macskull

I wouldn't be too worried about this. EDIT: The first paragraph, not the second one. As far as bickering about hard mode vs not, as long as team leaders clearly state what their plan is I don't think that'll be a big deal either.

If I recall correctly from some earlier discussions, the new difficulty tech is taking a long time to implement because there's no easy way to do it but the hope is for it to be easier in the future. I'm not sure I'd expect much existing content to be backfit with the new stuff though.

You don't want this, unless you only want to be able to slot one of any particular HO in a power.

I don't know about the license agreement, but you've never been able to skip cutscenes in the manner you're describing. The only time that really applies is during iTrials if all members have already completed the trial.

Nature Affinity/Corrosive Enzymes is the same, as are most damage auras. The damage auras I can kind of understand so they're not cluttering up the combat logs, but click powers should always show a hit roll.

Higher-level teams are popular because they give more XP and inf over time. If your team is steamrolling 0x8 it will probably be fine at 4x8 as well. You might get fewer drops in the same amount of time because each defeat will take longer, but it isn't that much slower than even-level content.

The pre-baked marble rye is selling for those higher amounts because people are willing to pay those higher amounts. If no one was willing to buy the items at that price the people trying to flip things would just get stuck with a load of stock that they'd have to lose money to unload.

I should have been clearer in the OP and linked the initial thread where this discussion originated, or maybe worded my actual post better, but to sum it up my initial statement could be read as "I don't think farming is bad for the game and I'm curious as to why you don't think it is either."

There's probably a not-insignificant number of players who don't really care about the clipping and just want to use the costume pieces. That being said, I don't think this is a fair assessment of Rebirth. Their content and additions are fairly well-polished and I would kill for Guardians over here on HC. The only thing I don't like about Rebirth is their insistence on maintaining "the grind" as part of the core gameplay experience.

Maybe this is just Poe's Law at work but I honestly can't tell if this is a serious take.

I took the advice of @GM Flints and started a new thread. Come join me!

And why did you answer "no?" Discuss.

It's things like this that make me think this game is gone to the americans.

If a message is sent in a global chat channel while a player is loading a new map, that chat message will not appear at all for that player.

In terms of contributing to the amount of inf available to buy things from the market and therefore contributing to inflation (or "raising the equilibrium" as you've said) the only thing that matters is the rate at which influence is being generated out of thin air per unit time. The vast majority of the playerbase isn't spending all their time - or probably even a moderate amount of time - farming, at least in the sense you're talking about. The merit system already does this. Story arcs, trials, and task forces get time-based rewards, though the playerbase tends to lean towards the task/strike forces which offer the best ratio of merits for time spent. The one thing I do agree with you on is challenge settings - the flashback arc/TF challenge settings have no tangible rewards associated with them aside from badges. If the developers want to incentivize players using these difficulty options they need to offer additional rewards on top of what the content on its own offers. It's not exactly scientific, but I looked back at an hour of chat logs from the LFG channel. Eliminating duplicates (like one person spamming a dozen times about forming a certain TF) there were 125 separate posts about teams forming or players looking for teams. Eight of them were AE farming-related. These 125 posts ran the gamut of speed task forces, patron arcs, 54x8 kill-most ITFs, Talos radio missions, Praetorian content, and the weekly strike targets. Seems like a decent sampling to me. EDIT: I'm sure the poster I'm replying to in this post isn't actually reading my post, so this is more for everyone else who's been following along with this thread - here's your reminder that 1) a rewards throttling system exists to combat abusive/exploitative behavior and 2) AE farming does not earn rewards at a sufficient rate to trigger this system.

[Emphasis mine] You're absolutely correct, but the accessibility of it is different and even if you're getting dragged through radios or task forces you may develop at least some understanding of what's going on as opposed to door sitting for 50 levels. Edit, to clarify: I don't think this is a serious, systemic issue on Homecoming. *shrugs* Neither way is right or wrong, the people who are proc-monstering are just huffing inspirations instead.

