Another_Fan
-
Posts
3571 -
Joined
-
Quote:The ability to coordinate attacks and take out targets is an advantage teams enjoy, the better the teamwork, the greater the advantage. Anti spike code hit directly at this.Originally Posted by Computer
Note: I am not saying that I don't believe teaming was discouraged in I13, however we cannot directly infer that from the anti-spike code.
DR is under the category of obvious advantages. More or less the devs looked at the situation and said that access to IOs and sets makes things incredibly lopsided, so lets just make them not nearly so useful.Quote:By the way, how was Recharge and Defense nerfed? Are you talking about Diminishing Returns now, because as I recall the Anti-Spike code only nerfed your To-Hit (or was it Accuracy?).
These days you can leave the rest to just
Quote:Very rarely does someone wander into a PvP zone Misses the entire point of if you put pvp into the same category as av/gm soloing you can expect the same level of participation.Quote:Before it comes up things won't translate exactly from AV soloing to PvPing. While it could be said they are in the same category, AV soloing is basically a can or can't thing whereas PvP can have differing levels of success at different times.
I think you are right that PVP will never be the big draw. PvP and even PnP RPGs rarely worked. Player ats are always balanced to be overwhelming to NPCs but almost never to be equally powerful against each other. What works for individuals wont work for a team etc.Quote:Your entire last paragraph is why you're never going to see what you're asking for. PVP will NEVER be THAT attractive in this game.
Cross server is a great idea, it would at least increase the apparent userbase and allow much more play. I don't think we would get it though as nothing in the game except the market and chat is cross server currently. Just at a guess they would need to set up a dedicated pvp server to make that work and then implement code to move your instance to it. -
A1:
Really depends on how well enhanced you are. But in general the minions preferably two shot with AOEs aim and build up. The sorcerer usually either teleports, fires up hurricane, or starts healing when his group is hit with an AOE. Teleport is a win for you, hurricane doesn't matter if you are still firing with aim and buildup active, and if he is healing you generally get the other minion and do some damage on the sorcerer, at that point you target the sorcerer till he teleports and then kill the remaining minion. Which leaves you chasing the teleporting sorcerer.
A2:
hmmm 2 LTs and a minion.
Depends, The embalmed is a pain but only when they get into close range, the mort is the same way. Back up target the Eidolon, AOE, finish off the eidolon, take out the mort and the embalmed with aoes and st as needed backing up to prevent the embalmed from exploding in your face. -
Quote:The attempt at anti spike code was an obvious attack on teaming, or at the very least an attack on coordination and communication. Recharge, plus defense, plus to hit all got nerfed.
Quote:
What do you get ? The obvious advantages got nerfed. If you recall they even tried to nerf teaming.
wrong
Anyway as long as the buy in for PvPing is in the same category as good farm builds and GM soloing, PvP will be a dead letter in this game. I know people that have been playing this game for years and have never soloed an AV or a GM and dont particularly care for farming. I don't have hard numbers but it really wouldn't surprise if they were the overwhelming majority. For you it may be nothing to do this for most people its considerably more difficult.Quote:Guess what, you get the same answer for tweaked farm builds and av soloing. Why should pvp be given a different way to work over these. If you say you are asking for pve builds to given open access to all enhancements as well as pvp you may have a point, otherwise not so much.
Now if PvP were overwhelmingly fun to the point, that it became the prime attraction of the game, yes you would find more people willing to slog through the hoops to play. At that point the people at NcSoft would be asking themselves why they have barricades on the road to their big attraction. -
Fire/fire tank ?
Get the demon farm from Harvey. You will go through it like a hot knife through butter. -
Quote:Originally Posted by JohnX
Someone should also mention, that probabilty-wise, a purple should drop in about 1 out of 5000 kills. Of course, individual results vary.
I'm not sure who said that, but I've seen that number posted a few times. So I cant point you a source right now.
