QuiJon

I disagree. My problem with the later two movies was that they simply didnt stick with the forumla that made the first one fun. I look at PotC alot like i look at say the Indiana Jones films. Though they deal with magic and mystic ideas, the central theme was that all these characters live in a real world with similar sensabilities to our own. So its ok to have one or two aspecs of the story be magical, like in the first one the zombie cursed by the gold. But the fun and humor of the movie came from those fantasy things existing in a real world. By the time the second one came around it was all like huge sea monsters and an octopus man that no one gives a second thought to, and fish people and huge storms and whirlpools were just the normal everyday realities that the characters faced. And it IMO wasnt nearly as fun.

And in doing that they moved away from many of the things that made the first film fun. Example when Jack holds elizabeth hostage after rescuing her from drowning in the first film. His escape really surprises even him in his balancing act and his fight with orlandos character. By the second one it was no big deal to be running through the forest on a water wheel, by the third it was no big whoop to be swinging around the rigging on a ship on the edge of a whirlpool of death in a rain storm.

Its that idea of making everything bigger and better to me that ruins so much. Like taking Indiana Jones from getting thrown under trucks and such that can be done live with stunt men, to putting him into a rollercoaster special effects ride on coal mine cars. It just didnt FEEL like it should. Or atleast that is my Opinions.

Thats true the problem in the case of the star wars eu books though was that when Batman a batman story arc goes bad you still had 3-4 other batman books running to lean on. When the EU went bad they had commited fully to the NJO or later Legacy of the Force arcs and there is no where else to turn. Now if they had made the NJO say affect half the released books where you got one NJO then one independent book release, that would have been fine, i would have kept reading the independents and simply ignored the NJO. But when they changed publishers the idea of every book having to contribute to that story arc basicly turned me off buying and reading the EU books.

There are aspects of the expanded universe i really wish were delt more in the offical canon though. One thing in particular i always liked in EU was the idea that force adepts had specialties. Like where one force weilder might be more of a fighter, another might be more of a healer, another more of a philosopher etc.

My main dislike of the EU really came though when they started the new jedi order stuff. I think it was a mistake to try and make all these different authors write basicly one story arc. Atleast with the old publishers though one book might have sucked, there was a fresh story coming out in 4 more months. When they combined it all, now if you didnt like the story you were screwed.

As I often tell my wife, if she cant beat me, then she needs to practice. Its all a race, and i plan to win.

I dont mind them having to come up with a story for doomsday, it would be pretty much a show up and fight otherwise since his first appearance in comics were pretty bare bones. But as has been mentioned, its never the IDEA on smallville that is the problem, its the eventual execution. Brianiac they have done an ok job with. Otherwise it seems pretty much a show of the bad guy, with a cliff hanger, then some crap *** way he gets out of the mess.

For doomsday the ultimate battle with the one foe that has technically beat superman was a 30 second 3 punch fight. The first appearance of zod was basicly a possesion of Luthor, the second was IMO kinda anti climactic also. Im I was more intrested in the "They are not candorians" then i was clark falling with the blueK in his chest.

Ultimately smallville needs to realize their is no drama in setting up a cliffhanger with an unbeatable hero being beat. We know that isnt going to stick. They should have just tied up the zod story line once and for all and then the cliff hanger should have been speculation about what is to come next season.

It might be more costly, but not that bad, to get a bit over what your plan is.

When i was running at the 73 boost from IOs it was a very very small window to click Domination again in. And i would constantly forget to click hasten if i changed that off auto in favor of domination.

For that build i would suggest trying to find room for atleast one LotG process for recharge, and the purple confusion set is normally pretty cheap for purples and those two alone would boost you 17.5 percent in recharge and give you a nice gap to work with in.

So there is no benefit to practicing and using your powers, exercising etc. Hum guess someone should tell the X-Men this they could prob save a ton of money on electricy not turning on their danger room anymore.

Im sorrry but your being dumb. Yes when the AE hit the streets it was totally abused. But then they nerfed XP in it and it calmed down. THen they further introduced the SSK system which calmed it down again. Since those two changes the old days of begging in PI were comparably way worse then what has gone on in the AE. In fact the AE is mostly a ghost town now.

So these changes really dont effect to many people in the AE. The people that can farm in the AE can farm anywhere. My point was with my two accounts i can just as easily take my low toons to PI and farm them there. I dont need the AE. So spending hours of work time on "Fixing" it instead of just ignoring what the few do in there, is really the punishement to other players. The time wasted that could be used to get issue 17 out, going rogue etc.

