Rhysem

As a follow-up, there is nothing better than watching the tank go down, dropping shield charge on top of my location (with damage bonus; I was already in the pack of mobs), then hitting one with the shield. I can tank for long enough for the defenders to get the tank back up.

Also, duoing with a emp defender friend who put assault and fort on me, I was 1-hitting +1 spawns with shield charge. Love it!

In my planned not-insanely-expensive build, I'm looking at a 30 second cycle time on build up and shield charge -- that's not too bad. I don't know what I could get it down to if I wanted to spend the big bucks. Probably only about 20, 25 seconds.

If you can't safely take the alpha with a Stone/ElA you're doing it wrong. Sorry, that's the truth. Hop in with fault queued = a few seconds before the alpha hits you. During those seconds, lighting field (slotted endmod) and power sink drain everybody's endurance to 0. Now we have no alpha.

The only place this doesn't work is against something you can't drain; AVs, GMs, etc.

This isn't to say that MMs can't tank as well. Or, heck, even some properly built corr or dom's. Stalkers, well, not so much.

Just some comments from a level 27 BS/Shield peanut gallery member:

I think dual builds is IDEAL for a BS/Shield scrapper. One build is for teaming, it takes phalanx and grant cover. The other is for solo work and skips both of those for other powers. Teaming you can probably also skip one with the shield -- this is the "I am not the tank" shield scrapper build. If you are the (virtual) tank, then you run your solo build, which is built for your survivability rather than your team's.

Even for non-set-IO builds, for the love of god get a steadfast protection res/3% global defense IO. Yes, it'll set you back a bit, so either save your merits or get some cash and buy one.

For epic pools, Weapon Mastery may be fun for the abuse of shield charge -> caltrops. Most insulting appearance ever!

Shield Charge makes you a great opener for teams. SC in and knock 80% of the spawn down, then the tank taunts and controllers can safely fire controls without taking the alpha of any they missed. You're tough enough to soak the one or two guys you'll miss hitting you for a (short) while.

Leadership of Concealment are also worth considering for power pool picks for a teaming build. Think of yourself as a melee-based defender.

Grounded is how you become immune to sappers. I wouldn't swap my grounded for another power, but that's my take. I like being immune to sappers.

[ QUOTE ]
Still waiting for any kind of evidence that there wasn't a stealth nerf to inf earnings while exemplared to deal with Ouroboros/tf farming.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't think they'd do that, it seems really counterproductive to up XP even more in teams, and lower inf gained more. Teams were already about all the XP you could handle and none of the loot, so making it even more so seems unwise.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd love to get some numbers from other folks. Right now it looks like while we were getting an across-the-board increase in xp/inf at our native levels, we actually got a DECREASE in inf while exemplared.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't write down numbers -- should have -- my level 45, on a 50's mission yesterday was getting unequal XP/inf. But I wasn't exemped or lackied or anything. I wonder if it isn't the level adjustment, but teaming doing something odd?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And all were proving false.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh I've read this thread...

And I countered every claim made by those in this thread that this change would benefit farmers.

No, this change will NOT.

But again I ask... please provide details stating how it will... so I can once again shoot it down.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where's that link again, btw?

Until you've got that all your claims are pretty much worth nothing.

[ QUOTE ]
Just because its not immediate, which is what you want, makes it wrong?!? No, just no. If its in the pipes, then its perfectly acceptable.

[/ QUOTE ]

54 pages says otherwise. Not acceptable. It'd be like sending rage live on the previous 0 recovery version. "We'll fix it soon" is not exactly reassuring when things like Robosurgery have been broken for over a year.

You fix it right to start with, or you don't apply it at all.

[ QUOTE ]
You mean like sending I11 live with Purples Set Bonuses not working when exemping & not being fixed for 3 months later.... you mean like sending I11 live with the End Mod Sets not working & not being fixed for 3 months later...

etc

etc

etc

etc

etc


This is the nature of the industry. Expect it

[/ QUOTE ]

No. I expect better. Warcraft does FAR better with having functional patches. If they want to keep getting paid, they need to start having patches not break things.

