UberGuy
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Quote:I had pretty high hopes that they weren't something like that, because both were just so damn strange. (Or sounded strange, since I didn't see the Katie run firsthand.) There wasn't much of "challenge" about them, just oddity.Originally Posted by Castle
And, for the record, none of those possibilities was intended to make the task forces any harder. -
Quote:In all honesty, did you actually read his post?Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
His post isn't about the actual bugs. It's about (a) the fact that no one knew to test the TF, because it wasn't in any patch notes, ever, and (b) it escaped either with no internal testing or intolerably incompetent testing.
The actual bugs are, it turns out, a different discussion. However. in the interest of helping the actual bugs be fixed, I PM'd this to Castle. (I wouldn't normally inflict bug details about mission problems on the powers guy, but he posted here, so that's what he gets.
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Quote:Hi, Castle. Per your post in the tech forums, here's an attempt to get you guys more detail for tracking down the issue.
Problem# 1
In the 3rd mission "Eliminate 1st radar station", the computer cannot be attacked directly. It can be targeted, but any attack used reports "target out of range". I am sure of this for melee attacks, as that's what I had on the TF, but no one seemed able to attack it with ranged attacks either. Untargeted AoE attacks, or those targeting nearby foes, seemed to damage it normally.
Problem# 2
In the 4th mission, "Eliminate 2nd radar station", we could not find the computer. A GM responded to my /stuck petition and presented us with the computer, suggesting it was hidden in the map geometry. Other people on the team were reporting that the map was not the normal map for this mission, which may have led indirectly to this issue. Additionally, even after the GM produced the objective for us, it had the same problem seen in Problem #1 above.
Problem#3
In the 5th mission, "Eliminate 3rd radar station", when some of us entered the map, we were presented with what apparently was the 4th mission instance. As you know, one cannot normally re-enter an already completed mission instance. However, upon entering we found the same map as before, devoid of all mobs or objectives and with "Mission Complete" in the mission objective GUI, complete with blue "Exit" button. After several of us quit the TF, some who remained reported that they were able to enter and find the map populated with foes and not marked as complete.
I hope that helps. -
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Quote:Maybe after you met that character in game.Originally Posted by Ironblade
uh huh.... And I can shove knitting needles into my eye sockets. But would I WANT to?
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Most of my testing with it (by volume of kills) has been that map spawned for 6, and it's been low.
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Quote:Without backing or opposing this suggestion, I thought it might be worth pointing out that there is precedent for this. Quite a long time back (Issue 3-5 range) the devs reduced the mez potential of minions and some LTs in the early and mid levels. However, there's no similar precedent I know of for changes to level 40+ mobs, except for spot changes to individual mobs.Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
I agree the problem is the mobs that have minions and lts that can chain. Simple solution: reduce the chain mezzing ability of the lts and minions in those mobs: Malta, Carnies, and Tsoo and KoA to a limited degree.
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Quote:As long as you realize that you can often obtain what you are looking for more efficiently by using random rolls, selling the results (assuming you don't need it yourself), and using that income to buy what you actually do want.*Originally Posted by Heraclea
So I hoard merits and buy, not random rolls, but what I need.
I know based on your past posts that you may know this and be avoiding it because you find it objectionable. I just wanted to point it out, just in case.
*There are items for which this is not true in general. What they are varies over time and what side you're on (hero or villain). Basically by definition, they are usually the most expensive things on the market which you can also buy with merits, often by a wide margin. -
Quote:Actually, increased number of recipes in circulation is potentially anti-inflationary, assuming that by "inflation" we mean increasing cost per recipe. The primary driver for inflation is an increase the ratio of inf in circulation to recipes in circulation. The AE did this handily. Large numbers of people appeared to prefer to save up tickets for Silver or Gold rolls, which, inherently, produced less recipes per unit time than previous PvE play. (It also shifted supply from Pool A to Pool C/D.) At the same time, ticket caps were added, but many players were using the AE for XP, with tickets as a secondary concern. If you stayed in a map for the XP, you stopped getting tickets but continued to get large amounts of inf.Originally Posted by KestrelBlue
The prices for purples were so high because of the influx of cheaper drops and more tickets overall (tickets yield recipes, which were flipped on the market for inf, coffers increased in general). Prices surge when everyone's means are more plentiful, ergo inflation.
