Redoubtable

An event would be a great idea, once we get things solidified a bit. I was thinking of organising a combined SINISTER/SENTINEL Rikti raid on a Wednesday night, I'll talk to Lili about that.

A good idea, but it turns out it won't be necessary. I happened to be around for an impromptu raid today and we now have all of the beacon badges.

Welcome ricktu, just give a shout on the Australia channel when you'd like an invite.

To give you an idea of how quickly we intend to get the base completed, the SG was established last Friday and already has teleporters for 12 zones. If we haven't built up enough prestige by the end of the week to upgrade the plot and add the last 10 zones then I'll be converting some influence to pay for it (I'm trying to catch up with Lili's contribution). Having always played in established SGs, I'm itching to get the base up to that standard as quickly as possible.

Incidentally, I'm unreliably informed that the Unabashed badge (in the middle of the Rikti ship) is required for the RWZ teleport beacon. If anyone happens to be on a raid any time soon, it would be appreciated if you could collect this one while in SG mode.

I have one of each at level 30 (Plant/Thorn Dom, Plant/Therm Troller), and I find the Dominator much more engaging and fun to play. Getting the most from the Plant primary doesn't require the use of many powers (Strangler, Seeds, Creepers, Fly Trap, three of which are on longish timers), which can make things pretty boring when you've got a buffing secondary.

Name: S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L.

Concept: Serve the Oceanic community by providing an active hero group which is open to all.

Server: Justice (the unofficial oceanic server)

Website: TBA. Rules and regulations are identical to those at http://sinister.wikidot.com/

RP: Not a primarily RP-oriented group, but we have a number of RPers in the group and links with active RP teams.

PvP: Not at this stage, though we're open to PvP-oriented events if there is sufficient interest amongst members.

Activity: The intention is to achieve similar levels of activity to SINISTER. Weekly events will occur on Monday nights.

Requirements to Join: Be nice, be considerate, have a sense of humour and don't be a PITA. By all means follow our Rules and Regulations (available on our web site), but ultimately they just boil down to that. Before you join though, best assess how realistic it is for you to play in the Aussie timezones on a regular basis. The main reason a lot of us are here is that it's too difficult for us to play regularly with people in the US; that goes both ways.

Leadership: @Redoubt, @Lili, @Min Min, @Metacore

In-game Contacts: If you want to /tell us or in-game email us, use the globals above. If you want an SG invite, then a shout out on the Australia global channel during our peak hours should get you someone with invite privileges.

Out-of-game Contacts: You can PM Redoubtable, MinMin, Liliaceae or cybermitheral on these forums, or you can drop us a message via the SINISTER web site http://sinister.wikidot.com or the shared Australasian SG/VG forums here.

Coalitions: We currently have a coalition with the Defenders of the Southern Cross SG, and are open to coalitions with other Oceanic time zone SGs.

Other Details:

• We actively discuss events on our forums, and do Task Forces and other events weekly.
• We share leadership with the villain group SINISTER, also on Justice, and we have many shared members with them.
• Our base is currently under development, and is expected to soon be at the standard of the SINISTER base.
• We have a wide range of very experienced players who are extremely ready to answer questions about the game, various ATs and powersets, the markets, inventions etc.
• Have fun! It's a game!

The free server transfers have been a great boon to the Oceanic community, bringing a lot of new characters and players to Justice over the last couple of months. While we've had some excellent activity on the villain side of the fence in recent times, activity blueside has continued to be sporadic. Anecdotally, part of the reason seems to be the lack of an active, organised Oceanic supergroup on Justice, which is something that we at SINISTER would like to change.

To whit: Lili, Min Min and I have established S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L., a new hero supergroup which will form the basis of upcoming blueside events on Justice. We've also got cybermitheral (@Metacore) on board to continue his excellent work in organising Monday night TFs, and we're hoping that Mondays will soon be to heroism what Wednesdays are to nefariousness.

Any and all are welcome to join the group, which will be run in the same way, and by the same people, as SINISTER. We're also well on our way to a fully functional base, so you needn't fear having to hoof it around Paragon City for weeks while we get our Prestige together.

Watch the SG and Australia channel messages of the day, and these forums, for upcoming events. We hope that this will be the first step down the path of a more active and fun hero-side community for Oceanic players on Justice.

@Redoubt, @Lili, @Min Min and @Metacore

I read Castle's other post in that thread, and I'll have to withdraw my previous assessment - Castle seems to have ruled out the possibility of more frequent drops. I guess he must be talking about the inf oversupply, but it's not exactly clear what he means by "horribly broken".

Gotta say, I don't like it when devs post little snippets which can be taken in many different ways - especially when it may just be the dev's opinion, rather than an indication of future direction.

Brute 1: Level 50 SS/Elec, lotsa IOs. Super Speed + Celerity: Stealth - base PvE stealth radius w. SS running = 65 ft.

Scenario 1a: While malefactored to level 30, noted that standing close to a level 25 CoT Hellfrost caused my PvE stealth radius (in combat attributes window) to drop to 0 ft within 2 - 5 seconds and stay there (Hellfrost did not attack due to level difference). Moving away from the enemy would result in stealth radius returning to 65 ft after a short delay.

