Ssyrie

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[ QUOTE ][*] Weapon Customization: Players will be able to change their weapons in the same way that they change their costume parts!

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I am really excited for this, but really I just want to know if I can change the Mace into a Bat and can finally make my Bionic Six Sport One character I have always wanted.

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Actually, mace would be a good choice for a number of blunt weapons (bat, pipe, wrench,...). I also hope they add some different types of maces as well, like these: Mace, 3 Maces. That's usually what I think of when someone is talking about a mace.

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What if it wasn't a matter of "just" a mutation? What if when he mutated himself, what actually happened was that it opened a gate to the Elder God Hamidon who then uses his body as a way into our world? What if this Elder God consumed the scientist's body in such a way so as to not require the scientist's actual body to reform here, which would explain the lack of such a body each time the Hamidon is defeated, or assuming this, repulsed from this dimension?

It's possible there is more to this than we currently know.

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I like the theory, but the fact that the scientist's name was Hamidon Pasalima before his transformation is a bit problimatic.

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Well, consider that usually Elder Gods actual names are frequently quite unpronounceable to us so we had to "name" that Elder God with the name of the person who released it!

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There is no evidence that any Elder Gods were involved, just a horrible accident.

From the actual story arc (thanks to Red Tomax):
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Tanya Tyler's story

When you rescued her, Tanya Tyler told you:

'It's true, I did know Hamidon. back then, he was Hamidon Pasalima, the molecular biologist. he was so passionate! So concerned about the world! We fell in love.'

'But I haven't seen him in years, not since our first raid on Paragon Technological Institute. Yes, I was there. Hamidon used the facilities to create something he called 'The Will of the Earth'. A colony of sentient bacteria with the ability to warp living material on a molecular level. When the heroes came to stop us, I lost track of him. I guess I always assumed he had been killed.'


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Hamidon was transformed because he became infected with the "Will of the Earth" when several heroes attempted to stop him from making it. Now exactly who those heroes are is the real mystery.

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Since I know this is the era of giving players what they want and I know that there's a lot more competition for the MMO dollar these days, I can see a system of influence transfer may come into being.

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My argument doesn't really have anything to do with encouraging "twinking". In fact, I'd be all for preventing most of it by prohibiting trades between toons on the same account (just filter those sale orders and buy orders out of the list). My main concern is that this method of consignment is all of the following:

a) the least fair to the playerbase because they have no real way to determine commodity value


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Actually, I'm pretty sure that legitimate buying and selling will set fair market price for things people actually want (i.e. Recipes). Most inf transfers will probably involve low level TO's that nobody really cares about buying anyway, and will be ignored by the general population.
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b) prone to generating tons of spammed lowbie enhancement and salvage sell orders


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Lowbie enhancements will most likely be ignored by everyone, except those trying to do inf transfers. As for salvage, I've you're going to be crafting, you'll need it. And I hope if I need a specific piece of salvage it's available, no matter how common it may be.
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c) conducive to huge (and i believe unanticipated) amounts of lag as a direct result of b).


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I think most of the lag will be do to too many players hanging out in the consignment shops. It's why I believe that some of them should have been put in different zones (AP->GC, Talos->IP).
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Twinking, for me, isn't really the issue, though it certainly is the motivation behind the Wentworth's and Black Market casino...erm...consignment house.

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Twinking is just a fact of life in MMO's. Before we had AT FOTM, now we'll have recipe combo FOTM (and probably both combined).

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So basically all I have to do is put up every TO I get at the AH for 1 inf and hope someone uses the same one for a character trade and I get instant millions?

Anyone else see a problem here or am I misunderstanding this?

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Nope, youve got it nailed XD

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Nobody will pay that much for low lvl items because they know there will be no guarantee of the funds going where they want.

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That's true of the people that come to the boards and are aware of how this works. Most of the playerbase doesn't come here, and those are the ones that will be victimized.

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But even a smart player that doesn't read the forums would probably figure out he needs to lo-ball the initial price to try weed out other peoples stuff. Personally, I don't recall reading anywhere whether it tells you how many of something are for sale, or if that at least one copy is available.

I really don't think it will be that hard to transfer inf to lower level characters. Transfering during "off" hours, picking off level enhancements (not purchasable from stores), and making sure nobody else is selling the item already should make it fairly safe to do.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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Can we assume that it works the other way for LTB listings (looking to buy).

