Arcanaville

The difference, though, is that while tons of people went to see Phantom Menace, lots of them admitted point-blank they went to see it because it was Star Wars, and it could have been two guys drinking coffee for two hours and they would have gone to see it because it was Star Wars. Critical reviews and general buzz about that movie was that it was, at least, somewhat disappointing after the initial hype wore off. And that became increasingly crystalized after the first few weeks. Trek's been out for over a year: by this time after Phantom Menace's release the movie had very few neutral or general audience defenders. But Trek hasn't gone that way, if anything the criticisms have lessened over time and the overall opinion of the movie continues to be generally positive. In that respect, Trek and PM are heading in exactly opposite directions.

Because there is so much subjectivity involved, no one thing is definitive for any movie. There are people who think Citizen Kane sucks, who think Gone With the Wind is boring, who think the Ten Commandments isn't true to the source material. Some people think Inception is one of the best movies of the decade, others thing its incomprehensible rubbish. But I think when the general critical reviews of a movie are overwhelmingly positive (the average reviewer thought the movie was reasonably entertaining, if far from perfect) and the general audience feedback of the movie is overwhelmingly positive (while not scientific, RT has Trek at 91% positive, and that's consistent with other audience feedback), and the box office suggests the movie had both good word of mouth (the movie had decent legs over the first six weeks of general release) and strong attendance per screen, and DVD and Blueray sales indicate strong home video demand, the burden of proof is skewed towards the people who want to assert the movie was poor cinema rather than the reverse.

Keeping in mind there's a difference between a movie you don't like and a movie you think is poorly done. There's lots of movies that are not my cup of tea but I don't think are poorly done and vice versa. Although, as a film buff its not common for me to actually hate a movie that I simultaneously think is well done. But I've been known to fall asleep during well made movies that were not my thing. No one has to prove a movie is something they don't like. Its only when they say its an objectively bad movie that the subject of demonstration comes into play.

And for the record, I liked Casino Royale. I had my doubts about Daniel Craig, but I think he did a good job overall.

You are someone that likes everything that every single other person in the game likes, and absolutely nothing else?

(Sorry, pet peeve. You're thinking of the greatest common factor, along with everyone else on the planet that misuses that term).

That's just keys on the keyboard until you create a scenario where that makes the difference between a team you know should fail and a team you've seen succeed.

Until you do, that's no different than me saying I can solo Hamidon by just "slotting the right inventions to kill him, tada."

As for the rest, you know I've reread my post, your post, and every other post. I'm pretty certain I'm not making any false assumptions. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader. Or you can ask me to point it out in excruciating detail, in which case I would be happy to properly oblige the request of a forum poster who was making a specific voluntary request for me to do so in writing.

No argument there. On the other hand, Chekov and Scotty are not what I would consider to be well-developed in the TOS movies either. In many of them they become parodies of themselves; in IV particularly, even though that is seen as an otherwise good movie (worse in V, but I don't think we're going to be using that as an example of anything anywhere).

I think the main problem there isn't Abrams, but the original script, and the problem with the original script is that we really don't know those characters well enough to easily extrapolate their past selves, so Orci and Kurtzman didn't have anywhere interesting to go. Spock we probably can extrapolate the best, even moreso than Kirk, and Spock shows up very strongly in the film. Kirk less so, but we can still see the potential for the naturally brash and rebellious Kirk to get out of hand without a father to look up to, and perhaps resenting Star Fleet for taking his father away from him (although I believe the script goes too far there, particularly in the aforementioned Kobayashi Maru). But then we get to McCoy, who we know basically nothing about his past (or rather, most people even most fans don't know much) except he seems to have had a very long friendship with Kirk. Sulu and Chekov we know even less, and Scotty's best known for saying the line "its green" and being the TOS equivalent of a geek. Not much to work with there.

In any case, I think if there's someone to blame for Scotty being the Chris Knight of Star Trek, Chekov being Doogie Houser: Navigator, and Sulu having trouble with the parking brake, its probably more Orci and Kurtzman than Abrams.

