Author Topic: New efforts!  (Read 7209963 times)

Twisted Toon

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26120 on: November 01, 2016, 05:25:28 AM »
I had an interesting and exciting week-end.

Starting onFriday, we (the people living in the house) noticed an extension cord laying on the ground under one of our outlets on the side of the house. the cord lead into the next door  neighbors backyard. We kindly returned the rest of their cord to them by tossing it on their roof. Saturday, the power company turned off the electricity around 9 am, to do some maintenance in the neighborhood. Around 6:30 pm, they turned it back on. Which caused the transformer on the pole behind our house to spark and catch the trees that belog to the neighbors behind our house on fire. Which, in turn, lead to the tin building in our back yard to catch on fire. Fortunately, some alert friendly neighbors saw it in time to help contain the blaze before the fire department got there and put the fire out. My brother and I were out at the time, doing some last minute Halloween shopping. The fire department finally left around 8:30. Some of them liked the decorations we had done in our front yard, and we even demonstrated the water effect we had with lighting (using the same outlet that was being hijacked the day before). Around the time the fire department left, we went to unplug the lights and noticed the next door neighbors had hijacked the outlet again. We took some photos and called the police. When the police finally arrived, we pointed out the extension cord and where it led. There wasn't really all that much that they could do but unplug the extension cord and return it to the neighbors side of the fence. Although, I dpn't think the cord was in the same condition after it was returned this time. They also said that if we had any more issues to call them again. Which I did this morning. the next door neighbors run an assisted living hostel, or something like that. Apparently, the owner of the place didn't know that one of the tenents was stealing electricity from us, because they acted all surprised when the police officer asked them about it. Hopefully, there wonb't be any more un-authorized extension cord usage from them for the foreseeable future.

Also, did I mention that the fire that tirched our tin building also knocked out the cable and internet for most of the block? They didn't get that fixed until this afternoon. Then there were all the Trick or Treaters coming by to walk the plank and loot our dead man's chest.

Thank goodness we got the internet back.
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Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26121 on: November 01, 2016, 08:54:29 AM »
I don't remember which issue nerfed RoA but I can tell you I stopped playing the toon about a year and a half before the announced shutdown.  Prior to the nerfing, a friend who had an archer/nrg blaster (same powersets as on mine) and I could walk through a mission nearly as fast as a team of 8 players with the usual assortment of arch types.  One of us would pop a red insp + build up + aim + RoA + that fanned arrow attack.  minions all dead.  LTs nearly dead.  Bosses half dead.  Usually 1 to 2 single target attacks would finish the LTs.  He'd take one LT.  I'd take the other.  Lastly, he and I together would then finish the boss together with the flaming arrow attack.  It's been a few years so I don't remember the actual names of the powers.

Ventrillo would help us stay coordinated.  We'd alternate who would do the insp+build up+aim+RoA combo.  Both of us would fire that fanned arrow attack and then follow up with the single target powers.

To the best of my knowledge, Rain of Arrows did not change during that period of time.  In fact the I24 version of RoA (which was unchanged from I23) appears to deal about 900 damage at the damage cap, which is consistent with my recollection of the power and your description above of what the power would have done under those circumstances.  For reference, even con level 50 minions had about 430 health and even con level 50 Lts had about 860.  I think bosses had 2570 or so.  One damage capped RoA would wipe out even con minions and Lts that did not have lethal resistances.  Against +1s or +2s you'd probably have left the Lts with a sliver of health left.

One of the rare times my intuition of what was possible with a given set of powers was demonstrated wrong was when I challenged a player who claimed they could rapidly solo +3x8 with bosses with an Archery blaster.  The combo turned out to be Arch/Mental.  Arch/Mental with the right invention build had arguably the highest AoE damage output of any build.  And with drain psyche it was a sustainable AoE output.  The key was having a high enough kill speed to farm inspirations fast enough to keep lucks and rages going, on top of the very high recharge of the build.  Spam RoA and DP, and fill in the rest.  It was impressive when it worked right.

umber

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26122 on: November 01, 2016, 12:55:57 PM »
I always enjoyed parking my MM pets at the doors and just keep on knocking.... monsters come out and pets go to town, rinse, repeat and smile. :)

The knockback powers were always fun for keeping a huge ToT spawn all clustered up especially if you stayed near doors with nearby corner geometry.  Hurricane, Force Bubble, Bonfire... you could sense the palpable werewolf frustration.

