Ukase

I DO encourage you to seek out the fun the way you want to play. It's your time and you should kill-most at +4 or however you think best. It's just not the optimal way for those that want merits. Merits are what a number of players turn to because they can't stand the market. They'd rather use merits to get their purples and ATOs. (even though I've shared many times this is a foolish way to spend in-game currency!) To answer the question in the post title: The primary reason it's a +0 "snooze fest" is because aside from the Dr. Aeon SF, you get the exact same merits whether you do it at +4 or -1. You get the same merits whether you do it with no enhancements or with no limitations at all. There's a fairly large sub-population of players who have no need of influence. XP? XP is meaningless, because if you look at a speed ITF done in 10 minutes done 4 times vs the 40 minute kill most ITF, the former gives you more merits. Probably more inf, too, because you've clobbered the higher XP/INF AVs and EBs 4x as much. As far as fun goes, a lot of players think the kill-most is the snooze-fest. And when you're tackling something like a Citadel, the NPCs just have more Hitpoints; they don't have any extra special abilities to worry about. So, instead of tackling them in 1-2 shots, you have to hit them 2x as much. The extra inf/xp just isn't worth it, because you could just clobber the +0 NPCs faster in the same time frame. And have more time to get more merits doing something else. Personally, the only time I play a kill-most or kill-through is with an SG crawl team. I do this more for a few folks who just don't enjoy the faster pace as much as I do. When solo, I am not reading anything other than mission objectives. I'd sooner mash a couple of lucks than clobber mobs that would see me if I click a glowie while stealthed. It's just faster that way. I finish an arc faster, and am rewarded by the story arc completion XP/Inf bonus. By doing things faster, I get more merits in less time than the other player who kills most/through. Since we're not on the same team, we both win! Another reason for +0 is pugs. When you PUG, you have very little idea as to how capable or not your team is. There's even a small fraction of players that for reasons that escape me don't even buy enhancements until level 22 or so. Maybe even level 30. I can't imagine the frustration they feel between levels 19 and whenever they slot, due to Beginner's Luck running out. I always start a PUG at +0 (unless it's a 50 team with level shifts) and then let the group dictate how high they want to go.

Isn't it fantastic that each Experienced Marksman recipe uses the same ingredients?

I was just curious. It's no secret that there are some market plays going on with uncommon salvage, pvp IOs and LotG 7.5%, and probably other areas I don't really look at routinely. Below are some screenshots over the past 3 days, in the AM upon my logging in. Obviously, there's a key metric missing - # of sales in the past unit of time (week, day, hour) These would be useful, certainly, but I think the AH has quite enough to do as is, even though I'd love to see it. How much attention are you paying to demand when you slap your 100's of Achilles Heel debuff procs in the market? I sometimes find myself tempted to make 4-5 SGs with nothing but storage and buy all the LOTG's in game - just to clear out the old inventory from folks that may never play again. That's quite an inf-sink, and it's not like I wouldn't eventually use at least most of them. But..1000 slots, rule of 5...I think 5k would be as many as I'd ever need. It's interesting to me, as over the past three days, the # of the LotG's have increased by about 100 each day. Bidding seems to be close to the same. Granted, it's just now the weekend, so demand should pick up a little bit, I'd think. Do you ask yourself how many players are making new characters each day? Are you taking note of the various server loads to get a clue? Or do you just slap 'em in, and hope for the best? I generally sell my lotg for about 6, and hope they overbid and I get more. I read that somewhere in here is someone who stated they still sell them for 7M and while the sale isn't instant, they never have to wait for more than a day. I wonder if that's still the case. Obviously, these screenies are just one moment in time in the morning, and in the evenings they may sell for 2x what I'm looking at. No idea. What's your process in assessing demand? From July 7 July 8 Today, July 9

Hey, playing devil's advocate is supposed to be fun! Don't you start with your logic riddles!

For a smaller league, there is a strategy you can use if someone has incandescence. You might take a group of 12, have two teams of 6. The player with incan goes to the third location and begin to solo the mobs around the third resonator, while the two teams clear their respective resonators of mobs. When the barrier drops on those two resonators, take the resonators down. The second player with incan then uses it to bring the entire league to the third resonator and finish off the mobs and the resonator. The key though is DPS. If you can't clobber the mobs and resonator within 30 seconds (giving a 5 second buffer for the incan) then it's going to be a struggle because you have to try again.