Example:
Player A1 puts a LTB for tech wings at 5 mil
Player B1 had a LTB for tech wings at 10 mil
Player A2 offers tech wings for 5 mil (to transfer to his other character A1)
Player B1 gets the wings since he had the higher offer

And notice, B1 wasn't trying to intercept the wings. His offer could be nearly 7 days old. He just really wanted to buy them for himself.

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Yes, there are going to be those of us attempting to use it like Western Union or an offshore bank. But to call an interception griefing seems a bit... harsh to me. Almost a "guilty" verdict for what will probably be a normal part of consignment shop life - buying and selling of "junk" items by people who are trying to get better than vendor prices, but aren't trying to transfer funds or intercept them.

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Personally I think most interceptions will be purely accidental. If someone wanted to grief a transfer of mine, how the heck is he going to know what item I'm using to do it with? Given the sheer number of things you can sell, there's no way anyone would know what item to buy or sell to grief you.

Plus, we haven't seen how the search feature works yet. For example, if I wanted to buy some level 27 magic damage SO's, will it just show those or will it show everything within 1-2 levels (25-29)? If you can only see the level you're searching for, it can be pretty hard to find a specific item to intercept. With 26 different types of TO's and 53 levels for each one, that's 1378 different possibilities. DO's and SO's have up to 6890* possibilities each and I don't even want to try and calculate how many different recipes there are.

Unless the person knows exactly what item you're using for the transfer, I don't think there's any practical way to intentionally grief someone.

* that assumes a level range from 1-53. I don't know how someone could get a level 1 SO or DO, but I wouldn't rule out some weird buggy drop.

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I did that once. The problem is that Doc Delilah is dumb as a brick. She tends to hang back and stare while you fight, spending most of her time toggling temp invuln on and off.

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My solution to that is to run through the spawn so she is close enough to agro the mobs. I pretty much do that with any pet or pet like NPC that I can't order around.

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I am listening to your ideas, but a Flashback system is simply not something we can implement in a timeframe you would all be happy with.

Instead we are looking into other options to get you the Pool B choice so level 50s don't feel gimped.

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Dataminins shouldn't be that hard. Those who've finished the arcs have the souvenirs, the data is all right there. Can't you award us based on that, retroactively?

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last time they did datamining like that, it took them 1.5x the period reviewed to get it done (badges). Otherwise, they would of had to stop developing ANYTHING the data-analyzing/mining people could work on.

3 years x 1.5 = 4.5 years...

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Another problem with datamining is that plenty of characters would have earned more recipes then they could hold at any one time (just a guess, but probably true). My lvl 50 tank has 43 souvenirs, all the regular contact souvenirs, and a few old TF souvenirs. I don't have any souviners from any zone arcs, even though I did the Hollows and 3 of the Stirga story arcs, but I think only Faultline does that (maybe Croatoa, had outleveled it when it came out). But 43 is probably still more recipes than we will be able to walk around with.

If they did datamine, the only way to not overload someone would be to impliment some sort of token system and a place to cash them in. That alone would take more developement time, and I want I9 as soon as the devs can get it to us.

And they could do the datamining in stages. Just figure out some sort of schedule and tell the players that the datamining will take place over a certain amount of time. Maybe do a server each day or a certain number of characters on every server each day during morning maintenance. Sure it might take a couple of weeks to get it done, but people would just have to be patient.

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I am listening to your ideas, but a Flashback system is simply not something we can implement in a timeframe you would all be happy with.

Instead we are looking into other options to get you the Pool B choice so level 50s don't feel gimped.

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Ok. How about a choice when someone is exemp into a lower level TF (or Trial) they could choose whether they want a TF or Story Arc recipe? That way people who need a lower level ultra rare story arc recipe have at least some shot at getting it without messing up people who are doing it for the TF UR recipe.

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wow...you obviously never read many X-men comics. Wolverine was...
A. a Gambler.
B. a Drinker.
C. a Womanizer.
D. a patron of many a gentlemens club.

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And that's perfectly fine, as nothing prevents Wolverine from moseying over to the red side for some shady dealing, and to check on the monkey fights with a catgirl on his lap. But not every hero is like Wolverine. For every 'realistic' shady anti-hero, there's a virtuous and upstanding hero who would want his or her social scene to be reasonably upstanding and innocent.

