Ukase

I don't know how many folks run this that aren't focused on killing fakes, etc, in pursuit of badges. But, I am curious about something. Each time I run this, the Freedom Phalanx Reserve heroes...it's not even a couple of mobs before they all claim they can't go on. Citadel is usually the first to go, followed by Back Alley Brawler. Penny Yin is usually the last to leave. But Positron...he's like a pet that does nothing. He seems to take whatever splash damage that comes towards my characters, but does nothing. The dialog as you complete the objectives in the mission shows him speaking, but I really don't understand what his role is this first mission. He's useless. Is this non-performance on his part intended, or a glitch?

Then how do you explain my earning 30 prismatics each time I've completed a 4* Aeon SF? But we only earn 20 for completing the 4*ITF? I did this on Tuesday and Wednesday of this previous week, post patch. Each time, after we fought Incandescence, Serpent Drummer, Levantera, Borea, Dark Watcher, Lady Grey and Hero One, when Hero One was the last to go down, we got 10 Prismatics. No idea if that's by design or not, but since it's not that hard to do, (relative to the rest of the challenges in the SF), may as well do it. Get the combat dummy and 10 prismatics. Then got 20 when we completed the SF. 30 for about 70 minutes vs 20 for about 2 hours. (to be fair, the time to complete the 4* ITF can certainly be shorter, team composition, players, etc. ) But, I'm convinced the HM ITF should reward more due to the longer time requirement. Admittedly, over time, the prismatics won't be selling for that much, and won't be much of an issue. But, right now, the difference of 10 PAPs is about 200M, give or take a smidge.

For an afk-farmer, in particular with the new changes, some -threat wouldn't be a bad thing, I wouldn't think. Plus the inherent stealth might be protective, in a sense from mobs that wander by - which the afk-er may not be able to handle. All depends on the map and the build, of course. And opinions will vary.

Thanks, but I went and knocked out the accolades this afternoon; had a character I was leveling up and needed to knock out Maria Jenkin's arc anyway, so I just collaboratively completed them. The Atlas Medallion just boosts endurance, and with burn on auto, there's really not a strong need for more endurance. It seems so strange to devote so many slots just for set bonuses, lol. I can say one thing, it didn't take very long at all to get the first 24 vet levels. I burned a ton of threads to make the alpha t-3, rather than use emp merits or bother with a weekly tf. Just quicker and easier to do that, and I won't miss the inf for the crafting fee. Now, when I need to do some farming, I'm ready. I almost made a fire/spines tank....that might be interesting. The dps would be much poorer, but with some procs, and higher hp, I wouldn't have to waste so many slots on regen. Might keep me out of trouble for a minute.

First - I can appreciate the effort in making & sharing the builds. The afk seems well thought out. Interesting, too. But here's what I don't know, and my thoughts are all over the place. Different maps will tend to have different custom mobs. So, while this afk build you're kindly sharing may do perfectly well on the map you suggest, it may do horribly on a different map. I went to Brainstorm to test that build you shared a couple of weeks ago, got the passive accolades, and the build did great. So, I made the build here, and don't have the accolades yet. But, I got the amplifiers, and threw it into Bloodom's "XP adjusted" map, and after a few minutes, it died. (I couldn't test it in the same map/mission, as it wasn't available on Brainstorm.) I'm not complaining. I learned, or rather, was reminded that not all farm maps are the same. There's that slider that determines how much XP you get, and none of us really know what we're going to get until we enter it. As it stands now, I could get the passive accolades on the new farm brute...but ugh...I've done this so many times on so many characters...ugh. I don't even need to farm right now, so I'm going to wait until I need to, I think. Heh, for a lark, I'm the Abyss, with all my toggles off and three gms hitting me, doing a little damage, but not killing me. Good thing the build has taunt, I can gather some more. Different solutions: Don't stand in the center of the asteroid. Stand to the left or right. Use the tunnel and follow an npc around. This mitigates some damage, because as you move, they don't chase you with that ranged damage, so it's not that bad. Might come back to a dead farmer at the choke points, might not. Depends on the rng of mob movement. Consider a different primary and use Foot Stomp in lieu of burn.

