SaintTzu

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There are times that I really believe that CoV was designed to cause friction between some of the ATs to preserve the mindset that you are evil and only working with these others to further your own plans.

Or to put it another way, balance by conflict.

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I have thought this as well, going so far as to have it as a basic assumption that the initial development was thinking along these lines.

Hero ATs fit their niches, and thus have a high level of synergy when teamed. The cost of this is that some find it either difficult or slow to solo.

Villain ATs tend to solo well across the board, but their are some inherent conflicts when teamed which are fueled by their inherent powers. The Brute's Fury mechanic encourages reckless speed on one end while stalker's generally want more time to set up and approach a new spawn. Dom's ending up somewhere in the middle, Mastermind's there as well as they are sometimes limited by the speed of their minions.

Some of the game changes and buffs have altered this original pattern (the stalker buffs being a prime example). But I clearly remember that the first few issues after CoV opened, the big teams were all Brutes and Corruptors. The general attitude being that any other AT just slowed down the team.

I like the idea of making it work like a break-free. That might make click mez protection worth it again.

What I'd really like to see is, for sets with specific mez protection powers, the melee secondaries and tanker primaries, that there be two such powers that lock each other out. One that's a click and one that's a toggle.

Personally, I really dislike click mez protection powers. I get that there are some situations where they are superior, but it's not worth it to me in general.

It's the main reason why my /Nin stalker, who I otherwise love, doesn't get as much play. Let me choose a version of Indomitable Will, for example, instead of Kuju in Ren (or however you spell that, too lazy to look it up right now) and I'm a happy little ninja.

I don't have a complete suggestion as to how this might be implemented, but I'd like to see mixed assault sets made available to Defenders and Corruptors. By 'mixed assault' I mean identical with or similar to the Dominator secondaries.

It seems to me that a FF/Energy Assault Defender, or something of the kind, would be a lot of fun.

Let me chime in here in support of a Mastermind. Specifically Thugs/Dark. Dark is valuable to teams, moderately active, and can support multiple strategic approaches. And Dark Servant is one of the best (non-minion) pets in the game.

Thugs are arguably the most team-friendly Mastermind primary now that the bruiser does knockdown. The enforcers attacks reduce defense (and can hold that lovely -Res proc) and their leadership powers will apply to any other thugs in the area of effect. The only sticky point is the Arsonist's attacks, some of which can cause some scatter.

But here's the kicker, you have two lovely variations on the 'oh $#!7' button: Gang War (superior agro-magnet and damage diffusion cloud), and Howling Twilight (auto-hit AoE disorient to minions, slow, -regen with a nice AoE rez as a side effect). I went with the Leadership pool and added a third such button with Vengeance. I can't think of any combination that turns an almost-teamwipe into overwhelming victory faster than this one.

Solos extraordinarily well, holds up very nicely on teams, supports strategic and tactical thinking, has multiple ways to get the job done, powerful stuff to fall back on when it starts going against you and your team.

And, seems likely that by the end of the year you can play it on whatever side you like.

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Just imagine Atlas Park, already loaded with AE children, during an invasion. And the panic when some of them come out of AE into Atlas Park 2 and cant see thier buddies.

Woo Hoo! for chaos.

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Can you imagine the server lock if all the characters came out of the MA into all the Atlas instances at once for a raid on Freedom! Ha!

I only hope that they the drones go of line and the Rikti can raid the AE buildings!

***WARNING! Your AE mission has been terminated. Power is being diverted to the City shields. All heroes are urgently needed in the streets! You will be disconnected in 5 ... 4...3...2... 1.... ***

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This would be brilliant. Whatever disrupts the war walls could also mess with the AE power, so when they go down (or 'would' go down, on the red side) so does the AE system.

Oh, I can just imagine the cussin' in broadcast.

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I think my goal would be to keep my overall rate at >40M/hr or more for time spent. I haven't been marketeering for a few issues, but once I felt out what I could "farm" by 5-boxing (which was about 30M an hour or so, although that was pre-MA, so maybe I could abuse MA more), I felt like marketeering should yield more to be viable. (Although marketeering is "easier" than 5-boxing)

Anyhow, I'd be fine flipping for 200k or 1M profits if I can bid on stacks and sell stacks with little attention and great reliability.

