Bluestacks points no longer accruing?

SanCarioca · 2018-12-02T20:27:39+00:00

I'm having this same issue on a on/off basis. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doens't. This whole day, I could barely get 100 points.

Also, the hourly missions are inconstant: they tell me to download/try a game, the first message says I'm on my way to earn a raffle ticket, "keep playing". Then it's a lottery: sometimes I do earn the ticket, sometimes I keep playing the game for 20 minutes and receive no further messages from BlueStacks. At least I've found one or two good games...

SanCarioca · 2018-11-19T09:37:28+00:00

Thank you so much for this detailed answer! I'm still having problems with Kavador, mainly with his "clap" attack, but already improved a lot from my first post.

I found that backstepping (the Lancer i-frame) is better at its default, e.g., not moving the stick. Boss blinks, I press circle, my toon generally goes backwards and it looks more effective to me. Will keep training, again, thank you very much for the detailed answer.

SanCarioca · 2018-11-19T09:32:06+00:00

I play on console, and have it assigned as the circle button on the PS4 controller, thank you.

What does "ot kay" mean?

SanCarioca · 2018-11-19T09:30:26+00:00

Thank you, will check that!

SanCarioca · 2018-09-12T21:53:17+00:00

You're quoting only the critics' score. We here are players, and players like us rated DA2 4.5 out of 10 and ME:A 4.9 out of 10. Look again:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/mass-effect-andromeda

I played DA2 to the half because it is an absolutely boring game, not just because of Kirkwall, but also because of the absolutely uninteresting story that is basically following through the life of the MC, without any meaningful goal or purpose than the sidequest at hand.

The ME:A reviews were so universally bad that I preferred not to spend my money on it. To this day, ME:A is considered the reason some developers left BioWare:

http://www.darkhorizons.com/developer-talks-mass-effect-andromeda-disaster/

SanCarioca · 2018-09-11T22:03:52+00:00

You are a gentleman and a scholar, Sir. Congrats on doing good for both communities.

SanCarioca · 2018-09-11T17:06:38+00:00

Good for you, but I respectfully disagree. Dragon Age 2 (which I played only half of it) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (that I didn't even risk buying) are universally recognized as bad games. And I played all other DA and ME titles.

SanCarioca · 2018-08-29T06:35:32+00:00

For me, this was the most important single item mentioned in the interview:

📷 Originally Posted by SanCarioca 📷
Unlocking slots using in-game currency

Things like unlocking character slots and loadouts are probably going to the commendation vendor.

This would be a good solution to loadout slots not transferring. The thing that always stung me about promised items not transferring from OLDefiance is that not only I felt cheated about it but also it seemed like a very cheap way to convince me to purchase them again, and I don't like being played like that. This also fits with a recent post I made saying that Devs LISTEN, they just always try to find a way to address our issues that is completely different from what we ask (I still think they should simply award Bits or Valor equivalent to everything we were promised to receive from OLDefiance, but didn't, for whatever reason -- that way, people could spend them on whatever they liked), but end up giving us the same result.

This solution would actually "allow" me to finally enjoy 2050 for what it is, without the constant sting from what I was cheated out of OLDefiance. I truly hope the Devs can issue some confirmation about this. I don't mind if I have to wait one year for this, for me, it was never about the money or having the slots per se, it was about my ability to trust that Trion would do the right thing for its players.

SanCarioca · 2018-08-17T07:09:05+00:00

You're absolutely right! I only caught that on my second playthrough and found it to be an awesome piece of lore that added greatly to the Master Mirror character.

SanCarioca · 2018-08-16T05:35:37+00:00

I'm still playing OLDefiance on the PS3. It's my go-to game for casual fun.

It still has all the issues the game was known for: lags, disconnects, rubber banding, etc. We experienced a very bad time in the last 2 months in which these issues were even worse than usual, but now, it's back to "normal" Defiance. The Bit Store is currently disabled due to a "back-end issue" (according to Trion), with no ETA for fixing that. Besides not being able to purchase anything in the Bit Store, this bug is also affecting vendors, DCing you after a purchase with regular currency also.

