Memphis_Bill

Well, personally I like "Praetorian Nemesis died happily in his bed at a normal old age." He doesn't need to be involved with the P-Clockwork, Resistance or anything else. Just died a footnote as a former Prussian aristocrat.

This doesn't necessarily mean that there's nothing to do with *any* Nemesis here - we know Nemesis can hop dimensions, argue with alternate-dimension versions of himself, set up bases in other dimensions and the like. But his favored technique seems to be that of replacing people with automatons and setting up front companies - not to mention painting himself as 'bringing order' and such.

Well, the last is done, in a very similar way, by Cole. And the automatons - how would they escape notice by the "Psychic Friends network" that's been set up? "Any traitorous thoughts?" "No, but I've been noticing more people with no thoughts at all - empty shells."

Do we have a Praetoria timeline to work with?

The reason people get irritated over "healer" is that, most of the time, the person advertising themselves as such is... well, a leech and/or not playing their character anywhere NEAR as well as they could.

The example that always comes to mind (from multiple personal experiences with the type) is a year or two ago during the halloween event. Trying to take down Eochai, we picked up a Rad/Rad corruptor. Who, it turns out, was a "healer." AOE heal aura, rez, AM... and that's it. No debuffs. Med pool, IIRC. And utterly useless for what we needed.

Um, that's precisely what we were told - that this forum was being put down there in lieu of just getting shut down. By the "orange names." That hardly seems coincidental to me.

And I also seem to remember the FPC coming very shortly *afterward* (one of the many rather stalled "let's get the players involved" bits during Ex's tenure,) not least from turning down an invitation to it for multiple reasons (including extreme dislike of the mod staff at that point - which meant I *certainly* wouldn't want to be dealing with them on a regular basis.)

Bit of an exaggeration. The powers they chose to replace (and what they chose to replace them WITH) were questionable, at times. Not to mention that people had, at times, invested in those powers - including some expensive IOs that not only were now useless, but would require an entire respec to replace, and a new power (if you didn't like what it was replaced with) chosen.

For instance, I've got an ice/psy/mace dom. The devs were going to replace Disruptor Blast with Personal Force Field. I *use* Disruptor Blast - I can use more damage. PFF, by comparison, means I can do *nothing.* Sure, I'm relatively safe, but I'm not building domination (and at the time, dom was a damage as well as mag boost,) stacking holds, or doing damage. Needless to say, I was *not* a fan of that idea in the least. I had a mostly full primary and secondary, and everything else set up the way I wanted, happy with my performance. Other builds had much the same reaction - I don't recall just what was getting switched where, but it was a negative impact on several builds. (A few were positive, sure.)

So the devs made the *right* decision and just added the power as an option instead of unilaterally changing powers - powers you'd already picked.

Compare that to, say, Energy Aura. EA's pretty good on endurance, and has (among other things) an endurance drain power. One complaint that kept getting made, however, was that it had no self heal and was, by the numbers, less survivable. Instead of replacing one of the powers, they added a heal in with the energy drain. One already useful power was buffed. (A similar path was taken with electric armor.)

So, while Serum is generally regarded as one of the weaker "buffs," it'd be better to suggest increasing magnitude, duration, decreasing recharge or something similar.

Actually, just to nitpick - I could easily do this without interacting with anyone else, since I'm so alt-heavy. I could quite likely find someone of each origin in each level range on one of my accounts.

(And no, player interaction is not a prerequisite - I can, if I so choose, go without teaming or dealing with anyone else for most of the game, the exception being the occasional simul-click mission. I'm not required to do group content at all. A system that can run the game and an internet connection are the only prerequisites.)

It's probably easier to deal with in Paint and Wordpad, since there arent' as many options there. (Oh, and Windows Movie Maker, as well - I think that got chopped down a bit, though. I seem to remember being able to edit along a timeline, and couldn't find that at all. *shrug*)

I tend to grab Openoffice as well (oh, and found a ref to a nice site for the next time I do an install - http://ninite.com - makes a custom installer with, say, Firefox, Thunderbird, Openoffice, bunch of other apps I regularly download. One stop shopping, basically.)

BSD, I believe. Not sure if that makes a huge impact or not.

Huh. I haven't even had to deal with running as admin to install things. *shrug*

Office 2007... yeah, that's got a learning curve with where everything moved on the "ribbon." I've used it on and off for a while and... eh, yeah. It'll probably "feel" better on Win7, though, as you'll see the interface more (Paint and Wordpad, for instance, both use the "ribbon" now, as well.)

"Erasing debt?" Seriously? Anyone actually worries about that these days, after patrol XP, halving the debt cap, halving debt in missions on top of that, no debt during invasions and so forth?

How to erase debt: Play the game doing something other than standing around ******** about debt for up to five minutes.

Give them a 1.1 million debt cap back, THEN they can complain about debt.

I don't believe that's what he's saying (and that's one of the other things I'll generally argue against, since that irks me as well. Aion, I had an interesting looking bow - but got to a point where I needed more damage, so needed a new bow, which looks plainer.)

