sigma1932

Most people go AFK (without resting) with a Malta sapper in melee range for this, but if you're not high enough level for that (and can't find someone to SK you), you can try to get a friend with a toon that has a fast-recharge, no-damage hold, stun, or sleep to help you in the arena.

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With AE, at least he actually has to fight and contribute.

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No he doesn't. He can still door sit while bridged in a 1-54 level range map.

A few points:

1. Architect XXV is still listed on the "keep" list in the patch notes on the main page. Of course, Virtual Victor is listed twice in the same "keep" list, so make of it what you will.

2. Not 100% sure about the exploration badge, but the accolade defienitely counts (just tested it... my previous count on my hero was 18/25, ran an AE mission that gave me 4 more badges including the accolade, and my total went up to 22/25). This means that there are legitimately at least 25 badges outside of Architect XXV, so it's legitimately obtainable.

3. I vaguely remember there being an issue with another badge a while back where they couldn't adjust credit towards a badge, but rather could only give or take the "whole" badge. However, taking the badge away meant flagging it as "not obtainable", which I believe isn't something they can do on a per-character basis, so that might explain why they just let people keep it if they already had it.

Even if they could actually set the amount of credit people had towards a badge, it would've taken way more work than would've been wroth it to truly correct everything-- they would've had to go through every character individually, look at what badges they had and then set the Architect XXV meter to match that... or they would've had to just trash everything AE-badge-related, re-add it to the game, and make everyone re-earn the badges from scratch. IMO, either case just isn't worth the time/effort/resources/PR-backlash/etc.

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Ummm.... WTF does MA have to do with pvp badges or recipes????

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It doesn't have anything to do with PvP anything specifically, but you made the argument about farming, which it has everything to do with.

Toxics are easier redside... they're crawling all over the catwalks in Grandville.

Untoucable isn't so much hard as tedious since it takes some extra clicking to distinguish between the classic and Marcone versions of Family bosses. I just kept killing them around the dock areas in Nerva.

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No, I meant what I said actually. He claimed that 2 or 3 people alone should be able to fight Lusca and that he could solo it with his red side toon. Then he went on to say he would do it with two or three if he could convince the two people he specifically wanted, going so far as to say they were necessary. That word, necessary, was the key for me. To me that implies he wants something specific that they would bring to the table that nobody else would, therefore implying some kind of specialization. That's how I viewed it.

Perhaps I didn't state that clearly enough in my initial post. I'd also like to point out that I never said he needed his teammates to be on gimped builds or under 25 or something. I mean seriously, that's just foolish.

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Yeah, I caught that you called him on saying he could solo by pointing out that he was focusing on specializing a team... The fact that you didn't mention soloing specifically in the post he referred to is what I meant by "goofing the argument".

Either way, we're more or less on the same page... needing two specific other toons to take down Lusca with his red-side toon doesn't prove either his claim that he could solo the giant octopus.

On the other hand, I do know that the duo of my Rad/Rad Corruptor and my friend's EM/Stone Brute can just barely beat Deathsurge's regen (i.e. it probably would've taken upwards of an hour to whittle him down completely, but we did get to the point where his red bar was ever-so-slightly dropping) without inspirations, and also without IO's. If we can do that, I would think a well-coordinated and reasonably balanced (i.e. not specialized, but not purposely gimped either) group of 3 or more redside toons could put an appropriate amount of damage out to take him and probably any other solo GM down with reliable success with enough time. Of course, Lusca isn't technically a solo GM until only his its head is all that's left.... but still.

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GMs need a lot of tweaking, that's for sure. Still, you always have the advantage in that you can recruit from any level range, and can have multiple teams if necessary.

The main reason a lot of people fight them is for the badge, or just for the fun of fighting a building-sized monster.

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except that most of them aren't building-sized... sure, maybe 10-15 ft. tall, but that's not building sized.

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Depends on the building.

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Even a 1-story house is taller than 15 ft.

Never played a WP myself, so do they have any holes that you can plug with set bonuses? How often does a WP get hit? Going for some sort of Defense-buffing set bonuses might be something to consider (possibly ranged-Def. since Katana has a nice melee-def buffing power) I know WP gets Quick Recovery and if you stack that with Stamina, there shouldn't be many, if any, blue-bar issues even without the uniques, and their tier-9 ignores recharge buffs of any kind (power, enhancement, or set bonus). If none of that, it never hurts to add more overall damage, especially on a lethal-heavy set since that type is one of the most resisted.