You want to ***** about the impact of farming? Well the impact isnt the farmers anymore, its the time spent to curb what has become a small and ever smaller part of the player community instead of creating new content to keep the majority of the player base happy.

So direct your energies to telling the devs enough is a enough, undo this crappy change and leave well enough alone. Cause if you didnt read the Dev posts, they put this change in knowing it wasnt good, and plan and spending even now more time to fix it further. It was fine before this change. Or good enough atleast. But your complaining about the farmers, complain about the devs spending countless hours fixing something they will never fix instead of just creating a great game. THAT is where this game has gone wrong over the years, time and time again.

Really? How is that? I can still just run one of the missions i have keptsince before the AE was around anyway. With new sliders still set it to make spawns, and still run the mission solo for my second account to level on.

So what exploit did this fix? The one where i didnt have to actually take 5 minutes and use my base teleporters to move a new character from atlas to peregrine?

If people spent the time playing rather then worrying about how others play maybe less people would have to cry about finding teams. If a fix is going to hurt more people then it helps then why implement a half ***** fix? Plenty of missions offered appropriate rewards for the content, but because a handful of people would use a mechanic that could be slightly skewed to their favor, lets hurt 100 percent of the player base to fix the problem?

Not just that, but with the custom mob xp BS that they have nver fixed, this is even more of a hit to arcs that use custom mobs.

Half-***, required no thought, and punishes the honest players doesnt seem like a fix at all to me.

Accept they have always claimed that they were not designing the game based on IO use. So if that has changed is makes on sub par set/power compared to powers that have been in the game longer.

DPs already IMO is not a very good blaster set. The damage overall seems way to weak compared to even sets like energy, and the mitagation is just not there. With the animation times and roots, basicly any AOE gives most mobs enough time to close to melee range and just off you.

The roots need to be looked into, the cone AOEs should be much like energy torrent and not only have a increase to range, but an almost 100 percent knockback chance. As it is now the set should not have been labled as a blaster set, being that is much more kind to use as a corruptor.

You work for NC Soft? If so why dont you have a forum red name, if so why are you posting under a non-dev account without warning the forums ahead of time, isnt this breaking the company rules you speak of?



I have my own work also, howver i also know what is going on the the office. And if castle was making a banana-grenade set then obviously Babs would know to start working on the animations, and quality would know to start testing it, and it would probably have been discussed at a staff meeting with Positron and everyone to get power input on types of attacks to include etc etc.

I have probably deleted them but i have in the past gotten mod8 responses to much less trolling responses.
And yet here is my problem, by your own accounts the devs are not supose to comment on things in the works until the offical announcments come through. However Babs response to this thread implies in some ways that the devs are ok with substandard xp earning from the MA, and that no further action is forth coming. Which is the same as would be if he said that further action is forthcoming and is talking out of turn.

And if a player was to say that the assumptions that we make about the MA are wrong then that is one thing, they are likely as playing guess work as we are. But if a Dev says that you are wrong, its implies that the offical line of the company is that the players are incorrect.


Actually we were told by the devs that the 75 percent standard thing they put in the last issue was a temp fix because they wanted time to work out a final system, but couldnt let things stand as is. Being now 3 month ago or more, i would say that it wouldnt be a big request to atleast let be known the approach that they are taking.
The devs and the box for the MA edition said that you could level to 50 off player created content. Now i understand that this doesnt promiss at the same level of speed, however i feel that it implies it based on why make the comparison if it wasnt intended to be semi-equal. That would be like me advertising a Hyundia Accent as being able to get you to Los Angeles from San Francisco just like Southwest Airlines can. Sure it can get you there but not in the hour it would take to fly.

I say its double speak like Jack because we were told a better alternative was going to be forthcoming, and the response he gave implies it could not be. If the devs pushed a crappy system onto us for rewards, saying that it would be fixed, and know now that its not going to be, then that is totally just like the things jack used to do.

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See my thing is that i dont care really about the xp, influence etc as a single thing. But IMO there should be soemthing the AE offers in exchange for slower leveling. So if they want to leave xp and influence as it is now, im fine with that, then increase the ticket cap, or remove it. Maybe allow tickets to purchase specific recipies like merits do, or better yet buy purples.

