Cobaltix

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Original Post edited to add "but not" - Tar Patch and Freezing Rain are classified as differently.

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So... what's "classified differently" mean?

Is it because Enervating Field is a toggle, while the rest are click powers?

What's makes Enervating Field the "beneficiary" of such love?

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My thoughts exactly.

Must be the Toggle nature of the power I'd guess.

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Does anyone know how this issue with burn slipped past everyone and onto Live? This power is super-borked.

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There was no "slipping past". Burn is now "working as intended".

Once I figure out a good respec, it will be gone from my "Fire" Tanker as well.

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Please add a functionality into the Badges that allows us to view the Souvenir text from an arrow just like Souvenirs.

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Or just have the TF contact give out the souvenir to anyone who has the badge.

- wf

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There are no more Souvenier's being awarded for TF's as of 3 months ago.

They are GONE TO THE AMERICANS!

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I really don't care about the Badge Positron. I care about the story. When you got rid of the story you pretty much killed my interest in doing the TF. I like going back and reading the Souvenior. It's nice to read the hard work somebody has put into that mission and it's a shame that you guys decided to kill it.

Besides that your gimp and I'll take you on anytime in the arena.


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/signed


Please add a functionality into the Badges that allows us to view the Souvenir text from an arrow just like Souvenirs.

The Story is important and should be available to those who do the content.

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As for assigning the badges to those with the souvenirs. That -might- (in the biggest sense of the word) be possible, but it will have to wait until some of the engineers get their heads up from City of Villains to take a look at this. Rest assured that I am looking into this option (which I know doesn't satisfy everyone).

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That would be great for the people who have souvenirs, but it would be really nice if those of us that couldn't get them were able to get the badges too.

Considering that the souvenirs were removed without advance notice to the players, and many of us expected to get them and didn't, would it be possible to reward the badge to those who recieved the souvenirs and then datamine only the last couple of months for those of us who were unable to get the souvenirs?

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He gave a concession here, this now falls under the "Pushing your Luck" category

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If you'd care to quote where Cuppa indicated that Souvenir's would be left alone, that would be helpful.

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Here ya go.

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Thanks for that. I do recall the thread now after looking at it.

Still, tomorrow makes that post 3 months old and there are plenty of changes that have occured from then to now.

I'd still like current clarification.

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1) A Souvenir that was awarded for a SS TF represents an easily identifiable marker that can be used to award the subsequent Badge. Is there a reason that a script cannot be written to auto award the SS TF based on the presence of of the requisite Souvenir?

They still have to actually find the souvenir which is basically about what the datamine would have to do in the first place. So no this isn't actually a solution that is feasible


2) Are the TF Souvenir's being removed from the game with I5?

I believe CuppaJo said that any souvenirs you had would not be touched. If they aren't willing to look for them to give you something based on them why would they want to dig through everything to remove them?

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I appreciate your reply but I would prefer for Positron to make a pass at answering.

Much of what I posted was from a long unanswered PM to him.

If you'd care to quote where Cuppa indicated that Souvenir's would be left alone, that would be helpful.

Also, my mention of the SS TF Souvenirs isn't a call for them to Datamine, I suspect that very few people have them actually. I would request that those with a SS TF Souvenir be able to petition for the Badge when I5 goes live. The blanket "Do not petition CS for Badges in I5" is heavy handed in light of the existence of SS TF Souvenirs. It's too black and white. If you have a Souvenir and choose to petition for the badge based on having it, I believe they should award it.
It is feasible to get a badge through petition, I've done it more than a few times.

You still aren't addressing the Souvenir concerns.

1) A Souvenir that was awarded for a SS TF represents an easily identifiable marker that can be used to award the subsequent Badge. Is there a reason that a script cannot be written to auto award the SS TF based on the presence of of the requisite Souvenir?

