tidge
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Posts posted by tidge
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If it was a "technical question", why was it proposed so that everyone can have their pick", with a focus on "p2w" and "AE"? If someone wants to participate in a conversation, it is somewhat important that they take ownership of their part of it.
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22 minutes ago, Neiska said:
Now you are putting words in my mouth. I never said "i'm just saying." I added it as a PS to another topic. Another pointed out that would segregate the community (more than it already is) and I even agreed with them.
On 6/7/2024 at 7:27 PM, Neiska said:PS - I am unsure it has been discussed or asked before, but I do wonder if its possible to separate the different shards by p2w/start and AE stuff. As in -
Shard 1 - No p2w or AE
Shard 2 - p2w, but no AE
Shard 3 - no p2w, but AE
Shard 4 - p2w and AE
That way everyone can have their pick. The purists can have their playground, others can have theirs, and so on.
2 hours ago, Neiska said:i added that as an afterthought, mostly wondering if such a thing was possible in the game scripts and the like.
It was a bad idea, and rather than recognize it was a bad idea it is now necessary to have a debate about conversation.
There is no fundamental way that players having access to START or AE has a noticeable effect on other players I can think of, with only one exceptions
- Because reward drops from AE mirror rewards from the non-AE part of the game, and players can create their own AE, it is possible for the in-game economy to go to dark places.
I suppose it is hypothetically possible that if there exists a player that is actively shunned because START makes that specific player "useless" (because of START attacks, debuffs, heals, travel options, whatever) then START (or P2W as it was referred to) could be causing some sort of community problem... but that strikes me as an incredible stretch.
I think there is also some confusion about AE... there is more to AE than "farming". AE is used by many players as a creative outlet. It is repeatedly been stated that players will seek content that gives rewards indistinguishable from (what I think is being referred to as) "AE Farming".
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1 hour ago, battlewraith said:
Looks like you did not get spared a second time, lol.
It's the doubling down, with no introspection, and a hint of "I'm just saying..." that I felt warranted it. Advocating for segregation into "Like Minded" groups sealed the deal.
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7 minutes ago, Triumphant said:
But, to address your own question, the reason is so that people that think the game is most readily enjoyed a certain way can have access a pool of players that share their preferred play style. It would make for a more enjoyable play experience for players with those preferences, particularly regarding PUGs.
I have trouble imagining players that would willingly give up on P2W/S.T.A.R.T. For one thing, it's where we buy everything from prestige travel powers to turning off certain drops. Please don't waste any more effort trying to workshop that idea.
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8 minutes ago, speeed4ce said:
See, I love using Thunderstrike, if only because it feels satisfying to use. Which, honestly, impacts a lot of my play and build decisions around Thunder Strike and Lightning Rod.
I find Lightning Rod to be fun, but I felt a distinct lack of "whelm" with Thunderstrike. Much like Water Jet from the Water Blast set, it looks cool (to me) but each felt like they were disrupting not just my attack chains but also my build goals. It was easier to criticize Water Jet before it had its undeniable flaw corrected (it used to cost Tidal, even if it missed) yet I still find it to be a bad choice. In the case of Thunderstrike, it is IMO the inner/outer radius effect that is needlessly confusing (misleading?) its damage potential... except for Tankers, who get the improved radii.
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17 hours ago, Neiska said:
PS - I am unsure it has been discussed or asked before, but I do wonder if its possible to separate the different shards by p2w/start and AE stuff. As in -
Shard 1 - No p2w or AE
Shard 2 - p2w, but no AE
Shard 3 - no p2w, but AE
Shard 4 - p2w and AE
That way everyone can have their pick. The purists can have their playground, others can have theirs, and so on. I am not sure if this is even possible, or if the HC staff would consider such a thing. But it's at least a thought and an effort for a compromise. Everyone could have their own game environment of choice and stop the bickering on the farming/AE topic already.
I'm sparing you a thumbs down reaction for this post, but this suggestion makes zero sense. Why do I write this? How would an "uninformed player" know what any of that means? Why would we want shards explicitly set up that have different things, that players can choose to ignore anyway?
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Oh, I have added some Toxic/Psi, but as most know... it isn't that easy to work in after a build has been planed.
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36 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:
This make 100 Adamaster kills using a variety of solo, group and league making sure I got full rewards each time.
"These 1600 merits and 500 incarnate threads are an insult, and probably hiding my pet drops!"
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IMO, the closest thing the "HC Devs" have done to what @Luminara describes... and it isn't close at all IMO... is the push to get everyone off of Tequila and onto HCLauncher. I have nothing bad at all to say about this push(*1), but losing functionality from Tequila (e.g. beta server access, requiring a special delivery mechanism for updates) is about the only thing that I can think of that comes close to the experiences folks have complained about with the new Mids.
