Shagster

Wait a sec... it's worse than that...

If you wanted to get an extra Astral Merit by doing, say, Antacid, over again....you'd have to forgo getting any Grenades... but then you'd lose the Merit for the 10 / 10 on grenades collection, and the Merit for getting full sabotage on both sides, for a net loss of an Astral Merit.

If you do want extra Astral Merits on Lambda, only option is Lambda Looter, which means if you beat Marauder with no acids or paci grenades, you get a grand total of 4 Astral Merits.

As many as a BAF awards on normal completion. Leave the guard towers on or stop all the prisoners, and you're up to 5 merits. Really? Doing Lambda without using Acid / Grenades gets less reward than BAF with guard towers left on? Doing Lambda the "hard way" looks to be both more difficult and more time-consuming to me...

Got the generic reply.

What the generic reply didn't acknowledge was that if the conditions of the 3 badges are correct, then our League should have gotten Lambda Looter and did not.

Basically, I was just told "you're probably wrong, the badges are tougher to get than you think, you probably didn't meet the criteria."

Which clearly wasn't investigated, because Lambda Looter should have worked on that criteria unless the league was wrong and something got used. Not sure how that would have happened.... unless a temp power got used, then replaced before the end by attacking a weapon shipment. But I think the League would have noticed the sudden increase in how much damage Marauder was taking with a Paci Grenade used. And the progress bar in the objectives window would have shown if number of portals went down from 10, right?

Plus if other leagues are getting all 3 badges in one run (as I've seen reported multiple times by other players), then something is wrong in the other direction, with badges sometimes being rewarded when NOT meeting the criteria.

so while the programmers are working on bugs and optimizing code, what are the animators, powers designers, story writers, art team, and so on going to be doing?

Need to give other Devs somethings to do. And sometimes they are going to do things that need programmer attention.

I'm no expert, but I'm not sure this would work with the way development cycles and QA procedures work in the industry.

Gave in to temptation and ordered a copy.

Now eager for it to arrive.

You know what we need? A thread to post our stories about stuff we did with our new Incarnate powers that we probably couldn't have done before getting our shiny new toys. (or at least would have been a lot harder, taken a lot more temp powers, etc.).

Can post here to brag, or to inform of what limits of possibility have been broken, or just to express amazement.

I'm sure once people aren't spending quite as much time on the Trials, we'll have level 50s with T4 Incarnate powers pointing out how they are taking down Recluse with a small team and towers still up, or soloing Romulus and his Nictus fluffies without pulling or shivans.

I'll start. The TL;DR version is: mostly soloing a Villain Respec on a tanker.

So, FemFury (my tanker) and Electroanagesia (SG mate), both being our main badgers, need those villain respec badges, which are now available as of Issue 20.

Not a lot of people on, so Electro uses her husband's and daughter's accounts to get two fillers, and we we start the high-end respec trial, planning to duo it.

Then, Electroanagesia had to take an extended AFK.

Hm. Tanker damage. Having to take out all those vines before they respawn. MIGHT be tricky.

Nope. With Judgement and Lore Pets, it was EASY. Quick, and Lore pets still around while tackling the Tree AV. Which also went down. Two more badger characters pushing a little more over the 1200 badge count.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty high-end IO-ed Scrappers that could have soloed the Thorn Tree room before Issue 19. But to do this with a Tanker without resorting to temp powers, and feeling that "didn't break a sweat" feeling. It was a bit of a "Wow" feeling for me.

Maybe I'm just easily impressed, though.

Anyone out there got some neat stories out there of new things your Incarnate can do that they couldn't do before? C'mon, blow our socks off with tales of your new awesomeness!

Just for fun, I was thinking of how *I* would design the Omega slot if it were up to me.

Now, all the slots between Alpha and Omega seem to be more about granting specific powers. Alpha was more of a general boost to what the character already had. I'd like to have Omega parallel that, but at the same time Omega has to be much more over-the-top and impressive, as the capstone of god-like power. I think the best model might be powers that enhance you in such a way as to really break the game for short periods of time. It also would be neat to fit in with Mender Remiel's intro mission in a balanced way.

So, I figured I'd write down my ideas, so that in a few (?) issues from now, people can either marvel at how close I was or point at laugh at me and gloat at how much more creative and insightful Positron and his endgame design team are compared to me.

