of them should be punished equally. They should both be held accountable for their actions. I know many may not agree, and this is fine. I am open to debate on this and accept all opinions even if they are not shared.

I'm just trying to keep things focused on rules specifically, that's all. 🙂 As mentioned earlier, the goading attempt would have to be clear. Usually after several goading attempts. It's usually fairly easy to see if it was just opinion, or if it was an insult handed to somebody in a passive aggressive way. The problem is that passive aggressive people already weaponize GMs in this way, the idea is so that nobody can weaponize a GM. A GM can read through a thread of two people going back and forth and see for themselves who the actual aggressors are. If there is any doubt then obviously no action would take place...but sometimes, the passive aggressive goader is pretty obvious.

I agree for the most part; however I don't think we can actually place any of the blame on the GM's. The GM's are simply enforcing the rules that they are allowed to enforce, they cannot enforce any rules that are not clearly stated in the EULA or the terms and guidelines of the forums. They may personally feel that the passive aggressive poster is just as much at fault as the one who was more upfront about their stance, but since there is no current rule against being passive aggressive and manipulating posters in to crossing the line and/or using the GM's as their personal weapon against said player, the GM's honestly can't do much about it. However, if a rule was created that strictly prohibits this kind of behavior, then both parties would receive the same actionable punishment rather than just the one who was goaded in to lashing out. The GM's cannot enforce a rule that does not exist. They can only enforce the rules that do exist. If the rule existed, I think GM's would handle such situations very differently.

So I took a spin at your request, more specifically Jacob's Ladder. I could not find the file associated for that power anywhere. I found the effects, but the effects I found were not correctly associated with the file name. You have to have the file name to apply any changes. I'm curious, is the sound effect different for villain side? I found the old school villain SFX for Jacob's Ladder, but since I don't play red side anymore, I don't know if that got the same treatment as the hero version or if red side still uses the original sound bite. If this is the case, then I can change it because I found it...but if it uses the same SFX as hero side, then no. The file does not exist on client side and it cannot be changed.

Exactly. it holds the passive aggressive player to be just as responsible for the confrontation as the player who responded with the straight forward aggression and hopefully nips it in the bud before it can get out of hand. This is a valid statement. So the question is, how does one determine if it was an honest statement not intended to be rude, or a snide comment aimed at goading the other poster to lash out? It's usually pretty easy to see when somebody is being passive aggressive in a deliberate way for me, especially when the act is done repeatedly. In times that I myself have been caught in the trap, it is usually in a situation where I have dealt with the snide comments over a period of time; even after several attempts to keep things cool. However, I think ultimately it would be up to the GM or Moderator to determine intent in any given situation. I will say this, it would be hard to tell with just a single comment in a lot of cases. It would be hard to be fair in judgement based on one comment unless the player either; A: Has a history of goading posters. or B: Has made several attempts to goad throughout that particular thread.

I think everyone feeds trolls though. I mean, they live under a bridge, they starve under there because they aren't smart enough to know that food grows on farms, not under bridges. In all realism though, I do think everyone feeds trolls from time to time. Sometimes a troll might catch you at a bad time and even though you would normally ignore the trolls, you just couldn't that particular day. That is good advice though. However, could the same logic be applied to posters who respond with insults? If players should ignore the passive aggressive players, should we drop the offense of responding aggressively and use, "ignore them" as the response to said player? I know it seems silly, but it's pretty much using the same logic. If we should just ignore Player A, then perhaps the same rule should apply to player B. I feel as though Player A in this situation committed the same level of toxic behavior as Player B...which is why I feel like we either make them both just as guilty and apply the same actionable offense to them both, or we say neither offense is actionable and "just ignore them" should apply here. Although I believe by "just ignoring them" will only encourage toxic behavior, because they will know there is no consequences for doing so. Personally, I do not feel just ignoring them solves much of anything, because they are still there, still being toxic and they are free to be toxic with their next victims. Ignoring them is the temporary fix, but I don't see it being the long term fix. In other words, not feeding the troll is a good solution for the individual, however, it does not correct the actual problem.

