Actually it does. It screws up the game economy, produces a bunch of high level people who have no clue how to play (bad on teams), and drives players away which hurts the game long run.
Aside from the last one, none of those affect me unless I choose to let them. The economy is something I rarely interact with, and I don’t team with people I don’t know unless they can convince me via chat that they are capable of communicating like a human being (hint: blind invites are a bad sign).
Even the long-term potential problem of driving players away is debatable - the people who are getting enjoyment from playing in a way you don’t (apparently) like are still paying $15 a month for the privilege, which helps pay for the servers. At the end of the day, NCSoft and Paragon are marketing a product, and they need to pay attention to what people want to pay for. How many people are driven away by abuse of AE? Is that number greater than the number of people who sign up in order to enjoy AE by abusing it?
I have to believe that the people whose livelihood is actually dependent on revenue from the game are paying attention, and that they have far more information than we do on which to base their decisions. I suspect they’re making the decisions that they feel are best for their game (and their jobs) in the long term.
This isn’t to say that we must trust them, they know all - far from it. They’re fallible and human, just like we are. But they are in a position to know things that we do not, and it’s appropriate to take that into account when trying to evaluate their actions.
Issue 19 is live!
So, when are we getting our 50s together for the first Incarnate slot?
Well, I ran the arc with my main (the emp/dark defender) last night. Ramiel’s arc just seems like the sort of thing a character ought to do alone, though I don’t mind helping out if someone has trouble with it.
I’m only about halfway to my first common boost, though, so I’ll likely be jumping on any TFs and/or Hami raids I can. If enough of us are on together, there’s no reason we can’t start a TF.
I really need to get back to this game at some point…
That’s why I brought it up. Tried soloing in Beta and Trapdoor was impossible!
What character were you fighting him with? I didn’t have much trouble with him on my empath, but I did knock him into the lava to help burn off his health. You know that when he bifurcates, his duplicates buff his regen, right? If you keep them killed off (or pull him out of the room to get him away from them, I think), he’s nothing special.
Regardless, if you’re online when I get home, I’d be happy to lend a hand.
I pulled Trapdoor into the cave room right before his big “lair”, around the corner and out of sight of the “lair” and then proceeded to beat the snot out of him as he uselessly made copies back by his spawn point. I think if he’s too far from his clones, they don’t work for him or something.
Inv/Axe Tank. Dude kept me so busy hopping all over the place to deal with his biffs that I barely had time to damage him! Didn’t think to knock him into the lava or otherwise countering the biffs, though
Okay, I used the luring tactic against Trapdoor. Any suggestions what to do with the Honoree? Already know to pull him so I don’t need to deal with all the Conscripts.
Never mind, needed to put Unstoppable up but barely survived even then. Can’t imagine soloing him with an Empath.
I just deal with the Conscripts first. It’s simpler.
I did the arc on my illusion/rad controller; she had an easy time of it. Killed the only clone Trapdoor spawned before he fell into the lava (and I wasn’t even trying to knock him in there). She first got rid of the portals by confusing them and letting the Conscripts destroy them, them got most of the Conscripts to kill each other. Then lured Honoree away from the Vanguard guy and beat him, then the Vanguard guy and that was it. The Minotaur was easy, went down like wet cardboard. The toughest guy was actually the Vanguard since he tagged her with that Curse of Weariness.
My other 50 is a Bots/Traps mastermind, I expect he’ll also have an fairly easy time of it. I think I may just try attacking the Rikti/Honoree/Vanguard group head on to see if it works; he’s handled EB pairs in the past.
Respeced my main character (a lvl 47 Blaster) to take advantage of Inherent Fitness. Took the time to write everything down and be organized. When I was done and putting back powers into the tray I realized I accidentally skipped Combat Jumping. Oops. On the plus side, my blaster now has Tough and Weave. If I like them, I may not even bother getting CJ back when the second respec becomes available…
From what I heard, it looks like the exploit has been fixed also. My conspiracy theory that has no evidence whatsoever is their data mining showed the number of Level 50’s was lower than people suspected and to create enough characters to take advantage of the the new system they developed, they allowed this exploit to exist longer than they otherwise would have to let people who do that sort of thing Power Level to 50.
