Yomo Kimyata

I've got a War Mace/Ninjitsu scrapper in his 30s. My intention was to create a Stalker that could use a War Mace. Mission accomplished.

I mostly solo. I usually optimize my alt for solo play, which by level 50 means I try (and generally succeed) in soft- or hard- capping various attributes. I assume some/many/all of you do the same. When I team on high end content (any TF that goes to 50, incarnates, hami, MSR, etc.) there are generally all kinds of buffs. I’m going to pick defense . So my character that normally has 45% or so has 60% or higher. Often way higher. Cool. Two questions: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn’t have a team build on an endgame character that “team caps” its build at say 30% defense and relies on the gamble that 7-47 league mates will be directly or indirectly be providing the defense I want for the content. 2. If I’m running a buffer in endgame (specifically defense oriented but the premise works for other buffs), why slot for a 30% buff when 5% will take most of my teammates over the limit? Then slot for damage or recharge or control or whatever. Just thinking aloud. It’s not a new issue. It seems there’s a way to repurpose powers and slots more efficiently.

Recipes are your lifeblood, so don’t forget to get the Ouroboros day job ASAP.

I've noticed that sometimes fog of war on outdoor maps gets reset, and since I always use the same computer and game folder, that's not it. I assumed it had something to do with switching alignments, or possibly just an ineffable bug.

If only there were some name, some catch phrase we could give to such a solo-oriented challenge...

Can you save salvage and inspirations for yourself in your base under your rules? Especially inspirations that drop in the first few levels before you really need them?

Anything that’s not a Dominator ATO on a Dominator.

My only bubblers are selfish soloers. I would only focus on defense enhancement for my alpha if I knew I’d be teaming with people who needed my boosts to hit defense caps. At 50, those people seem few and far between nowadays.

Wait, you want the *consumer* to win?!?!

Heh. I had a lot of holding bids in lvl 53 HOs. When I saw the patch notes, I took down all my bids and just in case someone was monitoring numbers I replaced them with the same number of bids at really low prices but well above 1 inf. I didn’t think anyone would be foolish enough to spend 50+mm on lvl 50 nucs, combine them up, and offer it at 1 inf. But there were plenty who offered at 1mm…. I’ve made a bunch of 100mm+ profit flips.

As much as I’d like to eat popcorn and poke the bear, let me tell you what’s happening. Someone is apparently (I’m away from the game, but I’m going off what I see in the last few posts) bidding on a lot of rares at 500,000. I don’t know how many; I can’t see the # bidding. @Ukase offered rares at 6, which means that they will trade to the highest outstanding bid >= 6, which is 500,000. There appear to be a lot of bids there. @Hedgefund has offered some above 500,000, let’s call it 550,000. They haven’t traded so either no one has bid at or above that level or (more likely) someone is offering rares at a lower price, like 525,000 and those are trading. Just because someone pays 1mm for a rare doesn’t mean that you have to pay 1mm for the next one. tl;dr either wait for the person who is buying at 500k to buy all they want or need and then your lower bids may fill, or bid higher than 500k to get higher in the queue than them. You may not be able to buy them tonight, but rares will trade below 500k again at some point. I guarantee* it. * not a legal guarantee.

I'm getting a 5% cut.

I apologize for quoting the whole thing, but if I just snipped you wouldn't necessarily know which post I was referring to. And thank you @Monos King for keeping the thread moving and to point. I feel, however, that you are focusing on the assumption that endgame is the target point here, and that it is trivial to get to the overpowered endgame. I don't disagree with that at all. But 90+% of my game play is sub 50 and solo. My concern about the game being too easy is actually based more on my sub-50 play, and I just wanted to make sure that my concerns are also taken into account. I get that I may be in the minority here, and if almost everyone is PLing their characters to 50 and then equipping them, and the devs want to address that meta, that's great. Won't affect me much, but that's great. What I don't want is for that meta to affect mechanics that forcibly change my game play. Now an example: I mentioned my dislike of SOs at level 2... *crowd boos, throws tomatoes* I get that some/many/everyone except me want to skip everything below 22 (or 35, or 50), but I don't. I like playing new alts and unfamiliar sets and equipping as I go. That's how I learn how to use various sets in ways that appeal to me. Now it is true that I don't have to equip any enhancements at all, and it is also true that I can deliberately nerf myself in sub-level 22 play. But now my level 7 character has 4-slotted attacks with 1 accuracy/3 damage for max chance to hit and roughly 100% damage. Comparing that to TOs (which don't even exist anymore I don't think) that's about 3x as much enhancement as I could have had on a maxxed out TO character. I have the choice between having a ridiculously powerful character fighting opponents that were designed for TO slotted characters, or by deliberating prohibiting myself from building the best character I can. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal. (and the auto upgrade mechanism for SOs is great! It has some bugs I think, and I'd love to be able to auto upgrade only some rather than all, but that's a different kettle of fish.) And I get why people love the new SO system. It makes their characters 2-3 times as powerful as they were before! That's great if your objective is to blow through levels 1-22 as quickly as possible! But it's not my choice, and I'm forced to accept the changes to reduce my enjoyment to increase the enjoyment of others. I'm ok with that, but I want it to be known this isn't a Pareto equilibrium. A less pedantic and completely theoretical example: let's say that the devs choose to rework Regeneration in some way or another because incarnate regeneration characters are somehow underperforming. If everyone wants that, cool. But please be really cautious to see how those changes would affect sub-50 play, because it would make me tear my hair out if suddenly my regeneration alts are twice as powerful as they were before and the level of competition remained unchanged. Just some of my thoughts. I don't expect them to be popular or even shared by a single other entity, but they are mine. Buffs kill!

