Author Topic: New efforts!  (Read 7334036 times)

Teikiatsu

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11700 on: September 17, 2014, 09:45:14 PM »
Are we operating from a premise that all the original servers will be re-instated as per i23-lights-out, or that there will be new or consolidated servers?
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Teikiatsu

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11701 on: September 17, 2014, 09:47:47 PM »
IIRC, Captain Electric (2?) kept a thread that monitored the solo rates. 1/10 iTrial would have been an improvement. What you could knock out in a weekend grinding iTrials would take over a month in DA, and there were some components you would *never* see.

Punitive is the most complimentary word I can use about DA and Posi trying to herd people into his raids.

I had a plant/empathy troller and fire/ice tank that were able to farm DA content very effectively but yeah it was a trudge to get through.
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Shadowe

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11702 on: September 17, 2014, 11:19:35 PM »
Are we operating from a premise that all the original servers will be re-instated as per i23-lights-out, or that there will be new or consolidated servers?

Simply put: we don't know. It depends if the server names are hard-coded into the game, or if they're stored in a database that the new owners can fiddle with.

I believe that someone who might know suggested that they're actually hard-coded, in which case NOT having the same servers would be problematic.
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Yoru-hime

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11703 on: September 17, 2014, 11:20:28 PM »
IIRC, Captain Electric (2?) kept a thread that monitored the solo rates. 1/10 iTrial would have been an improvement. What you could knock out in a weekend grinding iTrials would take over a month in DA, and there were some components you would *never* see.

Punitive is the most complimentary word I can use about DA and Posi trying to herd people into his raids.

Yeah, I was part of the group trying to document the component drop table for DA in beta. The version that was released was, to put it kindly, punitive, but the first iteration they put up was just laughable. I think we may have seen one Rare drop right before they revised it upward (out of hundreds of data points collected by dozens of players), but I don't recall for sure at this point. It really shows just how worried they were that the raids they'd spent all their time building were going to sit empty.

Rather than trying to goad people who would rather be doing something else into participating in raids via horribly skewed reward structures, they needed a cross-server recruitment system. Difficult? Of course, but not really optional if you want to implement an ever increasing number of large-group raids in your game.

At 8 raids, we were down to maybe 4 or 5 that I saw advertised regularly on Infinity (assuming you count grinding the mobs at the start of Magisterium as "raiding"), some of them aimed at new Incarnates, others aimed at the more advanced group, but with an increasing split between the mature Incarnates and the fresh Alpha Slotted 50s. What was it going to be like when that number hit 15 raids? 25? Split into four different tiers? Sooner or later, the population is going to start spreading too thin to effectively use them all, especially on smaller servers. If the devs didn't have some sort of relief for this problem in mind, they were headed for trouble in very short order.

Dev7on

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11704 on: September 17, 2014, 11:24:55 PM »
Any updates yet Ironwolf?????

GenericHero05

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11705 on: September 17, 2014, 11:39:34 PM »
My God, how I miss this game. Please let this happen soon.
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Sinistar

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11706 on: September 17, 2014, 11:42:07 PM »
Simply put: we don't know. It depends if the server names are hard-coded into the game, or if they're stored in a database that the new owners can fiddle with.

I believe that someone who might know suggested that they're actually hard-coded, in which case NOT having the same servers would be problematic.

If they are hard coded that's fine.  I suppose the main question is would we need them ALL back given the 2 year downtime and possible attrition to the fan base?
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rebel 1812

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11707 on: September 18, 2014, 12:01:54 AM »
If they are hard coded that's fine.  I suppose the main question is would we need them ALL back given the 2 year downtime and possible attrition to the fan base?

They should only have a couple to start and then expand if the market demand requires it.  Too many of the servers had very few people on them in the last year before the shut down.

Blondeshell

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11708 on: September 18, 2014, 12:29:01 AM »
Really Hard Way took a ton of tries.  I demorecorded every attempt and youtubed the first successful one.  If you want to see if you can find yourself in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txZg2B_oomI&list=UUkyaL-2ZrJKmVBhTkHHUKvg (man I really loved my Ion Judgment, didn't I).

But if your server had been trying dozens of times to complete a really hard way, had never succeeded before, and you knew the servers were shutting down and your chances were extremely limited (we succeeded for the first, and I believe *only* time, on October 28th, 2012), how many things would you have running in the background on the umpteenth attempt?

Sadly, I spent about 95% of my time during the last two months the servers were open documenting I24 content. Also, my Sunday evenings were always spoken for with other obligations. I was happy that Triumph succeeded in getting Really Hard Way when I heard about it, but I just had to chalk it up one of several iTrial badges that I would never get because of my work for Paragon Wiki.

JanessaVR

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11709 on: September 18, 2014, 12:43:47 AM »
Sadly, I spent about 95% of my time during the last two months the servers were open documenting I24 content. Also, my Sunday evenings were always spoken for with other obligations. I was happy that Triumph succeeded in getting Really Hard Way when I heard about it, but I just had to chalk it up one of several iTrial badges that I would never get because of my work for Paragon Wiki.
For which I, for one, profoundly thank you.  I never got to experience any of the I24 content, as I was recording a lot of other content with BandiCam.  2.4 TB's worth, to be precise.  Still need to get that up on YouTube, I had a filming schedule of Contacts and Story Arcs in a spreadsheet that I wanted to save.  All that I know of I24 comes from reading ParagonWiki.

