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Re: recipes
Your analysis ignores the fact that the "regular" content will provide pool A, pool B, pool C/D (if bosses are present), purple (if mobs are lvl 50+), and common IO recipes. The MA tickets in your analysis are generating only pool A recipes.
Re: salvage
The "regular" content generates a mixture of common, uncommon and rare salvage. The tickets in your analysis are generating only common salvage.
[/ QUOTE ]Can you give me specific percentages?
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Nope. If the actual drop rates have been made public knowledge, I'm not aware of it.
[/ QUOTE ]Hmmm...I was hoping for support for my theory about the ticket cap, but I guess we're not going to find it there.
My theory was that it represented the "cap" in regular content on how many drops you can get from regular content in a single run, but I don't know how to actually check that with the information we have.
On the other hand, you don't have to stop and sell/use/delete stuff to make room in your inventories for more "drops". Just start another run.
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You know, the constant acerbic, insulting spew about the developers is really tiring and dull.
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This is like the 4th post in the thread, and in the previous 3 I never even saw the acerbic, insult spew you are claiming. I saw someone say,"Hey the custom mobs are tougher but don't reward any higher, isn't that off for the risk/reward ratio?" which is an observation, not a jibe.
The closest thing that anyone said to a jibe at the Devs (and that's if I am hunting it out for you since you CITED nothing specific) was one poster claiming that the devs will likely not acknowledge the risk/reward discrepancy and will probably justify it, and this is after giving a straightforward example of where the Dev's did pretty much exactly that involving the KHTF. Hardly ascerbic or insulting. So yeah, if there was a Dev bashing going on, it was only in your head dude.
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I am sure the devs would love to have increased rewards for harder customs. Sadly, some putz would then create a mission with just one enemy type, one of the ones with increased rewards, that they can game the system with.
It is a shame. *snip*
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See i don't imagine the Devs were naive enough, especially after so many years, to think that the MA wouldn't get used for PL, farming, etc. I am sure there were many player's who wanted to explore those options when it released live specifically. Yet the Devs still went ahead.
Seems to me its like saying to your 16 year old daughter that she can't use the car, but then storing the car keys in her purse....set up to fail. Try taking a fresh, juicy, raw steak and placing it only a foot in front of your dog, tell him not to eat it, and then walk out of the room. Then be really, really pissed off at your dog and your daughter and act surprised when they disobey, take no responsibility for setting them up to do just what they ended up doing, and punish them severely (or at least threaten it). Seriously not handled well at all.
Players are not dogs.
MOST players are not 16-year-old girls.
Logical fallacy. Please try again.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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Players are not dogs.
MOST players are not 16-year-old girls.
Logical fallacy. Please try again.
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Err -- what fallacy?
Not a fallacy; just missing the point, and insulting to many dogs and young girls. I happen to know dogs and young girls with more self control than was described.
Whether or not the Devs screwed up, some players screwed up. I'm sure there were some innocents that did not know they were crossing a line, and I'm sure there were also players who didn't care. Since their cash depends on it, I'm sure they will make every effort to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.
That's not punishment, that's just a case of 'easy come, easy go'.
If you get your 50 levels that you got in 8 hours taken away, feel free to explain to Customer Service how there is no way you could have known you were exploiting, and maybe they will let you off the hook.
However, it is indeed possible that the Devs made mistakes:
- Maybe they shouldn't have given us the MA.
- Maybe they should have prenerfed it more before handing it to us.
- Maybe they should not have given us a warning before removing levels from the worst of the worst abusers.
But at least they are modifying their behavior in the wake of what happened. I hope the dogs and 16 year old girls who play this game will do the same.
No offense.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Not a fallacy; just missing the point, and insulting to many dogs and young girls. I happen to know dogs and young girls with more self control than was described.
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The legal concept is called an attractive nuisance. If you build a swimming pool and don't fence it in you have created an attractive nuisance. If anyone goes into your pool and suffers harm you are considered liable.
The devs created an attractive nuisance with MA and they were informed of the issues in advance
I don't contest that abusing the MA was tempting.
I just don't agree with the idea that choosing to succumb to temptation absolves one of the consequences. The Dev's mistake does not negate anyone else's.
