Lothic

I'm not claiming any knowledge of future content but I think the main reason we got the new "temp power tray" feature was for ideas like this. We've already seen things like the Panther Stealth power that gives us extra power(s) when shifted into the Panther form. No reason they couldn't give us dragon or badger powers that worked in a similar way.

Yeah I'm not an extreme fan of Penny's new outfit, but don't think it's really worth anyone's effort to change it. There are far too many other things I'd rather have the Devs work on right now.

After thinking about it for a minute I wonder if Penny's new outfit was inspired by any artwork leftover from the Korean "City of Hero" game. It does sort of look more like the kind of outfit you'd see in an Asian inspired MMO. *shrugs*

Besides even if you can somehow dismiss -everything- Whedon has ever done as "failed vanity projects" it's hard to hand-wave away the fact that he's had multiple shows and movies made over the years by top line networks/studios. Love him or hate him how many other people can say that on their resumes? For a supposedly failed career he's produced far more in Hollywood and in comics than most people could ever dream of.

This is correct. I recall them doing this kind of thing before.

I get the feeling that the type of player who'd be interested in doing beta testing is not usually the same type of player who want/need to take advantage of 2XP weekends. It's either that or they figure they can reduce the overall load on the live servers during 2XP if they can "encourage" some portion of the playerbase to spend time on the beta server.

This is one of the better back-handed compliments I've ever seen. You're basically saying the only reason Whedon did a good job with the Avengers movie is that he was so well constrained and controlled by his venue that he had no ability to do anything beyond what a well trained chimp could have done from a writing and directorial point of view. Obviously the fact that he's been working in Hollywood and in comics for decades had no bearing on his ultimate ability to be trusted with this movie...

Actually what would be funny at this point is if Whedon made sure that absolutely NO ONE died in his upcoming movies and/or TV shows. For him that it would be an "amazing unexpected twist" people would never see coming.

Truth be told it actually was sort of a typo on my part. But perhaps my subconscious has so little respect for MEGAN Fox as an actress that my conscious brain didn't bother to inform me that I was making that mistake.

I understand that a lot of people consider Morgan Fox to be sexy but I've never heard anyone describe Lynda Carter as "mannish". Just about the only thing that might be "mannish" about Lynda is her height - the rest of her various curves and jiggles say anything else but mannish.

As far as a "serious" version of Wonder Woman goes I'd almost rather see Lynda Carter suit up again (even the older 2012 version of her) in a new movie than Morgan Fox. That's just how vapid and annoying I consider Morgan Fox to be. She couldn't even keep herself from mouthing off and holding on to her cushy Transformers gig.

I suppose I could accept Morgan Fox being cast in an underground porn version of Wonder Woman. That's likely the only kind of movie she'll be able to make from now on anyway. *shrugs*

With the Avengers movie Whedon finally made the big-time from the insider "Hollywood darling" point of view. Making billions for the studios should allow him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. Joss could probably get away with creatively "phoning it in" for the next few years and still be considered A-list uber player in Hollywood.

That's not to say I expect the next Avengers pojects from him to totally suck. I'm just saying if he wanted to shoehorn a "@#$@!#$!@!$@% can't-act-can't-figure-out-emotion-emoish @#$@#$@# kid/teenager/twenty something" into whatever he does next then I'm sure it's going to happen. In fact I fully expect to see some kind of Buffy/Fray/River/Echo clone in some form or fashion.

While it's true Whedon has not been directly responsible for too many movies he's been writing for many movies for decades. He's got a long career of experience and great work so I had little fear about his handling of the Avengers movie when I first heard he was going to do it.

My point is that he didn't just suddenly make a billion-dollar movie out of the blue on his first movie job - his whole decades-long career has been leading him towards this achievement.

I won't address Fabricator too much here since you can now brute-force that badge with a few hours of time and a few 100 million Influence to burn. As far as the "ultra-grind" AE badges go I remember that I had around 75 of them done within about a month of their initial release. I only needed to earn like 4 or 5 more by the time the Devs knee-jerked their decision to remove them from the game.

People can have their own opinion about whether or not the Devs did the right thing by their supposed attempt to save players from having to "grind" the AE badges. But I will never consider a group of badges like those which were earnable within a matter of weeks to be TOO grindy for the purposes of this game. I will always believe the Devs grossly overreacted in that case.

If by some miracle the Devs decided to add "souvenir count" badges I think they would be fine from a grindiness point of view. I am not opposed to badges which take typical players several months to earn. There are still badges in this game which take a significant amounts of time to complete, such as Leader and Immortal. The souvenir count badges would likewise be "long term goals" for players to reach for.

Sure there might be some willing to wait for these things for that entire YEAR as I suggested. But I still suspect some would not want to wait that long and try gambling for the rares regardless. Just to be completely clear I would only be in favor of the Devs selling (at an extreme premium) the unique items from these Super Packs long after they are effectively obsolete. A period of one year would satisfy that for me at least.

When you compare what we already know is going to be in Super Pack set #2 there is a huge amount of overlap with what was already in set #1. It seems like it would actually be relatively easy for the Devs to eventually sell -everything- that makes a specific set unique in the Market long after it is considered "old" and replaced by whatever the latest set is. A year from now there very well may be a few people around willing to pay $20 or more for the Black Wolf directly because they aren't really wasting any more gambling effort on otherwise obsolete packs. Remember as I said it'd have to be that expensive to make it fair to the "gamblers" who got a shot at it as much as a year earlier.

