EmperorSteele

Macskull, you raise many good points, but I want to pick at the "right tool for the job" one. Because, you're 100% correct, but for some people, that's a bitter pill to swallow. They want THEIR character, who they've spent time writing and perfecting a bio for, gotten the badges with, is recognized by the community and has been built up by the in-game lore as being this awesome force in the in-game universe... they want THAT character to be able to do well. These are characters that the players have put time and care and love into, and it'd be nice if that investment paid off across the entire game, PvP included. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that someone with terrible power choices and slotting should be able to pwn just because they happen see themselves as "the main character". There still has to be build investment and thought put into it. But I also think work needs to be made that makes certain powers/sets/entire ATs more viable. I just wish we knew how to accomplish that, this time withOUT alienating the existing PvP base!

When you did Max's arc, did you find/release the Malta operatives? Because you can choose not to, but then you miss a mission and don't get credit for it.

So, when deleting enhancements, there's supposed to be a "Whiishhhh" sound, but instead it plays the sound that's normally played when slotting an enhancement. Players destroying zone geometry, and AVs spamming their ultimate attacks are one thing, but this sound bug makes the game literally unplayable! jk, put it on the back-burner, just wanted to give you all a heads up!

*claps* making patches and bug fixes on weekend, you guys really do go all-out for the community!

For PvP to be as balanced as possible, while still allowing various ATs to function the way they're supposed to, there needs to be a core philosophy put into place to build around and then maybe allow exceptions to, instead of just saying "Mezzes too short/Defense buffs don't work" etc. No disrespect to Alouu, who clearly knows what they're talking about, but I also don't see what purpose a lot of these changes accomplish, and how they would get non PvPers to want to PvP (caveat, I mean ones who are amenable to doing so, not rabidly anti-PvP folks like Frostbiter). Would these changes stop everyone from taking SS/SJ and zipping around like madmen -thus making them the only viable set of travel powers? Would these changes allow people to successfully PvP with just about any decent build instead of having to take certain powers or invalidating entire primaries or secondaries? Do they give a relatively new player a decent chance at surviving their first encounter with a PvP zone? Probably not. I suspect it's just "to make 8v8 PvP a little smoother", which is fine and all, but I feel we can do better than that! So the core philosophy I would introduce is a sliding scale of Offense/Control versus Defense/Survivability. You can 1-shot someone? Great, but then you should also die in one hit, as well. Can you take a dozen hits before going down? Cool, but it's going to take you a dozen hits to take anyone else down, too. And there would be active effects buffing/debuffing players as necessary to ensure they don't go too far off-curve. Now, such a philosophy does have it's drawbacks. For instance, if we turn Stalkers into 1-hit wonder glass-canons, that invalidates their entire secondary. A Brute's Fury would have to give them a -Def/-Res debuff while it buffs their damage output. Heck, even slotting too many damage enhancements might have to give a character a -HP or -Res debuff. Would this apply to buffs and debuffs as well, or would they be the "exception" and the saving grace of being on a team? Do we allow Controllers and Dominators to do what they're supposed to do, or do we either invalidate their primaries or everyone else's defenses? Mez being binary is a huge problem to overcome. And as much as I love procs, they either need to be invalidated or come with penalties for their use while in PvP. There's no easy answers to these problems. In fact, I suppose there are no right answers. But if anyone is ever going to "fix" PvP, it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And when we do so, there has to be a single guiding idea in mind. Whether that's "Perfect Balance", or just making one AT the best AT for lulz, or trying to make Teleport meta, or what have you.

Yeah, I tested out the Illusion change and did everything I could think of to break it (changing costumes while summoning, changing to a costume which didn't have custom pets applied while summoning, changing into a different gender while summoning, trying to use a prestige power to turn into something else while PA was spawning - which didn't work because I was locked out of using another power while PA was activating, etc). Ultimately, I found some niche uses for the changes, but nothing broken. The only thing I didn't try was zoning with them active >_>

I kinda both love and hate you right now.

