Doctor Roswell
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Posts
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I have never done a TPN in which we bothered with the seers.
I've also never been part of a failed TPN.
To be honest, I don't even think I'd know what to do if a league leader were to call out anything other than "ignore the seers!"
Anyway, as far as the original question, yeah, the bottom of the list (the older ones) is easier, the top (the more recent ones) is harder. Generally speaking. That's not to say you can't bring a +0 on a DD and still contribute, you're just going to have a much tougher time with it. And a league of all (or mostly) +0s and +1s shouldn't be surprised to see it fail. -
Quote:You got lucky. Converters don't convert an enhancement to something you can use, they randomly convert an enhancement to something else of the same rarity/type/set (depending on which type of conversion you select in the Convert window). The only thing you were guaranteed to get when you performed this specific conversion was "an ATO that's not from the Might of the Tanker set."Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Okay, I was playing my scrapper and converted a Tanker's Might ATO, which converted it to a Scrapper's Strike.
Now, I didn't extensively test this, but if they automatically convert to the set you can use, wouldn't it make sense to gleemail them before you convert them?
Disclaimer: I don't know for sure if it works like that because I only did it once, so it is entirely possible I just got lucky in getting one I could use.
Enhancements and salvage work differently on the back-end. You have to remember, salvage was added to the game when inventions and the auction house were implemented (what was that, issue 7 or so?) , and was only ever designed to be a part of those specific systems. Enhancements can be flagged as bound to a specific account, while that flag honestly doesn't exist for other types of drops, like salvage and recipes -- they can only be flagged as "untradable"... or not flagged as untradable. The "account-bound" flag simply isn't a part of the salvage coding at all. That's not to say it's impossible to add, just that it would take a lot more work than just changing a 0 to a 1 in the code somewhere -- like writing , implementing and testing entirely new code (or at least importing it from somewhere else, like enhancements).Quote:Originally Posted by monkeyslap
I fail to understand that problem. Attuned set enhancements you buy in the paragon market are account bound and can be emailed to yourself but not traded or placed in the auction house. So "there's no way to account bind salvage" is a crock if you ask me. If they can do it with shop purchased enhancements, they should be able to do it with salvage.
Basically, it's not just flipping a switch from "on" to "off," it's installing a whole new switch. Not impossible by any means, but a lot more time, money and work.
To me, it points more to "catalysts should never have been made salvage in the first place" than anything else. -
Quote:If you take your settings down to -1/x1, the last mission (the only one that's required to complete the arc) isn't too bad even if you're alone. However, if I'm remembering correctly, that arc doesn't give you a reward table at the end. Probably for exactly that reason.Originally Posted by StarGeek
If I recall correctly, you can skip to the end of Max's arc. It'll be harder by not breaking out all the Malta leaders, but seems like it'd be quick if you have a character capable of handling it.
So Heather is still probably your best bet.
Also, OP, don't forget about Taskmaster Gabriel. Two guaranteed Empyrian merits a week (plus the rewards for the individual arcs) isn't a bad deal when you're not doing trials, and it's a little less grindy than doing the same arc over and over again.
EDIT: Ninja'd! And also, make sure you do a repeatable mission every day. Those ten-thread rewards add up. -
Quote:I remember something about only having so many "nodes" to attach a costume item to on each character, and someone (BABs?) saying we were close to that limit as-is. Which, if I recall correctly, is also the reason splitting up head details could be a problem.Originally Posted by LLamaBoy
As for multiple auras, I think a dev at some point in the past (a few years back) mentioned something about technical restrictions preventing it. Who knows though, they might be able to overcome the problem now.
But "close to" a limit implies we're not actually at the limit, and dammit, Anti-Matter has THREE auras! Can't we please have two? I'd still be okay (thrilled, even) with just a "regular" and a "path" aura at the same time if that's all we can get. -
Quote:Couple of things:Originally Posted by Soul_System
Whamburger and french cries?
