snowy

Ok, so I can confirm that the "back door" entrance to Agrippa shield building works. I was 150/max HU when I started and it let me go through stages 1-3 in entirety. I am now looking to do the Agrippa device missions "through the back door" as well. I have purchased another gold token but neither Kenlz or Grrr.. will offer any talk to me. I believe I originally spoke to another NPC to get the shields back door rolling (some sort of a bribe or favour i'm sure!) but I cant remember who, and it's probably going to be a different NPC for the devices mission anyway. If anyone out there knows how to get started with the back door for devices I would love to know.

Sacrilege..

I for one hope that PVP in E&B never comes to pass. It was never part of the original game concept. If it does get implemented in any form it should be the arena method as was added to "live". There should be NO rewards of raid drop loot or rare loot and certainly not of loot that is otherwise unobtainable. The advocates of PVP only want in so that they can beat on each other, what more reward is required? Certainly nothing that put PVPers at an advantage over those who wish to play the game in the manner that it was originally conceived.. Basically give a little new sector to those who want to bash on each other and let them bet on it with some sort of escrow arrangement. If the want to bet credits, fine. If they want to agree on a bet of "my item vs your item" then that could work too, as long as the items bet are tradable in game anyway (to avoid obvious exploit..) and each players item they wish to bet goes into a neutral vault that is only accessible by the "victor". This method would allow all those who wish to partake in these willy waiving contests the opportunity for combat, reward and risk just like they have asked for without detriment to those who do not wish to take part. My personal view is that I would rather see the devs considerable talent put to good use by expanding the game in it's original format, but everyone has different priorities I guess.

^^ what he said ^^   I have location I like to farm for comps that I usually keep or break down. If I sell up I can make 50mil in an hour or so. You will need some decent toons of course! This is why credits aren't worth shit in E&B!! :lol:

Quite right! Even in an organized guild like the one I belong to 10 minutes is no-where near enough time for everyone to get their shit together! And if it were.... why would the offending guild in this case need to give themselves plenty of time to get organized as inferred by the OP? :huh:   By the way... Was it Static again?

Some interesting stuff here. I think that existing toons that would obviously not be able to "make tough decisions at birth" should have the opportunity to redistribute SPs already gained in order to fit their choice of specialisation? This should be implemented as an option that can be activated to use once only, but at any time after the choice of specialisation has been made. This will give the player the time to consider the profile of their toon before deploying the redistribution of the existing SPs. Faliure to address the plight of existing toons could potentially lead to much arm waving and protestiation by the masses who might feel their toons have been "nerfed" or "gimped" by the upgraded format. The populous are a sensitive lot, we all remember what happened to in game numbers after the waking nightmare "adjustments"... The last thing we need is to lose a lot of players over something, that if implemented properly, should be an interesting improvement to the game.

As I recall that group was made up almost entirely of JDs and JEs! Perhaps not the ideal raiding party!

The drop rates on these items were very small in the "original live" and 2% is a more than fair drop rate imo. 1% would not be out of line.

+1 to new ISP. Anything to get back playing the game I love.         I have all but given up playing now. I now login once a week on a tues or weds after patch to see if there is any improvement. There isn't. My game lags up even though I do not leave the station. Imput into guild chat will initially show up but subsequent posts are then subject to longer and longer delays until such point that I can no longer post. This is after 4 or 5 posts max.         The ISP thing might be one factor, but until "upgrades" and mods are tested for function on slow speed connection then nothing will save this unless they unwind about 3 months of patches. My typical connection speed is 0.7meg (which would have been more than adequete to support the original game). I suspect the devs are like most geeks I know and rock with anything from 20-70+ meg lines. This may be one reason they cannot appreciate the carnage that is afflicting many who attempt to play the game now. I briefly logged in just now, 187 online.. says it all really.

