Samuel_Tow

You just did. I have nothing against you, Dan, but what do you think you achieved by posting this, other than a "take that" at these people you seem to have contempt for? Do you honestly think someone will read this and say "My God! He's right! I must stop doing this!" Because from my experience, all that does is cause more animosity.

I know Zombie Man enjoys the animosity and feels it is his duty to put people in their place around these parts, but again - that does not help. Like I've said before - if you let one-off posters make their one-off post, ignore it and move away, their one-off post will have no significant impact on the thread. If, by contrast, you opt to start a huge argument about it, the thread becomes about that.

Personally, when I first heard about the "upgradable AoE Incarnate powers" from that one leak a while ago, my first thought was "Boy, I sure hope I can shoot those out of my rifle." Then I remembered that this probably won't happen, simply because it would be too much work for the art team. I'm not actually sure if this did or did not happen, but I highly doubt Incarnate powers would alter themselves to fit your powersets. Just doesn't seem like something that's very likely.

This is sort of what I talk about when I bring up customization and the homogeneity of powers, pets included. It doesn't seem like customization is a high priority at all. OF COURSE all powers couldn't be made to fit all player characters, I get that. But the solution to that is to let people customize them and make these powers fit, themselves. The most obvious example is how we were able to make Energy Blast and Energy Manipulation fit together, as well as how we could make Energy Manipulation fit Radiation Blast.

This homogeneity, perceived or real, is a symptom of what I see as a very worrisome problem - that the development team seems to have overfocused on systems and mechanics and such, and left the visuals behind.

Pot, meet kettle. I've seen a ton of complaining about how "evil" people derail threads with their nonsense, when the "good" people derail threads with their righteous crusades just as much. Has it ever occurred to "you people" that perhaps this derails wouldn't happen if you didn't play moderator every time?

You equate "can" with "want." I can justify anything and everything with enough handwaving, up to and including a man made out of sugar, spice and everything nice. This does not mean that I want to do this. I CAN follow the logic of the Twilight Saga. This does not mean that I want to watch the Twilight Saga. I don't want a story that JUST makes sense, I want a story that is actually good, so telling me how I can make sense of a bad story does not help. It's still a bad story.

I build my characters on concept. If a character's concept turns out to be impossible to maintain in the long run, I reroll said character and either make him into something else, or otherwise make another character who does make sense. I have more than enough characters with stories I like, so I see no reason to torture myself playing characters with stories that I don't.

To put my money where my mouth is: Some time ago I deleted a level 50 Ma/Inv Scrapper because the powersets I'd chosen for her didn't really fit the concept I had in mind, causing me to neglect her for over three years. She is now a heroic level 50 SS/Inv Brute, and by FAR my favourite character, easily surpassing even Samuel Tow, himself.

Following this, I deleted my level 50 AR/Dev/Mun Blaster, my first 50 Blaster and second 50 hero. I got sick and tired of playing Blasters and feeling like a complete loser when I was alone, so I rerolled him into a Bots/Traps Mastermind, and have had more fun with him in about 26 levels than I ever did with the Blaster, including back in the days of the Smoke Grenade bug.

Following this, I deleted a level 50 Energy/Energy/Force Blaster, again because I no longer like how Blasters play. I rerolled her into a heroic Energy/Willpower Brute, and have had much fun with her since, far more than I did before.

I'll be rerolling my 50 Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster soon, into a Fire/Fire/Pyre Scrapper when I get around to that. I'm also waiting for the Vanguard pack to rerolly my level 40-something Archery/Devices Blaster, because her concept was always much more appropriate to an agile fighter, not a squishy Blaster. She will become a Dual Blades Stalker. I also have a Psi/Psi Blaster I intend to delete and remake into a Demons/Pain or Demons/Dark Mastermind, I haven't decided. She has to do with psychics and demons, and posturing Blaster never really fit the theme. That's why she got stuck at 20 and never advanced.

I can justify a great many things by telling stories I don't like. I don't intend to tell stories I don't like when I can tell stories I enjoy.

Mentioning the Architect and the Lore pets in the same post makes me wonder something: Wouldn't it be cool if we got to use Architect customization for the Lore pets, to shape them as whatever we pick? That way, they could be vanquished foes, friendly support characters, random helpers or even "other heroes/villains," and it'd be up to us to decide.

I realise this would lose out on some of the more eccentric things that these could represent, such as non-player-usable models and skeletons. I... Suppose one could pick a pre-made pet OR a custom-made pet.

