Rodion
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Quote:The problem is that when you meet a Master Illusionist she usually spawns four Illusionists immediately, regardless of what your difficulty settings might be. Then you have five phasing enemies to deal with, plus a Phantasm, a dummy Phantasm, and a Dark Servant.Originally Posted by Pauper
Lowering your difficulty settings would also be helpful in avoiding having to fight three or four Illusionists at once.
Even on x1/+0, many radio missions have the objective of defeating the boss, which will have these capabilities even if you have bosses turned off. So you won't have any choice about meeting an MI that can do this if you accept missions like this.
That said, I can't support the idea of the devs spending their time creating something to address a problem that players have been dealing with for eight years without serious difficulty.
If you're having problems with Illusionists, you just need to use minimum difficulty settings (x1/-1) and the right tactics. On minimum difficulty there aren't many missions that spawn more than one MI or illusionist in one location (the exception I can think of is the level 40-50 hero Carnie tip missions).
The tactic is simple: wait till just after the MI/Illusionist phases back in and then hold/stun/knockback her immediately, then pound on her mercilessly. Since you should be running without bosses, you'll be able to mez her immediately and defeat an LT within 10 sec (use red inspirations if you need to amp up your damage). If don't have a mez attack, you should get one, or avoid running Carnie missions if you find them too difficult. Use purples just before attacking if needed to up your defense. Have breakfrees on hand if you can be mezzed.
If the devs were to do anything, they should rectify the real problem with Illusionists, their being able to affect us while phased, but we can't affect them. Yeah, I know that's their gimmick, but it's still bogus. Being phased is already enough of an advantage for NPCs because many players still continue attacking even though they can't affect phased targets, and it draws out the combat. NPCs should play by the same rules as players.
In the end, if the OP finds doing Carnie missions solo too difficult, the OP should just avoid doing them solo. Dismiss the Carnie hero tip missions, don't take Carnie radio missions and don't take the contacts that give out Carnie missions. -
Quote:First, it's only some players that reject non-unique names. Many players actively want to have non-unique names, and many players don't really have strong feelings one way or the other: there are pluses and minuses either way.Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
The Devs have given us tantalizing hints before that this is possible, but that it's also tied to no longer having unique names, which players seem to strongly reject.
Given that names on each server aren't truly unique (Sally, Sa11y, S4lly, and Sallie aren't unique in any meaningful sense), I would wager that most players find the argument moot.
Second, it seems unlikely that at this stage of design the devs would (or could) be able to definitively state that cross-server teaming would mandate non-unique names across all servers.
Obviously, characters with the same name from different servers participating in the same cross-server instance would require a mechanism to make them unique within that instance (perhaps based on server of origin or global name). But one could certainly envisage a system in which their name would remain unique on their home server, or a system that requires players to choose a unique cross-server character name if there's a collision the first time they join a cross-server instance, or some kind of "seniority" system based on character creation date.
Players who do not wish to suffer the indignity of having their name qualified by some ugly differentiating decoration or the slight of taking a different name could simply stay on their home server.
But this is all idle speculation at this point, because we don't really know how the system works internally and can't really know what sorts of limitations the devs have.
Instead of dictating design decisions to the devs, I would instead propose a basic requirement for cross-server teaming: no characters should be required to have their name changed on their home servers. And the corollary is that anyone who never teams across servers will never notice a change, or know that they have doppelgangers with the same name on other servers. -
When I leave the first mission of the new SSA episode my FPS is substantially degraded. The first time today it went to 4 fps, and when I did the arc on a second character the FPS went down to 18 fps. At 4 fps the game is unplayable, at 18 it's noticeably clunky.
Each time I restarted the game, went back in with the same character and experienced the same degradation. Switching characters didn't make a difference -- the FPS degradation was still present. Then (each time) I rebooted my computer, restarted the game and FPS was back to normal for that area of Atlas (50-80 fps). Everything works fine again, until I rerun that mission (the fight with the Clockwork in the Freedom Phalanx base), when my FPS drops like a rock.