    Just logged in to see if the issues were fixed on Tuesday. No mention of it the patch notes save for a mention of a group gating issue (which is the least of the worries), sure enough I sat on galaxy screen for a minute or two before appearing in earth station. Attempting to say hi to my guildie buddies in chat showed straight away 1 minute of lag, which was soon 5 minutes of lag, followed soon by an indeterminate amount of lag (I switched off, bored waiting). What is really disturbing is that there seems to be no acknowledgement of these issues that are affecting so many. Why no Dev comment on this thread? I hear Lannister when he says "cut the devs some slack" but right now I would just like to see some dev acknowledgement that these issues actually exist. "Denial" is a strong word to use but all that's needed is an undo of 3 or 4 patches and get back to playing the game. The game is losing players guys, when I did log in I noticed 157 players online. There's enough people leaving because their win buttons got taken away, if the hardcore who play regardless of content leave because they can't even physically play the game anymore then this thing will be finished inside 6 months. For my part I shall keep trying to log in, and checking the forums and patch notes eagerly awaiting the fix, I'm not about to give up on it yet. Many already have though..

Some cold hard facts to help y'all along:   1. "cherry picking" is perfectly legal in the emu 2. "cherry picking" was perfectly legal during live. 3. there is MUCH more available gas/hydros/roids to mine in the emu than there was in live. 4. there is HUGELY more hulks to mine in the emu than there was in live. 5. there are only a fraction of the number of active players on the emu than there were in any of the four "live" servers.   Ahh.. that's better.. some perspective at last ;-)   Think of "cherry pickers" as the guy who got there first, don't hate 'em for it ;-)

Well my guy that died yesterday is now well and truly helpless. I cannot JS myself because reactor is dead. I can't tow because attempting to do so just drops/locks the game. When I run task manager to close the game and then restart it I appear in the same place.   Question for the Devs:   In the STs when logging in after a lock-up the affected toon would then be in their destination sector, ie although we couldn't see it the too had transferred to the new sector BEFORE the game locked. Why was this changed? At least with the old system you were limited to one lock-up/crash per jump, now there is the very real possibility of sitting on the wrongside of a gate/WH stuck in a constant loop of "attempt gate/run task manager to close game/reload game/repeat step one!"   I know some seem to be able to play, there are still 200+ showing in game and I guess they can't all be stuck, but very many are having big problems and this dosen't seem to being acknowledged. I was very suprised not to see an update when I tried to log in this evening and quite suprised that no devs spoken on this thread yet. Something in the last two patches has caused enormous problems, it can't be that difficult to undo what was done surely?

Devs, please lock this thread before we get 6 of 'em!! ;-)

I have been compelled to speak out on the forums by other players who are experiencing the same problems as myself. Before Tuesdays patch something was already badly wrong. My toons if left in open space for 30 secs would just crash to desktop. Navigating and selection of targets was ok for a minute or so before becoming impossible. "engine recovering" was perpetual. Huge lag was experienced, the viewing angles of the ship were living a life unto themselves and "warp tunnel" graphic was permanent. I logged into today, read the patch notes and eagerly booted up, checking the proto box along the way. Unfortunately the situation is worse now, the game is totally unplayable at the moment for me and I died from a lag situation. The one time I gated it was very fast though, no red circle on the galaxy screen, that itself appeared only briefly.  It seems to me that we need to look at some of the recent patchings because there were far fewer of these problems a couple of months ago when the player base was 50% larger. I am not an IT bod so I cannot offer a solution to these issues but i will say that I think the whole "instability" issue has been slightly missunderstood by the developers for a long time, by that I mean that they are perhaps not aware exactly what many of the players are going through just to try to play the game, and perhaps because not enough were speaking up, or when they did they did so in the wrong tone and were not taken seriously. "Stability" in terms of how long the server stays up is, to be honest, a matter of indifference to most people. Yes it's inconvenient if drops every 6 or 12 hours but if the gameplay inbetween is seemless then everyone is happy. Keeping the server up for as long as possible is nice but what has really been an issue since the project began is the issue of "locking up" during docking/undocking/gating/WHing. Even when the game was function "well" an average night of enb for me entailed running task manager 20-50 times to close my locked game and restart. I would stay in the same sectors when things were bad and mine just so that I could still play the game (This is one reason I have 3 JEs @ 150+!)  I know others that play enb and it is apparent that those who live big cities and have massive broadband pipelines have had far fewer issues gating than the out-of-towners on 2,4, or 6 meg connections etc. It is NOT the slow connection that was CAUSING the old issues of dropping whilst gating and in WH but whatever this issue is it seems they may be more succeptable to it. Such connections are plenty to run a game like enb and indeed once in a sector we could mine non-stop for hours without problems. As soon as I tried a WH, boom, it dropped (stuck at galaxy screen). My concern is this: I do know that in order to solve an issue the devs must recreate it, however if they are anything like most crunch-heads I know then they probably all have the biggest fastest connections immaginable and therefore the issues that affect so many of us may not manifest themselves in the same way to them. I am told that the game accesses the login server everytime we change sector, if this is the case I suspect that finding a way to bypass this function will put an end to the issues that those with slower connections are having. As I said the dev stuff is all way over my head and I wouldn't even be able to say what is and isn't possible to implement to fix these issues. What we do need is more people coming forward with the issues to help give the devs better understanding of what is going on.

