Shatterjack

Then you were making baseless accusations. At best.
You're the one twisting words. Whenever it was mentioned as a possibility it was always put in terms of "if", not "when". Before Positron's teaser image posted before the I16 announcement, there was never any hint that PC had any place on the schedule.
Not as good an example, but it does serve as further proof that the devs can and do go back on "no" positions from time to time. And one is all it takes.

Look, as a launch-day veteran I realize that it gets tiring at times to see a suggestion get made repeatedly. But no amount of weariness on our part can impose an obligation on others to stop making or supporting those suggestions, not even when the developers say no to them. We're allowed (and in fact, encouraged) to try to change their minds.

...doesn't exist. Period. Skepticism is justified, insinuating that I am a liar is not.

Please do not put words in my mouth. Support for a suggested feature does not imply a belief that said feature should be developed to the exclusion of all other content.

You're also not accounting for the fact that not every feature needs the undivided attention of the entire development team, not even if it takes a lot of effort to implement. Being a software developer myself, I speak from experience when I say that some projects take a lot of time and effort to do, but don't benefit from having more than one or two people on them. Whether that too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen aspect would apply here is something you and I could only guess at, but my point is that just because something is difficult to do doesn't necessarily mean it blocks all other development.

Well, first of all, there is an important difference that you're missing: AT respecs and extra storage differ from swinging in that their main problems are in the way they would affect gameplay. If it were possible to implement them right now, instantly, complete and properly QA'ed, those problems would still be deal-breakers (barring some as-yet-unseen convincing gameplay-based argument that they shouldn't be, that is).

Swinging, on the other hand, has no such issues; its problems are aesthetic and technical ones. I've acknowledged the technical ones repeatedly, and I'm saying that the aesthetic ones aren't any worse than the ones we must already put up with by necessity (and everyone else so far has been silently conceding that point by glossing over it).

Secondly, yes, there is a reason to keep up with an idea even in the face of developer dismissal. Again, we saw that with Power Customization. Positron once stated in an interview (couldn't find it unfortunately, it was around 4-5 years ago if I recall) that PC just wasn't going to happen due to the resources it would require. Obviously, that decision was later revisited, and that was in no small part because people kept asking for it. The frequent posts about the subject served as a constant reminder that the players really wanted that feature, and it reached a point where they said "Okay, it's worth it to take the time to do this".

You might be tempted to point out that the equation had changed due to additional resource infusion by NCSoft, but that doesn't weaken my point. Once the devs had those resources it was the constant demands for PC that influenced them on how best to use them. A similar equation-changer may happen in the future (some blocking technical problem previously thought unsolvable turns out not to be, for instance), and if it does, I'd like them to see that swinglines are still very much wanted.

As I've already mentioned, "would take years" won't necessarily be true forever, and "would look stupid" has been overlooked for other powers already.

I've already stated that I acknowledge that the technical problems make swinging unlikely to happen. There's nothing wrong with addressing the other commonly-accepted reasons as well, which is what I've been doing here.

That aside, we have seen irrefutable evidence that the developers occasionally revisit what is still on the "too much work" list and what isn't, so keeping such ideas alive absolutely has value. In other words, your statement needs a "probably" in there before the "won't". This doesn't mean that we should simply dismiss technical issues, but it does mean that said issues are not automatically a reason to declare subjects a lost cause.

That doesn't answer the question at all. I asked why swinging should be dismissed on the basis of looking silly when other powers are not. Technical problems, while valid in and of themselves, are beside this particular point.

Nobody in this thread has showed any signs of being mad or frustrated, and you know it. Don't invent states of mind and project them onto people just because they disagree with you. It's dishonest, it's immature, and it should be beneath you.

Sorry, but that is not the conversation-ender that you want it to be. The devs can and do change their minds from time to time. You already acknowledged that with regards to Power Customization, even though you were trying to dismiss that truth as a "whine" due to the fact that it undermines your position.

