UberGuy
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Posts
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The vast majority of my characters are in the quadrant defined by Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral. I have the notion that most of them will break the rules if they have a reason to (especially if they think they won't get caught).
Despite the notion that Lawful and Chaotic are about cosmic concepts beyond mere mortal laws, the truth is that most sane laws (in the real world and in fiction) are intended to promote orderly, safe existence with a dose of preventing evil. None of my characters are particularly interested in destabilizing orderly societies, but almost any of them would ignore laws in both spirit and word if they thought it would help them achieve their aims.
Quite a few of my heroes are morally ambiguous. They would all take great pains to avoid harming innocents or bystanders, but most would choose to take life to save life, and this can lead to slippery slope situations where they may take lives they don't strictly need to, out of vengeance, callousness, what-have you. In GR terms, a lot of my heroes would probably be vigilantes, depending on the RP justifications turn out to be for gaining that designation.
On the flip side, few of my villains are steeped in evil. They tend to take the above view from my heroes, but have gone further into the shadows beyond the thin grey line. Few of them would bother harming bystanders or civilians, to the point of disinterest in work that requires it - if nothing else, there's no challenge. However, several of them are into work that specifically calls for them to take lives. Fortunately, CoH provides convenient outlets for such tendencies, ranging from the ongoing struggle against the Rikti to the endless replay of time-lost conflicts in Cimerora. Most of them are simply mercenary, and having to kill people is something they do when it's necessary to survive or succeeed in a mission. None of them are out to inflict pain or suffering for its own sake. I have the idea that a few of them would even enjoy hearing that Westin Phipps had come to some unpleasant end. If they had a reason to, none of my villains would turn their nose up at saving the lives of others. Most of them just aren't motivated to do that as a primary goal. A few of them would probably make decent GR Rogues, again depending on the RP justifications for that designation. -
Yeah, Justice does those as well. In fact, we usually have to clarify at the beginning of each raid which version we'll be using. The choice of which version will be used is primarily determined how many reliable Tankers are on hand. Having fewer than normal, so one Tanker is managing multiple mitos, or having Tankers on deck we either aren't familiar with or that we don't know how on the ball they are usually means the leaders go with the regular fall back between blooms. Number of EoEs or buffers is a factor too, but the initial judgment is usually based on the Tanker staff.
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Quote:Just bear in mind, unless you can't get on teams that do them well that the STF is a far better place to give up the merits/time spent to get a (Synthetic) Hami-O. That's to say that, in order to take a HO you probably spend less time and you definitely give up less merits.Originally Posted by DJ_Shecky
I seriously want to get back into doing them, not for merits, but for Hami-Os.
I understand not everyone needs or cares about merits, so maybe they're just not an important consideration for you. I wanted to point it out, just in case. -
Quote:Merits generally had the following effects.Originally Posted by Kane1
But I can't really tell what Merits did to the market, and, by extension, AE tickets. Any general advice there? Any guides available? If not, I'm not afraid to do the research on my own, I'd just like to know if there were some rules of thumb I should be aware of first.
- They almost certainly significantly reduced supply of pool C recipes on the market compared to the days of fast Katies and fast Edens. They produced greater normalization of rate of pool C production for time spent playing TFs.
- They probably had an additional reduction based on the fact that they can be hoarded on a very large scale. The game doesn't shove a recipe into your hands, and for many people who aren't sure how to best spend their merits the choice is just to hold on to them.
- They increased availability or at least access to a good chunk of recipes that cap out before level 50, like Miracles. Not all recipes get good representation in this, because rolling randomly at some level ranges doesn't give great odds of a big winner.
- They provided a certain degree of pressure valve for prices. However, I'm not sure this was a strong effect in practice. The people who seem most able to accumulate enough merits to use direct merit purchases to bypass high market prices already seem to be players who can earn a lot of money.
