Magpie_NA

You Got Questions, Dev Got Answers.

Ask a Dev.

*waves hands around*

Dev-elepor-Mart-Store!

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Everytime I see one of these polls I think to myself:

"The dev team must have sat down today for a brainstorm session of what to schedual for next year, after coming up with a ton of ideas none of them could decide on which was best. Matt offered to flip a coin and Jack suggested a round of D&D to decide the winner. But the team couldn't even decide on what to use as the tie breaker either. Hence the poll."

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My vote goes for when in-game dialogue can make me laugh

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I think most people would just like either
a: a personal storage locker in base
b: a personal storage locker in base

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Satanic Hamster, not just a cute avatar.

Happy Birthday

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Will GvE's VIP card unlock the tiki room in the Pocket D? If so, will there be another way to get in, such as by giving the badge out as a veteran reward, too?

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The VIP Teleport Card teleports you directly to the Tiki Room. This much was confirmed on the UK site.

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Why are the Brits getting info before us?

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Because we're so sexy, so Jay puts in a good word for us

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However for all sub level 40 zones I think you'll find that to be the case. And since the Hollows is a hazard zone .....

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The Rikti Crash Site now has a hospital.

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Dark Astoria always had one.

Am I the only person that has ever liked defiance? I've not read the God only knows number of replies to this, but I think defiance is great....

I drop to 48% health and suddenly I've got an extra SO's worth of damage. What's wrong with that? If I'm in a small group and get down to 10-20% health but kill what's got agro on me then suddenly I can one shot guys as I'm doing double damage (+200%ish damage). Defiance doesn't change the world but it is a VERY nice bonus.

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Holy crap, a redname post in the defender forums!

This is...wow! I mean, wow! I can now honestly say that I've seen everything.

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Nice one Doc

I believe that on top of what you have there, all you need to raid is the mission computer and raid teleporter, as you thought. Or that's what I've heard anyway. I'm not sure about the mission computer, but the raid tper is hellishly large, and I believe that it uses a fair whack of control and eng. Sticking that and the mission computer in might mean you have to upgrade power or energy. Which would also probably mean a room size upgrade.

Also, does anyone else remember hearing that to keep an IoP you needed 6 anchors, but you could only have 1 anchor per room? And then you couldn't put anchors in vaults, or something like that....I'm not sure, but I know there was some talk in beta about the minimum number of rooms you needed in a base to actually keep an IoP.

Also, thanks Brev

Apparently it is two weeks, and I've got to say that I'm glad. Finding the value to be that low was pretty scary for the average group.

At least it's easy to correct my value for this (just need to double it), now we're back up at 113,333,333.3 MAPr (Max Accumulated Prestige)

This calls for new debate.

Assuming all the figures are good now, we learned from ***'s post that getting more Pr than the value I was using is quite possible (if you're willing to farm). We do still need to work out exactly what 110mil Pr will buy you, but the high end raid game does look better now, if still a bit far flung in places.

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Magpie, I totally agree with the spirit of your post, but one point of clarity - aren't taxes due every two weeks instead of one?

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I don't know quite honestly, as I'd mentioned my copy of CoV is yet to arrive so I don't have first hand experience. I'd assumed that it was every week, since no-one with the game had corrected me, and even Lord Recluse didn't correct what would be a quite major part error on my part.

From what I remember of the beta paying rent every 2 weeks could well be the case. Does anyone know for deffinate how often you have to pay rent?

Firstly, thanks to everyone for the replies, it's all really helping (and a Recluse reply, damn this thread is sexy now).

I've not had a chance to work much with the base value numbers that Jester provided, but that's mainly as I've been trying to rework my original calculations. In particular I've been trying to work out a new value for Pr / Hour. Here's what I've been thinking.

M'k, well Dainter87 estimated 2,200 Pr / Hour. Darthmord posted that he was getting 817 Pr in 15-20min. Other people generally posted that I was aiming WaaaaY too high with 5,357. I've got to agree. I did some limited testing today (read - did missions) myself, and here's what I figured I was doing.