Paragon wiki had it as 1/3500, top doc listed his as 1/1800. My own results are around 1/3500. That is only at times I actually track, it doesn't include teams. -
Quote:Originally Posted by ConFlict
they do.
Wait for DR 2.0 on that.
Edit: That was unduly pointed.
Try and look at things from the point of view of NcSoft and the PvEer. The PvEer is playing his game and thinks he might like to PvP, he goes in the zones and the first thing he notices is the NPCs are killing him and when he talks to anyone about what he needs to do, he is told the ante is a new build. From NcSoft's view they have something that they have sunk resources into that nobody is using.
What do you get ? The obvious advantages got nerfed. If you recall they even tried to nerf teaming.
The PvEer is just behaving exactly the way the PvPer does. If you know you are going to lose a fight, you don't fight or you evade. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
It seems like you want a game where everyone has exactly the same chance to win in a competitive situation. The only 'game' I'm familiar with that would satisfy those requirements is coin flipping, which imo, isn't very fun, lol.
In regards to you talking about people thinking they have the 'right to wail on people because they paid their dues', that's just how games work, hell, that's how life works. The more someone works at something, the better they get. And someone who has worked at pvp for a long time is going to 'wail on' someone who is trying it out for the first time, and that is as it should be. Who wants to play a game where a total newb has the same chance of winning as someone who has played the game for years? Who wants to play a game where a player who has spent zero effort setting up his character has the same chance in a fight against another player who has spent months setting up his character? If that's for you, again, let me suggest you go flip some coins, lol.
No what I was suggesting was at the start of the game everyone gets to start with the same material. I also pointed out that if you force people to play another game just to play the game they may or may not want to and many less will participate.
If you think there is no skill involved making a build, and playing it doesn't involve any skill then you are correct, starting everyone at even in material would be like coin flipping. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
So what you're saying is, you're right and damn reality?
As opposed to you saying ignore a board full of complaints about broken arcs, let alone the old boards, that were a constant refrain of "Nobody plays my story because all of the farms, my story is 1000th on the list when that jerks damn farm is just below the devs choice"
You really cant fault the devs for not responding to their customers on this one. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
If you're the outlier, all you have to do is balance out your own best times. If you are running a 2 hour average TF in 30 minutes, all you have to do is make sure you add about 4 hour run per 30 minute run to basically erase the effect of your own best times.
Lets look at an example
100 tf runs avg time 120 minutes for the sake of argument 1 person is running 10 of the 100 runs at 1/2 hour. This gives 12000 minutes as the total amount of time and 11700 minutes as the time the rest of the people take or 2 hours and 10 minutes without the speedster. If he balances out his runs the total goes to 14400 minutes and 110 runs. This shifts the average to 131 minutes/ run. The median though is most likely shifted more. In the original case, the median will be the run that comes in 40th after him. By just running the tf at slower than the average he can move the median to the person that is 45th after him in half the additional time. Seeing as the as the average for everyone else is 130 he is likely to get more bang for his buck doing this, depending on the shape of their curve of course.
Whats more lets say someone finds a very speedy way to run tf x and doesnt want the rewards to change. All they have to do is for every speedy run they do slip in one run that is just slower than the average and the median doesn't move -
Quote:Yes, now I am going off my memory here as the original sources were all on the old boards, the devs repeatedly used language in terms of throttling the total flow of items into the game. The average is actually better, as is also the mode for lessening the effect of outliers. The median is probably the worst choice.Originally Posted by UberGuy
The median was said to be chosen specifically because they wanted something that would be less sensitive to outliers than the mean.
It's notable that all the standard tools for collapsing a distribution to a single descriptive number (or just a few numbers) provide poor representations of multimodal distributions.
This is as always a situation where how you ask the question and how you define your entities can have a gigantic bearing on the outcome. If you say take grp task force times as your measure, you are saying players are indistinguishable entities. This really doesn't matter if your goal is to deal with the aggregate.Quote:From what they've said, which isn't much, it sounds like it's based on completed runs. It doesn't seem like it's anything to do with individual players. Failed/incomplete runs may be counted separately and considered as part of the difficulty fudge factor for merit rewards.
