Arcanaville
-
Posts
10683 -
Joined
-
Quote:Now you know why I was always positioning myself to throw AoE at the adds in BAFs.Originally Posted by Snow Globe
Right now, all Incarnate XP and drops are based on what your individual team does. This should instead be spread out over the entire league.
- It is too easy to overlook a player on their "own" team if they return from a mapserver disconnect.
- It is too easy for players to get shafted by league tactics - hey blue team deal with the AV while yellow team gets all the Incarnate XP from the ambushes.
- It is not balanced.
The same thing applies to Hamidon Raids and Rikti Mothership Raids. -
Quote:Debuff resistance should affect all active debuffs, even debuffs that have already landed, if they are still taking effect. Really no different than when a resistance buff reduces a DoT while its still ticking.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Actually, I'm not at all sure this is how debuff resistance interacts with debuffs. For quite a while I had Focused Accuracy on my DB/Regen as a place to slot Gaussian's set. (I ditched it for Tactics with I19.) The main thing I used it for was toHit debuff resistance when faced with Death Mages and large numbers of Council/5th Vampyres. Turning it on after I was already debuffed restored my toHit chance to reasonable numbers. The debuff from Death Mages is a tick (though a pretty slow one), but the debuffs from Dark Blast and Dark Melee powers used by Vampyres (and Death Mages at range) are clicks. If what you're describing above is correct, turning FA on shouldn't have raised my toHit by anything like as much as it did. We're talking 30-40 points at times when I was heavily debuffed.
-
Quote:I've seen it done, and successfully, a number of ways. The two choke-point way works, but sometimes it doesn't. I think sometimes the two choke point method fails because sometimes you just get unlucky and something leaks through, and then no one bothers to chase after them and you only get one shot to take out everything with the two spot tactic. But when it works, it works well.Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
Find it interesting that it is rare for the US servers to run the BAF 'MO style' yet on Union it's pretty much the ONLY style run, as in every run follows the 'Fight AVs individually at spawns, 1 team per AV with 1 additional team and 1 member from each of the other teams dealing with reinforcements'.
An interesting divergence in tactics used by the different servers.
Do the US servers tend to use the two 'choke points' either side of the tennis courts for the escaping prisoners or the way it was first done when trying it, 2-3 people to a door to deal with the prisoners?
I'm more a fan of the three spot method: one center north, one south east near the doors, and one southwest also near the doors and specifically guarding the dangerous corner the leakers typically escape out of. I initially got the badge in that configuration.
And I've seen the bookends: two groups separated by about a hundred feet north, two groups separated by about a hundred feet south, which is a variation of the two spot choke point method, but with the choke points turned into gauntlets. I've seen a zero escape run using that method also. -
Quote:We were doing that on some of the Triumph raids at one point also. Getting people to not immediately swarm over the AVs and literally immobilize them by making it impossible for them to move is the hardest part of that tactic. Sometimes you have to encourage people a little, like by asking everyone who will listen to back completely away from the AVs and see how many people left are willing to try to solo Siege.Originally Posted by Furio
Just did a bunch of non MO BAF runs. Dechs joined and suggested pulling Siege to the add spawn spot NW of the tennis courts. Killed him there, then when Nightstar respawned, we just pulled here there, too and killed everything. Everyone was involved in killing everything and ixp flowed like wine.
Its also sometimes tricky to pull them directly onto the spawn point because you're in line of sight of the turrets. Sometimes we were pulling to that spot in that corner just southeast of the spawn point where the league had cover from the turrets but the AVs were still close enough to the spawn point for people to throw AoEs at them. -
Quote:Actually, now that you mention it: nope.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Got it. I figured assuming you got 8 Empyrian Merits because some of those 20 successes were within the same 20-hour windows, but I didn't think to tie it back to your breakdown.
So you ran two of the same trial on the 9th but 20+ hours separated? Heh.
04-09-2011 13:35:09 You received Empyrean Merit.
04-09-2011 15:31:25 You received Empyrean Merit.
04-09-2011 22:53:27 You received Empyrean Merit.
