Hyperstrike

LOL!

Send me the bill.

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All I can say is that if there is a mission in which Sister Flame is in danger and must be rescued, only about 700,000 heroes would immediately respond.

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I could see it now:

[Minion] Uhm...sir?

[AV] Why are you pestering me? Don't you know that I'll eviscerate you with a white hot paperclip if you anger me?

[Minion] But sir...you have "company".

[AV] So it's a Sister Flame rescue attempt eh? Which heroes? Who do I get to trounce on today?

[Minion] Uh...All of them?

*Pan out as the wall to the Lair Of Evil simply evaporates revealing legions of heroes stretching back to the horizon*

[AV] *BLEEP* ME!

[Heroes] That's kinda what we had in mind.

[AV] Not the face! Not the face! AUUGH!

[Sister Flame] Wow! He went down faster than Hamidon during a Virtue nuke-fest!

[Positot] Okay! Let's go have fun now! More Frostfire!

[Frostfire] But I'm not equipped to handle that many people!

[BabyMage] Sucks to be you don't it?

[Hero 2] ICE SLIDES NAO!

[Frostfire] *Whimper*

Mike Stackpole

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Did anyone notice Castle's new sig?

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ROTFLMAO!

Another Sister Flame convert!

*CENSORED!*

I'm sending you a bill for dental reconstruction!

I dislocated my jaw so hard I broke four teeth when it hit the floor!

Great work!

Stuff at this level makes it intimidating for me to even want to try demo editing.

In the case of base salvage, crafting it WAS WAI. Then they changed their minds.

That's not "using an exploit". That's a nerf. Plain and simple.

[Expletive]! I forgot to sterilize these. You're okay with that right? Just a little soap and water and we're good!

Okay, thanks for clarifying now.

So you ARE classifying powers into tiers by their numerical order.

Okay, I can live with that.

Post deleted by me upon viewing Castle's clarification.

Why do I hear South Park Saddam Hussein when you say that?

The rug really ties the base together man!

Not to be dumb.

But how do you get 4 tiers of powers in a set with only three tiers?

1: Swift/Hurdle (No prereqs)
2: Health (One prereq)
3: Stamina (L20 and 2 prereqs)

I can foresee this having a nice buffing effect on support-oriented toons too.

Imagine being able to take Team TP without having to take TP Other, TP Foe, or Teleport. How many powers does that free up?

I can see Matt tearing his hair out over this one though.

Dang...only 4 years 5 months to go! AUUUGH! MOMMY!

Wish I had Monday off.

Pencil me in for Thursday though.

First STF for me PERIOD.

Name: Darkest Deeds (No fee too small! No act too heinous!)

Recruiting Policy: Currently recruiting.

RP Level: Light RP, meta-gaming, with irony/parody overtones. We don't take ourselves horrendously seriously. We've rather "comic" on the "comic book badguy" thing.

Theme/Concept: S&M Parody, the majority of our toons are female. General raison d'être is a transportation hub (still in the very early stages) and someplace red-side to base-edit as well.

Activity: Approximately 7 unique users as of 01/12/09. Three very active users with multiple alts (myself included in this number).

Prime Time: We have players in multiple timezones, so for uniformity's sake, I'll present all times in EST. Prime time for us is usually about 9PM EST to 2AM EST weekdays, with myself sometimes being on as early as 7PM EST.

Weekends are a lot more freeform as several of our members have kids. As such I can only speak for myself. I generally play for a couple hours in the morning. After about 2-3PM EST I get off and power-nap before work. Then I play while at work (I'm the network architect and lead admin at work, with permission from the owners) from about 12AM EST to about 6AM EST. At least two of our three "mains" are on pretty much every day redside, we're grinding to get the base up and running nicely and get several characters who can participate in all levels of content in the red-side game. Once we complete these two main objectives, we'll probably split our time a bit more evenly between redside and blueside. Even so, unless we have plans, there's not a huge deal with us hopping over to go mishing with VG-mates.

Requirements for Membership: That you're actually going to play this toon. We request, but don't demand, that you stay in SG mode till 35. After that, as you like. Personally, I stay in SG mode all the time. A sense of humor (especially snarky humor) isn't mandatory, but it helps!

Leaders:

Lady Domina: @Hyperstrike1 (Forums: Hyperstrike)
Summer.Storm: (Info withheld unless user volunteers it themselves)
Winter.Storm: (Info withheld unless user volunteers it themselves)

Note: Global for myself only, the .Storms allow their kids to play on their accounts.

Out-of-Game Contact(s): hyperstrike at-sign cox-supergroups.com

URL: Currently none. My web-fu is a broad but shallow river and my actual artistic design skill is about as pedestrian as possible. If one of our members wants to web-fu, lemme know.

Coalitions: Currently none. Always looking for coalitions.

Other:

Base setup: Currently 2 teleporters, we have all redside beacons save the RWZ beacon (just have to pick up the ship badge at the next RtR). We're currently kicking hard to get off the combo control/power unit. Once that's in we'll expand with workshop then a med center.

