UberGuy

Yeah. For some reason, though, the tech was exceptionally bad about this. I once had him freak out and start running into Escher-land with no known provocation, after being "re-attached" to me. He actually left me standing outside the lab entrance, traversed the map and ran into the hospital doors, never to be seen again.

No one had died when he did it.

If he lost his "lead" (the person he attached to and followed around) he would become hopelessly lost, run through doors no one was leading him to and generally disappear through the map, calling out how he was lost and occasionally appearing through doors and elevators only to run off through the walls or some such. You basically had to reset the mission. This would be triggered by his lead dying or being affected by stealth. Running any AoE stealth powers was always a huge no-no once the Tech was loose on the map.

He is much improved, and is far less prone to do this. However he still occasionally freaks out. He is more likely to be recoverable (he will now usually reattach to someone if they get close enough), but he still sometimes runs off throught the map like some bad Tom & Jerry cartoon, and I have been on a run or two since the "fix" (let's call it an improvement) where we ended up having to reset. We still are careful with stealth auras around him.

Edit: It should be noted that the Recluse fix essentially addresses a geometry exploit that made the mission easier. It's quite a different category of fix, and probably will be taken as evidence the devs are more likely to fix an exploit than a problem. Personally, I'm kind of glad they fixed this (if they really were successful). I always thought it was super cheesy.

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Whereas I would expect it to contribute nothing of my earnings to the pact, and not level either of us up, much less hand it all back to me later. If this is WAI for pacted people, then it need to be made the same for non pacted people. Let them pool the xp they would earn and get it back after they do the content they want.

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"Non pacted" people do not have a second character gaining XP on their behalf, and are not engaged in a mechanism which explicitly banks XP earned by that other party when the recipient can't recieve it (such as not being logged in on that character).

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However in this case I seriously doubt it is WAI. I could take a pacted person into Dark Astoria, farm as much as I want, then turn the pact off and leap much closer to 50 in one fell swoop, along with all the benefits of the farming of easy foes.

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How is this different from leaving the pacted person offline or in some other zone while you farm?

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The Eden Trial awards 2 merits. Merits are awarded immediately upon completion, rather than mission exit or calling the contact. So it seems that you got the reward and the Titan does not award merits.

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That's what the Eden Trial is worth. The Titan is a "Monster", not a "Giant Monster", and as such is not worth any merits.

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Bug Description: Character is level 10. I turned off xp to try and get a badge mission before outleveling the contact. I was solo, but when my partner logged in I discovered she was ahead. I turned my xp earnings back on to see what would happen, and the Pact server gave me all the xp I thought I had given up by turning it off.

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That sounds like exactly what I would expect to happen. All the descriptons of the pacts would have suggested to me that the pact will enforce the XP level to be the same. As you discovered, turning off XP just suppressed the gains, much as if you were offline.

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Scrapper Build Up power not granting full buff

Server: Virtue
Zone: Various - non PvP
Character name: Gas-Soaked Rag Man
Time: various
Location: N/A
Mission: N/A
Mission Contact: N/A
Bug Description: My level 46 Fire/WP scrapper is having a problem with Build Up. He is getting only 46.4% damage boost from it, rather than the normal 100%. The To Hit component is unaffected, and he still gets the expected 20%.


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Confirmed and more detail below.

Build Up power not granting full buff

Server: Justice
Zone: Various - non PvP
Character name: American Steele (Broadsword/Invuln)
Time: various
Location: N/A
Mission: N/A
Mission Contact: N/A
Bug Description: The damage bonus(es) for Build Up is being resisted by the character's damage resistance(es). This accounts for the varying bonuses reported above.

This is similar to a bug which was introduced into Dark Melee/Soul Drain during beta but was fixed before live.

This does not appear to affect Tanker, Brute or Stalker versions of this power, though I only tested a few powersets (Tanker Energy Melee, Brute Energy Melee, Brute Stone Melee and Stalker Martial Arts).

Just throwing in another backing post for the whole "only the heroes had to log" thing. As long as the team isn't mixed when someone zones to a non-co-op zone, no one will be kicked.

Lost Set Bonus in Adjusted Targeting.

Server: Justice
Zone: Any
Character name: Abyssal Frost, Shadowslip, Nightfall
Time: Any
Location: Any
Mission: Any
Mission Contact: N/A
Bug Description: Adjusted Targeting IO set no longer grants its +2% damage set bonus for having two slotted in a single power. I noticed this because my global damage bonuses were smaller in the Combat Attributes monitor. In the detailed monitor I can account for the bonuses I retain as coming from other sets, and there are no 2% bonuses listed. This is new as of I13.
Link to Forum Discussions: N/A

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Not to totally derail the thread but Vengeance-stacking has never been a viable tactic against the Patrons.

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Sorry, no. Maybe for the team composition / players you tried it with. I've been on teams that used that many times.

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Also, on a final note: The entire playerbase does not play optimally as a gigantic block. If that were the case, then literally the only builds you would see are FoTM builds and every run would be a speed run.