(*1) For what its worth, I think there is a spectrum of reasons for the launcher shift, ranging from well-motivated to *shrug*... I don't have any issues myself with the current HCLauncher.
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I want to echo what @twozerofoxtrot wrote. I think having a "self heal" is probably more important for SR than chasing blanket resistances, at least for most content. The resistances picked up from set bonuses/uniques should be enough for a lot of the game. Yes, I have Tough, but it was picked at level 47, The most problematic attack type for my SR Tanker so far as been Nemesis' Toxic. Probably not a surprise, but it feels worse on my SR than on any other Tanker.
I haven't tried tanking the hardest suff yet with my minimally-Incarnate SR Tanker, but when things are going pear-shaped, I have a high-recharge Unleashed Potential available. It doesn't help against auto-hits, but the extra Regeneration ends up balancing with the Scaling Resistances, and the +Defense definitely helps for when it is DDR that is causing me grief.
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-Res procs
in Tanker
My experiences align with what @Sovera wrote, for pretty much every AT I experimented with:
14 hours ago, Sovera said:I've tested the -res procs extensively at some point and what I could see was that they had no impact on the times in clearing a mission. It took as long with them as with them replaced by damage procs.
There is only one circumstance I found where I could see an improvement in clear times, but it is in opposition to a piece of advice written earlier:
On 6/5/2024 at 5:08 PM, Sanguinesun said:However putting them in multiple powers likely is not going to be overall efficient for a build where putting other enhancements in it for bonuses or even damage procs would be better off for the entirety of the build.
The circumstance is this: A Robotics Mastermind with multiple power slotted with the Annihilation %-Resistance piece in the MM attacks. Let me spell out a couple of things before I describe what I observed:
- A solo Mastermind with 6 henchmen is sort of like being on a team with "poorly slotted" teammates
- Robotic henchmen don't have great single-target damage, but they can make a lot of attacks in 10 seconds
- The same source of -Resistance will reset (extend) the duration of the effect
- The MM is spamming the AoE attacks (which include the Annihilation piece) against spawns, and eventually against hard single targets.
When these circumstances align, the %-Res does improve the clear times for the solo MM... but I think the biggest effect is that the Henchmen aren't "nuking" spawns like some player ATs will be. The random nature of the %proc, combined with the randomness of which critters in a spawn get hit by both the MM and the henchmen lead to a general improvement in clear times. It also helps against hard targets, but the fight has to drag a bit to be able to observe this (see the comments above about pylon testing)
I experimented with trying to use (multiple) "stacking" sources of (different) %-Resistance with the MM and I came to the conclusion that it was actually a waste of a slot. I didn't see any effect on other ATs that changed my mind. The %procs are inherently unreliable and the durations are short. I found it better for Tankers to just take Weaken Resolve, slotted for Accuracy, and if desired to add an Achilles' Heel %-Resistance piece to that. This will give a reliable source of -Resistance, plus a pretty good extra %-Resistance chance to be used against a single target... which will almost certainly be what the Tanker is left facing... assuming the Tanker doesn't sprint off leaving a boss behind for teammates to clean up.
There is one more effect that I bring up in discussion of %-Resistance versus %Damage: (Non-AFK) Mission/map clear times are pretty much directly correlated with how many buttons have to be mashed. My play experience has been that for solo play, %damage is better at reducing the number of buttons that need to be mashed than %-Resistance.
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I have a Spines/Bio Stalker, but not as a Scrapper. The /Bio Secondary makes the Stalker into a very effective PBAoE murder machine. The subtle differences between those two AT in the Primary give me a little bit of pause, mostly because the Scrapper won't have an Assassin's Strike, so as @arcane wrote the single-target damage may be lackluster for the leveling experience.
A recollection of my Stalker leveling experience is that I wasn't impressed with Spine Burst. My final build has it delayed until level 12 and slotted with 5xArmageddon. I think it was that I found the animation to be a little clumsy.
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Perhaps what dear @Shin Magmus is trying to say is more like this:
"Because of various combat effects, including player RNG rolls resulting in MISS with a single-target attack/control that would have otherwise kept a specific Carnie from phasing, fights with large Carnie spawns feel peculiarly random in ways that fights with other similarly sized spawns do not."
Maybe It was in reference to whether or not the enemy Illusionists phase before the player fires off an AoE against their spawn? Both are more annoying than any trick played by nuCouncil.
