AE baby experiences that made you shake your head.

[doc7924]

In my experience anyway, most min/maxers were annoying to play with.  They tended to speed run every TF until it was no longer fun, skip anything that wasn't "rewarding enough" and smack talk anyone who built for fun over performance.

I was on one TF one time with maybe 4 or 5 people from the same SG and all they did for the whole TF was rattle off their numbers - how much damage they did, DOT they did, defense numbers, it got real annoying after an hour or so.

I played for fun - I tried to make some decent builds using IO sets and whatnot of course, but I never obsessed over it like many people did.

[Aggelakis]

I was/am a huge number cruncher - unashamed min/maxer - but never had enough time or wish to put it to use. I played with builds in Mids all the time. I spent a bazillion hours editing Paragon Wiki. But most of that was done when I couldn't open the game, so my play time was ridiculously low. So I was forced to be super casual, although it wasn't a big deal. I knew the game inside and out, but I didn't care to "win" anything...I wanted to have fun, so most of my play time was spent on *playing* instead of twinking (playing....or chatting! CoH was a chat room with an interactive 3D interface for a while, some months I almost didn't ever *play* even if I spent 30 minutes or an hour or three hours in game).

[blacksly]

Eh, I was a min/maxer, and several others in the Legion on Liberty also seemed to be like that. But everyone was welcoming of new players, concept builds, etc... I'd say that the "elitist" style of min-maxers was greatly in the minority. CoH seemed like the game where, if your build showed that you were a noob, you'd get advice for how to improve the build, rather than a derogatory comment and then a kick from the team.

[ag88t88]

Eh, I was a min/maxer, and several others in the Legion on Liberty also seemed to be like that. But everyone was welcoming of new players, concept builds, etc... I'd say that the "elitist" style of min-maxers was greatly in the minority. CoH seemed like the game where, if your build showed that you were a noob, you'd get advice for how to improve the build, rather than a derogatory comment and then a kick from the team.

I tend to agree.  I played exclusively on Virtue, I ran into a number of people who were huge min-maxers, could do some really interesting stuff with their builds and had some epic toons for sure, but I don't recall ever being on a team where I was chastised for not having the right build, the right powers, the right enhancements etc.  I had a couple of toons that I adored that I put a LOT of time into building, but even then I wasn't necessarily hard core min\maxing, I was mostly just chasing a couple of key stats, like my AR blaster having just insane damage.  Most of my builds were made around concept, character or even just me saying "damn you know I never did try that powerset and it looks fun, what kind of character would use Stone armor?"

Even still, most people never seemed to care, even the ones who were really into their builds.  I also found most people didn't even bother me about my build, even when I played characters that were a little gimped because I was still learning their powers or what ever. I think the vast majority of "advice" I got was when I asked for it, and then I'd get a ton of very helpful advice, and a few debates over the true utility of certain powers, but yeah.  I was never harassed, never made to feel like I wasn't doing it right because I didn't min-max or what ever.   I know some people like that were out there, but I think they were a small minority. 

I do remember one time I was kicked off a team in a really weird manner by a crazy over the top guy, but that had nothing to do with min-maxing and apparently something to do with his odd little SG, but that is another story. 

[LaughingAlex]

Not so much an AE baby experience but a classic noob experience.  Met someone who was a 4 year veteran(had the vet badges) who thought healing was the be-all-end-all and that defenders should do nothing but heal, even claimed debuffs and buffs were tirtiary to healing.  Yeah, I left the team pronto.

[General Idiot]

The one that always stuck in my mind was when I got asked by someone in their 20s to help out with a cape mission, which kinda raised eyebrows right there since the cape mission wasn't that hard. So I get there and he's absolutely amazed that I can actually kill things without assistance, which confused me so I asked and it turned out he didn't know what enhancements were or how to use them. Strangely enough, he got a lot more effective once I took him over to a store and explained things.

[MWRuger]

I had a buddy like that who was amazed that my blaster could not only jump into pointblank range but proceed to one shot everyone but the boss.

I explained about set bonuses. He was happy-ish.

[Mistress Urd]

Just for laughs, I went and soloed a corruptor to 50 during one of those "broken" underling farms, just to see how long it would take. 6 hours, but lets not forget AE wasn't the only source of Mega XP mistakes in the game.

Ah, I recall one winter event where Kings Row saw huge numbers of people farming Winter Lords. 

[Minotaur]

Just for laughs, I went and soloed a corruptor to 50 during one of those "broken" underling farms, just to see how long it would take. 6 hours, but lets not forget AE wasn't the only source of Mega XP mistakes in the game.

Ah, I recall one winter event where Kings Row saw huge numbers of people farming Winter Lords.

A friend of mine was on an all blaster team for thet WL event, he went up many levels in a few minutes, apparently 8x aim/BU/snipe with no ED was enough to basically one shot a WL.

And 6 hours 1-50 could be done without any exploits in AE.

[MWRuger]

A friend of mine was on an all blaster team for thet WL event, he went up many levels in a few minutes, apparently 8x aim/BU/snipe with no ED was enough to basically one shot a WL.

And 6 hours 1-50 could be done without any exploits in AE.

