Conspiracy_R_Us

Copy

Paste

Thank you Culex for spending the time to compile and organize this information, and then posting it for us. This is great information that will always be useful.

I must admit the mission thing is pretty cool, and we do have a good community here so we might get some good stuff. It just needs to be an elaborate and sophisticated system that can do everything we need it to do, and it needs to not be heavily censored.

If the adventure building community here attains 1/10th the creativity of the original NWN community, it will be amazingly awesome. But I don't think the tools the devs are giving us will allow that to happen. We'll see though.

It's obvious that these mission rewards would arrive extremely nerfed, as it should be.

Captain America rip offs, here we come! Even if you include energy shields there's only a tiny handful of heroes that use them especially as their signature powers.

Think of the hundreds of comic book heroes that use pistols. Also, pistols have been talked about for longer and more heatedly than shields have seriously been talked about, IMO.

For me, the only thing I really wanted in i13 was Pistols and it's not there. I would have taken a Battle Axe scrapper as a substitue (sue me, so I want another lethal weapon set for scrappers), but even Proliferation is not on the list.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Any chance those tokens will be awarded retroactively? And do they apply towards Ouroboros missions?

[/ QUOTE ]
How would they award them retrospectively when, like Posi said, you have to pick them to the exclusion of other awards which you've already received for those task you've already done?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh I forgot about the tokens, this is probably the best thing about this issue. But all it is, is giving the players something we have asked for since IOs came out.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Okay, this day job thing? Isn't that basically rewarding us for NOT playing the game?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well nobody can play 24/7 so what's the big deal? You aren't getting anything for when you can't play now so there's no way on earth this can be seen as anything but a positive. *shrugs*

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is the announcement clearly says that the Day Job system will provide real, tangible, in-game benefits. How good an idea is it, really, if in order to complete a tough mission it's recommended to first log off and get the Regen boost for Caregiving before attempting it? Or if one of the accolades for getting multiple Day Job badges is just the perfect title for your favorite character, only you can't play them while you're earning it? I just think it's not a good road to travel down. In fact, didn't Positron once say that WoW's "rested XP" system was rewarding players for not playing?

[/ QUOTE ]

What's wrong with rewarding players for not playing? Everyone has to work and sleep, I'd prefer to be gaining something during that time than not. That said, it's not something that has me hyped up because it makes no difference on my gameplay and the rewards are going to be really weak.

That's unfortunate. Proliferation would have been one of my favorite things about this issue, if it happened. Shields are meh.

And what about Pistol blasters? Not gonna happen I guess.

Overall the issue sounds alright, not one of the best though.

Let's see.

Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, Blazing Aura, Healing Flames, Quills, and Spine Burst are all ASAP powers. That means, get them at the level they are available. If you do this, then you can hazard zone fight from 10 to 40 in very little time (after 40 you can't any more, because the devs nerfed the high level hazard zone).

Tough needs to come much sooner, like by 30.

To do this, Impale, Consume and Hasten can be pushed back. I got Impale and Consume in the 40s. Yes, I know Impale is a great power but it is not AoE and therefore expendable for an AoE scrapper. Ripper, Sands of Mu and Nem/Blackwand are enough to take out bosses along with your two damage auras.

Healing Flames needs at least the equivalent of 3 recharge 3 heal, and if possible 3 end redux. Use frankenslotting to do it.

The damage auras should have 3 SOs worth of damage enhancement, again frankenslotting fixes the Slot shortage.

All the big spines AoEs (Spine Burst, Quills and Throw Spines) could go for some slow enhancement, if you can get it in. It's really nice when things can't run miles away from you because they're scared of the big bad Spine/Fire spawn cleaner. This directly translates to faster spawn killing and faster xp/hour.

I like RotP a lot and got it at 38. It comes in handy in Eden when you get unlucky, and you never need to carry a BF again.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As for "/no" posts being singled out, I think it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the situation. It's not like we're running some kind of democracy here where you're voting on these issues; what we're doing is having a conversation and saying "no" is about as childish and argumentative as you can get. If someone said that to me in conversation I'd be baffled and annoyed.