I've never attempted it, but I believe ITF is probably soloable in theory. It would take forever, but I don't think its mathematically impossible. If Lusca is soloable, I'm pretty sure ITF is as well. If I was willing to spend a day on it, I believe the build I'm currently thinking about to update my Ill/Rad might have a shot at it. Everything else is just a question of time. Romulus is the only actual questionable fight. If the area was cleared by pulling first and you used every tool at your disposal, including large insps, temp powers, nukes, shivans, base buffs, and if Imperious behaves, maybe.

This is more mental musing than relevant to the subject, but I think in general most things people think are impossible are not. I've done so many crazy things to prove people wrong who say something is impossible. I once spent an entire weekend perfecting the technique of pulling a boss away from another boss just so I could post on the forums that the person who said it was literally impossible was wrong. I spent weeks trying to come up with the right set of tactics to solo Black Scorpion in RV (on test) on Ill/Rad (with a heavy) just to prove it was possible.

I'm not really the worlds best MMO player, but I do know City of Heroes inside and out, and I am pretty persistent when I want to be. I once posted a continuing thread where I described the thirty nine attempts I made to solo Envoy of Shadows at +2 on my Ill/Rad. Envoy kept eating my Phantasms (yes: Phantasms, this was a long time ago and soloing AVs was not quite commonplace yet).

Actually, I'm a bit of a soloer myself. I don't mind teaming (I actually like teaming here and there), but I'm often solo, and in the past I was more of a soloist. Its no accident my main reached level 50 after 906 hours of play: virtually all of it up to level 30 totally solo and more than half from 30 to 50 solo. So a lot of my stunts over the years have been pushing the envelope of what a soloer can do; not to prove I'm a one-person-army, but rather because I'm usually solo normally.

Not true. The Star Trek movie is obviously an attempt to set up a bigger story in a larger universe, and it has the burden an original movie doesn't have of having to mesh with prior expectations. That means its requirements are different from an original story that has no prior baggage.

Lets take a look at another recent example, albeit in a different setting. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica has a similar set of problems the Abrams Trek has. It had a set of preconceived notions it had to address, and it had to set its own course and tone. It had to do all of this and set up its future storylines all in one short three hour pilot. In my opinion, it did a pretty good job of it but I'm similarly "excusing" a lot that I wouldn't if I was judging this as a stand alone three hour movie. It isn't the miniseries that sets the tone of the show, its the first few episodes, and specifically the first one: 33. All the pilot did was make me interested enough to tune in to the first episode. 33 hooked me into the show. The pilot is mostly staging. 33 is a dramatic masterpiece.

Another relevant example: Casino Royale. Another reboot of a classic series, this time a movie series. Casino Royale is a great movie, but it does have the only little problem of being about someone I've never seen before, ever: James Bond, before he became James Bond. The one thing I have no idea about at all is just exactly where is this going with the character. Quantum of Solace tells me: Casino Royale isn't the new James Bond: its the fresh out of the wrapper James Bond that we're seeing once, and never again.

It also ends on an obvious set of hanging threads designed to be hanging in a way I would also rarely "excuse" in another movie, but I was willing to give Bond the benefit of the doubt. I was rewarded for that benefit of the doubt.

Probably the most relevant example though is X-Men. I made the same "excuses" in that movie. Unlike Abrams, you can't hang the bad character director label on Singer, but the first X-Men was a bit more plodding and superficial than is his norm. Partially because of the material, but also partially because those are the constraints he was working through. He had to start from scratch and invent an entire world for the X-Men to inhabit, and also invent his version of the X-Men. It was X2 where he was able to launch into the story at full speed without all that set up and showed much more clearly what sort of director he was. And I think that is fair.

He's not the strongest character director. But I think that's not a fair assessment of his work on Trek. Of course that is somewhat subjective, but I think his treatment particularly of Spock is not a caricature: its very well fleshed out. Its a little more superficial in the case of Kirk, but then again Kirk was pretty superficial in most of TOS as well. He was more of an archetype than a three-dimensional character except for a few very noteworthy episodes.