We've all experience an RNG-cursed miss after a Build-Up/Assassin's Strike... but I think all the times I've missed with any attack/control against a phasing Carnie that if it had hit would have either face-planted them or held them, and I don't feel at all bad about those missed AS.
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I build with level 50 in mind, but as a practical matter I typically only plot out up through level 32.
While leveling: I don't honor what the final build will be in terms of powers or slotting, certainly not in set choices (because Purples, etc. aren't available below a certain level). Every once in a while I will make radically different choices in power pools while leveling up. I like to experiment, and respecs are plentiful.
Some things I do while leveling: I often have more +Recovery than what a final build will have. I typically don't multi-slot powers like Build Up even if a final build has multiple slots.
When I see a build posted that has Hasten before level 10, I can pretty much guess that such a build was not played organically. There are some powers that simply don't make sense to take very early. Hasten sticks out to me because it isn't commonly taken because there is some later power in the Speed pool that is being gatekept by needing to take multiple earlier powers.
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53 minutes ago, mistagoat said:
I greatly dislike the changes. These groups have just had boring time sinks added to them.
Even worse, you get nothing for the added effort. When you kill a Freak you get xp and then when that Freak rez's you kill it again and get another helping of xp.
IIRC, Freaks have generally lower XP because they can rez.
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52 minutes ago, Super Atom said:
Synapse is 100% correct, making enemies take longer to kill is not difficulty. It's just more boring.
NuCouncil used to have no tricks, and were doormats compared to other groups. It is no secret that players would advertise "Council Radios in PI", I am not going to be convinced it is because the OTHER groups in radio options lacked "cool gimmicks". I think it is disingenuous for a "Live Dev" to throw shade at the most recent update to enemy groups when what we had on live was not exactly imaginative. KoV and BP in Dark Astoria... pretty good! Other groups that never got updated on Live? Pretty big blind spot IMO.
Personally, I find the Carnies to be the MOST annoying (not the most difficult) at x8, because of the constant phasing, flying and running. NuCouncil, even with an occasional runner, is still easier to deal with.
Even low levels have some highly annoying "classic" enemy behavior. I'm thinking of defeat all or even defeat specific spawns were the original CoT spectres go invisible and fly away. Tell me more about the classic non-boring play.
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4 minutes ago, MeltingPenguins said:
Hi, hello new player here, maybe I could throw in my two cents:
The game is fun so far (highest character is at level 12 now), but what I found a little frustrating are these bits:
- The chat and how to filter it: I still don't know if it is possible to filter NPC dialogue that's not relevant to a mission from the chat, or open a global chat that only shows player messages (outside of Help)
You can right-click on tabs (even ones you have added) to edit what appears in what tabs.
I tend to have a dedicated tab that includes cutscene dialogue, npc dialogue, system and rewards... removing those things from the other tabs.
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2 minutes ago, Pleonast said:
That’s fair. But as it is now, DO and SO enhancements are a trap to new players. They don’t get enough useful drops to keep them up to level. Spending inf to buy them is a huge waste. We need to either make them not a trap, or remove them like TOs were removed. Maybe replace the drops with basic recipes and salvage.
Trap or opportunity for learning? It's hard for me to recall my feels from the earliest days of Live w.r.t. slotting (mostly because debt was so burdensome at launch), but because the leveling experience was so much slower at launch, I remember being able to tell (beyond the red numbers on the enhancements) that my character was struggling upon leveling. I'd combine DOs and SOs all the time. I don't remember feeling like there was pressure to keep all my DOs/SOs at peak performance.
Now with so many ways to quickly level by just playing.... I suspect the issue is that some (uninformed) players may want to both level quickly and have those quickly leveling characters perform at a peak levels. This is of course possible, even trivial, but it requires things like:
- Players need to know about the Invention system and the Auction House, and use them
- Players need to have a little bit of a nest egg (rather trivial for level 50s to build, assuming they vendor IO recipes)
- SG storage makes this much easier for multiple characters, but in-game email can also work
Once a player gets familiar with those things, DO/SO will stop using head-space.
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2 hours ago, Frostbiter said:
The recipe list in the Incarnate menu has a very hard to notice scroll bar. That should really be addressed. It comes up as an issue for new 50's all the time.
The UI scrollbar issues are not limited to the Incarnate menu. See also the Recipe crafting menu, the Ouroboros menu, etc.
As most everyone else wrote: The Incarnate system is possibly the most confusing aspect of "character building", as it includes unlocks, crafting, and multiple possible power picks.
My own biases:
I tend to ignore the Incarnate system and content. I like that I can now solo it, and earn it without grinding on PUGs as on Live.