But I found in practice that my best money was made by putting in a ton of lowball bids across many levels of very valuable IOs (miracle, numina, lotg, etc), crafting them, and selling the crafted copies at high rates. (I'd price high enough that my median time to sell was over one week)

This often netted me >40M per purchase, but there were days I'd log in and find I hadn't bought anything and had nothing to flip, so it balanced out times when I might make 3 sales.

Of course, Nethergoat (*wave*) sort of ruined that with his explicit outing of LotGs in particular and the discussion of the profitability of really expensive IOs in general. It's not that you couldn't make a profit, but at least at the time, it shrunk the profit dramatically, and the increased amount of flipping actually LOWERED the high-end price of LotGs because more flippers meant more availability - when I had the ONLY sub-L50 LotG on the market, I could get whatever I wanted, even if that was a new all-time high price.

My last splash was a game mechanics play - when merits were coming out, I decided LotGs and Big IOs would drop in price due to people buying them directly, and that the lack of people getting random rolls would drive prices on modest-demand IOs that were important through the roof. (ie, Celerity: Stealth, Posi: % energy, etc)

When merits rolled I was sitting on over 100 Celerity:Stealths, for example, purchased at 200-500k each. I bought out over 80 L50 ones.

I rolled those all back out to the market for 4-8M each, roughly. So the profit per IO was fairly modest by my standards (3-7M, say), but in the aggregate - it was quite a score. Over a hundred stealths, probably 30+ Posi %Energy, and a handful of others, and I think I netted well over a billion (probably ~1.3-1.5B) for what amounted to perhaps 2-3 hours worth of work... I literally bought them all in less than an hour, mostly just scanning prices of Pool Cs to determine viability, and then buying out anything reasonable. Then I would do quick logins after that, and collect infl and list 5-10 recipes, which took under 10 minutes. Smaller profits than the big flips of yesterday, but hundreds of them done in a short period of time.

I think it's probably very common for salvage flippers to eek out 50-100k profits, but they probably do it with buying and selling 100x+ at a time, and probably place and collect their bids and sales in minutes, so their profits per hour are similar.

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... I've done a bit of craft&resell on a few purples in the past week or so as a way of dipping a toe into ebil-ness.

It's things like this, and the 'Goat's follow up post, that let me know what a rank amateur I really am. I obviously don't spend enough time on ebil.

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Just wanted to throw out: Wait till after 2XP Weekend! Nothing wreaks havoc like it outside of the release of AE.

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I'm hoping the devs make the double xp only available outside of AE.

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I'm in full agreement. I think that would be a smart move.

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um..that already happened. you can pick any pool when you respec.

my thugs/traps did black scorpions patron, but currently used MU powers.

[/ QUOTE ] So, with that being said, what is probably the better Epic power for a Bots/Traps MM. Looking for the one that gives me the best defense, I am thinking Scorpion Shield?

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Really their about equal IMO. So go for the one you like thematicly. I went for Soul Mastery myself, and love it. If you already have defense getting a +def shield may be worth it, but it wasn't for me.

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I could be mistaken about this, but I believe Scorpion Shield is the only one of the four that provides Defense, the other three being Resistance based protection.

Night Widow.

Mine has no purple sets, but is otherwise well IOed. Defenses are soft-capped outside of Mind Link. When I want it, or for team support, Mind Link is perma without Hasten.

Other than AVs, about the only thing that ever defeats me in PvE is the cascade failure caused by a succession of lucky shots which apply -Def.

It's often only after such a defeat that I remember that I have Elude, so round two often goes my way.

It will happen, I'm reasonably sure. If it doesn't, there will be those (regardless of the time and effort needed to do this) who will switch sides purely for market reasons.

I'm sure the developers are aware of this and will wish to head it off before it happens.

I've stayed mostly redside despite the market inequities because I like the ATs and the content. The market is a pretty small part of my overall game experience. That said, I'll be happier when they merge.

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2. Identify the items in the system that are used as trading vehicles or stores of wealth. Generally, these are going to be items that enter the system at a slower rate than the rate at which they exit the system. LotGs for example. Once you have identified these items, buy them. And delete them. This destroys the listing fee on one trade, but if you are able to keep ahead of the supply, prices will increase disproportionally to the "economy" as a whole, meaning that commissions will increase as well. This will cause micro-inflation in various markets while having a much lesser effect on macro-inflation in the aggregate market. Traders and the wealthy will pay more in commissions, while users of common salvage and IOs will not see their prices increase nearly so much.

