MadScientist

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No, that's something different. Making the new C+D pool drop (very infrequently) from the defeat of bosses/EBs/AVs is a whole new award situation.

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your'e right. never mind me.

but the second part I said is relevant here, too.
we have Real Numbers for most game aspects, including the original drop rates for recipes and salvage. Can we be given the new drop rate numbers for the chance of that C+D pool from bosses? and the rates within that newly combined pool? (and while you're at it, I don't recall getting a solid number on Purple rates.)

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While not specifically related to the MA Reward system, there was no I14: Misc feedback thread, so, I'll put it here:

In I14 Beta, Synapse said that the newly combined and weighted Pool C+D recipes were set to drop from defeats of Boss and higher ranked foes (very rare). So... did that make it to Live or not? It wasn't in the Patch Notes for live release and it was in the Beta Patch Notes that it was pulled.

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according to the description of the item you buy at the vendor, it has. Confirmation in the patch note would be nice, though, since it's on trust that the drop rate is weighted.

speaking of weighted drops, can we know the new drop table, as part of the trend of Real Numbers transparency?

[ QUOTE ][*] Characters (on active accounts) who have inventories, bids or items for sale in the Black Market or in Wentworth's Consignment House will no longer have to log into the game within 60 days to avoid item or influence/infamy expiration.

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What is the rule for characters on inactive accounts? Is it 60 days of character inactivity? 60 days of account inactivity?
I've had my account go inactive because of billing issues. I'd hate to accidentally lose some stuff. I'd like to know if I should be checking in to the market every 60 days anyways to cover myself.

(based on that I'll be able to give you some feedback.)

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I think arcs should lock into Hall of Fame.

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except for the problem if someone edits an in-place arc and makes it non-HOF quality.

so do you lock in until republished? if so, you can't really immediately re-lock it once republished because no one has a chance to 1-star the now lousy arc.

It's a great idea in theory, but I'm not sure what's the fairest way to really implement it. Perhaps it's good enough to know that HOF has a buffer if it's averaging well over the HOF Rating requirement.

Badges that are earned by a whole account should get their own tab on the badge listing. They should not be mixed with badges earned by specific character actions. This goes for the MA badges, and some pre-existing stuff like Vet badges and Pocket D VIP. (I say "Tab" meaning something like the way SG Badges have their own button.)


Any MA badge related to running missions in test mode should be tracked account-wide. Since mission writing is done by global, not a single character, mission testing should be treated as part of writing. This would encourage testing with more characters, since they would all contribute to the same badge, instead of focusing testing on one to finish that one character's high badge. (Badges on each character do not encourage spreading around testing when those badges are so high.)


I still don't understand why a "special recognition" such as Hall of Fame or Dev Choice needs to also get involved in the Badge Chasing mini-game. They'd be fine rewards without also giving out badges.

Base storage is still insecure because even though there is a log of which character took what item, there is no log to know what character promoted them into a position to access that storage bin (or even who invited them to the SG), or know which character changed the bin's permission to make it accessible.

In short: We still need more logging features. This would allow us to audit our own SGs, and would probably keep more people honest if they know they're being logged.



The general problem is that there are very few tools for a SG leader to actually use to help them lead. This problem is highlighted by this issues focus on supreme leadership. I've said enough elsewhere about what some of those tools should be, I won't ramble on here.

These sets are in demand in plain old PVE because they are just as useful in PVE as any other set is - whether or not the person using the set will ever PVP at all.

Objective observation: That demand, combined with the limited source of them, drives the prices sky high.

Subjective opinion on fixing that: feed their PVE demand with some kind of PVE source. I'd be willing to buy them with Merits/Tickets at twice the price of the TF/Trial rolls. (I'd pay that much because they're a very small pool, so a good chance of success.)

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People always complain when they lose their "I Win" button. But i think that is the complaint here, if you took the power out of the set, the set is kidna subpar honestly. Or atleast not really as much of a pure win set as it was. Isnt that the very nature of a broken set?

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It's certainly the nature of a set that's frustrating me at low levels.
Now if it wants to come with a big warning label, "Find some teammates to carry you thru 37 levels and make sure you never want to run any content exemplared under 38" then, yeah, I could see it all balancing out from the one power.

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Psi Shockwave isn't an overpowered attack, but maybe it doesn't have a high enough end cost?

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I think if the end cost were balanced correctly people would probably complain. What's the point in having a power on a 10 second recharge if it costs 50 end?

