MadScientist

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acknowledge that an 80 CHARACTER SG may be less than a dozen PLAYERS, and scale bases accordingly.

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I disagree with your conclusion.
Instead of adapting bases to the current state of SGs, I think SGs should be reexamined so they can become the collections of 75 *players* that they were originally envisioned to be.

so... lemme get this straight...
they developed this content, released it, realized it had a bug... and are going to have it fixed inside of 6 months???
what, exactly, is a coding priority for the Devs right now?

simple rule of business, you never take something away from the customer. They took away the Cathedral, with no real explanation. I don't feel like they're working to get it back to us.

FYI, there's a huge thread on that quote already.

Are we at least on track to have the COP go live again on November 6th? That would be the start of a new cycle.

(never mind getting a chance for every SG to catch up to the SGs who have managed to benefit from IOPs for the past 2 weeks because they got organized faster.)

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Castle, any chance of revisiting the "bug" that causes transfusion to fail if the target dies?

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QFT, seconded, /signed, and whatever else you want a self-professed Kinetics junkie to say about this.
It also does the same thing on Transferrence and on the non-Caster parts of Fulcrum Shift. You always get the double-strength FS Buff around the caster, but can miss out on all the buffs/debuffs around the dead target. Can we at least get FS to target everything upon casting, like Fireball would, so even if the primary target goes away the ones still standing will be hit.

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When the trial 'breaks' on the 16th, will all power items be removed?

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they disappear when the next cycle starts, 3 weeks after the trial closes.

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If coaliation members supposedly can help with base-raids, why can't they participate in the COP?

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coalitions can't help with raids. (aside from being buff sources.)

yes, but for right now, this is PVE content. Go enjoy it.
don't worry, the PVP content won't suddenly go live. They'll announce that before it happens and it won't happen mid-cycle, so you'll lose your Items of Power and can simply not reacquire any when PVP is live. (and really, at the speed this stuff rolls out, it may be a good number of cycles before the PVP version launches.)

OR
maybe you'll find you really like the Items of Power and give PVP a try in order to keep getting them.

OR
maybe you will find you love Items of Power and can express to the Devs your love of them and your reluctance to lose them when the PVP version is going to go live.

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Wow, you could probably PL someone to 50 in a weekend.

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Actualy no you can't. Unless the IoP placement is bugged this prevents that. As things are now you cannot sell or delete an IoP. You dont even have the option to place it.

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If groups have a limited number of runs, I can see an advantage to having a irrationally huge XP award. That will be a good motivation for everyone in the SG to show up for the one run. Otherwise, people might say "eh, I'll just let the other guys handle it and not play as part of the group."
On the downside, once a group passes the mark for a secure plot and many IOPs they get this huge bonus effect of being able to hand out large chunks of XP. May make it even tougher for an upcomming SG to attract players.


one individual could run the trial indefinitely with some creative SG enrollment. maybe a large XP award helps balance that, as a group would want to award people who have helped the SG instead of to random pickups.

this may also mean the 1-villain-SG will have no trouble getting an IOP as there will be a huge list of people willing to jump in and help them for half a level of XP in 10 minutes. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

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OK, I agree it's fast and easy and that the bonus is too big. But 2, 4 and half minute?

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he means "two 4.5 minute". not 2, 4, and .5

I bet the lack of XP is based on the nature of how the mobs keep respawning. They may be classified as those summoned mobs that give no XP - like the ones from Portals.
However, in all those cases the summoner has a good enough reward to make up for the lack of XP from individuals. Do you think the reward from the trial is not balanced in that manner?

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What if my SG has one vault and we do the CoP to get the IoP and the IoP isn't something we like? Can we sell it for prestige or delete it so we can run it again to get another IoP?

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Should be easy enough to test. Anyone out there have base edit permision in a SG that's earned an IOP?

so the items affect rent. That's going to be easy to see, and really isn't a concern since it works in the SGs favor.
but I'm asking how does rent affect the item? for example, people have said that if rent goes overdue it turns off your IOP. That claim probably originated somewhere - but does it stop their effect, or delete the IOPs from your base? That would be good to know before we let rent lapse.

One more,
How does Rent affect Items of Power?
It's just tough to test, we need a "user's manual" for this kind of stuff.

A couple of questions that would be nice to know, and not very easily answered on Test tomorrow, if a Dev would be so kind....

Will we get any advanced warning before this goes live?

There was talk the last time of a limit on how many IOPs you could earn from the Trial. After 5 you could continue to run the trial, but not earn more Items. Is that (or any other earning limit) in place for this version?

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Who is going to pick a +3 SO over a SHO?

