New efforts!

[Sinistar]

halloween one year, a team of 8 mm's. in grandville...wow..just wow

Now that brings back a memory.....I had a thug/poison MM on Justice.  On halloween i formed a team of 8 fellow THUG Masterminds for Trick or Treating and Giant Monster hunting......oh the fun of all 8 triggering gang war at once.....

[Twisted Toon]

Now that brings back a memory.....I had a thug/poison MM on Justice.  On halloween i formed a team of 8 fellow THUG Masterminds for Trick or Treating and Giant Monster hunting......oh the fun of all 8 triggering gang war at once.....

I remember having my Bots/Traps MM drinking tea while her Bots ToT'd at the Giza. The things we MMs do to keep our minions happy...

[duane]

Now that brings back a memory.....I had a thug/poison MM on Justice.  On halloween i formed a team of 8 fellow THUG Masterminds for Trick or Treating and Giant Monster hunting......oh the fun of all 8 triggering gang war at once.....

7 Mastermind ITF.... I think there was a limitation to the number of simultaneous characters could appear in game and we hit that on the beach once the waves of soldiers started.   

[Biz]

Did they think it was odd that almost no one knew how to read or that women had almost no rights and the world was almost constantly embroiled in a war or conflict of some kind and was ruled over by monarchs, kings, emperors, czars, and dictators? 

There has almost never been a period without war or conflict in recorded history. Depending on your definition of war, there are quite a few history books that say there have only been about 250 years cumulative without a war occurring.

[Pyromantic]

I'm not sure what speed I would be playing at if the game came back.  It depends on a number of things, including of course how much time I had to play at that particular period, and how much I decide to split my time between characters.  I have about 8 characters I'd expect to make very quickly.  Half of those are builds I played to 50 before, so while I might not be in a rush, I also don't feel much need to delay the process.

I think it'd be much slower on a first toon in a re-release just due to not having the money to enhance everything or keep enhancements up to date.

I really don't think this is going to be much of an issue.  I never had a problem getting full SO builds by level 30 before IOs came out just from inf, and the additional source of potential income from drops should just make it easier.  The one thing I will miss is that later in the game's lifespan I kept a selection of crafted IOs in the mid-20s in my personal SG so that I could frankenslot builds in that level range.  It will probably take some time before that's realistically possible again.

[Arcana]

I really don't think this is going to be much of an issue.  I never had a problem getting full SO builds by level 30 before IOs came out just from inf, and the additional source of potential income from drops should just make it easier.

I should point out that a lot of people's memories about this seem to be skewed: it was almost mathematically impossible to earn enough inf to fully slot with SOs prior to level 30 for most of the game before I9.  It was not a question of skill, or playstyle, or even build.  It was simply the case that the amount of inf required to buy the SOs to do that required earning more XP than you needed to get past 30 for almost every activity that existed in the game.  The only way this was possible was to either be nearly permanently in debt (which decreased your leveling speed but didn't affect influence earning), or happen to luck out on drops and not have to pay for the bulk of your enhancements.

I did an experiment in I5 I think where I leveled a controller, bought nothing, slotted only drops, stopped and sold every time my inventory was full, always sold at the correct stores, and waited until level 27 to start buying SOs.  I was probably in debt about 1/3rd of the time.  I filled my slots at level 29, including several lucky power 10 drops.  That's how hard that was to do pre-I9.  Because XP and Inf are tied together, skill and playstyle have limited impact - if anything someone that was less skilled and in more debt would have a slightly easier time.

It wasn't a question of earning enough inf.  It was a question of figuring out how to do so without leveling.  Back then the leveling curve was faster than the inf earning curve relative to the cost of SOs until the devs reduced their cost.  Deliberately so by design, I believe.

Past level 40 the amount of XP you needed to level was high enough that you'd earn enough inf while doing it to continue to slot SOs.  But from 30 to about 40 the big problem was outleveling your SOs faster than you could replace them.  SO costs rose slower with level than XP costs to level increased at those levels.  So while our leveling speed dropped, our ability to buy enhancements per level band rose.