[/ QUOTE ]
That, however, is not a universally-held opinion. You cannot even (with a straight face) claim to know with any certitude that it is a majority opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand this because I made four statements in the quote but you don't specify what you're talking about. That's probably because you don't really know what you're saying either. So, if you care to, elucidate me as to which part of the quote you refer.

[/ QUOTE ]
Picked out in color for you. Sorry, but I expect single paragraphs to address single topics, usually defined by the first sentence; the colored bits are what I thought the whole thing was about.

[/ QUOTE ]

My invisible "from an educated/thoughtful perspective" tags always get me in trouble. If you look at this scenario in the real world, it will be obvious. I guess that level of extrapolation is not common amongst posters though so I erred, or maybe it's just that people have different expectations from an online community than they do from a real life community.

By the way, you should update your concept of paragraph because multiple supporting facts can and do go into one paragraph, each of which can be disputed. Again, I'd like to say that concepts like "opinion" and "paragraph" take on a different meaning in real life than they had in grade school or high school.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
what does /jranger stand for anyways? I never understood that one.

[/ QUOTE ]
JRanger would reply to every thread he disagreed with:
[ QUOTE ]
no

[/ QUOTE ]
He was then banned. /jranger is now used in memory of his permeating dissent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh wow, he got banned? I was wondering when that would happen... Although I really don't like that people are trying to "immortalize" his inane nonsense.

[/ QUOTE ]

I see him as a victim and a martyr of the system. He was only stating his opinion. He wasnt insulting anyone.

May god bless JRanger. He fought for freedom til the end.

[/ QUOTE ]

Poor little Opinion, it gets abused so much by the online community. It justifies everything and absolves everyone, all because grade school teachers are so fond of telling students that all opinions are equally valid and meaningful and we should accept everyone's opinion.

Well, in the real world that's not the case. Oftentimes people hold opinions that clash harshly with society, community, culture and government. If these people act on their opinions in an overly aggressive manner, they then get punished by the society. This is as it should be, because all opinions are not created equal and many are downright hostile to certain other groups of people or cultures.

Grow up, "Opinion" is a child's excuse for bad behavior.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As for "/no" posts being singled out, I think it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the situation. It's not like we're running some kind of democracy here where you're voting on these issues; what we're doing is having a conversation and saying "no" is about as childish and argumentative as you can get. If someone said that to me in conversation I'd be baffled and annoyed.

[/ QUOTE ]
That, however, is not a universally-held opinion. You cannot even (with a straight face) claim to know with any certitude that it is a majority opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand this because I made four statements in the quote but you don't specify what you're talking about. That's probably because you don't really know what you're saying either. So, if you care to, elucidate me as to which part of the quote you refer.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You are right, however, Ex has stated with the number of posts everyday they cannot search every single one. Therefore, until they CAN search every post for violations, let's give this a chance - shall we?

[/ QUOTE ]
I slept on this, but you know what? There's still one major, massive problemw ith the whole program:

It relies on counting up times a Moderator edits posts made by a given account. So ... if the Moderators never get around to editing (including outright deletion) of someone's posts ... they get a free pass.

Which makes it a LOTTERY OF DOOM: are you the unlucky person whose minor, not really important infractions get editted enough times to be Warned ... while the true, outright trolls go un-edited and un-deleted, thus getting a bonus "get out of jail free" card ...?

It's like playing Russian Roulette, with a permaban at risk rather than a bullet to the head!

Flawed execution of a flawed concept. This "tracking system" would only work properly if the moderation team responded - in a timely manner! - to each and every Notification, and took action every time it was within the rules to do so.

...

Anyone want to start a pool on who draws the Short Straw next?

[/ QUOTE ]

Apparently, you miss the point of any law enforcement situation in the whole world because they all operate on the principle of Dissuasion rather than punishment of every perpetrator. It's not that people don't do illegal things because they know they will be caught, they don't do illegal things because of the potential to be caught (of course, that's hopefully not the only reason).