My graphics card is a GeForce GTX 460 SE, 1 gig graphics memory, with driver version 6.14.13.142 (according to the Windows Device Manager). Windows XP, 4 gig main memory. For some reason, when I go to the nVidia website to check my driver version it gives a version number of 301.42 (says it's the current version). They must segment up the version number differently than Windows does.
It seems like something about the mission hoses the driver or the graphics card hardware, and only a complete system reboot fixes it. None of the other missions in the arc, or any other missions anywhere else in the game, have caused this problem. -
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Quote:Hmm. Does that mean if we defeat the Guards before Tyrant consumes them he cannot buff himself with them, or is he buffed no matter how they're defeated?Originally Posted by Arbiter Hawk
3.) Tyrant does not have a self heal. He does have a self-buff power which consumes his Olympian Guards, killing them, and providing him with bonus ToHit and Smashing Damage for each guard consumed in this way.
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I play both ranged and melee characters, so I don't have any axe to grind either way. The main reason the patches of death exist is that most melee incarnates are pretty much invincible. The AVs stand there clobbering us with massive attacks, yet we suffer almost no damage.
Most melee characters can punch out Tyrant's face for 20 minutes and are never damaged by his direct attacks. Only the crackling air does any serious damage, and only if you neglect to skip out of it.
This is the tradeoff: the devs would have to either make the AVs' direct attacks powerful enough to threaten us, or add attacks that will cut through our ridiculously high defenses but which we can avoid in some way.
They've chosen the latter, giving us fair warning with Marauder's attack, the rings with BAF and the patches most every other trial. Since the patches do DoT and we can generally flee them, it's a much more benign mechanic than constantly getting one-shot by the AV.
However, I agree that they've greatly overdone the patches of death thing. It's annoying that the action we're required to take in nearly all these cases is to just run away. That's very unimaginative.
But they've already used consumable inspirations that protect us from massive attacks (with Hamidon), and they have half a zillion temp powers that we need for a variety of gimmicks (like Reichsman, and Marauder, and the pillars of light, etc.).
Running away is the least onerous of these options, because it doesn't require any extra knowledge or monkeying with inspirations or temp powers. -
Part of the reason may be that setting up a real TF is frequently time-consuming, because you have to recruit the minimum number of people, and you have to deal with an AV. With an Ouro TF there's no such hassle. Perhaps the devs cooked those considerations into the merit reward calculation for the TF.
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To be honest, I've always felt level pacts were a cheat. It's the ultimate antithesis of "no risk, no reward." You could create a character at level 1, never play the game again and freeload for 50 levels. And people complain about AE babies...
For the most part Super SK and Patrol XP resolve the problem of friends who can't play as frequently: you level like crazy under those conditions. The only real stumbling block is that some content (TFs, etc.), are gated by level.
That's the problem that should be addressed.
One solution would be to remove most of those limits. That would make a lot of people happier, not just those who use level pacts.
Another solution would be to give characters the ability to designate one permanent partner (a better term would be sidekicks, but that's already used). A partner would always be able to play on any team the other could play on (unless forbidden by incarnate status or subscription status, perhaps). That means if your partner is level 50 and you're level 42, you'd both be able to participate in a Statesman TF.
Yes, you might be useless baggage on that Statesman TF. But even in a level pact, if you really don't have any time to play your character, you're probably not going to have very good enhancements, or a very good handle on what your powers do. So characters who are automatically advanced by level pacting are less likely to contribute much anyway. -
A few things:
While it's not a panacea, blasters get Defiance, which means they cannot be mezzed completely. That means you can still output single-target damage no matter what. For some power sets, you can even take defensive actions that in some situations reduce incoming damage (for example, /Energy blasters can use Power Thrust on melee attackers). At least some of the time you're not really missing out on anything because the mez will occur while the powers you can't use while mezzed are still recharging.
I have a level 50 Fire/Energy blaster that probably has more than 500 hours on it (asking an M-named civilian says I have 2100 hours, but since that includes any time spent logged out during, say, an AE "task force" the number is basically meaningless). The character has been mezzed about 90 minutes in five years.
