UberGuy

There is no such thing as proof by lack of evidence. It might support the interpretation you offer, but it does not show it.

Edit: By the way...

You might want to do a little googling for the Malleus Daemonum. It appears to have been a real book published in Venice in 1620, and is purportedly a book of exorcisms.

Edit2: Aha, I found it at the online collection of the British Library. So yes, it's a real book. Therefore no, the Malleus Maleificarium is not the only prior example of a mysticism/magic-related book with "Malleus" in the title.

There's another problem here. Its a mob drop. So not only is it a fraction of the bonus, the supply is much higher. Lower demand and (much) higher supply means that the price is very low.

If they are casual, they don't care much about these rewards. If they are going to leave over feeling they can never achieve hardcore rewards, then they are not casual players.

You don't make this binary transition from being a casual player to a hardcore one. This game has absolutely excellent support for making that transition gradually. You don't start with hard core IOs. You can improve your characters significantly by using cheap common and uncommon IOs. Then, if you want to keep investing, you can escalate to rare IO sets. They cost more, but except for the most amazing of them, they're quite attainable if you do any of the following.

• Play often at 50
• Use the market as an income generator
• Focus on merits and sell random rolls
• Focus on merits and sell key, valuable recipes or crafted IOs

If you use these techniques to kit out a character with things like +recharge, +defense bonuses, you can get moderate or high benefits from IOs at a fraction of the cost of purples.

Then, if you really want to be the hardest of the hardcore, you can look at purples. Because you only need them to be the most extreme of builds. Their biggest benefits are their high recharge, which not all builds even benefit that much from.

Purple drop rates do not influence any of the above.

And to say that this is important suggests that the quality of gameplay without them is inadequate. This is no different than claiming that the quality of gameplay is best with level 50s, so the game should be made so its much easier to get to 50 so we can all play at that quality.

So that makes your gameplay worse? This is greed and jealousy. I'm not going to pity people who leave because things like this anger them.

People who do this are rare, and those who do it do so whether you have IOs are not. They do it based on your AT, your powersets, and your number of veterans badges. People like this are idiots, and you should be glad if lack of IOs kept you off a team with them.

These are things that show you really don't know much about how this game and IOs work. You are ignoring or ignorant of huge swaths of opportunity that lay between SOs and "purpled out" builds. Additionally, you found this entire argument on the notion that the game with SOs alone is not good enough to bother playing, which is nothing but your opinion, and not one I agree with - that IOs are better does not make the baseline game unacceptable. You're saying I am leaving these things out, but I say they are either irrelevant, subjective or outright wrong.

Yes. Is this a surprise? They only can be slotted by level 50 characters. If that doesn't scream "end game", what does?

Any player who learns to be good at PvP is not a casual player. I have been playing video games a very long time, including years of league FPS play, and you don't get good enough to win a lot if you are just goofing around all the time. If they are not giving a casual investment in play, they should not have any issues using one of the techniques in my bullet list above to earn money to trick out thier PvP characters. Even PvP characters don't have to have purples - one of their biggest benefits in PvP is high accuracy bonuses to combat elusivity. If they don't want to worry about gaining gear for PvP then they need to look for a game with no loot you can use in PvP. That's not unique to this game.

Can you name me an MMO with PvP where the best (PvP) gear doesn't provide an advantage, and where the person with the most of it wouldn't have the edge in a contest between equally skilled opponents?

That's what gear is for. If it didn't do anything no one would want it.

If you can't name a game like that, what are you asking for? If you can name a game like that, why aren't you playing it?

And please, please don't head down the road of mixing PvP and "casual" players. That will never end well. There is not, and never will be, such a thing as "casual PvP" in any open-access PvP environment. The "hard core" players will always have the best, most tweaked, and most effective builds, gear, tactics and planning. The "casual" players never, ever get to compete on even footing with them, because (by definition), they don't put in the time and effort the hard core players do. The minute the "casual" player starts working to catch up with the hard-core crowd they stop being "casual" and start down a road to being more hard core.

There are. I join Hamidon raids regularly. I run 1-3 TFs a day, usually level 50 ones. Even after what I view as the pillage of PvP that was I13, people PvP with 50s.