The first two are BAFs and the last is a Lambda. The only noteworthy aspect to the second BAF is that I was awarded Strong and Pretty at the same time. I don't know if that comes with an Empyrean merit separate from the one per day Empyrean limit for the trials. -
Quote:Two things, and both of them actually not new observations. The first one: if the problem is the team is killing so fast you don't even have *time* to act, then the team itself is just so much more powerful than the content that even if you were a full fledged incarnate it would make no difference. So this is not an issue of the haves and have-nots. Its an issue of power. And it existed pre-Incarnate. Invention-powered steamroll teams were and are doing basically the same thing: throwing so much firepower at the critters that any three of them were probably redundant. And even before inventions, there were steamroll teams. To make a visible contribution on these kinds of teams then and now, you had to be creative. People who are on these kinds of teams know what I'm talking about: "leapfrogging" is one way, where the team splits in two and each half starts engaging the spawn beyond the other half of the team, rather than everyone engaging the same spawn. This has a major advantage over splitting up: if there is a miscalculation, your backup is right behind you: if you have problems and aren't wiping out your spawn, reinforcements will be coming past you momentarily.Originally Posted by Hydrophidian
What worries me, however, are the Have Nots. What worries me is playing, say, an SKed character--level 35-40 or so--with a team full of people who all have these goodies. I used to be able to make some sort of meaningful contribution with such a character, but in these new dynamics? I might be lucky to get an attack off. Not too thrilled with the prospect of that.
The second thing: when people say "I felt I made a contribution here, but I don't there" there is a lot of psychology to that statement not necessarily always reflected in reality. I recall a thread years ago where someone said they felt they were still making a significant contribution to their team even when they were -5. When I did the math based on their character (a scrapper) between degraded damage and degraded tohit I estimated they were doing about 1.5% of the total damage of the team. They insisted, however, that was a major contribution (and tossed in a "numbers aren't always correct" comment). Conversely, there are people now saying that if the team is level shifted and you're not, you're effectively worthless. That's a huge span on perspectives no game could possibly accommodate. The real question is what contribution were you really making in the first place with a level 35 Sked up to 50 before, and in what way do Incarnate powers dilute that contribution. I believe this is more a matter of degree than distinction. The difference between the team wiping out the entire spawn in the time it takes you to get off three attacks and the team now wiping out the entire spawn in the time it takes you to get off one attack is really minimal. The net result is the same: the target you were attacking would have been just as dead if you just stood there throwing snowballs at it. It just might have taken the team an extra second.
That has always been the case for teams with massive firepower. And if that is a problem, its not a problem that even more firepower solves. If a team doesn't need anything, there's nothing you can do to make yourself needed. Because they don't need anything. No matter how powerful a team is, if they need something that's a need that anyone with that thing can fill, no matter how much more powerful the team members are than they are. If they don't need anything, nothing you do can make them need you.
Incidentally, the best way to neutralize Ghost Widow has always been to buff the team's defense, not debuff her. Once she can't hit you effectively, her game is over. I've been on many runs where the only thing standing near her is my SR scrapper and the phantom army. She can't hit me, and she can't get a heal return off the PA. With her best trick neutralized, all you have to make sure about is she doesn't hold everyone else (not standing in her line of fire helps) and take her down like any other AV. -
Quote:For the character I mention, 27 runs, 20 successes, 7 non-successes (failures, trial-crashes), 8 empyreans. That's confirmed by the fact that the character currently has eight, has never converted one, and the logs show eight total drops.Originally Posted by UberGuy
I'm just curious about your Empyrean stat here. Do you mean that you've been on an average 12 failed trials out of 20? Or just that your total ratio of trials that provided an Empyrean to those that did not (including extra trails per day past the first) was 20 to 8?
The raw numbers are in this post from last night. -
Quote:I missed the day that double-Incarnate rewards were activated on the servers. That's more than twice the earning rate I'm currently earning either iXP or Empyreans (I'm averaging about 15% iXP per run, and less than one Empyrean per two successful runs - 8 out of 20).Originally Posted by rsclark
You're ignoring the iXP you already get in the trial.
