Megajoule
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Posts
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Joined
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Unlike some MMOs, the process of "grinding" to the level cap is (believe it or not) the actual game.
Interestingly, that's the game I enjoy. I don't much care for playing this other game called the Market. Can I have a button I can push that will instantly slot my character with all the IOs I want, so I don't have to grind away at something I don't enjoy? 'Cause that'd be awesome. -
If you all would like a supergroup for your team to call home, I offer the "Paragon Police Dept." I don't want to turn this into a whole pitch (wrong place for it), but we have teleporters to most zones, etc.
Formed back when I13 brought us Day Jobs, cop uniforms and riot shields, it's a quieter group lately. Other than needing some sort of police character, there are no membership requirements or obligations. So if you want the PPD under your character's name, use of the porters and an SG channel, get in touch with me. Or don't; no pressure. -
If you were to draw a Venn diagram, I suspect that the intersection of the "People who make billions playing the market" and "People who want apartments" would be rather small. Most of the first group would rather sink their profits into small but tangible increases in their powers (or plow them back into the market) than indulge in "useless", cosmetic RP frippery.
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Quote:Ahahahaha.Originally Posted by Inferno_Fusion
well id would like to have a red name comment on this like cant that do it in the up coming issue or something? Aka i17 which would be a great choice to add a bit more bio especially those who want to write a Praetorian bio
Between this and your 23 minute bumps, you clearly have no idea of the timescale this game works on.
Issue 17 is already mostly in the can. If the Devs decide to implement your suggestion, you might expect to see it in Issue 18. Issue 20 would probably be more realistic.
Yes, I know, it's just "one little thing." The game is made up of hundreds of little things, all connected in ways that most of us cannot understand. Changing one is not undertaken lightly.
And my personal opinion? If I want your whole history, I'll go read it on Virtueverse. Give me the above-the-splash-page boilerplate blurb. "Tony Stark, blah blah, invincible IRON MAN!" -
Since you asked:
Quote:Once or twice a week, when my SG/playgroup organizes them.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
How often do you join TF/SF teams?
As seldom as possible. I don't want that responsibility.Quote:How often do you form and lead TF/SF teams?
I haven't done the math myself, but the comments and observed skills of my friends suggest the answer is usually "average or slightly faster." Definitely not speed runs; for one thing, we're all role-players.Quote:On average, would you say those TF/SF teams you have played on complete faster or slower than the expected times?
I have yet to accumulate sufficient merits on any one of my characters to do anything with them.Quote:What do you do with the merits you earn?
So between what you and the other posters have said, I suppose the moral of this is to not believe what anyone says on the forums. Or at least not on the Market forums. The posters there led me to believe that most "serious" players used such methods to increase their rate of merit gain.
I am not a "serious" player, though I am a long-time one. I am not a farmer. My main experience with farming has been observing the rampant exploitation of the AE system a year ago and the sweeping nerfs which the Devs were finally forced to impose (with some complaining that they should have known it would be abused thus, and acted accordingly rather than trusting the players to not be selfish and greedy - imagine!). These nerfs succeeded in making the AE system unappealing to many farmers, but also to many average players as well. Before that, I've seen several cases of powers and preferred farm missions altered to try to prevent behavior the Devs disapprove of; this often inconveniences regular players, but not the people who had developed "more efficient" strategies, who simply find something else to do.
On the assumption that speed-running TFs was being done by a significant minority, who would bring down Dev attention and negative consequences on the innocent majority, I made this thread to suggest an alternative to yet another blanket nerf. It seems that such a thing is not as imminent as I was led to believe, which makes such boasting (and perhaps the Devs' apparently unenforced policy also) seem rather hollow. -
Quote:Well, mostly:Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
And how is this any different than players employing various tactics to increase their rate of XP gain? Or influence/infamy gain? Or recipe drops? Should those types of rewards also be given a hard limit? Why not throttle all rewards, so no one is allowed to earn more than anyone else?
(1) I tend not to keep my ear to the ground for the latest tricks (I'm the sort of player who prefers to play the game "as it lays"), and so I only happened to learn of this one by dropping into a discussion into a forum I rarely read;
(2) I prefer to focus on one issue at a time, or at least per thread;
(3) The devs haven't given us numbers for those, whereas "1 per 3" (vs "1 per 1", which was quoted at me a lot in that other thread) is pretty clear and simple, IMO.
