FourSpeed
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Posts
1554 -
Joined
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Quote:Darn! I thought I killed my future God-like self before he could write all that drivel...Originally Posted by CaptainMoodswing
Our reflection in the River! The letter writer is US! UUUUUUS! lol
Cheers,
4 -
Quote:Since you're evidently all about mindless nit-picking, I'll just say that it's luckyOriginally Posted by Texas Justice
Says the person signing their posts with 4
Okay, you can't talk about the supercontinent, the ancient Sumerian city-state, the programming language, the Steven King novella (downloadable onto your Kindle), the University of Rochester, the University of Richmond, the German prefix, the boards game, the 3-piece band or any other person, place or thing that is spelled ur.
Got it.
for me that none of those various 'ur' topics come up in normal conversation
very often.
But, thankfully, if they ever do, I'll have your wonderful post to help me determine
which complex meaning of "ur" they'd possibly be referring to rather than simply
assuming it's the "ur" we typically see on these boards and in broadcast all too
frequently.
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Quote:It's the reverse for me. The character was definitely first, the forum handleOriginally Posted by Leo_G
Lol am I the only guy that didn't make a character named after their forum handle?
second.
To top it off, when the game went live, we were guaranteed the name on all
servers, so there are several other FourSpeed toons of mine around on various
servers, but only my original Elec/Elec Blaster from the original beta went on to
a successful career beyond L10 or so...so far...
Cheers,
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Quote:hehehe... we all have our eccentricitiesOriginally Posted by Coyote_Seven
But... your user icon...
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I was never that big a fan of the ragdoll physics when it was introduced, and
with the lastest renditions of it since Freedom release, I find it grotesque.
I'd really like to see it get fixed or possibly even removed.
As for particle effects, I like those (excluding lag they sometimes cause).
Pretty Powers? Yes, Please!
And, I chuckled at the mention of the LHC / Higg's Boson project - well played
Cheers,
4 -
Like some others, I'm not much of a "main" person - I have a lot of alts that
I play regularly, and usually a few more "junior" characters that I'm also working
on at any given time.
To be sure, I like some of my toons more than others, and some are definitely
retired.
That said, I don't delete characters, and I still have (and play) my original toon
from day 1. He still has his original (amusing to me) SO build along with a much
more current respec'd, and nicely IO'd build, along with some iPowers as well.
I don't really have a character that I'd consider my "main" (including my namesake
original toon).
Regards,
4 -
Interesting discussion.
I often use "toon" to describe my characters, and it's intended without any
derogatory implications whatsoever. In no way (in my mind) does it denigrate
the time I've spent making them, creating their backstories, equipping them or playing them.
For me, this is a game with animated characters, along the lines of cartoon superheroes
I see on tv and movies (never did get into comic books much).
"Toon" seems like a logical and sensibly descriptive abbreviation for them to me.
If that usage upsets some purists, they have an implied appology from me,
based on my own intent and interpretation of the term, but it won't dissuade
me from using it.
I do think the various derivation origins mentioned are interesting though.
Regards,
4
PS> If you ever see me type "ur" in a post (apart from this disclaimer)
, you have
my permission to come over to my house and slap me upside the head (I too, dislike
internet speak - it borders on functional illiteracy to me) -
Couldn't agree more with the OP's criticism points.
I'm also 100% with the 'get somebody to do their UI's that has actually heard the
terms "ergonomic" and "process flow" and knows what they mean' crowd - By and
large, most of their UI's are terribad.
OP's point #2 *really* bugs me.
Despite Ironblade's workaround - it's simply stupid business.
If I walk into a store that's touting a potentially appealing item and they can't
actually show it to me - guess what? NO SALE.
If their answer to their own advertisments is "Google It" - NO SALE
In a digital market where they're trying to sell me some shiny pixels and a description,
if they can't be bothered to actually show it to me along with some detail information
at (potential) purchase time - they can cram it... NO SALE.
Unsurprisingly, there have been several things that I've considered buying, but
their complete inability to provide enough info to make an informed decision = NO SALE.
At this point, I don't even look at the Paragon Market at all any more...
I'd imagine it would be in their best business interests to try and alter that,
<shrug> or not...
Regards,
4 -
That's my understanding also.
While you're IN-game, those hours are counted normally.
If you're in a task-force related activity (tf, trial, ouros, AE), they count and continue
to count even if you log out (until you actually complete and clear that activity).