So we see it all of the time on forums throughout the galaxy; player A: says something snide underhanded to Player B. Player B in turn says something back to Player A and crosses a line by insulting Player A for Player A's underhanded snide comment. We've all seen it. We have all seen posters be passive aggressive with players, working their nerves in a deliberate way, and the poster in the receiving end of the passive aggressive posters will lash out in return. The only difference is usually that the player who lashes out, isn't so passive aggressive about it. In turn, the passive aggressive poster will take this opportunity to report the player who is straight forward in their response and get them either banned, or get them a warning from a GM. I have had this happen to me, although it has been a looooong time since it has happened...but I also see it happening to other posters as well. This issue on forums of almost any gaming community isn't so bad with this community but other gaming communities are infested with this type of Entrapment behavior. Not to say it has never happened in our community, but it's fairly mild here compared to others. However, it leads me to pose the question...should Entrapment be an actionable offense? I believe it should. My reasons are as follows... 1: The Passive Aggressive poster uses this method as a way to use the GMs/Moderators as a weapon in their personal arsenal. They are skilled at using the EULA to their advantage and they use the loop holes within the EULA to entice their debating opponent into crossing the line. 2: This is almost always a deliberate act. Passive Aggressive posters in my opinion are just as toxic as the poster who responds with straight forward toxic behavior in my opinion. So, should passive aggressive Entrapment tactics in a forum or in game be an actionable offense? Why would you deem it actionable? Why would you be against this being actionable? And please...keep the debate clean. Let's keep it logical and maybe use a bit of Psychology here.

@Nemu Yeah, I found the Stone/Stone build. 🙂 The Stone/Spines build pointed me in the general direction. lol

Thank you all!

Space/Moon

I have tried and tried and tried and no matter what I do I cannot find a viable build for Stone armor without including Granite armor. I am damn good at coming up with some pretty down right awesome builds. Not this time. I challenge you to come up with a viable build for Stone/Stone that does not require Granite Armor. Ten cheers for the winner!

This would be me.

Well, that's good to know. I would rather it be all in my head than it be true, heh. Thanks for touching up on that with me, MacSkull.

I will admit, it can be frustrating to see the system message say, "You had a 95% chance to hit, you rolled a 96" three times out of 5 attacks. I scratch my head and go, "How?" It does feel off, almost like the chance to roll above 95 is a higher chance than a 5% chance. But since I don't have any numbers to back this up other than how it "feels" I have kept my mouth shut and dealt with it. If anything, I would say the percentiles need to be looked at just to make sure they do not need to be recalibrated. It may be working just fine and this may be all in my head, but holy cow, these NPC's are lucky as hell when it comes to my roles of 96% or higher.

Same here. How does this add to the game in any way? What origin enhancements would you use? All of them? Random surprise? Would the devs have to create a whole new origin enhancement store? Seems more trouble than it is worth.

All the power level beggers would cry foul. 😄

I have brought this up before in similar threads, but Stalker's Placate used to be AoE. It was nerfed and made single target. The nerf was not needed then and it's needed even less now. The reason it was nerfed is because players complained about it. However, even though Stalker players tried educating them on how to counter Placate, they did not want to listen and complained even more. So even though the Devs said Stalkers were working as intended and would not be nerfed, players eventually got their way and the Placate power was nerfed anyway. This was before players would take +perception and -Placate abilities. Now that every dog and his brother knows about the (even though the counters existed then) counters to Placate, the nerf is even less needed now than it was then. So I give this thread a... +1 Revert Placate back to its original form. P.S. To be clear, Placate was never really AoE, it just placed the Stalker back in Hide, not the Pseudo hide that it places you in today. However, it had the same effect/affect as Placate without actually placing a Placate Debuff on the players. Only your target received the Placate Debuff.