They also need to implement testing on the test server so I don't have to grind out how much time to get the end mod sets to test them. They need to be available for testing, not require us to invest hours to find them to test.

[ QUOTE ]
Heck check the thread... I've said several times that I'd be surprised if the Devs weren’t already addressing some of the TF inconsistencies & nuances internally. I'd be surprised in fact if I12 doesn’t address numerous TF problems (such as the absurdity of the Shard TFs).

[/ QUOTE ]

Then those changes needed to be pushed out first. Would it be acceptable for them to do work on the login server that'd speed up logins, but in the meantime 1/10th the people in the game just couldn't login for a while? That's just crazy. Do it right or don't do it. It's as bad as the rage changes.

[ QUOTE ]
And this is the point where I really have to stand up and shout. I've not seen it picked up on yet, so I'm going to pick up on it.

A randomly selected Pool C recipe is NOT a 'good reward based on a group accomplishment'.

[/ QUOTE ]

I picked on it in my wall of text reply to Lighthouse. Heck, not being able to chose your HO in LRSF or STF is pretty bad too. I mean, I can understand the old hammie raids where they just dropped randomly not offering a choice. Fine. As soon as there was a reward window, and especially with how hard the TFs are, there is no excuse in not offering a choice of which you want.

Totally agreed though. The devs have gone for the "quick and easy" fix rather than the right fix -- fixing their original bad design.

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't mind this change.

I do think it was targeted at the Cap SF. I've seen the farmers walk away with 64 rare recipes in just under 40 minutes. Here's how they did it:
There were 8 of them. They each had 8 characters at level 15. They'd each log on a character, team up and get the SF then log off. Rinse and repeat until all 8 characters for each of them were involved in the SF. Then each of them logs on 1 character (each in a different SF) and solo's it until the final mission. Then they cycle through the teams, log all 8 on and destroy the last mission. Each character gets a rare recipe drop. 8x8=64 rare recipes...... Odds are you're going to get at least 1-2 Miracle procs or Numina procs and a crapton of other decent ones.

So yeah, I think it was a valid change and having strikeforces/taskforces running as intended doesn't seem like a bad thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is NO WAY they did it in 40 minutes, quit lieing. The best time I've ever seen ghosting from start to entering "bind BZ" is 20 minutes. From there, there's 5 glowies to click, an ambush (or two) to ditch, and two AVs to kill PER GROUP. If you're telling me you can do that in 2 minutes, either you're god or an idiot.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm all for the change. Anything that slows down farmers is fine in my book.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha. Well you shouldn't be for it, it helped a bunch of farmers too. Probably more than it hurt since gold sellers are included in the "helped" column.

[ QUOTE ]
And those prices have nothing to do with the inflation of double experience weekend where people were pulling in tens of millions of inf every few hours?

[/ QUOTE ]

They were "only" 75 mill over the weekend. Just FYI.

[ QUOTE ]
IF they really want to fix farming, they'll make it so you can't reset missions.

I'm not saying that would be popular, mind you...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, right after they fix blinkies appearing in walls, mobs getting stuck in the walls, etc.

Aka the first of never.

Edit: oh and not to mention turing regular missions into a fiasco like SF missions. The group lead selected your mish and spawned it for 8 then the team quit? Congrats, you get to find 8 folks to help you clear it or you're stuck with it as it stands.

Again, not going to happen. Too much potential for abuse.

[ QUOTE ]
SOLUTION - Standardize all Task Forces/Strike Forces to have a Minimum Team Size requirement of 5. The LSRF and STF being the exception as they are supposed to be the pinnacle of challenge. This means that those farmers that try to roll in and farm one solo are going to face a super serious challenge. They may be able to handle mob spawn sizes of 4 but 5 I hazard to guess will thin that herd a lot more, making them a negligible minority.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your guess is wrong. I take on a 6-man spawned TV Don with no fear with my 50 SM/ELA solo. I'm not even fully purpled out (yet).

Also note that a static fixed size isn't fair to red-side when it is vastly underpopulated compared to blue side. It also advantages being on more populated servers (freedom) which will just contribute to the overpopulation and lag. I'd advise against that as a solution: bad side effects.