2) Are the TF Souvenir's being removed from the game with I5? Many of us that like the Souvenir's do so for the storyline content that is fluid and as such will change over time. Much like the Calvin Scott TF that advanced part of the storyline along, the Soul Orb Souvenir is the only recorded in game marker of that turn of events. If these Souvenir's are being removed, a Badge needs to be created to replace it. A Badge that contains the storyline text in some sort of drop down menu that the Souvenir's do would be ideal.

3) Are we now saying that having an in game record of the storyline changes and events ( a la Souvenirs) was not intended to exist? Are there no concerns about there being no history of the storyline as it evolves aside from what can be found on the website and Gil's articles?



Please, Please, Please preserve the Storyline changes in some format. This is our link to storyline immersion and without it, the game loses more than a bit of it's lustre.

Thanks.

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I have looked up Accolades, and all of them combined will probably effect your gameplay slightly moreso than a badge. That is, not much at all. Unless you wanna tell me that having 15% more HP will let you survive that fight that you couldn't before. Or that extra 10 endurance will let you fire off one last attack that allows you to kill that AV that you never could before. Or those powers that you can use once every 25 minutes will let you bump your difficulty up to Invincible, which was heretofore impossible. Or that having all of them will let you do anything you couldn't do before with any sort of greater success. If you feel like telling me that, then you better have an actual example to back it up.

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All of that and you still don't know what Zookeeper is for.

It's arguably one of the best ways to keep yourself alive in the late game.

Once again, as before, I'm up against you and your monkeyboy Foo007.

All I ever see you two post is hate for people on the boards just to spite. I don't even know why you are interested in this game. All you ever do is [censored] on people and their feedback to the Development Team like you're god on high and the rest of us are beneath you.

Why don't you [censored] off already.

If nothing in this game is worth anything, why are you even here?

Why do you hang around this place?

Why are you such an arsewhole?

Why do you care that the rest of us like to collect badges and have a bone to pick about the way they're implmented with the Dev Team?

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Well the Monkey Badge is for an accolade. So to get the accolade power to help make the game that much more enjoyable, some people have to do things that they don't necessarily want to, like kill 10 K monkeys. It was doing something in the short term that was enjoyable so that something in the long term would be more enjoyable. It's one of those "grin and bear it" type things.

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Such a nice attempt to rationalize. Sadly, I don't believe it will work.

See, either Galactiman is a smart guy playing dumb to rile people or he really is an idiot. Either way, there is no reasoning with him.

Look up Accolades Galctiman and you will understand why people collect certain Badges

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Thanks for telling me what I already know.

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Sorry, I meant to be helpful. When you said "Personally, I don't see the reasoning behind it." I thought that meant that you didn't know the reasoning behind it.

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No worries and personally I don't. Are there really that many active players with SS TF Souvenirs?

I find it hard to believe.

I also don't understand why they are unwilling to make this simple concession on a QoL issue to appease an already frustrated fanbase.

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Per a PM reply from Cuppa, there is a blanket policy in place instructing GM's to not award ANY Badges by Petition after I5 goes live. This includes those who have a Souvenir for a SS TF.

Personally, I don't see the reasoning behind it.

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The reason for this is to prevent the GM's from being swamped by requests to add the badges. They'll be plenty busy handling all the I5 bugs that make it over to live when the issue is released.

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Thanks for telling me what I already know. My full post outlines the concern for Manually awarding the Badges. They need to work smarter not harder.

Bottom line :

They should be writing a script to auto award if you posses the Souvenir.

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I don't get you people. If the only reason you are spending 12+ hours of your life doing something that you don't find entertaining in the least is to have a silly little icon show up in your toon info that might, on occasion, impress some noob, but that most people will not give a flip about, then you have greater problems than can be solved with datamining. I don't care what kind of honking great "badge" you get at the end of something, if it's not fun, don't do it. If it's fun, then you shouldn't mind doing it again. If you are saying "well it was fun the first time, but it would be boring to do again," then nah, it wasn't as fun as you say it was.

