iBot

Great movie!... Inconceivable! Anyway. I've noticed the D-Sync have been all over the place and not sure if it is a glitch or just shiny. I put up one that I got the other day for what I thought was fair at 2 mil and it sold within seconds for 36 mil. When I checked the history the pricing was all over the place at 5, 25, 10, 37, and 12. I honestly didn't think anything on the AH was going for more than mid 20s. There were 72 bids and 1 for sale when I listed. Makes me wonder what the sell price of that 1 is. Anyway... oddity I'm sure that will be fixed soon(tm).

I think the very first component I made for incarnates was using a shard because I didn't realize that threads were easier. Also, recently I just use emp merits for anything that doesn't drop. The first 21 vet levels rain enough emp merits to easily get T4 alpha and at least T2 or T3 of others depending on what else drops for you. Running arc 22.07 in ouro rewards an easy component and can be done in under 10 minutes (or even 6 - 8 minutes with awesome map and placement). Even a team can do the mission in around 12 minutes due to the larger spawns. This is by far the fastest and easiest way to earn components to craft incarnate powers since any level will drop as the reward. Several times I've gotten enough VR to get alpha and another power to T4 in just a few runs. No threads or shards needed. It does help if you know what components you need prior to the reward window popping up but really only important if running with others that are speeding. Otherwise you can take your time and bring up the incarnate window to make sure you pick what is needed for the next component you want to craft.

Go with me on this because this maybe a bit wonky but: What if our basic assumption that lowest sell price is always matched with highest bid price is wrong? Well not so much wrong as in there is a limited search algorithm running to make those matches and it stops at the first find not the best find. I could see them doing something like that to save on processing time and any sells/bids on the edges are missed. Just a thought. How likely? No idea. But it supports the evidence presented cause as soon as someone listed 1 converter for 1 inf that bid of 300,000 should have filled immediately.

I'd be perfectly OK with badges that were rewarded for all the various flavors of this quagmire. 1.) Solo TF - Badge A 2.) Team TF - Badge B 3.) Solo TF - no extras - Badge C 4.) Team TF - no extras - Badge D 5.) Solo TF - no extras no death - Badge E 6.) Team TF - no extras no death - Badge F I know... this would obviously require new development in that I doubt the current system allows for those types of distinctions but I would prefer this over the change of an existing badge. What is above would allow players to gain badges based on how they want to play. We are almost there in that there is a normal badge and a 'master of' badge for a few of the TFs. Just expand that to include solo runs and we are all good. I also think I saw someone post about maybe instead of more badges add special pips or stars to a badge to denote different ways of it being earned. That too would be acceptable.

Completely off topic but a bit of color for this. The original name was a bit of a poke fun at all the forum players that constantly complain about players that "bot" in online games. And since I work in the robotics field I thought it would amuse me to see them try to complain about me playing the game. And mostly because the iPod was popular and everywhere in those years. And now back to the thread... @Faultline hit it with that post. I am not annoyed with the changes because I like that the HC devs are doing things to improve upon the game. The gripe I have is that the badge requirements were changed in a way that negates the use of them as benchmarks. I also did not agree with it when the original devs did it so the fact that it was done before changes nothing in my opinion. As I stated prior I can only hope that the changes made will add new things to earn that actually reward those of us that like our super powered characters with all powers available. And I think @Ukase has a valid point in that I hope there is a way in the future for solo players to be able to earn badges based on the fact that they did actually solo the content not just earn the same badge as those of us that did it with teammates. I personally feel that soloing a TF is an accomplishment in an of itself and should be recognized as such. I know... I know.. the howls of "but muh MMO you heretic" ... but I also thought that the HC crew wanted players to be able to do things with fewer teammates required because of the small population. That would be the only reason I could understand as to why we can start TFs with a team of just 1.

As a general rule, whenever I see someone mention the mysterious "They" I immediately substitute "I" and the argument suddenly makes sense. I doubt very much that the devs did a knee jerk reaction here and tried to appease some. I'd like to think that reading through the public posts here that they truly understand that "pleasing everyone" is a myth and guide decisions based on what would be best for the game systems in the long run. I'm not happy with the current state of things but there are certainly factors that no one on these forums short of the devs themselves are aware of. I'd like to hope that the changes made in this latest update are merely a stepping stone to more advanced content that involves all of the fun powers we have access to. Look at it this way: if I want to play my favorite toon without incarnates I'll run a TF that maxes my level below 45. But darn it there are times when I want to rampage through wave after wave of mobs at my full level 53 and not be looked down upon because I enjoy it. The people that want unbalanced powers or sets removed sometimes now have what they wanted and I'm happy for those that like that. Now I just hope that those of us on the other end of the spectrum get something too.

