Ukase

The character I've got in mind is from the Hawaiian Islands. As for what I'd like - something along these lines: And no, despite my better judgement, the character is not going to be called Hawaiian Punch.

It's so easy to focus on the negative of a given event. Lag. Under-slotted, unslotted level 45-50's turning up to participate in another zone event like a Hamidon raid. Fewer people to team with doing non-event activities. Arriving from a brief afk to find your character dead because some player decided not to stick around for the Arisen Mummy who's found your alt and smashed you while you were gone. Seeing countless people - even the league leader with the afk bubble over their heads - while you're actively contributing. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others. But there are players who were gloriously delighted during the event. Just an anecdote, but I took...I think it was Snickerpants, a water/nature corruptor and was just playing through arcs like I normally do, but I saw an Eochai out in the wild, and when I saw others start hitting it, I thought, "free merits". Apparently, my level 20+ that was doing tips in the area must have dealt more damage than I would have thought, and I got the badge. Which led to the slippery slope of getting all the event badges on that character. I'd even had enough RNG luck to get the Ostentatious before I got all the others. The last thing I needed was the banners. And even the ridiculous league led by a player who seems to be more afk than not (meds, they said) made a point of getting the banners, even though I know they already had them because the same character was leading leagues for ToT the year before. For reasons that escape me, I was very happy to get those Banner badges. So much so, that for the rest of the event, if I wasn't in a mission, I would help anyone that was looking for help with them. It's nice getting that 1 hour damage boost. Let's maybe consider what people are complaining about, but shift the lens to other perspectives to see if it's really "bad", or just not good for them individually. Lag isn't good. But it's a mysterious word for some. It means different things to different people. But, in a nut shell, when you click or mash a button to execute an attack, and nothing happens, and you're not mezzed or out of range...that may as well be called lag. I'm already playing on minimum settings because I don't see any real distinction between max settings and minimal settings. The game looks the same no matter what setting I use. I laugh - I use that ++no particles command, and other than not seeing certain auras or sg portals, I can't really tell the difference. My powers activate the same with or without it. I think that kind of thing is in the player's own mind. Any improvement is so minimal as to not notice it on my end. Not sure what can be done, other than upgrade the servers. And given the age of the game, not sure if that's going to help enough to make it worth it. It is worth mentioning the HC Devs did a great thing by placing a player cap on the zones during the event. I think that probably helped a lot. The rest of the negatives are behavioral. And I'm sure there are enough people in each camp where changing things is just going to irk another group of players, while the ones currently irked may find something else to be frustrated by. (maybe not, who knows) Ultimately, this game is resurrected. How are you going to kill something that refuses to die? I don't know there's a solution to my own pet peeves other than to reduce my expectations of others, and stop asking so much of myself in the process. It is just a game. I shouldn't take it that seriously.

I thought I would mention - this occurred twice in as many days. I'd moved 2 blasters into the abyss while I did some badge work on a couple of corruptors. And in both cases, neither blaster had Rebirth. But, I hadn't noticed it until the league leader called for buffs. (I certainly used barrier when fighting the gms to get hami to spawn.) Now, barrier had recharged, and I'd already had the Radial Rebirth crafted. I didn't even try to slot it at that time because I wanted to be sure I was ready to mash the EoE and the red insps. But, I was able to slot it immediately after hami went down, during that brief time when we're waiting for the buds to spawn. No messages about having been attacked or attacking too recently, despite the fact I'd attacked just 30 seconds ago. So, clearly something is variable about this cool down timer.

