Snow Globe

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it might mean that the side not listed can get it in their regular zones (Man/Woman in Black can be achieved in CoV without entering a PVP zone).

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Yes, but there was no need to say "CoH only" since both CoV and CoH can get the badge in BB. If you're going to make a list a lot of people just read the headline and then read the list.

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It is ONLY an exclusive to PVP zones in CoH, not CoV. In CoV, you can get the badge outside the PVP zones. Therefore in CoV, it is not exclusive to Bloody Bay, that is why the list is how it is.

I could say something very insulting here about intelligence and reading comprehension, but the moderators wouldn't appreciate it.

Current PVP Zone Exclusive Badges [I8]

While some badgers dislike or outright hate PVP, everyone needs to understand just how many or how few badges are exclusive to PVP. If you avoid PVP at all costs, these are the badges you will miss out on. If you want to limit your exposure to PVP, you can see what badges you are willing to live with or without.

Now, some of these badges are listed as "CoH only" or "CoV only". This might mean that the badge in question is only available to that side (Swashbuckler, and the CoV accolades below), or it might mean that the side not listed can get it in their regular zones (Man/Woman in Black can be achieved in CoV without entering a PVP zone).

Here is the list:

Explore:
15 badges shared. (Lobbyist / Crooked Politician, Hungry / All Consuming, Imploding, Ghoulish, Globetrotter, Raganarok, Temporal Fighter / Dark Victory, Last Stand, Hangman or Hangwoman, Politician, Broad Shoulders, Piratical, Weapon Inspector / Weapon of Mass Destruction, Tunnel Rat, Triumphant)

History:
2 badges CoV-Only. (Swashbuckler, Arachnos Rising)

Accomplishments:
3 pillbox badges. (Time Machinist, Somewhere in Time, Back From the Future)
3 heavies badges. (Temporal Agent, Temporal Spy, Temporal Soldier)
7 badges for Signature Heroes CoV-Only. (Oppressor, Destroyer, Dead-eye, Interrogator, Breakneck, Uppercut, Blackguard)
6 badges for Signature Villains CoH-Only. (Arachnophobic, Wrangler, Poltergeist, Sandblasted, Shark Hunter, Justiciar)

Achievement:
12 badges shared. (Reinforcement, Agent Provocateur, Irradiated, Gunner, Disruptor, Forward Observer, Risk Taker / Most Wanted, Time Traveller, Rocketman, Siren's Song / Raider, Vigilante / Wanted, Web Master)
2 badges CoH-Only. (Man in Black or Woman in Black, Reformed)

Gladiators:
3 badges shared. (Longbow Warden 2, Longbow Warden 1, Shivan Destroyer)
1 badges CoH-Only. (Longbow Spec-Ops)

Accolades:
4 badges CoV-Only. (Marshal, Headline Stealer, Born in Battle, Megalomaniac)

Totals:
49 For CoV that are exclusive to PVP zones.
45 For CoH that are exclusive to PVP zones.

If you stretch the definition of a PVP zone to include the arena and base raids, you add at most 6 badges for both sides.

Explore: Cage fighter
Achievements: Lanista, Grand Lanista, Liberator / Master Thief
Gladiators: Longbow Nullifier, and Hercules Titan.

They are all shared.

With 36 directly shared (42 with the Arena/Base Raids), on the other hand if you count the signature heroes/villains that is 42 shared with 1 more badge on the villain side.

I don't know whether to be appalled or to chuckle mercilessly at the thought of the Exorcist/T. Ruxpin combo.

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Is there any possibility of event badges carrying over to new characters as long as one of the characters on your account has it? just wondering...

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I highly doubt this would ever happen after seeing the flamewars erupt over this very issue.

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A great way to get the held badges is go find 2 red (orange if u cant find red) SAPPERS inside of a mission, get them in melee range and let um stab u to your hearts content.

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I would only do this on a Tank, or Brute, maybe on Scrapper or Stalker, and only one on a squishy class (possibly yellow or even conning).

