Parabola

They could remove the option to vendor anything. If the only choices were between selling everything on the market or deleting it would certainly cut into the earning power at the high end. *Ducks behind sofa*.

I'm probably going to post my build at some point, I'm still levelling and refining it but it is already turning into an absolute monster. If mids is to be believed when I've got the final pieces in place I should have enough accuracy/to-hit to reliably hit +4 enemies even when a power doesn't have any accuracy of its own. How endurance sustainable the whole thing is going to be remains to be seen...

Great - thanks for that. Good news for my build :).

I figure this is as good as any place to ask this - I saw someone saying somewhere that pseudopets only use accuracy that is slotted directly into them and not global accuracy bonuses. Is this correct? Does anyone know if they are affected by tactics? I'm trying to work out how best to slot Acid Arrow in Trick Arrows - it can take so many procs that I'd like to use 5 damage procs and an achilles heel and simply use my global acc and to-hit to make it hit. But I imagine it is a pseudopet? Or is the initial effect a normal attack and the continuing effect a pseudopet?

Dark Blast in both it's defender/corruptor and blaster incarnations relies on cones for it's aoe damage outside of the nuke. The fact that it has a pbaoe nuke is a little awkward given that cones force you to play at range but that isn't the subject of this suggestion. Cones come with something of a usage tax - they have target caps of 10 and they require a little lining up to use well. Dark Blast as a set adds to this issue by being a bit all over the place with the shape of the cones it has. I think the set could be made more user friendly with some tweaks to the ranges and arcs of the cones: Night Fall (defender and corruptor) Current: Range 60, Arc 20 Proposed: Range 60 (or 50), Arc 30 The uncontroversial suggestion will I believe be that Night Fall needs more arc. Buffing this to 30 degrees seems reasonable. If this absolutely has to come at the expense of range for balance reasons then lowering the range to 50 would bring the area covered by the cone back to something like what it currently is (using (pi*radius2)*arc/360 gives us (pi*602)*20/360 = 628.3 and (pi*502)*30/360 = 654.5). Even with this range reduction a 50/30 cone would I think be more useful than a 60/20 one. Torrent (defender and corruptor) Current: Range 80, Arc 30 Proposed: Range 60, Arc 30 (or 35/40) Umbral Torrent (blaster) Current: Range 80, Arc 30 Proposed: Range 60, Arc 30 (or 35/40) Torrent and Umbral Torrent are exactly the same shape and my issue with them both is the same so I have lumped them together. This may be a harder sell but my thinking is as follows: When you are using multiple cones in combat your effective range to the mobs is set by your shortest cone. You are already having to maneuver in order to line up the cones to your best advantage but if you are anything like me that doesn't include moving back and forward depending on the range of each cone you are about to use. I tend to sit at around the maximum range of my shortest cone and fire everything off from there. As things stand Tenebrous Tentacles is setting this distance at an unmodified range of 40. Torrent and Umbral Torrent blast way past this range and I have a habit of hitting unaggroed mobs behind those currently being fought (particularly with global +range bonuses). I therefore find the extra range these powers have to be a handicap rather than an advantage. So, I believe reducing the range of Torrent and Umbral Torrent would actually be a buff rather than a nerf. If the loss of affected area is too much to stomach then we could also look at widening the arc a little to compensate. The current area is a massive 1675.5 (no idea what these units are!). Using range 60/arc 30 would give 942.5, range 60/arc 35 would give 1099.5, and range 60/arc 40 would give 1256.6. These numbers are smaller (quite a bit in some cases) but as discussed I don't find the end part of the range 80 cone to be all that useful anyway. I'd be happy enough to reduce the range and simply lose the extra area but would be delighted with an arc increase to either 35 or 40 degrees. Tenebrous Tentacles (defender, corruptor and blaster) Current: Range 40, Arc 40 Proposed: Range 40 (or 50), Arc 40 I don't think Tenebrous Tentacles really needs changes. Having said which more range would always be welcome to line it up better with the other cones in the set. If this could be extended to 50 then that would set a new 'base range of engagement' to launch the other cones from (I'm assuming that nearly every dark blast player regardless of AT takes this power). This extension would also make it easier to equalise the lengths of the cones using range enhancement - at ED cap it is possible to extend a 40 power to just over 60 but it is generally impractical alongside other slotting priorities, 50 to 60 is much easier. I'm not sure I'd want to see it's arc reduced though so if that would be the only option I'd probably prefer to leave it where it is (at 40/40 its area is 558.5, to get a similar area at range 50 the arc would have to fall below 30). So those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading, I welcome any comments.