Azrael

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26123 on: November 01, 2016, 01:27:18 PM »
Sorry for the length of this post but as an investor, I know a fair amount about the housing crisis:

The 2008 financial meltdown wasn't due to businesses not applying risk assessment.  It was due to crony capitalism.  It all started with two banks that wanted to merge.  One an investment bank.  The other a savings bank.  Such mergers were illegal due to the Glass-Steagall Act.  At the time, Clinton was trying to get the Affordable Housing Act passed.  A rider was attached that would repeal Glass-Steagal.

Glass-Steagall was passed in 1933 as the Banking Act of 1933.  There is another bill in 1932 which is also called the Glass-Steagall act.  Glass-Steagall limited securities, activities and affiliations within commercial banks and securites firms.  Savings banks can get FDIC protection while investment banks cannot.  The merger was between Citibank and Salomon Smith Barney.  With the removal of Glass-Steagall, commercial banks could now get the safety net of FDIC insurance and put all of us tax payers on the hook for their malinvestments.

Shortly after the Affordable Housing Act was passed, Attorney General Janet Reno threatened to prosecute anyone who violated the Affordable Housing Act.  This forced the banking institutions to lend to people who should not have received the loans.

Now this created or inflated several bubbles in our economy.

The real estate (aka housing) bubble
The private consumption debt bubble
The public (aka gov) consumption debt bubble
The stock market bubble
The dollar bubble
The trade deficit bubble

Each of them feeding off of one another.  The real estate, private consumption debt, and stock market bubbles have popped.  What made them especially nasty was the loans that the lending institutions made would then sell them off to investment houses who would then package them into investment products and sell them on the stock market.  They also did the same for the credit card debt and heloc (home equity line of credit) loans.  This poured money into lending institutions to keep the party going.   As long as everyone with debt was making payments, the party continues.  Of course, most of the loans were ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) which start with a low rate to get the payments down.  ARMS always reset and these did.  Those resets made the loan payments too steep for many.  Add to that a general slowdown in the economy.

The actual crash started much earlier.  I worked in a power industry at the time.  We saw the demand for new power plants drop in 2004-2005 time frame.  By 2006, there was literally no demand for new power plants.  Some believe the beginning of the crash started in 1998 with the effects of NAFTA beginning to be felt.

If you are really interested in any of this, grab a copy of aftershock by David Wiedemer, Robert Wiedemer and Cindy Spitzer.  They better explain the bubbles and what has happened and what is yet to come.

That was a great post, Lady Vamp.

Here's a great documentary on 'Money.'  Some may find it illuminating.  History.  Presidents.  Banking.  The 'Federal' Reserve.  Politics.  'Money.' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4wU9ZnAKAw

A dry subject that more people should pay close attention to.

Azrael.

PS.  Also a fab read is 'Supercrash' which puts recent history in an approachable style if you like comic books.  You can find it available at the great Page.45 or good comic book resellers.  Review below.

http://www.page45.com/store/Supercrash-How-To-Hijack-The-Global-Economy.html#SID=318
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 01:35:46 PM by Azrael »

LadyVamp

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26124 on: November 01, 2016, 03:33:05 PM »
To the best of my knowledge, Rain of Arrows did not change during that period of time.  In fact the I24 version of RoA (which was unchanged from I23) appears to deal about 900 damage at the damage cap, which is consistent with my recollection of the power and your description above of what the power would have done under those circumstances.  For reference, even con level 50 minions had about 430 health and even con level 50 Lts had about 860.  I think bosses had 2570 or so.  One damage capped RoA would wipe out even con minions and Lts that did not have lethal resistances.  Against +1s or +2s you'd probably have left the Lts with a sliver of health left.

