Eiko-chan

IIRC, the only thread in the GR Beta longer than the "complaining about ambushes" thread was the morality thread.

Eh. Let them.

IIRC, Steelclaw is retired.

Clearly we need Mother/Beholder slashpics. Or Mother/Vanessa.

The Kheldian Bosses can take forever to kill (they don't generally hurt me, they just refuse to die). When they pop into Dwarf or Nova form, my damage drops around 70-80%.

They might make up for this a bit by virtue of their self-rezzes, which generally gives me a second shot at boss-level drops with far less difficulty the second time.

I honestly thought that was the only way Babbage spawned.

When I say I don't really play blue-side, I'm completely, 100% serious.

My Elec/Shield Brute is only getting about 1 an hour. She runs on x8. Elec/Shield should, on paper, be far more capable of blowing through x8 mobs than MA/SR.

Would this discrepancy be entire explained by my penchant for not cherry-picking enemies, and just fighting whatever comes along instead of specifically seeking out only Freakshow/Council/other "simple" enemy groups?

There's a GM that spawns in Boomtown?

I like Superman but I hate Statesman. I don't think it has nearly as much to do with his ideals and standards as it has to do with his portrayal. Go talk to him about Incarnates and he just talks down to you. Rescue him from Tyrant and he just goes around stealing the glory. For a very long time, he has been presented as an unmatchable power that we, the players, must always stay below - and that might be the worst offence of all.

And, of course, there's the association of Statesman the character with Statesman the developer, who is oft-reviled around here. That can't help either. Plus, we keep having more and more Marcus Coles shoved in our faces as great powers, and always as great powers we must "team up" against - as if Marcus Cole is some inviolate pinnacle that can never be matched no matter what we do.

The game would honestly be much better if Statesman and Recluse were just to kill one another, and the player characters forced into the limelight more because their respective factions now have no one else to turn to.

Not in a subscription service. Current customers pay the bills, because they are paying recurring charges. A retained customer is exactly the same as a new customer.

Because the rewards previously locked behind Task Forces have never been "the next level" of character advancement.

1 shard/mission was based off older missions, not tips. Tips are shorter (less groups to fight); I'm getting a shard every 2-3 missions on tips. It comes out to about 1 shard an hour, no matter which metric you look at.

Because of the way shard drops work, this rate should be approximately the same whether you solo or team (teams probably are slightly higher simply because teams clear missions faster). I'm also willing to concede that, if you are not taking the WST/Trial path to Incarnates, that x8 is a reasonable balance point - whether you prefer smaller teams or soloing, running against full 8-person content should probably be the expected norm when balancing shard generation.

Trying to balance the cost of a recipe such that it is not used more than something with a time-gated mechanism built in is futile. Without time-gating the recipe itself, no ideal balance would be achieved. Just setting an arbitrary shard amount as "what a soloer can earn in a week" is not going to set a satisfactory balance. What soloer? How much do they play? How much more or less valuable is their play time versus that of those running Task Forces?

And we don't yet know whether the Incarnate Trials are offering faster access to Notices or not; the recipe is intended as an alternative to those, not the WST.

I have no idea what you're asking about.

Accounting rules require them to break up yearly subscriptions quarter-by-quarter. They "realise" 1/4th of the income each quarter, rather than all in the single quarter the subscription renews.

Yeah, the Power arc really goes downhill after Tami Baker.

It is coming from x8 missions.

Solo, one shard a mission seems to be a pretty standard average across most reports.

I make that you and your GF probably aren't the people that should be the balance point for what can and cannot be a "soloable arc". The nice thing about story arcs is that you can get help when you need it, or try to tackle the challenge yourself if you don't.

I soloed the Ramiel arc with every single one of my 5 50s. Only problem I had was when I forgot to turn off AVs for the Honoree/Holtz fight with my Tanker (so I reset the mission, turned off AVs, and went and took them out as EBs.) I probably shouldn't be the balance point either; my solo ability is pretty far beyond the norm.

Both sides have, at times, been fairly liberal with throwing around the accusations and belittlements. No one can really claim a high-ground here.

A lot of them are. So neener.

Not so long as it's linked to a reward system like the Incarnate system, I won't. I don't mind raids existing. I mind raids existing with a reward structure designed as the "next step" for our characters.

I don't think giving ex-customers what they want is the best policy if it means you're locking things away from your current customers.

The devs are gambling on their new end-game raid content bringing in more customers than it drives away.

No. My expensive IOs are staying on my characters to rot.