EarthWyrm

As long as people are buying them at this price point, you're probably right.

I'm not, and I never will. There are too many things that are more entertaining for me to spend my points on. If they cut the price in half on the enhancement trays, I might consider it.

Because there are things I'd spend 800 points on. There aren't many that would get me to exceed my monthly "allowance," but they're out there. The leprechaun ain't one of 'em, though.

I've given up trying to understand the pricing model, and guess my points will continue accruing until there are sales on some of the more recent costume sets, or they release a new round of super packs.

You think this is bad, try the view from an American university campus sometime. Nothing quite like dodging pools of green vomit the morning after...

"Starting"?

If you're going to blatantly mischaracterize the concerns that were raised, you might consider waiting until after those forums are purged and people can't see for themselves that you're doing nothing but posturing and shooting at straw men.

Oh, wait. It's the internet. Carry on, then.

Last night's Ustream included a statement that there would be no patch today, and later references to maybe having the first patch within another week or two.

That's not true. I fought Diabolique as an AV last night at the end of Duncan's arc.

If the others you mentioned were only ever coded as EBs, that's a separate issue from AVs not spawning. I don't recall them being AVs when I ran the arc on beta, either, and just assumed they were only ever meant to be EBs because this was a "solo path."

See, I never noticed it until somebody (you?) mentioned it on the forums, but once I saw the skull and crossbones it reminded me a lot of that classic perceptual "Young woman/old woman" illusion that's in every intro psych book from the dawn of time. It's subtle, but I'm going to give DN credit for it being intentional.

That's one possible interpretation of their actions. The other is that they choose not to give the free respec because they'd rather "encourage" purchasing respecs for real money. It saddens me that my inclination is to be more prone to believe the latter than the former, but that's where I find myself. I'd be satisfied with just about any explanation; no explanation is not something I view as acceptable, given the past few years' history surrounding this issue.

I stand by my previous statement that this represents a violation of the psychological contract that exists between the devs and the players, and that it concerns me as such.

If there's some piece of explanation that I've missed (I've looked at the dev and community digests, but don't frequent the "Freedom Friday" thing or have time for the Ustreams) I'd be fine with being educated on the topic. All I'm finding in my (admittedly cursory) searches is a lot of wind, and Zwill's "Sorry, not this time" up-thread.

Doesn't look like he's taking commissions now - bummer.

The stalker change, maybe. The gravity changes, less so.

And we've not been given a reason, so your proclamation that the change "wasn't meaningful in a way that requires a free respec" is (a) your opinion, which is no more or less valid than anyone else's, and (b) a subtle but important mischaracterization of what it was I actually said. See, I never used the word "require". You're welcome to look back at what you quoted, even. I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth.

You might consider using multi-quote, because you're suggesting by quoting me that my feelings on the matter have anything to do with Hami-O's. They do not. They have to do with my feeling that something in the management philosophy of the game has changed based on this decision.

I don't need the respecs. It's not about needing them. It's not even about wanting them. It's about feeling that my spending extra money is seeming more important than the psychological contract that's developed between me and the makers of this game over the past seven years.

That's not a small thing, to me.

In your opinion.

ZM and Uber pretty much summed up my thoughts. Not providing a freespec when meaningful changes have been made to an archetype, and when a powerset shared by two other archetypes has been pretty sizably re-designed, seems to represent a change in the apparent philosophy of the game's management that I find disheartening.

I've tended to dismiss claims that the Freedom model has led to "money-grubbing" tactics, but if this really is about trying to make people pay for more respecs (and I've seen no evidence to the contrary, like a statement that, "We plan to issue one for the anniversary and don't want to give them out too close together") then I guess my friend who wants me to start beta-testing other games gets his wish. I'll head down to Gamestop with my $5 tomorrow.

Word. Or just contact information for the artist so I can get one of my own female characters done up right-proper.

That's true, and now that I've got food and antibiotics in me, I'm feeling better. Of course, I have a bunch of characters with their trays filled with crap I can't use, but it's not like enhancement drops matter so full trays is just an aesthetic issue.

Still vaguely annoyed, though, since this was good timing for me (I teach and am on spring break) and I may not be able to be around when they actually go live if it's not until next week.

There are worse fates, of course. It's a minor disappointment. Nothing more.

If I may be so bold:

Huh?

The supply of level 10s is never going to be all that high, relative to 50s. That's really all I was thinking.

I don't put it outside the realm of possibility that a level 10 version will still command a billion or more. My initial response was "Sell it NAO!" when I thought it was a level 50, hence my edit.

If it were mine, level 10 or not, I'd be relisting it to see if I could grab a few hundred million in profit. That has more to do with my opinion that in terms of what it provides, this remains one of the most over-valued IOs in the game for probably 97% of the characters out there.

Edited because I missed that it was level 10. Level 10 probably will hold value pretty well.

It's like if "Titanic" were remade by Troma Studios...

Seriously, though, thanks for the update WW!

...by the superpacks, because superpacks are ebil! They gives you viruses!!!eleventy!1!

Even if that's the case, in terms of performance the price of a level 53 ought to be about the price of a 52+. So if I could buy a 52 for a billion and a 50 to combine with it for 300 million, I can't imagine paying more than 1.3 billion for a 53.

On the other hand, if you're hoping to capitalize on the OCD collector mentality, I refer you to the great amounts of hand-waving and angst-spewing that go along with a narrow set of reactions to the superpacks, wherein some posters have vocally criticized PS for "taking advantage of" people with specific forms of mental illness (in that case, gambling addiction). I don't happen to agree with that perspective, but it's out there.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with someone before costume codes started showing up on the market. The person was asking 2-3 billion inf (which some of them still sell for), and I politely declined because it just wasn't worth that to me (still not, but people can do with their fake money whatever they want). I then had it explained to me, despite my not asking, that multi-billion inf prices for them were fair and even cheap, because he had inside information from PS that when they eventually went up on the market they would be the most expensive things on there and be priced at some ridiculous amount (I seem to recall $20-30 equivalent being tossed around). Some people just sell "hard".

People can ask whatever they want for items. If someone's willing to pay their price, fine. The free market isn't about social approval, but it's also not something that should be expected to be free of social disapproval.

That seems a little counter-intuitive to be WAI, especially given how the proc is advertised to work; have you submitted a /bug report on it?

I'm sure someone will link to it shortly, but Dink posted recently that fixes were being made to the set based on feedback, and that the fixes would most likely go live with I22 but wouldn't be in the first live build.

Edited to add that I was thinking of her statement on the other packs, but would suspect that the missing elements are also in the I22 build. I'm sure she'll jump in to clarify, since I can see she's on the forums now.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a patch note that should've made it to the forums...

I'd rather have it in an attack I use almost every time it's recharged; KO Blow is fun and hard-hitting, but it's slow to animate. Yes, with its base recharge it's almost guaranteed to activate the proc whenever you use it, but if I'm firing off a faster-activating power faster than its base recharge would generally allow, I can still get my fury bar up in the 90-100% range pretty consistently.

There are, I think, playstyle differences that can make a single "optimal" slotting strategy difficult to identify with this proc. I kind of like that.