Anyway its no secret I think they have their counting off. If you look at the statesman tf, the lord recluce, or the abandoned sewer trial they have much higher failure rates, and the potential to be horrendously long but have very low merit rewards. Its a scratch your head kind of moment.
There are over 100k people that play the game, on 11 servers in the U.S. alone, even if you were to say that 10% of the people acounted for 75% of the tf runs it would still take a major effort to move the average in one TF. Seeing as ? they use data over a long time horizon ?? the task would be even harder because they would have to overcome historical data.Quote:If people thought gaming the distribution for profit was easy, I feel certain they would do it. A simple average calculation would be relatively easy to game. Addressing that ease would require the devs to make it a not so simple average, doing things like trying identify and then discarding outliers. My guess is that, rather than figure out the right model for that, they went with something that purportedly did that "out of the box". -
Quote:Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
1: It didn't hurt storytellers much, if at all.
2: Storytellers didn't bring it on themselves.
I still haven't hurt one bit from the limited rewards on custom critters. Mostly because I hardly used them to begin with in my own arcs. I have always preferred to use standard critters, and I have always preferred to fight standard critters. Custom critters are great as bosses and allies but that's about it.
I just got done playing this game, just scroll through the forum and in your minds ear listen to the wails of discontent. -
Quote:I have found AE to be my preferred means of self power leveling.Originally Posted by Not_Epsilon
AE Has too little reward for too much risk
-Pretty self explainitory, even patrol XP is disabled, furthering the dispairity between RC and AE. I should not have to deal with a power that does 5k damage to get full xp, I don't even think theres a GM that does that, although I have been wrong and prolly am.
I do agree that many of the nerfs are extreme, and almost pointless. Map ticket limits are state lotteries, discriminatory on the stupid. Anyone who knows what the ticket limit for a map is and can divide by 2 can circumvent them. The nerfs on custome critters hurt the storytellers more than anyone else, funny when you think they brought them on themselves. (If you want to wage war, make certain you can live with the consequences). -
Quote:This I rolled my Ice blasters up after reading about how wonderful they are on the boards, I just don't get it. Blizzard is real nice one of the top 4 nukes, I just couldn't leverage the AOEs. into a decent pace I found enjoyable. Ice/ment worked better but I haven't gotten that one IOd up yet so the jury is still out.Originally Posted by SoulSpark
If you want as much recharge as possible so that Blizzard is up more often for farming purposes, you can replace recall friend with Stealth, and Hibernate with Grant Invisbility or Invisibilty and slot both with a Luck of the Gambler: Recharge bonus IO. Then replace the Lockdown sets in your three holds with 4 IOs of the Basilisk Gaze set (still keep two of the lockdowns in each hold for the damage bonus). That will give you a total of 37.5% additional Global recharge. Which will pull down Blizzard's recharge from 155 seconds to 133 seconds. Keep in mind though that both the LotG IOs and the Basilisk Gaze sets are pretty expensive.
But, also keep in mind that this will put a considerable dent in your defences and you will lose some utility of your blaster by sacrificing Recall Friend. Like you said, Ice Blast is a single target oriented set. True that Aim -> Build Up -> Ice Storm -> Blizzard is a very mean AoE damage combo..but it's pretty much the only AoE damage you get. It crashes your Endurance, and it's really really slow for farming purpse. I won't lie to you I DID farm with mine at some point (I used the north wall in Cimerora for that. Lots of 50-52 mobs that respawn very quickly), but the downtime between Blizzards just eventually got on my nerves. You'd be much better off getting a real farm toon for that like a Fire/Kin controller (which is a solid farmer right of the bat without having to IO them out), or if you want a Blaster go with Archery/Mental Manipulation or even Fire Blast/Mental Manipulation. But those require a lot of investment to be "effecient" farmers. -
Lots
Psi/ment
Fire/Ment
Arch/Dev
Arch/Ment
Ar/EM
Ice/Ice
Ice/ment
Ar/Fire
Ar/Ment
Admittedly the Ar/fire and the Arch/dev are kind of stalled but the rest are at 50.
