Ironblade

You are mistaken. DRAMATICALLY so. Back on live, at the time of shutdown, I tracked my money in a spreadsheet. Not so that I knew which character had money, but so I knew which characters had room to hold more. I had 57 billion influence at shutdown. How much was from farming? I'd estimate about 1-2% at most. I would clear a Council map with my fire/kin once or twice per month for variety. Farming bored me. I had thousands upon thousands of reward merits. In fact, I tracked how many Ironblade earned in total - 8597. And he spent a bit over 2500. And how did I amass this wealth? By playing the game. In particular, I enjoy task forces and trials. Back on live, I ran over 600 TFs or trials in some years. Your point #2 is of little concern as AE is a niche activity. Point #3 circles back to your #1 and is just as wrong. Point #4 is also wrong. My "third party app" for figuring out IO's is Microsoft Excel (which I use for every game I play, from EQ2 to Minecraft to CoH). I love Excel. The Incarnate system isn't that complicated. In a way, it's like IO's - you can get as far into the weeds AS YOU WANT. If you want to be a key player on iTrials and TF Master runs, then knock yourself out. If you just want to upgrade your character with a kick-ass build, that's pretty cheap and easy. Now, I get that you end by saying this is not a rant and I agree, it isn't. You also say it's your "experience and opinion", but you make many statements of fact, like "The only viable way to make money for end game IOs is to create a fire farmer." which are FACTUALLY INCORRECT. You're certainly welcome to your opinion. So perhaps this is the only way YOU have found to buy end-game IO's. That doesn't make it THE only way. I fully recognize that the way I play is not the only way to play. My girlfriend uses Mids Hero Planner (or Pine? whatever is is now) for her IO planning. I just made a fire/fire brute for farming because she wanted to farm and felt it would be more fun together. So I don't have any problem with farming per se - I just find solo farming boring. So I made more inf than I could ever spend by other methods.

Not to mention, "the person who knew how this worked has since left and we're afraid to touch it now."

Thank you. Have now included that entire directory in my overnight back-ups. FYI, my full path was C:\Users\(my login name)\AppData\Local\NCSoft\CoX\VisitedMaps

This - "within reason". Positron at +4 is not within reason. (Or +3, or +2 or even +1 for Posi.) For an ITF, "within reason" can range from skipping the cyst ambushes to killing every living thing on the final map. I'm up for either.

Well, that sounds like someone with control issues or a strong preconception that their way is the only way. Running the low level TFs at +0 is *NOT* a speed run. Stealthing where you can in a tedious, low level slogfest like Synapse or Citadel is *NOT* a speed run. And, to directly address that persons comment, accepting a place on a TF doesn't bind me to jack. If they broadcast for a TF and make no mention of any special conditions, then we start and it's at +4, I am bound to NOTHING. I retain free will. If it's a TF below level 30 or so, I'll ask if it's intentional. If so, I'll see how it goes for a mission or two. If the team genuinely can't handle it - I'm gone. I am under no obligation to suffer because someone has delusions of might. P.S. On a side note, my default assumption when someone is recruiting for one of the Weekly Strike Targets is that we will be trying to get it done quickly. Maybe not a 'speed run', per se, but sure as hell not killing everything on the map in every Synapse mission. P.P.S. I fully recognize that I can get away with some 'assumptions' because I usually lead the TF's I'm on. I generally run them the way that I think is 'normal' for that TF. If I plan anything other than a 'normal' run, I announce it as such.

On a side note, I just soloed Talshak's arc to unlock Karsis on another character. Talshak's arc rewards THIRTY merits. I just soloed it on an invuln tank and it was a breeze. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take note of the time required.

OMG REALLY!?!?!?! This bug has existed for about five minutes less than FOREVER!

Yes. You don't get a map in Trials (Cavern of Transcendence, Eden, Sewer, etc).

Back on live, I had many thousands of hours on Ironblade. I ran overnight heal farms to get the badges for over a year-and-a-half. It didn't take that long for any one person - I helped dozens of people get the badges and I then switched to another character who I cycled through other people's SG's to get the healing badges for small groups since they unlocked base items.

Another example would be Cytoskeletons for Invincibiilty in the invuln set. They enhance acc buff, def buff AND reduce end cost.

Don't forget Cimerorans. They debuff defense. If you don't get hit, you're fine. But as soon as you get hit, you lose some defense and that leads to a cascade failure and, before you know it, you're dead.

It would be more accurate to say that Paragonwiki is not up to date. This is how it worked when the game was live. After the game shut down, most or all of the simultaneous click requirements were removed due to the much lower population on the 'secret server'.

If this where the trial or TF leaders are supposed to say, "Challenge accepted."? 😉

I did a Synapse with Snarky last week, also. When I noticed the name, I expected him to be entertaining. I was not disappointed. 🙂

Note to self: Don't run Positron with Snarky. 😛

Good job getting this implemented before Safe Mode goes bye-bye. As you're aware, there is a 'non trivial' amount of concern about that.

Tanks were always my favorite AT. Back on live, I took every tank primary to 50 at least once and invuln three times (energy melee, dark melee and staff).

Not in my opinion. I took both an invuln/staff tank and a SR/street tank to 50.

And this is the reason (before we had invention IO's) I had 6 slots in Taunt on my Hami tank. A random griefer wasn't likely to spend extra slots on Taunt whereas it made perfect sense for a Hami-specific build. Having said that, some of my tanks have 6 slots in Taunt right now for awesome set bonuses.

Except they're not, and never were, our 'superiors'. We didn't work for them. We were engaging in a business transaction with them. And, if they expect their customers WORLDWIDE to adhere to the traditions of THEIR culture, well, then they're just incompetent idiots. Executives at multinational companies tend not to be completely oblivious.

The only 'oddity' to me is that some of the chapters are pretty easy for most AT's, then you hit a chapter that will grind you into the dirt unless you're on a tough character.

My mind boggles. Back on live, I took every archetype to level 50 simply because they existed. I don't see alts as being inconsistent with getting to 50. I think it gets boring playing the same character day after day. Also, sometimes a particular AT would be more helpful to a team. I typically had 5-6 active characters at a given time. When one of them hit 50, I'd start thinking about what AT/powersets to play next. The key here to have a limited number of alts, but making sure they cover a wide variety of play styles.

Yes. According to ParagonWiki the final part (#5) was on the beta server at the time of shutdown. It is available on Homecoming. The first arc has 7 parts and the second arc has 5.

And note that the reward system is a bit complex. You can earn the quadruple merit reward once per character per week. However, every character gets one 'free' run of each chapter that doesn't count against the timer. So you could log in your favorite character, run all 12 chapters consecutively, and get the 4x reward all 12 times. Then, if you run any chapter on that character, that starts the timer and you can't get the quadruple reward *on that character* for another week.

In routine situations, where everyone is in accord, finalizing and documenting an agreement can take weeks. In this situation, they are trying to develop a new type of non-profit organization. It will be done either when: 1) It's done. 2) It all falls apart.