MadScientist

I'm not sure you can compart this to a 50 *hero* where the economy and Prestige-earning speed to date are both completely different. But I'll not debate your experiences, I'll just address this....

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For the Midas Touch I'm honestly not sure if I understand what the big deal is (yes, outleveling lower contacts with money requirements IS an issue). But 20,000,000 *earned* is nothing. I think people have just forgotten how easy it is to earn money at 48-50 by not being in SG mode.

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No one is really arguing the relative easy of achieving this objective.
The primary SG/Prestige arguement is about the cost to the SG during the time you are doing the task. Whether that task takes 10 hours or 100 hours, the problem is what happens to the SG.



I cited 5 specific reasons Midas is a poor choice for unlocking a contact, and showed one similar requirement (Bling) already annoys players.
How would you address those issues?
Let me repeat the 5 here and illustrate how another badge would be a better choice. I'll use Electrician as a good choice for the TV.
1. Midas is not fun to acquire. Chasing Gremlins at a low level can be quite amusing. You can also work on it at little at a time when higher missions send you running across Cap, so at least it's not as much of a mindless grind.
2. you can't specifically grind Midas. If you hit 45 and want the TV missions, you can go to Cap and work *just* at this badge until you get it. Electrician is much more of a singular Achievement, Midas is simply a milestone.
3. teams don't do a thing to help Midas. Teammates can help with catching Gremlins.
4. Midas hurts your SG. Even if it took only 100 Prestige, that hurts your SG. Electrician does not hurt your SG, and can even help it if you kill Gremlins while exemplar'd, or before you level too high.
5. The Infamy from Midas is superfluous after selling all your Loot at that level. I guess you could say that killing grey-cons has no other benefit, but that's not surprising when it comes to badge hunting. Electrician is at least no worse than Midas here.

and Electrician makes more thematic sense. What does an abstract concept that you barter with Quartermasters have to do with a television, anyways?



Back on your original post, it seems to be arguing that Midas isn't that bad. that bad. Shoudln't we have a badge requierment that isn't bad at all?

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I'm really not seeing how dropping out of SG Mode at 45+ long enough to earn 20 million infamy is going to hurt an SG that works together at all, since it allows lower level characters to remain in SG mode longer. I'm going to have to say that I really can't complain with the requirements for this particular badge. And I say this as the leader of an active, moderate-sized SG with a base that still needs quite a few things. (50+ members.)

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I don't think any SG in practice will be as organized as you present.
Who gets to dictate which SG member drops out of SG Mode, has to be online when Infamy is in demand, and is the one person who gets to earn the Souvenier for the TV arcs? (which is VERY important to many Content Completists out there.)
You're not accounting for people who simply want to earn this themselves.

Further, you can't supply 10 other people in the SG if they all want the badge from the TV mission. You need to recalculate your numbers to supply just 7 other people for everyone one who leaves SG Mode.


Your number of 154,200 is, IMHO, too much to ask a SG to miss out on to open up mission content. Heck, 1 Prestige is too much, IMHO. This is very poor design to detract from a player community to open up content.

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It's pure silliness to try to get the Midas Touch badge by earning Infamy through your 30s and early 40s - You're just not making half as much infamy as a level 45+ character does. In a purely logical sense, it is FAR more effective AND FASTER for a 45-50 character to drop out of SG mode and work towards Midas Touch than it is for a 30-45 character to do it, you make 3-4 times the infamy at the upper levels than you do at the mid levels.

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You'd think that. But not every player utilizes logic. Nor does every player understand the mathematics of the Infamy production curve.
Just from personal experience, I see a lot of people leave SG Mode at 30 so they'll have enough Infamy at 32, then re-enter SG Mode at 31.5 when they think they have enough... and even then, they end up getting half a level worth of more-than-enough Infamy when they sell loot! All because they think they should plan ahead, which itself has a certain logic to it.

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They're temp powers...

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this brings something to light...
do these even warrant the label "temp power"? What's the defense given by your average temp power like Cryonite Armor? What are the durations? Compare the recovery buff to the 15 minute buff you get after the Soul of Akarist mission. Where do I find those stats?
You get temp powers from missions at about the same frequency you can expect to gather enough salvage to use this station, so they should be comparable, right? How much power reduction are we seeing in exchange for choosing which power we get?

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Larger SGs can always call on friends in the SG to help with this boss, small SG might not have that option.