- Providing a way for a small percentage of players who still use the AE to produce high-volume tickets to produce supply of recipes below their normal level range. You can roll pool A drops pretty cheaply, and rolling in lower level ranges is actually cheaper.
- Definitely providing a price escape valve for rare salvage. You can buy non-random rare salvage directly with tickets, and can actually be faster to earn the necessary tickets than it would be to earn money over a couple million inf. I am fairly certain this is depressing salvage prices - since the AE stabilized, I haven't seen any rare salvage linger long over 3.5M inf, and most seem to stay in the 1.5-2.5M range most of the time.
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Quote:First of all, I seriously doubt the assertion that villains would be 10x richer for being on the hero side. It's actually easier in many ways to be richer in absolute terms on the villain market, because so many things are more expensive. You have to sell more items on the hero market to make money.Originally Posted by Commander
So, my question to you: Would you be happier if they merged the markets right away so all of your alts can be 10 times richer, or would you want the items you have to grow in value so that (if you're a longterm player) when it came time to sell it, each item would have a value of 10 times its current price?
Ultimately, much of that comes out in the wash. Villains make more money per item, but pay more money per item the buy on the market.
The failings of the villain market are:
- You can only get decent transaction rates in a narrow band near or at the level caps for items. It seems most of the people using the market do so at or near level 50.
- Presumably because not much sells away from level caps, not many people seem to try to buy there either. So even when you have something to sell which is good but in low supply, no one seems to bother looking for it, and your sale takes ages to go through.
- Overall transaction rates seem lower than hero levels, even near the level caps for items. This is likely because transaction volumes are not simply proportional to population. Having, say, 1/2 as many players is likely to produce less than 1/2 as much market use.
Also:
This is so wildly weird I don't even know what to think of it. Where on earth do you get the idea that all the demand will be met by demand? If that were the case it would have already happened on the hero market.Quote:If we have the demands met by allowing cross-faction purchases, at first, people will rake in the inf. But, after a while, there will be too much supply and there will be less demand on certain items. That will cause HUGE drops in prices, making the economy substandard. -
My understanding is that was one per hero and pet. I don't know if I saw proof of that, but it's possible I did and just don't remember.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Miuramir
And then there would be post after post asking "But why is the run gone?!?"
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Quote:No, but I did not enjoy the old raid's mechanics whatsoever. I only enjoyed it because I'm a powergamer who wanted HOs, because I did it with friends, and because I occasionally had a leadership role, usually targeter.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
...am I the only one who's had fun with both the old and new style Hami raids...?
I much prefer the new mechanics. While repetitive, I find it far more engaging. Whatever each team is doing, it has some level of urgency. It has urgency becase letting each wave persist too long risks that someone who's either holding aggro or otherwise managing a dangerous entity will be defeated, and that can lead to a cascade breakdown of the attack wave. Faster is safer.
I also hated the "yellow dawn" with a burning passion, because the old raid style had limited control over preventing it. Too much server-side or network lag and Hami would break the holds and then odds were things were done with until a server reset.
Is the new raid perfect? No. But its mechanics actually require most of the engaged players to actually do a lot more besides /follow + auto attack. The social aspect of the old raid is missing in large part because no one has time to do it. In my mind that is a mark of success. -
Quote:Maybe they should consider that a pretty significant portion of their player base has been playing the game for years without that sort of "challenge", and they don't need to resort to it for us players to enjoy the game. To me it smacks of the game master who so desperately wants their NPCs to win against the player characters and will take efforts to see to it they do regardless of whether their players enjoy the results.Originally Posted by Dispari
I agree stuff like detoggles and mag 100 holds aren't that fun, but I can't really think of anything else they could do to make the encounter mean anything. At least they're trying.
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Quote:Indeed. Going to 90% resists from 70% reduces the damage you were taking to one third of what it was before. I consider that dramatic.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Firstly, going from 70% to 90% is a DRAMATIC improvement.
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Grats.
