Parabola

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.

The game economy works exactly like a real world economy. Are you seriously expecting us to believe that?

Really hoping this is a joke. Good rant though. Just on the off chance you're actually serious, can I have your stuff?

I haven't checked the most recent mids updates but a while ago I found it's numbers for brute EA were all off. It was a pleasant surprise to find myself softcapped in game before I thought I should be.

Yeah that would have been huge. Of course back when they were putting the mechanics together there was no way for most characters to hit the softcaps without outside help anyway so it didn't matter. A similar effect could possibly be achieved with the current mechanics by using the AT modifier that applies to powers like weave and applying it to defence set bonuses. Then a tank would get more out of a defence set bonus than a blaster and there would be far fewer softcapped squishies running around. I genuinely think the game would be better for these kind of measures but appreciate that I have a bit of a hardline purist system approach that isn't shared by everyone. If the recent rage over the inflation curbing measure (that far too many people are still failing to understand) is anything to go by, a change like this could melt the internet :).

I have to agree about not wanting to see zapp be reduced in damage. The fast snipe change was a huge buff to elec blast as it was desperately lacking a single target attack chain. Damage could be added to tesla cage but the weak link power to my mind is really voltaic sentinel. If that could be buffed to the extent that it genuinely made up for the lack of a third tier blast then elec blast would be in a pretty good place. I suppose overall I'm not seeing the need to have a chaining mechanic in elec blast simply for the sake of it.

Well it made me smile.

Beat me to it. People are really failing to see the wider picture with this change. Ultimately all it is chaging is the ratio of inf to drops that are being added to the market, and that will limit inflation. Printing money does not help the economy, it doesn't work like that in the real world and neither does it in the game. Farmers will either continue farming, do some other content more often or rage quit. Any of those outcomes is the same for the economy: less inf is being added to the economy per drop and that will limit inflation.

Music to many of our ears I'm sure. Please include greater reward for harder content and smoothing out the disparity between earning potential between high level and low level play. Oh and maybe tweaking drop rates so that taking down hard targets is rewarding in proportion to the time it takes vs mowing down a sea of minions?

I'm staggered that there are people trying to push the argument that printing money is somehow good for the economy. That experiment has been tried many times in the real world and it never ends well. Creating more goods and higher value goods however enriches the economy. Farming is still going an effective means of wealth generation, both directly and indirectly from selling drops. Prices on the market are capped and currently sit nowhere near those caps. There is no doom here. Farm if you want to farm. Marketeer if you want to marketeer. Go hunt kill skulls otherwise. Also try to stay safe in these unprecedented times and keep a sense of perspective.

Great work devs. That is all :).

I love this idea Yeah this is a neat idea. The trick would be how to prevent the new enemies from being absolutely lethal to the non-incarnate members of the team. The voids work because they are deadly to the Keldians but not that much more dangerous than regular enemies to the other members of the team. The same sort of setup would mean that incarnate characters would have to be in some way more vulnerable to these new enemies than non-incarnate characters. It would be quite fun to watch a tier 4 incarnate running like a scalded cat and having to be bailed out by the lowbies that are just tagging along most of the time. It would certainly alter team dynamics a bit - "We've got 6 incarnates on this team, we'd better recruit a couple of lowbies or we're going to get owned".

The immediate problem would be that not all enemies scale up to 50. A hellion is very limited in their powers and even if his stats were boosted he'd still be a total walkover compared to a real level 50 mob. There would have to be quite a bit of enemy redesign to get this idea to work.

Hmm, confused and absurd? Thanks :). I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion I was talking about batman or vigilantism at all from my post though? My points were simply that in my opinion: A) Overwhelming power isn't inherently heroic. The person who is in more personal danger has a greater opportunity to demonstrate heroism in any given crisis. B) I am simply not a fan of the kind of storytelling that is common in 'high level' superhero stories. The need to raise the threats to more and more overblown levels just removes all connection to the story for me. Both of these points were my thoughts about the idea that the high level game felt more heroic than the low level game. I am offering a different opinion. Getting back on topic this difference of opinion is indicative of what we are seeing here in a broader sense. I firmly believe that several parts of the incanate system are generally a detriment to the late game and if I had my way I would make sweeping changes to them. From comments others have made I don't think I am alone in this. However it is also clear that many others feel just as strongly that the incarnate system is fine or even perfect as it is. I doubt anything very much can be said by advocates of either point of view to change any minds, this being the internet after all ;). Both of these positions are just opinions. Neither are inherently right or wrong. At the end of the day the only thing that really matters is how the devs see it. I'm sure they have seen these conversations about the incarnate system and late game difficulty in general and will have noted the points made by everyone. If they think there is anything worth addressing I am sure they will do their best to please everyone (and best of luck with that!).

