Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Eiko-chan

We're more common than you'd think. Global channels are a god-send for us.

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

Yes, this would be nice. It would also be nice to be able to hide anything that uses Extreme critters. Or pick tags to exclude, such as "challenging," if that's what you're most definitely not looking for.

A big part of the reason so many missions have orange warnings is that the warnings don't differentiate between enemies and friendlies. So let's say someone uses an MA trick to have an invisible ally show up, deliver some dialogue, and take off. The arc will have an "enemies with custom power selections" warning on it, even if you never fight a custom critter.

Originally Posted by Triplash

Inf sinks aren't about removing it from any one character, but removing it from the game entirely. Such as the 10% fee at the market or the ability to buy prestige. The reason it's seen as necessary is because it's so easy to create inf in this game, particularly if your build can defeat enemies at a fast pace.

The sheer amounts of inf floating around out there are causing prices of certain items in the market to go nuts. Rare, highly sought after items increase in price until most people can't afford them through their normal play methods. Common, frequently used things like particular salvage and recipes increase in price as well, sometimes drastically. In that case it's because people who have wagonloads of inf get bored waiting around for their bids to fill at reasonable prices, so they overbid in an attempt to get it immediately. They can afford it, after all. These things cause folks who play "the casual way" to get frustrated, since from what they can see, prices on even the most common items in the game are seriously out of whack.

When you buy things on the market, 90% of that inf stays in the game and just shifts from one character to another. Worse, when high-ticket items sell off-market for prices above the inf cap, that inf has no market fee deducted. So that's 10% of 2-5 billion that doesn't get destroyed.

In essence, as long as people have "extra" money to throw at getting what they want, prices are going to go up. Players who don't have that kind of money get frustrated and develop a poor opinion of the game. That not only causes those players to stop playing, but it spreads negative word of mouth about an otherwise great game. Pretty lose-lose in the big picture.

Originally Posted by Charcoal_EU

The difference between an exploit and a valid strategy is developer intent. It is not whether I or you or the forums as a collective think "this is OK". It is not about having more or less choices.

Please note:
1. While the developers do state their intent sometimes they do not state it all the time, regarding everything. Nor are they required to.
2. The developers can and do change their intent, sometimes after they have stated it.
3. We can make suggestions/arguments to influence their intent regarding some/any part of the game. But the final decision is theirs.

I do wish the developers would explicitly state whether this change to Trapdoor was a case of "we fixed an exploit that was making it too easy" or "at first we thought pulling him was OK, but then we changed our minds".

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

I see a lot of people complaining about customs being too hard because the author wanted to make a "challenge" arc for their purpled-out Scrapper. I really doubt this is the case with the majority of these arcs. I think most of these groups are due to things like "Darkity dark dark enemies are COOL! I'm gonna give Dark powers to everyone!" or "my author self-insert AV is going to have all the powers my character does" or just plain player-killer GMing. Face it guys, the majority of the playerbase doesn't have a purpled-out Scrapper.

When you rate an arc you have the option of selecting tags. Does this do anything? Maybe it would help if you had both author-selected tags and player-selected tags visible. That way, if players tag the arc "challenging" and the author did not, it's a pretty good bet that the arc is simply poorly designed and will kill you.

Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim

Well as others have said, it could have been regarded as an exploit (if we're talking about the same thing here). That's why it doesn't bother me. Plus I'm (apparently) in the minority of players who didn't need to use the tactic that was removed and just smashed the task to begin with.

Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim

He certainly could have said it differently.

Originally Posted by Megajoule

I wasn't there, but if I had been, this would have been the content of my whining:
I want story. If you just roll out a new upgrade system with no new content, no new story behind it, just tacking it on to the same TFs we're already running, then it's just... meh. You've added a new set of purples, no more.

Ideally, I'd want multiple new paths, just as you say. But that takes time. And it's unfortunate that the new feature wasn't entirely ready (and some may say it still isn't), and had to be held back for them to add some context for it. But without that context, it IMO looks like lazy or half-baked development.

Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim

My other trolling thread aside (and mind you, the only trolling thread I've EVER made as I was having a good weekend and was quite cocky at the time of posting) where did I tell someone they were doing it wrong? I applauded the OP and watched people react unfavorably to a very reasonable post. Hell, a few replies have boiled down to "No, don't tell me what to do even if you're being polite."

:/

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

Somehow, I don't think it is intended for people with 45 level 50 characters to make every single one of them an Incarnate.

As far as I can tell, I'm doing it more or less the way they had in mind when they created the system. I think about which characters I want to be Incarnates, and how far I want them to go on that path. A few of them will be going the full path, most of the rest of them will be stopping at the Alpha slot. A couple others may be going a couple steps farther than the Alpha, but I'm not sure yet because we don't know what the rest of the Incarnate slots are yet.

I don't see it as being much different than Accolades really. If you want those accolades, you have to run a specific mission, or kill a certain number of semi-rare enemies. To get one accolade, you are forced to run 6 TFs. Doing any of those things will get old when you do it over and over again, what makes you think the Incarnate arc will be any different?

Another thing: It is very likely we are going to have to run something else to unlock the rest of the slots. Besides, end game content is nothing more than a time-sink, pretty much by definition, why is it so surprising that it is time consuming to do?

