Goliath Bird Eater

Not everyone goes into the Tech forum with regularity.

Yes, Zombie, I'm well aware that Castle and BABs post more frequently than any of the other devs. But I couldn't rightfully call it a "dev digest" if I only put up links to two or three people, now could I?


*Sigh* Why do I even bother trying to post helpful stuff?

Probability:Giving up:You: 0%
Probability:Letting down:You: 0%
Probability: Running Around: 0%
Probability: Inflicting Injury:You: 0%

... considered flaming?

And you do realize that "Forum Cartel" is just a title based on post count, right? It's not some sort of ultra-secret cabal. Any loudmouth can get there in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, some loudmouths are actually respected members of the community who've made a great number of their posts in the guise of helping other players. Lemur is one of those folks, as blunt about it as he may be sometimes.

It's harder than you'd think to come up with a concise, yet sufficiently-informative ruleset for a large and diverse internet community capable of being both solid enough to stand up to scrutiny and flexible enough to handle situations not explicitly mentioned.

Or he could be drinking again. I wouldn't hold it against him if he was. Would you?

Can I exchange this for the phone number and address of DJ Jazzy Jeff? He'd probably appreciate somebody sending him a gift basket more than Will Smith would. I mean, not that Will wouldn't appreciate it; he's a cool guy and would surely think it a nice gesture by one of his fans. But I think Jeff just kinda needs it more, y'know what I mean?

*Looks up from his summoning circle*

It's gonna do what?!

*Angrily throws ritual dagger and copy of the Necronomicon to the floor*

Great, now what am I gonna do with all this goat blood? Do you have any idea how hard was to get 200 gallons of the stuff?!

Grumble ... Stupid devs, not telling me that they were gonna raise Great Cthulhu ...

*Storms off*

Use Mids hero planner. And there was an offline character creator released when the ill-fated Korean version of the game was put out. But after the Marvel lawsuit and such, it was decided that it wouldn't be prudent to release a program which allows people to infringe on copyright in North America without the ability to actively monitor the creations.

Practically none of those powersets actually existed. We've been told before that the only powers which actually existed at the time of that gameplay demo were the individual powers that were used by the demo character. Not powersets, but powers. That huge list was all still wishful thinking.

• BABs said he created the new super strength animations. He wasn't even around when that video was released. What reason would he have to lie?
• I'm not seeing how the new "split" creation sequence is the same one in the video. There are similarities, but given how the steps in the character creation process really haven't changed since back then, it makes sense that the two would look similar.
• The female model also had a different standing pose, one that I like better than the one they currently use. And characters did somersaults as they went into flight. If there's some conspiracy and the lazy devs are just copying 6-year-old animations, why not copy these as well?

No. No. Not the new ones, unless you wanna call BABs a liar. Who knows.

And I'm fairly sure that the gameplay demo video was from before the closed beta. I was in the open beta, and it wasn't all that different than what we got at launch.

The thing is, before it should really be brought back, base issues and PvP both need to be a lot closer to their finalized state. Without those two systems running how the devs want and interacting nicely with each other, there's no point in trying to throw a reworked CoP trial on top of them both. Maybe after I16 and/or Going Rogue, there will finally be time on the development schedule to really devote time and manpower to hammering out bases and PvP.

Most of the items you've listed weren't just "swept under the rug", though. Both the City Vault and CoP trial were shelved due to technical issues: the Vault because as it was coded, it was causing massive, game-breaking lag on even the internal servers, and the CoP because there were exploit issues which would require some time and specialized attention to resolve. Also, with base construction/raiding and PvP both still in long-term states of reworking (Paragon's development schedule has been thrown off a couple of times; case in point: we should've already found out what "The Coming Storm" was, but that had to be pushed back a bit to accommodate the big projects that the studio has been working on since they were acquired by NCSoft), there's no real point to add the CoP trial back to the game until everything else associated with it is up and fully running.

Making SG membership based on global accounts was never anything that was even remotely set in stone; the last thing said about it was that it would be looked into. Maybe the idea couldn't make it past that point? Incarnates as an epic AT might still be in the works; the fact that both the "Origin of Power" arc and the Cimeroran content talk about it could certainly be a precursor to it being added to the game. As for HOs being 33%? Well, I'm not privy to the design theory behind that. Maybe you should try PMing a dev about it. In my own opinion, however, they now represent a nice accompaniment to IOs. If you're looking to maximize the effectiveness of enhancers and aren't too caught up in getting set bonuses, mixing IOs and HOs is usually the way to go. And as for the War Walls, they do come down ... every time the Rikti attack. Sometimes, things aren't meant to be taken literally

Some of the features you mentioned would be nice to have, and we may still have them at some point. Others are likely never going to see the light of day. But please don't assume that the devs just kinda shrugged and went to work on something else. There are reasons for everything.

As was pointed out to me in another thread, this has been one of the few double xp weekends not also associated with a reactivation weekend. As such, you don't have all those people returning to the game for a day or two.

There was also an Aion beta event during the weekend, and I'm sure some folks were taking part in that.

Y'know, that never even crossed my mind. It does make the most sense, actually.

In fairness, being a small server, we really don't ever have the phenomenon of being utterly bombarded with farm requests. Even in Atlas Park, it's not that bad. And bridge spam more or less died off once disabling XP became an option.

This.

It's been rather quiet as compared to most double xp weekends.


As for personal experiences, I haven't been as gung-ho as I usually am. But I've made some progress nonetheless. I've got a kat/regen Scrapper I really like, whom I brought from 24 to 30 yesterday. Ran the Moonfire TF for the first time ever (kinda embarrassing that I've been here since the beginning and had never run it), and had tons of fun with a great team. When I log in today, I'm hoping to do some stuff with my VG.

Let me quote my subsequent post, since it at least appears that you didn't bother to read it:

That right there is the issue, and why some of us would like for the devs to give new players who've spent most or all of their time inside the AE doing farm runs a reason to hopefully step out into the rest of the game world, if only for a weekend. That way, if they do get bored with the game after having farmed their way to 50 over the course of a few days, they might be more inclined to go experience the rest of the game instead of canceling their subscription and leaving. As long as there isn't any exploiting going on, there is no right or wrong way to play the game. But ideally, you'd want to retain subscribers, and a system which allows you to attain the maximum level in a very short period of time is antithetical to that ideal.

Anyways, I've said my piece multiple times, and I don't feel like having to defend the same point over and over again. Make of my opinion what you will; I'm done in this thread.

I'm just trying to save you from future embarrassment.