Real numbers:
~40% XP from one trial
3 Astrals because getting 3 on Lambda is easy.
1 Emprean
I've seen twelve shards drop in an ITF. I've never seen those numbers quoted above before, or anything close to them. Theoretically speaking they are possible if one team on a BAF hoards the kills. But I do not believe there is any strategy possible that can earn that level of rewards for an entire league, or even half of it. Its only possible in a BAF where one third of the league takes the vast majority of the iXP, which is why its nearly three times the average (and on such runs, everyone else is usually stuck around 8-10%). -
Quote:The problem here is that if the game throws content at a team for which you personally are indispensable, the odds rise dramatically that substituting you for someone else would radically increase the probability of failure. In other words, it is an extremely fine line between making you noticably useful and making you necessary. Suppose you only played tanks. The only way for you to experience the sense that you were always a strong contributor would be for the content to require tanks. That means if that team had taken a blaster instead of you, it would have a much harder time. It would have a higher probability of failing.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm not looking for recognition from other people, I'm looking for recognition from the system. Whether other people notice my absence or not is just a symptom of power balance. When I say "and nobody notices," I don't mean to say "I regret that my contribution was not appreciated" so much so that "the team was strong enough to run with fewer people than are actually on it." When team strength is such that my contribution is irrelevant, I feel like a freeloader, even in instances when people try their darnest to reassure me that "No, really, it's OK, you're helping."
It probably seems self-centric of me to say this. It probably is. But the fact of the matter is that praise and reassurance is irrelevant. I know most people in-game are kind souls whose tolerance for team-mates is rather much more benevolent than the forums would suggest, so I know they really have no problem with me being on the team. But what I look for is the game system facts, and the game system facts are that the team performs well adequately with or without my intervention. Whether or not my presence is appreciated, I am factually useless to the team at this point, because I am not improving anything. If I left, the team would not be worse off, lack of idle chit-chat notwithstanding.
Unless your game design has a level of design precision I've never seen before, not just in a game but anywhere, inclusivity and notoriety are mutually exclusive targets to aim for. The more noteworthy you make something, the more noteworthy you make its absence.
In engineering, this is known as the rule that resilience and efficiency tend to be similarly mutually exclusive. Resilience usually requires redundancy. Redundancy is inefficient. But it is more tolerant. -
Quote:I would be surprised to see more than five total shifts (we have three now) and critters higher than (explicit) level 55. I would not be surprised to see critters or encounters with level shift or level shift debuff, although not necessarily static ones. Take that for whatever its worth.Originally Posted by docbuzzard
IIRC it was stated by Positron we'll see 4 level shifts total. Any speculation past that flies in the face of evidence. Thus it would be tantamount to doom crying. Hence I wouldn't expect to see any threats which get higher than +5 (maybe +6, but unlikely since the devs prefer to be inclusive).
-
Quote:If I stick to making precise comparisons instead of just randomly guessing, my *breakdown* thread earning rate in the posted calculations above would have been (on successful runs):Originally Posted by rsclark
You can unlock Interface after one trial if you break everything down and convert it to XP - exactly what the guy doing ITF would be doing. If you stick to making fair comparisons it's not faster at all.
104 threads
88 * 4 threads from astrals
8 * 20 threads from empyreans
1 * 4 threads from commons
21 * 9 threads from uncommons (average)
4 * 22 threads from rares (average)
Total: 897 threads from breakdown That was in 20 successful runs, which is 45 threads per run. That's just enough to unlock Destiny and Lore, and more than enough to unlock Interface and Judgment, but its lower than what you could earn in an above average ITF run, and it assumes someone would psychotically break down a rare component, which would cost 340 threads to make, into the 22 threads it returns as a breakdown. If we're going to do that, we might as well break down NotWs for their five shards and twenty-five threads. You'll be able to do that once per week per character.
But I'll be honest: I don't care if I need them now or not: I'm not breaking down NotWs into five shards. I don't care if I end up with fifty of the things. And if I ever break down a rare drop into 22 threads, I'm immediately petitioning that event as a computer glitch. -
Quote:At 1:5 assuming you get only six shards per ITF, that's just two ITFs to earn enough stuff to craft a common incarnate power (60 threads). That's at least as fast as the trials. The trials don't overtake shards until you try to slot an uncommon at this ratio, and only because you're highly likely to get an uncommon drop at some point and not have to craft it.Originally Posted by Dispari
To me that says nothing of the advancement of actually getting the powers themselves and everything about the speed of iXP between "earning" it and "buying" it. I actually feel like either earning it is too slow, or buying it is too fast. Because I frequently already had a rare power before I even unlocked the slot. In fact I got tired of waiting on Lore because I was getting ~8% per BAF, so I just spent 22-23 threads on finishing it off.