My take on legality:
Do the devs have the legal right and will to remove levels from characters?
The Devs have the legal right to remove levels from your character in the same way that they have the right to generic your characters or server ban you without right of appeal.
The players have the legal right to make whatever content they want in the MA.
The Devs have the legal right to lock those MA slots.
Ethically:
The players have a responsibility not to even ATTEMPT to abuse the system.
The Devs have a responsibility to attempt to make the system as bulletproof as is practical.
The Devs made a call to allow elements in the system that they knew were abusable, rather than delay release. That was a screwup; but I don't expect the devs to say,"We apologize for over estimating the honesty of the players."
Now that the milk has been spilled, the Devs are going to try to shore the code up more, but they also chose to reiterate to the players that they are going to be enforcing the rules.
That was nothing other than being nice; other MMOs have had mass bannings for less (or so I hear).
I would like the Devs to define 'abuse' in terms of earnings/time. I do not beleive that is how the devs currently define it, and I beleive they don't because they would have to restructure the game around it.
If they chose to, however I still would not expect them to say so until after they had code written to enforce it.
So: are you SURE you want them to define 'abuse'?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Ethically:
The players have a responsibility not to even ATTEMPT to abuse the system.
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I have never played in an MMO where reasonably-minded players passed on a vehicle for earning some sort of resource quickly and efficiently.
I have never been in a guild in EQ or WoW that said, "Hey guys, this zone...yeah...we get too many drops in here and it's too easy. The tank is complaining because nobody takes aggro from him, and the Enchanter is upset because his crowd-control is marginalized while everybody gets all this fantastic loot. We should really stop doing this zone..."
No contest that it almost never happens. Does not change the fact (that is to say, my opinion) that it is unethical to abuse anything you have been given.
Also does not make sense to me that someone will abuse something and then complain when someone in authority takes it away and says, "Sorry, going to have to fix this to be more durable before you break it."
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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No contest that it almost never happens. Does not change the fact (that is to say, my opinion) that it is unethical to abuse anything you have been given.
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The problem is that the words "ethical" and "abuse" are incredibly variable especially in this context.
The facts (that is, my opinion) are these: Delibertately choosing to abuse just about anything is always unethical.
If you honestly don't know that (for example) going from 1-50 in 8 hours is abuse, no problem.
If, on the other hand, you suspect that it might be wrong, it behooves you to back off or PM the Devs or something.
If you decide you don't care, that's unethical on it's face.
But I agree: 'unethical' and 'abuse' are usually very subjective words to define.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.
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Do we have a single case of this actually happening to anyone? It appears to me players are still assuming this is going to occur, but every day that goes by increases the chance the devs are going to calm down and be more reasonable.
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Seems to me its like saying to your 16 year old daughter that she can't use the car, but then storing the car keys in her purse....set up to fail. Try taking a fresh, juicy, raw steak and placing it only a foot in front of your dog, tell him not to eat it, and then walk out of the room. Then be really, really pissed off at your dog and your daughter and act surprised when they disobey, take no responsibility for setting them up to do just what they ended up doing, and punish them severely (or at least threaten it). Seriously not handled well at all.
[/ QUOTE ]We are (hopefully) capable of a little more self-control than a dog.
We haven't been given the details, but, since the Devs invoked much more serious punishments than in the past, the violations must have also been much more serious than in the past. (Unless you truly believe the Devs were deliberately trying to trick people into violations?)
For example, if they were taking down exploitative arcs and the creators were putting them right back up again, and if they were also being told those arcs were prohibited, and the creators continued to put them right back up again, those people would have demonstrated that they had absolutely no interest in playing by the rules. In the real world, that kind of open defiance gets you removed from any real world game, why not this one? (That is, however, speculation. We don't know the exact details of what kind of behavior they felt warranted terminating accounts. Only "using exploits in their arcs" and being one of the "most egregious" abusers of the system.)
It's more like giving your teenager the keys to car, and telling them not to break any traffic laws, then finding out they went street-racing with it. For the tenth time.
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Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.
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Do we have a single case of this actually happening to anyone? It appears to me players are still assuming this is going to occur, but every day that goes by increases the chance the devs are going to calm down and be more reasonable.
