American_Angel

Suggestion:
Remove Auto SK from AE. This might also cut down on things.

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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The reason people 'beg' for farms is, they want a free ride. And up until this point, giving free rides to people was a benefit.

I suspect the practice of charging for spots on 'farm teams' will resume, or other variants of 'what's in it for me'... and thus you'll see less "PL MEH" because it'll be pricier.

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Now you have a point there, Soul. I can see the "charging for farms" thing starting again, and that will help.

But let's also be honest...before AE, PI was loaded down with people asking for farms, right? At least on Freedom it was.

Now...I actually didn't mind it there. My big problem is still the Atlas AE building. I personally think the Rikti should fly in and drop a big bomb on it.

Because Atlas will just become like PI after this....the broadcasts will still be there because "some" farmers will still be giving out freebies, and as long as the beggars know this, they're going to broadcast.

If they remove the AE building from Atlas, lowbies can still access AE in Galaxy, but Atlas, the most populated zone in the game, will calm down a bit.

As to this anjnouncement. I haven't decided if I like it or not.

The other day, I made a comment that I didn't envy the devs on trying to fix things, because it seemed likely that they would alienate a lot of the good plyers with nerfs.

This ISN'T a nerf...and I do suspect it's a "step" in the right direction. On the surface I was shocked.

But we've all been trying to tell them there's no way to get rid of farmers...maybe they finally realized it and are instead trying to work around them to make hte rest of us enjoy the game more?

After he shock wore off and I thought things through, with some adjustments this could well work.

I do think they need to limit the AE buildings more though.

Really.

They could totally remove them from Atlas and Skyway. Wouldn't hurt to remove the PI one either, though after this I suspect it wouldn't matter there. PI I think will become popular again.

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Exactly what I said. If people thought AE was bad.....

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This doesn't make sense. If anything it will clean up b-cast.

As I've said before those farming probably wouldn't be playing with you anyway if they weren't farming.

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It won't clean up broadcast hardly at all, since the majority of broadcasts are people begging for farms, not asking for fillers.


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Enhanced Difficulty Options - Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.'s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.

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This info right here? This tells me the devs are no longer truly against farming. This completely and openly promotes it.

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Since novelty seems to be an issue, perhaps it's time to find something newer for you, and move along to verdant pastures with greener grass.

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And THAT is your standard response to anyone who voices a complaint here. I don't have to move on...but I do pay to play, and as a customer I have the right to complain when I don't like something that is basically stealing from me.

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This booster pack is a total rip off. They are charging $10 to do something that should have been built into the tailor to begin with.

Frankly, I don't see how you guys can stand for this.

The costume sucks. The animations are cool, but the gender change? THat should have been available all along.

MC Soft = Sony now I guess...no, wait...at least Sony gives you a bigger world with each paid expansion...and more levels.

RIP OFF for a a bunch of suckers.

More and more, I'm disliking the way things are turning in htis game.

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Why do you care what other people want to do with their hard-earned money? If anyone's a sucker, you are, because you gripe about the game with every one of your posts and yet still pay to play.

If you're gonna rip on the company, at least get the name right.

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I care because I'm NOT going to spend the money, and as a result, I don't get something I should get for my monthly subscription...and I might add the monthly subscription is over priced for a game this old.

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It's not an expansion, it's a mini-pack.

But y'know, you're right. They shouldn't put out anything to make some extra money to keep a 5 year old game afloat. I'd rather they just shut the game down when they don't make enough each month to run it anymore.


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Oh please. $15.00 per month from over 40k subscribers...this game isn't going anywhere right now. This is all about lining their pockets by selling us features that should have been there all along.

I can understand paying for things like the Mac Pack and the sort,,,but this one is a total, complete rip off.

This booster pack is a total rip off. They are charging $10 to do something that should have been built into the tailor to begin with.

Frankly, I don't see how you guys can stand for this.

The costume sucks. The animations are cool, but the gender change? THat should have been available all along.

MC Soft = Sony now I guess...no, wait...at least Sony gives you a bigger world with each paid expansion...and more levels.

RIP OFF

More and more, I'm disliking the way things are turning in htis game.

It seems the battles we insert into our misisons are not working. All they do is stand there next to each other.

Someone pointed this out to me in my own mission, and since then others have told me they have the same issue.

Also, "Republish" does not work. "Republish and Exit" does not work. The only one that works for me is "Republish & Play".

I guess because it figures I'm going to play test it, the system forces the changes.

Finally, if the ability to set the levels have been added, then why are not the enemies set to those same levels?

It does my no good to set a mission for levels 32-50 if the boss with a minimum lvl of 40 won't go lower. That prevents players under 38 from completing the mission.

And...I though the ability to set the levels was supposed to fix that issue?