Now if you split it, 5 for hero, 3 or 4 for villain that'd be better. If you look at the sizes, the devs have already recognized that this is an issue, particularly on red-side.

[ QUOTE ]
SOLUTION – Revamp the older TF’s by reducing the number of pointless missions that are nothing more than padding. There is no real necessity to hunt this and hunt that and click this and click that. The Shard TF’s are overly crowded with this sort of crap and their presence adds no real value to the TF. The Villain side has that figured out pretty good.

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be nice. Reducing the useless "travel to this zone to do what you just did" would be really nice blue side, particularly for POSITRON where many players lack their movement yet.

[ QUOTE ]
People softloading was taking advantage of a design vulnerability. That is an exploit! That is against the game rules.

[/ QUOTE ]

False. It is bad design by the devs and nothing more. An exploit would be figuring out a way to dupe money, XP, IOs, crash servers, auto-complete TF missions which aren't auto-completable, etc. The "rules of how the game works" weren't being broken -- missions spawn for the number of players in the team. That you could use this to make a mission easier isn't against the rules of the game any more than bringing a 50 in to crush a badge mission is.

If I figured out that doing an /afk <string of 257 characters> in base caused spawns to shrink to only 1 minion, then that's probably an exploit, because that's not what the code is designed to do (for one thing, /afk shouldn't interact with the mob count in any way).

This calling everything an "exploit" is as bad as the "hackers broke into..." thing the news does all the time. Those aren't hackers. Crackers maybe, but script kiddies more likely.

[ QUOTE ]
Plugging that hole is the exact thing we players are constantly crying for. We are always yelling at the devs for not fixing this and not fixing that. Now they fix one

[/ QUOTE ]

Not that they've fixed the scientist spawn in Cap or apparently LRSF. Not that they've fixed Force of Nature being unusable when malefactored.
Not that they've fixed robosurgery.

The first may be hard. The second and third are almost certainly trivial. They are easily repeatable, testable bugs. There's plenty of really rather bad outstanding bugs that could use a fix. I've had a friend about ready to quit the game over the scientist in portal corp in the Cap Au SF issues because he is SO FRUSTRATED that half the runs he does the stupid scientists disappears into the wall and he has to reset the mission to try it again...

[ QUOTE ]
, a BIG one and many people are crying no fair. It was a vulnerability that players (farmer or not, RMTer or not) were using to speed up the time in which they completed a TF/SF to maximize their gains and minimize their risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

False. Risk was not minimized. I'm absolutely safer with my full regular team signed in than I am going through those missions solo. Risk is minimized RELATIVE to reward, but DUH. That's what players do in games, from bringing in a 50 to stomp a difficult badge mission to loading an alt up with inf.

[ QUOTE ]
That is a categorical definition of Exploiting a Game Mechanic. It is cheating, regardless of weather your intent was sincere (i.e. you actually wanted to do the TF for the badge and the team fun) or not (meaning you just wanted the rare recipe). This patch resolves that, and on that front I can do nothing but applaud and endorse the decision.

[/ QUOTE ]

FREE YOUR MIND!

http://www.sirlin.net/Features/featu...ToWinPart1.htm

Specifically the "Boundaries of Playing to Win" section. It may be a bug, it may be unintended design, but as long as it isn't crashing instance servers, corrupting the database, etc., I have a hard time condemning it. Blame the devs for the player's behavior, because players are doing that "bad" behavior as a result of (real) bad design on the dev's part. There are alternate ways to make doing a TF "as intended" more rewarding than the ghosting method, yet without breaking the rate of supply of any given uber recipe going into the market.

A simple one would be a TF done with a bunch of the difficulty settings enabled gives you a recipe of your pick. You want Miracle: +recovery, you get it. Of course you've just completed a TF with enemies buffed, players debuffed, AT-only, and no enhancements. Frankly if you invested the time (no travel powers) and are good enough as a team to do it with those restrictions I don't care if it was a level 15-20 SF or LRSF, you deserve a HO or your pick of (any) recipe.

