Lothic

I'm not 100% certain but I think these permanent costumes from the Paragon Market are suppose to behave (good or bad) exactly like the Halloween event temporary costumes. If they behave differently then that's probably unintended.

You might not like that Paragon Studios probably considered how much these codes were going for on the third party market. But I can almost assure you that that factored into the $6 price point in this situation.

Then why bother to comment here about the situation one way or the other? Again I'm quite sure the fact that they wanted to capture some of the "third party demand" for these codes figured into their decisions here whether the price was "reasonable" or not.

I think you're missing the point about why Paragon Studios prices things like this. It's simple economics.

They are always going to push the limit with how much they price new things because they know a certain percentage of people will pay pretty much "any price" for certain items. After those people have mostly finished paying that X amount only then will they lower to price to catch the other people who would only buy it at a lower price.

I actually fully expect the price on these costume powers will be permanently lowered at some point. The trick is now long will it be before that happens. Will it be a week, six months or even longer? Everyone has to decide for themselves if they want something today or if they're willing to wait for it.

That's why I said you can't really claim Paragon Studios made a "mistake" with the $6 price point here. If anything they are being extremely clever about it.

Ultimately everyone ends up having to decide how much they want to pay for anything. If you think $6 is too much to pay for these things then don't buy them.

But at the same time you really don't have any grounds to imply that it was a "mistake" for Paragon Studios to set the prices for these things at $6 because it's already been well established that, whether you agree with it or not, there are in fact people willing to pay that much (and even much more in this case).

Bottomline you can't really fault Paragon Studios. They are a company in the business to make money. If enough people are willing to buy these things for $6 that's exactly what they'll charge for it, even if there are a number of people like you who think it's too much. *shrugs*

You can't get these particular costumes from the Halloween event.
These are a few of the ones you could only get during conventions.
I understand why some people might consider $6 for these former convention hand-out costumes to be too expensive. But considering that I've seen these codes going for as much as $50 on eBay I'd think being able to pay only $6 directly to Paragon Studios is a much better alternative. *shrugs*

How long ago was that? I only ask because I agree there was a time when Dr. Qs did take a lot of time because of the long travel and lack of super-charged IO builds. I figure with all the travel options and tricks we have now it'd be a lot less tedious. Couple that with a bunch of level 50s with Incarnate abilities and I figure a Dr. Q would take a lot less time on average today.

It's mostly in the Shard, but many of those Shard TFs have random missions all the way back in places like Atlas Park. I kind of think it was sort of a joke the Devs were playing back in the days when there were far fewer travel options than there are now.

Anyway the TF is full of missions that can be a good run for lots of XP/drops.
There's not too much of a "story" behind it, but it is what it is.

Dr. Q is now technically among the oldest (and therefore relatively easiest) TFs in the game. We were finishing it pretty easily long before we even had IOs let alone things like Incarnate abilities.

As the others implied the mix ATs/powersets on your team isn't really nearly as important as making sure you have plenty of travel and/or teleport capabilities. The actual missions are pretty simple - it's the traveling to get to them that really makes that TF challenging.

Yeah his outfit does look a bit CoT and/or WoW like. Oh well.

Well given that they recently released a pic where we see Superman with a scruffy beard as well I guess they're going with idea that Kryptonians can be "scruffy" in this movie. *shrugs*

OK, I've now rewatched the episode for myself.

First of all the Doctor, after laying Carl in the bed tells Rick to get a pillowcase and apply pressure to THE WOUND, singular. There was only ONE wound regardless of the number of fragments in question.

A few seconds later we see the Doctor apparently glancing at the SINGLE wound and saying (somehow magically) that not only did the bullet not "pass through the deer cleanly" but that he knows, for certain, there are SIX bullet fragments. How he knows that six distinct fragments passed through the same bullet wound is apparently a question we're not supposed to wonder about.

Then later we see they had put a bandage over the single wound and we see only one spot of blood, not six.

Then later we see the Doctor digging around in Carl's belly where there's only ONE obvious wound and manages to dig out one bullet fragment. At this point the Doctor dramatically says something like "one down, five to go" further stressing he knows for an absolute fact there are only 6 pieces in question.

Then later the Doctor mentions that he needs a respirator to go further because pulling the pieces out could kill Carl otherwise. Once again how on earth would he know HOW MANY other pieces there were if he wouldn't even dare to poke into him further to find out?

