EarthWyrm

Anyone can get purple drops, if:

(a) they're fighting something from which they can earn xp/inf, which is
(b) not grey to them (since greys give trivial inf, but cannot drop recipes/enhancements/salvage) and
(c) capable of dropping a level 50 common recipe.

A level 47 character fighting even-cons therefore has a chance to get purple drops, because a level 47 mob can drop a level 50 common IO recipe.

A level 50 running a level 47 mission, however, needs it set to the third or fourth difficulty in order to make sure the minions con green, rather than grey, since as noted above grey-cons cannot drop recipes.

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Wow, I have to say that this makes me a bit chaffed. I don't get how there has not been a nasty memo about this like it was for other things not being used as intended.

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Because nobody ever said PVP was not supposed to be used to kill other characters repeatedly, but it was very clear from before release that the MA was not supposed to be used to farm.

Just a guess.

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Have they set a lower ticket cap for smaller maps? When did this happen?

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There is a lower ticket cap for smaller maps. Whether it is intentional or not is unknown, because no redname has commented on it. Arcanaville did some testing on it, as have others. If you want to see a really painfully low cap, try one of the police station maps. I got a "one or more tickets were not awarded" message after receiving about 40 tickets from defeats. I /bugged it in-game. When you run across it, do the same and include the map name (/whereami will give you the information they need to isolate problem maps, if this is indeed a problem).

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Actully it's supose to. There are faulse advertisement laws to prevent things like this from happening however I don't think they've ever been enforced.

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I will elect not to comment on your lack of legal knowledge, other than to say that anyone who believes a company could engage in blatantly illegal behavior in the manner you claim and not find themselves targeted by a class action suit, in today's legal environment, is incorrect.

Early adopters for anything pay a premium.

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That's another thing that bugs me, at my Wall-Mart there's useually a display stand in the front of the store with new movies on it, thoughs same movies are sold in the back of the store but for a cheaper price.

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For it to ring at a different price, it has to have a different UPC. For it to have a different UPC, it has to be a different item. What you will most frequently see at the front of a store are promotional/feature-laden versions of movies, while the less expensive, non-exclusive, feature-lite versions are kept with the bulk of the movies.

If the two things rang at different prices, they were not the same item. There's no magic tag that registers can use to tell what part of a store the same exact item came from.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I've been wanting to go back and re-visit some of the custom mobs' descriptions, but you're right about the issue currently being space. I'm going to be updating when the new issue hits, and will definitely be using your suggestions when I do so!

Hey WN,

Played Blappy tonight and enjoyed it, and played "Death to Disco" a while ago and loved it.

Submitted for your consideration, then...

Title: The Rise and Fall of the Radioactive Bikini Squad
Arc ID: 1928 (I think, if I'm wrong it's in my sig)
Creator’s Global Name: @Wyrm
Mission Count: 5
Notes – Should be soloable. Has an extreme boss (not an EB) at the end, but there's a helper NPC available. I recommend level 40+ on it, because of some of the foes. Yes, there are Knives of Artemis, but only for one mission, and it's as short as I could reasonably make it.

Hope you enjoy the arc!

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It seems that more people are concerned about the presentation than the content. I announced an idea, told everyone it was my idea, and put my idea in quotes. Period.

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If you wanted to "announce an idea," it might have behooved you to start with, "What would everyone think if we saw this on the forums tomorrow?" rather than posting it with a title designed to draw attention and make people angry before they had a chance to know that it WAS an idea.

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Luck of the Gambler uniques

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Notable among the uniques in that you can have up to five of them.

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They should have pulled it in beta, or not at all. Failing that they should have warned us that the change was coming and told us what the plans were for restoring it, if any.

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I agree that they should have pulled it in beta. I don't know how it got left in. I mean, fercryinoutloud, A'ville was the author of the mission that clued me into the problem, and she has confirmed in other threads that *she* /bugged and reported it.

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Well it's been almost a month and and still no explination as to why this map was pulled or if it will be returning.

