EvilRyu

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Face it folks a bit of the CASUAL aspect died in this game when IOs were introduced.



[/ QUOTE ]Yeah I do think this as well. I could see if we were trying to purple out a warshade or something but this should be easier for the casual gamer.

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I agree, but then, the IO system wasn't really DESIGNED for the casual gamer. The whole concept, from the very start, was that it was not necessary to have IOs. You could go without IOs and have the same system that you had post-ED.

Now, IOs supposedly allow you to get close to the performance that we once had pre-ED. But that was what I felt the idea was. Remove the easy ability to cap your stats in return for the non-casual players gaining the ability to do this through IOs. The casual player was at a somewhat lower level, but could still participate in the game.

If it was impossible to play this game without IOs -- or even get IOs at all as a casual player - I would agree totally. But it is possible to use lesser IOs and non set IOs. I know, that is the strategy I use.

Also, the ability to use Merits to purchase IOs, instead of having to buy them from the Market, I believe was meant to HELP the casual player. While the casual player can't fully IO out all his characters, he can choose a few critical IOs that he would NEVER have the Influence to buy.

[/ QUOTE ]Heres the thing, IOs came about because of ED so in a since if you wish to play the game closer to pre-issue 6 performance in some aspects IOs are your only hope, thus are required. As for as it helping the casual person, it simple doesnt in a timely manner enough to matter. So instead of the casual gamer getting NO good IOs they might get one every 8 to 12 months when they save up enough merits to buy what they want. Because merit generation is so low for them they wouldnt be likely to random roll. What hurts this is the pool system that is no longer relevant to the name of the pool. It totally needs to be redone at this point as it is just confusing now.

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I'll bring his total up to $.04. It does feel as though spreading my playing time over alts is at cross purposes with the way the Merit system works.

I also have to say, I don't quite understand Positron's reasoning. All characters running, say, the Positron TF are going to be the in the same level bracket while they run it, even though they might have very disparate levels otherwise. They'll obviously complete the TF at the same time as each other, and they'll get the same number of Merits when they do.

Given that characters can SK up to run some story arcs, and anyone can Exemplar down for Merit activities, how can the devs expect characters at different levels to consistently earn Merits at different, level-appropriate rates? Do most players just not SK/Exemplar very often?


[/ QUOTE ] I think they are thinking of this from the perspective of say a scrapper doing the arc vs say a defender doing the arc in addition to any extra or less slots you might have at said levels.

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Never would I thought I would see the day when you get punished for making and playing alts .

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But if you create an alt, wouldn't you want to PLAY that alt? Why would you want to play some other character and earn IOs for that alt, unless you could earn more IOs that way than the alt could normally earn? (Because the main is higher level)

I guess I can understand transferring unused Merits to an alt, but in short, if you're tired of playing the game, what good is it to force yourself to play an old character, just to grind out more IOs? Why don't you either play the alt, or quit?

[/ QUOTE ]At this point I am some what burnt out on this game. The only reason my account is active is because of vet rewards. If it wasnt for that I would have cancel and came back several times when interesting stuff gets here. Between school, work, wife aggro and near complete burn out on the game I only log in to make sure my stuff at ww/bm doesnt go poof.

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So I guess being forced to play as limited a pool of characters as possible if you want anything more expensive than a random roll is Working As Intended?

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... I may be misremembering/misunderstanding, but don't you typically get Merits only from situations where previously the only option was random rolls..?

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That's true, but entirely irrelevant to my point.

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Uhm, actually it's fairly relevant. It is player choice that has made the market distintegrate; there are just as many opportunities for random rolls as before (actually more, if you consider the merits for mission arc completion). If people are not choosing to take that opportunity, it's hardly the dev's responsibility, now is it?

[/ QUOTE ]Its their responsiblity to fix the issue where we cant select the level of the random roll. That in itself is one of the main reasons why people are hoarding merits and will end up hoarding tickets too. The system by design encourages people to hoard so they can select the specific level they want.

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You can't? When did this happen? I can move the level slider just fine to chose which level zone of a reward I want to roll in.

[/ QUOTE ]That doesnt let you choose the level of the IO on a random roll, only on a direct purchase.

