Oliin

That was added afterwards. Targeting Drone adds a little bit of extra damage to AR's snipe and only its snipe.

Right. Market purchased IOs should work just fine for anyone.

Well what do you know, you're right. It never even crossed my mind that they'd be VIP only sets. Huh.

Funny story. They apparently actually tested some form of stealth strike with cloaking devices ages and ages ago. The help text indicating CD would let attacks crit from hide slipped onto the test server and according to the devs (I want to say it was Castle) they wouldn't be going that route (I think because it was too good) but they'd be looking into Devices in other ways.

I've not tested this myself since I'm too high in the reward tiers, but that is reportedly how IOs work when you don't have IO access. They just don't do anything but sit in their slot taking up space.

How do you figure? Issue 21 and 22 are relatively bigger than issues have been in a while, I'm getting an extra story arc every month and I'm getting 400 points in the store (well 550 actually) every month to spend on the stuff they're trying to sell me.

That looks like more to me.

Sorry to sort of double post here, but Dark Assault, and Dark Affinity are pretty much just proliferated sets and as such free across the board like with Dark Manipulation last issue.

That is, of course, unless I'm horribly mistaken. I'm pretty sure I'm not, but you never know and all.

Assuming the post Freedom issues progress as they have for the last two (and that's a decently large assumption) I doubt we'll ever have a whole issue completely focused on one subject again. Even with the main focus on one thing (First Ward, Solo Incarnate path, ect) they're still putting out a trial and 'other' mission content.

That said, I doubt bases or PvP will ever be the primary focus of an issue without them being tied somehow to another significant feature.

PvP and some sort of instanced PvP missions along the lines of all those other games and/or possibly some sort of hybrid PvP/PvE zone. Base love along with some sort of personal base that was free to VIPs but otherwise purchasable and was somehow tied to new content(yes I know, personal bases are almost certainly not on the horizon I'm just spit balling here.).

Honestly I imagine they'd do some work on bases as a QoL sort of thing. Now if they ever did personal bases then yea, I imagine those would be something purchased on the market, but not so much normal bases.

I kind of hope they some day manage to get a working and fun form of PvP into the game since that seems to be a decent free to play draw .... And in all honesty I've always liked PvP but I've never really liked it in this game for some reason.


Actually, here's a question. If there was a decent chunk of an issue dedicated to going gung-ho on base improvements including new decorative items (including ceilings/walls/floors) and getting base PvP to work, but the trade off was that in the future they sold decorative items in the store (with some free on issue releases) ... would that really be so bad?

Aren't most of the travel powers $7.50? Personally I'd prefer $5, but not much I can do about it aside from waiting for a sale.

On the other hand, we're also getting a lot of the things we used to get for free ... still free (well for VIPs).

New Zones Free? - First Ward
Revamped Zones Free? - Dark Astoria and Atlas Park
New Story Arcs Free? - The SSAs, DA, AP FW story arcs, mid-level arcs in I22
New Powersets Free? - Darkness Control, Time Manipulation, Darkness Manipulation, Darkness Assault
Proliferated Power Sets Free? - It'd be a longish list, but yea it happened in I21 and then the Dark Miasma version in I22.
Costume Sets Free? - IDF and Defense sets in I21 and Olympian Guard in I22
New (non end-game) Trials/SFs Free? - Death from Below, Drowning In Blood

Costume sets and power sets have never been an 'every issue' addition to the game but we've had them included for the past two issues. The odd little non-pool travel powers were always tied to either the purchase of some game box or a costume pack.

It seems to me that in general we're getting more free to go along with the more purchasable things. Personally I'm ok with that really, but I can understand how other people might not be. I just wish I didn't see people go overboard about how we'll obviously have to pay for everything when it's fairly obvious that the VIPs are still getting a lot included in their subscription. Honestly I'd say we're getting more than we used to for our subscription fee.

To an extent that's kind of how it already works. I don't know if there's any solid equation behind it or anything along those lines, but currently the sturdier ATs have more room between their base HP and their max HP than the 'squishy' ATs. It could likely be a bit more standardized than it seems at a glance but that's mostly how it works.

There are the two notable exceptions of the Stalker and the Blaster in having the higher base HPs but still having the 1606 hp cap. If you count the Mastermind as a 'squishy' then they're an exception too but in the other direction. What with their having a lower base HP but still having the 1606 HP cap.

And you do realize by the way, if your though of a standard equation for the max HP cap being a function of the AT's base HP and what its growth rate's supposed to be were to ever be put into place (and it honestly probably should have been that way from the beginning) ... then the blaster HP cap would almost certainly be raised. So I don't really understand why you'd think the blaster HP cap is fine

I don't know that anyone's specifically calling to have the same new max HP as Stalkers. Everything I've read is just people saying the cap's too low. Honestly I think the more 'sturdy' ATs should have a larger gap between their base HP and their max HP than the 'squisy' ones. Granted I don't know what the new max HP for Stalkers is, but if it's not at least somewhere around 2200-ish (which would bring them kind of in-line with Scrappers) then I'll be a little disappointed.

Yea, Hulu got season 1-4 pretty much the day after. This season it got the first episode.

Pretty much, yea. It's very much a work in progress.

I'm not completely sure on this one, but I'm reasonably sure that the test server is VIP only and the Beta server is definitely VIP only.

Oh no need to explain. I've made plenty of absentminded/distracted mistakes over the years.

I actually already saw Hugo a few weeks ago and as you said, it's well worth watching. Unfortunately by the time I got around to watching it they'd moved it out of the 3-D theater but I can attest that it's still a beautiful (and well done) film in 2-D.

My guess is because your forum name is one letter off from Rydia. A female character from Final Fantasy IV.

I don't believe they force the gold(ish) name for VIPs.

Well, we can download it next Thursday anyway.

I'm guessing the reason it's not up for best animated picture is because it's nominated for Best Picture. Unfortunately I don't think it's likely to win Best Picture but what can you do sometimes.

As I said, it's very situationally useful. I've certainly used it on my blasters (though not often), but I still don't really think that the snipe is exactly a good power.

That's only true if your level is being raised up. If you're the same level as the team leader nothing happens to your level and if you're higher level than the team leader then you're just brought down to their level.

Granted I don't team much, but I'm reasonably certain that's how it works.

Well it's kind of the same thing (animation) as motion capture. Except instead of the combination of actor and technology you end up with it being the combination of actor and animator instead. It's the performance of the animated character in combination with the actor's voice.

What about, "Because they need help," as a reason to help someone who needs it?

That said, kind of a silly change, but not quite end of the world either.

David Prowse and James Earl Jones were totally robbed!