Luciferish

I think it's consensus among those already in the rotation.. I know they are talking about it, though things are looking positive and progress is being made.  Imagine what the problems would be if the big 3 don't find a way to allow another guild into the rotation having proved their desire and capability.  That would surely turn into something nasty. Fortunately these guilds aren't run by adolescent minds and I am sure they will find a way to accommodate EG's situation, just to keep the peace.  My entire point here is that it's a new situation since Live of the EMU and the guilds concerned are doing their best to figure out a solution without a bunch of name calling, raid jumping and other nasty ways this could go.

Well whatever you think of individual players, the fact there IS a rotation makes my point.  The fact that another guild can develop enough to be placed IN that rotation without a major war breaking out also proves the point.  Our little community can rise above the actions of any individuals.  Whatever GoodHumorBoy did to make your 'naughty list' it serves no one to run around talking like the entire server is doomed to infantile conflicts. 

Well aren't you Mr. Positive.    As small as our community is in the EMU I don't think it will degrade into the uncivilized mess you see in other MMOs. At least I certainly hope it wont.

I think it's good that EG is getting some guidance and help while they get their feet wet.. It is also good to know that EG is not being met with hostility but rather with support as they grow into these challenges.  This is what makes this game and its community unique and special.... Best of luck EG and thanks go out to all of the Big 3 for helping these guys spread their wings.. I hope to hear more successful learning experiences from this... And hey.. EG peeps... Even if you fall flat on your face for a raid, learn from it.. failure is often the greatest teacher of success.

I can understand the effort involved and I love the new looks... It would just be nice to see all of the other tiles other than the ones currently used for turn ins to get some purpose.. "Junk Loot" is great, but useful loot is better, especially when it looks like (actually is) part of a grouping of loot that has a  purpose.    Thanks for the clarification, at any rate.. :) keep the changes coming, these little details mean a lot for the feel of the game...

I was looking at the Mahjong tile sets that are in game and how they are arranged.  It seems a bit haphazard in the way they were implemented.  Are we going to see this done in a more sensible way in the future? Complete set? All tiles having turn-in value?  Same would apply to the animal figurines, lovely artwork with little use.. Perhaps have the animals be faction turn in items as well? Perhaps for Chavez v.s. RD?   Also the white dragon tile is.. blank?   EDIT: I see what the dragon tile is now, I forgot that the white dragon was essentially a blank tile with a boarder on it as it is in most sets, I actually went and pulled out my set to look at the ones I have so I could see it.. :)

Go to the Net 7 site, click on the avatar's name to the left.. Then click the "Signature" tab at the top.. pick the one you like, paste the link in your sig setting here..   Though mine does not seem to want to update.. :(

I would say it is uncalled for to rip into anyone for such questions.  The client/server connection is kind of touchy and there are any number of reasons people can have issues.    Kudos to Zack for narrowing this down to ISP, that is an ugly troubleshoot to get that far.  You essentially have to eliminate everything else since it is not a common thing for ISP issues like this.

Sounds like fun, but I wonder how many people would actually use the content that are not in guilds... Seeing as how it requires a group to be assembled quickly the non-guild/small guild population has not shown well at this ability.

As far as I know the raid timers are not effected by shutdowns now, so the timer will execute based on when the last raid was run, no matter if there was a patch or crash.

The reactor and shield buffs from JS/TT are both very short durations, which is a detriment to the skill.  I have all but given up using it because the upper limit of TT's shields and JS's reactors when when solo are enough to get by most of the time.  JS has to uncloak to activate this skill and it takes a very long time so I have to warp out of the combat area to use it.  I have found it is just better to conserve energy as much as possible and MH more often if I am having reactor issues.

I tried both and found the MH to be better for what I do.. The timing is fairly good... About the time reactor is low the MH delay timer expires and fills reactor to nearly 100% depending on the cap.  if you aren't taking damage and proper use of cloak you barely touch your shield to get that.  My JD also rarely uses Psi shield, because the mobs she fights drops it in one hit, so I would be sitting there exposed while I re-establish the shield.  Also leech is very dangerous because I can be exposed long enough to take heavy damage to my shields doing a leech, if enough damage is taken I can't cloak and it spirals into xp debt very quickly.    Cloak/Find Target Chim/Fire/cloak Fire/cloak x3 MH/cloak x1 Fire/cloak x4 rinse/repeat mob dies. MH/cloak x1 find a target   I can go this way for hours and never run out of power, never be exposed long enough to get hit significantly and kill indefinitely as long as I don't make a mistake in the process or hit a lag spike at a bad moment.   With Shield leech it was flipping a coin.. Do I lose 50% shield and risk an incap to leech it or MH it and not risk anything.. SEC burns more shield per use, feeds less reactor and timer is shorter... you can actually hurt your chances of survival using that thing.   As for Terrell I found that lack of a shield leech on my JS is not as much of a problem as JD/JE in most cases, MH is very useful however if you are burning massive amounts of reactor healing someone else or if you need to feed someone else some reactor power in your group... MH/Charge Shield..  They are 100% in both in about 2 seconds. Use can be the same if you are griding XP with the JS as they burn a lot of juice if you are acting like a JD... Under cloak and during firing you lose power, not gain it.. so rapid consecutive firing will drain your reactor no matter how many buffs you have...