In combination, these behaviors likely increased inf in circulation while simultaneously producing fewer recipes. And of course it hammered purple supply, since the AE could not produce them at all except for a period where it was (accidentally) possible to get them as ticket rolls. This certainly resulted in increased price per recipe, and dramatic increase in price per purple recipe. -
Quote:I know someone who did it on a Rad/Psy Defender. He did use inspirations, but I think I can forgive that, given the achievement.Originally Posted by Scientist
The best heroside combo for hard target soloing is probably Ill/Rad controller, there was one awhile back who soloed Lusca, who is essentially 9 Giant Monsters in one. It took them 6 hours or so, but I doubt theres another heroside AT who can do that.
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Quote:This is backwards.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
The Eden trial *was* worth more than 7 Merits, it was worth a Rare Pool C recipe which has a value of 20 Merits for a random roll (or about 200 Merits if you're buying a specific one).
They implemented this system because they knew that all content was not equal. They didn't want everyone gravitating only to the content which could be done most quickly, and they did not want to try to make all content take the same amount of time. Therefore, they changed to a system that allowed them to normalize rewards based on the time it took to complete them.
To declare that any TF or similar merit rewarding content is being "exploited" because it is worth less than one random recipe is, as I said, circular reasoning. It is worth less than this because it's median completion time was too short for (in the devs' estimation) to be worth a whole recipe.
They even told us this was the reasoning in the Merit Reward system.
This is a very broad definition of that term, and not one I or many others will accept. It is not one the devs have provided. This is one of the things I most dislike about your forum presence: your presentation style is such that you appear to presume you speak for the devs thoughts, intentions and goals with authority.Quote:The team is leveraging mechanics to avoid the series of tasks in the TF. That is the very definition of 'exploit.' -
The post above by perwira made me think about my approach to CoH. Considering that I'm one of the only regular posters in this forum who claims to have made heaps of in-game wealth just by "playing the game," I figure perhaps it would be instructive to explain just what that means.
The first thing I have to say is that, despite not thinking of myself that way, I am a patient player. I don't (just) mean in my approach to the market, either, but in my approach to my characters.
Before inventions, I used to create more alts. I actually disliked the idea of hitting 50 on my favorite characters, because I perceived there being nothing to do with them back then. It wasn't just a lack of end-game content, but rather a lack of goals for them to strive towards. All that changed in I9, and before it came out, my favorite characters had all hit 50 in preparation.
I don't PL characters of my own. I tend to solo them to 50, or at least 45+. Because of this, any character I get to 50 is one I really enjoy, because if I didn't enjoy it, I would stop playing it long before then. Because I really enjoy playing them, I am happy to keep playing them even at 50, so long as I have goals for them, and IOs are those goals.
But I don't have to jump feet first into the lap of ultimate power. I'm happy with an incremental approach. First, I don't invest in anything major until around the 40s, unless it's something like a unique or proc which will serve me well all the way through. My goal is a late-game build, so I don't want to invest much in a disposable build. What this results in is early "frankenslotting" builds that up my endurance, recharge and accuracy beyond SO levels, but pay little attention to set bonuses.
This is a bootstrapping process. "Frankenbuilds" let me hit more often, for less endurance, or save slots I wouldn't have for key powers. I can get more from my playtime for a character. I then use this investment to play the character more, achieving more in the play time than I could before. I use this to reap more rewards, the profits of which I then fold back into the character, one set at a time. Eventually I have a build which is the best I can make without purple sets. Usually, the character is now very powerful, and I can leverage that for another self-investment pass, where I start working towards purples. This can take a while. I've given individual characters a good month of pretty consecutive playtime to pay for their purples. I spend that time running TFs or soloing maps spawned for two (or more, in I16).
Just in case one reads an implication of it above, I'm not building farmers here. Just to give you an idea, when I want to farm my most efficient characters are Corruptors, Defenders and my one Nightwidow, so while I'm capable of it technically, I'm not paying off the house with it.
As a result of this approach to characters, I have created few new alts since I9, and many of my existing lowbies have languished at their I9 levels. My existing 50s and other 40+ characters have gotten the lion's share of my attention. I have leveled just one new character from 1-50 since I9, a Nightwidow created just before I13 launched. (She was 50 before I14 and a billionaire halfway through it. Thanks, AE!)
