Ukase

No worries. Rest is a weapon. Be well-armed!

I just noticed ..it looks like there are 218 different possible items to get.

Aldous Huxley: “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” or, as it has been morphed to, "You pay your money, you take your chances"

Confirmed. Just bought a dozen packs. Conf

That was back in live? I can't recall them ever locking XP gain at a certain rate.

I like the way you think, at least in this regard. Perhaps, they could be persuaded to simply not allow the packs to be relisted at all? If such a thing is possible. You buy 'em, you open 'em and resell the parts like a proper marketing genius, as opposed to the ...well, lazier marketing geniuses. Or give 'em away. That's not unheard of either. The idea is for them to be an inf sink, really. Not a money maker, right? Remember the reasoning behind the noXP, 2xinf removal; the bottom line between those who farmed and those who didn't was supposedly getting larger, not smaller. Citation below: Now, what I find super interesting is there must be some internal tracking to determine the influence between those who farm, and those who don't. (or it could be a fair assumption, just comparing the inf earned from running missions for an hour, and then farming for that same hour. ) Either way, given that's a concern of theirs, it makes sense if they can prevent them from being relisted, or better yet, to be relisted for the same price you bought it for, if that's possible. You know, in case someone makes 1000 mistakes, lol.

I completely understand the distinction. But, I have always considered the "Procs" to be a set bonus, it's just that only 1 is required for that bonus. Just Semantics. I finished Worthy Opponent just a bit ago. The leader was crazy enough to try for Master of at the same time, and lol, he died in the first minute of the first mission. I suffered two defeats in front of Kronos, when my end got drained, I got stunned...and for some reason, couldn't use a break free. I think I was dead already, but my monitor didn't show it..yet. Used a large wakie, and got clobbered in an instant. But then, I got up and remained up right for the rest of it. I'd gotten so used to that defensive amplifier!

I looked there. It stated "No enhancement set bonuses"... so it could be that Flea is correct and it's WAI. And I suppose that's the case. Just seemed odd to me.

Nope. I could see my defense drop from 42% to 11.15%, figured the limitation had taken effect already.

As long as it's optional, everyone will be fine with it. Well, most.

Figured I'd ask this here, rather than clumsily file a petition and possibly waste time for our hard-working dev team. One of my characters only needs Worthy Opponent and Legatus to be "complete". I'm not terribly into masochism (though being a badger might contradict that statement), so I'm going to wait until January for Legatus. At least, that's what I'm telling myself now. I was unclear how my character would fare without IO set bonuses, so I thought I would start the TF and take a look at my combat stats. But, I'm confused by what I see. Numina Regen/Recovery is active. Celerity: Stealth is active. Kismet 6% ToHit is active. I thought set bonuses were negated when you selected both "Old School Challenge" and "Master of Lord Recluse's Strike Force". Near as I can tell, my other set bonuses are negated. Am I missing something?

I should wait until I at least try it on Relentless before I talk about it. But, man, I hear those numbers and wonder how retoggling, etc. that many times can anyone be having fun. I'd be putting a hammer through my screen.

I've heard about these higher difficulty settings and numerous defeats. The problem is...for me, I can't accept being defeated an average of 9 to 20 times in a Strike Force as being "fun". Or even interesting. It's like some of my jokes. So stupid, you can't help but laugh. I don't comprehend why people are subjecting themselves to it - when it clearly surpasses "challenging", and enters into unreasonable. And the additional rewards for the greater difficulty is laughable. Toss a transcendent merit into the mix, then maybe you'll have something worthwhile. Had a friend yesterday who wanted to run it on relentless. A group of friends did not. We ran on Malicious, and after three missions, he was still recruiting. I wouldn't be able to state for sure, but I think the folks that are clamoring for the higher difficulty options are but a vocal minority. Thankfully, they're options, and not forced upon us.