Point being, if they want players to make good use of the AE it needs to offer something, and it its going to offer slower leveling, slower influence no random drops and tickets that dont quite make up for all the random drops, and to top it off creativity costs players even more xp loss andinfluence loss, then guess what? Players wont use it. Just as they dont seem to be doingnow. It might not have been designed for rewards but the devs were atleast smart enough to know with no rewards it wouldnt be used. So how about being smart enough to pick atleast one thing that it can offer great rewards for, in exchange for slower rewards in other ways.

If this is the case then BABs shouldnt be offering opinions, atleast not under his red named account.

BaBs is a developer, as such he might not directly work on every aspect of the game, but would certinally have knowledge of what is being worked on in other departments. It is not like the staff on the game is so large they dont see each other, talk, have meeting etc.

Saying its still being looked at and researched is not commiting to a fix,or putting a time table ona fix. But to basicly offer a snappy remark with no information is trolling. His post offered really nothing to the discussion of a possible fix, or related to the original topic by commenting on a proposed fix. If BaBs was one of us, a moderator could have smacked his post, i know i have gotten warning emails for less.

I dont expect the devs to make comments out of turn, i dont expect the devs to keep the players aprised of all things in development before the right time to discuss it. But I also dont expect them to take part in double speak on issues we are discussing. If they have nothing constructive to offer then perhaps they need to offer nothing at all, or at minimum have a non dev forum account and offer those opinions through that rather then a red name.

Then who determines how long it should take. I am not saying that i think 48 hours is appropriate time, however if XP rewards were solved so that AE was similar to normal xp earning and still allowed for creative control of your creations, then the problem is solved with no need to limit how quickly i can earn xp on some arbitrary scale of how fast the devs feel i should level or how much is to much ina day or whatever.

I dont like the idea of capping my xp or influence. IMO the devs need to look at the standard game groups of villians. And then map out a threat level based on their attacks, and use that as a guage to giving rewards on MA critters. So basiclly standard dev rewards equal a certian level of gain for a threat assesment. Use that as a baseline, then asign powers in the critter sets similar values for attacks debuffing or controling etc. If you custom critter is atleast the same as a base line dev then you get full xp, if its higher you get slightly higher, maybe 10 percent. if its lower its xp is based again on its threat.

Then give a base that every critter has to have atleast 2 attacks or something like that to prevent the non-hitter critters.

And i would know this about you how? Even if you canceled and reactivated an account the forum reg date would be the original reg date. Which is all i have to go off of, and your response was to my comments which were dealing with issues from prior to your reg date. So for assuming that was correct, i guess im sorry. But my points still stand, the biggest issues with this game and its fans has always been the devs talking themselves into holes with the type of double speak that BaBs was taking part in on "alternative"
On what server? Cause on Liberty it is all but dead space in the middle of each city zone. And if it is dead, and you make your one team of 8 players, that still dead in the grand scheme of player participation.

And why was personal gain reduced? For no good damn reason thats why. How many months has it been since it was reduced and back then we were told the reduction was a temp fix until they could get a new xp system on line. Someone makes a thread about how to fix it, and the dev response is basicly "its alternative not equal" not something useful like "were still working on getting a system in place that would appropriately reward players for thier hightened efforts against AE custom mobs."

Would that have been so hard to say, it infact they were still working on it?


If you make weaker then standard class custom critters they get no xp. Standard class custom critters are more often more difficult to fight then normal dev created critters. And they earn less xp then dev created critters. Even if the xp wasnt an issue, if your rolling up a blaster or something like that, and every mob in the standard setting has some type of status effect (which most dev mobs dont have until the 30ish range mostly) that becomes a pain in the ***, and in taking part im rewarded with less xp then for fighting normal mobs in standard vanilla radio missions.
Exempts should have always earned xp, and SSKing is yet another way for the devs to have limited and slowed down leveling after all their PR systems to increase it. (patrol xp, xp smoothing etc) BTW personally i also dont find it fun to kick back with a level 20 on a team of level 40 something and get xp for doing practically nothing. which i swhat SSK basicly boils down to.
I didnt say it kills the fun of playing, but if progressing through the game wasnt part of the fun, then no one would worry about reaching 50, or level 10 or 20 or 32 or 38 etc. Part of the fun is the development of yoru chracter, and ifyou have limited time to play, then yes when your playing your going to likely ignore things that further limit your progression.
Can you showme numberssaying they are recieving a fair share of use? I dont need numbers to know when i log in and go to the building to see its empty. Just like PVP zones i dont need numbers to know that the "vast majority" of players dont use them. I just have to do a player search and look at their population. Prior to these changes i used to get 3-4 invites a night like "AE team running real missions would you like to join?" i dont get those anymore at all.