One final thing is that I tend not to share wealth between these characters. I frequently give new characters a seed of a couple of million from an existing character because I'm too lazy to bother earning it myself on the market. From then on, basically everything they earn is their own. The exception I make is with drops - I'll move drops between characters if one gets something I know I want for another, rather than selling it. Additionally, I'll use existing characters to "twink" new ones with things like low-level Miracles or LotGs. I do this because I am utterly spoiled by the capabilities of my IOd out level 50s, and I want a touch of it on my lowbies, too.
So there you have it. When I come here and tell people that purples are alternate progression for 50s and not something they should just expect to fall into once they get to 50, I'm very much practicing that sermon. I'm impatient in many ways, but character development isn't one of them. -
Quote:Unfortunately, I doubt the devs view this as you describe it here and in the rest of your post. I fully expect the next round of merit reward updates to absolutely hammer things like Posi's TF. The median completion time is going to be much lower after this issue, and I expect they will modify the reward accordingly.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
This issue has also brought another (most likely unintentional) buff to merits with the Super Sidekicking system. Since merits are a time based reward setting your TF to -1 level mobs significantly shortens the defeat alls. Also having powers available that are 5 levels higher than the TF rating speeds things up greatly.
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Quote:This definition of "exploit" is lunatic.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
But to answer your question about exploits: As I mentioned above, which you neglected to quote, when there is a design flaw which allows players to 'work around' the intended investment of risk and time, then taking advantage of that design flaw is an exploit. I know, I know, exploit is so wed to the notion of a *bug*. But when a TF that is designed to be an hour's worth of work -- even for a good team -- gives the reward for an hour's worth of work; but is done in 20 minutes... then there is a exploit involved... whether through a bug, or players cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way, it's an exploit.
The devs have a mechanism for dealing with people who can "cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way." It's called changing the merit reward for a TF based on median completion time.
Your reasoning is circular. The reward is low making exploiting it unlikely.Quote:If the Eden exploits are fixed, then why is its Merit reward still so low? Twenty minute Edens are still possible, thus, the low Merit reward.
With the merit reward system, the devs no longer have to designate a TF as requiring a certain amount of time to complete. They simply assign rewards based on the amount of time it takes to complete.
Characters chock full of IOs are going to be more damaging, more endurance efficient, and safer than characters without them. This will allow them to complete combat-oriented challenges faster than people without them. The fact that IOs are optional means the devs have to account for their existence and potential, but also allow for people who don't use them. This is unquestionably part of why merit rewards are based on median completion time - so that a small percentage of players completing merit-granting content in shorter times is less likely heavily skew rewards for other players. -
Quote:Cho would never do that. He would suggest that Sexy Jay instead make the Council and the Coven much more visually flamboyant. They would end up with mez powers that made two player characters mack with their toggles suppressed. I'm afraid to wonder what idle animations we might find the Council doing.Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
I heard Cho suggested that Katie and Hess be made more challenging . . .
Of course these things would dramatically affect the game's current rating. -
Good work, 4, and nice pics.
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Quote:1) That's not really what we're discussing.Originally Posted by FitzSimmons
Aside from the broken mission what's wrong with a challenge and some change?
2) Can you show anyone where meaningfully increased challenge is? See The two posts above yours. -
Quote:He didn't ask when he could get the most OP classes. He just asked what they were.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Well, an apparently new player wouldn't have access to VEATs nor HEATs, now would they
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Quote:Except I do not feel this is the case in general. It's just the case for foe types I called out, who seem to slather a team of players in mez sauce with mez sprinkles and a side of mez broulet.Originally Posted by Futurias
Actually, if a archetype is under-perfoming consistently (of which I feel this problem of high level mezzing across a great many of the mobs is), that indicates a problem with archetype, not the NPCs.
