Judgement_Dave

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Seems odd that that line of badges only just turned up en masse for me yesterday (first three) when I know I've been on after the 5th with enough rating for the first one or two badges.

Bizarre.

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AFAIK the badges weren't awarded retroactively when the changes to the badge criteria were made. IIRC Any of the series that you were due were awarded when the arc earning them next got rated. I think it was a few days on one of my accounts before it suddenly got awarded a couple of the badges (and had only had one additional rating as far as I could see).

Belated Birthday Gratz

The 5th May patch dropped the requirements for this line of badges:
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[*] The Builder line of badges has had their requirements to obtain decreased substantially, so that the final badge “Master Builder” has the same requirements as getting a mission into the Hall of Fame.


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You'll notice that the patch notes didn't state the new, lower requirements, and I've always been a bit unsure about the veracity of the the final badge having the same requirements as a HoF (surely the HoF badge is fine).

AFAIK The wiki is correct. It's certainly correct for the earlier badges.

It all makes sense:
Blue Rabbit -> Blue Hare -> Blue Hair -> Blue Rinse -> OMG how old is Blue?!?!

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Posi mentioned (or someone else did, i can't fully remember) to give villains higher rewards. Something that, if kept balanced and reasonable could work.

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If it's from the birthday EU test server appearance, then this is the exchange re: combined markets from my chatlogs:

* on Combined CoH/CoV Markets:
04-28-2009 18:51:58 [Local] Positron: Combined Markets: Maybe, farrr in the future... when the datamines don't have a HUGE discrepency in available inf on either side.
04-28-2009 18:52:55 [Local] Positron: If people are willing to pay 200m on heroside, and you cant afford 60m villainside, you definitely cant afford 200m
04-28-2009 18:53:53 [Local] Judgement Dave: i sth ediscrepency in INF earned to date or in rate of INF earning... the former could be addressed by a 1-time boost, the latter by adjusting rewards on 1 side....
04-28-2009 18:54:31 [Local] Positron: My brain just broke trying to figure out how to make rewards on one side work diff than the other

So as I read it, Posi actually seemed to state that he couldn't see how to give villains higher rewards... Doesn't mean it's impossible by any means.

Bluerabbit:
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There are already a lot of them out there and frankly they take too long to be awarded.

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ToyRobotTerror:
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No not more of them unless they lower the requirement.


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How can they take too much time to be awarded?

You don't really have to actively do anything to build progress on the bars - they could take a year each to get and you would stil get there with practically the same amount of 'effort'.

I actually like mutually exclusive badges and the jobs taking 21 days as there are too many badgers that seem to think that badging means grabbing new badges within hours/days of their introduction to the game.

This approach is somewhat damaging IMO - every event or new set of badges gets blitzed in the first few days and soon after it's almost impossible to get teams for them. THis makes it almost impossible for non-hardcore badgers. All the better if a few mutually exclusive and long-duration badges can kick some of this attitude into touch and get a few more badgers taking a slightly more laid back approach.

Regards the OP suggestion - the biggest issue I see is that there is no similar places in CoV.

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It seems like a nice idea to me, but the problem I can see is people abusing it, for instance, making a level 1 charecter, leaving it in city hall to get the improved powers whilst playing an alt then having an easy cruise through levels because your doing too much damage for your level.

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Pretty much won't happen if the improved power doesn't exceed the strength of the Nemesis staff/blackwand or sands of mu/undead slaying axe that are awarded as vets reward permatemps.

Not noticed this pre-I14 (though it's a fair few months since I last did Numina):

Numina TF:

* Final mission map has been changed from the map with the much-hated layercake room.

* Locate Scout mission appears to be having problems. I know of 2 or 3 TFs in the past few days that needed to get GM assistance due to an off-map mob. It also appears that dc'ing on exiting the final mission of the TF isn't uncommon.

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Why was it changed from emails to tells? Does anyone know...?

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I believe it was so that the arcs would be published under a global name rather than the local name.

I do hope that they are working on this issue; has it been acknowledged and committed to?

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During the anniversary chat, Posi said that the e-mails version wouldn't have worked cross-server, never mind cross-region. So the current system is technically better - at least this way characters on Defiant can send feedback to ones on Union. They just can't send it to Freedom or Justice.

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Did he?

Because emails seemed to work fine cross-region in beta.

I only really craft CIOs at low level (if the ingredients drop) or if a character is after the crafting badges - and then, if the character can't use the CIOs, I usually stick a few in SG storage and sell the rest.

Given how costly the 45/50 CIOs are to craft I'm surprised you need so many for the memorization badge - if I was spending thousands in RL I'd remember PDQ.

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Because it's the comments I get from people who have played my arcs and enjoyed them that makes writing them worthwhile. The "best arc I've played so far in MA" comments have meant more to me than any number of stars (admittedly I don't care about the badges). I don't care about mainstream/community popularity as long as some people have got enjoyment from my efforts.


