Bionic_Flea

Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer

You have hunger pains from the infestation devouring your intestinal lining and making transdimensional interfaces into visual companions while enjoying pickles soaked in prune extract overnight betwixt thousands upon thousands of gleaming spectacles vomiting extremely vile copious bile onto unsuspecting sentient cockroaches, which oddly feels like a hot roast beef/salmon entering a very cavernous mouth, and stimulates frenzied ferrets in perpetual, harmonized, synchronized, and, ironically, disproportionate proportions of reefer and cheese mixed with stuffed olives -- you, idiot who was eating itself while dancing with wolves wearing orange see-thru sarongs covered in artificial chocolate cockroaches squished between monogamous pigeons mating atop mountains copiously covered specimens astride axiomatic hirsuite diseased cockroaches, stop, collaborate without discussing ramifications of stopping cockroaches incubating under ample cockroaches
with cockroaches

Originally Posted by Solo_One

can i have the pve accolades without having to actually pve?

Originally Posted by Scrier

Except Quebec, which I believe covers Montreal. Which is a shame, since a lot of people are less interested in the prizes than in the artwork appearing in game.

Originally Posted by Supermax

I checked it out. Wow, you guys really need to stop making fun of him. He seems the type that can go on a killing spree at any moment. And I don't mean in the game.

Originally Posted by enrious2

No, prize claimed because you were helping Kat and 3 others do the mission so Kat could get the 1bil.

Then you all switched with you as team lead.

Accuracy, please.

Originally Posted by Mental_Giant

Where's the impact to PvP? Synapse would be working on PvP recipes or something if he wasn't doing badges?

Originally Posted by Radionuclide

So the real question is, did doubling the badge number as you pointed out truely have a negative impact on PvP development? And the answer is emphatically no. Did the changes to MA have a negative impact on PvP development? Yes in terms of powers as time was spent with the critters. I think it would be more accurate to say that MA and new power set development (DP, DS, KM, and EC) was the true resource hog. And quite rightly so as the PvE subcommunity is quite a bit larger the the PvP subcommunity.

--Rad

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

That's kind of a loaded question, since, and I'm sorry to say this, I couldn't care less about ANY of the three. I'm not exaggerating.

Originally Posted by Chrome_Family

Don't forget Justice-badges

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

This ventures into territory the devs can't discuss in too much detail, so they are usually cautious try to avoid discussing too deeply. Its also something that they have historically found difficult to articulate precisely even in areas they are allowed to discuss.

I'm not as cautious, and extremely wordy.

First: we were never meant to be "equal" to 3 even minions. Even back when Statesman was making that statement, I discussed with him the fact that statement was misleading and contradicted other things he said about the game balance. What he said was that 3 even minions was originally meant to be a challenge to players, because that was the standard spawn in a mission (for one player). Obviously, when you are designing a game, you try to generate opposition for the player to overcome that is within their means to do so but generally not trivial to do so.

We were meant to be challenged by three minions, but generally win. By definition, that means we were always supposed to be superior to three even minions. Just not so superior that they were meaningless to us.


Today, that rule is just a whisper of a guideline. The devs now recognize that because of the way the level progression works, the players get more powerful relative to the critters as they get higher. And the devs now *want* the players to get more powerful relative to the critters, to provide the psychological feedback of progress. So we are "balanced against" increasingly higher levels of threat as we get higher.

But as I said, that's just a guideline. The game balance is based around a set of boundaries that define a range of acceptably balanced performance, rather than a specific "target." To the best of my knowledge, these are the parameters the game is balanced *within*:

1. Every powerset combination where the player makes reasonable choices to do so should be able to reasonably solo the core story content of the game.

2. When averaged across all of the players that play the game every powerset combination should generate performance similar to that of the average performance of all players playing all powerset combinations, to within a specific range centered around that average. This should be true under a set of different specific circumstances, such as different combat levels.

3. A player should be theoretically be able to level from level one to level 50 by playing and completing some subset of the core story content less than 100%. In addition, the amount of time for the average player to complete that content should fall within a certain leveling range. Above average players can level significantly faster without generating unacceptably high performance up to some unknown (and possibly non-specific) limit.


There are other minor rules here and there I'm aware of that I doubt you'd be interested in. The problem is that I have only a vague sense of the actual numbers involved in #2, and absolutely no idea (except what basic logic tells me) about the numbers involved in #3, and the devs are explicitly barred from discussing either. To the extent that I know anything about those quantities I'm equally barred from discussing them except in vague terms comparable to what the devs have already said in public.


This is just unfortunately one of those topics for which the devs could give answers, but for most people they cannot give satisfactory ones and would be forced to terminate the discussion at almost every turn. The fact that there are still people who think we were, are, or were ever considered to be "equal to three minions" attests to the difficulty in communicating about this specific topic. That statement was never, ever true and even when Statesman was here I worked hard to correct that misunderstanding, with only very limited success. Its just a very difficult topic to cover without falling into a lot of misunderstandings and general arguments.

Originally Posted by Castle

PVP
Nothing in Going Rogue or the follow up issue. We do have some plans, however, and "Curious Observer" and I discuss things frequently.