Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

There's a huge difference. Badges aren't just things they decided to add to the game, and then decided how you'd get them. Its not like they said "lets add a Task Force Commander badge: now how should we allow players to unlock it?" The mode of awarding a badge isn't arbitrary: it exists *solely* to award for a specific activity. Each badge is bound to the activity that awards it. Allowing players to buy their way out of that activity damages the entire badge system in a way that is completely impossible for the costume system.

Costume parts are not normally bound to the method of acquisition. That's the exception to the rule. Badges are normally bound to the method of acquisition by design: that is the rule not the exception. Tampering with that in the badge system runs the risk of making the entire system pointless. That's not true for costumes.

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

I'm fully aware that the prevailing opinions on the forums very seldom bear any resemblance to the opinions found in game.

The conniption fits thrown on the forums over various things go largely unnoticed by the majority of the people who play the game. That's because the majority of the people who play the game either A) Don't realize the forums exist, or B) Could not care less about them. The whole "I don't like how the game is forcing us to run Incarnate Trials all the time" that pops up now and then....yeah, you don't hear that in-game. At all. In-game the people who like the trials play them, and the people who don't....don't.

It's incredibly conceited of us forumites to think that our opinions hold so much more weight than the average player, simply because we like to post them here. I'm not excepting myself from that either. Even if by some quirk of fate 100% of the forums agrees on something, that's still less than 10% of the game's population you've heard from. And there's no guarantee that the other 90% or so is going to have a similar opinion.

The forums give a pretty good cross-section of the playerbase, with one exception; The people who would rather just play the game instead of discussing every aspect and arguing about it are not represented. That's because they're logged into the game instead of here.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

No

Originally Posted by Tyger42

a) shouldn't be playing this game at all, then. Practically everything you do in the game is gambling in some form.... Whether it's the hunt for random drops or being at the mercy of the RNG for every single attack and defense roll...

Originally Posted by Quasadu

The hell with that. I'm playing the game to make my character the most awesome character they can be, because they are awesome all by themselves.

They aren't just trying to be like Statesman (or Recluse, or Cole, or anybody else) when they grow up.

Originally Posted by SuperOz

As you said, that's your mileage. I sat down and went through those contradictory characterisations of Statesman, and made a choice as a player and a reader about what rang true better. Consider this; is a character being portayed as an egotistical jerk being written well as such, or is it just simply bad writing? If it's bad writing, then you are entitled as a reader to treat it as such and disregard it.

It's our right to do that with any media we encounter. It's the very reason remakes and parodies and all manner of 'adaptations' exist. I prefer the writing and characterisation of Statesman that makes him live up to that name because I feel it's more in keeping with the character. Yes, this is my personal interpretation, and it doesn't make it any more right or wrong than yours.

But I'm not going to hang mine or anyone else's personal interpretations on the character; I did my best as a writer and a reader to judge the character on his merits and sort through what simply was mischaracterisation, the bane of all fictional characters. When I did that, I found a character with what I felt was an unfairly deserved reputation. And on that basis, not deserving of his fate.


S.

Originally Posted by Bad_Influence

"They can add all kinds of stuff as Trial exclusvie unlocks, like costume parts, auras, emotes, temp power and so on, on top of the faster progress they give."

I do not like the newer Trial components such as damage pulses, unresistable knock-up [puns not intended], INSTANT DEATH, no hospital + punitive rezzes and one person making an entire trial fail = cue insults and screaming, Sam I Am: I do not like green eggs and ham.

*I do not like instant and unresistable death
*I do not like level 54+ enemies [can't wait till we work up to level 80+ enemies, eh? Me either...]
*I do not like being thrown around like a rag doll with mag 8 KB protection
*I do not like people who cannot follow instructions borking my chance to succeed
*I do not like seeing people screaming at and insulting each other
*I don't like a stream of useless rewards, trying for the one I need

You can tie all the costume parts, emotes, fluff, candy, nonsense, L33t L00T, smilies, adorableness, faulty reasoning, pile-driving repetitiveness and even a few craptacular temp powers [oh, WHOOOOO! WHAT SAYS INCARNATE LIKE THOSE!!!] on toppa the pile you want.

I can ignore all that stuff. Sounds great for the future of the game, right? I know you think so.

Not everyone agrees.

Originally Posted by Cende

My understanding is that he's back at Cryptic, actually.

Originally Posted by EU_Damz

A lot of people aint read that announcement thread because they want to find out in the arc as it happens They at least didnt put it in their title, people just asking that its not put in the title of threads ASSUMING everybody has either A) Read it and found out or B) Dont really care about the story.

Ergo, imo and quite a lot of others, its still a spoiler

Originally Posted by SuperOz

Based on that logic alone, it comes off as a cheap gimmick to kill him off, then. Every MMO has its powerful NPC's. It gives you something to aspire to. I don't want the players to be the premiere heroes, because quite frankly not many of us know or want to emulate the values involved.