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But keeping it on the hero side makes it easier for the good guys to monitor whats going on in there. Put it on the other side and the place will go straight to heck.

Personally, I'd like to see a tailor put into Pocket D. That way we don't have to leave Pocket D after earning event costume pieces.

I've noticed that the 'V' belt seems to be clipping into skirts again. Not as bad as it was in the past, but it is noticable.

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Blizzard is pretty powerful, but you need to keep your foes within it to see that power. Ice Storm isn't too bad, again, if you can keep the enemies within it. Until I can get either of them slotted up, I use them mainly for crowd control, as in "Get the *#*$ off me!"

Blizzard has little to no uses solo, IMO. The only use I can see a solo Blaster using Blizzard is vs an Elite Boss. Even then, the endurance hit from using it can easily turn the tide of the battle back over to the EB. In a group, Blizzard can be phenomenal. Tanker agros, Controller lock em down, Ice Blaster assists Controller with the Boss(es), then drops down Storm and Blizzard.

Cyclone Jack

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Actually, Blizzard is quite usefull when playing solo. It makes hunt X missions a whole lot easier, especially when having to hunt in a hazard zone with large spawns. My lvl 40 Ice/Ice had a hunt Rikti in RCS and would just use Aim+Build Up+Blizzard then run for the hills and wait for the defeat counter to go down.

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I have a level 40 Corruptor that uses 3-slotted hover for normal movement at all times. So, yeah, I find moving at that speed to be useful. Especially before travel powers and SOs are available.

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I noticed the 2 new armors, Sinister and Justice are bugged on the chest and leg option. You can chose 2 colors but only the primary color shows up. It is working fine for the boots, gloves, and shouldes though.

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If you can select patterns for it, look and see if there's a pattern at the end of the list that matches the costume name and it should fix the problem.

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Just click the left arrow on the patterns and and it will go straight to the end of the list.

I just wish the boots came in stiletto heels for female characters.

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Frankly... I'd rather have Gauntlet than Defiance or Vigilance.

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You haven't thought things through. I'd take any version of Defiance, even a nerfed one, and run laughing all the way to the bank.

Good God...Ice would be such a scary....lmao....funny. Thanks for the laugh.

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Lol, alright, let me clarify... I think Gauntlet is more useful for tanks than Defiance is for blasters or Vigilance for defenders. I agree, either Defiance or Vigilance would be magnificent on a tanker. */em drool*

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I agree, Gauntlent does work and is usefull. Normally I use taunt as an opening 'attack' or for pulling mobs off teammates and then rely on Whirling Hands to keep the agro of the mobs around me. As for ranged tank attacks, I know I've used LBE to pull mobs off teammates if taunt isn't available or the range is too great (my LBE has 3 dam/range HO's).

As for the other hero inherents, scrappers and controllers got a pretty good deal. Defenders got screwed because their's does't work when playing solo. However, I do remember pre-vigilance on 7-8 man teams if we over agro'd my poor emp defender sometimes just couldn't keep healing because I'd run out of end trying to keep everyone alive. But now in those desperate situations it's easier to keep going. Blasters did get the worst of all the inherent's in the game. It doesn't kick in soon enough and the buff doesn't really get impressive untill you're nearly dead (hope your nuke power is ready )

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If I set the body sliders to give me the widest possible shoulders for a male and then select the non-fitted suit jacket, I can see clipping "lines" in the suit around about the shoulderblade position. This is less obvious when the character is doing something, but it becomes very obvious when he enters the hands-on-hips idle animation. I believe this was still an issue after I7.

I'll post screenies later, but all my graphics settings are minimised, which may contribute.

Also: if you go invisible with the Slacks / Boots combination, you can see the boots through your pants. Both are "invisible", but it's an odd look.

Finally: I can't say whether Ian or Jay are sexy without pics.

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I've always wondered why they bothered having the entire boot when it's completely covered by the pants. Getting rid of the hidden part should solve the clipping problems boots have. Believe me, I've got a few characters who would like to have pants and boots that aren't the same color. I'm pretty sure I've got some screen shots of the clipping problem, I'm just not at my PC right now so I can't get to them right now.

