Xaphan

Moon Zone announcement confirmed!

Hm... what? Are you sure? A quick check shows that Test and Live are currently on the same version, so there shouldn't be a difference between the two. Although your settings can be different... so maybe your settings on the test server are just lower, or something?

Well, basically, even if there was a recent change, it's been on live for a good while now. I haven't noticed anything different, and I haven't heard any whining about it... so I'd say it's not an issue.

My guess (which is just speculation, of course): Level 20 is the minumum level for side switching. It's also the level where Praetorian characters choose Hero or Villain and come to Primal Earth as part of the story line (though they can probably go right back if they want, I guess). So, the Resistance vs Loyalist storyline more or less ends at level 20, and at that point Emperor Cole's secrets are revealed... and it stops being shades of grey and begins being good vs evil. The morally ambiguous content in Praetoria (which people who start at Praetorians will be doing) ends, and the good vs evil content (which people who will be doing side switching) begins.

From what I've heard, we'll be going to Praetoria for side switching stuff (mostly, if not entirely), so there can't really be a level cap on Praetorian content since most of the people switching will probably be high leveled. The level cap mentioned for Praetoria is probably for the Loyalist vs Resistance (morally ambiguous version) content that the people starting new characters there will be doing.

From my understanding, we do have the career paths in Praetoria, but it's not as clear cut as heroes vs villains. Both sides are shades of grey, and both sides will be doing good and bad stuff (the Resistance, for example, can be either freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on how you look at them... and I imagine they'll be walking that line quite a bit).
At the end of it all, you get to choose to become a hero or a villain, but I'm not entirely sure how much of what career you chose will influence that, if at all.

Praetoria is more than just backwards land. The devs are trying to add more shades of grey and moral ambiguity to the story line... so it's more likely that BOTH sides will have good and evil missions that you can do (or not do) in order to determine if you become a hero or villain.


And yeah, it seems like your career path will be lost once you hit Primal Earth (but you'll still have your souvenirs, and maybe come other stuff, at least!). The factions on Primal are Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, and Villain. At least from the way I understand it.
For going from hero to villain the path is Hero -> Vigilante -> Villain.
For going from villain to hero the path is Villain -> Rogue -> Hero
The Praetorian factions don't enter into it at all.

What I got from it was more "Oh, I WANT to kill him... but for some reason even I cannot! It's simply impossible. Luckily, I AM able to control him, and use him to make the world a better place. Anyone have a problem with that?"

I think Cole may have struck a deal with Hami during their fight... or may have even been the one to unleash him on Praetorian Earth to begin with. I don't think one is truly controling the other so much as they simply found a compromise where they both get what they want...

On the other hand, rigid capes would look ridiculous, but we're used to rigid hair. So, it's POSSIBLE that they could have developed a system that lets you turn off moving hair in the options, which replaces the moving pieces with similar looking rigid ones. Looking at it that way, it's POSSIBLE at least.

...I know I'm grasping at straws here, but come on man! Let a guy have some hope!

Personally, I hope they're unlocked via missions. For example, the initiation missions unlock the set (since you're joining the club, you might as well look the part), or maybe there's a pair of TFs that cap the Praetoria story off that let you earn the costumes as a parting gift of sorts. I have nothing against the faction merits thing personally, but I'm just not sure how well it'd work in this situation.


Perhaps rather than merits, they tie it into the actual good/evil spectrum that you run through as you're doing Praetorian missions? If you go full Loyalist side, you can unlock all their stuff... and in order to get the resistance stuff, you have to go back to the other side, slowly working your way back to "neutral" first (of course, you wouldn't lose the parts in the process).

I think the biggest beef people have with merits and the like is that they seem like clutter. If it was more of a sliding scale in a different menu pane, I think most people would be fine with it.

Things that can't be bought from merit vendors, on the other hand, will likely experience a sharp upturn in cost. Purple and PvP recipes in particular. Those are already too expensive, I don't want some half-baked idea adding to the cost.

Well, there are costume changes (which are already trivial due to free costume change tokens, but yeah), and crafting recipes. While most recipes aren't that bad, the level 50 common recipes can cost around half a million to craft before you get the badges. That's not really a trivial cost at all.

But that aside, your argument in this matter seems to be that if they're already trivial, what's the harm in making them even more trivial? ...If that's the case, and the only thing inf is good for these days is the market, why not just get rid of INF instead? Make it so you have to use reward merits on the market or something instead.

Hey, the point here seems to be needlessly getting rid of and combining currency types that serve different purposes, so why not start with the one that's the most trivial?

Just a guess, but it may be a bigger issue here because in weapon sets with redraw, you only need to draw once and then the rest of the attacks in your chain don't do the draw animation (unless you use a power from another set or put away your weapon, that is). So it's more of an annoyance than an actual balance concern, since the draw part usually happens before combat even starts.

But with being able to change the weapon type used by the attacks, you can run into the situation where someone chooses more than one weapon to use for their power set, and actually get a noticeable performance decrease because they have so much redraw during combat.

Example: I decide that for my character concept, I only have a handful of "real" powers, and make up for the rest of them with gadgets and stuff. So some of my blasts have the normal from-the-hands animations, some use a high-tech-pistol, and some use a magic-wand. However, I'm a bit of a dullard and I use all three variants for powers in my main attack chain, causing me to have to draw a new weapon every other attack. And, being an MMO player, I complain about it on the forums and blame the devs.


It would actually be a problem that could be resolved by eliminating draw times. Hopefully BaB hasn't given up on that.

I figure it's needed to use long range teleports, rather than just the short range stuff their troops can use. Plus, given the events of the Lady Grey TF and Dark Watcher arc (where the portal room is below the mothership, likely using the ship to power it), plus how they invaded in the first place, the motherships are probably used to open the cross-dimensional portals between here and there (albeit that ability was neutered for a while when Omega team destroyed the portal generators or whatever on the Rikti world).

Ooh, now that would be fun. If only because I lost all my old screenshots of the Rikti Motherships hanging over the skies of Paragon. But that still begs the question... why?