Ok this is gonna sound like "I told you so" but I don't care. I don't want anything I say to be construed as a criticism of the devs because it isn't. However.. Many of us who played all the STs and beta have witnessed the evolution of the game. When ST first came out explore XP was set at 4x!!, open up a gas cloud in glenn and you had a great chance of finding a stack of 300 gas right there!! And if you found a lvl 9 roid, well you could just sit next to it because it respawned as soon as you mined it!!! All obvious glitches. There have been many other adjustments and improvements along the way. No-one complained at the time when these XP cash cows were rightly removed because that's what a ST and beta is for, to iron out these issues. This is where we get to the "I told you so" bit..     The Emu went "live" too soon. I and others expressed suprise at the announcement, beta had lasted only about 6 months. Stress test 4 dragged on for over 2 years without a wipe as shouldn't have been. The devs asked everyone to play new toons so they could study the levelling, but most got an easy "leg up" from big bro 150! Concern from those not wanting lose their toons in a wipe grew the longer ST4 went on, the fact that it was a ST was almost forgotten. When the announcement was made that we were finally going "live" we were told that the game was practically finished and that work would now focus on content. Unfortunately it was not ready, balance is difficult to gauge over the 6 months of beta. If all the recent fixes/corrections/"nerfs" had been implemented during a BETA environment there would have been none of this outrage, it would have been accepted as part of the developement of the game (which it is of course).   So I propose a solution, a solution that will impact myself as much as anyone else in this game.   Keep working towards getting the balance right, reach a conensus with the majority of the playerbase when you're satisfied that all exploits/issues/imbalances have been settled...    and WIPE.   Start afresh once again, safe in the knowledge that all currently implemented items/missions/game mechanics would not be adjusted. The reason there are many dissenting voices here is the perception that the goalposts are being moved after the game has started. We are playing in what we are told is the final "live" iteration of the Emu, but recently the game has had a very "beta" feel about it.   So wipe it and fire it up again when the balance you are looking to reach is broadly achieved.     It will kill my accounts, many of you may know that for the first 6 months of the Emu since we went "live" I was able to play almost 24/7. It enabled me to build up my toons quickly, without macro (I wouldn't even know how to) or any other illeagal activities! I am now in employment and my game time is reduced accordingly, so if wipe comes i'll never ever be able to get back to where I am now. No chance. However I would support a move to redesignate the current game as "beta2" with promise of going "live" again when the devs and the players together feel the game is ready because I believe it would probably be better for the Emu.   One more thing. The most important thing to many in the game is not a nerfed mssion or item, it is the constant crashing/locking up everytime a gate is passed through or a wormhole activated. Find a way to bypass the login server when changing sectors and I suspect that the issue will go away. For many this is a more important than any other issue, and surely more fundamental than content/nerf issues.   Whatever direction the Emu takes, I hope that the player > dev > player feelings improve. Upon consideration the Job XP halving is appropriate (not sure about the credit rewards - that's what trade runs are for afterall, but I digress) and the Waking Nightmare explanation is fair enough even if the "fix" was a long time coming and somewhat sudden when it arrived. By the same token the Devs need to view some of the views expressed in this thread (and post patch on tuesdays) as "constructive criticism" and perhaps not retaliate with terms like "whine/whinge", afterall, players only voice their opinions this strongly because they love the game and feel passionately about it. No-one here hates the game!