One of the rare times my intuition of what was possible with a given set of powers was demonstrated wrong was when I challenged a player who claimed they could rapidly solo +3x8 with bosses with an Archery blaster.  The combo turned out to be Arch/Mental.  Arch/Mental with the right invention build had arguably the highest AoE damage output of any build.  And with drain psyche it was a sustainable AoE output.  The key was having a high enough kill speed to farm inspirations fast enough to keep lucks and rages going, on top of the very high recharge of the build.  Spam RoA and DP, and fill in the rest.  It was impressive when it worked right.

Might have been a cap instead of a nerf but I can tell you that we used to walk through missions quickly by alternating who used red+build up+aim+roa combo
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MWRuger

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26125 on: November 01, 2016, 05:30:18 PM »
Well, its November.

I know it is 29 days yet. Till the fourth anniversary of when the plug was pulled.

I remember all the venom and open hatred of NCSoft, I remember Missing Worlds Media, Golden Girl, Valence. Heroes and Villains, Ironwolf, Nate's announcement. I'm sure many of you do as well.

Here it is, four years on. I still miss the game, I still think about it, I still want to play it, I still want to go home.

So I'll say again what I have said many times. All I want to do is to play again before I die.

Once I was pretty sure this would happen. Today, I'm pretty sure it won't. But I can't tell you how much I hope I'm wrong.  :(
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Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26126 on: November 01, 2016, 09:02:39 PM »
Might have been a cap instead of a nerf but I can tell you that we used to walk through missions quickly by alternating who used red+build up+aim+roa combo

I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying the version that existed at shutdown appears to behave in exactly the way you describe originally using it.  In fact, the critical part of your recollection is that RoA killed all the minions and left the Lts with just a sliver of health remaining.  Assuming about +95%ish slotting on RoA (the ED soft cap), a small red plus BU plus Aim would have been a total of 25% + 100% + 62.5% + 195% = 382.5% total damage.  For RoA to not kill an LT outright it would have to do less than 224 damage against even 50s, 250 vs 51s (+1) or 282 vs 52s (+2).  City of Data shows RoA dealing three ticks of 75.07 damage or 225.21 damage.  If it did significantly more damage it would not be leaving Lts with a little health left.  The damage cap seems to not be a factor either, as 382.5% damage is both under the Blaster damage cap (500%) and the critter/pseudopet damage cap (400%).

It is possible RoA was changed in some way over time, but I think it is extremely unlikely it ever did more damage.  Mostly because it already does too much damage for its recharge.  Technically, RoA does three ticks of scale 1.35 damage, but that's relative to 55.6102 damage per scale (at level 50) - which is what the pseudo pet does, but blasters were buffed to 1.125 ranged damage, which means on a normalized basis RoA actually deals about 3.6 scale damage in three ticks of 1.2 damage.  That's enormous given its 60 second recharge.  Nova does scale 4 damage with 145 second recharge - it used to deal a little more than that but with 360 recharge.

The only downside to RoA is that it obeys a 400% damage cap instead of the blaster 500% damage cap.  But that would only come into play if you could accumulate more damage buff than the scenario you describe.  And I believe it always obeyed that cap from the beginning of time.

I noted the huge damage discrepancy in RoA and mentioned it to the devs.  They said they were aware of it but didn't want to change it because they felt the set was underperforming overall and didn't want to nerf RoA until they knew what they wanted to do with the set as a whole.  When they got around to speeding up the activations on the set they decided RoA wasn't problematic enough to change it and chose to keep it at its extremely high damage.  In any case, RoA wouldn't really be a problem relative to other AoE powers unless you could get extremely high recharge, far in excess of what Hasten provided.  And there was no way to do that, right?

Nyx Nought Nothing

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26127 on: November 01, 2016, 10:40:53 PM »
And there was no way to do that, right?
Um, right. Exactly. In the eventuality that the game comes back the new devs should absolutely keep this fact in mind.
So far so good. Onward and upward!

Sinistar

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26128 on: November 02, 2016, 01:30:24 AM »
Well, its November.

I know it is 29 days yet. Till the fourth anniversary of when the plug was pulled.

I remember all the venom and open hatred of NCSoft, I remember Missing Worlds Media, Golden Girl, Valence. Heroes and Villains, Ironwolf, Nate's announcement. I'm sure many of you do as well.

