UberGuy

It's more complicated than that. Is your team keeping you damage capped all the time? My guess is no. I play with extremely veteran players, and when they bring kinetics to the table, they only cap my Brutes' damage if we stop and pigpile on something like a single tough foe in the middle of a pile of guys. Most of the rest of the time we're rolling along mowing stuff down before it can be used for saturated FS.

Don't get me wrong - a Brute with good buffs is hideously damaging, and even one rolling along with just his own fury bar can hit peak performance above a Scrapper with a comparable powerset. That's before considering that some of the Brute powerserts can make better damage-scale-per-second attack chains than Scrapper sets can. But the Scrapper runs near their peak full time, unconditionally, and leaps benefits more per point of damage buff. It's when you plop both ATs down in the same place and saturate both of them that the Brute firmly pulls ahead.

Soloing's affect on drops doesn't factor in to merits and pool C/D drops, which is the one place I think this argument may have mattered. Because villain content is shorter, the variation from the median completion time tends to be smaller. Hero content, as long and obnoxious as it can be, actually offers more opportunities for shortcutting, meaning savvy players can often deviate more from the median time and earn more merits. This isn't always true, but I find it true a meaningful amount of the time.

There are also factors that reduce the amount of non-TF teaming on villains. Population is a big one, an the solo-friendly nature of the villain ATs reinforces it. This likely reduces the overall aggregate merit production rate, as a shared (and not divided) reward.

Only for Pool A, E or respecs.

However, I think this distinction becomes essentially moot in GR. A Rogue will be able to run hero content, with all it's opportunities for increased merit efficiency.

The only convincing arguments I've seen on this delved into some relatively sophisticated views of the two game sides as economies with different production efficiencies. For example, if villains as a population were less good at producing merits per-capita, they might then produce less per-capita pool C/D recipes. In a merged market, they would use their inf , (which they would not necessarily be less efficient at producing), and buy pool C/D recipes from heroes. If the villains didn't have anything they were better at producing than heroes, this would create a net flow of money out of the villain system and into the hero one, raising per-capita wealth of heroes compared to villains.

I have never felt that this particular example was especially likely to actually materialize, but I couldn't back that up with much evidence. However, in the modern environment, I feel these imbalanced flows are actually actively countered by the availability of shared TFs and things like the AE in the RWZ. More compelling for the future, though, is that in GR, villains (specifically, Rogues) will actually be able to team with heroes in pure hero content, if not initiate it themselves (still unclear). This will actually give villains many of (if not all of) the same per-capita market good production facilities that heroes have access to, and vice versa.

This makes me feel that these imbalanced flow scenarios are no longer significant barriers to merged markets.

Another point about merged markets that gets brought up is that the devs may fear it will turn out horribly, but they can't undo it once it's done. (By which they mean it would be a colossal PITA to undo that the dev's wouldn't want to try to do.)

While it might be true that unmerging the markets would be an unmanageable pain, that doesn't mean they can't merge them in a way that allows them to mitigate some major imbalanced trade scenario. They could introduce conversion rates between infamy and influence. If you create a net flow of infamy out of villains then you raise the conversion rate so that infamy is worth more influence. Villains then need to spend less inf to get pool C/D goods from heroes, and presumably you can approach some degree of equilibrium. You have to keep this sort of trade ratio's value updated, and that isn't necessarily trivial, but it does counter the argument that you are irrevocably screwed if you merge the market and it doesn't do what you want.

I'm not at all sure a majority of people play level 50 characters most of the time. Certainly a lot of people do it, but I couldn't say what percentage of players that is.

They just happen to figure very largely in the market landscape, because they earn the most income.

Thing is, not a lot of people were recommending 30-34 or 35-39 as rolling ranges. A lot rolling was done in the 40-44 range (for Miracles, Impervium and all the L50 goodies), or the 10-14 range (for Basilisk's). A common view was that rolling in the 30s was too "dilluted" for a shot at big ticket items, despite the fact that it gave you a chance for Kinetic Combat. (At the time, the prices for KCs weren't that amazing compared to the big lottery winners, at least on the Black Market, and I think most people who did rolls did so for the chance at big money items.)

Yeah, I get this vibe. I mean, I'm sure there will be something, perhaps in GR, that will make respecs popular, and the recipes can be sold for a profit. Thing is, the reasons the price is falling are probably systemic - there are more of them in circulation because more people are defeating more mobs. Unless the devs take away the I16 difficulty sliders, I doubt that's going to change soon. That means we don't yet know where the bottom on the price slide is, and we don't know where future event spikes will take the price to.