What you do really depends on what direction you want to go with the character... it might be cheaper to 250 merits on a LotG or two, sell them, get enough inf. to buy potentially 2-3 3-4 part sets from the market if they give the bonuses you want... gotta look at the overall inf-per-merit cost if you really wanna squeeze all the value out of them.

I know I have at least some miniscule degree of OCD... I often feel uneasy when things aren't arranged in some sort of order... like if I change the volume on my TV, I have to leave it on an even number, or if I'm grilling out, the brats/burgers have to be in a grid-like pattern on the grill.

As far as badges go, though... it's in the back of my head that I'm still missing a few, but the only real effect it's having on me is it's keeping me from cancelling my subscriptions.

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LostHalo: I doubt your statement.

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Assuming I can convince the necessary two people, it will be done again. Hopefully Lusca will be spawned in an ideal location, away from the gawkers.

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If you're saying you need two specific people to do it, then that kinda throws out your idea of not needing any kind of specialization, no?

I'm with Fulmens on this one....

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Specific person != Specialized toon.
There is a difference between asking for competence/intelligence from another person and designing an Ill/Rad (or other option) that is expressly targeted towards a particular goal. If you don't understand that difference, nothing I do will be 'good enough' in your eyes (especially now that there is a new "Gotta be less than 25!!!" condition thrown out...).

And before it gets more drawn out: I'm challenging the notion of needing [key word] two or three full teams when one team is more than enough to bring everything that could ever be needed.

But... It's probably meaningless at this point, since all that will be argued is semantics over the term "specialization".

"Hey, you built your 3-person team with x, y, and z, that's over-specialized! Unless you do it with 3 melee-oriented Blasters, it's not fair!11!"

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I think The_Demon_Hunter might have goofed the argument he wanted to make... to quote your post that prompted the "I doubt your statement." comment:

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2 or 3 teams? Without specialization, it only takes 2 or 3 people to take down Lusca. With specialization, it only takes 1. A single full team should utterly crush Lusca. I only wish such a GM were available red-side...my toons over there could probably wreck Lusca without a problem solo (or needing a permanent supply line of Inspirations).

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In the boldfaced part above, you flat out said you could solo Lusca... Even if Demon_Hunter didn't goof his argument, I think everyone and their ancestry 3 generations back would call shenanigans on you being able to solo a GM that's technically 8 GM's in one. You even said yourself you needed to "convince the necessary two people" (in your later post), which implies you wouldn't be soloing.

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GMs need a lot of tweaking, that's for sure. Still, you always have the advantage in that you can recruit from any level range, and can have multiple teams if necessary.

The main reason a lot of people fight them is for the badge, or just for the fun of fighting a building-sized monster.

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except that most of them aren't building-sized... sure, maybe 10-15 ft. tall, but that's not building sized.

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Well no wonder I could never get Caleb to spawn. I was killing the Spectal Demons in Cap. Doooh!! I'd never kill 100 though w/o a team.

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They're easy to kill when they're grey, like the ones around Primeva and Thorn Isle in Nerva are for a 50....

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I only put them in TP Ally, because I hate waiting for its longass animation.

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It doesn't change the animation time, just the length of time the power can be interrupted, unless you mean you don't like having to recast it when it gets interrupted... I'm totally with you on that, though I usually put a recharge in the free slot because I don't often TP-other powers while in combat.

To the OP: yes, I use them in Aid self and in snipe powers if I don't feel like monkeying around with slotting SotM (which has interrupt built into it).

One reason to still slot something with a 1-second interrupt time is DoT's... some of them are less than 1 second between ticks, and therefore can interrupt something with a 1-second intterupt time. No, there aren't many enemies that have them, but it's annoying when there are.

I buy random rolls with AE tix because you can't specifically pick out what you want... merits I save and buy what I specifically want because I don't trust the RNG enough to give me what I want before I spend the equivalent number of merits on random rolls, it's the only way to get recipes of levels lower than a set's maximum once you're level 50, and I also don't like getting hosed by the market, which already happens if I'm after purples.

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Fail. Please go review economics 101 before ever posting such fail again.