I remember the Rikti monkey change. Happened shortly after I'd spent several days running around herding the darn things together then nuking them for the 10,000 version. I think that one badge more than any other proved to me that I really didn't care any longer about getting badges except for on one character and even then it was only ones that would come naturally as you played. Never farmed another.

I'm still firmly in the camp that incarnates are in serious need of a refactor pass. Added so late in the life cycle they never really got any attention in terms of real balance or diversity passes. For any given set there are clear top picks and others that I'd be willing to bet good inf very few if any actually pick up. So that is one problem. The second is the change of requirements for any badge in game. I wonder if it is harder for them to add new badges rather than retool the requirements of an existing badge. For the people that already have the badge, the new requirements are pointless because it isn't like they can earn the badge a second time. For the people that don't have the badge, it no longer compares apples to apples in that the new method is more difficult. I'd much rather the devs leave the badges alone and add new ones for newer mechanics or retoolings. That way it is obvious for those that care under what circumstances that badge was earned. I do not agree with the design decision that removing powers from the player is good for "challenge". I earned those powers. I did everything asked to make my character as powerful as possible and now the devs are saying "Oh sorry you have to play with one hand and one eye closed in order to be considered a 'master'". No thanks. I'd much rather see them add incarnate level powers to the mobs to even the playing field rather than remove my powers just cause. Anyway... my 0.02 inf 👍

1.) Yes I rarely use my nuke. When I do is when I'm reasonably sure that anything sent flying will die when landing and anything that doesn't I finish off with a 1, 2 or quick snipe. Also see #3. 2.) I rarely if ever use explosive blast so no need for that. I tend to use power push to send a single target flying back to the tank. Otherwise, the mob is dead before anyone really notices it is missing. I love seeing a blast chase a mob around a corner to finish it off. 3.) For the record I'm one of those crazy people you complain about all the time that likes running stuff at +4. I'm also weird in that since I like to stay at range I rarely use my nuke anyway because then I'd have to get close to the mobs which tends to scuff my paint which I really, really, really... hate.

The only shunned NRG blasters were the ones that had no clue how to use KB. Those of us that do know enough to 1.) NOT use it as the alpha strike and 2.) Use it to effectively send running mobs flying right back on top of the tank. 👍 Also if all the mobs are dead who cares where they landed? 🤪

Oh I agree. Don't misunderstand I'm not saying that in terms of generating inf that using the clicks to blasterize things is more effective or anything. I just find it more fun than playing the AH. The only times I've burned through converters is when I'm trying to get a particular ATO or if the set IO piece I want isn't available on the AH so I buy another piece and convert. I think the most I've ever gone through in one sitting is close to 300. And I only know that because I used 100 merits to get them and I swear RNGesus gave me the ATO I wanted on the very last pull of convert. I hadn't thought about farmers but now that you mention it when I did farm I did seem to rack up a large number of converters and catalysts. But then I'm one of those farmers that never bothered with the marketeering side of the coin. I just straight up sold everything without crafting first. I know... I know... I'm a heretic what can I say? 🤷‍♂️

@Andreah Fair point. I figured some may have that many just from opening packs and never really bothering to use them. But very true that market players certainly use them much faster than those of us who are too lazy to bother much with converter roulette. Personally I'd say someone that could spend time buying 10k converters at 10 a stack is life being misspent. 🤪. Those 1000 clicks are much better spent blasterizing mobs.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you know this from personal experience. 😆 ... and next logical question... if you have 10k and get 1 more what happens? I'm guessing that the universe doesn't implode but beyond that logical conclusion what now?

I think that if the in game population stays flat or declines by next year this could be the case. Personally, I'm just going to buy a bunch to use myself and sell off the things I don't rather than trying to make any profit on the packs themselves. Time will tell.

Off hand question for OP: Why are you bidding on both attuned and non-attuned? To the AH they are the same... Anyway: Yeah good luck with the AH code. It is spaghetti that has been put through a blender then smoothed out into a lasagna made to resemble pizza. That section of the game most likely will not be touched until HC goes legit. Too many chances for it to go BOOM! for them to really touch it now. Course as always I could be wrong there but previous forum posts have indicated it ain't pretty in there.