I know that 2 orange sappers will eventually kill an Ill/Emp Controller.

Being stunned and immobilized do count. Including being stunned after you use an awake.

Ok, the second mezzed badge is for 2 hours of being incapacitated. That is 120 minutes. So, for every 72 seconds you get one "tick" of the progress bar.

The third mezzed badge will "tick" once every 6 minutes of being held/mezzed/slept/stunned.

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Case in point:
The Katie Hannon TF (Croatoa). I remember that there were a few on Triumph that spent weeks doing it for 10 Single Origin drops for the first mission. Seeing Triumph is a smaller population server, I would imagine that Freedom had the same thing only more so. Now the reward is gone, Mary is still an AV all ten times, and you only get one SO drop.

With more choices, there is less chance of getting shafted thanks to some farmers lack of foresight.

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To be honest, mary was pretty wussy as an AV, when I did the TF.

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If you were completely honest, you would have said what AT and level you were.

I do know that AT, level, and team make up will turn that first mission into either a quick run (under 20 minutes) to a painful ordeal (almost 2 hours, and this was before the AV Regen). I've had both those extremes, and many more in between (a lot of alts, helping friends and sg, etc).

The simple fact of the risk/reward for that first mission was broken with the take back of the SO drops. The moment it was taken back, the first 9 should have been made elite bosses, and the last AV should have been set to the TF level like all the other TFs.

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I haven't a problem with repeatable rewards. Though I do have concerns about the 4 SF to 13 TF disparity between CoV and CoH.


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Not to neglect you valid concerns. The farmers will pick the easiest and repeat it anyway, so there isnt really that much difference herosdie and villanside in accessibility.

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Actually that is one of my concerns. If a taskforce or strikeforce is getting farmed for any reason, the rewards will get nerfed, but the difficulty will remain the same or greater.

Case in point:
The Katie Hannon TF (Croatoa). I remember that there were a few on Triumph that spent weeks doing it for 10 Single Origin drops for the first mission. Seeing Triumph is a smaller population server, I would imagine that Freedom had the same thing only more so. Now the reward is gone, Mary is still an AV all ten times, and you only get one SO drop.

With more choices, there is less chance of getting shafted thanks to some farmers lack of foresight.

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Just give the pool B reward to everyone on the team.
They do it already with badges.

The 50s can exemp down and get them.

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Badges award very differently than story arcs, and we already see a lot of people being annoyed that if you are not on the team for the majority of the mission (even in a TF/SF) you get no badge.

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If you do a TF, you get a random TF drop.

That is much better than "If you do this specific TF, you get a 5% chance that one of you will get a specific drop if too many haven't dropped today."

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I haven't a problem with repeatable rewards. Though I do have concerns about the 4 SF to 13 TF disparity between CoV and CoH.

Also, there needs to be 3 more trials added to CoV (CoH has Caverns, Eden, Sewer) as well. Respec trials are equal number in both.

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Story Arc drops drop to the person whose arc it is, guaranteed. Even with Story Arcs being unrepeatable, that's still much better odds than a WoW raid. IF of course, you can do the arc in question in the first place.

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The highlighted portion is the part that bugs me the most. I've done over 30 regular souviner arcs (still have 5 more left to finish, missed 1 souviner arc) and 8 of the zone story arcs with one of my 50s. I couldn't do the Croatoa Arcs, or the new Faultline arcs with that character as it had outlevelled the arcs before they went live.

Basically, if they add any new 45 or below story arcs, this character will get even further cheated out of the same chances a new character gets. My favorite server has no character slots left, my second favorite server is full as well. On my favorite server the majority of my characters are 21+. I don't want to delete any of them, and getting a second account is not an option.

As to the idea that I could just buy what I need doesn't take into consideration that since Issue 6 there has been a penalty to INF earning while in SGmode. I've avoided the Inf badges, because I thought my SG was worth it. I've been out of sgmode the bare minimum to get my enhancements upgraded. Now I am being FURTHER punished (barely getting by, I could've had the INF badges, my level 25+ villains could have gotten the unlockable contact a bit easier) for staying true to my Groups because I most likely will not be able to afford to use the auction house, even if what I need from it is available. This is wrong.