This wouldn't affect the character's skills at all - or damage bonuses, etc. It wouldn't even have a crafting "skill" to advance (barring the badges just for crafting "stuff.") Just levels where you can make different costume bits that would be purely costume bits - just like wings, rocket boots, etc. are now.

At least as I understand it.

Understood that from your first post I was just making a general statement about me, costume suggestions, and such in response to the "hate it if you want" bit.

Eh. I'm not so sure I agree with this - any more than someone who's crafting a bunch of IOs at once would say that. For some, that would be the reward in and of itself.

Come to think of it, there's one other thing that might (*might*) be an objection - not from me, necessarily. Namely that some may see this as just another "hoop" to jump through for costume bits, as opposed to just having them in the costume creator. There are already complaints about having to do anything from earn merits (Vanguard armor - don't think I've ever picked up a full set, mind you) to doing TFs to, of course, buying them.

I don't oppose crafting stuff, just to be clear. (It's a way to pass time in Aion, even if it absolutely burns through kinah there, and I tend to stock up lower level common IOs for lowbies in my other SGs - so I craft a good bit.) But I can see the objection - that and perhaps wanting some sort of 'advancement' - much like you mentioned, via WoW (and, yes, Aion, which will give some degree of XP.) But I think that goes a tad farther than you were thinking of for this.

I don't hate it. The only costume-specific things I tend to be absolutely against are "origin-locked" ones (IE, if you're a magic origin you can have X cape, say, but not if you're tech.)

The only bit I'm iffy about is - if I'm understanding this correctly - having what you can craft in ranges. Typically with our crafting (not going into WoW - which I'm not all that familiar with - or Aion crafting, since we don't level our "tailoring" or whatever else it would be separately) the lower levels are limited not by skill but by INF.

Also, how are we *getting* these - recipe drop, learned somewhere, ?

*points and laughs*

"I hate speed boost!"
"Toggle walk on, then."

FWIW, even though I probably won't use it *much,* I was rather happy to see it in Aion. Nice, relaxed saunter through a forest... then whip out the bow and start perforating something.

From my standpoint, yes, XP to 7 is a serious upgrade. Vista had issues - some perception, some reality. 7, however, is *very* nice. Even some of the little things I'm finding very useful (hauling windows to the side to have them half-maximize, for instance. And having sidebar-less gadgets - I used Konfab... er, widgets on XP for little things I wanted to glance to know, and use them on 7, too, arranged how I want.) Search from the start menu (a FAST search) is a $deity-send, jump lists aren't used much yet, but I can see potential there... the list keeps going on, all the little things add up.

The flip side of that, of course, is that having people read the prior discussions (part of the reason for the cut-and-paste answers that I don't even have to be *on* for someone to post any more ) means they'd see the issues with the idea (as opposed to having it come as some great revelation... yet again.)

"I don't care" tends not to be a very good argument - either "I don't care about the problems," or "add all these limitations, fine, so I can use it for two minutes every three hours when they're all met." The more limits you put on, the less likely it is that either it'd be used, or it'd get done at all. Sure, there'd be some new-shiny-ness, but then - in the case of vehicles, just with this thread - "I can't use it indoors? I can't fight from it? I can't this, that, the other? Why did I take this again?"

I'm just going to point to the bottom of the cut-paste response and say, if you ever see vehicles in game, that'd be the most likely way to see it.

Miffed Queen fan.
Alternately, someone who's miffed you like Queen.

Part of the problem with patterns, though, is that many of them *don't* match up except with their mates - I know I've used a belt for a cheat (to hide that the sides, for instance, don't "really" match up, without the belt there'd be a step) more often than not.

I'd love to see some of the patterns redone, frankly, so that there were only a couple of "join points" - you know X set of tops would match bottom 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 14-20, and so forth.

(Admittedly, that's a problem with some of the textured ones, as well. I think Assassin bottoms and the Angelic top are probably the ones I've used the most that "work" with more of the side stripes, top paterns, etc. as well as the older sets.)

This is the biggie there. Which arcs does "everyone universally agree" on? I mean, the Posi TF, sure. But after that? There may be bits I want to see chopped OUT of an arc here or there (I forget which it is, in Skyway, where someone gives you a CD for a contact - and you find out it was some music for that contact's kid, nothing related to the mission at all,) but universally? Some want all hunt missions gone, where others see where they just fit in with what's going on in the story. I think the VEAT arcs are a waste of time and a disappointment, EvilGeko loves them.

What's the cutoff point? And what do you do for those who liked the previous arcs?

(I have to add, with that last line - while I wish I'd gotten to run the Calvin Scott TF, I love that it went away. I wish more content would BE here for only an issue or two, then either evolve or vanish, to keep the feel of the game evolving.)

...
1 und3rst0d 1t 0n t3h 1st r34d-thr0ugh.
B│╙

("This may be a bright & shiny world, but how can life flourish in such sterile surroundings, I ask you?
I will wait for the signal. This false dream will be smashed!")