Naw. You formed an opinion based on the information you had at the time. That opinion was flawed and collectively we convinced you to reassess your position which you were smart enough to do. Anyone that shared the same opinion is also now better off. Silence is never a good thing. Free exchange of ideas is. 👍

I'm still trying to get to ludicrously rich... didn't realize there are 2 more steps. 🤪 Interesting... I guess maybe the original thought was that the 10m price was a nice to have when they still weren't sure how the population on the servers would grow. The change to 15 is a odd one given that this will be the last time they go on sale.

Pure ebil... love it!

A little clever macro programming and the clicks could be automated.

My 0.02 inf... This is only the first round of difficulty changes. Personally, I think in the future there will be more content that requires incarnate powers. I know that this patch removed the alpha slot req for Apex/Tin man but I think that was done more to open up the runs for players that didn't get to alpha yet rather than removing incarnate content. So for right now I agree that incarnates can be skipped for the current settings but future who knows. Keep in mind, all the higher difficulty settings actually reward incarnate salvage so it would be very odd in my mind for them to give that reward table and then remove the use of those powers for more content. Along that note, I only worry about the first level shift for most of my characters unless I really enjoy playing that toon. In that case I might get to T4 alpha and T3 in the rest. Otherwise I do have several 50s that don't even have an alpha slot yet cause the toon was made for a specific event run and not played since.

Awesome!... can't wait for the new difficulty settings to expand out to other TFs/SFs. Good fun for all of us that like to push builds to the limit and beyond.

So I think I mentioned in a previous post about maybe actually opening a few I buy this year. We'll see. I also hit on the brilliant idea of "hey why not just bid a bunch at 10m right now on the toons that I don't play that often so they auto buy when the event goes live." Then then I thought, "well why not just email myself all that info and do it on one of my not so used toons so I don't have them scattered all over the place like last time." Then, then, then I realized that I'm lazy and don't want to log in all those toons to transfer all that inf around just to then mess around with the AH to get all those packs. At this point, my brain locked and I"m still trying to recover. 🤪

The AH is a big data issue. First remember that it is a large scale insertion sort most likely pulled from a type of merge sort or quick sort. If they implemented it as a bubble sort then good grief but highly unlikely. It is also a highly fragmented system of data. Think poorly maintained HD from the 1990s when everyone one in tech would say "speed up your HD ... run disk defrag once in a while." Something we would need to know is what kicks off a single process pass. Is it placing an item for sale or is it when you try to buy something? Most likely it is a form of transaction lists that are merged into completed transactions for transfer. Things that happen fast are probably when you place an item at the edges of those lists. Anything in the middle requires more processing time to find. There is also the issue of mismatched transactions. For example someone bids "I want 4 of these at 100 inf" but the market has "2 at 75, 1 at 80, and 65 at 101". Well you get 3 and then have to wait for it to either find another list for under 100 or for someone else to sell under 100 which fills your final piece. Remember, the items are bucketed not the prices so the AH still has to keep all those individual prices stored. So it is not as simple as match highest bid with lowest price. You have to take into account the quantities. When listing a stack of 10 for say 150 inf it is possible for that stack to sell at uneven prices. So the AH has to maintain the data listing each of those fragmented transaction. This requires more processing to filter those lists. It is also probably a low priority thread. It also runs the AH for all servers so it makes sense that if one of the other shards is down the AH would waste time trying to communicate with that shard which results in a delay as the timeout ticks. The server doesn't instantly know that the transaction is going to fail because the shard is down. That time out is normally in seconds so if there are a lot of transactions waiting to be fulfilled the AH could waste a lot of time just waiting before moving on to the next transaction. And of course as always I could be 100% wrong since I've never laid eyes on the code. This is just what my opinion is based on my limited knowledge of these sorts of data systems.

I'd have to say I like power sets that are different enough that I don't feel like I'm playing "XYZ" just now it is YELLOW!. That sort. I really like some of the unique sets in CoH that step outside the formula for that AT and mix in different aspects from other power sets. I like that defense based characters play differently from resist based. I dislike the sameness of most blaster sets, even though blasters are my favorite AT, and is probably why I only have 2. I would like to see in the future even more proliferation of powers with mixing of different affects. I know there are limits to the game engine but pushing those would be fun to see.

Hadn't thought of the conversion issue with HO/DSO/et al. Would be a wonderful opportunity for the devs to implement another converter type salvage piece maybe something tied into incarnate threads or <gasp> shards. Very interesting. I'm off to go buy a bunch of cheap HOs now. 🤑