Edit: For a primer in economics You should try reading the market forums. We're not all evil jerks.. Just most of us.

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How is suggesting that the total number of purple drops remain the same while being less lopsidedly in the inventories of farmers "fail"?

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As someone said on page 4, by putting a limit on how many purples a single toon can receive per length of time, you're potentially just cutting off part of what the farmers are picking up currently rather than shifting the drops they would be getting to the non-farmers.

To put it another way, non-farmers wouldn't be gaining more drops just because the farmers are getting locked out of them by a timer. The net result is fewer purple drops throughout the whole game, which translates into even fewer being on the market, and prices going even higher than the outrageous amounts they're going for now.

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If you'd bothered to actually read the whole idea, you'd see that limiting drops per character is only half of the idea, the other half being finding a way to make non farmers pick up the purple drop slack. Responding to an idea that specifically states "the total number of purple drops remain[s] the same" with "the net result is fewer purple drops throughout the whole game" just shows a lack of reading comprehension.

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Actually, I saw that, but since you at no point put forth any real details about how to keep the total drops the same, I took it as moot for the time being.

I'd be happy to constructively discuss how you plan on not screwing non-farmers over who might occasionally go on a binge and play 12 hours straight on a weekend, while still making such a mechanic actually worthwhile to spend the time/resources to implement. Also, how does it work on teams? Since drops go to a random member of at eam, do they all get screwed if another one drops, or just the guy who caught the last one? Also, how would you address the fact that putting a timer on purple drops effectively takes the reward away from the person who's doing more of the "work" and shifting that reward to someone who isn't?

As someone else said, albeit a bit more abbrasively, you have to have at least the basic trappings of how to put it into practice, not just come up with a concept and expect everyone to agree with it.

Sorry, but the underpants-gnomish-type philosophy on profit (1. come up with arbitrary concept, 2. ???, 3. profit) doesn't fly in real discussions.

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Fail. Please go review economics 101 before ever posting such fail again.

Edit: For a primer in economics You should try reading the market forums. We're not all evil jerks.. Just most of us.

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How is suggesting that the total number of purple drops remain the same while being less lopsidedly in the inventories of farmers "fail"?

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As someone said on page 4, by putting a limit on how many purples a single toon can receive per length of time, you're potentially just cutting off part of what the farmers are picking up currently rather than shifting the drops they would be getting to the non-farmers.

To put it another way, non-farmers wouldn't be gaining more drops just because the farmers are getting locked out of them by a timer. The net result is fewer purple drops throughout the whole game, which translates into even fewer being on the market, and prices going even higher than the outrageous amounts they're going for now.

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If the OP wants Shivians then he wants Shivians, regardless of what he's fighting.

As far as I can see he asked a perfectly civil question in the correct manner for these forums, except for the lack of capitals and punctuation, but this is about the norm these days.

He also got one or two very helpful replies and the onus is on him to acknowledge them in the same manner as they were given and be thankful that someone was able to help him.

Time and time again I see these forums degenerate into a slanging match between parties that have been members long enough to know better.

Why don't we all try to set a good example and be polite to each other and just get along?

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Go back to San Francisco you friggan hippie.

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I have 5 level 50 toons that I have grinded for evey level I got. Grinding for badges is my enjoyment in this game and it is why I still pay for 2 accounts. Let me break it down If I lose one badge that I have grinded so hard for I will close both of my COH accounts. Look I don't want this to come off as a threat I am just stating a fact after 2 years paying for the game grinding for every badge I have, you will take my fun away and why should I pay for what is no longer fun

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NEWSFALSH: you are playing the game wrong, while I am sure the devs are sorry to see two subs laps, they would rather you play their game their way and have their fun.



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Positron
Positron

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LOL

Definitely not the burger king of MMOGs

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To be fair, if BK really made a burger my way, it would not only not make me gain weigh or add to my cholesterol number, but it would help both of these areas instead, and it definitely wouldn't give me the green apple splatters.

Kinda puts a whole new perspective on how great it really is to not be the "BK of MMOG's".

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That being said, I don't see why they can't keep the virtual badges. Since those missions don't need to be published to be farmed, it doesn't hurt the system. And it's the ideal closed environment for people who LIKE farming for the sake of farming, since it has no regular rewards. I'd be happy with them keeping the virtual badges, and even adding a bunch more, though I'd really like them to reduce the virtual kills badges.

