OK, this first post is a little of topic, but it my topic.
IMHO, AE babies hurt the game.
Perhaps remove AE from AP.
Farmers, really, with all the cool stuff. Doing the same thing over and over.
I wonder how many farmers had the TFC Accolade?
Death from Below, oddly enough has nothing to do with submarines.
This trial sucked up all the newbies and didn't force them out of AP.
I liked the concept of the origin contact.
Play different origins and the game seems not so the same old same old.
That Matt guy got monotonous.
Paying to be PL'd.
First, just play the game. Forget about getting to 50.
When 50 comes, it feels empty.
Just have fun, don't just guard the door.
I had about twenty level 50's and it was never a big deal.
They use to announce you, but that faded away.
If you focus on getting the 3 worthwhile accolades and doing the main content you'll be doing good.
Ahem. I farmed. A lot. About three to five Dreck maps a day, typically in the slower times of the day, when there weren't enough people to easily gather 24 for an iTrial or two.
All of my 50's had Atlas Medallion, Freedom Phalanx, TFC, Eye of the Magus, Geas of the Kind ones, Portal Jockey, Vanguard Medal, Elusive Mind and The Crey Pistol. A couple of them, my main @Ukase and one of my favorites @Molten Heat had the Portable Workbench.
The difference is, neither of those two characters "grew up" in AE. So, one could argue, I was at least able to perform at a slightly better than mediocre fashion during team play.
And that's what this is all about, right? Team play? Why else would anyone be concerned about how someone else plays their character? Because their abilities, or lack thereof did impact their teammates on at least a minor level, right?
The problem is, as I see it, is that as wonderful as our playerbase was, for every brilliant mind out there we had, there was probably someone else who..well, was very young, inexperienced, or just not so brilliant. You could share with them every trick in the book - like "jousting" - a nifty trick where you execute a power in the midst of a mob, but through clever keyboarding, you've superjumped out of the way before the power executes, performing a nice AoE alpha strike on a mob. Very handy for killing Skulls in Perez Park in pursuit of badges. But, despite this wonderful "trick", they would sooner use flurry because their character was Mohammed Ali's mutant grandchild. (hey, whatever floats your boat, right?)
Some just won't get it. They like easy. Some don't care much for the stories, particularly when they've experienced them with twenty to 100 characters before the one that you're seeing now.
You never know what's really going on behind that other character's keyboard. That player could be a 70 year old grandmother spending time with her grandchildren watching them "arrest" ne`er-do-wells. It could be a 6 year old autistic child seeing a slightly different world in a different way.
So, my advice would be to relax, enjoy the game the way you like it. Keep an open mind - something that's always been easier for me to say, and harder for me to do. Life is short enough worrying about someone else.
Check the builds while you're teaming. If the tank has 4 travel powers and no defense or resistance shields, expect to have some amusing anecdote to share with us.
But, let's get the game back first - and then we can worry about how to make the game better.