Bad examples. In those cases those movies were not intended to be setups for future stories, and did not have very much in the way of established baggage to cut through, except for Iron Man. And in the case of Iron Man, they had several advantages. Robert Downey Junior for one, and a less nit-picky fanbase for another. Iron Man is not an ensemble piece like Trek is. Its focused on one character. Everyone else is just along for the ride. Trek has to focus on Kirk and Spock, work in McCoy, Uhura and Scotty (and to a lesser extent Chekov and Sulu), and Sarek.

But more importantly, everything *I* needed to know I saw in Trek, just like in Raiders and Back to the Future. There were *tons* of unanswered questions in both those movies, but I didn't *need* them answered to enjoy them. I didn't need them answered to enjoy Trek either. Those who did decided they did but only as a matter of personal preference. There's no objective reason why they would be needed.

And if we fall back to the issue of movies being subjective, and if its not enjoyable then objective criteria is meaningless, which often happens in discussions like this, then the bottom line is more people seemed to pay for and enjoy Abrams Trek than did all the TNG movies combined.

Whatever else is subjective, this much is objective. Abrams reversed decades of other people slowly destroying credibility and interest in Star Trek. Before the Abrams reboot, Trek had one foot in the grave. People are interested in Trek again, and the franchise has a future again. This was not an obviously easy thing to accomplish, and I doubt one person in a million could have succeeded better on that score. The bottom line is Abrams left Trek better off than worse off or at best neutral. I cannot say that about Enterprise or Voyager or even Deep Space Nine. I can't say it about any TNG movie. I can't really say it about Star Trek III or V or even Undiscovered Country (which was not a bad movie). Excluding TOS itself, I can only say that about Star Trek the Next Generation, Star Trek the Motion Picture, Star Trek the Wrath of Khan, Star Trek the Voyage Home, and Abrams Star Trek.

Actually, my Energy/Energy blaster soloed Positron, Synapse, Sister Psycho, and Citadel. For the badges. And task force commander, but mostly for the badges.


Unfortunately, everyone's different: that would be an ideal target to aim for if everyone is the same.

Keep in mind that things like Apex and Tin Mage are currently being run by players with a single common or uncommon Alpha slot (and sometimes not even that, albeit inadvisedly). Apex and Tin Mage have to stand up to players eventually running them with ten Incarnate slots. In effect, this is similar to the old school method of dealing with difficult missions, like say the Terra mission. Just outlevel it and come back to it when you're +2 to it. If Apex and Tin Mage are too hard today, revisit in a few Issues when you have four Incarnate slots. Or for that matter by the next issue when we will have level shift. With level shift, all those +4s become +3s - coincidentally the point at which the LRSF went from more difficult than the average player could often handle to difficult but not impossible even for average players. Incoming damage and effects drop by about 8%, and your own damage and effects become 35% stronger against the critters - a pretty big jump. Just that opportunity alone is apparently coming shortly with the rare and very rare Alphas.

There's lots of reasons why Global@Local isn't a magic solution to the problem. Noteworthy among them is that not everyone likes that naming convention: there's every reason to believe at least as many people dislike that convention than dislike having to hunt for a unique local name.

Separate from the technical and economic issues, I personally find that solution sufficiently ugly that I would consider striking someone that suggested it on my development team.

If someone really likes that solution, they are free to *name* their characters that. I would be more than happy to go to bat to get the name field lengthened to make that possible.

And on a separate, personal level, although its not difficult to figure out who I am in-game when I'm playing, its still the case that I would rather not go around playing as Arcanaville@Character. I would change globals instead, and with that eliminate the ability for people to PM me in-game unless they knew me personally. Not might: would. As it is I sometimes log into a second account and play just so I can turn off chat completely. I was strongly opposed to the devs adding global transparency in the first place.

In any case, except for length issues, since people can put prefixes on their names now, anyone who thinks this is a good idea can do it already. There's nothing at all gained by making everyone do it.

Technically, I count as a prominent poster that is in favor of soloable Incarnate content. I just believe its perfectly reasonable that the teamed task force and raid content have development priority at the moment.

I believe that over the long haul, soloable Incarnate content will be important to the long-term health of the end game. But it has to be an interesting adjunct to the main task force and trial content, without either replacing it or diluting it. It cannot simply be the solo versions of the teamed content, nor can it simply be scaled down versions of the trial content. It has to be something uniquely designed to be soloed, without being a separate end game targeted solely at soloers. And that will be tricky to strike a balance for.

