Lothic

I have the feeling that virtually every new top-end Vet award that comes out from now on is going to have to run this gauntlet of constructive criticism to "justify itself" as a Vet award instead of some other kind of power.

When there are a growing number of newer people playing today who have no realistic chance to expect that the game will be around for ANOTHER seven years for them to get these newest awards I tend to think the current Vet system will only become more of a DIS-incentive for the general player base than something positive for the game.

Yes, I actually realized the fundamental difference. I just didn't bother to emphasize it. Like you I've only been playing this game for 81 months so forgive me if I don't FORGET too many things like this.

Still (as I mentioned in the Suggestions thread SwellGuy started on this) I don't really accept that the "value added" this Vet award is going to provide beyond the current Market TP powers is really unique/special/huge enough to justify it taking a spot of one of our post 7 year Vet awards. *shrugs*

This is actually why some "weird" people like me have always favored Vet award system reform in this game to address people in your situation. I honestly doubt much if anything will actually change, but it's always worth letting people know that there are some old-timers like me who understand and sympathize with the basic "unfairness" of the current system.

Just to be clear I don't deny that this Vet power has the potential be more useful than the current Market TP powers. I just contend that it will not be THAT MUCH MORE useful or unique to justify it being a post 7 year Vet award. Nothing about it screams "this would make a better high-end Vet award than an Accolade award" to me. *shrugs*

Trying to define Ninja Run as an "alternative" to the 60th month Vet award is one of the biggest stretches of logic I've seen in these forums in a while. I think you shot past "that's ridiculous" all the way into "that's so ridiculous that's actually pretty impressive for its audacity" territory. Congrats to you.

I would think that an updated Westworld, in the context of 2011, would have a strong Matrix-like "online gaming/fantasy" vibe to it. They might even take it in a dystopian "Blade Runner / I, Robot" direction exploring the idea that it's becoming a "man versus AI" scenario. It'll be interesting to see how it's handled.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrueGentleman Oh, yes, and they're remaking/rebooting Lethal Weapon, Tarzan, The Wild Bunch, and Oh, God.

As for these I think my only response would be is "Oh, God".

Batman truly is the Sun Tzu of superheroes.

And people wonder why we can't have nice things...

Likewise one could easily counter the idea that this award's advantage of letting you access the market mid-mission would be such an extraordinarily wonderful benefit that it blows the simple "market TF" powers out of the water. I think since the markets were introduced I can count on one hand the number of times I really, really wanted/needed to have market access mid-mission. Trying to make the case that this feature will allow for significant improvements in leveling speeds is definitely hyping up a mountain out of a molehill.

And as for the idea of making two versions of this thing (a Vet version and a non-Vet version) I just can't see the Devs ever putting that much effort into it. We don't have Vet and non-Vet versions of what Field Crafter and Mission Engineer provide - why would we get two versions of this new power?

I'm not against the idea of Vet awards being considered "unique" or even "exclusive" but the idea of them being "hard to get" is a bit misleading because as StormDevil implied you just have to be patient enough to pay a monthly bill for a certain number of months. Nothing really "hard" about it.

But a serious problem with this market thing being a Vet award is that it breaks the precedent already set with two other Accolade awards. The Field Crafter badge gives us remote access to a crafting table and the Mission Engineer badge gives us remote access to the AE system. It actually makes relatively little sense that something new that gives us "remote access" to the marekts would not also be an Accolade award. Why would I have to earn a bunch of badges for those other powers and just have to be an old-timer for this new one?

This is the main reason why I don't think this makes for a good Vet award. It's simply not "unique/special" enough to be worthy of something I had to play/pay over 7 years to get. *shrugs*

Eh, I don't think this would reach my "$20 just for this one thing" threshold but I'd probably pay for it if it were part of a $9.99 Booster Pack that came along with other stuff too. I'd reserve my "I'd pay $20 just for that" offer for additional costume slots for characters, but of course that's a topic for another suggestions thread.

You've got a pretty good point here about why something like this should be a Booster/Accolade power instead of a Vet power.

As a Booster power anyone who directly wants it can buy it at any time.
As an Accolade power the marketeers can earn it (regardless if the badgers use it or not).
But as a Vet power old-timers are going to get it whether they want it or not.

My personal reason for thinking this was a "less than optimal" choice for a Vet award is that to me Vet awards should provide things that are clearly not possible to get/obtain any other way. Things like the Reveal power is a good example: it's a good Vet award because it gives us something that has no equivalent in the rest of the game. On the other hand this Market power basically duplicates what the Market TP powers provide - a shortcut way to get to the market. I don't see this as being "unique" enough to qualify as a good Vet power.

Oh well, I'll probably make pretty good use out of it when I do get it. But for me I'll always wonder what better thing we could of gotten instead what amounts to a permanent Market TP power. *shrugs*

This is slightly off-topic but I just noticed the pic you have in your sig line. For your sake I hope the guy who's always wanted to name their character CyberRadical never sees it. It's impressive that you've managed to have a character made in this game roughly 4 years longer than the game's actually existed.

