Lothic

This is a very important point. The problem with ED wasn't that it happened at all but that it happened -after- the game had been around for a few years. Had the Devs worked this into the system from Day One no one would have ever known the difference in the first place.

ED was a necessary evil which allowed the game to introduce IO sets (and later the Incarnate system) in a balanced way.
Without ED these future additions would have never been possible.

I'm just about as far from being a super "twitchy" hand/eye coordinated game player as you can get. I'll admit that the ski slopes did frustrate me for a good number of hours, especially when I kept missing the Speeder badge by a few seconds. But I kept trying it and eventually figured out the importance of the inertia control powers. Since then I've completed all the ski badges on many different characters over the years.

Sure it was a challenge, but comparing the ski slopes to the level of angst brought on by ED is really pushing it. *shrugs*

I don't have any problem with a movie simply being about kick-*** sword fights, explosions, and gratuitous nudity as long all those things are done well. Somehow this new Conan movie managed to become a forgettably mediocre version of all those things.

Since I can make my female PCs talk and use emotes I guess the real mystery is why the Devs allowed us to make female characters in the first place.

I basically didn't understand the basis of that criticism either. I never had any "unanswered questions" about the origin story in the original film. If anything I thought the origin story presented in the new movie was simplistic and forgettable, much like the rest of it was.

I probably wouldn't let this one issue alone bring you to that decision. But I guess I could see how this could be a "final straw" for someone who's all but decided to quit their VIP status regardless. What I said above actually applies to every MMO, not just CoH. *shrugs*

Yes I'm well aware you can start a new character with the Mastermind AT as a hero now.

But for years when most people ever mentioned wanting "Hero Masterminds" the suggestion usually involved allowing players to create a new kind of blueside Mastermind with "heroic" styled powersets like Justin Credible was talking about.

Why is the kind of thing not obvious?
The Snowbeast model has been in the game for years. There's nothing new about it.
The German Shepherd involved an entirely new body model. You're paying for the development costs of a brand new feature for the game.
*shrugs*

Cubert J. Farnsworth: Your explanations are pure weapons grade balognium. It's all impossible.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Nothing is impossible. Not if you can imagine it. That's what being is a scientist is all about.
Cubert J. Farnsworth: No, that's what being a magical elf is all about.

Welcome to the game...

Just as an FYI the topics of "Customizable Mastermind Henchmen" and "Hero Masterminds" have popped up here literally hundreds of times since October 2005 (when City of Villains launched). Feel free to add "fuel" to those fires but try to keep some perspective on them as well. At the very least don't hold your breath for these kinds of things to happen anytime soon.

I think the point MrCaptainMan was making is that while the LAM was a hard trial to finish when it first came out it can now be pretty easily completed by fully outfitted 50+3 Incarnates without worrying about the portals. I've been on a few LAMs in the last few months that didn't take more than a couple of minutes to pound Marauder into the ground regardless of the portals. *shrugs*

There's an alternative to having a Kin cast IR on you, but it's an admittedly less than ideal one. The Low-G Pack that you can buy from Siren's Call gives you a temp power which only lasts 30 minutes of real-time but it does effectively give you the same kind of benefit that IR does. I've used it in the past for the ski slopes but that was long before we had more direct options like Ninja Run.

Good luck regardless.

I'd agree with the premise that this season is being used to setup of the backstory of the show and that a second season will be the "real show" later on if that was actually happening. But apart from getting this nebulous idea that the portal might be made to go both ways there's really nothing being established in this season of shows that I ultimately care about.

I think it would have been really awesome if they had established some actual characters set in 2149 and developed that side of the story in parallel with Terra Nova. Except for a few brief glimpses in the pilot episode we really know practically nothing about 2149 or why anything related to it should matter. The show has dropped hints that there are some "big bad evil" people back in 2149 which not only threaten Terra Nova but drive the whole Sixer opposition against it. But who are "they" and why are they important? I simply have no reason to care whether Terra Nova succeeds or not because I have no real understanding of the forces standing against it.

I guess what I'm saying is that using the entire first season to "setup" a show is fine as long as they give us enough confidence that it's all leading up to something. Shows like Babylon 5 managed to pull that off - I'm just not getting that same reassurance here. *shrugs*

You don't have to do anything tricky like shortcutting the waypoints. In fact with the way the course is designed I'll bet there's really no way to shortcut any of the waypoints without negatively ADDING time to your run.

Again it doesn't really matter how fast you can go using any speed-oriented powers on the ski slopes. As long as you don't bump into walls and you nail all of the jumps the gravity effect of the ice itself will move you as fast as you need to go all by itself. This is why people like Placta have been able to finish the course faster by concentrating on control more than pure speed.

I realize everyone assumes using speed-oriented powers will let you finish this course faster but I assure you it's inertial control, not speed, which is the primary thing you need to boost here.

I imagine the key there would be if Afterburner gives you enough inertial control to counteract the relatively "sloppy" nature of the basic Fly power. My guess is that using Afterburner would be better than nothing, but it probably wouldn't be the optimal power to use for overall speed/control.

Yeah I haven't really tried the slopes since they introduced the Ninja/Beast run powers. Those powers probably provide a good combination of speed and inertial control all by themselves for some people to manage the gold. I suspect it's probably still easier to do it with Inertial Reduction involved but at least the Ninja/Beast run powers give us more tools to work with.

Exactly. Movement control is far more important for the ski slopes than powers that give you raw speed. I've been able to get all the ski badges with plenty of time to spare just by using Inertial Reduction and Sprint.

Here's why that's the case: As you start to move down the slopes the gravity effect will easily give you all the "speed" you need to make it down fast enough. With Movement Control powers it becomes very simple to control yourself so that you can maximize the gravity effect without bumping against the walls or missing the jumps.

Good Luck.

Wow that kind of sucks. I could easily see that as something that never really came up during beta testing. Thanks for the heads-up, but I wouldn't expect that to ever be something that'll ever be "fixed".

Fry: So, there’s an infinite number of parallel universes?
Professor: No, just the two.
Fry: Oh, well, I’m sure that’s enough.

Well like I implied yesterday Commander Taylor is definitely the most well developed and interesting character of Terra Nova. The problem is that I don't think he's strong enough to carry the dead weight of the entire rest of the show.

I'll just put it this way:

I liked Captain Sisko more than Commander Taylor.
I liked Odo more than Jim Shannon.
I liked Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax more than Dr. Elisabeth Shannon.
I liked Jake Sisko more than Josh Shannon.
I liked Doctor Bashir more than Dr. Malcolm Wallace.
I liked Major Kira more than Lt. Alicia Washington.
I liked Garak more than Mira.
I liked Quark more than Boylan.

And so on...

Many purples tend be in the 200-400 million range. Of course some of the less desirable ones can go for as little as 5-10 million and I've seen others go for well over 500 million.

As Justaris just said the IOs that tend to be the most valuable (as in more than 2 billion) are the super rare PvP IOs.

I suppose. But using your logic the "counter" could have just as easily gone to 99 billion or 9999 billion too. Just something to ponder I guess.