Waiting a little extra longer for a powerset being a complaint is weak. Try following an MMORPG from alpha stage, beta testing it and seeing that it's good and looks to be shaping up well, having it get near release, then going horribly horribly wrong and tanking because they suddenly catered to the new influx of players. Or one that's shaping up well but gets released half finished. Or horrible horrible imbalances between classes. Or major numbers imbalances in open PVP Etc.
Your complaint of a feature that's taking longer than you'd like but they are working on an will be done really soon (By End of April is the word atm) is about a 2 out of 10 on the scale of complaint worthy.
Also, the stuff you've been asked to purchase in the meantime being lame is highly subjective, assumes your not subbed and earning points, and ignores all the awesome freebies we have been given.
Really, if you want to, you can make almost anything SOUND like a convincing case or argument. But it doesn't change what it is. Which is in this case is people being waaayyy spoiled. News flash. This is a good MMORPG that's working hard to consistently add what people want as well as random extras. They are trying not to overload any portion of their playerbase so as not to neglect others. We are freekin lucky here. There are many games I'd have killed to see this sort of content/commitment in.
Ya, melee got alot of love lately and is dominant in game atm. Let the other people, especially masterminds, have their candy. They went from good, to no new power sets while everyone else got them, to end game content that destroys their pets. They've also been waiting longer than you. Chill your jets.
- Chill out a bit; there's no reason to start insulting people for being excited about a new set. Besides that, I'm not crying. I'm not even complaining. I'm explaining a position being taken by a far-from-insignificant portion of players. There's no reason to call them all crybabies for wanting something that they've been asking for (some for literally years) and which does something useful in-game, in place of something nobody (or nearly nobody) asked for, which does nothing. The set is coming out this month; great. I can wait. I'll likely wait a few weeks after it's released anyway before I buy it, just so I'm not one of six Staff scrappers on every team I join. I'm at most mildly annoyed and fairly confused that the set isn't out yet, not angry. But I understand completely why other people are much more upset.
- What do other MMOs have to do with this? "I've seen worse, so this doesn't count" is a facile argument. If someone is diagnosed with cancer, do you tell them to quit whining and get over it just because you once knew somebody else with a more aggressive and deadly kind of cancer? Sure, that's a ridiculous extreme, but the logic here is the same.
- Beast Mastery isn't preventing Staff Fighting from being released. Not directly, anyway. Putting Staff Fighting on the market wouldn't somehow prevent Beast MMs from playing their new set any more than Beast Mastery prevented Dark controllers from playing their new set.
- There's exactly zero evidence to suggest that Staff Fighting is still being worked on. There's no direct evidence to suggest it's not either, but that's at least where logic points us: It was on Beta largely unchanged for close to three months, then Beta was closed to test Issue 23. If they make any changes to Staff Fighting now, those changes will need to be tested, but apparently, there's nothing else to test. They're sitting on it; Zwillinger very nearly came out and said as much in his other thread.
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Quote:Sure, if that's what you want to call it when somebody says, "hey, remember that thing you promised a while back? The one you showed me, let me use for a while, and told me in no uncertain terms that I'd be able to purchase at a later date? It's kinda been a long time... when can I purchase that like you said I could? Because all the other stuff you've asked me to purchase in the interim is pretty lame. Why all that other stuff, anyway, when I can't see any reason not to sell the thing you showed me?"Originally Posted by Soul_System
Let me shorten that down into bite sized but extremely accurate terminology.
ENTITLEMENT.
Carry on.
I mean, most people on the boards tend more toward expressing that with "this is a slap in the face"-style hyperbole, but the sentiment is the same, I think. -
Conventional wisdom is that Reactive is the "best" interface, but that's not necessarily true for all builds. My robotics MM, for example, is getting a lot of use out of Cognitive (the confuse one) right now. My Invulnerability tanker uses Diamagnetic to become even more impossible to hit, as well as keeping the rest of the team that much safer if an enemy somehow breaks away from me (though I do have a Reactive that I swap in sometimes when I'm soloing). My energy blaster uses Gravitic for the movement speed debuff so I have time to get an extra shot or two in as enemies close back into melee range with me after being knocked back.
