MSR is stupid, and possibly one of the dumbest designs in MMORPG history

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

The link I quoted says there's a 10% chance of a drop.  I can quote it again if needed.  That's not "any Rikti will give them" that's 10% of Rikti giving them.

 

Which is different from:

 

13 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

There's no other way to get these so "don't do activity you don't like" doesn't apply here.  I want those things, I have to raid, so be it.

 

You'll note that's you saying that.  Percentage to drop, rewards at the end of missions/arcs - these are "other ways to get these" that are not raids. And before you try to say anything else, I said "You get them for killing Rikti." You kill rikti,  you roll the dice on getting a V-merit. You kill multiple Rikti, you get multiple chances on V-merits. You know, like... if you're street sweeping, or on a mission, or on a task force with Rikti, or fighting off an invasion.  Things that are not raids.

 

So, yes. Congrats. You've managed to start off my dead wife's birthday by pissing me off with your lack of reading comprehension. Thanks *ever* so much.

[Crystal Dragon]

41 minutes ago, Hedgefund said:

I'm honestly not sure if this is some schtick to be a "General smartalec" or what.  Are you seriously suggesting that a legitimate means of earning around 1200 VMs is RWZ missions and general Rikti mobs?  Given the 90% reduction in VM reward for mobs that means around 10,000 rikti, I'm adjusting down for mission rewards and lt/boss rewards.

 

So, let me spell out what should have been obvious but apparently not.

 

"If one wants to receive that particular set of rewards, around 1200 VMs, in a reasonable amount of time, then the RWZ is the only way to do it".  45 minutes all told for a raid (including gathering) vs however many hours it would take outside of the raid. 

 

Killing rikti at rikti raids on either side of the faction zones is a prime way to get vmerits, running MSR's work, and missions in the RWZ zone help, but if you don't want to do MSR, you don't have to. Do the missions, watch for the raids in the other zones for RIkti and headline a team to take em out. Yes, you can get a huge sum from just running the raid and cooperative play there, but if you don't wanna, you don't have to. No one is forcing you, or anyone else to attend. We ask for help for those that WANT to do it. Don't want to join up? Don't. Don't waste our time with your excuses and reasoning, don't waste our time with your complaints, either do, or don't. It's that damned simple.

Edit: Also, to expand on reasons some leaders don't pick up people for the leagues as quickly. We've had a few leech players that refuse to contribute or fight in the bowl when the raid starts. Some of us raid leaders prefer to avoid that becoming a regular problem by blacklisting said XP leeches from joining the raids. Doesn't matter the character, it's the logic behind letting others gather vmerits and not chipping in to help out that drives us to keep these nonactive players out. If you don't get picked up for the raid, it's either cause we hit the limit on recruits for the teams, or we didn't see you post in broadcast. MOST of the raid leaders on Everlasting tend to recruit via Broadcast over local, since we often have roleplay happening before the raid starts, folks catching up and what not before the raid launches. Local requests get drowned out and fast, and it's not our job to hunt them down. Post in broadcast, if ya miss an invite, check your settings for invites and see if you had them blocked or were in a taskforce still from another mission.

Edited February 9, 2022 by CrystalDragon
Expanding a bit on that discourse earlier in the thread. Read back a bit to find where this thread started to go south.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

I'm honestly not sure if this is some schtick to be a "General smartalec" or what.  Are you seriously suggesting that a legitimate means of earning around 1200 VMs is RWZ missions and general Rikti mobs?  Given the 90% reduction in VM reward for mobs that means around 10,000 rikti, I'm adjusting down for mission rewards and lt/boss rewards.

 

So, let me spell out what should have been obvious but apparently not.

 

"If one wants to receive that particular set of rewards, around 1200 VMs, in a reasonable amount of time, then the RWZ is the only way to do it".  45 minutes all told for a raid (including gathering) vs however many hours it would take outside of the raid.

 

You are now being even more dishonest by moving goalposts.

 

Original post:

15 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

I do them for 

1) a bigger sack

2) a big ol' bot

3) a grai matter or two

 

There's no other way to get these so "don't do activity you don't like" doesn't apply here.  I want those things, I have to raid, so be it.