I think that's a separate argument to how fast people should be able to get all the powers themselves.
If it was me, my feeling is I would change the one per day conversion from 10:10 to 10:15, and change the unlimited conversion from 10:5 to 10:7. That's assuming the only option I had was to mess with the shard conversion ratio, which I mentioned above I don't think is ideal. -
Quote:The hardcore players are spending four, five, and even more hours a day grinding out the trials themselves. At that rate, if they focused on ITFs they would have four very rares in a couple of months. I would bet that if that was the *only* way to get those Incarnate powers, you'd see ITF runs around the clock with people aiming to have them all by the end of June, and some crazy lunatic would be finished around April 30th.Originally Posted by Liquid
The 3 year estimate is for Very Rares, which we both agree isn't really a reasonable goal for "casual" players, so it shouldn't be used in their defense. However, is it a reasonable goal for hardcore players that just hate the trials? As you've already suggested, that's subjective.
I should point out there were hardcore berserkers that had earned so many shards *before* I20 released they were full of rares practically on day one.
Here's a thought. Someone who earns the 50 WST assist badge has done enough WSTs that if they were ITFs they would be 14% of the way to the 360 ITF target. And there are players that put that level of effort in primarily for a badge.
I'm never worried about the hardcore players. They can always take care of themselves. I'm really only concerned about the players that aren't insane (and I've done things like farm Empath when it was still a billion points so my sanity is questionable myself). -
Quote:I'm aware. But even factoring that in, iXP earning rates aren't *bad* and to have consistently low rates requires randomly finding yourself never on that team and always being on BAFs, which is unusual.Originally Posted by Dispari
BAF teams that I've gone on a few times have also taken to devoting one team to killing adds, or similar tasks. So that most iXP goes to one group.
-
Quote:Way too fast. In one good ITF I could unlock an entire Incarnate slot. That's far *faster* than it takes running trials.Originally Posted by Dispari
I mentioned before that a shard:thread conversion ratio of 10:50 would allow:
1) About 1.67 months (50 days) for the unlocking and slotting of one slot, which is longer than Alpha took but still not in the "years" category.
2) Allow people who aren't doing the trials to fully unlock and fully complete the new slots in a bit under 7 months, which is a decent estimate for when the next stuff will be out for people to fiddle around with.
3) Be an actual effective 1:1 conversion ratio; 4 shards = 1 common but 20 threads = 1 common. 10 shards is 2.5 commons for Alpha, and 50 threads would be 2.5 commons for the other stuff. What increases the rate slightly is that you need more rares and stuff to actually finish.
4) Allow players to do whatever content they want, while still giving a speed and ease advantage to people doing it "the intended way."
It would still cost money but it'd be a step in the right direction.
I stated in the other two betas that *any* shard to thread conversion was doomed, because there was no way to simultaneously make shard to thread conversion solo-accessible *and* not devalue thread earning and the trials. I consider the latter a deal-breaker, period. That's why I proposed "splinters" as a way to resolve that problem. That suggestion has (what I believe to be) the unique property among all suggestions I've ever read that it autoscales to every team size from solo (1) through eight, and every number in between. Its not a "solo" solution or a "teamed alternative to the trials" its also a duo solution, a four person SG solution, and so on. Because the smaller the team the more splinters each player earns, but conversely the larger the team the more shards each player earns (on average), you could theoretically pick almost *any* scaling ratio and this system could be balanced around it without *any* collateral damage to the reward system anywhere else.
Meaning: if you want solo players to earn rewards 30 times slower than incarnate trial teams, you could set the exchange rate of splinters to stuff extremely low. If you want solo players to earn rewards only four times slower than incarnate trial teams, you could set the exchange rate of splinters to stuff much higher. Since players in full teams would be earning spliters eight times slower than solo players on average, you have a factor of eight to play around with. Tweaking both shards and splinters simultaneously would give you even more latitude, although at this point it might be difficult to tamper with shard conversion ratios. -
Quote:I agree and I stated so far upthread. However, as Liquid was willing to post specific numbers of earning rates to provide a data point, I was willing to post an alternate set of numbers as a second data point. I tried to provide more playing statistics so that if you wanted to, you could try to factor out some of the randomness. For example, it seems clear the number one random factor in these kinds of comparisons by a huge margin is the number of rares (and very rares) you get, because at least as this methodology goes they are worth a huge amount of threads. Almost 60% of my calculated earning capacity comes from just four rare drops.Originally Posted by Test_Rat
One thing that is impossible to account for is randomness.
