Do you PL in AE?

[Ironblade]

6 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

1) It's objectively faster.  TP to SG base, unslot with unslotters at base merit vendor, put in table, log out, log back in on new 50.  Takes less than 5 minutes.

As I already observed, most characters are not going to use exactly the same IO's so this is, in your own words, "a contrived nonsense scenario".

 

 

6 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

2) You're not building optimally then.  To your later point, if you're not rocking gamblers and the defensive uniques, then we're playing different games.  Regarding the Miracle, again you're showing your lack of knowledge because Panacea is objectively more bang for your buck and Miracle is a tertiary unique when it comes to efficient recovery.

Yep.  Not playing 'optimally' ON PURPOSE.

Way too many people playing cookie cutter builds where every character has to have capped defense, Hasten, etc.

If I wanted that, I can afford it.  But I prefer goofing around.  I have characters with multiple travel powers.  I built one named 'Toggle Man' whose reason for existence is to run toggles - just because.

 

 

6 hours ago, Omega-202 said:

3) What game are you playing where you are going to drop what you are doing and need to go grab a niche powerset that you haven't played in a year to join an ad hoc master of TF?  Talk about a contrived nonsense scenario.

I'm playing a game where people do crazy stuff for entertainment value.  (shrug)  I built one character, leveled to 50 and got all incarnates to tier 4 JUST TO HELP WITH ONE SPECIFIC BADGE.  I play this character on Really Hard Way badge runs every week and it's not even my badger.

 

I'm having FUN.  If you can't grasp that then yeah, we're NOT playing the same game.  Toodles.

[Seed22]

13 hours ago, Ironblade said:

As I already observed, most characters are not going to use exactly the same IO's so this is, in your own words, "a contrived nonsense scenario".

 

 

Yep.  Not playing 'optimally' ON PURPOSE.

Way too many people playing cookie cutter builds where every character has to have capped defense, Hasten, etc.

If I wanted that, I can afford it.  But I prefer goofing around.  I have characters with multiple travel powers.  I built one named 'Toggle Man' whose reason for existence is to run toggles - just because.

 

 

I'm playing a game where people do crazy stuff for entertainment value.  (shrug)  I built one character, leveled to 50 and got all incarnates to tier 4 JUST TO HELP WITH ONE SPECIFIC BADGE.  I play this character on Really Hard Way badge runs every week and it's not even my badger.

 

I'm having FUN.  If you can't grasp that then yeah, we're NOT playing the same game.  Toodles.

You’re doing it right in my book Iron. Play whats fun! I have a lot of optimal toons and a few that just interested me. 
 

As long as it’s not dictating how others should play, or griefing, I fail to see the issue! 
 

[Bionic_Flea]

On 6/29/2022 at 3:12 PM, Omega-202 said:

If you want to believe that everyone would be making museums of "in case of emergency, break glass to access your 1.4 billion inf, crappily built 50" than you do you.  I don't think that would happen on any massive scale.  

I have about 40ish fully built level 50s.  Probably another hundred between live and other servers.  I have never stripped a character for parts. 

 

I think this approach may be much more common than you think.

[lemming]

17 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I have about 40ish fully built level 50s.  Probably another hundred between live and other servers.  I have never stripped a character for parts. 

 

I think this approach may be much more common than you think.

Same.   I have quite a few chars that have a partial outfit with sets, but most of my chars wind up with at least generic 50 IOs so that I can break them out and play at any time.   97 50s, only around a dozen tuned to be extra buff, but everyone is playable.  (except for a farmer that I did strip at the time to outfit one that was more fun to play for me)

[lemming]

Oh, I do re-use some IOs.   All those below 50 generics get stripped on respec and put in the new characters.

[Lyrium]

Same here, every character gets 100m as starting money and funds themselves from there. No enh sharing

[Solarverse]

Here is what I don't understand.  We allow AE to PL players. So why are we still running with aggro caps and still running all these missions that used to have ambush spawns, but no longer have them? Chemera and his Guards in one such mission that used to have a LOT of ambush mobs. I just think it is silly to allow PLing in AE, but the game still has aggro caps and a huge ambush mob nerf. It makes no sense. And before anyone say that it will negatively impact teams...not really. You will have herding teams and regular teams. It won't hurt the game any more or less than AE does. So we might as well get rid of those horrid nerfs, IMO.

