Primal

I've never set up a Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace account, despite friends and family urging me to.

This is not out of concern for privacy, in truth I'll tell you more than you want to know about me with little prompting, short of my SS or credit card #s. No, in truth I've never gotten into it because I'm incurably lazy, and it'd always be months out of date because I'd simply forget about it. Hell it's only because of my Blackberry that I check my email more than once a month, if that.

Really the very concept of constantly updating what I'm doing seems very odd to me. If I was famous or good-looking or selling something, sure, but just an average lug like me? Whatever.

My favorite mondegreen is still "wrapped up like a ******".

It wasn't until just a few years ago, literally, that I found out he was saying "revved up like a deuce" (as in coupe).

Heh, they censor that? You can figure it out, I believe.

Hey now, Bald Bull can be a bit tricky, especially timing your punch to his charge.

Could be worse, Castle could still be saying "What does he mean about closing King Hippo's mouth!? Why doesn't he just tell me!"

So basically all the same points we made in beta? I agree now as I did then. The difficulty for me is not insurmountable by any means, it's just *slightly* higher than it needs to be. And it mostly equates to more standing around. Praetoria feels like a 20-40 zone that just had its range changed and nothing else.

In truth I wouldn't have any problem at all with it if there was just a difficulty adjuster available. Personally I much prefer dialing things down a level and then increasing their numbers, -1/x3 is ideal for most of my characters until 22.

Carnie boots and corsets plz k thnx.

Join the chorus, OP, we've been singing it for years. Could happen one day.

And welcome.

Yeah, my first day wasn't so hot. I started my new Fire/Stone Dom in Praetoria, and ran okay for about half an hour. Rubberbanding and laggy, but I've seen worse. Then I mapserved leaving a mission, wound up crashing. Came back, decided I'd go put some stuff in the Market, crashed upon trying to enter the tram, not even a mapserve that time. Logged back in, outside the tram, tried it again. Crash. Decided I'd play something offline.

Frankly, it probably was my ISP, in beta I had no trouble. And tonight it's raining and the lightning's flashing.

So yeah.

Some (or all) of these are repeats, and some are more guidelines than rules, but here are mine.

- All characters log out where they'll get Day Job credit, and MUST be in a comfortable position. Mostly I find a desk, bench, or a barstool, and utlize the appropriate sit emote. If I plan to log that character for a great length of time, I put them somewhere they'll be entertained as well, namely Pocket D. (Hey, if it was me in the game, I'd hang out in a nightclub all the time.)

- No character does AE at all. To me it's simply too immersion-breaking. I've considered making a character like Decorum's, who only does AE, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

- I hardly ever do sewer teams. They really bore me. Sometimes I'm just that desperate and on a character whose soloing ability sucks, but it's rare and I try to avoid it.

- I level to 50 at the trainer I started with. So far that's only come up twice, but there you go.

- I always pick a Badge name that's appropriate for the character, and go out of the way to get one if it'll fit.

- My Stalkers don't get the travel powers either, just Sprint, Ninja Run, and Hurdle or Swift (or both). I too find it fun to navigate via rooftops and trick jumps, and with Hide I don't have to worry about aggro much. They do have that jump pack for emergencies.

- I never use stray numbers or punctuation to fudge in a name. I will use them if it's appropriate.

- If I decide a character will work better as something else, I delete and reroll without a second thought. Concept is everything.

- I don't push characters to 50 just to have them there anymore. I've done it twice to unlock the EATs, and felt bad about it both times.

- Relatedly, I don't play my 50s. No motivation there at all.

I believe the reason for the lower numbers is simply the competition. For the action crowd you have The Expendables as a much more obvious choice, and for the rest there's Eat Pray Love. SPvtW appeals mainly if not exclusively to geeks, and not a huge proportion of those either. Yes, it's a comedy and a good one, but it's of the "quirky and hip" variety, not the broad (I'm trying desperately to avoid saying "LCD" here) style that makes solid money.

Think mainstream America here, folks. What would they turn out for?

I...can't get the images to blend. Any of them, even on that page you linked. Is that what we're trying to do here? Crossing my eyes just splits them up further. And it's all giving me a headache.

I believe I'd have to bow out of any such "feature" in this game.