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Spending influence at the SG Registrar to get Prestige is the sort of thing you do if there's something you really have to have right now, kinda like paying the listed rate for anything on the market -- it's the eBay "Buy It Now" price for bases. One million influence only gets you two thousand Prestige, and even with the new, lower costs for bases, you'd need to spend hundreds of millions in influence to make any kind of worthwhile addition to your base. Fulmens has been helping people with this, but even with his usual matching offer, you're still not getting a great deal by going to the registrar.

While I do understand the need to get things built "right now" for the instant gratification of having the big shiny you want, I will almost always recommend you're better off in the long run by being patient and investing that inf in making your own characters more powerful by getting better IOs. As your characters get more powerful, you defeat enemies more quickly, and that leads to faster Prestige earnings just from playing the game.

Task Forces can net higher level toons 10K or more. Sometimes a lot more. I usually roll up somewhere between 15-20K on an ITF team. That's on teams that complete it in 70-90 minutes. If you have time to play the game, you'll roll up Prestige just by playing. Just takes some patience.

I think the biggest rule though is, we all want to see whatever your Prestige is spent on. When you get your base going, don't hesitate to show pics here in one of the base threads.

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Actually, exchanging influence does work well, and when combined with earning prestige, you can grow the base very quickly. I'm speaking through experience.

Of course, I make about 500-600 million influence per week at the market...so I have the influence to spare when I need it.

Right now, my SG is worth around 90 million, and I have over 60 million left over even with the biggest secure plot.

There is also another option though...Double XP Weekend. EXP is not the only thing doubled.

I would imagine, making a new toon and getting on AE farms, you could have millions of PRestige earned very quickly.

If you don't want to PL, just turn off the exp gain while on the AE Farms.

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Prestige earning picks up after about lvl 25. I have a one man SG. My toons are in SG mode always. On average, each one earns around 450k in prestige on the trip from level one to level 50.

Also there is a 20k prestige bonus for the first 15 characters in a SG. So maybe you could find 3 more active players and that would give you an additional 60k.

Prices on base items and plots have come way down as well as rent being much cheaper than it used to be.

Good luck and don't get discouraged. I always got kinda bummed when I'd see me lvl 35 toons had only made like 60k in prestige. Then I looked at some of my 50s that I didn't really play after they hit 50 had around 450k and I didn't feel so bad.

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The secret is easy...my main has over 4 million Prestige.

1) Pick a main you enjoy and play him/her a lot, even after hitting 50. There are lots of things to do

2) Or, create new toons, and AE Farm them for prestige...and turn off exp earning at lvl 26, when the prestige is maximized.

System Restore to a date before the trouble started. Problem solved, right?

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I believe the only logical way is to only allow the superleader to have the power to rename and/or transfer the supergroup across servers. Does it give the SL quite a bit of power in the SG .. yes, but then the SG's SL is most likely the person that founded the SG in the first place. Only if your SL is a .. ahem .."Jerk" would he/she rename or move the SG without having a majority of the members approve it. If you think on it there really is nothing stopping a SL from kicking everyone in the SG except himself right now as we speak. just need to have reliable/trustworthy SL'ers.

Just the time savings of not having to ditch millions of prestige earned to start out with nil, not having to spend months .. heck years if your a small SG just to get back to where you were before the move is an idea I believe most can get behind.

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Here's a thought...let us "sell back" our SGs. We all know what the exchange rate is...well...if we sell our sg back, we get influence multiplied back to us, and we can take that to any server, start the sg there, and exchange the influence again, getting equal value for the sg we sold.

Just a thought.

/signed

So long as it's the Super Leader only...or the founder.

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MY SG is about the only reason I haven't transferred my heroes to a more active server. Across all of my characters I have earned over 8 mil prestige. Its just too much work and effort to throw away...

I do hope one of these days this will be an option. Especially for the smaller sgs. Because my members would like to transfer as well. My server just isn't as active as it was 2 years ago and we often rely on pugs to team with. Would really like to move to virtue or some place more active and alive.

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Sounds more like your SG is inactive rather than your server to me. After all you do find PuG members to team with, don't you?

Hehehe.. [sarcasm]Yeah, my SG mates are all a bunch of lazy slugs, so it must be the server.[/sarcasm]

I play all servers and have no problems finding teams when I want them on any of them. And many of my characters don't even belong to SGs. You're either not trying hard enough or you're insisting on the maximum amount of team members before you even decide to play. You realize you can do missions with less than 8 players, right? It may not get you the max amount of XP/hour but it can still be fun.



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I would guess that you are the exception to the general rule. If the servers were actually as active as you claim, people would not have insisted the service be added in the first place, right?

I use to play on Champion. Was there teaming opportunities? Yes. But the server still wasn't very active.

I transferred my main toons to Freedom...which is THE most active server. Since then, finding a team is not hard.