Of course, said pets would have to be limited to specific predefined powersets to preserve balance, as Architect power selection tends to produce vastly inconsistent character power levels. Still, having a pet that at least LOOKS like what I want it to, even if it fights like, say, a Seer, would be better than using a Seer directly.

I feel much the same way, and an "arms race" is a good way to put it. What I tend to dislike about most traditional RPGs is that they're so designed that you slowly fall behind the power curve and need more and more help to do less and less. I know the story tries to convince us that we're stronger really, really hard, but the fact remains that everything only gets more and more difficulty and requires more and more people.

"Show, don't tell." I'm being told I'm stronger, but I don't see it. I don't "feel" it. It just feels like my enemies are racing ahead of me.

I really don't think there's anything more to be said about the subject than this. Anything else and I'll just be repeating the same things I said five years ago.

They didn't learn from Patron Pools. They didn't learn that people prefer powers that they have the choice of writing off as their own, or attributing to another entity as a granted power.

I kind of already posted that, probably a couple of pages before, I don't remember. You're right - there really is no point to have a solo option to what is ostensibly a team content gate. I've managed to make peace with that, myself, since there's really no reason to look for "other ways" to earn passage into content you don't want to do to begin with.

I can also see why they'd add a quote-unquote "solo option" just so they could say they have one, and I can see why they'd make it unviable. We're supposed to be playing the Trials, if not to unlock the powers then to use the powers. And that's just fine, really.

Like I said - better to have content you don't want to do than to have content you want to do but can't.

That's more or less where I am. Not really sure when (or if) these things will ever get worked on, but some of the things that would make me really happy include:

*Powerset proliferation
*Further power customization
*New costume pieces and sets, especially if they cover brand new concepts.
*New weapons (pretty please?)
*Backpacks and jetpacks.
*New powersets. Pistols, Demons, Kinetic Melee and Electrical Control were great. How about Dark Control?
*Updates on currently underperforming sets like Devices.

'Course, you can't have all of that stuff in a single Issue, I get that. But I still hope I21 has at least one of these.

*edit*
Oh, and when are we going to get our Apathy Corruptors, damn it!?!

It's really cool, I agree, though it seems like a good place to try out that Cimeroran "underwater" tech

However, it's still a cargo ship, just tilted to one side, and I'm not even sure if the shipping containers have slid down. For some reason, whenever I think of ship maps, I think back to the old X-Com: Terror from the Deep game, and the Ship Assaults that had. It had both engineering decks with the walkways and the engines and the large storage rooms and the little closets, as well as cruise ship upper decks, with corridors, cabins restaurants, pools and I think even a movie theatre.

I know it's unreasonable, but I've always wanted to see ship maps like that.

Ah! That explains the difference in cost. I'm only running single-slotted for endurance, and I really didn't spot that in your build.

Thing is, power use consumes a LOT more endurance than toggles, even for something like Stone Armour, so if I want to overslot on endurance reduction, powers would be it. Just the attacks single-slotted for endurance cost 3.770 points per second, given a fairly consistent attack chain. And it's easy to keep it fairly consistent as I only come up to about 95% uptime, which actually gives me some wait time to absorb possible collisions. It's probably not QUITE that high in actual practice anyway... But it's high.

The thing, though, is that this is an extremely slot-tight build, with Stone Armour not really having almost any powers that I can leave with just a couple of slots. Stone Skin comes the closest, but even that requires a few. And Stone Melee isn't much easier, either, with Fault - the one place I could save up a bit - needing double accuracy slotting because of its inherently low native accuracy.

Total endurance consumption of powers + toggles for Stone Melee and Stone Armour only, all single-slotted for endurance reduction but not recharge reduction (which doesn't help much with cost) comes up to 5.072 before recovery, 2.458 after Stamina, so this gives me around 40 seconds' worth of fighting. Adding Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection brings this down to 1.796, which is better but still high. It isn't until the Cardiac Boost that I get 1.544 per second and 0.822 per second with Stamina and Stamina + Energy respectively. 1.544 is about decent, comparing to my other characters, and 0.822 is downright great, but that's kind of to be expected. Going from Common to Uncommon does not show significant improvement on this.

Really, I have two options now: Either go for Stamina + Energy + Cardiac and be overengineered but short on slots, or kill Mud Pots and go from there. I'm thinking I'll go with the former. This guy is a flagship villain of mine. He deserves to have unnecessarily good endurance.

You know, if this is a suggestion about SG bases, it might help to specify that in your post. Preferably in the title. Otherwise we're left to guess, and the first guess that comes to mind is the SG emblem you wear on your chest.

