Ukase

You've seen it, I've seen it. You're on a pug, and it's clear that the leader may have some knowledge, but not enough to convey to everyone else what to do. At what point is it okay to "take over" and give direction? I feel so badly for the others on this team. They tried hard, but the team lead gave no direction - and when he/she did, it was clear to me at that point, they didn't understand how the abandoned sewer trial worked - or their tactic was clearly too advanced for a team as inexperienced and squishy as the rest of the team was. I was the only one, a blaster, who didn't die. I could go into details, but it's really sad to think of how many times that poor dominator got chewed up by hordes of ritki and hatched krakens. The MMs fared no better. Only the brute did decently, dying only once. Curious to know when you folks would take over and start giving instructions. I waited too late, forgot all about server maintenance. Saw the message after we first started, figured an hour would be plenty of time. And it should have been - if everyone knew what to do. They did not. When the leader finally quit, then I took over - and we had the head down to half before the ritki repaired the gens, and we knew we wouldn't have enough time. A shame, really.

First - I really want to apologize. I missed this post! I just asked about these on the badge forum and was referred to it. It should be a sticky! Sign my new fire blaster up. And today is Tuesday...I'll send you a tell in game to see if you're on before hand.

I was curious about the Swiss draw tournament badge called Tournament Victor. I've gotten this badge once before, but either someone else was dealing with the match set-up, or I've forgotten how in my old age. Tried to get 8 folks, but only got a couple of others, and with 3, couldn't seem to get it to set up right so we could actually start it. Am I right in saying 8 people are required? I know 8 are required for Pentad. (though it seems like 5 should be enough with that name). Can someone refresh my feeble memory?

Welcome back. Have you learned/relearned about Ouroboros? No need to stop XP, you can revisit pretty much 99% of that content through Ouroboros. If you're not familiar with it, simply ask someone in the help channel, they'll break it down for you. In short, it's a zone where there are several crystals, contacts, where you can click on them, go in tf mode, solo or teamed, and be automatically exemped to the cap of that contact's arc. You can get there via someone else's ouroboros portal (temp power), Echo:Galaxy City, (via SG beacon) Echo:Dark Astoria (also via SG beacon). For those with villains, you can only access through Echo:Dark Astoria. You can get there on HC server at level 1, but can't do any content within until level 15. (on live, you had to be level 14 to make the trip.) But you can get there on HC, as stated, at level 1, and work on day job badge if you like. You can also go via someone else's portal and get the exploration badge on top of that arch, which "entrusts you with the secret", and gives you the portal. There's also a few missions that will give you the portal upon completion, but the only one I know on top of my head is the initial contact out of Faultline, Jim Temblor.

I suggest you start with the oldest character. Have a set of distinct ATs - ranged, melee, support, and cycle through the three of them as needed by the group you're in league with.

So glad you had that whim. Just ran into the same issue, and I know I got it on Ukase without issue, but Ukase Fire (got two purples in less than 2 minutes, lol) had trouble getting it, but got it within one Judgement upon entry in ticket mode.

This gets a bump because I'm pretty sure Yomo still has more inf than I do.

I have no characters on Reunion, but I'd make one to participate. I've actually been successful in getting to level 50 twice on a blaster with no defeats. And when I did get defeated eventually, 1 was during a hami raid, which was my fault for hitting inferno before the tanks jumped in the GM scrum to get aggro. The other time was on some crazy No inspiration, MoITF for time, challenge. Speed kills. And I could have lived if I'd waited 20 more second for my barrier to come up. Or had the option of munching a luck. Them's the breaks. I should add, that I would up the difficulty gradually as I leveled. +1 at level 10, +2 at level 20, +3 at level 30, +4 at level 40.

Some interesting thoughts. I posted...sometime during this year that it would be good if we took better advantage of AE for story driven content, since the content we do have, other than those new vig/rogue arcs from...page 3, I think it was, are the only new content we've got, outside of AE. I even suggested a contest, promoted by the HC devs. I think one thing that would be more easily done is to simply make AE story driven content more rewarding in terms of XP/Inf, along the same lines as non-AE content. So, how to distinguish from the farms - let the devs make a ruling on every story that gets 50 votes with 5 stars, or something like that. I would think flagging a given AE arc as "standard reward amount" would be easier than porting the arc to some zone.

Another thing you can do is to bring out your HVAC and lore pets. The lore pets will fade after 5 minutes, but the heavy will stick with you overnight - and if zombies or nemesis come out in a zone event, odds are your rebirth will keep you alive, as will your HVAC.