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it only costs 10 now. and we do have Drain Psyche in the set. and why do people refuse to slot End Reduc? no, wait, don't answer that.
but anyways, it doesn't HAVE to be End. my point was you can keep it powerful while fixing other aspects, especially if it's related to making the rest of the set perform better, especially for lower level. Cause really, much more frustration on this character and I may go get PL'd on an MA mission up to 38 and start playing then.

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Secondary effects are not considered when balancing a power's primary effects.

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which effects do you consider "primary"? well, you probably mean damage, and DPA or DPCC, right? but where does End, Rech, ToHit and such factor in? That -Rech effect has to come with a cost somewhere.

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Fulcrum shift and granite first, please.

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having a number of Kins, I feel I have to step in and say that FS is actually rather balanced. The problem is FS added to a large number of pets. Fire/Kin controllers and the like give the power a bad name, anyone who doubts that can roll a /Kin Corr and see. I have always thought the solution to that would be to lower the damage cap on summoned pets, and even a "low" 250% cap would be hard for any non-Kin set to reach, so non-Kin pet owners wouldn't even really notice.


as for Granite, I think there's a lesson here valuable for any Dominator fixes, too. The problem with Granite is not its plain old Def/Res. The imbalance comes when offsetting the mobility loss with SB. (so I guess the Granite fix should be to apply a lower speed cap, or resistance to +spd, the current -spd is an insufficient cost.)
Likewise, Perma-Dom is not "overpowered", it's not more powerful than another Dom's non-Perma-Dom, in the same way Granite is no stronger than MoG or OWTS. But if you do have recharge you've offset one of the balances in Domination, removing the portions of time that it's not active.
Psi Shockwave isn't an overpowered attack, but maybe it doesn't have a high enough end cost?

and Drain Psyche is not overpowered at all. Other secondaries get Build Up or Aim or Power Build Up, they get to buff their Damage, Acc, other effects. Psi gets to buff their Regen/Recover. I don't see an imbalance.

had an idea for a different take on why Psionic Dart is terrible,

DPA of level 1 powers. (DPA at 50 because that's what Mids' gives me.)

Earth/Psi
Stone Prison = 18.7
Fossilize = 17.4
Psionic Dart = 16.3

Fire/Psi
Ring of Fire = 23.4
Char = 37.2
Psionic Dart = 16.3

Grav/Psi
Crush = 27.1
Lift = 28.1
Psionic Dart = 16.3

Ice/Psi
Chillblain = 30.9
Block of Ice = 19.3
Psionic Dart = 16.3

Mind/Psi
Mesmerize = 21.6
Levitate = 25.5
Psionic Dart = 16.3

Plant/Psi
Entangle = 30.1
Strangler = 19.2
Psionic Dart = 16.3

That should illustrate why I keep slotting other powers instead of Psionic Dart.

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Could you give us a bigger more comprehensive case for Psionic Assault's woes? On the last go around we concluded that things were just acceptable for Psionic Assault.

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Having started an Ice/Psi for I14, I came here to file some complaints

Psi Dart is a worthless power. I haven't slotted it, nor have I considered slotting it. I'm only level 17, only have a handful of powers to activate, and it's not worth clicking Dart.

Every other secondary tier 1 does 36 damage (level 50, per Mids'). All others except Thorns activate in 1 second. so...
36 DPA for most sets (give or take, some do a few tenths of a HP more damage)
27 DPA for Thorns, but especially at low levels that debuff is huge, at higher levels the -Def gives you options for added IO procs (yes, I consider IO options a power balance)
16 DPA for Dart.
It's just not comparing, and for a power you *have* to take it really needs to be up to par.
It's pathetic compared to the Veteran Blackwand/NemStaff.

What about it's secondary effect? 30% -Rech is the weakest of all the -Rech side effects you can get. Now if it did 100% -Rech that might be noticable at low levels. It might even be useful against higher level foes as a primarily debuff power with some kind of damage. or is -Rech useful...? you see, here's the general problem...

Are we overpaying for useless features?
Every power is balanced, in terms of damage, effects, inherant accuracy, rech, end, activation, and so on. Consider,
- Including a -Rech is not that useful alongside a primary set of hard control. If the opponent is held, it doesn't matter if their powers are charged. In fact, if they're only attacking occasionally because of holds then the -Rech may not be relevant at all.
- A -Rech effect is only useful after the NPC has used their attack chain once (since they start with everything charged). Given a Dom's level of HP and lack of damage mitigation, will any fight be drawn out long enough (one way or another) to notice -Rech? (I'm sure someone's written a better analysis of the actual impact of -Rech.)
- Including Immobilize on Subdue is a wasted effect compared to a primary full of options to Hold, Immob, Slow, KB, etc. Are we overpaying for a feature we don't notice?
- Psi attacks have a higher range, this is just the theme for Psi, but being our secondary does it matter? The primary Dom powers are holds, and those still have their normal ranges.

that's what I've got. What do you think?