I9 didn't just change things by introducing more ways to earn inf.  It also reduced the problem of burnout.  If you didn't keep leveling your enhancements they would go red and stop working altogether.  Even the cheapest inventions don't do that.  So you aren't compelled to try to keep replacing enhancements as you level.  They won't get better but they won't get worse either.  Nothing was worse pre-I9 than going from having all (degraded) SOs to literally having *nothing* when you leveled out of them.  It could happen right in the middle of combat, which made people want to spend inf to upgrade them or replace them early - which also increased the cost burden in earlier levels.

[Vee]

That's about where my thinking was. Since we were thinking about fastest leveling possible and bracketing the existence of AE, my assumption was that crafting IOs and marketing was out the window, so we'd be looking at trying to buy SOs on drops and vendor money. I just remember my sad first toon who didn't know not to waste his meager earnings on TOs and didn't know to put things on the market. He was essentially broke and practically unenhanced apart from drops until 40ish when someone finally told me what was what.

I'd probably do better in a re-release situation if only because I'd only enhance essential powers until more cash was at hand. Well that and I'd not actually be trying to race to 50 in the first day

[Arcana]

That's about where my thinking was. Since we were thinking about fastest leveling possible and bracketing the existence of AE, my assumption was that crafting IOs and marketing was out the window, so we'd be looking at trying to buy SOs on drops and vendor money. I just remember my sad first toon who didn't know not to waste his meager earnings on TOs and didn't know to put things on the market. He was essentially broke and practically unenhanced apart from drops until 40ish when someone finally told me what was what.

I'd probably do better in a re-release situation if only because I'd only enhance essential powers until more cash was at hand. Well that and I'd not actually be trying to race to 50 in the first day

In an I23 world enhancements are really not necessary in the early game if you are trying to literally level as fast as possible, because leveling inspirations take care of that in an extreme leveling scenario for the first dozen levels at least.  Maybe up to nearly 20.

[Ironwolf]

Speed of leveling was the fastest for me with a Fire/Dark Corruptor.

At level 10 I would be running at -1 x 8 solo.
Powers:
Super speed, tar patch, Darkest night, FireBlast, Fire Ball, Rain Of Fire
Zip forward, herd a group with Darkest Night and drop tar patch on a corner - rain of fire and fireball until well done. 

By 22 I would be at +1 x 8 - solo.
Super speed, tar patch, Darkest night, FireBlast, Fire Ball, Rain Of Fire, Aim, Firebreath, Howling Twilight, Shadow Fall, Fearsome stare.

Zip forward, herd a group with Darkest Night and tar patch a corner - fearsome stare, Howling Twilight and then Fireball, Fire Breath and rain of fire.

By level 50 once I had some IO's in I was soloing +4 x 8. I would herd the Wall in Cimerora timing it so the patrols would come by at the same time thus getting more than the aggro cap. This was my go to IO farmer on the wall.

[Ironwolf]

In an I23 world enhancements are really not necessary in the early game if you are trying to literally level as fast as possible, because leveling inspirations take care of that in an extreme leveling scenario for the first dozen levels at least.  Maybe up to nearly 20.

I would run TF's getting low level SO and at level 22 sell the lower level ones that dropped and fund most of my new ones. There were a number of SO dropping TF's on defeating the AV - Caverns trial a good example. Those low level SO could make a low level character a monster if you had 6 or 8 of them.

[Pyromantic]

I should point out that a lot of people's memories about this seem to be skewed: it was almost mathematically impossible to earn enough inf to fully slot with SOs prior to level 30 for most of the game before I9.  It was not a question of skill, or playstyle, or even build.  It was simply the case that the amount of inf required to buy the SOs to do that required earning more XP than you needed to get past 30 for almost every activity that existed in the game.  The only way this was possible was to either be nearly permanently in debt (which decreased your leveling speed but didn't affect influence earning), or happen to luck out on drops and not have to pay for the bulk of your enhancements.

I did an experiment in I5 I think where I leveled a controller, bought nothing, slotted only drops, stopped and sold every time my inventory was full, always sold at the correct stores, and waited until level 27 to start buying SOs.  I was probably in debt about 1/3rd of the time.  I filled my slots at level 29, including several lucky power 10 drops.  That's how hard that was to do pre-I9.  Because XP and Inf are tied together, skill and playstyle have limited impact - if anything someone that was less skilled and in more debt would have a slightly easier time.

It wasn't a question of earning enough inf.  It was a question of figuring out how to do so without leveling.  Back then the leveling curve was faster than the inf earning curve relative to the cost of SOs until the devs reduced their cost.  Deliberately so by design, I believe.