The large majority of my characters were already on Virtue and Freedom, mostly Virtue. I've pretty much done all the moving around I'm going to do, but if anything, I'll be moving some characters from Freedom to Virtue.

My handful of characters on Justice, Triumph, and Infinity are staying right there, mainly because their names are already taken elsewhere.

The first time I saw the trailer for Devil in a theater, the audience groaned and/or snickered too. However, the last few times I've seen it there's been no reaction. I'm not as fed up with Shyamalan as most, so I'm interested in Devil myself.

Before this movie we got The Switch (bleh whatever) and Devil trailers, and I forget what else. Nothing new.

Saw it this afternoon, before The Expendables. I liked it but did not love it, which applies to a lot of movies actually, but this one did do better than most.

I actually found some of the surrounding characters much more interesting than Scott or Ramona. Like the girl with the glasses (Jennifer or Julie, I forget now), the one who "has issues" and apparently has every job, that gag was clever. Also liked Kim the drummer, and Scott's roommate stole practically every scene he was in.

Oh, and "hasbian" made be laugh. Plus the way of defeating her made me laugh again, mainly because it made me think of an ex of MINE who could be "defeated" by touching the back of her neck.

Well, frankly I'd probably be boring like M_B mentioned and pay off on one of my credit cards.

However, if I HAD to spend it, I'd probably buy the other volumes of Conan that Books-A-Million had. There's a color set from Dark Horse, and Marvel has those old black and white issues bound into a couple of volumes too.

The other choice is a pair of those new running shoes with the odd shape, intended to tone you up. I'm on a running kick lately, does wonders for my attitude and mood.

Yeah, I had pretty much the exact same reactions, OP. My theater (half full) all laughed hardest at the Arnold joke too, though personally I laughed much harder at Bruce Willis's line just a little earlier.

Auto-shotgun for the win, seriously. Heck, regular shotgun, I laughed when that guy's top half went flying across the room, that pretty much lets you know what you're in for.

It's perfectly possible to solo (almost*) every mission in Praetoria, provided one is careful and/or built for damage. Or just willing to zerg it if necessary. However, there's no denying that the enemies are by and large more difficult than the ones on red and blue. Not hugely, but it's noticeable.

Ambushes are fine every now and again, or when they make sense. In almost every mission? In ten waves or more, sometimes all at once? Some of them are probably bugs, but one wonders. At times the missions simply seem designed to kill you. Not everyone is going to be happy with this direction. Of course some characters can handle this better than others.

* - Two words: Noble Savage. I foresee many many Broadcasts in the future, all saying something like "GAAAHH! Team forming for Noble Savage!" (Unless he's been patched recently, which frankly I doubt.)

You know what? I shouldn't sound so darn negative in my first public feedback-type post. It sounds like I'm upset about Praetoria, but I'm not really. I don't care for the ambush-happiness, or the fact that this 1-20 area feels like it's balanced for SOs, but dangit the zones are incredible and feel alive, the stories are just fantastic, and the new mission tech involved is impressive. I especially love some of the dialogue options available, you can be straight up HARD CORE in Praetoria at times.

Well, sadly I have nothing as artistic as The Girl's, but here are a few more shots.

Hey, I just got here, it wasn't me! I'm a Stalker anyway!



Hamidon plushies plz.



Your Mother knows best.



See the headset on this Syndicate? I want it. Badly. So jealous right now.



I just love the lighting and ambience in this place:

Let's see.

I have four characters that will be switching sides, including one that will reroll for the sole purpose of leveling a bit as a Villain then redeeming herself.

There are at least five, and possibly more, who I'll be rerolling to start as Praetorians. They're all pretty much placeholders and have been sitting idle for a long time waiting for this.

I plan to start at least two brand new characters in Praetoria, I'm still debating about two others, and no doubt I'll eventually think of more.

So yeah, got a few new ideas, and there's a lot of shuffling to be done.

- Always fullscreen, never have anything else running to distract me, my ADD gets plenty of use as it is.

- I'm about half solo and half PuG.

- This sounds terrible, but I don't have many actual friends in the game at all, and those few are rarely on, if ever these days. Nobody I know IRL plays. I mean, I listen to and participate in chatter on Broadcast, Team, and Globals, but it's mostly just me. Hell, I'm mostly alone in the world, and somehow I've made it through. I'm not whining here, just pointing out that I can't really rely on in-game friends to keep up my interest here, no matter how good the community overall is.

