Captiosus

I don't know where this rumor originated, but I can tell you that it's been running rampant in global channels, including help, on three of the servers I play on - Virtue, Victory and Guardian. It's come up several times a day on each. I chalk it up to people who dislike farmers.

That said, I still think forcing free premiums to go all the way to reward level 4 for tickets is a bit too much. I understand they need to set up tiers for things to provide ample reward for playing and paying but my current, biggest, fear about the state of the game as it goes F2P is that the economy, not power leveling, is what will drive interested people away.

A case-in-point: I finally got two good RL friends to start playing two months ago. While they enjoyed the mechanics of the game, once they got past the initial learning curve (one had never played an MMO before in their life), they were both appalled when it came to trying to earn money. One of them ultimately quit over it, even though I expressed the invention/salvage system was completely optional.

For legitimately new players, the economy of the game is going to be a gigantic OMG WTF factor. AE tickets are a great form of alternate currency and could lessen that factor and keep people playing, because if f2p players bail, that's 0% chance they'll ever, at any point, convert to a paying member.

What I'd do, if I had any say in the matter, would be to make tickets available at reward level 1 but make the special ticket salvage cap 25% its current amount and limit what can be purchased with them at the ticket vendor to enhancements only. Then at reward level 4, make it 100% cap and completely unrestricted sales.

Thanks for this.

I've been an off again, on again player since launch and am coming back off of a year and a half hiatus (damn you, real life!). I resubbed over the last weekend and have been astonished at just how barren the world is, even at peak hours. I can only imagine what a genuinely new player would think if they logged in and saw no one else, saw little to no chat, and didn't know about these channels.

I knew about Victory Badges from before, but I would have never known about the rest of these channels if it weren't for this thread.

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More importantly, it encouraged people to create MA "farm missions" that would clog up the search window list and create "5 star cartels" in order to farm the badges. The search options in the MA suck enough as it is, there's no need to encourage people to game it.

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This change isn't going to stop people making crappy 1 or 2 arc MA farms or pushing 5-star cartels. They'll still do it for tickets (even with the 1500 cap), or XP/INF, or in the vain hopes of getting a DC tag. In short, even without this, there's going to be a lot of useless trash on MA.

Additionally, half of the badges on the list are from test mode. None of those 'clogged up' MA because they were hosted on people's local machines and provided no rewards other than badges.

Synapse said:
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This is because they encouraged farming, because they encouraged aberrant behavior by doing one thing over and over again, they were unobtainable by a large portion of our players, or earning them was completely out of a player’s hands and in the hands of other players.

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The devs, themselves, encourage farming (and possibly even aberrant behavior, as defined by Synapse) through a lot of the badges they've put in. Badges such as Illusionist, Unveiler, Protectorate all encourage farming and people padding groups for mob spawns, resetting missions, et cetera. A lot of people don't have these badges because they're equally as difficult to obtain. Yet, they're not removing or changing them.

The only part of Synapse's post with which I agree is removing badges dependent on other player feedback. That was bad design from the start.

Sigh..

Goodbye Asa Nasmaru the Obliterator. That title worked so well with her background, too.

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I just love how they have basically said "Well, these NEW badges that encourage farming are bad, but... those earlier ones? Yeah, they can stay."

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So true. Badges which require grinding are still in the game. Why is this any different? Illusionist and the Fake Nem badges are some serious grindfests - there just aren't enough of them readily available without getting in a group to cause them to spawn en masse.

Those are OK, but MA "grindy" ones aren't?

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i'd say this is at least as big a factor as not having Stamina. Even with stamina it's easy to frequently run out of end if you don't slot any endurance reduction in your attacks. i almost always slot end reducers and take Fitness, but pre-20 to 24 end reducers do a lot more for staying in the fight.

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Pre-24, I agree completely, though, to be honest, I've never slotted endredux pre-24 on any of my characters and felt I was doing fine. Perhaps slower than others, but I always got to 24 fairly quickly in my eyes.

After stamina and some slots though, it really depends on who you group with or how you play. If you play solo, I could see where endredux + stamina would be a big help, but if you group and get endurance buffs, imo, the endredux would be wasted.

My main since the date I started playing (whatever the reg date is here) has been an nrg/nrg blaster. No endredux at 50. In groups I find I never have an issue with endurance when buffs are running.

I'm not saying I believe in the theory of "I just want to blow stuff up", but, to me, it feels like having mostly accuracy and damage ultimately means more efficient endurance use because mobs don't require multiple casts.

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I run the ShiftedNight Villain Group on Victory. We have a fully stocked base (which is being newly redesigned) and a strong set of coaltions. I am in charge of the bi-weekly Rikti Ship Raids, and we're very active in SF's, MA arcs and other activities. Feel free to look me up in game if you're interested!

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I'll try to look you up later today, Valdy.

I haven't done a lot red side, but I have a 50 stalker (SpazRat) and my latest Dominator project (Asa Nasmaru) who are in dire need of a VG.