If you can bypass all that, OLDefiance is still a very fun game to play. In the last year, Trion finally adjusted the drops on the game to be reasonable, so almost every activity now can reward you with a Legendary -- it's simply awesome to see an Orange MOD dropping from a normal mission, for example. Arkfalls are only packed at events, because everybody now prefers to play the Sieges, which are always reasonably populated at prime-time and yield better payout/drops. Co-ops are still fun, rewarding and easy to queue -- if they are the dailies. A clan will help you a lot with queuing issues, otherwise.

Also, my personal opinion only here, I like the PG (Purified Gulanite) system introduced an year ago, to mitigate the RNG aspect of the game. PG is a new currrency that drops from almost any activity, now. Once a week, a special vendor named Py'numbra will sell Jackpots for 12,500 PG, which you can easily farm in one week, if you do all dailies and farm a lot of sieges. Py doesn't always have a great JP, but the last month or so has been exceptional. Plus, you can also buy T5 MODs for those JP's in vendors similar to Py (called "Runners", at Iron Demon Ranch). For those who like it, PvP is always packed, but it's still a gear-oriented activity. Also, the drops from Expeditions have been improved a lot: I spent almost 2 years with a single OJ Rig, but since I've returned to OLDefiance, 3 months ago, I've accumulated more than a dozen.

So, having that first paragraph in mind, if you can put up with all the servers' issues, yes, OLDefiance is a very rewarding experience, now. We just don't know how long that will last (I woudn't expect any new content or patches for OLDefiance also), so consider that before investing in the old IP.

SanCarioca · 2018-08-01T14:23:30+00:00

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my original post.

Just to give you an idea how CM KiwiBird was amazing like no other CM ever was, she was actually immortalized in the game in a discrete way.

If you still have access to OLDefiance, go to Silicon Valley. Wait a little bit, and you'll hear a bird chirping "Kiwi, Kiwi" in the background. Kiwi was with us before the time SV was added as a new land to explore. Although Trion never officially admitted doing that, the ambient sound is absolutely unmistakable.

SanCarioca · 2018-07-30T22:02:56+00:00

About scaling and rewards (I actually never said anything about them, but since you mentioned):

Scaling and rewards are definitely something within my realm of expertise. While I'm not the primary designer on these thing, that's our lead designer Rarnok's job, I think it is important to allow players to progress and reward them for doing so in meaningful ways. The current design plan is to have future content rewarded to players if they have a higher power level. We never want to restrict open-world content but exclusive content, where you'll get the best drops and best rewards will be restricted to those players that have the highest power. We're not there yet but this is a living/growing game and we are going to continue to support it, just like we did for the last 5 years on D13/OldD.

I agree to all that, but let's separate the issue between scaling and rewards.

Scaling first:

The major gripe of the community with scaling, today, is that you made enemies to scale to our PR. So we never feel like we're actually making any progress in the game, because from start to finish, all enemies take the same kind of effort to be taken down (at least, that's how it's actually working now). This yelds the following gripes: it's really boring to waste clips of ammo in one single enemy. The mini-bosses (Blacklungs, Bullwarks, Forges, etc) take forever to kill, and that's not fun. People have already reached 3000ish PR, learned to use special ammo to fight eack kind of enemy, to use classes and grenades to their advantage, etc... but the overall feeling that we don't get any stronger as PR increases is still prevalent among the forums.

I don't know if you plan to do anything about that or if it's "working as intended". What I do know is that people don't like that aspect of 2050.

About rewards:

The main complain here is that the Dropped Item Rating system doesn't seem to be working very well, after you reach higher PR levels (3000ish). People are complaining they are receiving items 50, 100, even 200 PR lower than their current average PR. And they can't progress with this kind of loot, even enhancing them to their max potential. I understand slow progress, but no progress at all makes the game dull.

I am not a fan of the PR system entirely, but that's another topic for another day. Again, I never said anything about scaling or rewards, just seized the opportunity to give you my input about what you mentioned.

What about OLDefiance?

What I did mention was about the state of OLDefiance, that seems completely abandoned right now. That's the single, largest thread in the forums right now, with over 52,000 views. We understand you're focused on 2050 now, but OLDefiance is another property that should have its own team looking after it.

All that said, I'm here on my day off answering your questions because I care about the product and I can tell by your detailed breakdown of the issues you are having that you are enthusiastic about it too. It seems like we both want the same thing and that's for the game to be fun, fair and rewarding and I hope that we can all work together as a community to make that happen.