So, just to play devil's advocate, I should start stating that I'm a hetero male in my bio? I honestly don't think anyone gives a whit about what gender pronoun anyone goes by, nor their preferences and frankly, nor should they. If I ever stumbled across such a thing, I'd likely 2 star them with a comment to avoid them simply because they chose to share useless info. We're all just pixels in this game.

A fair enough idea, but then I'd have to retoggle. Pass. A better solution for me is to spawn a Snow Beast and let it deal with it. Sometimes, just dropping a lore pet on the head of the stuck npc is enough to get them loose. Or the aforementioned Snow Beast. Or TP target. Or Fold space.

While I can understand why someone might think that one per zone is inefficient, as stated before, it really isn't - at least, not always. Sometimes, you have teammates who: have a base teleporter, SG portal temp, Ouro port, LRTP to all (or most) zones know where a given faction will be in an assigned zone have the AoE and/or fold space to complete the defeats necessary in 1-2 attacks In my case, when I do a Numina, if not leading, I'll ask the leader before the tf even starts if they're going to assign zones. Then I'll tab out, bring up the Numina kill list for quick reference. I know where to find any of the npcs on the kill list. Sometimes, they're not in a large enough group to tackle them quickly. And this is why we sometimes ask for 2 people to go to each zone, by team roster. 1 & 2 take Perez, 3 & 4 go to Atlas. 5&6 go to Steel. 7&8 go to Kings. Generally, because 1 & 2 are already in PP, the team may have to wait a moment for 3&4 to catch up, but by the time they're done, 5,6,7 & 8 are in position, and 1 & 2 are getting there. There used to be a bit of a challenge with Council in Boomtown due to 5th column clobbering them as you approach, but now that the big war walker base is in Boom, there's always enough council to clobber without sweating the 5th column. You just have to get there and wait for your turn to clobber. And yes, sometimes you get people on your team who don't read chat, or if they do, don't follow the suggestion/request/order from the team lead. There's a brutal solution - kick 'em. If they're not going to contribute for the street sweeps, then who needs 'em? But that's harsh, and sometimes, folks go for a refill without letting the team know. Sometimes a cat will hop on the keyboard and cause all manner of shenanigans. Real life can occur and interrupt things and the team is none the wiser, often left thinking the worst. This is the disadvantage of PUGs. PUGs can be great, and it's generally where we run into folks who become folks we run with more often than not. But, sometimes, like any other population, you run into less than ideal teammates for you, for whatever reason. Sometimes, they just suck. Sometimes, you play in such a different style, they no longer find teaming with your leadership or play style entertaining.

I've had similar issues on occasion with various contacts. The key for me has been to either auto-complete the first mission, or just complete it myself, and then if I don't get the arc next, I'll abandon and re-try until I do get the arc. That usually works for me. I can't think of a time that it hasn't worked.

Go make it.

There are many reasons to leave after the completion of Frostfire. 1. Got a few levels, need to train, and because most will go from level 10-11 to level 13-14, they'll need new enhancements, and sometimes choosing them can take some time. Sometimes, they'll need to transfer inf, or sometimes, they may have to market enough to get the inf to buy them. 2. It could be that the teaming wasn't that fun for them. Some folks are so focused on their own fun, they may not realize that others have to deal with certain challenges in the mission that others are oblivious of. Like a brute/scrapper/tank with some AoE. They don't like to waste an AoE on one character, so they move to the next group, often leaving these leftovers for other teammates who may not be well-equipped to handle them. Or, it could be any number of things, like someone told a bad joke, or nobody was chatting at all, and they found that to be boring, like a team full of soloists. Sometimes, folks die - a lot, and who wants to be on that team, where people think defeat is a routine thing, not realizing that while you're defeated waiting for a rez, others are carrying your weight, or simply not much is getting done while they wait for you. There's a zillion things that could be going on that might trouble a teammate. They may not say anything, because they realize it's their problem. 3. Frostfire can be over in a few minutes, or it can take maybe an hour, depending on the team's style. And when it takes longer, some folks are just out of time. Even with 2xp, I've never taken a character from 1-39 in a day outside of a farm. I simply don't play for extended periods of time anymore. Maybe an hour, 90 minutes is as much as I can stand. The body was designed for movement, not being stationary for such lengths of time. It's just not healthy. (That's why folks toss and turn when they sleep - to move.) 4. It's possible that you may not have expressed the next mission on the agenda before the mission was over. If the mission's over, and there's no talk of what's next, why should they stick around? Could be any number of reasons.