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Positron (in the other thread I believe) showed how these were costed for a SG of 2 to easily get them, and support features like storage. The key here is still SuperGROUP. At least 2 people in a GROUP. This is not just a title you put under you name - I think it's safe to assume a SG has some kind of interactivity between them.
I don't think there's any issue wuth SG-related support for someone who solos. There's a small group, and then there's no-group.

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I think they are concerned with people building a lot of these and then abusing them if they let them take the form of temp powers or custom Inspirations.

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I agree that they might be thinking that, but I have to wonder why it would be a concern. These buffs have a very particular cost. It's a cost you can't purchase with Infamy. It's a cost you can't gain any better at higher levels to feed to your low alts. Wouldn't that limit the usability of these stations?

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I wonder if the current Shrouded will be changed to Shady for those that already have it?

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It does. This appears they simply changed the badge text for Villains, similar to Villain/Reformed and others.

The duration makes no sense.
If you need 5% resistance to one type for all 15 minutes of a mission, you should consider dropping your difficulty.
If you need that 5% just to overcome one boss, just bring a Rugged or two for the duration of the boss fight.


Is this for soloing, or teaming?
If you're on a team, what's 5% resistance to one type of damage to one teammate?
If you're solo, would you spend the salvage instead of just finding a teammate to give you a similar buff? In a SG, there should be someone you can bug to help you out. Maybe the Devs feel this has to be less potent than a /Thermal's shields so you don't belittle their role on a team, but since it stacks with those shields I don't see the problem, and people will still prefer the free buffs. Sure, maybe the other person in the SG is a Brute or a Dominator or Stalker, but they can help you in other ways, too, that doesn't cost you Salvage.

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It seems very likely that a 50 can start the missions. It's definitely a 45+ contact - I had Midas Touch at 44, it wouldn't talk to me.

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45+ could mean 45-49 or 45-50.

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And it's not just 6 missions - it's 3 full story arcs plus some extra missions. I got just about an entire level at 45 doing only the Television. It's worth it.

I'm not sure how much grind we're really looking at. In the late 40s you earn a lot of inf per level...it might be no big deal to run SG mode from 25-40 and try to make up the 20 million later.

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I still don't see it being worth the grind or the cost to the SG.

I doubt people will stay in SG Mode until 40. I see people drop SG Mode at 25 to save for 30 enhancements, even though this is horribly inefficient. My 150k Prestige estimate was based on someone at or near 50 - it's going to be more like 500k if people stay out of SG Mode until gettig Midas Touch.

Consider the point of view of a SG Leader when a large number of players in the 25-45 range will not be earning Prestige. Are they worth roster spots? Suddenly, SGs are full of 50's who have nothing better to do than grind Prestige, and they'll be lacking the people on their way up. We've been told the whole Prestige system was balanced to make lower level members appealing to a SG. Well, lowe levels aren't appealing if they're going to run out of SG Mode that much!

Everything is a tradeoff, and running in SG Mode is a choice. Changing that choice to include unlocked content, I think, is a horrible move.




Summarizing this whole issue: Midas Touch is a poor requirement to unlock content because...
- it's not fun to acquire.
- it's not something you can specifically work at. It's a by-product of gaining XP, not an achievement in itself.
- it's not something your teammates can specifically assist you in acquiring.
- chasing after it hurts your Supergoup.
- it's very superfluous - selling loot will give you almost enough Infamy to cover every SO you need, you will only need a few million more to finish the job, not 20 million more.
- people already complain about the Bling badge being a requirment.

I fail to see how any amount of content is worth those problems when there are 200 other badges they could choose from that do not have those issues!

I would be very interested in hearing a Developer give their reasoning for choosing Midas Touch for this instead of some other badges.

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shrouded can't be a requirements, it's only being given currently from a bug in certain missions

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In issue 7, those Shrouded missions instead give the Shady badge. This would seem to be correct behavior now, the badge text makes sense for Villains. So I would think it's fair game for Accolades.
Unfortunately I'm missing too many other I7 badges to contribute any further to this analysis.

one problem with the TV is that people are going out of SG mode LONG before hitting 45. So even if a month from now the Devs see this is a problem and change the requirement, a lot of SGs will have lost a lot of income from people who got the badge and from people still working on the badge. So this really has to change before I7 goes live.


The accolade requirement makes the TV's missions that much more in-demand. If you don't want to leave SG mode, you could find someone to team with and experience the content. but with the badge being needed as it is, you may not be able to find that spot on the team.
People used to get accused of extorting higher levels for the Fortune Teller mission. and really, was 100k Influence a problem for people with 300 million? What will the going rate be for this mission if most of the players don't want to hurt their SG by getting the contact?