If it's not a general problem and happens primarily with certain mobs, then I categorize the mobs as the problem. Is it arguable that any amount of mez tends to decrease the contribution of non-mez-protected characters? Sure, that makes sense to me. Is it generally so severe that it's worth of broad-brush change? Not in my opinion. -
Quote:Just because the devs have said that something is their standard operating procedure does not make it correct or defensible. "Correcting" things like the speed with which people can run TFs is not a change deserving of complete lack of patch notes. Announcing things like "some maps for the Hess TF have been modified" does not announce to the player base that there is an "exploit", nor does it explain to them how to execute it on live. The cost of such total obfuscation is that no one gets to test the changes.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
I, too, get after the Devs for lapses in patch notes. But fixes for exploits (which includes design flaws which have 'legal' workarounds so that it's not working as intended, and a 20 minute Hess is definitely not intended) are not announced on Test and are not announced when they go Live, at least, not at first. When the Patch is deemed stable and won't get reverted, then they announce exploit fixes. Given that this past Issue needed an emergency patch last Thursday, it is reasonable to assume that the delayed announcing of exploit fixes got delayed further or were forgotten in the rush.
I agree completely with you that things like ways to crash zones to "dupe" enhancements, how to form a team so that extraordinary and unintended XP is produced, or that certain IOs were producing millions of points of damage do not need patch notes.
In brief, your definition of "exploit" is needlessly extreme.
However, things with no patch notes, whether or not we agree with what they should be, need to be internally tested. If this was an intentional change to the Hess TF, QA completely fell on its face in testing or validating it. The TF is completely unplayable without GM assistance in multiple successive missions. There is absolutely no way that's excusable.
I'll find that acceptable when it's acceptable anywhere else I've ever worked. "Sorry, I was sick" isn't a professional response for producing crap work, and I reject it categorically. If rampant illness is an issue, than the correct response is to defer the release. Releasing half-baked software system changes is acceptable because the gaming industry tolerates it. They have their customers over a barrel. Basically we can only speak with our subscription dollars, and our choices are not to play something we enjoy in general or suck it up and accept shoddy work when it's delivered.Quote:Not too mention Paragon Studios is experiencing a flu epidemic right now.
First of all, I don't believe this for a second. However, that's not actually relevant to the discussion. What's at issue is the quality and correctness of what they do tell us, the quality of their internal testing, and their foresight in enabling informed testing by their community testers. I find it vanishingly likely that anyone tested Hess during beta, and incredibly likely that someone would have if we had any inkling it had changed for any reason.Quote:The Devs have always come clean with changes they made. After all, they have publicly made the statement that hiding changes indefinitely is just stupid because we can all plainly see them.
I don't. I don't expect them to come read this thread at all and won't be offended if they don't. I expect better improvements in the way they manage and release their software.Quote:Sometimes the process has lapses and sometimes it's delayed. Whenever we've inquired about it, we've been answered. Just don't expect answers from a flu-ridden studio over the weekend. -
Quote:I basically agree with mac here. I spend quite a lot of time soloing, uh, soloable squishies, and I don't find mezzing overly problematic in general. There are a few exceptions, and they result in me avoiding certain AI "factions" almost completely with my squishies. The most dreadful of them are Malta. Their Little Sisters band, the KoA, get a nod on their bosses.Originally Posted by macskull
People who complain about mez in the PvE game (not talking about you specifically, just a general statement) had a point under the pre-I13 mez rules where a mez would drop all your toggles. Toggle-heavy squishies or ATs that lacked mez protection but relied on toggles for survivability (see Khelds) got the short end of the stick, especially in a game where micro-mezzes (Crey and KoA are the most suspect groups here) in the form of sleeps or very short-duration holds caused the huge annoyance of having to retoggle everything.
Given the current PvE mez and toggle rules, people needn't complain about micro-mezzes anymore, and standard mezzes are just a small hurdle that's easily overcome with a Break Free or two. If you don't regularly carry them when you know you're going to be facing mezzing enemies, then you probably deserve whatever debt you end up getting. Inspiration management's not just a PvP skill.
The problem isn't micro-mezzes, but eternal, thou-shalt-be-stunned-at-every-possible-opportunity mezzes. The stun grenades from the LTs and, God help you, the Operations Officer and Hand of Artemis bosses are outrageous. If they can hit you, you better have a Break Free. Oh, and if it's a boss, you better have multiple Break Frees or 2nd or 3rd tier ones, because the stun can outlast a little Break Free. And now, of course, their Titans spew holds much more frequently than before - a faction known for its ability to mez the crap out of you now actually does so even more.
I like challenge. However, I don't find being overwhelmed with any one effect enjoyable, particularly when it's an effect to which I am specifically vulnerable. In my opinion, PC vulnerabilities in games should be exploited in moderation, because contstantly having something exploiting it becomes frustrating.