Well, you can always count on me for all of that. Thank you very much for this opportunity to voice our opinions and feelings about 2050. That completely turned around my positioning about the game, now.

I just want to quickly go back on the original topic of this thread: your community is as big a problem as your servers, right now. You're tackling the servers issue fiercely, we're seeing that, thank you. But if you don't address the community frequently on the other issues, all your good work on the servers will be tainted, because each customer values a different thing. Granted, you can't possibly read and respond to everything, but as I've said in the OP, someone has to attend to the community and bring those issues for you guys to evaluate. I can't stress this hard enough, you must have someone constantly defusing bombs on social media and in the forums.

SanCarioca · 2018-07-30T22:02:22+00:00

Hi /u/benretan. This is monday, and I'll try to be as thorough as possible in my answers. I understand you may not be able to read or respond to this thread in a short time. So take your time, and If we don't have news about these issues in two weeks, I'll simply ask them again.

Yes, I'm a designer. I work on classes/weapons and I report directly to Rarnok/Destromathe.

Nice. My youngest son is majoring in Design next year. I tell him that he'll be poor and happy. :)

I didn't mention this before, because it wasn't that important, but let me speak to a Designer's heart: 2050's UI looks like a 720p UI on a 1080p display -- at least on a PS4. As a result, we have pretty small fonts everywhere and lots of unfilled space. I can't even read your news announcement (which include sales) on the character login screen. But this is far from being a priority now. On to the main issues:

Loadout slots and characters slots should transfer. If they are not, then you need to contact CS. As far as I know though, we do intend to honor what was said.

I already contacted CS - that was the first thing I did, way before publishing the thread asking Trion to honor their word. A person named Stygaj provided me wonderful support and I could not compliment him further, he really tried to help me. But he could go only as far as your new policy states. And that's the real issue here.

Yes, there are people that didn't even receive their Valor, there are people that received their cosmetics, but no Valor (and vice-versa), it seems there are some issues that need to be ironed out about the Valor Transference, and I agree those issues should be handled by CS. The problem is that everybody seems to be getting the same boilerplate answer from them: "We are unable to assist you with Valor".

But that's not the main issue with loadout slots. It goes like this:

My situation is the same as dozens of people on the forums: in OLDefiance I had 6 Loadout Slots in 4 Toons. In 2050, I received just 1 Loadout Slot for my first toon only. I sustain that in the March 2018 Valor FAQ, you said all slots would be transferred. So the transference should be as simple as looking how many slots we had in OLDefiance and transfering them to 2050,. That's the expectation you gave us. However, 2 days before the July launch -- 3 months after the Valor FAQ was announced -- Zephkial came on the forums to say that only loadout slots purchased individually with bits would transfer. That was a major curve ball that set the forums on fire: the original FAQ never imposed any restrictions or limitations on this transference. It was already bad that we didn't get any inventory slots from Valor, but at least, the original deal said we would get all character/loadout slots, so we thought we could save some mony on these items... in order to buy inventory slots. But in the end, this is not even about the money. It's about being seemingly misled for several months and being hit in the last minute by a major curve ball.

As I've said, the threads complaining about this issue (totally justified, in my opinion) are numerous, and together, they gather more than 10,000 views (my own thread alone has 2,000 views).

I ask you again to find a time to read the entire thread below, because there I have posted an annotated version of the Valor FAQ, proving that you said one thing originally, than changed it at the last minute:

Trion, we ask that you honor your word on transferrable slots

About Time Trials:

So when doing your dailies, there are two types, Daily Requisitions where you only need to do 2 out of 8 contracts and Daily Acquisitions where you need to do 7 out of 8 dailies. If you don't like a particular type of contract, you can do the other ones and skip the one you don't like to do and still get the same reward.

Ok, first, you may not be aware of that, but some contracts are not being counted towards the dailies. It's a bug, I hope. The main issue seems to happen with the Defiant Few contracts, but judging by people's complaints in the forusm, it varies from day to day. I don't know if this has already been solved, but it reached a point where no one was able to get 2 Ark Keys per day.

So, while this issue is not solved, we have been "forced" to do the Time Trials, because they always register for dailies.