As for "/no" posts being singled out, I think it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the situation. It's not like we're running some kind of democracy here where you're voting on these issues; what we're doing is having a conversation and saying "no" is about as childish and argumentative as you can get. If someone said that to me in conversation I'd be baffled and annoyed. Meanwhile saying "yes" is not troll-like because it's not trying to start an argument. (Although I think you could hit the notify moderate button on those as well.)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Refrain from such posts as :

* +1
* /jranger
* LOL
* no

or other such “fluff” posts that do little to contribute to the discussion. Continued such posts will result in action on our part to curb the behavior.


[/ QUOTE ]

You forgot to include "first post after dev".

[/ QUOTE ]
That idea sounds familiar...

[/ QUOTE ]

I was curious why your post got locked so quickly the other day. Turns out it was because they've been planning this. Seems prescient to me.

The useless one word posts are pretty annoying for anyone trying to have an actual discussion, so I"m happy to see them leave. It's not that I have a problem with fluff; I have a problem with uncreative, groupthink fluff.

I never considered the possibility of running multiple SFs in parallel. Seems very productive but also requires a core of pretty hard-core gamers who are very organized. I don't think PuG groups could do that; the problem with katie was that any random PuG could gather up and plow through it in less than 15 minutes.

I posted this guide because I was hoping that more casual players would pick up on the idea that it is possible to run an SF in a short amount of time, and maybe SFs would then become more popular. More SFs completed means there are more recipes out there, whether people keep them or sell them it has an effect on the market; each numi +r/+r someone gets and keeps is one less demand for that item.

The Fast Virgil SF
or, How to Fix the Villain Market

The Virgil Tarikoss SF is the fastest strike force that villains can access. Doing the bare minimum and getting a little lucky, the Virgil SF can be completed in a little over 30 minutes. The fastest time I have clocked is 35 minutes and that is because I run in PuGs and the team composition is never perfect. This is still a very fast time to get a rare recipe and I consider any run under 45 minutes to be a success; above 45 minutes means something went wrong, in a pretty bad way.

The Team: For the fastest run, team size should be 5 or 6. If there are a lot of regen debuffs and high damage, four can do it; sometimes the AVs take too much time though if the team size is small. Over 6 team members and spawns become larger making stealthing the glowies in the final mission more difficult, and the ambushes more...plentiful. I usually don't put a restriction on team composition. Any AT/powerset can contribute but as usual Brutes and Corrupters are the most helpful; MMs are fine but for the fast stealth missions don't bother to wait for them to set up.

Finally, at least one member must have Invisibility (of any sort) and Recall Friend. This person should also memorize the maps and learn how to click glowies without being seen using terrain and geometry. The stealther can be a Stalker but any AT works; I use a Cold Corrupter - a PBAoE stealth power is very useful when you must port your friends with spawns all around. It's fastest if the Leader and the stealther/TPer are different people. To run a Fast Virgil SF, the only person that needs to have experience is this person, everyone else can be completely new to the concept of Fast Virgil (but of course it helps if everyone knows what to do).

A word on inspiration load: My standard insp load is two greens, two awakens, and the rest purples leaving one free spot which I keep open. The purples are helpful at multiple parts of the SF - mainly for the hostage escort mission and the glowies in the last mission.

Note:Some people I have teamed with suggest the log out trick, but I will not cover that technique here because I think a.) it saves only a nominal amount of time and b.) it's lame to cheat the system like that when you can operate within the bounds of the system and still get a great time.

Note:For the fastest time a min/maxed team will work best. I don't run this way because 5 minutes doesn't matter to me and I don't want to exclude someone for such a small amount of time. However, if you're running with an SG you could create a team to farm Virgil. I would think one brute and four corupters would be fastest. The corrupters will have good -regen and AoE damage, and the brute will have good AoE damage. One corrupter will have some form of invis + super speed + recall friend.

The Missions: (told from the stealther/TPer perspective)

Stop the Legacy Chain Auguring: A kill all. So kill 'em all! There's also a glowie, usually near the named boss. Before the SF starts I usually wait in the area where this mission starts, and teleport the leader to the door so he/she doesn't have to run. After this mission I immediatly head to the North side of the zone, where I wait at the next door and port the leader after he talks to Virgil.

