Fulmens

Two points:
1) the player who "got three" in a single TF may have been ... improving the story.
2) Some people have just never gotten a frikkin purple. I have a friend who counted something like 14,000 kills with no purple. I can't tell "bug" from "miserably low percentage" at that point.

The only people who reliably get what they want from AE are farmers.

There are other stories in the Architect Entertainment System. Unfortunately, there are a lot of potential problems with any given story:

1) Many people built half-finished experiments to try out AE, published them and abandoned them.

2) Many people's storytelling skills are not as good as they had hoped.

3) Some people think it's funny or cool to make up grief critters.

4) It is very possible to, entirely by accident, create enemy groups that are living hell for some or all players. (KoA-level caltrops? Seen it, very often. Permanent slowcap? Seen it. Every minion having blind, slow and three holds? Seen it.)

5) To avoid exploits, there are a lot of reasons enemies may give lowered XP ("hmm, you've created nothing but minions and they don't have either of the main attacks for their attack set. SPLOIT!") So it's very common for a good story to give severely reduced XP.

So you need to find the stories that are actually meant for the public, that aren't farms, that aren't crap stories, that aren't griefbombs, and that will be at least slightly rewarding.

Having said all that: There are some really, really good stories out there. Wonderful stories. There are a number of threads devoted to them; I haven't done much AE recently, so I don't know where my list is. But if you start with the Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame you'll get some good storytelling.

Time to adjust your expectations.

I think the way the numbers work, on an average ITF one person on the team might get a purple.

When you're on an 8 person team, compared to soloing, you're cutting your chances by 7/8.

I think when we decided we were gunning for purples, 4 person team playing once a week, it took us maybe three months for each member of the team to get a purple. And we had a really high kill-per-minute rate.

OK, according to my list all I have left is Starrbolt. Did I miss anyone?

That guy there? Look at Pandaemonium (sp?!?) You'll find it somewhere in the top 100.

THAT is what she's doing on Freedom.

Captain Iron/@Baseload: I can be on tonight around 10 Eastern. That good for you?

There's a reason I was against the Crazy 88s starting up on Freedom. She is that reason.

(Canine: In case you're not in on the joke, someone has actually SAID these things we're repeating. Really.)

As far as gleemailing- I've made that mistake before. If you want to do a sell-items-back-and-forth deal, I'm pretty sure I still have some level 30-40 DO's I used to use for that. I'll even refund your market fees!

Alternatively, if you don't want to make your OWN Crazy 88 SG, I could make up a representative for you in ours, and give you regular updates when you email inf for the burning.

Full service SG, that's us.

OK, I should have a little time to do this. I basically haven't been on for a week- thank you for your patience!

EDIT: I was going to email out the money. A couple people were online and I forgot how much fun it is watching the inf burn. If I don't get in touch with you in a couple days I'll email it out then.

Right now I'm thinking "ground loop", but it's not an intuitive metaphor.

There should be. Nothing clever's coming to me.

(I did that last week. Five rolls, total about half a million raw or "salvage cost plus a million" crafted. That's what I get for playing a 50.)

I HATE YOUR IDEA.

I HATE YOU.

I'M REALLY MAD.

... wait, what was the idea? Lemme go think about that for a minute. I'm easily led.

I'm back. Thanksgiving happened and I've been scared to check the game, because I offered "a billion or so" to match base builders on that thread. . .

After the base builders, you guys are next in the rotation.

I believe I got the Thinkpoint virus [from something off the Yahoo homepage, maybe? I did the classic user error of clicking on something without thinking. If I'd been thinking, it wouldn't have happened.]

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware got rid of whatever it was, but now my machine is in a deeply strange state.

I have to right click on executables and "Run as" . Anytime I click on [for instance] my Firefox shortcut, it asks me what program I want to use to open it.

Anyone seen this before?

I'm passing this way again.

To repeat:

Max of 200M per person (to avoid ambiguity: that's your 200M plus mine.) Any NA server, any side.

I'm matching at least a billion.

I'm not on as much as I used to be, so it might take a little while to set up.

[EDIT]
To avoid this post being completely nonconstructive: You can get all eight Exploration Badges in any of the main zones for an accolade that gives 5 reward merits per zone. Also,
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Villain_Merit_Rewards
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Merit_Rewards
[/EDIT]
I'm sorry that you're incapable of the basics of financial self-defense in this game.

