Venture

It's the same mistake they made with the Patron Power pets, and the PP's themselves actually, so don't hold your breath.

I suppose we should be grateful for the T rating, then.

Do you seriously want me to recite the litany of sins committed by the recent so-called "writing"?

Great, all of our characters get to be necromancers.

Why does ANYONE think this is a good idea?

Yes, they are Praetorian mobs, yes, we all read the stupid flavor text, and no, gluing feathers to a rat doesn't make it a swan.

Mule muffins. As numerous respondents have already mentioned there are other alternatives available right now.

Furthermore: if you can't do something right don't do it at all. No one put a gun to the devs' heads and made them implement a half-baked pet power as part of the Incarnate system. It was a choice.

No, it is saying "this is your new origin, deal with it" and the Lore pets prove the lie.

Yeah, we read the story the first time. We get it.

The point is that it's a terrible story.

One of many recent facepalm moments for me. I can't imagine what makes them think we all want Praetorian mobs for sidekicks. Praetoria really has become the latest in a long line of darlings that need to be killed.

Somehow we'll muddle through without you.

People argue about lots of things...Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Wendy's, whether Stephanie Meyer or Justin Bieber is the true Antichrist, etc. That doesn't mean anything will ever be settled, or that the arguments have any validity in the first place.

There are plenty of qualities in art that can be evaluated and debated, ranging from (in our case) minor points like grammar and spelling to major points like effective use of themes or morals, plot consistency, etc. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have written so many AE reviews. But there are at least as many that can't. The developers like cheap, shlocky stories about time travel and parallel worlds and seventeen copies of a character no one cared about in the first place. They don't particularly care about how stories treat the player-character. Stories that throw Idiot Balls by the crateload are fine; in fact they think this is a cool way to show just what a "master strategist" a villain is. Etc., ad nauseum. If this is what they like to see in stories then there is no chance of talking them out of it, any more than you could (e.g.) convince a muddleheaded deviant who prefers pie of the obvious superiority and wholesomeness of cake.

You can't get theah from heah.

One of the things I wanted to do with AE, which I shelved because almost none of what I needed was possible, was a replacement for the Positron TF using the DE as the main threat (because the "interview" with him in the Top Cow comics said they were his main concern). It would have opened with human eco-terrorists attacking the Steel Canyon university and used DE creatures as Elite Bosses in the last two missions, culminating with an AV-strength Devoured.

Actually I don't, because this isn't something you can argue about. It's a question of aesthetics.

My fixes would likely become a matter of some discussion, since I would do things like utterly destroy Ouroboros and time travel in general, kill off Nemesis, eliminate all parallel Earths (not to be confused with alternate words, i.e. Praetoria is a parallel of City's Earth, Narnia would be an alternate world; I would reclassify the Rikti homeworld as an alternate world) and probably Kill Off For Real all or most of the signature characters.

Fixed.

Like anyone's looking at their foreheads....

Fixed.

As for the actual point, I don't want to run most of these TFs once. Having to run them on multiple characters...bring on the speed runs.

Either you are making a dualist argument -- which, at our current level of scientific understanding is not really viable -- or you're being complete irrational.

If consciousness is the result of having a "soul" (and there is no evidence this is the case) then strong AI is impossible and the point is moot. If it is not, then consciousness in an organic brain is only the result of natural processes, meaning the brain is nothing but a computer that runs on carbon chemistry instead of semiconductors. That does not necessarily mean that it is inevitable that we will learn how to emulate it but if we do it would be nothing but bigotry to deny the resultant consciousness all the rights we afford each other.

My AR/Dev, now level 50, played on +0x2 starting in the 30s (when the capability became available) and with her current build runs at +1x2. She only just got Aid Self in i19 and has never had AirSup. She has never had any option to be anything but an "all-range Blaster".

My 45 DP/Dev is on +0x2 (should probably raise it) and my 34 Elec/Dev is on +1x2 (does have AirSup). My other Blasters are all below 22 and are still on base difficulty. I suppose someone will cry foul because the older ones are all Devices, but for my money, if your Blasters are dying on base difficulty I don't know what you're doing but you're doing it wrong.

Yes, you can, all it takes is an end to the killer GM attitude.

Longbow is an example of a group that's within an acceptable margin of baseline difficulty. It's harder but not so much so that you'll need to change settings.

N.B. that the bulk of the original complaint is less about factions than it is about mission design. "You can lower your difficulty" is no excuse for throwing (e.g.) ten-wave ambushes at people, particularly under level 20. That's got nothing to do with what factions or powersets are in play. That's just a mission writer being a horse's patootie. I called people on that kind of bad design when I wrote MA reviews and I'm not giving the devs a pass on it either.

Of course not. They are not balanced at all.

I don't care what they intended. What they did was create a game where base difficulty is, indeed, easy mode. I do not have a single character above level 22 that plays on base difficulty. Not one. Only the squishiest fail to turn up difficulty well before that. In the post-SO game base difficulty is suitable for exactly no one.

I agree that base difficulty shouldn't be easy mode, but then I argue that we shouldn't be talking about "base difficulty" at all because there shouldn't be any other kind. The game should be balanced and all characters should be playing in the same ball park. The developers chose not to do that; they chose to allow wild variations in character power and to allow players to tailor the environment to their tastes, trusting that they would chose appropriate difficulty settings. The result of that design decision was MA farms.

Then we can't have characters with purple sets and Incarnate powers, or even regular sets. We can't have characters that are ten or twenty times more powerful than others (at least; the difference between a build that has to play on standard and one that can handle +4x8 has to be measured in orders of magnitude). SOs were already too much, ED and all. And we both know there is no way to get there from here. The player base won't stand it.

Given what the developers have already built it is utterly unreasonable to expect any player with a competent mature build to run around playing at base difficulty. The resultant play experience would be mind-numbingly boring. Implicit in the design of the game we actually have is the assertion that a player will be able to pick an appropriate baseline difficulty for the particular character he is playing. Allowing mission writers to toss out any standard of difficulty contradicts that assertion and is just plain shoddy craftsmanship. If that's the way it's going to be, if mission difficulty is so volatile that players can't rely on being able to play on the setting of their choice, then the ability to change difficulty setting needs to be at the players' fingertips, not in the hands of an NPC that might be on the other side of the zone, or in a different zone altogether.

Yes, there is, new players need to win a lot so they have a foundation of successes to build some confidence on. New players forced into Praetoria are likely getting pissed off and quitting if they're not getting advice and support from older players. They're also probably wondering why the game turns into a cakewalk after they leave the starting area.

Actually it's exactly what I said.

That argument went the way of the dodo when the developers decided to implement difficulty adjustment in lieu of actually balancing the game. If the developers want everyone to play at base difficulty then they need to prevent people from building characters that can play at higher levels, and we both know that's not going to happen.