Find Reason behind Circle Attack: This mission gives beginners a lot of trouble, but is actually very easy once you learn it. It is set in an outdoor map and you must 1.) release the foreman and 2.) defeat the strike leader. There are three hostages, but you only need to release the foreman and there are only ever three mobs around him. The first thing I do is find the foreman; there are three spots where the hostages always spawn so just memorize those and it is then a quick deal. Once found, quickly free the foreman by yourself - there should be 1-2 minions and 1-2 lieuts, easy work. Then, you find the strike leader who also only spawns in a couple possible locations. Teleport your friends to the leader and take out his spawn; careful of ghosts fleeing they can delay mission completion. Total this mission should take about 5 minutes or less. To make it quicker, have one person scout/tp to the leader while another rescues the foreman.

Retrieve Padre Henri's Journal from Legacy Chain: Another stealth mission. You must defeat a boss spawn and get a glowie. There are three possible maps for this mission, two with many floors and one with only two floors. Depending on which map you get, you will know where the boss will spawn - it's the same (or very close) every time. Stealth through till you find the boss,
port your friends to him, take him out. Then find the glowie which is always very near to the boss. Again, around 5 minutes max for this mission including travel time. After this all missions will be at the portal by Virgil, negating any travel time.

Prevent Circle from Controlling Bat'Zul: My favorite mission because it is so easy. A simple defeat boss and minions and click glowie mission. The CoT boss always spawns in the same room, and the glowie is always in that room. After you enter the mission just keep going South (down on the map) until you get to the room, port your friends there, and take out the spawn. Careful of possible damage crystals when you first stealth into the room. 3 or 4 minutes tops for this mission.

Find Method to Pierce Barrier: This is the second mission that has the potential to cause a lot of problems. It is a "escort hostage to glowie" type mission and longbow ambush you after you rescue the hostage. There's different ways to do this, but my favorite (and the fastest IMO) is to just rescue the hostage right away and power through the ambushes with purples or demonic. Just to be safe, it is sometimes a good idea to scout where the computer is before rescuing the hostage. However, this mission has a ton of floors, but the Hostage and the Glowie are always on the first two floors. Doing this mission dozens upon dozens of times I think the hostage was only ever on the third floor for me once.

After you take out the spawn with the hostage make sure all PBAoE stealth powers are off and then sprint (no travel powers!) towards wherever the glowie is - a yellow arrow will guide you; usually you need to take elevators. Eat three purples (or more if you want) before any longbow start shooting at you; do NOT wait until after you get hit a bunch, because the LB attacks debuff your defense and your purples will then be useless. Then just trot through the spawns until you get to the glowie. It's helpful if your teamates throw themselves into the spawns and ambushes so they soak up most of the agro. It's really best if a brute leads the hostage, but I've done it tons of times on a corrupter too. With luck you can do this mission in 5-10 minutes; if you're unlucky it could take a half hour.

Bind Bat'Zul: For this you must get 5 glowies, then defeat Infernal (a Hero) and Bat'Zul (an AV) This is the mission that many people like to use the log-out trick on. Feh on that, I say. There's two ways to do this: the first is to kill Infernal and the legacy chain, stealth the altars, and then pull Bat'Zul into the corridor to defeat him; the other, better, way is to stealth all the altars and then pull Bat'zul into Infernal. They will start to fight and then you can wail away on them safely, with only minimal agro.

The altars: Be careful not to fall in the lava and stealth down each corridor. I use raptor packs for this because with SS it's hard to not fall in the lava. When you find an altar use the geometry of the tunnel to hide yourself from the Bat'zul minions; for some you hide behind bones jutting from the walls, others you hide below rock ledges or hovering over lava. All of the altars can be gotten in this way except one, where they see you 95% of the time. For this one, use 2 or 3 purples first so you can get it without being hit. (At this point, make sure all of your teamates are far down the starting corridor, near the portal.) After all 5 alters are clicked you must still "trigger" Bat'zul. You will notice that at the end of each corridor, after you've gotten all the altars, a lone Bat'Zul minion will appear. Just kill one of these and Batty will rise out of the lava. At this point just pull him with a ranged attack and run down the starting corridor, past infernal, and back to your group.