It does, however, indicate how the Devs are likely to act if they think that speed-running et al is getting out of hand - nerf rewards for everyone, even the people at the other end of the average. ("Nerf 'em all and let States sort 'em out.") I would like to encourage them to be a little more discriminating, is all.Quote:Apples & oranges. The vast majority of the AE fixes were to address exploits & loopholes such as low risk/high reward enemies, all boss farms, etc. -
As I understand it, about a year ago(?), some of the Kheldian arcs were being completed (in Ouroborous) in much less time than their merit awards suggested. Players became aware of this and began farming those arcs. This, of course, came to the attention of the Devs. The awards were adjusted accordingly, most of them downward. Other arcs had their awards tweaked about the same time, again (as I understand it) to match the "1 per 3" metric.
On a recent visit to the Market forums, several players informed me that they employed various tactics to increase their rate of merit gain from the expected 1 per 3 to something closer to 1 per 1. I am aware that this is an average; however, if such behavior becomes common, one may expect the average to shift noticeably (to 1 per 2, say) and for the Devs to take action accordingly.
Furthermore, given that the last time the Devs implemented sweeping changes in order to prevent players from greatly exceeding the intended rate of experience/reward gain - in that case, via the AE system - the result was to implement strict new controls that affected all users of that system. Players who were only interested in quick rewards, of course, promptly migrated to other areas of the game or to other games entirely, leaving the remaining users of the Mission Architect to suffer the consequences of their actions.
So yes, I'm concerned about the possibility of a few players - the speed-runners - ruining things for everyone else, if the Devs are committed to enforcing their oft-cited "speed limit". We don't know that they are. But if they are, then I would like to see a fix that actually focuses on the people who are pushing the curve out of wack. That sort is going to move on to the next Get Stuff Faster trick anyway, as soon as this hole is plugged; I would simply like to see as little collateral damage land on everyone else as possible. -
The position that players should be earning, on average, 1 merit per three minutes from task forces is not mine, it's the Devs'. My suggestion was simply that if the Devs wish to enforce that game design decision against people who have found ways to change the ratio substantially in their favor, capping the final award at 1/3 of the actual time spent might be one way to do so. I do believe that this would be fairer to players than reducing the rewards for everyone to reflect common speed-run times, which would be another method to enforce their game design (one which they've used in the past).
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Although the Devs have stated on several occasions that their metric for reward merits is "one per three minutes of play", and have rebalanced and tweaked TFs and Ouro arcs as necessary to fit, players have still managed to come up with ways to increase their rate of merit gain. Some teams can apparently cut this down to as little as one minute per merit, a threefold increase.
My suggestion is that the Devs may wish to implement a hard-coded limit which makes it impossible to gain more than one merit per three minutes. Since these merits are awarded at the end of the arc or Task/Strike Force, it seems to me that the most appropriate solution (if the Devs do wish to enforce their game design) would be to set the merit award to either the default value or the actual completion time divided by 3, whichever is lower. (Extra merits should not be awarded for extra time, lest players leave themselves logged in overnight before completing the arc or task force.) -
Quote:Obviously. However, it's just as obvious (to me) that this is not the developers' intent, which has been stated repeatedly as "1 merit per 3 minutes." We've been through several rounds of rebalancing and tweaking of the merit rewards to attempt to enforce this. Do we now need another, because some players have worked out methods to gain merits more quickly and efficiently than the devs want?Originally Posted by PC_guy
it works out better when you're getting 1 merit per min
Rather than another reward reduction, which punishes other players who do not use such methods to maximize their merit gain over time, maybe the desired rate could be enforced with a coding change to enforce "no more than 1 merit per 3 minutes." I shall consider this for a post to the Suggestions board. Apologies if I've derailed this thread. -
I'm a little sad that it took me a moment to get that you weren't serious, mostly in terms of what it says about the average proposal/discussion here that is entirely so.
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The one thing that jumps out at me is the part about selling recipes that cost 200 - 250 merits each. Assuming that the Devs have been keeping up with their "1 merit per 3 minutes" metric, each of those recipes represents 10+ hours worth of grinding TFs, Oro, etc. (You'll also be getting inf and other drops in the meantime, yes, but that's not my point.)