Until the devs figure out how to do that properly, I would rather they focus on the Incarnate task forces first. I would revoke their iterative design privileges if I could: they have to start getting things right the first time, on the assumption the market place isn't going to give them a second swing at the plate for free every time.

I did this originally and keep it around to demonstrate the methodology as much as to demonstrate set comparisons, because the information is obviously out of date. But the methodology is still sound, at least for what it does. I think if I were to do an updated and modern comparison, I would have to somehow account for things like debuffs and situational issues like set synergy and invention leverage, for it to be interesting enough to be worth the effort. That's an enormous undertaking.

As SO sets, I think Willpower is a little stronger than it probably should have been, but not way out of bounds broken. But it scales up to levels I do not believe were originally intentional.

Dark Armor is still stronger than I think most people give it credit for. Energy Aura, yeah, I think it could probably stand to have another glance at. Its not bad, but probably not quite where it should be.

Compensate for what? Lack of damage? The odds of a team having just the right configuration such that the combination of inherent fitness and the Alpha slot increases their damage by more than a whole player's worth of damage, which is what is implied with the above statement, makes me very comfortable in betting its something you've never actually witnessed. It would be non-trivial to even contrive such a scenario on paper, much less see it in actual normal play.

There's just not enough performance swing between the two to definitively swing a situation from a definite loser to a definite winner due to those factors in the situations described. I'm sure it converts losing to winning situations all the time in small, difficult to spot ways. But in such dramatic fashion: highly unlikely to happen, even less likely anyone could spot it happening analytically while it happened.

That's right, and no one has demonstrated to me that subscriptions would be helped in net by a purge. You're going to lose customers either way. You're going to gain customers either way. My position on the default action to take in that situation remains the same.

Its easy to speak theoretically, when the responsibility for success or failure is not singularly yours, with customers and jobs on the line. I'm saying if it was my decision to make, with customers and jobs on the line, I would choose not to purge. That's a calculated business decision given the facts currently at my disposal.

NCSoft may have other facts at their disposal. They may have a better idea of the percentage of players they can eventually hook back after an extended leave. They may have a better idea of how many of them complain about having names purged or reassigned, relative to the number of customers they retained immediately following a purge relative to the average. My guess is that if the numbers were strongly favorable, they would maintain the purge. That they do not suggests to me that no such evidence exists. So if past purges did help subscription numbers, it must be by an amount too small to statistically measure.

In any case, what I'm asserting is that given the information I have, I would not only not support a purge, I would actively decide not to purge. That decision is based primarily on the presumption that a purge will not positively increase subscriptions. If someone can demonstrate that it will with a high degree of certainty, I would likely change my mind. If someone wants to say that decision is unfair, I'm prepared to concede that its unfair right now and say its irrelevant to my position. For me fairness is only relevant when it involves things players have a reasonable expectation of having. There is no reasonable expectation of having a previously taken name. *Why* its not available to them is no longer a question of fairness to me. Remember: non-paying customers do not have those names. NCSoft has those names.

Keep in mind also that I'm not saying this is NCSoft's position or line of thought. I'm saying its mine: this is what I would do if it was my decision to make, and I would be making it purely on the basis of what is best for the long-term future of the game.

No offense to either actor, both of whom I respect, but when your Klingon captain is Emmet Brown, and his lieutenant is Dan Fielding, the wheels have come off of central casting.

Star Trek in general has always done better when it created a genuinely interesting threat or enemy for the main characters to confront. In fact we tend to remember the challenge as much or more than what the characters did to overcome it: Khan, the Doomsday Machine, the Borg (the original scary Borg, not the Hugh/Seven of Nine version). I don't think WoK works with any other villain but Khan and any other actor besides Ricardo Montalban dueling Shatner-speak with whatever it is that Ricardo Montalban is doing in WoK. WoK needed a villain you honestly believe is the equal of Kirk and friends, something that Nero, Soren, Shinzon, Ruafo, and even the Borg Queen just never seemed to measure up to.

