Shagster

I can see FemFury, even though she's towards the back! (yay for making her really tall!)

No worries.

I'm valuable enough to show up a few minutes late for work every now and then. And I've earned a lot of brownie points over the years by going above and beyond in the past.

Your video was totally worth it.

I knew there was a reason I liked your posts, Bill.

(just kidding, had no idea of your politics from your posting history that I had read)

Zwill mentioned it in a podcast interview. "Evolved Hardcore Gamer" was a phrase they used internally at the studio. Zwill said he was a good example. A hardcore gamer who now had a a job, kids, commitments, etc, and only gets a few quick hours of gaming and not every day.

Basically, the ex-hardcore gamer who still loves games just as much, but for whom the 7 days a week with marathon day-long gaming sessions on weekends are a thing of the past.

You could be right.

While I think targeting the "hardcore gamer who doesn't have much time for gaming anymore" could actually be a nice untapped market, I would think that might be exactly the opposite of what NCSoft wants to target, if they think hardcore grinding MMOs are where it's at. Maybe that conflict of vision doomed the Super-Secret-Project, and NCSoft killed Paragon because they didn't like what they saw in the pipeline.

Personally, I think Paragon was pretty good at being different than the crowd and finding new approaches to things. If anyone could have made a game that would exploit the "evolved hardcore gamer" market, it would be them.

Unless, as some scientist theorize, black holes are the method by which new universes are started. Each black hole that forms in our universe may be chance for a new "child" universe to split off from ours.

Some could take a philosophical argument that without endings, things have no meaning. Without death to define and delimit a life, one might lose the preciousness of unique moments and achievements. A case could be made that finality and ending give meaning to the time we have.

There was an alien race of artists in GURPS Aliens that believed that entropy had to be a gift from a benevolent creator, because it ensured that sentient beings would always have something to fix or improve, and therefore would never be without purpose.

He had already been let go as part of Paragon Studios, and the time had come for him to focus on the job search. (The guy has a family, after all).

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...61&postcount=1

Well, since the system of the MA grew out of an internal tool created to make the Devs more efficient at writing missions... it therefore seems less unlikely that creating MA displaced huge amounts of content creation elsewhere. They were making the core parts of MA anyway, for their own use.

And given that one player who was a talented MA writer went on to be hired by Paragon as a dev to write new missions...

I think implementing Mission Architect had a lower opportunity cost than you might think, in terms of displaced content.

Had it taken off, MA would have been the holy grail of MMO content production, in a way. It would have been a solution to the "Devs take 3 months to create new content, hardcore players finish it in a week, then ask what's next" syndrome. Given that potential, even if we take every criticism of MA as a undisputed fact, it was a risk worth taking by the Devs.

In a way, the Rani would make a better ongoing enemy for the Doctor in the nuWho universe than the Master.

With no other Time Lords around, if the Master is alive, he HAS to be the Doctor's top priority. Given enough breathing room, The Master will either conquer the universe, destroy all of reality, or create some similar cosmic disaster. So at the end of every encounter, the Doctor has to be convinced the Master is dead. He can't just "get away" or the Doctor looks a fool for not spending every waking moment working on finding and stopping his arch-nemesis.

The Rani, on the other hand, is more the amoral mad scientist type. She could wander about time and space, performing her twisted experiments, conquering a planet here and there. Basically acting as an "anti-Doctor", wandering at whim, but doing harm with her indifference to "lesser beings" rather than doing good out of caring.

And if the Rani escapes at the end of a battle between them, it's not an immediate cosmic crisis. Sure, the Doctor would want to track her down at some point, out of a sense of Time Lord responsibility. But in the grand scheme of total threat to all life in the universe, the Daleks and several other forces are a greater worry, so the Doctor doesn't look like an irresponsible idiot for putting off dealing with The Rani until her next scheme comes to his attention.

Hm. One thought that I just had regarding keeping the -Resist on Tyrant: Tanker Bruising.