That's really quite sad. I feel bad for your characters now! I've never been a backstories kind of guy but when I first started playing on homecoming I did have a kind of similar idea. I was thinking of writing bios for all my alts that linked them to a single event. A kind of mass origin story that would be revealed part by part in each bio. Then I remembered that I lack the writing chops to pull that off and that no-one would end up reading it all anyway... It was good in my head though!

I'm going to ask the question why? The OP is missing any explanation of what you think would be achieved by removing the argo cap (as it will henceforth forever be known). How do you think it might improve gameplay? How do you see it affecting team dynamics for the better?

This was the perfect inspiration to finish off my carnival illusionist. She looked like this before which I wasn't totally happy with: Now she looks like this: A still image hardly does her justice. The way the various patterns and colours interact with each other when in motion is awesome. So many thanks Jawbreaker, I hope you don't mind me lifting some ideas from you.

It's just a no whichever way you look at it I'm afraid. OP this really isn't the way to address a subject either. Starting a topic by the text equivalent of shouting that anyone who disagrees with what you are about to say is wrong is just going to annoy people. I'm not sure how new you are around here but this community is full of people who not only know the mechanics of this game inside and out but who bring all sorts of knowledge from the outside world. There are many developers and analysts and other seriously qualified people playing this game for fun. It is always better to approach any topic with humility and work under the assumption that someone else may know a lot more about it than you.

I prefer the ice sword to the fire sword by a country mile but there's no accounting for taste or so they say!

I'd like to add a minimal fx option to frozen fists to the list as well please. If we're being really greedy greater ice sword could use some dpa love too. It's a bit meh at the minute.

Just to reiterate this point. I think it's actually quite hard to build a blaster that doesn't do enough damage. I have an elec/mental and she kicks out plenty of damage despite elec being considered a weak primary. The thing is she has synergy and survivability. She can sit in melee range letting off a chain of aoe that results in complete safety once the drain kicks in. Sure another blaster could produce bigger numbers but dead mobs are dead mobs, having to use one more click to get there is neither here nor there. This is particularly important if you are going to be running as just a duo with your friend. Whatever the other character you aren't going to be able to cover all the bases. If they go meatshield you aren't going to have buffs/heals to support you. If they go support then the mobs will tend to swarm you. In just a duo I would look to go a little multi-role rather than all out damage dealer. A brute and a corruptor or a controller and a corruptor might be something to consider, or at least using a blaster that can offer more than just straight damage.

Maybe you can point out the part you find offensive because I'm not seeing it? He is speaking from a position of knowledge, addressing yet another post in this thread that is trying to claim that 'water isn't wet' in economic terms. And incidentally the post he is addressing is the one that contains the genuinely offensive material. The only part of SwitchFade's post that I'm on the fence about is whether Uruare is genuinely motivated by nefarious intent or is simply repeatedly demonstrating ignorance of economics. I can understand reaching the conclusion he has given the time and effort he, myself and others have spent trying to explain how it actually works, only to see the same 'sky isn't blue' arguments in return. I'm more inclined to think that sadly people are just not prepared to listen to any information that disagrees with what they already believe, or what they want to believe.

If you are looking to run arcs for merits then the scrapper you are looking for might be a stalker. Stealth speeds things up considerably and stalkers get it at lv1. They also get more devastating burst single target damage which is all you really need for speed running. There are loads of good options, I'm a massive fan of km/ea, it gets going very quickly and ea can get very tough.

Ah damn. Looks like I missed the fun. Think I can work out what happened from the remaining posts though. On topic, in my entirely unscientific and limited view it looks like the weekend/new powerset bubble the market was experiencing has calmed down. The new IO sets are largely sinking into obscurity in market terms. It feels like over the last couple of days there has been quite a lot of conversion going on. Maybe more people have been made aware by these discussions?

This thread really is the gift that keeps on giving. Converters are being used to transform enhancements that no one wants into those that they do. The increased supply of desirable enhancements brings their cost down. The people doing the converting are indeed making a profit but they aren't exploiting anyone, in fact everyone benefits. Anyone can do this and if you don't want to buy from the market there are other options available (including sitting down with a stack of converters of your own and converting until you have exactly what you want).