Past level 40 the amount of XP you needed to level was high enough that you'd earn enough inf while doing it to continue to slot SOs.  But from 30 to about 40 the big problem was outleveling your SOs faster than you could replace them.  SO costs rose slower with level than XP costs to level increased at those levels.  So while our leveling speed dropped, our ability to buy enhancements per level band rose.

I9 didn't just change things by introducing more ways to earn inf.  It also reduced the problem of burnout.  If you didn't keep leveling your enhancements they would go red and stop working altogether.  Even the cheapest inventions don't do that.  So you aren't compelled to try to keep replacing enhancements as you level.  They won't get better but they won't get worse either.  Nothing was worse pre-I9 than going from having all (degraded) SOs to literally having *nothing* when you leveled out of them.  It could happen right in the middle of combat, which made people want to spend inf to upgrade them or replace them early - which also increased the cost burden in earlier levels.

I will allow for the possibility my memory is off, and I shouldn't have been as liberal with the use of "full" to describe my SO builds, in that I wouldn't worry about sprint, rest etc.  But, in addition to my first character, I moved into new servers a couple of times in the I6-I8 era.  In those situations, many of the techniques you mentioned would be standard operating procedure for me until I got established.  In addition, IIRC focusing on enemy groups that shared your origin made it significantly more likely to get drops you could use.  So, from what you said of your own experiment, getting SOs (in most if not all powers) by 30 should be doable.

Regardless though, I23 is definitely a different world.  It may be something of an issue for a bit, but I'd be surprised if it's a big one.

That's about where my thinking was. Since we were thinking about fastest leveling possible and bracketing the existence of AE, my assumption was that crafting IOs and marketing was out the window, so we'd be looking at trying to buy SOs on drops and vendor money. I just remember my sad first toon who didn't know not to waste his meager earnings on TOs and didn't know to put things on the market. He was essentially broke and practically unenhanced apart from drops until 40ish when someone finally told me what was what.

I'd probably do better in a re-release situation if only because I'd only enhance essential powers until more cash was at hand. Well that and I'd not actually be trying to race to 50 in the first day

I'm sure it helped significantly that I had a RL friend and a couple of people that I met in game advise me on some of the basics.

[Arcana]

Speed of leveling was the fastest for me with a Fire/Dark Corruptor.

At level 10 I would be running at -1 x 8 solo.
Powers:
Super speed, tar patch, Darkest night, FireBlast, Fire Ball, Rain Of Fire
Zip forward, herd a group with Darkest Night and drop tar patch on a corner - rain of fire and fireball until well done. 

By 22 I would be at +1 x 8 - solo.
Super speed, tar patch, Darkest night, FireBlast, Fire Ball, Rain Of Fire, Aim, Firebreath, Howling Twilight, Shadow Fall, Fearsome stare.

Zip forward, herd a group with Darkest Night and tar patch a corner - fearsome stare, Howling Twilight and then Fireball, Fire Breath and rain of fire.

By level 50 once I had some IO's in I was soloing +4 x 8. I would herd the Wall in Cimerora timing it so the patrols would come by at the same time thus getting more than the aggro cap. This was my go to IO farmer on the wall.

At early levels the biggest problem - assuming you don't just drop dead trying to attack too many things - is endurance efficiency.  At level 10 even with inherent stamina your recovery is only about 2.08 eps.  It isn't possible to sustain all those AoEs without resting a lot.  Tar patch basically gets you 1.3x damage which is actually very good for its 7.8 end cost, but Rain of Fire costs a very unsustainable 26 end.  Without slotting it is also only castable once every 90 seconds or so.

The biggest reasons why I suggested Claws/Fire brute is because a) Claws' AoE is broken - it does more damage for its endurance costs than it should, making its AoEs among the most efficient, and b) Brute fury gives the best DPE boost possible when slotting is still low.  For comparison, Brute swipe and Scrapper swipe both cost the same amount of endurance, and Brute base damage is 34.62 (at level 50) while Scrapper base damage is 47.55.  At low levels with minimal slotting the brute would only need about +37% damage - a trivial amount of fury - to overtake the Scrapper in DPE.  This means more things killed with less resting between fights, and a better kill count for every endurance point spent.