Short answer: No, not worth it. Explanation: So, from an influence generation perspective, I see the exchange rate and wonder who's cocaine habit is this supporting. Just ballpark because it's not really my thing to sell super insps, but use them - occasionally, a super team yellow/red will go for 2M. But that's usually one buyer who's fighting a gm in an open instance or something that needs it in that moment. Penny-wise, pound-foolish kind of transaction if you ask me. Maybe there was a badge involved. Anyway, about the most I ever would expect from a super insp that I pay 30 threads for is 1M for the let's get paid today price, as opposed to - this character can just sit here next to Luna until this team red sells for 2M+. So..how many AE tickets do I get for 30 threads? 30 tickets. 250 tickets to get 1 common IO recipe at level 50. Basically, about 8M inf opportunity cost for a common IO frequently bought instantly at 300k or less that YOU have to craft and pay a crafting fee and salvage for. 75 tickets for a level 50 SO in your origin. So, that's about 2.5M opportunity cost for an SO that you can get certainly for less than 50k at any store. (I haven't used an SO at level 50 on any character ...maybe when HC first opened? I doubt even then. Can't recall. Doesn't matter. The discrepancy is obvious. 80 tickets for a specific uncommon salvage. One that even when the marketers are up to their tricks I can get it for 10K, at the most 100k, this would be an opportunity cost of over 2.5M 8 tickets for a random common salvage. The math is a little harder, but Luna has super insps that go for 10 threads. And a super red could go now, this instant for some lame price like 222,222. Who among us would pay 111,111, half that price for a common salvage that may or may not be the one you want? Nobody, I hope. That leaves two categories remaining. Recipe rolls: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Now, I've done these before. This might be something a farmer would do if they were full on salvage with very few recipes, so they do about 5 asteroids, and pop upstairs for some random reward recipes. Bronze are 60 to 75 tickets. So...about 2-2.5M opportunity cost for one recipe that you have to craft and generate salvage for. Now, in the 10-14 range, which a level 50 character can choose - some of those are convertible into a decent IO. But, optimally, I can't see making much more than 4M, maybe 5 in a high demand period of the week for something like a -res Achilles Heel. Crafting costs and salvage are cheap; but even so it's a random roll, and I'd still have to burn at least 3 converters to get the proc, because the proc isn't in the bronze roll pool. So, I think at best, this is a very small profit, but more than likely a push, or a loss. The silver class goes from 450-600. I'm not even going to do math here. I just wouldn't do it. It would be one thing if we could do ticket run on an Atta cave map and not hit the ticket cap in 2-4 minutes when there's still 30 minutes of map left. But since we can only earn, I think it's like 800 tickets per map. Maybe 750. Some small figure. So, you'd have to do about 20 asteroids to make even popping upstairs worth your time. And - you'd have to buy the salvage for the recipes if you intended to craft them. The gold class recipes are 3000-4000 tickets. Do I need to mention how insane this would be to even consider this? There is yet one category left. The payoff badge for 1000 tickets, or in this discussion 1000 threads. If you're t-4'd, and you want that badge, you might pay it. But, anecdotally, since there are other badges to earn in AE, it's not a big leap to just run a couple of maps to get those tickets and use them, rather than threads. The reason why is it takes 8 minutes maybe, depending on how fast you're moving to earn 1000 tickets. 1000 threads takes multiple vet levels, and that's with the 120 thread dump in the earlier vet levels. So yeah, AE tickets are a loser's game. You would have to be a bit of a gambler to go with the bronze rolls, and hope you're lucky. I can see if you see a ton of the super insps being sold for scratch might motivate a few folks to go for bronze rolls. But me...nah. Whomever put this option in either put no thought into it at all, or was just hoping people sucked at math or weren't paying attention. It makes no sense to me why the exchange rate is so bad. But, in order to make the rate good - they'd have to adjust the number of tickets for the bronze roll, or it would be too good, I think. But that's just conjecture on my part. Opinions will vary.

You clearly missed the entire reason for my post. It's past time they stopped ALWAYS giving an introductory mission. I don't want to do the introductory mission, unless it gives a badge. And sometimes, not even then. I don't pursue badges with every character. I just want the story arc because it gives merits, and I'd rather not do the arc through ouro for reasons already stated. I already am familiar with the accept, abandon tactic. If this worked for every contact, I wouldn't have bothered making the suggestion, but it doesn't.

I suggest each contact list which mission/story arcs they have for us to choose from. Why in the world do we have to waste our time doing some one-off mission that gives no merits? There's just no reason to suffer through these one-offs other than to get to the story arc. If we can't get rid of them, make them part of the arc and increase the merit rewards by a merit or two. It makes no sense to me now that it's a non-profit game that we need people to sink time into a meaningless activity. In my mind, every contact should be like Lord Schweinzer. You go up, ask for the list of missions available, and choose what you want. Mind you, I don't want to do every arc with every character. I like how the contact gives me a choice - this or that. But when I know the contact has an arc, and my choices are some 90 minute timed mission or talking to a security chief, I know that neither one of those are what I want to do. I want the arc. Now, I'm left to outlevel the contact and go direct to the arc - which locks me in for the duration of the arc making doing other things, like help with a zone event or a gm problematic. Or, suffer through one of the options. Pitfalls: I'm sure it would be damned tedious for some dev to do this for each and every contact. I know I wouldn't want to do it! I don't even know how they'd manage to do this by level range. So many damned contacts! A good problem to have! But, Christmas is coming, and no harm in asking, as far I can tell.

