Wing_Leader

It could still be the server. The amount of time it takes from the last count update you saw on your client will naturally vary. But it is the 99% regularity of it that is the most damning evidence, not the 1% exceptions. Still, my theory could be entirely wrong, but I'd really like to hear a Dev explain this phenomenon.

Semi-literacy has been the cornerstone of "new hipness" in America since the George W. era of anti-intellectualism. The fact that it is the de facto standard for online communication means the 99% have, in fact, won the culture wars.

You may be right, but in the Cyst mission, it seemed like nobody but me and the tank had the defenses to withstand the nictuses surrounding every cyst, to say nothing of all the Cim ambushes that created further adds, which meant everyone but us died by the time a cyst was at half hit points. If we were lucky, the tank and I (a willpower brute) could finish off the cyst before dying ourselves, and then wait for everyone to res or come back from the hospital. Multiply that by the ten cysts that have to be destroyed, and you have just one mission that takes forever to finish.

Then, in both of the missions involving "traitors", we had ranged squishies and controller squishies who could not survive all the mobs that came along with every cyclops or minotaur. And then in the fight with the computer console, I had to destroy it almost single-handedly because everyone else just kept dying and only I seemed to have the means to stand there and shrug off attacks.

And then, when facing nictus-infused Romulus, nobody else could deal with his AV buddies who were spamming him with heals without dying constantly, so after 20 minutes of pounding on him, the team was wiped out and we just gave up for the night.

If the most fun TF in the game requires a finely-tuned balance of just the right power sets and a group of players who know all the tricks of how to beat each mission, then it is by definition one of the least fun TFs in the game to me. Maybe it is fun when the "speed" version is mastered and you don't ever have to face any deaths (who has time to die when it is finished in 15 mins?), but speed runs don't appeal to me for various reasons and I'm unlikely to bother with the TF enough times to know how to speed through it.

I presume it will be the same thing that motivates them today.

At the moment, there are a lot of +3's with no real reason to run the trials anymore, no need or desire to add yet another ability to their slots, but run them anyway. Who cares if, when the new slots become available, they unlock them and slot them up instantly? These guys (and gals) will grind the new trials just because they can, not because they need to. It's what they do today, and I suspect it will be what they continue to do until the servers finally shut down for good.

You can probably divide the hardcore player base into those that enjoy the trials for their own sake, those that do them to stockpile components for the future, and those that do them as part of a routine of cycling through WTFs, SSAs, Tips, and whatever other repeatable content is available. And when none of that is motivational enough, they turn to playing alts and sending them through the whole process. I don't see these players losing motivation to play just because they can insta-slot their mains. And I imagine that non-hardcore players aren't stockpiling and will be doing the new trials and unlocking the new slots at a nice even pace just like the devs want.

I have no access to their data, but just to play devil's advocate for a moment, it could be the case that the devs won't be shocked at all by the number of people who could unlock and hit tier 4 on the new slots right away. Either because they have a good sense of just how many hardcore trial runners there are on each server, or because the number is actually pretty small relative to the overall player population.

Ultimately I don't see why the devs should care how long it takes anyone to get what they want out of the game. They are allowing people to play for free now, so extracting every possible subscription dollar out of the player base can no longer be a practical goal anymore.

Hope springs eternal.

Just seeing how devoted you've been to the Taxibot service gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies. Oh, those were the days...

This feels like a product management issue, not an axiomatic Truth that nobody can do anything about. If the product manager in charge of updating the graphical quality of the old pieces does not allow them to "reflect a different, more modern style of graphics" (which would be at odds with the overall aesthetic those pieces originally embodied), then we should be fine. As long as the goals are clearly understood, clearly laid out, and followed with discipline, no derailment of intent should occur.

If you are saying that there is no way to insure this given a cynical view of human nature, well, I can't and won't argue along those lines. That is a philosophical view that I feel limits human endeavors unnecessarily. I prefer to think that it is very possible to get the right person to lead a successful update effort that produces results 99% of customers would be happy with. Call me a naive optimist, but that's what I believe.

The fact that mistakes were made before indicates to me only that the past effort was poorly (or incorrectly) defined and perhaps too broad in its allowable interpretation. There are remedies for that.

I thought that it was stated outright, during a player summit or ustream thingy or whateverthehell, that the next set of Icarnate slots would not introduce any new currencies. If so, then yes, a lot of folks will be tier 3 or tier 4 almost immediately (once they've acquired the iXP to unlock the slots). I think the expectation is that the new slots will require a lot of iXP, maybe an order of magnitude more than the existing slots, so as to encourage runs through the newest trials which will provide commensurately more iXP. Folks trying to farm BAF for the new slots will probably find it to be an excruciatingly slow grind.

The usual approach is to put your lichen temp powers on auto-attack so they fire off whenever the engine itself allows it. I do the same thing with pacification grenades in the fight against Marauder. When you see one fire off, just ctrl-click the next one in your tray. That's about the only management you have to do for it. If you have something else in your build (like Hasten) that require the auto-activation mechanic, learn to live without it for a few minutes (the duration of the War Walker fight).