In many cases, you can avoid getting mezzed by knowing what mobs mez you and taking them out first, either by mezzing them first (holds, KBs, stuns, etc.), or avoiding their mez (stay out of melee range of Freakshow PBAoE stuns), preventing yourself from being targeted (using a click-targeted ranged attack like Rain of Fire from around a corner, then shooting the mezzer in the back as they flee), use Aid Self proactively before engaging mobs that stun you, and so on.
Managing inspirations to ensure you have a Break Free at all times isn't that onerous (combining "junk" insps like accuracy really helps). If you're playing a blaster on a team, a lot of the time you won't ever be targeted if you're playing with an aggro magnet like a tanker or brute.
If your goal is to avoid face-planting, you can play blasters in such a way to avoid it. Will you be able to stand in one place and unload one massive AoE after another on helpless mobs? Not until you hit level 50 and get all the defensive tools you need (which may include Clarion, Scorpion Shield, Weave, etc.), and an inspiration tray large enough to make up for the deficiencies blasters have. But also remember that many scrappers don't have very good defenses until level 30 or 35.
Is it easier to play a scrapper that doesn't have to worry about getting mezzed and can take most attacks on the chin? Sure. If you want to play that way, create a scrapper. Or a tanker or a brute that gets a lot of AoEs if that's your thing. -
Quote:Federal law prohibits on-line gambling, and most states regulate gambling as well. Since many states derive serious money from lotteries, video poker and electronic pull tabs, competition from on-line gambling may prompt states to take action.Originally Posted by Zybron1
I'm not really concerned. The likelihood of legislation limiting corporations from making money in nearly any fashion they deem worthy actually passing congress in the United States seems very slim.
It's much easier to pass state legislation, and laws in key states (say, California) would basically dictate on-line policy for the rest of the country.
Whether MMOs would be caught in this dragnet is unclear. But considering that the motivation for the shift in strategy mentioned in the article ostensibly came from the acquisition of an American company by foreign interests, don't be surprised if it becomes ammunition in the war against on-line gambling. -
When I first saw the super packs on beta I explicitly called attention to the fact that the mechanism was trying too hard to be like gambling (turning over five "cards"?), and that it might be illegal in some states and countries.
Of course, I'm someone who thinks the very definition of boring and wasteful is sitting in front of a slot machine, plugging it with hundreds of dollars worth of quarters. -
Quote:It turns out that Tolkien did not invent the term "Hobbit." The word appeared in a list of fairies published in 1895 in a book about English folklore called the Denham Tracts. You can look this up on Google books; the reference to hobbit is on page 79, between "grants" and "hobgoblins."Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
I mentioned WoW because it's the most well known current use of Orcs. The ACTUAL legal battle was over the inclusion of orcs in Dungeons and Dragons, in the late 70's. They where made to remove "Hobbit" because that was an original creation, but could keep orc, because Tolkien had dug up an actual but disused name for a similar creature. But the outcome was, orcs could be used by anyone.
This was exactly the kind of reference work Tolkien would have consulted when writing The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, so it's likely that he picked up on the word in his researches. It was perfect appellation for his gentle, large-eared, hairy-footed, burrowing rabbit-like humanoids.
As an alternative theory, the term hobbit was also used for centuries in Wales to measure agricultural products, and equal to two and a half imperial bushels. Tolkien would probably have come across it, since he was a linguist, and would have liked the sound of it as it crossed "hobgoblin" and "rabbit," making it quite well suited to his concept of hobbits. -
Got six commons and one rare for seven component rolls in DA arcs.
Astrals for one merit roll. -
Quote:I assume that you're either new to the game, or you're making a facetious suggestion to be humorousOriginally Posted by Traska
I'd like to see a new mission type: bounties. "Defeat 30 Outcasts", "Defeat 10 Hewers", "Defeat 15 Family Lieutenants", that sort of thing.
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They already have missions like that, and they're terrible. Nothing breaks up a team that's steamrolling missions faster than getting a "Defeat 50 Carnies in Peregrine Island" mission. Suddenly everyone says, "Oh, my SG is calling," "I gotta do my homework," "wife aggro," etc., etc.