And why? Because an NPC can be a Paragon. Players can try and emulate them.


S.

Originally Posted by EU_Damz

Firstly . . . . . bad form at the title! There are global channels ingame where people are said NOT to spoil anything and people dont want to visit the forums at the moment for the huge spoiler and titles like this is the reason why!
If you read the article spoiling it, fine thats good. Dont assume everybody else wanted to read it though!

*coughs* Anyway . . . . .

I dont mind that he's going to die, the way he acted in the incarnate initiation arc proves that he has zero trust in anybody and he refuses to let people get the power which he has or maybe even stronger.
Anybody who says they're the only ones who can be trusted with such power, needs to be smashed!

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

You should have done that with your BAB thread yesterday

Originally Posted by TrueGentleman

Possibly. Like you, I'm making my best guess. At the very least, though, the QA team is going to have their hands full testing Super Packs when there are plenty of other areas with the Paragon Market and the game at large where their attention could already help.

It's a question of priorities, at least from this perspective.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I just want the game to be consistent with its own lore.

Originally Posted by jwbullfrog

Ok, If i understand their status correctly, Longbow is a private organization that the UN has uses as their defacto peacekeeping force. It's legality is based largely on it's connection to Ms. Liberty (and by extension, Statesman.)

The US government has no direct control over Longbow and, as such, are under no obligation to do anything about their occupation of Ft. Darwin. Having said that, the US government could completely disavow the organization if Arachnos decided to claim its sovereign rights to beat the holy hell out of them.

Personally, since I'm not too fond of Libby or her Longbow toy soldiers, I'd be happy to claim a spot on a nearby rooftop and watch the fireworks if they did decide to nuke her and longbow from orbit.

Originally Posted by TrueGentleman

Since there has to be behind-the-scenes coding in order for the Super Pack's random rolls to work properly with the player account database that's the domain of the Paragon Market, it's a fair supposition that even if there's a separate team devoted strictly to the latter, they'll have to be involved in some way. Even if Paragon Studios is rigidly compartmentalized, there's still the problem of Super Packs taking away the focus of management as The Thing That Has to Get Done.

It would have been encouraging if the Super Packs hadn't been announced until the Paragon Market was 100% working (and anyone who plays on OS X knows it's not) and the useful missing features had been implemented (such as purchasing history/pre-Freedom legqacy items). Instead, the current circumstances are discouragingly reminiscent of what happened with Architect Entertainment once it went live and encountered assorted disappointments, i.e. the devs moved on to the next thing.

Originally Posted by Bosstone

Basic courtesy, then.

Originally Posted by Bosstone

Yes, I imagine Z and the marketing group have been reviewing the data as much as they can, both the number of voices on the forums as well as actual market data. I expect that is why they believe the concessions they've made to date are worthwhile. I also expect that means that the fact that they are not making the one concession you so dearly want indicates that it is rather an important point, one that they feel is worth sticking to their guns.

Naturally, you think they're wrong, but could you at least afford them the professional courtesy of supposing that if they're being this difficult about the costume pieces while giving in on the other stuff that maybe they have their reasons, ones that they find pretty compelling?

Originally Posted by OneFrigidWitch

I have a loyalist "hero" and a straight up arachnos agent (two of them). I dont want my ability to play straight up villains tromped on. If they kill off Cole so completely that I can no longer be a praetorian loyalist, or an arachnos loyalist, I will be very unhappy.

Originally Posted by Mr_Morbid

The UN is nothing more than a debating society. It may pass resolutions but it has ZERO power to enforce them. And it isn't just the US that tends to ignore it. Think Bosnia and Rwanda for examples where the UN literally had troops on the ground yet did absolutely nothing to stop genocidal warfare.

Originally Posted by TrueGentleman

If Paragon decides to go ahead without further response to our feedback and the Super Packs bomb at the store, then the playerbase will have additionally lost out on all the time and resources spent implementing a flawed system instead of, say, improving the Paragon Market's barely acceptable UI. That's not an especially attractive gamble either.

Originally Posted by Black Zot

Someone forgets on a regular basis to inform the US of those two facts.

And as far as military invasions are concerned, Longbow (a group that last I checked answers to the US government) has been fighting a guerilla campaign in the Rogue Isles since Recluse set up shop there. America has no business pointing fingers at Arachnos for terrorism as long as that's going on.

Originally Posted by Bosstone

It depends. I'd love for a more definite statement to come out, but if there's a new Tier 9 VIP set that costs 3 tokens every 6 months, and that's stable, then you get 6 tokens a year on which you have absolutely nothing to spend them except the consumable tier.

It's hard to know if that will be so, though. Maybe the next VIP offering will need 5 tokens.