Stormfront_NA

Hi:

Been reading lots of posts over how to fix red, merging markets and what not...

So it occurred to me, why not go beyond merging markets, merge the whole thing.

Have it where you hop into a submarine in special zones, which takes you to PI or Grandville accordingly.

The aggroe ranges for guards of opposing factions are doubled, or better yet your alt threat range is say doubled, so it can simulate your not being welcomed there.

Contacts for missions or TFs, they should not really care that much what side you are on, possibly one could explain this attitude, as the contact is using the super powered individual to achieve their needs. A Hero Contact, may snicker on how it used a villain to attack a Malta facility, a Villain Contact would find ironic the use of a hero to further the means of Arachnoss by having the hero attack a CoT base.

Markets being merged, because a salesman in general does not care who buys their goods.

So if we can get beyond our inhibitions, a merging is actually not that difficult to conceive or explain.

By doing this, any player AT can experience any content freely, and if there is a nurf red perception or not, the player can do the best of both worlds and avoid the worst of both worlds.

Hugs

Stormy

The whole red side problem is quite diverse, no simple single fix...

I do tend to perceive that the SF merit earning is inferior per stock of time to the TF system. I believe a poster above did a good job contrasting those.

I would like to see FBZ be a co-op zone, if anything to give red side access to high merit earning activities, while the developers make some for the red side (if ever). This suggestion, is a band-aid, but its a relatively easy band-aid to do while the tough SF development occurrs.

But when I think of this, its all irrelevant, when GR comes along, I will be able to move my Lady Villains from red side to blue, and thus enjoy a much greater variety of TFs to do (with reasonable merit aewards), mission threads and especially much much greater variety of enemy mob groups. Frankly Red side, Longbow are excessively used, not sure if there are any story threads they are not involved at one time or the other, if there are threads with out Longbow, I would think they are very few...

It saddens me, that I will be totally abandoning red side, and see all that work done by developers on red side being essentailly forgotten or unused. I certainly do not intend to return to red side after switching sides, unless a redeemidable upgrade or improvement of the red side is done.

So as an after thought, maybe nothing is needed to be done for red, it may be beyond repair unless quite a great deal of effort i splaced into it; which I would be lead to believe is hihgly unlikely

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

With the return of the 5th Column, Bricks' inhabitant mob groups had been altered quite a bit. While once there were Crey all over the place, they have been massively replaced with 5th Column and Freakshow; while this may not seem much of an issue, several story threads and TFs require the hunt of Crey at Bricks in very large numbers.

While you can eventually find the 50 Crey in Bricks, it is frankly annoying, when the Crey is in short supply because they were massively replaced by other mob groups. Since there are no hunt missions for 5th Column nor Freaks in Bricks, can you replace some from both groups with Creys, please? Or reduce the hunt number of Creys would work too; after all there had to be a correlation of hunt number to mob availability, if you reduce the availability of the mob by more than half, should you not reduce the hunt number by more than half?

As a side suggestion...

The return of the 5th Column has also impacted other zones, mainly Boom and IP, who has TFs calling for the hunt of Council. While it is cute to see the 5th column obliterate the council, it is very annoying to see this occur when you have to hunt the Council to meet TF hunt requirements. In these zones, since there are TFs that require hunting Council, can the "war" between these two not be played out in these two zones, and say moved to FF where there is no hunts for either? or perhaps let the Council win more often? or reduce the hunt values to account for the new imposed rarity of the hunted mob?

