Coyotedancer

Though I don't hit those maps solo with Harry very often, I'll start keeping numbers when I do if you guys want. Another data-point might be useful, That said, while I don't know about another INF or drop nerf in general, I *have* definitely noticed one real weirdness... Something that's been mentioned before on the Bugs forum. I often dual-box, and there's a VERY consistent difference (That is to say, too consistent to be nothing but RNG jerkishness-) between the quantity of uncommon/rare/very rare recipe drops that the "leader" (Harry) gets on any farm map vs. what the secondary character ends up with. When I ran Harry (mission owner) and Sefkhet (lvl 50 tag-along) together on Cult's big Freakworld map Sunday morning, for instance, he ended with 6 assorted u/r/vr recipes. She had... I want to say 15 or 16. That was a wider gap than average (I'd say it's typical for the secondary character to get at least half-again more drops than the leader, with double not being all that uncommon-), but the general trend has held for months. Their number of common recipe drops were a lot closer, for reference. Salvage and INF, likewise. She slightly edged him out on enhancements, but there's never been a large enough difference between the first character and seconds there to make as much of an impression as the difference in invention set recipes. Like I said, though I haven't been logging exact numbers, the difference in the recipes has been large, noticeable and absolutely consistent for quite awhile. I wonder if what some of you guys are seeing is related? If there's a tangle in there somewhere that's affecting the number of drops the mission owner receives there might be circumstances where that hits solo mission owners just like it does Harry when he's half of a duo. 'Just a thought. [For the record, I always run +4/x8 with bosses, and I tend to bounce between Brigg's cave map and Cult's various missions when I'm dual-boxing. Bloody Rainbow is just annoying with two characters.] ETA: 'Found some notes I took when that thread in the Bugs forum came up, just to document the recipe weirdness... I didn't date them, unfortunately, so they're no good as references for exactly when something might have gotten strange. Bloody Rainbow (Harry/Oreviel) U/R/VR Harry 7, Rev 10 2551 (Harry/Bahir) U/R/VR Harry 8, Bahir 12 2551 (Harry/Bahir) U/R/VR Harry 4, Bahir 10 Cult's Outdoor (Harry/Deigan) U/R/VR Harry 9, Deigan 16 Cult's Outdoor (Harry/Narada) U/R/VR Harry 7, Narada 13 Though the exact percentage of the difference varies, which I would expect given our RNG, you can see what I mean about the pattern... the fact that there IS a difference... being consistent.

You're not alone in that. I know a few people on Everlasting who see the main draw of the game in "social RP". They spend most of their active playing time doing that instead of bashing goons, and so... a year-and-change into the game... most of their characters are midlevel at most, with no real plan for ever seeing 50. For them, that's just not the point of being in the City. All this build-stuff, and the power-level conversations, and the debates over Incarnates, and the back-and-forth over buffing or nerfing Power X or IO set Y? They couldn't care less. And while I may not personally understand their perspective, it *IS* still a perfectly valid way to do "the City-thing". Takes all types, right?

Dex is great fun, though, and keeping up with him was definitely a good test for my defender's build.

That would be Everlasting

Same for me. I'd say my "average" for the gang is somewhere in the 250/300m-neighborhood... a little more for some, a little less for others... depending on AT and what I'm going for. It's really only the favorites and the off-the-wall "concept builds" that tend to creep up into the "pricey" range. 500m+ for a favorite is justified, I think, I'm not a devoted enough farmer to toss that much at every single member of my crew, though. Not right out of the gate, anyway.... Given enough time without new alts demanding resources, though? Who knows. Maybe someday I'll have revised and updated all of them to that point... But it hasn't happened yet. XD

One easy solution to the Texanism issue? Make an alt who's from Dallas. (I'm Southern and spent quite a few years living in the mountains of western North Carolina. I made a character from eastern Tennessee for those days when I want to let my Inner Appalachian shine. It's good fun. XD)

'Been trying to throw some quatloos into the collective pot for over a year now... and FINALLY, for the first time, today I actually got there in time to do it. I swear, you guys are some seriously fast-moving donation-puppies. XD BUT... Success! At last. 🧐

Nothing to stop a badly-written arc from being upvoted by its creator's friends and SG-mates, either. A hot mess written by a well-known player with a large, supportive SG or an extensive friends-list would likely surpass the star totals of a good but obscure writer's arc faster than we could say "Popularity Contest".