As far as AE goes, to be honest, I am kind of in agreement with most here, but only because it helps the market. I'm not a big fan of PLing random players...but that is my personal choice. I just think it's dumb for this game to still have aggro caps and removed ambush mobs if we have AE PLing people like crazy anyway. It's like putting out the grease fire, but then igniting a gasoline fire. Makes no damn sense to me.

[Ghost]

Just an idea to end the “looking for farm” broadcasts.

Why not make the AE it’s own instance (for lack of a better term).  In other words, when in AE you are disconnected from regular chat channels.  You can broadcast, but it’s only seen by players within AE.

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Ghost

[Stormwalker]

On 6/27/2022 at 6:44 AM, Nightmarer said:

Heya,

 

I've been reading a few ppl complaining about "AE babies" and such, it is, ppl get PL'd to 50 and then they don't have a clue of what to do or how to play which seems to be annoying both for team mates and for them as well.

Thing is, in my case, I've lvld up enough chars both here and on live so I just PL new alts and start doing stuff at 50.

 

I am curious to know what ppl would do if XP was removed from AE. Would you still play with the perspective of more people to team with? Would you just play until lvl 35 and from there just one ITF after another?

 

I play little enough as it is now, the only way I would consider playing all the content again would be if new sets / AT's were incorporated ingame plus also a shard reduction to boost the number of players would also be required. 

 

What would you people do in such case the XP was removed entirely from AE?

 

I have exactly one character that I have powerleveled via AE, and only up to 22 (actually, she's not there yet.  AE farms are incredibly boring, so I have been doing it in small doses).  That was because I wanted to try out the Sentinel archtype to see if it interested me, and I wanted to get to a high enough level to get a feel for how it plays relative to other AT's.  Other than that, all of mine level the old-fashioned way.

 

It's not that I really have any problem with people farming their way to high level?  I just find it incredibly tedious.  Also, I prefer to build stories in my head around my characters as I play them.  I find that often as I am playing through story arcs and such, details about my characters' personalities and stories come to me that I might never have thought of otherwise.

[Carnifax]

I power level most new chars to an interesting point. That's typically 22 or 27. Doesn't take too long with my Fire/Claws tank. Then I just them out with the beginnings of their final build. I like IOing as I go, feels like the build is maturing, especially in the 30s.

 

Only real reason for it is Reunion is typically quiet so not a lot of lowbie teams going, especially since I tend to play slightly later than peak. 

 

I don't really need to farm, although I do splurges of craft/convert/market occasionally for Inf. 

[Ukase]

On 6/28/2022 at 5:06 PM, Omega-202 said:

 

And here is the disconnect.  This is where our base assumptions are incompatible and we're coming down on opposite sides.

 

Why is that the assumption?  Why do you think that people are going to just collect action figures of kitted out 50s and never play them?  If that's the case, those people should just play on Brainstorm.  Why have characters and not play them?  That's insane to me.  

 

If that's your base assumption, no further conversation needed.  I disagree but I'm not going to convince you.  

Let me at least share one perspective to address this question of "Why have characters and not play them?" 

When HC opened, the first thing I did was remake some of my favorite characters from live. Ice/ice blast, ill/rad troller, spines/regen scrap, fire/fire blast and fire/stone tank. 

Even solo, with 2xp, leveling from 1 to 50 takes less than a week. But, just because you make 50 doesn't mean the journey stops. There's still incarnates and badges. 4 characters now with all the badges, 1 with all but a dozen - and that's simply because last year, I just got tired of badging. 

To be as brief as I can, I make new characters to try combinations I haven't tried. Eventually I had over 50 level 50s. How am I to play those characters on even a semi-routine basis? And still make new alts and level them? There's still another 100 I haven't tried, at least! 