 

Then never ever ever again (until the next 50 [I only do them at 50 once I have a destiny+lore to contribute]).  IMO this is the worst activity in the game.  My own mini game is how long can I last before I check the timer.  Last time there was 25:00 remaining, I knew I was in for a long, long raid.  The best was with a tank when I was actively pulling and I think the first time I checked there was about 7 minutes left.  That was a good one.

 

Note this is the entire post.

 

There are two *absolute* statements, one right after the other.

1. There's no other way to get these so "don't do activity you don't like" doesn't apply here.

 

This was shown to be incorrect. This is an absolute statement. (Two, technically, run together, both incorrect.) We're talking about MSRs. You're referring afterward to MSRs. There's no ambiguity. You are stating there is no other way to get the Vanguard storage sack ("A bigger sack,") or "A big ol' bot," (Vanguard HVAS.) And "A grai matter or two." Which I didn't even touch on (you can create it with four incarnate shards, which will drop from *multiple* activities, so you're incorrect there, as well.)

 

2. You then followed it up with absolute statement # 2, "I want those things, I have to raid, so be it."

 

There is no ambiguity here. You are stating, "I want A, I must do activity B." You were shown this is 100% incorrect.  The only thing needed for two of the items? Vanguard merits. These drop while doing other activities. The third even has a second currency, Incarnate Shards, that you can completely ignore anything to do with Rikti to get.

 

When pointing that out, you followed up with a bit of dishonesty ignoring a page (that *everyone* can see and get to) that didn't support your statement - and even what you quoted didn't do anything more than show it's a means of earning merits.

 

You stated NOTHING about time. You did not say "This is the only way to get these in under an hour," or "I have no patience and want to get things as quickly as possible." There is absolutely NOTHING in what you said that reflects what you feel the need to "spell out" (IE, attempt to rewrite history because you look like a doofus for saying what you did) in your last post.

 

And in answer to the first part, obviously they *are* a legitimate means to gain the rewards. They just take a little longer. What you want are luxury items. They aren't required in any way, shape or form to complete any part of the game. Your impatience is irrelevant to their availability.

 

Now, I'll give you a fresh example of an absolute statement. I find you dishonest and unlikeable, and therefore am 100% done with you and shoving you on an ignore list. Note how there's no ambiguity there, either.

[Glacier Peak]

Damn some people gotta get their "I'm right, you're wrong" fix in today 🤣 

[KC4800]

17 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

League forms.

Spot opens in zone.

Fly over, jump in the middle of the ship, get badge, zone out.

I do understand the logistics of this and don't need it to be explained. I still don't like that I have to take a spot in the zone, when I have no desire to participate. Sometimes the zone limit is reached, and a person who wants in, can't get in, and gives up trying. Just so I can get that badge when the shield goes down. Do I feel guilty? No. But it is pretty poorly thought out where that badge is located. Perhaps move it out from under the shield, to the top of a building that overlooks the ship?

[TheZag]

Im the instanced version all players will earn slightly more vanguard merits but the people pulling rikti to the bowl will notice the most improvement.  When pulling rikti to the bowl i could get as little as 500 merits.  The average was 700ish and a 'good' run for my tank was a little over 900.  And all those numbers when dps in the bowl would report that they got 1100 to 1600 merits.  Being out of range of the kills really causes your pullers totals to suffer on the zone MSR.

 

Lets ensure that our pullers never have to suffer lower rewards while helping everyone else get increased rewards by only running the instanced version of the MSR.  Everyone gets a vanguard merit for every kill without regard to distance or damage dealt to an enemy.  Your local pullers support you,  now lets remember to support them.  Vote yes on instanced MSR runs.

[PeregrineFalcon]

5 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Damn some people gotta get their "I'm right, you're wrong" fix in today 🤣 

Yeah. But it's understandable though.

 

There's always been a portion of people who refuse to admit that they're wrong even when they're given a link to a website, or shown a video, that proves them wrong. In recent years this portion seems to me to have increased considerably in size.

 

After years and years of having to deal with people like this, it becomes infuriating. Frankly, Greycat was a lot more polite about it than I often am.

[TheZag]

13 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

I do understand the logistics of this and don't need it to be explained. I still don't like that I have to take a spot in the zone, when I have no desire to participate. Sometimes the zone limit is reached, and a person who wants in, can't get in, and gives up trying. Just so I can get that badge when the shield goes down. Do I feel guilty? No. But it is pretty poorly thought out where that badge is located. Perhaps move it out from under the shield, to the top of a building that overlooks the ship?

