Venture

Renowned
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  1. Quote:
    I might have missed something, but not sure why the Rulu-Shin are in the Abyss...I took it that they're trying to harness Hamidon's power (he's becoming the new Terra Volta reactor...everyone wants a turn) or somesuch, I'll read the clues a little closer next time.
    Landing in the Abyss was a mistake...they were taking Horta Vines at random trying to get away from you. As you approach the EB says they're stuck at a dead end now and have to fight.
  2. Quote:
    Thoughts on the arc as a whole: since they flat out stated that the means there were using wouldnt affect Numina, she probably wont die. probably a red herring, but who knows.
    Actually they said the obelisk wouldn't transfer Numina's powers but it would kill her.
  3. Quote:
    Speaking of enemies that talk a lot more than they should, does anyone else remember a really old mission, maybe as far back as release date, that specifically stated that the Clockwork don't have any capability for speech?


    There is no such mission. Clockwork have been capable of speech since Day One.

    I figured out the Big Secret back around launch playing one of the one-off Clockwork missions in (IIRC) the 15-20 bracket because it had Clockwork talking about how much they hated my character.
  4. Quote:
    I think it says something about how much faith I have left in the mission writers that I'm *still* not sure if Darrin Wade is playing the long con, or if the writer of this arc just didn't read Wade's arc through to the end and assumed stealing artifacts from the Midnighters for his own use was his entire shtick.
    My thoughts exactly.

    I found the arc to be just as meh-tastic as the first one. I also got a good laugh out of the YouTube promo bit that basically comes out and says they're greasing a character as an attention grab, which is one of the worst reasons to do it.
  5. Quote:
    It isn't like you beat her up and put her in the network just because. There's actually a very good reason you do it and it saves her life and stops her from doing things far far worse..
    Fiat justita ruat caelum.

    Stuffing her back in the fridge against her will is wrong; damn the consequences. Making the decision for her is exactly what Tyrant has been doing to the whole world.

    Quote:
    I will say to the OP what I've said to others, I think the underlying theme of the First Ward is despair, and that no power we ever gain will ever undo what has been wrought on that land.
    This is really the heart of the matter. The original GR Praetorian content suffered from a very bad case of Darkness Induced Audience Apathy, i.e. the setting is so bleak and both sides are so despicable that there is nothing at stake. The world is going to continue to suck no matter what, so the audience (or player in this case) has no incentive to care or emotionally invest at all.

    So, along comes First Ward, the developers' first chance to address the problem, and they...twist the knife in the wound and then pour salt and lemon juice on it. As a player the content is sufficiently bleak (and sufficiently difficult) that I have no reason to want to go through it again (played it all in beta). From an in-character perspective my Primal characters have no incentive to go there (they have their own world to protect, thank you very much) and my few Praetorians (one, actually) would take one look at First Ward and execute a different trope: Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  6. The entire First Ward storyline just reinforces the notion that Primal Earth should deal with Praetoria by saturation-bombing.
  7. I gave up on the /help channel a looooooong time ago.
  8. They've been moving the Christmas shopping season up one day every year for most of my life.
  9. Quote:
    Speak for yourself, I'm low density unobtanium
    Whereas I am made of pure unadulterated awe...eh, too easy.
  10. Quote:
    When I dump "junk" salvage for less than 100 inf, it is so that people can get the salvage they need without paying through the nose for stuff they need for crafting.
    I don't list anything that low because I don't want to make life any easier than necessary for flippers.

    Of course, I also don't list anything that doesn't have outstanding bids, either.
  11. Anything listed below vendor value should be immediately bought by "the market" at vendor price and just removed from the system.
  12. Quote:
    Still, nuking, say, South Independence Port for new tutorial would've been much less disruptive
    Fixed.
  13. Quote:
    I thought they used player levels to show the passage of time in stories?
    That notion was in the Black Knight "not dead yet" territory long before i21; the fall of Galaxy City makes it officially Deader Than Disco.

    Quote:
    The odds of any story that needs to hype the death of a major character to get people interested being fantastically brilliant are so abysmally low that it's more likely we'll get a fantastically brilliant story starring Fusionette.
    Quick old chum! To the Mission Architect terminal!
  14. Quote:
    To Players: Do you care Who will Die? Do you want a say in this storyline or future storylines?
    No, and no, unless they're willing to grant my request to kill the entire Freedom Phalanx.
  15. Quote:
    set up to be likeable and then killed as a morality pet? given one liners that would make diablo cody gag? or having my sexual orientation inexplicably changed?
    No, have your pet fanwank theory destroyed by Word of God or future stories.

    Quote:
    The calculated risk of allowing branching dialogue has made a sort of rp xeno's paradox that each option given will make some people more sensitive to smaller variations in the game as presented and tha game as they have conceived, and thus that much less likely to ever actually reach their in-game conception.
    I agree that in general we have to accept that there will never be enough options to cover all bases. In this particular case, though, I do think there should have been an option in between "send him to the Carboard Prison" and "kill him".
  16. Quote:
    I decided what my character did; anything to the contrary was ignored. The amazing super-power that allowed me to do this is called imagination.
    What you imagine has absolutely no currency.