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Quote:I was told after the first test that the hold is a mag 100 version of Glacier. In short, there is nothing that can either prevent this or break out of it without significant stacking (10 Clear Minds for example).Originally Posted by Ad Astra
2 - the massive mag holds will paralyze teams with almost no one able to continue to do damage during the holds - no Defiance, no Clear Mind (question - does CM break these holds? I wasn't on a team with an Emp to see). Even the level 50 Brute was routinely getting held. Once Held, we died quickly.
I struggle to understand what's supposed to be enjoyable about being subjected to such an effect. -
Quote:Oh, I'm pretty sure population is down overall from our historic highs. I just don't think it's reasonable to conclude that, of all things, faster leveling is clearly to blame for that.Originally Posted by hedgehog_NA
I watch the server global channels. If I am on Infinity and see no activity for 1.5 hrs in an average evening, I am inclined to believe that we have lower server activity. Go stand at Imperious and watch how many fewer TF's are starting. The frequency of hami raids and Mothership raids.You can see for yourself.
Here are just a few reasons I can think of for server populations to be down that have not only have nothing to do with leveling speed, but with anything the devs can control.
- The game is going on 6 years old.
- We're still in the throes of the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, with unemployment in the developed world at 30+ year highs.
- There are new MMOs out, including the first ever competetion in the same genre.
- School started up again a couple of moths ago.
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Quote:Yep. I've never met a stealth power that didn't matter. Cloaking Device, Mask Presence, Shadow Fall, IOs, Hide...Originally Posted by Verene
Far as I know all of them matter - definitely the two you mention. Steamy mist, arctic fog, and shadow fall will make teammates lose the hostage too.
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There are things you can buy that the sale price of an LotG won't even cover. Primarily these are: Purples, PvPIOs (a couple of sets and a few uniques of which are very nice even in PvE), lower-level LotGs, some lower-level sets (Basilisk's Gaze, for example)...
There are several dozen things I can think of you could spend ~100M on pretty easily. Sometimes it would get you a whole set, sometimes one enhancement, sometimes not even that.
The way you phrased your post, it sounded to me like you considered 100M a lot of money, and then felt there was nothing to spend that money on. What I'm saying is that there are actually probably several dozen things to spend it on. Whether you want to spend it on them is a separate question, of course, but that's not what it sounded like.
Quote:The game was always cash rich in the sense that a lot of cash existed in the system. I've no doubt that cash has increased with time as people have determined better ways to generate lots of new inf and more people have started playing at level 50. Primarily, I think that having a market has just made readily apparent how cash rich it really was/is, and allowed more of the cash that existed to get around to more people.Just seems the game's a little cash-rich since the Market system was implemented IMO. -
Agreed. Not stackable.
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There's plenty of stuff to buy with it.
Out of curiosity, do you mean spending the inf on prestige? If so, why do that? It's vastly more efficient to run around in SG mode. -
I am now so tempted to make a character named "Karmic Sinkhole".
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Quote:Buy someone nice and sacrifice their soul?Originally Posted by Ironblade
But what if we want to be rich in spirit?
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Quote:Just so you know, the great majority of the TF/SFs in the game can be run in under an hour. Almost everything else can be run in under 90 minutes. The only TF that almost always takes 3+ hours is, to my knowledge, the Dr. Quarterfield TF in the Shadow Shard.Originally Posted by Shadow_Stone
I have done a handful of the task forces, I just don't have the time to play 4-5 hours straight
Here are some suggestions for ways to achieve shorter completion time on TFs. The more of these you use, the faster things go.
- Don't fight everything. Skirt past what you can.
- A subset of the above: stealth your way to the end of missions with clickable "glowie" objectives or to the boss room of "Defeat so-and-so" and his guards. Teleport powers are a boon for this strategy.
- Bring buffers and debuffers. A team of all damage dealers or aggro managers will work fine for most things, but will plow foes so much faster if you replace one or two of them with someone who buffs, and AVs go down much faster if you're buffed and they're debuffed. A few of the more recent TFs (ITF, LGTF) can actually be hard to complete without strong buffs and debuffs, or at least the right damage types.