OK, well it was me on my kinetics/energy def, examplared down to lv40 to fight with a friend on a lv40 stone/kinetics cont. We were doing his lv40 (rugged I think) carnie mission. It was an outside instance and I believe that we may have cleared it. All the mobs spawned at lv41, and they each gave 6 PR / Kill. Each group had 6 carnies in it, and apart from the named mission boss all the spawns were minions (if luits or bosses had spawned the average rate of Pr gain would have increased, they take longer but the Pr is generally more than worth the time).

6 (carnies) * 6 (Pr) = 36 Pr /group

(we were both on the same sg, so I could double the Pr here, but that would just mean halving it later, so I won't)

I estimate that we were going through about 1 group every 40 seconds. We're both old hands at the game so I know that we were going pretty damn efficiently, plus dual kinetics rocks your face. Admittedly we could kill faster with more dedicated damage dealing archetypes, but then most groups also have downtime. We didn't even slow down for the mission, so I know that our Pr / min is pretty constant.

1 group / 40 seconds -> 3 groups / 2 min -> 1.5 groups / 1 min

36 (Pr / group) * 1.5 = 54 Pr / min

60 (minutes) * 54 Pr = 3240 Pr / hour

Now 3240 isn't the full story. Firstly the mission Pr reward would add to the Pr gain. Then you've got going to contacts, finding teams, chatting to people, waiting on people that are away and all the other good stuff that slows teams down. Plus you have to take into acount less expreienced players going at different rates. And soloing, people don't always team, and teaming is generally faster.

The two estimates people had given me that I mentioned earlier were 2200 Pr / hour and ~2500 Pr / hour. Now my value clearly has to be lowered if it's going to represent an average amount of time (to take into account all the factors I listed above), but I'm still not going to lower it to ~2,000-2,500. This is as I'm still going for a generous value, even if the generous value isn't as generous as in my original post.

I'm going to set the new Prestige per Player Hour as 3,000. Let's hope that value works.

Now, for the amount of time people play.

When thinking about my sg/vg I do want to be using an active and large group as my example. So I'm going to mostly keep the values from my original calculations (a slight decrease in average play times was the only change). I had debated lowering these values further but I wanted to represent active groups, and as always I want a generous value.

So the values I'm using now for weekdays are an sg having 25 people online doing missions or hunting in sg mode (above lv25 or equivalent longer time) for 2 hours each. For weekends the values are an sg having 40 people online doing missions or hunting in sg mode (above lv25 or equivalent longer time) for 3.5 hours each.

Part of the factoring for my new timings was PVP. In full PVP people gain little xp, and I can see fairly hardcore raiding groups ploughing a lot of time into PVP, aswell as the time they'll spend actually being raided / raiding. This kept the time values down.

OK, now onto the calculations.

Weekdays:

25 * 2 = 50 PH

50 * 5 (weekdays) = 250 PH for weekdays

Weekends:

40 * 3.5 = 140 PH

140 * 2 (weekend days) 280 PH for weekends

Total PH's:

Total PH for a week = 250 + 280 = 510 PH

Total Pr for a week = 510 * 3,000 (the average player prestige constant) = 1,530,000 Pr

1,530,000 Pr / week. Now that's a hell of a lot lower than the value from last time. It's less than half of the value from last time in fact. If we halve the end value we achieved last time then we get ~50millon Pr. I'm going to use 50mill Pr to estimate the value of rent our sg would be paying. Since the rent is 2% at around 14,00,000 prestige and 3% at around 69,000,000 prestige then I'm going to say.......2.7% rent. Why? Sevens are luckly. We've been through this already.

OK, now if 1,530,000 Pr is the max amount my example sg can make per week, then this group can support a base where 1,530,000 is the amount of rent per week.

If 1,530,000 = 2.7%

then 56,666,666.7 = 100%

( 1,530,000 / 2.7 = 566,666.7 )
( 566,666.7 * 100 = 56,666,666.7 )

56,666,666.7 is our sg's Max Accumulated Prestige (prestige banked and in the base).