Running around a huge zone looking for particular mobs is boring, plain and simple, and it can be aggravating when those mobs are in short supply and another team is hunting for them and taking them away from you.
The devs invented new technology to make these missions more palatable with Freedom, and it's just ridiculous. If you do the low-level Habashy arc you get sent to defeat Hellions, and they spawn out of thin air if you stand there after you defeat one. The game is otherwise carefully programmed to explicitly avoid that kind of nonsense, but when you have lots of players doing hunts in the same open zone you have little choice but to use the WoW-type sillyspawn.
There's even a task force whose major component is running around the entire city defeating 10-30 mobs of 12 different groups. The most annoying thing about this is that if certain kinds of zone events start while you're doing this, the mobs you're supposed to hunt don't spawn anymore and you may have to wait half an hour for the zone event to end so you can finish your hunts. -
Quote:I have to say, I didn't expect a concept based on "Lost in Space" to succeed. But they went beyond that, and made too many of the characters unlikable and unsympathetic.Originally Posted by Desi_Nova
They killed Stargate Universe just as it was finding it's Story.
Most of them were whiny brats, backstabbers or control freaks; with only a couple of "team-oriented" characters. The audience that watched the first two series liked the close-knit friend/family vibe, and didn't cotton to the reality-show quality of SGU. By repelling the core audience, the show didn't have a chance.
While there always needs to be a healthy dose of conflict in a show, that internecine strife should have ended after 5-6 episodes. That much conflict would have left the entire crew at each others' throats and dead by the end of the first season. Halfway through the first season they should have begun the storyline that they just started touching upon at the end. -
Before we can address this properly we must first get our medical terminology straight.
Calling the general condition "altitis" is wrong. Altitis is inflammation of the alt, which only applies to Fiery Aura tankers, brutes and scrappers, and blasters, controllers, and dominators with Hot Feet and/or Fire Shield.
In the general case the condition should more properly be called altomania, altophilia or polyaltamy.
We can't effect a cure if we don't properly diagnose the problem! -
Quote:Nope. That's how it works.Originally Posted by MCG_Warface
Maybe I was just doing something wrong?
Everything about the DA arcs discourages teaming. To get enough components to make your powers in a reasonable time frame (a month) you have to run one to three arcs through Ouro every day. Since you can only do this through Ouro, you are forced to stealth them solo to get incarnated in any reasonable amount of time.
This tediousness is almost certainly intentional. Getting iXP, components and astral/empyrean merits through incarnate trials is at least an order of magnitude easier and faster. The reason is simple: iTrials are themselves so annoying and inconvenient that a solo path that was only, say, twice as onerous would be far more attractive and would make iTrials totally obsolete.
As it is, it may be that DA has almost totally sucked the life out of iTrials on the servers where I play. Three or four trials used to be run nightly back-to-back, but now I see an odd one running maybe a couple of times a week, if that. Part of it is due to incarnate burnout, I'm sure, but acquaintances who used to run iTrials frequently are now running DA content or lowbies instead. -
Quote:Since he's talking about the LFG, he doesn't have to join a team on another server. The LFG mechanism would toss you and everyone else queued across all servers into a league as it currently does for people independently queued for trials, and you would have to sort out teams once you're in the instance for the trial.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
How do you propose joining a team on another server? That's a pretty big step you're skipping over.
That instance would be created on another server. That would mean transferring character data (which can be a lot, considering all the salvage, recipes, bazillions of temp and permanent powers) to that server. They need to define some mechanism for dealing with name conflicts (possibly suffixing either your global or server name). They need to deal with disconnects: if you DC when running a cross-server trial, where do you go when you log in again? What happens to the inf/xp you earned so far on that trial? When the trial's over they need to ship your character data back to your home server, making sure that you don't lose any XP/inf, drops you got during the trial. And so on.
I'm all for this, but I have concerns over the viability of it because so many players insist on having full control of the league composition. Also, part of the reason people want to do this is to play with their friends' characters on other servers. If they aren't guaranteed to get on a team with that player, the whole point of cross-server trials is lost for them.