Man, I hate respeccing. I wind up writing everything down on a legal pad and am still convinced I’ve screwed it up by the end.
On the plus side, I played with my Earth/Storm controller’s build to where she has 36% Ranged defense. When I keep Hurricane on, I’m actually pretty durable when soloing at x6. I can pop a small purple when I need it and be softcapped for sticky situations.
I’ve heard that conspiracy theory mentioned with varying levels of seriousness but the AE monkey farms came a week after they fixed a nearly identical exploit involving Arachnos spiderlings. That was part of the annoyance that they only fixed the spiderlings and not the root of the exploit issue. But if they had seriously wanted to covertly promote exploiting to 50, they could have had a couple week head start by leaving spiderlings alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the game and am quite excited about this Issue…but a minor rant follows:
With Inherent Fitness allowing me to pick non-passive powers now added to Day Job Powers, Veteran Powers, Temps, Ancillary/Epic Powers and the original Primary/Secondary powersets, I find that “room on the power trays” is precious space with many competitors, and “room in my head” is all but overwhelmed. My 50 Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker is my first Issue 19 respec, and she used six power trays to capture the key powers…after deleting at least a dozen from my trays/hotkeys in a deliberate attempt to minimize clutter.
I won’t be logically able to use six power trays in combat, but the ones after the “default” three contain what I hope are situational powers. Adding Combat Jumping back into the build forced me to find not only space for the toggle, but logical space for the toggle, among my other toggle defenses and movement powers, where I have a chance to remember and use it, not just stuck somewhere on an unused tray.
Similarly, hard decisions were forced on me in order to simplify a suite of controls and options rapidly approaching that of a hardcore flight simulator. Ninja Run goes off the main trays because it toggles off Combat Jumping and Gog knows I don’t want to keep checking that’s working. It gets space on a tray I will seldom open, thus it will often go unused. Hasten is out – I fit some more passive Luck of the Gambler set bonuses in, but I have a hard time finding slots, taskbar space, or mindspace to track Hasten’s periodic recharging on this particular character (other characters seem to be better able to slot and use Hasten). I wanted one more power for a LOTG recharge IO, but Hover is out, because it conflicts with Burn, and I want to be able to use both the small defense bonus for running it AND Burn when I’m hard-pressed. Maneuvers is out because it’ll just cost too much endurance with only the one slot, and additional slots will kill part of my glorious attack chains or drop a defensive set bonus. It’s a tight build. So I settled on Stealth, which although not providing full defense in combat, costs less endurance than Maneuvers and doesn’t negate Burn, and has some potential for situational use on its own. I agonized a lot, took up a substantial portion of last two nights of playtime. Third power replacing Fitness pool is Consume…even one-slotted, it’s useful. But my God, it’s on task Bar 5 now, because it’s situational. Hope I remember it and can find it when a crisis looms.
Tough choices like those lie ahead when respeccing, but I am extremely happy about the ability to shift some passives and pre-requisites earlier in every build now that I don’t have to dedicate three powers to Stamina through level 20 (assuming I wanted Stamina, I carefully disclaim.)
New Mids build for I-19 claimed to be out today, which will help with the respeccing.
I haven’t played the game in a while, but six trays? I’ve never needed more than three for any character: Common attack powers in one that I can trigger with the number keys, toggles in another, and situational and temp powers that I can click on in a third.
Granted, I rarely ever make use of temp powers, and I phase veteran powers out as soon as my attack chain is sufficient with just primary/secondary powers. Sands of Mu is nice, but it starts losing its utility between levels 15-20 depending on the AT.
I use four. Three default trays, and then a vertical tray for travel powers.
There are a couple of missions now where you fight your own duplicate…at least one Tip mission and the revamped Positron Task Force. My Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker is 90% resistant to fire damage and 70% resistant to lethal; the duplicate and I, doing mostly fire and some lethal damage, can hardly scratch each other. But unlike the duplicate, I can pull out Sands of Mu and the Blackwand and dump some big, big hits on the duplicate with negative energy damage.