I will eventually slot Alpha, to get the +1 level shift, and to get more oomph of some set of attributes.
The other attributes and tiers will usually only get slotted when I want to play with buddies in "Incarnate" or "Hard Mode" content.
Personally? Originally (Live) I saw the Incarnate system as being mostly a way to get powers that my ATs couldn't normally have: AoEs, Heals, Shields, Pets, whatever. I used to like this, now I'm less inclined to think this is necessary, even for solo play. I never took Enhancement Diversification personally, but I won't ignore how Alpha can improve performance.
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IIRC, the original DO/SO drops being usable by characters (by origin) were supposed to be handled by the character picking contacts that were offering specific enemy groups. This is manifest in the pre-40 content when introduced to (and before selecting) contacts when the player is informed which enemy groups a contact will offer missions for. Early contacts will be more explicit about which origins they align with.
Back-in-the-day, there were more resources out-of-game to be able to learn which groups favored which SO/DO drops. The Invention systems (even common recipes!) essentially supplanted DO/SO. Mathematically, I see no real reason to worry about SO/DO once a character can slot level 25 common IOs. If folks want to play with DOs/SOs... I feel that those players have made a choice such that they probably shouldn't need the game to be modified to support a version of the original, unmodified version of the game.
As an aside: because of the rewards associated with crafting level 25 and 30 common IOs, the market place (introduced at the end of the IO tutorial, should have plenty of enhancements at those levels, for relatively cheap.
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Excellent point made:
4 hours ago, Neiska said:Has it not occurred to some people that -
AE inf/exp was nerfed. People still farm.
They have added prisms and such to all non-AE activities. People still farm.
They changed the AI to make farming more difficult. People still farm.
They have changed some powersets, adding things like inherent -DEF. People still farm.
They have added all kinds of story content. People still farm.
Many farmers have been farming for nearly 5 years now. People still farm.
I am not sure how else to point out that some people, farming IS their peak enjoyment of the game. I can't speak for everyone as for the WHY.
I can offer my own guesses as to why folks prefer farming... but they would simply be guesses. From my own, extremely limited "farming" experience, I can say I did it explicitly for:
- random drops, and "daily rewards" used to
- build up a "nest egg" that has been used in the many subsequent years to improve the play experience of subsequent alts
I honestly never considered AE farming for XP... mostly because it is pretty easy to get as much XP as fast as I want otherwise... and I don't usually "want" fast XP.
I can post my impressions what other "farmers" have liked during the assort "rage quit" periods... there is some number of "farmers" that simply want as much as possible for as little effort as possible (my words, not theirs). This was most noticeable IMO when the changes to Vanguard, and later Empyrian, merit rewards occurred (see also the "level 49 cheat") ... I write IMO because there is no in-game reason to have been hurt by those changes except in the raw accumulation of MOAR. The MOAR certainly can be used in different ways, but the in-game economy was being affected in some peculiar ways that the devs felt like they should step in.
I think it is self-evident that many players absolutely will accept and migrate to content that they feel is offering them the most (in-game) rewards for the smallest amount of effort... this is human nature. It see it manifest in game quite a bit:
- Torchbearer's "Saturday Night Synapse" started as a sort of fun stress test of giant monsters in-zone, but the total number of players simply calling out in zone for "overflow" makes it somewhat obvious that some fraction of players are just there for the merits. The last several months don't look like "playing", at least not to me.
- The change to the Ghost of Scrapyard rewards, after Monstrous Aethers were introduced. It used to be incredibly difficult to get players to go to "red side", up until it became widely known that this GM could be trivially farmed. Torchbearer has hours upon hours of leagues constantly resummoning and defeating that Giant Monster.
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I definitely don't want to diminish the dedication of folks working with legacy code for a rather complicated problem... but I long ago stopped using MIDS variants for personal reasons:
- It seemed like it needed a LOT of extra resources to install (and run?), far more than I expected for what should be essentially a database tool
- For me, someone who is familiar with the sets usable for powers, and can reference other sites (City of Data!), the primary value a tool like MIDS would provide would be to see relatively tiny fractional changes between relatively major changes in power/slot choices.
- It was during an attempted MIDS install, during a period when I was feeling like I should give it another chance, that the HDD it was being installed on bricked itself.
In reverse order:
(3) This is the most personal, and it isn't fair to assign blame to MIDS, but hey... it happened!
(2) I am not now, never have been, and at this point incredibly unlikely to become the type of player that sweats out an extra point of damage, or 0.3% defense, or tries to build a "perfect" attack chain, or similar. I don't want to yuck in the yum of players who want to go "crunchy", but my perception is that such players often present this attitude with such an intense level of detail and content constraints that I find myself wondering how mellow they would be in other, less structured, content.
