Blue_Mourning

You know, I didn't really ask for end-game content either - although I like that it was added. What I don't understand is begrudging those people that did want some form of it their content. It's an MMO, I like that their catering to others it means I get to meet a wider variety of gamer.

These kinds of complaints just seem kind of bizarre to me.

If that's what you're worried about I wouldn't be. You're guaranteed a reward, just not what class of reward - but you'll still get threads, iXP and merits, which are the most important things anyway.

No to mention that even the longest trials are like an hour long due to the time constraints. Even if you fail you get progression towards the slots, and threads.

Wait, Ayn Rand isn't well known?

If you see evidence to support the point and then say "But that's just propoganda," what evidence, pray tell, would sway you more than the devs telling you "This is the backbone of the Praetorian War Machine. There's little point in debate if you refuse to admit to evidence.

Okay, but Lambda is not a small meaningless facility. it's the backbone of the Praetorian Military Machine.

That's great except it's not true. The game has always reverted back to the status quo.

Story wise/lore wise Jack's team was decent. Story telling wise Jack's team was absolutely awful.

i10 was almost wholly dependent on the lore existing that we never played through though. It should also be pointed out that i10 brought the whole of the Vanguard storylines with it too, and only one mechanic/system to implement. What do we really have against Praetorians? So far we have/will have Apex and TM, Lambda/BAF, AntiMatter/Hami, whatever unlocks the Omega slot, and Admiral Sutter. In addition to that we have an entire new system, with several new mechanics.

How does that stack up? That's 8 story arcs. In the Rikti storyline we had the 5 Vanguard arcs, LGTF, the Mothership Raid, and Vanguard Merits. And all of that ended when we repelled the second invasion. We've already repelled the invasion in Apex and Tin Mage - or at least delayed it. We're now beyond what was accomplished in i10 with respect to the Rikti, because we never went to Rikti Earth to neuter their war machine.

I can think of a good reason to drag it out. The devs have never told a multi issue long running arc, which by the way, I find interesting because I like long running stories that end. If the idea of the Incarnate system was that the Well goes mad and we slowly take power from it as we defeat it's champion then they're doing a very good job of it. Writing wise I LOVE the urgency of Apex, and I love the fact that Tin Mage essentially makes you a returning Omega Team.

I love the fact that the incarnate trials make you feel like you're in a war, something I really only felt during ITF, or maybe LGTF (although the LGTF really needs to make the story more explicit for the person who's not the leader of the team - to a lesser extent ITF too).

And none of this - none of it - precludes them from adding more incarnate stuff when this is done. And in fact Prometheus essentially tells us they're going to. And, mechanically, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. If the new Hami/Antimatter trial unlock the remaining 4 on the incarnate track, then all we'll have left to unlock is the Omega slot, which probably means a beat down of Cole to unlock. I'm okay with that. I want them to end it, and I like occasionally having a long running storyline. As long as they actually end that, I can deal with them thowing more Praetorians at me (especially since it's a third side of the game and needs to be developed more...even if they were never going to add more after the 1 - 20 stuff - Praetoria was NOT well developed before i18)

How many people agree with an argument does not lend it validity. I'm agreeing with Jophiel here. I don't care how many people agree or disagree. Even worse than that, in this case there's no right answer. "Am I bored....?" is a pointless question. I just wish that those who aren't bored would stop dismissing the arguement as a minority, because that doesn't make them any less bored if it's true (and it might not be true, and I do with Golden Girl would stop doing this); I wish that those who are bored would stop attacking the taste and discerning eye of those who do (something Eva and Venture repeatedly do; they think that the current set on content is bad/horrible and that the devs are only developing it because no one reads content anymore and blah blah blah blah blah. I read the freaking content and while it has some problems [plot holes, some lore-consistency problems] I like it an recognize it for what it does well).

And I really wish that everyone would stop making blanket statements that they can't support (examples:GG - the complainers are a minority; Venture - everyone who thinks about signature characters think X about them, etc. there are other examples in this thread alone)

If you looked at exactly who I was quoting you would see why I said that.

Why is it if you're happy with the current set of content, you're not discerning or you don't care about the story?

I don't think we can classify any of the Praetors as good or even decent; pragmatic maybe. Some of them loyal - definitely. They're not completely devoid of good qualities, but White keeping the destroyers around by supplying them, not to mention some of the worst excesses he seems to approve of with Powers Division makes him selfish and uncaring at best, and purposefully corrupt at worst. Bobcat kills a bank full of people to prove to Neuron how mcuh of a resourceful woman she is. Anti-Matter seems to be the one who has the least issues, but, like Neuron, shows the traits of a prepubescent boy. And Anti Matter is still building Cole his invasion force.

Cole is overseeing all of this, and he is in charge of a system that disappears people, lets people die, lets his Praetors treat whole city zones like their personal playground, and wants to take over the whole multiverse for unclear reasons. I think that just about everyone in a position of power is shown to have little regard for anyone but themselves, or the regime that will keep them in power.

I agree to a point. I don't think they fleshed them out enough. But I'm not going to talk for everyone. If I make an arguement - and to your credit when you've usually made arguements (whether I've agreed with you or disagreed with you) - I tell you the reasons why I believe what I believe and why you should agree with me, if any. I leave it up to you to figure out if my argument had merit or not. I do not presume what anyone else thinks unless they've told me. I'll even say what I think they should think, but I will not ever say "I know everyone thinks this way".

