Blackbird71

Claiming people are shard-hopping because they are "community-minded" is either false or delusional. You said it yourself, they're chasing the XP boosts; it's a self-serving choice. Assuming any other motivation is disingenuous. If they were doing this because they were being "community-minded," no XP bonus would have been necessary to entice them. Meanwhile, there are those who have established and built communities with the game, often at great effort and investment of personal time. These are communities that welcome new players, that help people learn how to play, and which keep people playing through interest in connections formed with others. To call them not "community-minded" because they refuse to abandon those groups and instead remain with them and maintain them at the sacrifice of the XP bonus is a gross insult.

That's being awfully condescending towards those who choose not to leave their preferred shard because it's where their friends and SGs are. Frankly, this whole thing comes across as a great big "screw you" to those players, and referring to them as not being "community-minded" only reinforces that. That was rude and uncalled for.

Again, players can power-level a character in a few hours, so that's all the boost buys you, a few hours on another shard. This is a temporary fix at best; when it's done you'll have the same imbalance and problems that were there before. And again, it comes at the cost of feeling exclusionary, cutting players out of the celebration, or sending the message that they are not as valued as others. That's not a great PR move, and the timing and communication could have been a lot better.

Because previously HC and the other servers were acting in defiance of NCSoft, and were showing at least some willpower to do so. Now that there is a licensing agreement, HC has stepped away from that defiance and into deference, and whereas previously shutting HC down would have likely required some effort and expense from NCSoft, now in theory all it would take is NCSoft asking for the game to be shut down. In the end would it have made much difference either way? I don't know; probably not. But it does create a perception that HC is now directly under NCSoft's thumb and willing to comply with whatever NCSoft wants them to do, as opposed to continuing to find ways to resist and keep running in spite of NCSoft. For obvious reasons, this game is full of a lot of superhero fans. One thing you learn from the genre is that when the hero and the villain set aside their differences to work together, you should always keep one eye on the villain and watch for the inevitable betrayal. Whether or not that truly applies in this case, the mentality is kind of programmed into the player base, so you can't blame them for the suspicion. This is honestly my big fear in this situation, that other servers will either be forced to come under the HC license umbrella or be shut down, and the variety and options in the CoH community will be reduced. I don't agree with all of HC's decisions and direction for the game, and having other alternatives available has always been reassuring.

That doesn't really track. With the XP boost, nothing is preventing characters from transferring after they've power leveled, so it's the same issue. As noted before, established players are less likely to shard-hop away from groups they're used to playing with. I'm sure some will just to take advantage of the XP boost, and then they'll be right back with their groups once the boost is gone or they've reached their desired levels. This shard-specific boost just seems to punish those who have ties keeping them to a particular shard. If you really want to try to even out the shard numbers, first thing you are going to have to do is either limit shard transfers based on shard pop, or shut them off partially for certain shards (can only transfer into low-pop shards and/or out of high-pop shards). Without that, you'll run into the same problems just as soon as the XP boost is gone. I'm not saying this is a good idea, only that it's necessary to controlling shard pop. If you want people to stick around on a shard and build it up, you can't make it inconsequentially easy to change. Where the shard-based XP boost really feels bad is that in the past, XP boosts have often been turned on as part of a celebration of some milestone or other event. As these boosts came in the wake of the licensing agreement announcement, it really felt like players on some shards were being left out of the celebration of that announcement.

Still stinks if you play on those shards. Everlasting even got cut out completely of the first round of boosts. Feels very anti-RPers. I assume these boosts are targeted towards new players rather than the existing players, as established players generally aren't going to swap shards just for an XP boost when they have their SGs, friends, etc. on their home shard. If that's the case, why not just give the patrol XP power charges to new characters on those servers? It would be more targeted and less of a finger in the eye to players on certain shards.

Is there a reason why Everlasting and Torchbearer are getting less of a boost than Reunion and Indomitable? It seems kind of like a raw deal for those who play on those two servers.

Conversely I have experienced that those who eschew any sort of rules of behavior and reduce everything to "don't be a jerk" are those most likely to be jerks and to be in need of such rules. In my life I've only known one person who was an exception to that, which is vastly outweighed by the number of experiences proving the point.

I'm aware, thanks. Having the Tier 7 at level 24 vs. 18 as primary can still make a big difference on low-level Ouro arcs.

The funny thing is that, at least up through the 20s, my experience has been that the corruptor is more survivable and does fewer hospital runs. I credit this to superior firepower through earlier access to higher-tier attacks being able to burn down enemies faster. I imagine this will change as I get powers more slotted out and build up res and def, but it does concern me for those times I know I'll be exemplared down to lower levels and don't have access to as many attacks on the defender. Anyway, thanks for the input!

All that I get as the basics; I'm more looking for whether there are specific reasons one AT would be better than the other for the particular powerset.