[/ QUOTE ]I would be surprised if all the punishments for past offenses haven't already dropped. I'd also be surprised if anyone fessed up to losing an account, or even just levels, because they'd be identifying themselves as one of "the worst of the worst".
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Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.
[/ QUOTE ]
Do we have a single case of this actually happening to anyone? It appears to me players are still assuming this is going to occur, but every day that goes by increases the chance the devs are going to calm down and be more reasonable.
[/ QUOTE ]I would be surprised if all the punishments for past offenses haven't already dropped. I'd also be surprised if anyone fessed up to losing an account, or even just levels, because they'd be identifying themselves as one of "the worst of the worst".
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LOL if they gave badges people would be farming for it. 
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Also, per Posi, no one is being punished, but some players are having the levels they got super fast get taken away.
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Do we have a single case of this actually happening to anyone? It appears to me players are still assuming this is going to occur, but every day that goes by increases the chance the devs are going to calm down and be more reasonable.
[/ QUOTE ]I would be surprised if all the punishments for past offenses haven't already dropped. I'd also be surprised if anyone fessed up to losing an account, or even just levels, because they'd be identifying themselves as one of "the worst of the worst".
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LOL if they gave badges people would be farming for it.
[/ QUOTE ]THAT I cannot argue with!
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In the MA, the custom critters are amazingly tough. Well, even a standard/standard minion is using a player damage scale. The risk is much greater against custom critters but there is no adjustment to the reward. So the risk versus reward isn't balanced.
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I was just thinking about this earlier today. Custom critters have more attacks and hit harder than standard critters (I'm not even sure how their non-offensive powers scale) but the rewards for the risk is considerably lower.
I really don't want to suggest jacking the xp/inf rewards waay up... or even the ticket rewards... but if they were to do one; a slight to moderate increase across the board probably wouldn't be a bad idea (along with a corresponding increase to the ticket cap).
I would suggest allowing for:
Recipe drops for minor to moderate enhancement sets unique to MA custom critters (similar to what was done for PvP)
Recipe drops for temp powers unique to MA custom critters
An extended and expanded MA custom critter/objective badge system with unlocks for base items and other fluff.
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Heh, I doubt if any rewards for custom criters are going up until months after the Devs feel absolutely sure they won't be farmed.
On the other hand, jacking up the rewards on a particular critter would be a great way to locate any farmers they wanted to get rid of...
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Thats just silly.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I would like to see something along the lines of the following.
1) Make sure that mobs on "standard" aren't so noticably more challenging than standard mobs outside the MA. I'm not sure the minions are ridiculously more challenging now, but they are noticably so, and the damage scale on the ranged attacks given to melee mobs is a big part of it.
2) Make sure that mobs on "hard" and "extreme" really are that much scarier. This is harder to do well, and would likely might require "hard" versions of some powersets to have greater deviation from player character versions. This would be to ensure all powersets offered something effective to the user to keep the mob from being weaker than normal if equipped with team-oriented powersets and then fought solo, for example.
3) Use existing examples of mobs with +XP rewards to buff the XP of the "hard" and "extreme" mobs.
Not that under the current system, higher difficulty settings don't do anything to some mobs. I haven't tried all powersets, but from what I've seen there's no such thing as an "extreme" minion. This should be standardized in the critter editor interface (such as greying out that option for minions) and the XP rules, and documented.
I've seen this idea suggested before, but in the discussion I saw, the line of thinking was that this would require variation in XP by powerset and powerset combo, as well as rank and difficulty. I don't think that's sensible. I think a standard reward level should be set for each rank and difficulty, and the powersets tuned to approach that target. Yes, some combinations may swing high or low on the risk/reward for their difficulty, but some focus on these situations should allow the devs to keep them from being extreme. Player feedback would likley have to be part of the guidance to point them to possible outliers.
I have no idea how techinically feasible variable XP rewards for MA mobs would be. I know that tuning the powersets is time-consuming. In days of old I would have been loathe to suggest time-consuming things, but the devs seem to have a lot better staffing these days. Only they, of course, know what else is competing for those man-hours.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Heh, I doubt if any rewards for custom criters are going up until months after the Devs feel absolutely sure they won't be farmed.
On the other hand, jacking up the rewards on a particular critter would be a great way to locate any farmers they wanted to get rid of...