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It was pulled because the last room was non-standard and led to glowies spawning inside walls or in other unreachable geometry positions. This was reported during I14 open beta by a number of people, including myself. Not knowing how much work it takes to modify maps to update where spawns are allowed to be created, it is not possible for anyone who's not a redname to predict when the map will be returned to "available" status.

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I always thought purples were Pool A, so I only looked at that part.

In retrospect, it makes sense that they aren't pool A, but rater an "extra" pool, like costume parts, otherwise they'd show up at lower levels, and maybe in Bronze Rolls.

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I'm actually fairly sure they are. Reason being, when the bugged cargo ship map was around with its predictable drop-points (if you switched in/out of SG mode at particular points), regular Pool A recipes and Purple recipes could drop at the same points in the sequence (but never at the same time). However, costume parts (which drop from a different "pool") never fell at those points in the sequence, and would only fall from minions that never dropped recipes otherwise.

Based on extensive testing an, uh, SG member did. Of course.

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Firstly, only the SL can set base storage permissions.

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I just checked this, and it's not correct. I logged in a character that is top-rank in one of my SGs, but not the SL, and I can edit permissions on the storage objects just fine.

A character that is the next rank down is unable to edit storage permissions. So it looks like SL and top-rank SG members both have the ability to edit permissions on storage items.

A level 47 enemy has the potential to drop a purple recipe, provided that enemy does not con grey to you. I don't believe a level 50 farming level 47 minions is going to be able to get a purple drop, unless they're level 47 minions generated thru Ouroboros while the level 50 is exemped to level 45.

Or, to put it differently, I think that if you want to farm for purples you want to have it spawning level 48 minions for maximum efficiency, since they will be green to a level 50 and therefore eligible to give drops.

If I'm wrong, I'm confident someone will correct me.

QR

The main problem with overslotting stuns on a brute, IMO, is that stunned mobs are not attacking you, and mobs that aren't attacking are not helping you build fury.

One set of 5 Stupefies isn't bad, if you're talking about powers that do minor damage anyway. Heavy hitters need the damage slotting, though. Things that are dead are even less of a threat than things that are stunned.

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near-total lack of end-game content after 5 years is a perfectly legitimate gripe to make.

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LOL. I can't take anyone seriously who says something like this.

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And yet, somehow, my heart will go on.

[/ QUOTE ]NEAR! FAR! WHevER YOU ARE!

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Warning: THE SHIP SANK!!!!!

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Crap!

/em cancels Netflix order

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I would say its the ticket nerf more than anything else. Why do a longer arc if you are going to max out on tickets?

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I'd thought the 1500 ticket max was per mission, not per arc. I've played through longer arcs and never gotten anywhere near 1500 tickets for a single mission. The only maps that seem to push the envelope on that are ones that are designed for ticket-gain, and even then your ticket counter resets for the next mission.

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The benefit we had before with the extra ticket bonus that increased as the arc went on is basically worthless now.

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I always knew that was there, but honestly never noticed it, so don't miss it.

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I usually do arcs that are at most 3 missions.

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That's a shame. I'm sure you're missing some good stuff.

Shorter arcs definitely get more plays, no doubt. If you glance at the three arc descriptions in my sig, I'm sure you can guess which one has more than 3x the ratings of the other 2 combined. I made a conscious decision to create one "candy bar" arc, since I knew not everyone would have the time for a full meal every time they played, but I'm happy with how all 3 turned out.

To update: I tried a villain on Champion and was also able to use the market without issue. I've PM'd this thread to Ghost Falcon and Niviene, so the team has been made aware of the problem.

QR

To add to the discussion, I logged a character on Victory and was able to use the BM just fine. I logged back into Virtue and had about 30 seconds of usage of the BM before I got the pop-up "tell us about your error" box and the game hard-crashed.

Same here. Three times. At least one person who was standing beside me crashed out once while I was trying to put/take things from the BM in Cap (virtue). There's a guy there with his blazing aura pulsing (I could hear it even after the game froze), but I have no idea whether it's a sound loop or something purely BM-related.

Very annoying. Very.