This does not sound like a good way to start an economy.

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There are 2 possible benefits to rarity:

1) You don't want players to be 'fully slotted' with that specific item, at least not too soon. If B drops are limited to Story Arcs, then you can only get 50 or so per character, ever. Of course, that number will eventually be skewed as people shuffle them from less-played characters onto more-played characters.

For instance: the IOs that give +% to hp regeneration. A few of those per character, or a lot of those on a few characters has no effect on the game. But a lot of those on every character devalues end (and end drain in PvP) massively.

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That is already being taken care of with the "No more than 5 of any type of bonus" stacking rule, as _Castle_ ponders:

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Stacking:
Yes, to a point, they well stack. Each 'bonus' can be replicated up to 5 times per character per value. For instance, if you have 6 enhancement sets that each give +1% maximum hp, you would only gain +5% maximum hp -- you've exceeded the cap. In practice, this is less likely than it sounds since +1% and +1.25% are different, and your character could have 5 copies of each (for +11.25% total maximum hp)

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Continuing along:

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2) Fun for Acheivers. A significant minority of MMO players are what is called Acheivers. They enjoy a game more while they have a chance of doing things 'best first'. For a game to be successful, you want to cater to these folks as well as to the Killers, Explorers and RolePlayers.

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Highlighted to stress a point. Yes there are some that see rarity as a challenge, but while some things should be harder to achieve than others, given the stacking rules they shouldn't be as rare as it looks like Pool B is for everyone. For that matter Pool C and D for villains, either.

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Oh, there is no real benefit to rarity for the players, aside from elitists.

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Agreed.

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Putting rarity into the computer MMO is similar. Yo know that certain items will only be obtainable in certain ways depending on the drop pool.

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The thing is that every time the developers try to introduce rarity into the "City of" franchise, the resounding player response has been "Get lost. We do not WANT the rare hunts of other games, that is why we play City of Heroes/Villains."

You'd think that Cryptic would listen eventually.

Even with a once a day limit, I'd probably get it once every few days (if not a longer time) on a server. I also have no intention of paying RL money to some item farmer.

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1. Each broker offered a one time only Pool B drop instead of a new contact. This could be available from outleveled Brokers via teaming with lower levels long enough to fill the broker bar, then being allowed access to the recipe drop. Once the recipe drop is chosen, it is removed from that broker's list just like a contact.

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Yuck. That would limit the "make up" fix to 1/5 - 1/7 the amount of drops a new character can get.

Sorry that is a bad idea.

What you've just proposed is that my level 50 get under 10 drops for the 45+ arcs she did.

I still think the 1 drop a day from safeguards/mayhems (and they have the 1 a day code already, it is being used for the SHOs, and will be used in the new Hami encounter). It would require less coding than what you propose, and limits the amount of farming that can be done to Pool B.

I'm agreeing with Starget here. Linking PoolB to Vet Rewards is a bad idea. Both from those that don't have them, and from any level 20+ character's perspective.

I like it! Five out of five tchotchkes!

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If all that the Devs want to do is reward time spent on content

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Go to the very first post in this thread:

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Now I hear you guys... you all seem to dislike the Story Arc aspect of this system. I've had some discussions with the team yesterday about what we could do instead, and still keep the flavor of the four pool system, because having the extra three pools allows us to not only reward risk/reward, but time/reward as well. Takes longer to do a Task Force? Here's a nice bonus you can't get anywhere else. Finish the Respec trial, but already have all your Respecs? Here's a nice reward that carries with it some good inherent value.

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Highlighted for amusement.

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This is the crux: If B drops are designed to be limited to under 100 per character (hence attaching them to unrepeatable content), then no method of making them unlimited content works: they would need to be nerfed.