Basically the elements of this extended scene simply don't add up. Once again I'll make the point that the whole idea of mentioning SIX specific fragments was not only completely impossible to support given what the Doctor could see or do but I would submit that the writers of this show didn't even have to toss out ANY specific number of fragments and still retain the believable dramatic tension of the scene. In effect the idea that the Doctor was able to magically count 6 fragments deep inside the kid's gut made the scene "less than cool" for me. *shrugs*

I would simply suggest that you, like I did for the Doctor scene, rewatch the scene when Carl gets shot. I find it hard to believe you wouldn't accept that there's at least a -chance- that Otis could have seen the deer but not the boy in this scenario.

There were plenty of trees and bushes between Otis and the deer even accounting for the few square-foot "clearing" the deer and boy were supposedly standing in. Sure Otis might have been able to tell the deer was looking at something. But if we accept that Otis did not see the boy then there's no reason to think that the deer was looking at anything weird. As you've pointed out many times it's virtually impossible for Carl to have been able to stand so close to a wild deer. Otis, being a hunter with possiblity 20 years of experience just like you, would naturally fall back on the FALSE ASSUMPTION that there couldn't possibly be a boy standing right behind the deer so to Otis' mind it would have been perfectly safe to shoot at the deer. Thus the accident.

On this point I would ask whether you're purposely trying to be obtuse and arguing for the sake of arguing. I believe your real world hunting experience is clouding your ability to simply accept the silly situation for what it was. Yes Carl standing next to the buck was a stupid pretense to get them to the farm - but given the silly situation Carl getting accidentally shot was completely within the realm of believability.

I've never argued whether bullets can break up on impact or not. You don't have to be a hunter to know that. I've simply been arguing the points of WHEN the bullet broke up and HOW the heck the Doctor would know he's only dealing with 6 pieces. I seriously doubt the Doctor would, in the effort of "comforting" Rick, bother to tell him an exact number of something like that when he really doesn't know the number fragments he's dealing with. Doctors don't "comfort" using exact numbers unless they are pretty damn sure about those numbers.

It was always pretty clear to me that the shot came straight through the buck's chest. Even I the "non-hunter" know that's where you want to hit a deer to drop him. Therefore it was very clear that the full body of the buck was completely in-between Otis and Carl. Add to that a little underbrush (that would better obscure Carl's legs) and the fact that it looked like Otis was shooting at least a few degrees from above the deer up on a bit of a hillside add together for all the reasonable ingredients for Otis to realistically NOT see Carl standing there.

One more time I've already agreed that Carl being able to stand a few feet from a wild buck was completely unbelievable. I'm not even arguing that point. But given that we are to believe Carl was in fact just a few feet behind the buck makes it even more likely that its relatively big body obscured Carl from Otis.

We can reasonably assume that they will get around to offering all of the special convention costume codes eventually. Now that they are selling -any- of them why would there ever be a legitimate reason for holding the rest of them back at this point?

This.

I'm starting to find it a bit funny that there seems to be people out there who think that EVERYTHING the Paragon Market sells should not only appeal to ALL players all the time but that the items should be sold for prices that ALL players can agree are low enough. Real brick-n-mortar stores don't work that way - why should a virtual one?

I mean put it this way: How many real live stores do you walk into and expect that absolutely everything for sale in the store is something you want to buy AND is being sold there for an affordable price? That basically never happens to me.

Basically it's not a "failure" when the Paragon Market offers something you don't want to buy so people shouldn't whine about when it happens. Just accept it and wait for something else.

Earlier in the thread I talked about doubting the "Jenner Secret" was that Andrea was pregnant. But I must admit if the secret was that Lori was pregnant then that would put a whole different spin on the matter. Somehow I think if that was the secret Rick would have had it out with Lori by now. I don't think he could have held that back from her (and indirectly the audience) for this long. But I guess stranger things could happen.

I'm pretty much assuming the secret was more along the lines of "Everyone is infected" until I see otherwise.

Again, one more time, I find it incredibly silly that the Doc would assume, in the case of a bullet that he supposedly knows can break up upon impact, that 6 holes (if there were even 6 holes) equals exactly six pieces. My point, ALL ALONG, is that he doesn't really know how many pieces he's dealing with regardless of entry wounds. How can he possibly COUNT six total fragments when he didn't even want to dig deep enough into him without the ventilator?

I'm quibbling over the use of the word SIX in this scene. The doctor is basically guessing at that so why even use a NUMBER in the conversation to begin with?

Then you really should know better than to assume this could -not- have happened. You apparently should know that even better than I. *shrugs*

And who's to say he wasn't? That's my point - there are many, many different rationales you can use to easily explain how the scenario we saw could have happened.

I'm just going to have to assume you have not spent very much time out in the woods. At the very least our ideas about how obscured people can be regardless of clothing or lighting seems to be at an impasse...