By pictures alone, I suspect you probably spent about 100 hours on this, at least. Points for the creativity - and the endurance.

Fair enough. I appreciate your perspective. I think the reason the number isn't as high as some would like is because the original devs were concerned about the market. Let's say that we could hold 800 recipes. I'm sure, most would wait quite some time before they dealt with their inventory. In that time, I am curious as to how that would impact the availability of various recipes/salvage/invention enhancements in the market. I think this unknown, or the predictable scarcity is what kept the initial number lower than what you might hope for. Another reason has something to do with the servers ability to track everything. I haven't been through the code - wouldn't even know where to look or be able to follow the logic trail without some pointers along the way (unless the internal documentation is far better than what I'd expect), but I suspect if they multiplied character inventory storage by 10, then server storage would be impacted in some way. Nowadays, it's likely less of a concern than at the time of initial release. But if I were forced to guess, I'd think that's why. With the new HC management being on a volunteer basis, I can't fathom what kind of precision this might take. Is it as simple as finding the initial storage capacity of a level 1 character and adding 720 to that number, or is it simply finding the number 80 upon leveling 50 and adding another 720? I've no idea how they'd do it. If they did, they'd probably just start off simple by doubling initial character storage at level 1, then doubling the increase as we leveled up. It wouldn't get to 800, of course, but it may be easier to implement. <shrug>

A great idea!

How in the world? Why would you EVER need more than 80 recipes to store? Just craft 'em and stash 'em, or sell 'em. How hard is that? It should be a habit you develop as you level. You park your character in Ouro at level 1 to get the Chronologist day job badge, so at level 10, you start getting rare recipes to drop after each completed mission. At the beginning of your next session, you head to your base, you pluck out the salvage you need from your storage racks, and craft and stash, or sell. Takes...3 minutes. I don't get it. If you can't be bothered, just stash 'em in the AH. We get over 100 slots there.

Clearly, since someone can join an AE arc in the midst of a run, they have the ability to do this for TFs and Ouro. No question about it. As for Task Forces that give badges - no badge unless you were in each mission. Merits could be meted out in a slightly front heavy fashion to reward the commitment. For example - a 10 mission TF that gives 50 merits might give 7 merits for each of the first two, 5 merits for each of the next four, and the last mission gives zero or 1. It's a really good idea and should be considered.

Was this some private server? I never heard of it.

Interesting thoughts. Was discussing the Superior Winter-Os with a newer player earlier today. When I mentioned that Avalanche, made Superior gives 5% melee defense, they were stunned. I always thought it was that 5% that made them so valuable to most folks. I rarely...wait..I've never used Entomb, except in early levels. The Frozen Blast set isn't really anything special, except to a farmer. Same with Winter Blast. Blistering Cold isn't too bad, but I'll use Kin Combats more often than not, with two crushing impacts. What I'm surprised at is how cheap the Hero/villain packs are. I don't have the memory I used to - but weren't the ATOs costing like 350- 400 reward merits EACH, plus 25 million back in live, from a merit vendor? (the proc and the quads usually cost an extra 25-50 merits) Or am I confused? I completely understand that many players if they lack the resources have no joy in marketing or farming. I do understand it gets tedious. But why is EVERYTHING so cheap? In one year, I have more inf than I made in 3 years in live, and things cost ...1/10th of what they did. (So maybe I should have 10x as much?) We need things to work towards, and other than badges...we don't have that.

Why do you think this is way easier to get? Both are for sale at the AH. It's only easier to get because it's cheaper - if they were the same price, would it be easier? Or do you think it's easier because it's an uncommon recipe vs pvp?

What you have to understand is that when folks go shopping for Widgets, they never take into account the cost of manufacturing that Widget, nor the payroll required to keep the Widget workers housed and fed with enough to save for a future. All they care about is if the Widget is useful to them. So...you can craft as many rare stun recipes as you like, but (these are orange, not red on my computer) they are only useful to a small fraction of the community. Supply and Demand is what is influencing the prices, not the cost of crafting to some unknown person or people. (We're all unknown people. Nobody has a clue what we crafted or put for sale. All they know is we're greedy for not listing them for 1 inf. Purple recipes may have dropped for you - but they have not dropped for me. I get them...pretty much every other day now that I've stopped farming. When I was farming, 3-4 a day was not a surprise. 1-2 a day was closer to average. If you search the forums - somewhere here I made a note of getting 4 purples within 11 minutes. Thought I broke something. Was just lucky. So, please, don't look at what dropped and assume that there was a stealth nerf. I promise you - you're just not that lucky. I, however, am that lucky.

