Goliath Bird Eater

What, you expected people who've likely NOT already run through the Magisterium enough times to know everything stone cold to succeed?

Try clearing your cache; the villain skin comes up with Penny and Shadowhunter when I switch to it.

Can't we just bulldoze Skyway? The way it's laid out makes me think that Ivo Shandor had a relative who got a job with the Paragon Department of Transportation.

Why not? He was already the grizzled, semi-retired hero that showed newbies the ropes in Galaxy City; it's not like this would be some big change for him. Besides, Ms. Liberty is popping up in a lot of places these days and could do with a little less on her already-full schedule.

It's the first thing they talk about in the article.

I know.

Really though, how is that different from normal? Not every title can be a home run -- some are going to be good; a lot are going to just be "there"; some are going to be good in theory, but not so good in execution; and some should have had more thought put into them before being published. I see that exact same pattern when I look at Marvel's titles, when I look at Image's titles, when I look at Dark Horse's titles, and when I look at just about every publisher's titles.

I think the negative press surrounding the New 52 concept boils down to two things: people not giving it a chance at all, and a very vocal minority causing others to prejudge based solely upon their hyperbolic complaints about ultimately mundane things (i.e., Harley Quinn and Starfire no longer being their precious animated wives).

I haven't read every title, as some concepts just don't interest me. For example: Stormwatch does nothing for me, and I've never been a JLA fan as I think most members work better in their solo books. But I do follow some, and have given up on others:

The Superman line in general has been good, and I love the new Supergirl title.

Batman & Robin is the only Bat-title I still read. I haven't read Incorporated #1 yet, so I can't comment.

Birds of Prey does nothing for me. And it's not because I'm a Gail Simone fanboy or anything and hold her run upon some pedestal. It just doesn't hook me in.

Speaking of Gail Simone, I tried Batgirl and gave up after four issues.

Batwoman, on the other hand, is great.

Both Swamp Thing and Animal Man have been fun. Animal Man in particular.

Suicide Squad had an iffy start, but it's slowly, steadily getting better.

Red Hood and the Outlaws is, in my opinion, very underrated. Too many people dismissed it outright as a result of that stupid pseudo-feminist "Starfire isn't characterized as a vapid, naive ball of cute like she was in the cartoon, and is instead still very close to her established comic characterization! WAAAAAAH!" nonsense. Like Suicide squad, it hit the ground running so the readers have had to be caught up on-the-fly. Maybe the upcoming space arc will get people to quit kvetching about Starfire ...

I'm sticking with World's Finest for the time being just to see how the characterization of Power Girl continues to unfold. I'm still not a fan of her costume redesign, but it's a lot better than the first images we saw of it.

I'm probably forgetting some.

You mean "Bleez's Blue Butt: The Comic"?

The deletion of purple recipes on level 50 characters was just one of the few effects we players actually saw. According to several developers, attempting to implement the new enhancement slots also broke other things under the hood.

And as to how the additional slots would cause loss of purples: I'm fairly sure nothing concrete has been said by a dev, but the most likely guess is that the number of enhancement slots and character level are so connected that increasing the total number of slots caused the game to internally see such characters as something other than level 50, thus rendering the level-50-only enhancers as null. Again, this is just a guess.

And before anybody says it: No, characters are NOT above 50 if they have level shifts.

As someone who spent several years as an assistant CM for a rather large and active online community, believe me when I say you gotta have a TON of patience. Between regular community concerns, technical issues, trolls, newbies who don't know any better, and community members who straight-up hate you for some reason or another and seek to make your life hell, resisting the urge to push the Big Red Button is sometimes very difficult.

But it is possible.

A Baron Munchausen reference?!

DUDE!

Exactly.

The author of the article was NOT privy to what content was present during the GR beta, which included the initial stage of the Incarnate system. They prefaced the article by saying it was all based upon conjecture, and this fact alone proves it. Also -- correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the focus group of players that went to Paragon Studios to see the Freedom model there either during or very shortly after Going Rogue's development cycle? If so, then the main crux of the argument, "GR failed and the game almost died, thus the change to another business model", is kinda rendered moot.

Not saying that there's Absolutely no merit to any part of their argument. After all, CoH IS an old MMO, and all MMOs reach the point where the subscription base begins to fall off (assuming they're not f2p).

I'll have you know that I clean and polish my impervium alloy on a regular basis!

Sorry Zyph, that's what passes for "gender equality" in this game with regard to costumes. Those who wanted female toons to get everything the male and huge models had IN ADDITION TO their own special parts cried, shouted, pleaded, and demanded under the guise of "gender equality" until the developers finally gave in. How having more options than others is equality, I don't know. But I doubt it's going to change any time soon, so you might as well resign yourself to having fewer options because you decide not to make a given character female.

Apologies in advance for any thread derailment that might happen because of this post.

In fairness, what to do about PvP in CoH is kind of an elephant in the room at this point. And any real, meaningful discussion about it that could potentially bear fruit would need to take up the equivalent of an entire Player Summit.

Assuming, of course, that the PvP community would be willing to engage in honest back-and-forth dialogue with the developers this time, instead of folding their arms and shouting "CHANGE IT BACK NAO!".

I'd be all in favor of one, maybe two new red zones. Only concern is that given how there's just a smudge of level overlap between the existing zones, any new zones could potentially cause older zones to be largely empty (yes yes, "Durr hurr redside is already empty!" and all that), thereby repeating the problem present in PAragon City.

That would be the "Wheatonesque" Protean. As in Wil Wheaton.

OMG Yes!!!