They want you to raid, that's why. That's the entire point. It's how the process goes. They add a new shiny and keep it exclusive for a couple of years, then they might possibly start adding alternate paths to these rewards. But as of right now, the "solo path" is an illusion.

Though, to be honest, it seems like that's just as well. As people said before - the only Incarnate content we have is TFs and Trials. As such, there really is no need for a solo path to gain something that's only usable in forced-teaming encounters anyway.

I am. And this is not a new argument. It is, in fact, the same argument I made about Patron Powerpools in I7. Yes, I can see why the storyline would justify us borrowing other entities' powers, my beef isn't that it doesn't make sense. My beef is with why it was deemed necessary to write a story where we had no alternate explanations but that we are borrowing other entities' powers?

I'm well aware of the story of the Well of the Furies, and to be honest, I didn't find a problem with it originally. Back before we were given a specific explanation, I tended to interpret the Well's power more as a form of "inspiration," in that it makes us better at what we do, but doesn't actually let us do new things that we wouldn't normally be able to do with our powers. I'll have to re-examine the newer storylines, but it seems like this is no longer the case.

This represents a trend in writing that I've been arguing about for years now - the game becomes less and less tolerant towards allowing us to pretend this is our story. The old Launch content was very inclusive, permitting characters of all mentalities, all motivations and types of power. The Epics we got with I1 were even better - just more powers that could easily be used to extend the ones we already had, and seamlessly so. But ever since CoV came out, the storyline has assumed more and more, decreed more and more and excluded more and more, and we keep being allowed to borrow other people's powers, and thus lie our characters to other people narratively.

Having this as an option, such as the ability to use Vanguard gear to represent yourself as a Vanguard options is indeed very good. I'll go a step further and say that I no longer have a problem with Patron pools, now that villains got access to Epics. I mean, I might want to have some characters associate with some NPC factions, sure. But having no choice in the matter... Not my thing.

Yes, it is. I have no intention of allowing specific people to ruin my fun on the forums over whatever stubborn agenda they may have, when we can coexist peacefully. I don't come to a discussion forum to challenge other people's ideas and opinions. I come to share ideas and opinions, as well as to get information. I feel no need to browbeat others and I feel no need to dominate them. This is not a discussion, not in my eyes.

A discussion focuses focuses on arguments on the subject matter at hand, not on arguments ad hominem. People who resort to these are not people I'm interested in having a discussion with any more than I'm interested in having a discussion with my cat.

My life has been much happier once I learned to stay away from peer pressure and ignore, avoid and stay away from the things I don't like, and this is one more way to do so.

Not very good, because it's a flawed, one-sided view of the situation. We are all players here, and should really have equal "rights" to be happy. It's a mistake to only ever base development resources based on those who are happy and ignore those who are not. After all, isn't that precisely why the Incarnate system was introduced? I was perfectly happy not having an end game system, but others were not. An end game system was added, and those who were unhappy before are happy now. Do you view that as a positive change?

Ironically, to claim that you claim you don't want changes to the game based on the outlooks of people currently unhappy with specific aspects of it is the ultimate act of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LALALALALAL I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" You're happy with the game (I assume) and are arguing that those who are not should be ignored, and the problems they bring up should be ignored, as well, by virtue of being brought up by contemptible people.

Finally, it is not my "ideas" you challenge by making your claim. You are challenging my person, by virtue of dismissing me entirely for being unhappy. No good ever comes from ignoring problems.

Then you only see what you want to see. With a very few exception, all cries of martyrdom have been levelled at the player base, and in particular a select few posters. "We people" don't feel wrong by the game or by the developers. Disappointed, maybe, but you can't always get what you want. What "we people" feel wrong by is "you people" who keep insisting on "challenging" us at every turn, stoutly determined to ensure nothing we say ever goes unspat on, lest we be allowed to feel we have a voice.

How you can take the moral high ground in this situation is beyond me. I'm not saying I've never intentionally played the bad guy in such situation, but at least when I do, I do so with the clear admission that I'll be the bad guy. You can be as much an intolerant Internet bully as is your fancy, that's fine. It comes with the territory. But you don't get to claim righteousness in doing so.

[/quote]As my wife is fond of saying, "If you don't wan't people to laugh at your beliefs, then perhaps you should not have such funny beliefs."[/QUOTE]

I agree. I should indeed not hold the funny opinions that I do, which make so many people laugh at me. Has this point not been made enough times already? Should I start a counter?

Hey, to each their own. The good thing about this game is that we can all make our own stories and involve as much or as little of the existing canon as we want.