Adeon Hawkwood

I really, really wish we could do in-set conversions on Overwhelming Force .

This is largely what it comes down to. People HATE feeling like they got taken advantage of. Remember back when Going Rogue was coming out and it was revealed that people who had pre-ordered would not get the same goodies as people who bought it at the store (new costumes and a month of game time). Even though pre-ordering got you early access to Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning a lot of people were still pissed and demanded refunds.

The same basic principle applies here. Releasing the costumes and wolf to the store is fine BUT the price and time needs to be done so that people who got them through packs don't feel like they were ripped off. If the price is to low or the exclusive period to short then in addition to losing goodwill from customers it will almost certainly impact sales of future Super Packs since people will just decide to wait and get it when it comes out in the store and I'm willing to bet that will cost Paragon Studios money.

As a side note, I will say that I find the Super Packs considerably better value than the random item packs in another MMO that I have played in the past.

No plenty of people love knockback BUT not all powers with knockback are equal. There are powers where changing knockback to knockdown makes the power considerably more useful.

A good example is Bonfire. With Knockback it scatters enemies everywhere and creates a zone where characters are reasonably safe form melee attacks. With knockdown it basically neutralizes a spawn while dealing a reasonable amount of damage. The standard power is a situation survival tool while the enhanced power is an all-the-time survival tool and damage dealer.

Just to clarify on this since it's a minor comment I made which has spawned an inordinate amount of debate.

I made mention of a 600PP Costume pack in two places. The first was when I was establishing how I viewed the breakdown of different "value levels" for costume packs. I set a range of 400PP-600PP as the price range for a "common costume". In this place I was not specifically saying that there were any 600PP costume packs I was simply establishing that I would consider this a viable spread for "common costumes" with 400PP being for neat costumes and 600PP for very cool ones.

The second place was an honest typo (as I mentioned in a previous post). I was talking about relative costume costs and managed to type 600 when I meant 400.

I'll also note that my 1000-1440 range has been amended. My original post used that rnage but since then I've reconsidered and decided to just stick to the low end. I was (originally) discounting the ATEs and Catalysts entirely since I can get them in game but on further reflection that doesn't really hold up. ATEs are relatively cheap on the market because other people are buying Super Packs. If the costume and Wolf were not in super packs then fewer people would have excess ATEs to sell on the market and the price would increase therefore my ATE use is effectively subsidized by the costume portion of the Super Pack. If the costume were sold alone I'd probably have to spend more for my ATEs which effectively lowers the perceived cost of the costume.

A useful tip here is that you can convert Astral Merits into Incarnate Shards at the Astral Merit vendor (at a 1:1 ratio). This is surprisingly useful for getting new characters their Alpha slot since instead of running Task Forces for shards and components you can simply run iTrials use the Astral Merits to get Shards and use the threads and components to make a start on other slots while racking up iXP. Generally on a new character I'll build his T3 Alpha Slot like this:

T1: Convert 11 Astrals to Shards + 1 Shard from Ramiel's arc (sometimes I'll just use regular thread based commons but if I'm burning Astral merits anyway this is slightly cheaper).
T2: Use 2 Commons and 1 Uncommon from iTrial rewards (this is cheaper than converting Astrals)
T3: Notice of the Well + 8 Astrals to Shards (sometimes a bit less if I got some shards or a component while running the WST).

This generally takes 4-5 trials which puts me a good bit of the way towards unlocking Judgement and Interface.

For the Tier 4 Alpha generally run more WSTs to get the extra Notices but I still tend to burn Astral's for the Shards needed to upgrade them to a Favor. Unless I get really lucky rares and very rares are gating me so the guaranteed Rare drop from the WST makes that my preferred method.

It could be that as well. I can just imagine Beckett playing a Scrapper and Castle playing a Storm/Energy Defender to annoy the hell out of her.

Personally I think they slowed down on slot releases for two reasons. First the initial release of four slots together meant that people farmed the hell out of them just on BAF and Lambda and then burned out. If they'd just released two slots with BAF/Lambda (possibly moving the level shift form Destiny to Interface so we got one shift then) and then released the othe two later as they built up the number trials I think it would have gone a lot smoother. Hybrid (and presumably Genesis, Mind and Vitae) uses a new type of iXP so rationing the slots out while they build up the number of trials with new iXP helps prevent burn-out.

My second reason is more speculative. I think they may be feeling their way into how they want to gate access to the higher tier slots. People complained a LOT about the switch from Shards to Threads to the point that the devs felt compelled to pretty much promise "No New Merits/Salvage". Now this is pure speculation on my part but I suspect that somewhere on Positron's hard drive is an old design document detailing the new Salvage and Merits that would be used for building Hybrid, Genesis, Mind and Vitae abilities. Given the push-back from the community they've obviously shelved that idea (assuming they did have it anyway) but that may well have made them more cautious about how they award the new slots. With Hybrid it's just a new form of iXP which means most people just farm the kills at the start of the trial to unlock the slot and then run older and easier content to make abilities. By releasing only one slot they can observe player behavior and then decide if they want to change things up a bit for the next slot (for example for Genesis they could make the requirement that you have to get the requisite iXP but also need a particular Trial Completion Badge to unlock the slot or change the trial to back-load the iXP).

Relax, it was a typo and one that came for a very simple reason: I haven't purchased ANY costumes on the Paragon Market since it was released so I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to the pricing. I do have several of the pre-Freedom costumes but I purchased them through Super Packs. Similarly for the Elemental Order I only really wanted one of the pieces (the Backpack).

