issue 26 Patch Notes for May 16th, 2019

[wheresmycow]

Are we going to see a reduction in the incarnate materials awarded for veteran levels? Right now, the rewards for earning veteran levels are so good they pretty much obviate the need to run incarnate trials, unless you want a full suite of Very Rare abilities, which will be bad for the health of raid content in the long-term.

 

I hope not. I got sick to death of having to run those things over-and-over-and-over-and-dammit-OVER-AGAIN back in the day. It's refreshing *not* to have that grind ahead of me here.

 

I don't think we should remove incarnate rewards for vet levels completely, but right now the rewards for trials pale in comparison to them. They're very front-loaded, so just evening them out through the vet levels would help a lot.

What are veteran levels?  I tried looking it up but all I saw the veteran rewards program.

[White Hot Flash]

What are veteran levels?

 

Veteran levels are what you earn after level 50, when the normal XP leveling process stops.  If you notice your XP bubbles once at lvl 50, they are still filling as you do content that earns XP.  You still ding-rez and get the usual inspiration bonus, and every set number of times you totally fill all ten bubbles, you'll earn Emp Merits.  I believe it's every three or so veteran levels for a bit, and then it happens less often.  It's a way for you to earn your Incarnate stuff faster and not have to run Trials all the time, as some folks have a hard time getting to do them.  If I have any info wrong, feel free to correct me.

[Cinnder]

What are veteran levels?

 

Veteran levels are what you earn after level 50, when the normal XP leveling process stops.  If you notice your XP bubbles once at lvl 50, they are still filling as you do content that earns XP.  You still ding-rez and get the usual inspiration bonus, and every set number of times you totally fill all ten bubbles, you'll earn Emp Merits.  I believe it's every three or so veteran levels for a bit, and then it happens less often.  It's a way for you to earn your Incarnate stuff faster and not have to run Trials all the time, as some folks have a hard time getting to do them.  If I have any info wrong, feel free to correct me.

 

(My emphasis)

I don't have a 50 yet; is the solo Incarnate content in DA working?  Back in the day I ran that more than I did iTrials.

[The Fifth Horseman]

WHERE the P2W vendors are in game and their specific name on map?

1. You can find them on the minimap, there's at least one in each tutorial and each starting zone.

2. P2W Vendor in COH/COV, T4V Vendor in Praetoria

[Zolgar]

The Bad Farm and the Warrior farm, as well as most of the other popular farms, didn't run a single instance of a "Patrol"  or "Ambush" AI.  My guess is that the Dev choice missions, the ones that were more story driven and promoted as better for the community, had lots of patrol and ambush AI.  I know the farm missions didn't use patrol or ambush AI because I made some of them and recreted some for testing.  So, although Leandro posted something regarding AE, it doesn't really apply to the most farmed missions.  It would rather apply to the other more PVE story driven content.

 

Well... you can always to to get those arcs on Dev's Choice :)

 

 

Edit: and before you say that the admins would never make a farm a Dev's Choice, I bet if it were well-written with some sort of narrative, even a short one (Smash TV, The Running Man, etc.) it could actually have a shot.

 

Part of me wants to try to write a farm arc with a legit story and stuff, to see if I could manage getting it devs. choice. >.>

[jkwak]

 
Jimmy cheats.

 

i knew it  :D :D :D

[Epsilon Assassin]

Prior to this patch, the server was running with the configuration setting "XPScale" set to 2 (or 1.5 or whatever it was; I didn't set it) which affected both experience and influence. AE missions used a separate XPScale set to 0.5 which halved the experience, but influence was still being multiplied by the XPScale. Meaning, AE was running at 50% XP, 200% inf (or 150% inf or whatever it was).

 

This patch the XPScale (and thus influence gain in all content) goes back to 1x, while the XP gain in AE is still 0.5.

 

Regardless, I think there's something messing with the XP/Inf gain and drop rate in AE.

 

(Found another issue that caused this)

 

In addition, I'd like to note that prior to AE going down, I had received dozens of PvP/Purple IOs from AE standard rewards each afternoon farming. Since AE has gone live, I have yet to receive a single one of either. Which is far and beyond what should be expected of reasonable deviation/margin of error. 

 

There are a couple of bug reports and a bit of conversation about it in the respective forum.

[Lunchmoney]

 
Jimmy cheats.

 

i knew it  :D :D :D

Page 3 before someone commented :)

[barrier]

Prior to this patch, the server was running with the configuration setting "XPScale" set to 2 (or 1.5 or whatever it was; I didn't set it) which affected both experience and influence. AE missions used a separate XPScale set to 0.5 which halved the experience, but influence was still being multiplied by the XPScale. Meaning, AE was running at 50% XP, 200% inf (or 150% inf or whatever it was).

 

This patch the XPScale (and thus influence gain in all content) goes back to 1x, while the XP gain in AE is still 0.5.

 

Regardless, I think there's something messing with the XP/Inf gain and drop rate in AE.

 

While running today, I noticed significantly lower inf gain then would be expected. Upon closer inspection, the XP/Inf on Patrol/Ambush mobs seems to be wildly ranging to extremes.

 

The standard Minion in my map, who is not Pat/Amb, gives ~10.1k XP. However, Ambush/Pat minions can award as little as 1k Inf, and as much as around 9k. Same minion, same villain group.