Elf for the benefit of those who didn't witness the exchange about Teach on chat I think it should be mentioned that although Magoo may have "jumped in with both feet" a little in that discussion he did in fact make a fairly comprehensive apology to you in chat when you explained the Teach issue. I think in the interest of presenting all the facts that deserves a mention in this thread.

I have all but quit now. But not for some of the content related reasons above. My enb experience is now virtually non-existant for other reasons. From the start I played this 100%, I put everything into it. The occasional ctd or lock-up during gating/WH used to hamper me a little but I put so many hours in it couldn't hold me back. Gradually the issue has become worse, I am also only able to play weekdays during "peak" hours now which is when the problem is at its most accute. I was able to get round this by not gating, i.e. spending my time mining, farming or doing combat in one sector. This has meant jobs are pretty much out for me, but that's ok, I levelled 3 JEs to max lvl and there's plenty of mining still to be done on my new PS & TS. Sadly the latest blight to befall me (as of a couple of patches ago) has made even this a risky proposition. It seems that now if I lose connection to the game because of a flaky internet line at my end my toons stay in. The upshot of this is that I cannot then log back onto them. It's happened many times now and if there isn't a dev or GM on at the time i'm stuffed. I submit a ticket and wait for my toons release. That often takes hours, at present I have four toons stuck in the game, one of which I only logged in to report the issue on the other three. I have less time to play now and when the majority of that time is spent running task manager to close the game or submitting tickets to get my toons released I just cant be bothered. This emulator went "live" because as the devs said "we have basically finished testing and now want to concentrate on content". Well sorry but since then they've done nothing but adjust the game fundamentals and balance. The very basic things that i'd like to be able to do, like click on a gate and get through it more than 50% of the time seem no closer to reality for me. This is still beta in all but name.

JEs completely nerfed now. "That's how it was in live" is absolutely no defense when precious little else is as it was in live. Half the mobs in live didn't have ludicrous plasma deflects I can tell you that much. When will that get "fixed"? I wont hold my breath. If I had one wish it would be that the connection issues that are blighting so many peoples gameplay every time they gate or wormhole were given priority over all else until resolved. If I didn't have to run task manager 50+ times every day I could probably grit my teeth and bear the rest :-(  

Posted this on the other thread,

There are very many interesting and useful abilities available to the various different character types in Earth and Beyond. Most of them never get used at all because at the time when they really might become useful (ie vs high lvl mobs and in raids) they are ineffective and/or mark the user for instant  death. A lot of players don't even bother putting skill points into these abilities until everything else is maxed out. An easy solution imo would be to change the way aggro works.   It seems that a mob will currently aggro on the player that has dealt the biggest blow and stay aggro'd until it detects a more punishing blow/effect that supercedes the previous one and then switches target. For example, the mob may start to aggro a PW to begin with that hits for 16k, aggro might then switch to a JE a couple of minutes later when a shield leech does 25k damage. Shortly after that the TT might draw aggro when they heal their buddy for 50k of health. Therefore once a suitably high lvl and buffed TT takes aggro by healing it isn't going shift anywhere else anytime soon. Against the top mobs in the game the TT will not survive this for long.   I suggest that the aggro gets reset after every time the mobs fires a gun. So let's say a Mob is aggro on the PW in a group because the PW opened fire. The mob will then fire on the PW. Aggro is now reset and will be decided just before the mob opens fire again by the following factors:    1. Highest damage inflicted/(or equivalent heal effect on player etc) on mob since last time mob fired gun. 2. If no damage inflicted/effect used since last mob fired then mob fires upon player with highest sig. 3. In the event of highest sigs being equal between two or more players (quite likely as players strive towards what they percieve as "optimum" set up) then the player with the worst faction to the mob shall recieve the aggro.   Clearly if the mob is using a PL with a .5 sec reload then it may be desirable in such circumstance for the mob to reset its aggro once every 3 or 4 rounds fired as opposed to every one. This duration can be tweaked with each mob to get a desirable "balance". This will not nerf mobs, if the same player in a group is the overwhelming threat to the mob each time the mob resets aggro then aggro will likely return to that player, which is as it should be. Occasional leeching, healing and hacking may draw fire when used, and if used repeatedly will hold aggro for longer and possibly lead to death for the player! A single area shield RC will not however draw the agg for remainder of the enconter.    This arrangement would mean that users of healing be punished, as would users of other class specific effects but they would not necessarily get instantly rubbed out as soon as they pressed the button. It would also likely lead to more widespread use of these abilities in the game, especially in raid scenarios.     I hope this provides at least some food for thought and perhaps along with some of the other useful suggestions on this forum lead to the right balance being arrived at.