This makes some sense (sort of), because of the disconnect logic - ie. you can
get disconnected from the game (mapserver etc.) and still re-join the activity
when you log back in.
I believe it is this behaviour that also counts that time as "logged-in"
with NPC's.
Regards,
4 -
Quote:I admit it - I chuckled...Originally Posted by UberGuy
So, what's with this proliferation of threads in the form: "X - a Y or what?"
Cheers,
4 -
Now that you've picked an AT combination to try, I feel I can throw in my word-nazi comment.
Syngenic? I don't think that word means what you think that word means.
I think "synergistic" was more of what you had in mind...
Cheers,
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Maybe it's for a similar reason the devs don't fix/change pvp itself - not many ppl bother with it,
so it's difficult to justify putting much effort to change it or keep things up-to-date...
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One consideration in favor of Hurl is that it is also -fly.
For me, that was enough reason to keep it in my build rather than LBE. YMMV
Regards,
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Quote:Hehehe - don't get me started on their various UI's... ugh... There are still elementsOriginally Posted by Grouchybeast
I used to think the updated WW interface was a ridiculously bad piece of design. Since the arrival of the Paragon Market, I'm just thankful that it wasn't much, much worse.
of the basic UI that have been buggy crap from day 1.
With the recent
additions, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there is no bottom limit
to how terribad they can make any given UI.
Thankfully, even with a crappy UI, the WW/BM itself has still been one of the most
effective player-enabling systems in the entire game - by a wide margin imho.
Regards,
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Quote:My Bad (moron moment)Originally Posted by Microcosm
DA?
I was thinking of Divine Avalanche, but I realize (and should have remembered)
that it's part of the NB primary, not the /Nin secondary, which several of my
/nin stalkers are... My appologies.
That said, /nin has a lot of good powers including the heal and Retsu that I
use easily as much as trops.
That's the real value of /Nin. It's a utility box full of several good, but often
situational powers. I like a lot of them as much as I like Caltrops.
Regards,
4 -
I don't know a lot about other MMO markets so I don't have a lot of basis for
comparison.
That said, I've been here a long time, and I think some things are beneficially
true due to the market that were pretty much impossible before it.
Pre-Market: 100M was *vast* wealth. My L50 main from I-1 days had a whopping
30M on him (by I-3) and he was rich. He lacked for nothing.
Post-Market: These days, all of my toons typically have 50-100M before they
hit L20 - my old I-1 main is a homeless beggar comparatively
Several of my toons are billionaires... And the fun part? SO prices haven't changed by
a single inf since Day-1. At ~20M for SO's (over an entire career), I could afford
SO's on every toon I could imagine and fill my character slots with, and still
have billions of inf left over - talk about buying power.
Pre-Market: Speaking of SO's, if you were replacing them every 5 levels, L25-L35
was a difficult time inf-wise for most characters and L22 could be difficult for some.
Post-Market: All of my toons are IO'd, I've not used TO/DO's in years, and I
can count the number of toons that use SO's (any at all) on one hand. In most
cases - my toons are frankenslotted with set pieces and common IO's by L27.
The market has completely changed the way I equip all of my characters in a
vastly more effective way from a performance perspective (Post-ED, of course).
Solo Play: That's my style 90% of the time. In the past, that meant it was difficult
for me to get certain IO's from drops, tf's, trials... Through the market, however,
np - I could buy them there... That situation has changed more recently with
merits and AE tix etc, but *availability* of stuff I wouldn't be able to get by
myself from normal content I tend to play is a LOT higher with the Market than
without it.
For myself, I'm very confidant saying that the buying power of all of my toons,
has been astronomically increased with the addition of the market.
There are several things I'd like added as improvements, and personally, I detest
the god-awful UI they saddled us with, but even as WW is today, it's a huge
improvement to the game, and to the capabilities of my characters.
YMMV.
Regards,
4
PS> I'm not going to address "Last 5", "manipulation" and such in this post (it's
long enough already), except to say those issues, while existing, are vastly
overblown by those decrying them... -
I too, love my trops
They're great for ambushes and pulls. Drop 'em at a corner, get out of LoS,
and pick off mobs once they're trying to get out of them.
They are also a thing of beauty when combined with TP Foe.
I like to use them to either gank a specific mob pulled from a group, or put a problem
mob into them out of LoS while I gank a different one, it can work in either variant
of divide and conquer.
If you end up with too much aggro, or a situation starts going south, chuck out
trops, and a lot more mobs are running rather than shooting.