My problem wasn't with Venture's side of the argument - I happen to (with qualifications) agree with him. It's that the way he argued his side was an unsubstantiated claim designed to pointlessly belittle the other side. It's a cheap argument. It's lazy, and it's malicious at it's very very worst. If you think your side of the argument is obvious then say it's obvious to you, and lay out the position. If it's not obvious then I'll ask why it's obvious, but don't say "My position is obvious, and most of the players agree with me, because everyone I've run into thinks the same". I don't know who he asked - was it friends (which tends to be a self selected homogenous group)? Was it randoms? How many? What percentage of the player base? Across multiple servers? On the forums (which is a self selected group of people with generally strong opinions)? Without that information, a statement that "most people believe that..." might or might not be lying, but I have no way of finding out.

I wasn't talking about the characters. I was talking about people. You just made a blanket statement about people, and I hate hate hate that. At best, it's a lazy oversight, and the kind of statement people throw away without really understanding what it means.

At worst it's disingenuous, or even a flat out lie meant to support your statement with evidence that either doesn't exist, is near impossible to prove, or that someone hasn't bothered to research. You can say what you think. That's valid. You can say what you believe most people have told you, which is heresay, but whatever, at least it's anecdotal. You cannot, CANNOT say "everyone thinks this" and have that be a valid statement without research to back it up with percentages of answers, a response rate and a margin of error, none of which I expect anyone to do for such a pointless question and one which I'm 99.9% (meaningless stats are meaningless) sure that you never got. EDIT: And it automatically, without evidence, puts anyone who disagrees with you into a possibly fictional minority of your design meant to belittle or discredit the other side. /edit

So do not deign to speak for me, for my brother, for my friend, or for that guy I've never met who stands around in pocket D with a bunny costume asking people to pull his tail. You do not speak for me, even if I agree with you. Setting yourself as an authority for what "most people" think is putting yourself on a pedestal that you do not own, and you haven't the authority to claim.

Unless you're willing to give me the evidence with a standard deviation.

I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh. Even if I happen to agree with you I dislike, with a passion, people making blanket statements that they're not prepared to go the extra mile to back up. And for the record?

isn't good enough evidence for anything. It only proves what those who you spoke to believe.

And of course it's impossible to have a mixed or nuanced view of it. Because you know, we're just not that complicated or smart.

Can you not talk for everyone when you don't know everyone?

Because we shouldn't judge someone on what someone else is doing? Just because someone has someone who looks like them, or even shares their DNA whole cloth doesn't meant they're the same people. Or do you think that what someone's identical twin does is a predictive measure on what that person will do, even if they share nothing more than DNA?

Prior to merits it was the only way to get Pool C recipes. And the fact that it is still the most efficient way to get merit rewards IS an incentive to run TF's multiple times. It's just not as good a carrot as they have in the new I-Trials.

Mostly agreed. I've had miserable experiences on CoP but I've been told that there are several aspects of Rularru and one that is absolutely awful. Each time I did it I've gotten the big man with storm powers and I've been told that that's the one that eats your lunch.

I didn't complete the Lambda, but I saw that our issues were more along the lines of people not following what they were supposed to be following, and the BAF was going pretty much without a hitch. Both times I had great leadership (just not great followers on the Lambda...).

Then you should hate all TF's in this game, not just the BAF or Lambda. All of them are mechanically encouraged to run more often because they provide great rewards.

While I tentatively agree that the BAF isn't "epic" in scope, we had an Omega Team moment in Tin Mage. We went to their world and we stopped an invasion, or at least paused it. And we came back. That's more than the Omega team did.

My problem isn't with them. It's with people who are giving feedback on what they don't like coming in I20 who obviously haven't tested it. Like if you make any reference to a Hami or MSR while referencing the BAF and Lambda whatsoever. The two have nothing in common. Yet in this thread and in at least 2 - 3 others people reference that as if they were anything like the raids that have come before.

The only thing in game that is like these is the Cathedral of Pain. And having played both CoP and Lamba (and for a brief period a BAF, but the server shut down on me) I can say that CoP is much harder than Lambda or BAF. It's that kind of noise that's really annoying and even worse it's the kind of falsehood, among others, that just gets repeated again and again and again.

So then do you just divorce choice from consequence? Choice without consequence feels hollow and absolutely useless. Knowing the outcome and making the decision based on outcome isn't making a true choice, but that's up to the player and not the maker of the game.

For me completely divorcing moral choice from tangible outcomes makes absolutely no kind of sense whatsoever. And to your friend in DA2, I would make the arguement that they should have to live with the consequences of their actions. Otherwise why make the decision in the first place?

That's always been the downside to fighting -1 enemies. I don't really see them changing it.

It should be pointed out that just because it's repeatable content doesn't mean it's repeatable by lore. Otherwise once we do Ramiel's arc we shouldn't be able to redo the LGTF.

I honestly don't think the problem was giving lore pets. I think the problem is giving any pets as an option.

Until we have full visual customization there isn't any faction that would make anyone happy. And even after they're given full visual customization, the people that can't customize powers for them aren't going to be happy either.

If they decided they wanted to go with pets as an option, and they apparently have, then I'll grit my teeth and bear it because there isn't any optiont hat everyone would be happy with.

Also they've stated that they want to eventually expand on it, which is a nice workaround.