Halon

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Welcome back to the game.

If you've been gone for 2 years, any Base Salvage you have now is no longer used for crafting Base items. It's all been changed to Invention Salvage.

Base Salvage and Components can be sold at the markets, or they can be converted into Brainstorms at your invention table and then the Brainstorms can be converted into random Invention Salvage.

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Wait, so what is the base salvage in my inventory for then? Just brainstorming?

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Now...I did turn off experience on my fire/Kin, but I had no idea until this post that that would increase Prestige earning...or does it?

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I asked this exact same question on /broadcast on Freedom. Someone replied, no, and you actually got less prestige with XP turned off. Didn't verify it, so take it with a grain of salt.

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Preparing a slide-show/virtual tour for you now

Should be PMing it sometime tonight.

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Speaking of which, is there a utility to record a .mpg out of your 3D card directly, so you could turn it on then go on a virtual tour, and poof, out comes a high quality .mpg of it? I have a modern NVidia card, on a modern quadcore machine.

"Be bad to give them defense"? Because then they'd be tougher to kill?




BTW, anybody have some devastating combos? I'm looking to build the opposite of a farm -- something that's tough to me to solo with my various characters.

I don't wanna just resort to AVs. SS/SS ellite bosses (mission on 5, and my personal difficulty on 5) are a decent challenge, but I'm, well, is there a thread for this?


I tried creating good lockdown/debuf foes to surround some high-dps elites, and vice-versa.

I guess I could just be stupid and populate it with groups of elite bosses of those types. :-/

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but the potential exploitation has already turned farming into a harmful habit.

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Again, fix most of the exploits, you fix the situation.

This will take time. This will not be simple, straightforward, or pretty.

And this is something that can ONLY be worked out in the live environment. Simply because the test environment simply CAN'T accommodate the number of people required to vet it pre-live.

Anyone who thought any differently (or still does) is simply naive. At best.

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As a good example, in World War II online, a buddy who played it told me they used to load up a troop transport truck, then go crash it into a bush (infinitely hard), which (thanks to well-done physics, actually) the truck would flip, spilling the players (good) but they'd aim it so they were flung over the back fence of the Nazi base, thus getting in a way "you weren't supposed to".

So ya, no matter how hard you think, you may very well miss something.



EverQuest, like most games, required you to do a 20-30s "camp" when logging out to prevent misuse by people pulling the plug when they were gonna lose a fight.

The game would take over your char on network disconnect and fight on for you until the time ran out.

But...some dungeons had locked doors which the party needed to get a key for. Of course, the local monsters could open the door. So people would run at a locked door, disconnect their network cable, and the server would take over, converting you to NPC status, where you'd open the door and go through. You then plug back in before you're timed out and poof! You're on the other side of the locked door.


Also in EQ, the big boats to travel to other continents were actually built as NPCs. They were given a magic, invisible, heavy "weapon" to weigh them down, which allowed the devs to control their speed. Well, fighters got an ability called "disarm", so they'd target the boat and...well, you do the math. Wheeee! I'm king of the world!

Jesus!


Umm. "How many?"

Apparently I forgot to account for patch time. : pulling-collar-like-David-Letterman-Yeesh-emoticon:

Freedom server, I'm pretty new but have quite a small, single-person base going. Lately, my regular play toon is Perky Plant Pixie, but if I'm editing it's either (The) Waitress, or Battle Pixie.

Got a lovely welcome room, a general base meeting room/combo/forge room, a resurrection alter, a fantastic tp room with longbow flier platform and spiral staircase, and energy and control rooms with interesting experiments in construction going on.


I think it's Freedom, lol. It's the unofficial PvP server, the one that turns yellow from green first.

6:30 pm EST, should be on by 7:30.

Here's an idea. Try burying the invention cart inside the desk on the platform so the screen looks like it's on the desk. I don't know if it'll line up right (or if it does, if it's still clickable runtime) but that would be pretty cool.


I've been doing a lot of experiments with this "burying" idea.