I'm afraid that unless there's some way of arranging the teams before you queue, this feature would see an initial big hit as people tried it out, and would then fall into disuse because players can't exercise the degree of control over league structure that they want to. And players aren't unreasonable for wanting that control: many trials simply can't be completed if you don't have the right personnel.
Thus, even though I'm pointing out that what Samuel wants to do would be technically possible based on the current implementation of leagues, I agree that for cross-server trials to be successful in the long term the interface needs to provide some way to look at who's registered for a cross-server trial and invite teams to a league before queuing it. -
I've played older versions of Champions/Hero and GURPS Supers from 10-15 years ago and Savage Worlds/Necessary Evil more recently.
Champions is probably the most flexible and scales best to super heroes, but it's pretty complex to run. GURPS was a little coarser because it only had four stats, and it was linear instead of logarithmic for powers and didn't scale as well for titanic super hero battles. It's in the same ballpark of complexity as Champions. They both have many involved mechanics that provide hours and hours of enjoyment for rules lawyers.
Savage Worlds is a lot simpler to run. It has fewer options, but that's the tradeoff for ease of play. If you just like to play and don't mind spitballing things, Savage Worlds will suit you. -
My guess is that they're looking at doing cross-server trials like the Incarnate and DFB trials. Those occur in single instances, whereas regular trials occur in the open world and require starting and stopping several instances.
Doing Incarnate/DFB/DiB/Halloween/Winter trials would be a logical first step. I think this would be a great thing for them to do, having the potential to make it possible for everyone to get enough incarnate trials regardless of their home server population.
A nice feature would be the ability to specifically indicate who you're in league with on another server.
It might be possible later on to create a "virtual" server that would be populated only by the team running regular TFs like Positron, but that might use too many server-side resources to be viable. -
Quote:Sometimes they replace a costume piece with something that's in a different place in the costume editor, so it's "gone" but you can still create a character that looks the same.Originally Posted by halfthief
The tech support people said the costume piece was discontinued.
Your character still looks the way it used to, right? So the game can still display that costume piece, it's just not set up the same as before.
Make a screen copy of the character and post it here so we can see what you have, and maybe figure out a way to re-do with the existing costume pieces. -
I sampled PvP through the first few iterations, which is what the OP is suggesting. It wasn't much fun.
PvP should be like the long, drawn-out, one-on-one hero vs. villain brawls in the comics, or a mass melee like in the Avengers. But pre-I13 PvP was a tedious chase hither and yon through Siren's Call or Bloody Bay followed by a short and savage eight-on-one ganking.
The PvP changes were intended to give us more of that big AV fight flavor, but the totally different mechanics have turned off everyone. The same rules should be used for PvP and PvE. Instead of changing the mechanics to force particular behavior on players, there should be incentives to elicit the desired behavior from the players.
Thus, instead of travel suppression, heal decay, shortened mezzes, etc., the system should reward players for playing the "right" way. For example, if 8 characters gank one target, it's not counted as a kill and would penalize your rewards. Fleeing would penalize your rewards. Chain-mezzing an opponent would penalize you. Beating on an opponent who's not defending himself would be penalized.
One way to do this would be to provide an on-screen display of a stat that tracks desired behavior. For example, a dynamic Bravery or Honor score would be decreased every time you did something that was considered cowardly (fleeing, ganging up on a target, chain-mezzing an opponent, attacking someone who doesn't fight back), and increased if you did something brave (faced down multiple opponents, allowed an knocked-down opponent to stand up unmolested). Ganking someone who's resting could hammer your Bravery score for several minutes. Any kills occurring when you have a negative Bravery score wouldn't not be counted.
The Bravery bar could be displayed under Hit Points and could turn blue when you're brave and yellow when you're cowardly.
This would add a new wrinkle to PvP. Instead of just concentrating on ganking your opponent in the shortest possible time, you would have to monitor your Bravery score as well, carefully coordinating it with your attacks. This would require strategical as well as tactical considerations in choosing your actions.