They've also helped me net quite a few PvP kills over the years (especially in lower lvl
zones like BBay and Siren's, where builds may be less able to deal with them).
I don't think they're the best power in /nin (it's tough to beat DA, for instance),
but I personally consider them a "must have" on my /nin toons - along with tp foe.
Regards,
4
PS> I don't team on most of my stalkers, so these are primarily solo tactics. -
It depends on what you mean by "efficient".
There are a LOT of ways to make money in the game - all of them consist of
some mix of: knowledge, effort, time.
Folks have listed several good examples in this thread. In regards to the OP's
question though,
If you consider efficient as : "least amount of time to X inf", you'll get a very
different answer than you'd get if you consider efficient as : "least amount of
personal effort to get X inf", or "least amount of skill/knowledge needed to get X inf".
All of those approaches are "efficient" for one of the key variables.
In terms of pure time: Hands down answer is use of the market - folks have
gone from 0 to a billion in a few days - short of exploits, you can't get enough
A-merits to even get close to that with SSAs, and the amount of farming effort
needed, even on optimised builds, would be pretty high.
Otoh, if you want to get a billion inf with minimal market knowledge, A-Merits
from tips and SSA are probably easiest for anybody to do.
AE runs are much closer to standard farming except that it cuts down on travel,
and tickets are much easier to work with and convert than normal farm drops
(My CEBR farmer - when that still worked well - made ~50-75M / hr while *actively*
farming. Others have done better, but 1M+ / minute isn't too shabby).
In terms of knowledge - it was pretty efficient, but in terms of effort, it risked
bouts of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Personally, I wouldn't worry about efficiency, I'd worry about fit.
By that, I mean, "what sorts of ways to make inf fit in with what I'm doing with
my character(s) and playstyle".
I'll add that whatever your playstyle, there are plenty of ways to make inf that
you could probably do effectively, and maybe even "efficiently".
Regards,
4 -
The Crazy 88's celebrated the Solstice by setting more inf afire in their SG inf-cinerator
Happy Solstice, and Happy Holidays!
Cheers,
4 -
Granny tells me that there's still plenty of eggnog left to sip while folks warm
their hands and hearts around the inf firepit...
Cheers,
4 -
Well, this has been an amusing thread - I especially like the OP's "conversion".
"Can't beat em? Join 'em!" - An excellent strategy, actually.
As for the activity itself, I have some opinions on it - I'll toss them out here and move on...
* First, is it an exploit? NO. It uses simple in-game mechanics that *anyone* can use.
It is NOT using something that is *broken* in the game.
* Is it immoral? NO. Nobody stole anything from you to do it. Nobody harmed anyone
to do it. Nobody prevented you from playing your game by doing it.
No Laws were broken.
The EULA nazis can perhaps, raise a debate about the AFK portion, as a violation
of ToS, but if player A is AFK in this case, it's a pretty tough sell to explain how it harms
anybody else - particularly when using an in-game mechanic to achieve it.
* Is it undesirable? I don't know - that is something the devs have to decide.
If they DO decide it's undesirable (as they did with CEBR, for instance), they
can take steps to stop it or minimize its effectiveness.
My personal opinion is twofold:
PvP in this game is a failure - due to a combination of player desires, game balance,
complexity and a host of other reasons, it has never taken off with the playerbase
and is extremely unlikely to ever be popular (or even viable depending on your
definition of viable). The number of active PvPer's in the game is very probably
less than 1,000 players these days.
The drop rate for these IO's is miniscule - As a casual PvP'er since it began,
I can count on one hand the number of drops I've received - I doubt my experience
in this regard is unique.
Given those two issues, I agree that the supply of those IOs would be virtually
non-existent without PvP Farming.
Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, once again, is up to the devs.
As for destroying PvP farms, there's nothing in the rules against that - if they're
in-zone, and they have an orange targeting box, you can kill 'em. np.
If they are off-map, *that* may, in fact, be bannable - that IS exploiting a bug
(although, goodness knows there are dozens of places to get around the geometry).
One reason that *may* be bannable in PvP however is simple - from under the map,
you can kill a target ON the map with total impunity. <shrug>
I always took a different tack with farms myself - I don't begrudge a player getting
a drop with their farm, so I don't destroy the farm (by killing the killer).
I just kill the rezzer one shot before the killer would - I consider it my "toll", my
dice roll - Maybe I get a drop too, and if I don't wreck the farm, I know I can
come back in an hour, or the next night, or w/e and get another "free" chance
for an IO...