I am as guilty as anyone, at least for this poster. I've been on a team with him before and he gives his team, typically filled with newer players who don't know any better wrong information. It was just a mission team in the hollows, and I left because of their misinformation. The truth of it is, I'm sure they mean well. But they're like those players who think arctic fog in the msr is going to impact the number of spawns of rikti. There's zero evidence to support this, yet "bro science" leads the way still. Being mistaken or wrong doesn't make one evil or unworthy of courtesy. But after a while, this begins to look like trolling - as if they are deliberately coming up with a premise that's almost plausible if you didn't know any better. There's a proverb that says, "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent". Please, join me as I shut up. Maybe somebody will think I'm wise.

A tank is an archetype. That's all. I never expect any tank below level 20 to have any real survivability because the game doesn't award them enough slots, nor influence to acquire the SOs to put in the slots they do have - unless they're vet players with a little gift from their alt. It always annoys me to no end to be on a tank at level 11, get an invite to a team running a level 14 mission at +4. Those npcs are level 18. And while I am sk'd to level 13, they're +5 to me. The math doesn't lie. It doesn't matter if you're on a stone tank, bio tank, no matter what you're on - if your team isn't killing them super fast, or buffing the crap out of my tank, I'm dead, and they're probably not far behind. Two things tend to lead to disappointment. Unrealistic expectations and unrealized expectations. In the example I provided, it's woefully unrealistic to expect any tank to handle that kind of scenario under typical pug team compositions. (where half of the folks aren't even slotted because they don't think it's necessary. Cheap, lazy bastards, lol) Every tank I have tends to survive in most conditions. And when it doesn't, I look in the combat attributes to see if I can determine why. More often than not, it's a -res debuff or a -recharge, or both. And if my teammates are otherwise distracted, or just lack the tools to help, then it's time to taste dirt. That's just the way this game is played. To minimize these events, you try to team up with smart people, or you analyze the team comp before you begin, and bail if there's weak team composition given the task at hand. Usually, there's nothing THAT hard that any pug can't handle after level 26. But before then, a tank has to be judicious if they want to avoid defeat.

I'm curious. Why are you running KW radios? Are you getting anything other than some sort of challenge? Merits? incarnate salvage? At 50, almost nobody needs xp or inf. What's your motivation?

So I get that for you, the TP has no value. For some - that's the only value the pool has aside from the Prune of Protection. I call it Prune on purpose for reasons of my own. (still irked due to the nerf) If you got a hover like power from getting mystic flight, in lieu of translocation, then there are players who would rather have a third alternative, like combat jumping. If I can have that as a choice along with your hover choice, then by all means! But, there are things I don't know, and I don't even know what I don't know about what kind of a hassle that would be to implement, let alone how that would impact every build for 90% of the characters that take one or more of these pools. As an idea, it's not bad, but it would need further fleshing out to be something most players could get behind. (just my opinion)

I realize this is horrible thing to say - but if you commit suicide, so to speak - and let your character die (Not you the player!) your costume toggle will not turn back on, and you'll be in the costume that you made.

Not sure I worded the title right, but when I zone into a mission, I usually get some kind of "tip" like "you can do a radio mission in kings row at level 5 and get a jet pack, these are handy to get around" (bad grammar - that's not a quote, but that's the gist of what it says) So, sometimes, my system loads too fast, and/or I'm reading too slowly and I only catch the first part of the tip. Is there a master list of these tips somewhere? I'm curious as to what I don't yet know (which is probably quite an extended list not covered, but still)

You gotta send that build to @snarky. He loves range. If he could fight from his coffin, he would.

That Exo Blast looked pretty amazing. The sounds, the names of the powers all were pretty great!