This value is quite close to the 50mill Pr I was using to estimate the rate of rent, so the rate of rent is probably quite close to being correct. So I'm going to take this as our final value (a hell of an improvement over the 3 times it took me last time).

Now 56,666,666.7 Pr is getting quite small. In fact that is quite very small, compared to the value of some base items and plots. As I said I am still yet to work fully through the values of base items, but the value does seem....low. That's all I'm saying for now.

*end math and rent calculations*

I've also been thinking about small sgs/vgs today. Now I never assumed that my 4 person sg would be able to go raiding, but at least before the beta I'd been thinking that a 20 man sg would be able to raid to a reasonable degree. Thinking about this now I'd still like smallish groups to be able to raid, however in reality, small groups being raid capable may be less of a want and more of a nessecity.

I say this as if my example sg is the smallest group able to provide for a reasonably well stocked raid base, then who will be raiding them? My thinking is, how many groups of that size will there actually be on each server? And more essentially how many of them will bother with raiding? We NEED 20-30 man groups to be raid capable, and not just if they are 20-30 powerlevelers. We need groups of 20-30 fairly casual players to at least be able to get the most basic of raid bases set up within a month or two, and then those bases need to be sustainable.

CoHs has always had the reputation of being one of the most accessable MMOs, a game you could pick up for half an hour and actually accomplish something in. The truely casual player will never be able to maintain a massive, secure base full of sapper turrets but they need to be able to do something in the raid system.

At the moment they have nothing, and we have no opponents.

Thanks for the input Dainter, I agree with what you said about the numbers. What I actually wanted to reach with the amount people can make per hour is how much they could make during fairly normal play, not farming. Just currently I have squat to go on, so I made the number high, then I can work down.

Oh, and thirdly is deffinately a word ^^, although 'forthly' might be quaternary? Who knows.

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Fourthly (again is that a word?) your calcs are for if the SG only spent their prestige on rent. There would be no buying of anything else, or replacing something that got destroyed...

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This is the only point where you might have missed what I meant. I was intentionally calculating the point where an sg could afford nothing but rent. I only wanted to get the max value of prestige (or equivalent) that you could own, getting to that point would be a massively laboured and increasingly slow-going task at the high end. Maintaining that value of equipment, as you said, would be nigh impossible if you were actually being raided.

I figured that my values for the time players spend on and how much they can make in an hour would be off, it's why I need the help with it. If anyone posts what they believe to be more realistic numbers then I'll gladly put them in and recalculate things around them. I might get that done tonight, but I'm working off GMT time (it's currently 10:10pm), so I might not. Either way, I'll have it updated tommorrow.

Also Jester, if you could be on around 12am-1am GMT (7pm-8pm Eastern US) then I'll meet you on then and we can get things sorted out. I could be on a little earlier or later than that, but not by much. If I don't see you then I'll send you an e-mail/pm/whatever with some ideas.

I've got to admit that I've only dabbled in bases myself. My only experience is in the CoV beta playing with the 36mil free prestige. I've seen the prices of a few things, and I like how bases work. I also agree that bases should be a long term thing, if you want to get them to really high levels. Getting a raidable base in a month from a reasonably large sg doesn't sound too unreasonable to me.

My concern, like Jester's, is rent.

OK, let's take some base level figures. I'm pulling these figures right off my head so feel free to call them invalid or put forward better suggestions. I'm also going to be slightly generous about the amount of prestige we can feasibly gain.

OK, well from Marut's example. He said that 14 people working well together made 150k prestige in 2 hours. Good stuff. Alright, that sounded like plentiful co-operation and hard work was going on there, but I'll also assume that people will learn how to make prestige in even better ways than that in the future. So I'm going to say that 150k, from 14 people, in 2 hours, is the average rate that people make prestige when in sg mode above lv25.

14 people and 2 hours = 28 Player Hours (PH)

In 28PH they made 150k Prestige (Pr)

That makes 5,357 Prestige per Player Hour

I realise that that is far above how much an average person will make playing normally, looking for teams and soloing and the such, but as I said earlier, I'm going for a generous number here.

OK, time to estimate how long people play.

