MadScientist

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Has it been stated whether or not the current delayed xp delivery is intended behavior or a bug? Not to put too fine a point on it but I hate the current situation.

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Current patch notes on test refer to it as a bug.

Woulda been nice if someone stated that a few pages ago to save us all some complaining.

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-XP doesn't update quickly. Sometimes, while in a mission I find I receive around 1/2 a level in xp without zoning.

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I noticed the random updates of my XP bar today.

I was SK'd to a friend, and the other half of the leveling pact was not online.

I couldn't see any trigger in when the XP updated or not - it sometimes happened while neither of us were near combat. We tried to force an update by breaking and resetting the sidekicking, it didn't change things.

Something odd is definitely going on here.

I'm not even sure what the advantage is of holding back those rewards until a mission completion.
The free tailor sessions and crafting tokens simply award - no action needed.

Why not award recipes, insps, salvage, etc upon login if you have enough time accumulated?

oh, sure, you get them for "free"... but what else are you logging in to do if not running a mission at some point? Let's just take the mission completion part as a given - since it's the most fundamental achievement in the game - and stop requiring the obvious in order to get a day job effect.
Then you've removed the imbalance from 2 players of the exact same logout time getting differing amounts of those rewards if they run missions at different speeds.

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Many day job effects make me want to run thru missions to only kill the boss at the end because I feel the need to finish a mission while the buff power is still active.
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These buffs should not be based on a timer. They should accumulate charges that fire when you complete a mission.

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I dunno if *charges* will fly but they could at least make it active until one mission completes before logoff

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Perhaps an easy-to-code compromise:
Pause the timer on the Auto power while not in a mission.
(easy to code because the game knows if you're in a mission or not. the varying debt award is proof of that.)

Then you don't feel excessive travel time, load time, team-searching time, shopping time, etc, is draining away your potential power usage.


FWIW, applying that timer logic to Empowerment stations wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

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The removal of arc-reward xp annoys the hell out of me.
I hate calling the contact just to get a "so what, you're done" message now. No reward xp, no SO. Heck I don't even use the SOs, but it at least makes it feel like you are getting a reward when you get that pop-up box. Psychology man!

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FWIW,

They also removed the XP award from the Respec trials. (Took me until 2 days ago to realize that.)

So before you could choose a respec or the combination of a Recipe and XP. Now they give you the same respec choice, or a reward of fewer Merits than a Pool D recipe plus zero XP.

Yes, it's true the XP was buggy (read: potentially exploitable if you were low level) but completely removing it is not a fix!

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Add a candy cane keeper outside the chalet door in Pocket D once its closed. I'm sure there will be more people wanting to redeem thier canes after the event.

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/Signed

There is a person to turn in haloween salvage all year long, please put someone, somewhere, where we can turn in canes for those of us that missed out on doing so. Especially for the badges/costume parts.

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or simply for those of us who forgot it was ending sunday night and thought it lasted thru monday night....

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I wonder if they could create a "hockey stick" temp power, and use the ragdoll physics to allow us to actually play ice hockey.

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mechanically, should be pretty simple.

spawn an NPC named "Hockey Puck" that has 100% Resist Damage and 100% Resist Immobilize and 100% Resist Knock Up. (the last so it stays on the ground, in a rink.)

Hockey Stick melee power has a stick animation, the same effect of a snowball (ie: does nothing), plus "Special vs Hockey Puck: Knockback"

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I suppose you'd have to be very careful w/ how you handle the status protection & resistances of the "puck" - it'd have to have to be immune to holds & tp. It'd have to be immune to slows & repel. Would you just let people use force bolt & foot stomp to knock it around, though?

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dunno. I was just pointing out that within the confines of the current NPC generating system everything exists to do this. Whether that also includes Teleport and Repel protection is just as simple as any other power effects it might have. (and probably a good idea.)
It could have Force Bolt protection if it had 500 Mag KB Resist and the Stick did a 501 Mag hit to it. No need to be power-specific. Guess a whole lot of people could throw Force Bolt at once, but I have no idea how high those numbers could be turned up.

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I wonder if they could create a "hockey stick" temp power, and use the ragdoll physics to allow us to actually play ice hockey.

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mechanically, should be pretty simple.

spawn an NPC named "Hockey Puck" that has 100% Resist Damage and 100% Resist Immobilize and 100% Resist Knock Up. (the last so it stays on the ground, in a rink.)