The main goal of the group is to have someone able to go with you through any level of content you so desire on the server. This in turn should help expand and broaden the web of contacts we have already begun building for ourselves and to make the SG, and Protector redside a more active friendly place.

My personal goal for my set of toons, simply, is prestige generation for the group so that I can improve the base for you.

I also anticipate heavy participation in Mission Architect once it rolls. So I'll need guinea p^H^H^HPLAYTESTERS for it. And I'm willing to help knock the rough edges off other people's efforts as well.

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Yeah, he was so busy ranting and so tired that he had a couple of factual errors.

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At least I'm willing to step up and admit to anatomically impossible feats like having both feet in my mouth while my head is shoved somewhere dark and poopy.



Don't get me wrong. I like the concept of the Merit system. I just think the implementation could use some work.

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Hyperstrike, there's a slider in the Merit Vendor to allow you to choose the exact level of the recipe you want.

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Ah. This kind of humiliation is what I get for typing at 5AM after not sleeping all night...

Pardon me if this seems disjointed or pseudo-rantish. It's 5AM and I'm a bit loopy.

Subjectively:

Merits Discourage Arc Teaming!

The fact that only the person who the story arc belongs to gets merits is a giant, throbbing digitus impudicus to everyone else on the team. As if their contribution to the success of the arc meant NOTHING.

Sure, they get drops, and inf, and prestige. See below.

Merits Are Going To Scuttle The Market!

While this isn't QUITE so pronounced blue-side, with it's huge, entrenched market base, red-side, where things are comparatively scarce (markedly moreso), this like kicking a man who is down with spiked taser-boots. You've now decresed the drop rate of certain recipies to "when someone buys it". Sure, there's going to be people crazy/stupid enough to random everything. We always need more Crap of the Hunters and Pacing...of...the...Turtle. Because, save for rare cases, that's all that's going to go to market.

Merits Destroy The Value Of Inf!

As the market purges itself, and new supplies of recipies DO NOT come in, you're going to be unable to get various things for ANY price, save merits.

Congratulations, you've just replaced one common currency with another! With no meaningful conversion between! Research the term "Confederate Currency".

The Merit System Lacks Real Control!

Sure, you can get the particular recipie. But you have zero control over the actual level. This means you have to try and have merit farmer toons with XP turned off at specific levels to buy precise recipies. However, this is a problem because:

Merits Penalize Alt-ism!

Instead of allowing people, as they have in the past, to cycle through different content by means of alts, merits, because they are non-tradeable, encourages one to play a "Main Merit" toon to that their merit earnings stay consolidated.

This kind of negative incentive to alt is in direct opposition to your day jobs initiative! Unless you're trying to tell us that "Working As Intended" means you want us to grind a single toon forever and ever and only sporadically turning on XP gains to hit newer content, while all our alts day-job badge to death.

This leads to:

Merits INCREASE Grind!

Sure, it takes a while to work up millions to buy stuff like Hecatombs, and such. However, there's a broad swath of content that can be played, and cycled through, so it doesn't resemble a grind. With merits, you either have to farm Ouro, farm Taskforces, or turn off XP earnings and exhaust story arcs left and right!

I like my shiny as much as the rest of you do. But that's [u]NO FUN[u]. Currently, I have a main badge/set-application toon. However, he isn't the only toon I play. I'm actively working a villain-side equivallent toon (main badger, IO set-out, etc), as well as multiple heros in different, interesting powersets. Do I want to go back to grinding one single guy all day every day? HELL NO!

Merits Are Exclusionary!

Some people have limited amounts of time to play. Meaning that they are going to take inordinately huge amounts of time to rack up even a random roll's worth of merits.

Others, like myself, have larger blocks of time to play. However, we team a lot with friends (see the part about the huge middle finger to teaming and merits) who happen to hop on.

I can run a taskforce or Ouro arc! GREAT! But when my friends pop on (since none of us are even in the same TIME ZONES, let alone state, never mind city) I can "Sorry! Taskforcing, merits are more important than you!"! Or I can drop a taskforce and go play something besides "City of Soloists".

I'm on a low pop server. I don't mind soloing now and again. But I have a LOT more fun when teaming.

And NO, "Move to another server" is NOT an acceptable "solution". Because it's not a solution! Hell, it's no more than peripherally associated with the root problem anyhow!

The Time Based Metric Is BROKEN!

First, it simply shifts focus away from previous min/maxed reward-earning content to a different set of min/maxed reward-earning content. Yes, it MAY have slowed the earnings down some, but it hasn't eliminated the behavior.

So you're still rewarding people who speed through while penalizing those who actually play through the content.

Also, I see this huge worry about "well what if someone stealths the content?"

SO WHAT!?!? If you didn't want people to be able to stealth content you shouldn't have put in stealth powers! This is simply more of the "penalties for efficiency and creativeness" mentality.

The Current Merits Implementation Destroys The Notion That They're Rewards!