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Zen Concern brings up a point I've been wondering about for a while now--why are there no Archery/Trick Arrow Corruptor sets? Seems like a fairly balanced, fairly neato thing to have for CoV. Has there ever been an explanation for this?


Dr. Nemesis
Imperator and Founder
The Nemesis Council

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/Agreed

After having so much fun with TA/Archery, I was hoping to try the reverse.

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Before the changes on test, my 24 TA/A COULDN'T solo on Heroic. Now I can, but needing to reapply the debuffs mid-combat is extremely tedious. At least with toggles I'd turn them on and they'd stay up.

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I could always solo my TA/A on heroic, but it is both slow and many times dangerous.

Test server helps but animation times and the need to apply several powers to be safe really hurts.

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I have a 25 TA/arc, I know what it can and cant do. Single target immobs are widely considered borderline worthless. And certainly doesnt help as much as an aoe heal which kin, rad and dark all have.

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Single target immobs are good in the low lvls, solo, pinning AV's and perhaps in small teams.

On most teams though a single target immob is nothing you'll be using.

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I'll agree that Entangle is mostly useless on mid-lrg teams. Solo it's a life saver, especially if you play the mob AI against itself. A good trick is to entangle the mob that tries to move into melee, then leave him there while taking out his buddies. Against a three mob spawn I can take the other two down before the entangled one is freed, then I entangle him again and finish him off. And if they all charge, that's what the glue arrow is for.

As for speed, what attacks did you take? I've got TA/Archery and I move through mobs pretty quickly. On the TA side when solo I pretty much stick to Entangle, Glue, Ice for crowd control (I have more, just never use them solo). On the Archery side I have Snap, Aimed, Blazing. These three are slotted 1 acc 3 dam 1 end with Aimed and Blazing also having 1 recharge as well. I found that it was just faster and easier to immobolize/hold or slow a spawn and just mow them down quickly then, then spend time launching a bunch of debuffs. When teamed I find myself using my other TA debuff powers a lot more since there are other people responsible for dealing out the damage. I just make it easier for them to do that.

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also single target immobs really do nothing for survivability, and dont nearly compare to the other level 1 powers.

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Excuse me? A single target immob is perfect for keeping heavy hitting melee and short range attackers away (shotguns, flamethrowers, etc). I learned that trick early on when I could take out a Hellion Buckshot without taking any damage by keeping him from getting too close. Staying out of range of mobs helps keep my defender alive a lot longer.

A TA defender doesn't play the same as other defenders. It's a whole different game and if you don't learn how to play you'll never be satisfied with it

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Trick Arrow is a fairly overlooked powerset, but learn how to play it and you can be pretty powerful. My TA/Archer can already take on spawns solo that would make many defenders think twice. Entangle, Glue, & Ice arrows can keep numerous mobs out of melee range while I turn them into pin cushions. Now with glue's recharge cut in half, some recharge enhancers could probably keep it up all the time. Plus there are several interesting debuffs available for team support.

TA is a very usefull set, it's a shame that more people didn't really give it a chance.

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Overall it will probably be a bad desescision to make them perment, if nothing else, because someone will speed through the popup that informs them such, pick the wrong power, and be here to gripe about it the first time they try to respec .

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Anyone who doesn't read up on this before making their decision, deserves to get stuck with the wrong Patron. The information will be available in-game, on the website, and the forums. And that doesn't count trying different patron power sets on the test server.

Plus, they could put a timer on the window that won't allow you to close it right away. That way you have nothing to do but read what's there.

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IF we were to ever add a way to get Isolator post-Tutorial, it would most likely be incredibly hard to get. Annoyingly hard. Irritatingly hard. There-would-be-a-zillion-people-asking-to-make-it-easier hard.

[/ QUOTE ] Don't sing it, bring it.

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/Amen

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That's the thing, though... The basis behind Isolator is to ultimetly be a reward for those who took the time and trouble to defeat contaminated. It's intended to be a suprise, or easter egg, of sorts. (Much like Jail Bird). Allowing people to get it later on defeats the whole purpouse of it.

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Most of the complaints are from people who have characters that were made before the badge was available. One of my characters is in the position of being capable of having every badge available in CoH, including ALL the holiday and special badges, but will NEVER be able to have Isolator because she was created before the badge was available.

At the very least, the devs should allow the pre-badge characters a chance to earn it... somehow.