I'd like to note here that the largest my sg has ever been was about 20 people, so my numbers are really rough here. If Jester or any other large sg leader types want to call bull**** on me then by all means feel free. But bear in mind that these number are designed to be generous.

Alright, so let's start by assuming your sg has 70 members, members that aren't inactive, or alts, or playing on non-sg alts. Now let's start with weekdays. On an average weekday let's say that 25 members sign on for an average of 2.5 hours each (in sg mode, above lv25 or equivalent time on lower lvs).

25 * 2.5 = 62.5 PH

62.5 * 5 (weekdays) = 312.5 PH for weekdays

Now weekends. On weekends let's say that 40 members sign in for an average of 4 hours each (in sg mode, above lv25 or equivalent time on lower lvs).

40 * 4 = 160 PH

160 * 2 (weekend days) 320 PH for weekends

Total PH for a week = 312.5 + 320 = 632.5 PH

Total Pr for a week = 632.5 * 5,357 (the average player prestige constant) = 3,388,302.5 Pr

So that's my reasonably generous value of how much prestige an sg can make in a week. Now here comes the point. And it was a long time coming, it better be good.

At the top level of rent an sg will be paying 3.8% of their combined sg/vg base and prestige based assets in rent each week (or so I've been led to believe). Here's where I calculate the max amount of 'phat l3wt' a sg can accrue.

3,388,302.5 Pr is the max amount my example sg can make per week. Now this amount of Pr can support a base where 3,388,302.5 is the amount of rent per week.

If 3,388,302.5 = 3.8%

then 89,165,855 = 100%

( 3,388,302.5 / 3.8 = 891,658.6 )
( 891,658.6 * 100 = 89,165,855 )

89,165,855 Max Accumulated Pr (MAPr), well hmm. That raises a problem doesn't it? Namely that the rate for rent doesn't hit 3.8% until 170mill of the phatest l3wt is aquired!! And I don't know the exact value of rent for our situation as the graph isn't linear!!!

Cryptic, I decry the names of your exponential variables! Cast them down so the mortals may gaze upon them!

*ahem*

I appear to have lost myself for a moment there. Let us continue.

We may not have an exact rent % for 89,165,855 Pr, but given that 69,000,000 Pr gives a value of 3% and 170,000,000 Pr gives 3.8% on an exponential curve then we are quite able to estimate a value. I'm going to call it as 3.07% rent. Why? Sevens are lucky. Now, let's get back to the math, same method as preivously when we were using 3.8%.

If 3,388,302.5 = 3.07%

then 110,368,160 = 100%

( 3,388,302.5 / 3.07 = 1,103,681.6 )
( 1,103,681.6 * 100 = 110,368,160 )

So 110,368,160 MAPr. Looks good doesn't it? Does it hell. I estimated the rent of 3.07% off 89,165,855 MAPr, now we need to raise the rent value back up a small amount to allow for the change. 110,368,160 Pr is still closer to 69,000,000 Pr than to 170,000,000 Pr , and given the nature of the curve (exponential), I will now recalculate to a rent of 3.25%. Now to calculate the MAPr again, same method as the last 2 times. (This is the last time I'll calculate the rent value. This one should be more accurate than the last time but all rent values are guesses here, so I doubt whether or not trying to bring any more precision to the rent will actually increase accuracy beyond this point)

If 3,388,302.5 = 3.25%

then 104,255,460 = 100%

( 3,388,302.5 / 3.25 = 1,042,554.6 )
( 1,042,554.6 * 100 = 104,255,460 )

And it's done

104,255,460 is our sg's Max Accumulated Prestige (prestige banked and in the base).

Now here is where you come in.

Firsly I need sg leaders to call bull**** on the 'player hour' parts of my calculation. Secondly, and more essentially, I need someone who's copy of CoV has arrived (unlike mine ;;_; to find the values of expensive plots for bases, massive power generators, huge control consoles and other stupidly good base items (a large, secure compund sounds like a good start) so that we can calculate exactly what 100million prestige will buy you.