In 2 days of eye bleeding grinding I have gotten 2 Very rare windows 15 Rare windows 25ish Uncommon and 3 Commons (why I can't get commons I dunno but sometimes I wish I would).
A year of ITFs a day is alot, I expect it would be MUCH higher to match the extraordinary luck I have been having with my drop tables.
Then there is a friend of mine who has gotten the 10 Thread drop multiple times, and mostly commons and Uncommon windows (and can't get IXP to save his life) Easily matched via the ITF method.
It is weird, though, that your friend would get extremely low iXP consistently across many runs. Since iXP, as far as I know, is team-split like all XP is, that would imply that either he always gets on a team that coincidentally is extremely low in damage and is getting bad iXP across the entire team, or he is somehow being excluded from a significant amount of iXP, like if he was constantly being kicked out of trials and spent a lot of time zoning back into them. -
Quote:You have two choices on converting shards to threads. You can convert one to one, but only once every 20 hours at a 10 to 10 swap. So using this method, you can only get 10 threads per day no matter how many shards you have.Originally Posted by Chyll
Just for my own clarification/understanding. How does earning rate - as per your estimates here - correlate to application rate? (I couldn't think of a better term.)
Earning threads as threads in trials can lead to near instant conversion to powers. If I understand properly, there is a daily shard-to-thread conversion cap? I thought that is where the 3 year number was coming from, not from earnings rate. So earning speed need be no faster than the application speed, because the latter has a governor on it.
(It is entirely possible that I have misunderstood something with the shard-to-thread conversion. It hasn't been something I have looked at meaningfullly.)
The alternate method converts 10 shards to 5 threads, and you can do this an unlimited number of times per day. But its only half as efficient: using this method can double the effort required to earn a set of threads. But as a practical matter, it won't really double that effort because no one can really earn hundreds of shards per day. Assuming you manage to earn 30 shards per day, then every day you'll be able to convert ten into ten threads, then the other 20 into 10 threads, for a total of 30 to 20. Your 30 shard per day earning rate becomes 20 threads per day using the two conversion methods, a 1.5 to 1 ratio, if you go as fast as possible and don't skip any days of play.
In one year, you could convert 3650 shards into 3650 threads. The 2.7 year figure I've seen quoted is I believe the time gate estimate for the amount of time it would take using nothing but the more efficient method to upgrade about 10,000 threads, which is I believe what it would take to slot very rares into all four slots. And that is something that at my calculated earning rate of 263 thread-equivalents per hour would take me 38 hours of continuous trial running. In theory, it would probably take about three weeks at my quoted times, but as a practical matter that first week was a curious anomaly for me: I was out of town and able to play in the day time, something I'm usually not able to do. My guess is that it would take a couple of months of my normal play habits to acquire that same 10,000 thread equivalent. -
Quote:If there is one thing that I demand 100% accuracy on, its the case when someone says "that's not actually what I said." Especially when I quote directly:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
First of all, that's not actually what I said, and what you paraphrased my post into isn't what I said or what I meant.
Now, if you're saying that this is a specific assertion:Quote:What concerns me the most, however, is this apparent drive to sweep said discontent under the rug by discrediting the people feeling it, and vilifying them as some kind of intellectual vandals seeking to take parts out of the game down seemingly out of sheer malice.
then it is an extremely weird turn of phrase to specifically refer to yourself as "the people feeling it."Quote:"They" know who they are because I've already called them by name in the past, and "they" very much have vilified me with various at-length posts explaining how I'm anti-social, how I'm unworthy of having my opinion considered and various other instances that I don't feel like listing.
But more importantly, as I said repeatedly while all of this may be novel to you personally, its not novel. If this is the hardest you've ever been hit, its not the hardest people have been hit in general. You're implying that the fact you feel personally attacked out of proportion to the past suggests this issue must be radically different. What's different is not the issue, but only the fact that your personal experience surrounding it has been different.
