KingSnake

Originally Posted by ShoeTattoo

Everybody who logged in since i17 went live could be given a badge for surviving the market glitch: "Black Friday Survivor" or something like that could be a good pick for the badge name. Or perhaps that's a little too much dark humor, and the badge idea would go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

I'm essentially out of the markets these days, meaning I didn't lose anything, so perhaps its easier for me and others like me who didn't lose anything to let all of this go.

Would it be unreasonable to say "Sometimes stuff happens."?

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

They have to compensate people for taking something down so they didn't get inundated with a sh*t storm of "Waah my stack got deleted /ragequit!" and so they could fix it faster?

Wow...I shouldn't be surprised, but still...

Originally Posted by EvilDeathBee

I only think it's funny that they dealt with a farm by removing a timer. That's definitely a switch.



If the last mission of a story arc is timed, you can log out without completing it, then return in a bit to pick up your merits. If you are playing in Ouroboros, you can do the same arc repeatedly. Story arc merits don't have diminishing returns.

Hmm. I wonder if they will remove the timer from the Banished Pantheon map in the Wheel of Destruction arc too.

Originally Posted by Sarrate

You would be correct, Sailboat. The order I'd rank increasing survivability is:

1) +defense
2) +maxhp
3) +regen

*) Take Tough/Weave (no matter how you focus, I'd recommend this)

The good thing is you shouldn't have issues increasing both 1 and 2 at the same time. If you can push ~40% def and 3000+ maxhp, you'll be very solid. (I sit at 39% s/l, 42% exotics, ~3160 maxhp, and ~650-700% regen with 1 target. I fear very few things.)

It will definitely be expensive, though.

Originally Posted by Nihilii

Checking on my SD tanker right now :

GC with one lotg def/global rech gives me 17.3% DDR.
AD with two membranes gives me 30.27% DDR (stackable).
BA with 57% def enhancement gives me 27.17% DDR.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

According to Mid's it should give you ~17% DDR; if you're not seeing that then something's not right. My SD/Fire tanker doesn't have it yet at 32 so I can't say for sure, but it definitely affects DDR on my 50 BS/SD scrapper. With double stacked AD loaded with 3 Membranes my scrapper's at the 95% DDR cap... unfortunately I only have enough recharge to be at that exaulted level about 40% of the time .

My tanker doesn't have GC in his build plan until 49, and since he just hit 32 tonight it'll be awhile before I can test it personally.

Originally Posted by konshu

It's possible, perhaps, that the new people you are seeing are part of the existing player base who switched servers.

I know I've made some changes with my toons and in the past several months have played a lot on Victory, Liberty, Triumph, and Pinnacle, and hardly any on Freedom and Virtue.

Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan

Weekends on Triumph in the RWZ AE building the MA Super Team runs arcs. It's obviously time someone bumped the thread if it's fallen off the fron page.

Eco.

Originally Posted by OABAAB

You know Dr. Aeon, it's interesting that you're preaching patience when you know full well (or should know as an employee) that time isn't a luxury PS/CoX can afford. I know where to find NCSoft quarterly reports and what to look for when it comes to CoX revenue. I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. This is part of what I do for a living. In anycase, since the introduction of AE in April of last year, CoX sales revenue all the sudden plummeted 40% (compared to a 43% revenue decline in a rolling 12 month period ending in Q4 2009). Basically, during the course of Q1 2009, CoX revenue went down 3% which can be attributed to the natural decline of most aging MMOs. Then came AE in Q2 in the final two quarters of 2009, revenue fell off a cliff and dropped 40%.

Next let's look at the chronology of AE itself. The first 2-3 months after the introduction of AE, there was no doubt that it was wildly popular and widely utilized. Everyone and their extended family were crammed into the AE buildings in AP or Mercy/Cap. That kind of player interest couldn't have been bad from the revenue standpoint and the fact that revenue only dropped 3% from Q1 to Q2 of last year seems to reflect just that. Then came the fine-tuning or nerfs to be more blunt. In chronological progression, ticket cap, custom critter exp, MM pets, and now allied NPCs, just to name a few of the big ones. If you log on during peak hours right now, the players in Mercy and Cap AE buildings are a mere small fraction of where it was a year ago. Going back to the revenue decline in 2009, you can't honestly tell me that these two trends had no correlation. The fact is that drastic and persistent nerfing of popular (and maybe even integral) features in a MMO can contribute significantly to the eventual demise of the game itself. After all it has already happened several times in the short history of MMORPGs. Two prominent examples would be SWG and more recently, Tabula Rasa.