Hugs

Stormy

My wish giggles was for fire tankers be able to feel and behave like a true tanker, they need inherent Knock Back Protection thru fire shield and immobilization thru fire shield as well. Having to use burn to break free from iimobilization, is hardly practical for one burn scares mobs away which is anti-tank doctrine to begin with, and it does not provide a permanent immob defense as real tankers has thru buttons or toggles. I know buttons are not quite permanent protection as a standard, but if properly enhanced they can provide reasonably permanent coverage.

hugs

Sue

Fiery Aura also provides MAG 12 KBP and MAG 12 Immob protection

Hugs

Stormy

Mmmm

Sharker, I really did not meant to say all with money, achieved it through external to the game sources, but I do believe this external to the game sources has influenced prices in the market by making influence much more available that it would be otherwise, think of it as inflation (when you print too much money with out backing, the unit value of money drops, and therefore you need to pay more money for whatever you buy).

I will admit, with regards to the white pricing of salvage or any other salvage in fact, Sharker you are right, a little bit of patience will definetely pay off. I usually place my bids for my salvage and continue on buying other salvage for other recipies, usually after I bought a couple of salvage, I get my salvage at the bid I made a few minutes ago. I also know which recipies I am planning to acquire in the next couple of days and I do in advance place bids for the salvage they require as well, saving me lots of influence in the process.

Never the less, as I did say, I like the idea of merits letting you buy what you actually want, the very essence of this ability does provide a sense of check and balance to overall system. I still would like to see the merit system extend to Purple recipies, and all forms of salvage as well. Further more, it would be nice if AE Tickets, and yet another form of pseudo-currency, be adapted to work as the merit system does with regards to choice. But again, I like to see lots of chioces and versatility, does the AE ticket system needs to be evolved, not really; but it would be nice.

Stormy

Hi:

I did mention in my post that there would be issues, but I really was after a more cinematic feel for the combat. As another player indicated, I do often mix leap with martial arts attacks and do get some rather impressive visuals. I can also agree that fire while moving would not make sense either for certain powers, for example Snipe would not make sense while leaping!

I do agree there could be some game balance concerns, for some "jousting" like attack effects could also be experienced as well.

But the suggestion was merely for cinematic flavor.

Sue

Hi:

I remember reading comic books, and watch my favorite heroes shooting their pistols as they jump, fly, bounce of a wall or what not.

In the game, our heroes run to a spot, shoot, then run again; not very cinematic if you think of it.

I will confess game has improved a lot from the stop, do something, move, stop do something. As a whole, many of the defensive powers had a similar stop and go effect, but thankfully those graphics had been sent packing and you can activate many of your defensive powers as you run, fly, jump or whatever you doing with out stopping.

I think, it would be nice if we could attack as we moved with out stopping.

I'm not sure how heavely the attack graphics would get changed, to allow for this suggestion, nor how much more work would be involved with it, perhaps it could be a I20 type improvement.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I like the idea of being able to get recipes through merits, which allows me to avoid the hideous over-pricing of some recipes; of course as some would say, as long as someone will pay that much for them, they will be priced as such..way to go Ebay and ******!

Just as recipes are being hideously priced and manipulated, salvage is no different and subject to price gauging, of course as long as folks are willing to pay such amounts for them, the practice will continue.

I had always hoped for a game alternate to control or limit how bad the gauging can get to be, for us players who play casually, have not so good luck, or do not buy influence from busineses such as ******* or Ebay. I feel the merit award system does limit som eof this, after all just do a few TFs and you can have any recipe you want wit the exception of purples; would be nice if you could buy purples as well.

With regards to random rolls at AE for recipes, its a waste for me, I always get some lame status effect recipe, and of course of a level I do not want. I would really like to see AE have tickets exchanged for specific recipes and salvage, any type common, rare or what not. Obviously the amount of tickets one could store would have to be more 9999, so reasonable exchange rates could be set.

But anyway, I am for allowing commons to be acquired through AE tickets.

Hugs

Stormfront

Hi:

Lately I have done several respec Trials and at times the entire group was hoping for more of a challenge.

So it occur to me, why not set up the trial to be like the other "Master" TFs, but besides the normal limitations, you can't heal the reactor core.

If you complete the trial, you get a shiny new badge to brag about :<)


Stormy

I really hate how things can go crazy for really no reason, just because some people have to be ugly.