So...after about a week, my thoughts on the changes have changed, a bit. First, the new HM ITF is not rewarding enough for the time involved. Compare the 4* ITF, you earn 20 Prismatics, with the 4* Aeon, where you can earn 30, in a little bit more than half the time invested. (assuming you talk to lady gray and do that fight where you earn the combat dummy.) Other than the novelty or the challenge, why would anyone run the 4* ITF? In time, most folks will not run that, when they could run the Aeon and get 50% more. With regards to afk-farming...I had to face all kinds of delusion in the forums here regarding that. Some folks swear the change isn't impacting their farming. And I would question my build. Then, I realize that not all AE maps have the same XP. Some farms are just easier. They give less XP. The newer farms that have been "adjusted" for page 4, there's still no way to know how the XP will be, until you step in a map, kill a minion, lieut, and boss (and elite boss, if that's your thing) and track it. I'd step in one farm, think other people must not know what they're doing, then step in another farm and think I don't know what I'm doing. I made a rad/fire brute based on America's Angel's build. Went to test and copied it exactly. it did fine. Made it on Excelsior, and slapped that puppy in an "adjusted for XP" farm, and it lasted about 2 minutes before it died. Tried out my buddy Stitch's build, it died. Turns out, that farm I was trying ... I still don't know if that was adjusted for 100% or 125%, because until last night, it never occurred to me the xp in those would be different. I think it did occur, but it just wasn't something I ever thought about, because I never worried about the xp. I farmed for drops, not XP. The characters are already 50, already t-4'd, XP is meaningless. I just want the emp merits now, which leads me back to XP. Now, it doesn't matter to me how long it takes, to be honest, but I am looking at it like it's a problem to be solved. So, given that the amplifiers aren't useful in Master runs, nor in Magisterium and other iTrials, these amplifiers now have a clear use - in the farms. Since I already paid for them with the zillions of packs I've bought over the years, I'll use those in the farm, without having to respec my builds. In the meantime, I'm at the drawing board, checking which maps give which XP and then seeing how my characters fare in them. And trying to get them to function as before, without using defensive amplifiers. Honestly, without them, I am thinking it's just not possible to afk farm as before - but it can be done. By not standing in the center of the asteroid map - but standing to the left or right. And just moving to the other side after a period of time. Or use one of those, follow the rescued NPC maps. Or, just make my own map, and have xp not be adjusted for 100%, but find the right % for my farmers. Who cares how long it takes? It's afk, right? Time is meaningless. Still, in the meantime, it's a problem to solve, so I'll beat my head against this wall and try to solve it for a while. It'll give me something to do - something I didn't have to do before. That's kind of a pro and a con, as far as my thoughts go. With regards to the prismatic aether, this new "currency". Just really a stupid idea. Absolutely stupid. They should have used 20 reward merits for each costume and called it a day. In fact, I think it was so stupid, I'll call it stupid again. Stupid! Stupid! It's like this: "We made this new hard mode stuff, and by golly, they will play that content!" The only way they can get certain players to do these things is to put a badge or a costume unlock, or both, to motivate certain players to do these things. Truth: If there weren't a badge with the new HM ITF, I would have never run it. Truth: If there weren't 150 PAPs required for 4 badges, I wouldn't have done the 4* Aeon a number of times. (and really, I did that more to hang out with Stitch & co, I already bought 143 of those PAPs at 55M to get those badges.) But, I've done it, and now, I'll only do those kinds of things when I want to, not because I need/want a badge. And I will likely never want to. Just depends on who I'd be teamed with. The 4*HMITF is going to take a good team over an hour. If the team isn't that good, or it's a PUG, it will take 2 hours or more. Sorry, but that's not good for anyone. Two hours? I don't have time for bullshit like that. If you do, great. I'll never, ever, knowingly commit to 2 hours of playtime.

So, one of my strategies has been to leave the allies behind ASAP. They try to follow, but give up and remain in position once they lose sight of you. In Penny Yin's arc, I'm to rescue Doc Delilah. She's right at the front of the map. So, I leave her there, un-rescued. I enter the building, complete the objective in there, and rescue Doc last. It all depends. Fusionette and I think it's Temblor in the Levantera arc, after you become a member of the Vanguard - I rescue Fusionette last, and before her, Temblor. The roughest for me is Provost Marchand's arc. The second or third mission has a number of allies that are somewhat durable when I run at 0/1, but if I'm on a brute or scrapper that runs at a higher difficulty, they end up taking a knee fairly quickly. I used to use team inspirations to keep them going, but it's damned tedious because they don't have a pet window to track their HP.