I have a friend in game, @stitch, and while I don't see him daily, I can tell you, other than the 15 badge characters he's got, I have never, ever seen him play the same character twice. And why would he? You get to 50, t-4 in all, then what? Pursue all badges on each and every character? That's the stuff of madness because it's not sustainable. Imagine having 500 characters, and then a new big patch comes out and you have to get all the new badges on all those characters. Oh - and you still have to make sure your wife is happy and your kids are fed. There's just no way to do it and still live life as a half-normal human. 

There's a few folks that only have a few alts and they cycle between those. And that's perfectly fine, too. But my way is also just fine. I make a character. In most cases, I level to 50. In a few cases, playing them isn't that much fun, so I shelve them, thinking I'll be in the mood to play them later. And in a few cases, I do get those characters to 50. In other cases, I just delete them. And after they get to t-4, I don't have any more goals with that character. I've already done what that character can do, save badges, and that's just madness to do that with every character. (They do all get the 4 passive accolades tho)

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

In other cases, I just delete them.

 

I'm in Brigg's farm right now PLing that damned fire/regen brute to 50. 12 maps to go. Then I have to go do the damn patron arc so I can get gloom, darkest night and dark oblit. Then spend a ton of cash on winter IOs, since I don't use them that often, for the recharge debuff resistance. Then however much longer getting her T3ed. After that, there will be a few ITF runs.

 

All this just to prove to myself that fire/regen sucks as much as I think it does. And then she'll be stripped and deleted. Well... ok, I'll probably get a pylon baseline and run Trapdoor with her and THEN delete her.

 

Edit: Why yes, it WOULD make vastly more sense to just do this on beta.

 

Edit2: Yea, screw it. I played it normally solo to 20something and ran a Posi with the SG. She was 28 when I began PLing this morning. Think I will save myself time and inf and build her on beta instead.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Ghost]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'm in Brigg's farm right now PLing that damned fire/regen brute to 50. 12 maps to go. Then I have to go do the damn patron arc so I can get gloom, darkest night and dark oblit. Then spend a ton of cash on winter IOs, since I don't use them that often, for the recharge debuff resistance. Then however much longer getting her T3ed. After that, there will be a few ITF runs.

 

All this just to prove to myself that fire/regen sucks as much as I think it does. And then she'll be stripped and deleted. Well... ok, I'll probably get a pylon baseline and run Trapdoor with her and THEN delete her.

 

Edit: Why yes, it WOULD make vastly more sense to just do this on beta.

 

Edit2: Yea, screw it. I played it normally solo to 20something and ran a Posi with the SG. She was 28 when I began PLing this morning. Think I will save myself time and inf and build her on beta instead.

Looking forward to your post about how you now love Fire/Regen and are giving up all other alts to play that set exclusively 🙂

[Ukase]

On 6/28/2022 at 8:00 PM, Omega-202 said:

Then why not strip them for parts instead of buying fresh IOs for the next 50?  Seems silly to mothball kitted out characters.  

 

I often strip down old completely unused 50s, if only for convenience.  5 gamblers, the full suite of defensive uniques, a shifter or two, and 3 or 4 sets of purps can be used on most builds.  Saves time having to shop for parts.  

 

Sorry, the concept of keeping a tricked out 50 as is, unused, like some weird collectible is a totally alien concept to me.  

Let me shed what is likely a rare, but not unique perspective. 

Stripping a character of IOs is tedious work. Further, once that's done, you have to stash those items somewhere, where presumably, another alt would use them. 
But, the thing about other alts is they're different. While it's true most of my characters will use the usual pvp IO procs, the steadfast 3% defense, perf shifter +end, miracle + recovery, numina +regen/recovery, etc - they'll have different sets and such. Why would I make an alt that uses all the same stuff, unless it's a farm brute to be recycled. 

My base is set up to stash the expensive IOs, but not the cheap stuff. And, it's currently full.
10 bins with 100 purples each. 
1 bin with LotG 7.5% recharges. 
1 bin filled with ATOs
1 bin with Winter-Os
1 bin with random sets that most of my characters would use. 
1 bin with PvP IOs. 
and 1 bin has my spines/fire brute IOs for when I recycle the farmers when they hit vet level 48. (after that, the emp merit returns drop too low to keep them around. So, I respec them, stash the IOs for the next brute) 

The other two storage units are for Super inspirations. So, I just don't have room to strip alts I don't play. The characters can hold the IOs just fine. Not like I need them. I have plenty of inf to spare. 


