HenryTank

Awesome guide Thugs. Thanks for taking the time to do this write up.

Holy smokes, nice guid man! Those bind commands rock. I'm glad someone came up with a way to manage multiple autocast powers.

Can you give some tips on what types of things to farm with this build?

Quick question: Is there a /bind command I can setup that when i hit it will delete XYZ salvage from my inventory?

After reading all your psots, LordXenite, I see the same theme through out your messages. ME ME ME ... I I I ... I've never seen someone so focussed on their own view point. The key to any discussion is looking at it from other people's perspective.

See guys, I play the game to play the game.

I care not for getting to Lv50,

I care not for purpling a build because I know that eventually those goals are within my reach if I persevere.

were *I* Positron, I'd take away the ability to use tickets to buy rewards other than the unlockable MA/AE content, and instead give only XP/INF and Merits from MA/AE content, and with reduced rates so that MA/AE content is still played by people who want to experience it for the content and not because it grants better rewards than the normal in-game content.

I say this because I think that had the Devs wished to encourage the population of Efficient Gamers in CoX, they would've just released the MA in I13 because instead of letting us design custom critters, and craft stories, the Efficient Gamer would've been just as happy, or happier even with user-crafted Rikti Comm Officer missions!

See, that's what I don't get... what fun bits are you talking about?

In my opinion, MMO's are only fun if you play them with friends, or PuG and make friends, and this you can do from Lv1 to the level-cap.

Games that tell me "first level up some, and then we'll show you what fun really is", I eventually get disillusioned with and quit, because deep down inside, the fun is either in You (and your friends), or it isn't.

If the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, I personally couldn't care less. I've already been through many debates with people who tried to rub in that they had Lv50 characters before I did, and showing off their purple-build this, and purple-build that... but for myself, the fun in this game has little to do with how successful my stats/numbers are and a lot more with how much fun the gameplay of my chosen AT/power-set combination brings me.

Since the goals I see for the MA/AE system were never associated with providing a "better" or even a "separate" vehicle for character-growth, I am not phased by the changes to the MA/AE system or our Arcs.

See, this is where you fail to understand the mentality of an efficency expert.

*Nerf All Custom Groups so that you cannot have all boss groups.

I will test all group combinations until I learn the most efficient groups to kill that give the highest rewards. Calculate how many i have to kill to get 900 tickets and continue.


*Nerf all ticket drops so that it's based soly on how long you spend inside a mission.

I will change my focus from tickets to which mobs give the highest infamy / time to kill ratio and treat tickets as a bonus.

*Nerf the rewards so that you can only roll on random salvage or random broze tickets and make the cost 10 times higher.

I will calculate how much infamy per hour can be made in AE and probably conclude clearing lib tv would be more efficient and go there.

These nerfs are only parts of an equation that needs to be re-calculated each time a change is made.

No matter what changes, there will always be a "most efficient" method of earning infamy.

Anyone who complains about the "most efficient" method to make infamy is an not the brightest star in the sky. I mean really ... you can always continue to nerf the "most efficient" method, but guess what ... now there's a different most efficient method. Get over it.

((You assume it was on TEST long enough for anyone to reasonably test enough so that any such work arounds could be found. With how fast patches now go from TEST to LIVE that would be a bad assumption. ))

This patch was on test longer than 10 minutes I assume. That's how long it took to test.

I considered editing my post to remove the potential that this was a bug, but I refuse to believe it is a bug. ANYONE testing the cap would catch this on their first attempt. I cannot believe a huge nerf like this went into production without a single competant tester finding this. I can only conclude this is working as designed.

Further ... my initial post concludes that it's NOT efficient to continue to kill mobs after mission completion, hence discouraging anyone from doing this.

If I had 46 people at my disposal I would do what I first posted times 15 groups. This would net 1500 tickets x 15 groups x 10 runs per hour for a total of 225,000 tickets per hour.

Prior to yesterday I spent alot of time clearing AE Mission boss maps. Typically 3 players. 45 minute run would earn us about 6000 (3500 drops + 2500 bonus) tickets per run. Now with the ticket cap being lowered to 1500 these runs are now a thing of the past.

We did some testing and here's what we found.

Same boss map. We would cap tickets after the 7th pull of 20+ mobs. If you hit the 1500 tickets from drops, your bonus for completing the mission is zero.

After you complete the mission, if you continue to kill enemies, you continue to get tickets again. So getting 3500 tickets from a full clear is still possible but you won't get any bonus.

If you kill enemies until you get about 800-1000 tickets and then complete the mission, you'll get 500-600 ticket bonus putting you at 1500 tickets for the mission.

