Sith_Rose

I am fully in support of this, as someone who has let her VIP status lapse, and thus will never get to complete all of the I-23 Incarnate Trials, or post goodbyes on the Virtue server forums, or any of a few dozen other things that I'd like to do.

I'll see if I can reach @Thorgar - I may have his phone number somewhere, and I know his Guild Wars 2 ID. He should have screenshots of Salsakitten. Some of The Cape regulars may have screenshots of her DJ identity too.

I can't say I'm overly impressed either. It feels like a reskinned zombie invasion. I've got to admit, I was expecting more out of this event...

Is that...all?

It's a bland, boring, standard invasion event?

It's not even as interesting as the Rikti invasions!

I REALLY hope there's more than this. Because I'm severely underwhelmed and disappointed. Brilliantly descriptive write-up, and then...One GM, one badge, a standard invasion with NO stages, nothing interesting?

I know you guys can do better than this.

Important tip that I'm surprised nobody's brought up yet:

The DA story arc badges will not be awarded to teammates, only to the mission holder. This is working as intended. These are meant to be Story Arc badges, which are awarded ONLY to the arc-holder. They are not meant to be awarded to teammates. There was a bug where the badge might be awarded to teammates but not to the mission-holder. I understand their rationale, as all of these missions require the mission owner to make a *choice*. I have confirmed this with a fairly high level GM.

I have pointed out in very strong terms that, unlike the Praetorian missions, these missions team-complete. The Praetorian missions that require choices do NOT team-complete, which means that if you're running them with a group, you have to rerun those specific missions for each mission holder. The DA missions automatically team-complete if you have that mission, REGARDLESS of whether you're the mission-holder. However, even if you have the mission in your queue, you don't get the badge because it is a mission that requires a player choice.

I have also pointed out very strongly that they NEED to change the team-complete settings for these missions. I have also noted that the player base was NOT informed of this, and that it's extremely annoying. As it stands, I'm going to have to rerun the entire DA content on my Defender badge-hunter, because she didn't get a couple of the badges due to IC choices, and then ran the missions again with a friend on their missions. I petitioned, believing it was an error. They will NOT award the badge if you were not the mission-owner.

I will note that I have not absolutely confirmed that you do not get the badge if you had the mission in your queue but were not the person whose mission was active because of the aforementioned bug.

As I said, this has been confirmed as working as intended that only the mission owner gets the badge. This is also now the case for the Midnighter Club badge arc. Yes, I consider this a huge problem that needs to be fixed ASAP, or at least listed as a known issue with the player base being fully informed. They MAY have fixed the team-complete aspect with this patch, but I haven't verified that yet.

OK, I can answer this. And I've gotten this answer from a very high-level GM, so it's quite reliable.

This is working as intended. These are meant to be Story Arc badges, which are awarded ONLY to the arc-holder. They are not meant to be awarded to teammates. There was a bug where the badge might be awarded to teammates but not to the mission-holder. I understand their rationale, as all of these missions require the mission owner to make a *choice*.

I have pointed out in very strong terms that, unlike the Praetorian missions, these missions team-complete. The Praetorian missions that require choices do NOT team-complete, which means that if you're running them with a group, you have to rerun those specific missions for each mission holder. The DA missions automatically team-complete if you have that mission, REGARDLESS of whether you're the mission-holder. However, even if you have the mission in your queue, you don't get the badge because it is a mission that requires a player choice.

I have also pointed out very strongly that they NEED to change the team-complete settings for these missions. I have also noted that the player base was NOT informed of this, and that it's extremely annoying. As it stands, I'm going to have to rerun the entire DA content on my Defender badge-hunter, because she didn't get a couple of the badges due to IC choices, and then ran the mission again with a friend on their mission. I petitioned, believing it was an error. They will NOT award the badge if you were not the mission-owner.

I will note that I have not absolutely confirmed that you do not get the badge if you had the mission in your queue but were not the person whose mission was active because of the aforementioned bug.

As I said, this has been confirmed as working as intended that only the mission owner gets the badge. This is also now the case for the Midnighter Club badge arc. Yes, I consider this a huge problem that needs to be fixed ASAP, or at least listed as a known issue with the player base being fully informed. They MAY have fixed the team-complete aspect with this patch, but I haven't verified that yet.