There's no question that Nero is not the equal of Khan. But I think a Khan would have blown Kirk and Spock off the screen: we don't know these new actors and reimagined characters well enough yet for them to stand up to a Khan, and there wasn't enough time to simultaneously develop Kirk and Spock *and* Nero at the same time. Nero was about as much villain as the first movie could handle. Think V'Ger.

I think the second movie will define whether the Abrams Trek respects the need for the cast to have a strong villain or threat to counter or not, much as WoK couldn't have been the first Star Trek movie after all those years and needed to follow TMP.

My fault:

Eagle's Claw's crit booster
CAK's defense debuff
CAK's increased damage
Cobra's damage/recharge point
Total single target damage no longer sad

Not my fault:

Eagle's Claw's glitchy implementation (hopefully going to get that fixed)
CAK's defense debuff not slottable
Thunder Kick still worthless
Eagle's Claw stun still stand up comedy material

A very, very, very little bit. Its mostly what Positron wants it to be. At the moment, my influence over the end game is probably somewhat lower than the average closed beta tester.

Most of my content-advocacy is on the public forums anyway: I rarely make content requests or suggestions in private. Powers and critter design on the other hand, I tend to be, shall we say, more vocal on both publicly and privately.

Doesn't matter. Starships have changed a lot since then. Khan certainly reread the manuals to take control of the Reliant.


If he knew what was happening he should have shouted what I would have: "fire."

Sorry, that doesn't fly. Its been established that sensors can tell how many planets a system has as a starship approaches it: which side of the sun they are or what their relative positions are is irrelevant given the distances we're talking about. They could have thought Ceti Alpha Five was Ceti Alpha Six due to a confusion about distance. They could not have failed to notice that Ceti Alpha had one less planet than it was supposed to, or that there was a giant debris field that used to be Ceti Alpha Six.



I don't consider Chekov not remembering the significance of Ceti Alpha a plot hole. I do consider it a huge plot hole that a starship supposedly scanning a planet to make sure it was safe to destroy with the Genesis torpedo fails to discover what is essentially the remains of a ship on the planet that is obviously inhabited.


That's an interesting way to look at it. Lets flip it: in terms of consistency and scientific reasonableness, what does WoK do *right*?

And keep in mind I was talking strictly about the notion of plot holes and scientific inconsistencies, not which movie was subjectively better executed. I never specifically asserted that Abrams Trek was better executed than WoK. I questioned blaming plot holes and inconsistencies for not liking Abrams Trek. I believe noticing those is an effect of not liking Abrams Trek, not the cause, for many if not most people.


No, they cannot. In general planets don't just wander around near weird nebulas. But lets say this is an anomaly and it is in fact wandering around somewhere around the Mutara nebula. At what distance? It can't be *any* distance because Enterprise can see the extent of the Mutara nebula from Regula. That means it has to be quite far away from the nebula. The nebula can't be small, because at warp one it takes Enterprise several seconds to cross it at least, and it has to have enough mass for the genesis device to make at least one planet and one star.

Enterprise gets from Regula to the nebula in a few minutes with impulse engines. They have to be moving relatively slowly at impulse, and yet they get from a planet with a vantage point to see an entire nebula to the nebula itself in minutes. The distances don't work out there unless you assume impulse engines go way faster than its normally implied they can go.

But here's one that doesn't require any astronomical knowledge at all. Enterprise is heading for Regula at warp five. Thats a bit more than a hundred times the speed of light. At some point it is intercepted by Reliant and drops out of warp (presumably). A fight ensues, and Enterprise is crippled. It then proceeds to Reluga one at impulse. Lets assume it takes eight *hours* to get there, and that the impulse engines can travel at least half the speed of light. That means that at the time they dropped out of warp Enterprise was only about two and a half minutes from Regula at warp five. If Kirk took longer to walk to the bridge they would have made it to Regula.

And this one is compounded by another one. Reliant left Regula to intercept Enterprise. We've established that the intercept point has to be within about two and a half minutes of Regula at warp five. So when Khan gives the order to intercept Enterprise and Joachim says "may I speak" Khan should have said "make it fast, buddy, Enterprise is like just a couple minutes from driving right over us."