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I second this!

As for griefing, they should just drop the bottom 5-10% of rates for each arc for listing/searching purposes. The more rates something gets, the more low ratings will be dropped, and the more low ratings that are dropped, the less each griefer means. In a round-about way it would make it so that griefing in AE would actually defeat its own purpose-- by adding more rates, they make more space for their downvote to be dropped. Yes, it means bad arcs will lose some of their bad ratings, however, bad arcs shouldn't get high ratings to begin with, so for those arcs, even the ratings above that bottom 5-10% will still be low, and they'll still fall to the bottom.

One other thing to add: when you're whittling down the inner turrets on the firebase itself, you can make it so you're only getting hit by at most two at a time if you stand/hover right below them, tight up against the walls of the firebase. This blocks at least two of the other turrets' line of sight to you, so they won't shoot.

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[Disclaimer]
I only read Pohsyb's posts (linked from teh Dev Digest page), and no, i'm not reading through 220 pages, so this may or may not have been asked already.
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So, they're allowing XP and Inf. Rewards for mobs killed in custom missions? Apparently, the idea of PL'ing must not matter to the Devs anymore.

I can see it now: not only will someone rez the "Defeat Dreck" mission AND the Werewolf farms from way back when . Now we won't even need bridges to do it... it'll be plenty fast just to SK the lowbie yourself, and

I guarantee someone will combine the two concepts, and take it even further:

1. Create a huge, flat, wide open map.
2. Create a custom minion with no attacks, an HP debuff, vulnerability to all damage types (both Def and Res), and then make them rez like freakshow.
3. Commence cleaning up.

We'll have fire blasters one-shotting huge mobs (put loads of spawn points in, very close together) with a single shot of Fireball, meaning they can run it from level 2 on... just creating a new mission each time they outlevel one of the old ones... and they won't need to be reset either, since they can just be quit and restarted, or just finished and restarted. Also, they can bring at least one friend along who might not have a low-level AoE attack, SK them, and PL them while they're at it.

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There is exactly one part of that which has not been stated as impossible.

We canNOT make our own maps.

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K, so people will just use the instanced boomtown map that was used for the original Dreck mission, or the "family farm" instanced map (I think it's instanced steel canyon).

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We canNOT set the spawn points on maps, preexisting or otherwise.

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Duelly noted, thx for the info, however I'm assuming we can still say what mobs are available to spawn, yes? Otherwise, how would we place custom mobs into missions?

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We canNOT assign (as far as I know) single specific powers to a critter.

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From Pohsyb:
This is a bit misleading. You can chose 2 powersets that include almost all powersets available to players, but you can mix-match them in ways not available to players. (Ex: Fire Blast + Invulnerability ).

Not as great of a bullet point, I know. We would love to expand this system further, but we cannot by release.

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In that case, is there something stopping people from choosing two non-attack powersets, or giving them all interruptable pool powers rather than primary/secondaries? (I'm thinking along the lines of Immunes Surgeons... just without the heals)

In short, is there something in place to prevent people from building custom mobs that present no threat at all and are basically just cannon fodder to be chewed up for XP?

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We canNOT (as far as I know) assign buffs or debuffs to a critter.

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Thought more about this-- can we apply static buffs/debuffs like in the PVP zones to missions?

Don't get me wrong... my main purpose here isn't to find an edge to "break" the game through the MA, but rather to play devil's advocate and point out ways that people could break things within the paramaters laid out by the Dev's through the game's design so they can potentially be addressed ahead of time (it all goes back to when I used to make mods for NWN, I'd have friends play them and attempt to "break" things by going out of their way to do things I may not have thought of on my own).

In the past, the Dev's have gone to some length to "discourage" PL'ing and such, and I'd hate to see all that effort go down the drain due to tunnel-vision for how things are "intended" to be used-- after all, I think it's a fair assumption that if something CAN be done, it WILL be done (especially if it provides a major shortcut), regardless of whether or not it meets the dev's intentions.

[Disclaimer]
I only read Pohsyb's posts (linked from teh Dev Digest page), and no, i'm not reading through 220 pages, so this may or may not have been asked already.
[/Disclaimer]

So, they're allowing XP and Inf. Rewards for mobs killed in custom missions? Apparently, the idea of PL'ing must not matter to the Devs anymore.