Seriously! They're CURRENCY. Something that can only be spent. Not traded. Not gifted. Not sold. In i12, yeah, finishing up a TV Trial and getting Crap of the Hunter was kinda a letdown. But there was still a good modicum of "I was rewarded for my effort". We already got currency (inf) from the completion bonus as it was.

The whole "attaboy!" feel is missing from merits.


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Now, I don't feel that the Merit system is completely unsalvageable. It's a good idea that, when done properly, would give a better modicum of control to players.

What I would do:

1: Revise merit prices UPWARDS, drastically. (Read the rest before you go up in nuclear flames here). Look at doubling or tripling the price of uncommon. Double/triple the price for rares over that. Then allow for purples at double/triple/quadruple over that.

Take a LotG: D/E/R. The one I was looking at on the merit system (misremember level) was going for 250 merits straight-buy. Under the new system it'd be 1000-2250. While some of you may look at that and go *EXPLETIVE*! He's NUTS!, keep reading.

Bump the random rolls to double/triple their current values.

2: ALL missions (save "talkies") award a merit to every participant.

Paper/Radio: 1
Safeguard/Mayhem: 2

Story Arc (Red or Yellow)/Taskforce
Talkies/Deliveries: Zero
Get/Destroy Item/Rescue (without leadouts) (Possible to do stealth): 1 (or chance of 1)
Fight Boss/Rescue (with leadout)/Defeat All: 2 (or 1 with chance of one more)
Final Battle (AV fights): 2

Arc Completion for Arc Holder: 2-5 (Depending on difficulty/grind-factor of mission.

This is probably the only point that should be arc-holder/captain only. So we don't encourage people to simply jump on the last mish for a bonus.

Trial/TF Completion: 5-10 depending on difficulty and grind factors. Posi and Doc Q should be max, Katie should be minimum.

Difficulty Level Modifier for Arc/Trial/TF Completion:

Heroic/Villainous: 0
Tenacious/Vicious: + 1
Rugged/Malicious: + 1 (with chance for 1 more)
Unyielding/Ruthless: +2
Invincible/Relentless: +2 (with chance for 1 more)

I won't require that merits be tradeable. With this type of system, merits become more plentiful, meaning that it's easier to accumulate them (though not necessarily cheaper to buy what you want).

Introduce some method of controlling EXACT level of a recipie. Possibly by having all recipies drop at the MINIMUM of the level range by default and allowing a slider to specify exact level above minimum for a given range.

This system, or something like it, would insure that even very casual players have a fighting chance of accumulating reasonable amounts of merits and straight-purchasing things in weeks or months (as opposed to years-to-never). At the same time, it would place brakes on people hell-bent to purple themselves "like yesterday", yet still allow them to bust their butts and work towards the eventual goal.

Moreover, with the merit system being more accessible, there's less incentive to hoard merits, and more to attempt random rolls, with some of the byproducts recipies filtering back to the market. Indeed, I can see the market toons wearing the tires right off the random rollers and converting stuff back to inf in the market.

While this wouldn't eliminate the issue of merits supplanting inf, it WOULD mitigate most of the unpleasant side-effects. In addition, it would also (at least for me) eliminate some of the disappointment of simply being handed a stack of cash at the end of an arc/taskforce instead of my "shiny".


Okay, been typing for an hour and a half. I gotta get a bit more sleep before work. I will put addendum posts into this thread as I get the chance.

Slot a couple enhancements into flight and swift. That should reduce your transit times....

Gah! Was just thinking approximately the same thing. Damn you Warner Brothers!

Duuuuude!

Kudos man! Kudos!

*Nerdgasm*

Well, I like to hear the sound of my own...typing?

Unfortunately, when the Big Guy made me, he left the Verbose option turned on by default. So I kick out these long LONG posts sometimes. Usually in one of three lengths:

<ul type="square">[*] TLDR[*] Have Your Hands Fallen Off Yet[*] I'd Rather Read War And Peace, It'd Be Shorter[/list]
And the more I know about some subjects (or at east THINK I know, the more didactic I get).

Yeah. Shoot me now...

As to my opinion on the Merits system.

Their data mining is lying to them. They're seeing taskforces as skewed by speed-farmers. So the values are completely out of whack with what normal players would achieve. Penalizing them.

Moreover, the this new system severely penalizes people who DON'T trial and taskforce regularly. It's going to dry the market up blue-side badly, and is just going to wreck red-side.

Sure, you can PROBABLY find someone who'll part with their merits to buy you the recipie you want for a buttload of inf. But how EXACTLY does someone go about FINDING such a person? Do we need to start taking out ads? But they're so tunnel-visioned on "balancing" these taskforces that they don't see that some things don't NEED to be balanced.

And on this note, I'm done.

I've tried to answer his concerns in an item-by-item basis, and given him examples of how it's NOT a grind to get that much prestige.

I'm offended by his behavior here as well and will not be responding to further prods from him with anything other than a torch with which to chase him back under his bridge.

He should feel honored. He's made my ignore list.