It's only a 20% Resist debuff, but if I remember right, it has a little mechanical quirk where it's not a direct debuff, but rather it grants a power to the target that then debuffs the target. This was done to prevent Bruising from stacking from multiple tankers.

The upside of that is, since the source of the power becomes the target, it's not impacted by level differences. It's still reduced by Resistance, but it shouldn't have the 30% reduction in debuff strength from the level difference. Unless they changed that at some point.

We should remind Tankers to use that Tier 1 attack from their secondary often on Tyrant. (although, I assume most Tankers know to do this in AV fights). Need a Tanker or two to pull Tyrant out of the Lightning anyway, so people can go back to attacking.

Edit: And the -Resist procs from Achilles' Heel and Fury of the Gladiator work the same way, with a granted -resist power. So, they should bypass level differences too.

I'm not sure if Uber mentioned it too, but I think it was me who first brought this up in league chat.

For anyone not familiar with the details of this game mechanic, here's the link to the "Purple Patch" page on Paragonwiki:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch

So when doing Really Hard Way, Tyrant is 54(+5), and we don't get level shifts from killing the lights. So, taking from that chart, here's how various Incarnate shift / Ultimate combos stack up versus an effective Level 59 target.

50(+3) with Ultimate: 30% of base damage

50(+3) no Ultimate or
50(+2) with Ultimate: 15% of base damage

50(+2) no Ultimate or
50(+1) with Ultimate: 8% of base damage

50(+1) no Ultimate: 5% of base damage

And remember this modifier doesn't just reduce damage, it also reduces your Debuff effectiveness.

These numbers are pretty stark. So, if you think as a 50(+3), you don't need to burn an Ultimate for the fight with Tyrant while going for RHW, just keep in mind that you will be doing half as much damage.

Also means that a 50(+2) is basically half as effective as the 50(+3). Since Scourge isn't 100%, probably means a 50(+3) Blaster or Scrapper is a better choice than a 50(+2) Corruptor, despite the natural advantages of Corruptors with Tyrant.

And a "Pity spot" for a 50(+1) who's new to the trials, and doesn't have Ultimates? That's not looking good. Literally 1/6th as effective as the 50(+3) burning Ultimates. That character would be definitely boosting Tyrant (by adding to league size) more than would be helping.

One of the things about Justice server I've always loved is we are rarely elitist when forming teams or leagues or raids (at least in my experience). It seems to me that the general attitude is "Come one, come all. If you can't pull your own weight, we've got plenty of other people who can pick up the slack. You'll learn a lot about this, and we'll feel good about helping you out." I've seen this with Incarnate Trials, Hami Raids, and Master runs of TFs. I've been on teams where we've said in tells "We've got 3 solid players who know each other and 5 people who've never done the STF before. We can still pull off the Master run as long as the 5 listen and don't actively grief us. And we can get these guys the badge."

I think you have to make an exception to that for Really Hard Way. Personally, I'd say 50(+3) only. Maybe a 50(+2) or two, if they are a really good debuff set Corruptor.

Personally, I do NOT like like being that selective, but this is the most difficult badge in the top trial in the game. Hopefully people can understand that doing other trials and "leveling up" is a good idea before tackling something this challenging. (And it's not like we won't bring along a 50(+1) on a regular Magi trial. It's just the RHW runs that run into this Level 54(+5) monster.)

And everybody has to have at least an Ultimate for that final push around 30% health on Tyrant. I myself have gifted Ultimates to players with less Influence / Astral Merits for RHW runs, and I think that's a great way to ensure success. Make sure *everybody* has those Ultimates, make it clear in league to the more casual players that others will help them out if they just speak up and say they don't have any Ultimates.

Although, I'd say over half the time, you explain that you just buy them from Astral Christy for 2 Astral Merits, and a lot of people realize they have a huge stock of Astrals sitting around from other trials, and are glad to find a use for them. And for other people, buying an Ultimate for 20 million a pop on the Auction House is a nice way to burn influence before the game shuts down.