Hockey Stick melee power has a stick animation, the same effect of a snowball (ie: does nothing), plus "Special vs Hockey Puck: Knockback"

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[ QUOTE ][*]Power Liberator / Master Thief is not obtainable. Given questions about how it was earned, perhaps the fairest solution is to change the badge requirement to winning any raid by any victory condition.


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what is this?!?!?!?! i have never seen this badge and it does not show up on Badge- hunter

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no? Maybe because it's not obtainable right now they're not tracking it.

Indications are that the initial design goal was for "taking an IOP in a raid." as in, encouragement for the scheduled raid system. Thus, the Liberator/Thief name.
In implementation, the badge was given for "winning a raid via clicking on the opponent's IOP" (as opposed to winning via planting beacons or destroying anchors) regardless of the IOP actually changing hands in a pickup raid. As you can clearly see, such a reward was easily ... arranged ... between 2 raiding parties, and we'll hopefully leave the recurring argument there, it's perhaps better suited for the badge forum.

It's not obtainable because there are no longer IOPs to be clicked on. I guess it's likely still active in the system.

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I think I disagree about making Tech Empowerment Stations take only Tech Salvage and vice versa. I rather like the fact that the 2-item recipes are identical for both types of Empowerment Stations. It lets me place only the Arcane one in my Arcane-themed base, instead of having to hide a Tech Station in a corner somewhere.

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This is why I mentioned the misperception that they are identical. They are not.
Any recipe that has an odd number of ingredients will see the last ingredient is different. eg, KB Increase, Recovery.


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Plus the idea of having to keep in stock both Tech & Arcane Salvage for Empowerments in the current state of limited storage (either in a Rack or on the character) actually makes a requirement of having only one type of Salvage used on a particular Station a bit more onerous rather than less so, as you argue.

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At one level tier, to cover every recipe on one station, you need 24 pieces, 12 common and 12 uncommon. If the station only used Tech, it would form its recipe list from only 12 pieces. That should make it easier to provide a stash for each recipe, right?
Note how each piece would probably be in twice as many recipes, this makes your stash more useful. (and perhaps helps people stumble upon something they'd like to use where they may normally not see any craftable options on the station at all.)


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Since that point is opinion only, perhaps you should remove it from the list of "Issues"?

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I was not the only one to take issue with the interweaving of tech and arcane pieces.
Do you still think it's not a good point after the replies to your other 2 paragraphs?

sadly, the original discussion of this got eaten by the forum, I'll see what I can remember.

How about multiple SGs at once?

Characters can do this now by quitting and rejoining, but it's very clumsy. The idea is to allow them to remain on both rosters, using each as needed.

Just like a character can chat to multiple channels (team, broadcast, local), or kind of how a player can be in many global channels, how about each character able to enroll in more than one SG?

To continue the global channel analogy, you may be in some public channels, some private, may be an operator in some and not others. Each SG would be completely separate - your promotion status in one SG only affects that SG. One SG doesn't see the others rosters or coalitions. It would simply give one character multiple bases to enter, the option to join different raid teams without switching SGs, and the ability to earn prestige for many groups without losing connections/rank/totals in other groups.


If a character made a SG of just themselves, then suddenly they have an "apartment" as people keep requesting. Thus people in public SGs can also create personal SGs now and gain access to things like personal bases and private storage.
On the other hand, there are many players who favor the personal functions and refuse to join more public SGs because of that. Giving them the ability to do both provides more potential members for those larger multiplayer SGs.


there are a few odd issues, but they seem easily solvable.
Chatting over a general Supergroup channel would probably need a different channel per group. eg, [Supergroup][$Groupname]$character: message.
SG Mode should probably apply for one group at a time, not for all. This helps decide which logo and colors to use on the costume. This keeps Prestige earning to its current levels.
One SG Mode at a time could solve other issues that would be confused by 2 SGs. For example, which SG is shown in the target box, or which SG are you paying rent for? If those are limited to the SG you're in SG Mode for, they aren't problems.

The bottom line is this: it's currently possible to support multiple SGs, but an inconvenience to switch rosters. You reset your totals and your rank, you need to track down someone for an invite. Make that a little easier by letting someone hold space on many rosters, but only activate things like SG Mode and Chat for one roster at a time.

