Ironblade

There's a lot of ground between 'soloable' and 'faceroll the keyboard easy'. All of that content you mention is absolutely soloable. The new, optional 'hard modes' are designed to be hard but they apply to task forces that most people can't solo anyway.

Actually, the badge requirements are high enough that people generally farm those badges, even on a 'healer'. I have two comments: 1) The character you enjoy playing the most is probably the best choice. Some badges will take a LONG time and require that you play the character A LOT. For example, the badges for earning influence. The last badge is for half a billion inf and selling stuff doesn't count - only kills and mission completion rewards. Also dealing damage, taking damage and debt. All are 'farmable' but it's easier if you get most those badges without trying during the course of normal play. 2) One consideration is that some characters are not great for soloing. As an example, a badger friend back on live, who played a mind/empathy controller asked to team with me for the Ouroboros challenge badges (i.e. no enhancements, enemies buffed, etc) because it was a really tough slog for him and relatively easy for my scrapper. FYI, my main character and only badger is Ironblade, who is broadsword/regen. I made him back in the day because I thought it sounded like a good starter character to learn the game and never looked back. I remade him on Homecoming and he has every badge at this time.

Like others, I'm guessing you meant 'shards'. I only play on Homecoming, but I have Ironblade at level 50 on every shard. I have four characters on Excelsior that I play in regularly scheduled teams and the rest of my characters are on Everlasting.

Go big or go home. I had a dark/dark/dark on live and his name was Dark Lord Darkness. 🙂

This is correct. In the situation described, that lone person could have gotten the badge if they could deal enough damage. I've done this on my scrapper - being a solo attacker and doing at least 10% of the damage by myself out of a total of nine attackers (not that hard on any DPS focused character). Dividing the teams more evenly would have pretty much guaranteed everyone the badge. Just make sure to distribute the DPS-ers.

I guess because of the involvement of NCSoft. Assuming it even happens. The MMO is "reportedly in the works".

eh, it's funny. It's like the guy (I forget on which shard) who does this question and answer thing: "I've got inf out the wazoo! You know why?" "Because I'm the goddam Stygian Owl, that's why!" He cracks me up. 🙂

For anyone else who might have questions, the gladiator matches are pretty simple. 1. Go to an arena console and select your gladiators. You must do this before starting a match. You'll need the Longbow Defender unlocked (which is earned by getting PvP rep). You'll want two of them plus low-cost 'padders' to be healing targets. 2. Start the match. You need to specify it as a gladiator match and want the victory condition to be death (1 or more) and not a timer. 3. Invite people to the match. Everyone involved must have selected their gladiators in advance. 4. I think you need to set your gladiators to defensive posture or something to get the Longbow to start spamming their heals. Bunch everyone up as close together as possible. 5. Profit. Keep everyone on team 1 far away from team 2. There is to be no fighting. The way I did this for the healing badges back on live, was to use my second account on one side and everyone else on the other side. If we had more than 8 people working on the badges, I would divide them between the two teams. And we often did have more than 8 people because, once upon a time, you needed to heal 1 billion points for the final badge - which was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE without farming it. Positron admitted it was due to a typo but they left it that way a long time once we started getting the badges by farming. Eventually, they reduced the badge requirement by a factor of ONE HUNDRED, making it possible (but crazy tedious) without farming. And, of course, it continued to be impossible if you had no healing power of your own. For some context of how crazy the initial requirement was - I cycled my character through other peoples' SGs to get them the three SG heal badges since that unlocked base items. In the process of getting the badges for a few dozen players over the course of 1-1/2 years, I earned all three SG healing badges for FORTY-SEVEN different SGs. Having said all of that, there's another way to get the healing badges now that we have incarnate powers. Get the Destiny power that gives +HP - this counts as healing done. Go to Mercy Island where the troops are arrayed near the base portal and set it to auto-fire. You'll want to be in task force mode to avoid being logged out. Yay! Detailed info on the healing badges in the 'Immortal badge' thread. 🙂

I used the gladiators to get the healing badges on Homecoming. I have not used Arena matches for any other category of badges (aside from the badges specifically for Arena matches).

But this isn't how the game actually is, so it's a nonsensical hypothetical. There ARE other players in the game and there is constant market activity. You conflate the terms wealth and money here, but they are not the same thing. I can have a base full of purples, ATO's, etc or I can have a few billion influence. Either way, I have considerable wealth. The only differences are liquidity and that the enhancements fluctuate in value. It's rather like the difference between owning cash and owning shares of stock.

That whiny person needed to piss off. Multiple events recruiting in the same place happens and people deal with it. The only person who should have been ashamed was the person chastising you and the other leader for recruiting in the same place. But, in my experience, idiots like that have no shame. The big point of etiquette is that some of the shards have specific iTrials (or other events) scheduled each evening. Don't step on their scheduled events. If anyone ignored etiquette at all in your situation, it was the person who started recruiting WHILE YOU WERE ALREADY RECRUITING. They were rude and should have waited.

Nope. Your figures leave out the value of the enhancement, which the market determined to be 2 million inf. First you say, "What you've done is moved some wealth around..." and later "There is actually *less* inf in the game..." Yes, there is less INF in the game by the end of the exchange, but there is more WEALTH. Your summary states, "Between them, there is a total of 99,700,000 inf in the game world. 300,000 inf is gone for good." Absolutely correct, but one of those players also has the enhancement with a market-assigned value of 2 million, so there is more WEALTH.