And one more on this subject: Khan says "prepare to alter course." Alter? He was at Regula. Kirk is heading for Regula. If he is altering course, that means he first left Regula, headed in a random direction, and then decided to intercept Enterprise after moving a significant amount of tangential distance. That also makes no sense. He should never have been anywhere but basically in a line between Enterprise and Regula, with no real need to "alter" course to intercept Enterprise. Enterprise is heading right for them.


That's called "cheating." Moreover, I consider plot holes that are integral to a story to be worse than ones that are tangential to the story, because the intergral ones cannot be ignored or dismissed.


Carol *calling* Kirk isn't a coincidence due to their prior relationship, although I do not think Carol is calling Kirk because she thinks Kirk is actually in charge of Genesis normally. In fact, I think she was surprised to learn that Chekov said Kirk assumed authority for Genesis. She seemed incredulous.

But Carol Marcus just happening to be the project leader for Genesis is no bigger of a coincidence than Scotty just happening to be on the planet Kirk and Spock are left on. And once again in Star Trek, Enterprise is the only starship anywhere in the region, by coincidence. And Enterprise is near Earth at the time, by the way. It was at impulse power after leaving space dock: it can't be far from the Solar System. Coincidentally, a ship near Earth is the only ship anywhere near Regula.

Coincidentally, the planet Reliant finds and beams down to happens to be the planet that Khan is on. Coincidentally the planet Kirk leaves Khan on happens to be near a planet that explodes, even though planets don't explode. Coincidentally of the two people who find Khan, one of the two is part of the Enterprise crew that originally found him.


I'll concede the Kobayashi Maru: that was utterly wasted in Abrams Trek. But as to the moments people are likely to remember from Abrams Trek to a similar degree, its hard to say: its been too soon to judge. Testing my personal memory is not representative: I remember the entire movie more or less accurately. But as to wow-moments in Abrams Trek that have been repeated to me by others, Kirk's father crashing the Kelvin into the Narata to open the movie is one, Spock's beam down to Vulcan (which was in the trailer) bookended with his beam back to Enterprise while Amanda falls to her death is the other. Will they or other scenes become "classics" in the same way some scenes from WoK have become? Probably not: WoK isn't just remembered because it was good, it is remembered because in many ways it was the first Trek movie to really grab people in a way the Motion Picture didn't. Its hard to become iconic, and it takes as much luck as skill to make it.


On my list of Trek movies, WoK is still probably comfortably in first place. But I'm juggling 4 and Abrams for the second spot, and interestingly I think Abrams Trek has a lot in common with 4. Both are radical departures, certainly, but they work. Both were designed to bring in a wider audience than the hard core Trek fans, and both succeeded. Both were met with grumblings about how they were "not Trek" and an insult to the fans when first released. I think most of the complaints about Abrams Trek will fade like those for TVH did, and it'll be appreciated for what it was. In terms of being good general entertainment, both succeed in my opinion. And I think in terms of being movies first and Star Trek movies second, both are superior efforts to most of the other trek movies. I think Undiscovered Country is a good movie, but WoK is the far superior work of similar tone. I think 3 and 5 are not as bad as people say, but not Trek's best work definitely. And I think none of the TNG movies including Generations is really anywhere near WoK, UC, TVH, or Abrams except maybe First Contact, and its still a movie that trails them.

Which reminds me: iconic moments are a metric, but not the best or only metric to judge a movie. Generations probably has a better one than any moment in The Voyage Home with Kirk's "it was... fun" scene. People remember that one. But TVH is a much better movie than Generations, even without a scene that trumps that one (for fans, TVH has lots of quotable moments, but that's not the same thing as having a generally iconic scene).

Some perhaps, but a lot is debatable as to whether it should have been self-contained. WoK doesn't really explain who Khan is or why he's on Ceti Alpha Five. It doesn't explain the connection of his wife to Kirk, or how a 20th century person is running around in the twenty third century. We're assumed to know.


