Oliin

Sorry, you're right. Let me correct myself, I meant I've never really seen a movie or show filmed that way that looked convincing enough to make me think the people were actually there. It always looks just a little off. It certainly can work beautifully in the more stylized films out there though.

I'm sure eventually we'll get there though, and who knows, it might even be soon but not quite yet.

Heck, practical effects still usually look better to me than CGI in most movies.

Oh good lord I hope they don't do something like that.

I've yet to see a film or show where they did that and it actually looked any good.

To be fair. It's not reeeealy his fault exactly. I mean, the guy was kidnapped for years and then kind of brainwashed into it.

Seriously now? You're going to look down your nose at people who spend ten of their spare dollars on some shinies in a video game when you obviously have your own entertainment budget yourself?

That's just silly.

Alternately a meal for one at a (relatively) cheap restaurant or therabouts. I got a really nice gyro with a side of fries for $9 last night. Just found the place the other day and it's the only one around here that actually seems to make a real gyro ... or any other kind of Greek food for that matter. Mousaka's the most expensive thing on their menu and goes for $11.

Now admittedly there are plenty of people on a budget who play this game and I'm sure there's not a lot of wiggle room in their budgets for the booster packs, but $10 is not an exorbitant amount of money to pay for something. You may not think what's contained in the pack itself is worth $10, but the price-point itself is hardly expensive for the US market (which is the market they're aiming for, not that of Bhutan I'm sorry to say).

I'm perfectly fine with your not thinking the pack's worth it. I'm going to buy it myself, but I have just as much use for the pieces as I have the other couple of packs I've purchased, but your not liking it's just fine. What's absurd is trying to make ten dollars sound like a completely unreasonable price to ask for ... well anything. By that reasoning buying steak on sale for $7 for one meal is unreasonable, not to mention the price of a box of cereal nowdays.

We get a day job that lets us pop on a half-level of patrol xp on demand?

I mean, it's admittedly not the 'best' vet reward out there, and with its limit of 5 charges it's not really going to have all that much effect over the course of a character but it's certainly not terrible either and is a nice little nod to letting vets level 'faster'(something I know I've seen some people out there request ... and request and request).

Gah!

In my defense, I saw it in theaters and not at all since
Still thought it was fun though.

Did anyone end up making that face in Monsters Vs Aliens? I can't really remember.

Ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one whose (almost) first thought was that clip.

Don't forget, there's also Power Push.


Oh, and Nova. Never forget Nova.

But at the same time if the targeting drone's part of the character's standard gear it still represents a portion of a character's combat ability in the same way a weapon represents the combat ability of someone suing Assault Rifle or Broadsword. I dunno, you're probably right since you actually understand the system more than I do.

Still don't see a reason not to have cloaking device or surveillance count though.

Quite possibly talking specifically about the specific NPC appearance as opposed to the enemy group itself..

You have that many folks over 40 and have yet never done anything on this page? Surprising but not impossible I suppose.

You could also use someone else's oro portal to get into the zone and get the exploration badge there for the 'entrusted with the secret' badge.

I'm not completely sure if you're being sarcastic or not here, but either way that statement just bothers me. Does the ability of a controller to lock down enemies negate the survivability advantage a tank has over a scrapper and therefore indicate the two ATs should have more similar damage? I mean, if the ability to negate the survivability advantage scrappers have over blasters makes it ok for scrappers to equal (or just about that) blaster damage then shouldn't it be ok for tankers to equal scrapper damage too?

I'm aware that's somewhat of a weak argument, but my point is that ATs should be balanced against each other not balanced by the inclusion of another because in the case where that 'other' either isn't there or isn't doing its job effectively then problems will tend to arise. Sadly I don't think blasters are currently very balanced against other damage ATs as far as damage versus survivability goes, and even more sad than that is I don't really think the game would hold up well to a blaster damage increase that would bring their balance 'in line'.

That said, I like my blasters. I think they're fun and I doubt I'll stop playing or making them anytime soon, but I also think they're poorly balanced.

I think this is the first time I've heard anyone reference any of that, and I pay decently close attention to the digest and articles around the web.

Of course I'm human and do miss things, so if you're not misremembering something a link would be cool if you (or anyone) find it.

That statement I have no arguments with at all. I toe-bomb a lot when I'm solo or in smaller teams, though I've never liked time bomb much in spite of its impressive damage.

I do think however, that devices looses a decent chunk of its usefulness when it's introduced into a larger teaming environment. Though I suppose it may well be something of a perception issue. I always feel like I'm not contributing as much when I'm on my energy/dev as I do when I play my other blasters in those situations.

Honestly, I'm unconvinced that blasters specifically need buffs (or more specifically I think increasing blaster's damage to a level justifying their relative fragility would 'break' chunks of the game) but I do think some of our powersets could stand to be improved, devices being one of them.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I largely like my energy/dev blaster but really? In my experience those mines are not terribly useful in combat situations, or more exactly they're not generally a player's best use of time in a combat situation.

Trip mine's fantastic, but it animates incredibly slowly and has an almost four second interrupt time. It's basically a slower casting AoE snipe with a longer interrupt time that you need to be in melee range to use effectively (in combat anyway). The interrupt bit can be ok assuming you're fighting things that mostly use single-target attacks, but if you throw any AoE into the mix and there's a good chance you're going to be interrupted.

In general you're mostly better off using the AoEs in your primary instead of trip mine while in combat. It's kind of like how you're generally better off using other single target attacks instead of snipe while in combat.

Then there's Time Bomb and I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to use it while in combat. Heck, I have a hard time figuring out why you would use it while on a team in the first place. I mean yea, there are a couple times where it wouldn't hurt ("Hey guys, check this out."), but Time Bomb's hardly what I would call a 'go-to' power.

They did however get sued and forced to take down their American McGee's Strawberry Shortcake parody thing however many years back that was. I seem to recall it was because it negatively impacted the image of the brand or some other such silliness.

Wow ... the woman hosting that show's terrifyingly cheerful.

Wait ... what?

Ok, I know there's a level range where scrappers don't have mez resistance, but they spend most of their leveling time with it. And heck, they have resistance in the part of the game that honestly has the majority of the mezzes. So generally speaking it's fairly safe to say that scrappers will pretty much have access to their full attack chain at almost any given time once they get that sheild.

Also FoN has no mez protection. It had it for a bit when the APPs were on the test server but it was removed and has never had mez protection of any sort on the live servers. Just kind of FYI and all. Oh, and you can't actually attack when you have PFF up, so it's kind of useless for providing mitigation while you're taking down the main threat in a group. It's certainly one of those powers that's fantastic when things start going south though.