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If it's a rare +3 SO like an End Mod, or a Flight Speed, or something that practically never drops, I would.

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I would, too. However, I doubt it will happen because it would not be balanced with the Heroes who have no such source of 53 SOs.

But if they put the selection box on the Shard SFs, too....


anyways, I like this fix. Very cool. Thanks. Can we get this on all Strikeforces? I keep missing SOs in the Sharkhead one.

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The hero version is easily obtained at level 21 (grab a mentor for fakies). Villains will have a hard time getting it by level 40.

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There's little point trying to compare hero vs villain version of specific accolades. There are a lot of differences in the world of heroes and world of villains. Consider, for example, the amount of healing available in hero powersets, or for villains the amount of stealth powers. In a world with few +Recovery powers, +5 End is not the same to a villain as it is to a hero, it may well be insanely make-or-break to builds at level 7. I don't think that's what the Devs want from these.
(besides, your list leaves out the opposite situations with Demonic and the Immobilizer vs their hero versions.)

What's important, I think, is the balance of *how many* accolades at a given point. For example, in Siren's Call, either side should be expected to have the same number of accolades, just like they have the same amount of powers. Which specific accolades they have can be no worse than the difference in powers available to Blasters vs Corruptors or Brutes vs Tanks. While +5 End may be more fitting for late-game for villains, there is no accolade at all that heroes have to wait for level 45 to acquire.


But that's really the problem - never mind which accolades, the hero accolades can all help get you to 50, they're not things you pick up by farming after 50.
So, yeah, I agree that having to farm damage for an accolade sucks. But I think your reasoning is going to form a very weak argument if you insist on comparing it to the hero version. Things need not be the same to be balanced.

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Since MadScienctist simply refuses to acknowledge the truth ...

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ok, NOW you're crossing a line.
look, I'm here, keeping a nice list of bugs, glitches, QOL issues and balances. for this item, I'm looking for some specific details we can use to get Dev attention. and then you have to go and make it personal.
whatever.

you must have missed the number of times I've said it before, so I'll say it again.... SOMETHING appears wrong with the damage badge.
you must have also missed the other people refuting the accolade claims.
if you don't want to help collect more information we can provide to the devs, then what are you actually posting?

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If you sit there taking 200K+ an hour and you have the 2nd badge and after hours of sitting there nothing moves then what do you call it? It is the 1 million damage badge which would make each tic only 10K.

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Then you have proven that you have tracked less than 10k in that time.

If you are setting out to prove that the first X amount of damage does not count, you should take X+Y damage because you *could* prove that it tracks exactly Y. You can't prove something holds for all values <= X when you only test one value in that range.


or, really, the Devs should do this because they can take one hit, check the progress on the damage badge directly, and see how much it tracks. That would be the really simple solution, should take less time than this discussion we're having.

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A much easier test(and one I intend to run soon): Start a new villain, any kind will do but Brutes will be best. Skip the tutorial. Get someone who has Frostwork, and maybe someone with a heal. Use Frostwork on your brute, see how many more HP you get, and then find a mob that does less damage than that per attack, and let them attack you until you've taken 1,000 damage, keeping Frostwork up the whole time. Alternately, find a building(say, the Fort you start out on) to jump off of to take damage. See if you get a tick on your damage badge.

After I test this, I'll post my results, but people should feel free to test it themselves.

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Was anyone able to try this?


and I think this test illustrates a good point about these situations: watching the damage bar *not moving* is not going to prove much.
If the badge bar moves every 100,000 damage, and you don't see it move, you've proven that you've tracked less than 100,000. You haven't proven you've tracked 0.

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All this test this test that is pointless since the test have been done by players before and was basicly ignored, test A had no accolades and no problems. Test B got accolades then had a problem.

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That was not a request for a test. That was a request for more information when a player claims they are having trouble earning the damage badge. There are two reasons: the first is the large number of posts like yours that refuse to give any details other than accolades. (unless you want to point to some specific posts you refer to which include that information.) the second reason is, as you say, things get ignored. "hey, Dev, can you look into this..." requests often get ignored. Reports of "I can't earn this" usually get ignored. Specific, reproducable cases seem to draw the attention they deserve. (I'm glad that the Legacy Chain gladiator issues were an exception to this.)

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The simplest way would be for the playerbase to test this. Once we've done that, if a problem actually exists, and we have actual proof, we can submit our findings to the devs, who will then have a reason to bother other than, "It doesn't feel right."

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and there is the issue. There are many people with troubles farming damage badges. Actual details are rather scarce. Typically, the description of the farming setup starts and ends with "I have +HP Accolades". If we could submit complete builds and other details to the Devs, it may help them figure this out. What's that tracking file people used to demo the /regen problems? Maybe the answer is part of that.

