Venture

False, but we can't have that conversation here.

Actually they are relatively old. Civilizations had to build up to a significant size before relative anarchy stopped working.

The earliest society I know that I would call "totalitarian" would be the Chinese Legalists, c. 400 CE (IIRC). That would put them at about the halfway point in recorded history. The kind of modern fascism portrayed in Praetoria is very new, as it's almost right out of Mussolini.

As for what a "natural society" is, some dead white European male once noted that "man is born free but everywhere is in chains"; he also observed that even if someone gives away their own freedom they can't give away their childrens', and to renounce liberty is to give up being human.

I'm fixing Boris now. Not sure I can do much about the patrols, other than have them not talk at all.

We don't know that.

No. Fiat justita ruat caelum.

"Capable" is an absolute; either you can do it or you can't. The rest is overkill. Which, granted, is underrated, but that's irrelevant.

I agree, because I think the premises "anyone can solo" and "teams don't need particular construction" are bad game design. Support characters shouldn't be able to solo and generalists who are shouldn't be very welcome on teams. If the devs want to change the nature of the game they'll have to start abandoning some fundamental principles or they're going to fail. Whichver choice they make, it should be fun to watch.

Why, thank you!

To paraphrase a dead white guy, that's a good thing: it means you have standards.

Rather than trying to be "new" or "different", they should be trying to be good.

a) Have a member of your hero SG "go undercover" in the Isles as a Vigilante (may require doing distasteful things but that's a matter of perspective, and if you pick and choose you can avoid doing anything that will keep you up at night).

b) Check the market for an item that has no current bids and none for sale. Have an SG member in one location put one of said item up for sale and one in the other buy it.

c) Later, rinse, repeat until satisfied that this isn't a coincidence.

.: QED.

N.B. this uses only in-game resources. Not that such is really important, since no reasonable account could possibly explain how such a corrupt enterprise could exist without anyone, or, actually, everyone, knowing about it.

All of that being said I did have to abandon my stand here. As I went over my builds I started guesstimating how long it would take to acquire what I wanted and the results were trending suspiciously close to, say, the expected heat death of the universe. Uncommon recipes were particularly pernicious as you can't get them with AMs. Getting the Field Crafter accolade on my main's reroll without market support doesn't look very promising either, though I am likely to try. I use the markets as little as possible and won't pay outrageous obviously flipper-generated prices but I've had to chalk this up to the same kind of sadistic GMing we've been plagued with pretty much from the start.

"Always plant a lie inside a truth. It make it easier to swallow." -- J. Sheridan

Fail. I have. I did have enough sense to do it with a Blaster, though. I wouldn't even consider using a melee build in serious PvP in this system.

Given the premises that all competent builds (e.g. not the semi-mythical "pure healer" or "man" builds) are supposed to be capable of soloing standard content and that TFs are not supposed to require particular team construction, "ranged builds sometimes have an advantage" fails.

Encounters like this are the camel's nose in the tent. I'm with those who say we should shoot the camel now.

Then the "zones of death" are just an annoyance and fail for that reason.

Edit: missed one:

The DPS metric exists because the way to advance in this game is to kill mobs. As alluded to above, competently-built characters in this game are killing machines. If the devs want that to change then they need to change some very deeply-rooted premises, which probably can't be done successfully.

Nothing said in any of the bios can be taken at face value. Any or all of it could be propaganda (from either side).

The tentacles, assuming they're actually in the game, could also be fakes operated by the State. Since they're conveniently inaccessible I'll believe they're part of a Praetorian Hamidon (or real at all) when and if we get to fight them.

Know what happens if you "joust" with a melee character? You cut your DPS about in half as you spend more time running back to somewhere you can hit the target from as you spend actually hitting the target. The day the devs decided that some characters wouldn't be able to fight effectively at range and that characters can't move while attacking was the day they decided encounters based on mobility would be broken.

I was referring to the "zones of death" in the Apex TF, which I've only heard of.

As for Trapdoor, I got in his face and hit him until he fell down.

Edit: And:

The game. If you activate an attack, you stop moving. Time spent moving is not time spent fighting.

While I haven't played the encounter in question yet, the game is designed so that you fight by "standing still and clicking your power buttons over and over". If they want people to fight on the move they should first make it possible to actually do so.

I don't have a problem with it.

"Why We Fight" (#253990) is way ahead on the funny/not-funny score, though it's not 100% of course. Act IV is probably the one part that gets the most not-funny comments, but it seems the political incorrectness in act III makes up for it.

Most of mine have a comedic element or two thrown in. I think "Chains of Blood" and "Blowback" are the only ones that don't (they're also the first two I wrote).

It implies nothing of the sort. It is simply a statement about the world. As Shatterjack notes, it is player knowledge. How or if the character responds is another matter. Part of being a good roleplayer is being able to manage what information does or does not get past the "firewall" between player and character.

I do. While I'm only going to roll my eyes at trivial transgressions like the author deciding what room temperature my character prefers (unless there are a great many of them), large assumptions like whether or not my character can be usefully cloned are far less forgivable.

I'll be checking the arc today for the group issue.

Hated it; no theme, dealt with a part of the game that's best handwaved, throws the Idiot Ball, poor gameplay (ambushes from hell, short-timed objectives, cut scenes chewing up insp/buff time, drops a freaking ZEUS on mid-level characters).

The sins of these arcs defy enumeration. They require epic levels of Plot Induced Stupidity to even function. As Eva has noted, they are just showcases for a mechanic that as far as I'm concerned never should have been introduced in the first place.

Actually, it is very likey they did not test it, or "tested" it with (dev-style) invulnurability on just to see if things spawned in the right places, not for balance.

Oh, don't get me started on the Incarnate arc. (Evil Overlord List #22: "No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head." Not even in small bites.) I think that's about got me convinced that the only way to play the canon content is to read all NPC text as "click here to fight mobs".

I've suggested in the past that any arc that has not been played or accessed by its creator for 90 days be purged. People have thrown rocks at me for it.

If even the creator hasn't bothered with an arc in three months I think it is fair to say no one will miss it if it goes away.

No, it isn't. In fact it is an inevitable one. Sooner or later either the AE system in particular or the game in general will be shut down. When that happens everyone's arcs get "junked". There is no reason to burden the system with garbage no one including the creator is even touching any more.

Hijacking the player-character's private concepts is a no-no. The only thing the player gets to bring to the table is his character. The GM/author gets all the other characters and the whole world. Conversely, the GM/author does get to describe the world, and trying to equate the former with "my character can't feel temperature/is color-blind/etc." is just being a horse's patootie.