Besides, sometimes, I do play those characters again, particularly when HC changes the rules on the powersets and power pools. 

For example - that miserable, dastardly change to Rune of Protection and the rest of the Sorcery pool. I chose to respec a lot of my characters that have that pool, and played them for a time after, just to try them out for a few days. 

I have one whose only real purpose is to farm Ambrosia. Not so I can be a damn mercenary and charge 3M each, but so I don't have to spend 3m each, and maybe help out a teammate or two. 

I have a lot of characters that exist as mission holders for various badges. And, some...well, here's an example: Lagniappe. Lagniappe was my first corruptor, a water/time corruptor. I think it's a fantastic name. And I really enjoyed playing it when I was leveling it up. And, it is an AT powerset combo that @Bionic_Flea himself suggested I try when I pestered him for a suggestion. To delete it after that would really be poor form. 

I haven't played it in ..looks like 7 months. Maybe longer, but that was the last log in for that character. I don't think I'll ever delete it. Wouldn't feel right. 
Now my widow, my warshade - those are true garbage characters. I leveled them up with my sg, and that's the ONLY reason they got to 50, because one was a blue side crawl team, the other a red side crawl team. I can't bring myself to delete them, but I have banished them to reunion where they won't take up character slots. And they're still fully IOd. One day, I may revamp them, respec them and see if they can actually punch their way out of a paper bag, and avoid getting stunned. (yeah, I tediously came up with a human only build for the WS, and suddenly realized - they don't have status protection unless they use dwarf form. My mistake - so, it's not so much the AT is trash, but the way I made them is trash) And, who knows? One day, HC may make sweeping changes to them - and this will save the trouble of leveling an identical character should a change occur. 

 

[lemming]

On 7/1/2022 at 8:58 PM, Solarverse said:

Here is what I don't understand.  We allow AE to PL players. So why are we still running with aggro caps and still running all these missions that used to have ambush spawns, but no longer have them?

I believe the agro caps should stay because it was ridiculous when you could pull a zone into a dumpster.  (I wouldn't mind slightly higher caps, but we do need caps, just for technical reasons)

 

Now, you may have a point about all those missions that are now on timers that were being farmed.  Most of them don't need to be anymore.

[Solarverse]

51 minutes ago, lemming said:

I believe the agro caps should stay because it was ridiculous when you could pull a zone into a dumpster.  (I wouldn't mind slightly higher caps, but we do need caps, just for technical reasons)

 

Now, you may have a point about all those missions that are now on timers that were being farmed.  Most of them don't need to be anymore.

I put little credence in to the claim by the original Devs about the Technical issues to be honest. Jack Emmert has shown me that he is VERY capable of lying in order to avoid backlash or to hype a game pre-sales. If these devs confirmed it, I would be far more willing to believe these guys and gals here.

As far as herding a zone in to a dumpster being ridiculous, I find plenty of aspects of this game to be ridiculous, but as players on these forums have had to remind me time and time again, everybody plays for different reasons and it is about our enjoyment of the game. With aggro caps removed, you don't have to herd unless you want to. In order to avoid herding teams, people would simply start specifying herding teams vs regular teams when advertising in LFG chat much like they advertise speed runs vs kill all teams. So as ridiculous as it may seem to some, it's a lot of fun for others. And since fun is what this game is supposed to be about, I still see no reason (unless the technical issues turns out to be true) to continue this game with an aggro cap or the removal of the ambush mobs that once existed.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Solarverse

[tidge]

12 hours ago, Ukase said:

Let me shed what is likely a rare, but not unique perspective. 

Stripping a character of IOs is tedious work. Further, once that's done, you have to stash those items somewhere, where presumably, another alt would use them. 
But, the thing about other alts is they're different. While it's true most of my characters will use the usual pvp IO procs, the steadfast 3% defense, perf shifter +end, miracle + recovery, numina +regen/recovery, etc - they'll have different sets and such. Why would I make an alt that uses all the same stuff, unless it's a farm brute to be recycled. 