Storage Issue

I understand the need to require expensive room purchases to allow additional storage. But I don't like being required to put the actual storage bins in their respective rooms.

It makes difficult a cohesive base design since now a room you may have marked out as being, say, a power room, has to have a weird storage rack in it. :-/

And no, I can't bury it because then nobody can access it.


There's only a limited amount of facade I can put on it, too, to make it not look like an old storage shelf, without interfering with the clickability of it. This is already hit-or-miss and semi-independent of actual visibility thanks to mouse hit boxes.


Secondary Suggestion

It would be nice to be able to tag any object (or group of objects, if grouping ever becomes allowed) to be the storage clickee. This would allow you to build your own rack, so to speak, and use that instead. (I don't know if these are destroyable in base raids, which could be a problem if people try to make a little heart-in-a-jar be the storage rack just for the raid.)

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People in Issue 14 open beta were probably doing like me, trying to make story arcs, tweaking them, seeing how the system worked, what I could do to get around mob levels that jumped all over the place between missions and various other things. Nobody was going "right...how can I completely exploit this for my own XP rate gain..." perhaps there were a few but nobody was really being vocal about it.

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Before I made my own arc, I thought it was going to be more like Base Builder Deluxe, where you designed your own dungeon, and then placed your own villains at your own locations.

I thought it wouldn't take long before someone created a giant pit and crammed it with 200 non-flying, non-ranged AVs, and people would just stand at the rim and pew pew them to death. Oh the humanity!

I note you could, say, pick two controller sets, even the same one, for a created NPC character. Or two Superstrengths, for that matter.

Does this "double up" the number of things the NPC character can use? Like get two zapps, or two knockout blows, or two build ups, for that matter?


I want to know because, while such would be overkill for a PC, for an NPC, that would be very cool to do in certain cases. Like they zapp you, then a few seconds later, zapp you again, which the PC can't, and shouldn't, be able to do.

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That's all fine though if there's more farmer players, then NCsoft gets their fees and makes there money. Losing a few wackos that don't like that type of play so much won't hit their bottom line.

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AE farming makes Progress Quest look like a deep, rich, and well-thought out, emotionally moving game experience.

I'm with you. More power to NCSoft if it keeps their bottom line from shrinking as the years tick by, but NCSoft, [u]Please, please add a better way for people to get pick up groups going for non-AE missions![u]


Or course, the other solution is to ban XP from any AE mission (barring the handful that have been blessed as an official addition and is accessible from the outside world.)

On the one hand, a lot of people might not play who otherwise would. On the other hand, it'll lift many people from the crack of the little level joy boost every half hour.

Perhaps just a small amount of XP, such that "real world" edged it out by, say, 10%. Then people would do AE because they're fun -- as adventures -- rather than as fun because they make you go ding every 20 minutes.


Or how about make them not repeatable more than 1 or 2 times, per character, for 24 hours with XP. That would be a short term solution, though, as the giant green breasts caves would just multiply to fill the daily demand.

<ul type="square"> [*]Inability for PVE players to use a defending base during a raid. Why not instance the raiding base, and leave a copy for use by the rest of the SG while the raid is underway? Note that the PVE functions of an attacking base remain usable for people not in the attacking raid force.
[*]Attacking teams can have SG and coalition member "buff bots" sitting in their base providing raid help, Defenders can not. This is an imbalance. (Note that instancing the bases on a single map to speed up loading would also balance this - both sides could only use coalition bots outside in the zone.)[/list]

Better yet, just try an immersion thing. You'd be surprised how exciting it would be:

<ul type="square">[*]When a raid starts, everyone is kicked from both bases except the SG members.[*]No "raid" to join. Everyone in the SG is either an attacker or defender by default. Go into your base to help out and you're in the raid.[*]Thus those "not" in the raid cannot use their base. Well, they can, of course, but they're at risk during the raid.[*]Raid window thus pops up for any SG member in either base. Members not involved, i.e. in the "real" world, can open it to look at it if they like. Can join in by entering their base.[*]Small issues:

• Lot of players enter the base one at a time to delay the win.
• Player leaves bases to go buy hot dog from vendor and doesn't want to return.