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All I can see is this, if merits dont become global and or we dont get some account based storage soon, alot of people are going to get burned out on this system. I understand they want people to play more but this is getting some what rediculous. This game heavily relys on the creation of alts to keep the game fresh, but when you get burned out on all the content and you have little reason to create alts because you dread how long its going to take to get some of the IOs, and playing multiple characters makes it take longer to get even one of the desired rewards. Never would I thought I would see the day when you get punished for making and playing alts .

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As opposed to getting punished for teaming, in terms of the regular drops you get?

Face it folks a bit of the CASUAL aspect died in this game when IOs were introduced.



[/ QUOTE ]Yeah I do think this as well. I could see if we were trying to purple out a warshade or something but this should be easier for the casual gamer. In addition to this its part of the reason why folks dont want to move to other servers. Why pick up move or start new characters on a different server when you have no Inf there? I bet if there was account based storage you would see more server transfers going on.

All I can see is this, if merits dont become global and or we dont get some account based storage soon, alot of people are going to get burned out on this system. I understand they want people to play more but this is getting some what rediculous. This game heavily relys on the creation of alts to keep the game fresh, but when you get burned out on all the content and you have little reason to create alts because you dread how long its going to take to get some of the IOs, and playing multiple characters makes it take longer to get even one of the desired rewards. Never would I thought I would see the day when you get punished for making and playing alts .

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So I guess being forced to play as limited a pool of characters as possible if you want anything more expensive than a random roll is Working As Intended?

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... I may be misremembering/misunderstanding, but don't you typically get Merits only from situations where previously the only option was random rolls..?

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That's true, but entirely irrelevant to my point.

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Uhm, actually it's fairly relevant. It is player choice that has made the market distintegrate; there are just as many opportunities for random rolls as before (actually more, if you consider the merits for mission arc completion). If people are not choosing to take that opportunity, it's hardly the dev's responsibility, now is it?

[/ QUOTE ]Its their responsiblity to fix the issue where we cant select the level of the random roll. That in itself is one of the main reasons why people are hoarding merits and will end up hoarding tickets too. The system by design encourages people to hoard so they can select the specific level they want.

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How about letting us finally get account based storage like all the other MMO's have.

Doubleplusungood. We have more than enough (i.e. "any") shared storage in SG bases now.

[/ QUOTE ]As if every single super group in the game has totally trust worthy members. Lets not forget all the SG thefts that have gone on in the past.

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What about this then, as sort of a compromise? How about letting us finally get account based storage like all the other MMO's have. Do this for salvage, enhancements, recipes so we dont have to form personal super groups or get a second account to get the most out of the invention system. Any chance we can get this?

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You already have it, it is called a Solo Base. (well except for the recipies but you just build those into IOs)

[/ QUOTE ]Didnt you read where I said personal SG. People shouldnt have to do this to get IOs.

What about this then, as sort of a compromise? How about letting us finally get account based storage like all the other MMO's have. Do this for salvage, enhancements, recipes so we dont have to form personal super groups or get a second account to get the most out of the invention system. Because of the scarcity of how things are now on the market that pretty much what you have to do to complete some builds in a timely manner. I am not complaining about merits or tickets its just the account based storage for other things is long over due for us. Also I know the technology to do this isnt here yet but how about letting us select the level of the random roll for tickets (if there is a random roll for this) and merits so we dont have to park characters indefinately to get stuff at the right levels. I know you guys addressed this type of behavior once before when we had the issue of exemplaring and accolades. Any chance we can get this?

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I find their stance to be somewhat schizophrenic when it comes to "farming". On one hand, they implement stuff like aggro/aoe caps, timers on missions, etc. But then on the other hand, they implement stuff like Leader, Purples, Merits, and increase things like the Illusionist badge to levels that are simply ridiculous. "We don't want you to farm, but we are putting in stuff that if you want it in a decent amount of time, you have to farm."

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Its not schizophrenic. The correct statement is "we don't want you to farm, but we are putting in stuff that you might not get in a decent amount of time, by your definition of decent. If you try to farm, we'll take certain steps to stop you, but we might not be able to stop farming without side-effects that are more detrimental to the game than we, the developers, feel is tolerable."