Edit and I am planning on starting a fire/elec soon as I can decide what to delete. I am thinking a defender or a tank is going to get the axe. -
Quote:If the distribution is multimodal which I would hazard it is, the median is likely a very bad way to do things. I don't recall if they actually came out and said this but it seems very likely that one of the purposes of merits is to control the rate recipes make it to the general population. The median if the average and the median aren't close the median won't serve this purpose well.Originally Posted by UberGuy
The median is a much better choice for this sort of thing. It's far less subject to the effects of outliers, and that's why they used it. Any time you want to treat things that have real values over a wide range and represent things as a single value, you have to do one of two things.
- Ignore or at least devalue large outliers
- Allow the single value to be disproportionately modified by large outliers
I remember asking this back when we got the news about merits, just how are they counting times ? Are they just taking it as a simple count of tf runs and speed ? Are they counting it on a per player basis ? Do they take a players average run and have it count as a single point ?
Quote:Of course let's not forget that balancing to the median also allows some people to perform significantly poorly without suggesting rewards need to be increased. This is pretty important, because it helps keep people from gaming the stats by staying logged into TFs overnight.
That is not necessarily so. It depends on the shape of the distribution. As to gaming the distribution, It would be interesting to see just what it would take to do so profitably. It sounds like an activity people would do to see if they could, not because they would get some net benefit. (Then again if you can get other people to do it for you, its a different story). -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
The very fact that you are here on these forums, and probably play with like-minded people is very likely to be what's going on there. Never, ever assume that you or anyone you know represents the average (or median) case. I know lots of people who complete TFs in 25 minutes that other people talk about failing repeatedly, and refusing to run them any more on those grounds.
I wasn't considering myself as the average here. What I was saying is that there is a large number of people that run it regularly and quickly. To pull the average out to 3:18:00 there would seem to need to be people completing it in what would be insanely long times. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
Then you are in fundamental disagreement with Synapse, who has stated exactly how merit rewards are assigned.
other drops doesn't enter into it
IIRC he stated that in the equation there was a big discretionary constant. Now when I look at positron, 66 merits gives an average run of 3 hours 18 minutes. I know many many people that are doing posis in an hour and a half or less as a somewhat slow speed, so I look at the number and have to think there is something odd going on there. The same holds true for, synapse, sister psyche and manticore. -
Quote:Originally Posted by black_barrier
Yes.
Ask Lord_of_Time, he has the actual numbers.
Also, Bab's mentioned it about a year and half ago (i11?), when drop rates were actually changed to be dependent upon the difficulty of certain encounters (certain TF missions have higher rewards; a quick intuitive note, check out how often people claim to get purples from an RSF run as compared to an ITF. now note how many mobs you kill).
The wall does seem really slow for dropping purples. It would also go towards explaining why posi has that outsize merit reward, its your likelihood of getting anything decent as a drop on it is near null. Edit: For clarity: I am saying that the devs are considering the total potential earning power when setting merit rewards -
Quote:Originally Posted by SkeetSkeet
I get it. Really, I do. What you're angling towards in this thread is a FPS style environment where each time a player enters into PVP they come in at the same baseline as everyone else. Spawn into RV with your third build full of free PVP gear with no prior investment required to attain it.
What I would suggest you are blind to is that this is antithetical to MMO persistent world games. Players don't expect and don't want to be at the same generic baseline as everyone else. Players expect their investment of time (this can be in the form of gear, levels, accolades or simply hours of experience raising the player's skill level) to actually provide them with some material advantage over a player who has not similarly invested.
