macskull

If this were true, it wouldn't have been fixed when I16 launched. You're looking for the PvE section of the boards, which is that-a-way --->

Also you're terrible, why do you keep posting here? You can't honestly thing you're doing a good job at trolling?

Earth Assault will be a pretty bad PvP set - it consists mostly of melee and AoE. And it has Mud Pots for god's sake.

Web Envelope is quite useful, but the the mace blasts are pretty crappy. I'd rather see them buffed to the point of usefulness than have them removed for something else, though.

I'm not disagreeing with the fact that suggestions and constructive criticism are good for the game. However, PvP seems to be a special case - when I13 hit we were told that they were going to be reinvesting in the PvP game and that it wouldn't be ignored any longer, yet we've had few changes and bug fixes since I14 (I14 was a very positive issue between the arena changes and PvP IOs, and I15 gave us a separate option for heal decay, but that's about it), and very little developer communication regarding player concerns and feedback. I've been filing bug reports both in-game and on the closed, open, and live forums for I16 about a list of powers that aren't working as expected in PvP, but none of them have been fixed. Amusingly, I also bugged an emote that wasn't working right for Khelds in Dwarf form and bugged the jump speed debuff from Shadow Fall, and both of those were fixed even though they're at best minor, unnoticeable changes.

What the PvPers are asking for (well, those of us that still care enough to try) is simply some comment from a redname, even if it's only in passing, that they're still listening to what we have to say, and maybe even drop us a hint as to what they're planning on doing with PvP instead of just saying "we've put it on hold for now."

Combination of the MA changes, CO, Aion, and school have done it for a lot of people. Also note that the RPers went nuts over color customization and there've been a few times when Virtue had a higher population than Freedom, which I don't remember ever happening (please note that I'm not trying to speak ill of any group of players here, I'm just trying to make a point). There are also a lot more people just running missions solo thanks to the new difficulty options.

The animation that picture is from is called "In a perfect world" if it helps to clear that up for you.

I doubt that. As much as I enjoyed the XP afforded to me in I14 and I15, it was very much out of line with what standard content provided, and the I16 changes were a step toward fixing that. Whether or not they went too far is another matter (in my opinion, they did - the custom critter XP changes are ridiculous).

I'd much rather bring along some greens (or, even better, teammates) for the rare occasion I get hit than have my +damage/+tohit power replaced by a self-heal that I don't really need in the first place. Self-heals don't make things die faster, more damage does. If you are having survivability issues on a VEAT - any VEAT so long as it's built well - then I'd say it's more than likely due to user error.

Because people had characters wrecked and changes targeted specifically at them because they were too good at what they put effort into getting good at? Can you imagine the outrage on these boards if they were to apply DR or heal decay to PvE (not just set bonuses - everything)?

When someone hands you **** on a plate, you don't say "Hey, thanks!" You say "Dude, you just handed me a plate full of ****. Here's the recipe for a filet mignon, try that and get back to me."

This is probably what I'd've said. Hits the nail on the head IMO and if I weren't out of rep for today I'd give some.

Thing is, the game's already very easy (aside from specific encounters which are designed to be difficult or require teamwork/coordination, such as the sewer trial and Hami raid) even running on SOs - using IOs is like installing a turbocharger in your car's engine. To be honest, there's not much of a necessity other than "it would be nice" to keep set bonuses while exemplared unless you exemplar a lot and still have a build goal you want to keep while exemplared to that level (i.e. softcapped defenses, perma Phantom Army, permhasten, permadom). In that case, it's a matter of preference: what do you want more, the enhancement values (which usually are only a few percent different between level 35 and level 50 for the same piece) or the set bonuses? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

If you've got lots of characters you want to get the MO badges on (especially the RSF and BSF), get them now - the -1 thing is apparently a bug and will be fixed sometime soon (tm).

Were you killing the mobs sequentially, as a player would have done, or were you using [The I Win Button] to simply wipe the map and collect data that way? Perhaps there's something reminiscent of the old RNG bug, but that's only speculation from yours truly.

