Lothic

To be fair the idea of Wonder Woman being used to sell makeup doesn't bother me -that- much.
I don't find it insulting as much as just a tad bit stereotypical and uninspired.

I just figure if they wanted to pick anything in the world to sell using the likeness of Wonder Woman that the idea of makeup was probably not the most "politically correct" choice because of all the historical and cultural connotations it drags up. Then again I guess I'd rather see Wonder Woman linked to a line of cutesy "girl power" pre-teen makeup than see Batman linked to a line of unisex/emo/Hot Topic goth makeup. *shrugs*

BTW, that visual image of the Batman "squirt gun" is just disturbing on sooooo many levels.

The classic phrase "The best defense is a good offense" applies perfectly here.

Most ATs out there rely on slotting up defense powers and/or Mez resisting effects to protect themselves from critters that Mez. Controllers/Dominators are unique in that their main defense (against all kinds of damage really) is their ability to Mez others before they themselves are Mezzed.

Once a person accepts that basic concept and plays towards that strength they'll usualy find that Controllers/Dominators are usually just about the EASIEST ATs to solo with especially by the time they are level 45+. It's probably been years since my main Fire/Rad was chain-Mezzed while soloing - I honestly can't remember the last time it even happened.

Yes there is a precedent. But the real question is whether there's a need in this case.

The top end epic badges were finally reduced because virtually everyone came to agree the original requirements were ridiculously too high. For example there were serious mathematical estimates behind the idea that it would've taken the average player over 10 YEARS of continuous daily effort to earn the original Empath via "natural play". That was simply idiotic.

On the other hand I think you'd be hard pressed to make that same argument for Day Jobs, especially now that almost everyone who cares about them for their main badging characters very likely has them done already. Yes waiting 21 days (a value that was already a reduction for what it originally was in the beta) for a Day Job badge could be considered "annoying" to some people, but it's no where near as problematic as the epic badges were. Trying to compare the difficulty in getting these two sets of badges is like trying to compare night and day.

I'm not going to sit here and assume the Day Job badges will never change at this point.
But let's just say if they ever do get reduced I'm going to be incredibly surprised.

Only since 2008? Only since I12? Heck I've seen people suggesting getting more costume slots since 2004.

One of the very few things that "other superhero MMO which launched in August 2009" did that I've been dying to see copied here was the ability to purchase costume slots for characters. I'll continue to hope that the Devs of this game finally decide it was a good idea and do something like it here.

It might prove to be "better than nothing" as far as promoting Wonder Woman. But I suspect it's also a symptom of precisely why we don't currently have a Wonder Woman TV show, Wonder Woman movie, and/or no Wonder Woman cartoon. People in the industry basically don't know how to "sell" Wonder Woman as a modern character in 2011. As Arcanaville mentioned she has always embodied a complex mixture of concepts and I seriously don't think Hollywood producer types really have any idea what makes her tick as a character. Since she's hard to "figure out" she gets passed over for easier productions.

Sadly I suspect Wonder Woman will continue to remain in limbo TV/movie wise.
And as you say it's hard to say if this makeup thing will actually prove to be good or bad for that. *shrugs*

On one hand I don't see anything strictly wrong with the idea of a new line of Wonder Woman makeup for pre-teens. In a free market world people are pretty much free to try to make money anyway they can. But on the other hand I can see how this move was, at best, fairly questionable from a "promoting the right public image" for Wonder Woman into the future.

To me the idea of peddling Wonder Woman makeup could be taken as being as misguided as the NRA trying to convince PETA that hunting is harmless by promoting a line of rifles for pre-teens to go out to shoot their favorite bunnies and squirrels. It just seems like the people behind this makeup promotion could have come up with something, anything, to sell based on Wonder Woman that would have been much less of a political "hot-button" issue than makeup. I don't know what that would have been offhand, but surely something better could have been devised.

I guess there's some "humor" in this situation from a social commentary point of view, but sadly this kind of thing just tends to keep us from getting -any- new Wonder Woman TV show/movie made.

Then again I was one of those "dedicated" people who actually earned badges like Empath, Leader and Immortal -before- they were reduced. Ultimately I agree that those badges were reduced because for the most part they were ridiculously too high, but let's just say your point is semi-wasted on me.