They have mentioned that it's something they've gotten a lot of feedback on, and are looking into a fix for. I have the same problem - However, I DO have a workaround. If you happen to have multiple level 50s of the same AT, you can unslot the superior, email it to yourself, unslot the normal, claim it on the character with the catalyst, and catalyze that one. Unfortunately, this is only doable if you have multiple 50s of the same AT and at least one of them does NOT already have a full superior set.

Important note: The new DA content mission complete badges are, per the senior GMs, only supposed to be awarded to the mission holder. There is a bug that sometimes allows the badge to be awarded to teammates and not to the mission holder.

The missions are team-completeable in most cases. YOU WILL NOT GET THE BADGE IF YOU ARE NOT THE MISSION HOLDER. Even if you have the mission yourself, you will not get the badge. The GMs will not award the badge unless you were the mission holder.

If you want the badges and don't want to have to redo the entire DA arcs, turn off team-complete or do not take the badge missions and do them separately.

I'm somewhat irked about this, since now I have to go back and redo the entire DA content in Ouroborous, and I don't recall seeing this mentioned anywhere in the beta information at all. IMO, it needs to be fixed to make sure that either the missions cannot be team-completed, as is the case with the Praetorian "choice required" missions (and is not, by the way, the case currently with the DA missions, the ones that are player choice required ALSO team-complete), or ensure that the badge is awarded to every person in the team who had the mission in their mission log.

I filed a petition regarding the DA mission badges not being awarded.

The ultimate response was that this IS working as intended and ONLY the mission holder is supposed to receive the badge.

The problem is that almost all of these missions are team-completable. Which means that if you have auto-complete turned on, you now have to go to Ouroborous and do the ENTIRE ARC again if you want the badge for your own character, should you happen to have done someone else's mission.

I'm fairly annoyed by this. I can't find anywhere that they said that this was going to be the case. If the badge is only supposed to be awarded to the mission holder, it should NOT under ANY circumstances be team-completable.

The response I got from a very senior GM was (edited to remove GM identifying information, it's not his fault the devs screwed this up):
You are correct that there is currently a bug with this badge and how it is awarded. The Developers have informed us that the intended function for the new Achievement Badges is that they award to the mission owner when the objectives are completed.

There is also a bug that a teammate other than the mission owner can receive this particular badge.

In the instance you reported, the mission owner had also filed a petition and was granted the badge because of the bug that occurred. In general, we do not remove a reward from a player if it was granted due to a bug in the game, so we did not remove the badge from your husband, even though he should not have earned it.

I just had this problem as well - I logged in on a character who had logged off with Inner Inspiration *recharged* and it was greyed out. After about 4 minutes, it spontaneously acted like it had just recharged. This is fairly bizarre, considered that I had not used it AT ALL on the character last time I was logged in on her.

To my sorrow, I had not realized that her global name had changed in the years that the Technocratic Union founders were on hiatus. I did not connect her global with the character names of a good friend and former SG member who we roleplayed with many, many times. She left our SG under good terms, for RP reasons, and we have always kept our doors open to former members. I am deeply saddened to realize that we have, indeed, lost one of our own within the Technocratic Union.

Goodbye, Salsakitten. Be seeing you.

May the Powers keep her soul as she would wish it kept, and may the living remember her well. May she walk in joy and brightness with those who have passed before, or return to the Wheel as she wishes. And may all blessings for strength and ease of pain fall upon those who love her and will miss her.

The Technocratic Union
Virtue Server
Heroes
12x16 currently, will probably increase to 20x20 in I13. 15 million Prestige.

I'd prefer this to be at least a couple of weeks after I13's release, as I'm going to be adding some additional rooms and would like time to decorate them properly.

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Prestige Refunds: The programming team has set up a refund system for all base plots, rooms and items. As soon a player loads into a base, that base will automatically refund the Prestige difference. This is crucial: the base must be entered in order to trigger the Prestige refund. If your base is not loaded, then the refund will not happen until someone enters it.