Unfortunately, this post serves as a sort of go-ahead for me to continue my ticket farming, because if the drop rates are as low as people have calculated them to be I'm better off simply spending my time getting tickets for gold and bronze rolls instead of running through missions where I might not get anything, let alone something good.

That's impossible, I thought the I13 changes fixed that.

One of the reasons the merit system was implemented in the first place was to tackle the "our content isn't all the same length" issue - for example, you had Eden granting a recipe, and at the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Q granted a recipe. Obviously less people were running Dr. Q's because why would anyone take 3-5 hours to get a recipe (unless they really wanted the badge) when they could run an Eden in 7-10 minutes and get that same recipe? The merit system helps to ensure that all content awards roughly equally, because rewards for each task are based on median completion time. It also helps to ensure that the same content doesn't get repeated over and over again by virtue of the 18-hour DR timer and lower rewards on the most popular "farmed" TFs/SFs pre-I13.

The requirements for the Eden trial are simple:

* Defeat 200 Devouring Earth (outdoors, in Eden)
* Defeat the Rock Wall
* Defeat the Mold Wall
* Rescue the heroes
* Defeat the Crystal Titan

Those requirements I listed are the only requirements that need to be met to successfully complete the task force. There's no "leveraging of mechanics" going on here (the only possible one I can think of is dropping the Quarries into holes before the first wall so they don't follow you the rest of the TF), only a team that skips from objective to objective without fighting any of the "filler." "Filler" is just there to make the task take longer, and a good team will realize this and skip it, since it's not required for completion. The modus operandi many Eden teams used was kill the 200 DE, then have someone with Assemble the Team recall everyone back to the mission door once that was completed. After that, the team would drop through holes to the first wall, kill it as quickly as possible, run to the second and kill it, run to the back of the map and rescue the heroes, and finally rush the Titan and drop it before the room he was in overwhelmed the team. If the melee characters on the team lacked Ambrosias, you could gather up on the bridges between the first and second wall and kill only the bosses, since they drop the inspirations, until everyone that needed Ambrosias had them.

"Completing only required objectives" is not an exploit.

You should come along on one of our Hess TFs (after they get fixed) and we'd be glad to have you point out exactly what we're doing that's an exploit (hint: you won't find anything).

You make the mistake of assuming that anything done significantly faster than the time it's designed to be completed relies on an exploit. I already used the Eden trial as an example of how that's not true - even after the geometry hole was fixed, people were still running them in less than 10 minutes (which includes the hunt at the beginning). This is the reason Eden is worth 6 merits (is it 6? I don't remember, but I remember it was 2 at I13 launch) - because that's how quickly the average Eden team was completing it, not because that's how fast the devs expected you to run it. The thing about TFs/SFs/flashbacks and indeed any mission is that there is a basic requirement or multiple requirements which must be met to finish it. Essentially when content's written the writers sit down and say "okay, we'd like teams to complete these objectives." Obviously, some teams will do it faster than others - I've done a defeat-most invincible ITF and it still took us less than 40 minutes. Given that the merit reward for the ITF is 26, which assumes a 130-minute completion time, does that mean we're exploiting because we're finishing in 1/3 the time that it's "balanced" around? If stacking defense buffs from multiple characters, steamrolling missions, and hitting only the objectives before moving on is an exploit, I'm not sure what to say.

In the example of the KHTF, the first mission was set to be failable in case you had a team that couldn't handle the AV spawns. That worked fine before IOs when the only reward was an SO (whee) but after IOs it became clear that the TF was being run too fast for the reward it gave (that doesn't mean it's an exploit, only that the risk and reward were not in line), so it was adjusted. On the last mission, teams that fly Katie out, without having her aggro a whole crapload of mobs, aren't exploiting - they're simply using a legitimate means to shorten the task force time. If the devs want to go through and intentionally make TFs take longer to complete, that's fine, but to say that's the case because of exploits is false.

EDIT: Another example - the Dr. Q TF gives 120 merits, which equates to a 600 minute (TEN HOUR!) completion time. My team completed it in less than three hours. Can you tell me what exploits we were using? (Hint: there were none.)