Oldeb

This, oh so very much.

What I'd really like to know is how the incarnate system could have possibly been in development for 18 months now. It was in January of 2010 that that Posi shifted to System Designer to work on end game content. And yet the whole thing feels terribly last minute.

First ideas for the Alpha slot are available in August 2010 after eight months of design and planning. Unfortunately there is no content yet so it's pushed back.

Two and a half months later the Alpha slot is released, but only the first two tiers. Apparently the design of the Alpha is still unfinished 10.5 months after planning began.

Two months later the remainder of the Alpha is release in I19.5. So after only 13 months of design the very first level is complete. And there is much rejoicing.

Only one month later though the entire method of Alpha progress (shards) is effectively abandoned for a new method (threads and merits). So 13 months of planning down the drain and a restart with I20?

Now it looks like I20.5 will be full of gated "shinies" in an attempt to get more people to keep playing the iTrials after a minor panic that a year and a half of design and programming work will be undone due to player disinterest.

And that's only looking at the Live release dates, not the actual beta testing schedule. With the beta testing it would seem that before I19.5 and the WST system was released they knew what they were currently working on would render everything they were about to release obsolete.

I wonder what morale is like at Paragon Studios knowing that as soon as you finish a product you'll be working on invalidating it before it even reaches the end users.

Yes, but seeing how the souvenir unlocks them anyway it's going to be faster to speed through the four missions of his second arc. Although I've heard it's bugged for Female Claws users. Dunno if that's still true.

So unless you're trying to farm them for someone who can't get the mission there's no point.


Edit: I need to read the OP better. Yeah, Samuel and his friend would have had to keep resetting the mission until they earned the defeat badge. If you wanted it at level one you'd have to turn off XP.

It would be fun to try and organize a Repelball game. There probably isn't a way to form a league, but an exhibition match could be done.

The biggest problem is that since the end of base raids you'd have to be in an open PVP zone and there's no way to stop it from being griefed to hell.

There are still plenty of costume contests. And you can always host your own if you wanted. It's not a lack of population that kills costume contests.
Okaaay. You like spam. Got it. No idea how this is a plus for many people. Besides, you can still find recruitment spam. If it's going away I can only hope that it's because this is a terrible way to recruit anyone but prestige mules.
This has nothing to do with a server merge at all. Nothing is stopping supergroups from doing this but the fact that some people don't want to do it.
So make a group like the Taxibots and do this. There is nothing stopping you or anyone else except a lack of interest. This is another idea that has nothing to do with a server merge, just a complaint about how people aren't playing like you want them to.
Another thing that won't be fixed by population. This is just a complaint that people aren't chatting the way you want them to.
Yep, still complaining about people not chatting right. Form a SG and host a party yourself. It's not that hard to do.

So rather than you transfering servers or creating a new character on a server more to your liking everyone should be forced to do what you want. Even though many of the things you miss the most have absolutely nothing to do with population.

And if it doesn't work out (presumably because you're still unhappy) they can alway just replace the server and all the characters on it and all their SGs. How generous of you.

Are you ready for the Postypocalypse? Zombies! Music! Prizes! And Braaaaains!


When: Sunday, May 15th from 6:00-9:00 Eastern/3:00-6:00 Pacific

Where: Neutropolis in Praetoria. The party will be held at the location of the zone event “The Great Escape” which is approximately 300 yards northwest of the Cole Transportation Authority. Teleportation will be available for those who need it.

Who: The Posthaste Fan Club and you!

Music: Posthaste of the Cape Radio will be handling DJ duties for the event. Be sure to tune in for music by Zombies and music about zombies!

Theme: Zombies, zombies, and more zombies! Come dressed in your reanimated best!


We will be running the zone event “The Great Escape” three times over the course of the party, twice on the side of the PPD against the Ghouls and once with the Ghouls to raid a PPD lab. Reward choices for completing this event include the emotes Ghoul_flex and Tantrum as well as reward merits or a random IO recipe. Be prepared for an epic Zombies versus Ghouls showdown!

There will also be a pair of costume contests, one for best Zombie Freedom Phalanx or Vindicator costume and one for best Zombie Arachnos. Prizes will be awarded to first, second, and third place finishers.

Trivia questions will be asked throughout the night, so study up on your zombie, music, and CoX lore!

This is the biggest problem I have with Sutter and Apex. It's not really the rooting code that bothers me. Outside of these task forces it never really crosses my mind, it's just how the game works.

But with these two the developlers are exploiting a game mechanic for the express purpose of killing players.

How is it any different from the player discovered exploits we've seen closed? Jousting was a way to attack without being in any danger and it got removed. The various AE farms have been abusing exploits to level extremely rapidly with little effort. They were shut down. Every player abuse of the system gets fixed, and that's exactly how it should be.

Now the Devs are apparently okay with forcing us to use powers that prevent movement while requiring that we move. Yes, you can still beat both TFs. But it's still the abuse of a game mechanic over which players have zero control.

