Liquid

This is great, and resolves my major concerns about the Packs, assuming that the costume parts do end up being purchasable through non-random means from the Paragon Market. I wasn't expecting the ATIO/Catalyst change, and I am very happy to see these advantages made earnable through in-game means. I think that is a good decision for the sake of game balance. I'm obviously still not a fan of random goods for real money, but the removal of the exclusivity means I don't feel you are trying to coerce people into gambling.

Thank you so much for making the changes you've decided to make, and I'm hopeful that the costume part decision works out in a satisfactory manner as well. This post, combined with David's Workshop thread and the official announcement of the retro Sci-Fi pack, really made my day.

Edit: also, I think the inf sink you are adding for buying the ATIOs is a very good move for the in-game economy.

You know, I totally forgot that I've wanted a battle axe/guitar combo forever.

I'd like a double headed battle axe/guitar please. Something like this:



but less fake looking, with actual blades on the edges.

I do miss the content that was removed, but content assigned to you based on your Origin is something I'm against in general. I'd have preferred that they gave us a choice of which of the original 5 contacts we wanted originally.

Yes, certain heroes fight villains that have the same origin. But some fight villains that have opposing or different origins, such as tech vs magic. I'd be quite happy if they modified existing contact acquisition methods to allow a choice of all available contacts (it's usually 2 or 3, or just one if you're introduced by a previous content) when we acquire new ones, so that we can choose to make a hero sorcerer that takes down evil sci/tech corporations, or a Natural villain that hunts mutants because he/she thinks they're an affront to humanity.

So, if you were presented with the option to pick the origin-theme of the content, I'd be all for the idea of Origin specific content. I'm against it if you are forced into a specific content path based on your Origin.

I've got an Energy/Energy Blaster that is super fun to play, and really, she boils down to 5 powers that make her fun:

Power Bolt
Power Blast
Power Burst

Combat Jumping
Hurdle

She'd still need Stamina to keep the blasting going, and I couldn't bear not having a travel power, so I'll add Super Speed to the list, which combined with the stealth IO in Combat Jumping makes her able to sneak past guys I'd rather not fight. That makes 7 powers for me.

The rest of her current powers improve her performance, but those are the ones that are required for her to be fun. I don't think I've got anyone else that I could use less powers than that with and still enjoy myself.

I'm glad to see Dual Pistols on sale for the Preems. That was a smart decision to make when releasing the Gunslinger costume set.

Super Strength. When I come up with a character concept for a superhero (and I don't just mean for this game, I mean in general), 90% of the time they have superhuman strength.

Obviously, 90% of my characters in this game aren't Super Strength, or I wouldn't have been able to experience the variety that this game has to offer, but my two favorite characters are both Super Strength, and I have a third SS character approaching level 50. All three of these characters are remakes of level 50s I already had (I swapped the ATs on two of them when Going Rogue came out to have a Hero Brute and a Villain Tanker, and remade the third on a different account). I have another one planned, and I probably deleted 8 or so SS characters back when we were limited to 12 slots, one of which was level 50, and the other was level 43.

I'm really hoping to get Super Strength Scrappers and Stalkers at some point. I've wanted Super Strength Scrappers since release.

I don't know. Killing Statesman seems like a bad marketing decision. He's the most recognizable character we've got outside of the game. He's the best mascot this game has, it feels like throwing away a brand.

I find the hints to be amusing, but for the sake of the game, I hope it's just misdirection or coincidence.

So, on the topic of Lore "essences" and the ghostly aura they have: when the Lore slot was in Beta, it originally only had the 4 Praetorian trees, but without the aura or the word "essence" in their names when summoned. At the time, I and others thought that this would be it for the tree, that these would be the only options that would ever be in the Lore tree (after all, there was very little precedent to getting new powers in a powerset).

I made a big post about it, and made two points. The first, and the most important to me, was that it would fit very few concepts to have the ability to summon Praetorian Loyalist troops. The second was that it made no sense within the lore whatsoever for Incarnates to summon troops from one specific faction in one specific dimension that, for most of the playerbase, wasn't their home dimension. Compounding that, it happened to be our enemies. There was no precedent for any Incarnate in the game summoning Praetorian Loyalist troops, not even Tyrant (though it would obviously make sense if he could). The only Incarnate with summoning powers is Lord Recluse, and he summons Arachnos troops, not Praetorian Loyalists. I then pointed out the irony of the slot being named "Lore" when looked at from this perspective.