We have people protesting the LHC because they think it might create a black hole that eats the Earth. On the other hand, the Federation looked the other way when a science team decided to make a small device that can destroy a planet and turn it into Disneyland. And its not like they didn't know about it: Carol Marcus sent them a proposal and a video of them destroying a planet with it. And they let this team continue working on it, in a tiny space station in the middle of nowhere, without oversight or protection. Or at all.

Khan, the super-genius, read everything about how to operate a starship except the part where it has an override code that can be used to take over the entire ship. Is that not in the manuals? Is it classified information? Less classified than how to operate the deflector shields or weapons? In TOS he learned enough from reading manuals to override the bridge controls and take over the ship from engineering: Khan doesn't seem to be the sort of person that just skims the manuals looking at the pictures.

And while we're at it, Khan the superior intellect rejects Kirks offer to beam aboard the Reliant unless Kirk transmits to him all of his Genesis files. Except Kirk almost certainly downloaded those. Once Khan had Kirk he could have forced him to download anything he wanted on Reliant. Why have Kirk get the data on Enterprise and transmit it to Reliant *and then* beam aboard? That actually makes no tactical sense whatsoever.

And one last bit of tactical brain freeze. Kirk correctly surmises that if Khan is thinking two-dimensionally, he can gain the tactical advantage by removing himself from Khan's plane of travel. But then he pops back up again giving himself a 50/50 chance of popping up right in front of Khan. How about turning 90 degrees "upward" and just waiting for Khan to cross your line of fire? (I know why: dramatic license: it looks better on film the way it was shot. But its still stupid.)

Single player Incarnate content is probably going to come along eventually, but the teamed content is likely to be the priority for the near future. Part of the reason is due to the need to get a handle on creating the mission mechanics and balancing the difficulty for Incarnate-loaded teams. That requires extensive testing.

CoX has actually *not* avoided that path at any time in its history. That it has seemed like it has to you is a coincidence. The game from its inception has always defined its gameplay as having a core "standard game" which has what I call the standard model of difficulty. That standard itself has evolved over time in terms of being refined, but its basic boundaries are essentially that to qualify as core standard content the content must be soloable by any archetype that is reasonably built to solo within a reasonable amount of time or attempts, using a reasonable amount of inspirations over the course of the content.

However, the game has always had content that was intended to be designed beyond that level of difficulty, either to target players wanting higher difficulty or to gate certain rewards, or both. Task forces are one such type of content. Respec trial is another, as is all the trials. The Praetorian arc (Maria) is another. Just stepping into a hazard zone is yet another.

The "standard" end game is already established. Its either to roll an alt, or to play the standard content that exists at level 50. That is the end game for people who want to remain within the standard content boundaries. That has always been a part of the game design as well. So for people who want an end game but do not want to leave the standard difficultly model, you've had your end game since Issue 1.

"The" end game is actually the alternate end game: the end game for people who want to leave the standard difficulty model. This is the progressional end game that ratchets both player power and player difficulty. Those two have to go hand in hand: you're not going to get a standard difficulty end game where you get to be more powerful and the critters stay the same or only scale with you. Besides the point that that would be extremely difficult to do with something like the Incarnate system (its already difficult to do with the invention system, and even just with scaling to level 50) it would be a lot of development effort to put players right back at the same place, which is simply not worth it. We already have a standard model level 50, the devs are not going to make another one.

Eventually much of the technology developed for the end game will be backported to the standard game, maintaining more or less the standard model of difficulty. The standard model missions will get more interesting, without getting materially more difficult. And the devs are not going to stop making standard content: most of the content in Issue 19 is standard content, skewed counting notwithstanding. So the standard model end game will continue to grow and evolve. But the simple fact is, if you want a standard model end game, you've had one for eighteen issues. Level 50 content *is* the standard model end game, and its not going anywhere. Honestly, given that the standard model end game has had an eighteen issue head start over the advanced one, I don't see the justification for a complaint.

To the extent that there's been a trend its a trend that was started at launch. It was evident in the design of Peregrine Island and its snipers and quad boss spawns. It was evident in Maria's arc full of archvillains. It was evident in the respec trial that most players failed the first time or two. It was evident in the design of the Rularuu, and the Vanguard, and the Cimerorans. The fact that you've been able to, I assume, dodge all these things is a lucky happenstance, it is not a reflection of the devs going out of their way to make non-standard content invisible. Optional to an extent, but not invisible. Just as the Incarnate system and the end game content is similarly optional, but not invisible.