This isn't really all that difficult to understand, even if one disagrees with it.

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Definition of "decent":

Nearly five years of playing a character and not even half way to Popular badge.

And yes, their stance is schizophrenic. You may disagree with it, but that's how I see it.

Granted, since it's Arcanaville saying it, by definition everyone else is not just wrong, but wrong. I realize no one will agree with me, especially since you are saying I'm wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]I agree with you. Some stuff is just stupidly wrong how they did it. Especially the master illusionist thing. I could see if they gave us the ability to set the spawns to give bosses throughout the mission when solo instead of just at the end.

My questions are this, can you have multiple AVs in a spawn similar to the LRSF or STF? Can our AVs have PToD™ too? Can our AVs or critters trigger powers at certain health levels, like say nuke at 75% health, 50% health, or 25% health? Can we have our critters use certain powers in sequence? Like say Aim--->Melt Armor---->Inferno.

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I have Windows 7, and I'm having problems I never had with XP. As I'm moving around ingame, colors will frequently flicker between the proper color and another color. For example, the pants one of my characters is wearing are dark red, but they will flicker to a light pink. This happens mostly to building colors. I will also get the entire screen to flicker while moving. This seems to happen more often when I have Sprint or Jet Pack activated, and I'm moving between buildings faster than the normal run speed.

The biggest problem is that every 10 min or so, the game will crash entirely. This is extremely frustrating, and seems to be random. I went for about an hour last night, and never crashed, while another time, I crashed three times in 10 minutes or so.

I have Windows 7, an AMD quad-core processor, and a NVIDIA N9600GT video card. Any suggestions would be helpful; if I'm missing information, let me know, but it'll be a few hours before I get home.

[/ QUOTE ]Make sure you are using the windows update drivers.

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Possibly useless info for pure gamers:

Indications from tech sites is that Win7 will have far more brutal DRM than even Vista. Simple example is capturing audio streams. You can't without losses, or lossy workarounds or hacks. There is MUCH more to this subject, but I didn't bother to keep reading, as this freight train has been lighting the tunnel for a long while now.

I am not happy with an operating system that not only fails to facilitate whatever I am trying to do, but actually attempts to self-determine MY level of rights to my own content. Making archivals of DVDs that I own is relevant to me. I personally can circumvent anything they throw into Win 7, by using readily available hacks. Not so easy for Joe consumer that simply wants to get something done with his PC.

When the authority that validates your downloaded media is gone, so is your ability to use that media. Steam, Yahoo music, Itunes...... There are no promises of forever.

I do not know when the decision to use hardware (trusted computing platform), or an operating system (Digital Rights Mangling) to LIMIT your capabilities became a focus. I am certain that day was not a day to celebrate.

Windows 7 is the next level of lockdown, apparently.

[/ QUOTE ]Simpliest solution is dont download anything with DRM to begin with. I have never understood why folks [censored] about DRM so much. Its totally avoidable. I download good quality much on the internet all the time legally and I never buy stuff that has DRM to begin with.

I wouldnt unless you got hardware that specifically helps with virtualization. Its actually kind of sluggish. What you might want to try is something called virtual box. Its free like virtual pc but has way more features. Keep in mind that once windows 7 goes live you can actually do virtualization alot easier. You can actually create and edit the virtual hard disk files that you use for the virtual machines in windows explorer. That going to be big for me because I can create wim files easier for deployment.

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I have not tried to test W7 but from all i read it seems to be leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. Does anyone know when it is going to be released?

[/ QUOTE ]All signs are pointing to august of this year for RTM. Which is good in a way but I already feel we will be in for the same ride we had with vista with people loading it on under par machines and [censored] drivers and swearing up and down that its the OS.

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Ooh. That mission is sort of an 'intentional failure.' I completely forgot about that one.

[/ QUOTE ]This is why you get super speed and stealth IO. I never failed that one despite there being hardly any time to do it. The lady jane hostage thing on the other hand, failed it at least 20 times already. 2 nights ago the npc got my whole team killed despite us being extra careful with this mission.

We still need that full list of merit changes. Any chance if you can get us the word on that? Will it be today at least?

