Grey Pilgrim

Cheater!

Heh, we're not going to have the best rounded teams if everyone plays something Time or Beam, but we'll see how it goes, I guess.

I don't really want to be on it that much, to be honest. I don't like the idea of a VIP server at all. Still, it's here and people will use it some, so I'll move a couple of 50s there to make room on my home server, Victory (which is where I and many others want to be... hopefully the same for others who have homes on other servers), other than making one namesake character there.

Though you should not be able to actually purchase those things. They really need something to show you already have it, but at least you aren't supposed to be able to actually lose points on those.

This for me. I don't really like the idea of a VIP server in the first place, but I may move some of my lesser played 50s over there to make more room for my characters on Victory that I really like playing. That's a surprisingly large number, and I could always use more room.

Any change apparently requires FX or animation time that they just do not have. I would think there are some options that would be better than they have now and not too much work, but we just don't know how much work they would take, or how much time FX and animation does have.

I do hope it is high on the priority list, as it is hard to tell Light Form is going when your other shields are on... and the shortened form shifting would make a huge difference in how well Kheldians play, at least in a QoL way.

We have plenty of revamp threads in the Kheldian forums, and this is our feedback thread for the beta, even if it would have been better for them to make an official one. Arbiter Hawk reads this, and he's not the only dev reading these boards.

When this goes live, and these boards are removed, we can certainly move things to the Kheldian forums. We can even start one in the general powers forum to make sure it doesn't get unnoticed or something. That said, Arbiter Hawk has been reading the Kheldian forums and has said he is keeping an eye on us. You don't have to worry about them reading, just making a strong case for your ideas.

I'm a little confused as to what the issue is for Light Form. It still IS a panic button. It's a huge boost of resistance and recovery, as well as mez protection. The only thing negatively different is that it's only up for 90 rather than 180 seconds. I can see how that can be slightly worrying, but that comes with the benefit of a greatly lessened crash. You were up a creek or out of a fight with the old one's crash, with this, you CAN keep going just fine. It's a boost overall, though it requires a tweaking of tactics.

We're not going to get that much discussion with a developer about changes, before they are brought forward in a beta, though. As much as I would like to hear more, the devs just don't work like that. At best, I've heard a developer say "oh, we'll try to work on that." We never get an ETA, or even an exact description of what that is.

And for good reason. They don't want to make promises that they can't keep, and they need to be able to toss around ideas and even see how things work in a closed beta. That's how it is.

We already have word from a powers developer that he is reading our suggestions and keeping an eye on Kheldians, and that he is going to wait and see how well the current changes do. We even have a promise that more will come when animation and FX time can be used (though I'm still worried about how soon that will be). That is more than a lot of people asking for changes to something in game are getting at this point (Stalkers, PvP, Bases, Gravity users, etc.).

I hear what you are saying and would love to hear more about what they are thinking, but I know it's not going to happen. We're just waiting to pounce on anything Arbiter Hawk would say as well, so that's going to be part of the problem as well. Being critical but fair, and making strong arguments via numbers, comparisons, and performance is the way to go.

Last but not least, I DO want more changes to Kheldians, and think we're doing mostly okay with arguments to that extent. We can keep it up and keep this being noticed, and hopefully more will come between I21 and I22, or in I22 (since their development setup is different than it has been before, I don't know what to expect).

I know not everyone will agree, but Light Form is far more useful with the change. You can make arguments for the old style Tier 9s and how much they could offer, but that huge crash just was too much of a tradeoff. Middle of the road is popular with a lot more people for things like this, and I can definitely see that appeal.

The inherent, to me, has similar issues. Sure, it's nice that we can get such big numbers from teammates. But this is a detriment solo or on small teams, and is even weak on a big team if you aren't near your teammates. I'd rather see our performance made more reliable by distributing some of the inherent's benefit to the other forms, while still allowing some buffing from the inherent. As for mez protection, I still think we need more benefit from teammates. Once you have enough Controllers or Doms to make those numbers mean something, they're already mezzing most things that could mez you.

I guess I'd rather see the peaks and valleys of performance come more from powers (like for Warshades) than the inherent. The combination makes things harder to balance and more uneven than it should be.

To reply to these and the little bit of discussion about what Arbiter Hawk does, he said he has been getting more involved with powers as of late. I think Synapse and Black Scorpion are the main powers guys still, but he's helping out. Though it's hard to say now that they have the task forces or whatever they are calling their groupings working on development.

I have to say yet again, though, that we just have to keep making a strong case for our ideas. We're probably at the limit for what is going to happen with I21, but that's not the end of the world. We know more is planned to fix animation issues in the future, and in his very first PM to me, Arbiter Hawk said he was open to ideas about how to improve the QoL or functionality of existing powers for Kheldians, and he wanted me to share them. He also said he read the Kheldian forums thoroughly and played Kheldians a lot in preparation for the changes. I haven't agreed with every statement he has made about Kheldians, but his being openness and work does say something.

There are a lot of balls being juggled with I21, so I'm not that surprised that we are sitting where we are for now. I'm pleasantly surprised that we got changes for I21 (since the best I had heard just before Closed Beta was I22 for changes), and as long as Arbiter Hawk stays open to ideas (and we make a good case for our ideas), we're in a good spot. I just hope action can be taken on things by I22.

So, in short, I will be down in the dumps with our status if nothing else happens by I22. But until then, keep in mind that the door is open for ideas, and don't expect them to happen overnight.

Sheesh, no wonder my kids want me to put my slides up online. The only problem with that is my slides are what they are supposed to be, outlines for what we are discussing. So they slides alone won't be all that helpful...

I hate your #1, as it is so common in business (my dad and wife have groused about such speakers at their relative jobs). There is no way it should be common in education either, but that's part of the ridiculousness of teaching in college. You don't need to take any education or teaching classes to teach in college. While you probably have done some presenting or teaching once you have a PhD, it's not necessary (though any school I have heard of generally has some training and support).

But not reading off of slides or your notes is one of the things I hit on when talking about presenting effectively. Funny thing is most students know this, but don't necessarily avoid doing it when they present. I'm sure all these teachers are in the same position.

Not sure if Serkis has been around and in people's minds enough to make it on to this list. Certainly his range can be seen by him playing Gollum and the muderer/criminal Rigaud in the BBC's Little Dorritt (you all should watch that, even if you aren't a fan of Charles Dickens. It's paced well, and Serkis as Rigaud is positively creepy and one of the better villains I have ever seen). Still, he tends to be buried in CGI, so many people are going leave him out of a best actors list.

I would say he's probably one of the better character actors out there. I wouldn't have known he was Rigaud or Gollum unless the credits were telling me, heh.