I specifically didn't do any forum searches for anyone else having ideas about Omega, so I wouldn't be influenced by other input. If you have already come with similar, or way better, very cool.

Tree #1: Unbreakable Defense
Click power gives Untouchable status while still allowed to attack, as in the Mender Remiel intro mission. You're as unkillable as a phantom army Decoy while duration lasts.
Base duration is 10 seconds at Tier 1, 20 Seconds at Tier 2, 30 seconds at Tier 3, 40 seconds at Tier 4
Core branch of tree adds some extended duration. Radial Branch adds high Mag Mez Defense (Mag 80 at T2, 120 at T3, 150 at T4), and allows power to be clicked when mezzed.

Tree #2: Unstoppable Damage
click power makes all your attacks Unresistable damage for a duration that scales up with Tier.
Core branch gives a DoT of Unresistable damage and an Unresistable Resistance/Defense Debuff so you can soften up a hard target for your teammates. Best for one big target like an AV
Radial branch adds a moderate AoE splash of unresistable damage to all your attacks, so you can quickly kill larger groups.

Tree #3: Irresistible Control
click power makes each attack have an unresistable debuff to Status protection. so after enough hits with this power active, even a standard AV with PTOD can be controlled with a single attack.
Core branch extends Mez duration as well, similar to domination. x1.5 at T2, x2 at T3, x2.5 at T4
Radial branch adds a small Mag of Sleep/Hold/Stun/Immob as proc (% of proc scales up with Tier) to all attacks, so non-control characters can exploit the debuff.

Tree #4: Balanced Optimization
Alpha Slot on Steroids!
click power activates a "super-alpha", adding 2 SOs worth of ED-ignoring enhancement to Dmg / EndMod / Acc / DEF / EndReduction / Resist / Recharge / Heal / Hold / Stun / Sleep / DefBuff / DefDeBuff / ToHit buff. (+40% to Resist and DEF, +66% to the others)
Duration longer than the other 3 trees, possibly shorter recharge too. Much more diluted, general effects, but more often usuable.
Core path increases % of enhancement. Radial Path increase duration.


I'm thinking powers like these, if the duration / recharge was balanced right, could do two things at once.

1) Allow for "game-breaking" moments of sheer awesomeness. (punching Hamidon nucleus with Unstoppable damage and blowing through that 99% resist. Clicking Unbreakable defense and tanking tower-buffed Lord Recluse on a Blaster. And so on.)

while still

2) allowing for tactical use in a properly designed endgame content, made for higher-tier incarnates.

such as:
"Okay, the two Irresistible Control guys, lock down the mind-control Freedom Phalanx and Arachnos Patrons.
Unbreakable Defense, tank Rularru and keep him off us. Tell us when we need to switch off aggro.
Someone with Unstoppable Damage Radial, mop up the hordes of Rularru creatures by the willforges.
Unstoppable Damage Core, focus on Mother Mayhem so we can free the mind-controlled NPCs quickly. Everyone else get on Tyrant. When his echoes manifest, call out if you see which font of the well he's coming from."

Or something like that anyway. (I actually assume by the time Omega hits, we'll have left Tyrant long behind. Hope so, anyway, based on what Prometheus had to say.)

Boy, now that I've typed all this up, kinda hoping this isn't something that has basically been said before.... Maybe I should have done that forum search after all. Oh, well.

There's a certain type of gamer who's gonna get really bored by cutscenes. Especially if they run the same Trial / TF dozens of times or more. After seeing the same cutscene enough times, they end up tapping their foot, just wanting to get past it and get to the ACTION.

Therefore, I submit that the BAF cutscene just might be a psychological experiment by the Devs to see if it's possible to make male gamers bored of cleavage.

You can get Astral Merits in Lambda Sector, but only if you do certain things to completion.

My first LS run, only got 8 / 10 on the Pacification Gernades, and no Astral Merit.

Second run, we had two full teams, and got 10 / 10 on both the acids and the gernades. Astral Merit received.

Excitement is building.

Man, the next few weeks can't pass fast enough, as far as TV anticipation goes.

Just remembered to look around for the Red Nose Day Special "Space" and "Time". Several minutes of solid Doctor Who comedy.

Not enough to tide me over though.... gonna have to have a Season 5 DVD marathon soon.