Now let us consider the obvious fact that PS is not exactly flush with subscribers and rolling in dough (at least compared to years before). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the bigwigs at NCSoft corporate have already expressed their concern over the steep decline in CoX revenue last year. After all in the corporate world, if a product line suddenly loses 40% of sales revenue in a matter of months, it usually gets discontinued. NCSoft may be willing to deal with it for now given that the overall company profitability skyrocketed last year due to the popularity of AION in Asia but how long is it going to last? What if GR doesn't generate as much revenue as desired? That projection isn't all that far fetched given the short term memory nature of the MMO population, ample competition and the fact that CoX is an aging game. This is not to mention that patience isn't exactly a virtue in the world dominated by corporate balance sheets.

With all of this in mind, I am simply shocked that you guys haven't switched to a more conservative approach when it comes to AE fine-tuning. The nerf now and deal with it later approach as exhibited by this latest episode is extremely shortsighted and irrational. It's almost as if PS is willing to alienate some player now while banking on GR to inject fresh blood later but that scenerio is far from a guarantee. Regardless of what the "good riddance, let them leave" or "we don't need players like that anyways" crowd is saying, CoX is currently not on a solid enough footing to be able to afford the hemorrhaging of even more subscribers (revenue).

P.S: If you dislike my bluntness and challenging tone, feel free to put a temporary or even permanent ban on me. If that is to be a consequence of me saying what needs to said, so be it. My main account was already canceled prior to all of this and this account only has about two weeks left. However, allow me to say this one final thing. The reason I canceled originally was due to a perfect storm of busier real life schedule, low CoV population and other diversions. It was not the result of some ragequit over any particular prior issue. However, now that I've seen the way this particular nerf was handled and the continuation of collective tunnel vision on the part of PS, I doubt I would've renewed anyways. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Clouded

I'd be pissed if they removed the EXP from AE, that's a terrible idea. I'm no RPer and I use AE quite often.

And this whole Ghost Town theory is bunk. There are many players, like me, that use AE to run other people's story arcs for entertainment and tickets. However, only the developers truly know the amount of players using AE, and I wonder if they can differentiate between players using it for farms, exploits or intended purposes.

Originally Posted by Beef_Cake

Like I said in another post, remove the XP and rewards from the AE all together, then anyonecan create any mission they want and put 2,000 AVS into 1 mission and can all be 1 shotted with brawl, at least it won't be a exploit anymore as you will be removing the risk vs reward scenario.

Eliminate the XP and the farmers will leave the AE system and do other things, like farming regular missions again. That way all the RPers and such can enjoy the AE system for what it was truly designed for.

Then as Arctic_Princess stated, remove/flush the AE arcs with those specific key words, it won;t be hard to do, just a little extra time and the AE system will be exactly what is was intended for.

Originally Posted by Beef_Cake

All I know is the AE is becoming a ghost town due to all the changes

Originally Posted by Doc_Wormwood

I only recently came back after a year away. Among other things, I was disappointed to see many things that were 'right around the corner' for AE still in the 'real soon now' category (like properly functioning custom powers).

To see yet another problem where the devs place the fun of folks using the system right below the 'exploit' of those using the system wrong makes it very clear this is not a new design philosophy, and one that will be in place for the forseeable future.

AE is the only reason I came back. So.

I have too many characters to give away all of my stuff, though I did wipe my arcs.

Originally Posted by Clouded

I'm a big fan of the passives since they were buffed. The only power I consider skipping in INV is Unstoppable. Not because of the crash either, that's easy to deal with but more or less because I just don't use it once IOed. It's the same reason I dropped Elude from my IOed SR Brute.