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The devs have never before presented them with the ability to simply look at rewards and say "hey, I can get some of the best rewards in the game if I run 10 ITFs". I mean I know an awful lot of people hate math, but I give most of them credit for being able to do division of 250 by 25.

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@ UberGuy: Wow, okay. At least try to be right about your accusations before you sling them around.

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I seriously don't know what you're referring to.

What accusations?

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UberGuy, the random system is still in. You can purchase a random recipe at a level of your choosing for far less than you'll be paying for specific recipes that you're saving up for.

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I'm well aware of it. I think it's badly broken. I've provided some feedback about it already.

In short, the rato of the merit cost of a random drop is much too high compared to the cost of a pool C recipie. No one who is actually trying to obtain IOs for a build should ever choose to do that. Because I find it completely credbible that this is the motive of most people running TFs for drops, I believe this will hammer the supply in the market of pool C and D recipies. The only supply there will be from folks who have consiously decided either that they don't care what they get or they are going to explicitly act as market suppliers (for profit, altruism or whatever). If this happens it will will be self reinforcing in that it will drive people to actually prefer merits for many of these drops, since they won't have to worry about supply dry ups or demand spikes, or even competing with rich characters.

This could be avoided by a far smaller random merit cost. If the opportunity cost of spending merits on a random roll is lower, people will be more prone to take their chances (which are fairly poor of getting a "valuable" drop).

If the goal is to outfit a character it just never makes sense to pay 25 merits for a random roll given the distribution of items in the TF pools.

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Merit System:
Next up, we have a new Merit System for playing through content in the game. Players will no longer need to “farm” particular missions or Task Forces for a specific IO. Now you can accumulate Merits and simply purchase that IO outright from the new Merit Vendors sprinkled throughout Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Practically everything you do in the game earns you Merits now and the amount you earn is based on our datamines on how long particular things take to accomplish in our game. This means that really fast Task Forces or Trials will earn you fewer Merits than ones that take longer to complete. Merits don’t have a level associated with them either, so you can earn Merits in your low-level career, and save them up to purchase IOs that will be most useful when you are level 50. The choice is now in your hands, and out of the random drop tables these missions had previously.

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Wow.

And that's not a happy, adoring "wow".

I'm not going to sit here and say I liked everything about the random drop table setup you had. But have you decided that you don't like the market? Because if this stuff is now no longer tied to random drops, what is the market for?

Just on the really odd chance that you've forgotten, let me remind you how a market is used in any game where you have such a system. Some person does content and gets a widget as a reward, but they wanted a doodad. So they take the widget to the market and sell it to people who are looking for doodads. They get some money back, which they save up towards buying a widget (unless they do get one later as a drop).

If there are no random drop tables in the picture, the person above never gets a doodad. They just save up merits till they get their widget, then they move on.

Oh, sure, there's still going to be a market for some things, particularly those not dropping from TFs and trials, mostly because people can generate them outside of TFs and trials, which means the introduction of merits won't decrease their supply.

So what's the deal? Did you decide you didn't like having a market after all? Or is it that you simply don't see the outcome I describe as coming about?

Obviously, if my predictions don't pan out then all is well. What's you plan, though, if they do?

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IF there are 1/5 as many TF recipes as there used to be (less TF's and katies being 1/3 of a roll and whatnot)

AND your roll gives you a 1/3 chance of "Something good"

THEN for 75 merits you get "something good" which will be similar in value to "something specifically good".

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That is so not true.

That's only true in the long run, where you spend the time buying a random drop 150 times or so.

Averages are not the same as probabilities. A 33% chance of a good thing does not mean you get a good thing after 3 tries.

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I agree with Ironblade wholly on this. I have heard people talk about doing these that fast, and I don't doubt that it can be done. This sounds like a geometry glitch or somesuch.

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Uh, no.

You just need to know what you're doing and how to navigate the maps. In particular, you need to know what not to do.

As an aside, expect the merit rewards for most of the TFs and trials to decline over time, because the devs have just motivated everyone to start running all the ones with decent rewards as fast as they can. What today is done by a few is going to be done by more and more people over time, motivating the devs to reduce the reward to account for it.

This system is moronic.

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Hm. While IE6 is no longer the current version, it still has a substantial installationn base. Something to look into to see if it can be fixed, Lighthouse.

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Among other things, many corporate sites are still running IE6. At work I don't have a choice, and they won't be updating the browser for a number of months still.

(And the new site completely locks up IE6 for me too. 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)

I love the invasions. Rikti invasions will evermore be pale after this.

The fact that bosses appear in large waves is excellent. I actually find the zombies more dangerous than the Rikti. The zombies hit harder, and in the short bursts they get to be there, that makes them more meaningful.

On a technical note I want to thank whoever (or whatever accident) made the zombies untargetable while they're appearing. This is something that I find incredibly frustrating during Rikti invasions - that you can target them but they are "invalid target"s. This makes finding a valid target during Rikti waves unneccesarily hard.