This is not really surprising. You have to admit you are much more involved in the narrative content and social dynamic of the game than its mechanical or functional dynamics. Its significantly more difficult to entangle you in arguments over the latter than the former, and most of the previous blow ups have been over things for which you were less likely to draw a line in the sand. To put it bluntly, you were not as much of a threat in them.
And on the subject of "that's not what I said" this is what I said in the post you responded to:
Quote:It might be a novel question for you personally, but it is not a novel question directed at the game. Multiple times, I stated directly that your experience now may have been different than in the past, but that doesn't mean the issues themselves were different overall in fervor. And yet you say this:Quote:This is also possibly novel for you to experience, but not novel for the game.
*I* say you're probably being treated more harshly now than in the past, *you* say you're definitely being treated more harshly now than in the past, but you're implying here my memory of the past where it specifically relates to your experience may be faulty. That seems to be a jab with no specific cause, even if no offense was intended.Quote:Point of fact, and I trust my memory of how I've been treated more than your memory of how I've been treated, no offence intended. -
Quote:I'm not sure what you mean by that, since I wasn't attempting to echo anyone: I was stating the converse of the position I was responding to. So in that sense, the argument such as it is was entirely my own, and not anyone elses.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I think you're misappropriating an argument here, if ever so slightly.
It might be a novel question for you personally, but it is not a novel question directed at the game. It was asked very strongly when the invention system came out, by people who cared about the issue of gear as much you probably do about the current I20 content.Quote:I can only speak for myself and at most a couple of other people, but the complaint in itself was never about the specific Trials, themselves, or the specific implementations or the specific numbers. Those can be changed and tweaked as time moves on. My biggest complaint and biggest fear lies elsewhere completely. It lies in a very pertinent question: Where is this game headed?
This is also possibly novel for you to experience, but not novel for the game. And my position on this is still the same: I see no specific difference in fervor on either side of this particular debate. The people expressing complaints are being "vilified" no more and no less than the people expressing satisfaction.Quote:What concerns me the most, however, is this apparent drive to sweep said discontent under the rug by discrediting the people feeling it, and vilifying them as some kind of intellectual vandals seeking to take parts out of the game down seemingly out of sheer malice.
This is a major change for the game, and I don't think you can afford to ignore its effect on the community as a whole.
Is the end game and its collateral consequences a major change for the game? Probably. Is it the biggest, most controversial, or most heatedly debated in the game's history? Probably not. I've been there for basically all of them, and not just observing from the sidelines either: I've put myself into the cross-fire in essentially every shooting-war the forums have had since I first signed in. So my perspective is from someone that has not just seen it all, but has taken actual bullets from every single one of them. They're *all* heated, *all* emotional, *all* important to someone, and *all* critical moments in the game's future from someone's perspective. That's not to belittle your perspective, but just to give that perspective some, well, perspective. Just look at the quoted passage above: "they" vilify by falsely accusing "us" of malice. You realize "they" just saw "you" maliciously and falsely accuse them of vilification. Its actually just that easy. -
On the subject of numbers, here are my preliminary estimates for earning from April 6th through April 9th (on the 10th and 11th I switched to a different character, and that would complicate things a bit)
Lambda Starts: 4 Completes: 2 Av complete: 2931.0
BAF starts: 5 Completes: 2 Av complete: 1063.5
Threads: 34 Astral: 22 Empyrean: 2
Lambda Starts: 1 Completes: 1 Av complete: 2176.0
BAF starts: 4 Completes: 4 Av complete: 957.5
Threads: 21 Astral: 22 Empyrean: 2
Lambda Starts: 5 Completes: 5 Av complete: 1717.2
BAF starts: 0 Completes: 0 Av complete: 0
Threads: 25 Astral: 20 Empyrean: 1
Lambda Starts: 1 Completes: 1 Av complete: 1756.0
BAF starts: 7 Completes: 5 Av complete: 1190.0
Threads: 37 Astral: 31 Empyrean: 3
That is 117 threads, 95 Astrals, and 8 Empyreans in four days over 27 trial starts and 20 completions. Seven failures break down to 2 crashes and 4 failures. Of the four failures, two were BAF escape failures, one was a BAF separated attempt that went south, and one was a failed Lambda.