But if you're going to blame me because you're stupid, shallow and greedy: I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Yes. You're greedy. You want the good stuff. You see other kids selling each other the good stuff. You want the other kids to sell you the good stuff AND YOU WANT TO PAY LESS.

You've built some sort of dream world where evil people like me set the prices. I actually HAD a couple of Luck of the Gamblers at level 35 about a month ago- I do my tips, I get my reward merits- and I looked at the going rate, 150 million, and said "I think I can list for 155 million and get more than 150 million." You want to know what happened? My amazing mind control powers worked? NO. I pulled em, relisted at 141 million and they sold at 150 million in ONE DAY. Cost of lesson: 15 million inf in fees.

Now I have one more data point than you do. I declare victory and leave.

I thought I remembered something about Flash Arrow's debuff being non-resistable. Have I been eating the lead paint again?

And does that mean it's the same -9.75% against +3s? Archvillains? Hamidon?

I spend less than an hour a day at the market, make more than 500M a week, but many people don't like doing what I like doing. They'd rather give me the money to do it for them. Everyone wins!

I notice nothing was said about being able to see 100% of buy prices, only 100% of sale prices. Was that intentional, Max_zero?

one thing to mention: If you're doing, for instance, a Task Force: There are sort of two ways to do it. "Tourist" and "Commuter." First time through, you're a tourist- you want to see stuff, take your time, figure out what's going on. Fifteenth time through, you're a commuter. Bam bam bam, go here get this, everyone out, who's going to do the Atlas run? I'm heading to Kings.

Almost every task force I've been on in the last two years has been commuter-style and almost everyone on a task force is going to expect it to be commuter-style. I don't really know a solution for this. MAYBE if you build your own team with no level 50's on it, explain to everyone that this is your first time through and you're going to be reading the text, you'll have a minimally annoying experience... maybe.

As far as the types of missions: there are several "generations" of missions- because most of the people in the game have seen the old stuff several times before. The original stuff, set in the original zones [all the places you can go by train, except Croatoa] has a certain amount of hunting, sometimes has a lot of repeated content ("go to these five warehouses and stop the Tsoo"), but will give you a core understanding of the game and the enemies and who's doing what and why.

There are standalone zones which each have their own set of missions, one set per zone: Hollows [level 5-15], Faultline[15-25ish], Striga [20-30ish], Croatoa [25-35ish] and the Rikti War Zone [35+]. These are newer, the development team has learned some lessons, the stories are tighter. Of course the good thing and the bad thing is that if you get on a team in that zone, you're doing those missions. Which can be like reading a novel by opening to random pages and reading that chapter. You'll read some parts twice, might miss some parts altogether and won't get it in order.

The Tip system is even newer- and until you get tired of the Tip missions, they're some of the most fun ones in my opinion. TIP MISSIONS ARE HARDER.

Praetoria was, of course, the newest set of missions, where the writers have the most experience of what to offer, the most tools [before Praetoria you couldn't make a meaningful decision...] and the best idea about what the players want [or what they said they wanted, not always the same thing.]

So those are, more or less, the ways through the game today.

I woulda come at it from this angle:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Memorization

but your way works too

Have you visited some of the city's sights? Dark Astoria, Ouroboros... Founders Falls is lovely! [watch out for the snipers.] Go to Striga Isle, admire the volcano!

... One other point as far as gameplay: Before level 12, you don't really get any story arcs. You may not CARE about story arcs; the only real difference is the text - the reason WHY you're beating up this bunch of thugs in this anonymous warehouse.

Above 12, you start to get the answers to questions like "Who makes clockwork and how do they work?" "What's Dr. Vazhilok want?" "What's up with the Tsoo and all their groovy bosses? " You start seeing enemies that do more than just hit you with baseball bats.

Above 12, you start getting some interesting powers as well- not that your core powers are BAD, but some of the chrome is awfully shiny.

Above, umm, 20 or 22, you start getting DISTINCTLY more powerful.

So those are some carrots which you may or may not find tasty.

Teaming is a distinctly different experience from soloing as well. I barely play the game normally any more [well, after 72 months or something...] but I still log on three times a week for a couple hours per time to play with friends, and a couple times a week to team with strangers.