 

A little birdie told me that the shield isnt as solid as one would think and a properly aimed teleport or incan could allow a player to collect a certain unnamed badge at a certain unknown location without first dropping previously mentioned shield.

[arcane]

19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Damn some people gotta get their "I'm right, you're wrong" fix in today 🤣 

Just today?

[lemming]

On rewards, I found my fire blaster got the most bang for the buck in vmerits.   Seems to be she just needs to do AOEs and hit as many targets as possible for best results.

[Aracknight]

I like the MSR for a number of reasons.  Influence, and Experience when levelling characters up, but most importantly are the Vanguard Merits.  I've found converting them and buying enhancements with them the most efficient and cost-effective way of equipping my characters, especially when it's time for ATOs and Winter-Os.  

 

I also enjoy them because once the battle in the bowl starts, you can chat amongst each other, drop puns, and that stuff is sometimes more enjoyable than the actual fighting and grinding.

 

For me, the MSR raid is a far better experience than standing about listening to people beg for farms.

[Verfall]

I go for the merits and the dad jokes on Excel when Oklahoman runs them. Got nice collections of both. Did the last one on chocolate edibles which greatly enhanced the experience. But whatever floats boats, your mileage may something, yada yada yada.

[Albion]

*Reads title*
Ok who the heck is starting shit again with... oh...

[Dazl]

The 30 mins in the bowl is definitely the most boring part. The instanced raid does have a better v-merit rewards but you have to have the "Member of Vanguard" badge to do it, so you would have to be level 35+ to join. Some raid leaders prefer to do the open raid so lower level players can take advantage of the raid to get some easy levels. There is also a social element may people enjoy with the larger raids like this one and Hamidon.

 

I don't do many MSR's but on Excelsior Oklahoman runs a quality MSR as well as his many other raids.

[Snarky]

First I want to thank everyone for their responses.  I gotta drive my numbers! But seriously, I do appreciate ALL the feedback, as I am sure many of you know.

 

As usual when I post a screed on the boards I get an education pretty quickly.  That was the case here.  I learned there are eighteen bombs.  I do these raids as little as I can and thought there were six.  Once anyone on your team does a bomb the whole team is locked out for 30 minutes.  That removes that drama.

 

Last night I joined an MSR run by Oklahoman.  On my main "Snarky"  There was some fun spirited ribbing, a few comments and laughs.  Someone asked me I had heard any good jokes.  My response, "Me being on this F-ing raid."  The group was well run and we did what we set out to do. Thank you to Oklahoman and all who participated.

 

I still do not like these things.  My main is an Invul Brute, and of course incarnated.  So I at least had an interesting job.  For me herding the ship to the bowl is way more interesting than sitting and spamming buttons.  Still, a half an hour?  Really?  Meh.  9 to go...

[Ukase]

5 minutes ago, Snarky said:

First I want to thank everyone for their responses. 

Glad I could help. 

For the rest of you folks - I strongly encourage you to recognize what the name "Snarky" means.  If you find yourself getting riled, look at the name again, and chuckle. 

One last thing about the MSR. I had a brute and respec'd it specifically to pursue vg merits in AE. I had thought that if I was going to afk farm, I might as well get vg merits as well as all the other goodies while I was at it. 

From an efficiency perspective, my spines/fire outperforms it in fire maps. From a vg merit perspective, the number of vg merits earned are ...well, quite unremarkable. I can't recommend it. Someone else may have better luck, but I seriously doubt it. Even if I were to have somehow kayoed 10x as many for 10x as many vg merits, it still wouldn't have gotten me as much as an MSR. It did, however, defeat a poke in the eye on the satisfaction meter. 

Hedgefund, whom I find myself terribly upset with because he has a better name than I do, stated that the MSR is the only way to get those rewards. Well, technically, he was incorrect, but the spirit of his comment is true. You're just not going to get 800 to 1500 vg merits (I always got more vg merits in the zone msrs than the instanced, but that may have been because on Excelsior, Apparition's MSRs didn't have a full league at the time. ) in 30 minutes doing anything else. 