There's also the fact that any given interface only stacks four times at a time, so if an entire team or league is using it, a lot of their procs are going to waste. But that's not a problem here since you're looking at solo play only.
If I were in your shoes, I'd probably go Reactive. It's really never a bad choice. -
Quote:You know, I should have seen that coming....Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
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Quote:Depending on context, it could be a shortening of "issue," or it could be pseudo-curse similar to "dang" or "frak" (I've usually seen it used as a substitute for the dreaded "S-word").Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
Completely off topic, but this question keeps ringing in my head as I catch up on posts:
What the heck does 'ish' mean? -
The devs are looking into what can be done. Last I heard, the "frontrunner" of all ideas being discussed was to allow us to at least transfer them to other characters on the same account... unfortunately, there's no way to account-bind salvage (it can only be marked as "untradable"), so the workaround will likely be to let us turn it in to incarnate merit vendors in Ouroboros and have a new one sent to us via global email.
But none of that is confirmed or promised yet, just what's sounding like the most likely action. -
Quote:You're right; ever since Freedom launched we've seen more new powersets more quickly than probably ever before (unless you count something like the CoV launch, which is kind of a special case). However, I don't really think the issue people have here is how quickly or slowly powersets are being released. It's that, as far as anybody can tell, Staff Fighting has been ready -- or as ready as it's going to get, anyway -- since sometime in January, and Paragon just... keeps... sitting on it. And we're seeing a particular upswing in rage about that now because:Originally Posted by Noobian_Prince
That's practically one a month. And you're complaining the devs are rolling them out too slowly? When did we ever get that many powersets that quickly?
- Issue 22 has come and gone, but Issue 23 is a long way off and information on it is still pretty sparse. The next "big thing" to look to on the horizon is Staff Fighting.
- For the past month, we've had a pretty good idea what's coming every Tuesday thanks to War Witch's letter. With March now over, we're all once again left with no clue what's coming each week, so people are working themselves up into an anticipatory frenzy: "It could be Staff Fighting, I hope it's Staff Fighting, I want Staff Fighting so bad!" And when they log in only to discover yet another useless, overpriced vanity pet nobody asked for instead of the useful, presumably-reasonably-priced powerset lots of people have been asking for, it's a pretty huge letdown. This isn't kids refusing to wait until Christmas morning to open their presents, it's kids opening each present hoping it's the Xbox they know for a fact is under the tree somewhere, only to find yet another package of socks or underwear. Except in this case, they can't just tear into another present right away, they have to wait a whole week for the next one.
- With the Beta server now closed and holding an Issue-23 build, obviously any testing to be done on Staff is over. Which, again, leads people to believe, not unreasonably I think, that it's ready for release... and if it's ready, then again they all ask, why can't we have it yet? Maybe there's a perfectly valid reason we can't, but does being told "not now, you'll spoil your dinner" make waiting for the cookies you've been watching your mother bake all day any easier? They're baked. They've cooled. Does Mom really expect the kids not to ask for one?
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Jumping in at the 15-page mark... I haven't read the whole thread, but I did skim and look for Zwill's responses at least. My thoughts:
A big part of my frustration (and I don't seem to be alone here) is that Staff Fighting has been on Beta so much longer than Beast Mastery ever was -- people logging on to test out Staff discovered a clearly-not-for players'-eyes version of Beasts that ended up there by accident, with placeholder animations and un-textured pets. And as far as pretty much anybody who doesn't work for Paragon knows, Staff has been 100% ready (or at least as ready as it's going to get, since I doubt the sound effects are being reworked again) for something like two or three months now. The perception at this point is that it's just being sat upon, and in my case that's been compounded by the practice of, until this thread was started, spending the past month and a half completely ignoring (as far as I know) any questions about the delay except to occasionally tell people on Facebook not to bother asking any. As annoying as all the "nope, the staff here isn't fighting, we all get along great" jokes got after a while, at least someone was acknowledging that the players were asking about it at all.
