Ukase

If you have the resources/farmer, a faster way to get the recipe rejection badge - do AE missions for tickets. My farmer will get me 1K tickets in about 2 minutes or so. Each random recipe roll is 60 tickets in the 15-19 Bronze category. When Null has you set to reject recipes - you don't get these, but you do get credit towards the badge. (assuming you're rejecting rares and uncommons)

This is so beautifully and accurately stated.

XP in this game is all but meaningless. It will come, eventually. Start it, finish it. In Yin, there's a mob of freaks, a mob of freaks with civs to be rescued, a mob, and then a mob of freaks with more civs...I ignore them if there's no reason to mess with them. There's nothing to be gained. XP? I'll get that when I clobber what needs to be clobbered. And, because I finish quickly, I'm off to do the next thing speedily, and make xp as I go. I see no reason why anyone would pursue it. It will come eventually. But the merits, the badges, the sooner you get those, the sooner you're off to the next set of merits and/or badges.

For me, the primary reason I don't lead as often as I might: I don't want to wait for people to join the team. More often than not, I can do it solo faster than I can form the team for it and do it as a team. Take something like a Numina. I can solo it in about 30 minutes. Last time I formed a team for it, it took 7 minutes to form, and 26 minutes for us to finish. Why wait? Yin TF? 5 minutes to form, 22 minutes to finish as a team, 21 minutes to solo. Why wait? Obviously, an MoITF takes a lot longer to solo. Took me about 90 minutes. But nobody died.

If it were an account wide badge, I wouldn't hate it. I've suffered through a bit of tedium just to accumulate 250 billion. To give it all away for one badge...and then have to reduplicate my efforts x 4, and then reproduce that 5 more times for my other badgers...I'd rather not think about it.

Winter pack count 3-Feb-21 3498 Winter pack bids 3-Feb-21 2479 Avg. Price 19.5M Winter pack count 2/4/2021 3269 Winter pack bids 2/4/2021 2480 Avg. Price 19.5M Winter pack count 2/5/2021 3203 Winter pack bids 2/5/2021 2470 Avg. Price 15.3M Winter pack count 2/10/2021 3457 Winter pack bids 2/10/2021 2488 Avg. Price 19M Winter pack count 2/19/2021 4141 Winter pack bids 2/19/2021 2511 Avg. Price 2/19/2021 20M Winter pack count 3/1/2021 3952 Winter pack bids 3/1/2021 2524 Avg. Price 3/1/2021 20M Winter pack count 3/11/2021 4157 Winter pack bids 3/11/2021 2514 Avg. Price 3/11/2021 20M So, there's a copy of my data, Like my IRA, I don't look at it every day, but every so often. If you're not familiar, the Winter Pack Count is the number of packs over the dev-seeded 10 million packs. Overall, most of our marketers aren't greedy. I think most feel 2x your inf back (less fees) is quite reasonable. What's surprising me is how fast the Winter-Os have rebounded in price. Not all the way in some sets, but closer than I thought they would be.

I agree with Snarky on this point. Ice blast has Blizzard, a targeted AoE psuedo pet, which is simply fantastic. Whereas, Energy, Fire, and a number of other poor blaster secondaries are forced to run into a mob and go nuclear, increasing risk of stun/mez, etc. While it's true that blasters have been adjusted here on HC for the better, (Higher HP than live, improved regen/recovery toggle auras, insta-snipes in combat, etc), an option to do things purely at range is certainly not unreasonable. That said, whether it's something we want the devs to look into, as opposed to other issues, I can't really say.

Lunchmoney - people in this game can behave oddly. Some folks are figuratively starving for a team-up. They will do anything, even if they're not very good at it. My heart breaks, just a little, for some of these people. They want to be a on a team, but if the team is missing some banter, or dialogue, some sort of social exchange while people are fighting/playing, they are bored. Smashing the bad guys is not why they play. They would be just as thrilled to stand under Atlas and talk about most anything. At least, that's the way it seems to me. Other folks come on and want to do something specific. If it's not a kill-most itf, they want no part of doing three speed itfs where you get more merits in less time. They have their perceptions and are certainly entitled to them. And some folks just don't know what to say when a team dynamic changes. If a leader leaves, and someone else suddenly has the star, they may not feel comfortable for any number of reasons. So they leave. It's not terribly unthinkable for someone to feel awkward in that situation. Remember, a lot of these folks are playing this game in the middle of a pandemic. They may not be true gamers, but just looking to pass the time and have no clue how things ordinarily go.

