Megajoule

You say "price gouging", EBIL marketeers say "opportunity". Supply and demand at work.

First, I love this game in part because it is different from many others, both at the time of its inception and since. This includes the freedom to not team (I soloed my first character, a defender, most of the way to 50 if you can believe it) and also great freedom when I do team, thanks to sidekicking and exemplaring (which are now even better implemented than when I started).

Second, the Game with the Laser Swords is hardly the first "Massively Single-Player Game", and not even the first one based around a well-known Sci-Fi universe. Lately I've been playing the Game with the Pointy Ears and Bumpy Foreheads, and one of the observations frequently made there (sometimes favorably, sometimes disapprovingly) is that until one reaches endgame, there's very little need or incentive to team. Which fits the IP, of course; "these are the voyages" of a single starship, I mean player, at a time.

I would compare it to Tartarus, Sheol, the Mayan underworld, etc etc.

Dear OP:

Fight the Power, man.

Continuing the reductio, then:
"It's just a video game, it's just comic books, you shouldn't expect anything better, anything good or consistent or plausible. Lower your expectations until satisfied with what you're shoveled."

Each year, thousands are afflicted by Greengrocer's Apostrophe. Won't you help us find a cure?

ES: Good post, good analogy, and I chuckled at the image of the henchmen playing cards in limbo.

UG: Telling people "don't look at this too closely" is (a) pretty much futile, considering the sort of people (ie, lore nerds) we're talking about/to; and (b) shouldn't that equally apply to the devs, in the form of "don't explain this too much"?

Seriously, what you're saying is only a step away from "none of this matters or makes sense anyway, so stop talking and thinking and caring about it." Consider that this thread started from the premise that "eh, just ignore it" is not a real solution.

Define "species."

Do mutants get their own, separate Well? Do androids and robots (the ones that are "real" enough to become empowered, that is)? Do the Coralax and the Snakes count as separate species, or are they "just" magically-modified humans? (Ditto for the Arachnoids and the technomagic that Recluse's scientists unwittingly wrought on them.) What about the Devouring Earth? Or the elves, the dragons, and the catgirls?

Found himself in a happy relationship on a Joss Whedon show.

Like others, I don't see a problem with increasing the resolution on tights patterns as long as that's the ONLY thing that's changed.

Please make some white tights that are true (opaque) white. Leave the blended sort for legacy characters, if you like, but I want tights that don't blend with the skin color.

For people who still don't understand the request for tights that stretch across the female chest, I offer the following illustrative phrase: "monoboob."
(Though I wonder if this goes beyond mere textures, as doing it "right" would probably involve mesh work.)

I was rolling my eyes at WoD vampires in Steel Canyon back in late '04. Some things never change. People have One Character and they're going to play him/her in Every Game, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. (I could make a crack here about limited imagination...)

Haven't been following the forums lately, especially not the Beta forums, which tend to be "have a look at this thing we're pushing live regardless of your feedback."
So hearing about the CoL sashes was a pleasant surprise. Didn't care about the rest of the set, just wanted that piece, for my male PB.
'Cept now I find out, he can't wear that piece.
Oh well. Guess I won't be spending any of my stipend this month.

I get those enhancements on new characters, and I always discard them as part of the setting up process. They're so weak, and the early levels go by so fast (even without farming DFB or anything else), that I really don't care.

In practical terms, Training Origin enhancements aren't training for your character(s) as much as training the player how to use enhancements. Once the player figures out how those work, and how little bonus TOs actually provide, they're just vendor trash.

Heck, I'm a Star Wars fan (have been since '77), and as a fairly well-known article points out, tongue only slightly in cheek, all Star Wars fans hate Star Wars.

(And yet, we love it too. Love's a funny thing. Some people love blindly, ignoring (deliberately or not) anything that might be considered a fault; others, consumed with the idea that something could be Absolutely Perfect if only/not for ____, become obsessed with the flawed parts they imagine are holding their love back from being Wonderful for Ever and Ever.

The reality, of course, is that things can't ever be entirely perfect in this world. But that doesn't stop the perfectionists and the romantics from wanting and yearning and hoping, and complaining bitterly when what they get doesn't live up to their impossible expectations... while others insist that it is perfect just like it is, so shut up.)

So, I'm guessing that Recluse is going to be spending a lot of time in his tower, alone, moping and/or eating Hagen Daz.

That's what I meant, yes. And I didn't see the new Tutorial as an invasion; more like (yet another) raid, taking advantage of the chaos and destruction accompanying the disaster. They're just here to sift through the rubble for valuables and McGuffins, maybe recruit a few new mooks in spandex, and beat it back to the Isles; "loot and scoot".

A lot of your other points come down to "I don't want them to act like comic book villains." And, um, well... *cough*

If you need something to keep you busy, I invite you to research the record of US foreign policy toward a small European country called Latveria, ruled over with a literal iron fist by a fellow with the cheerful name of DOOM (of whom, let's face it, Recluse is seldom more than a thinly-veiled expy). Despite his well-documented personal commission of multiple terrorist acts on American soil, most of them involving trying to blow up (launch into orbit, etc) a particular building in Manhattan, he's still in power and has been for decades.

Anime (and manga) is not a genre, it's a medium. Like "western" comics and "western" animation, both are extremely broad.

"Anime" covers everything from Dragon Ball to Ghost in the Shell to Hello Kitty to Monster. Similarly, "comics" encompasses stuff as varied as Batman, Tales from the Crypt and Bone. (And when you go further abroad, Asterix, Heavy Metal and Blacksad.) And I'm just mentioning big, popular names, not the really obscure stuff.