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

Show me one other thing in the game that actually makes you more powerful simply for running a single arc and then playing the game fairly normally. Everything else gives you reward merits, and as I said, reward merits in and of themselves do not make you more powerful.

This particular arc unlocks the ability to gain the Alpha slot, which does indeed do more to make you more powerful than any other single story arc in the game. It should be more difficult than other content to reflect that.

Personally, and I'm probably an extreme minority in this, I'd rather NONE of the missions in that arc be auto-completable. Am I going to stand on my soapbox and complain about it until they do it? No, not even a little. They allowed most of the missions in the arc to be auto-completed, and I see no reason why they should change it after the fact, but if they had not allowed it, I wouldn't be complaining either.

I really don't get why people are complaining that end game content is too hard for them to do alone. End game content is generally defined as: Something for max level characters to do that is usually more difficult or challenging than content that comes before it. How many other games have end game content that is even soloable at all? I can't speak from experience, but I'd wager a guess that the answer is "not too damn many".

I say, be glad that the devs even gave us the option to solo it, and auto-complete missions if need be. They could have taken a page from other games' playbooks and made the end game content a massive raid that you have to have all the best gear to complete, but that raid is where you get the best gear in the first place. (I think we know which game I'm referring to here)

Originally Posted by CrazyJerseyan

Whether it's in game or real life, as long as it doesn't impact me much I don't take anything away from people that want to complain about content...you have the right to do so.

I just see things a little differently b/c more times than not, I'm overseas and not able to play as much as I'd like to. I can't remember the last time I found anything I wanted to complain about in CoX b/c I'm usually just thrilled to play.

I hope the devs give you the options you are looking for man.

Originally Posted by Rosen_ice

My main problem... is it isn't really part of the game.

It is like playing a game inside of a game. It doesn't feel like you are actually saving the world or anything else, it is just a bunch of content removed from the "real city" as much as the devs possibly could.

That, and finding decent content to play is hard. There is so much clutter...

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

Ok, everyone who avoids AE because you get tickets rather than random drops...you do realize that unless you're 50, tickets can be way more profitable than regular drops right? For one thing, the roll results are weighted, so you get fewer immobilize recipes and more recipes people might actually want to buy. For another, you can save them up and roll at the levels where stuff tends to sell for more. And if you roll in a lower level bracket, you can get desirable lower-level recipes. Where do you think all those Steadfasts and Regenerative Tissues come from?

Yes, the search sucks, the ratings system sucks, it's hard to find good stuff among the dreck, there are too many farms and outdated arcs, most people have no clue how to design custom critters but insist on filling missions with them anyway, people are still allowed to make custom critters with a level range of 1-54 which makes the "my level" search useless, the available tags are limited, the XP isn't as good as in regular missions, it's full of plot holes and spelling errors....but tickets are awesome.

What keeps me away from AE arcs is the new shiny right now, and the fact that I've played so many of them that finding something good that I haven't played is becoming harder and harder. I can't remember the last time I found a decent arc through the in-game search. I find most of what I play through the forums.

Originally Posted by Katie V

So pull him into the lava. That cancels two Bifucations' worth of regen, and should give you enough time to beat him down on anything.

Originally Posted by Dark_Respite

This then raises in my mind a question for everyone who decries the arcs with lousy writing...

... if there were arcs that were well-written, with an engaging story, well-designed enemies, a good and varied use of maps, etc., but that occasionally might be lighter on XP (the way FedEx missions can be sometimes), would you still play them?

For example... a 5-mission arc. Mission 1: solid middle-of-the-road mish for difficulty (mid-sized map, not a DA). Mission 2: a small map, empty save for a boss and his minions beat the snot out of him for (imagine sneaking into the hideout of Jimmy the Fish). Mission 3: large map, a couple glowies, an ambush or two, still not a DA (Jimmy's been messing with something impressive... time to take it away). Mission 4: mid-sized map, rescue some poor schmuck, ambush and a boss (Joey the Squirrel, responsible for abducting the schmuck in the first place). Mission 5: whole hog, mid-sized map DA to impress upon said faction that the good guys will win and they'll remember that fact each time it rains.

A couple of these missions would be a bit light on XP. But if the arc were really well done, the maps not overused, and some good original designs with well balanced powers, would you still play it?

I would.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Originally Posted by seebs

This kind of "balance" made no sense in 1st edition AD&D, and it makes no sense now.

Originally Posted by Turgenev

This.

And, people, there are 10 more days of chances. If you don't get it at first, try again. They're freebies.

People ask why they don't just do X, Y or Z method for giving them out, instead of what they're doing with the social engines. The answer? They're finding out which one nets them the fastest response, so they know where to put their energies for 2011. It also drums up activity on the social sites. This benefits NCSoft as much as it benefits you.

Originally Posted by Bubbawheat

That is one of the most infuriating things I've seen that shows that the sorting function wholeheartedly stinks. How in the world can an arc go from 925 plays and 5 stars, the very first arc (non DC/GA/HoF) and after probably 1-2 votes get knocked down to page 21 for 4-star rated arcs? That makes no sense whatsoever!

And I just realized that the default sort order for all arcs goes like this:

Guest Author
Dev Choice
Hall of Fame
5-star arcs
unplayed arcs
1-star arcs
2-star arcs
3-star arcs
4 star arcs

Really? Really? I mean, really?