9 completed Lamdas averaged 2042 seconds per run. 11 BAF runs averaged 1231 seconds per completed run. I believe thirteen threads and seven astral merits were awarded during failures. That means 104 threads, 88 astral merits, and 8 empyrean merits were earned in 20 completed runs totaling approximately 31919 seconds, or 8.87 hours. That then means my average earning rate on *successful* runs was about 13.2 threads per hour, 10.7 astral merits per hour, and about 0.9 empyrean merit per hour.
I also believe I earned 1 common, 21 uncommon, and 4 rare drops total across all runs. That's 26 drops, more than the number of successful runs, because you can earn random drops at certain times. I think the count is correct.
If I break everything down in the same manner as Liquid did into threads, that's a bit tricky because as you can see I was uncommon-overloaded. Here is what I have currently slotted:
Ion Core Judgment
Reactive Interface
Barrier Total Radial Invocation
The uncommon judgment took 5 commons and 1 uncommon. The common interface took 3 commons. The rare barrier took 7 commons, 1 uncommon, and a rare.
So, I ended up using 15 commons, 2 uncommons, and a rare. However, I only had one actual common. So I had to convert stuff to make those commons. The exact way you do this, and what you decide to keep and breakdown changes what things are worth. Rather than trying to figure out the best way, I'll just state what I actually did. I broke down 20 astral merits for a total of 80 threads. I also broke down 7 uncommons for about 63 threads (I don't have the precise count, so I'm taking the average here - I know I broke down 10 by counting what's left). I also converted some shards into threads: 40 total.
I ended up with the equivalent of using 15 * 20 + 2 * 60 + 340 = 760 thread-equivalents, using Liquid's methodology. I'm left with the equivalent in breakdown of:
14 actual threads
13 * 9 = 117 threads from uncommon drops
75 * 4 = 300 threads from astral merits
8 * 20 = 160 threads from empyrean merits
3 * 340 = 1020 threads from rare drops
Total: 1611
Grand total: 2371 thread-equivalents. That's across all successful and unsuccessful runs. Eliminating the 41 thread equivalents from unsuccessful runs leaves 2331 thread-equivalents in 20 successful runs over 8.87 hours. That's 263 thread-equivalents per hour.
Interestingly, that is almost exactly one hundred times the *solo* shard earning rate of my MA/SR scrapper running at 0x8. Very roughly, that is about 30 times my guestimate for my ITF earning rate for plows (about 9.3 shards per hour). Nearly *half* of that multiplier comes from rare trial drops.
None of these calculations include iXP. At the moment that character has Judgment, Interface, and Destiny unlocked and Lore about 82% unlocked. That is, very roughly, worth about 142 threads. That's actually small potatoes compared to the rest of the numbers.
Getting back to the issue of rares. Its obvious that the non-trial earning rare is more competitive for common and uncommon incarnate powers than for rare and very rare powers. If the rare incarnate components are valued at breakdown rather than usage and the aim is to get common and uncommon powers, and iXP is put in, then my thread earning rate becomes something much closer to 1250 threads in 8.87 hours or 141 threads per hour: fifteen times my ITF estimate in shards (I still need to figure out a good way to extract those statistics). Its a distinct question, I believe, if its fair for the non-trial costs to escalate the higher the tier power you're going for becomes. I think to at least some degree that's not unreasonable.
In any case, for me to get to the same place my main is now running nothing but ITFs, my rough estimate is that I would have to run about 180 ITFs to get to the roughly the same place if I didn't care to reach rare incarnate powers, and about 360 of them if I did. That's a lot of them, although running one a day would achieve that in about one year. That seems to be inconsistent with a circa 3 year estimate that is floating around out there, and running one ITF a day is actually a far lower activity level than the people who are running trials now are putting it.
One year of an ITF a day sounds like a lot of play, and it is. On the other hand, its not an astronomical level of effort, and its not entirely absurd considering that's the level of activity necessary to match the fact I got four rare drops in four days running trials, valuing those drops at their maximum value. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure others will have a different opinion of these same numbers. I tried to be as complete as possible so others could dissect them accordingly. Also, I think I got them accurate, although there's a ton of logs to analyze even with some automation assistance: there might be a miscount of a couple threads here or there, but nothing I think that has material impact.