Would that suggestion benefit me? Sure. I know my group of friends, I know what we can accomplish when we work together. At the same time, it'd take us about the same time as doing an old double-6x8 BZ grid for 98 recipes and actually probably produce LESS "really good" recipes than that grid does (on average). But it would be more fun to do since I could actually play with my friends and wouldn't have to have un-fun login/logout sequences as well as 5 minute downtimes while someone spawns BZ.

Just my not so humble opinion.

[ QUOTE ]
Such missions have always been intended to be group activities, hence the reason for the minimum group size requirement to start them. We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous

[/ QUOTE ]

Min = Max = 8 man isn't onerous? Losing one person puts you at a 87.5% effectiveness and there's nothing you can do to avoid that. Other than enforced raid attendance. I'm sorry, did that sound like World of Warcraft terminology? Your game's main advantage and draw -- that it was very casual friendly -- has been going out the window ever since you introduced inventions. This is only accelerating that trend.

Not to mention the problems you have with population imbalance. If you divide the number of players CoH has by the number of servers, and balance that for level spread it looks pretty easy to find a TF/SF team.

Until you realize there are way more heroes than villains. Given the activity of the market, probably at least 1.5 times to 2 times as many heroes (WoW's historic ratio before Burning Crusade) as villains. Then you factor in that population across servers isn't even and you'll discover that it might be that if you are on a low population villain server, you're fighting a serious uphill battle for those "easy 4-man" TFs. They're already effectively as hard to get a group together for as 6 to 8-man hero TFs since you've got (about) 2/3rds to half the population, not even factoring in the server population disparities.

[ QUOTE ]
and that the need for grouping is a good dynamic in a social environment like City of Heroes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why not just nerf everyone to the point grouping is required, ala EQ, EQ2, DAoC, AC2, SWG, and many others? That certainly seemed to be the direction Statesman wanted to go -- enforced grouping. Of the big enforced grouping games above I've played one -- DAoC and only for a short time. If you want to enforce grouping that's cool, it sends me a signal clear as day that this ain't the game for me.

Warcraft, particularly with Burning Crusade, has done a great job setting up a solo-friendly but grouping-encouraged game. You can solo all the way to the max level by yourself. If you want good equipment, you're probably going to have to group up to do a instance. And yes the instances are 5-man and you need 5 to complete it, the spawns are static and fixed. On the bright side, if someone quits, you can invite someone new to the instance. And they just made it easier to teleport that person right into the instance where you are.

What you should be doing is rewarding grouping and rewarding good (group) play. A change to the TFs that was this "size (-1)" minimum spawn size plus the option to select better loot if you run with enough difficulty settings would be much better for encouraging grouping. Requiring "no enhancements/no travel powers" is going to kill a solo farmer, or even a parallel ghosting run like my group does. However, grouped up we can put together a group that'll operate as if we were pretty close to normal: 1 brute, 1 thermal/sonic corr or ff mm, 1 kin corr. Folks (other than the kin) have blue due to Speed Boost, the brute has decent shields on them even without enhancement slots, and we have a spot free that can go to any class (though another kin would be a sweet addition, as would a dark corr/mm or traps mm or rad corr for the debuffing action).

I'm very happy to play with my group of friends. I even like adding an occasional PUG'er to us. I'd frankly much rather do a TF for "real" than ghost five simultaneously. But your rewards system doesn't give me any incentive to do that. If I can do it solo and we can get more done in less time, then I'm more likely to get a good reward since it is all up to the PRNG what I get. The more rewards from the PRNG I get, the better chance one of them is the about 6 to 10 good recipes out of a set of 75-some drops.

And with this change, I won't be PUG'in with non-guildies if I don't have to for a TF ever again. Why put the TF at risk with a PUG'er who might quit in the middle? I might group with my friends to do TF/SFs, but I already do that. This hasn't added any incentive for me to group with them more (we're pretty much always grouped if we're on and playing), only removed any incentive I had to ever group with anyone else.

[ QUOTE ]
We want to continue to offer good rewards based on a group accomplishment through such missions and maintaining that requirement is the reason for this change.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you really think the SO rewards out of TFs are "good rewards"? A lot of my characters don't even ever slot SOs anymore -- the expiring is just too much hassal, and/or IOs are strictly better (35+), and/or I'm slotting set IOs for set bonuses, or just for the benefit to multiple aspects of a power.