Oh, and also this, pretty much word-for-word:
Quote:As to the idea of a posted monthly release schedule, four things:Originally Posted by Reiska
Just saying: there would not be a controversy here if not for the following facts:
- Staff Fighting was opened on the beta earlier than Beast Mastery.
- Staff Fighting was acknowledged by the majority of testers on the VIP beta as being clearly ready for release outside of minor FX issues as early as the end of January, as evidenced by testing data across all level ranges on the VIP beta servers, including Incarnate content. There were complaints about the set's sound effects, which were addressed, and there was an animation bug involving Assassin Strike on Staff Stalkers, which was addressed.
- Beast Mastery, in contrast, was widely acknowledged to be underperforming by a substantial percentage of the testers who were actually skillful Mastermind players and who were not too busy squeeing over the pets' appearance to actually pay attention to the numbers. Chief among the set's acknowledged issues were the fact that none of the six pets in the set have gapless attack chains (in fact, all six have large gaps), and the fact that there was an observed correlation between Beast Mastery's introduction to the beta servers and a sudden significant degradation in pet AI performance which affected all Mastermind primaries.
- The fact that the introduction of Beast Mastery to the VIP beta servers exposed a bug causing pets - Mastermind pets, Lore pets, Controller pets, any kind of pets - to uncontrollably charge mission and/or trial bosses while ignoring mastermind pet commands, including stay/heel, (most noticeable in various phases of the Underground trial, and also with Marauder at Lambda Sector, but it manifests in non-Incarnate content as well) should have been an absolute show-stopper to the set's release; there is no universe I am aware of in which an update that fundamentally breaks the functionality of one archetype and significantly inhibits the damage-dealing functionality of two other archetypes should have been considered acceptable.
- Nonetheless, Beast Mastery was released to the live servers without addressing any of its problems, in the midst of a continuous wave (which is still ongoing) of new Paragon Market items obsessively using the four-legged animation rig first introduced by the German Shepherd vanity pet. As of right now, April 3, 2012, all of the above mentioned issues, which were identified on the VIP beta in February, are still present on the live servers.
- We are then told that the timing of the release of Beast Mastery - which should not have been pushed live in this state - is the primary reason that Staff Fighting has not been released to the live servers, because "if we release too many Powersets too quickly, it could be seen as a grab at your Paragon Points, and subsequently, your money." However, either the development team apparently does not consider a black wolf vanity pet that is documented to require, on average, the purchase of over one hundred dollars in Super Packs to be a grab at our Paragon Points, or that excuse is patently devoid of truth.
- If you put it on the forums, you'd only reach about ten percent of the playerbase? If you don't put it anywhere, you'll reach exactly ZERO percent of the playerbase.
- It's happened twice before on the forums (well, one and a half times, since War Witch's letter didn't technically promise anything with specific dates. Though the order listed there did turn out to be spot-on) without anything going up on the main page.
- How much of the playerbase frequents the main page? I can't imagine there are too many people checking it daily or anything, what with all the important news showing up in the Launcher and all. The site, forums notwithstanding, seems like it's more useful as a means of informing and advertising to new and unfamiliar players than people already invested in the game.
- Seriously? Months? I could code it by hand in Notepad in a few days at most, and I'm not even that good.
Regarding vanity pets: They're useless to me, too. I might re-think that if they weren't so danged expensive, and I understand why they are from a development perspective, but from a consumer's perspective, I look at it this way: I happily pay 400 points for a costume set with, let's say a dozen items in it. Asking me to pay 600 for what basically amounts to a single costume item (after all, it has no in-game effect other than to look pretty) is ludicrous. -
Quote:That's been my experience too (well, I'd say it's been an even split between Brazilian and Korean players for me), but I do have to wonder if that might be specifically because there were French- and German-language servers for those players to congregate on, while there's never been a Portuguese-language one. If there were a Brazilian server, would English-speaking players run into as many Portuguese speakers as we do now, or would they all be on that server instead?Originally Posted by TonyV
I just have to point out that most non-English speakers I see in the game are not French or German, they're Brazilian and they speak Portuguese.