You're correct, but I wasn't speaking of rewards. Rewards in game are so irrelevant, I barely pay attention to them. A d-sync? Useless for the most part, except to sell. And even then, unless it's one of a specific few, still useless. Merits? Merits are trash, useless. Only good for converters. And converters are free. (when you use a farmer's emp merits to exchange for them) Aside from badges, there really are no real rewards in game. And most of those are useless, too, unless you're pursuing all of them, and/or want the 4 passive accolades. But when I say "rewards in game are so irrelevant", I say that they are irrelevant to me, not everyone. I don't need merits, got hundreds, if not thousands in the winter packs I've yet to open. D-Syncs, some have good utility, but not enough utility to farm the SF/TF. At least, not enough utility for me. Now, if we could pick which one we wanted, that would be preferred. I honestly have no idea why we can't, as that would certainly lead to a more stable supply and pricing for each of them. But, there's a reason. Just don't know what it is.

Honestly, I don't notice a difference, aside from the battle with Apex taking a bit longer than otherwise. Truth is, a good group, and there really isn't a difference. Now, when you're pursuing the badges, that's when things get tedious. If not, it's just like doing an Apex or Tin Mage.

It was a couple of patches ago. The exchange rate is simply stupid bad. Anyone doing this is just ignorant of Luna. I see no reason to advertise it, because you'd have to be dumb as a rock to do this transaction. I honestly have no idea what the HC devs were thinking when they slapped in that exchange rate. It costs 80 tickets for a specific uncommon salvage. So, 80 threads. Or, 540 tickets, or 540 threads for a specific rare. 100 tickets/threads for one random large inspiration. Yet, I can take those same 100 threads and visit Luna for 10 Super Inspirations. Now, does that make any damned sense at all? I'm thinking they goofed and intended to make the threads to tickets something a bit more generous, but missed the mark. Too bad we can't use tickets to buy incarnate salvage!

Let me shed what is likely a rare, but not unique perspective. Stripping a character of IOs is tedious work. Further, once that's done, you have to stash those items somewhere, where presumably, another alt would use them. But, the thing about other alts is they're different. While it's true most of my characters will use the usual pvp IO procs, the steadfast 3% defense, perf shifter +end, miracle + recovery, numina +regen/recovery, etc - they'll have different sets and such. Why would I make an alt that uses all the same stuff, unless it's a farm brute to be recycled. My base is set up to stash the expensive IOs, but not the cheap stuff. And, it's currently full. 10 bins with 100 purples each. 1 bin with LotG 7.5% recharges. 1 bin filled with ATOs 1 bin with Winter-Os 1 bin with random sets that most of my characters would use. 1 bin with PvP IOs. and 1 bin has my spines/fire brute IOs for when I recycle the farmers when they hit vet level 48. (after that, the emp merit returns drop too low to keep them around. So, I respec them, stash the IOs for the next brute) The other two storage units are for Super inspirations. So, I just don't have room to strip alts I don't play. The characters can hold the IOs just fine. Not like I need them. I have plenty of inf to spare. Besides, sometimes, I do play those characters again, particularly when HC changes the rules on the powersets and power pools. For example - that miserable, dastardly change to Rune of Protection and the rest of the Sorcery pool. I chose to respec a lot of my characters that have that pool, and played them for a time after, just to try them out for a few days. I have one whose only real purpose is to farm Ambrosia. Not so I can be a damn mercenary and charge 3M each, but so I don't have to spend 3m each, and maybe help out a teammate or two. I have a lot of characters that exist as mission holders for various badges. And, some...well, here's an example: Lagniappe. Lagniappe was my first corruptor, a water/time corruptor. I think it's a fantastic name. And I really enjoyed playing it when I was leveling it up. And, it is an AT powerset combo that @Bionic_Flea himself suggested I try when I pestered him for a suggestion. To delete it after that would really be poor form. I haven't played it in ..looks like 7 months. Maybe longer, but that was the last log in for that character. I don't think I'll ever delete it. Wouldn't feel right. Now my widow, my warshade - those are true garbage characters. I leveled them up with my sg, and that's the ONLY reason they got to 50, because one was a blue side crawl team, the other a red side crawl team. I can't bring myself to delete them, but I have banished them to reunion where they won't take up character slots. And they're still fully IOd. One day, I may revamp them, respec them and see if they can actually punch their way out of a paper bag, and avoid getting stunned. (yeah, I tediously came up with a human only build for the WS, and suddenly realized - they don't have status protection unless they use dwarf form. My mistake - so, it's not so much the AT is trash, but the way I made them is trash) And, who knows? One day, HC may make sweeping changes to them - and this will save the trouble of leveling an identical character should a change occur.

