Nethergoat

Yah, having to do content to unlock content REALLY BLOWS man, I feel your pain!

I guess my field crafter can kiss the flood of 500k common IOs goodbye.
=(

*tips a beer in memory of the monkey legions*


Sort of on topic, was able to log in this AM just before work. My Monkey Level Bumped characters were all happy as clams.

It doesn't matter what the devs personal opinions on farmers or farming are. They can despise the practice and wish a pox on it. But as employees of a for-profit MMO they need to realize that farming and farmers are one of their customer demographics.
And in any game with an economy a vital demographic, one that contributes directly to core functionality for all your other players.

Again, they don't have to encourage or officially condone it as long as they understand it's an important component of the success of the commercial product they're selling.

I'm not saying that they have to actively encourage farmers or that they shouldn't put the kibosh on things they feel are over-rewarding, but neither should they be going out of their way to suppress or marginalize the activity.

The structure of the game encourages and rewards farming, whatever the intent of the devs. They don't have to like it, but they should recognize that reality.

then why waste time creating them?

Clearly they expected at least some % of their customers would be engaged by this system and pursue the rewards.

2004 (or whenever they added badges) was a long time ago , but gamers were still gamers.

Uh....they added an economy.

=P

Farming is an inherent quality of the genre, or rather an instinctive response many gamers have to challenges or goals. Give a group of gamers a goal and they will find efficient, repeatable ways to accomplish it. You can intend exactly the opposite, but oh well, there it is anyway.

As with a lot of stuff dev intent is irrelevant- to belabor my car metaphor, you can intend people to push it around the block as a grueling physical workout, but if you leave the keys in the ignition they're gonna peel out for Vegas. Posi intended for players to use MA one way, but the reward structure guaranteed it would be farmed six ways to Sunday.

So you can say they never deliberately yadda yadda yadda....so?
They made an MMO, the farming follows directly and inevitably from that.

That'd be great, too.

This is basically my sentiments run through a high powered PR firm.
=)


Lack of build up is THE main performance issue with /dev.
Back in the day Targeting Drone letting you ignore accuracy in your powers and slot more damage made it a fair trade- you didn't get that burst, but you did appreciably more damage with your 'basic' attack chain. Perma-hasten +six slotted damage SOs hit HARD.

Nowadays, you're just taking a big performance hit with no compensation.

My fire/ice has some pretty great global recharge, and either aim or buildup is ready for every spawn. If I really want to vaporize something I can wait a few seconds until they're both up.


/dev has structural issues I wish they would address.
On the villain side I really like playing /traps and I'd like to see /dev get a makeover along those lines.

this little thing

=P

is internet speak for "this is joke, don't take it seriously".

As for my review of the set, I stand by my statements.
/dev ranks dead last in my list of blaster secondaries from a performance standpoint and many of its best 'tricks' are readily replicated by pool powers and various permutations of the IO system.

I've probably spent more time playing my ar/dev than you've spent playing, period.

If you enjoy it, great!

That doesn't make it good.

BAH I had a big detailed multi-quote reply to this all ready to go then the logout bug killed it.


>

Anyway, reader's digest version:

Do whatever you think is fun, I'm a disgruntled AR/Dev player from the dawn of time who remembers when it was a great combo so take my whining with a grain of salt.

Caltrops is all that and a side of fries and almost justifies the rest of the set.

If you like controller-y blasters, check out /ice. My absolute fave blaster is a fire/ice. Ice Patch is Caltrops-eque, and IMHO the rest of the set blows /dev out of the water.

My guy was a speedster, so the stacking stealth possibilities with CD were less appealing than they might have otherwise been.


My issue with trip mine and time bomb are not only playstyle related, but efficiency related- in the time it takes to lay down trops and plant a couple of mines I could have wiped out the spawn with my plethora of AoEs. Higher difficulty levels tilt the balance in favor of the explosives, and less AoE-centric sets may see things differently. But on standard difficulty Flamethrower/Shotgun/Full Auto carrying a decent load of Defiance makes short work of most things.

*boggle*

Whatever you do, stay away from AR! =P

IMHO most of the set stinks and is easily replaced by pool powers and either individual IOs or set bonuses. Stuff like Targeting Drone and Cloaking Device used to be great but are largely redundant these days.

That said, some tricks and tips culled from dragging my ar/dev kicking and screaming to 50:

Sticking a Ragnarok: Chance for Knockdown in Caltrops or Full Auto is entertaining (once you hit 50, obviously).