You're confusing "end game content" and "things to do at 50". You can have the latter without the former. This game is founded heavily on repeating content, and not so much on epic activities that take hours and a hundred people to do. You can experience that repeating content as a new character with new AT and/or powersets, or you can repeat it as a level 50 working towards your purples. (That's actually an over-simplification. You can do both at the same time thanks to the market.) There's not perfect overlap in the two, but there's a lot.

Purples and end-game activities are not related. There are lots of people willing to play the game we have while they work towards purples. There are lots of people who want bigger, badder raids. There are people who don't want any raids. Only some of them will be satisfied.

Right now, purples are for people who either PvP, or who PvE with their 50s for the sake of playing 50s, and who want to chase a goal while doing so.

Perhaps you missed the part where there's no end-game material that's isolated to hard-core people. I mean, seriously, what are you referring to? There is nothing in this game you need purples or even IOs for. They just make it easier. You can raid Hamidon or the RWZ ship with SOs. You can run the STF or RSF without IOs. It works. Hell, most of that stuff is predicated on having buffs and heals coming out of your ears - if there's the expected amount of support running around, a lot of builds won't even be able to tell the difference in having no IOs at all.

Casual players never, ever do that. If they do that, then they are not casual. By definition, a casual player does not care about the high-end loot.
What game are you talking about? That seriously makes no sense to me.

No, it will not stack no matter what powers it activates from.

Try searching his posts in the Scrapper forum. No, wait, try just going into the Scrapper forum and looking at the stickied threads. Bill has two doing exactly that sort of comparison.

As far as I know, it works like it did before, and all that has changed is the base probability of activation.

I'm not 100% sure I'm contradicting you here, but I think you're saying this somewhat strangely.

If you turn on CC in a spawn of 16 critters, the proc will check its activation chance against all 16 immediately. Then it will do so again 10 seconds later, and every 10 seconds thereafter.

This is, in fact, counts as 16 separate checks for the proc to activate.

If the proc were one that affects you, it would have 16 separate chances to affect you. This is exactly what happens with the Touch of the Nictus: Chance for +Endurace proc when slotted in Dark Regeneration. If you hit 5 foes with that power, for one click of the mouse you have 5 separate chances to gain +20 endurance all right then.

The Force Feedback proc works in this way, but the self recharge boost does not stack. If you hit 5 foes with power that proc is slotted in, you get 5 chances to apply the self +recharge. However, even if it happens to apply more than once, you only get the benefit of one activation. More foes just make it more likely to occur.

Here's a random datapoint. Given that it was Double XP Weekend™, and I shy away from even self PLing my characters past content, this weekend I mostly played 50s for inf. Along the way I broke down and did some farming. Of course, as mentioned previously, my best hero farmer is a Dark/Dark Defender*, so that's who I used.

Tuned for 6 players, +2 levels†, and no bosses, I was averaging 6M inf/hour (so 3M/hr non-doubled) in raw defeats, not counting common IO drops, of which I was getting roughly 10 per run. Non-doubled, that's about 4M/hour on probably one of the slowest things anyone interested in farming would ever consider trying it with.

(Which I was actually pretty pleased with. After all, most of what I enjoy about playing my characters is actually succeeding at things they shouldn't be any good at. )

By the way, I didn't get any purples, or any especially good drops period. I only did it for a few hours all weekend, though. This was a major anniversary for the parents and I had a shindig planned, so my DXP-ing was limited.

* Why is a Dark/Dark my best farmer, you might ask? Because I tended to create single-target-centric attackers under the old soloing regime, tuned more towards DPS against hard targets than AoEs against lots of little ones. Since I don't farm much, I've had little motivation to build a character specifically good at farming. Instead, I just use what I have when the whim strikes. My DDD has the best AoEs in my L50 hero stable.

† Why on +2? Because even when the whole point is mowing down lots of foes, it bores me when it's too easy. My characters are all generally built towards taking on +2/+3 level foes, so anything less gets feels too cheesy.‡

‡ So I was earning 3M/hr or 4M/hr depending on how you measure it on a doubly handicapped farmer.

Yes... and? That doesn't make it a "greek" word. It's a Latin word derived from a Greek one.

Actually, it's both. For example, there is a word attributed to Late Latin: necromantia, derived from the Greek nekromanteia, which is the root of the modern word necromancy. So it was a prefix even in Latin.

Whether Lovecraft knew this when he created the name, I don't know. He may have thought he was mixing Greek and Latin. However, it was supposed to be the Latin translation of the Greek title.

"Icon" is Latin.