Rejolt

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11710 on: September 18, 2014, 12:52:06 AM »
Our next forum game! Name the new servers!

New Freedom!

Phoenix!

Titan!

FREEEM!

EDIT: I really, really hate that I know about the negotiations. I should be playing other games instead of waiting for stuff that may not be and I just barely got over existing.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2014, 12:57:37 AM by Rejolt »
Rejolt Industries LLC is now a thing. Woo!

Ankhammon

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11711 on: September 18, 2014, 12:59:44 AM »
Our next forum game! Name the new servers!

New Freedom!

Phoenix!

Titan!

FREEEM!

EDIT: I really, really hate that I know about the negotiations. I should be playing other games instead of waiting for stuff that may not be and I just barely got over existing.

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Baja

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11712 on: September 18, 2014, 02:00:50 AM »
Our next forum game! Name the new servers!

New Freedom!

Phoenix!

Titan!

FREEEM!

EDIT: I really, really hate that I know about the negotiations. I should be playing other games instead of waiting for stuff that may not be and I just barely got over existing.

I would exclusively play on FREEEM!

Power Gamer

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11713 on: September 18, 2014, 02:37:00 AM »
hmmm, Titan or FREEEM gunna have to flip a coin
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Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11714 on: September 18, 2014, 02:47:30 AM »
I disagree, that being said it's really a matter of opinion if you aren't going to accept the defined meaning of grinding.

If you're going to accept the wikipedia article as the official definition, I can always edit it.  When you find an actual official definition for the term I'll accept that; in the meantime I'll use the term as its been generally used in the gaming community, which is the definition I alluded to.

Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11715 on: September 18, 2014, 02:53:35 AM »
Sadly, I spent about 95% of my time during the last two months the servers were open documenting I24 content. Also, my Sunday evenings were always spoken for with other obligations. I was happy that Triumph succeeded in getting Really Hard Way when I heard about it, but I just had to chalk it up one of several iTrial badges that I would never get because of my work for Paragon Wiki.

Ironically, I couldn't experience much of the I24 content because I was busy ... doing other things on the beta server.

Baja

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11716 on: September 18, 2014, 03:44:39 AM »
If you're going to accept the wikipedia article as the official definition, I can always edit it.  When you find an actual official definition for the term I'll accept that; in the meantime I'll use the term as its been generally used in the gaming community, which is the definition I alluded to.

Please feel free to google "video game grinding definition" you'll notice at the top in big bold letters it will say "Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive tasks during video games." Not only will you see that there will be hundreds if not thousands of websites simply repeating exactly what is said. Like I mentioned before if you have opinions on what grinding is to be considered that's fine, I'm in no position to disagree. I highly doubt any dictionary is going to define grinding anytime soon, then again if "bling bling" can be defined who knows, so if you're not willing to accept my sources then it leaves no option but to agree to disagree.

Codewalker

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11717 on: September 18, 2014, 04:32:51 AM »
Simply put: we don't know. It depends if the server names are hard-coded into the game, or if they're stored in a database that the new owners can fiddle with.

I believe that someone who might know suggested that they're actually hard-coded, in which case NOT having the same servers would be problematic.

Server names are in the translations, the same (binary) file that converts from strings like P72617432 to a power description in English.

To use something other than one of the existing names, you'd need to roll out a client patch with a new bin.pigg file.

If the character data can't be acquired, I'd recommend against using one of the existing server names, as people will likely be confused by it.

As for new names, if there's only one shard, my vote is for "Paragon".

Zombie Hustler

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11718 on: September 18, 2014, 04:36:40 AM »
Nope. Although I didn't run them like I did on Liberty, the Champion and Infinity servers had slightly more people doing incarnate content on a more regular basis than Liberty.

Yeah, I rarely had trouble finding an iTrial to join on Infinity (where I almost exclusively played, at least until I started doing the Beta server thing). Unless the server was simply slow, there were always people assembling iTrials.

I enjoyed them for the most part. My only real complaints were twofold:

1) The difficulty in getting the story content out of them. Someone elsewhere mentioned having the same problem with regular Trials/Taskforces, to which I'd agree. I think a big difference for me, at least, is that it seemed there was so much more content in the iTrials, or at least certainly more content that I found relevant, as it directly tied into the ongoing (at that point) storyline in the game- and the fact that I was a Praetoria fanatic. So that was disappointing to me.

2) This goes along with #1, but it seemed everyone always ran the same iTrials- BAF, Lambda. To a lesser extent Keyes and MoM. I only ever got to participate in an Underground Trial once (and it ended when too many people dropped), a Magisterium once (ended when everyone dropped with only two bosses remaining at the end), and never a Diabolique or TPN. I'm sure Magisterium would have changed, as it seemed people were starting to get the hang of it and run them a bit more often before the end.

I also didn't feel like I was able to participate so much in either Keyes or Lambda. Lambda especially- running around those interior maps, looking for glowies to click while everyone just runs ramshod all around and you keep running into masses of enemies who lay you flat every time. Part of it was probably my system that couldn't quite keep up, but it also seemed like any teamwork to that point (and after that point) went out the window, and suddenly it was every man for himself against hordes of Incarnate level foes. Ouch.

Angel Phoenix77

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #11719 on: September 18, 2014, 04:39:20 AM »
Any updates yet Ironwolf?????
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