This thread makes it even more unlikely that my nrg/nrg blaster will change his badge title away from Master of Olympus.

I've been sporting that title on my original blaster since badges went live - I rarely see people on Victory with it, I always get asked where it comes from. People avoided Malta then and they still avoid Malta.

Posts like this just reaffirm why I keep that badge title up, and probably will forever.

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MA simultaneously showcases the potential of COX while at the same time exposing its relatively shallow mission system. No matter how great a story you weave into an MA arc...your limitations are still the same as the content we've gotten so far. You can't really create new and interesting aspects of gameplay.

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...yet.

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'Yet'?

Slashman is right in both the above quoted text and the post directly above this one. The only way they can address the limitations of MA is to completely overhaul the base game design.

Let's be honest, we have a grand total of 5 types of missions: Kill All, Kill Boss, Recover Object, Destroy Object, Kidnap/Rescue. That's it. You can rearrange these 5 types within an arc as much as you like, but, at the end of the day, that's all you have.

Wouldn't it be nice to have missions where you have to actually do more detailed things? Solve puzzles, for example. Or rely on powers like stealth to have a team member stealth through an area to have to complete an objective for you?

However, to allow more types of missions and more diverse sub-missions like these would require getting all the way down to the core of the game.

I can understand why they haven't done this as of yet, but the first glimmer of hope that the core gameplay may change is with Going Rogue, and we have no idea when that may actually come out.

MA is a fun toy, but when all is said and done, the only thing that makes it stand out is when someone creates a great, engrossing story.. because despite the story, the missions are still nothing but Kill All, Kill Boss, Collect Object, Destroy Object, Kidnap/Rescue.

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Software sales fell 23 percent, while sales of consoles and handheld players dropped 8 percent.

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The above line is a great example of number manipulation.

NPD should never combine the sales of handhelds and consoles, as they're two completely different hardware areas. Consoles and handhelds only saw a combined 8% drop... That couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Nintendo released the DSi over the last year, could it?

If you look at NPDs numbers, regularly reported on sites like Kotaku as the numbers come out, and just look at month-to-month console sales, excluding handhelds, the sales of those have dipped considerably more than 8%.

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Because so far the 'anecdotal' evidence is that it's expanding.

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LOL What?

I remember when even Victory was a 3-yellow blip, "Medium Load" server on the select screen during peak hours (2005-2006). I haven't seen it go above 1-blip on the select screen in over a year and a half, even during the free weekends.

My anecdotal evidence clearly shows the game has contracted and continues to contract, disputing your anecdotal evidence.

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See what I did there?
See why presenting facts is a good thing?

If the OP didn't present facts, you can turn around and present logic supported by official facts, completely shutting down his thread for good. If you argue back with your own anecdotal evidence, you're feeding trolls and allowing them the opportunity to fight back with a "nuh-uh" or "no u" defense (like the one above).

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The mass of the playerbase have voted with their dollars, and this game is just as profitable as ever, if not more, than it was five years ago.

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The bold part is an outright fallacy.

The subscriber base dropped off not long after CoV and then leveled out thereafter. The only time there's a noticable population spike is during free weekends.

Since the subscription itself is still 14.99 a month and there's less people playing now that there were five years ago (before there was the 500 pound gorilla in the room named Warcraft) and since the retail game client, itself, has dropped to sub-$20, the game is nowhere near "as profitable as", let alone "more profitable than", 5 years ago.

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Something like base speed 56.9, max speed 94.5? At that point, it maxxes out at unenhanced SS, it's still slower than everything else, and it should only take two slots to cap speed (though it needs the full benefit from both to cap, whereas SS and SJ only need 43% and 56% total enhancement).

Follow with a simple tweak to hover -- hover no longer debuffs your base flight speed (meaning you would fly at the same speed as your unenhanced run speed, as base run and base fly speeds are identical). That way, Hover is not the only "travel power" that actually makes you slower.

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Why should fly be "slower than everything else"? Because you can just fly in a straight line unobstructed? That's the same logic Blizzard used when making their first flying mount in WoW's expansion slower than the cheaper epic ground mount; I disagreed with it there and I disagree with the premise here.

First of all, I don't meet many people who don't take both SS and SJ. When you put the two together, you have just as much "straight line" manuverability as fly. Even if there's a building you can't jump straight over, you can run around it. There's literally no obstacle that slows you down going "as the crow flies" from one point to the other unless you're just not paying attention.

Secondly, flight, as a power pool, pales in comparison to both Speed and Leaping. Speed gives Hasten and Acrobatics, Leaping gives Combat Jumping.. Flight gives Hover's anti-knockback and.. uh.. a very situational group fly.

To summarize, SS and SJ are superior travel powers, speed wise, and both pools provide excellent synergy with other powers whereas Fly is slower and the pool provides little to no synergy with other powers. Doesn't this strike anyone else as being just, well, wrong?