Scenario 1b: In an attempt to isolate the issue, malefactored to level 10 via flashback to remove Lightning Reflexes and Grounded auto powers. Only power icons now being displayed are Hurdle, three accolade powers, and Fury. Testing with level 8 and level 5 Infected in Mercy produces same result as above (though the level 8s attacked when my stealth dropped).

Brute 2: Level 43 Stone/WP, all SOs except stealth proc. Super Speed + Celerity: Stealth - base PvE stealth radius w. SS running = 65 ft.

Scenario 2: At natural level, stand next to level 20ish Arachnos and Family enemies in Sharkhead. Again observe stealth radius dropping from 65 ft to 0 ft, then returning to 65 ft when moving away. Only powers in common with scenario 1b are Hurdle and Fury.

Corruptor: Level 50 Ice/Kin, some IOs. Super Speed + Celerity: Stealth - base PvE stealth radius w. SS running = 65 ft.

Scenario 3: At natural level, stand next to same enemies in Sharkhead as scenario 2. Stealth radius remains at 65 ft constantly, even when in close proximity to enemies. Only power in common with scenarios 1b and 2 is Hurdle.

Conclusion: Stealth is being incorrectly suppressed for Brutes when in close proximity to any enemy. The process of elimination above seems to suggest that the Fury auto power is causing this problem.

I don't have the means to test other stealth-granting powers such as Stealth, Invisibility, Steamy Mist, etc, but I suspect that all suppressable stealth powers will be affected by this bug. Recent experience has shown that Energy Cloak (from Energy Aura) is not suppressed under any circumstances, and it appears to be immune to this effect. I would guess that Fury's aura is being treated as an attack for the purposes of the stealth supprssion code, which is problematic since we can't switch it off.

If anyone is able to some quick and dirty testing on other powers or IOs that grant stealth then that would be helpful, but my current assumption is that stealth is ineffective for Brutes once in melee range (possibly 10 ft, based on Ethric's quote from CoD).

Also, does anyone know which dev would be best to PM in order to get this some attention? Stealth being broken for an entire archetype would probably qualify as a serious bug.

Without getting into the semantics too much, it looks to me like Castle is specifically referring to the price of PvP recipes being greater than the theoretical inf cap, not saying that the market itself is "horribly broken". The fix could be as simple as increasing the drop rate of PvP recipes.

If it helps, Mod8 has a dissenting opinion:

That was my suspicion, that it was Fury causing the issue. I'll post some test results and PM whoever it is that looks after this stuff nowadays.

I've got a few Brutes that use Super Speed slotted with Celerity +Stealth IOs to achieve invisibility, but I've been noticing for a while that this hasn't been fully effective - enemies will sometimes spot me, even though I have all taunt and damage auras turned off and am not attacking. For a while I thought that this must have been caused by enemies with extra perception (Rikti Drones and the like), but I did some testing last night and came to the conclusion that stealth will actually be suppressed whenever a Brute is in melee range of an enemy (within 5 seconds, it seems to be tick based), regardless of enemy type and relative level. The same testing with a Corruptor seemed to indicate that this problem is isolated to Brutes only.

Before I write up a long post with my evidence, I wanted to check that this isn't a known issue. I couldn't find anything in the forum search, but if this is a bug as I suspect then I'm a little surprised that it hasn't been found before. Does anyone know whether this has been previously documented?

I believe that there'll be some suicidal action tonight for SINISTER Wednesday. Not sure exactly what Lili's got lined up, but it should be fairly crazy if the +4 Ice Mistral we did on Sunday is anything to go by.

Holy cow, this flame thread has devolved into a reasonable discussion!

Given my own scant background in economics, I find the moral economy stuff really interesting. Amazing what can happen when the people on both sides of the argument actually have some idea of what they're talking about.

Linking unlocks to themed content is a good idea, but, as has been mentioned, linking EATs to a Task Force would actually make them harder for some players to obtain, rather than easier. A better solution would be to have a universally available level-gated arc, similar to those that unlock capes, auras and the Midnighter Club, which gave access to the EATs when completed. This provides the desired thematic link, while avoiding potential discrimination against soloists.

Unfortunately, it's probably too late to add something like this in i17 unless it's already on the plan. I'm ok with it being a simple unlock at level 20, but this would be nicer.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't hate you. It's a market, not a frickin' commune, and no amount of magical thinking is going to make prices drop below the equilibrium.

This was kind of the point of my question above. Purples should never be easier to get on the market than they are via drops, and I would almost argue that current market prices are cheap when compared to the effort of gathering a full set of purples through drops.

Anyway, it's not market prices that are fluctuating, it's the value of the currency.

Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about the redside market here (not sure what they cost in WW right now).

I'm curious, if the current prices are too high then what do people think is a reasonable price for a purple recipe or other rare drop?

Just a small tip on the accuracy slotting: a good way to tell if you have enough +acc/+to-hit is to show the Last Hit Chance line in your combat attributes monitor window. If you're consistently seeing hit chances of 95% in there for a particular attack then you have enough (possibly too much) accuracy slotted.

Hit percentages are quite difficult to monitor subjectively since you notice the misses more than the hits, which tends to lead to overslotting of accuracy enhancements.