All of which means I'm not sure how solid the investment is.

I'm always curious about peoples proclamations that they know what's required for, or how proposed changes will affect "the health of the game".

You aren't any better informed about this than Arcanaville (or any of the rest of us). You're just basing a prediction on your own feelings of what you think should happen, and reading Castle's comments through that colored lens. Of course the interpretation and prediction seems imminent and sensible to you - you came up with it.

I kind of wonder if it's common in the gaming industry period, but we get the most visible examples of the seeming lack of it in online games.

I think part of the issue with MMOs is that they have a kind of captive audience. I seriously doubt they actually think of their customers that way, but at some level they know that people will either stay because they like the game, or not. As long as the bugs aren't so bad that they drive people who like the game away in droves, my guess is they figure we'll deal.

That's an interesting thought.

I also wonder if it's that gaming shops don't seem to have the kind of rigorous or formal atmosphere that enterprise or commercial projects often try to maintain. In my limited exposure to game shops, they usually project a feel more like a team of smart people with good ideas that shoot from the hip, kind of like the internet start-ups in the '90s. In my own experience, that sort of thing can carry you if your product is relatively small or if you don't have to answer to a lot of people for its direction and functionality. The bigger the system or the more customers it has to satisfy, the better served a project seems to be by formal software lifecycles.

I'm rather certain the testers don't attempt to fix the bugs.

All? Certainly not. Very few complex software systems can claim to have policing of how changes affect all their components. However, given that you mentioned software regression, it seems reasonable to consider the discipline of software regression testing. Regression testing can often be automated. If automated, it can also be interwoven with stress or load testing.

Of course, you might change your system in a way for which you actually have no test in your regression test scripts. When you discover such a situation, you have found an opportunity to improve your test scripts by adding a new test case.

There is some truth to this, but only in the sense among that those 5,000 players are going to be some people who are doing something which was not tested for. There's nothing magical about having 5000 users logged in as part of a test suite - this is done with real, mission critical software systems all the time.

(Some problems don't show up just under load - a system I work on recently had a sequence of failures because the vendor added a cache flushing mechanism that kicked in every 12 hours after the software was started. None of the load or regression testing lasted 12 hours, so the issue was never seen until the system went live. After this was found, the vendor provided a formal patch which removed this behavior entirely, agreeing it was a poor design.)

There's no technical barrier preventing one from building testing client interfaces that can either simulate or drive actual client interfaces performing certain scripted player actions. There may be cost barriers, of course. Whether the testing is automated or manual, the goal is to build a list of tests which concentrate on those things which have been found problematic in the past. Mob spawn levels has broken several times in the recent past - if I was in charge of testing, there would be a test case for that in the AE, on TFs, and in Ouroboros.

User beta tests are not where any bugs that could have been caught by existing unit, integration or regression tests should be caught. Betas with the user community should be testing for user acceptance (feedback on new interfaces, for example), for errors for which there are no test cases (which you then correct), or for outright design flaws (trying to expose things like exploits).

Unfortunately, enough old bugs get resurrected in CoH, perhaps through branch merging, it raises the question of whether there are enough (or even any!) internal regression test cases performed before stuff goes to player testing.

One of the other glaring weaknesses of how CoH betas are conducted is a frequent lack of information given to testers about how things should actually be working. Beta testing is not the time to be coy about how things work to try and keep it interesting. If the players do not know how things should work, they cannot conclude whether changes are bugs or intended behavior. They can guess, but making testers guess is a huge waste of time and potential.

A fine example was the recent change in how influence is earned at level 50. Pohsyb recently commented on how he couldn't believe that no one had caught this, which was a bug that had existed at least since exemplaring was introduced in the game, if not since the game's release. The truth is that no one caught it because no one knew how it was working was wrong.

This is where regression testing is invaluable. You make the change, run through test cases, and see what, if anything failed. Then you investigate the failures and make a judgment about whether what's broken is more important than what your patch fixes. If not, you proceed with the patch, if it is, you hold off and fix the new problem too.

Edit: Regression testing even for small changes is important, but often stress or load tests are not performed for small changes. These are often even more time and resource intensive than regression testing. If your regression test is large, you may choose not to run it for small changes, but doing so is begging for problems you actually have test cases for to slip through.