I can see it now: not only will someone rez the "Defeat Dreck" mission AND the Werewolf farms from way back when . Now we won't even need bridges to do it... it'll be plenty fast just to SK the lowbie yourself, and

I guarantee someone will combine the two concepts, and take it even further:

1. Create a huge, flat, wide open map.
2. Create a custom minion with no attacks, an HP debuff, vulnerability to all damage types (both Def and Res), and then make them rez like freakshow.
3. Commence cleaning up.

We'll have fire blasters one-shotting huge mobs (put loads of spawn points in, very close together) with a single shot of Fireball, meaning they can run it from level 2 on... just creating a new mission each time they outlevel one of the old ones... and they won't need to be reset either, since they can just be quit and restarted, or just finished and restarted. Also, they can bring at least one friend along who might not have a low-level AoE attack, SK them, and PL them while they're at it.

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I'd like to get the two "normally villains-only" badges - Weed Whacker, and Coldblooded for my blueside badge toon. Do we know if these will still be available to heroes through the co-op missions, or will they have gone the way of that Longbow defeats badge that heroes can no longer earn?

I don't want to waste my time running these missions multiple times only to not get the badges. I already have all the other Spring Fling badges on that toon.

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FTR, the Reformed badge is supposed to be coming back, so says Positron (check the Dev Digest for his post in a "Reformed Badge" thread).

As for the others, only way to know for sure if they're going to be available is to try it when the event goes live. Just make sure a villain on your team enters the appropriate mission first so the map is flagged to spawn "villain-only" mobs. They don't have to be the owner, they just have to enter the mission first.

Also note that there are some level restrictions on some of the mobs... i.e. the walking turkey-leg frog people (aka Hordelings) only spawn below a certain level, and Hellfrosts/Succubi only spawn above a different level. Unfortunately, I don't recall what these levels are, so someone else will have to provide that info, or perhaps it can be found somewhere at paragonwiki.

QR, with quotes

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Just so it's clear, he said it was their intent several years ago in discussions when it was still a Cryptic title. That doesn't mean things haven't changed and it's still going to happen.

Please don't turn this into a meme folks. If it happens it happens. But if it doesn't people are gonna rant and rave and moan and cry because forumgoers are putting the broadest possible spin on a comment that is ambiguous at best.

Like Posi said it was their plan "back then" The rest of the post makes it pretty clear that things have changed since then. Please don't hold him to something without looking at the big picture.

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As far as side-switching goes, this is what I got out of Posi's post as well.

If anything, I'd give it LESS of a chance of happening now, since they gave the badge back, but I don't think the chance of it happening has changed at all.

Personally, I'd prefer it not happen... I honestly believe it would make a number of AT's somewhat obselete.

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Someone really needs to look at those COV family though. The untouchable badge requires CoH Family bosses, they are sparsely scattered in missions and in Nerva, and some of the Family bosses in Nerva give credit towards gangbuster instead. Ask Phil and the people that place mobs to look at the family bosses for Marcone in the description (placed mobs in Nerva and Sharkhead). Also when the rewards were removed from the infamous family farms, the family bosses lost all progress towards the Untouchable badge.

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I really agree with this. Ideally, Untouchable should be made unavailable for villains, all Family bosses would count for Gangbuster, and the weapon options that unlock for Untouchable would also be available for Gangbuster.

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Except that some of us already have both badges. I'd say a more "ideal" solution would be to simply remove Marcone types from the spawns near the docks in Nerva, and leave it at that, or perhaps find an area to make a warzone between the two "families", where each spawn has at least one of each.

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I agree that it's annoying, and I've seen it quite a bit recently. Tho...I can't say that I've seen it now more than I have in the past. It's come to the point where if I walk up to a group of 3 baddies, I expect at least one to bolt.

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It used to be that the same one in the spawn would be the runner... either the one trying to swipe a woman's purse, or the one who had his arms crossed, or the one who did the talking as you approached.

Would be kinda nice if it was still that way.

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It stinks when you have the AV debuffed and he/she decides to run across the map, agro'ing everything that you haven't killed yet.

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Simple solution: Turn your debuffs off until the AV comes back... they'll be recharged before then.