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Yup - the best part of MA is certainly getting feedback. Knowing a couple of people enjoyed something I created is great - especially when I'm pretty sure I've no idea who the person is so I don't think they've been swayed in the least bit by any teaming or forum antics!

And negative comments are good if they provide feedback as to why they're negative.

In fact the only non-useful comment I recall getting was when feedback was still email based and a US account sent the comment 'meh'. Not useful in the least...

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You're right. It was for selfish reasons. I simply didn't want to have to put up with the headaches anymore :P

My skin is very thin, and i'm actually a pretty destructive person when something gets under it. But hey-ho, i've made room for that 1% of fantastically talented weatherable people to slot something in there

MA's a great system, I just don't have the spuds for it. I also can't see anyway to make the ratings system fair.


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There'll be less than 1% of fantastically talented weatherable people...

They key is - if you've done something as well as you could, accept feedback/criticism that's constructive and dismiss as idiots those who obviously just want to shedog & moan about something.

MA's easy when you accept that even the best arc ever, that 95% of people agree is sheer genius and should see the author deified, will still have 5% saying that it's dogpile and only zero-rating because you can't go lower...

But it's still a shame to just remove arcs because of that 5% if even a single player enjoyed it.

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Xemulas said:

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Oh, I removed it. Was sick and tired of something I do for recreation in my spare time making me so angry (Getting 'feedback' from people saying things like "I don't understand the story lulz, but it's pretty good lol 3 stars, after it getting to around 40 plays and 4 star average, being praised for the story all the while. Just an example).
Pointless for a badger when people of that caliber can lower your average. Anyway!

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Don't get demoralised, Xemulas

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Quite right don't get demoralised, instead get a thicker skin and forget about the ratings badges.

You're never going to please everyone and especially not when providing content for a game where accessing the content takes 5 seconds - so people will jump into any old arc even if, had they read the info avaialbe, they'd have known that they probably wouldn't get much from it.

Personally I actually find it a shame and even slightly selfish to have many people enjoying the story (according to Xemula's quote) but to just remove the arcs because of a few less-than-stellar ratings/comments from people who didn't really seem interested in the arc. Pull the arc to put something else up, but pull it just to avoid a few negative ratings when soem people were really enjoying it?

And as for mentioning badges. I personally think the ratings badges should stay and cartels/griefers be detected (as they were meant to be). But the badges for ratings are nice to haves and no badger is neccesarily going to get them all.

Think of the top ratings badges as if they're awarded to a player at random once a month, or like the bughunter badge . Sure it'll be nice if you get it, but you probably never will - and getting stressed about it ain't worth anything.


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I reckon you ought to have to finish the arc before you can rate it - that would save a lot of grief, and might allow something to get into the Hall of Fame once in a while.

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No - this raises it's own problems such as:

* What if an arc is impossible to finish for your character?

* What if within seconds/minutes it becomes very apparent that you are playing the thrown together in 2 seconds, kill all, dog-parcel from hell arc? And there are a fair few of these about...

Instead griefing voting patterns ought to be weeded out of the mix and perpetrators addressed. It should be possible to do it, not least because the devs claimed pre-I14 that it could be done.

Of course, I guess a system where you rated only after completing the arc or having been actually in the arc's missions for at least a set amount of time could work.

E.g. if you had to complete or be in the arc's missions for at least 5 minutes.

Then:
* Grief raters would have to wait 5 minutes to rate - which would deter at least some of them who are doing it purely to grief.
* Anyone completing the arc could rate immediately.
* Anyone who got stuck or couldn't complete would either have:
---- taken more than 5 minutes before getting stuck, so could rate immediately;
---- taken less than 5 minutes to get stuck, and so have less than 5 minutes left to wait.

The main people this would adversely affect are those who do hit a stinking dogpile of an arc and it's almost immediately obvious - but I, for one, would happiy wait 5 minutes to zero/1 star an arc that was truely that bad just to help others to avoid it.

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Finally! I nominate...

"The Twisted Tongue" (1444)
By @Days

I loved the writing in this arc - it was highly convincing and humourous, and had a great twist.

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I'll second that - if the devs try it I'm sure they'd enjoy the humour.

It manages to do an excellent and engaging storyline that's full of character (and pretty full of characters) without having to resort to cheap gimmicks and custom mobs. Probably the only arc I've seen so far that I wish I'd written...

Whereas I've moved on to smiling at being in a team of 8 lvl 4-6 doing normal missions in Defiant Atlas - and at least 1 person only started 2 days ago - this is his 1st team...

Who says all newbies just MA farm/PL??

I thought it's never the wrong time to start a 'seen anything ingame that made you smile' thread...

So I just step into Talos police station and see this NPC dialogue pop up in chat - I think the citizen was just plain unlucky and her parents knew this before they named her:

[NPC] PPD Captain: What did he look like again?
[NPC] Dung: This is the fifteenth time I've had my purse stolen!