That doesn't mean it's acceptable. Continuous improvement is an important part of any successful IT system's management. Improvements in your test cycle are a key aspect of that. Failing to improve testing methodologies leads to repetitive failures, which contribute to discontented users. Where I work, enough discontented users gets you replaced with another product.

Ultimately, test cases, automated testing suites, and test planning come down to investing in tools that allow a team to work smarter, not harder. These tools should be part of any serious software house's equipment. Whether they're home grown or purchased, there are a lot of things testers and developers can do to improve the quality of their releases.

The idea that Paragon Studios might be lacking good testing discipline is worrisome in the face of the massive set of new features we can expect soon. Obviously, I don't know what they have, but I can make guesses based on recent quality that whatever they have could use some work.

ROFL. There are probably people who feel I should be in the #7 club, possibly even in charge.

Whether you enjoyed something, or found it a transformative or evocative experience has no bearing on whether something is art. To say that something is "art" has, somewhere along the way, gained an air of meaning that something was awesome or inspirational in some way. To say that something is "a work of art" has clear implications of exceptional quality. However, such quality is not a requirement for something to be a piece of art. Anyone who says otherwise is confusing whether they liked a piece of art and its nature as a piece of artistic expression. Just because you don't think a piece of artwork was moving or enjoyable to you (or indeed to anyone) doesn't mean it wasn't a work of art.

See...

Let me start by saying that if you find this works, then there's nothing wrong with sticking with it. However, it seems like a lot of effort. I'm going to try to illustrate what I do, and maybe you can pick up on some tidbits that would reduce the amount of effort involved.

A lot of people who post in here likely never hoard salvage, period. The idea is that the cost of most salvage is so far under the radar of their earnings/cost ratio they just buy whatever they need when they want it. Technically, I should be one of those people. However, I am a relentless skinflint. I know what most stuff costs, and I almost always want to get a deal on it. I'm willing to let stuff under around 50k-100k slide if I really want it right then, but usually I'll leave bids out for stuff as low as 5k-10k, usually knowing they'll fill in 15- to 60-ish minutes.

The only salvage I hoard is lowbie salvage that is "high" price and/or low supply. I hoard it because I use it in bursts of common IO crafting. I do this knowing it's not the most efficient use of my storage, but it's easy-come and I don't have to think about it later. At most, I usually save 2-3 million doing this. It's notable that I can literally earn that back in a fraction of an hour on a level 50. If you don't have a strong fighting level 50, this may matter more to you.

I, too, hoard enhancements, but only certain ones that are rare and valuable and which I know I'll want on characters within the next few weeks. Examples are things like Miracle uniques or low-level LotG:Recharge. Why do I bother hoarding them? A true marketeer would sell them, then patiently buy them back at a lower cost. My deal is that I am not always patient enough for that on big ticket items. I will want to wait for a good deal, and that takes time. While I might be able to make more money on a sell/rebuy cycle, I can hold on to it and just use it when ready.

Your worry seems to be that if you sell something valuable, you'll not be able to get it back, or that if you can get it back, you'll have to pay more for it. I think you especially fear the latter, based on your past posts regarding "hyperinflation". All I can tell you is that you shouldn't fear inflation that much in the game. Yes, prices sometimes rise - they also sometimes fall, both in response to forces in the game that influence supply and demand of goods and the amount of currency in the system. The important thing is that, if you actually sell goods on the market, your buying power tracks these changes. When prices rise, your profit per item sold rises. The key to sustainable buying is simply to sell more than you buy no matter the prevailing economic conditions. So long as you do that, you can buy what you want no matter what the current buying power of inf.

This actually works best as a short term strategy, because if you do it over the long term, you can be caught by surprise by abrupt shifts in buying power. There's little value to me in hoarding most things long term, except slotted in my characters' powers. I don't worry about the devauluation of various mediums because I don't hold on to them for the purpose of spending them later. I sell them now to buy things now, within the limits of what it takes me to sell enough to buy what I want.

Hoarding works, but it's not required. I personally have a lot more fun playing the game and just taking the time to intelligently sell things I get pretty much right away. I check for the better of crafted and recipe prices and I sell near the current peak if I can. I hoard very little, and only things I know I won't want to be as patient buying as my skinflint nature demands.

Hopefully that was helpful to someone.

Edit: Ooh, I remembered that I do one other very limited form of hoarding. If any given piece of common or uncommon salvage gets really expensive or low supply, I hoard three of them but sell all the rest. When I need one, I list a lowball bid, and use one of my hoarded ones. This way I buffer myself against "want it nao" competing with my inner skinflint, up to needing three of the same thing at the same time, which doesn't happen that often.