Here it is, four years on. I still miss the game, I still think about it, I still want to play it, I still want to go home.

So I'll say again what I have said many times. All I want to do is to play again before I die.

Once I was pretty sure this would happen. Today, I'm pretty sure it won't. But I can't tell you how much I hope I'm wrong.  :(

I remember all the NCSoft hatred quite well.   

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JanessaVR

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26129 on: November 02, 2016, 02:36:22 AM »
I had an interesting and exciting week-end.
.....
You were much nicer than I would have been.  I would have simply cut the extension cord with some wire cutters at the fence line, and walked off with the cord extending into my yard.  If they complained, I'd act like I had no idea what they were talking about.  Repeat as needed until they get tired of buying new extension cords.

LadyVamp

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26130 on: November 02, 2016, 03:15:06 AM »
I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying the version that existed at shutdown appears to behave in exactly the way you describe originally using it.  In fact, the critical part of your recollection is that RoA killed all the minions and left the Lts with just a sliver of health remaining.

I don't have the facts and figures.  All I can go on is what I remember, and all I can tell you is it used to look stronger to me in the past.  It seemed stronger to me then a new issue came out and LTs and bosses would still be hurt but have more of their health.  I don't remember when that issue was released or even what number it was.  I started playing when issue 2 was current.  Never stopped.  Never took a break.  I was there to meet new and interesting people and blow the heads off of pve enemies.  If my toons happen to kill of a pack of minions in one shot then more power to me.  I'd do the basics for slotting enhancements.  Never anything advanced.  Only one toon ever got sets and she wasn't seriously setup (pardon the pun).

I did things like get on my ar/nrg blaster and get on an assault team more than one.  8 ar/something blasters on a team.  We'd shoot full auto in 4x4 sequences.  Blast the hell out of anything in our way.  Get on arch/whatever blasters and go roa on the heads of enemies too.  Get on all controller teams and go run various TFs.  Used LV most of the time but there were other controllers in my stables.  Being an ill/storm was quite fun.  Statesman was really fun on all controller runs.  I remember perma-hasten with perma pets too.  I remember them all but I can't tell you the stats behind each toon much less which issues were in effect when I was doing these things.  In truth, it doesn't matter.  What matters is I had a good time and met lots of interesting people.

Hell, half the time, I'd get on my emp/rad def or ill/emp controller, find a team (usually they found me first), and let them do the killing while I kept them healed/buffed up.  Only ever ran into one person who had a problem with the fact I wasn't attacking.  Let his rear-end die a few times for spite and the tank kicked him off the team and then told the rest of the team if they had a problem with me buffing/healing only, get off the team.  Don't know who that player was.  Never exchanged real world names.  It didn't matter.  It was fun.  I do remember logging into those toons and having at least 4 tells asking me to join them before the computer would let me start playing.  That was a nightly occurrence whenever I got on either of those toons.

Wow!  That brought back lots of memories. 
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LadyVamp

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26131 on: November 02, 2016, 03:34:04 AM »
It really freaking blows we can't get on the game anymore.  Anyone know how the various spiritual successors are coming along?

What I wouldn't give to go blasting my way with those "lost" friends just one more time.
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Twisted Toon

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26132 on: November 02, 2016, 04:29:30 AM »
You were much nicer than I would have been.  I would have simply cut the extension cord with some wire cutters at the fence line, and walked off with the cord extending into my yard.  If they complained, I'd act like I had no idea what they were talking about.  Repeat as needed until they get tired of buying new extension cords.

That was one of the options we had though of. We decided to go with the police before we escalated to cutting cords. We have a nice branch trimmer that would have worked quite nicely.

So far, no repeats of the unauthorized electrical usage.

We still haven't sifted through all the torched, scorched, and waterlogged stuff that was in the tin building in the back yard. We'll probably do that this coming weekend.

