PumBumbler

You say that to all the Hula Girls in this game.

Only the 1 group. Sometimes it's hard to contain the whole mob and either you got a runner or a mob got knocked down the stairs. Usually people who attack from the bottom of the stairs or even on the stairs themselves may be spotted by the bottom mob, depending on how close that mob spawns. Jumping in from the side usually works to avoid the bottom mob aggro, and having AoE immobs really helps to keep the mob together.

Solo posi by uber scrappers and blasters can be done in an hour. A decent team with a couple of purpled out toons can do it in an hour as well. One of the big slowdowns is the CoT rescue mission. With 2 hostages to lead out and a boss, it can get quite difficult with so many mages running about. Note that you should complete the boss before rescuing any hostages. Each hostage rescued spawns an ambush which can be quite annoying. The fastest way to run that particular mission is to speed through (Superspeed with stealth proc =invis) and note the location of both hostages while getting to the boss, defeat the boss mob, then go back and get both hostages at once and lead them out. Any other way tends to waste time.

Not always. Putting procs in low damage powers like a coercive proc in arctic air and damage procs in choking cloud work as long as the set bonuses make sense too.

You didn't have to leave town in order not to compete. The extra effort is noted however.

Was a busy day today, so images will have to wait until tomorrow. I can tell you this however. A commercial air hockey table weighs about 550 lbs. and cannot fit down the basement stairwell of a house built in the early 1950s. Not without a sawzall.

This is exactly what I've been saying all along, but the median, while being less sensitive to outliers, has a problem with a non standard distribution, which is what we have here. The speeders are at a rank that is far different from the average player times, which means that either the speeders get a fat reward, or the average players get ripped off, depending on which group is completing the TFs more often.

Again, I will state, the speeders will run the desirable TFs way more often than the average completers and will be over represented in the sampling data.

The reward system simply doesn't work well in the way it is implemented, so either the statistics have to be mapped to the reward system in a more comprehensive manner, or a better way of mining the stats need to be done (much more difficult in many ways).

Instead you propose to rework the content to compress the 2 groups, while I was saying to alter the reward system.

You could always try running mids under a virtualized environment with xp installed. This means you'd have to get a copy of xp.

www.virtualbox.org is a free VM for personal use.

alternatively you could try WINE but there isn't a lot of promising data ((link)

This isn't always the case. Macs can sometime be cheaper than identically specced systems from other vendors, but the difference is that Apple tends not to drop the price at all as the components become plentiful, while the other vendors will float the price of the system as the components drop.

This means that the best "deal" for getting a Mac is usually when they introduce a new system, like the 27" iMac. The screen alone is quite a bargain when compared to other vendors, but in 6 months when the competition has worked its way across and their price drops, the 27" iMac will be at the same price point (+/-), and in a year that 27" iMac may be comparatively expensive.


You definitely can use the iMac 27" as a monitor. The only issue is that the connector is newfangled and will need an adapter for most connections.

linky.

I lol'd because I've seen that outfit well before this contest ever was dreamed up.

Given the massive amount of brain power that is going around arguing in circles about PvP IOs is also rather silly don't you think?

Just because I don't take your position doesn't put me into your categorical other camp. Let go of the forum PvP and maybe we can have a real discussion.

You could easily baseline the merit reward system on the fastest completion times -25% and work the diminished reward system from there with a longer tail on the timer.

A simplistic linear scaling system that you seem to cling to isn't the only way to imagine implementations. All the current system has done is made the fastest runners get even more rewards, while (eventually) punishing the non speed runners.

Two examples I can think of of how the current system is flawed are LRSF and Eden Trial. Both have been run by speeders so often that the datamining supports that the overwhelming majority of runs will be by the fast folks, and then the median value is then of course, the fast times.

Again, let me point out that the fast people are able to run 3-6 TF/SFs easily in the time it takes an average team to run one TF/SF. This would also imply that the speeders are over represented by a similar factor, again skewing the median values.