Targeting Drone is a good place to stick a Chance for Buildup proc.
It's still not actual Buildup, but it's better than nothing.

I really dislike the "spend ten minutes setting up for the next spawn" aspect of devices so I respec'ed out of Trip Mines. They're fine at what they do, but they impose a certain playstyle that I don't find congenial. Also, keep in mind that they are unaffected by your Targeting Drone (along with Time Bomb I believe- gee thanks devs!) so slot plenty of acc.

Web Grenade is a fine tier 1 immobilize, and is a great place to stick a Trap of the Hunter set if you go for ranged defense.

I wouldn't bother with Taser, except as an AR/Dev I can stack it with Beanbag to good effect.

Smoke Grenade is underwhelming, but as noted can be handy for wheezing glowies and the -tohit can help if you build for positional defense.

Cloaking device, meh. I'd blow a few mil on a stealth IO and save the power choice.

Time Bomb is hot garbage. It's a hidden dev IQ test- if you take Time Bomb they exclude you from future betas. =P

Gun Drone's better than it used to be as Assault Turret, but it's still weak (especially with the OMG MUST CHARGE INTO MELEE bug affecting everyone's pets). The damage is laughable, but it does attract some aggro and the defiance boost is nice. Unfortunately it's laughably long, interruptible set up time and short duration mean I rarely bother with it. It is a nice place to stick an Expedient Reinforcement set, though.

Huh...that ended up being more of a whine than a strategy guide....sorry Seebs!
=P

The world is indeed rife with hacks who're Shakespeare in their own minds.

But it's been my experience that I get a vastly better payoff from arcs in sigs and forum threads than I do from plucking them more or less randomly from the search window.

Oh man, I'd totally forgotten about BADGEPOCALYPSE.

Lawlz.

I think Sam is referring to Posi's freakout over the epic tsunami of farming the release of MA created.

That there's a more obvious and logical reason, when you provide one yourself?

I don't think it makes any difference.
The interface is so clunky and awful finding anything would be a chore even without the legions of undead arcs, farms and narrowly focused pet projects.

I still manage to discover fun, entertaining content, but it's in spite of the interface.

And as you note, the best way to spot promising stuff is check the forums and people's sigs.
People who care enough about their story to promote them generally turn out a better-than-average product.

I haven't used Elements, but I'll wager you could make your image in whatever graphic editor you wanted, save it as one of the popular formats, open it in Elements and then save it as .psd.


Clunky, but cheap.

=D

Yes!!

Fantastic contest, hopefully I can find some time to brush up my lame graphic art skillz and pull an entry out of my hat.

The wouldn't have to.

The second it stops paying off as good as the 'real' game, there go your players.

Cutting XP 5% would have the same effect as removing it entirely.

The dream that there is some demographic in love with MA for the beauty of its many lovingly crafted story arcs is Utopian folly.

MA is subject to the same exacting scrutiny from the players as every other aspect of this game.

you're about the twenty millionth person with this brilliant idea, so I'll give you the same answer I gave all of your spiritual ancestors:

Removing XP would eliminate MA from the play schedule of 99.9% of the playerbase, leaving a handful of RPers and 'art for art's sake' authors.


Me, I'd rather have people use the thing they spent so much time and effort on.

I haven't seen any MA farm spam outside Atlas Park.
I've seen very little MA farm spam period on servers other than Freedom.

I mean, blame MA farmers in one zone on one server for people not playing your arc if you like, but there's a much more obvious and logical reason they're ignoring it.

who?

The majority of posts I've read see it as helping lowbies who can use it while altering the options available to high level characters in a fairly minor way.

I haven't seen anyone singing HALLELUJA, NOBODY NEEDS TO EVER WORRY ABOUT END AGAIN!

It's fairly obvious why this change was made and its effects are easy to extrapolate. It isn't imposing an unfair burden on anyone, anywhere.

as the proud owner of a now-level 50 AR/DEV that predates ED and any number of other performance nerfs, I feel your pain. AR on its own is a pretty good set, especially if you like AoE, but paired with decrepit, outdated /dev it underperforms rather dramatically.

As you haven't invested a whole lot of time yet, I'd say re-roll with a better secondary because it doesn't improve all that much the higher you go.

/Dev just stinks on hot ice. Caltrops is great, the rest of the set dates back to a more primitive game with different design goals and it doesn't measure up to modern challenges.