Of course, it'll cost you.

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You might, I say *might*, be able to do almost the opposite of this. If you identify a key niche and set up just right, you might be able to freeze a big someone or group of someones out of that niche entirely. If you can undercut a major position, and the holders of that position choose not to wait you out, then they'll have to liquidate or re-list lower.

Thats the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that might cause pure destruction of someone else's INF.

Of course there are a number of things that could go amiss with such a scheme, but you *are* looking for a project...

I'll be over here in the corner wishing for my Ninja/Rad.

On point, there are a few things that make the Arsonist seem so suicidal. The range of certain powers is one. The fact that his usual opener is an AoE is another. Also just the pure amount of damage he can dish out attracts quite a bit of hate. Finally his status as a minion when he can produce the damage of a boss pretty much puts the exclamation point on his "Please Kill Me First!" sign.

I find he tends to survive longer when I keep him on the Defensive and try to make sure the initial agro is focused on either myself or the bruiser. It's not perfect protection, but it helps a bit.

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i wonder if the new universial enhament slots are different than normal, i mean can they take any io/enh ? so i can add a needed 4th set item for a set bonus, or will it be only special universial enhanments?

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They will be different than normal, I'm sure. They will apply their effects to the character as a whole, somewhat like a set bonus, rather than to a particular individual power.

Quite a long time ago I made a related suggestion, that being that you could have special slots that would apply a secondary effect or damage type to your attacks. So, for example, you could have a Broadsword scrapper with a flaming blade, and the damage for all attacks would change from lethal to lethal/fire and maybe gain a small amount of DoT. I've no idea if this will be possible with these Universal Enhancements, of course, but I'm enjoying contemplating the possibilities.

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Really, anything but /energy and /thorn is awesome. Both of those are terrible sets and should only be taken if you want a challenge.

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I just want to make it clear that this (the above) isn't a universally held opinion.

Energy doesn't particularly excite me, but Thorns does not suck.

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(...) What I'd like to know is what will happen regarding SG/VG memberships should you cross over to the other side? Will we be forced to drop from our current groups, or will there be a mechanic introduced that would allow a villain for example to retain his VG membership or vice-versa for a hero? (...)


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I'm reasonably sure you'll have to disassociate yourself from a Villain Group before they'll let you into polite society.

(grumble) That said, (insert your least favorite political group here) seems to manage it... (/grumble)

This 'raise the level cap' stuff is so tiresome (and I'm a bit cranky so I guess this is a minor rant).

At level 50 my Widow has defeated Lord Recluse in personal combat, sliced up most of the Phalanx at one point or another, personally defeated Statesman (that one with a bit of assistance from a Shivan, I'll admit), killed the corporal form of a goddess, directly foiled Nemesis... I could go on for quite a while here.

What would a level 60 even mean... that you could solo the Hamidon? Stage a one-man/woman/whatever Mothership raid? What would even be the point of such a character?

I don't have any problems with them finding ways for level 50s to develop, it sounds like these coming universal slots will provide an avenue there, but raising the level cap would make a joke out of the entire campaign background.

Quit with the level-cap-raising talk. Please.

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You've sent the devs a message about this, yes? With this concrete, reproducible example?

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Nothing beyond what's in this thread. It's just a bit of odd behavior, and probably working mostly as intended. If my hypothesis about it's cause is correct then it's something that probably shouldn't even be visible to the vast majority of players. It seems likely that the '1500 ticket cap' is just a simplification of the changes they made.

I don't necessarily see a bug here, there doesn't seem to be anyway to call it out as an exploit, and it may only be visible due to the specific parameters of a single Tiny map. In my judgement this isn't something that needs to take up developer time right now.

All that said, I know Moderators and the occasional Redname read these threads, if they think it needs attention then I'm sure it'll get some. Also, Arcanaville is planning to give it a look, and on this issue I'd trust her judgement as to whether the matter is urgent or important over my own.

<-- look, happy!

. . .

Ok, I've replicated the issue and made a mission to showcase it. #172150, 'Tester Mission' (I know, I'm a naming genius). My initial run through, at difficulty level 4 on my 50 Widow-er, yielded 112 tickets for defeats, 100 tickets at completion, and the, 'One or more architect tickets were not rewarded because you have reached the ticket limit for this map.' notice.