The point I've really been trying to make is that 100mil's worth of prestige is really the most any sg will manage to accumulate. If we figure out that a massive, well equiped base with super powered turrets, awesome defences and some basic social space can be bought under this then fine, I can live with that. Only the biggest sgs in the game should have bases of that magnitude. On the other hand, if for 100mil then you can't buy the largest plot of land then fit a generator on it....then something may need to be done about the rate prestige is gained.

Please tell me if you find any errors in my calculations, but also, PLEASE don't tell me there are any errors in it......

Magpie

Good luck, and thanks.

17/21

That'll do. I don't know that much about comics in general but I did get right all the ones that I'd actually heard of.

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So I was on with my SG on Champion a while ago, and we were doing the Positron TF. At one point, we were ambush right in front of Positron and Valkyrie. So here's all these guys shooting at us, trying to kill us, and Mr. Bigshot "I got my armor upgraded" and Ms. "I have this fancy spear that none of you can get!" are just kinda standing there watching.

THANKS A LOT, LEGENDARY HEROES!

Seriously, though, it would be cool if the trainers got some sort of automated power similar to the police drones. There's just something wrong about the eight most famous heroes in all of Paragon city standing there watching you get pounded on.

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All that crap is grey to me, no XP.

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^^

Hail to the King baby

SG Name: The British Monsters of Rock

SG Leaders: Magpie, Judith.

SG Website (if any): We're working on it, admitedly we've been working on it for a while but still...

SG Recruiters: Magpie, Judith., Fanelia...and many other people, just e-mail one of us and we'll sort you out.
Teamspeak/Ventrillo Server: Nope

SG Peak Hours: Evenings and weekends GMT (translates roughly to 2pm-7pm weedays on the east coast, and just about any time on weekends)

Other Info: Originally made to overcome bloody great timezone differences, with the game being released in Europe we're now expanding to allow anyone that is either a) Not a moron, or b) New and able to learn. We have a handful of lv50s between us and would like to make the SG a bit PVP minded (you don't have to PVP of course, but if you want to PVP then Judith will be your best friend).

Plus we're awesome.

My guess is that the thing that is not true is something not being true...

You KNOW there'll be killer mimes

Thanks again for the guide man, this is really useful. I only knew 1 spawn before this.

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Just as long as you don't take a page from Statesman's book and say "Soon" all the time.

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No, see, that would be evil.

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He'll kill you for even suggesting he's not evil =P

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quite honestly I don't want you wasting my ssubscription on translating your version of English to mine as there is no benefit at all for this

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I completely agree - although it's not 'my' version of English. I'm from Essex


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OK, if we had versions translated to various accents then I may consider abbandoning Justice, the Geordie server...would be like a really twisted version of home, and for the 1st few lvs you'd probably have the mobs being rescued from the citizens...

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I live in Europe. I play CoH on a USA server. Why should I have to move to an Euro server ? My SG is on Pinnacle, my friends and compatriots too.

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That's the point I was going to make. PLEASE please please, pleaseeee give us access to both sets of servers. The SG I founded almost 3 months ago on Justice is all European and I believe the largest all Euro clan on Justice, but we're still not huge and finding a team at your lv at odd times (for us) is still a problem. Despite that I would like to stay there as I know a lot of people on the server that are not European, so even if my entire group moved servers then I'd still be minus half of my friends list.

And just to say that we should AT LEAST get the option of a one time char transfer, I mean it's a little bit of a raw deal to have to shell out again for the game just to play in my own damn timezone.

Also one other question, please answer this, if there's only going to be 1 or 2 servers for English speaking people in Europe then wouldn't there be a lack of server space for characters? I currently have more than about 20 character slots in use over various servers and if there were only 2 servers then I'd need to delete some of my old chars, and if there was only 1 server I'd have to lose half my alts, or move them to a server where I don't speak the language.

Weeee! After all this time I have a community rep to call my own

*edit*

I just read the post above and is that right? We won't be able to access the European servers? Can I just say *SHAFT* to me. It's gonna be fun if other people I know here buy copies and I'm stuck utterly unable to play with them.

Damn I hope that's some kind of crazy mis-quote...

Go community rep! Save our server access!