If you're lucky, Batty will come down the hall and Infernal and him will start fighting it out. If you're unlucky, the ambushes that come will prevent Batty from coming down the hall, and you will have to help Infernal clear them out (carefully). After some finagling you should be able to get Batty and Infernal to fight each other, or at least come down the corridor a bit. Then, engage them. Go for Bat'Zul first because he is much more powerful, Infernal will help you kill him and shouldn't attack you. After Batty goes down (possible with some annoying running) take out Infernal.

For the AV fights, spam immobs if you have them and don't use your caltrops/rains/area denial powers. Batty is an annoying runner so it's best to keep him slowed and immobed. Also, of course, spam -regen if you have it. Shivans/nukes are not necessary but I carry them in the off chance the team buckles and can't take out the AVs.

Good Job, you're done! Collect your LotG +recharge or Crap of the Hunter recipe and go home! Or, run the SF again and let the reward screen hang on-screen while you log out and play an alt. If you've never done the SF this way, it may take a while to get into the groove of it, but after you run it a couple times it should be no problem to finish in 40 - 45 minutes and maybe less!

Also, make sure to put your recipe up on the Black Market if you don't want it; us villains need everything we can get. The more villains we have running these SFs, the healthier the villain market will become. Take the lead if no one else will, and put a team together!

If you have your own tips or tricks feel free to chime in, or if you disagree with any of my methods let me know.

I have a non-hyperthreaded single core processor, and an old sound card, so I suffer from a lot of sound lag in-game especially on teams. My idea was that I could use the techniques in this thread to take out the sounds that are especially troublesome. Powers like carrion creepers, some ice powers, etc; many times when I'm on teams with powers like this, hitting many mobs, I go from great performance to a slide show.

However, I'm not sure if this will work because my comp will still have to access a sound file it will just be different than the original. Any thoughts on this?

Also, anyone know the .oggs for Carrion Creepers? Looking at Thingamajig's web page I don't see anything powers listed under plant control but how about tentacle_loop.ogg, tentacleattack.ogg, and tentacleattack2.ogg? Would those be possibilities?

RMTers rejoice!

You might want to note that Sonic Cage has been nerfed in PvP. It used to be 30s duration so you could perma it with 3 recharges; now it is 15s duration so impossible to perma. It is good not only for Emps and blasters but also for those annoying, not-worth-trying to kill types such as Spines/Regen scrappers or Ice tanks.

Slotting for PvP for Cage was 3 recharges and 3 accuracy before the nerf. Now, I feel it has moved from a must-have PvP power to an optional PvP power; perhaps warranting fewer slots: 2 or 3 acc and 0-3 rech.

I would hope to see some of my old friends that have left, but all my global friends got deleted in the bug last year...

(yes, I'm still sore about that)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And, is that a Pirsig reference or is there some deeper historical meaning?

[/ QUOTE ]

???

[/ QUOTE ]

Nevermind, I guess it's a pretty common expression. (Robert Pirsig)

Good writing. It kept me interested throughout even though I knew what you were going to say and use a lot of the same tactics myself.

My sweet spot, however, is often much lower than where you suggest to remain. It does of course depend on team and enemies and the particulars of each situation. The perfect set up for me though is a scenario in which I get pummeled at the beginning of the fight but then the controllers and tanks claim the agro (I might need to hit a green before they have it under control). After that I don't want any healing and instead utilize my single target attacks, especially melee attacks, to take on individual enemies and kill them before they can retaliate. In this situation I would never use an AoE attack.

The other option is, I can start a fight with a purple or two and drain the mobs with powerboosted Short circuit (elec/energy). The damage I take after that is heavy defiance range but the enemies can't retaliate and I can remain in the orange or red while I beat them down using AoEs and melee versus the more powerful opponents. Similar techniques work for other sets with knockback, holds or slows.

A very important element of successfully using defiance is moderation of AoEs, I think. Also, knowing how to properly utilize your secondary effects and mez powers. For example, using defiance against a +1 or 2 boss is very feasible if you can use total focus, or drain them of endurance, or hold them.

The problem with any of this is if you're teamed with any defender or controller that has a heal power you won't be able to use defiance at all. I've always felt it would be very unwise to ask them NOT to heal me, so I refrain from doing that...