Just as an example - you can barely see it - but that's a "glowie", one of my mission objectives. That is as bright as it got. Everything else is fairly normal as far as I can tell, but this is a bit disappointing. As for client-side improvements, I don't think I require that. I'm sure there's some minor setting, but candidly, I have no idea what half of the terms in the graphic slider even mean.

I was reminded recently that at minimum, more than a few players never played on live, or if they did, they were a munchkin figuratively, or literally, sitting on someone's lap. A lot of folks have no idea what an unseeded salvage price tag would look like. They don't understand that 20M for a purple is very inexpensive. Heck, they don't even understand that even the most expensive thing in this game is cheap, relatively, when you consider how simple it is to get influence/infamy/information. I tried really hard to grasp what the OP wants - and doesn't want, I think I get it now, thanks to his/her recap. (but I could be wrong. I've learned that reading comprehension isn't as strong a suit for me as I would like to think!) Regarding #1 - we do have that in a sense. We get usable loot. But I think the OP is wanting that everything that drops be useful, rather than something to vendor because we can't use it for varying reasons. Or we don't want to use it. "I did the Synapse TF, and besides merits & XP, all I got was this Basilisk's Gaze recipe that I can't use." That's a fair statement. The game is set up to drop random loot instead of specific things that the game should probably know we can use. For example, why should the game drop a level 16 Steadfast protection on a character that doesn't have any type of resistance armor? I always felt like my emp should have gotten items like Doctored Wounds, or Miracle, that type of thing. I believe the converters were introduced to specifically address that. Yay, a new currency. Just what every game needs, right? I do think we could make the following changes without much hassle: Random enhancement drops should align with your origin so you can use them. They should all be the level of the npc that was defeated. So, if you want a +3 SO, then get to clobbering +3 NPCs. Recipes should only require one type of salvage - arcane or technology. My reason for this is because when you're doing an arc, you get a recipe, the salvage for that recipe, should have a chance to drop within that arc. It drives me up the wall when I need a bleeding stone for a recipe that dropped on a freak map, and I'll never get it until I fight magic origin npcs. Looking for specific loot shouldn't drive my choice of arcs, I don't think. It should be the story itself. But that's just my opinion. It's odd. In AE maps, both arcane and tech salvage may drop, but not "in the wild". And that's crazy to me.

I could have sworn there was a better place to ask this question, but I wanted to ask it sooner than later, and didn't find it in my first look around. I recently got a new Nvidia 3060 for my computer. Before, I was playing on performance settings, now I'm maxed out. So...the thing is - why does everything look the exact same except for the glowies? The glowies no longer appear to glow as brightly, and sometimes, they flicker more than they "glow". I would have thought there would be greater contrast, more colorful effects, etc..but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'd be curious to see snippets of what some of your graphic settings are set to.