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This is *extremely* good news. Thank you for listening to our concerns here. I'm glad you were able to get a solution implemented before going live with this issue, and I'm very glad that you're here and telling us good news!

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Teleporter recipes: The Rare salvage requirement on these should be removed in the next patch.

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Excellent. That will resolve the worst of my concerns aside from security for the bases.

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Q. Salvage Storage Racks, Why only 30 pieces of invention salvage?

A. In short, the market. The market system is designed to have a steady supply of salvage coming in. If large salvage racks were added, it would create a temporary supply problem of unknown duration until the salvage racks filled up.

Since having salvage temporarily dry up would be a big problem for all players, this number was intentionally kept low. Once the impact on the markets as a whole can be measured, we will look at adjusting these numbers again.


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This is a good explanation. It makes sense, especially with Dual Builds being released at the same time. I'd mentioned that we don't know what the market impact for both Dual Builds and Bases will be, and that Test is not a good data source for salvage markets. I can understand wanting to look at market impact before allowing a larger degree of hoarding.

It's good to hear that storage amounts are going to be something that will be monitored for the future. I can handle a low amount of storage capacity on a temporary basis.

I am still very concerned about security aspects of base storage. If it's possible, could you give us some further information on where this issue may stand currently, and whether it's being looked at?

Star Strider Forces Registry
Name: Agent Storm
Global Contact: @sithrose
Level of Classification: Hero of the City, Defender-Class Empath
Origin: Technology
Super Rank & Super Group: Director, The Technocratic Union

(Somehow my first post vanished...)

This is my second post on this topic. Here, I will be addressing how these changes effect The Technocratic Union, a 40+ member Supergroup with approximately 15 million total prestige.

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Base Repricing
1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

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The Technocratic Union current base:
Small Secret Location 12x16 (4,671,491/722,000 P)

Rooms: Infirmary (150,000/100,000P), Oversight Center (50,000 P), Containment Alcove (250,000/100,000 P), Workshop 1x2 (50,000 P), Energy Terminal 2x2 (150,000/100,000 P), Energy Terminal 2x4 (750,000/190,000 P), 2 Teleport Chambers 2x2 (150,000/100,000 P each), Secure Teleport Bay 3x4 (600,000/253,000 P), Control Room 2x4 (750,000/145,000 P), Workshop 3x4 (400,000/230,000 P), 3 Workshop 2x2 (100,000 P each), Entrance (0 P).

Total room cost Live: 3,750,000 Prestige
Total room cost I13: 1,718,000 Prestige

Total Base items:
Basic Telepad x8 (15,000 P each), Teleport Beacon x16 (10,000 P each), Expert Worktable (100,000 P), Advanced Worktable (50,000 P), Basic Worktable (25,000 P), Personal Storage Vault (100,000 P), Basic Reclaimator (10,000), Auto-Doc (50,000/? P), Inspiration Collector x6 (75,000 P each), Salvage Racks x3 (15,000 P each), Supercollider (60,000 P) Enhancement Table x5 (25,000 P each), Invention Worktable (25,000 P), Terminal x4 (30,000 P each), Corner Terminal (32,000 P), Holodisplay (97,000/25,000 P), Monitor Bank (85,000/20,000 P), Supercomputer (1,5000,000/500,000 P), Combo Power and Control Unit (25,000 P), Arcane Crucible (30,000 P), Turbine Generator (1,500,000/1,000,000 P), 878 Decorative Items.

Total item cost Live: 6,004,000
Total item cost I13: 4,367,000

Total cost Live: 14,425,491 Prestige
Total cost I13: 7,803,000 Prestige

This is a *very* significant difference in cost for the better.

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2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

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I *really* do not want to. Given that the changes literally cut my current base prestige costs in half...I don't really see that I have a choice as a responsible SG leader and base designer. It'll let me add in the rest of the teleporter locations which we've been wanting to have for a while.

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3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?

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It's going to take me 30-35 hours. That's what it's taken on previous upgrades/redesigns of the base. That's why I REALLY REALLY do not want to do this.

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4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?

