Lothic

I'd agree that some people are "luckier" than others. In like maybe 50 trials I've only seen two VR components drop myself.

Then again I -created- some of my own luck over the last few years by amassing billions of Influence in the markets. After purple/pvp IO'ing my builds I've had very little else to spend my Influence on. Burning a few more billion for Incarnate components hasn't really been too painful so far.

As always, YMMV.

I don't think free-form powersets for a game like this is a "bad" idea. But I will agree that so far no one has been able to make a successful superhero MMO based on that concept. It's sort of like the fundamental idea of Communism: on paper the idea sounds nice but in reality it's probably never going to happen.

There have been a number of pen-n-paper RPGs that have featured free-form power systems. In fact the original Champions is a notable example of that for this discussion. But the reason those games work is that you have a human GM right there capable of being flexible with his/her players and making the system work. So far computer based games still don't quite have the flexibility required to balance a free-form system without it quickly devolving into a min/max tank-mage-fest.

Perhaps someday someone will make a free-form superhero MMO that'll actually work. I just don't think we're there yet.

Well since I'm going to have all of my T4s done on my main within another week or so WITHOUT using all my Astrals or ANY Empyreans I'm going to have plenty of them racked up so that what -whatever- they're going to be good for I'll be ready for it. I'm just against the automatic kneejerk assumption that everyone ought to go ahead and burn Astrals and Empyreans regardless if they need to or not. *shrugs*

My main already has her T4 Judgement, T4 Destiny, T3 Lore and T3 Interface unlocked after 2 weeks, and that's with only burning about half her Astrals so far. If I wanted to I could easily burn enough Astrals to get the others to T4 right now but there's no point in wasting Astrals when I'll probably have the other T4s done in like another week or so anyway.

Burn Astrals if you need to have things ASAP. Otherwise I'm choosing to take the longer view and horde them as much as possible. If we finally get to the point where we realize that the "extra" things Astrals can buy are dumb then I can always convert them to Threads then.

Well I suppose if you dig deep enough you could probably find some things to support your idea. I'm just coming at it from the point of view of a player who's been playing CoH regularly for 7 years versus giving up on CO a few months after it launched. As always YMMV.

It depends on what you think the "other things" Astrals are going to be be able to buy. The Devs hinted that they will eventually be used to purchase "other" things in the game but what those things are going to be and how long it'll be before that happens is anyone's guess.

At this point I've converted about half of the Astrals I've gotten into Threads. I figure Astrals seem to drop quickly enough so that seems to be a good compromise to me. Basically I don't want to be caught without -any- Astrals just in case they become super useful for something else.

Even though most of the time people usually assume "the book is better than the movie/TV version" in some cases the compressed nature of movies/TV shows actually forces a detail-rich book based story to become more tightly focused and give up the excess baggage that obscures the main story too much. Maybe this series will be a good case of that.

I thought this was a good show but it suffered from the same problem shows like Caprica did: They apparently tried to make a "never-ending" episodic TV show out of a story concept that would have been better served by a fixed-length dozen episode mini-series.

Basically the entire premise of the show was that the 3 main characters were exiled to Earth after this evil dictator guy staged a coup to take over their howeworld. Clearly they were leading up to the idea that these 3 would eventually go back and lead a revolution to retake their world and save the day. Why does that story have to require more than about a dozen action packed episodes? Do you need to drag that out 100+ episodes? No, of course not.

So because they apparently didn't have a plan to "finish" up the story anytime soon I pretty much assumed months ago that eventually this thing was going to be cancelled without being properly finished. It's kind of disappointing my prediction had to be right once again.

With all due respect to the GMs/Devs it appears they are once again "confused" about how their own game works. How on Earth could a league earn Lambda Looter, Well-Stocked and Antacid all during one run if the badges actually worked as described? I was on a Lambda Trial just last night where I myself earned those 3 badges together in one run.

I really hate when the GMs respond to players in this vaguely condescending way when they are clearly wrong. Either their "understanding" of these badges is wrong or they aren't working the way they say they're supposed to. Either way the GMs/Devs are probably going to remain convinced they are right and we are wrong until we keep beating it over their stubborn heads long enough to admit it. *sigh*

Actually Canada has traditionally been the "51st state" of the United States. I thought everyone knew that... j/k

But even if one were to claim the UK was the 51st state I'd think that'd be better than being called Airstrip One for instance.

Maybe she'll even crash her invisible jet while she's too distracted with sexting Steve Trevor with her smart phone... lol

This not like this thread is hundreds of pages long. Was it really too hard to notice that we started talking about the "motorcycle" outfit just a few posts down from the one you replied to?

Exceptions that prove the rule.

I'm sure dozens (or even hundreds) of people could post here to tell similar stories to yours. That still doesn't discount that the overwhelming majority of players will never even get close to bumping up against the 2 billion INF cap.

I'm certainly not going to sit here and promise you that the cap will never be raised. But I will continue to suspect that the odds of it ever happening are pretty remote for all sorts of reasons.

Obviously Lynda had plenty of "appealing assets" to attract viewers on that level.

But my guess is that they had her do those other kinds of things as a way to try to modernize the character and make her seem more "in-tune" with things happening in the 70s. This is why I fully expect to see this new Wonder Woman doing things like tweeting, dealing with reality-based 24-hour news cycles and confronting terrorism. They will adapt her to the realities of 2011, for better or worse.

It's possible, but I'm not really sure why that would be considered too powerful in a "very rare, one-use only" inspiration form considering the others they did allow. Who knows?

Just seems suspiciously much more likely they didn't want to make room for "eight+one" super inspirations in their data structures and decided it'd be easier to drop one than to make extra room for the oddball Ultimate.

At this point in the game's life I'd be very surprised to see this cap ever get raised.

Despite how many multi-billions the "ebil" marketeers can earn you still have to remember that maybe 95% or more of players have never even seen a billion INF let alone 2 billion in their entire time playing. The only way the Devs would ever really consider raising the cap is if you start seeing that many more people having billion+ amounts of INF. And I just don't see that happening anytime soon. *shrugs*

If I were in the need of making arrangements for SOMEONE ELSE then I might be inclined to CHOOSE something else as well.

Not to be too nit-picky but there doesn't seem to be a new Super Healing inspiration.
My guess is they decided to drop that one to make room for the Ultimate one.

The "movement" to a once a week maintenance cycle has been in place for YEARS now. Just because we've had a few unusual Thursday maintenance periods to deal with a new Issue release doesn't mean things won't settle back down eventually.

Despite any recent problems this game, over the course of 7 years, probably still has an up-time record of well around 98-99%. I'm not really sure what "problem" you're trying to solve with this suggestion. Stop worrying about the short term and accept the overall reality. *shrugs*

Right now the ONLY thing that Champions Online currently does better than this game is its ability to offer its players the option to buy extra costume slots for characters. At this point I almost think it's sad that this game has not followed suit and given us the same feature.

People have wanted more costume slots in this game pretty much since the beginning.
I just wonder how many more years will it take before the Devs address this...

The idea of a "fix only bugs and/or revamp old content" issue sounds great in theory and looks good on paper but in reality will never happen. *shrugs*

Ah... I don't usually overly analyze still photos of women in action for their degree of "bounce-ability" but I guess I could see how that might be interesting to some people.

Welcome to a month ago.