First, I applaud many of you for trying to create interesting content. You're telling a story, which can be tough to do using the MA system. My very best suggestion/advice is to plead with the HC staff to allow the better stories/content to be moved out of AE and into the wild, so to speak. The reason many do not run your stories is because: 1. No idea it exists. 2. The XP is 1/2 what it is in the wild. 3. There are no reward merits. 4. The defeats, debt, influence earned - so many different badges that are tracked by the game - they do not count in AE maps. If the "dev choice" winners, say, every quarter, were to have their missions/story arcs moved outside of AE, then people WOULD run it. Perhaps not as often as a Yin or other task forces and story arcs, but when something "new" drops, people will run it.

So...I can kind of see how you might think the game is catering to a certain group. The earlier page, when they took away temp powers (like my jetpack) when in a pvp zone, it certainly seemed like there was some effort put in to appease the folks that liked to pvp. And they are either a rare bunch, or a very quiet bunch. I only know of a handful of players that will tolerate pvp, (as in think it's okay) whereas the rest are decidedly anti-pvp, and you could remove those zones, and they would never know. As they are a volunteer staff, it also stands to reason they'd work on things that capture their interest. So, I guess I'd just say be patient. Empty words, I know, but it's all I got.

Guess I'm just as ignorant. I remember where The Fab is in Grandville, but only because of the badge there. Thing is, when I get invited, I can see from the team window what zone they're in. Once I get in zone, if I am not real clear where the contact is, I can just head over to where the leader is. We don't really have to know, for example, where the Hyperion neighborhood marker is in Atlas. Nor do we need to know where the Grim Vale is in Croatoa, if we join a GM kill team. All we need to know is where the train is, or an sg portal, take one or the other, and once in zone, head towards the team leader.

I am only looking at the Rad/fire (new) and the Spines/Fire. Something doesn't add up for me. And I could certainly be wrong. When I tested earlier this month the Brigg's Asteroid Map, when I cleared the map, I got the same influence each time. I don't know which map you're using that would take 20+ minutes, but I'm curious as to why the clear time for Spines is faster, but somehow you earned less inf? If the number of mobs on each of the maps was the same, with a faster clear time, the spines/fire should have a higher inf/minute. Do we know enough about the spawns on maps to conclude they have the same number of mobs, or even the same class of mobs? Outside of AE, for example, the last mission to rescue Mr. Yin, sometimes there may be 1 boss, or 3 minions, or sometimes 1 lieutenant and 1 minion. Is that the way the AE Maps work as well? It's a very minor thing, I was just curious.

As we all know, some changes took place in AE. I read/see/hear of new farms that are updated as "adjusted for XP". So, trying to sort it out myself, I go to create a custom npc. Is this what folks are referring to? I'm not an AE mission creator, not really. I've put together tiny little ones for badge purposes, but really had no idea what I was doing. I can only assume that some farm maps have this slider lower, to make the farm easier. And other folks have it higher by using the Custom or Extreme setting. Is that the case, or does it mean something different?

You mean, "A bad part of the internet" uses it as a byword for ..etc. I just think it's bad form. I have a daughter named Felicia. The teasing she got during that stupid "Bye Felicia" meme was horrendous. While it may be true that there's a woman out there somewhere that treated some waitstaff horribly, it's equally horrible to perpetuate it's use in such a poor fashion. I mean, I get it, it's something most folks understand. We all have a clear understanding of profanity, but that doesn't mean we should use it. We're all mostly adults, let's use the words we already know instead of coming up with new ones. Sorry, I don't mean this to be an attack, it's just a peeve of mine.

So, was tinkering with a build, and had thought that the Impervious Skin: "proc" was a unique. It isn't. So, who wouldn't want more regen? So, in mids, I slotted several. So, did the respec, and suddenly, I read it more carefully and realize only the regen part is unique, which allows for multiple slotting. So, I could slot multiples, but in game, only get the benefit of one regen boost. In Mids Reborn, however, I'm seeing these regen boosts stack. So, I believe that's a mistake, and Mids' shouldn't show the boost from multiples of this IO in question. If I've misinterpreted, or not expressed things clearly, I apologize, let me know, I'll try to do better. But, pretty sure that's a mistake on Mids' part, and not mine.