I left behind my own SG that I had formed on Champion...still have it there, with only a couple of my toons in it. I restarted an SG on Freedom and now it's #18, bigger and more popular than my old one.

Transferring SGs to another server woouuld be nice...but it's really not needed. You can start one and grow it pretty fast these days.

I'll even put that to the test. I'm going to create a toon on Virtue and focus on making a villain group from scratch...just to see how fast it can grow.

"renaming" an SG would be totally the bomb though. I hate the name I chose for my first SG. People assume it's a Christian-themed SG because of the name. Nothing wrong with being Christian...it;s just not a themed sg.

I don't like my email box filled up...because I actually do get emails from people I want to at times.

The problem is, people can now get from 1-20 in 30 minutes on an AE farm.

The banning isn't happening anymore...lets be real here. Without chat logs, no one can prove a person is a spammer, and since non-spammers are getting global ignored, the system is broke. Period.

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That means people I spammed just 3 days ago are now able to spam me again!

[/ QUOTE ]Banned accounts can't spam. The accounts being /ignorespammer'ed / marked as spam should be being banned rather quickly.

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Because the first freaking month is free! All they have to do is cancel the account before the first payment is due, that way they are no longer trial accounts and can send all the spam the want.

[/ QUOTE ]No it's not, you have to pay for the activation code.

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Spam ignored accounts are no longer banned quickly. Too many griefers ruined that. To many innocent people were spam ignored.

For example, if I just don't like someone ingame, and never want to recieve anything from them regardless of their toon, I can spam ignore them.

You are correct about the activation code though.

I had actually fixed those typos...twice now. And once again they are back. It's been that way daily. Fix something, it's fixed for a day, then the problems are back again. They really messed something up with this issue...

lol...too funny...

Live with the brackets people...

With the advent of AE, spammers can get toons to 10 within just a few minutes.

As a result, my mailbox is getting dozens of spaamer emails per day now...I mean it's really, really bad.

This week, I cycled through my entire spammer list in 3 days. That means people I spammed just 3 days ago are now able to spam me again!

The trial account thing doesn't work. Why? Because the first freaking month is free! All they have to do is cancel the account before the first payment is due, that way they are no longer trial accounts and can send all the spam the want.

Now, I know the devs have said "There's nothing more we can do about it" but that's a major copout.

Mission Architect has made things worse than ever. You Devs invented the system...now deal with the consequences, Give us better spam control!

Just so you don't feel like I'm only here to complain, here's my suggestions:

1) Make it so we have the option to only receive emails from our Super Group, Coalitions or Global Friends. It's easy...just give us check boxes.

2) Barring that, make our spam list much, much bigger, and make it account wide. Making it account wide will reduce the server load that multiple lists would have, and you can make it 6 times larger than it is and still not have more than it is now (figure a list per character right now, 8 or more characters per server).

3) EMAIL ABILITY REQUEST: Give us a "Send to SG Members" distribution button in the email window.

Contain the Infestation...it's either the 3rd or 4th map Jadkni...

I could not even start the map because "Bull Ant" killed me and my partner over and over. I was on a 50 Fire/Kin, he was on a scrapper.

I quit the map after dying 5 times at the entrance...we were hit as soon as we zoned in each time.

I did not cast a vote...figure I'll give you a change to fix it before I decide on the vote. All the other maps so far were good, but this one experience had me wanting to give it 3 stars or less, simply because I hit a brick wall. He's just too tough.

Okay, airhead! All done!

I loved the arc, and there's really not much I would change.

The only problem I saw was the final mission was extremely short...sort of anti-climatic.

I still gave it 5 stars though, because of the overall arc. Fantastic job!

Yours is next, JadKni!

airhead, I'm playing through the rest of your arc right now.

I have to say, it's a fun one! I love Rat Races attitude and characterization.

Matron Holicapo, in M2 I think, was a nice challenge too. I love her confession, lol.

Not sure if this is on purpose:
Matron Holicapo: Nexta child to misbehave getsa spankin'!

Nexta and getsa...it's possible you wee making an italian accent though

"everyone deserves a fair go" - Very clever!

Note: I want the Rat Litter Maestro Day Badge

Edit: You evil, evil man! Quantums??! A Lot of them??? lol

btw...I always suggest a "Part 2 of 5" type of count for the missions. Lets people keep track.

I think the error is in the "Republish" button.

When I click "Replublish and Exit" it seems to work better. I still have to give it time to update though.

Additional changes:

1) was able to make Legion have her own group and still fit her in.

2) Also added 5 longbow patrols to the mission 2...just to help make it clear it's a longbow base.

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Okay! Finished the arc through sheer force of will. Let me preface this by saying I like the arc and I love the faction, they were a real challenge and with one exception I'd say don't touch them. Now, that out of the way, no sane person can ever finish this arc in its' current state.