NOBODY CARES HOW MANY BADGES YOU HAVE AND YOU DON'T NEED A BADGE TO KNOW THAT YOU DID SOMETHING!!! Sheesh, you people whine about everything around here.

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You've missed the point entirely.

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That's his M.O.

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What if you have proof of your deserving of said badge, like a souvenir? As I have two from two of the SS TFs, would I be able to contact a GM, have those in my souvenir list and be rewarded with the badge because I have irresputable proof of doing the two TFs?

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Yeah, this is totally screwed now.

Per a PM reply from Cuppa, there is a blanket policy in place instructing GM's to not award ANY Badges by Petition after I5 goes live. This includes those who have a Souvenir for a SS TF.

Personally, I don't see the reasoning behind it. If you have the proof, in Souvenir format, they should award the Badge.

For whatever reason they're gonna roll out, they simply aren't doing it.

Poor form in my opinion, poor form.




Also, Positron, if you're still reading this, I never heard back from you on the issue of Souvenir Removal in I5.

I'd love to hear a concrete answer on that. Are you or are you not removing Souvenir's that have already been awarded in the game for Task Forces?

The subsequent request if you are removing them is to add a Badge for the Calvin Scott TF.

I can already see that answer but would love to see you post and give some reasoning.

Thanks.



EDIT: A subsequent reply from Cuppa indicates that she will push for the Devs to write a script that will check for the Souvenir and award the Badge if the result = True.

I hope that they decide to go this route. The issue seems to be one of manual awarding. Automated awarding would seem to be a logical choice here and I would question why things are being done the hard way instead of the smart way.

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I'll pop in here so you guys have a new target.

The original Task Force Datamine took 3 months to finish. That was to go over 2 months worth of data.

We now have 18 months worth of data. We looked for a more effecient solution, but our estimates still come out at 2 years to datamine and get you your badges.

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Why can't you award the badge to those who have the Souvenir?

It should be an auto award upon loading up I5.

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You can read the story during a task force (or anyone's mission) by clicking on the i button next to the mission on the missions drop down.

Enjoy.

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I wish they would make a note of this somewhere. This lack of knowledge is astounding to me due to how prolific it is.

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Well, this one makes the "Lame List" as well. I suppose it's good there was never a Souvenir for the Shard TF's otherwise they'd be forced to datamine.


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They did have souvenirs for the Shadow Shard task forces. Unfortunately, they stopped awarding them about two months ago without providing any advance notice to the players.

So that means that those of us that completed them in the last two months are basically screwed. We get no reward whatsoever unless we choose to redo all 30 hours of our work.

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All Souvenirs have been removoed from all TFs. If you petition for one you get a support e-mail that points you to a thread here on the forums. It is not an official thread announcing the change, just a thread where someone pointed out the issue and CuppaJo happened to respond to it. It is simply the worst customer service interaction I have ever run into online. Not everyone in game reads the forums so they should not be a method of announcing things like that, but even if they are used in that way an official thread should be used. A GM should never e-mail me a link to a player created thread.

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Yes, this is all well known and documented. What I didn't know was that there were Souvenirs for the Shard TF's up till a couple of months ago.

Now, is Cuppa really telling us that those with Souvenirs for the Shard TF's can't petition for the Badge and have it awarded?


If that is the case then this situation just got 16 times more [censored] than it was before.



Bottom line :

If you have a Souvenir, you get a newly created Badge.

If this isn't true, something is seriously wrong over at Cryptic.

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Clarification - Monsters in TF's do not count towards the badges for those monsters (Adamastor or Jurrassic for ex). It has been this way for some time.

Also - after much pushing and shoving - we were told that there will NOT be data mining for TF badges. So if you did a TF before I5 - when I5 goes live you will not get a badge for it auto-magically.

I know - it stinks - I'm sorry about that.