The other way to go with swap ammo would be to juice up what it does a little. The idea of being able to tailor your damage type and secondary effects depending on the enemy is thematic and awesome but the reality is a bit underwhelming. If a greater percentage of the damage was moved from lethal to be fire/cold/toxic it would feel a fairer exchange for aim. The raw damage values could perhaps use a little love too...

Going off on a tangent here but it's funny how subjective everything is. I see the game in many respects the other way around. At low levels I find the threats are more believable and there is more opportunity for heroism due to the lack of overwhelming personal power. Who is acting more heroically, the man off the street who confronts a mugger or superman who is impervious to injury doing the same? I like it when the threats are more down to earth. Disrupting a gang's drug distribution network is just so much more real than closing down the multidimensional portals of cosmic travellers trying to lead the invasion from the planet zog. It's a problem that has infected the superhero movie genre, threats have become more and more overblown and removed from reality. I find myself caring less and less because none of it feels in any way real. Superheroes are obviously fiction but they need the context of living in our world. The superman story would have been meaningless if it hadn't been set on earth and he hadn't been shown living amongst us. He wouldn't have been 'super man', he'd have been 'just another alien'. Too often the real world is just presented as a backdrop to be blown up with flashy special effects while a villain of arbitrary power is defeated by a hero to prove that his arbitrary power level has increased slightly since the last film. Anyway, what were we talking about again?

The one that has been bothering me recently isn't an armour power at all. Frozen fists in the ice melee set has no min fx option to match the min fx settings for all the ice armour powers. It looks really silly having the huge ice blocks appear on your arms when the rest of you just has the more subtle frosty fx.

Sadly there is apparently a massive technical limitation preventing this from happening. Something to do with the server architecture for both bases and the auction house. It would be nice though.

Yup, the incarnate system was badly designed. Allowing everyone access to nukes, pets and big buffs just served to homogenise the AT roles and unbalance the high level game as there was nowhere to go with the difficulty curve (particularly with the level shift in regular content - what were they thinking?!). Turning everyone into a tankmage can be individually fun but it's bad for the game. All imo of course :).

I kind of agree about bombardment being a little lacklustre now. Yes it has more recharge enhancement than posi's blast now but builds generally have so much global recharge that it rarely matters. If I have a long recharge taoe such as a nuke it's getting an ato or purple set that offer more recharge anyway. And the resist bonus for six slotting is ... eh. I have recently built a dark tank which in the whole game is probably the character most wanting to patch up an energy hole and it was far simpler to just softcap e/n defence than mess about with resistance. I still think s/l defence in the sixth slot would have been more generally useful. Artillery is looking decent. I'd have given it a +range bonus as well for both the utility and the theme of it. At least it's a set I can see myself using, bombardment just doesn't make the grade unfortunately.

Racing ahead of the group to take on a fresh spawn leaving squishies behind to deal with the bosses that were too much effort to kill. Endemic in the late game and it annoys me every time.

UniqueDragon, is that you?

The early games rushes by now even if you don't get someone to pl you in ae. Get the 2xp boost from the pay to win vendor and do a few death from below trials and you'll be well on your way. That said in terms of AT's brutes are considered easy to get going because of the fury mechanic reducing the need for damage slotting. All the melee AT's are pretty straightforward though but really speaking the character you'll have the easiest time levelling is the one you like the best.

The same thought had occurred to me. I think a discussion should be had about the balance of Dark Regeneration itself; it isn't ideal that a single proc is being relied upon to make a power practical to use. The power has a fairly brutal end cost in exchange for a massive heal, if the end cost could be reduced the heal per target could also come down without seriously compromising its utility.

Not in front of mids or the game at the minute for the proper name of it but the sustain is built into the handclap ability you get at 20.