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The reduction of cost is extremely good. I'm very pleased by it. The requirement of redesigning the base in order to take advantage of the cost reductions is VERY BAD. It's going to take me two weeks of work with my schedule to rebuild the base and add all the decorations back in. And that's IF I don't actually play AT ALL and spend all of my free time working on the base. I'd like to be able to *play* the new content too. I don't want to spend that long working on the base. But it'll give the SG members a very good QOL upgrade by letting me add the remaining telepad locations.

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5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?

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Short term, it's going to make me spend much longer than I want to redesigning the base. It's also going to let me enlarge the plot size and add 6 more telepads, 12 more beacons. In the long term, it means that I won't have to redo the SG base for at least 2 more years, barring more changes such as this one. I am not happy with the timeconsuming implementation of this change, but I am happy with the net results.

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Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?

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I already have all of the telepads made with base salvage. In order to take advantage of the new prestige pricing for the Monitor Bank, Turbine Generator, Auto-Doc, Mega Monitor, Mission Computer, and Holodisplay, I'm going to need the following salvage:
Inanimate Carbon Rod, Scope x2, Spell Scroll, Plasma Capacitor x2, Brass, Chemical Formula, Clockwork Winder, Source Code, Human Blood Sample x2, Polycarbon, Luck Charm, Heads Up Display x2, Boresight, Mutant Blood Sample, Runebound Armor, Psionic Ectoplasm, Enriched Plutonium, Computer Virus, Daemon Program, Ancient Artifact.

This means that I am going to have to purchase *all* of these items, or otherwise farm/acquire them. The money or time for it is going to be coming out of my pocket. Now, I haven't done pricing on these items yet, but pricing for telepads suggests in the range of 50,000 to 60,000 influence per item, with the potential for pricing of over 1,500,000 million influence per item based on *current* Live salvage pricing. In other words, I'm effectively trading prestige costs for influence costs here. This is tolerable but painful for a level 50 with 33 months of active playtime. This is absolutely out of the question for a level 30 without farming.

Rather than contributing Base salvage, something which is very easy to earn and doesn't take anything away from personal character goals, players are being asked to contribute either influence or invention salvage. This is a detriment to personal enhancement goals both by costing influence which could be used to purchase enhancements and by using invention salvage which could be used to *make* those same enhancements. The other option is to have a single player take up the entire burden of purchasing salvage out of their own pocket, which is not fair to that player. It also does not remotely contribute to the team sense that a good supergroup should have.

We are also going to be unable to keep salvage storage in the base safely. I will address this point in security concerns below.

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2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?

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I frankly don't see a positive effect for my SG in this implementation.

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3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?

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Adjustment time is minimal, 15 minutes or less. Crafting time is NOT minimal, neither is purchasing and travel time.

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4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?

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I forsee the pricing of Invention salvage to skyrocket due to multiple small VGs, such as this one, being able to make larger, much more functional bases. This will put a burden of demand on the specific salvage most commonly needed for base construction. Many of those items are also commonly needed in IOs and speciality recipes. Dual builds will also be increasing the demand for Invention salvage, as people create Inventions for both of their builds. (copied from previous post.)

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5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?

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My security concerns are severe. We will have public storage of invention salvage available, but we have NO way of ensuring that other players will not simply take that salvage and sell it on the market. While we can use the very limited security settings available, setting security higher will impossible for lower-ranked SG members to use inspiration storage. That's not fair to them, but it's also completely out of line to expect SG leaders to open their SGs up to theft of high-priced invention salvage. Either there will not be any meaningful usage of invention salvage storage (as there currently is not with enhancement storage due to these same issues), or low-ranked SG members won't have access to ANY base storage at all. I'm not happy with either of those options at all. While I don't necessarily trust new members, I don't see any reason why we have to make it clear by barring them from storage access that we *don't* trust them.

I'm going to respond to this in two posts. This one will address the Difference Engineers, a 14 character Villaingroup with 1.4 million Prestige earned total.

