Lothic

Playing in a game run by Dame Judi Dench would be surreal to be sure. But I think my vote for "what famous person would I like to have as a DM for a D&D campaign" would have to go to Stephen Colbert. He's dropped so many gaming references on his show over the years that I would be shocked to learn that he's never actually run a game before. Besides we already know how well he can "play in character" based on how well his show does in the first place.

Sylph Knight was definitely involved with the infamous "7 Drop Ships destroyed in 9 minutes" raid that happened during the Beta testing phase that introduced Drop Ships to the game. Based on exploiting the weakness that allowed that to happen (which involved Slowing the ships to a standstill so that everyone could more easily dog-pile them) the Devs buffed the ships up to make them effectively "unslowable" by the time the Issue with those ships went live.

It's true that Drop Ships are still killable despite how much harder it is to do now - I've even been involved with a few live server kills on Virtue back when it was a "fun" thing to do. As a badger I certainly would have no problems if they ever introduced a defeat badge for them. But for what it's worth I actually don't have any problem that there is -not- a badge for them and accept Positron's judgement on the matter.

Let the games begin...

Even the "Red Shirts" in Star Trek got a few minutes of screen time before they were shot down in some horrible way.

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Seriously no big deal. I just wanted to make it clear I'm not basing anything I say here on direct "insider" knowledge. The only thing I really have going for me here is that I've played the game fairly regularly for 8 years now and I've got a good idea on how and why the Devs do what they do based on that experience.

I know nothing about this for certain but based on what I've seen Penelope Yin do they might come up with a modified version of the Dominator "Psionic Assualt" set with more melee powers to make it more Scrapper/Brute/Stalker oriented.

I'm flattered that you'd think I might have some "insider info" on Psychic Melee but I honestly don't. I'm just drawing a reasonable conclusion from the facts at hand.

We see that the latest version of Penelope Yin is in fact using some kind of "unique psychic powerset" that does involve some melee elements (even down to "psychic claw" effects). We also know that the Devs have in the past "foreshadowed" certain upcoming features in the latest additions to the game (like the Tsoo in DA using staves).

When you piece it together it points to the possibility that they are using the new Penelope Yin as a sort of "in-game beta test" of a new Psychic Melee powerset.

That's probably the main reason why it hasn't happened yet. Either the Devs are going to somehow nerf the MM version of Kinetics or they've decided they no longer care how overpowered it might be. *shrugs*

As I implied earlier pay closer attention to the latest version of Penelope Yin.

For what it's worth an Issue 23 build (version number prefixed with a "2300") has been on the Beta server since last Friday and public access to that server has been shut off since then. I'd say that even if the Beta server is reopened today for VIP open beta that it's effectively been in a "closed beta" for at least a week now.

Apart from Star Trek is there nothing Futurama can't teach us?

I'd argue that changing badge names to be unique *JUST* because badge trackers can't tell the difference between the two is a good enough reason for me all by itself. Of course I might be a little biased about that as well but it is what it is.

Actually it was a problem from the point of view of being able to verify these unique badges on the third party badge tracking websites. It's relatively easy for a badge collector to have both of those badges and there's really no way for automated verification software to tell the difference between two identically named badges regardless of red/blue status.

This game has now made this mistake of "reusing" previous badge names for newer badges about 10 different times over the years of this game and each time it drives people who want to verify badges crazy. This is why in every case the Devs of this game have eventually corrected these problems. Case in point the newer Gate Crasher has been renamed Spinebreaker in the latest Issue patch.

All things considered there really is no good reason for any new badge to reuse the exact name of any old badge regardless of the red/blue dual names. It's a sloppy mistake that sadly our Devs seem to be unable to avoid.

Sadly the situation with Gate Crasher needing to be renamed to Spinebreaker is a far, far different issue than the problem plaguing the Anniversary Vet badges. It's been six months since CoH:Freedom left those yearly badges broken and there's really no sign that they'll be fixed anytime soon. Hopefully it'll happen ASAP but I'm not holding my breath for it.

Exactly.

Obviously given the technology we have today in 2012 it's easier to create purpose-built robotic tanks or airplanes. But clearly those kinds of things have always been considered baby steps towards the ultimate goal of having humanoid robots that could do all sorts of generalized tasks like piloting -any- kind of tank or airplane the same way a human can.

Besides once we manage to download our brains into machines it might be nice to be downloaded into a tank or airplane on occasion but eventually we'll probably want to spend time in robotic humanoid-shaped machines as well. This core research needs to happen regardless.

Yep I actually thought about that TNG episode when I first heard about these Google glasses too. Obviously the people at Google either never saw the episode or don't care about turning us all into Augmented Reality zombies.

What I found interesting about the whole John Carter movie "failure" was the idea that when you look back over the entire genre of Sci-Fi you see that Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series served as a main inspiration for many of the most famous Sci-Fi authors the world has ever known. Put in those terms it almost doesn't seem -possible- that a movie like this could have failed.

Unfortunately I think this John Carter movie was a victim of bad timing as much as anything else. For people who don't know of the original Barsoom books (and that's probably a lot of people these days) the release of this movie in 2012 probably led the audiences to think that this movie was trying to "copy" previous epics like Star Wars or Avatar when if anything those movies had borrowed from Burroughs' books decades before. The hundred-year-old "source" story ended up looking like the cheesy Disney rip-off in this situation.

It probably didn't help that the John Carter movie itself just seemed a little hollow/shallow somehow. Too much of the story seemed glossed over or rushed without generating any depth or empathy for the characters. Basically I sat through the movie not really caring what was going to happen next almost like what happened to me when I watched Sucker Punch. I enjoyed the pretty visuals, but ultimately I came out of it without a sense that I had just seen anything original or thought-provoking.

An Elric-based comedy would be a strange mix of surreal, horrifying and utter wrongness on dozens of levels.

I assume you're talking about "hand-held" versions of these weapons. There've been a good number of artillery-sized rail guns tested but plasma weapons of any type are barely off the drawing board at this point. Not sure if I'd technically prefer one over the other beyond the simple idea that I'd like to try out whichever one becomes a practical reality first.

One would think that things like this would be an obvious "no-brainer" for them to sell in the Paragon Market. Given how long the base-builders have gone without any significant base item updates I'd bet Paragon Studios could offer new base decoration packs for ridiculously high prices and still get a bunch of people to buy them.

Yes it's true that software technology in general improves all the time. The thing you have to remember though is that this game is "locked in" to using certain graphics and animation engines that are pushing being 10+ years old now (this game launched in April 2004 but was in development at least a couple of years before that).

Despite the wonderful efforts our Devs have done to push the boundaries of this game there will always be limitations to what can be realistically added that could only ever be "fixed" by totally re-writing the game from scratch. That's not to imply this game was designed badly from the start - it's just that it's starting to show its inevitable age.

Bottomline we can't really expect to see major leaps in animation for this game even if that kind of thing is "easy" to do now in other contexts.