I wasn't impressed with the SEC device, the cost v.s. return in comparison to the MH was very poor. But yes it is similar.  There are also reactors that are not Jenquai friendly (Warrior's Heart) that other races can use, but again they are poor second choices.

Fish makes many good points... Skunky had a desire to raid and get raids going for "the rest of us", he and others, some experienced at raiding, tried and met with some disappointment.  Now with some persistence that could be fixed, but the primary problem was when it came time to execute the raid, either people didn't want to or couldn't due to lack of development of their toons.   Most of the rewards in these raids are for high level toon, 135-150 range. Lacking enough people, leadership and coordination is what caused issues here.  There are ways to overcome those issues, but all of those solutions are normally roles of a guild.  Helping people level up, guiding skill development and helping equip the people that are going to be raiding via suggestion or direct assistance.  Guilds KNOW what needs to be happening so it is easy for them to tell a new TT in the ranks how to setup their toon to be more effective.  An inexperienced raider without guidance has to learn by trial and error, which will cause XP debt.    Personally I think it's fine to be non-guild oriented, but one has to set the expectation of their end-game content to be limited to trading for the really high end gear that is available via trade, non-trade items that require direct looting from a raid will be problematic if not impossible to obtain.  But I think a toon that reaches 150 and has gotten all the toys they can in that scenario is just not going to get played very much except to assist in a multi-box situation.  Some people will actively over-ding their toon until it is completely maxed but it is more likely they will start a new one from a different class. A solo player can keep themselves occupied doing this for months.    Raid content is not required to have a satisfactory setup for most classes, I think that people want the "Best of the best" for their beloved ship and this makes them want something that is out of reach for their circumstances, causing irritation that they can't get that ultimate-bad-mean-super weapon/reactor/shield/engine. But do you really need it?  Can your ship perform well in the content you are playing with? I have found that most cases the answer should be yes.  Tactics, careful research of the traded or player built equipment will render more than adequate equipment for any class.  Raid EQ is not required for any of the normally "Solo" content.

I imagine that scaling raids to the level of whoever started the raid or whoever is activating stages of a raid would be very very hard to do and avoid abuse.  Smaller raids are a great idea, but again it isn't about individual skills of the player.  It comes down to teamwork.. which is not inherent to solo play.  Since most of the population that is not in a guild plays very much solo they do not develop the needed piloting skills and tactics needed to be successful in a raid.  how to watch reactors with your JE to know when/who needs charges.. How to diffuse agro when you are a healer.. best sequence to summon a group of mobs with your JD and avoid getting beaten down until the agro shifts to tank in the group, etc.  All of this comes with experience and practice.     My advice would be, if you are intent on raiding a lot, consider a guild, they raid constantly... maybe after you've gotten when you need as far as experience and technique you could sponsor raids and help teach others how to do them, but that is part of what has been going on.  Attempts to do this so far have met with a very low success rate unless the raiding guilds get involved at some level to ensure success.    After a few weeks in a major guild and a little bit of a learning curve you will learn how to operate your toon in a raid well enough you can support in your role.  In order to adequately organize raids from general public (read people who have not raided before) you will have to know the roles of everyone involved and how to explain the techniques and tactics to people who have never done it before.  Small raids are more forgiving, such as Mordana raids.  Gate and FB to a lesser degree, failure can be quick and catastrophic if certain things happen in those raids.  Major raids (GoBB, RD and Controller) would be met with a quick and certain death for all.  Those raids require a specific coordinated effort across 2 or 3 groups and even guilds that have run the raids dozens of times can "Oops" it and find themselves in trouble.  They, however, will recover themselves and continue. Inexperienced groups will end up with lots of XP debt and little to show for the effort.   That being said I would still love to see a way for non-guild/small guild players to "get it together" but from what I've seen that challenge is going to be hard to meet without tremendous effort of several people and a process to which people can "train up" for them.    My recommended process would be to organize Mordana raids first.. and do them for a period of days or weeks until groups can form, successfully execute complete all 4 raids in KV with minimal deaths.  Once that is happening at a reasonable level, then start organizing Tada-O gate raids.  Do many of them, to both upgrade the equipment on routine raiders and get the spawns, loot and tactics down.  A well seasoned group of 6 well armed toons of the right classes can execute a gate raid and not even have a single death.  But initially 2 groups is best for this.  Enough firepower and backup to get it done in a reasonable amount of time... and then more forward... Getting this kind of long-term project going with players that play solo, at their own pace and without obligations to a guild is going to be extremely hard.   The best course, if you want to raid regularly, get into the raiding guilds, Epic, Static, VGE or Builders.  You will probably be surprised at the level of cooperation and coordination they have because some of these players have been raiding together since the EMU was in early development.  They love the game and are usually very helpful people.