Looking at the Prestige I've earned on my 40's, I would estimate this would deny my SG 150,000 Prestige if I went out of SG Mode long enough to get the badge.
If a SG was offered a series of 6 missions at a cost of 150k, would they think this was a good cost? That would not go over well at all, I think. Imagine if the SG SF cost 150k to start!

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For the TV contact:

If it is a 45-50 contact, can you still receive missions from the TV if you have never talked to it prior to hitting level 50? If you CAN, there is no problem here since you could always get the infamy badge later. If you CAN'T, because hitting level 50 turns off the contact, then this is a big, big problem for all the reasons already expressed in this thread.

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Say for a moment you can hit 50 and keep on working for the Infamy badge...
How long do you end up grinding at 50 for the badge? And then, is that amount of grind worth it for 6 missions?


Most other contacts in the game either unlock thru the course of normal play (like Sonata, Dumont, Jaeger) perhaps with a slight diversion to finish them off in time, or unlock with a rather short grind (about 60-90 minutes for Lunata and Slot Machine).

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AFter testing around a bit with a few powers that have -recharge, I'd say it's..um...weird.

I was testing with Siphon Speed, my friend was using SHout (10 second recharge, not slotted for recharge). With 3 Recharge reductions in Siphon speed, his shout took 12 seconds to recharge (with 1 siphon on him). WIthout any recharge reductions, it took about 14 seconds to recharge (again, with 1 siphon on him).

Need more testing, I'd say. But it seems the recharge reduction enhancements are making the -rcg Less!
Also tested with Psychic shockwave but found it to be far...uh...stronger than I needed, but it seemed to have the same behavior (less recharge debuff with more recharge enhancements, although the Enhancement screen said "Recharge:" rather than "Slow:" For Shockwave).

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Have you tried testing Siphon with various amounts of Enhance Slow Movement slotted in it?

This is all very surprising to me. As others have said, we've always been under the impression that Slow != -Recharge. Consider that powers like Chilling Embace list both -Speed and -Recharge as separate effects.

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I think the best way to solve the infamy/influance vs. SG/VG prestiege or whatever passes for it in CoV, would be when you are in SG mode what you earn for your group counts tward your badge then everything works out the same way it has been.

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You earn far less Prestige than Infamy. Just looking at the SG I'm in, 40's have at most 800k, and they've been playing in SG Mode the whole time. You'll never hit 20 million Prestige on a single character.
You could scale this by level when counting for the badge. eg, a 2-prestige kill at leve 40 gives 80 credit on the badge, at level 41 it gives 82 credit, etc. But in the end, the scaling has to be on par with the Infamy you would have earned, so just track Infamy before taxing it.

they changed Tarixus to a different badge - and a badge that's trivially easy to acquire. Why is this one such a bad design? I'd love for a Dev to post here and justify this design choice.

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I think it is absurd to make people choose between loyalty to their SG (staying in SG mode and earning prestige) or getting an accolade power (earning the inf badge to unlock the TV). Surely a different badge could be used to unlock the TV if its badge is necessary for an accolade?

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This has already had an impact. I made a comment in SG chat about starting to save up Prestige to buy all the new stuff releasing in I7, and someone responded by saying they were not in SG Mode anymore because they want to be sure to do the TV's missions.
A number of villains are already running after Gangbuster in preparation for the accolade, so this isn't too surprising.
but it really sucks.

So I guess that means someone unlocked this accolade when they got that badge.
I have to ask... is it really just Immobilize? Cause the Hero one does a Hold.
Futhermore, the Hero one is completed with a level 35-40 mission, the absolute minimum being at level 33 because of the badge in Eden. Why do villains have to wait for level 45+ for that mission for the similar power? why not change the Accolade requirement from Media Junkie to Skip Tracer to be more in line with what Heroes get?

(course, the TV unlocking mechanism still has to change, too.)


this looks like 4 of the original 6 Hero accolades for Villains. I still wonder if there are Atlas and Portal counterparts that we're not unlocking because certain badges are bugged.

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On the splitting mez protection thing, I think it's really just a way to protect from pvp abuse. If you could get total mez protection from one of these buffs then you can bet that every squishie who ever pvp'd would be hitting their base every 15 mins.