Updates for I13. (sorry this got delayed.)<ul type="square">

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Empowerment:
[*]Tech stations should only use Tech salvage, Arcane stations should only use Arcane salvage. They should not mix and match the types within each recipe. This achieves the following:
- Characters on storyarcs spend long stretches fighting one origin of foe. Requiring both origins of salvage makes it far less likely to complete a recipe via drops.
- Reinforces roleplay.
- It would be clearer that there are actual differences between the 2 stations, currently a lot of people assume they're identical and remove one option.
- This would double the amount of recipe options. Again, making it more likely to get the right drops for one of them. And when the drops alone don't fill a recipe, players would have more options for what pieces do complete them, overcoming troubles like market shortages of a particular piece, or limited resources in storage.
[*]In general, Empowerment has a lot of issues. Another thread will be started for those. But in relation to I13, the change to Invention salvage has caused the following concerns:
- Empowerment seems more expensive now. In particular, with a lack of Real Number information on the craftings and the mistake of saying they last only 15 minutes (8.16.06 patch notes say they are meant to last an hour), a higher cost just makes matters worse.
- Characters do not have the capacity to hold a lot of empowerment ingredients as they could with Components. This makes it harder to plan ahead.
- The recipe list is more complex. Compounding that, it's far away from the Market. Markets in the base may help here.
- Using a community stash of salvage is a pain because of the number of pieces vs the size of the bin, and the lack of sorting. (eg, if you see you need one Circuit Board to complete a recipe, you may have to check many bins to find one. Previously, it was easy to set up a tech bin full of the 4 tech components people went looking for.)


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Storage, in particular the I13 change to storing Invention Salvage:
[*]Invention Salvage is considered to be worth more than Base Salvage was. So storage security is more of an issue protecting against theft.[*]Invention Salvage has more uses than Base Salvage had (doing the job of both now). So storage security is more of an issue protecting against gluttony.[*]Capacity is far too low. It's low compared to one character (are we supposed to return to using mules?) It's low when you factor in holiday salvage. It's low considering the amount of different items you may want to group together in one bin for organizational reasons.


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General issues
[*]IO Salvage is seen as more valuable than Base Salvage. That relates to the following points:
- Worry over crafted item deletion.
- Concern about the lack of group contributions to base needs.
- Lack of crafted item information before spending salvage.
- Empowerment costs and storage concerns (see above)
[*]Rent is now so low as to be meaningless. What is the goal of this new cost structure? Most people see rent as a mere annoyance now, not as a game feature.
(Numbers: People on the 8x12 plot have received a prestige refund of 1,569,861. 18 storage items and an empowerment station is 2,100 rent. That's 747 rent payments. That's 4,482 weeks. The smallest of plot upgrades has freed up enough prestige to handle rent for the next 86 years. Why do we still have rent at all?)
[*]Wall items can not be placed on South and West walls.
[*]The Editor is harder to use with the ability to overlap items. Suggestions: A control for snap-to-grid layout. Another control for restricting movement to along a single axis.
[*]Magic Doors are not usable because of pathing code changes. Will they be supported directly some time in the future? Are they unsupported because larger rooms are now more affordable?
[*]Plot costs for smaller Secure plots are equal to Hidden. What is the design goal? What is the cost for the Secure Plot advantages?
[*]Is crafting still meaningful? Recipes take very few pieces, making it less important to contribute as a group. Crafting is a 1-time trivial action. There are related issues such as deleting crafted items. Is the system at all worth the design that's in it?
[*]The change to the functionality of an item controlled by permissions (in this case: storage) highlighted the need to demote offline and hidden characters so SGs could better adapt to the new permission effect. Maybe no longer an issue for I13, but it would be nice to see this in place for future changes to security-related items.
[*]In general, I13 has made it easier for a smaller roster to achieve more base function and area. This removes some of the game's incentive for forming larger rosters. Will we ever get higher-level stuff to work towards?
[*]Midnighter Club could use a teleporter, especially now with a contact inside. (There's a workaround on the Pillar if you're not on a team or TF. This is clumsy.) Concerns were raised about beacons and both roleplay and function with the badge, but how about a Midnighter-specific Teleport Main item?
[*]There is little balance from a Basic vs Advanced vs Elite cannon. The placement is the same, crafting differences are now very minor. There's no cost benefit to the lighter weapons if the real limiting factor is not resources, but is placement space. To illustrate that, consider consider a level 50 IO vs a 20 - it's still one slot - but 50's from different sets present an interesting choice. So perhaps cannons needs all the same base stats, and some other difference that's more interesting and can be used to design a raid defense.
[*]There's no longer a Special Salvage reward for PVP missions, such as Alien Tech, Astrology Book. Will those missions get a different buff? Hopefull a buff related to supergroups.[/list]
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Appendix: Items fixed in I13

Note: any pathing issues in the prior posts are not going to be marked "solved" until the raid system is returned and we see what pathing looks like. It's possible that old issues will still remain just as they were described. Remember, it is unfair to fix pathing only for people who ignore the raid function of bases!
Developers please note: if building rules for raids are too restrictive, it makes an indirect cost on the raiding system.