The mittens don't bother me even slightly. No idea why. I can't stand most of the non-boot feet, and the only female ankle/foot that looks remotely reasonable to me is the stiletto heels one - and not just because I like the look of stiletto heels. If there's one thing about the models I can't get around it's the way the neck transitions between the head and the chest. It looks particularly awful on females. It's for this reason I almost always use the "Heavy Neck Chain" costume piece , and try to color it as if it's more of a turtleneck.

See, you seem to have gone off down a different road than the one I'm on again. Please, read my posts. What did I say? I said revisited expansion of previous content. There's no way to confuse that with "changes I didn't like". I even gave examples!

I'm not talking about nerfs. I'm not talking about retconns of the story some people might like and others might not. I'm talking about revisiting story elements and making new content on them, or making good on new gameplay elements that replace old ones that were removed or heavily modified. Things like putting Base Raids back.

Why am I talking about those things? Because they're real examples of things the devs have said they will or would like to do, but that have taken a long time to happen because they have lots to do and limited resources. That's relelvant when we're saying it's hypothetically OK for GR to come along and only support certain things (like crossover missions for "grey stage" characters) for later. I'm leery of saying "later is OK", because "later" can be a lot later.

Do I know that what the devs will do with GR will involve "later"? Of course not! I'm just saying I really hope it doesn't. If there's any risk it would, I'm saying allowing increased crossover play of existing content is a much better alternative than having to wait (possibly a long time) for new content.

If instead we get a filtered subset of existing content, like I said, I'm OK with that. I'm having to chase down roads of this argument you've led me down as a result of my responses to other people's suppositions.

Huh? I'm lost. Are you mixing me up with another poster, or did I explain something really badly?

You know, I'm trying to be patient, but what is with you and sticking words in my mouth? I never said anything about leaving over any of this. I want GR to be the best product that it could be. There's a part of that which is selfish, and a part that is genuinely concerned for it to maximally appeal to the widest possible audience, because happy customers keep subs up, and increased subs keeps the game interesting and in business.

Really? How many examples are there? Can you give me a list? Please restrict that list to expansion content with open hooks, like the Coming Storm or the Shadow Shard, or gameplay systems like PvP Base Raids. (So I'm not talking about bug fixes here.) Please also include with each item approximately how long it took it to happen from its perceived inception to its realization. And I'm totally serious here, I'm happy to be shown wrong.

Here's an example: I6 ED was done with the promise of a future system to give us new, more powerful enhancements. This was delivered in I9, approximately 1 year and 7 months later.

And so my suggestions offer optimizations for how they could potentially achieve more with ostensibly less effort. I do not claim to know how much technical effort is involved in allowing people to cross sides, but I can make a very good educated guess that it's a lot less than 30 levels of cross-faction vigilante and rogue contacts.

I'm sorry, where did I say I concluded that? What I concluded is that I do not want to wait for them to come back and revisit it, because past experience has shown that this can literally take years to occur.

I can't think of any better indicator of future performance than past performance. I'm happy for you if you're willing to assume that past performance is not indicative of future performance, but I am not. I will certainly accept evidence that future performance may change, but I am unwilling to accept it just because it is within the realm of possibility.

Well, it's not my speculation. Other people are speculating that it will work this way, and I'm saying why I think that would be bad. If it's all wrong, I'm probably happy. I've got no argument with that.


No, I'm not disregarding that possibility, other people are framing their speculation that way, and I'm answering it. As long as a decent amount of content is left after such hypothetical filtering of missions, I'd likely be (mostly) happy with it. My main argument is that, by and large, any roleplay/concept argument for filtering missions that way can have holes shot in it by some glossing-over that's no worse than we find glaringly present elsewhere in the game. If the devs do it that way, people will find ways to take exceptions to it. I think they'd have more broad-based satisfaction by not taking that approach.

I'm sorry, but I think we do. Because if going rogue or vigilante means that neither your original nor "other side" contacts will give you missions, it is a completely pointless distinction in the game, interesting only to hardcore RP and people who never want to do their own missions or form teams. In other words, it would appeal to a very niche segment of players. I do not want to see anything that niche have such effort applied to it.

If you're suggesting that vigilantes and rogues will have all completely new contacts across all level ranges, well, that'd be pretty neat. I'll believe it when I see it from a redname, though. It would be a lot of work.