So I guess proof of a damage badge bug would include:
- character archetype and level
- all auto and/or toggle powers active at the time, including temp powers and accolades, as well as powers you have set to auto-fire. provide full slotting information on these, including the actual enhancement level
- which damage badge you're working on and its progress at the start and end of the test
- are you in SG Mode? If so, what is the start and end progress on the SG damage badge? (for all we know the SG Damage Badge may be affecting personal tracking)
- name of mission or zone where you're doing this
- source of damage, it's amount and it's approximate frequency
- time you tested (start time and length of test)
- and anything else worth noting (how much damage Herostats says you took, for example. Did you come back from being AFK to find that one of your toggles had turned off?)

I'm believing that there's a bug somewhere. I just don't believe it's the Accolades.
Perhaps that kind of detail should get its own thread to track this problem.

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Actually that doesn't test the what everyone is complaining about: +HP Accolades.

The simplest way is for Cryptic to get a QA person to test this.

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But it does test taking damage when you have a +HP effect applied.

If that test shows that the damage badge progresses as expected, then it would follow that either the damage badge does not care about your boosted HP at all, or it calculates correctly your boosted HP from Frostwork. It would then be a lot easier to argue that Accolades have no effect because they boost you HP in a similar manner. and then we can all focus on other reasons for difficulty farming damage at higher levels.

If that test shows that the damage badge does not track correctly when you have Frostwork, then that itself is a problem that will need to be addressed by the Devs. It would be expected that Accolades and Dull Pain may be experiencing similar problems, or it should be easy to get a Dev to verify they're working OK when they fix the Frostwork problem.

But you're absolutely right, we need a Dev to look into this. I think there are enough cases of people having some kind of damage farming difficulty to know that something is buggy. The Devs can test this a lot better than we can, and they may even have a better idea of what to look for.

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So you are asking me if for months I have been farming damage before villains got accolades? Considering I am now 1% from Immortal on my villain and he has all 3 accolades that add health. Running herostats and comparing it to the movement of the bar which should be 1% every 10 million damage it is not adding up right.

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So you're saying that prior to I7 you were able to farm damage, and after I7 you are not. Correct?
What convinces you, with no testing particular to this theory, that it's Accolades and not one of the multitude of other code changes in I7?

You're not the only one to report a problem farming damage. If we, the players, are going to figure this out, we need more information than "I have accolades". What's the complete farming setup?
and should we have to test this at all? Haven't we gathered enough cases of people having trouble to get some Dev attention for the damage badges?

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Ok if someone wants to prove the accolades have an effect on badges then plese do the following (I'll be doing it in cov on my villain)

Find a malta turret preferably between green and yellow.

turn off all defense and all resist toggles then rest an let it attack you while resting...this should be causing very minor damage, not enough to exceed the 10+ % extra hp your other accolades give you...

Now note your damage in fact stick a piece of tape or take precise note of where the tracking bar is...

now walk away for about a day

come back if that bar hasn't moved at all zilch nadda then it's something wrong w/ accolades affecting damage taken OR at the very least a tracking bug for the bar graphic.

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What you prove is that SOMETHING is broken. It could be Rest, it could be Lethal damage, it could be Health, it could be that you're wearing a cape, it could be the damage from a Pet, it could be that the meter is broken, etc, etc.

That does NOT prove that it's the Accolades unless you do it twice, once with Accolades and once without.

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Actually what IS the good of having a secure plot?

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Effects of a Secure plot,
- You can use more than 1 Battery, which in practical application means you can use Batteries somewhere other than your Control room.
- You can have a second energy main item. This either can give you more energy output than usual, or you can double-up and have a backup should one go down in a raid. The trade-off for this is that the extra energy room for this item is another raid spot that's vulnerable to having a Pylon planted in it.
- You can have a second control main item, which can mean more control that can't be destroyed in a raid, or more control without having to gather salvage for an AES. (or, a way to have one AES for looks and some other item to attach a mission computer.)

Note that the cost of changing from Hidden to Secure, plus a second control room, plus a Supercomputer is pretty much the same cost of a larger control room plus AES in place of your current Supercomputer. Likewise, upgrading, adding a second energy room, and a second Turbine Generator may end up costing more than buying a Fusion Generator. This would only seem to be worth it if you're doing both upgrades.
However, consider raid vulnerability. You need 6 anchor rooms. In most cases, you would already have: 2 workshops, medical, control, power, teleport. If you add a second control and second power, you have 2 more rooms you need to protect from enemy Pylons. When you consider that particular vulnerability, is it worth the second set of E/C items at all?