Lothic

The trick is that they don't have to give us much to still qualify for "a new thing every week". Case in point we got the new Fire Fighter helmets last week. They probably have several dozen "single costume item" like things they can string us along with for a very long time.

The Wolf Pet might be a "Halloween trial only" reward but I'll bet a lot of people will be upset with that if that's the case. The Bat aura and Murder of Crows CCE are both arguably Halloween oriented but I can see where the Wolf Pet might be considered far more generic and non-holiday oriented than that. If the Wolf Pet is locked behind the Halloween Event there's going to be a lot of grumbling about that.

On one hand I'm glad D&D didn't come to an end when TSR died. On the other hand I haven't played a newer version of the game since TSR died. We gave up at 3rd Edition the way you stopped at 4th Edition. *shrugs*

That being said it's interesting they're actually pumping out new versions (and sub-versions) every few years. That's pretty much what we expected them to do with it to maximize profits. I figure the lines between PnP and MMO will keep blurring until D&D basically becomes like a specialized version of Second Life. Not sure if that's completely good or bad, but it does seem to be its destiny.

Sure it might be a bit cliche for there to be a couple of wife-beater/racists in a random group from Georgia like this but it's hardly "every white guy on the show" and it's hardly a major part of the show regardless. If that's all you got from the first season of the show then I think you focused on something that wasn't really there.

Besides as a spoiler alert.....




The main "racist" and "wife beater" are both gone before the end of the first season finishes anyway. *shrugs*

Yeah Shane getting ready to make a bunch of noise shooting the deer was a bit dumb, but maybe there's a reason why the zombies weren't being attracted by the church bell. I think this episode was starting to show us that the zombies aren't 100% mindless. The whole thing with the "herd" of zombies makes me think they may have at least a tiny bit of animal-like instinct, kind of like a horde of locusts. Even though the bell was loud maybe they know enough to realize that wasn't a sound worth paying attention to. Basically they might be able to tell the difference between "food noise" and "non-food noise".

I figure most people watching this show wouldn't know they were gutting the zombie wrong.

And Lori's "this is a graveyard" statement was a bit melodramatic. But I saw it as a vague attempt to remind everyone to try to hang onto a bit of respect for the dead like "civilized" people would. She didn't really object once they did start scavenging the cars - she just wanted to make sure the people didn't get carried away with it.

Yes I agree it does sound counterintuitive for a company in the business of making a profit. But sometimes the people who run games like this have certain policies or paradigms that they'd rather maintain regardless of the financial ramifications. For example could you imagine how much money they'd make if they sold Influence or permanent level boosts...

I agree the Paragon Market has changed things. But one could argue that they are now making so much extra money from other offerings that they may have LESS motivation to sell character-based event items as account-wide unlocks. My point is if they don't want to sell X, Y or Z for whatever reason (good or bad) they can now choose to not to sell it because they don't need the money from it. *shrugs*

Eh, well things posted like this on the Intertubes are always suspect to me.

I figure about the only solid data point we have to go on is the relative box office success of the last Star Trek movie. I'm not suggesting that Abrams will (or should) have anything to do with the next Star Trek TV series but I'm just making the point that the Network Suits might see that success as an indicator that it's time to bring Star Trek back to TV.

Basically as always I'll believe it when I see it...

I simply suspect that if the locked costume items like the Roman armor are on the "scheduled list of things to put on the Market for sale" that they would be pretty much at the bottom of that list. *shrugs*

Then one could easily ask if they allowed for those things to be purchasable then why did they not also include things like the Roman Armor? Apparently to them there IS a difference in some cases.

They are similar in that they are both reasons why people can't make ANY costume they want at level 1. If you have to come up with a workable costume idea that the game supports because the game won't let you have an astronaut helmet how is that any different than having to come up with a workable costume idea that the game supports because your character doesn't have access to the Roman armor? The fact that the Roman armor IS in the game but just happens to be unlockable is not a good enough reason to justify making it available without having to be unlocked.

Actually the question of "Why is this such a problem?" is the question I think I should be asking you in this case. Even though our characters do not have infinite costume choices they do already have many, many to choose from - billions of choices in fact if you accounted for all the combos. The fact that a few of those choices out of all the available items are locked by default does not prevent you from making a costume with a huge array of choices to choose from regardless.

Frankly this is the classic "making a mountain out of a molehill" situation here.

And I'll bet that 60% of the time it works every time too.

I've never actually been a regular watcher of Family Guy either. But I do know he's totally into Star Trek based at least on how much he geeked out to Shatner during the Comedy Central Roasts if nothing else.

Like I said before I think the franchise could do worse than to put MacFarlane in charge.

The problem with Caprica was that they tried to stretch a show that would have been a perfect 8-10 part miniseries into an ongoing episodic series. With no concept of a specific closed story with a definite beginning, middle and end it finally spun off into the weeds and was rightly cancelled for it. Somehow I think MacFarlane would have better sense than that on a Star Trek show.

The problem with arguing against costume items being legitimate unlockable rewards is the faulty assumption that you can currently (by default) create ANY kind of costume you want EXCEPT those that require the unlockable items. The reason it's a faulty premise is that we actually CAN'T create any type of costume we want in this game even WITH all the unlockables unlocked.

Try creating an astronaut with a space helmet. Can't do it regardless of unlockables.
Try creating a clown with big clown shoes. Can't do it regardless of unlockables.
Try creating a ballerina with a tutu. Can't do it regardless of unlockables.
And so on...

So because we already do not have infinite choice when it comes to costume concepts the fact that a tiny handful of items are locked from use by a brand new character is not a legitimate reason to get rid of the entire unlockable rewards concept or find ways to undermine it via Paragon Market purchases.

My brand new character already can't be an astronaut, clown or ballerina at level 1.
What does it matter that it also can't be a Roman solider at level 1 either?

You asked the question "Why should players be limited in how they look by some arbitrary unlock that is level gated?" The question I would ask is "Why should players -not- have to earn at least a couple special items that are only important for a couple of specific costume concepts?" If there were like hundreds of locked costume items I might have more sympathy for your position. But because there's only a small handful of them I have a hard time agreeing with you on this. *shrugs*

If he's smart about it he could probably not only get the lead job for the Star Trek show for himself but carry over many of those 300 people with him. I'm sure plenty of those people do generic enough jobs that would apply to both a live-action TV show and/or a cartoon.

Reveal is (was) the Vet power that let's you remove the Fog of War from the map.

Like I implied in my last post something like this might be nice if its like the fifth time you've wanted to unlock something. But being able to "buy your way" out of doing it at least once almost seems like cheating to me somehow.

The game offers these things as goals to work towards. I see absolutely no problem with being "forced" to complete those tasks at least once in order to be rewarded for my effort.

Ha loser! I have Spandex of +6 Shibbleflop on all my characters.

But seriously as a compromise I'd be fine with the idea of being able to buy things for secondary characters as long as you've had at least one character on the account that unlocked the item via playing the game the intended way. I understand that having to unlock things MULTIPLE times can be annoying but I still think you as a player should have to unlock the items in question at least once by playing the game for it.

People have been asking for this for many years now. The Devs have stuck by their guns as far as keeping these kinds of things character-based instead of account-based. Obviously it's irksome if you want to unlock all these things on dozens of characters and/or want things pre-unlocked on new characters after the event, but I'm not expecting this to change anytime soon. *shrugs*

Obviously Zwillinger's reply is not a definite confirmation either way, but it seems they are at least considering the idea...