The penalty for Apex/Tin Mage is still there. Praetorians are apparently uber powerful, well-blessed gods of destruction. Except when they aren't. Then they're in the same level range as the Freakshow. Don't bother looking for an explanation, there isn't one.

Except that it's not a new complaint. What you're counting as a shift is two seperate complaints, only one was louder immediately after launch. The concerns about advancing as an Incarnate while solo are old and predate the release of I20.

Here is a post from Black Scorpion addressing that they will be looking into ways for solo players to earn Incarnate abilities after questions were raised about solo players being excluded from the Incarnate system. Note that the date on that post is back in January.

The complaints about the rate of solo progress appeared when the first screenshots hit the forums showing the shard conversion rate. Again that was before I20 launched.

Immediately after launch, yes, there was a flood of "it's too difficult" complaints. But the complaint that non-trial progress wasn't exactly fair was present too. After a few days the difficulty complaints died down again, but we still are discussing the trial vs. non-trial incarnate gains.

It's certainly unfair to imply that what you're seeing is a fickle shift from "it's too hard" to "it's too grindy."

No offense, but the amount of complaints dropping after a month is the expected outcome no matter how it's resolved. It would be really suprising if that didn't happen.

After a month everyone who dislikes a feature would either have quit, resigned themselves to it being there no matter what they said about it, or changed their mind about how they felt.

The only reason for the complaints to continue after a month would be because a large number of people who couldn't stand some part of a game still decided to stick around even though they hated it. That would be something you'd want to look into and see why they bothered staying.

There's been an increase of that whenever a complaint has been brought up in Beta. There's less of an actually looking into the problem and more of a "toss them something, whatever it is, to get them to be quiet" mentality of late.

Honestly if it's not the main focus of an issue I think I've reached the point where I just expect it to look rushed out by the intern or tossed in with the hope nobody would notice.

That doesn't explain why the color scheme would be off. Even if they deleted the old UI off of the Beta server they still were running the old version on the Live servers. It's not like whoever made the "classic" version was forced to try and redo the colors from memory or pictures and couldn't quite get them to match up. The old version was readily available at all times during the development of the "classic" version.

As has already been pointed out to you, it'll take nearly as long to earn them through PvP as well. The difference in timing between the two is nowhere near as extreme.

You have pointed out (correctly) that it takes a long time to get a full PvP set, especially if you are only doing it through Alignment Merits. You are, I repeat, completely right about that.

What you keep missing is that a week of PvPing does not suddenly grant you a character with all the PvP sets slotted. It takes a long time that way too.

That is not the case with Incarnate slots. A week of running the Trials and I can have them slotted. Your comparison falls short here.

This is the biggest thing for me. Even when people talk about how the 2.7 years is a worst case scenario and exaggerated, they never come back with a time frame that isn't measured in months and costs billions of inf.

When the non-trial rate is less than 10% of the trial rate, even in the best case scenarios, there's a problem. It's not slower, it's a don't bother trying.

So you have no powers on a plain, non-incarnate 50 that you don't need? You literally require every single power you have available at each level to beat your current missions?

You have a Warshade. Should your leveling have been cut off after you got Eclipse because you didn't need anything else? Do you keep every power icon on an open tray because you might need it at a moment's notice?

Asking why someone would want an additional power is bizarre.

This.

With the I13 changes PvP damage was adjusted for powers based on new criteria, namely activation time and recharge rate. Spirit Shark has a 3 second activation and a recharge of 6 seconds. With whatever formula they use (I don't think we've been giving it exactly, just in general) it sits right at the "sweet spot" for damage vs usability.

For a Stalker the base damage is only 38.9 in PvE. For PvP that base number jumps roughly 4x to 154.5. Now add in an 80 foot range and criticals from Hide.

By comparison an Assassin Strike does 250.2 base damage in PvP, has a 7 foot range, is interuptable, and requires your target to stay in sight the entire 3.6 second activation time.

Plus, you know, shark vomit.

Hey now, he's got a point.

Remember how it was a poor decision to get locked into one Patron Power Pool? Well they fixed that, didn't they? And it only took three years.

And two years after they corrected another bad decision and gave Villians their own Epic Power Pools.

So if we're patient for the next five years there won't be a single complaint still standing.

I'm amused at anything or anyone that assumes you can log on every day for any amount of time and still count as casual.

There's a bit of a difference between "taking longer solo" and "minimum three years to unlock", don't you think?

To put it in perspective for you, if the VEATS (introduced May 2008) were unlocked at the same rate as the incarnate powers via shards we'd just now be seeing the first of them in-game.

I'm afraid that won't happen, it's just the prison-home of dimension destroying, world devouring entity. Certainly nothing that would interest anyone. Besides, you'd have to be something greater than just a run of the mill level 50 anyway.

Wouldn't you rather fight Marcus Cole?


But yes, I'd love to see Dr. Q get the same treatment Posi did.

Are you sure we can't at least hold it against them a little? It's one of those things that just makes no sense other than the new UI guy really, really liking green


Or New Coke, I guess.