Short Checklist of Things That Would Make Me Five-Star This:
[*] Typo - Catalyst Healers "plany powers"
[*] Typo - Line break "<br>" in mission 4 clue interaction bar
[*] Mission 1 and 4 need a total overhaul, no sane player will EVER finish these. I don't mean this offensively, it's just that noone likes huge outdoor maps hunting for over 7 bosses. This alone took way too long. Suggest reducing the number of defender groups in 1 and 3 to 7/5 respectively and
condensing all of the Legions into one group (more challenging and less mind-bendingly tedious). Same goes for the final mission.
[*] Director Prime's status as 'Longbow' in mission two was out of place, and his boss group is currently bugged to be comprised of 5th Columnists, but that's a quick fix. Maybe recolor him not to look like Longbow if you wanted him to seem as though he were an enemy commander of some sort, and possibly give him dialog suggesting this.
[*] Catalyst seemed quiet at the finale for the Big Bad. Was this intentional or did his text bug out?



Long Feedback of Why I'll Withhold My Rating For Now:

This was actually in and of itself fairly fun. The problem, is that it's simply too tedious. Outdoor maps can be frustrating, and this is made up of four. Furthermore, they all require hunting all over the place looking for the bosses who largely don't stand out much. If you reduced the number of bosses you had to hunt down and beat up, it'd make this a lot more enjoyable.

This brings me to the second thing that really killed the arc for me. Legion is essentially just a different looking Catalyst Archer as far as I could tell, impeding you only through the time you waste hunting through the entire map for all of the Legions. My suggestion here would be to make a separate "Catalyst Hounds" faction containing only Legion so that you can simply have the player(s) fight a single group of Legions. If you were to do this, you might want to take her Dark Miasma away so that she doesn't stack a zillion tar patches and annihilate the player. I'd actually recommend this regardless, to make her something more than a renamed Catalyst Archer. Sonic Resonance or something would be teeth-gritting difficult without driving people (well, me at least) insane.

Another thing that I found strange was the Amazons. I won't say remove them outright, because there's already enough hard LTs, but they seem to disproportionately weak compared to the other members of the faction that if you needed to cut one for filespace to make any of the above changes to Legion, you could definitely axe them. They seem sort of out of place, if you ask me.

Catalyst himself seemed "easy" (and I only say this compared to the rest of this extremely difficult arc) compared to the rest. I don't usually reccomend using ambushes with bosses, but here, it only makes sense (given that we've already killed something like eight-gazillion of his toadies PRIOR to his full-scale invasion) and would make the fight more interesting. Maybe even have Legionsquad ambush here instead of just being in the mission?

Speaking of craaazy difficulty, I'm fine with an all-LT faction with tons of debuffers, sappers, and extreme-level empaths, but you really need to make it clear that this arc is extremely hard in the arc summary.


All that said, I'll gladly replay it and see what changes you make to it in the future. The arc has potential, it's just a little on the masochistic side right now. With all that out of the way, here's my own overly-difficult pet project.

Arc ID: #251938
Author: @JadKni
Name: Pest Control


I've played through your psychotic arc, now play through mine!

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Okay...made some more adjustments:

1) For some reason, some of the changes I did yesterday did not stay...such as the level settings. Changed them to 32-50 again.

2) fixed the spelling error in healers and removed that line break

3) My text for catalyst is gone...I have to re-enter it (one of those grrrrrs)

4) Director Prime is actually not out of place...the 5th column were. I fixed that yesterday, but again...for some reason it changed back again.

You did make me think though...I think I should add a couple battles between hte army and longbow, because that is supposed to be a longbow base.

5) Made the longbow base map in secon mission medium instead of large.

6) Changed Legion to a Sonic as suggested. The arrows seems a "stinger" type of power...but I can live with the change and you made a good point.

7) Made Amazon and Catalyst Archers into minions. Hopefully this will help the soloists out there. Although my concerns is that not all the mobs will appear now. That was the original reason I made them all LTs...to get all the custom mobs to appear. If it works out well, I won't change it back.

8) Made the 4th map a cave map to change things up. It was the only mission with an outdoor that could be changed and still make sense. Hopefully that will make things less tedious.

9) Reduced the number of Defenders needed from 15 to 10 in mission 1.

10) Space is indeed an issue, but with i15 it gave me slightly more space. I had want to make Legion have her own group before, but space stopped me...maybe I can now.

11) I changed Catalyst to an energy tank. This should make him more difficult and more of a challenge. Thought about making him an AV...but holding back on that for now.

JadKni, I made some changes yesterday where I reduced the boss requirements.

Did you play before or after I made the changes?

Otherwise I printed out your post and am going through it today

Thanks!

Edit: Actually, I'm logged on now and seeing that some of my changes didn't take. Grrrr.

btw, airhead, I plan to check out your arc later today! Thanks!