They choose to split an issue because so many players felt that the AE was not what it should be without custom critters. They dont set deadlines on issues, they never have. Though im sure someone somewhere says it has to be outby such a date. And what rules were broken? When you have players that are offering up information on what is being abused exactly (like mitos missions) and the devs launch the system anyway without correcting it, how is that players breaking the rules? Take the enemy off the charts of spawnable types if its not intended to be used.


Im sorry but who isulted who first ?Its pretty much a response to troll bait.
Sorry for your losses, but ultimately dont care. You do what you have to do, i already covered this issue.

I didnt say they made a bad game, i said ihave disagreements with choices they have made within that game. I voice those differences of opinion, and get jumped on accused of being a farmer, accussed of i guess having no fun. As i said i find the game fun or i wouldnt be playing it. I find the game fun and a release between all those things that come up in everyones life like you listed above.

But the game is a role playing game, it does denote that your character will gain skills, strenght etc. If there are two paths to do that, playing through the AE andplaying standard dev content, and one path offers badges, higher xp, higher influence, faster leveling, more teaming opprotunities, purple drops etc. And the other might offer somewhat nicer choices for IO sets, but slower everything else, less people in the sytsem so fewer teammates availible, which path do you think your going to choose?

Or put it this way, your dad just died a few weeks ago, your working full time, your friend is pregnant but you want to burn off some of the little free time you have playing the game. You log in you can isntantly get on a team running radio missions, and get the 2-3 bars you need to hit 32 and get your controllerpets, or you can try and take 20 minutes of the hour you have to play to put together a AE team, and fight harder mobs for less xp and you fall short of level 32.

Which path would you choose. Cause frankly the game is the same. There might be different stories but ultimately a blinky mission or kill all is the same in AE as it is in dev created land. So basicly the FUN of playing is the same on both sides. So then why pick the slower path?

And the devs created enemies with 1-2 attacks also, how many attacks do most hellions have? Or Council? However when i use custom setting and limit the attacks bellow standard to match dev content, i basicly lose all xp earning for the people playing my arcs. Even if i keep it standard, they will only earn 75 percent xp for enemies that are most times more difficult then dev enemies.

So if it was superior then why did it have to be nerfed to be inferior rather the closer to on par. See i can get around the lessened drops, since basicly you can earn tickets that come closer to getting real desirable set peices, this helps overcome the money issue also. But i dont see why xp should have to be inferior.

Again i understand the exploits that could come with using bonuses on mission completition. However why nerf patrol xp in the missions? Why have harder custom mobs be worth so much less then mobs the game spawns which are way easier to fight? I agree that mobs with no really combat ability shouldnt gain xp, however i can make mobs at standard strenght using fire/regen or something like that, which between the two sets makes superior mobs to what the game would normally spawn, and get 25 percent less xp for them. That IMO is not fair and then further limits the desires of people to use the system and experience other players creativity.

Your right, there will always be a best way to level or gain rewards, i dont argue that. But what i do argue is that alternative doesnt have to mean substantially inferior to the other.

Yes the AE have several issues upon release that contributed to a overblown farmersville. But the response to this shouldnot have been to nerf the rewards to thepoint where even the non-farmers sat back and said screw it, that it would not be worth thier time to use. Which IMO is where we are at right now.

No Patrol xp, no influence bonuses, no xp bonuses. Then add in probably less earning of recipies and salvage then a standard mission with the ticket purchasing. Now top that offby taking the one feature that they new people wanted, that they delayed the AE to give us, that of custom characters, and make it basicly so backward for xp that anyone using custom characters will prob never see their arcs being played much at all.

As is a standard custom character earns less xp then most standard game spawned mobs. However in most cases these standard custom characters have more attacks and defenses then those standard mobs. And if they dont, then they are worth nothing.

As is right now the AE is not an alternative means to leveling, its a inferior means to leveling. I would take a little more time to level by way of playing new stories and arcs if it was just a bit slower. But when factoring in most things its not just a bit slower, its alot slower, unless your farming.

A farmer can still make mobs that are custom built to his toons, that go down easy and can be spawned and killed in mass, use the AE to limit traveling of lower level toons etc. So basicly i can build a good farming map that out xps a standard mission, i cant so much build a standard mission arc for general gameplay that meets the difficulty level to xp that a standard mission offers.

IMO this is what needs to be fixed. I know people will still say its to slow or slower then normal, but atleast it wouldnt be so slow that those actually wanting new experiences and willing to give back a bitof time to get them wouldnt have to give up on the system.