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Base Repricing
1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

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Difference Engineers current base:
Hidden Plot 8x8 - 0 Prestige
Rooms: Oversight Center (50,000 P), 2 Workshops (100,000 P each), Entrance (0 P).
Total room cost: 250,000 Prestige.
Items:
Combo Control+ Power Unit (25,000 P) 5 Inspiration Storage (75,000 P each), Personal Storage Vault (100,000 P), Invention Worktable (25,000 P), Salvage Storage (15,000 P), Enhancement Table (95,000 P)
Total item cost: 635,000 Prestige.

We still have approximately 500,000 Prestige available on Live. Every single room and item that we currently have remains unchanged in pricing for this base.

Projected desire for base construction:
Hidden Plot 8x12 (1,653,861/84,500 P)
Rooms: 2 Workshop 2x2 (100,000 P Each), 1 Control Room (100,000 P), 1 Energy Room (150,000/100,000 P), 1 Teleport Room 3x3 (150,000/162,500 P), 1 Medbay (50,000 P)

Total room costs Live: 2,303,861 Prestige
Total room costs I13: 697,000 Prestige

Desired Base items:
Mainframe (150,000/50,000 P), Basic Generator (225,000/200,000 P), 5 Inspiration Storage (75,000 P each), Personal Storage Vault (100,000 P), Invention Worktable (25,000 P), Salvage Storage (15,000 P), Enhancement Table (95,000 P), 2 Telepads (15,000 P each), 4 Beacons (10,000 P each), Basic Reclaimator (10,000 P)

Total item costs Live: 1,635,000
Total item costs I13: 860,000

Total base costs for desired base on Live: 3,938,861 Prestige
Total base costs for desired base I13: 1,557,000 Prestige

I'd say that needing about 250,000 Prestige for the base I want is a LOT better than needing about 2.6 million prestige. This is a very net positive effect in terms of prestige costs for my smaller VG.

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2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

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In this case I definitely will be rebuilding the Difference Engineers base. I will be rebuilding the base due to the availability/affordability of a larger plot and more rooms, and will not recieve any prestige refund from this rebuild.

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3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?

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I estimate it will take me approximately 8-10 hours to rebuild/build the Difference Engineers base with suitable decoration.

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4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?

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I will need to purchase the salvage required to make my two Telepads. Based on rough pricing estimates, this will cost me approximately 200,000 Infamy as prices *currently* stand on the Live servers. This infamy will be coming out of my level 37 Brute's pocket, with possible contributions from two other members of the VG. This cost is affordable for a level 37 character. We have not saved Base salvage, so I can't make the telepads in advance.

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5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?

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There will be a short term expenditure of effort and time in building the base, but in *this* case I consider that a good thing. I'm able to build a base our VG wouldn't be able to afford for a long time, as a change from the very minimal three-room storage base we currently have. In the long term, there will be infamy and prestige costs, but given the slow earning nature of prestige I don't expect there to be any upgrades to the base for another year, possibly more. We're not a very active VG at present.

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Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?

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We will have room for a single Base Salvage storage item at first, given the Inspiration storage that we presently have in our base. This will give us 30 storage pieces, which means we will still need to go to the market for any significant amount of IO crafting.

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2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?

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I'm still not really seeing any postive effect on my VG. We'll still have to go back and forth from the Market to the crafting tables in order to make any significant amount of IOs, which makes the Base Salvage relatively useless for anything other than temporary or transfer storage in our case.

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3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?

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About 15 minutes. I.E. I've already adjusted.

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4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?

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I forsee the pricing of Invention salvage to skyrocket due to multiple small VGs, such as this one, being able to make larger, much more functional bases. This will put a burden of demand on the specific salvage most commonly needed for base construction. Many of those items are also commonly needed in IOs and speciality recipes. Dual builds will also be increasing the demand for Invention salvage, as people create Inventions for both of their builds.

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5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?

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I am still unable to make Inspiration storage accessible to different ranks than Salvage storage is. This means that I still cannot allow new members to access the Inspiration storage without risking loss of any storage salvage or enhancements. This is a big security and quality of life concern.

Next up: How my *other* Supergroup is going to be effected by these changes...BIG difference there.

Star Strider Forces Registry
Name: Agent Storm
Global Contact: @sithrose
Level of Classification: Hero of the City, Defender-Class Empath
Origin: Technology
Super Rank & Super Group: Director, The Technocratic Union