I have a lot of feedback to give, but it's still incomplete, because I've yet to try it on Relentless mode. My very first take, soloing on Villainous, was a bittersweet reaction to Becky. It was amusing. But, I also knew that after a few times, it's going to get stale, pretty quickly. She'll soon be rated right up with Glacia and Infernia with her propensity for dialogue. Still, a good impression from the start. The dialogue in the mission with the security/bouncer guy, is interesting too. I like interactions like this, because you can always choose a different answer the next time, and perhaps get a different result. And my third time, I got the best result - but I'll keep quiet about that, cuz, you know, spoilers. On Malicious, I really only have one issue with it - and it seems to be more of an issue on my end. I can only tell the Brickernauts are counting down, with the words over their heads, and the yellow beam, from very far away. I've taken my tank in their twice, solo, and neither the numbers or the beam are visible to me. Pretty sure it's just on my end, because everyone I've teamed with sees it clearly. It's just me having this problem. But that doesn't stop it from being annoying. The count-down, from far away, looks a lot like the count-down over the Demolition Charges in the Underground Trial. It would be good to change the coloring of the lettering to red, or something more noticeable. It's not really apparent, or clear, that there are more than 10 Aeon Scientists. If you're not paying attention, you can end up waking up a sleeping scientist without having to do so. Although the dialogue that ensues is amusing, once you do wake him up. There are a couple of parts that are...well, annoying. Midas doing whatever it is he's doing where we get ported to what seems to be the second floor and can't target him - it's a bit annoying, because it always takes me a second to get my bearings and see where I am, where I'm supposed to be. The landing, after being "rifted" when fighting the car, is a bit disconcerting with all the "Rippled" wording in red. I'm never quite sure how my character will take the landing, so I use the jetpack to break my fall. One other thing - I noticed that medi-porters can get unlocked. But, it's not obvious from the start that you'd need or want to do this. The only way I learned is when the system message splashed across the screen. Otherwise, the only way you'd know is if you got defeated and didn't have a rez handy. The biggest issue, as far as the content of the story goes, is this idea that there's somebody in the car. I was thinking the car itself was the entity, not some punk driver. That really should be ret-conned in a future patch, as some kind of imposter, not the real high roller. But then, that would reek too much of Fake Nemesis, so another option, maybe. More of a minor issue is the Beast Within badge. You have to really want this badge to solo up to the car rifting you to the right place. Not that you have to solo it, It's just annoying to have to find folks that want to do just this badge in order to make quicker work of it. Sure, there are "some" of these Lycanthropes outside this SF, but hunting for those seem like it would be even more tedious. Hopefully, more content will be coming in the future that will allow an easier time of hunting these. As is, it's annoying. I think you'd have to run this 34 times to get the badge organically. And that's about 30 times more than I want. I get it. It's a badge, if you want it - prepare to grind. But, it's just my observation that it's annoying to have to do so.

So, I'm not the only one that was braced for "Doooom"? I find that amusing.

What makes me spend time playing a character? For me, it tends to be badges that keep me playing it. The more you get, the more you want to get.

I'll just come out and say it. The others, bless their hearts have been too kind. If you look carefully, I think you'll find your Sentinel DOES hit the target. The problem is, it's a Sentinel, and it doesn't do any damage. So, yes, the proper course is to delete it and re-make it as a blaster. I'm sorry. None of the above is true - I'm just joking. I can resist anything but temptation, and it was too tempting to not crack that joke at the expense of the Sentinel. Serious question: are you using offensive adaptation? It should give a boost to accuracy. Log your Sent in, open combat attributes and go crazy in a mission. Use snip & sketch, (or equivalent) and show us when you've missed more than 3x in a row. Then, you'll have some basis for a legit bug.

Gaussian offers a story arc against the Vanguard Swords, which are required for one of the defeat badges. You can either run the first mission a couple of times at 0/8, or run the second mission and quit the arc, if in ouro. Or proceed. To each their own.

<smacks forehead> I have got to get my eyes checked. If I hadn't read this, it would have never even occurred to me to look on the map, and I do have the latest update. When I had read that these 6 were found in the ASN, I simply went to the lab, where the badge is...pretty much empty of any of them. I did find Gray Matter and Cortex, but they were in the new area. I had just assumed they spawned at different times. Glad to get them all knocked out and done!

So, anecdotally, this is an example of how this can play to an advantage. For those that farm, you run a few missions, you've got your salvage topped off, or close to it. Me, I craft everything, then convert. Others have differing strategies as to what they do with the drops. But for me, after I craft the recipes, often, I'll still have a slew of common & uncommon left. The Rare salvage is placed in my vault, to give me more room. So, using threads for tickets, I would get the random rolls in the 45-50 range (because my farmer has that salvage on hand) and just craft & convert those, until I run out of salvage. Given how super insps aren't working in a lot of the newer Master trials, demand for them has decreased, so the prices of them have dropped. I haven't done the math yet, but I think this may be a viable path to dealing with surplus threads/shards on farm characters.

I play zoomed out as far back as I can get. But there are some maps, or areas in some maps where if my character is against a wall, I'm limited to how far back I can be.

I don't think it's a bug - as last night, on Discord, my teammates would say "you don't see that gold beam?" and "Bricker is counting down, back up". So I know they're visible to some - just not to me when I'm too close to the action. Pretty sure it's on my side of the keyboard, not a bug with the tf. Otherwise, they'd have fixed it or addressed it by now.

What sound would that be?

I think the patch notes were a bit confusing for the average "reader" - simply because the average person doesn't really read, but skims through information. And doesn't necessarily retain what was skimmed over with accuracy. And, I am one of those average "readers" sometimes. I was very surprised to see Incarnate powers being allowed on the Aeon SF on the increased difficulty level. And fun fact: I think I need a new video card. Apparently, I can only see that gold beam above the brickernauts before they explode when I'm a safe distance away. If I'm in melee, I don't see any countdown numbers or a gold beam. But that's my problem. I play on the "recommended" setting, rather than ultra or Performance. Guess it's past time to upgrade...but prices being what they are, I'll have to suffer through it. Could be my eyes, tho...<shrug>

That interesting...I was completely ignorant of this. I thought it was like 5 guys, & some volunteer players for testing. This makes it seem like a much larger number of people than I would have thought.