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You have a rough time in a Lost mission. They do both Sleep and Hold. Which do you get? Or both?
Tsoo do Holds and Slows and Disorients all from LTs. How much salvage does it take to overcome a room with too many mobs? Or to simply make your Tsoo kill-all mission a little less annoying?
Council will give you a mix of Hold, Sleep, Disorient, Immobilize.
I could keep going down the list of opponents. I don't see this as a PvP issue.

you don't want Mook Capos. you want Marcone Capos. and Marcone Consiglieri. and you may see a boss-level Marcone Underboss here and there, but I think they're only in missions at much higher levels.

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Final kill tally was around 120 with at most 1 or 2 deaths per team member (with a few who never died at all.)

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and yet despite this dominance you were unable to win the zone?!? that's disturbing. is the zone win just some carrot dangling out in front of PvPers that will never get reached?

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This isn't meant to be a brag (much ), but more of a statement on villain effectiveness in high level PvP.

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that's good to know. especially with raids coming.

moved enough salvage over to one character to get the recipe to show up for the level 3 tech table. 38 Material, 25 Power, 9 Hardware, 6 Prototype. For all that salvage, you only get 2 more powers to choose: Hold Resistance and Psi Damage Resistance, and I can't see the recipies for them.
I'm not sure that's worth the upgrade.

Here's the breakdown of what you get by upgrading:
Level 1, 15000 Prestige gives you access to: Confuse R, Fear R, Fire R, Grant Invis, Inc Attack Speed, Inc Flight Speed, Inc Jump Speed, Inc Perception, Inc Run Speed, KB Inc, KB Protection, Lethal R, Sleep R, Slow R, Smashing R
Level 2, 30000 Prestige, 12 Material and 36 Power gives you access to all of Level 1 plus: Cold R, Disorient R, End Drain R, Energy R, Immobilize R, Inc Recovery, Negative R, Toxic R
Level 3, 60000 Prestige, and a total of 50 Material, 61 Power, 9 Hardware, 6 Prototype, gives you all the above plus: Hold R, Psionic R

25 powers total. sounds like a lot, but consider:
8 of them are damage resists, each duplicating a piece of Rugged's effect.
6 are status resists, duplicating pieces of Break Free.
1 duplicates one of the two effects from Insight.
6 duplicate pool powers (and four of them are 1st tier pool powers) the fitness-duplicates for run and jump speed are quite useless compared to travel powers.
only 4 are more or less unique.


what a salvage sink! Just having the 2 top level tables will burn 222 basic components and 30 advanced components, without even gaining a single buff!

and as soon as you drop the level 1 table, be prepared to have that salvage spent on the other two levels. People in the SG just love building personal items - SOMEONE is going to drop a level 2 table within a day. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised to see two of the same kind show up at once. So the salvage is going to get burned one way or another. The real reason to upgrade to level 3 may be to cut off people's access to building more stations.

Positron, can we please get a SG Permision on crafting personal items?

so why don't we have an Atlas Medal equivalent? (+10 End, right?)

is it possible there is such an accolade and it's unobtainable because of some bug or other?

new bug found: if I right-click the power icon below my HP bar and select info, I just get the power info, no timer. if I instead go to my Powers list on the tray and right-click Info there, I get the standard info PLUS a timer of how much use is left.

an update on what I said...
I realized I didn't check out the level 2 buff station! There is a Resist End Drain power there. It costs 26 Power, 3 Hardware and 3 Prototype. Which I assume would be 8 Power, 1 Hardware, 1 Proto when the costs are corrected. Still, that's 10 salvage, 2 at medium level, for this resistance. Way too much.

There's also a Disorient Resistance. This just drives home my comments about reactive vs pre-emptive. As was leared from inspiration, players just don't want to protect from these ahead of time. Also learned from inpirations (I thought) was that splitting the types of protection was a bad idea - we should get Mez protection in one place.

I see no point to even test Cold or Energy resist, the tactical problems still exist as I described above.

Now that we have Teleport Defense as part of many existing powers, the same has to be done for Siphon Speed.

Keeping this on-topic for RV - I realized the problem with Siphon when the AVs showed up and I got Siphoned and couldn't flee from them. When something can 1-shot me, I don't want to stand in melee range of them!

I would suggest having Negative Energy protection apply to Siphon Speed, as a drain of your power seems Negative to me.

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Villains stand a good chance against Heroes. I've seen it first hand in base raids.

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yes but not when they are 10 levels behind and lacking hami'os

Also no one before this point has had to fight heros with Focused acc, FON, and a few other very strong APP powers.

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and since schedulers can choose whether to attack a hero or villain group in a raid, the villains are going to get picked on very quickly. Even by other villains who don't want to face a defending hero group.