Luminara

None of these new critters seem to pose much threat to melee characters. Even my Ice/Willpower sentinel and Dark/Martial dominator don't have problems with them (because they're melee characters (yes, they are (i said yes, they are))). The most trouble I've had was running out of patience with the Ancient Dickhead who spawned a second Dark Ass-hat when a fight went on too long, the mummies having Irritate Player and seeming to be the most common spawn, and the particle count on the Hollow Reaper (particle slider at minimum, /priorityboost 1 and i'm still dropping to single-digit framerates when they lean in). If that had happened on one of my TA/* or */TA characters, though, I would've been pasted before I finished animating Flash Arrow. Would be a nice code variable to add for next year... IfMelee=Yes, SpawnMOAR.

Solo, Peregrine Island. I clicked on a door and... a Spectral Werewolf came up from behind me, followed by an Arisen Mummy, while a Crone Matriarch hung out in the street. As soon as I defeated the sneak attacking Spectral Werewolf, another Spectral Werewolf spawned and attacked. These weren't someone else's spawn. According to the spawn rules recently posted, ToT spawns aggro on the door clicker, and all four of these ass-hats came after me. They weren't following someone else and came close enough for Entropic Aura to Taunt them, they appeared on the street 50' away (Entropic Aura's radius is 8') and came running over to me. Not running after someone, they spawned in the street (i heard the Crone Matriarch's Hurricane activate behind me, which was why i turned around and saw the EB party starting) and ran straight to me. And there was no-one else running this ToT route, at least no-one I could see or hear (i pay attention to my surroundings when doing things in zones, i don't want to disrupt someone else's routine). Even if there had been, again, aggro rules for ToT spawns would've made it very unusual for those EBs to attack me instead of the door clicker... and even if the clicker somehow escaped the EBs and left them just within visual range of my character, there wouldn't have been that many EBs. One would be a possibility. Two, a stretch, but perhaps two "lucky" clicks in a row could do it. Three, all of which the clicker managed to evade and deposit behind me? That stretches credulity to the breaking point. AND all of the EBs stuck around long enough for me to defeat them (except the Crone Matriarch, because i forgot she was there, jumped onto the top of the building and Tabbed out of the game to write this. when i realized she'd followed me and was attacking, i Tabbed back and returned the favor, but she die-despawned before i finished her off). So clearly, all of these were my spawn, from that one door. They had to be, or at least two of them would've despawned before I got around to dealing with them (remember that the second Spectral Werewolf didn't even appear until i defeated the first one, and the Crone Matriarch just hung out, hovering above the street, doing nothing while i fought the Werewolves and Mummy). Something's fucky.

That's not how the exemplar mechanic works. It applies a reduction to total values. If you exemplar a level 50 character down to 10, a level 50 Accuracy SO (you couldn't slot a level 10 SO in an attempt to bypass the exemplar mechanic, the game doesn't allow it) will be worth 8.2%, not 33.3%. Slotting a level 10 Accuracy IO under the same conditions does not grant the nominal 11.7% Accuracy, it grants 2.9%. Same thing happens with attuned IOs, set IOs, ATOs, everything. Replacing that level 10 Accuracy IO with a level 50 Accuracy IO results in a 10.3% increase in Accuracy. The mechanic was specifically designed to function in this manner to compensate for the increased number of slots available to higher level characters. The enhancements have a lower individual value than a native-level character's enhancements, but the character has a larger pool of slots with enhancements slotted, creating a degree of parity between the higher and lower level characters. All slotted enhancements are subject to the exemplar reduction, and attempting to bypass the reduction by slotting lower level enhancements just makes the exemplared character worse than the slot-starved native level character. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you do this. Don't do it.

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I hate fighting the mummy, so if one spawns after I've received the badge, I've started running away, but I found that just hopping up to the top of a nearby building was a better solution. Arisen Homeboy can't jump. Probably works on the vampire, too.

That adage is applied when speaking about a person, a reminder that it's discourteous to bad-mouth someone behind his/her back. It does not mean, "Agree with me or keep your mouth shut".

