Lothic

It's doubly-silly considering that the word is being used here as the name of an established movie character. I realize that it's probably not the most "politically correct" name out there, but its use in this thread (and the related movie quote) is ONLY as a character name. Even the quote it's used in makes no direct derogatory slur against the character in question. It's technically as neutral as saying "John only pawn in game of life". Ironically what makes that quote funny is that it shows the character is very insightful and philosophical, qualities which are not usually associated with the negative use of that word.

This is why context is so important. Unfortunately as we all know word checkers aren't quite smart enough yet to know the difference. Maybe someday...

The patch back on September 28th removed the ability to use Warburg Nukes during the Cathedral of Pain Trial. The assumed reason the Devs imposed that nerf was that the nukes were making the trial too easy to accomplish.

Since the nukes are now being used to defeat the Director 11 AV quickly enough to allow people to earn the relatively hard Midnight Dodger What Dodges at Midnight badge it was RUMORED that the Devs might also decide to disallow them for the Tin Mage TF (at least during that mission at any rate). That's the only rumor related to nukes and the Incarnate TFs I'm aware of.

Clearly Abrams could've used whatever number of Vulcan survivors he and his writers wanted to. As has been pointed out Trek canon has never been quite as consistent as it could (should?) have been.

I'm not going to offer an exact survivor count they "should have used" because the "facts" in this case are pretty vague and speculative. But I will strongly suggest that given everything that is generally known about the background of Star Trek and the assumptions made about Vulcans and interstellar travel that the idea there would ONLY be around 10,000 off-world Vulcan survivors is a grossly low number for all sorts of reasons. Should that number have been more reasonably 250 thousand, a million, tens of millions? Who knows. But only 10,000? No, that just seems way too low all things considered.

It's quite likely Abrams picked the nearly improbable low number he used more for the dramatic effect to drive home the tragedy of Vulcan's destruction. Let's face it saying that there's only 10,000 left sounds a lot more dire than using a more "realistic" value like 5 million. Basically (once again for Abrams and crew) logic and rationality gave way to serving the silly meanderings of his ill-informed imagination.

Who knew that his name was a bad word? I guess I've been living a sheltered life...

If this game ever needs to be reorganized under a F2P model in order to save it then something fundamentally "bad" would have had to have happened to prompt that change. It's certainly possible that, under those circumstances, a F2P scheme could keep this game afloat for quite a while afterwards. But I sincerely doubt it would ever be considered a "boost". At best it would be a desperate stop-gap tourniquet to keep this game from financially bleeding to death.

The problem with using words like "quantitative" and "qualitative" when it comes to Vet Awards is those things are totally subjective depending on your point of view. Your ideas of "trivial" and "cool" are surely different than someone else's.

The Devs are completely free to give us anything they want for Vet Awards. But at this point they're effectively damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they give us something new that's incredibly cool and desired then people who don't have 81+ months ranked up will whine and cry foul. On the other hand if the Devs continue to give us semi-useless Vet Awards (like a few Merits or patrol XP which we can also get via non-Vet methods) then they'll risk pissing off the old timers who are expecting more out of it.

A temp tailor access power would be a valid compromise for a new Vet Award because it'd be a pure fluff non-combat oriented power. It'd be something that would not affect combat at all and would probably only be used by a fraction of the playerbase regardless. But clearly that's just my opinion because as I've said before the Devs will never be able to please everyone with ANY new Vet Award at this point. I totally realize that anyone without 81+ months could potentially be upset by this. As I implied the Devs painted themselves into a corner over these kinds of things - it might have really been better (as was rumored years ago) for Vet Awards to have stopped at 60 months after all. *shrugs*

I think it would've been reasonable to have at least "suspected" that this event would be extended because there've been several extensions in the past. On the other hand I never would've believed they would have extended this one for a FULL MONTH longer. At most I might have figured on maybe an extra week or two at most.

I guess there's a lesson to be learned from this, I'm just not sure what it could be at this point.

MMOs tend to become F2P only at the point when they're either too old or too "unappealing" to support a mandatory paying player base.

This game MIGHT (and that's a big MIGHT) become F2P at some point, but I suspect that not only is that point still a few years away but when/if it does happen here that will likely be the beginning of the end of this game being a live game.

Basically it would not be a "good sign" for the future of this game under any circumstances.

Yeah I'd agree completely: calling out that cut-n-paste error was pretty nitpicky.

If I was writing a post about exact build calculations and/or ED capping then I'd probably worry about a number like that being right or wrong. But in the context of this thread exact numbers hardly matter. It's not like I'm going to be changing my builds based on your "correction" at any rate.

As a historical FYI there was a time way, way back during the first year or two of the game when you could get many (like 5 or 10) HOs during EVERY Hami raid. Of course what you did to get multiple HOs per run would necessarily deprive other people from getting ANY HOs during the same raid. Needless to say that implementation was grossly unfair and quickly changed to the "one guaranteed HO per player" scheme we have today. Those were the days.

It's true that set IOs have mostly replaced the need for HOs but there are a few powers where HOs work very well for. For example Membrane Exposures (33% Rechg/20% ToHit) work pretty well in Build Up and Aim type powers. Enzyme Exposures (33% END Redux/20% DEF Debuff/20% ToHit Debuff) work perfectly in Radiation Infection. And since most people usually only leave one slot for Swift sticking a Microfilament Exposure (33% Fly, Run and or Jump) there works pretty well if you want to boost both running and flying speeds.