I'm not logging back into the game so can't file a formal ticket, but they got three of the pop-up box reports from me.

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I /bugged it, reported it, reported it, and reported it again.

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I hadn't meant to imply that you hadn't done any of the above. Quite to the contrary, my point (overly subtle) was that they've been so busy that not even something that you were likely to have reported was able to be pulled in a timely fashion, because it wasn't immediately game-breaking.

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It would, I think, be useful to start a list of the undocumented changes / fixes from the last patch. Some of these break missions, while others make things work that didn't work before, i.e.:

Breaks:

<ul type="square">[*] Crey Hero Lab map has been removed[/list]
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That one's been needing to go for a while. I reported in open beta that the non-standard setup of the last room was leading to glowies spawning inside walls. Heck, it was in Arcanaville's arc, so I even sent her a message since I figured she might be able to get more notice than the standard bug report I'd already submitted.

I'm guessing it'll be back when they can fix that problem.

QR

I don't want to comment on everything here, but in terms of providing a constructive version of, "Me too," I would like to echo the concerns about the inclusion of Energy Drain (a) at all, for minions and (b) at anything below extreme for other classes of enemies. Being able to populate a mission with predictable spawns that can drain every melee character to zero end (very easy, with multiple Energy Drains happening at once) within seconds of engagement is the antithesis of fun.

There are two things that consistently make me quit arcs, and those are the over-use of to-hit debuffs and the over-use of end drain. I very much hope that the Energy Drain (and Darknest Night) decisions get some serious attention pre-promotion.

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It's a little disheartening that with teams, only the team lead really sees the story text. All team members should be able to talk to the contact and at least be able to read the text. (This goes for Task Forces too.)

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This is a common misconception. Anyone can read the mission briefings and send-off text by clicking the little red starburst that appears in their Nav bar once they're inside the mission. The only thing the team leader gets that the rest of the team never has access to is the return-to-contact text. In the case of task forces, where the final RTC text can be a huge payoff (I'm looking at you, Lady Grey...), that's a fairly big issue, but for the most part, anyone can follow the briefings.

I don't know if I can commit to this (we're coming to the end of the semester, so I'm already going to have a lot of reading on my desktop!), but I'd like to make a recommendation on a judging criterion, in addition to the somewhat obvious things like writing and pacing.

I think that you should try to run the arcs with characters/teams at multiple levels. There are some highly-rated arcs, including some of the Dev's Choice ones, that are an absolute misery for lower-level characters or teams. The custom groups may be all right for 50s to face, but become seriously overpowered against characters in their 20s and 30s. Thinking about how arcs will play across multiple levels is an aspect of design that I think should be rewarded.

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So if your mission implies that it's a farming mission, it'll be banned. Doesn't matter if it is one or not. If it's not one and it's banned, escalate it to the GMs and ask for it to be unbanned.

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So, the GM are doing a search on the term "farm" and out-right banning the mission arc without even looking at it.

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And, in some cases, "Ticket".

They're over-worked and under-staffed (aren't we all?). I don't know how else they could realistically undertake the task of making it very clear from the get-go that farming missions are unacceptable.

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Sorry, but as a some-what student of history, this strike me purely as draconian and early 1933 Germany.

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So, yeah. Godwin's.

Aside from that, in 1933 Germany, you couldn't call up the powers that be and ask them to reconsider. You couldn't argue your position. You couldn't request that they give you the chance to revise what you'd done and make it acceptable.

That's how the process goes here, though. If a GM sees something that looks like a farm map, it gets banned. The author then has the chance to edit the mission and re-submit it for GM review. If the changes meet the standards for making it clear that it's not a farm map, the arc will be re-posted immediately.

They're over-worked and under-staffed, it's a totally thankless job, but the process is ultimately fair to the author. You do have an appeal mechanism built-in, and based on my experience, the GMs are interested in making sure that they give the players every chance to correct their missteps.

I wasn't happy to log in and find one of my arcs banned, but I was very happy two hours later with how I'd been treated by the GMs and how willing they were to work with and listen to me. The process was fair, and definitely resolved to my satisfaction.