Run it and see for yourself. It's a tiny map, won't take long. Let me also say that I couldn't bring myself to put in weak 'farm-fodder' enemies, so the group is *not* a bunch of pushovers. Clicking the glowy will end the mission, so don't hit it 'til you're done clearing the ambushes if you want the full results.

And, if while you're there you should happen to give me a push toward those shiny authorship badges, I'll try not to complain.

Let me say a couple of things here.

The map I ran for that was, I'll say it again, very short. Tiny, in fact. Takes, probably, 5 to 10 minutes at most (not counting the time running back from the hospital after one of ambushes bags you).

Somewhere in the vicinity of 150 to 200 tickets for a 5 to 10 minute mission does not seem that horrible to me, rather the opposite. Then again, I'm not much of a 'max reward' type farmer. Oh, I like the rewards just fine, but my motivation to play is closer to the 'enjoy my characters and spend time with people I like, interspersed with sudden violence' school of thought. So, others may have different opinions regarding that level of reward.

. . .

A procedural note for those attempting to replicate what I've seen: I hit the limiter (if, indeed, thats what it turns out to be) on a feature packed map (for it's size, at least), running at difficulty level 4. When I went back and ran it on difficulty rank 5, the lower number of defeats reduced the in-mission ticket gain to somewhere in the 60's and I did not get the 'tickets not rewarded' message.

So, the limiter does kick-in pretty high. It may be that it's only noticeable in such a tightly packed and contained map, and that most small and medium maps won't have this issue at all due to the spacing of enemy groups, the lowered value of feature-to-spawn point ratio, or something of the kind.

. . .

Regarding Arcanaville: I've not read everything she's posted, and I know she's been in a few board-scraps which I've largely ignored or missed. As far as I know I've never teamed with her in the game, or even had an exchange with her on these boards. But, from what I have read it seems clear that she's been of immense value to this community and this game. I hope I'm lucky enough that she (or someone very like her) is a prominent part of any game I play in the future.

I don't have the time, inclination, deep knowledge of the guts of this game, and very possibly the talent to test and analyze the way Arcanaville does. I certainly didn't take The Player's invocation of her as any slight to me and I'd be happy to hear she'd glanced at this little issue.

. . .

Finally, I still don't think I have enough information to take a firm position as to the value of these recent changes to the AE system. I think it likely that it would've been a profound mistake to leave things as they were two weeks ago. It's probable that the changes made are not perfect, few things are. This is, perhaps, too much philosophy for this venue (or this time of the morning) but even if these changes are a mistake, I'm happy to see new mistakes being made rather than old ones. It tells me there's life in this thing yet.

As you were.

Was just about to post the same link.

Well, must get some work done, I'll check back later.

I get what you're saying there. I suppose it's possible. However, in the above mission, if I hadn't hit a limiter of some kind wouldn't my end of mission bonus have been 118 as well?

Mission re-run. The map is Tiny (tiny abandoned warehouse 02, I believe), there was one glowy and two ambushes. Difficulty was set at level 4. It was run solo.

Tickets gain from defeats, or other things that didn't complete the mission: 118 (so I was a bit off there with my 'not more that 75-100' statement).

Upon completing the mission:

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"One or more architect tickets were not rewarded because you have reached the ticket limit for this map.

You have received 94 bonus architect tickets for completing the mission!"

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My current pet theory: The cap is based on the map itself, as a function of either the number of spawn points or the number of possible features or some combination of the two. For the really large maps often used for farm missions that cap may well be 1500, but it's much lower for smaller maps.

I'll see if I can run the same map later and give a more accurate and detailed report.

Not possible, unfortunately.

As I said, it was a very small map, two or three spawns, one glowy, and an ambush or two. Even on a very difficult setting I don't see anyway that the tickets granted from defeats could be more that 75 to 100, and even that's pushing it a bit.

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For instance, I did a mission on a small map. The ticket bonus on completion was 87, along with a messages saying (I paraphrase) one or more tickets had not been granted as the limit for that map had been reached.

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The cap also includes enemy defeats...

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Well, I was solo, so this part...

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Because you cannot get a partial reward for defeating an enemy, you may end up with slightly less.

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... wouldn't apply.

Or did you mean something else and I'm misunderstanding you?