No, they're not. The majority of players simply don't care about teammates' builds unless it's a Master badge run, a Hard Mode task force or something like that. I know a number of people who don't bother with a 'real build' until they get to level 50 and either use SO's or common IO's until they get there. Will you sometimes run into a 'build cop' on a regular task force? Sure. There are idiots everywhere. Unless they're the team leader, chuckle and ignore them. If they are the team leader, find a team led by a non-idiot. I run the weekly task forces multiple times a week and I couldn't care less about anyone's build. P.S. On a side note, it has never been farming or marketeering that has funded my builds. It's those multiple weekly strike targets with the double merits. P.P.S. Also, a 'proper build' can be shockingly cheap. I built an invuln tank for regeneration. It cost me under 40 million inf back on live to get close to 350% regen. That wouldn't let me tank a Master of Statesman TF but it let me breeze through 90% of the task forces.

That doesn't seem accurate. If I buy a garbage recipe (anything selling under 10,000 inf), craft it, and use converters to turn it into an enhancement worth 2 million, have I not created wealth? I took ingredients worth 600K or 700K and turned the value into 2 million. If I then price the enhancement low enough that it sells instantly, have I not shared that wealth by allowing someone to buy something they want at a lower price than they would have been able to otherwise? I actually do this, which is why this example immediately sprang to mind.

Well, to me, the phrase "recent weeks" would seem to line up with the Halloween event. Every enemy you defeat (that isn't grey to you) has a chance to drop a purple. And Peregrine Island on every shard has a non-stop Trick or Treat farm going where enemies are being killed non-stop at a prodigious rate. I would think that is boosting the supply in the short term.

Really?? How can you just post that picture instead of an actual video. I mean, a guy with a mohawk playing Thunderstruck on flaming bagpipes. When you look up the world 'awesome' in the dictionary, it has this guy.

Ah, now it's all clear. That was a Hard Mode task force. Compared to that, Master runs are (typically) much easier. Most characters should expect to die repeatedly on a PUG hard mode run, which is what this sounds like. With people who play together often and have discussed what character each person is bringing, you can do the hard mode runs with just a handful of deaths. I've done 1 and 2 star runs with less than 10 deaths and I was on a 4 star run where I died about 8 or 9 times and the entire team had 30-something deaths.

Because you can't. Every team leader can pass the team star to someone on their team and the league leader can pass the league star. You can't promote a person to team leader unless they're on your team. So you have to communicate to someone on the team to promote someone. You need to identify who should get promoted (and move them to that team, if necessary). Then you probably need to send tells and often GO TO ALL CAPS to get their attention. Frequently, they are oblivious and you need to follow KaizenSoze's advice - which doesn't work if the league is full. Exactly what I had to do. Luckily I wasn't running the ToT league in prime-time so it fluctuated between four and five teams so I always had slots open to shuffle people around.

That's not my recollection. Maybe there were some vocal complainers, but my impression was that most badgers didn't care because the PvP badges weren't as stupidly grindy as, for example, the healing and damage taken badges. I had all the PvP badges back on live and I have them all on Homecoming. Also, while the PvP zones weren't the ghost towns that they are today, they were NEVER busy zones.

Yomo did post, but in another thread.

Well, you can sort of get one of those now. When you meet any of the conditions to unlock Cimerora, it becomes available as one of the destinations when you are exiting Ouroboros.

Some people (myself included) find running task forces to be more FUN. This is a game, so fun is my primary metric. Of course, I can have fun efficiently. Occasionally, when the Dr Q TF is the weekly, I'll solo it - with 3 accounts logged in. So that's 744 merits for me. Also, diminishing returns is not relevant unless you only have 1 or 2 characters. I'll certainly agree with you that task forces are not the best way to earn inf; not even close. Some people farm for fun and relaxation, and some people hate farming. Some people enjoy marketeering and some hate it and/or can't be bothered to learn it. Task forces are an OPTION. Personally: I find farming boring; I enjoy marketeering (and that's where a lot of my inf comes from); I enjoy running task forces (and have over 40,000 rewards merits lying around).

I thought about this and concluded that, if I really want those extra Aether, I could just turn off XP so they won't level during the ToT carnage.

So you probably haven't seen the related changes. There's also a whole bunch for the hero and villain epic AT's that Ieft out. Level Availability Changes Primary Sets (non-Epic ATs) Tier 8 powers moved from level 26 to level 22 Tier 9 powers moved from level 32 to level 26 Secondary Sets (non-Epic ATs) Tier 2 powers moved from level 2 to level 1 (character creation) Tier 7 powers moved from level 28 to level 24 Tier 8 powers moved from level 35 to level 28 Tier 9 powers moved from level 38 to level 30 Epic Pools Tier 3 powers moved from level 41 to level 38

I have seen several people express the opinion that the current market conditions are anomalous and are caused by people moving away from AE farming to Trick or Treat farming - which drops hardly any salvage or recipes but can quickly get you 10 Prismatic Aether. If their conclusions are accurate, wait about two weeks and things should start moving back toward 'normal'.