Although, I did manage to fins most of the Lego Queen Anne's Revenge. One of the sails is useless, and it needs a replacement main mast. But, it would still be seaworthy, if it wasn't made of Lego. I'm going to have to go back out there and look for more of the pieces and came off. At least now, it looks like it had survived a battle...barely.
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

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Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26133 on: November 02, 2016, 04:46:50 AM »
You were much nicer than I would have been.  I would have simply cut the extension cord with some wire cutters at the fence line, and walked off with the cord extending into my yard.  If they complained, I'd act like I had no idea what they were talking about.  Repeat as needed until they get tired of buying new extension cords.

The first time I would have unplugged it and asked them to not do that anymore.  The second time I would have put my EE degree to use.

Victoria Victrix

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26134 on: November 02, 2016, 08:34:36 AM »
The first time I would have unplugged it and asked them to not do that anymore.  The second time I would have put my EE degree to use.

Note to self:  Do not piss off Arcana.....
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Arcana

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26135 on: November 02, 2016, 08:42:50 AM »
Note to self:  Do not piss off Arcana.....

You don't tug on Superman's cape.  You don't spit into the wind.  You don't pull the mask of the old Lone Ranger.  And you don't mess around with electrical engineers.

ivanhedgehog

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26136 on: November 02, 2016, 12:42:44 PM »
It really freaking blows we can't get on the game anymore.  Anyone know how the various spiritual successors are coming along?

What I wouldn't give to go blasting my way with those "lost" friends just one more time.

Valium online is going to alpha but it has been a couple of months and no one knows if alpha will be next week or 6 years from now. not encouraging. COT is making lots of tech advances but again, no idea when they will have anything to show of it.we are probably 2 years away from a possibility of a game.

r00tb0ySlim

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26137 on: November 02, 2016, 02:43:00 PM »
The first time I would have unplugged it and asked them to not do that anymore.  The second time I would have put my EE degree to use.
Yea, a lil bit of 220V is always good for a 120V load!! 

Twisted Toon

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26138 on: November 02, 2016, 03:40:19 PM »
The first time I would have unplugged it and asked them to not do that anymore.  The second time I would have put my EE degree to use.

I don't have an EE degree, and my IT degree doesn't seem to have any thing to provide for the situation. However, the bolt cutters we have in the tool box came in very handy thing morning when the cord was, yet again, plugged into the outlet. The cord, all of it that I coulf pull to my side of the fence, is in about 2 foot sections in my dumpster. I'll be happy to treat any other cords they want to use in a similar manner. Fortunately, they can't get to any of our extension cords, since we only use them right around the holidays of Halloween and Christmas, and they'll be moving out the 25th of November.
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

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Sinistar

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Re: New efforts!
« Reply #26139 on: November 02, 2016, 06:47:00 PM »
I don't have an EE degree, and my IT degree doesn't seem to have any thing to provide for the situation. However, the bolt cutters we have in the tool box came in very handy thing morning when the cord was, yet again, plugged into the outlet. The cord, all of it that I coulf pull to my side of the fence, is in about 2 foot sections in my dumpster. I'll be happy to treat any other cords they want to use in a similar manner. Fortunately, they can't get to any of our extension cords, since we only use them right around the holidays of Halloween and Christmas, and they'll be moving out the 25th of November.

Once upon a time a neighbor tried to siphon my electricity and pitched a fit whenever I unplugged their cord.

One time as I unplugged it the idiot trespassed onto my property clearly intending to do something......illegal.
However they stopped when they saw what was holstered on my right leg. 

Couple of days later the cord was back and they were trying to siphon my power.  However I decided this time to be a bit clever and went to the circuit breakers and turned off the one for the power socket, I think it also shut down my porch light but that was no big deal.    The jerk then had the audacity to pound on my door demanding I restore power and that I had no right to stop him from leeching my energy.  Okay seriously now, this person was not a rocket scientist and had no understanding of the law.  What they also didn't know was that a relative of mine who was a cop in the area was inside my home and already knew of the situation and heard everything the idiot said.

After that.....there was no more energy theft attempts, and the person swiftly moved out of the area.....can't imagine why.....such a nice fellow..... ;)
In fearful COH-less days
In Raging COH-less nights
With Strong Hearts Full, we shall UNITE!
When all seems lost in the effort to bring CoH back to life,
Look to Cyberspace, where HOPE burns bright!