One of the main draws when Exalted opened up (for players on Virtue, anyway) was the sudden availability of character names that had been locked up forever on all the other servers. A lot of people made that their "new home" not because they wanted to be on the all-VIP server, but because the idea of finally being able to make a character with a name they'd wanted for literally years was just too attractive to pass up.Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
And now, English speaking players are going to have 2 more English language severs when the changes are made to Vigilance and Zukunft, so there's no reason why the same increase in populaiton won't happen there too.
That could be a decent draw for English speakers in this case, too -- it's not a totally clean slate, but I assume the vast majority of characters on Vigilance have French names, not English ones, and that most characters on Zukunft are named in German. There could be a veritable English-codename goldmine over there, and with the main barrier preventing English speakers from playing on those servers disappearing, a migration to them could very well be in the cards. Probably not on the same level as Exalted, but something. -
Quote:Isn't everything?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Is this something to do with catgirls?
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Quote:And what supposed "vendetta" do I have, in which I pop into threads not to contribute, but just to call people out and start fights (or rather, continue fights from other threads)?Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Hello Mr. Pot met Mr. Vendetta Kettle. Pfft.
(I'd also note that the pot being black doesn't mean it's wrong when it says the kettle is too.) -
So far there have been four paid-only sets -- five if you count the one we know for sure is coming soon:
- Beam Rifle (weapon-based, but not melee)
- Street Justice (melee, but not weapon-based)
- Titan Weapons (weapon-based and melee)
- Beast Mastery (neither weapon-based nor melee)
- Staff Fighting (weapon-based and melee)
There's even less of a problem if you factor in all the purchasable sets that VIPs get for "free," and I personally think it's unfair not to. -
I actually thought Psyche's death was a lot... "heavier" than Statesman's. Having it be at the hands of her husband, to save the whole city, seemed to mean more than having it be "just because" and at the hands of some until-now-minor character.
Back in the '90s, when DC killed Superman and broke Batman's back, one of people's biggest complaints wasn't that those things happened, it was that they happened because of villains who showed up out of the blue for that specific purpose. Wouldn't it have been a little more momentous to have Lex Luthor (for example) kill Superman, or the Joker (for instance) put Batman out of commission, or Lord Recluse (just to throw a name out there off the top of my head) finally off Statesman?
Not to mention the fact that there was some build-up to Psyche's death, with the whole Malaise thing earlier in the arc. Statesman was purposely left out for most of it, then brought back just so he could be killed. That felt lazy to me. At least they made me care that Psyche had just made the ultimate sacrifice. -
Supposedly there's (currently) no way for the devs to account-bind salvage; it can only be marked as "untradable." Which means somebody dropped the ball in making the things salvage in the first place instead of some other kind of drop.
There's a fair amount of circumstantial evidence to suggest that someday we'll get more ATO sets, but so far, nothing concrete. And by the time those come out, how many Catalysts will you have? "Great, now I can use twelve catalysts! Assuming I can find room in my build for twelve different ATOs. And what am I supposed to do with these other fifty catalysts I've been accumulating for the past eight months?"
Personally, I'm hoping they can figure out a way to add some functionality to the things so all those extras are good for something -- let us use them on IOs as enhancement boosters, maybe? Or convert them to something else like we do with unwanted Incarnate salvage? Or spend them like merits? Or use them as converters? Or... I don't know. Something. -
Quote:And so, I made an attempt to provide you with more accurate information. You were under an impression, now you know.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
And that is why I used the terms "impression" and "implied" as opposed to saying, "I was certain that she said...". I wasn't following the issue closely and what I heard was second, third, or fourth hand.
And I'm still disappointed there wasn't anything new to buy added to the market for VIP's this week. Free stuff doesn't count, and the sales are just trying to sell old stuff.