**edited to read correctly - note on top of all that - Babbage that is in the TF will give you the badge - IF your group does the most damage to it - if someone helps you defeat Babbage - you may not get it if your team does not do the majority of the damage**

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Well, this one makes the "Lame List" as well. I suppose it's good there was never a Souvenir for the Shard TF's otherwise they'd be forced to datamine.

All I can say is I'm glad I've held off on those TF's for as long as I have.

Seriously though, 12 hours for the Quarterfield TF and no Badge Love?

Man, there really must be an economy of staff over at Cryptic these days. Why not just assign the job to an intern and be done with it?

The only conclusion is that they simply don't want to spend the time on it which is rather sad.

SWEET!

GameStop here I come!

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Please datamine all the other TFs, particularly Calvin Scott which can't be redone.


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There is no badge for Calvin Scott.

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But doesn't mean there should be one

I say it needs one!

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Agreed.

One thing I would like clarification on Positron, if there are to be no more Souvenirs awarded in the game, are the current ones going to be removed? If so, I would strongly urge you to protect the storyline change that is documented by the Soul Orb that many of us received from doing the Calvin Scott TF.

If you plan to delete the Souvenirs, I would request that a Badge be made for the CS TF that includes the text of the Souvenir.

Preserving the changes to the Storyline are one of the key reasons that many of the players like having the Souvenirs, not for the Souvenir itself but for the story it contains.

Please consider changing Badges to have a drop down arrow that includes the text of the Souvenir. This way, with the removal of the Souvenirs, we can still keep the excellent storylines and their subsequent changes as they would be attached to the Badge.

Thanks for your consideration.

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Wanted to explain the reasons for changing Burn...

It became apparent that Burn was the trump power...with it, a Tanker needed to do nothing else. He could lay down a Burn patch and Taunt foes in and out of it. The damage was so great that the Burn patch itself would do the defeating; the Tanker only needed to hit Taunt.

The question has come up - "what's the point of Burn now?" Well, it still offers Immobilization defense (we're actually going to increase that duration). And Burn does do a lot of damage. Taunt alone might not bring mobs into Burn continually, but stunning, holding, immobilizing mobs in Burn is just plain devastating.

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I need to take issue with one item here States, and that is the effect of Stunning/Disorienting a mob and the behavior of that mob under the effects of Stun/Disorient.

While testing my L32 Fire/EM Tanker in Croatoa, even playing as is on Live, when I Stun/Disorient an opponent with one of my melee attacks, the mob will wander away from me at a pace that is faster than any Player Character will be able to move under a similar effect.

Now, apply Burn and guess what happens? They actually move away faster! Guess what else they can do? Fly or Jump away at such a rate! This is simply not right and indicated to me that even when a mob is Stunned/Disoriented, they can react to the Fear Effect of Burn. Perhaps this is intended but if it is then it certainly is no sort of equalizer for the Solo Fire/EM Tanker.

Please take a look into this to see if the movement rate of a Stunned/Disoriented mob is where it should be.

Now, I have a suggestion for how you could fix Burn.

Start from this position : Scrap the power as we know it.

Next, decide to have it still provide the Immobilization Protection it currently has in it. Then, add an Immobilization Effect to it that conforms to your new AoE rules. Leave the Fear in place (this way, mobs not Immobilized will run) but those that are held will still attack in melee or ranged if need be. Now, determine how much damage you want it to do.

Voila. Fixed. Now, we can still Tank, hold Aggro and still fulfill our role as slightly damage dealing Tanker. Sure, we seem slightly controller-ish but then again, that's what a Fire/Ice Tank is already.

Give it some thought. Thanks for your efforts.

Meh.

That's how I feel as a Blaster as my highest level toon.

It was fun for the first ten levels of a new toon but on a Level 42, not really all that helpful.