The following are no longer issues.
- Any Base Salvage issues.
- Pocket D now has a beacon. Add Cimerora to the list in its place.
- SG Costume Color settings are fixed. All items are now colorable, and each costume is separate.

- Return to Mission Teleporter is NOT a fixed issue. Having a clickable character power to do that does not replace the question of a base item.

(QR)

I think the salvage costs are too high. 30 Merits for a rare of a specific origin is too much.

Consider that the salvage drop rate is supposed to be one rare per hour, maybe less than that for very high levels. (Based on statements from Positron about filling your salvage capacity in an hour and based on the rarity scheme.) Comparing to the 5-minutes-per-merit we were told for TFs, that means I should expect salvage to be around 12 merits.

Cutting salvage costs to 10-15 merits would also bring it in line with the average selling cost on the market vs the average TF recipe cost. (not claiming there's a direct equation from market cost to merit cost, just saying it's clear salvage is not as valuable as recipes.)

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One way that could be balanced would be to have each TF give random drops at the content's level, not at your level.

So... if there's worry about Katie giving farmable recipes AND merits, it gets farmed for level 34 recipes. (Plus 1 or 2 levels on higher difficulties.) Not nearly as abusive as farming level 50s, given the difference in power between 50 buffs and 34 buffs.
55 Merits on Posi plus a level 15 drop isn't much more from the view of a 50 farmer, but consider how it looks to a level 15 character.
etc, etc. Not totally the random drop plus merits, but still a great compromise.
This would actually help the market quite a bit by generating a variety of levels. Consider how many level 30-ish Posi Triples were getting sold even before Merits came along.

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That would make Posi really popular. Since 15 is the lowest that the +stealth movement IO's drop.

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Is that a bad thing?
It's easy enough to buy 15s with Merits directly, so is this any worse?
And you have to weigh that chance against people who prefer to run something where a larger percent of the possible drops would be more useful to them.

(heck, Stealth is easy enough at level 1 from an empowerment station. I can see the usefulness of the IO, but I can't believe how much people pay for what's essentially convenience over Empowerment.)

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I slotted Achilles' Heel: Chance for Resistance Debuff in both Infrigidate and Sleet on my Cold/Cold Defender.

I see the notice "You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily" in the Combat log when I use Infrigidate as I expect, but I never see it fire in Sleet.

Is this a known issue?

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Sleet would be a psuedo-pet. The combat log is a bit picky about which pseudo-pet effects get recorded there and which don't. (I don't have it, but I'd bet Sleet doesn't normally report what targets it debuffs.)
Usually I'd suggest looking for the -Res orange triangles, but Sleet is putting those up anyways. hmm... how about testing it in PVP? Have a friend watch their Real Numbers, and see if they ever get a 2nd debuff after a few applications of Sleet.

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Ski Badges - If you achieve the gold level without getting the other two first, wouldn't it make sense to award them all at the same time? I mean, if you can do it at the gold level, you can obviously do it at the other two.

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Yes, it would. But they may have a goal of wanting people to run the course at least 3 times to get 3 badges.

If that's the case, I suggest changing the badges to work like this:
Bronze - complete course in under 45 seconds.
Silver - have Bronze and complete course in under 35 seconds.
Gold - have Silver and complete course in under 25 seconds.

So if your first run is 20 seconds, you get Bronze, and have to run it again. If you keep up that pace on the 2nd run, you also get Silver, and still have to run a third time.

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To fix Wentworths/Black Market balance add a free Random Roll at the end of TF's and Trials to go along with the Merits. Example: Player completes Positron TF, receives 55 Merits and 1 Random Rare Recipe from the TF Pool. That way you'll preserve what Wentworths/Black Market was before Merit System and you'll keep all the positive things that the Merit System is adding to the game.

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One way that could be balanced would be to have each TF give random drops at the content's level, not at your level.

