On a team with two other VEATs tonight

[TaxibotJoe]

Everybody is a tank at triple digit defense.

 

That’s all 😎

[Giovanni Valia]

It's surprising how few people make Widows and Soldiers, considering how good they are in teams. Pic related, the number of chars created in each AT from 2019 to March 2020.

 

[TaxibotJoe]

Have never had the pleasure of an all widow/soldier TF/SF. 

 

What’s the toughest? Not ITF, I would think. 

[JnEricsonx]

I remember when VEATS came out, so everyone ran them.  You had teams in the teens running highest diff content for that level.  Our only problem?  Running out of endurance.  We all hit harder, more accurate, and harder to hit, but we burned end like you wouldn't believe.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Giovanni Valia said:

It's surprising how few people make Widows and Soldiers, considering how good they are in teams. Pic related, the number of chars created in each AT from 2019 to March 2020.

It may do nothing for the stats, but most of my VEATs have 3 builds!

[Gulbasaur]

6 hours ago, Giovanni Valia said:

It's surprising how few people make Widows and Soldiers, considering how good they are in teams. Pic related, the number of chars created in each AT from 2019 to March 2020.

I think people are put off by the costume editor, really. It's not obvious that your uniform costume slot isn't your only costume slot.

 

There's also the roleplay aspect of not wanting to be constrained by a backstory - my way of explaining it is that they're like the Bat Family or Lantern Corps in that while they all use a similar set of skills, they're all defined as their own characters. The VEAT story has you explicitly proving that you're not just another Arachnos lackey.

 

The top five archetypes are all quite clear in what they do, as well. What really gets me from that chart is how damaged stalkers are by their reputation from the early game - they're absurdly good now. I'm also surprised to see Dominators so low as they're basically Lockdown Blasters. The top four on the list are all archetypes that I think are too boring to play, funnily enough, so clearly I just like making my life more complicated.

[Crater Kate]

Something that I've heard people bring up in regards to why there's so few VEATs is: once you have a VEAT, you don't need another of that VEAT.

 

Like, talking Widows - sure there are differences in how you want to tweak your build, but ultimately, you can do one of two things with a Widow - Night Widow, or Fortunata. And you can do both on the same character. Take that versus a Blaster, where there's a huge variety of combinations and no two are going to play exactly the same - some are going to be melee focused, some ranged focus, some *control* focused, some can survive the world, some operate on kill-or-be-killed... and then across that mechanical variety, you have a huge range of flavor varieties. Basically, what I'm saying is that more people roll more alts of other ATs. I would bet good money that if we had a way of measuring AT-per-human-player, VEATS would not be unpopular in the sense that people aren't rolling them. I think people just don't often roll multiple of them.

[TaxibotJoe]

5 hours ago, Crater Kate said:

Something that I've heard people bring up in regards to why there's so few VEATs is: once you have a VEAT, you don't need another of that VEAT. 

That makes sense.

 

I am not fond of the crab backpack, and my bane is @ 50, so I don’t see rolling another, but I have multiples of other ATs. 
 

Except tanks. One was enough of those. 

[kiramon]

19 minutes ago, TaxibotJoe said:

That makes sense.

 

I am not fond of the crab backpack, and my bane is @ 50, so I don’t see rolling another, but I have multiples of other ATs. 
 

Except tanks. One was enough of those. 

 

Cuz you didnt even have to make another one it satisfied you so good? 😉😉😉 loljk

[TaxibotJoe]

3 minutes ago, kiramon said:

 

Cuz you didnt even have to make another one it satisfied you so good? 😉😉😉 loljk

😁

 

yes, exactly that

 

It’s strange, but all the melee AT feel the same to me. Tank, stalker, whatever.

[Maxzero]

3 hours ago, TaxibotJoe said:

😁

 

yes, exactly that

 

It’s strange, but all the melee AT feel the same to me. Tank, stalker, whatever.

 

That's because honestly they kinda are all the same lol.

[Gulbasaur]

2 hours ago, Maxzero said:

 

That's because honestly they kinda are all the same lol.

Tanker and stalker play very differently, especially with the IOs. Stalkers kind of have special moves with the predictable crit mechanic, whereas Tankers are all about the flow.

 

Scrappers and brutes, though - potayto potahto.

[KaizenSoze]

We ran an all Arachnos ITF tonight.

 

Ok, we had one Warshade because he asked nicely and 6 Arachnos.

 

Went well at 4x8, considering I was the only level 53 in the group.

 

I will try and have them more regularly on Excelsior.

[kiramon]

3 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

We ran an all Arachnos ITF tonight.

 

Ok, we had one Warshade because he asked nicely and 6 Arachnos.

 

Went well at 4x8, considering I was the only level 53 in the group.

 

I will try and have them more regularly on Excelsior.

I saw the lfg for it but was in another group already 

[ScarRee]

Its a very underated profession. AND I LOVE IT lol

[TheSpiritFox]

There's really only ever a reason to make one of each of the epics. Like, I have 6 fully T4ed masterminds. Why would I do that with VEATs? I have a crab and it has a second spec for bane no reason to have to switch between characters when I can switch builds every 60 seconds. 

[KaizenSoze]

We ran another ITF, 4 Arachnos, 1 WS, and 1 PB.

 

It was fun at 4x8. Took an hour.

[Grindingsucks]

@Gulbasaur 

Quote

I think people are put off by the costume editor, really. It's not obvious that your uniform costume slot isn't your only costume slot.

This was it for me, actually.  I've been playing this game for over a year now, and only last week figure out that you can use one of your six starting slots to make a custom costume for VEATS at the tailor, as soon as you log in with the character.  I was also put off by what I perceived as lack of power choice, not realizing (again, until very recently) that you could mix and max some wolf/crab abilities.

 

There are so many aspect of this game that I'm still learning all the time, even after hundreds and hundreds of hours of regular play.

[arcane]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:40 PM, Giovanni Valia said:

It's surprising how few people make Widows and Soldiers, considering how good they are in teams. Pic related, the number of chars created in each AT from 2019 to March 2020.

 

Considering you only need one EAT to capture all possibilities whereas every non-epic AT has a large number of potential combos... this is a misleading statement/chart.

[Grindingsucks]

It's just telling you how many players made VEAT characters.  I don't see how it's misleading.  Any interpretation of the data, itself, is purely a subjective human endeavor.

[arcane]

8 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

It's just telling you how many players made VEAT characters.  I don't see how it's misleading.  Any interpretation of the data, itself, is purely a subjective human endeavor.

That’s literally not what it says though. It tells you how many of an AT exist, not how many players have made the AT. It just so happens those numbers would be more or less identical for EATs. The point is those are two VERY different numbers for any non-epic AT.
 

If the graph showed how many players have made each AT, it would count me once for every AT. But that’s not what it’s measuring, so instead it counts me once for each EAT but 11 or 12 times for, say, defenders.

[Grindingsucks]

Ah, I see what you're saying there, brother.  Fair enough.

[KaizenSoze]

Yes, by itself that chart is not enough.

 

For more but still inclusive information. Add in hours played at 50, and widows is 25% less played than Arachnos Soldier.

 

Soldiers have 43% of the play time of all stalkers, the next lowest AT.

 

Of course, we don't know the break out of Night Widows vs Fortunata or Bane vs Crab vs Huntsman.

 

I have tried to figured the widow and solider build breakout using this page:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/fotm-powers/

 

But my stat-fu is not good enough to make anything but general guesses. I have asked the devs to include a breakout in the next stat dump.

 

There have been several threads about what the community thinks needs improving. So, I am not going to rehash them.