For the curious, 2005 RMs

This is harder to do than you think. So many players will give a new player clearly bad information. Like using reward merits to buy an ATO. This is as stupid a thing as I've ever heard. The same 100 merits can get you a purple recipe or a winter-O, which will sell for more. Sell them, then buy the ATO outright, if you're inclined to forgo actually using the merits to turn trash into gold. It usually ends up in a shouting match with the newer player left more confused than when they started. This is why I really wanted the tutorial to cover this in-game. One of these days, I'm just going to record a game session and make a youtube video and explain the different ways to make influence in this game. The problem is condensing the information that doesn't waste the viewers time. It's hard to do that and share bad jokes. explain things fully, to try and answer questions preemptively.

Yes. 5 astrals can be converted into 1 emp at Luna. Aside from that, nothing can be made into an empyrean merit, other than breaking down a T-merit. Threads can't be amassed to create one, unfortunately.

If this happens again, you might try logging off - re-verify files, then log back in to see if it persists.

I would also pick up vengeance - but I'd drop assault, unless you're going to be soloing more often than not. Or, alternatively take assault early, then drop it at 50 via a respec, for tactics. The reason why is when you're teamed, assault does nothing for you when your teammates have you damage capped with fulcrum shift or overgrowth, and buffs of that nature. And anecdotally, I find myself at the damage cap fairly often. More often than I would have thought. Now, if you're solo, or mostly going with smaller teams, sure, keep assault and disregard my suggestion. Vengeance is nice because it's a good spot for an LotG 7.5% recharge, which you get the benefit of, whether anyone gets defeated or not. And, it's a very nice buff for that one slot.

In all transparency, this could have been me. I must have given away a few hundred of them. Now, I wasn't just running up to folks and giving them away; I would look at the bio and the build. If I saw something in their info that suggested they had any kind of IO, I didn't gift them. If they had no bio, I took them to be a vet player, and I didn't gift them. Now; certainly many vet players, myself included will write a bio of some kind. So, I might check their global. I'm in the habit of checking globals a lot; if I don't recognize it, they probably are fairly new. At least, that's how I looked at it. But lately, I've learned there's at least half the player base that teams among themselves and don't mix with the rest of us. Most larger SGs that take anyone will team up with the lfg folks; but some folks just stick to themselves, and there's more of these than I would have thought. So, now, I just gift when it's my idea, and it's a fairly new player, but it's more of a hand up, than a hand out.

This reminds me of one of my "drop challenge characters". I had NOT set it up to decline gifts, got gifted without "preamble" and had to carry this defender ATO around until the challenge was over, lol. I moved it to the last position on the last tray...but it did act as a reminder to decline gifts.

Hey, I'm a guy who named a character Broc Li using martial assault. (even if it was on a dominator) "I'm the vegetable with the best kung fu!" was my bio. And with that bio, the cheese was there, practically a given.

Ultimately, it's not a big deal; I start the Lab with two. I take one, and the other is for when it runs out, and since we can access the AH, I have a few more there if I need them. I was just wondering if something like the Awakened boss did some kind of mindswipe and stole the buff or something, even though I can't tell from the combat logs.

This is a fine question to ask, one I've asked before. There is no right answer, I'm afraid. I think @Yomo Kimyata with his give away that he tirelessly did for a year or more had the right amount. 20M. They could still get the luxury team teleport, if they even knew it existed, and have enough left over for basic SOs. But it really doesn't matter. Gifting them influence is pointless, because they have no idea how to get more. Most will park the alt after Halloween, or beg for a farm. Some will keep playing, but those would be in the minority. Anecdotally, I know I've given away entirely too much, because those players stopped playing (as far as I could tell) almost immediately after I gifted them large sums. In fact, there might be 5 people out of the hundreds I've gifted large sums that are still playing. I think the best gift of all is your time and your knowledge, if they're smart enough to ask the "how" question.

So, just to make it clear - when I play - my camera is zoomed out at max. So, I usually only see what's going on when I'm in a tight space and the camera can't zoom that far out. To me - given the description of the power, I just assumed it was PBAoE. (why did they chance PBAoE into melee aoe, and why change TAoE to ranged AoE? I know they had their reasons, but I don't like the change, but I digress - and that was a rhetorical question, because they're not going to change it back) After some chat with Rudra, I have come to see the light, so to speak. Now, I don't like it - mainly because I like the PBAoE invention sets better than the TAoE. Other than that, it's really not that big of a deal. This will be yet another character relegated to the back pages simply because it uses that combo sequence - which isn't bad, but I prefer consistent damage regardless of what order I mash the buttons.