Do you really think stuff like "Trap of the Hunter: Acc/Immob/Rech" is a good reward? How about "Malaise's Illusions: Chance for Psi Damage" -- and while you're answering that remind me exactly how many sets percentage wise can slot that?

How about offering actual good rewards, like the choice of set type? Or at least dropping a set that I could possibly slot as my AT -- no more of this Confuses dropping for my brute. I'll still trade on the market. If I get a Mako's Bite, but I'm slotting Crushing Impact so up on the market it goes. Or I get my 6th Mako's Bite and don't need it even though I'm slotting it.

[ QUOTE ]
We know that finding out about this change after the patch is already live is not the ideal way to go about it. It was never our intent to “hide” or “stealth” this change out, it was simply lost in the volume of other changes spanning many months.

[/ QUOTE ]

What plans can you assure the players that you have in-place to prevent this in the future?

[ QUOTE ]
One of the many aims of this most recent update was to address exploitive behavior that could be used for influence/infamy farming.

[/ QUOTE ]

It seems to me you've only "addressed" recipe farming and made the inf farming problem worse -- now there are ready spawned missions for inf famers to grind day in and day out. While farming the Cap SF at 20 is going to be hard on most brutes, doing the Ice Minstral SF at 40 gives you enough of your powers that farming a 4-man spawn is so easy you'll be using the diff slider to boost that to a 5-man spawn.

Drops high level (expensive) magic salvage, check. If you're 50, drops inf as a even-level kill for you, check. Doesn't drop purple recipes, but can drop some of the similarly-expensive "ends-at-40" set recipes: Touch of Death and Decimation spring rapidly to mind.

Not to mention with less players farming TF/SFs, the recipes going into the market are going down. Prices are going up, which means increased incentive to RMT for inf to afford it.

[ QUOTE ]
This is especially relevant when considering recent problems with unwanted real money trade (RMT) solicitations in game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oddly I didn't see any RMT solicitations until such time as inventions and the market were introduced. Of course I can't prove cause and effect -- it could be that the RMT tells caused the market to spring into being, fully formed from Statesman's head.

I'm sure there was RMT before the market -- SOs could be expensive, and prestige was very costly, but the problem was tiny until your introduction of IOs/the market.

[ QUOTE ]
Also included in the most recent update is the change to make it harder for RMT spammers to use the in game mail system for such advertisements. We will continue to make other changes as necessary to address the issue.

[/ QUOTE ]

Like removing the market? Because now that you've created an incentive, you aren't going to ever stop RMT. Not only do you as a company have a relatively small incentive to control it (RMT'ers, and especially when you ban their accounts means more new retail boxes sold to create new (paying) accounts for you). No, your incentive to control it extends only as far as making sure you look like you're doing enough to have fewer real players leave the game than RMT accounts get registered.

Very disappointed in how poorly this change was thought out and implemented,

[ QUOTE ]
Um, that TF (ice Minstral) caps at lvl 40. So unless you want to up the difficulty to spawn lvl 41 & 42s...

Guess what, now you are back into the Bosses Issues

[/ QUOTE ]

I just pointed the "instant farm just add water" aspect of the TF change to one of the guys we sometimes farmed BZ with. He was immediately excited. This guy regularly runs Liberate TV at max difficulty with a team of 8. He doesn't care about sissy little death mages.

You seem to fail to grasp that boss XP and thus Inf went up... a lot. Or that some builds are in fact better at boss killing than minion killing (EM anyone?).

But that's okay, go ahead and live in your fantasy world.

Oh, I wanted to add I know he's RMT'd in the past. Used to sell on Ebay I think, actually, before Ebay did the big RMT ban stick. Btw, he's about as American as you can get.

Sure, it's anecdotal evidence, but that's more evidence than your "lol bosses" has.

[ QUOTE ]
*sigh*

So they are going to farm 5 minnions & 2 Lts per mob in which the TF caps at what, lvl 40?

LMAO

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. That drops high arcane and drops inf as their real level, just like working out debt does while malefactored. All they lose is purples, which is inconvenient, but...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Edit - Then Ice Mistral, mission 4 (outside map). CoT.