I almost always have the ATOs and a collection of favorite procs and specials (Which include the GladArmor/ShieldWall/Panacea PvP bits on a fair few of the gang-), but rather or not there are any purple sets or WinterO's involved depends a lot on the individual character and what I'm going for with them. Some use them, some don't. Harry (my farm-boy) probably has the single most expensive build of anyone in my crew, and he uses a number of both. If I had had to buy all of his gear outright (I didn't. I'd been hoarding purples, abusing converters, buying Winter packs on sale and planning him for months before I pulled that particular trigger, because I *knew* his build was going to be in OMGWHAT?!-territory otherwise.) it probably would have come in around 750-800m, easy. My favorite Defender, by contrast? Ivory has neither purples nor Winters. Her build cost me MAYBE 150m, tops, to put together.... and yet she's a capable enough character to follow Mysh's Titan Scrap right into the middle of huge groups of goons as if it's the most natural place in the world to find a support type. 'Sort of a good illustration of how you may not need a Scrooge McDuck-sized fortune to build a terror. XD

A lot of hissing and snarling and ruffled fur and bouncing around each other sideways...

"MIDS-pron"... I love it. XD But, yeah. When I say "finished build", I'm talking about using IO sets, not commons. I suspect that's true for most of us when we're talking about getting to the point of a character being complete.

That's an NPC. The only whip attacks we have for player characters are in the Demons MM set, as Li Sensei said, and they're an elemental effect. They don't have a customizable weapon skin. So... No chain-whip type weapons in this game.

As far as I know, the real issue with porting AE stories out to the game world proper is that the formats are completely different. I remember reading somewhere that regular missions are built as something completely off the wall... Excel docs, maybe?... While AE uses something absolutely incompatible.

If you're talking about me as the "farming advocate"... No. I have a few more than that. And not all of them use terribly pricey, purpled-out builds. ETA re Mysh's post: I also have a few that I never play. I haven't touched my Tank or my Illusion Controller since I finished them... I *did* still finish them, but that was mostly a matter of principle more than anything else. XP

They do. XD The game still thinks we're stinky villains.

You would probably get "None. Ever." from a few people. (Yes VT, I'm looking at you. 😁) Just thinking about the character lists that many of my own friends have, though, really huge collections of "finished" 50s seem fairly rare. Quite a few tend to have a lot of alts (tons in some cases-) of various levels, a much smaller group of 50s in various stages of completeness and maybe a handful of favorites that are Incarnated and completely kitted out even though we're at a year-and-change into the game's return. I'm the odd one out, there. I have a sizable group at this point , but I tend to finish one member of the crew before I move on to the next, so almost all of my characters are 50 (I have 4 that aren't-) and all of those 50s are IOed/Incarnated to at least what I consider a reasonable standard. That "finishing one before starting another" doesn't seem to be the usual City-Player Pattern, though... so I'm not sure of it's really useful to compare a list like mine to the lists of more typical alt-a-holics? It's an interesting thing to think about though...

Beans approves. (That's my little rad defender science-bug. His name was Beans. XD)

I'm for it. XD

I do, too.... But they tend not to be forum users. That's why I called it the "forum meta" It's more common here than in the game at large. And I can see how a build could get pretty pricey, even though my own very rarely do.

As a doll collector, let me introduce you to a horror named Blythe.... (*NOT* one of my dolls, for the record. I collect Asian ball-jointed dolls. These chicks are smaller, plastic and hinge-jointed.)

You can thank the "forum meta" for that... You know, the tendency for build-wonks to tell everyone they just HAVE to soft-cap their Defense, and they just HAVE to slot Expensive Procs X and Y and five of Expensive Special Z, plus Winter O's all over the place or their character is "sub-optimal" and basically a potato in virtual spandex? A less-pricey build can handle 99% of the game just fine.... But high-priced min/maxing is such a way of life that you'd never know it from some build discussions. And then there are complaints about players being "too powerful" and how all the content is "too easy".... After everyone's been told that the only good way to build a character is to design it specifically to trivialize everything in the game.

The ATOs were *LUDICROUSLY* overpriced in the Live days... Absolutely to a ridiculous degree, because the idea was to drive people to buy superpacks for real-world money. Making them hard to attain with in-game currency was directly related to profits. That's not an issue here. And frankly, I'm glad merit prices were adjusted to something more reasonable.

Munch. Snack. Rularuu.

I admit, I only recognize Andrew Carnegie on the end, there... Is #2 JP Morgan?

Nah. The "moon" we see now is just a big cardboard cut-out... A fake... The REAL moon, being made of cheese, was eaten by Giant Space Rats in 1952.