I believe this statement to be false. Show me the patch notes, because I think I'd remember this.

This is what I don't get: Glad Armor 3% Def (all) vs. Steadfast Protection 3% Def(all)/Resist The glad sells typically 10-11M Sometimes, more, sometimes less. The Steadfast sells for 4-5M. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Both are slottable at level 7. While it's true the Steadfast caps at level 30, so the strength of the resist portion is capped at that level (unless you boosted, but it still wouldn't be a level 50 resist level protection), but the Glad Armor's extra only protects against tp in a pvp zone. Other than Chimera, I don't think any NPCs we face use a tp-foe. (And Despite all my characters having a Shield Wall and a Glad Armor, I still get ported in the Magisterium) So why should the glad armor be worth twice as much? Both drop in pve. Granted the set bonuses of the Glad armor are better, but still...

It's already been stated that inflation is a result of more funds being in circulation, thus diminishing the value of those funds. The solution is certainly not a simple thing, not the way CoH is set up. Suppose, for the sake of argument, there was a fixed set of influence in the game. (Scratching my head, trying to think how that would work). That would certainly limit inflation, but would it really help things? For the sake of argument, we cannot assume each player is granted a certain amount with their new account, lest scoundrels create multiple accounts to get multiple endowments. So...they start off with zero. And as of now - so do we! But...we are able to continually defeat mobs for xp and influence. And the mobs respawn, missions may get reset, so the path to inflation lies with repetition. right? All that said, I think a solution is fairly obvious. Since the current cap a character can hold is 2 Billion, why not find a way to limit that across all characters? Just suppose that ALL you could hold was 2 billion across all accounts? All those emails I have with 900 million in them, across my three accounts - I wake up and *poof*! All gone, except for for 2 Billion in each. Well, that certainly gives me an advantage...but suppose HC stated that only one account is now allowed. Or, that they encouraged all to have three accounts to make things equitable and fair. How might that play out? Well...I certainly would be a bit peeved at losing over 100 Billion. Costume Contest resources from player hosted events would either stop, or have drastically reduced prizes. The more I think about it, the more I think the Influence/Infamy/Information has run its course. We should exchange it for reward merits - the metric that truly defines how much we've actually played the content in the game. There's no rule that says an AE map can't award a reward merit or three, provided it met a certain level of difficulty. The problem is the smallest unit of measurement is 1, and who'd want to pay one reward merit for a piece of common salvage? Do you folks see what I'm getting at here? This in-game economy stems from...a GAME! It's really not that serious. I thought about writing a few more pages, but I think that would be TOO cruel. What I would encourage those that disagree with this nerf do is come up with a viable solution that allows entry level players to play the game they'd like to, rather than the way someone like me tells them they need to, just to afford the IOs to have the better build. (and if you're one of those that says SOs are just fine - they are - if you want to struggle more than otherwise. Candidly, IO set bonuses are a game changer for most players. You might be fine with 'em. If so, great. Me, I like the set bonuses and will keep chasing them.

I've been in your shoes, Kiramon. Trust me on that. I used to strive to get to t-4 for each slot - and still do, but now, it's not nearly as challenging, and here's why: I've been badging with my latest 50. Not sure what possessed me, as I already have Ukase, my ice blaster with all the badges available, 1531. (no bug hunter, despite my best efforts) Made Ukase Fire 2 weeks ago, and already have over 1000 badges. But what has really made the difference has been Master of Incarnate Trials, and the Dark Astoria path. Just play your character, and everything else will take care of itself. For those that don't care for the details, don't sweat it. But if you want more detail - it's in the spoiler.

There's a tab to click on at the top of this page called "Server Status". Click on it, it will tell you.

A pvp recipe may drop in any content, AE farms, Task Forces, Strike Forces, Street sweeps, hunts, ..and in pvp, of course. It's all random. They drop as often as any rare recipe would. As far as percentages go, I have no idea, nor concern. If I want one, I buy a level 10 pvp recipe (or as many as 50 of them at as low a price as I can) at level 7, boosted by inf from another character. Craft, convert to the one I want, slot it. The rest are sold as they are for 9-10m. They pretty much all sell within the hour, unless I got too greedy, or someone posted some seriously low prices for reasons that escape my logic. Then, if it's not a proc, like say I want to actually use the glad armor set for it's set bonuses, I'll catalyze them. 4m+2.5m is still cheaper than 9-10m from the ah. (And that 2.5 is opportunity cost, as I use ones that drop, borrowing from alts, as they only drop for level 50 characters.)