[*]Benefit: "The clarion call goes out!" Anyone online can come join. One base has more members? Well, you shouldn't attack them, then. Could still have alternative option for "max members".[/list]

Thus a raid becomes more like a real, uncontrollable thing rather than a scheduled event.



Yes, I yearn for true, live events.

1) Speaking of the base portal, you can move it around, lift it, and so on. There's an invisible barrier "under" it that's much wider than the cylinder. You cannot run up it, so you'd have to jump up and over it to get to the cylinder to click on it and use it runtime.

This becomes obvious when you lift it up, if what the cylinder base is "on" is smaller than the box under the teleporter, which looks to be abut 3x the diameter of the cylinder, roughly.

Don't know why it's there (probably to prevent things from getting too close to it) but now that it's pointless it should be removed. Or at least altered so you can "run" up the invisible thing without having to jump.

2) When you come into the base via the teleporter, the teleporter can place you inside any nearby objects, which didn't use to be a problem for obvious reasons. Then you have to use /stuck to get out. The placement seems random, or maybe related to your orientation to the outside teleporter you used, who knows. I seem to get "stuck" about 1 of 3 times.

I don't want to have to move things away from it. A better solution would be to fix it so you don't appear inside something. If that can't be done due to stupid placement of items, then just tp inside an item per usual and let that SG's base guy fix it.

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Scrappers don't out-DPS blasters because of crits.

IF scrappers out-DPS blasters it is generally because of one of two things:

1) Scrapper spent a billion on the build, and Blaster did not, or
2) Blaster is not using all the tools they have.

I suppose there is case
3) Blaster is dead on floor in the first two runthroughs of the attack chain.

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Then there's the whole single vs. multiple target issue. A blapper might max out DPS including their fire sword or whatever, but some blasters, myself included, don't take it, preferring to take anything that helps with ranged instead. After all, the only thing that lasts long enough to be worth it is an AV, and I'd rather be in the rear with the gear than risk it adding a few percent to the DPS. You croak, the DPS of the group tends to go way, way down.

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When solo bubble your pets, when on teams bubble your teammates. Granted depending on the team the pet AI may be more reliable.

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/smile

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I'm just going to argue semantics: the S in "DPS" stands for "second" as far as i'm aware.

Show me an attack, or a whole CHAIN of attacks, which can be COMPLETED WITHIN A SECOND (that does over 300 damage, to boot), and I'll shush up about it =)

In the meantime, make up another term to adequately describe what's being talked about.

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It's Damage per Second, not Damage in a Second. No matter how you try to semantically argue that you're right, you're wrong. The entire point of the term is that it is an averaged value across an extended time frame using a smaller unit to display the average contribution over a longer period of time. If you've got a problem with how DPS is used, then you've also got a problem with how recovery and regeneration operate as well since, they don't actually operate within a second as would be suggested by their read outs (end/sec and hp/sec, respectively). Base Regeneration is actually a single tick of healing for 5% of max health once every 12 seconds. That's not hp/sec, but that's how we see it. Endurance works the exact same way but with more, smaller ticks that are still percentage based.

It's the same reason why pressure is often measured in lbs/ft^2 or rain is measured in inches over an area rather than in a more discrete and specific measurement. I have yet to see any game that uses the term DPS (or any *PS) as a tool for measurement that specifically measures for a single second rather than the average contribution over the number of seconds that took place.

If you want to argue semantics, at least try to make your argument founded on something more solid than weak supposition and ignorance.

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Thank you. I was wondering what all this blather was about. "DPS", i.e. damage per second, has long, long been used in online games to mean over a span of time. DPA is good as far as calculations to build attack chains go, but for damage output over a period of time on a single target, you want DPS. It took X seconds to kill AV Y. What build makes Y the smallest? At least w.r.t. damage done, not necessarily considering debuffs, etc.