[/ QUOTE ]


But it'll STILL spawn Death Mages per mob.... No farmer is going to sacrifice the influence / hour.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not for a min-4-to-start SF. It'll spawn 2 lts and 5 minions (for 4 man) just like Cap Au. Maybe you should understand how a change works before you open your mouth next time.

[ QUOTE ]
And to my fellow players, the two other so-called stealth nerfs were not really stealth changes SINCE WE WERE FRIGGIN TALKING ABOUT THOSE CHANGES ON TEST!

[/ QUOTE ]

Any change not listed in the patch notes is stealth. Those that are not buffs are nerfs. Thus it is a stealth nerf.

I had a suspicion, but I never confirmed it on test before it went live.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They won't. They'll get one and log out to reset it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is that true? So you can farm a mission, log out, and when you get back in it will reset?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. You can use it to fix TF missions when you have things like the still-unfixed "blinkie spawns in the wall" or the "scientist from portal corp learns to phase shift through the walls and vanishes"

Actually it is the ONLY way to fix those other than abandoning the TF.

You know, TFs might be more fun to play if they weren't buggy so much. Half the time we ghost Cap the stupid scientist gets lost.

[ QUOTE ]
1. Most Farmers spawn maps for 6 & not 8 due to the abundance of Bosses

[/ QUOTE ]

Boosted boss XP/Inf means that they are now almost certainly time-efficient to classes that are good at farming.

[ QUOTE ]
2. Most farmers use SJ (Inertial Redux) as their only mode of transportation... good luck with that in the Shard.

[/ QUOTE ]

Infinite jet packs through O-portal, check. (at least villain side, I assume)

[ QUOTE ]
3. Most farmers prefer to NOT hop from mish door to mish door, because it wastes valuable farming time.

[/ QUOTE ]

They won't. They'll get one and log out to reset it.

[ QUOTE ]
4. Most farmers prefer the large outdoor maps, not too many of those on the Shard TFs

[/ QUOTE ]

Plenty more large TFs available. All they need is ONE good map.

[ QUOTE ]
5. They could log out of the game and then log back in to reset a map... but how is that any different than what they do already? This changes very little in that regard

[/ QUOTE ]

They (used to) have to get a team back together to re-spawn the map at their desired size. Now the game does it for them.

Note that this means previously TF maps (other than the first, or maybe second if the first mish was fast) weren't farmable. Now they are. I'll bet I can find some sweet farm maps later on in TFs. Heck, the villain respec is a great lv 50 CoT indoor for AoE mission. Only spawns for 4, but with a diff setting you can put that up to for 5.

[ QUOTE ]
If you are going to complain about something, pick a valid example... your "you actually made farming EASIER for RMT farmers" is complete BS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can I have what you're smokin? They really did.

[ QUOTE ]
Um Wrong... the softloading of the Villian Respec, LRTF, STF alone warrants this change.

[/ QUOTE ]

Softloading of things indicates only one thing: doing them the usual way is un-fun to people. Maybe this is because they receive their 15th Crap of the Hunter. Maybe this is because they don't like playing with others. Maybe it is something else. It certainly warrants a change, but it does not warrant only this change.

[ QUOTE ]
And its not like the NPCS don’t indicate that you need 'X' Number of players to run a TF

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah they tell my brute to bring friends to kill a little sissy EB too. There are brutes (and MMs) who can solo an AV. Your point?

[ QUOTE ]
Funny, all this complaining, and all I really see in this change is "TFs will be played as they were supposed to be played"

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahaha you're funny. My BZ ghosting group did it last night. Our times were worse, but not that much worse. When I get all my purples slotted and/or build a BZ farm build, I'll be turning out similar times to what I was before.

Just so you know. :-)

[ QUOTE ]
Hey, Positron has the Legendary Cat Helmet on the shelf. That's kind of cool. Is he a fan of Halo and/or cats?

[/ QUOTE ]

He also has a copy of Risk and Talisman.

I can't play Talisman anymore unless there's /lots/ of booze involved. It helps make the hurting stop sooner.