And where in my post was the groundless cynicism? Please be specific. I ask because the thing you quoted me on there is followed by quite factual examples of what I was talking about. Also, I will thank you not to put words in my mouth, because I didn't say the devs were out to get anyone. I said that their priorities shift regularly, and they don't often go back and make good on prior potential. (Please note the word "often" in that sentence).

What I'm saying is that the very decision itself is seemingly arbitrary. If we question that core decision, and I do, then everything that stems from it falls under question as well.

That's what I've been trying to do.

• A merged market is more vibrant. Most people want the market to fucntion in at lease one of two major ways: as a tool for obtaining gear and as a mini-game of its own. More players makes it a far more utilitarian gear supplier, but tends to make the mini-game aspect more "even handed" among players.
• A villain side that's got enforced separation is going to have an even lower playerbase size than it does today, because we know with absolute certainty that some people will leave it when they can move their much-loved ATs over to the more populous, team-oriented side with the more vibrant economy.
• Reducing game mechanical barriers reduces likelyhood of people having to choose between roleplay/concept and in-game performance. We know for a fact people resent those things - see the long-standing debacle about Patron Power Pools.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's impossible the devs have non-arbitrary reasons for wanting the separation to be enforced, but we don't know what they are (or if they are), so they currently appear arbitrary. The above are a few reasons I can think of for them not to choose the way they seem to be now.

If I live in the Rogue Isles, I doubt I'd care. It's not like the Paragon authorities can do a damn bit about me. The best they might do is hire a vigilante or rogue to do me in. Wait, that's just another mission opportunity...

And the assumption is that they have proven enough worth for me to contact already. There's no trust on the Rogue Isles, period. Just because someone isn't in with the "authorities" (using that term loosely in the controlled chaos that is the RI) hardly means you can trust them. A contract metahuman may not turn you in to the heroes, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't turn you in to other unpleasant organizations on the Rogue Isles.

And we know heroes won't go rogue on that same mission how? Especially a vigilante hero, who the contacts will blithely continue to give those missions out to?

No, but honestly, what's more realistic in terms of delivered effort? How many things have the devs given us teasers for, claming "more to come" and then basically never have revisited because they're always too busy working on the next big thing to come along? Ouroboros and the Coming Storm comes to mind. How long has it been since villains got dedicated, original content? Why should we expect more now just so they can experience it while being rogues? The devs may have the best intentions, and it may come someday, but how long are we players willing to wait for things? Letting people play the existing content is the easiest way to open up the game for more people without requiring them to perform the full RP conversion to the other side. (That and merging the markets.)

And it would take a whole lot less suspension of disbelief than, say, Merit Vendors, or why heroes would ever let themselves be digitized by the combination of Dr. Aeon and Crey Corporation.

And my response to that is: "So?" The devs are the ones opening pandora's box here. It's completely natural for people to question some cases of what, so far, seem like extremely arbitrary limitations on interactions when you cross sides. Sure, we don't know everything yet - it sounds like the devs haven't decided everything yet. But some of what the devs have preliminarily decided doesn't sit well.

Let's look at this from a roleplaying standpoint for a moment. If you're playing a vigilante, why would most of the rogue isles contacts even care? A huge number of them are hiring mercenaries, and a huge number of arcs are villain-on-villain violence. A contact hires a vigilante to wipe out an Arachnos base or a cell of Malta? Rock on?

On the flip side, are most Paragon contacts going to care if the person who wanders up to them is more of a dark night (not in the Batman sense) if they need someone to stop the Vahz from poisoning the city, or the Rikti from reinvading? Anyone with a "Rogue" designation presumably has completed enough sensitivity training to have a reputation for saving lives or performing other good deeds at least some of the time. I think only the most morally uptight of contacts would object to their help in a crisis.

A reasonable question in this is how do you get introduced to these contacts. But we actually already have a mechanism for that - police scanners and RI newspapers. If a Rogue runs around answering police S.O.S. calls, or a Vigilante runs around taking contracts from RI brokers, the contacts in that zone would hear about it and have a chance to decide this person is someone up their ally.

The very nature of introducing "Going Rogue" is to blur the existing lines between the games. That's unavoidable and, in may ways, highly desirable. Leaving in little barriers that trip people trying to take that bluring to fairly natural conclusions is more frustrating than useful. Let the players decide how they want to play their characters, and where. Go with the flow a little more, rather than trying to force it to go around corners.