EnigmaBlack

Originally Posted by Raccoon_

Originally Posted by _Ryxx_

Why is this directed at me? Ele and I really are different people >.> I think he meant this (Isolators) was fun. He usually lets me PL him through the first while because it's hard to find competent players on the fly at super low levels.

The tanking was a little difficult with two scrappers running lightning field and I only chilling embrace; I had to Des ahead just to get initial aggro. Never taken taunt this early before, and I'm loving the free end cost on it now.

Originally Posted by Eisregen_NA

Once upon a time, it used to be Defenders had more HPs than both Blasters and Controllers. At the time, Blasters were nevertheless somewhat overpowered due to various factors (mostly an out of whack Smoke Grenade). Once those factors were fixed, it turned out that Blasters were actually useless. So the Devs kept throwing stuff like more HP and a new Inherent at the AT in an effort to make it worthwhile.

The Defender Inherent was just added in to insult Defender players clamoring for an Inherent of their own after everyone else had gotten one. Essentially it's the Devs saying 'shut up and heal, n00b'. In other words, I wouldn't expect anything to come out of that. After all, Defenders are fine as they are, even with low HP and Negligence.

Originally Posted by Prof_Backfire

My Blaster's only 39 and SKed, I can wipe out entire spawns of Cimerorans with Build Up+Full Auto. Let's see a Defender do that!

Originally Posted by McDunkin

Try going into Data > Select Instance and force it to your game instance. I haven't had the online offline issue, that I am aware of, but I have had it stop recording most data (still recorded xp, inf, and debt though) and doing the above fixed that.

Originally Posted by Lakanna

Here's an interesting chain of thought.

When the demon ship map was bugged, it was using a static string of numbers, rather than a random one. That made it possible to manipulate it. At the time, SG-mode could drop base salvage, so by shifting in and out of SG mode, you could manipulate which numbers were rolled for what values.

The interesting part is that the same number string was used for salvage, inspirations, enhancements, recipe, and base salvage. Now, if what we're seeing is that salvage and inspirations are dropping normally, but enhancements and recipes are not, then I see 2 possibilities.

1: The drop rate for recipes was changed. Synapse has said that this isn't the case, and I imagine it wouldn't be very hard to check, although the fact that this bug appeared at the same time as drop rates in AE were tweaked means its not outside the realm of possibility. If the "reduced rewards" code is being called somewhere in the non-AE coding, it could lead to reductions in rewards. (don't custom critters now reward 75% base XP?)

2: The new difficulty slider is causing trouble with the way drops are assigned after they're rolled, giving some drops to non-existent teammates. This is why we need to check the drop rates of real teammates vs. virtual ones, and also test them on very low (+0/x1) difficulty settings.

I ran papers all morning on +0x1, and started noticing certain patterns. Recipe/enhancement drops almost always came in pairs for me: if I went a while without either, then got one, the very next spawn was likely to drop one as well. Often, this was the first 2 spawns of a map, although it did happen at other times. Nowhere near enough to call it a real pattern, but enough to make me take notice. I suggest that in addition to counting drops, watch for patterns of drops, especially patches where you get several recipes or enhancements in a short amount of time. I have no idea WHY this would happen, unless the RNG was well and truly broken, though.

My results for the morning. Difficulty was +0/x1 the whole way through

672 rewarding mobs defeated
13 bosses and elite bosses
45 lieutenants
605 minions
6 underlings (XP only)
3 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Archon Belaggi (1)
Archon Leery (1)
Archon Romano (1)
0 pets and 6 greys

696 inf/debt rewards
1474404 inf
22283 prestige
24 vanguard merits

13 Pool A recipes (Mob Defeats) from 743 minion equivalents (1.75%)
2 uncommon and rare recipes
Hecatomb : Dam (Superior) (Recipe)
Undermined Defenses: Defense Debuff/Endurance Reduction (Recipe)
11 common recipes

1 Pool B recipes (Mission Complete)
Performance Shifter : End Mod/Rech/Acc (Recipe)

58 salvage from 714 minion equivalents (8.11%)
2 rare
6 uncommon
50 common

9 single origin enhancements
220 inspirations (1 tier 3, 68 tier 2, 151 tier 1, 0 special)

Also of note: 24 missions, 1 Pool B recipe? These were about 18 papers and 6 Borea missions.

Originally Posted by Grouchybeast

That's awesome! Thank you :-)

The things to make sure you record are:
- exact number of minions, lts and bosses defeated.
- exact number of Pool A recipe and salvage drops.
- map.
- difficulty setting.
- team size setting.
- AT.
- mission conditions (e.g. normal mission map, Ouroboros, exemplared).

DropStats (www.glasspaw.com/dropstats) will tally up the defeats and drops from the ingame chat log, saving a lot of time.

If you have a particular theory you want to test, it takes ~2000 minion-equivalent defeats to get a statistically significant result for any one set of conditions. (Or rather, this will get a confidence interval narrow enough to distinguish between the old and 'new' results as established so far.) The most important thing, though, is to report ALL runs, whether the rate seems high, low, whatever. Selective reporting will destroy the validity of the data gathered.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

I think it's important to recognize that the devs aren't anti-farming - they're just anti-farming in the AE, because it has a major impact on non-farming players.
Like pre AE, they never put a minimum entry level of 40 on PI, no matter how many people were being PLed there.
They tweaked Family and Demon xp a bit, and added a timer to the Dreck misison, but the basic ability for a low level to go to PI and be PLed was always left open, because it didn't really affect other players, but the AE was being badly affected by farm missions, and farming there was having a way bigger impact on non-farmers and the game in general than the old style PI farming ever had.

Issue I16 actually contains some good stuff for farmers - the new difficulty settings will make it easier and faster for them, with no need for fillers anymore, so I think I16 is more an attempt to balance the needs of farmers and non-farmers, rather than an attempt to just nerf farmers.

Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree

The first thing I've done is enable 'Friends and Supergroup Only' on my ingame e-mails.

/me waves goodbye to spammers