PRAF68_EU

My inclination would be to use Aim/BU as usual, but always and only use Snipe immediately after.

This looks like an attempt to make blasters (apart from /dev) more bursty.

People are simply looking for a reality that makes some kind of sense...

Power Thrust falls into that category. So did Taser when it was a melee power. And Total Focus when it was mag 4 stun, and Freezing Touch and Shocking Grasp.

But it's to little, and too much of a hodge-podge.

And the pure damage melee powers as you say, are pointless. it's actually impossible for them to be both useful and maintain the ranged focus of the class at the same time.

I might have forgiven it being "not very good" if it had been an actual Alien prequel, rather than pretentious claptrap which exploited the Alien legacy to attract far more interest than the film would have had on it's own merits.

Save your money and get Dr Who: The Arc in Space DVD instead.

Me too. "slow motion movie" is right. It's a remake of a TV episode played at half speed.

DULL is exactly what it is.

As a comparison, a lot more stuff actually happens in The Kings Speech than in ST:TMP.

Well, if you judge the quality of film by the number of explosions, yes.

I know lots of people who enjoyed all those films, and where bored to tears by Return of the King.

Most of those films aren't to my taste, either. But I'm mature enough to know that something can be good even if it's not to my taste.

And I really enjoyed The Kings Speech, anyway.

It might make sense to you, but it's not TRUE. It was officially retconned to NOT be a mirror universe. Someone who is evil in one universe can still be evil in the other, they can turn out to be almost exactly they same (e.g. Malaise) or completely different.

I think it depends on how the film is marketed.

Prometheus is reasonably fun; but it was marketed as something deeper, and that is where it fails.

Well, if you start from the point of view that all humans are that stupid, then I guess the film must be for you. And it also gives the aliens a good motive for wanting to exterminate them. Go Aliens.

But it's not consistent with my experience of humans, which leads me to the conclusion that the characters are stupid because the writer is stupid.

I take it then that any encounter in which you use inspirations, temporary powers, or any of the myriad other tools which form part of the game is a flawed encounter then?

It's pretty obvious that the game's developers don't share that opinion, since they wouldn't have put such things in the game in the first place if using them was cheating.

IMO, any encounter which doesn't include a risk of defeat is a flawed encounter.

Irrelevant. I always find Ballistas bad news on any AT. I'm not saying dark ward's content is easier, it will obviously depend on ATs and powersets. I'm just rubbishing the idea that it's any more difficult than content that has been in the game for six years.

FYI, I've completed the Wards with a blaster, a brute and a tank. It's obviously harder with a blaster, like everything else, but far from impossible.

This is rubbish. I encountered a Longbow Ballista EB doing Mako's patron arc last night with a character I had taken through First and Night Wards without difficulty. It was a far far more difficult fight, and required me to put the level down to -1 for the first time.

The new content is no more difficult than content that has been in the game for many many years.

You are missing the point. It's not a parallel Timeline, it's a diverging timeline. It apparently branched off round about 1914 and has been growing increasingly different ever since. Not minor variations, but great big stonking differences.

What?! Most of the Earth-as-we-know-it, billions upon billions of people, doesn't even exist in Praetoria, most of the Earth's population was killed in the Hamidon Wars. Not existing is pretty radically different. Recluse is dead. Ghost Widow is alive. Massive differences.

As for the Hamidons, we have no reason to suppose they where ever the same person. Herd of convergent evolution? The comic books have several examples of instances where different people become the same hero (or villain) in alternate universe or parallel timelines.

And the existing origin of Hamidon story? I always felt that wasn't the whole story, and was very unconvincing as to how he grew so enormously powerful so quickly.

And if you don't like that, then there is always Time Travel. Perhaps Mender Silos sent Praetorian* Hamidon into the past, because it's a Nemesis Plot.

*Or possibly Primal Hamidon will be sent into the past of Praetorian Earth, and there is only one Hamidon. Which would explain why he is more powerful - he has been growing and mutating for longer. Indeed this could be the "ground zero" (AKA Nero) event that caused the timelines to diverge. ( I really like this idea actually, since evolution would explain why Hamidon is a giant single celled organism on Primal Earth, but is a giant Audrey 2 on Praetoria).

Indeed. There are NO FACTS in this film. Basically, we have a writer who couldn't be bothered, so puts some pictures on the screen and tells the audience to write it themselves.

Pool powers which are better than primary and secondary powers available at the same level? I would consider it an issue.

So did the devs, which is why they removed it after we tested it.

I think they are already set below average. I would consider myself a below average player. I'm ageing, my reactions are slow and my coordination poor, I don't spend all that long playing, I don't use keybinds, my builds are whatever-takes-my-fancy, I'm usually assisted by at least one cat - and yet I didn't find Night Ward difficult. That's why I am so surprised that people find that stuff difficult.

I don't think they really interact in the same Ecosystem.

You know "things-mankind-was-not-meant-to-know"? Based on the tablet, I think it best described as "things-martiankind-was-not-meant-to-know". It's probably right up there with how delegates from Alpha Centauri reproduce.

The problem is any upgrade to the difficulty slider is quite code intensive, and would inevitably be unsatisfactory. You can scale number and difficulty of mobs, but you will never be able to scale for increased tactical complexity, nor can you scale effectively based on what actual powers mobs have*.

And how far should the scaling go? Should it be possible to downgrade an AV to a minion?


*For example, should Malta be rated higher because of Sappers? What about for those powersets that don't have a problem with sappers?

Indeed. In either direction.

Random EBs in newspaper missions would help to ensure that all content was of equal difficulty.

I would have no objection to code being added to scale native EBs to bosses being added, but I don't see the point because I'm sure the small number of people complaining about difficulty would continue to complain. "We had to fight BOSSES!!!!" "We encountered an EB with purple triangles" (scaled down AV from older content) "We encountered two EBs" (final mission or RWZ has two AVs) "we where overwelmed by ambush spawns" "the Hellion looked at me in a bad way and made me cry".

Waste of developer resources trying to pander to a loud minority who will never be happy. It's PvP all over again.