I was a bit pained to discover Don Rickles needed to be explained, when I made a fire/earth dom called Mr. Warmth. I shared some of the seriously off-color humor from a You Tube video and some were stunned to discover such things were ever spoken out loud. At the time, they were genuinely funny comments. But now, not so much.

Good thing I'm not a genie, then!

Oh, that - well, thanks for your reply. I did do exactly what you suggested. I figured the progress meter is what's bugged, but felt like I should still submit the report.

There was another thread? My search fu must be weak. I did do a search for "Vandal" in this sub-forum and came up empty.

I should add, I just got this badge, it's only the progress meter that's glitched.

I did just get this badge, just now. It seems only the progress meter is glitched.

Well...when a genie comes out of the bottle and says you have three wishes, my third wish is always for three more wishes. So, my first wish is for three wishes. 1. Three more wishes. 1. When a DoT like Sands of Mu misses, only some of the punches should miss, not all 8. 2. If I can "see" an npc that's stuck in a wall, I should be able to hit part of it, if not center mass. And if I can manage to travel from the back of a map to the front without getting stuck, the npc I'm escorting (thinking of you Amy Jonnson!) should also be able to do it. Let's fix these geographical issues. 3. Three more wishes. 1. Implement the naming policy. 2. GM fact sharing - a few months ago, I asked why it was that people seemed to think stealth impacted spawns in the msr. One GM chimed in that we shouldn't use stealth because it obscured their costumes, instead of taking a moment ( I do understand that it might take more than a moment. I get that their volunteers, and ultimately, it's not THAT big of a deal) to ascertain what the undeniable truth is so we can put an end to the ignorance, whether it by mine, or those with the opposing view. I want to know what the answer is. 3. the right to ask for 3 more wishes at a time convenient for me.

Let me try to share an additional perspective. Veracity is an SG that I have one character in, as I happened to be in the right place at the right time, just a month or so after HC opened the doors. Right around the time Excelsior was created. In that SG, I learned a few things. I never truly "fit in", because while I appreciate a speed run, I'm not about to make a build specifically for a task force speed record. These players (at least then) would send their builds back and forth to each other, making minor adjustments here and there to get the most bang for their IO dollar. Before each run, they'd do the Steel Canyon Mayhem/Safeguard for the ATT temp, so each player would have the one from p2w and the short term temp power. Incandescence would be used when possible as well. And back then, liberal use of the old SG base macro as well. Players with slower page load times would not lead, as that would slow things down a bit. Practice runs would be made to determine if the doors for each map were the same. If they were, and the mission were in the same zone, you can bet one member would leave the prior mission early, if they entered at all, to ATT or incan the team to the next mission as soon as all had exited. There are more than a couple of players in my other SG on a different shard who are strangely fast. The shorter ski slope in 13 seconds? I can barely do 17 with a kin's help. Barely got 46 seconds on the long one, while these rascals destroy that time with 42 seconds, some of them even faster than that. And, on missions? They get to the mission faster, and by the time I load in, sometimes the mission completes and they're already out by the time my page loads. And I'm not on a slow system! I got the league star twice last night on our leagues RHW runs. It's just that some players are quite good at moving their characters about. They have played the game enough to know whether it's better to jump at point A, or take path B and toggle a jet pack for a couple of seconds, etc. So, in summary, it's partially practice and experience. The other part is painstaking attention to detail, specialized builds, quitting the tf a dozen times to ensure you get the key from the Security Chief the first time, instead of beating all of them. (LRSF) I believe one of them even got in trouble for avoiding cut scenes, which I guess is a no-no. Not terribly clear how you'd do that, but if we want to talk about inf sinks, I'd pay to not see Mother Mammory in BAF, and avoid Sister Psyche's crappy dialogue with Manti, and Anti-Matter's trite speech at the beginning of Keyes, too.