^Title You can only see it when stealth'd/invis'd, but it's there!

I don't recall Cole specifically hunting magic users, though I may be mistaken. I do know that the RIKTI purposefully went after magic users, because they were originally not prepared to deal with it and found themselves unable to stand against it. Though it would make sense as the only magic users we really see in Praetoria are in First Ward...

2nding Mind/Kin, but with some caveats. Mind is VERY Solo friendly, but admittedly is kind of easy mode. All the other Controller sets have an AoE immob power which, sure, does a little damage and sets up containment, but lets the bad guys still shoot you. Mass Hypnosis shuts. Down. EVERYTHING! And yeah, they'll wake up when attacked, but that's why you take your time cycling through Dominate, Levitate, then Mesmerize to put them BACK to sleep after. Then, when everyone's weak and weary, blast them all with Terrorize so they all die screaming! Kin just makes this all go faster, with Siphon Speed, Siphon power and Fulcrum Shift. And you need it to go faster, because admittedly, while this is the safest way to play, it's also the slowest. You won't be doing +4/x8 missions on your own without some serious IO/incarnate help, and a soloing AVs might be out of your reach unless you build right (in contrast to a lot of other controller builds which can solo AVs or even GMs with just SO's)

haha, same, Kinda kicking myself for not going all-in. Still, now that this is an obvious choice, I wonder how much that's going to affect things. Like, it's gonna take a lot longer to sell the packs if there's tens of thousands of competing postings. Maybe some people will be patient and post them a few months after the event ends instead of immediately?

I agree with the OP, I feel like this sort of thing should be labled. Hell, sometimes I can't tell if something is supposed to be tech salvage or magic salvage (apparently regenerating flesh is supposed to be science based while a psionic threat report is somehow magical?), and clear lables would help my OCD!

The result was probably a now-subpar attack chain. On Live, if I use Contaminated Strike every-other attack, it keeps bruising up, and hence, my damage. But now that it's just a weak attack... Well, I'm probably better off using other abilities! So perhaps my methodology was flawed. On Live, I was attacking to take full advantage of the debuff... on Test, I failed to take advantage of anything "new" and, perhaps was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak? I thought maybe I was being clever, trying to see if doing the exact same thing would yield similar results or not, in order to fully test whether or not the changes had any impact on damage. But since multiple things were changed... Well, it's the kind of thing that made sense in my head until I had to put it into words and now I'm not so sure about it all =/

The current highest amount is 1525, but there's still a few badges that haven't come up yet, such as the some of the Valentines badges and the Nemesis event badge. Some other badges, like the anniversary badges, can only be obtained during the month of May. At the current moment, if you started right NOW, and somehow got all the currently achievable badges in like, a week, the most you could get is about ~1460, because you wouldn't be able to get most of the Halloween/Winter Event/Valentines/anniversary badges (though some of the winter badges can be bought with candy canes), nor "Until the End of the World" for the 1500 badges badge. [EDIT] it occurred to me that getting all the day jobs would take longer than a week, but, you get the point!

It's the kind of thing where it's not possible to actually GET anything other than a level 50, buuuut it's still hypothetically possible? Like, I think, if they wanted to, a Dev or GM could create and grant a level 25 or 53 Hami-O with a command, and the game would just downscale it/upscale it automagically. The main reason for these unobtainable things to exist on the market is for people to dump their extra billions of inf (since the inf cap is 2billion), knowing that the order will never be filled, since the items don't actually exist. And, on the ultra rare, nearly impossible off-chance someone DOES snag a level 53 Hami-O and post it, well... then someone just paid 2billion inf for the rarest prize in the game, so money well spent!