As I said before, when I made my original posting in suggestions I essentially said:

I have powers in some of my ATs, say Axe for my Tank, clearly says the effect of using it states it knocks-up. When I go fight mobs, I use that one power, and the foe is knocked clearly across the room. Annoying to me, to be frank and a departure to what the power description says that power is supposed to do.

So foolish me for asking if there was a way to avoid the conversion from Knock-up to Knock-back

That is all I asked for, as I confessed before, I was not familiar with the mechanics of the game.

So while mostly insulted and flamed, slowly the mechanics on how IOs and SOs actually work over the powers with Knock effect are actually impacted. Yet no effort was made to look for ways to accomodate my very simple request, or really explain why such a request was so earth shattering if attempted to accomodate.

After learning the basic mechanics, I really could not think of a way within those mechanics to accomodate my desire for powers to retain their original definitions, and the use of a Knock IO or SO would result in a greater chance of a Knock effect to occur, and not automatically translate into a Knock-back effect instead.

So I thought, since I really don't master the subject sufficiently well to make an intelligent suggestion, perhaps going thru Player Questions, I could find someone who would understand what I really wanted to accomplish, and may be able to tell me how it could be accomplished.

So once more, foolish me, I came to this thread seeking for someone who may actually have an idea on how to accomodate my desire, or at worst explain why trying to satisfy it was really more trouble than it was worth.

A potential solution as some has referred, is to simply do not slot any IO sets with KB recipies. Others have correctly said, one has a choice if one wants that extra defense then the knock-back comes with the territory or if you don't want the knock-back then accept the lesser defense. The question I would ask, is this choice really needed, it is now, but can the system be changed, so the question would not be needed to be made?

Before this thread, I did not know how difficult it would be to allow KOs for knock-ups to simply be an increase of MAG alike Mes powers. Now given Arcanaville's explanation, so the per force trade-off can't be avoided.

It is sad that the mechanics which were established well before IOs can not be changed with ease, to allow for different Knock mechanics (up/down - back).

A fortunate situation is that not many 6 slot recipies saddles us with KO recipies, so the impact of them can be mitigated to an extent.


This is as best as I can my explanation of why I started in suggestions and then why I came here.

Stormfront

Thank you Arcanaville and Finduilas for taking the time in giving a constructive and useful explanation. My gratitude to RobertoLyon for defending a Lady's honor.

To answer a few questions, I have tried in another thread (Suggestions) to suggest a way to stop having my Knock-down converted to Knock-back when a KB is included in a set. What I got, from some of the names above and many others is the standard: You are an ignorant fool, stupid, learn the game, etc. Instead of a clear reason of what I have asked or suggested is dumb; it seems the folks simply stating I am stupid is a totally compelling explanation.

To be honest, when I did make the suggestion, I did not know the exact mechanics on how Knock-down/back actually worked; all I knew was what I was experiencing in the game, and frankly did not like, and wanted to see if it was possible to make changes to accomodate my desire. In that thread some of the mechanics were explained, but no attempt was made to find a way to remedy the issue, just an explanation of how things work, which did explain the why things worked the way it did.

So I turned to the player help thread, expecting to take my understanding and the how to possibly fix this to the next level. Arcanaville, and Finduilas provided that input I been asking and the consequences that went with them; they did not have to call me names to replace intelligent information exchange.

I respect some of the practical solutions some of the players proposed, I think they are well intentioned, and perhaps useful, but those solutions are more of live with it kind of thing, than try to fix it, its like having a broken tooth, and told to chew with your other side as a permanent fix.

I always thought, a healthy discussion on new ideas, game upgrades, game changes to be a good thing to keep the game dynamic and more fun. Thruthfully not all suggestions will be great ones, nor all will be bad. I wonder those who has so much fun maligning me, how many suggestions they made (if any) and have any of them been implemented by the devs? Have they contributed any? As stupid as I have been portraid to be, I had several suggestions actually instituted, for example, when you go to tailors, you have a chioce to get a whole motiff set up front as opposed to have to go the different parts of the uniform and set them, it was my suggestion. So yeah, I may not bat 1000, but at least I have the courage to go to bat, and have hit the ball out of the park a few times.