I get what you're saying here. I wonder, though, what happens to the "AE noobs" you speak of? 1. They leave the game. 2. They learn the game, or at least, some of it, as they play. 3. They continue to make other alts just to sit in AE and get PL'd to 50 and repeat. So...who cares? Is it that in their effort to learn the game, they frustrate others who have done so as they played, instead of waiting until they're level 50, essentially broke and without much, if any, kind of build? That's my guess. I can't pretend to know the thought process that leads to this result, but ultimately, they will either learn, or leave. I'm okay with that.

I'm a bit stumped by this, as I've gotten this badge on three other characters. But for some reason, with my corruptor, I'm not able to see any progress. You can see from the picture - no progress shown, despite the system information clearly showing I've destroyed the items which should give progress. I am fairly certain I've satisfied these requirements, as the folks I was teamed with yesterday got the badge, but for whatever reason, I did not.

If you'll note the badge list - the Vandal progress badge clearly shows no progress. Yet, if you see the system messages below, it clearly shows I've destroyed some mailboxes, hydrants, etc. I was in this mission with a team yesterday for about 30 minutes, and while I can't state with certainty I satisfied the requirements, I know I've made at least some progress, as other teammates got the badge while I was in there. I was rogue, so I went to Null, switched to Villain, just to ensure that wasn't a factor. I even switched back to hero, and back to villain, but no change. Before I put this in a bug report, I figured I'd ask if there were anything I hadn't thought about it.

I realize this is a dated post; but I just did this (before seeing this) and can state that it DID work for me. Took about 17 minutes without travel powers and no enhancements. The other runs were in the 7-8 minute range.

Seriously? My tank is a shield/mace. As such, my defense was soft-capped for melee at about level 25 or so. You don't take damage if they never hit you. I had to turn my toggles off just to die. Even then, I had to take a knee because I had too many hitpoints for the GMs to kill me fast enough to suit me. As for damage dealt - it's a tank. Not famous for dishing out damage. And the held badges? Had to go overnight with 2 sappers, with my toggles off. Different ATs/powersets will have some of those achievement badges that are harder to obtain than for other AT/powersets. As for suggestions - focus on the damage taken, dealt, inf earned...after you have all the defeats. Don't hunt defeat badges until you've done all the Masters, ouro arcs, accomplishments, etc. And - stepwise refinement - crafting badges, certain arcs - they're tedious, particularly when solo. Break them up over time. Bid on 2000 pieces of common salvage (200 slots, 10 pieces each slot.) before you log off or quit for the day. Next time you're on, grab the salvage, sell for 6 inf (costs you 5 inf to sell anything, so you may as well break even). Repeat until you get all the sales you need.

Grats - but I thought Zerg was simply laying waste to hami without regard to mitos. Still, one sweep is a job well done for an 8 man team.

They look identical to me. Same shade/color, some ring of white on the outside. Same burst design on the icon. Identical. But - I hit enter - and here, I see a difference. In game, I don't. They look the same, I promise, not trying to be contrarian. Maybe it's my eyes.

This is really quite silly - and may have more to do with my eyesight than anything..but, in a mission, I attempted to use burn while following a teammate I had targeted. More to keep tabs on where they were, but in any event, it was so strange...burn wouldn't execute. In white letters, "invalid target" kept displaying. I thought, "strange", burn doesn't require a target. It finally dawned on me, that I was mashing Fireball instead. I tend to do fiery embrace, burn, fireball in my attack chain, and somehow the two got switched. Or I put them in the wrong place after the latest respec. Either way - the two powers look EXACTLY alike. I'd like some difference between them.

There's a Monty Python one-liner that goes, "I've really suffered for my music. Now it's your turn." And then he began to play his guitar. I honestly think that when some of us struggle through something like all the crafting badges or the dreaded ouroboros no-enhancement, no travel power badges that we genuinely want others to suffer through it as well. I can understand why someone wants everyone to do things that certain way. Misery loves company, right? The problem, if you can even call it that, is not everyone enjoys the same things in the same way. That's really what it comes down to. And since there's no advertising beyond word of mouth, and there are other private/publicly available free servers also running, it's really not in anyone's best interest to begin to do something that would alienate a fair portion of the player base, as it's already rather slim compared to what we'd like to see.