Basically HOs only have a few niche uses, but those uses are worth exploring.

Yeah there have been a few event extensions in the past. Not really enough to rely on it happening all the time, but at least enough times to reasonably suspect it from now on.

I don't have a problem with an extension for this particular event, but I do think it's a tad much for it to be extended an entire month. A couple of weeks at most would have been more than enough. I'd rather these events remain semi-special by having them kept reasonably short. In the real world there are already places which start selling Christmas stuff as early as September and that kind of thing is just silly. I'd prefer not to see a similar "holiday season creep" happen in this game as well.

Obviously "comic book magic" makes that work. Physics would not have to be accounted for.

I couldn't care less about Spidey making a web parachute that let him float DOWN to the ground. That has nothing to do with a web-based object that would let somebody fly UP from the ground.

But even if you let "comic book magic" allow a kite-like object to lift someone UP off the ground for that to be imagined as the reasonable "workaround" for an anchorless swingline that EVERYONE in this game would use as a generic travel power is just plain stupid. Sorry, but it really is just very silly.

The idea of explaining away realistic physics problems by falling back on the virtual crutch of "it's a comic book game so anything should be possible" is simply a lazy and insufficient way to try to justify this. I'm just glad the Devs of this game appear to also realize how dumb this is (probably by seeing how bad it looks in that "other" game) and have made the wise decision to not even try to bother with it.

I understand the problem with making something that many people have asked for being gated behind a high numbered month Vet Award. But if you take a step back you could probably make that argument about anything the Devs chose to make as a new Vet Award at this point. Really what you're ultimately implying here is that NOTHING is going to be truly acceptable as a new Vet Award because there would always be some portion of the player base who would declare it to be "unfair".

Ultimately a tailor temp power as a new Vet Award would upset some people, but in the grand scheme of things it'd be a much more reasonable Vet Award than many other more "unfair" ideas. Ironically if they made a tailor temp power unlockable by anyone (like for instance the way the AE tablet or portable workbench is) you'd probably upset a different subset of people who hate all "unlockable" things in this game. The Devs are never going to be able to please everyone regardless.

There have been a few times when an event was suppose to end on a Sunday/Monday but actually lingered on until the weekly maintenance but I wouldn't really assume anything at this point unless it gets officially announced. I'd consider any "bonus" time to end at anytime without any guarantees.

Did a Dev mention this or has someone already gone past 999 making the assumption that the limit is 9999 fairly reasonable?

While we don't know with 100% certainty we'll need huge stockpiles of shards in order to craft the Rare and Very Rare Alpha slots I think given how the system is structured it seems relatively safe to assume that we'll need quite a few to get those top slots. Besides think of it this way: If there wasn't a viable need to stockpile that many of them the Devs probably would have limited us to only 99 shards.

I'm personally not going to go crazy farming as many shards as I possibly can. On the other hand I really don't think it'll end up being a waste to end up with a few hundred of them ready to go before Issue 20 arrives.

Please for the love of all things reasonable: The physics involved to let a man-sized human to do what you're suggesting would probably require "web parachutes" to be like 100s of square meters wide, which would make -them- weigh even more. This doesn't even mention the gusts of wind involved for the masses we're talk about.

Just because you can cite a fringe real world example doesn't mean it has any relevance here. I'm beginning to wonder when this thread is going to start debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...

I'm suggesting a real life engineering choice. Nothing artificial about it. I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years so I speak with some experience in this area.

Our Devs have already done an admirable job updating this game's graphics with things like Ultra mode, but at best they are just managing to wring every last once of capability out of a graphics system that's already around 10 years old now. Remember not only has the game itself been live for nearly 7 years, but you have to account for the the fact that its based on work that was started several years before that.

Simply put this game will not be around forever, at least in its present form. Eventually it will reach a point where the only serious way it could "compete" with newer games graphically is for it to be essentially redesigned from scratch. The core system will simply become far more difficult to modify/maintain than it would be to just start over. This is why we got an expansion like Going Rogue. It's a compromise between zones with improved visual design and more overall content to play with.

As time goes on I would not expect to get sweeping fundamental graphics changes even if the Devs wanted to give them to us. Basically it'd be like trying to update a Model T Ford to make it equivalent to a 2011 model car built today. Sure you could waste a lot of time and money to mount a fancy custom engine in it and give it a nice modern paint job, but at the end of the day it's still going to be heavily modified 100 year old car. No game company is going to spend the time and money making a hyper-awesome customized Model T Ford when it'll eventually be much cheaper/easier to deal with a brand new car. Like a CoH2 for instance...

I wouldn't worry about the beer can shaped beer cans these robots can fire.
I'd worry about the beer can shaped GRENADES these things will be able to toss around.

Once again discussion of a swingline travel power in this game is essentially academic because the chances they'd be able to implement it (in any form) in this mature game is very remote.

But even if by some miracle they did add it to this game I would only want it to work by anchoring to real objects, not thin air. People who would claim that I'm not using my "imagination" hard enough to accept swinglines attached to nothingness need to step back, take a deep breath, and realize just how unreasonable that position is. Sure comic book worlds bend many real world physics rules, but they don't bend/break the rules for everything and this would be one of those things. If you can cite me an example of Spider-Man swinging across a mid-west cornfield or an ocean maybe I'd reconsider.