Indeed the question is how much sooner and how much higher? As I mentioned a few posts back I consider the "cost" of the Super Pack costume set to be 1000 paragon points. This isn't a fact it's a statement of opinion based on my feelings about the pack. The pack has currently been out about 4.5 months. So what discount would I consider reasonable? Well again purely my opinion I would say:
6 months after the pack: 800 points or 2 Paragon Reward Tokens*
12 months after the pack: 600 points or 1 Paragon Reward Token*
18 months after the pack: 400 points
24 months: Free to VIPs, 400 points for Premiums.

This isn't to say that Paragon Studios should automatically do that it's simply that this is roughly the price and time points where I wouldn't feel annoyed about it.

* For Paragon Rewards I wouldn't actually care which tier it's in. Tier 9 Non-VIP-Exclusive is one option as is simply making a special section for it which can be purchased at any Tier but doesn't contribute to your rewards meter.

I tend to do the same even if I'm not planning on using a PPP just so I have them unlocked if I change my mind. I also tend to run Mortimer Kal while I'm switched for the extra Notice of the Well at level 50.

Neither actually. I think that the costume set is probably worth 600 points same as other sets (the gun and backpack are worth a little bit more to me because I REALLY like them). However at the moment with the super packs I would say that the Costume Set is costing around 1000 points when purchased through Super Packs (the ATEs and Catalysts are worth something but the inspirations and temp powers are pretty much worthless to me).

So I guess the point I'm making is that if the costume set was released on it's own for 600 points it's a pretty severe discount over what I perceive as the current cost of the costume (note: cost, not value) and that would kind of annoy me.

You know, just as a random though. What about releasing the costume as a Tier 9 option in the Paragon Rewards program (that's just Tier 9, not Tier 9 VIP)? Maybe split across two Paragon Token picks (it doesn't seem worth three).

The costume pieces aren't the only thing of value. The ATEs have some value (although for the most part the supply of them in-game seems to exceed the demand) and the Catalysts are very nice (in fact they are one of the few things I would buy from the store if I could) but the rest of it is a bit meh. I've got loads of stuff from the original Super Packs clogging up my email and haven't really used any of it. I've started making an effort to use up the consumables at least but it's slow going.

In any case the Super Pack mechanic itself has little appeal to me. If I regularly used consumables it might be fun as a semi-discounted way to get them but for the most part if I buy something from the market I want a permanent boost. The only real benefit that I derive from Super Packs is that other people buy them in large quantities to try and get the Black Wolf (or at least I assume that's what they want) which in turn means I can get ATEs cheaply for Inf rather than Paragon Points.

I'd recommend it. While it is possible to solo an AV it generally requires a pretty high end build and/or specific powersets that can provide useful debuffs. I wouldn't recommend trying to solo any AVs unless you really know what you're doing.

As a note the Task Force AVs will always be AVs no matter what settings or team size you have.

I think as an extension of this the fact that it's so easy to organize a working team and that the death penalty is essentially meaningless avoids a lot of the elitism you get in other games. Yes there is some elitism but for the most part no one cares if your character is doing 2% less damage than someone else's character. Add in that, for the most part, teams are organized as "bring whatever you want and we'll figure it out later" rather than along some standard mix of DPS/Tanks/Healers encourages a very laid back mentality.

I'd be fine with being able to buy it directly instead of a Super Pack. I'd be a little annoyed if Super Pack exclusive stuff was offered for direct buy now (especially at the price points SnowGlobe is asking for).

No the Thief does that as the last stage in his bit. He can't do it until the Grifter is finished getting the passcode though. I'm no sure why the Open the Vault bit remains visible during the AV fights though.

If you do well enough you get a third AV (you normally get one after the first stage and one after the second). Not sure how well you have to score to get that.

It would depend on the price point. I would expect them to cost more than the current costume pieces. At least 1000 points for the set. If they were released at the same price point as regular costumes then I'd probably be a bit annoyed.

It depends a lot on the price point. I can accept paying a premium to get it early but if the premium is to high then I'll wait (for what it's worth I tend to use the price of a 24-pack of super packs as my price point for the costume set so I'm comparing the costume only price to the 1440 points price for a 24-pack).

No that's still VIP only. So two reasons to subscribe, Incarnates and having my own SG base .

There are two problems with that. First AR doesn't have Aim. Secondly you can't actually get Aim and BU to 20 second recharge without external Buffs (you can get to about 25 seconds without to much trouble though which gives you FastSnipe almost permanently).

*shrug* Just because we don't have a set for 600 points doesn't mean we never will. I said 400-600 because that's what I'd consider the range for a "low end" costume set.

As for the Tier 9 VIP sets I never said that they were associated with any Paragon Point cost I said that they are a separate tier cost-wise from the "basic" sets in the Paragon store. Despite what Zwillinger has said this is objectively true. You can purchase a paragon store costume simply by buying the points to pay for it whereas the T9 VIP sets have a requirement that you spend a large amount of money on other things first (either subscription time or Paragon Points) to earn the tokens needed to unlock the ability to spend tokens on the costumes. So effectively they are free bonuses for spending a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that but it does make them a separate tier from other sets.

The first rule of the Internet: Someone will complain about anything

The second rule of the Internet: Someone will complain about anything.

That being said I think that a forced respec upon log-in would be a valid reason for complaints. I know that I wouldn't be especially fond of it (although I'd be willing to tolerate it for three more slots).