Besides I don't think the Devs have ever told us they would never change ANY badge. I think if they are ever finally convinced of a need to change one they will. My point was that for most people a reduction for the Day Job badges would have made much more sense 18+ months ago. Unlike the silly too-high epics which very few people were able to get there's really no difficulty for the vast majority of players to be done (or almost done) with Day Jobs right now. There's no serious comparison between the two. My guess is that people who are currently done with Day Jobs probably couldn't care less if the Devs changed them at this point or not. *shrugs*

For you, at least.

These level shifts would effectively be "permanent" if you wanted to keep yourself slotted with Rare or Very Rare Alphas. Obviously anyone could unslot them, but then you wouldn't be under the possible level shift nerfage either. Who in their right mind would bother creating a Very Rare Alpha and willingly NOT want to use it, unless of course it had a stupid disadvantage like the one that's being suggested here? Are you ever going to want to willingly shift down to say a Common Alpha once you have a Very Rare crafted? I didn't think so...

We are going to be end-game GODS once we have high level Alphas slotted. The Incarnate system is going to effectively "break" the balance of the game whether the Devs want it to or not. As a reward for all of our hard work creating these gods why would we not be able to roll over these critters very easily AND get good rewards for it at the same time?

There are people out there who like to set their mission difficulty settings up as high as possible to maximize their rewards. If something like incarnate slots gave us permanent level shifts which effectively gave us permanent reward "nerfs" as you're implying I'll bet there'll be people out there who'll try to AVOID any future content that would impose permanent level shifts on them.

I just can't see the incarnate system institutionalizing reward nerfage. What's the point of getting one of my 50s up to being a tip-top uber incarnate when it'll only be able to earn like +0 level rewards? I'd be better off (under that system) keeping my 50s as non-incarnates, or at the very least non level shifted.

I think in the future we'll probably see some ultra high-end incarnate only content that'll have critters higher than level 54 to challenge our god-like fully loaded incarnates. But I doubt we'll ever see those kinds of boosted enemies in any currently existing content, even for the current "Master" level TF/SFs.

You have to remember there will always be level 50 characters in this game who are either not incarnates yet or (for whatever reason) have chosen not to become incarnates. There will always be a need for "standard" level 54 AVs because, believe it or not, not everyone can easily do the Master TF/SFs and many people still find them more than enough of a challenge for them.

I suppose this will mean that eventually top-end incarnates will be able to do the current Master level TF/SFs fairly easily. Such is life.

It may be easy enough to declare/label things like this any way you want. But there's really no guarantee what you or I would consider trivial, cool, quantitative, qualitative, controversial, etc. will match up to the way the Devs would describe these things. And since they are the ones who arbitrate what becomes Vet Awards we as players don't really get much of a vote in the matter. *shrugs*

You seem to be trying to claim males can't write decent stories that would either appeal to women or have well-written female lead characters. You're making a sweeping generalization and trying to imply it's a factual certainty.

Obviously a male writer (like Joss Whedon for instance) has more personal life experience empathy with the male characters he writes about. But that doesn't automatically mean that he as a male can't write stories about/for women as well (or even better) than any given female writer could.

To suggest an author can only produce their best work when writing about characters of his/her own sex is actually another form of sexism. Good going there.

On the other hand it might be realistic for a villain to have "forced labor" from any faction. There should not be any game limitations to something like this. If you want to be a hero who'd only have "heroic" gladiators working for you then only pick those gladiators. I'd rather not have the game limit my choice on something like this for a purely arbitrary reason.

That would not surprise me. The Devs want us to earn "real" Prestige for our SGs, not virtual versions of it.

I think the fact that those of us who actually cared about collecting all the Day Job badges are now finally finishing them off points strongly to the conclusion that it'd be semi-pointless for the Devs to change how Day Job badges are awarded at this point. Why would it matter if the Devs changed the Day Job requirement from 21 days to say 14 days when perhaps 98% of the people who would care about that already have all the Day Job badges?

If the Devs were ever going to tinker around with this they would have done it like 18 months ago.
Doing anything about it now would be a waste of Dev effort.