I like the level of difficulty in getting the new badges. This is a once-a-year event and I have lots of characters I'd like to get them on.

ToT Spirit's spawn rate is outrageously low compared to its peers. It took me all day to get that badge on a new character. I literally would have earned all the other ToT critter badges 3x or more over and I had all 33 costumes by the time I got it. (Indeed, it took so long I actually had a chance to get every other halloween badge by the time I finished, including those for the two GMs and Unseelies.) If it was just me noticing this I might have attributed it to bad luck with the RNG, but the observation seems basically universal.

There are Burn Tanker protectors you meet in missions. It's not the Experiment demonic chap.

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...Many of these "naughty" things are THOROUGHLY entrenched in our American culture and come out as a reflex reaction more than a cognitive process.

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Sorry, you may be sincere, but I consider that nothing but an excuse. This isn't the American Revolution, and the devs/mods aren't oppressing anyone, and we have no more rights here than the ones we got when we agreed to the EULA. They are a business and you can vote with your dollars - and your voice in actual public forums (physical and digital) - if you don't like how they run their ship.

If you can't keep track of that divide, you're just going to run afoul of the mods a lot.

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Is this a blanket order that discussion about any game, including offline, single-player (or multiplayer like Halo 3) Wii/360/PS3/PC games is verboten?

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If I might... actually discussing such things is, by defintion, off topic, and they broadly disallow off-topic discussion.

Mentioning them for context or somthing isn't likely to be a problem. "I want Martial Arts to look like it does in Street Fighter" should be OK.

(By the way, I really don't want that. It was just an example.)

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Niv's posts only refer to the Devs, which is why I asked what I did.

You can discuss rules, but not moderator actions. You can disagree with Devs, but not mods when it comes to forum moderation.

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Like I said, they've made clear that trying to debate specific moderation activities is off-limits.

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Likewise, discussions regarding moderator actions are not permitted on the forum. If you have questions regarding a post or thread that has been removed or subject to other moderation, feel free to contact a moderator to discuss it.

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That's means you can't make a post along the lines of "Moderator4 deleted my post without any justification."

Honestly, it's going to be very hard for you to make a post about even broad patterns of problems with moderation. Not just because of the rules, but because it's nearly impossible to make such a thread without it devolving into a cesspool of non-constructive negativity. If we could guarantee constructive negativity it might be different.

Making such discussions into threads instead of PMs seems only to be valuable in an effort to drag the perceived problem(s) into the court of public opinion. But these forums aren't supposed to be a court of public opinion.

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LH's post above yours seems to say I was right. Though it is a bit unclear.

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I don't understand. That post states:

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Yes, it's ok to disagree with the devs or community team as long as you're not trolling/flamming/insulting/being a wacky nutcase/whatever else.

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Disagreeing with the moderators or community team about matters of specific moderation action will almost certainly be deleted. A frank discussion about problems seen with general trends in moderation? They're saying that shouldn't be.

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Please do not attempt to add meaning to what I've written or what I want. I put the words I mean to be there and am happy to clarify when someone has a question about my meaning. Rarely do I need a mouthpiece to assemble my words for me.

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You may put the words you meant, but those words to not neccesarily convey the intent you believe. All human communication is about interpretation. I saw meaning in your words that you say you did not intend, and I have no reason to doubt you. There is no need to respond in a way that treats me in a pejorative way for reading your post as I did. I have neither intent to act nor interest in acting as your or anyone else's mouthpiece. But I am quite interested in paying attention to percieved undertones. Perceptions can always be incorrect.

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It all seems to, after reading this entire thread, boil down to that one singular rule which offers no true guidance for our actions aside from 'don't annoy the mods'. This is my concern and has been all along. If that's truly the case, then why not just call a spade a spade and say so?

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Because that conveys a notion which does not underly their intent.

You want them to state that all rules are hard, fast, impartial, and inviolate.

By the nature of the goals, that is impossible. It will always be neccessary for them to use their human judgement about what is and is not acceptable, based on principles set forth in these rules. The rules encode one hard and fast rule - whatever they decide to do, based on their human judgements, it stands. Based on that one rule, its their way or the highway, because this is their house they built, and we're guests.

The rest of the rules are there to point out a few specific examples of things they're going to be looking for or types of behavior they don't want to see. Beyond that it's a judgement call, both on our part as posters and their part as moderators.

Saying it the way you seem to want them to - that this is a subjective order and watever they decide is what flies - would carry a pejorative connotation that they don't intend. Their intent is not to act as cruel, arbitrary dictators. They want guests in their house, and poorly treated guests leave.

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I am trying to get clarification on what is ok to say and what is going to get deleted. If I made posts that fit into the discussion, and those posts were not flaming, attacking, insulting, or anything of that nature and they were deleted,and not part of a chain that was deleted, I want to know what crossed the line.

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Sorry, I did misread your post.

I don't know what to tell you except that posts of mine that have been moderated in the last couple of months have always come with a PM from the moderators about what and why. Obviously I don't know if that's happening for everyone, but I certainly would agree that it should be.