My base is set up to stash the expensive IOs, but not the cheap stuff. And, it's currently full.

 

There are other mechanism to store pieces (I have some characters that keep HOs in there personal enhancement storage, some characters that stockpile certain recipes, there is email and the auction house and the salvage vault) but generally I execute some variation of what Ukase describes.

 

The closest I come to stripping characters of enhancements is when one of the following happens:

• I have a low level character that wants an attuned piece, but "storage" has a non-attuned piece at "too high" a level... I'll use unslotters and catalysts on a level 50 to get the piece I need. (using the AH would almost certainly save time/effort/Inf... but I find some peculiar satisfaction in doing this with my roster)
• I have a character with a second build that can use pieces from an earlier build that exceed some arbitrary, self-imposed limit on 'cost'. I'll unslot (not 'free-via-respec') those specific pieces for use in the second/third builds.

I don't have as many different level 50s as others... I occasionally pull mine out of the stable to run x8 or PUG content for merits/HOs/D-Syncs/incarnate/catalysts/AH shenanigans, which I wouldn't be able to do if I had stripped them of their Enhancement sets. Specifically in the case of Catalysts, it doesn't take long to get the daily catalyst drop, but it does take a significant number of defeats. At an earlier point in the game when I needed to accumulate a significant number of catalysts and merits, I would commonly run x8 Dark Astoria content with different level 50s... each one gets a catalyst and it typically takes between 30-50 minutes of x8 map-clearing to get a level 50 PVP or Very Rare recipe drop (Purple drops are not guaranteed!)... in addition to any character-locked arc rewards achieved. There is an upper limit on how many characters I theoretically need to do this, but I have enough variety in my character stable that I'd feel bad about stripping any of them down to their skivvies.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I realized this morning that when you've reached the point, again, that you spend far more time on the forums talking about the game rather than playing it, something might have gone amiss. Yesterday, I fully intended to PL that fire/regen brute to 50 and spend the weekend doing what was necessary to get it fully tricked out but in the end, I just built it on beta utilizing VASTLY less time to do so and got from it what I needed to.

 

I spent no inf, very little time, pulled nothing from storage and now have absolutely no reason not to delete it from live as it currently sits with nothing but a buncha red SOs. Total inf loss of trying it out? Whatever gets spent buying the P2W stuff I start every character with.

 

The flipside to this is the same thing so many have mentioned already in that as the time/energy spent on a character goes down, the ease of just nuking it goes up. My spreadsheet shows I have around 60 characters total and it seems between 50 and 75 across my two accounts is all my brain can handle. I'll hit the login screen from time to time and scroll through it and go, huh, I'm never playin that again. So I log it on, respec, strip everything, dump it in the bins, email off the inf/emps/merits, and poof, it's gone. And why does this happen? Cuz there's probably only 20 characters (three of them being the same damn character but with different ATs) that I always enjoy playing. The rest are works in progress or something so silly (Bunny Fufu comes to mind) that I keep around just for the giggles.

 

Looking at the spreadsheet now, there's easily 10 I could strip and nuke right now and some of those have never seen the inside of AE because of the other side of this topic. Sometimes you invest fully, you get a backstory, you get a great name and an awesome costume, everything clicks and then after X number of hours playing, you realize that the combo or even the archetype you chose sucks taint. This is particularly bad when you've forced yourself all the way to 50 the long way while deluding yourself into thinking that it'll get better.

 

Point is, I'm not sure I'll bother with much PLing anymore. It's just easier to slap a build together in Mids, export it to beta, and test it out there to save you all manner of time and potential frustration.

[Luminara]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I realized this morning that when you've reached the point, again, that you spend far more time on the forums talking about the game rather than playing it, something might have gone amiss.

 

I thought the forums were the game.  I'm so confused!

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, Luminara said:

I thought the forums were the game.  I'm so confused!

 

It's true. The other thing is just the costume generator so we can get screenshots to post to the forum.