- Play with people you know, if possible. Get a global friends list going and try to include good players. My favorite approach is to try and look for people who look out for their teammates even when on non-protective ATs. It tells me they're really paying attention to their surroundings and not just worried about things like their own DPS. If they happen to have characters who can solo a team spawn, that's a nice bonus for faster TF runs, but by itself that's not always a good reason to want to play with someone.
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Quote:I'm pretty sure there's more in their calculations than mean time to earn, if that's even in there. I'm guessing that some combination of set bonus scale, set bonus type and maybe enhancement scale factor in too, perhaps with a sort of fudge factor for how powerful/desirable the pieces are. (For the latter, see the merit costs of Blessing of the Zephyr.)Originally Posted by Another_Fan
That is really scary when you think about it. You can get a merit theoretically in 3.5 minutes so if the devs are saying it should take more than 9999 merits to get a purple what they are saying is it should take you more than 35,000 minutes of game time to get purple
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If you can believe this... it goes on.
Over the weekend someone spawned Hamidon on Justice but didn't finish him off. (They possibly didn't start him off; all the Mitos were there and he had all 4 waves.) Anyway, we had an impromptu raid since he was there.
I took the same character in, and here's what I got for two rolls.
For those keeping count at home, that's 3 LotG globals in 5 rolls, and 5/5 on pretty win recipes overall.
The character's name is "Fortune's Shadow", a play on words because her backstory is that she's an ex-Fortunata, Dark/Psi Defender. I refer to her as "Fortune" for short. I think that name has new meaning, now. -
Quote:This is simply false. I do none of these things with any regularity at all (I haven't flipped anything in probably a year) and I have multiple characters with multiple purple sets.Originally Posted by Seldom
What bothers me is that the means of obtaining these has escalated to a point where many find only consistant farming/flipping a reasonable way of gaining a complete set. Both of these practices are rather solitary, and quite frankly, dry and repetitive. If the way to reach the 'pinnacle' of character progress is to do such, I find something to be awry.
I play the game and sell what I get. I play my 50s. (I don't think the having the biggest cash benefits being from playing 50s should be a problem, since purples are only usable by 50s.) -
Quote:As mentioned, having a stash which you do not spend has utility beyond its investment value. If you have a large bankroll on hand, you can use it to snatch up things that come along before the price rises. This is an investment, and it may go sour, but you often need significant liquidity to make the investment at all.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Might as well dig a hole and bury it. Money that isn't earning is money wasted. I just wish I had enough slots to keep all my money earning all the time. Or a bank that offered interest.
Another factor is that we don't know what's going to happen to the value of inf. During I14 and I15, the value of hoarded inf fell dramatically, but then when I16 hit it went through a brief spike as people seemingly flooded out of the AE into canon missions tuned up with the difficulty slider. Money I had been hoarding in I15 to reach the inf cap for nothing more than forum bragging rights suddenly had between two and 10 times the buying power, depending on what you were looking at. (And I definitely used it.) I look at keeping some inf sitting around is a way to diversify my holdings.
Perhaps the conclusion I've come to is that holding some assets in reserve is the ultimate form of "I want it now". Because this is a game, there are times I just damn well want it now so I can play with it. If all my funds are tied up in some market scheme, or I have no merits on hand, and nothing is hoarded in my base... I can't have it now. I have to wait. So I periodically stash some stuff in my base, and I hold on to chunks of cash, and I hoard some merits.... and I still make money hand over fist. Sure, if it's hoarded it's doing nothing, but unless you want to buy the stars all the time for every character (and I know some people who do), you just don't need to wrap up everything in earning money. You can earn stuff fast enough that I don't find it hurts much to set some aside. -
Also, the ones that are not set bonuses say things like "chance of" or "for 120s".
Anything that's listed as an actual set bonus for number of enhancers slotted always acts, well, like a set bonus.