Ok let me ask you this, In PvP in this game if you are at a disadvantage in a fight isn't the accepted strategy to avoid taking the loss, to get away from the fight and deny the other guy the points ?? PvEers are just taking this to a logical conclusion. If you dislike Fiteklubbing, you really can't seriously yell "Res and get up so I can kill you again"
Yes it is about the time invested. In this game its not so much effort but time, and that is the point. Most people only have so much to put in. Let me go back to the ski slope example. In the pre multi build environment most people would be really upset, if they found out that the only way they could get the medals is by respecing just for that. Even with multi builds, I would guess most people didn't bother.Quote:It's the same motivation that will make a player spend hours accumulating badges and costume pieces that are strictly for show. In this type of game, being able to differentiate yourself is a huge motivator and this carries over into pvp. It's not a "griefer" mentality, it's the same mentality that drives the rest of the game--the drive to feel like your hero or villain stands out from the crowd and maybe is just a little bit better than the next guy because of the effort you invested.
The other recurring theme in this thread, is that PvP was never the focus of this game. True, so you really can't expect a PvP module that requires PvP to be the players focus to be really popular. You need something that is easy for people that are oriented on other things to get into, and where its not blindingly obvious that they are at a complete disadvantage. -
Quote:First time I looked at this I didn't see the 47. You are farming at effectively minus 3 and hoping for purples. That is either going to kill a big portion of your income or really slow down your sale rate. The critters are -3 so you are going to get 40% the inf from kills that you would, and your pool A recipe drops are all going to be 47s as well. Your commons will still be 50s.Originally Posted by munecaroon
No need for this puppy.
I'm recipe-farming Unai's "Save Scientists' Other Halves" (taken by lv 47) on +0/x8.
Nemesis stay in formation 90% of the time (no wandering mobs, this is a boon for tankers with their small AoE radius, too .. btw).
I don't wanna claim bragging rights here, but so far I haven't seen a build that outperforms this one as a farmer.
This is my alternative solo build, I make heavy use of inspiration drops!
-
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
There are different ways you can design any game, and some people will like approach "A" while others will prefer approach "B". The approach the devs here took is that heavy-duty IOing, at least purples specifically, is something you're intended to do as ongoing progression potential for a character that's already 50.
That means that just getting to 50 in a month and then calling it good with whatever money you earn on your way there isn't the approach they envisioned for someone to take to get a baseline 50 to the level of power that lots of IOs can provide. It's very likely it's supposed to be additional "grind" at 50, presumably performed with the 50 in question.
Now, I'll be honest, I get why someone interested in PvP as a primary goal isn't going to like that. I think a lot of serious CoH PvPers consider it annoying enough to have to level to 50 in the first place, and burn through it as fast as they can. For a lot of such folks, PvE play requirements are a barrier to their good times.
Having to play a while for heavy-duty IO access isn't a barrier to me. I'm goal-driven, and with no goals, I'm bored, so having something to work towards is fun for me. I'll play the same character heavily for weeks or even months, at the end of which they are 50, heavily IO'd and ridiculously bad-*** in PvE. Then, I'll play them even longer to enjoy how bad-*** they are. To me, that's a good time, and it's a good time that's very compatible with the goal structure the devs seem to have created.
That said, though, I get the desire of people for something like Guild War's PvP-only builds and loot. If the devs here had gone that way day one, a lot of things might be a lot better. Sadly, day one, I don't think the devs on deck had enough of a clue on what they really wanted PvP to be to come up with something like that. Such a system might work really well here, because we have so many PvErs who don't want to PvP, and I think PvPers who don't want to PvE much are common in many MMOs.
Even if they added in instant level 50s you could only PvP with, that doesn't mean they'd have to go for instant max gear access, and I'd be more than a little surprised if they did. I would expect people to still need to play (and/or play the market) to make progress. The place you have to play might change - I could see PvP-only characters having to PvP to get credit for loot.
Not my call and it would be no skin off my nose if they did, but removing all the progress requirement just doesn't seem our devs' style.