I'm not aware of 'Dung' being a popular firstname in any nationality, so I'm wondering where the heck that came from in game...

Some of your questions are answered in the MA: Help Snippets, Tips & Tricks thread.

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Architect HTML tags and Text Substitution Variables
$himher - 'him' if it's a male/large character and 'her' if it's female
$heshe - 'he' if it's a male/large character and 'she' if it's female
$hisher - 'his' if it's a male/large character and 'her' if it's female


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I never mentioned in the original post about these that they can also use capitalisation by capitalising the H's.

e.g.

$himher will become "him" or "her".
$HimHer will become "Him" or "Her".

I heard that all that really happens in scheduled server maintenance is ghosty enhancing the hamsters - so always sell endreds/endmods/attack rate and run speed to ghost falcon. Avoid selling dmg and taunt or the hamsters end up fighting in vicious HvH battles until the server needs unscheduled maintenance to sort everything out.

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Everyone is invited to the 'closed' beta, therefore it's not closed, as it's wide open.

GF says there is no closed beta, which is then true. Sorta.

As nomenclature differences in this game from the rednames goes, that's pretty much on the lowest of the low scales, and I don't think you can derive "ZOMG THE DEVS DON'T SPEAK TO EACH OTHER!' from it at all.

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Usually closed betas are covered by NDA terms forbidding testers from talking to people not in the closed test about the test. A closed beta covered by such terms wouldn't actually be open even when all subscribers were invited to take part. And, with such terms, we wouldn't be able to discuss the closed beta in the public sections of the forum, though a closed beta section only visible to subscribers would be ok.

It's possible that this is actually what was planned/intended and so why Posi invited us to closed beta. ANd even if this was planned the plan may well have changed since the anniversary.

If there is no closed beta then why invite us all to one (other than for humour, subsequently lost-in-translation, or to sound like a bigger deal than it is)? And if there is a closede beta, even if all subscribers are invited, then why does GF state that there isn't one?

Not really bothered either way - but open and closed beta mean different things - it's why they are called distinct names... And I do like use and abuse of language.

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NO Issue 15 Closed Beta [ QUOTE ]
Actually, there is no spoon.



For the record, there is NO Issue 15 Closed Beta.

Where:
Issue 15 Beta will occur on the Training Room (in both North America and Europe), and not on a separate server (like the Macintosh Closed Beta)

Who:
Issue 15 Beta will be open to everyone who has an active account. Trial Account users will have access to the Training Room, however Trial Account limitations will still be in place on those Trial Accounts.

When:
Soon


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So the rednames are split or just don't communicate?

Didn't Posi say that we're all invited to I15 Closed beta? But Ghost Falcon states that there is no I15 Closed beta.

Now I know that everyone in closed is practically meaningless and means that closed is as near as dammit open... but if GF is correct doesn't that mean that Posi went back on an anniversary gift?

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Would have to be named something else. Very sensitive issue that command slash is.

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/wrists maybe?

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Q. Will it be available for Mac as well as PC upon launch?

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It'll no doubt be a third 'part' of the single executable (with CoH and CoV being the first 2 parts) with the necessary data/program updates being installed on your machine but unavailable to you unless you buy the GR version (or more precisely unlock the GR part on your account).

Those not getting the GR version will still have the data/program patched.

So if CoX works for the Mac then this will too.


Ok - they haven't confirmed that but they have stated that you need CoH or CoV to use GR. You really think they're doing an entirely new excutable/data installation for something that isn't even standalone??

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All it takes now is to get your story arc noticed in the first place.... *cough sig *cough *cough

[/ QUOTE ]Word is they're not checking EU ones. Not that I know anythiing about it.

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You must have a source though, unless you pulled that out of thin air (or somewhere darker and smellier).

How could they possibly tell the difference between EU ones and US ones in the MA?

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Look at the what the bit you quoted was responding to and it's quite clear that the reference was to the devs not checking the EU boards and so not noticing any plugs in peoples sigs.

The MA may not distinguish between US/EU players, but the boards certainly do.

The servers aren't back up but the patch is available on the servers and it is 18.20090422.5T that went on Test last week:

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Release Notes for 18.20090422.5T


COMBINED


Mission Architect

<ul type="square">[*]The maximum number of tickets awarded per player per mission has been reduced to 1,500 tickets. Because you cannot get a partial reward for defeating an enemy, you may end up with slightly less. [*]It is no longer possible to unpublish an arc that has been banned, though it may be resubmitted. [*]You may now either unpublish, or resubmit an invalidated arc. [*]If your character is not eligible for any xp/influence/debt reduction rewards in a Mission Architect mission, you will no longer be awarded any tickets for that mission. [*]It is no longer possible to have the Mission Completion ticket reward be greater than the total number of tickets gained before mission completion. [*]The ‘chicken tug’ animation is no longer selectable for critters through the Mission Architect UI[/list]
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I'm guessing that this is very possibly the last one before I15 hits test for a week to 10 days...