 

Meanwhile, the average Minion from a Mission Content farm (Red side Nem TV Farm mission) gives about 13k (Werfer) to 14.5k (Dragoon).

 

Using the averages between the two groups you get 13.75 for Mission content, and 5k for AE. Now, I have no way of showing that the average weighting of Ambush minions is actually an even spread, it does appear to me that there might be a goober in the code.

 

In addition, I'd like to note that prior to AE going down, I had received dozens of PvP/Purple IOs from AE standard rewards each afternoon farming. Since AE has gone live, I have yet to receive a single one of either. Which is far and beyond what should be expected of reasonable deviation/margin of error. 

 

There are a couple of bug reports and a bit of conversation about it in the respective forum.

 

I'm with you on this, I farmed for a bit last night and my trays, which are consistently full after a run or two (given how much I keep on my toons) were not filling up at all. Something is definitely way off and I'm sure the market will start reflecting it in next day or so.

[Leandro]

In addition, I'd like to note that prior to AE going down, I had received dozens of PvP/Purple IOs from AE standard rewards each afternoon farming. Since AE has gone live, I have yet to receive a single one of either. Which is far and beyond what should be expected of reasonable deviation/margin of error. 

 

There are a couple of bug reports and a bit of conversation about it in the respective forum.

 

I replied there, but TL;DR is that recipe drop rates didn't change and the XP scale should not affect drop rates.

[barrier]

In addition, I'd like to note that prior to AE going down, I had received dozens of PvP/Purple IOs from AE standard rewards each afternoon farming. Since AE has gone live, I have yet to receive a single one of either. Which is far and beyond what should be expected of reasonable deviation/margin of error. 

 

There are a couple of bug reports and a bit of conversation about it in the respective forum.

 

I replied there, but TL;DR is that recipe drop rates didn't change and the XP scale should not affect drop rates.

 

Has any of the GMs tested this?

[_NOPE_]

Prior to this patch, the server was running with the configuration setting "XPScale" set to 2 (or 1.5 or whatever it was; I didn't set it) which affected both experience and influence. AE missions used a separate XPScale set to 0.5 which halved the experience, but influence was still being multiplied by the XPScale. Meaning, AE was running at 50% XP, 200% inf (or 150% inf or whatever it was).

 

This patch the XPScale (and thus influence gain in all content) goes back to 1x, while the XP gain in AE is still 0.5.

 

Regardless, I think there's something messing with the XP/Inf gain and drop rate in AE.

 

(Found another issue that caused this)

 

In addition, I'd like to note that prior to AE going down, I had received dozens of PvP/Purple IOs from AE standard rewards each afternoon farming. Since AE has gone live, I have yet to receive a single one of either. Which is far and beyond what should be expected of reasonable deviation/margin of error. 

 

There are a couple of bug reports and a bit of conversation about it in the respective forum.

 

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Perform a series of actual statistical tests to prove the point, and then I'm sure the dev team would look into it. But, as Leandro said, there's no reason to suspect anything amiss, for the reasons he gave. If you wish them to spend their time looking into it further, I think you'll have to provide a better bit of evidence than anecdotal stories. Something like a spreadsheet containing "incidents" containing something like this:

 

Mission Ran	XP Earned	Influence Earned	Recipe Drop(s) Awarded	Salvage Drop(s) Awarded
AwesomeFarm1	500	500	1 Invention:Accuracy	2 Luck Charms, 3 Ancient Amulets
LameFarm1	350	250	0	1 Brass

 

Basically, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 

[Noyjitat]

Are we going to see a reduction in the incarnate materials awarded for veteran levels? Right now, the rewards for earning veteran levels are so good they pretty much obviate the need to run incarnate trials, unless you want a full suite of Very Rare abilities, which will be bad for the health of raid content in the long-term.

 

This is both good and bad. Because this vet leveling system is also a good method to rebuild all your incarnates and purple characters sooner than later. That said the only

Change id be for is to make this xp only be awarded during tfs, trials, hami and msr. Though I personally dont think you should change anything at all now. I mean that should have been decided on long ago. Currently not having problems at all putting trials together and I don’t expect them to lose popularity anytime soon.

[WanderingAries]

Jimmy cheats.

 

Oh, does he need a timeout?

[Zerethon]

Are we going to see a reduction in the incarnate materials awarded for veteran levels? Right now, the rewards for earning veteran levels are so good they pretty much obviate the need to run incarnate trials, unless you want a full suite of Very Rare abilities, which will be bad for the health of raid content in the long-term.

 

This is both good and bad. Because this vet leveling system is also a good method to rebuild all your incarnates and purple characters sooner than later. That said the only

Change id be for is to make this xp only be awarded during tfs, trials, hami and msr. Though I personally dont think you should change anything at all now. I mean that should have been decided on long ago. Currently not having problems at all putting trials together and I don’t expect them to lose popularity anytime soon.

 

ITrials also give a good chunk of XP too, so when you first start going for your incarnate stuff they give a double whammy of mats AND vet XP, i run the crap out of them on my main when not leveling alts or farming.

[TheNerdzilla]

There was a post a whiiiiile back that said that XP was increased by 50% on the weekdays.  Is that still a thing or has it been removed?

[Obsidius]

Part of me wants to try to write a farm arc with a legit story and stuff, to see if I could manage getting it devs. choice. >.>

 

 

#Palpatine DO IT.  :-*