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I don't think that the team coming up with the Pool B wanted it limited to well under 100 drops. Rather they, and I am taking their word here, wanted a way to reward time spent on content. I would guess that the person coming up with that hadn't played this game much (but maybe other MMOs), didn't look at the mechanics of story arcs and how they award, and thought this was a good idea not knowing that the story arc rewards were one-offs.

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If B drops are not designed to be limited (and are therefore no more piffy than c or D drops), then we are all getting upset over nothing. At that point, you might as well add B drops to the C and D tables and call it a day.

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Which some are calling for. My "best case" request is a repeatable story arc for each level range, set it so that the reward can only be claimed once a day.

I'm not so much against the idea of adding a once a day chance to get a pool B from the bounty system. I just do not think that it is an acceptable alternate method to story arc completion, if it is the only solution that the developers can come up with.

If it were a third alternative (to doing story arcs and the yet unknown alternate method), and one that could only be claimed within the same timeframe as any "solution" to the Pool B problem, then I am fine with that.

But from the reasoning provided, the developers want to reward the time it takes to do a story arc. Given that can range anywhere between 1-6 hours for level 20+ arcs (depending on AT/Level/Arc/Team size), it probably shouldn't be more than once a day. Before anyone wants to jump on me for that timeframe, I feel the exact same way about any story arc reward alternative.

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Question: Currently, cashing in 6000 bounty in Siren's Call produces the same option menu as completing a story arc. Is there any chance we could have Siren's bounty as an alternative for Pool B recipes?

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Sounds good to me.

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And sounds bad to everyone who doesn't like pvp.

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Which makes no sense to me.

So I play PvE and I get it from arcs. He plays PvP and gets it from bounties. So what?

Perhaps those who oppose don't know how the bounty system works in Sirens? Or I having only done one bounty am not seeing how it would be a PvP exploit?

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Ok, as stated above, the proposal suggests this would be a "Fix" to the lack of ability to get Pool B drops from Story Arcs.

As such, that is a BAD IDEA. Knowing the developers, they'll go, "Hey, for those that can't get the pool B drops from story arcs can always PVP, let's do it!" and then stop looking for PVE solutions to the problem.

I did NOT say this was an exploit. I have upthread said that those that would most likely benefit from such a "fix" would only be the hard-core PVPers that already through other means pretty much farm the heck of that kind of system.

Let me put it another way (numbers for illustration purposes only):
Let us say that doing the Lord Recluse Strike Force gave a drop that gives a +50% increased effectiveness to batteling the Heroes. Now the 2nd run would be easier, and you gain an additional +50% bonus, making the 3rd run easier. And so on until those that repeatedly do the SF can do the strike force in under 30 minutes. So the developers seeing that it is being beaten "too fast" increase the difficulty. After a few of these adjustments, the only ones doing the Strike Force would be those that are "Hard Core", leaving everyone else out in the cold.

I seem to recall the developers have already stated that the hard core PVPers will most likely be the ones maxing out on inventions anyways, so it follows that people that are not hard core will be toast entering Sirens Call if this is tied to the bounty system.

Also it does NOT address the fact that those who have outlevelled arcs will have less access to Pool B.

(Edited to correct an error in the second last paragraph.)

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Question: Currently, cashing in 6000 bounty in Siren's Call produces the same option menu as completing a story arc. Is there any chance we could have Siren's bounty as an alternative for Pool B recipes?

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Sounds good to me.

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And sounds bad to everyone who doesn't like pvp.

I just wanted to "warn off" Doc Brainstorm and his minions BEFORE they head down that path .

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Question: Currently, cashing in 6000 bounty in Siren's Call produces the same option menu as completing a story arc. Is there any chance we could have Siren's bounty as an alternative for Pool B recipes?

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No PVP solution to a PVE problem, please.

Especially since the people that are going to have the IOs no matter what it takes will be the hardcore PVPers.

I already detest the amount of PVP baiting that is already in the game, and that is the only thing this sort of suggestion will do: make more bait for the hardcore PVPer.