Alright I guess I WILL have to rewatch this part of episode tonight.

Even if the doctor was counting 6 wounds (which I still do -not- think was the case) he still has absolutely no idea if the bullet broke up even MORE inside Carl. If there were 6 bits coming out of the deer there might be 20 bits of lead in Carl by the time it all stopped.

Bottomline the Doctor still has absolutely NO idea what's going on inside Carl without an X-ray or exploratory surgery. The idea the he kept stressing EXACTLY 6 pieces like it was an undeniable fact was, and continues to be, incredibly silly to me.

I thought that was the point I was trying to make here.

In all seriousness it's still very easy for me to envision a scenario where a boy standing behind a buck in the tricky lighting of the woods could have gone unnoticed by Otis. I just don't buy that Otis should -not- have been able to make that mistake. *shrugs*

So we have Otis saying it both did and didn't go "clean through" the deer. Which is it? And if he did actually say the phrase "but it did not go through clean" then you're just ASSUMING that meant the bullet broke up. That could just as easily mean it got deflected by a bone and came out an exit angle that differed from the entry angle.

Believe me if I'm having a hard enough time accepting that the doctor knew -exactly- how many pieces the bullet broke into I'm going to have even a harder time believing that Otis knew for sure that his bullet, the moment it hit the deer, broke apart or not. Face it - the idea that the doctor could know there were exactly 6 pieces of lead in the kid without an X-ray or more digging deep in the kid (which he specifically said he would not do unless Carl was sedated) is just silly from the get-go. The writers would have just done better to have the Doc say something like, "I think the bullet broke into several pieces" instead of trying to come up with an exact number of pieces he kept stating as a hard fact.

I think KAKTOS asked the question and people like Chad Gulzow-Man and terrible_deli answered it. I don't think anyone ever went to those conventions JUST FOR the costume codes, but there has been a steep third party market for these code on eBay and other places. I'd much rather pay $6 back to Paragon Studios than $20+ to a third party scalper. *shrugs*

Thank you for offering these costume powers to people who had no chance to go to these conventions. It's great you hand them out for free during those events, but selling them afterwards in the Paragon Market will be a great way to handle any future costume powers like this.

Well for starters I realize the idea of Carl being able to get that close to a deer in the wild is fairly impossible. But for the sake of the show I'll let that bit of "unrealism" go. Beyond that I know that the buck was a relatively large target, one that when looking at it from the right angle and distance could easily obscure a boy-sized object behind it.

One more time I totally get that the situation was fairly contrived for the sake of the story. But when just looking at the physics of the thing I could totally buy that a guy some distance away could focus on a deer and not see people shadowed by the trees behind it. Even my limited close-ranged Paintball experience helps me visualize that. *shrugs*

You people are going to have to make me rewatch the ep on my TiVo aren't you.

I'm almost positive the Doc said it was a "clean entry wound" into Carl because he was implying that was the "good news" about the wound but the "bad news" was that it broke up into exactly six pieces inside Carl. How he knows that exact number of fragments continues to be the mystery for me. About the only thing he said in reference to the deer was that it "slowed the bullet down which probably saved Carl's life".

I don't happen to know the exact statistics on how many people are accidentally shot while hunting, but I'm willing to bet it still happens at least a few times a year even in 2011.

I'll grant that the exact situation presented in this show of Carl standing directly behind the deer and getting hit that way was a bit far fetched. But ironically I can apply some personal experience to this based on my Paintball outings. There have been times where I've aimed at one person a long distance away and "accidentally" hit people behind them that I didn't even know was there because of the distance and cover involved.

Again I'll grant this was a one-in-a-million chance, but I can envision how it could have happened even to an experienced hunter which we must assume Otis is.

I suppose if there were 6 wounds on his belly I'd agree with this. But once again the Doc himself shot (no pun intended) that "explanation" down because he specifically said that the bullet went in and only then broke up INSIDE Carl.

It's funny people keep trying to defend this point here in this thread but I'm telling you the things the Doc said about it specifically made the whole situation unbelievably contrived. The only reason I brought this point up in the first place was that there was really no way justify the whole "exact six pieces" diagnosis based on what we heard and saw.

Sure it's a nitpick, but it's one the writers seemed to go out of their way to dig a hole for themselves. *shrugs*

He's becoming one of my favorites too. It's interesting to think there are people like him who are regarded as "outlaw misfits" in civilized society but as soon as you take away the civilized society they suddenly become the cool people you want and need.

Many people believe the Devs are going to start selling "Vanity Pets" (like this Wolf) in the Paragon Market.
This power is just lingering in the code awaiting the day when the Devs make it available to us.