Feature Name or Description:
Glitches with the Navigation window.

Operating System (Vista, XP, OS X version): winXP, SP3
User Client (Mac, PC, Linux): PC
Server:
Zone:
Character name:
Time:
Location:
Archetype:
Level:
Power:
Badge:
Mission:
Mission Contact:
Mission ID #:

Bug Description:
The vertical height of the Navigation window is jumpy. This happens whenever changing selections in the expanded window, such as contacts or missions. The upper portion of the window briefly shrinks (down to its typical pre-I14 size, I think) and then regrows. This makes it hard to click the right spot, especially in laggy areas.

I realize the current mission area needs to be a little bigger for the MA Settings button, but on non-MA missions it looks like there's now an extra blank line of space below mission objectives, that wasn't there before. The typical height of that window post-I14 is now a bit taller than it's minimum, so it keeps reducing briefly whenver its text changes.

In short, can you permanently lock the vertical height of the collapsed Nav window to a fixed number? That would solve this problem.

Link to Forum Discussions:
(pardon the whole block of blank N/A stuff there.)

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#1 Person in architect building next to inspiration seller that we can use to set our difficulty level. It's really annoying to be constantly leaving, running to trainer, then running back to test missions on different difficulties.

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funny how a little movement is an issue, but I hear very little about sinking Inf into testing at different difficulties.

Priorities, people!!!

If we're testing on different levels, make it simpler to TEST, as in making it unrelated to normal settings.

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Characters (on active accounts) who have inventories, bids or items for sale in the Black Market or in Wentworth's Consignment House will no longer have to log into the game within 60 days to avoid item or influence/infamy expiration.

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What is the rule for *inactive* accounts?

I ask because not too long ago I had my account go inactive for a few days because of a credit card issue.
Would I have immediately lost all my stuff if the character was longer than 60 days away? or is the rule 60 days of account inactivity now?

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In the absence of a definite redname statement, assume the worst. Because, unless someone thought of this and coded for it, I think the path of least resistance in the code would work as follows:
Toon A has not logged in for 70 days.
Account goes inactive.
Next maintenance, since the account is inactive, the 'clean out CH' subroutine runs and deletes anything over 60 days.

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which brings up the question of why they wouldn't simply remove the cleanup routine. Why add an "if active" in there?

I've PM'd Niv about this already. It's very strange to get a patch note explaining for one type (in this case active accounts) without clear info on the compliment type.

The real problem is that in the scenario you describe any "hiccup" in billing can trigger the delete of certain items if they were on a character with some time since last market check-in. The way you have to cancel billing and resubscribe to change certain settings could end up tripping that, too.

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Characters (on active accounts) who have inventories, bids or items for sale in the Black Market or in Wentworth's Consignment House will no longer have to log into the game within 60 days to avoid item or influence/infamy expiration.

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What is the rule for *inactive* accounts?

I ask because not too long ago I had my account go inactive for a few days because of a credit card issue.
Would I have immediately lost all my stuff if the character was longer than 60 days away? or is the rule 60 days of account inactivity now?

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All I was saying is I hope things like those you listed, and other things that have been asked for repeatedly get some attention soon.

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I know.

I'm just getting sick of "wait til next issue". Especially on things that have had that philosophy for many issues now. (ie, offline demoting.)

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But the Main Focus of I14 was on Architect, not Bases.

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we've got a nice list of non-MA stuff already. every issue has plenty of other additions. For example, consider the effort they put into the arena system this issue.

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They already had their hands full when they decided to give us Storage Permissions and Rank 6.

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Was that really "full"? Most of the things I mentioned are small, discrete items. For example, logging has messages in the system already, all it would take is stashing them to a text file and putting a button somewhere to see that file.

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I'm just hoping they will give us some of the stuff we HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR in I15.

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Most of what I listed has been asked for a lot longer than just now. Same way those better storage permissions were asked for when storage was first added. We got storage now because (if you're an optimist) the salvage storage change forced the issue, (and if your a pessimist) they were in there anyways as part of fixing the base item overflow issues.
So maybe I15 logic does hold, since messing up leadership structures may cause all sorts of troubles they simply have to fix with better leadership tools.