Who was talking about a free 50 ? I was just talking about letting people have a pvp build that they could IO out however they wanted. Something like a third build the same as the second build is now with the exception that you wouldnt need to worry about acquiring the IOs for it. -
Quote:For awhile I haven't had to work very much to make my points, in this thread. They were pretty simple to begin with, DR wasn't a very good solution to PvPs problems it would have been better to provide much easier means for people to meet the buy in rather than destroying the high end, The largest rewards possible wouldn't be enough to get most people to play in an unpleasant environment. Even if people are losing because they don't have skill, if the playing field isn't level or perceived as level they will blame the gear and not participate. As I said, I haven't had to work very hard, It seems everytime a hardcore pvper posts, they manage to open up new vistas on their stereotype in the game.Originally Posted by Not_Epsilon
I come to the forums to, since it is a gaming forum, in part to either have fun or be srs about the game, not needle some poor person and make them feel bad. It's not the kind of person I am, but unfortunetly, you showed a very poor character trait of yours.
Also, the day I have to be completely formal on a gaming forum, I'ld be damned.
So please, remove yourself from the high horse your riding and REALIZE where you are, and what you're doing.
P.S. Reading your posts and not commenting where your experience does not reach would be an awesome way to start; then you can get to the part where you become constructive and not blind to the self-evident.
This thread is dead, A_F is really blind at this point.
You may be right about me being blind to the real nature of pvp. I had always thought the top end players were different from the griefers that created the stereotype. That you would welcome a fair and balanced game. I guess I was wrong. I used the analogy to chess earlier, the funny thing is that in chess what is used as a handicap is an actual handicap. Material or moves are decisive advantages. One chessmaster I forget the name once said "When I play white, I win because I am playing white, when I play black it is because I am (his name can't recall)". Well DR, or allowing people greater access to the equipment are skill neutral normalizations. If a player has skill they will still win, but the goal of them in either case would be to make certain everyone can have a good time.
As to your comments about a high horse, well, you have declared the thread dead, myself blind, and declared I showed poor character when you were attempting to get under my skin. It seems thats what you are riding is more clydesdale than shetland pony as well. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Computer
To accumulate money overall, or to get to 50mil per day? I would still be willing to work for 5 minutes a day if I only earned 5mil per day. If I had to work for...30 minutes a day on the market in order to make 50mil per day, I probably would not do it just because I could be doing something I enjoy more that will get me the same, if not better rewards.
Hmm 30 minutes a day would be too much. Now if it took you 90 days to put together a competitive build ? 120 ?
Ok we have something of a changeup in terms here. The things you listed are the rewards for the people that do them. Basebuilding, RPing, Playing MA are considered rewards and fun on their own by the people that enjoy them. If you go over to the MA thread you can find people saying they don't go to any particular effort to level up their characters.Quote:I can't speak for anyone else, but if they are anything like me then spending a lot of time at the Market for a small amount of money is not worth it.
I think people should be willing to do some kind of work in order to get the rewards they want. Off the top of my head the things that will not get you rewards are:
You can even find people that have said in these forums that playing the market is the part of the game they find the most fun or its the only reason they have stuck with the game. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Not_Epsilon
No, actually, you are the one mistaken, however, it is completely possible that the phrase is a local phrase, or a phrase simply unknown to those outside the psychological proffession. It is however, something I enjoy using, so continue to nit-pik.
Either way, It still doesn't change the fact that you pretty much have shown 0 understanding of pvp as a whole. So arguing, or even reading ur posts is slightly amusing; however, continue posting, it makes the thread funny.
I'd expect better needling from someone who had training in psychology. Or at the very least better conversational technique. -
Quote:Originally Posted by PumBumbler
Is the ski slope comment also in jest? I manage to get all 3 badges with Super Speed only, although the jump pack temp power from the bank missions came in handy to even get better times.
PS. Final prizes are up for the costume contest.
Quite in earnest. IIRC there was a thread last year complaining that specific powers were required to get the badges. I was a little let down, that power picks were what made the difference.