[Solarverse]

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I realized this morning that when you've reached the point, again, that you spend far more time on the forums talking about the game rather than playing it, something might have gone amiss. Yesterday, I fully intended to PL that fire/regen brute to 50 and spend the weekend doing what was necessary to get it fully tricked out but in the end, I just built it on beta utilizing VASTLY less time to do so and got from it what I needed to.

 

I spent no inf, very little time, pulled nothing from storage and now have absolutely no reason not to delete it from live as it currently sits with nothing but a buncha red SOs. Total inf loss of trying it out? Whatever gets spent buying the P2W stuff I start every character with.

 

The flipside to this is the same thing so many have mentioned already in that as the time/energy spent on a character goes down, the ease of just nuking it goes up. My spreadsheet shows I have around 60 characters total and it seems between 50 and 75 across my two accounts is all my brain can handle. I'll hit the login screen from time to time and scroll through it and go, huh, I'm never playin that again. So I log it on, respec, strip everything, dump it in the bins, email off the inf/emps/merits, and poof, it's gone. And why does this happen? Cuz there's probably only 20 characters (three of them being the same damn character but with different ATs) that I always enjoy playing. The rest are works in progress or something so silly (Bunny Fufu comes to mind) that I keep around just for the giggles.

 

Looking at the spreadsheet now, there's easily 10 I could strip and nuke right now and some of those have never seen the inside of AE because of the other side of this topic. Sometimes you invest fully, you get a backstory, you get a great name and an awesome costume, everything clicks and then after X number of hours playing, you realize that the combo or even the archetype you chose sucks taint. This is particularly bad when you've forced yourself all the way to 50 the long way while deluding yourself into thinking that it'll get better.

 

Point is, I'm not sure I'll bother with much PLing anymore. It's just easier to slap a build together in Mids, export it to beta, and test it out there to save you all manner of time and potential frustration.

 

That is actually a great analysis and logic. It seems you found the absolute most proficient way to create a build, test it to see if you will like it and have greatly lowered your chances of ending up with a bunch of characters that you will never enjoy playing. You almost have it down to a philosophy. Very nice, my man.

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

That is actually a great analysis and logic. It seems you found the absolute most proficient way to create a build, test it to see if you will like it and have greatly lowered your chances of ending up with a bunch of characters that you will never enjoy playing. You almost have it down to a philosophy. Very nice, my man.

 

The devs made it easy. But it also shows why the devs in the before time, pre-snap, would never have made it so easy to create alts on the test server. Definitely has the potential to kill player retention when you can see the end product so easily.

[lemming]

20 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I put little credence in to the claim by the original Devs about the Technical issues to be honest. Jack Emmert has shown me that he is VERY capable of lying in order to avoid backlash or to hype a game pre-sales. If these devs confirmed it, I would be far more willing to believe these guys and gals here.

As far as herding a zone in to a dumpster being ridiculous, I find plenty of aspects of this game to be ridiculous, but as players on these forums have had to remind me time and time again, everybody plays for different reasons and it is about our enjoyment of the game. With aggro caps removed, you don't have to herd unless you want to. In order to avoid herding teams, people would simply start specifying herding teams vs regular teams when advertising in LFG chat much like they advertise speed runs vs kill all teams. So as ridiculous as it may seem to some, it's a lot of fun for others. And since fun is what this game is supposed to be about, I still see no reason (unless the technical issues turns out to be true) to continue this game with an aggro cap or the removal of the ambush mobs that once existed.

I had a few times where a nuke on a dumpstered zone would just freeze everyone's system, so I do think there were some technical reasons.  Are they still there? That's a question for the devs.

 

Now, if you can make it so the agro cap is still in existence while in a shared zone and have it removed in missions, I'd vote sure.

[roleki]

On 7/3/2022 at 12:21 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

The devs made it easy. But it also shows why the devs in the before time, pre-snap, would never have made it so easy to create alts on the test server. Definitely has the potential to kill player retention when you can see the end product so easily.

 

That seems so weird to me; am I the only one rolling a ton of alts because I want to go out and do stuff with them once they're finished?  

[momentarygrace]

15 minutes ago, roleki said:

 

That seems so weird to me; am I the only one rolling a ton of alts because I want to go out and do stuff with them once they're finished?  

 

Nope yo're not. 🙂