Bright

This made me grin... so +1, just for humor's sake.

It's not a pretty picture for the Praetorian Carnival...

I can just imagine Anteros (my own Carnival of War guy-) looking around at the remains of his own faction... scattered, leaderless and pretty much decimated by insane former members of their own group... and then at his Carnival of Light friends, all milling around wondering if they're going to have to trade in their masks and armor for Gothic eyeliner and hot-pants, since those seem to be the only assets Desi brings to the table... and coming to the well-nigh inevitable conclussion that they're all completely hosed.

I liked the characters and the story well enough (Even though I did get a little tired of the repeated "Okay, time to do something horrible to my friends. Again."-thing...), but from a playability standpoint it was annoying as all hell.

See, I went through it the first time solo. With a Stalker. <_<

I knew it would be a pain on a Stalker going in, just because a lot of things in Praetoria are. That's the way the place was designed... But about half-way through the early arcs I seriously began to wonder if a Stalker had ganked Protean's puppy as a child or what. There's 'Hostile to Stalkers' and then there's 'Let's see just how useless we can make you, you sneaky jerks!', and whole swaths of First Ward fall solidly under that second heading.

I'm about to head there with another Stalker... I doubt my reaction this time will be any different, but I figured it was worth giving it a second chance. Now that I know what I'm in for, maybe Anteros will fare better than Whisper did. o_0

Excellent!

Solar vs. Terrestrial archery charms.

(And yeah... Exalted style over-the-top fight scenes is what I'm really going to see Immortals for, so as long as it gives me that I'll be content.)

I bought a couple of the LotG +rech MOs for my secondary account. That one's going preem in January and hasn't been around long enough to get inventions unlocked, so it seemed like a nice thing for my two scraps to have.

I want one of these.

Simple. Graceful. Understated... And absolutely perfect for making a City version of my favorite tabletop Exalted character.

I wouldn't say no to a Titan scythe, either.

Huh. A ShopIO version of Numina's...

I do like that set, and use it fairly often on my characters that need that sort of thing, so... Yeah. You may just have gotten me with that one.

Now, if only you'd added Character Slots to that sale list... With all the new, spiffy power sets in the pipe I'll be needing a few of those.

I think simply making the "exculsives" only exclusive to the packs for a specific amount of time, and then available as regular-purchase items afterwards, is the most reasonable 'middle ground'...

That not only allows those of us who are adverse to rando-boxes a way to eventually access those items (and I do think it should include ALL of the exclusives - both the costume pieces and the ATIOs), it also allows the devs to cycle and refresh what they include in the packs, which will help sustain sales.

Rando-Box Set 1 might include the Particle Man costume set, the Striga temp powers and the Tank and Brute ATIOs as its exclusives, say. A few months later, they could release Rando-Box Set 2, with the Triangle Man armor, the Blaster and Corruptor ATIOs and the Preatorian gun temps... shifting the Set 1 exclusives to the regular shop.

Both they, and we, could have our cake and eat it too with that sort of set-up. Sure, Marketing would worry over losing potential rando sales because of people who had the patience to wait and eventually buy the exclusives normally... But I think it's important to stop and ask, realisitcly, how many of those people would have actually ponied up for the x-dozen packs it would have taken them to assemble the complete set in the first place (And lets be honest here, it WILL take dozens of the things to get a full set. No one should try to kid themselves about that. It's just the nature of the beast.) and how much is that potential loss off-set by their purchase of the set when it goes into the normal shop, plus additional sales from people who would never even have considered the random method?

Several of mine still have their first costumes... Often because that's still just the way I think of them being dressed. They may have other costumes that they wear sometimes... but those first outfits are still their default, their signature look. They wouldn't be the same without them.

I have Ion on my favorite stalker to match her Mu Mastery powers... I'll probably have it on my Elec dominator for the same reason. I find myself picking Pyro a lot more often though. 'Just love that big fireball.

I think you're right about having a "usual time" making the trial easier to form, Ukaserex... Saturday is probably our best bet.

I also suspect that the more we run through the UG, the more people we'll eventually have who understand the mechanics of the Warwalkers and the Avatar fight. That'll be a definite factor in how tough or easy a time we have of it...

I watched an otherwise pretty strong league crash against the Lichen walker yesterday afternoon due in large part to players not really understanding how being targetted for the thing's special attacks worked, and no knowing which (and how quickly-) fungi needed to be destroyed to prevent its regeneration. If the group had been just a little more experienced and a little more comfortable with the specific requirements of that fight, we'd have beaten the snot out of that thing instead of running out of time. We had more than enough fire-power to have flattened it under better circumstances.

With regular runs and a solid, core group of people who are familiar with what's going on, I think we'll see a lot less of that kind of failure.