It would be nice, but I don't think we'll ever see it for just that reason. KB is, I think, the single biggest melee hit in the game, so it would be sweet to see it boosted by the scrapper's base melee multiplier.


Speaking of which, a SS tanker (willpower or regen, I forget) makes an excellent scrapper thanks to the fury.

I have a 44 SS tanker and she runs and fights like a scrapper. The DPS is feels very scrapper-like, and the KB is just lovely (tanker base damage multiplier is higher than brute base. Brutes rely on rage. Or fury. I forget which is which ).

On a lighter note:

/broadcast Ms. Liberty mission looking for people

doesn't have too many problems getting takers!

At 49, my thugs/traps could solo many AVs (that are also 49), with a load of blues to keep a web grenade lockdown in progress (can't do both that and keep up the other traps, and yes I have stamina). Maybe some "One Hundred...billion" dollar build could do it.

Anyway, that worked until I hit Ms. Liberty. Ok, she might as well be Statesman, but her health regen was way too fast. I could get her down maybe 5-10% in the same period of time that I killed other AVs. But traps just didn't debuff regen enough (or at all? I just threw everything I had at her) to be able to make headway except at a ridiculously slow pace.

So /traps is good, but possibly not the best for AVs by itself, in certain instances. Web grenade lockdown isn't the end-all of soloing AVs.

Managed to get a necro/bubbles up to about 27, in hopes the extra D could aid them in all their hopeless melee. I don't mind bubbling my pets, that's not the the issue.

But I hate bubbling everyone else on the team every five freakin' minutes. Last time I played her was about 6 months ago. Has this changed?

I'd give anything to get that to a 10 minute recharge. Triple the end just to double the time. :-/ Don't make me have to re-do it every 5 minutes "just to give me something to do besides run around."

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Undead robots???

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Undead, with laser bolts coming out of their eyes.

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Undead robots are stupid, to be sure (how can something that isn't technically alive be "undead", lol) but they've already been done before. I believe Warhammer has a faction that's undead robots.

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I'd love it to, but it wont happen. There's the worry of having masterminds doing 'pimp' characters.... Heck there's people who have even announced if we got female pets they'd do that.

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Funny. One of my MMs is a thug MM who is "The Oldest Professional", who got tired of her Johns so she used her magical ability to seduce to take 6 of 'em and start climbing the ladder of evil.


I just needed a bio to go with the closest approximation I could get to the crack ** style, a staple in CoH. There's even a contact blueside who looks like that. Druggie eyes and messy hair.


I thought they were more afraid of people making black "slaves".


In any case, this prohibition will fall eventually. Maybe not in CoH, but in the next game to come along with non-tamer based minions.


Of course, the bots you couldn't customize very much, but you could pick from several bot styles that already exist, like the current, or clockwork-style, or Malta mech-style, or Nemesis-style (steampunk FTW!)


But the 3 humans and zombies could all benefit from customization, though the zombies might be limited to zombies kin, you could still give 'em hats and shirts and whatnot, ala the zombie invasion types. There could be a number of CoT ghosts and demons you could use in place of the Lich, too.

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Brutes aren't Tanks, BTW.

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This^

Brutes are scrappers.. if you want to play a tank then play a tank.

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Yup, and if you really wanna be good at pvp, don't roll a Brute. If you MUST do melee for pvp, I'd advise you to roll a Scrapper or Stalker (hell...even a Tanker as a "disruption toon" w/taunt).

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The reason is brutes rely on their rage buildup to come into their own for damage output. But PvP is very quick, hit-and-run. There is no "building up your rage" in PvP. It's a non-issue.

A brute would be left with the absolutely silly option of attacking some NPCs until their rage was high, then hoping there was a hero-side player within 5s or so.

That ability which sounds so awesome in PvE, or a comic book for that matter, falls woefully short against real-world strategies. Of course, "tanking" wouldn't exist either, as nobody would attack the tank but would, and do, go for the controllers and healers first.