Edit: To clarify, "Necronomicon" is supposed to be the name of the Latin (O. Wormius) translation of the book.

I meant innocent in the sense of "innocent children" or "innocent bystanders", not as in "not guilty of actually being a witch".

It might dawn on you that they had never actually heard of it. Very few people in the world have any education in the witch trials other than to generally know they happened and maybe that a lot of nearly certainly innocent people were killed. The existence of the Malleus Maleficarumisn't well known at all

Of course it's not.

You know what I did tonight? I had the opportunity to have dinner with a friend of mine. She's pretty outspoken regarding things involving society's (and the world at large's) many injustices committed against women, from the truly monsterous down to the "small" and everyday. I figured I should to make sure I was not being completely insensitive here as a male taking a side in an argument relating to historical crimes focused on women, so before we hooked up I had decided I wanted her take on this. I had some genuine concern that she might agree with you on this.

First, I showed her the background for the "Maleficarum", then I showed her the in-game things we're discussing here. She saw where I was going before I could tell her about this thread. Do you know what her response was when shown the part requesting the badge be renamed? She literally "face palmed".

Now, that's an anecdote and I fully expect it to be taken with about four pounds of salt. I can't prove that story to you, but I'm going to tell you it made me feel way more confident in my position on this.

That said, I will now stop debating this here. This long ago reached a point comparable to arguments about religion or politics. I'm not convincing you of anything, and vice versa. That doesn't mean I won't speak up again if I happen to notice this matter raised elsewhere. (That could include far enough downthread in this same thread to have lost the local context of our exchanges here.) I don't think the badge should be changed over this. I don't really think it will be, and if somehow it is, I won't lose sleep over it, but I disagree with it and will try to speak out against it. Not to try and convince you, but provide a counter point for other readers, and possibly the devs.

And I'm sorry if my stance is aggravating. I just feel strongly about it.

This is, frankly, preposterous. This is like saying that every use of the suffix "-icon" in the title of a fictional book clearly had to be inspired by H.P. Lovecraft because it's the most recognizable book of magic with that of Latin in its name.

And I find you assertions that it must be so because it makes sense to you to be equally humorous.

Really? We know it usurped control? We don't know it didn't just let them breach to Primal Earth? Can you cite a reference for that claim? The Paragon Times article for it makes no such claim.

And this invalidates the theory how, exactly? Come on, this is easy to make up a viable explanation for. If we assume they let Rularuu into Primal Earth (and who knows where else) by accident, why would they show up with them?

Way to move your goal posts. I answered the question of why choose the Coven over ghosts, vampires, wolves and zombies, and you try to shift attention to the article in the times.

That article was written before the very 1st invasion. In the fiction of the game world, the people who wrote that article had not yet encountered the Coven. They knew a magic-using organization was involved (through interpretation of portents), but did not know which one, and thus cast their suspicions on the ones they knew about.

In this article, the prediction of invasion is described without attribution to any group. Magic-using groups are mentioned as sources of research by which the prediction of invasion is made.

Could it have been the Circle, 5th Column, or the Tsoo? Sure. But nothing in the game has ever indicated that it was.

Prove it.

Edit... From Wikipedia:

From The Paragon Times (via ParagonWiki):

The time lines don't even match. All they have in common is being books about "magic" (quotes for the Malleus Malleficarium) and the word "Malleus" in their title. The Malleus Mundi is a book of incantations. The Malleus Malleficarium is a book about how to recognize and persecute women as witches. Assertions that the real book inspired the game one have no basis other than the tenuous link that the Coven grant the "Malleus" badge.

The article does not know who obtained the book. It considers it "highly likely" that it was the Circle of Thorns, but concedes that other known groups were involved and doesn't know why their multi-way truce broke down. Fundamentally, we have no idea what happened. Any conclusion is supposition. My objection is that your version of supposition is held higher simply because it reinforces your claim of offense about the "Malleus" badge. So it's OK for you to draw conclusions from incomplete information, but not anyone else who doesn't come to the same conclusion? That's pretty damn oppressive on your part.

Really? Where's that stated in the articles? Remember, I'm apparently not allowed to draw any conclusions from incomplete information, so why should you be?

Did you actually read my previous posts?

Go follow the link to the in-game description for the NPCs. (Edit: I mean here the color text for each NPC, not the (missing) description of the organization itself.) The ones that makes it clear that they are actually an organization with structure, not just "wandering monsters" the way most of the others are. They're magic using and organized. That's why pick them instead of the others, which don't have similar connotations in their descriptions.