In the latter case, why would you think they'd need anchor points at all? The whole idea of anchor points is to create a "whitelist" of places where swinging is allowed. If it's allowed everywhere then there's no need for them; the line simply goes up until it hits an object and/or reaches a predetermined distance or whatever. And just in case you were thinking it: No, by "simply" I do not mean that this would be easy to do, nor am I dismissing the possibility that swinging is technically unfeasible for other reasons.

I'm also still waiting to hear why swinging should be dismissed on the "looks silly" basis, yet all the equally-or-more-silly-looking uses of existing powers should get a free pass.

Yes, it does. And don't be so melodramatic; there are precisely zero people who played Champions and said to themselves "You know, I would keep playing this game but I won't because swingers can go anywhere". CO has plenty of serious flaws, but the "invisible helicopter problem" hardly even moves the needle, and doesn't nearly justify dismissing a travel mode that is so iconic to the genre. It would be like saying we shouldn't have Super Speed because it looks silly for speedsters to stop on a dime.

Doesn't have to. The other end of the portal is next to a steel wall in my secret base. When my grapple fires it creates a portal in front of itself, flies through the entrance, then exits into my base and sticks to the wall with an electromagnet. When I'm done swinging the magnet releases and the grapple retracts, ready to be fired again.

Contrived? A bit, yeah. But it's only one possible explanation of many, and it's no worse than any excuse a speedster has for ignoring inertia. And if this game has taught us anything, it's that any power can be explained for any character. Between mutant powers, magic, super-science, alien technology, and so on, it's easy to come up with reasons why a character can appear to "swing from nothing".

Now on the other hand, the physics of swinging is a decidedly non-trivial issue, and can make for a better argument against implementing it. But only the devs can know just how valid that particular argument is. Us players are merely guessing when we invoke it.

And the answer is "very, very, very little". It's extremely difficult to do well, but very easy to use as a crutch to excuse bad writing.

Champions Online does that a lot, and that is far and away the absolute worst thing about that game. And that's coming from someone who rather likes CO.

Get throat cancer, Foxbat...

It's not silly to complain about that at all. It's good that such threads exist, but those are workarounds, not solutions. The solution is a serious overhaul of the AE interface and/or the rating system that:

1) lets us easily separate the wheat from the chaff, and

2) lets us individually define what "wheat" and "chaff" mean

Eliminate the first sentence. It doesn't help to establish the mood or setting, and suggests a concern for stealth on the PC's part that isn't necessarily warranted.

Not sure. The "seems like whispers" bit suggests a certain level of imagination, and many characters wouldn't see a need to use the gate. I'd have to know more about the mission before I could suggest an alternative.

Eliminate the phrase following the ellipsis. The part before that adequately establishes the hostage's situation, but that last part is downright trying to roleplay my character for me. If I saw that in an AE mission it would automatically be disqualified from a 5-star rating on the spot, and even 4-star could be lost if it kept throwing stuff like that at me.

Or maybe you're deliberately mischaracterizing my argument.

Nobody is suggesting anything along the lines of "It's cold in here where your character is but your character doesn't know that!". What I'm saying is that the GM says "It's cold in here", and the player decides whether the character realizes it or not, and how they react if they do.

It isn't a "cop-out"; it's an absolute fact that has been established for as long as RPG's have existed. Players frequently have knowledge that their character's don't.
Nonsense. Telling you that it's cold in here helps set the mood for the mission. That is done for the player's benefit. The author isn't writing to entertain the character. It is then up to the player to decide whether the character feels the temperature, whether it makes the character uncomfortable, and so on. Doing this without making unwarranted assumptions about player characters or being "sterile" is not only possible, but fairly easy.

Your attempted fiat declaration that everything in a text window is automatically character knowledge is as bizarre as it is unsupported.

You're getting your I's mixed up. The fact that you, the player, know that it's cold doesn't imply that the character knows it too. You are privy to information that your character does not and cannot know.