At what point does the game become a job? -
I would submit that the closeness and friendliness of the EU servers is directly related to their small populations - small enough that everyone knows everyone personally, and have to band together in order to accomplish anything. Not being in that situation is a luxury most of us take for granted. Here, you can (and frequently will) run into complete strangers. This can be both good and bad.
I've been on almost-empty servers in another game, and noted the same things I'm hearing from our new arrivals. Like just one or two guilds per side, because the population can't support more than that, and most would rather be in the big active guild than one that's just them and a couple of their mates. And some eventually give up and migrate to other, busier servers or games. -
Looks like I've got another arc to run tonight...
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I've lost track of how many times we've been told we can't have this.
We can't have this.
Stop it. -
Vitality, there's this amazing thing called "imagination". Some of us have been using it for years to create characters that don't quite fit into the mechanics we're given and stories/missions that weren't just what the Devs wrote for us. (This was before AE allowed us to make our own from scratch.)
Okay, sarcasm aside, my best advice to you, one roleplayer/writer to another: run through the required content as quick as you can and then IGNORE IT. It didn't happen. Write your own story. Put it up on one of the wikis. That is what your character, your hero, really did from 1-20.
Don't tell me that you're compelled to accept everything the Devs say your character does. You strike me as someone much too opinionated for that.
You have the power to decide your character's destiny and history. The official content is there to help you, not hinder you; when it conflicts with your vision, discard it. Instead of demanding that they change the game for you, change it for yourself. -
Not that we actually get votes, but mine's going to be "no", just because I'm that bitter.
I've been told so many times over the years that we can't ever ever have Pistol scrappers (because it would BREAK TEH SYSTEM by giving range to a melee class) that getting a half-***** blapper version of MA now would be, IMO, an insult. Like wanting a bacon cheeseburger and finally being offered a hamburger, plain, with a couple of bites already taken out of it.
"But it's what you wanted!"
"No, it's not what I &*#$%ing wanted, and it's also three ^$@#ing years late. @##% off." -
I just want to know how declaring that your character freezes the entire Earth and everyone on it, no saving throw, fits into a massively multi-player role-playing event.
(Other than as an example of the sort of thing you shouldn't do, and ignored by the other participants as bad RP and blatant godmoding.) -
Sheol, Tartarus, etc etc. There are lots of Hells that are cold and dark and not on fire.
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Quote:Me too, given that the lack of such information means that we're having to make our purchasing decision "sight unseen."Originally Posted by Nericus
I'd still like to see some pics of some of the upcoming costumes and auras.
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If you're really going to go forward with this, first, drop the "Manipulation." It's silly in this context, an artifact of when blaster secondaries were mostly elemental powers. We don't have "Device Manipulation."
It's still, IMO, an attempt to shove/sneak Pistol Scrapping into the Blaster AT/powersets, and I think I will actually be disappointed if the Devs end up allowing it. -
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Quote:Not from where I sit.Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
No no no, Pistol Blappers. There's a difference.
Look. Like I said before, I get where this is coming from. And it's cute... in the same sort of way as a kid who's been told he can't have a cookie trying to sneak half of one out of the jar.
But it's not going to happen.
No melee characters with pistols.
It's been asked for more times than I can count over the years (sometimes by me), and every time the Devs have said no. Every time.
Give it up already. You're wasting your time. You're wasting their time. -
Still trying to get Pistol Scrappers in through the back door, eh?
Give it up, folks. I wanted it too, believe me, but the Devs have made it abundantly clear over the years that it's not going to happen. -
If I could engage in PvP with another player of roughly my level of skill (optional) and my level of maturity and literacy (not optional), I might. I have, in some of Virtue's RPvP events.
Rather than trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer, though, I'm much more likely to get my PvP on by playing a game that has that as its sole objective/form of gameplay, not clumsily bolted on later; where investment is minimal and most players are friendly. Team Fortress 2, for example.
I have no interest in my character (not "toon", character) getting repeatedly beat down and teleported into drones by some trash-talking barely-comprehensible kid half my age with a tricked-out build who thinks that his fast twitch reflexes and knowledge of all the best "sploits" equates to him having a larger **** in real life. That's not an epic battle with one's arch-foe, that's Xbox LIVE.