Stifling the freedom to speak isn't a solution. Taking away peoples' liberties isn't an answer. Excising the right to converse, discuss, debate, and even argue vehemently won't fix any problems. All this would do is foment unrest and incite rebellion. Open up any history book and see how well this tactic worked for institutions which attempted to use it. It would also make more work for the developers, because instead of having the mods keep a hand on threads, the developers would have to dig through every post to locate specific feedback amongst the edited-in arguments. Right now, they can rely on the mods to keep threads loosely on topic, log in with a secondary account and see the results and relevant feedback very quickly and easily. With this approach, it would be like flipping through the unabridged version of The Stand to locate specific passages, without having read it before.

I have copies saved on the laptop, tablet and phone, just in case! ... However, lacking adequate access to small children, I've been forced to use cats to appraise our plans. We're working on a ball of string plot at the moment, one which they've assured me will permit total domination on a global scale.

That's why we put the mango grove there. Ask the people who asked too many questions... oh, wait.

I'll start a conference call with the Organization of Really Evil Organizations and let you know what we decide. Until then, carry on, lieutenant.

Goddamn it, we're going to have to move Antarctica again.

"Sci-fi". Exactly. No-one knows it was a documentary, thanks to us. Continue the good work!

That's a different organization. Evil Organization is the one that put the "EEE! AYIE! EEE! AYIE! OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!" in Old MacDonald.

We're going to stream it on Twatch.

/cleartray

Worry not, my fellow conspirators, I've taken steps to ensure that they cannot read this. We may speak freely. Now, down to business. As you will all recall, some years ago, a concern about undesirable elements was raised, that they might disrupt our plans for a New World Order. After prolonged discussion, we agreed that the best approach would be to welcome them, embrace them like brothers and sisters, and make them feel comfortable in our regime... only to lower their guards so we could implement a years-long insidious plot to drive them away. It would require patience, perseverance, cunning and deception the likes of which many cannot imagine possible, but nothing which was not within our capabilities. From the outset, we would adopt and maintain identities as "the HC team", each of us posing as different members of a fictional development organization, so none of what we were doing could be traced back to us. Under the guise of "the HC team", we would garner "donations", which we would pocket (faith, comrades, in another century or two, we'll all be millionaires). We would implement minute adjustments and alterations to the game, specifically targeted at them, designed to frustrate and anger them, to make their experience in the game, their approaches to playing, so infuriating that they would leave. My loyal friends, I am pleased to report that the plan about which I just diabolically monologued is working. They are displeased. In another decade or three, they will all become so irritated that they will abandon the game, spending the rest of their lives wishing they had never picked it up again. However, some have asked why we did not simply refuse their petitions to join us. Why we did not take the expedient route of shutting off all XP and inf* in Architect content and implement timers to everything which could be farmed. Why we could not just as easily make badges unobtainable. Why we bothered to create a thriving and stable economy when we could have turned it into a hyper-inflated mess right away. Why we improve powers and sets when we should be nerfing. Why, essentially, we did not make them unwelcome in the first place, ban them, destroy what they loved and deny them the happiness they sought, rather than bother with a plan which would take decades to reach culmination and take up so much of our infinitely valuable free time. Well, the people who asked those questions are buried in our mango grove in Antarctica, because they were stupid questions. We are an Evil Organization, we use obscenely intricate plans with numerous failure points to create schemes which otherwise would only exist in fiction. This is how we do things. Remember that, or you, too, will disappear to become mango mulch. It has, however, come to my attention that some of them have begun to see through our clever plot and question the validity of our fictional personas, their motives and, surprisingly, even suspect that there might be a secret organization behind all of their misery. Go out, then, and sow discord amongst them. Keep them rattled by comforting and reassuring them, even as you scheme and plot behind their backs. Shake the very foundations of their belief in reality, so they may never know our true sinister purpose. Stay the course. And if anyone blabs, I'll eat your babies. As ever, Your Evil Overlord

You omitted a critical detail, that the feedback thread was inundated by people saying "Y U NO MAKE FF MY WAY DEVS?!?!?!", which was the reason the thread was reined in, and PK's posts were purged because they were part of that derailment. It had nothing to do with him, personally, he wasn't targeted, and it wasn't disrespectful, it was enforcement of the rules. Rules apply to everyone, big name or first-time poster. No favoritism or bias, not even for those of us who have been around "forever".