I think Anne Hathaway's a workable pick for Selina Kyle. I might not have thought of her if you'd asked me to make a list of possible actresses for the role myself, but after thinking about it for a bit I think she'll be fine for it.

Her performance as the White Queen in the recent Alice in Wonderland makes me think she can handle a slightly mercurial/quirky over-the-top character like Catwoman can be. Besides in this still photo from that movie it looks like they were already grooming her for a role involving being fascinated by small furry rodents.

I think there will come a time when movie producers will be able to apply the "Kevin Flynn from TRON Legacy" CGI treatment to older actors as easily and cheaply as they use simple makeup today. But as interesting as it would be to see Lucy Lawless finally make an appearance as Wonder Woman I think for the conceivable future any new Wonder Woman show would be better off saving that CGI expense by featuring another (preferably) unknown younger actress who could be discovered to make the role her own.

Now if they were to finally start making a new Wonder Woman TV show today I think it would definitely be cool to have Lucy Lawless involved in it in at least some capacity. Maybe make her another Amazon (Hippolyta even?) or a villain the new Wonder Woman could face. That would be a sight to see.

The 70s era Hulk and Wonder Woman shows were products of their time. Sure there were what we would consider now to be "cheesy" elements to them but that doesn't mean they were intrinsically bad shows. Consider this: we are still talking about these 35+ year old shows as relevant to an Internet forum thread in 2011 - there must be something about them that was lasting and significant. Even though Wonder Woman seems to have suffered from some kind of "media limbo" effect more than the other superheroes I think there are some good recent examples of other genre shows from that rough time period being re-imagined to work well for today's audiences.

For example the Abrams reboot of Star Trek was an obvious box office success. I thought the time travel plot of the movie was an utter mess but I think the new actors worked well in the roles and their interactions caught the spirit of the original show. Another example was the good reboot of Battlestar Galactica. It wasn't bad to take a show that only managed one season back in the late 70s (I pretend BSG 1980 doesn't exist) and turn it into a new multi-season franchise with spin-offs. I hope the "suits" in Hollywood will pay attention to shows like this (as well as the general success other superhero movies are having in the last few years) to encourage them to consider a "modernized" Wonder Woman movie or TV show for today. Hopefully her stint as a "makeup queen" won't hurt her chances for that too much.

This is good news Beef_Cake. I had hoped the Devs would realize (sooner or later) that this was something that needed to be fixed.
Of course I suppose we might still have to wait literally months for this, but hopefully it won't come to that.

Well obviously my implication that the respec badges were made problematic in this case just so that the Devs could "toy" around with badge text was a bit of a jabbing simplification on my part.

I was actually aware that what made this situation non-straightforward was the idea that the respec tokens are linked into the current badges themselves. We do know that the badge text actually changes when you've used a particular respec token so clearly the tokens, badges and text are all uniquely mingled together in a non-trivial way. When I implied "badge text" was to blame I was intentionally being a bit dismissive because this was a relatively silly mess that I think the Devs might have managed to avoid with a bit more foresight. I mean after all they've only been working towards side-switching for about 5 or 6 years now. Handling respec badges a bit better never came up in all that time?

Many people talked about the possibility of that happening back in the "horse and buggy" days of the Interwebs 15 years ago.

My last post applies here too.

Obviously detecting Devil's Advocacy is not your strong suit.

That's actually one of the more mysterious aspects behind the multi-decade saga of "why hasn't there been a new Wonder Woman TV show since the 70s". When you think about it a show about a curvy woman running around in a star-spangled bathing suit should pretty much sell itself to US TV audiences regardless if there's a good plot to it or not. How many years did Baywatch stay on TV translated into like 100 languages for audiences around the world?

Yes I'm aware that this is a MAC campaign and I agree that does make the whole thing a notch classier than it being for "My First Makeup Kit sold at Walmart". You also have a good point that the involvement of Wonder Woman's character with this could be seen more as a connection to "celebrity" rather than to simple "vanity".

Who knows, I could be totally wrong about this and history may show that the starting point of the big summer blockbuster Wonder Woman movie (released let's say in 2012 or 2013) rested firmly on the overwhelming popularity of this makeup campaign. Perhaps 30+ years of waiting for some positive news towards an actual Wonder Woman movie/TV show has made me somewhat cynical about the whole thing.

Actually regardless if you liked the show or not Xena was probably the most successful "Wonder Woman clone" series since the actual Lynda Carter series. Other shows like Buffy:tVS, La Femme Nikita and Alias were very vaguely Wonder Woman-esque, but Xena probably has come as close to Wonder Woman as we've seen so far.

Now I'm not suggesting a new Wonder Woman show made in 2011 would have to somehow copy what Xena did (assuming you could quantify that). I'm just suggesting if a show like Xena could last 6 seasons I really don't understand why someone couldn't figure out how to do that for Wonder Woman too.