Corrosive Enzymes seems to be a part of nearly every Nature Affinity build I can find. In practice though, I'm questioning its value. Granted, I've only been testing sub-level 30 so far as I'm trying out some builds, but generally speaking I find that Enzymes at best saves me one attack power activation, and more often than not is just a break even for the number of actions needed to take a foe down. Even if it consistently reduced my actions per enemy by one, I have to ask whether that's worth taking up a valuable power slot? Maybe if it wasn't just a single-target effect it would be more useful, but as is, isn't it better to just make one more attack instead of using this power? I can see where it is probably more effective against EBs/AVs than rank-and-file minions and lieutenants, but again it's hard for me to justify a power with such a niche use condition. I feel I've got to be missing something here, so if you disagree, please help me out. What makes this power a must-have on your NA builds?

I'm looking to make a character with Nature Affinity (most likely paired with rad blast), and am trying to decide between Defender and Corruptor. Are there pros and cons to going either way? A few points: I'll likely be soloing most of the way from 1-50 (the "slow" way). After 50 is when I'd do more group content; TFs, MSRs, etc. A lot of my post-50 group content will involve exemplaring down to lower levels (Ouro arcs, etc.) Any input is appreciated; thanks!

So, in saying this is a "quantum jump," you're saying this is the smallest increase possible that can still be called a jump?

Someone hasn't read the thread.

It's also the one cosmetic reward that may be most desired by many RPers and casuals. It's something that has been requested for some time, and locking it behind such content is disappointing to say the least. As you've been around these forums for some time and seem to poke into everything, I expect you know that, and ignoring it seems a bit disingenuous. Besides, I thought you and I had an agreement not to respond to each other's posts? (you're blocking direct messages)

A drop a day. So then, only about three years to get the mini costume. I'm so glad they made it reasonable and achievable for casual players.

I just want to know whose bright idea it was to add a new reward and call it "PAP;" the mental association is... disturbing. Clearly no female input on that one! https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/pap-smear/about/pac-20394841

The additional problem here is when changes are significant enough to change how a character plays, in terms of how a power or powers work and the tactics and strategy needed to make use of them. These are things that are learned, both in terms of mindset and muscle memory, as a character is played from 1-50 and new powers are acquired gradually. Suddenly shifting everything at 50 when all powers and changes are acquired at once can be difficult to adapt to. At least for me, it often encourages recreating the character from scratch instead of just respecing, for the sake of learning the changed powers and adapting to the updates. But this is usually such a daunting and discouraging task that I end up just shelving the character instead. If you change a power that happens to be a cornerstone of a particular build, it can completely change how the build plays, so in this every functional change to what powers do can have dramatic consequences. This is exactly why the cottage rule existed for the Live devs, to avoid causing unnecessary player frustration with having to change builds and relearn characters.

(boldface added for emphasis) I cannot overstate how much I agree with these sentiments.

I don't farm, period. I don't have anything against those who do; it just doesn't interest me. But your insinuation is off the mark. As I said, my primary activity is playing 1-50 content (I tend to lose interest in characters once they get into incarnates). A respec doesn't have to be "required" for changes to be significant enough that I feel an undue burden/need of relearning/adjusting to the changes in order to continue playing as I have been playing. This is strictly my own experience I am relating here; your experience may differ. Likewise though, your opinions on what is or isn't required does not alter or invalidate my subjective experience.

Mostly it's the accumulation (and frequency) of powers changes. Sometimes it's a single change (as just one example, the tac arrow changes a while back killed one of my favorite characters for me). In short, the Cottage Rule should be reinstated and adhered to. There's a reason the original dev team had this rule; departures from it are increasingly frustrating and turn people like me away from the game. Not necessarily because the changes in isolation are bad, but because the cumulative effect is wearying.

This wasn't directed at me, but I'll throw in my unsolicited 0.02 INF anyway. What I want is to NOT have to constantly re-learn how to play the game. If every few months I have to start over, learning how powersets work, change powers and builds, change slotting, etc., just to keep doing what I've been doing (playing 1-50 content), then it gets annoyingly and frustratingly tedious. I hate having to spend time researching/adjusting/testing/creating builds just to be able to play the game, and would much rather spend my limited free time actually playing. I don't want anything that requires me to do "chores" before being able to play. I understand that there are things in the game that need tweaks and adjustments to fix long-standing problems, but I feel that HC has gone overboard in making changes for change's sake. I've shelved many of my long-played characters just because it would take too much work for me to update and relearn them after many of the i27 changes. Most recently I've taken a bit of a break from CoH: HC, in large part due to this frustration, and have barely logged in over the past few months. I popped in to look at the Page 4 changes, and frankly I'm finding little of interest to me. And maybe you don't care; maybe I'm not the target audience for HC, and if that's the case then so be it. But the question was asked so I thought I would answer. I have no problem with the additions of new high end or "hard mode" content (I likely won't ever play it myself, but its existence doesn't bother me), but please, please, please keep changes to the fundamental nuts and bolts of gameplay to the absolute minimum.

I skimmed the thread and did a text search of the pages and didn't find anything on this, so apologies if it's already been mentioned and I missed it. Since the eatfood emote has been set to show the same prop for everyone, would it now be possible to separate this emote out into eatfood1, eatfood2, etc., allowing players to choose what food they are eating? It's a minor thing, but would be a help to some RP.

Happy to help! And if you are crazy, you're in good company! 😉