I'm a little disappointed too, but not enough to really get upset. Last week we got something pretty major, this week we got the WWD finale, so I can see where someone could look at that and say, "yeah, that's plenty for one week." Sure, I'd like to get more, but who wouldn't?
Honestly, what's most disappointing to me this week is that with it being the end of March, I now have no idea what to expect next Tuesday. Staff Fighting? A new costume set? A set that exists in-game already being offered for sale? A horrendously-overpriced vanity pet? I guess I could play on Beta more and have a better idea, but man, it was nice to just have it spelled out ahead of time last month. -
I know, right? I mean, I remember a while back I paid fifty dollars -- FIFTY! -- for this game, and now they just give it away! Why did I waste my money? Not to mention the subscription fees I paid. I should have just waited and played for free. It's a scam, I tell ya!
Are you seriously complaining that there are too many discounts available?
Or are you under the impression that "charge what you think you can get for it now, then lower the price once sales drop off" is a sales practice somehow exclusive to CoH and Macy's? Because that's pretty much how the retail business works. Buy a DVD on release day, six months later it's selling for half what you paid for it. Pick up a new Xbox game, and pretty soon it's dropped from sixty dollars to twenty, and all the expansions come with it for free! -
This exact suggestion has been made a few times since Freedom and the Paragon Market debuted. A search for "Prestige Power Slide" will turn up at least a couple of threads.
Basically, it comes down to what Lothic said, although there are a half-dozen or so items in the same boat -- Slide is hardly the only exclusive item not currently available on the market. The Arachnos cape, an alternate Arachnos chest emblem, the Cape of the Four Winds, the Seven Stars chest insignia, and the Wisps aura are also unavailable, off the top of my head, and soon we'll probably be able to add every item in the Salute to Statesman loyalty pack to that list. However, as I mentioned in the other threads on this topic, as someone who has the Slide power, my personal feelings are that if there's a demand (and obviously there is), then they should feel free to sell it, "exclusive" or not. I care that I do have it, not that others don't.
Or, alternately, remove the pink foot glow and release a new sliding Sprint power -- that way the old version is still "exclusive," but other people can have a slide power too. (And I might even buy an "effects-less" version even though I have the original, since it would almost certainly look better with the modern game's path auras.) -
Quote:I make that joke all the time. Usually I go extra-obscure and toss in a line from the gun rack scene in Wayne's World, too: "If it's a severed head, I'm going to be very upset."Originally Posted by Party_Kake
*INTENSE HIGH FIVE*
Man I'm always making that joke when someone asks what's in the box and NOBODY ELSE GETS IT.
(Wayne's World pre-dates Se7en by three years, so that line is actually kind of prophetic.)
Oh, and also: Spoiler alert! Each box contains a universe.
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Quote:Just the opposite, in fact. We were all kind of assuming it was mere weeks away, then her "letter" hit the forums with a complete release schedule for March (which turned out to be 100% accurate) and no mention of Staff Fighting whatsoever.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I was under the impression that War Witch implied that staff would be released before the end of the month.
Come to think of it, the only time since that letter appeared that I remember seeing any Paragon staffers so much as mention the set or acknowledge (never mind answer) a single question was on the most recent Freedom Friday topic on Facebook, and that was just to tell people not to bother asking about it. It's like they're under orders not to talk about it. I haven't been following uStream very closely, though -- maybe it's been brought up there? -
Just a note: You can't turn trials down to -1/x1.
Is Time Saver really that hard to earn when the enemies are all -1 and you're +3 with t4 Judgement and Lore pets? And how long would it really take for, say a stalker, to ghost each mission on that arc in Ouroboros and get back to that fight over and over again? To say nothing of a team of eight +3s that includes one stalker with Team Teleport... do they all get the salvage? And the bonus merit too? Because on a trial, the whole team gets them.
Best case, we'd be looking at a once-a-week time gate on this. -
But while you're fighting the shivan for no XP, you could be fighting Hellions. Which are worth XP.
That timed experiment Firespray posted about above? Try that same thing, but time it to level 3 instead. That's where you'll see a real difference.