I think this post highlights something important. We all hate gotchas. We all hate instant death patches, untyped and non-positional damage, and un-resistable mez (I think I'm speaking for everyone here, apologies if not). They feel cheap and unfair. But this is exactly the kind of mechanism that ends up being employed when you run out of road on the difficulty scale. If the players are so tough they can't be challenged within the standard curve developers end up having to go outside it. And no one likes it. But people also resist changes that would provide extra bandwidth for challenge, so this is the kind of thing we end up with. I want to see more difficulty at the high end of the game. That certainly doesn't mean I want more of these really irritating mechanics. What I want is to be able to build my characters to the best of my ability, play with others who do the same, and enjoy the same teaming dynamics into the incarnate game that I love so much in the mid game. There just needs to be more room in the difficulty curve in some way to accommodate this because at the moment, in much of the content, the game is being overwhelmed.

The semantics of whether it should have been classed as an exploit or not are irrelevant. Yes the devs described it as such but even if they hadn't it would still have been a game system that was producing an undesirable outcome and the fix would have been the same. A problem doesn't have to be whatever I, you, or they class as an exploit in order to be worth fixing. The fact that this has been around for a while and openly advertised on the forums suggests to me that the devs were probably taking a wait and see attitude as to whether to intervene. Perhaps it has taken a while to monitor whatever metrics they have to be sure that they needed to do something. Whatever the case a problem is a problem and it should be addressed, no matter how long it has been around.

The maps wouldn't need to be generated, there are a huge number of variants for the common map layouts. They could just be grouped into pools to be chosen at random. Anything to provide more variety.

Sigh. At least I have the mental capability to understand the comment I am responding to...

I'd actually go a bit further and argue that there is a danger that TO's could teach a complete newcomer that enhancements don't do anything. It's better if they feel a difference from the things they slot to learn the importance of doing so.

I don't mind the assertion that you don't like the change because it impacts on your playstyle. I get that and I sympathise. But I just don't understand how anyone can state with a straight face that them printing money is somehow doing me or anyone apart from themselves a favour. I made this point earlier but to reiterate, there is nothing inherently noble about farming. Farmers are not creating wealth for the masses, they aren't earning a wage, they are printing money. The only thing that helps the economy is producing recipes and enhancements, and improving the quality of enhancements for sale. Adding inf to the game is detrimental to everyone but the person producing it.

Oh absolutely yes please. I would love to go even further and be able to save customisations for certain powers that I could then use to overwrite what I see in the same way we can overwrite sound files we don't like. It is possible to make most powers far less intrusive than even the default settings using very washed out colours (not that you'd know it from the glaring eye assault most people choose). I have tried this but haven't had much luck. It didn't seem to have much effect on other people's powers? I tell you what does work though - turning all your graphics settings down to absolute minimum. The game looks terrible but it sure runs fast! It would be nice to not have to do this though.

Have you actually read any of the explanations given by the devs or by many of us in this thread as to why this change was made? I get that people don't like having the thing they do changed but the change really was necessary.

All of these points are talking about how employment differs in game from the real world, not the fundamentals of the economy. My comment was obviously somewhat reductive to keep it pithy but the basic premise holds; the in game economy functions in much the same way as a real one. In particular the factors that govern inflation which is what this change is all about. In game we are not salaried workers, we are all effectively self employed small companies. We spend time and effort to produce goods (recipes etc), that we can sell. We do also accrue inf, but this isn't being paid to us by another entity within the economy, it is appearing out of thin air. The real world equivalent is literally printing money and this creates an inflationary pressure on the market. Taking the wide view, the price of any in game good is set by the ratio of the availability of that good, the desirability of it and how much inf is swilling around in the game economy. Supply and demand, just like real life. If the supply drops, the price rises. If the demand increases, the price rises. And if the amount of inf in the system increases people will be prepared to pay more to compete for the same goods and prices again rise. The thing that really matters in terms of limiting inflation in the game is the ratio of the quantity of goods being added to the market vs the amount of inf being created. Anything that allows a greater amount of inf to be created per good added is bad for inflation. This change is designed to limit that and that is why it has been applied everywhere and not just in AE. I think one of the unhelpful misunderstandings is that people may think of in game farming as a particularly noble act. The word has connotations of creation, effort and dirt under the fingernails. But everyone playing any content in the game is nobly creating goods just the same as a farmer, the only difference being that a farmer does it faster. However everyone playing the game is also nefariously printing inf, watering down the currency, and again farmers are doing that faster too. With the exemped xp->inf and patrol xp they were printing much, much faster. I understand that people who farm a lot for the direct inf creation and who treat drops as a by product are upset by this change. I sympathise but feel this was a necessary change for the good of the whole playerbase.