(1) From the outside... this is very hard to gauge, but having worked professionally on a significant number of software projects, most of which involved legacy code, this project feels like it needs to be refactored. This is a nearly impossible thing to ask a team of volunteers to do, because folks will work on the parts they want to work on.
As for how would I refactor/redesign such a tool?
#1 I'd start with the Pareto principle and recognize that "80% of the development effort is focused on 20% of the features"... so delay/eliminate the 20% of the features that are going to consume huge amounts of coding. It is fine to put hooks in place for future efforts, but don't try to develop a core that does everything. If I had to guess what 80% of teh user base wants:
- A graphical interface that allows, once an AT is selected
- Choice of primary/secondaries
- Power choices (including from pools, etc.) and slot placements
- Appropriate/allowable enhancement slots for chosen powers, plus set bonuses
- "Totals" for powers (considering ED, natch) and "globals" (including "toggles")
- Saving/exporting/importing builds
Things like "DPA", even though it is considered critical to some players, could probably take a bake seat for 80% of the user base. Heck, even though I use procs, I'd probably be able to live without an explicit calculation for "%proc" chance to start. Even though *I* go for accolades... and even Incarnates... these are other considerations that *I* think might complicate getting a smoothly working product.
#2 is more code-specific, and likely unfair because of my unfamiliarity with the code base... I'd try to make the database (of classes, of power sets, of enhancement sets, etc.) completely standalone and "distributable" such that a local version of the database could be relatively trivially installed/modified/updated locally by users... and if necessary refactor the database. I want to believe the database is relatively well-constructed, because of how well City of Data shows things... but years ago it felt like there were a number of database issues with the MIDS variants. Similarly... get the core UI working, and come up with a way that it wouldn't need to be tweaked.
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16 hours ago, Sanguinesun said:
In the recent Original Devs Q&A, Phil "Synapse" Zeleski was asked:
And regarding the revamps to the mobs, he mirrored my thoughts on all this perfectly:
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I think the only parts of Homecoming that I am not a big fan of are the revamps of some of the endgame enemy groups. The Council and Circle of Thorns really stand out as just annoying to fight. They aren't tricky or require counterplay, they just take longer to defeat due to resistances, revives and debuffs.
Does he remember how needlessly grindy the original Live Incarnate content was? Does Phil ever recall the other level 35+ groups?
The nuCouncil and nuCoT are no more "annoying" to fight that Rularuu, Nemesis, MoG PP, Carnie Illusionists, etc.
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29 minutes ago, Seed22 said:
The leveling experience is terrible. The game’s age really shows and its missions are absolute trash and thats putting it nicely. It is the worst leveling experience I have EVER experienced in any game I have ever played
Hard disagree. I'll describe a just-this-week experience of getting a blue-sider to level 24. I'll note I have "starting funds" and a stocked SG base.
1) Launch the character in Outbreak, bought some START stuff (AoE temp attacks, 8 hours of buffs (24 Kinf at level 1), some travel stuff, disabled some drops... but no 2XP)
2) After Outbreak, went to AP. Still no 2XP. Did a scrub arc and the first Matthew Hasby.
I want to note that while in Atlas (and later zones) I was careful to never have more than 10 bars of Patrol XP (mostly from exploration)
3) at level 5, I went to KR to do 3 radios and then the first Safequard.
4) Went to Hollows and completed the Flux arc
5) Went back to KR and did the second safeguard to unlock the "Save the Fortune Teller" contact.
6) After these, I was at level 15 (leveraging patrol XP), so started Montague's arc (still haven't finished it) because I then did
7) 3rd Safeguard... and I verified that if you already have Montague, detectives in neither Steel canyon nor Skyway City will give a new contact!
8 - Joined a Positron 1
9) Did the 4th Safeguard (Summon Teammates!), started doing TIPs (which are fun content IMO).
This isn't a trash experience! Notice I didn't include a DFB, and I barely touched "regular contact" missions. I've already out-leveled the "newer" content in the Hollows, Steel Canyon and Faultline... and I have only the first TF completed. I still have many zones to use for Patrol XP (also, day jobs). My experience red side is very much the same, except that PUG SFs are fewer in number.
If I feel like I've entered a doldrums period after level 30, I'll do the PVP zones content, Ouroborous initiation, join some more TFs, etc.
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How do we fail new players?
in General Discussion
Posted
If there answer was "it is technically possible to split the HC servers this way" would you be advocating that they actually be segregated?