And, is that a Pirsig reference or is there some deeper historical meaning?

Okay, I sent my friend request but I want Positron and Statesman to simultaneously click the "Accept" button.

I find it funny that people get outraged by myspace. It's just a webpage/forum...nothing wrong with it.

Edit: my real friends will get a good laugh out of me putting CoH/V above them on my friend list...it's been that way the last couple years anyway.

Dang I won't be able to attend any of this double xp weekend

Them's the breaks, I guess.

[ QUOTE ]
Epic sets are completely different than primary/secondary sets, and should NEVER match IMO (that's why they're not pri/sec), so that part of your argument is a moot point.

[/ QUOTE ]


I don't think you should write off that part so quickly because none of us (non-devs) know what is intended with "power standardization" and the patch notes don't say anything other than giving it as an excuse for the change. The only dev reply on the issue that I can find right now says nothing either: Castle. The only thing we "know" is that the devs supposedly think that all powers should have the same recharge times across all ATs.

And they probably won't reply to this thread because the facts speak for themselves, ie "Power Standardization" = Excuse, not a legitimate effort to fix powers.

Don't let some nebulous idea of "Power Standardization" that's never been defined and never really even talked about by a dev brainwash you into thinking this is a real paradigm of CoX game balance.

[ QUOTE ]
Um, guess I'm late to the party, but WHY was this changed? Was it felt Tanks were underpowered with a longer recharge? Did Blasters need a nerf? Or were both of those reasons ignored just to make the power more standardized?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's basically just an excuse to buff the Fire tanks because they under perform, consequences for brutes and blasters be danged.. "Power Standardization" is a complete lie considering there are TONS of powers that are not standardized like this still out there.

Check: all hero epic hold powers vs the ones in sets. Examples:
Blaster flame mastery Char is a 16s recharge vs controller/dominator Fire Control Char is a 8s recharge.
Scrapper Weapon Mastery Web Grenade is a 8s recharge vs blaster/corrupter Web Grenade at a 4s recharge
Etc, etc, etc...

The other MAJOR example of this is the blaster melee attacks vs brute/tank/stalker melee attacks: examples:
Blaster Bone Smasher is a 14s recharge vs Tank/Brute/Stalker Bone Smasher at a 8s recharge
Blaster charged brawl (10s) and Havoc Punch (14s) vs Brute Charged Brawl (3s) and Havoc Punch (6s)
Blaster Fire Sword (10s) vs Brute/Tank Fire Sword (6s)
Etc, etc, etc...

Did I mention these attacks have a much lower endurance usage for tanks/brutes/stalkers than the blaster counterparts? HAHAHAHA Jokes on you blasters!!!!! (admittedly the blaster attacks have a higher BI value). And I'm sure there's tons more examples out there...

Power Standardization my [censored] it's just transparent favoritism OR selective application of an arbitrary rule.

(All numbers from here and Sherksilver's hero builder.)

Thanks for looking at these issues Posi.

Most players would want these crash/performance issues fixed before new content: Thread.

Also, there's a performance issue with large teams and sound where some people's framrate will drop to sub 4fps during combat if there's more than a couple people on the team, but FPS are fine if we turn the sound f/x slider down to 0% in game: Thread. It's an old thread but there's new versions floating around too.

I don't like this change on my /fire brute because I don't feel burn is worth spending 5 slots on. Previously, I took the burn power and it worked great with just the base slot +2 additional slots for a total of 3 damage. However this new change would force me to use 3 additional slots just to get close to the performance I had before. The power is not worth that so I respecced it out.

Can Fiery Aura brutes get their immob protection from another power please? Having it in Fire Shield or Plasma Shield would be great, but forcing us to take this power solely for the immob protection is not very nice especially considering this nerfing and the power's poor performance as a damage tool.

Finally, this "power standardization" is a total crock because the power still isn't the same amongst all the ATs: blasters don't get immob protection from Burn yet the power got nerfed for them too. AFAIK blasters don't have a "-status protection" AT modifier...

Edited to add: note that I had to use a respec to fix my character due to this change.