I think it's a legitimate criticism. At least pre-AE a new character would have to make it to Peregrine Island or Grandville to hop on the PL train and the simple act of having to move between zones would have weeded out the extremely new players. There should never have been an AE building in Atlas Park or Mercy Island but that ship sailed a long time ago. "AE babies" were absolutely a thing back on live but it seems like the vast majority of the Homecoming playerbase are veterans who at least have a basic understanding of how the game works. Granted, I've spent enough time on the forums, on Discord, and ingame to know that sometimes even a "veteran" player doesn't know what they're doing...

This is only true if the act of producing those characters generates more inf than those characters will spend on their enhancements, which is definitely not the case. I can farm up a thousand brand-new level 50s but if I don't have the inf to buy enhancements I'm not contributing to demand in any way. TL;DR: The "farmers are ruinin' the economy!" argument only works if farmers are generating influence without also generating supply. This did happen back on live to a point because you earned inf and XP in AE but no drops, but on Homecoming where you're getting drops at the same time that impact is significantly dampened. The "farmers earn rewards too fast!" argument is also bunk - there's already a rewards throttling system in place in the game. Does no one remember MARTy?

Regen on Sentinels is absolutely better than the version the melee ATs get but as far as Sentinel secondaries go it's still not great. Granted, Sentinel secondaries are really weird...

I'm going to be different and say... yes but with that same assistance pretty much every other armor set in the game will still be better. Hell, you could completely revert every nerf to Regen since the beginning of time and it would still be a subpar set by today's standards.

You keep saying this and everyone else is giving you examples of how this isn't true. It's like you're being intentionally obtuse. If farming really were that lucrative you'd have a hard time finding teammates for any other content. EDIT: The actual data doesn't bear it out either. The last time for which statistics are available is March 2020 but I have little reason to doubt they've changed significantly since then. At the time there were 115,559 level 50 characters, 12,387 of which were Spines/Fire or Rad/Fire Brutes. For simplicity's sake we will say every one of those Brutes were only created or used as farmers. Even with that assumption that's only about 10% of the total level 50 population. If you take into account all characters across all levels (1,207,409) that's 1.03%.

Yes, I'm aware I can earn Empyrean merits simply by leveling but I can also do that in any other content. If I want to earn them the "normal" way, however, I need to run incarnate trials or Dark Astoria arcs. Besides, the conversion rates for Empyrean merits to any of those other things are... pretty awful. Yes, I am seriously suggesting that. Running merit-efficient task forces gives the best rewards in the game. If you're defining "the best rewards" solely as influence earned per time spent punching bad guys, of course farming is going to come out on top. If I'm trying to make influence as quickly as possible though, farming is pretty far down on the list of things I'm going to want to do. I'd rather spend a few minutes a day playing the market, or running task forces and using the merits I earn to buy salvage to sell. Full disclosure: aside from the occasional AE farm session every few months when I feel like leveling a new character, I spent the rest of my time ingame running task forces or story arcs for badges/accolades.

If I decide to spend my time playing the game in an AE farm, I cannot earn the following rewards: Reward merits Empyrean merits Astral merits Incarnate salvage Reward merits are the fastest way to make inf while playing the game, aside from market shenanigans. Now, all that aside... the "casual player" thing has been a running joke since waaaaaaaaaaay back on live. Who are these "casual players" who simultaneously want the best available gear for their character but are unaware of the myriad dead simple ways to make the inf to get it?

The items available through the market or P2W vendors have had (for the most part) fixed prices since they were introduced but prices for other items have remained relatively constant over the last two years. Are you suggesting that there was a sudden and massive amount of inflation due to AE farming right at the start and that equilibrium has been in effect since then? The amount of inf earned PLing a character from 1-50 is far less than the amount of inf it costs to fund a build for that character - even less if the character being PLd is using a 2XP booster. I can crank out all the 50s I want but the act of leveling them alone isn't going to get me the inf I need to pay for their builds.