The difference is subtle, yes. But it's there, and it can make the difference between proper mood-setting and godmoding.

The difference you're missing is that in the context of this game, "it's cold in here" does not imply "you feel that it's cold". The former merely imparts information to the player and leaves it up to them to determine how the character feels and reacts (if at all). The latter makes assumptions that aren't even necessary, much less warranted.

The fact that it's usually done in a fleeting, easily-ignored fashion makes it a minor sin in most cases, but the complaint is a legitimate one nevertheless.

No, it wouldn't. Even Apple couldn't come up with a UI that would make it feasible.

Getting CoX to run on a portable game system would be pretty cool as a technical accomplishment, but actually playing it on one would only be fun for the five minutes it would take the novelty to wear off.

Mind you, an action-oriented spinoff DS-or-whatever game set in the CoX universe could have potential, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

I think this point was made earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating: You needn't be at the mercy of game canon.

I just unlocked the Alpha for my one and only 50 to date, and he's simply a good fighter with no ties to any "magic well" mumbo-jumbo (no, not even subconsciously). Any abilities he gets through the Incarnate system are simply further training, experience, blah blah Badass Normal stuff. He never "really" worked with Mender Ramiel or even visited Oroborous; that's just something that I did as a player in a non-RP context, akin to the character creation.

Just like Inspirations, Enhancements, and pretty much every other game mechanic, your Incarnate Abilities represent whatever you want them to. The flavor text is optional, and it's all flavor text.

That said, you might well decide that it doesn't make sense for a given character of yours to have Incarnate abilities regardless of what those abilities actually mean. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

Those are certainly valid examples, but I would add that many incarnations of Batman would qualify as well, and even Frank Miller's Batman doesn't go around killing criminals.

You are either misunderstanding the analogy, or deliberately distorting it. I will assume the former.

You claim he compared the act of making a suggestion to the act of endangering someone's life in a hospital by smoking. This is false, and stems from a conflation of the act of making the suggestion with the act of implementing the suggestion (or more accurately, the consequences of its implementation). The act being compared to smoking in a hospital is the ganking/harrassment of other players, not your support of a /duel function. That support, in turn, is compared to asking for the ashtrays. Enabling suggestion maps to enabling suggestion, consequential act maps to consequential act.

And as previously noted, the analogy is not invalidated by a difference in scale; the fact that ganking lowbies or spamming duel requests isn't nearly as morally reprehensible as smoking in a hospital (and nobody claimed it is, not even implicitly) does nothing to detract from the fact that both are inconsiderate acts which would be enabled by their respective suggestions. Which, of course, is the entire point.

Therefore, the analogy stands, as you have failed to demonstrate a substantial flaw in it.

Additionally:
It's also pretending that anyone in Atlas Park over level 30 is farming by definition.

Analogies are not invalidated by differences in scale.

This isn't a problem if all the sounds available for a given power have the same length.

Inflation is a fact of life in MMO's. Keep an eye on prices over time for any game on those sites and you'll see the same thing happening. The first few days World of Warcraft was live, RMT shops were selling at something like five bucks per gold piece. Nowadays it's more like one cent per gold.

You're not seeing anything new, or anything that heralds the death of RMT.

That's not what you did. You took the argument to an extreme, attacked that grotesque exaggeration, and pretended to have discredited the real argument by proxy. That's a textbook strawman.

As for Godwin, the fact that you "dismiss" any argument that invokes your version of it shows that you are laboring under the common misconception about Godwin's Law: that the person who mentions Hitler/strawman/whatever has lost the argument or that their argument is automatically invalid. In truth, Godwin's Law merely states that the subject is increasingly likely to come up as the discussion goes on, and makes no judgement about the invoker. Therefore, to dismiss an argument because it invokes Godwin is to fail to understand Godwin, and by boldly proclaiming the former you irreversibly confess to the latter.