After many tests I have to conclude the most efficient use of your time to collect tickets is:

Run a boss mission with 3 players. Do four pulls of 30+ bosses and get your 900 tickets. complete mission for another 600 tickets. Each run takes 6 minutes.

Thank you for the insightful response to my post. I see you made it to the 5th word, quite an accomplishment.

Would you like to continue discussing genetics or perhaps we could discuss the main topic of my thread.

I was born a strategist. I obey the rules but from within the rules I maximize my ability to be the best of the best. I strive to have others /cheer at my accomplishments.

I dual box a 50 brute and 50 corr. I farm all 52 boss mobs that use super strength and can fly. I use no exploits what so ever. I typically pick up a 3rd person for company.

Last night I made 6500 tickets per mission per character per 30 minute run. I leveled up a nub from 11-21 in 20 minutes.

I enjoy earning tickets. I enjoy helping my friends level. Have I broken any rules? No. Have I used any exploits, no.

I fail to understand why so many people vilify other people for working within the rules to maximize their rewards.

What's on the agenda for tonight? The exact same thing as last night, but with 60% more loading time.

Who does this 1500 ticket cap effect? The casual 8-man groups that are trying to earn infamy by playing AE.

Nerfing the cap is funny. FUNNY!!! Why? If you analyze the problem. Players are gettting too many tickets from AE and are using focussed tactics to earn these tickets. How should we fix it?

Option 1: Lower the drop rate. Most obvious answer. No, we can't do that because most casuals won't feel AE is worth there time.

Option 2: Alter the ability of MA so that custom groups MUST have a minion class and lt. class mob. <--- duh

Option 3; Place a cap on how many tickets you can earn from the missions.

Well after reviewing all options, we've decided to pick option 3. It gives the appearance that farmers won't be able to farm any more because no one will EVER be able to post something about earning XYZ tickets since the cap is only 1500. Now all the casuals will think we've done a great job stopping the farming, when in reality all we've done is make them load more often.

Okay, what kind of logic is that? I don't have a clue. Anyway, I'm off to earn another 20,000 tickets ... I've got an hour to kill.

Is it possible your ally has only 'standard' sonic powers and they moved sonic dispersion to a higher grade like hard or extreme? I haven't tested this but it's a suggestion...

First off, I don't know who Statesman or Positron or Superman or Ironman is and if they are active members or ex employees or what ... I'm simply relaying a whisper I got last night. Excuse me for not googling his information to see if it was accurate.

Second, my numbers are weak? Sorry, you must have missed the (if a player matches 3/4 of these flags) they will be banned. So are you saying that every marketeer also has farms labeled "Ticket Paradise" and leveled up a newbie 1-50 in less than 10 hours?

I log in last night and the world is on fire. I'm getting tells from several of my buddies saying "the good times are over!" Two of my other friends tell me they have cancelled their accounts because of what statesman has done.

Being unaware of what this is all about I go to cap to test out my farming missions. Standard Outdoor all melee boss farm. Along the way I see the constant flames in broadcast.

So I load up my map for an 8 player spawn and go to work to see the changes. There are 3 noticable changes:
1. Mobs have a ranged attack and shoot once before entering melee range. This adds 2 seconds to my per spawn kill rate.
2. Mobs hit harder. When I engage a full 16-18 pack, i have to use 1 small respite.
3. Ticket Cap is lower. No sweat, I can use a smaller outdoor map now and get to the 1.2x bonus on the 5th mission faster.

From a farming for infamy perspective, I don't even notice these changes, they are so minor.

Who I feel for is the non MIN / MAX non hard core gamer out there. Standard 8 player PuG are having a tough time with these missions now. Dominators are casting immobolize on the packs before they are on the tank and their ranged attacks are chewing people up. Players are attacking too quickly now because brutes need more time to round up the packs which is causing more deaths.

From my perspective the people being impacted with these changes are the non-hardcore casual players. That's a shame since that's probably the majority of the player base.

Am I worried about the "rollbacks" and punishments? No, not at all. Really who is going to be flagged and what will be the criteria? From a developer perspective I would do the following:

1. IF Experience Points divided by hours played is greater than X, player flagged.
A. Ratio should be something like 3 mill per hour played and less is safe. Run the check against data from database restores for each day since I14 was released.
2. IF Ticket generated is greater than 50000 per day player flagged.
3. IF player published an arc that matches farm crieria (Rikti Comm Officer, Keywork "farm" "ticket" "powerlevel") player flagged.
4. IF Infamy spent is greater than 100,000,000 per day for X consecutive days, player flagged.


IF any player matches 3 / 4 of the above criteria bann account and any accounts that match the credit card payment information or Billing Address.