You might get a few hundred in an hour doing missions, but you're just not going to beat an MSR for VG merit gain. There is no substitute. 

[Apparition]

15 minutes ago, Ukase said:

One last thing about the MSR. I had a brute and respec'd it specifically to pursue vg merits in AE. I had thought that if I was going to afk farm, I might as well get vg merits as well as all the other goodies while I was at it. 

From an efficiency perspective, my spines/fire outperforms it in fire maps. From a vg merit perspective, the number of vg merits earned are ...well, quite unremarkable. I can't recommend it. Someone else may have better luck, but I seriously doubt it. Even if I were to have somehow kayoed 10x as many for 10x as many vg merits, it still wouldn't have gotten me as much as an MSR. It did, however, defeat a poke in the eye on the satisfaction meter. 

 

 

FWIW, Vanguard Merits were removed from AE several months ago as it was apparently considered an exploit.  Prior to that, I had my own Rikti AE farm set on the asteroid map which netted me about 30 - 35 Vanguard merits per go.

[CaptA]

MSR is great for the merits, but man is it a dull run. If it was about half as long I'd be more interested in doing runs more often. 

[Snarky]

3 minutes ago, CaptA said:

MSR is great for the merits, but man is it a dull run. If it was about half as long I'd be more interested in doing runs more often. 

I was going to suggest this.   It then realized the crews that run it (set up leagues, take down pylons, perk kill shots on flyer etc) deserve their full 30 minutes… so I’ll keep my Snarky nose out of their biz

[PLVRIZR]

On 2/8/2022 at 4:47 PM, Without_Pause said:

It's a graphic overload on my laptop which turns into a stream of screenshots.

 

I call that the "slide show".  Your comment took me back to 2004, when I first installed the game on a Dell Pentium III 800 desktop computer with a 64MB, yup, MB videocard...and it was even an "EB" processor, with the 133 FSB.  The slide shows, with a full team, is what prompted me to first upgrade to a 256MB X1950 card, then build my first desktop, with a P4 3.2 Ghz (Northwood), overclocked to 4.1 Ghz.  A damned Hot Rod, for that time...

[Without_Pause]

31 minutes ago, PLVRIZR said:

 

I call that the "slide show".  Your comment took me back to 2004, when I first installed the game on a Dell Pentium III 800 desktop computer with a 64MB, yup, MB videocard...and it was even an "EB" processor, with the 133 FSB.  The slide shows, with a full team, is what prompted me to first upgrade to a 256MB X1950 card, then build my first desktop, with a P4 3.2 Ghz (Northwood), overclocked to 4.1 Ghz.  A damned Hot Rod, for that time...

I know the code base is a steam pile, but there's no reason why the game should flat out struggle with well used maps like the sewers on a laptop which was bought with Windows 10. Based on what I have gathered, the only real solution is to buy a new PC.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Without_Pause

[Placta]

On 2/8/2022 at 2:42 PM, Snarky said:

it has two badges that require 10 runs (minimum) to accumulate.  That is 5 hours minimum not counting league prep and pylon burns etc. 

 

Hey, when it launched, the bomb badge required 25. My main/badger retired from ship raids after getting it and still had a bunch of leftover V-Merits years later when NC pulled the plug. (Conversion to reward merits wasn't an option back then.)

[Oklahoman]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Thank you to Oklahoman and all who participated.

 

Glad to have you. See you there or elsewhere again soon! 🙂

[PLVRIZR]

2 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

...but there's no reason why the game should flat out struggle with well used maps like the sewers on a laptop which was bought with Windows 10. Based on what I have gathered, the only real solution is to buy a new PC.

 

If your current laptop has integrated graphics, that would explain it.  Any device (laptop or desktop), with *any* dedicated graphics card will run this game at near ultra settings....  When remote, I run it on a 2 y.o. Dell/Alienware G3/3500 laptop, that I paid less than $1000 for (brand new), and its cheapo Nividia GTX 1650 Ti doesn't even blink at extremely high resolutions.

[Techwright]

On 2/8/2022 at 3:42 PM, Snarky said:

 This is akin to the griefer on Excelsior who kills Sally non stop and laughs at anyone who tells them they are trying to badge for her.  

I've long said they need to do something to help badgers get Sally.  Something like...I dunno, maybe doubling her hit points.