Mostly, I see it as a minimal issue.
In light of all the other *real* problems in the game - I'd much rather have the
devs fix those rather than whine about little Johnny getting a PvP shiny because
he set up his computer to run overnight at the (admittedly slight) risk of getting
killed... YMMV.
Regards,
4 -
1 of 3 toons logged in since Winter Event started had his trays wiped, complete
with all his macros.
Unfortunately the one that was wiped was a L50 with 5 full power trays.
Can't help but wonder once again if these guys even test their code.
In the meantime, they can cram the Winter Event until this is fixed.
I'm definitely not interested in trying to rebuild my macros and reload my power
trays on my other toons.
Maybe, I'd be lucky like Texas Justice and not have others affected, but honestly, it's not
worth the risk to me...
I'll find something else to do for a few days, and add yet another piece of evidence
to consider at renewal time.
Hope it gets fixed soon, and I hope other folks get lucky and don't get clobbered
by more shoddy code.
Regards,
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Quote:Remember how well that turned out for Icarus...Originally Posted by Avatea
Cowboys ride their horses casually into the sunset so I thought I'd do the opposite. I'll fly conqueringly into the rising sun instead, but not on my hoverboard, I'm not Marty (get that Freitag?)! My husband and I are indeed moving to China where new adventures and new challenges await, like accessing the Internet I'm used to for instance, that'll be fun!
Seriously though, warm wishes and best regards for the future Avatea.
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So...
Yet another teaser... Hmmm... where's my shaker of salt?
Cheers,
4 -
Quote:The examples I recalled off the top of my head were:Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
Might I ask, where those companies writing software to count money? Were they focused on keeping people alive, perhaps?
A> A big bank buying up the portfolios of several little/rural banks and converting
those accounts (and products) to the big bank's equivalents (preferrably without
any torches, pitchforks, shotguns, or Federal fines).
B> Retailer that was developing its own internal inventory tracking, stock managing
system for it's (many) stores nationwide - not a new idea, but this one also built
in some predictive ordering based on sales, seasonal trends, and some other
proprietary metrics (which made the project that much more interesting, and
defect sensitive).
Yes, the nature of those did indeed warrant the costs of higher quality prioritization -
not too surprisingly.
Yes, those specific cases (and several others I've since remembered after my
post) were held to a higher standard than I would expect here, but what I'm
seeing here lately is distinctly lower than what I would expect even so.
This I understand completely by way of another example. My ex-wife was anQuote:Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
The flaws you see as a programmer are generally not even noticed by the average player. My friends that play, non programmers, never even noticed the map bug until hours of play had passed. They could not care less.
Another analogy, for example, from my personal experience. I was the lighting designer and electrician for a theater company. To this day, I cannot watch a live performance without critiquing the lighting infrastructure. My wife never even notices where the lights are and just enjoys the show.
avid horse person, and would point out TV/Movie scenes whenever a character
would change horses from the prior scene (oftentimes with a horse that doesn't
remotely resemble the prior horse at all). Hint: It happens a LOT.
I'd never even noticed it before she started pointing it out.
For her, it was jarring enough that it would often ruin the show/movie for her.
These days, (15 years post divorce) I find I still notice those changes (scary),
and this might be a good place to wrap up my commentary in this thread.
* I have a background that sensitizes me to noticing software defects, particularly
the simple "Duh" ones that should be caught in the most preliminary testing. While
not gamebreaking, they are jarring to me, and it does affect my opinion of the
game, and detract from my enjoyment of it.
* Recently, I have felt that those sorts of bugs are appearing more frequently
than in the past.
Consequently, I wrote this thread to:
A: Determine if I'm the only one that feels this way. From many of the responses
here, I see that several others feel that way too (hopefully, not a "vanishingly
small" number).
B: Raise the awareness of the general forum population that quality seems to be
degrading with recent releases (according to my standards and expectations).
C: Make a statement to the devs that as a paying customer, I'd like them to be
aware of mine, and other's perceptions, and possibly investigate and/or take
some steps to improve things a bit from a quality perspective.
If you (the reader) don't sense an adverse change in game release quality,
or feel the quality is sufficient, fine. Enjoy. Ignorance can be Bliss!
If I've raised the awareness a bit, perhaps people will begin to notice the metaphorical
horse switching between scenes, and begin to express sentiments similar to my own
regarding the product we're paying for.
I would hope that could lead to an improved product in the future.
Thanks for your time and responses.
Regards,
4