You know, I have heard that many times but never experienced it myself. I have another friend who had level 50 tank he loved to play. He was pretty good at PVP apparently. Anyway, he wanted to PL me when I first started playing the game. I tried for a few levels and it was boring. Apparently, he meant for me to stand there while he cleared the map.

Last time I was PL'ed by another player.

I did use the monkey farms to get all my alts to 21 pre-inherent fitness though.

[kgiesing]

[Minotaur]

You know, I have heard that many times but never experienced it myself. I have another friend who had level 50 tank he loved to play. He was pretty good at PVP apparently. Anyway, he wanted to PL me when I first started playing the game. I tried for a few levels and it was boring. Apparently, he meant for me to stand there while he cleared the map.

Last time I was PL'ed by another player.

I did use the monkey farms to get all my alts to 21 pre-inherent fitness though.

I used to dual box, I created a monster SS/fire brute with 90% fire resist and 34% fire def (a purple away from softcap) then added barrier. 3 groups of +4x8 was not an issue. Anybody attempting to help me however got almost immediately pancaked. I could PL one of my own toons 1-50 in 6 hours, but usually didn't. PLing it to mid 20s in a few minutes however I often did, and I was far from the best at it.

I will say that before I did this I got 72 characters to 50 without PLing, so had learned my craft.

[MWRuger]

I used to dual box, I created a monster SS/fire brute with 90% fire resist and 34% fire def (a purple away from softcap) then added barrier. 3 groups of +4x8 was not an issue. Anybody attempting to help me however got almost immediately pancaked. I could PL one of my own toons 1-50 in 6 hours, but usually didn't. PLing it to mid 20s in a few minutes however I often did, and I was far from the best at it.

I will say that before I did this I got 72 characters to 50 without PLing, so had learned my craft.

Don't doubt your credentials a bit. I remember you well from the market forum.

I dual boxed as well. I would take by level 50 blaster in the Council Empire map, kill for shards and park my other character at the gate until he got to 21. The main reason I did this was I would create an interesting character and then fit a powerset to them. That meant that I had a few guys with the same sets.

I don't really see that as an exploit, because it doesn't rely on a bug to level. But yeah, it is PL'ing for sure.

[Mistress Urd]

Yep, and the old Warrior farms with Statesman.

[JaguarX]

In my experience anyway, most min/maxers were annoying to play with.  They tended to speed run every TF until it was no longer fun, skip anything that wasn't "rewarding enough" and smack talk anyone who built for fun over performance.

yup

[Minotaur]

In my experience anyway, most min/maxers were annoying to play with.  They tended to speed run every TF until it was no longer fun, skip anything that wasn't "rewarding enough" and smack talk anyone who built for fun over performance.

This doesn't tally with my experience on Victory, we had a community that were happy on for example an ITF to crank the difficulty up, not mind a few lowbies coming along and kill almost everything, this took 45-50 minutes usually. It was not normally difficult to find good people for any TF you wanted to run.

[Fridgy Daiere]

In my experience anyway, most min/maxers were annoying to play with.  They tended to speed run every TF until it was no longer fun, skip anything that wasn't "rewarding enough" and smack talk anyone who built for fun over performance.

Not so much my experience on Guardian, either.  While we did have a couple of semi-jerk min/maxing control freaks (I'm lookin' at you, CM! *wink*), most folks in the server global channel knew who they were and either joined or avoided as the situation dictated.    Most of the folks I played with rolled their toons first with a concept or back-story in mind, THEN min/maxed the crap outta them in Mids'.  I didn't see a lot of smack talk unless it was in jest between friends.  Of course, then it was pretty over-the-top! 

Of course, we might simply have had an extremely helpful, friendly server.

[MWRuger]

This doesn't tally with my experience on Victory, we had a community that were happy on for example an ITF to crank the difficulty up, not mind a few lowbies coming along and kill almost everything, this took 45-50 minutes usually. It was not normally difficult to find good people for any TF you wanted to run.

This happened on Liberty as well. I only had a few toons that were fully slotted, not even min/maxed, No one ever said boo to me. But I have to say I played late at night on a low pop server. Pretty much the guys who running then all knew how to play and knew each other more or less. So maybe that was it.

I was never the toughest one there but because I soloed so much, I didn't need much looking after. So even If I didn't bring a monster to the party, no one had to babysit either.

I was also hampered by the fact that I never wanted to lead, I have a high stress job where I have to decide things all day. When I played I wanted someone else to do that.

[Harpospoke]

The AE Baby craze was...like most things in the CoH community... exaggerated. Most people who used AE to PL their toons had already been playing the game for years and made toons based off their builds created in Mids. I encountered way more veterans who snubbed their noses at PLing with poor builds and play styles than AE Babies in my 8 years in CoH


I enjoyed the Freedom server for it's min/max community of PLers

That's my impression too.   I also played on Freedom and all the stories I heard on the forums were not encountered by me in the game.  You would think Freedom was a place where you couldn't put a decent team together from reading the forums.   It was incredibly easy for me to put together a team.  It was my regular routine.

And the "AE baby" thing....at that point in the life of the game...how many new players were we really getting?   I think some people just assumed any player who made a mistake was a new player who had never left the AE building.

[MWRuger]

Some of those stories do have the smell of urban legend to them.

What is the tram?

How do I get to King's Row?

I never heard them myself, nobody I ever knew heard them, just they heard about it from somebody else or from the videos.