Look, I explained this. If the Halloween witches are a driving force behind the invasion, and if they are using the Malleus Mundi as a means of achieving it, then they get that badge because of their association with that "Malleus", not the Malleus Maleficarium.

You did not make a claim about your experience. You made a claim about what's required to get lots of purples. You didn't qualify it with "in my experience". You stated it as a cold, hard fact.

Do you think I've outfitted my characters with drops? Do you think I've earned billions of influence off of selling purples? I haven't. I have sold damn near every thing else. I almost never sell purples I do get as drops, because I want a lot of them for a lot of characters. I do this knowing it's not even the smartest way to play, because I could likely sell them and then buy them back later for less!

What have you done with all your other drops? What did you do with all the merits those arcs and SFs imply you receiving? Where do you think I made all my money? Money I used then to buy the purples I needed?

I never claimed that someone with a different experience than mine is lying by saying they have had a different experience. I am saying your claim, which was unqualified, that farming is required to have purples - that is a lie. Should I use that term? Perhaps not, but I am sick to death of people who ignore information in front of their noses and make claims that they would not make if they used the information.

And since I "actually play" instead of farm, I ask "what fault"?

Since I don't actually outfit my characters with purple drops (or inf gained by selling same), you must be speaking of something not especially relevant to my accusation.

If you think I have to think I'm under personal attack to be irritated by people's posts, I have to tell you I don't. I am easily riled by people posting misinformation with the conviction of a religious zealot. That is why I came after you. Most posters here will tell you I don't break out truly harsh words very often, and I do apologize to you that you became my target. It truly agitated me to see yet another person making the claim you did - consider yourself the proverbial last straw.

Oh, but I should point out that you did personally attack both farmers and "marketeers". Ironically, neither label really applies to me. But don't give us a sob when you get called out for attacks on whole categories of players, one of whom this part of the forum is partially dedicated to.

"Effortless rewards?" Not to claim this game is hard or like work, but where did "effortless" enter into the equation, even for a farmer? You have to do something, and while I may just "play the game" most of the time, I also pay attention to the market, making sure I'm selling the right things at the right prices, making sure I don't spend inf I don't need to if I can help it, and trying pay attention to doing things that I find fun in a way that leans towards good rewards. It's not effortless, but it's not farming by any stretch of the imagination.

You cannot imagine how much I hoped someone would pull that out of their hat. This claim of association to witchcraft has no basis but the reuse of the word Malleus, and you're coming after me on the claim of baseless speculation? Again, the Malleus Mundi is not the Malleus Maleficarium. The backstory given for the Malleus Mundi it has no relationship to the contents of the Malleus Maleficarium. The names to not mean the same thing, and are only related by the fact that both contain the word for "hammer".

The Malleus Mundi was used to explain magical invasions for Halloween, and Halloween has fantasy witches associated with it, so we were given fantasy witch "monsters" to fight.

None of which turned up as being involved. Fascinating.

The devs rarely give us the whole story on most of the game's mysteries. They leave much to innuendo, incomplete NPC narratives, and symbolism. The fact that defeating the witches gives the Malleus badge is itself a likely hint.

I am not obfuscating. I am explaining an alternative that context, past dev content, and simple logic dictates is more likely than your idea that someone actually thought it was a good idea to symbolize a historical atrocity in a teen-rated video game.

Some degree of political correctness can have its place. This isn't one of them. You're defending what amounts to a conspiracy thoery with nothing other than circumstantial associations. You're assuming those associations have a necessarily sinister meaning, simply because you have found them. I think the very notion that you found sinister meaning when other alternatives appear obvious to me suggests you are barking up the wrong tree.

No, the assembled context of the rest of the event, the NPC descriptions, and the backstory help me come to that opinion.

What idiocy is this? Did I say anything event remotely like that? No, I said that the "Malleus" badge is a reference to the "Malleus Mundi", not the "Malleus Maleficarium".

Bull. You've found a connection between two uses of the word "Malleus", which are about completely different things, and witches - fantastic and "historic". The Malleus Mundi is used to explain interdimensional invasions now mysteriously associated with Halloween, of which pointy-hatted witches are iconic.

This association between the two is of your making, and things of your making do not a call to action make.