So, I gave two suggestions. The first suggestion was to change the name of the slot to Leadership, and allow us to create a sidekick/lackey-- the idea being that as an Incarnate, you are so influential that someone significant. Ideally it would use the character creator for the costume, but for balance's sake, they'd give us set options for powers. I gave examples of character types that I considered to be iconic for the genre (SS/Inv, MA/SR, Energy/Force Field, etc.). So, you'd pick a character type, and customize the costume, and have your own sidekick. This was the ideal option, in my mind, however, I knew there were technical limitations for customizing with Mastermind pets, so I suggested as an alternative version, allowing you to pick from some of the established characters in the game as a sidekick/lackey (like Flambeaux, Hollow Point, but good lord, not Fusionette). This obviously would be less ideal, as people would have multiple Flambeauxs running around.

I considered the Leadership idea to be the best because it has nothing to do with your concept, aside from the idea that you are looked up to by another person.

The second suggestion, if the first wasn't possible, was to have a sort of primal forces mastery slot, that gave somewhat generic elemental pets like Fire/Ice/Earth/Electricity elementals. This would fit less concepts than the Leadership idea, but more than having Praetorians follow them all over the place.

There was discussion over the idea, and a suggestion that came up from another poster (I know who it was, but I don't want to out them as the originator of the idea given the hostility to it in this thread, but I bet they'll just speak up anyway if they see it) was to give the Praetorian pets the ghostly aura, and say that they were essences summoned from the well, like the ones in the Ramiel arc. I said that would be better than nothing, as it resolved the second complaint, but I really wanted something that would fit more concepts.

We got the aura.

Then one issue later we got tons of Lore pets that rendered the whole argument pretty pointless (though if we hadn't had it, we may not have gotten those pets, or at least not as quickly, as they told us that our objections to the Praetorians led to the additional options being added to that issue), and we still had the essence thing that imposed the Well concept on us even though the non-Praetorian pets made that unnecessary.

So, at the time, the essence concept seemed like a resource-efficient idea for resolving one of the issues with the Lore slot, but now that the first issue was resolved through the extra options, the essence aura actually conflicts with concept flexibility since it forces the concept of the Well on your character's powers. So, yeah, I'd really like to see the aura and the name suffix at least be optional. Hopefully the developers will find a way to do that for us.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm at least partially to blame for that, and that they did it because we asked them to in Beta. I'm sorry that it resulted in people being somewhat unhappy with the end result (myself included), but the developers did listen to us, even if the result wasn't ideal in the end.

I have some thoughts on the "Blasters are supposed to die more than other ATs by design" topic. I don't know if you'll agree with them or not.

Originally, range was considered a form of defense. And if you play the release content up to mid levels, it plays out that way (with exceptions for certain groups like the Tsoo)-- generally the melee attacks were more powerful, and they might have stuns and knockdown attached to them, while ranged attacks were less dangerous. Combine that with the highest damage rating, the best endurance efficiency (Blasters had an end discount nobody else had at release), and the most attack powers, and I think this was why Blaster deaths were viewed as okay-- they killed so much faster that some debt evened their leveling out with other ATs that didn't die as much but couldn't kill as fast.

But after the mid levels for release content, and in the newer content (especially Praetorians), ranged attacks became more powerful and frequent, and commonly had mez attached to them. At level 28, The most commonly used Scrapper secondaries got their big defensive powers (Invincibility, Instant Healing), and had enough power slots to build up enough attacks to have a full attack chain. This is when Blasters' range, higher damage, and more attacks no longer gave them an advantage, and all they had left was dying faster.

We used to call the game "City of Blasters" at release because from level 1 to about level 25 or so, as long as you avoided the Tsoo, range and high damage more than made up for lack of defense. It wasn't all just broken Smoke Grenade. I always had the feeling that attention was paid to game balance from 1-25ish, but that after that, either things got rushed with mob design or some bad assumptions were made with player power options (like assuming people wouldn't 6 slot with one enhancement type, or that Tankers and Scrappers wouldn't keep Mez protection on full time) that caused balance to be out of whack.

Thanks for the details, Samuraiko, I missed that panel.

I'm reserving judgement on the fog and ghosts being gone until I see what is done to replace them. Based on how awesome the Halloween Trial was, I'm optimistic.

I do like the feel of old DA, though, so I'm glad we're getting an Echo of it to go to if we wish.

I agree that the consumables should stay at this level.

Windfall also really needs to specify exactly what it does. I might buy it at that price, but I need to know what drop rates it increases, and how much. Inf gain isn't appealing to me at all-- most of my inf comes from selling IO drops. This has the potential to be the one existing consumable I would buy repeatedly, but I'm not going to buy it blind.

That VIP starter kit is a great idea, I hope that's at the top of the email you send out to the Freems about this.

I'm really glad you're having this sale, I hope it turns out well for you!

Edit in response to Zwillinger: Woohoo! I really hope it works out well, then, because I think in the long run it will make you more money.