Why is it I always like a game much more when it first comes out...before the animation changes, before the mechanic changes, before things get all crazy. I stopped playing Age of Conan when they took away the Necromancer's buff powers that looked wicked cool. It was an awesome animation. Then, one day, I log in and it's gone. Not nerfed, but....gone. It was the same with SWTOR, one day I go to use a Lightsaber attack ability and suddenly, the animation I loved most was turned in to a simplistic stiff attack instead of the fancy move it once was. If I leave games over this, I am sure other people do as well. It's one thing if the animations are universally hated (cough cough, Psionic Melee *although the last hard hitting single target attack was nice*), I can see changing the animations to be a bit flashier and less stiff, but changing them just because, and despite the outcries to not change it...I'll never understand that. I remember the day ET got a nerf...I remember it well. I ran with a guy on Protector server who was pretty well known and very well liked on that server. They changed the animation of ET and suddenly, he was gone. He expressed how much he hated the change, realized it wasn't reverting back and left the game. I still remember him after all these years and actually miss the guy. He wasn't the only one either. I came close myself, since my main Tank was an Invuln/Energy. I HATED the new ET animation. It was absolutely horrible. Obviously I did not quit, but my main Tank got shelved and I did what everyone else did, Invuln/Super Strength. With Energy Melee I felt like I didn't follow some crowd of players who flocked to Super Strength. After the nerf though, I didn't see how I had much choice. It was all that was left that fit my character thematically. ET I think was arguablly one of the biggest mistakes the OG Devs ever made to a power, at least in my mind the most popular nerf for the wrong reasons...second only to the infamous Toggle IH to Click IH Nerf. Nerf abilities if you want to, but change the animations....that's a huge no no in my book unless it is pretty obvious the vast majority hates the animations. And I don't mean 45% vs 55%, I mean more like 25% vs 75% majority. Oh lookie there...once again the ET nerf memory has caused me to rant yet again. I gotta start catching myself sooner!

Agreed. Reverting the ET nerf is the ONLY thing the set needs. I also wouldn't complain if they gave Whirling Hands a range buff.

If they decreased the cast time for Teleportation to half of what it is and reduced the end drain drastically, the 20 second floating wouldn't be needed.

I am guilty as charged for liking this thread idea in the 1st degree, with the intent to implement.

If I were to be the first to respond, I would have said exactly what @MTeague has said. So instead of saying it in my own words, I will just say it in his, with the exception of just one spelling error. So it goes as follows... Full Disclosure: I tend to level 45-50 by getting XP while exemplared in 44-or-below content because I feel so damn useless / carried on a lvl 47 when a team of 50's is being incarnate gods and trivializing all content. I don't mind it once I'm ALSO one of those fully-incarnated out 50's. But I absolutely loathe the feeling of being carried. And when you're a 47 on a team of full incarnates, you could be replaced by a chipmunk and no one would notice. That said. I do not think Barrier should be weakened. Good / Bad / Indifferent, the Incarnate System is literally designed to make your character feel like a god among mortals. I mean, that was literally the design intent of the entire thing, backed up by story arcs and cut-scenes in the Mender Ramiel arc. Yes, this does truly unspeakable things to game balance, and I don't think game balance has a "Safe Word" to say "stop enough!". But, frankly, pre-incarnate groups can do the same thing if you have a team with a Force Fields, plus Cold Domination plus Sonic Resonance, plus Thermal Radiation. That entire team will be maxed defense / max resist the entire time if they use their buffs intelligently, from like, lvl 15 all the way to 50. Or just a team of 8 Empaths all buffing each other to SKY-HIGH defenses and regeneration levels that would make a willpower brute cry in envy.

You may think giving Stalker *1 extra ability* wouldn't make them OP, but you underestimate me. You let me give my Stalker 1 more power...and I'll show you an unkillable God that can also two shot almost anything in game. Sorry my man, I can't get on board with this idea. Because if I can do this with just one extra power, then so can a lot of other people.