While there is no specific reason why the Devs would ever have to pull any Super Pack set there's also no specific reason why they couldn't if they could cover everything that makes them unique via eventual market sales. Why would you need to buy packs from set #1 a year or more from now if you could buy the elemental costume set and the Black Wolf from the market? For newer players this would allow them (if they desired) to "catch up" to older players by simply buying the older items they missed, just like the Reward Points let them catch up on all the "vet" awards they missed. This precedent of eventually being able to buy things that were "unbuyable" before has already been established by the Devs whether they like it or not.

Same here. I guess that power got stuck like that for a lot of people. *shrugs*

We are agreed on the idea of a series of generic "souvenir count" badges, but I really think Zombie Man's suggestion for the top count being 300 is appropriate.

According to what I have seen there are currently over 300 souvenirs currently available in the game now and new ones are always being added with every Issue. If a character can realistically have 300+ souvenirs now why would a proposed set of "souvenir count" badges not be able to reflect that?

Maybe, but it really boils down to how much "gambling" you're willing to do.

Would you be willing to buy some packs now for a CHANCE to get the Black Wolf or would you be willing to pay like $20 for it directly a year from now? I suspect there would still be plenty of people willing to gamble for it today who either don't want to wait a year or who don't like the idea of paying $20 directly for anything much less a vanity pet.

Also by the time a year comes around most people will probably be buying packs from Set #3 or #4 by then. Effectivelly no one will still be buying packs from Set #1 once there are newer sets to be had.

I have plenty of "show off" badges now, for what that's worth. I don't -need- a new set like this regardless if it's a good idea or not.

I just don't buy into the idea that players need new badges to "encourage" them to do anything in this game. Either 1) you don't care about badges at all or 2) your goal is to get specific badges thus will do whatever it takes to get them. The concept of "passive badges" that people don't technically care about but will cause them to change the type of content they play in order to get those very same badges they don't care about is like being "a little bit pregnant" - it doesn't make any sense.

Trust me, the Devs really don't need to trick anyone into playing any content they otherwise don't want to do. *shrugs*

Part of the reason I like the "souvenir count" badge idea better than the "do all the Ouro arcs" idea is that you'd have a choice about whether or not you wanted to do Ouro arcs to get souvenirs or not. This way if you really don't want to do all the Ouro arcs for badges you wouldn't have to. Also this idea would be open-ended so every time the Devs added a new arc to the game (of any kind) there'd be a new chance to increment your souvenir count.

For what it's worth I've got two main badgers and I've only bothered to complete all the Ouro arcs on one of them so far. No one ever "forced" me to do them all on the other alt, but I must admit if doing them actually did offer up some badges I might be willing to eventually do it again.

Even when I did finish them all on my main it's not like I rushed them all during some kind of 100-hour marathon grind-fest. It probably took me the better part of a year or more to finish the remaining arcs. On average I did like an extra arc or two a week when I had a bit of spare time so it never seemed like a hassle to me. Turns out after doing all the Ouro arcs you have to do anyway as a badger to get the existing red/blue badges there's really not all that many left over to do anyway to knock off the rest of them.

Again I think I've made it clear I could take or leave getting new badges for these things and I do admit it could seem "grindy" to someone who absolutely hates some of the older content. On the other hand I could probably list other badges that could be counted just as (or more) grindy than this which currently exists. I honestly doubt badges like this will happen, but I obviously wouldn't mind if they did.

If you wouldn't care about these badges or doing what would be needed to get them on a dedicated "badging" character then why would you care about a semi-meaningless account based badge that you would not likely actively stumble over regardless?

Just making the point that suggesting making this account based is just about as dumb-sounding to me as the entire idea seems to be to you. Either this would have to be a proper set of count badges (single character based) or I could -very- easily live without them myself.

For me it was a choice for something to do on a character that I've played for over 8 years and had literally done just about everything else you could have already done on a single character. *shrugs*

If you'd find such an activity boring or robotic then by all means don't do it. But regardless there's absolutely NO justification for making something like this account based even if such a thing could be done. I would much rather there be no badges even remotely like this than to make this some kind of convoluted account based deal.

Well notice that I didn't say I would hate it if badges like this -were- added to the game...

Perhaps as an alternative (which has been suggested before) the Devs could add a series of "souvenir count" badges. This would cover not only the Ouro arcs but any other arc that awarded a souvenir. The game could easily count up the number of souvenirs you have (since I did that myself manually with my main badger) and award the count badges accordingly. Making it count based like this would bypass the "what if they add new arcs" problem at the very least.

P.S. I realize I'm simply asking for a series of badges I would likely get automatically, but it's not like I'd be preventing anyone else from earning them too.

Well I find myself in an interesting position as far as this thread topic goes. My main badger (as her souvenir count in my sig line implies) has already completed all red and blueside Ouro arcs. I finished that bit of OCD a few years ago and have made sure I've finished off any new arcs that have been added since then.

Now even though I would automatically get these new suggested badges were they added to the game I would not say that I'm automatically in favor of them being added. Unfortunately as people like Thirty-Seven summarized there would be a number of problems with such badges, not the least of which is his point #4.

For what it's worth I'm happy enough knowing I was already insane enough to finish all the Ouro arcs off regardless.

For what it's worth I never said -never- slot DEF in Hover. Sure if you're only 1% or 2% away from the cap and you really want to get there then why not?

I just made the implication that since most Hover users aren't going to find themselves in that unique "just need a tiny bit more DEF" scenario that most people won't notice slotting extra DEF in Hover to be all that significant. For the most part those slots would likely be more useful in other powers.