Stormy

I am a bit at a loss

There is a basic expansion you can buy for $30, then you can buy an upgrade to a deluxe set up.

Can someone tell me exactly what this upgrade consist of? Is the deluxe going to have content that the basic expansion will not have, is it content above and beyond the contents purchased thru booster packs? What do I get, that is so special? I am not that concerned with using new powers ahead of schedule.

Hugs

Sue

For those with the hidden agenda, can you please tell me what that hidden agenda is?

I simply and clearly said, I don't want to have to go chasing each mob I hit all over the map every time I hit them, and I sam eeking a reasonable solution to that!

What is your problem with that?

I been systematically replacing the Kinetic Combat KBs with the other incredibly much more expensive choice, that has reduced some of the hit and chase annoying situations.

I still would like to see a "MAG" increase only to be used in a test to see if the mob is affected by the knock effect, with out it automatically becoming a knock-away effect. I do understand Knock-away is great, and do use it with my Blasters, but for my melee its simply annoying.

I wonder about those who ciritique my ignorance on the subject matter, I thought comming here was a way to get a better understanding and be able to propose situations and get feedback which are constructive and educational. Did I miss-understood the purpose of this specific forum?

Once more, please explain, why asking this is such a horrible, earth shattering issue?

Stormy

I seek understanding and perhaps a means for a solution...

I have several scrappers and tankers, being melee based, I end up using Kinetic Combats to acquire the desperately needed Defense against Smash and Lethal.

Among the Kinetic Combats there is a recipe which does extra knockback.

While my Axe tanker alledgedly does knock-down and ups, because of the Kinetic Combat Knockback IO, like my Scrappers as well, the game exprience became a Hit, knock the mob way away, run after it, be ranged pummeled by the mob, get melee struck by it when I get next to it, I hit and knock it away, run after it, get ranged pummeled, melee strucked by the mob, get my hit and subsequent knock him away, rinse wash and repeat.

This chasing of the mob, is quite annoying, yet I need away to make my Tanker and Scrappers more survivable using the game sets.

I know someone will reply with, just don't use that set. While its easy to say, there are no other sets that would provide me the effect I need for survibabilty with out the blasted knock-back effect.

As I understand, somehow the MAG strength of the Knock effect, reduced by the victim's inherent resistance to Knock dictates how far you are knocked away. Thus if the effect is 1 or less, you are effectively knocked down/up, greater than MAG 1 you are knocked away.

Am I understanding this right?

Would suggesting to the devs to re-look at Knock effects, and split the two into different effects, where MAG is used to see if the effect goes off in the case of Knock-up/down and have no knock away effect regardless of the MAG effect difference; while Knock-Back continues to work under the same mechanics as it is now?

Hugs

Stormy

I would like to see more level 50 red zones, with out longbow content, please use another filler group.

I really enjoyed the early thread with the Snake-men, would be nice to see more work in developing that villain group, their own main zone would be so cool.

Stormy

Something funny occurred to me, but may be an issue later on...

The Valentine's event requires a hero group to have a villain to complete a mission, as well as a villain group to have a hero to complete mission.

If you are a Rogue or Vigilante, can you fill the requirement either way?

Stormy

I think, you all are being kinda mean to the OP.

Often many players do not want to lead, and many TFs do not occur for no one will step up to the task. Yet as soon as one does, its amazing how many players "suddenly" develops interest to play the TF.

Now, as some of you posters have indicated, if the rewards for leadership are so great, how come there is such reluctance for folks to lead? There seems to be a contradiction somewhere, one would think if the leader awards were so great, then no one would want to play unless they were leaders, but we do know that is not the case. So in retrospective, many of the other poster's assertions, that the built-in rewards are enough, may be at best questionable.