Very good SF ideas. I like those alot. What I think needs to happen with the pricing structure is that they change all pool c to cost the same all pool a's and pool ds. That would fix alot of this. Just because one enhancement is good for one toon it could be just as worthless on another so it isnt fair to assign one a higher merit cost. All pool cs should be 200 merits. Random roll needs to be lowered to 15 merits trial roll needs to be lowered to 25 or 20. Pool a uncommon should be 50 and pool A rare should be 100. Pool D needs to be 200. Pool B should be 125.

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Sidenote: The "speed LGTF" I was on this weekend (I didn't realize just how speedy) was as about as fun as eating dirty socks. I already knew run of the mill speed TFs weren't my cup of tea, this made me want to swear off the TF outside of my SG forever. The "speed ITF" isn't as bad because there are objectives that have to be achieved inside at least the first mission. Earlier TFs like Positron, Hess, Dr Q at least have some defeat alls or other objectives. However, by and large, except for a "no stealth" TF marathon I joined or TFs I have personally run, nearly every TF I've joined since I-13 has been "speed" and it sucks. Merits have turned this into "City of Farming" and it was alarmingly predictable.


[/ QUOTE ] Seriously I dont get all the hate for the speed tfs and such. Once you are level 50 and have done the tf/sf/trial at least once there is no reason to sit thru all of that. In the earlier part you complained about items being scarce but speeding thru tfs is actually supposed to help get items generated faster. Whether its your item you buy directly with merits or someone elses sold random roll on the market. I still think speed tfs are the way to go. I could see if the reason you started is that you are morally against killing off the already suicidial hostages but not every tf has hostages and the recent patch on test is supposed to help with the hostage killing.

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Strikeforce Name: Mender Silos SF
Contact :Mender Silos
Merits Awarded: You received 6 reward merits. (+1)

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Can someone check this on the test server... I did a mender Silos yesterday on Live and got 7 merits. If really the person who tested did received 6 merits, then it should be -1.

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Hero Mender Silos TF on Live is 7.
Villain Mendoer Silos SF on Live is 5.

[/ QUOTE ]I still find this to be so borked still. Heroes have it way easier than villains with this specific TF.

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Villain

Operative Renault Strike Force (Sharkhead)
Contact: Operative Renault
Merits: 22 (-3)

Credit for organization: @Southern

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Why you ran this, is it still buggy in that it's missing 2 missions?
(does it go Save 'Cuda - 3 consecutive hunts in Nerva - Shockstorm, skipping a Sharkhead and Mercy 2-part mission between hunts?)

because I have a suspicion the devs are datamining off a bugged arc over the past month, and it's going to be REALLY bad when they realize they need to fix the SF.

[/ QUOTE ]I knew something was off about that sf but I could never put my finger on it. I just found it weird that there were back to back hunts. I didnt realize missions were missing.

I am more worried about silver mantis than anything else.

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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).

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This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.

Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....

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Not necessarily. People may still favor running the TFs that give more worth, and saving those merits.

I think what you need to do is add Merits on top of the old random drop.

If that's not balanced, the number of merits could be lower than currently (not something I personally favor, but an option), or I think that reducing the worth of the drop by making it drop at the TF level not the player level would be a good balance - and it might even make some lower level content MORE appealing than it used to be. Think about it, you could farm level 30 randoms without stopping leveling a character at 30.

[/ QUOTE ]I think what needs to happen is this, allow us to select the level of the recipe upon crafting. Then it wont matter if its a lvl 50 or a level 10 recipe. You just have to pay the appropriate amount of inf for it and use the salvage for the tier you are crafting it in. But once you craft it its baked in forever. If they wont let us scale the recipes up for balance reasons then I see no reason why they cant let us scale level 50 recipes down if a person chooses to.

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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).

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This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.

Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....

[/ QUOTE ]I think yall are missing the point. The devs have said some tf/sf/trials are not worth a full recipe because they dont take much time to complete. Putting the reward choice on all the other tfs that do give enough for a full recipe is some what pointless. There is no difference in doing that versus people going to the merit vendor. If people are that lazy to go to the merit vendor then there is no hope for them. People just need to get with the program, stuff like Katie, Cap, Hess, Eden and Treespecs will never give enough for a full recipe again so why keep asking for that?