Is there a 60% cap? As I understand it different buff types stack and activate stacks with equip. There are at least 3 types of turbo buff: "turbo weapons", "turbo specific"(ie turbo beam, missilesw etc), and "reduced weapons delay". These different buffs should (and I believe do) stack. Having buffs on the same type stack i.e turbo projectiles 27% (equipped) and turbo projectiles 40% (equipped) would just be stupid, make massive turbo easy to attain and reduce the value of smaller difficult to get turbo buffs considerably. Different buffs should stack, different % numbers should not, the highest buff should count in the event of two similar buffs being deployed, just as it does with all other buffs. It's simple really and I think they have it just about right now. How the reduction in weapon delay is calculated from the given figures is another topic of course..

I have to say this problem has got me considering whether or not to even continue playing enb. I have to run task manager between 20 and 50 times a day and spend as much or more time logging in/out now as I do playing. It is a tragedy.   Some points to consider:   Like the OP I have noticed the problem is at its most severe when server goes 300+ (which nowadays is most of the time) Below 300 it is better, during hours roughly 10am-4pm GMT I can play constantly with no crashes at all. I have tested my internet connection on various available online tests and my line is always 6+. I have tried all combinations of checkboxes in the loader, no help. If I stay in one sector (ie mining) then connection is fine.     I am told that each time we gate or wormhole that we are effectively logging in again. A recent developement and indeed a backward step is the fact now if we lock up worming we get put back into the game "pre wormhole"! at least previously we logged in to find ourselves at our destination and not having to run the gauntlet of another crash. I know there are many people suffering this issue now and only yesterday one guy, peekaboo I think, announced on mkt he was leaving because the game was no longer playable for him.   It is obvious now that we switched to "live" too soon, the new content is excellant and i love it but there are some serious fundamentals that should be given priority over content until the issues are fixed. I can sympathise 100% with the dev team because as we know user numbers towards the end of st4/beta were more like 200 rather than the 500 we have now, so in this sense the "stress test" could never really perform it's intended function properly. With the issues and patching (and even unpatching) still going on we are effectively still in a beta environment.   I don't think we can at the moment trumpet 150+ hours of uptime as any sort of stability success story. I for one would rather have the server bomb once every 3 hours and get flawless gameplay inbetween.    This is no criticism of the devs, I love what you're doing, it's just very frustrating not being able to use the game as I used to over the last couple of years.

So if I need 5 noxion I should clear a whole field in Glenn? There's no way of telling where one field ends and the other begins. As for hulk fields.. There was no such thing in live and they should be done away with. In live it was a rare thing to find a hulk, they weren't necessarily in ore fields either, just the odd one here and there and even then there was only a slim chance of finding something good in there. If the field respawn rates were calculated on an "x" minutes since last item mined from field then if someone did cherry pick then the field might respawn soon afterwards if it were no longer being mined. The possibility of people taking what they want and then waiting for respawn could be countered somewhat by making duration "x" a variable that might perhaps be anything from 10mins - a hour or so.

Hi. No i'm not in static, i'm in Builders inc. Our guild can carry out the raids, no problem. I was posting up the procedure because many asked me exactly how it worked when I mentioned it in-game. It may turn out that this method for raiding will not suit the emulator but it would be interesting to trial and see how the players recieve it. We all know the in-game economy needs fixing. How that is done may eventually involve reducing the amount of drops and mining available but how many credits people have will be irrelavent if there are no uses for them anyway!

Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting that allocated guild slots are done away with completely!, rather that slots or days are perhaps given for public raids too. Anyone, members of existing guilds or not, can participate of course, it's just that this way offers a chance for players that might not get the chance because their guild is small or they play at a different time of day to most of their guild etc.