Left as an exercise for the reader is how many thread-equivalents this post cost in opportunity-cost. -
Quote:I believe that there should be a balance between congruent options and reward/action associations axiomatically. On what basis would you propose Eva and I resolve that in a debate?Originally Posted by Ironik
A personal preference is precisely a debatable design question for a game.
That's not obviously true. This game focuses on Superheroes. Would it be better if it broadened that scope to include orcs, secret agents, and ballet instructors? The wider you go, the shallower you become as a matter of logical principle. The more you strive to be minimally objectionable, the less things you can actually be. To be more specific, the game could aim for a E for Everyone rating rather than a T for Teen rating. That would make it have a wider audience. But it loses options for some members of that audience. Those compromises always exist. The question is where you stand on those compromises, there is no option available that avoids more than half of them.Quote:No game can be all things to all players, but it should at least strive for being most things to most people.
There is some limited areas upon which this can be debated, but unlikely in an internet setting. If we were actually making a game, this debate would come down to practical compromises among members of the design team. However, in an open-ended setting, this is essentially arguing over favorite flavor of ice cream. There is no right decision here, although that's not to say there aren't many ways to pick a specific decision and then implement that specific decision wrongly.
If I were on a design team, I would assert my intention to actually design a game where a fundamental guiding principle was that a certain subset of player decisions have non-trivial consequences. A non-trivial consequence is a consequence not easily reproducible if one makes the contrary decision. That means not all results will be achievable by all possible combinations of decisions. That means not all possible options would be valid or exist. That's fundamental to what I think makes a good game. If it was my decision to make, that's the decision I would make. If it was not my decision to make and I was ordered to do it differently, I would; I would also be considering whether that was the place I wanted to work in the long term. Perhaps over time I would be convinced that approach was acceptable to me upon seeing it actualized. Perhaps not.
That dynamic does not exist between Eva and myself, so I do not see how this otherwise gets resolved through pure logical debate. Its a difference of opinion which can be expressed but I doubt can be resolved. I'm more than happy to *explain* the details of my opinion, which are not simple. And perhaps explaining that might convince some people my approach was preferable. But I'm conceding that is unlikely in the case of Eva, because she seems to have consistently expressed a strong contrary opinion. -
Quote:My impression is that you're axiomatically opposed to singular gating of any kind for almost any reason. That's more of a personal preference than a debatable design question.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Just for the record, I still don't like Notices being gated behind either the WST or a stupid number of Shards. But at this point it's like complaining about a hangnail when you have a broken leg.
-
Quote:Right now Astrals are basically free threads. I can imagine the devs adding essentially astral sinks which in effect put pressure on threads because astrals will be diverted to the New Stuff. I don't really consider that a nerf to their value either: if anything I consider that a buff to their value, which causes them to experience shortages rather then their current oversupply.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
However *Puts on Conspiracy Theory Hat* we might see an indirect nerf to the value of Astral and Empyrean Merits. According to the devs we will eventually be able to use them for things other eventually. Now there are two reasons for that not to be included at launch. The first is that the items in question are not yet in game (a plausible theory) but the alternative is that thy want to see the rates at which people earn Astral and Empryean Merits before setting a value to them *Removes on Conspiracy Theory Hat*.
-
Quote:I always expect to see a large nerf somewhere at some point. But could you be more specific? I seriously doubt the devs will reduce thread drop rates and they can't cut the drop table rewards since they are atomic (they can't award half an uncommon drop really). They could DR repetitive runs of the trials, but I doubt that's going to happen any time soon because as a practical matter the devs have to assume that run rates will drop over time anyway and make that matter moot. The reward rates have to be consistent with what the long-term running rate is likely to be, and a few months from now they will still want new level 50s to be able to earn these slots.Originally Posted by Futurias
Expect to see a large nerf at some point.
So, I could see them tweaking the actual difficulty of the trials upward a bit if we continue to steam roll them. I don't consider that a nerf: that's just normal balancing. -
Quote:No, but they con squirrelly: they always color-con one level higher than they actually are. Not sure why.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Question: Are the Rikti that come out of the Comm Officers' portals level-shifted? Because I could have sworn I saw purple minions....
The first time any player saw a level shifted anything was the Alpha slot level shift in beta. But I have a feeling the mechanic predates the Alpha slot (and all other slots) by some time.