I mentioned in another post that I'm doing something similar on a lot of my "challenge" alts. No P2W. As @Rathulfr mentioned in another thread, Reveal was the hardest to give up, followed by Athletic Run, and finally any sort of jetpack. No AH. Can't buy anything; can't sell anything. That's it. All vendors are fair game. The basic strategy is to sell all your enhancement drops or unneeded items to the vendor. Early on, strategically buy SOs when you can afford them. Accumulate merits and swap them out for converters. Then when IO sets start dropping, craft what you can and convert it to something you can use. There's some real strategy in figuring out what to craft and what to sell. Salvage can be a drag because you can't reliably farm for specific uncommon or rare salvage, but fortunately you can exchange AE tickets for specific ones. In theory, I should be inf flow positive and well equipped with SOs by ?late teens/early 20s? with occasional IOs slotted. That's if I don't die, that is.

All rare salvage is in the same bucket, so if you bought one type but didn't buy another at the same price, that means that there were no more to buy at that price by the time you switched to the second type of rare salvage. This is a player-driven market, meaning that if you want to buy an Alien Blood Sample at 600k, and you bid there and you don't buy it, it's because at that moment no one is offering one there. Someone else may have bought all of them for offer before you got there. You can put in a bid and wait and sooner(tm) or later someone will come in to sell some more, hopefully at or below your bid price. The devs seeded 10mm rare salvage at the price of 1mm inf. You can essentially always be able to buy a rare salvage for 1,000,000. Anything less than that, you are relying on someone else coming in and offering them. My advice is to bid whatever price you feel is appropriate and then wait. Work on your costume. Run a mission. Read a book. If you have a good bid (600k will probably be good enough to fill in less than 30 minutes, maybe much less). If you want to buy it instantly, bid 1mm. Also, you can always run AE missions for Architect rewards. 540 tickets can be traded for a rare salvage of your choice.

I think of manipulation as trying to create intermediate to long term price changes by affecting/controlling (or *appearing to*) supply and/or demand. It’s easy to spike prices on rare to 1mm. Just put in 5 different bids at 1mm, the Last 5 turns all to 1,000,000 and General fills up w/ “OMG RARES ARE WORTH 1mm!” Now, you could pretty easily put in bids at, say, 900k for a block of 1,000. Or 10,000. That would keep anyone from buying at under 900k until all your bids fill. You’re not going to make money on this, but you will certainly be manipulating the market until your bids fill. I’d guess it would take about 5 minutes to fill 1,000 rares there. That’s purely processing time. I’m not sure how long it would take to fill 10,000. It depends on how much is actually being offered by players under the 1mm seeding.

I hadn’t either, and I’m grateful to @Ukase for not only teaching me something new, but something I could make a few inf of off.

I got yer solution to that right here, bub. 3 points of knockback resistance, inherent. Boom.

Wait until you play a Kheld against your first quantum.

Unless your dark skills are stronger than I think, they can only kill you once!

I was only mentioning Hami raid as an example, not the *defining* example. I'm sure you know that we all can come up with many many more examples where a reward table was created a long long time ago and is completely out of whack with the current or any future meta. It's not a world breaking problem, but I personally think it's pretty up there. I am interested in your opinion, because I feel that you personally are going to drive a lot of the direction going forward, and if it's a drop dead no go for you, then lock the thread and let it die. I quoted this sentence because I'm not sure what you mean by it. Are you saying you would have to put a warning that someone would get less inf and XP if they chose a lower level? If so, why in the world isn't there one now, since obviously you get fewer rewards from -1 than +1. Am I misunderstanding you?

I'm of two minds on rewards. First, I firmly believe in the maxim of higher risk, higher reward. Both in games, and in life. And probably in a few other things. Second, the risk/reward in this game is seriously out of whack. I hopped on a double Hami run last night for, I don't even know, 160 merits? Essentially zero risk. Which is roughly 23 Eden trials. I don't see those as equivalent. I'd like to see some progress made on that front, to be honest.

Thanks for this post, especially the above sentence. Some buffs only affect individuals (playing at -1 or +4, on their settings) and their teams. I beg you to carefully consider system-wide changes that make play easier -- some people would love it and some would hate it, but there would be no way to opt out so it would be simplified for everyone. I'd much rather have those who wish for it to be able to play at -2 than for me to have to play at +4, enemies buffed, no inspirations, blindfolded, and left pawed in order to enjoy it. That last part is, of course, an exaggeration. Thanks!

By a GM no less.