One last thing: I don't think the Incarnate system and the end game content represents CoX just rehashing other games. The Incarnate system has the potential to be something genuinely new: a transitional end game progression system that uses essentially a modified skills tree in an essentially level-less or near level-less end game. The end game task forces and content is I suppose more likely to look like what other games have done, simply because there are more limits to what a game designer can do in that setting. But you could say the same thing about the standard content as well. The real question is how the devs ease the majority of players into the new difficulty paths.

Difficulty is relative. The ITF was considered a difficult task force when it debued. Its now considered an ATM. The LRSF and STF were considered extremely difficult when they debued. Now they are considered just above average in difficulty. And even the normal task forces were considered difficult in the beginning, but now they are not considered all that difficult even by average players with average builds.

This game targets the average player. Not you or I, but its average subscriber. The average player has gotten better over time. Not massively so, but noticably so. The game's center of mass is going to shift as a result.

Oh don't get me started here. The fact that both the players *and* the devs seemed to not fully understand the principles of the reward system back then is just one of those times when I was pretty much arguing against anyone who managed to find the keyboard.

Even today when the players accuse Jack of a RvR mentality, I doubt they are thinking what he was thinking, and vice-versa. In fact, I doubt even a handful of people can actually define rigorously what "risk" even means in CoX's reward system. Risk of what?

The obvious answer, "risk of dying," is actually incorrect for the standard game.

It doesn't remain to be seen. Its possible to solo your way to filling Alpha. I've done it myself on a scrapper. QED.


I don't think anyone can say what you want them to say. The current stated direction is to provide soloing opportunities to participate in the Incarnate system, albeit they will be deliberately slower (or rather, the teaming opportunities will be explicitly designed to be faster, ala the shard dropping mechanics). However, no one is going to promise you anything about the future that hasn't been designed or decided yet. The best you're going to get is as far as I know this general design direction hasn't changed yet. If that's not good enough for you, you're never going to get a better one, ever. The devs are prohibited from making such forward-looking statements in general. The devs are going to do what's best for the game, or rather what the company tells them to do that is in their opinion the best for the game, and they are not going to tie their future hands with promises to you or me.

This shouldn't need to be stated, but it often has to be it seems.

I fail to see how inherent fitness and any of the currently available Alpha powers could cause so dramatic of a shift that these situations would be significantly altered. For example, I don't see how inherent fitness or any Alpha could affect whether a team has such overwhelming damage and buffs or debuffs that they could defeat Ghost Widow even without attempting to starve her PBAoE heal of targets.

Its time travel: how do you know the time cops aren't going to fix this, but we're still seeing the universe as it was before it was changed. That often happens in time travel stories: in Yesterday's Enterprise we see what the results of the time loop were, even though technically speaking due to the Enterprise-C going back to the same moment in the past none of that actually happened in the "official" timeline.

Or perhaps some time alterations are not subject to the time cops. Like anything that happens with the Guardian of Forever, say. Or for that matter if the Enterprise sends Tasha Yar into the past and creates a powerful Romulan enemy by accident. Apparently they will even let aliens go back to Earth's past and eat people. And you wonder what the time guardians had to say about either the quantum discontinuity that Worf experienced, the fact that the current Miles O'Brien is actually a future O'Brien, or whether they tried to take any steps to prevent the disaster initiated by Q in All Good Things...

The one thing that's impossible to do is accuse the Abrams Trek of being inconsistent with Trek's handling of time travel. They've done closed time loops, inconsistent loops, permanently changed history, demonstrated multiple simultaneous timelines, showed time being managed, manipulated, monitored, altered, preserved, corrected, and just plain shattered. There's very little consistency to obey in the first place.


WoK played loose with the science fiction and even some of the continuity of Trek to focus on the character melodrama between Kirk and Khan, and it worked: the action served the story. Abrams played loose with the science fiction and continuity of Trek to make a more general action adventure movie set in Trek. I think both succeeded for what it tried to do.