Doctor Roswell

If it went the duration of the 31st, that would be "until August 1st."

Fixes! Cool!

I guess this isn't the "upcoming patch" that will finally get me back my Wisps aura, though? Well, next patch I guess. That is included in "all the things," right?

Besides that, we got a new powerset less than a month ago.

And we know the current strategy is to let us know a week ahead of time before a new set is released (it happened with the last two new sets, plus we were told as much by Zwill here on the forums). Since we didn't get an announcement about a new set hitting live servers last week, there was no reason to expect one to hit live servers this week.

Show a little patience here.

I don't expect to ever see this, but I love the idea.

And we're done. I just got "Casino" on Virtue, and Wyley just got 500 million inf. Thanks, Wyley!

A complete success! Maybe sometime in the future, I'll try this again.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions.

The original post has been updated; I recommend anyone interested in participating here take a look. Highlights include the removal of the two characters who are now off the table, a few tweaks (mostly clarifications) to the "rules," and the removal of the suggestion that the name be gun-centric (gun-based names are still okay, but I think people zeroed in on that a little too much maybe. Please, if you're going to get hung up somewhere, make it the costume, not the powers. Think Batman, not the Atom). And, oh yeah, the price I'll pay to name his guy has officially doubled to half a billion inf thanks to a couple of fortuitous recipe drops and a very generous costume contest I won under Atlas the other day.

That's a five followed by eight zeros, kids.

Anyway, to respond to a couple of more recent posts:

"Aces and Eights" is taken (as is "Dead Man's Hand," another one I check often just in case). I could use the number 8 (it's available), but that's... awkward-looking to me. Maybe it's something I could get past, though. I'm thinking about it. I haven't ruled it out.

"Gamechanger" is taken as well, which is too bad -- I immediately had visions of a Kinetics defender/corruptor with Fulcrum Shift and was ready to declare a winner. I also checked "Game-Changer," and, well... also taken. Surprise surprise.

I won't be apologizing for having high standards. I know they're high. That's why I've sat on this for five years, and why I'm offering an ever-increasing payment for something that meets those standards. The vast majority of names I've seen suggested here have fallen into one of two categories for me: either they're very good, but not perfect, or they're near-perfect, but already taken. I'm looking for near-perfect but not already taken, and I'm willing to be patient. If I were in a rush, I would have already snapped up something decent-but-not-great for him years ago.

Anyone holding onto a name and waiting for a response: Thank you. And I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. But if you haven't heard from me on the subject by now, it's probably safe to assume it's not what I'm looking for. Feel free to hang onto it yourself, or set it free. I appreciate the effort, I really do.

Thanks for the enthusiasm and (mostly) positive response, everyone! Keep it up and somebody will take home the money!

Good, I was worried I wouldn't be burned out on invasions before Captain Mako week started.

Sorry, got busy. Two "prizes" have been awarded (the two 100-mil ones) -- one to Organica and the other to someone who contacted me via private message. The big one is still up for grabs. I'll try to update to original post when I get a chance.

That makes a lot of assumptions, Bill.

It assumes that the friends are all part of a tight-knit core group that do everything together.
It assumes the friends are all interested in starting new characters at the same time.
It assumes they're all running out of character slots at the same time, or willing to pick up and move because one of them is.

Just going from memory again, but I swear that a week after another powerset (Beasts?) was released, there was at least one thread about "why is the new SSA installment the ONLY new thing on the market this week? I get that automatically as a VIP!"

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most Beta-savvy person here, and I'm just going from memory, but thinking of what's on there right now, we've got Nature Affinity, Bio-Armor, SSA 2.2 (and 2.3, which probably shouldn't be released until after 2.2), the Cybertech costume set, and the new super boosters. A few things, but not exactly an overflow either. Especially if we assume they're not going to throw us another new powerset one week after the last one we got -- just imagine the hissyfit the "my VIP stipend should cover everything" crowd would pitch. So if we eliminate those, that's three things. Putting something truly new on the market this week, and every single week without fail, would only get them through the end of this month. First Tuesday in August, they'd be all out of new.

It's a little disappointing not to get the new SSA installment, but we got something fairly huge last week. Demanding some big new shiny every single week is basically demanding rushed, unfinished or lazy product. It's hard enough to put together something that works the way it's supposed to when they're not rushing against an arbitrary deadline.

Cut them a little slack, folks. You can have it fast, cheap or good, but you can't have all three.

So... this thread here, the one called "Discussion: Introducing Tweet Code Thursdays," We're not supposed to discuss this here? We're supposed to just suck it up and accept what we're given even if we don't approve of it? The thread wasn't created for the express purpose of allowing players to provide feedback to Paragon regarding this promotion and others like it?

I'd also point out -- also by citing this very thread -- that Paragon has demonstrated recently on at least one occasion that when an "exclusive" draws enough negative reaction, they attempt to make it somewhat less exclusive so as to not anger their customers. It's far from "the end of it."

They're learning.

Which I'll admit is usually an ominous thing to hear, but that's almost always with regard to robots and/or superintelligent apes. With game-development studios, self-awareness is probably a good thing.

But that even smaller percentage, the ones who want to lord their exclusives over everyone else forever, and would be upset if that exclusivity were ever taken away even if it meant more money in Paragon's development budget... those people should absolutely be listened to, right?

Another week of Paragon not biting off more than they can chew and not pushing something out the door before it's finished just to meet an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline.

Watch me seethe with anger. Here I go. I'm seething. Rrraaarrrr.

(Nothing for me this week, but that just means I can afford more super packs when the new ones do eventually go live.)

Looks like the Bats aura is back, but only for this week. I'm trying to think of a thematic reason for that, and I can't off the top of my head, but hey, Bats aura!

The "Featured" page also shows firefighter helmets, Water Blast, and a sale (25% off) on the Justice/Sinister costume package.

"Sales" has a few enhancement sets: Decimation, Devastation, Apocalypse, Salvo, Tempest, and Entropic Chaos (all at 50% off, for all that means).

Kind of a light week. I was sort of expecting the new SSA, myself, but I haven't been paying much attention to Beta lately -- maybe there's something holding it up?

Mr. Gulzow does bring up a valid point.