    There are two reasons for this. The first is simply that the game is what it is, and gluing feathers on a rat won't make it a swan. If you have to keep mentally editing the text to make it comport to your expectations, or even to make it make sense, you end up in "Click Here To Fight Mobs Land". At which point you seriously have to ask if maybe you might get better entertainment elsewhere.

    The secondary reason is that the devs will take the story in the direction they want, not in the direction you imagined. Sure, most of the time your fanwank isn't going to matter, but if (e.g.) the devs decide to re-use Thiery (yeah, so what if there was an option to kill him, Bobby Ewing was dead too) then you're Jossed.
  17. Venture

    is it all gone ?

    Quote:
    We do sometimes take a long while before wiping the Training room but data removal/modification/replacement is to be expected on there.
    Actually, a permanent wipe of the server has never been done. I've had characters on it since it started, leveled (legitimately) several of them to 50. Having permanent resource on Test was very convenient before character copy started bringing over inf. Now, it's not such a big deal.

    I'm not going to go off on a tear if the policy has finally changed, but it would have been nice to know in advance, even if nothing could be done about the impending loss.
  18. Quote:
    do I have to eat the lima beans?
    They're the best part!

    (I never had to be forced to eat my veggies, particularly lima beans.)
  19. Quote:
    Not exactly true, unless you are the same AT as the one you wish to use the power on, you need more than just the name. Otherwise you get for example the defender version of Ribcracker.
    And then you can use the drop-down menu on the info display to look at it from the perspective of any AT you want.

    But you know what, screw all this. If I'm going to be upset over anything it'll be Steve Jobs' death. The damned power set works fine, characters in this game are too powerful anyway, sit down, shut up, eat your vegetables and like it.
  20. Quote:
    Once again I am agreeing with Venture.

    I'm beginning to feel sick just typing that sentence.
    You'll get used to it.

    Everyone does.
  21. Quote:
    You never want to loose a customer for stupid reasons, and not offering a refund even if the customer is wrong is one of them.
    Having read your posts for years and having done my fair share of work in retail, I can say without hesitation you are emblematic of the type of customer I would go to great lengths to lose.
  22. Quote:
    I believe Frostfire's redemption is largely fan driven because there has always been a significant part of the community that felt his back story gives him a bum deal. After all, he was imprisoned for having tried to do the right thing even if he did it very badly.
    He received a just sentence (and very unwisely turned down a good deal from the prosecutor). He could have gotten two counts of manslaughter; AFAIK he could even have been charged with first-degree murder as the deaths occurred during the commission of a felony.

    N.b. from the official page: "Since his escape from the Zigursky Penitentiary, Frostfire is suspected to be directly involved in 10 Counts of Felony Assault, 2 Counts of Bookmaking, 4 Counts of Robbery, 3 Counts of Extortion, 3 Counts of Racketeering Violence, 8 Counts of Arson, 2 Counts of Murder" And then, as Eva points out, it gets worse in the new appearances, and then magically he gets a Get Out of Jail Free card.
  23. Quote:
    A low-level villain like Frosty getting "redeemed" is way less reality-bending than the proliferation of "heroes" who farmed the Freedom Phalanx in the LRSF for all those years.
    I'm limiting myself to the actual stories behind NPCs, obviously. In Frostfire's case, it's said that he blew up a Longbow base and killed hundreds of people. This is in the actual GR material, mind you, which shows what its writers thought was an example of a "redeemable" person.

    As for PCs, I have two villains gone hero. The first was level 50 long before GR and if you go over his souvenirs and badges it's obvious that he's a war criminal at best and a Complete Monster at worst. The other was a Tanker I chose to re-roll as a Brute. I would rather have gnawed my arm off than gone through the Praetorian content again so I made him a villain and was very, very careful with what I had him do in-game until he could switch at 20. In general, the side-switching system is a ridiculous Heel Face Revolving Door that consigns those using it to Punch Clock Villainy.
  24. Quote:
    In short, it is not required. The Developers of Paragon Studios are here to entertain you. If you are not entertained? GO. ELSEWHERE.
    a) It is possible to express reasonable displeasure with a product, even a "luxury" one, without having to bear accusations of "whining".

    b) It is far better that people do so prior to taking their business elsewhere. As with most issues in life, there is an entire continuum of responses between acceptance without question and complete abandonment.
  25. I will say that I'm disappointed with the price point they've chosen for new power sets. It doesn't compare well with the value received from the earlier expansions, and it was a big part of my decision to pass on Beam Weapons. (The fact that the set was lackluster was also a big part.)

    I suspect the 800 point price tag was chosen to offset the VIP stipend. The sets are expensive because we can (if we choose) to buy them at a discount. If so I'm not really happy about that.

    But I will be buying Street Justice later today because it was a very good set in beta. I just don't see myself paying this price for too many other sets. $10 is too much for anything but a top-drawer set.