I believe that the primary bottlenecks to fast leveling are a) lining up the best content with the best XP rewards and b) having enough endurance to run it.  The first one is more or less the same problem for everyone, but the second one isn't: the most endurance efficient build will tend to win that one.

[Arcana]

Regardless though, I23 is definitely a different world.  It may be something of an issue for a bit, but I'd be surprised if it's a big one.

Nah.  I didn't transfer wealth to alts and started all of them fresh, right up to shutdown.  In an I23 world, even a completely rebooted world with no alts to twink start ups and an empty market, enhancements won't be a problem.  It may take a while to get the *best* enhancements, but even if the markets aren't seeded with stuff just what you can earn yourself will be fine to start.

Heck, in a rebooted world it'll be easier to get the ultra-rare PvPIOs than the purples and valuable non-purples (i.e. Numinas).  Well, for me anyway. 

[Zerohour]

i take it there is still no news?

[darkgob]

i take it there is still no news?

UPDATE September 30 2015:


NO, WE DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE DEAL. YES, THEY ARE UNDER AN NDA. YES, EFFORTS ARE STILL ONGOING. STOP ASKING. JUST CHAT AND WAIT. THANKS.

[Joshex]

Nah.  I didn't transfer wealth to alts and started all of them fresh, right up to shutdown.  In an I23 world, even a completely rebooted world with no alts to twink start ups and an empty market, enhancements won't be a problem.  It may take a while to get the *best* enhancements, but even if the markets aren't seeded with stuff just what you can earn yourself will be fine to start.

Heck, in a rebooted world it'll be easier to get the ultra-rare PvPIOs than the purples and valuable non-purples (i.e. Numinas).  Well, for me anyway.

easier to get ultra rare PvP IOs? this comment interests me. care to elaborate as to how? do you mean more people will be active in PVP zones and thus a good probability of player vs player action with rewards? or do you mean the 4 days it takes to get a hero merit and swap it for a rare PVP IO in the same set as the ultra rare and do 'convert to another one in the same set' a bunch of times to get the proc?

[Waffles]

I'd say my fastest level 50 would have to be my Katana/willpower scrapper. Three hours is all it took. Used the pre-nerf Rikti Comm officer farming map.

Near the end, it took me about four hours using the "Fire cave" farming map to level my SS/fire brute. Most of that time is a result of not having blaze, and foot stomp. Once I unlocked those abilities, the insp boosts and the temp buffs were enough to overcharge the last eighteen levels.

As for leveling the "Normal" way, my Arachnos Soldier annihilated everything.



The Soldier I leveled as a bane spider, and turned into a crab spider once I hit 50, and had IO's ready to go. It was built more like a huntsman, until I unlocked Crowd control. Then it played more like this.

[Vee]

easier to get ultra rare PvP IOs? this comment interests me. care to elaborate as to how? do you mean more people will be active in PVP zones and thus a good probability of player vs player action with rewards? or do you mean the 4 days it takes to get a hero merit and swap it for a rare PVP IO in the same set as the ultra rare and do 'convert to another one in the same set' a bunch of times to get the proc?

Assuming two accounts you could afk farm for PvP IOs, then convert them to what you want. Even after heavy adjustments to lower the drop rate for killing the same toon (and I think you could mostly get around that by limiting the recharge in your rez, but I only half paid attention when people were talking about this), peeps were still getting multiple drops/day without actually playing. Purples don't really have a shortcut.

[Baaleos]

I'd say my fastest level 50 would have to be my Katana/willpower scrapper. Three hours is all it took. Used the pre-nerf Rikti Comm officer farming map.

Near the end, it took me about four hours using the "Fire cave" farming map to level my SS/fire brute. Most of that time is a result of not having blaze, and foot stomp. Once I unlocked those abilities, the insp boosts and the temp buffs were enough to overcharge the last eighteen levels.

As for leveling the "Normal" way, my Arachnos Soldier annihilated everything.



The Soldier I leveled as a bane spider, and turned into a crab spider once I hit 50, and had IO's ready to go. It was built more like a huntsman, until I unlocked Crowd control. Then it played more like this.

I spent 4 minutes watching Sauron killing people in your gif, wondering how many more people he can kill.

[blacksly]

I spent 4 minutes watching Sauron killing people in your gif, wondering how many more people he can kill.

Mace does have underrated AoE damage if you can herd together a bunch of Warriors.