This is not what happened on the original servers. What happened on the original servers was the market was dumped on a population with trillions upon trillions of currency gathering dust simultaneously with the release of a brand new enhancement system (Inventions) with low drop rates on the most desired recipes, leading to immediate price spikes and runaway inflation before most players woke up to log in the next day. There was no economy on the original servers until Issue 9, because there was nothing to spend inf* on, and when Issue 9 did finally create an economy, that economy instantly went into hyper-inflation. Not eventually, instantly. In contrast, the HC market was set up with those lessons firmly in mind. Drop rates were increased across the board. Salvage, recipes, everything that can drop drops more frequently now. PvP recipes drop in PvE content. Merit rewards have been increased, expanded to a wider variety of content, and made easier to acquire. Merit prices for goods were slashed. The reward merit price for converters was changed from 10 merits for a single converter to 3 converters for a single reward merit... and converters can drop from critters now, even -49 critters. ATOs were made available to everyone, rather than only top tier customers. Salvage was seeded on the market, and pooled so no single salvage can be driven to a price above that of any other within its category. Influence sinks were added and made attractive enough to justify purchases. And abnormal influence gain via critter defeats has been addressed twice. Consequently, prices here started low and have only minimally increased over the years. There are currently two uncontrolled market areas, HOs and variants thereof, and Aethers, and even those aren't showing signs of rampant inflation. Despite the enormous amount of inf* currently floating around in the game, and more being generated at a pace and in amounts which would make Cryptic and Paragon freak out, inflation has still been so slow that it's almost imperceptible. We're playing in an economic golden age on these servers, in which everyone can have everything they want and still be richer than they imagined possible, and the impact on the market is so minute that it can't even be tracked without a spreadsheet covering more than a year. The HC server economy will never approach the economy on the original servers because it never started in the situation which was on the original servers. Whatever you think you recall about the original server's economy, or you believe someone once told you about it, this ain't that and it can't become that. Period. Lastly, one data point, taken when a Page was recently released and a holiday event is in progress, isn't even remotely sufficient to indicate anything. And using the threat of inflation to justify a "refund policy" is panic-mongering, playing on peoples' fears to achieve a goal. Don't do that. Just don't. We have enough FUD around here right now, we don't need more.

They can't. There are controls in place to prevent it. You've noted a miniscule temporary increase in the Buy Now price for rare salvage and turned it into a panic thread about rapid, rampant inflation spiraling out of control. Relax, Chicken Little, the sky's firmly nailed overhead.

When I started on HC a year before you did, rare salvage was selling for ~450,000 inf*, and I've never had bids fill for less than 325,000 inf*, no matter how long I left them. 500,000 inf* is perfectly reasonable and in line with my experience. And I did play on the original servers, for years. I remember the market situation painfully well. What we have on the HC servers is not experiencing the inflationary trends shown on the original servers. You're over-reacting to a minor fluctuation.

I'm seeing hyperbole. I've had to cut my prices on LotGs just to get them out of my inventory. Orange salvage prices went up slightly not long after a new Page was released, drawing players back and new players in? And that's indicative of spiraling inflation? Definitely hyperbole.

Why should you stop being you for the sake of a non-existent corporate entity that you don't represent and aren't employed by? Is this going on your CV? "Maintained a professional demeanor during interactions on a video game forum, despite being belittled, reviled and the subject of numerous conspiracy theories by bat-shit crazy motherfuckers who thought they were 'all that and a side of chips'"? Are you the person Karen is finally going to speak to, after all of these years? No? Then keep being you. Reminders that the HC team are people, too, are necessary, even in the best of times.