- So what does keep me here? Two things that go together: I'm an action-RPG fiend and an RPer. This game is THE BEST I've ever come across that accomodates both. And RP to me doesn't include talking in my character's voice or using custom emotes a lot, I actually feel really self-conscious when I do that so I don't. Basically, I like to imagine that a movie is being made, and in my head I act as director for my character's actions. I zoom and pan, and imagine reaction shots. I go way out of my way to set up enemies so that they'll either attack or (preferably) be attacked in the most dramatic way possible. Death/defeat scenes run through my head in slow motion. I bet you can guess knockback is my best friend for this, every time I defeat someone and send them flying I just grin like a fool, and if it's particularly amusing or dramatic I get a little shiver. I could play this game for years to come, even if never got another update.

- I adore making characters. No, scratch that, that's just the end result. What I truly love is imagining characters, coming up with new stories, new concepts, new directions. I don't care about level 50 at all, I've gone there twice for the sole purpose of allowing me access to more ATs, but now I couldn't care any less about maxing out. What's important to me is creating, and then getting them to the point where *I* feel like they've "made it". Just like in a console RPG it's rarely necessary to max out, it's only important to see the story through, so too is how I play this game. Obviously the content can go on forever, but my characters only follow it until they feel it's done for THEM.

- I love exploring. Wandering around, checking the sights and sounds, just happy that I can experience the world. Oh, and it's fun in the game too.

When I catch two movies on the same day and there's a disparity in the ratings, I almost always go for the R-rated one second, and for two action movies you can remove the "almost". I like to end up the day with the most violence. Another consideration in my planning is if there's a disparity in my interest: "Eh, I guess I'll see it" comes first, whereas "I'm so there" comes last, in order to leave the pleasantest possible taste. (Yes, violence is a pleasant experience.)

"Quirky" is not a selling point for me, and SPvtW looks quirky, but promise some fighting and a cute girl and I'm willing to give it a chance. Expendables on the other hand has me quite excited. Therefore I will be seeing Scott Pilgrim first and The Expendables second. I have Fridays off so I'll be able to catch both for matinee price.

I don't feel bad about knowing where the spawns will be. For one thing I actually honestly don't mind knocking over "the same old office or warehouse", I'm just so happy it's not a freakin' blue cave. Another reason is that when I'm looking around for glowies or that last guy, I know all the hiding places too. Occasionally the game does throw you a curve too.

Mind you, I'm not opposed to new maps at all. As long as they aren't more caves! (Yeah yeah, I know, queue someone who just loves 'em.)

I have occasionally become disgusted with some aspect of the forum community and decided I'd ignore it all for a while. I recommend it to anyone. It's good for ya, gives you time to either forget why you did it or just gain some perspective, or if nothing else time for the wound (whatever its depth) to heal.

Not that anyone missed me at the time, mind you, just throwing out suggestions.

Hmm, silly names.

- Buttered Cat, Gravity/Ice Dominator. Old physics joke, bio explains it. Lots of complements on the name and the character concept, a few detractors.

- DJ Shoopuff, Rad/Psi Blaster. Librarian by day, club-hopping party-provider by night. Her name really could be anything, personally I just like the sound of "Shoopuff" (as well as the actual thing).

- Dr. Particular, Ill/Rad 'troller. I don't consider this a silly name really but some would. The bio explains that he used to be a kids' science show host, along the lines of Mr. Wizard.

- Sister Scylla, BS/Regen Scrapper. Another name that sounds disconnected from anything, until you read the bio and find out she's an ex-KoA, who have names like that.

- Staff Chick, Staff/Regen Scrapper. Okay, she's a placeholder, I'm an optimistic guy. A joke about this.

- Vegan Rage, Plant/Stone Dom. I guess this would be my one character who most fits this topic. Basically she's an archeology student who went spelunking by herself, was presumed dead, and came back as a wannabe Devouring Earth. With a silly name that her creator finds amusing.

- Oh yeah, almost forgot about Quicksand Jesus, the Earth/Rad 'troller. Jesus Dominguez came up with what he thought was a good heroic name, and doesn't understand why people think it highly hilarious to tell him they're "18 and Life" but won't settle for any "Monkey Business".