Previously, you just got a TF pool drop upon completion, randomly given. Now, with a random merit drop costing 20 merits, most TFs can give 1 or 2 rolls easily. This means that fast runners are now also being rewarded twice or three times more for most TFs (SFs are kind of a different story) than before.

The current merit system thus gives massively greater rewards to the fast people, since they tend to metagame anyhow and will gravitate towards the best bang for the buck. This means they will target the TFs that give the best merit/minutes they can receive. This will also result in the median times dropping for the targeted TFs, leading to reduced rewards similar to what has happened to Eden Trial and LRSF.

Now you may argue that the average speed TF person doesn't know about this and really isn't being hurt currently. However, the massive disparity between the fast people and slow people also makes itself shown in other ways, which in a sense, pushes what Another_Fan has been speaking about. That disparity tends to make itself known by having all the farmed purples, PvP IOs and abundance of merits being distributed first to the fast folk, who profit from it a lot more than the average folks. If the average person is still doing the same things they were doing 2 issues ago, they've actually gone backwards in effective income since a Luck of the Gambler global recharge has easily doubled in price. Which group do you think will get more of those precious IOs?

As well, you can make an argument that the speeders are like locusts...after ruining the reward for Eden Trial, no speeder ever bothers with it anymore. What's the point? So now your average speed TF person finishes the Trial in 60 minutes (or more), and gets a measly 9 merits...how do you think they're going to react? Will they ever work an Eden Trial again?

This is a natural enticement for the average folks to get in the fast lane. If you're not getting up to speed on a TF, eventually your reward will be diminished for doing it the slow way.

Now I'm not saying that this is a good or bad thing, but if the intent of the devs is to keep the casual players happy, the task force merit system only made the fast people fat. Which is an epic phail from my point of view. While nothing is keeping the casual player from doing the same thing as the speeders/farmers/powergamer is doing, people's general happiness can be measured by how their neighbour/friend/co-worker is doing. Parking a hopped up IO'd sports car type toon beside your average family sedan toon for weeks on end doesn't exactly prop up the self esteem for the average person. Which means go hard or go home, or keep the separate classes away from each other.

On the old boards I had posted that TF merits were going to concentrate the loot instead of making it more egalitarian. Again, if that was the goal, well, Mission Accomplished.

And as to the OP's post, PvP drops are just making the farmers rich. No one is PvPing for the drops when they can just farm them instead.

All of these devices should be thought of as part of an overarching strategy that the devs wish to pursue. If they want the game to be more like EVE online, then great, it's working out that way.

I just think they are straying further and further from the original ideal that this is a casual game.

PS. I am an unrepentant speeder. And posting this verbiage in an OT manner is very silly.

Edit. As most people who are in this thread are interested in the market anyhow and know how to play it, this is like me arguing that middle class needs a bump at a black tie function for oil barons.

If you can stretch up to the core i5 iMac, it has most of what you are looking for component wise, but of course it is still an all-in-one design.

There has been lots of talk about the demand for a mid range expandable mac but Apple doesn't seem to want to make one.

Your advice to the OP is spot on though.

The other alternative is to work the reward system a bit differently. Think wider. Anyhow this is massively OT, just like the last 50 posts.

Um, I never suggested an alternative to the median. I think you've just assumed that I would suggest an average in lieu of using the median.

An example of the median being a poor choice is reflected in the Eden trial. A better solution should be thought up was always my suggestion.

Yah, I'm not a fan of their choice of using the median. I'm quite sure there is a bivalent distribution going on.

The simple fact of the matter is that the best people can and will run multiple TFs in the time an average person will.

This likely self-selects the median to be a much lower value than it should be, since the fast TF people will get so many more kicks at the can, and generally they do kick it more, much more. It's not like an exam where everyone gets the same amount of time to get a single mark, and the grades are distributed along a bell curve.

However, I'm pretty sure the devs can see the non gaussian distribution and therefore fudge the rewards a bit.