It... kinda is? See, here's the thing: the bad guy has X amount of HP. The time it takes to deal X damage is an indicator of how much damage you're doing. We usually call this Damage per Second, but w/e. I only chose an AV to fight because they actually last longer than a minute, but they're also not a freakin' Pylon, which are really hard to put down without specifically building for that task. So if my time on Live is 5.5 minutes, and my time on Test, with an exact copy of that build, can only do it in 7, then it's clear that I've lost damage output. At least as far as single targets go. The HC devs removed bruising, but gave a flat damage increase to compensate. However, it doesn't seem to have compensated enough, otherwise my times would be much closer. That said, I'm not sure how much higher their AT mod should go without making them "too" strong.

Bump because I'm curious about this, too. I played it for like, a day at launch (or maybe it was the open beta, i forget), but didn't find myself enjoying it as much as I thought I would. Been wanting an excuse to try it out again, but never got around to it.

No, Judgements are clearly AoEs and can't be enhanced anyway =P /s

Not yet, but Jimmy told me it's something they're looking at. I would assume they want to do a pass at all Lore powers to make them customizable, but that's just my own theory.

I know it's too late to reverse course on any of this, but after doing some testing on my own, I'm not 100% thrilled with the changes. My testing consisted of putting Nictus Romulus (level 50 AV) in an AE mission and beating him up (with an Invuln/Rad), recording my time. I did this on Live, transferred over, and tried it a few times on test. On Live, I beat him in an average of 5.5 minutes. On Test, it was 7 minutes. So, not horrible, but not exactly an upgrade, either. I'm sure I could make some build changes to make the difference back up, so it's not a huge deal. Even so, thanks for all the care and effort you're putting into all this! It's awesome that you're actively developing the game instead of just opening a server and letting it languish!

Unslotters are a decent option, too. They typically go for about 150K, depending on timing and supply. Once you've made some money (like over 100Mil), a slow but steady path is to buy up Super packs (Heroes and Villains or Rouges and Vigilantes; avoid the winter pack as they go for 25m each), open them up, and sell what you can. The ATOs go for about 7.5-9 Million each, though the Brute ones will easily sell at 11/12 million. Then you get stuff like unslotters, converters, boosters and catalysts that you can sell, also. In addition, you get Brain Storm Ideas in stacks of 20, which can be crafted into Rare Salvage and sold for about 500k each. And finally, you'll get merits in stacks of 25, allowing you to buy more stuff to sell! A 10Mil Pack can be worth almost double its value if you're lucky... but if you're unlucky, you won't get ANYTHING to sell, instead getting respecs, free tailor sessions and hour-long boosts. One neat thing you can get is the "Windfall" temp power, which can't be sold/traded, but increases your inf rewards and chances for rare drops while playing. So while you can't sell it, you can activate it and marathon a few TFs, hopefully walking away with several million inf and maybe a purple recipe by the end! I usually get 5 packs at a time, and get on average 7 ATOs out of the deal, plus several of the other things. The ATOs even me out, and the extras (boosters, unslotters, etc) are the gravy that are pure profit. If you're willing to forgo profit, then you can use that stuff for your alts and save them the cost 😃

Only had a few slowdowns during the monstermash, but I feel that was more my graphics card choking than anything to do with latency/data/etc. Well done all around! And DAMN, Helen, that looks like a painting XD

... "Fixed a bug that allowed players to inadvertently delete the geometry of entire zones " Why would you patch this?! It sounds hilarious! jk, keep up the awesome work!

So, while I concure with the general sentiment in this thread, and totally understand and agree with the plan Jimmy has laid out, well... *looks at server stats page during peak hours* When HC launched, there were queues to play. The servers were always at 3 red dots. The total number of players was in the mid to ten thousands. But now? The total player population seems to have gotten Thanos'd. This can be attributed to lack of interest, which stems from lack of new content. If we lose many more players, then we're gonna end up with server consolidation on the table (and all the drama that comes with it) because why in the heck would we be paying for five servers when everyone could comfortably play on one or two? This will come into play especially if the few hundred people left can't fork over 5k a month. We need to grow to survive, so hopefully we see something soon! /doooooom!

There was a bug which caused Rikti drones to explode 10 times when killed. Made the LGTF look like a Michael Bay movie on the fourth of july!