Let me at least share one perspective to address this question of "Why have characters and not play them?" When HC opened, the first thing I did was remake some of my favorite characters from live. Ice/ice blast, ill/rad troller, spines/regen scrap, fire/fire blast and fire/stone tank. Even solo, with 2xp, leveling from 1 to 50 takes less than a week. But, just because you make 50 doesn't mean the journey stops. There's still incarnates and badges. 4 characters now with all the badges, 1 with all but a dozen - and that's simply because last year, I just got tired of badging. To be as brief as I can, I make new characters to try combinations I haven't tried. Eventually I had over 50 level 50s. How am I to play those characters on even a semi-routine basis? And still make new alts and level them? There's still another 100 I haven't tried, at least! I have a friend in game, @stitch, and while I don't see him daily, I can tell you, other than the 15 badge characters he's got, I have never, ever seen him play the same character twice. And why would he? You get to 50, t-4 in all, then what? Pursue all badges on each and every character? That's the stuff of madness because it's not sustainable. Imagine having 500 characters, and then a new big patch comes out and you have to get all the new badges on all those characters. Oh - and you still have to make sure your wife is happy and your kids are fed. There's just no way to do it and still live life as a half-normal human. There's a few folks that only have a few alts and they cycle between those. And that's perfectly fine, too. But my way is also just fine. I make a character. In most cases, I level to 50. In a few cases, playing them isn't that much fun, so I shelve them, thinking I'll be in the mood to play them later. And in a few cases, I do get those characters to 50. In other cases, I just delete them. And after they get to t-4, I don't have any more goals with that character. I've already done what that character can do, save badges, and that's just madness to do that with every character. (They do all get the 4 passive accolades tho)

With regards to the invention tutorial, not only would I like to see it unlocked at the first recipe drop, I'd like it expanded to include converters, catalysts and boosters.

Not sure I understand. 5/6 slot every power? Like Hurdle and Swift, too? Just attacks?

I think that's a good thing, but I am inclined to think that it's the work of one or more players working to drive the price of it down. Or, they're liquidating a large reserve. I dunno. But, I'm gonna make sure my base is re-stocked. I do not think it will last, but I could certainly be wrong.

That's a fan site that was put up about 2 years and 2 months ago. If you try to click through, most of those links are dead. Yes, you can see the dialogue as it was back on live, but click through to actually read them, there's nothing there.

When you do these trials - are you using the league window or the team window? Sometimes, I use the team window just to see what kind of team reds are active. Sadly, the range on these is only 20 feet, and after the first crackle and the inevitable scatter, often folks are never in close enough proximity to make full use of the inspirations. What's interesting to me is the fact that it's 16 target max, but you only have 8 folks on a team...I guess that includes pets, but the game has a bad habit of never quite spelling these things out specifically.

You raise some interesting points - but the one thing that you haven't mentioned is that the recipe in question is a very rare. Anecdotally, these are far less rare for me than they used to be. But, back on live, I didn't have a true farmer, I just had a fire/stone tank that could farm the dreck map, and did. But I had to be present, controlling my character. Burn on auto would have done the job, I think...but I'm not real sure, as it never occurred to me to try. In any event, if you take farming out of the equation, AND you take the Market Crash auto-purple drop out of the equation, I think it's safe to say, I might have gotten 5 purple drops in the past couple of years. Maybe 8. But, really, they're very, very rare as a drop. At least, they are for me. The rarity is why these are so relatively expensive. Think, back on live, a very rare recipe, uncrafted could cost you well over 250M! Even the Fortunata Hypnosis, the sleep set, arguably the least used would have cost you about 225k. And the salvage for it would be closer to 1-2M, with same crafting costs. So, the percentages on live were even more out of whack. So, I think it's about perspective. Yours is interesting. And I don't disagree with a lot of what you stated. But - ya gotta remember that purples are very rare. Scarcity means low supply. 10% global recharge means higher demand. And when someone gets one they can't use, they can craft it, keep it, store it, convert it or sell it. But if they do sell it, they want to get as much as they can. So, that will push the price higher. Eventually, there's a balance between what folks want to get for it, and what folks are willing to pay. Folks like me who are more frugal get annoyed at the high cost of these items. Other folks, not so much. It's just part of the game, I figure. I don't see a good way around it. Increasing supply through market crash and farming is probably the only thing keeping these items cheap. And they are cheap. Very cheap. At least, when you compare to 10X the price like they were on live.