Discussion - Release Notes for 18.20090422.5T

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It is possible, maybe, that there are actually other people who WANT to tell stories, and still others who WANT to experience those stories.

Shocking, I know, but there is a chance that 'you' are not the only person in the universe. Consequently, since there may be SOME people who want to experience these foolish 'Bardy' trivialities.

Now, On the other hand, I think 1500 is too low. But that does not mean I can't look at BOTH sides of the situation, and temper my responses with a little common sense and think of others as well as myself. Just sayin'.

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The # of tickets allowed in a arc has nothing to do with the ability to story tell, this is a Nerf and that's it. For those of us who like a good story the # of tickets you get means nothing so capping it does nothing for us. For those of you who want tickets there is no reason to run a arc past the cap cause there is no more reward after that point.

This is the dev's game and they are able to do what they like, but it's a Nerf and nothing else, storytelling is irrelevant to this move.

Personally, I don't AE much, I still have a lot of content that shipped with the game to do so it doesn't matter to me either way, but a Nerf is a Nerf.

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For those of us who like a good story the # of tickets you get means nothing so capping it does nothing for us.

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You're wrong, it does do something for us. It makes all the people that are there only for "1337 r3w4rdz" leave MA so that we can actually run normal teams that will allow us to enjoy the story rather than rushing through everything in the fastest and "most efficient" way possible. You can see this already in this thread.

Yay for reward nerfs!

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The maximum number of tickets awarded per player per mission has been reduced to 1,500 tickets. Because you cannot get a partial reward for defeating an enemy, you may end up with slightly less.

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I've run a few missions since the patch and this is either wrong or quite misleading. It's possible that 1500 tickets is indeed some sort of hard cap, but there is a much more restrictive soft cap in place.

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.

I'm not, at this point, making a judgement call as to whether this is a good or appropriate change, merely indicating that there's a lot more to it than a simple cap.

[edited for plurality]

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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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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?

No, what I'm saying is that you probably got "close" to 1500 with enemy defeats alone, so when you completed the mission, you got some of the mission bonus... an amount that would bring you up to 1500, but not all of the normal mission bonus.

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.

**Hands "Player" a couple of tanks of Oxygen**

I would hate for him to pass out way up there atop his soapbox

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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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Then this should be investigated and quantified. Let's get Arcanaville on it right away, seriously.

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

Joy of all joys!!! They nerfed tickets!!! Just when you thought the market could bounce back with the influx of recipes.

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.

Or is it possible that this message appears EVERY time as a bug?

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?

I've never heard of bonus "end of mission" tickets matching tickets earned within the mission. But just because I've never heard of it doesn't mean it could not be true, but I'd like some outside verification of that.

Edit: Just looked it up on ParagonWiki and apparently that is the way that it's supposed to work... hmm..... we need to investigate this further.

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Joy of all joys!!! They nerfed tickets!!! Just when you thought the market could bounce back with the influx of recipes.

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im wondering what the short and long term affect this will have on the market. I did so enjoy seeing the prices of everything come down. I can only imagine the joy that new players must have felt about getting what they wanted relatively cheap...well... as brief as that was...

Was just about to post the same link.

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

You got your stories, yay for you!
Some of us play for other things, some of us like the feeling of crushing enemies, SOME OF US actually want to be able to afford IO sets and such.

I see you haven't even mentioned the overpowered ranged attack they added to MELEE PREFERENCE mobs yet, the ones that with three white cons will kill a lowbie if only two hit?

Ticket nerf is that, a nerf, ranged attack addition is a heavy handed reply to hover sniping, when they could have had them use a ranged attack like regular npcs use (They do interrupt snipes you know).

Tried to run my lowbie blaster through, she got chewed up, even WITH SOs in her attacks, my 42 blaster fared a bit better due to her having PFF.

That ranged attack add really makes it nigh impossible for squishies, if you aren't a tank, a brute, or a scrapper, (gods forbid you're a defense scrapper), you might just get chewed up and spit out way more often than not.

The devs had their fun nerfing, now they should balance all this s crap they put in, what I wonder is if they had the though "Y'know maybe we should look at these numbers again, this doesn't seem right", or did they go "Eh, we'll just fix it later, or nerf something else through the floor"..

going to miss you chicken tug...

I would really like them to rethink the ticket, and ranged attack changes.

I can understand about the emote because its supposed to have a victim on the other end pulling.

I received 9 bonus tickets for mission completion last night...
How awesome was that!!!

not awesome enough. you cant contribute to the economy of the game at that rate.

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Some of us play for other things, some of us like the feeling of crushing enemies,

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You can't do that without tickets?

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SOME OF US actually want to be able to afford IO sets and such.

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So... run normal missions to get your imaginary virtual "stuff"?

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I see you haven't even mentioned the overpowered ranged attack they added to MELEE PREFERENCE mobs yet, the ones that with three white cons will kill a lowbie if only two hit?

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Interesting, I have a level 50 FF Defender and a level 5 Fire Blaster... neither of whom died from these ranged attacks or even got close to death...

Apparently pets no longer give XP when used in custom groups.

Did I miss this in notes somewhere?

(bah)

I understand about risk matching reward and all, but I was wondering something: What is supposed to be the concept of MA in the CoX universe? I thought it was supposed to be a kind of "virtual reality" system created by Dr. Aeon or Portal Corps or something. If that were the case, then I was viewing the MA facilities to be kind of like a Star Trek Next Gen Holo-deck or an X-men Danger Room. If so, then shouldn't there be more rewards in the "RL" of the CoX universe than in MA? Right now, it seems like the heroes/villains of Paragon City are so "addicted" to their "virtual reality" that they'd rather be there than in the "RL" and aid the Freedom Phalanx in Task Forces or perform some trials. I can't imagine the X-men preferring to spend their time in the Danger Room instead of fighting the real threats brought by super villainy.

In terms of the game, I've been trying to view MA primarily as a tool to provide the creative outlet for the CoX subscribers, which I think is innovative for any MMO currently out there. Does anyone think this is the way MA was intended to be viewed, or am I in the minority?