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Here is a thought, why not make the founder the super leader, if they are no longer a member make the oldest member the leader. Would that make too much sense? but the last one to log on??? come on get real, if the one who should be leader cant logon because of Whatever reason isnt made the leader is pretty lame. I think the persone who is the oldest member and is a current leader should be the super leader. but then again that would make way too much sense. and we cant have that now can we?????

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as much as I hate the whole Rank 6 setup... go re-read the description.
it's not simply the last, there's a 24 hour tiebreaker, then it goes to oldest.
so it does go to the oldest member, as long as they proved they're active by being logged on within the 24 hour tiebreaker window.
in other words, they sign in today (assuming our release notice holds up) and you have what you want. is that log in too much work compared to the work the oldest member has done leading the SG already?

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One man's perfect fix is another man's nightmare.

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Which is why the real solution would be to emphasis who gets promoted, and how, and what they are accountable for.

Including, but not limited to...<ul type="square">[*]knowing more about the people you plan to promote (ie: logging how they use the permissions they already have; better stat tracking.)[*]knowing more about what your leaders are doing while you're offline (which is important both to the co-leaders, and to the non-leaders seeing what the higher-ups are doing)[*]making sure the leaders know that they are being tracked and logged (consider how storage logging acts as a deterrent)[*]giving SGs better communication, including things like: communicating the SG's bylaws; ways for leaders to share notes; email to the whole roster; ways of reaching a leader by their SG name.[*]giving better ways to share some power without all-or-nothing nature of promotions (the new storage permission helps one example of this greatly. we need similar setups for base editing, and a few other functions)[*]offline rank management[*]protection against accidental promotion (shoulda come in the game when we got Kick confirmation a short time ago)[*]informing players what happened to their characters on the roster while they were offline (who kicked you when you weren't looking, and when?)[*]lessening the damage from griefing, or easier recovery. (eg, preservation of Join On and Prestige if you are removed from the roster; a log of who was kicked and a way to easily re-invite them)[/list]The devs *should* have given us a decent SG Management Overhaul in this issue. Instead, we got this Rank 6 change that might net out to a negative for many groups.

The irony is that the things I listed above might have added up to less actual code than Rank 6, if they'd put in a bit of design thought first.

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Wow, an SG isn't a right of passage if you get kicked you move on there are other nice SG's. Also the SL would help minimize all this being booted stuff since only one person would have total say in what goes on.

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"help minimize all this being booted stuff" by increasing one person's boot capabilities. That's a change, but not necessarily a fix.

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Just because someone took five minutes to go to Galaxy or Atlas and type in the SG name doesn't make them a leader. The person or people who do the heavy lifting are the leaders. I guess it depends on your definition of what makes someone that leader.

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perhaps a better example than questioning one person's leadership is to question how you treat others who do just as much. If 3 people *together* were to decide to start a SG, why should only 1 of them be singled out for a special position? Is that fair to the other two?

I guess if someone wanted to crusade for system flag called "guy who typed in the SG name" then that's accurate....

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In the current system, no one can demote someone who is at their same level, and there is no self demotion.

Adding in a "sole" Superleader to the SG system allows for leadership disputes to be solved within the SG themselves, as there is now a level that can demote the current "leader" level. If the Superleader no longer wants to be Superleader, they just need to promote someone else to Superleader, and they will demote themselves in the process.

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Pardon me for resorting to a cliche, Positron, but...

Baby. Bathwater.

This new system will perhaps do what you seek. However, it will have a huge number of new issues all its own.


If you wanted self-demote, why didn't you just put that in? If that turned out to not be enough, then you could have further complicated things.
If you wanted same-level demote, why not address the things that makes someone a "bad leader" and gets in a position to be demoted? Such as a tracking system to keep people more honest. (like how you created an audit trail to help protect storage, but still don't have one for SG rosters.)

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Powers like Lightning Storm, Voltaic Sentinel and Auto Turret are precisely the powers that were targeted by this fix. Making exemptions for them would defeat the purpose, don't you think?

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Voltaic Sentinel really needs its life-cycle fixed to 4 minutes.

Originally, VS was immobile. (Like Auto-Turret.)
That meant having to resummon it every mob or two, so it was given a low recharge.
That was in the days of multiple pet summonings, so it was given an equally low lifetime to avoid stacking many of them in one spot.

Now that so much has evolved around it, we're left with a pet no different than others, but with a re-summon every minute.

That's annoying. And it's not in line with all the other pets that last 4 minutes.
I've been trying to get some attention to this since VS became available to Corruptors and Dominators. In light of this latest change, maybe it's a good time to fix VS's problems.