Maybe something different or altered? I like the idea of the new power Bar filling up from damage taken from 100% Health or possibly filling up as events go on. Sorta like a power up bar that builds as you Nova a crowd or some such. Each time you One Shot a Minion or Disorient a Boss. Then, when full, you can drop a massive boost for a minute or two like minor Regen or some other in game boost. Hell, it could even be random.


All I know is, it's only 'meh' as it is right now.

Ok, I finally decided to test my Fire/EM Tanker on Test to see the changes for myself. Here's the basics (I'm not going into hard numbers, just my slotting and impressions) :

Nova Red L32 Fire/EM Tanker

Defenses :
Fire Shield 6 Slotted w/L35 Dam Res SO's
Plasma Shield 4 Slotted w/L35 Dam Res SO's
Combat Jumping 1 Slot w/L35 Def Buff SO
Acrobatics 1 Slot w/L35 End Redux SO
Tough 1 Slot w/L35 Dam Res SO

Attacks :
Burn 6 Slotted w/L35 Dam SO's
Barrage 4 Slotted w/L35 SO's (1 ACC, 3 DAM)
Energy Punch 4 Slotted w/L35 SO's (1 ACC, 3 DAM)
Bone Smasher 1 Slotted w/L35 SO (1 ACC)
Punch (Fighting Line) 1 Slotted w/L35 SO (1 ACC)

Other factors :
Stamina 6 Slotted w/L35 End Recovery SO's
Build Up 3 Slotted w/L35 Recharges
Healing Flames 5 Slotted w/L35 SO's (3 Heal, 2 Recharge)
Consume 3 Slotted w/L35 SO's (1 ACC, 1 Recharge, 1 End Rec)


So, what I realized while fighting Levels 30-34 in Croatoa is that I had to rely on Consume much more than before. Running the same 5 toggles I have been just doesn't cut it even with Stamina 6 slotted with +++ SO's.

An interesting thing to note was that I was never in any real danger until the size of the mobs at +2 (L34) increased beyond a few minions and a LT or two.

Even Con Bosses take a long time to kill, even using Burn to get some ticks. Just for fun I jumped into a fight with 6 even Con (L32) Boss Witches. Never had a chance but I bailed before I went down. Man do they drain the END quick!

So, Bosses kinda feel like they did in I3 but they don't hurt as much as they did when the initial changes were implemented then subsequently rolled back.

Finally, Burn ....

Well, what can I say. It sucks for sure but the power isn't completely useless. I will say that my planned Respec does include Hasten which I have previously not needed in my build. The Recharge time increase really does hurt in conjunction with super fear effect. One interesting thing to note though, while Taunt does not overcome the fear, foes who were primarily Melee would re-enter the Burn patch and leave again repeatedly over the course of a fight.

Damage seemed to be the same to me. Perhaps the mobs I fought were vulnerable to Fire? Or maybe the L35 SO's which are brand new to a L32 Tanker make the difference.

Either way, Even Con were taking 10-11 points per tick and I was getting anywhere from 5-10 of those based on the mob.

Fighting Cabal sucks as a Fire Tanker though. Unless you use terrain to bring them out of the sky, they will fight from up there until you take them out individually.

So, all in all, while it does suck somewhat, I'm still on the fence about respecing out of Burn. I sure could use those slots elsewhere for End Reduction/6 Slotting my Secondary attacks but the added boost in damage, although situational, does help still.


One last [censored] about my test session :

Half the fun of being an EM Tanker is the Stun/Disorient effects that the attacks reproduce. What I don't think is realistic is the rate of movement, especially flying, that occurs to a Stunned/Disoriented mob. It just isn't right that they can fly away effectively after I've smacked them good. When I get stunned, I can't do anything but walk slowly away.

I'd love to see a change to the Mob AI in this regard.

Well, that's all I've got. Sorry it isn't as scathing or scientific as most of the other posts in this thread.

People really will complain about the silliest things ...

Sweet.

Talk about perma suppression of movement Powers!