So... if there's worry about Katie giving farmable recipes AND merits, it gets farmed for level 34 recipes. (Plus 1 or 2 levels on higher difficulties.) Not nearly as abusive as farming level 50s, given the difference in power between 50 buffs and 34 buffs.
55 Merits on Posi plus a level 15 drop isn't much more from the view of a 50 farmer, but consider how it looks to a level 15 character.
etc, etc. Not totally the random drop plus merits, but still a great compromise.
This would actually help the market quite a bit by generating a variety of levels. Consider how many level 30-ish Posi Triples were getting sold even before Merits came along.

No souvenier for Dead Man's Deck

Server: Liberty
Zone: Oroboros
Character name: Mad-Scientist
Time: (not sure, ran the arc a while back and just noticed the problem today when looking at the Pillar)
Location: N/A
Mission: Dead Man's Deck story arc
Mission Contact: Mercedes Sheldon
Bug Description: I ran this arc via Flashback on my level 50. I completed it, and got Merits. But the arc still shows as not completed on the Flashback mission list. Completing the arc did not give me a souvenier (which I believe is what marks them starred on that list)

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After doing several arcs on my brute today &amp; getting my 3 merits for each i have reached a conclusion. The Dev's are nuts. Assume i did 67 arcs, which is what it would take to get 1 high end reciepe at 200 merits. I think its absolutly absurd.

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Previously, doing arcs would have gotten you ZERO pool C and pool D recipes. Now, after getting 20 merits, you can get a random roll. You are getting something where you previously got NOTHING.

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if the sum total of the system is "I13: One Recipe of Your Choice" then it hardly seems to be worth the trouble to have the whole thing in place. There has to be better payoff for the new features.

Bonus XP is of no use to a level 50 character. This means a 50 has day jobs they don't even care about. That also gets frustrating when you need a worthless day job just to finish an accolade.
Perhaps those jobs could change to a bonus Merit per mission completion? That would be useful to all levels.

so now that I13 has been live 21 days, I'm starting to get day job badges on some of my characters.

I'm... underwhelmed.

The amount of wait for a single badge just doesn't match the reward, the timer needs to be shortened.

Further, I have very little incentive to wait another 21 days to get an accolade power. I'd rather keep recharging the first bonus I've been using than spend 21 days for a bonus I don't care about (the debt protection one springs to mind here as a possible finish to an accolade on one character). It's just too little reward too far apart and not comparing to the few "useful" options like the market teleporter or the XP buff.

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I just turned my exp off on my newest hero.. I havent gotten any exp for the winter event... but people think its wierd I have the Frostfire mission at lvl 6

Want all those lowbie Merits? turn your exp off

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so the game has come to this: a choice between progression and development, not both.
that's a problem from where I'm sitting.

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The devs are limiting something that has made this game successful - customization. IO's were a GREAT idea, another way for players to customize their characters. WHY is 1/2 an hour too short a time to get a CHANCE at a SINGLE decent recipe?

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EXACTLY!

*Using* a Shield Breaker Chance for Damage would be fun. Watching the market endlessly hoping for the chance to even bid on one is simply not fun.

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Since the bonuses from these jobs are charged up before you even get the badge, it seems to me that there is little harm in rewarding the badge sooner.

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good point.

Adding to that is this:
In order to get a day job badge, you have to forgo charging up day job powers you have previously earned. this means badge chasers get less use out of the buff aspect of the system. If the badges came quicker, it would encourage using the buffs more.
In simpler terms: a requirement of any one badge is to *not use* the rest of the day job system. This is odd and should be minimized.

Bug with NPCs in Airlia's mission

Server:
Zone: Cimerora
Character name:
Time:
Location: mission map
Mission: "Talk to Sister Solaris" (part 2 of a 2-part mission. 1st part is named "Recruit Fortunata Bramlett")
Mission Contact: Sister Airlia
Bug Description: The mission starts with Fortunata Bramlett, who later morphs into Sybil Bramlett. The Fortunata version is combative, but can not be buffed (such as by Speed Boost). The Sybil version is non-combative but can be buffed, she even states in the dialog she can't use her powers while undercover. The buffing aspect is backwards. The initial Fortunata version should be combative and buffable, the later Sybil version should be non-combative and non-buffable. (Note: in the first mission of this chain Fortunata Bramlett is not combative and not buffable. I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but at least it's consistent with itself.)
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