Of course, one can always just avoid Malta. I'm of the opinion that it's poor to shunt people away from any given content because the foes in it are much more frustrating than foes in other content, or much more frequent, or both. Others may disagree.
All that said, I think that's a problem with the specific powers the mobs have, and not with mezzes in general. I don't really support the idea that everyone needs mez protection. I'd take it in a heartbeat, but I'm greedy like that. -
I have two qualifications that I think mean I get to vehemently agree with Pum on this.
- I was on this Hess TF with him.
- I work in a software delivery team in a fortune 100 company. (Appeal to unprovable authority, take it or leave it.)
There are only a few outcomes I can think of that explain how such a complete breakage of a TF could make it from beta to live.
- This was a completely unintentional change. No one knew to test for it, including the NCNC internal QA team. The problems are a side effect of some other change elsewhere.
- This is an intentional change that is undocumented. Given the historical quality of CoH's patch notes, undocumented changes are in no way unlikely (and this applies equally to liked and hated changes). In this situation, the change control process for the game completely broke down. Possibly because of the lack of documentation of the change, it was never internally QA tested and went live completely broken. Someone should be losing points on their annual review.
- This is a change the devs considered an explot "fix". It still should have produced path notes when it went live, even if they did not specify the alleged exploit. For example "Hess TF maps modified slightly." This case is a variant of the one above.
The only system failures that should be unexpected are those that are due to unexpected side effects or infrastructure failures, not intentional changes that weren't tested. Areas of known fragility, such as AI or animation, should receive special focus testing, with solid test cases for situations known to fail in the past.
I like this game, and I actually have a pretty high regard for its developers. However, I have extremely low respect for how they manage their software. In my professional opinion, something is wrong with their process, and despite modest improvements, it's been wrong for over five years. -
I have never definitively seen a statement that they are definitely pool A. However, I think there's some various evidence that suggests they are, some of which is anecdotal.
- I have never seen nor heard of a purple and a pool A dropping at the same time. This is possible with other differing drop pools. For example, I have gotten an enhancement recipe and costume recipe off of the same mob defeat before, when solo. It's possible I have never heard of this simply because it is sufficiently rare.
- For a while, you could get Purples off of non-Gold AE ticket rolls. This was a bug. It possibly suggests the devs had to do something to stop Purples from appearing in the reward list.
Finally, there is more recent data, gathered by TopDoc, that suggests that the denominator 5000 given on the Wiki is too large. His testing produced a number closer to 2000. -
Quote:They weren't huge maps.Originally Posted by Defenestrator
If you're running huge maps at 3/+2, you should have received a lot more than 8 recipes.
Code:Defeats: Minion Defeats: 220 LT Defeats: 68 Boss Defeats: 14 Recipes: Minion Drops: 7, Rate: 3.182% (95% in range 1.289%-6.446%) (48.324%-241.710% of expected) LT Drops: 2, Rate: 2.941% (95% in range 0.358%-10.224%) (6.716%-191.702% of expected) Boss Drops: 0 -
Quote:You know, I wasn't going to address the Gold Sets thing, but I have to say, I'd forgotten about this phenomenon, and I absolutely agree. From what I saw, at their peak popular costume pieces were selling for around 20M inf, back at a time when things like LotGs:R and Miracle+ uniques were about 40M inf. So you could pay for two costume pieces or buy a Miracle +Recovery - back when level 50s could not produce Miracles, meaning they were significantly more rare than they are today.Originally Posted by SlyGuyMcFly
Actually they would. Provided these Gold Sets loudly informed anyone and everyone that said character had a Gold Set. If you want proof of this, look at what happened when the Costume Recipes first came out: They where expensive. Then the devs upped the drop rate, more and more people started getting the previously super-rare costume pieces and now nobody gives two ***** about them.
That's pretty compelling. -
Quote:Actually, I've noted that some of the old cheapo salvage, such as Diamonds, which was frequently less than 1M inf pre-MA, is now under 1M again. On the black Market yesterday, its price was around 500k.Originally Posted by Imaheroe
My SG and I were monitoring WW all day yesterday and we noticed an upward trend to prices to all Salvage.
rares, which were good for 1mill started going to 2mil within minutes of our review.
Overall I am not hopeful that the market will drop.