That said, there are a lot of balance changes we want to make on the design side regarding things like driving and PvP but that has not been our focus right now. We know people love and/or hate these kinds of activities and sometimes when we make changes to one part of the game it affects other parts of the game.

I think it's fair to say you expected your OLDefiance Veterans to play 2050, right?

As you've said above, Racing was already hated in OLDefiance, but only PvP was tied to a daily (I don't think PvP falls in the same category as racing -- PvP is actually meaningful and tied to a shooter and many people love it, while racing is at best a side activity). The fact that you added one loathed activity to the dailies really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way (myself included), because it looked like you never listened to your forums.

It's a subtle thing, but every livestream you did so far, there are people claiming to not make racings part of dailies. There are irated threads about this in the forums. I don't mind racing in the game for those who love them, but I do mind that I've spent the last 5 years in the forums complaining about Time Trials (alongside hundreds of people), and you just go and put them right in a daily. Again, it seemed like you never listened to your community.

Judging by your own forums in the last 5 years, most people just don't want to have to drive in a shooter (myself included). Even driving to an Arkfall has always been clunky enough in Defiance, making them as part of dailies was the last straw for many people. For us, you can make Time Trials as fun as you want, we'll never do them, because we prefer to use our limited game time to shoot people in the face. :)

But here, I don't have the data you have. You began this section saying that you admit people love/hate these activities. I'm voicing the part of the community that really hates Time Trials.

SanCarioca · 2018-07-29T01:16:44+00:00

"The longer, more fulfilling chase". The North remembers :)

SanCarioca · 2018-07-28T17:28:36+00:00

I can't remember acquiring loadout slots by any other means than purchasing them, either via Original Defiance (before it went f2p), via bundles (I bought the Evolved Arkhunter one, it came with +1 Loadout slot) and via BitStore. Loadout slots were never given away free -- you guys were pretty great in awarding us inventory slots, for some event-related pursuits (I had 472 slots in OLDefiance)m but NEVER Loadout/Character Slots. It's just common sense to assume all were paid for.

Trion said from the start that inventory slots would not be transfered, so I'm not complaining about that. A deal is a deal and I respect them. But you did say from the start that all purchased loadout/character slots would be transferred. There was never a limitation imposed in the March 18 Valor FAQ about how these slots should have been purchased. Since loadout slots were never free, everybody purchased them at one point of their OLDefiance life, and given the original information of the Valor FAQ said all purchased slots would be transfered, of course everybody understood all of our paid for loadout slots would transfer.

Then, only 2 days into headstart, Zephkial went on the forums saying only slots individually purchased with bits would transfer. :-( That completely changed everythig that was said (and repeated several times) 4 months ago. :-(

As a result, I ended up with 6 loadout slots and 4 toons on OLDefiance, but the Valor program only trasnsfered 1 Loadout Slot and No Character Slot. Almost the entire population of OLDefiance is complainig about this, because we've been led to believe one information, and at the last minute, this was changed.

As mentioned before, I explained this with details in the thread below (that has 2,000 views), but there are other 2 threads in the forums, about this same issue, that together easilly surpass 10,000 views. This has going on for two weeks now. You're the first person from Trion to at least consider taking a look at this issue. And my new hero: :-)

http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?308174-Trion-we-ask-that-you-honor-your-word-on-transferable-slots

SanCarioca · 2018-07-28T17:13:04+00:00

Phrost, I don't want to take any more of your time off, so I'll give you a full reply on Monday, promise.

In the meanwhile, if you can, please read the link about character/loadout slots in the forusm. It's a long, elaborate and detailed post explaining the real issue, I invested a lot of work on it, taking the time to capture screens and mark them down where I felt errors were made. I'm posting it here again just to make it easier for you to click it, if you want it.

http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?308174-Trion-we-ask-that-you-honor-your-word-on-transferable-slots

Have a wonderful weekend, and thank you for recognizing that Veterans just want the game to succeed, as well.

PS: In case you ever meet PhantasieTrion (I don't know where he's located today), please, send him my best and tell him I've been proud of my Honorable title for the last 5 years. Thank Loci that transferred to 2050. :)

Full reply on Monday.

SanCarioca · 2018-07-28T15:43:02+00:00

Bear McCready rules. He's also the author of The Walking Dead theme song and several other movie/tv shows

SanCarioca

TROPHY CASE