First, Karen is a name. It is not a description. Some folks might think it is, but I know several ladies named Karen, and they do not represent the behavior this label infers certain women have. It is patently rude to use such a description to refer to anyone. If someone's an ass, just use the word ass to describe the behavior, unless you're concerned about offending certain mules or donkeys. Second, expecting players to have a travel power is normal. To not have any travel power is just ludicrous. There's usually no reason to not have one. Now, I understand for thematic, possibly RP purposes, some folks may delay in getting one, or opt to just use ninja/athletic run, or whatever. But that's still a power. To play the game with just sprint, I can't wrap my head around that. And I don't have to. It's ultimately none of my business. However, me dictating that they must get a travel power - that's a no-no. Not my role to tell anyone how to play - although I will consider them a bit silly, or a bit stupid. Or both. I won't share that thought with them, but I'll think it, for sure.

I think the only reason it was put there was to make it easy for villains/heroes to team up and farm. I don't recall it being there during live. And for the folks that run non-farm content in AE, I guess it makes it easier for them, too. But they can always go to RWZ. What's strange to me is there isn't one in Kallista Wharf, a co-op zone with nothing else going on there. Seems like a perfect place for one. I'm not real clear why there's one in most zones, other than to encourage it's use.

You don't honestly think that a person under 13 couldn't blissfully ignore that user agreement the same way teens agree they are over 18 and look at porn? Of course they can. Anyone that thinks differently is an idiot.

I am pretty sure if someone told you to go to Port Oakes, you would know enough to find the ferry to get there.

My apologies. I guess by not wanting to give you what may be a tedious task, I was thinking there might be some way for us to edit, kind of like the way we all might contribute to the HC Wiki. This is what I'm referring to: I confess, when I got the badge, I didn't look at the badge name. Or if I did, the name of it left my memory quickly. Same with Mimic, and the other new costume badges. But, I was able to pick those out by the descriptions. No such description for Hologram. That's all, and certainly didn't intend to nitpick or make extra work on top of what must be quite tedious work! Thanks for the effort!

Well...I never kept tabs on the numbers, but if you take into account that a number of AFK farmers who don't read the forums, suddenly discovered their builds were insufficient to handle the new aggro changes, perhaps some of those numbers are playing, and not in the farm - at least until the new page 4 adapted builds make their way into the forums. I just finished one, for rad/fire, and spines/fire. I like the spines/fire better. Yeah, I know irradiated ground is supposed to give the rad/fire a slight edge, but I like spines better, so sue me. As for the aforementioned LotG, I was honestly expecting the price to go back to 7M, but it's stayed at 6m for the most part. That did surprise me.

I wouldn't think that the case. Why would they corral only level 50's? Half of those level 50's got there in the farms, so it stands to reason they wanted the lowbies out of the farms, too.

Is there a simple way for us to edit the text? I was looking at the badges for getting 50 of the Prismatic bought costumes, Hologram accolade. I was anticipating it being directly below the badge for getting 10 costumes, but I suppose because it was an accolade it was further down. Had to refer to my character's list to get the name of the badge back in my wee brain. It is there, I did find it, but maybe a description would be helpful for the next old fella who's looking to update their badge list.

Preaching to the choir. But, I do think it was fun for some folks to get insta-rich (for them) when they were able to sell one for over 100M the first time they came out. I wasn't one of those folks, mind you, but I did my part to subsidize some folks with my purchase of 143 of them. The shame of it is, it could have been a great influence sink if they were available from a merit vendor or p2w, but the inf is just transferred instead.

So, the focused feedback for this patch has closed, so I'll make my suggestion here. As many of you who read the patch notes are aware, when a "page" drops, it's pretty easy to miss a few details here and there, because there's a lot of information to process. So, I ran a Mortimer (weekly) on a level 40 character, and was unpleasantly surprised to see I didn't get 2 Prismatics at the completion of it. These do drop randomly for lower level characters, so I can't understand why it doesn't reward 2 PAPs, regardless of level. So, my suggestion is that it should.

So, it would seem I had no idea what the OP was talking about. I thought he/she was referring to that Tiki lounge in Pocket D. I'm on my way to a mission in Talos and ran into this place. In any event, it would seem this side door has some Devouring Earth plotting the demise of this woman named Tanya. Seems like I'm always trying to rescue a woman named Tanya, but I am always too late. So for those that may have struggled with reading like I do from time to time, this is in Talos. [-1633.7 10.5 5642.6]