PvP would be more like a boxing match than a beat-down in alley. The server would be the referee. The challenge would be writing the code in the server that makes reasonable judgments on how your Bravery score changes. There would be a lot of bickering over what would constitute bravery, and it would need tweaking over time.
Like anything, such a system would be subject to exploitation. But a computer-refereed system would be a vast improvement over what we've got now, where people farm PvP recipes by ganking motionless characters on multiple accounts. It would be possible to game this system, of course, but that's the point. As long as it takes several minutes to game it, it's better than simplistic brain-numbing PvP farming.
By requiring characters to move and fight back over a minimum amount of time, you might be able to make PvP farming more difficult than actually PvPing, which would mean you could increase the drop chances for PvP recipes, which would make it even more appealing. -
The real problem I have with running the DA arcs through Ouroboros is that it discourages teaming. For people who like to team, it's very rare that everyone you play with logs in at the same time and is ready to start a mission in Ouro.
What happens most frequently is that you start a normal arc, then one friend on an incarnated 50 shows up, you invite him, then another friend playing a level 35 character shows up, and you invite him, and so on. This is the normal way to play.
With Ouro none of that is possible. Once you start the arc, you can't add new players. You also can't start the arc in Ouro with a player who hasn't already done it, which automatically rules out any sub-50 characters.
Even if a group of friends all does all of each others' arcs the first time through together, you'll never get enough components to build your powers. In my experience the components are the stumbling block: if you do a lot of arcs on teams you will unlock your slots faster than you'll get the components required simply because of the 20-hour rule.
These factors all conspire to force people to speed-run the DA incarnate arcs through Ouro. That means you're almost forcing people to stealth through Heather's arc solo in 15 minutes a couple of times a day to maximize threads, merits and components. But I think this is unncecessary.
The main reason Ouro arcs emulate the TF structure is that you get reward merits at the end of the arc. The DA arcs already have a separate reward mechanism that is based only on completing the final mission of an arc, so this restriction is not necessary for the DA arcs.
The devs should therefore remove the invitation restriction on DA arcs run through Ouro so that we can add new members to a team. This change has already been made for AE, so it's obviously possible. It would be more convenient to have Gabriel administer the repeats of these arcs, but I know it would require a completely new system and probably a lot of work, so I can live with having to port back to Ouro every few missions.
On the other hand, Gabriel looks to be associated with Empyrean Michael, so there's no reason he couldn't have a Ouro crystal in front of him, similar to the ones we can have in our bases. And if that crystal was limited to DA arcs, it might be easier to eliminate the restriction on adding new team members. -
Quote:VIPs don't have to pay for Staff Fighting. They can use the 400+ free points they get each month to buy it.Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
Pardon my Search-Fu, but I'll ask anyway. Why did VIPs have to pay [for] Staff Fighting?
Yes, VIPs might have to save their points for a month or two to get Staff Fighting "for free." They might have to make choices and tradeoffs, deferring the purchase of a costume set to get Staff Fighting. But I haven't spent a nickel on points since Freedom came out.
Additionally, VIPs can test-drive power sets before purchasing them by going to Beta, where they're free for testing. I decided against Beam Rifle and for Staff Fighting after testing them both on Beta. VIPs don't have to buy a pig in poke if they don't want to.
I can see why a newly subscribed VIP would be a little impatient to try out the latest thing. But if they're new they have dozens of other free power sets that they've never played before. What's the rush? -
Quote:This is good advice, and exactly mirrors my experience. I saved all my threads until Lore and Destiny opened up, and at that time I had almost exactly the number of threads and shards I needed to craft the rares I needed to get T3s all around (including a Notice of the Well). It might happen faster now because of Gabriel; I started getting his empyreans about half way through the month it took me to unlock all the slots.Originally Posted by Coulomb2
In general, what that means is that provided your aim is to get a power up to Tier 3 or Tier 4, until the component rolls have given you all the rares and very rares you need to reach your goal the most efficient strategy, long-term, is to save all threads and merits for crafting into rares or very rares. The component tables will generally drop all the commons and uncommons you'll need (and more) before you get the rares or very rares you need.