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I'm confused about #3, sweeping in bloody bay at 26+. I specifically tried that at 28, after reading that as a suggestion, and was still earning experience. Actual, real experience, not just debt payment. If I kept doing that, I would hit 29, and not knowing how close I was to Bling, I gave up and went back to perma-debt till I got bling, which I did about 4 bubbles into 28.

Even though You're auto-levelled to 25 in bloody bay, I was definately earning experience at 28. This was about early February, for reference.

The requirement of Bling for a 25-30 contact is definately a bad idea though. I was in perma-debt from 10-28.4 and only barely got Bling. Keeping in perma-debt for half your career, or doing SFs after you out level them, shouldn't be required to do a contact.

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If you were earning xp in Bloody Bay at level 26+, then there was a bug. I've spent three evening's there and haven't earned a single XP. Plenty of infamy, a little debt, and two badges (Villain, Woman in Black), but absolutely no xp.

Getting Bling at 28.4 from perma debt is about right. The xp required for 28.15 would net you just enough infamy from minions (.7 inf/xp) to get 500K. And that doesn't count rewards with better inf/xp ratios (lt's, bosses, etc...), debt, and exemping.

Ultimately, I do think that the hidden contact idea is slightly flawed, since there is at least one hidden contacts that is nearly impossible to get the required badge before outleveling her. At least not without some planning and lots of grinding.

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Actually there are several ways to get the infamy badge before hitting level 30.

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and none of the methods you name give a sense of *achievement*.

I will repeat the heart of my arguement against using this badge for Doc:
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Let us *earn* the special content, don't use a badge that's produced as a side-effect.

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Your methods simply stop leveling until you can unlock the contact - you're not even working with a particular goal. You're still gaining Infamy as a mere byproduct of what you're doing at that time. You are not "working at" Infamy the way you might work at a kill badge.

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Actually, I combine the two. There are several kill badges you can work on in Bloody Bay (like Villain to unlock another contact). Plus you could wait and do the SF's till after you outlevel them, you should get a good chunk of infamy from those.

Plus, here's something to think about. By the time you reach level 26, you have earned 446,119xp. If all you had fought to get that were minions you would have earned 312283 infamy (0.7 inf/xp). Plus you earn a better inf/xp ration for Lt's and bosses, and most mission bonuses are 1 inf/xp. And watch how much infamy you would earn over the next few levels just getting minion infamy:

LVL__Total XP___Infamy (@ .7 inf/xp)
27___554119____387883
28___689119____482383
29___855769____599038

At approx lvl 28.15 you would have earned enough xp by just defeating nothing but minions to have 500K in infamy (714286xp). So just basic leveling will take care of over half the requirement for 'Bling' before you hit 30. Add in all the extra infamy from sources that give a better inf/xp ratio than minions do and it really begins to close the gap.

I'll admit, it can be a bit of a grind. But gets some friends together and go tear up the streets of Bloody Bay for a while and the infamy should come rolling in. My brute had no problem getting 25K infamy per hour soloing, and that included avoiding spawns that would be a bit to much to take solo.

I just really wish the devs would give a satisfactory answer to the issue of why some badges (like infamy) don't have a progress bar.

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2) There are no progress bars for the influence/infamy badges. Doc Buzzsaw is unlocked via the 1st infamy badge which is very tough to attain prior to level 30. If you don't get the badge by 30 you miss out on content. My suggestion is either change the requirement to unlock Doc Buzzsaw or give the influence/infamy badges a meter.

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The placeholder for that badge at least needs to say "Earn this badge by gaining Infamy". It says "???" and the second one references Infamy after you get Bling. It would be almost impossible for an uniformed player to know Doc's clue points to a badge if there's no indication of an Infamy badge.

Though I still don't think Doc should unlock with that badge. It's either automatic, or darn-near-unattainable-in-time. Let us *earn* the special content, don't use a badge that's produced as a side-effect.

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Actually there are several ways to get the infamy badge before hitting level 30.

1. Do SF's after you outlevel them.
2. Exemp
3. Street sweep in Bloody Bay at level 26+*
4. Perma-debt

I've been doing #3 a lot lately. Usually really late at night when there aren't so many people around. Plus there are several hunting badges you can work on at the same time: Shivan, CoT, Freakshow, and Longbow (which I believe unlocks another secret contact you need before lvl 30).