I've stopped playing power sets, or making builds, that depend on an auto-activated click power in order to function properly (no Super Reflexes for me, not if I'm going to go Incarnate anyway).

I actually have no problem with a scenario in which certain powers are more of a hindrance than a help. It facilitates creative use of one's other powers, or better team play/coordination. As long as the scenario makes a good logical case for this limitation, I don't mind it. Avoiding civilian casualties is a clever way to make heroes think twice about how reckless they are during combat. As long as there are multiple solution vectors for dealing with this, I don't see it as a problem. In the case of TPN, you can either not use AoEs, pull the Telepathists away from civilians so you can use your AoEs safely, or just confine all combat to inside the buildings.

I have learned to just make the best of my Lore pets and the one shot I get at any given prisoner as it runs by. For me, the lamest thing is the fact that the Hardened Commandos can not be stopped or slowed down by anything in the game. Another "cheat", as I see it, but I suspect the devs feel it is "fair" because the prisoners don't ever attack.

I hate the sabotage phase of Lambda as well, and I can usually survive it reasonably well because I play a WP Brute. I still hate how everyone just runs around willy nilly trying to take these things down as fast as possible, never bothering to work as a group to maximize buffs and stuff. First-timers to the trial will always be left wondering what the hell they are supposed to be doing, and spending most of that phase getting ganked by IDF and waiting to return from the hospital.

My general problem with Lambda is that the entire trial is poorly presented. The league defeats the EB and then a timer starts counting down until Marauder arrives to "deal with the situation". No explanation of why the grenades or acids are useful is given, so the sabotage phase has no other motivation behind it other than there is nothing else to do unless you just want to wait for the timer to expire. There is no better evidence of this than the fact that not a single newbie who ends up with acids or grenades has any clue what to do with them.

Yes, these two "tricks" feel like cheating to me. And if you don't like that word, then how about "intellectually lazy, unsophisticated method of providing a challenge"? I am axiomatically opposed to the idea of autohit anything, unresistable anything, and one-shot kills. Those are not game mechanics, those are plot devices in the guise of game mechanics, and they have no place in the standard play environment of a video game (in a cutscene, sure, do whatever the plot requires, but nobody expects any sort of control during a cutscene anyways).

I can definitely appreciate the controversy involved in making drastic changes to existing pieces. Reflective properties are definitely in that category of "too much change". But I think when you look at many of the old costume pieces, it is obvious what the low-res texture was trying to get across, but fell short due to early limitations. In most of these cases a new-and-improved version of the same exact concept would, well, be an improvement.

Many of the old pieces try to suggest ridges or buckles or seams or fabric textures with raised edges/bumps but represent them with flat, painted lines. Making those features which were always meant to have actual thickness to them can be better achieved with the sort of technology available now. I see no reason not to go back and make those old textures into a form closer to what they were always intended to be. I would step back from changing the way light reflects off those pieces, or the way that colorization interacts with them. But in terms of apparent geometric/bump detail, I think an uprezing pass with bump/normal mapping would be quite welcome on many of the older pieces.

Sorry if all this has already been covered to death in David N's thread.

Or the Titan Weapon she has holding her hair in place...

Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that can happen in that new game with lightsabers? You can kill NPCs and quest-givers, actions that shape the gameplay experience you have later down the line.

Hey, it takes money to make money.

Even vendors charge a fee for selling to them, anywhere from 60% to 86.8% of the "market value" (i.e., purchase price) of the enhancement. Wentworth's only takes you for 10%. You won't get a better deal anywhere else except perhaps direct trading with another player.

They seem to be alive and well and doing just fine on Praetorian Earth. Or rather, a Praetorian Earth. In fact, I ran into them, along with Dominatrix herself, in one of the PI (via Portal Corp) story arc missions just the other night. I guess I'm not sure I understand the source of curious wonder here.

Unless you are asking why the Praetorian dimension Portal Corp connects to has a version of Dominatrix that is different from the one that Prometheus' trial teleporter connects to. In which case I think everyone is expected to assume that they are two different Praetorian Earths, each a separate threat on its own, dealt with through different contacts.

Or is there an official in-game explanation that I'm not aware of which makes more sense than that one?

I don't understand the subjective association of good and bad with an intrinsically objective thing like data. Could you elaborate?

You have some very good insights!

Now, if CoX were to be designed today, with a new engine, unencumbered by the limitations of the current 10-year old engine, would it still be designed like an amusement park rather than a simulation? The amusement park nature of the game is where it completely fails as an immersive experience for me, and while I don't want it to be as mundane in its simulational goals as The Sims, I would still prefer that the world actually make sense and not resort to so many metagame gimmicks that we are expected to just ignore or accept as the price for having a "fun little game". My instincts say that most if not all the metagame cheats and tropes could be replaced with stuff that maintains logical plausibility through and through, and that not making an MMO that way is, well, just weak game design. Unfortunately, I don't have millions in seed venture capital at my disposal to prove it.

Against NPC mobs? Really? Have you seen the effectiveness of those police drones?

Agreed. The whole "drop" system is profoundly flawed as far as in-world logic is concerned; I certainly didn't intend to make it sound like I was singling out the Invention component system.