So I tend to agree with the poster, than some sort of bonus for the leader is actually appropriate.

Now the question is how much, and what issues should be addressed with this:

1. For instance, the ugly disconnect, and the leader is not the leader anymore. How you allow for this?

2. How much, different tasks are more complex than others, say leading a Hammi raid team, versus a TF team, versus a thread mission team, versus a scanner/radio team, etc. One would expect the bonus awards to be different.

3. Should there be a minimum team size, to get such a bonus?

4. Should a proof of leadership be achieved to get prize? Such as TF takes normally 120 min, but leadership was such it took 100 minutes? Despite that Dev metrics is 100% against good leadership, tactics, team and composition; while the Devs only recognize as good: 100% kill all, be dumb and inefficient, the longer you take the more politically correct you are.

5. Anyone can think of other situations that must be accounted for?

Hugs

Stormfront

I can see your pain, but using merits for SO is really not that good of an idea.

I would suggest to be mindful of what activites yields merits, and even at low levels you can make a good amount of merits. Reaching 250 merits at low levels, is possible, but actually if you are observant you can buy some good recipies as low as 125 merits and then sell those recipies for 50 to 60 million influence, after that your SO buying blues are gone.

Now 125 merits seems like a lot, but if you do 2 Positrons (66 each) will put you at 132 merits, and that is not hard to do at low levels (10-15), interestingly you will not be buying Duos until 12 and Singles until 22, but by earning merits, and buying specific recipies ( not random roll) you can ensure to make sufficient influence to cover your Duos and Single needs all the way to 50 with ease. Also if you aggressively sell the salvage you make during the adventures, you may find you actually make enough influence to afford the DO and SOs as well, with out dipping into your merit pool, after all you want a Numina Regen?recov for 250 merits.

Hugs

Sue Aka Stormy

I love the suggestion, my experience when getting recipes is 99% trash recipies and 1% somewhat useful recipies, at leat having an opportunity to mix and re-roll recipies would at least be another opportunity to get something usefull, but likely it will be another cheap piece of junk, unless a different recipe generator is utilized.

It would be nice, if the present random process would be changed all together and the possibility to get any recipe is kinda leveled by type of recipe, that is melee, ranged, AOE, PBAE, Targeted AOE, etc. The first step on the process of randomness is to determine what category recipie it will be, all categories are equal weighted. So you would have the same chance to get a melee as a slow recipe. I have to wonder how come I get pacing of the turtles so often, only to be interrupted by Ghost Widows, what is the random chart look like? Pacing of the Turtle 1-50, Ghost Widow 51-75, all other recipied between 72 and 100? Ha ha ha

The next roll, is to determine the rarity of the recipe with a bias in favor for common and against purples.

The third roll, is to determine which recipe, within the rarity group, and class.

The fourth and last roll is for the specific recipe within that recipe family.

For example given you get a recipe:

Roll 1: Melee
Roll 2: Rare
Roll 3: Kinetic Combat
Roll 4: Knockback

Hugs

Stormy

Using this template above with the suggestion, only roll 2 would not be needed, the rarity isbased on the rarity of the ingredients.

Thus when you combine 3 rares...
Roll 1: determines what class
Roll 2: Type
Roll 4: Specific recipe

A further refinement, which may be cool to think off, could be combining 3 of the same class and rarity, thus steps 1 and 2 are pre-empted.

So if you combine 3 rare melee recipies...
Roll 1: Would be for the specific Recipe Family (rare)
Roll 2: Would be for the specific recipe within the family.

By doing this, the absurde randomness and lieklyhood you gonna end up with the ultra common pacing of the turle drop can be avoided (despite that Pacing of the trutle is alledgedly rare)

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: I would not be adverse at trading say 10 recipes or so and get a choice, based on the ten traded recipe rarity.