Oliin

This, entirely this except I was in the Air Force instead of the Marines. Thank you Steelclaw for presenting that sentiment far more eloquently than I would have been able to.

I remember the first time someone honestly thanked me for my service after September 11th (something that had never happened before in my several years in the military at that point). It really is wonderful feeling appreciated instead of just sort of taken for granted.

Also a little bit before that in The Majestic and somewhat Man on the Moon.

I was thinking Truman Show too, but it was still fairly comic and fanciful. So more of a baby step away from it than anything else.

As far as Keanu goes they probably meant The Gift.

Until the past weekend or so it only was logging me out if I closed my browser. Since then though as long as logging in actually works I seem to stay logged in until I go idle for a few hours. At which point I need to try logging in again and hope it sticks on the first try.

Actually I was agreeing with the post I quoted in that this week's offerings are better than last week's. Which is why I was saying there's nothing wrong with this week's items (since the post I quoted was saying they weren't good). I was possibly unclear in my wording though.

Sorry, that was sarcasm on my part. Sometimes I forget it doesn't work well over the internet and it slips out. I can easily see people who have some disposable cash and not a lot of free time buying the IO sets they offer (or even just people who don't have a lot of inf but have some spare cash). I know I've seriously debated buying some Thunderstrikes for some of my leveling blasters at least.

Honestly, I'm not sure what's laughable about any of those offerings in concept. I mean, some convenience items (yea ... nobody's going to go for convenience item IOs ....), a story arc (possibly a short one), and an aura. I don't really see anything actually bad about any of that.

I can honestly live with having to log back in every couple hours, it's not all that huge a bother (though it is a bother). What gets me is there have been several instances over the weekend when I went and logged in, got the log-in confirmation page, and then when it redirected me back to the actual forums ... I was logged out.

Didn't the nuke just debuff your base end regeneration to 0, so you'd still regain end if you had stamina but if you didn't you were stuck (it's been so long, I forget). Of course, nearly everyone had stamina.

I still say my favorite was hitting several hundred monkeys at a time with Nova while farming for the zookeeper badge ... stupid 10,000 monkeys.


Ohhh ...

I remember when /devices was the OP blaster secondary. (whee misplaced decimals)

It has begun!

Because obviously there are no long-term experienced players around the forums who power-level .... I don't personally, but if there's some on the forums (and there are) then there's a lot more who do that in the game.

I am curious as to what your would like the requirements to be for someone to get on the VIP server in order to get a server with nothing but friendly, experienced players who all get along with each other. You can't really do it by sub time since there are people who've had a long-term sub but who don't play much, and there are some really friendly skilled players who pick things up quickly but have only been around a very short time. You can't really do it by number of 50s since there are some people who only play a very limited number of characters or even those who have altitis so much that they may not have more than a couple 50s (like me) or possibly even none. You can't really do badges since some people may not care about badges or possibly just not even be high enough level to do it (or in the case of Mo* badges just not care to deal with the hassle).

Also, I don't really think the game was ever quite as rosy as you seem to think it was. I've been playing this game since I got into the beta for pre-ordering it and even back then you had players who's sole goal was to upset others. For example I remember joining a Perez Park team just a couple of weeks after launch with a player who enjoyed randomly porting teammates into full spawns guaranteed to kill them. You know, back before the accept teleport prompt was added to the game. Basically pretty much any time you get a large group of people together you're going to run into stupid questions and jerks.

That's always just a fantastic speech and Branagh did a great job with it. Also, the music just makes that scene.

You do realize that they're going to remove the 15 emp merit cost and are putting back the emp merit reward for folks who've unlocked their slots right?

Of course not, because obviously as sheeple we've been conditioned to blindly accept the payment for "booster pack" style content where if we really had any brains we'd demand it be included in our subscription fee. It obviously doesn't cost them any more money to produce the extra content and they're just laughing at us while rolling in money like Scrooge McDuck.

...

Seriously though while some people clearly find the amount of content we get for our $15 a month is entirely reasonable, others quite obviously don't. I don't really think that any amount of calm explanation, yelling or cajoling will be able to convince most people that the other side is right.

Heck, there's even a number of people out there that think that in no way should any form of entertainment cost money. That it's their personal right to pirate any form of entertainment they so choose and that any form of copyright protection is an infringement on their rights as a human being. I've seriously met people like that. I don't understand them.

I thought a couple of people responded to your question.

Anyway. It should be noted that for the subscription fee of $15 a month VIPs don't get anything less than what I've seen in any of the other subscription-based games out there and when compared to some games we get significantly more for our $15. That's not including any of the things that go up for sale on the market by the way, including the Signature Story Arcs.

Now, if you were to give all the VIPs every single thing that went up on the market for free then you'd push what CoH players get for their $15 far beyond what any other game I've ever played gives for their $15. It's not that CoH is more valuable than other games. It isn't. None of the big-name MMOs that have in-game virtual shops are more 'valuable' than games without one.

Just like in so many other games we can pay our $15 and get a fun, full-featured game. As a matter of fact from what I can tell we haven't lost anything from our subscription at all since Freedom launched (we've arguably gained from it). The stuff in the shop is quite simply 'extra', along the lines of DLC content in non-MMO games.

Why shouldn't we pay for extras?

Given I mostly run though the trials on my blaster, yea. That's likely why the pulse is being toned down a lot. Mostly I was just saying that Antimatter would have had to be fairly damaged for the pulse to be powerful enough to one-shot you if the only damage you've taken was from falling.

Wait. I thought the pulses were a % of your health damage, not a specific amount. Wouldn't Antimatter have had to have been really damaged for the pulses to put out that much damage?

I continue to be confused as to why a merit cost for some abilities and not for others was thought to be a good idea myself. At least not without the purchased abilities being at least somewhat 'better'. I wasn't terribly thrilled by the emp merit nerf they tried to give the BAF and Lambda trials, but at least I could see why they were trying to do that.

I don't think I'd be terribly surprised to see a merit cost for all the abilities in the next tier. I'd actually be ok with it as long as there's consistency within that tier's powers.

Powersets have however most certainly been gated behind a purchase before.

Let's assume a month that has 4 Tuesdays in it, so only 4 big releases to the market. So far we've seen something like this:

• 1 powerset (800 points)
• 2 costume sets (400 points each, 800 total)
• 1 signature story arc (free for VIPs, 400 points otherwise).

That's about $20 worth of points ($25 for a non-subscriber) and I would only have to pay $15 if I wanted all of. That's much better than 1/10th.

To be fair though, there could be months that have more expensive stuff go to the market and others that have less.


Speaking as a very long time subscriber I'm relatively happy with the state of things at the moment. I like costume items and they're giving me more new options than they ever have before (I haven't picked up all of them though since I don't need all of them). I like options power set wise and they've added in some new good ones so far. On top of that they've still given me free costume sets, a power set and new story content just like they always have in the past.

I don't really see what the issue is here. Why in the world should I be entitled for more than I ever got before for no extra charge? Especially since I've been having to buy extras for a long time now, now they're just putting out more of those extras.

Ok, I'm not terribly foor the emp merit change as it currently stands, but really? I'd be extremely surprised if they intended any sort of threat or punishment with it. Encourage us to rn the new content yes, punish us for not running the new content ... not so much.

I think there were better options they could have chosen for the encouragment part though.

Even then I've found it to be really quite large for some objectives.