[/ QUOTE ]On the third hand, leaving them as is would (and I know I'm going to get flamed for this) tend to discourage building Farm Missions full of nothing but Custom Bosses. Thus reducing the need to identify and punish individual offenders.
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Use existing examples of mobs with +XP rewards to buff the XP of the "hard" and "extreme" mobs.
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Since Hard and Extreme seem like they are going away, I would expect they would not be able to balance mob XP that way. It is also problematic, since a spawn might be challenging inside its group, but cake on its own. It is also far too easy to game by using a character that trivializes whatever it is about a mob that makes it more challenging.
Increasing XP for individual critters seems far too easy to abuse to actually happen.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
I don't think it will happen, but it would be interesting:
Since we will soon be able to pick individual powers above the minimum for each difficulty, you would have to evaluate each power in a vacuum and again in combination with each other power and give it an xp value based on each of those and the combinations, then increase the xp value.
Although ideally, the xp of a foe should actually based on its' difficulty vs the specific PC.
When you attacked a foe, the system would run a quick calculation:
- How many attacks will it take to defeat this foe (including damage, tohit v defense, etc)?
- How many attacks will it take for this foe to defeat me (as above)?
Your xp would then be adjusted appropriately.
Not that this would be dynamic, so if you suddenly got a bunch of buffs, your xp would go down (as the foe is no longer as much of a threat). Likewise, if you got taken down to 1 hp by the first hit, your xp would shoot way up.
Naturally, this would lead to a bunch of people trying to farm while at 1 hp.
Depending on the numbers, I think I'm okay with that.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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The devs should look into a method for determining individual xp values for each custom mob, based on its power selections. For example, an extreme/extreme Mind Control/Willpower boss is an extremely nasty customer and should be worth a lot of experience, but a standard/standard Radiation/Empathy boss is worth much less.
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Even that is not really accurate. You could have a minion who is pretty harmless alone, but can amplify the power of the right group. Put him in one group and he is much weaker, put him in another group and he is much stronger.
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On top of all that, there's also the fact that different ATs are threatened by different things. What's difficult for one AT and/or power set is an easy walk in the park for another.
All of my friends who have generally nasty melee characters sort of cringe at the idea of Cimeroran missions, while my "squishy" Storm Defender finds them to be really no trouble at all.
On the other hand, it's quite the reverse situation vs. Rikti. Mezzed, mezzed, mezzed, mezzed... oh, the mission's done. "Hey, glad I could help, guys!"
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As a point of fact, the devs already award different XP for certain mobs: the XP for Family mobs in the 40s were reduced because they are so easy to farm, and there's the recent comm officer XP change.
My concern is that the MA's potential will be never be realized because there's no way to know what the actual difficulty of a particular mission is, and you have no idea whether you will be compensated for that difficulty. If people perceive that MA missions are more trouble than they're worth, it will die.
The devs need to eliminate the cheats and exploits that give easy XP, but they also need to justly reward difficult missions.
Yes, it's true that different characters and different team compositions do or don't have problems with particular mobs, but you can still calculate a mean difficulty and a mean XP value for them.
Should tankers get less XP because they can solo dozens of Freakshow bosses at once? The devs long ago decided that everyone is compensated equally regardless of build, so that's a red herring.
And it's not just the AT involved. If you know what you're doing and prepare properly (build your character right -- get some kind of KB resistance and at least one or two mez powers, bring Break Frees, and convert other inspirations to them as needed), you can breeze through Rikti just as easily as any other enemy faction.
The key point is to identify the greatest threat and neutralize it first. If you're a squishy and you're fighting Rikti, you know you have to have interrupt the comm officers to stop a portal from forming, and you have to mez the mezzers before they mez you.
All the standard factions are relatively easy once you know what they do and how to neutralize them. The devs designed them to have weaknesses that we can learn and exploit.
Custom mobs in the MA don't work that way: we haven't seen them and don't automatically know all their strengths and weaknesses, and their power level can vary widely. This is a serious problem that has to be dealt with somehow.
The devs could force custom mobs to follow the same standards as standard mobs. That would mean disallowing any kind of mez resistance for minions and LTs, capping damage, etc. Which would result in the sameness that everyone was hoping we could escape from.