Judging by your forum date, you werent even playing the game during Jack's biggest spouts of double speak on issues like ED, GDN, or HamiOs, so you can think its snide all you want, but the old lead designer of this game had a knack for creating situations that he only later made worse by his own double speak in trying to defend.
And why would you assume the changes they made only effected farmers? I see next to no one in the AE buildings anymore, be them farmers or standard players. I think that reflects that even a normal playing person doesnt consider the changes to mobs and xp in the AE to be worth their time anylonger.
When did i ever say that i didnt play for fun. But narrow minded people all seem to think that fun, rewards, xp, etc are all mutally exclusive. Or that if the find running the same TF over and over fun, that everyone should, and if you dont then your only intrested in rewards or farming etc.

See i can have fun playing a level 50, i can have fun playing a level 30. But obviously i want to see progression in the character that i play, if its availible to him. Its less so availible to a level 50 because of the cap, but why if i want to level my level 30 character, would i choose a system that not only didnt offer me patrol xp, bonuses, and inluence at the same level as a standard mission, but then also fight tougher enemies for less xp?
I can imagine people finding fun in different ways, unfortunately you dontseem to be able to. Apparently you feel that if your playing for the purposes to level a character your not playing for fun. Well personally i dontfeel that way.

At its heart the purpose of the AE was to allow players to make content. And other players to play that content. Now however it would seem the vast majority of players dont play the content. So ask yourself why? Because the rewards arenot on par with standard mission content is really the onlyreason i could think of.

I mean seriously if all things were equal why would i want to do a standard story arc for the 20th time rather then playing something new. And just as when the AE was in beta we told the devs about how all the ways people were farming and exploiting the system and the devs launched anyway, we also told them that with the proposed changes to the custom critters that hte AE would turn into a ghost town, and it has done so again.

I have been playing the game for over 5 years, i have played every AT availible, if i didnt find the game fun i wouldnt still beplaying it. That doesnt mean im going to not offer my opinion and crawl up the devs brown-holes when i dont feel they are making good decisions just because they are the devs. And i certianly dont need to hear from some 2 year vet about how i am a farmer or whatever your glitch was because i find fun in different ways then he does. Seriously ohhh you did the ITF 7 times, big whoop, i prob have also. But since it was for fun and not for reward im sure you decided to waste those merits on only buying trap of the hunter IOs right?

Not every minute of my playing time can be spent on a team running TF or other such social things. And when i am playing and friends and such are not availible, then yes my attentions turn to more things like leveling, xp, influence etc. So what, i also find that fun. You have a good time sticking to idea of fun and why not try to not tell other people what they should consider fun or not.

The resources are already commited, this is a live build already as its listed.

That is something i considered, however first I really really hate running out of end. I hate having to pay attention to my end bar really at all. I dont seem to have to with stamina. Maybe ill try a build on test and see how it goes. My other thing is that might save 3 powers and a pool choice, but i really dont know what i would take in their places.

The only thing i could think would be leadership pools, which would require more slotting then Fitness for sure, and then add to any possible end draining off running the toggles. I could get more patron powers, but again, more slotting,and i really hate the idea of commiting slots to a pet that is only up on like a 16 minute timer. But something to think about.

Wow i think we might have a new winner for the Jack Emmert double talk award.

Ok ill give you that the by definition that "alternative" doesnt require the system to offer equal rewards. But if it offers lesser rewards, it just simply wont be used. And i think that spending the time you all did on the system to try and get it right, emplies you wanted it to be used.

For instance, as an "alternative" to driving to work, i can take public transportation. However that requires 3 transfers, and waiting up to 45 minutes to catch the first bus when i get off work so the 6 miles i go to work takes about 90 minutes on public transportation but 20 minutes at most by car. So guess what i dont use public transportation when i can avoid it. Its alternative, but far substandard to driving.

The AE system already got rewards nerfed. Though the ticket system is nice, i dont really feel it offers the same level of rewards as running standard missions and getting randoms. It does offer choices which i did like. However if custome critters can not offer the same rewards as standard do, then i take 2 hits off using the system to level.

But when a developer uses a term like "alternative" IMO it emplies equality between the two alternatives. That one might have some things better the other might have other things it does well, but that in the end they reach the same objective in roughly the same effort is put into them. Well getting like none-75 percent of the XP to kill off mobs that have 2-3 times the powers as a standard mob, IMO doesnt get to the same place with the same amount of effort.