Issue 20 info is up!

While I want to say "yes" because I do indeed agree, Masterminds are a bit of a different beast. Mastermind henchmen come in strictly defined themes - soldiers, thugs, demons, zombies, etc. To me, it would be quite... I want to say "irritating" but let's go with "odd" to see a Necromancy Mastermind lugging around a troupe of Playboy bunnies and claiming those were zombies, or a Mercenaries Mastermind walking around with a bunch of preteen kids and insisting they are hardened veteran soldiers.

Incarnates don't really have the same limitation, in that their Lore pets could be anything, and aren't defined to anything specific, as far as I'm aware. Kids, playboy bunnies, unicorns, anything. That's why I'm much more willing to support "anything" for Incarnates than I am for Masterminds.

That said, I don't exactly claim I don't want customization for Mastermind henchmen. Far from it, in fact. I do want to see more futuristic soldiers with more futuristic weapons, or even alien soldiers wielding alien weapons, even if they still have to shoot bullets and flamethrowers out of their barrels. In fact, I find myself without a decent Mastermind to represent the space army of my new-ish space empire. Robots don't count, since I want a living army, and anything other than robots just doesn't look futuristic in any way, shape or form. Where are my Replica Soldiers? Where are my Storm Troopers with laser blasters?

I do want to see Mastermind customization, I very much do, but within theme.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

A-yup.

Don't think fully customization with MM pets. Think of AE customization of NPCs.

Color clothes choose skin tone, that sort of thing.

Maybe have choice of alternate models options from the ones in game like different types of zombies and robots and male/female ninjas and what have you.

Ah, that! Yeah, that I could fully get behind. Black soldiers, blue thugs, pinkish zombies, all of that gives us more tools at our disposal.

However, I do want to go a step beyond that, myself, and have those "alternate models" be meaningfully different, but still within the same theme. Like, say...

Mercs: Contemporary soldiers, Futuristic space soldiers, Lizardmen/alein soldiers, undead soldiers (ala Praetorian Duray's Second Regiment)

Thugs: Basic thugs, cyberpunk thugs, Western "gunslingeR" thugs, alien thugs.

Necromancy: Regular zombies, exposed skeletons, "dark knights" in armour, robozombies, maybe even an "evil mage" look for the Lich.

That's basically what I'm looking for. Just more looks to them to provide a broader tree of concepts for Masterminds without having to go through the laborious process of introducing a dozen new sets.

Hell, just going from Feudal Japan ninja to Grey Fox technoninja would double that set's potential.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

But even while some people were doing that other people were complaining about people who did that. So it's obviously not what everyone wanted.

Meanwhile people who tried to write stories had to deal with ratings cartels, ratings griefing, bugs, custom critters that were nearly impossible to balance until much later and checking their arcs after every patch to make sure the latest bug fix or exploit fix hadn't broken anything. People who tried to play stories had to deal with a crappy search engine, an arc list full of farms and unfinished "tests," broken arcs from people who got sick of checking them after every patch, overpowered custom critters from people who didn't bother to try to balance them at all, and no way to filter out the dross and find the good stuff without going to the forums. They didn't give up because they weren't interested in user-created content, they gave up because the implementation pretty much told them to.

Yep, that's what happened on my Silver Mantis run too. When you're running a team at a lower difficulty than you solo on, people are going to play like they're soloing even on a team, to the point where some people forget how to play on a team. It's been going on long enough that some people chafe at Incarnate content forcing them to play as a team again (I'm not referring to the multi-team raids, I'm referring to the single-team Apex and Tin Mage task forces and how some people claim they're effectively too hard.)

And as soon as masterminds get I'm sure lore will eventually follow. How long has it taken them to come up with an interface to allow PP Customizations after they made PC?

My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.

We're still counting the days, as far as I know, since Pool Customization doesn't exist anywhere that I can see. I don't remember when Power Customization came out (I want to say I16), so it's been a while, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that if we ever do get pet and pool customization, pool customization will come first by a wide margin.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This looks like a response to many prayers on the EU servers. Here's hoping!

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

What exactly were you expecting? The only stuff I've really seen getting hyped up by Posi was the incarnate trials, and surprise! We're getting incarnate trials.

Some people were saying that this issue seems content light, when compared to most other issues, this isn't true. Now, if you don't like the new content that's something entirely else. And as far as the NDA goes, how do you know there's still not stuff that's under it?

Has there really, ever been a major feature in an Issue that wasn't in the Issue's press release?
It seems like we (as a group, not you and me particularly) go through this every time a new issue gets announced.

*Announcement lists X new features*
Group One: "What, that's it?"
Group Two: "There might be stuff that's not announced yet!"
*Issue comes out with X new features*
Group One: "What, that's it?"
Group Two: "Why'd you expect anything other than exactly what the announcement said it would be?"

Well if you're cynical, the NDA was because they were aware of player dissatisfaction with concept-limiting powers and railroading storylines and didn't want those dissatisfied players to leave over it. Or they knew some people don't want raids and didn't want those people to leave (although they did announce there would be raids, so I don't know why they'd bother hiding there would be raids.) Or didn't want soloists, people who wanted power proliferation, people who wanted power customization, PvPers, base builders, AE users, etc etc to leave, so they held off announcing the things that would make these people unhappy until the last possible moment so as to eke every last subscription penny out of them.

If you're less cynical, i20 has something that CO and DCUO don't have and they didn't want CO and DCUO to steal it and put it out first. Or because someone broke the i18 Closed Beta NDA and blabbed about Vanguard merits being needed for the Incarnate system, someone blabbed about Shield Charge before the changes had been finalized and caused an outpouring of DOOOOOMMMMM! and forum drama, someone broke the i13 Closed Beta NDA to blab about the PvP changes and caused the worst outpouring of immaturity, vitriol and general douchebaggery I've ever seen on this forum and which included death threats to the developers, people have broken NDA on multiple other occasions, and they wanted to make sure people took the NDA seriously this time. In both cases I wouldn't blame them in the slightest.

I'm not quote sure how you can come to that conclusion when the devs have gone out of their way to ramp up the story elements in several systems.
For example, look at the Radio missions with their one-off set-ups being linked to random villain groups, who use identical dialog, regardless of how suitable it is for them - like a Circle of Throns mage will say the same text as a Freakshow boss.

Now look at the similar Tip missions - they're also one-off set ups, but they're linked to specific groups, and each one has unique dialog for the mission - plus, there's an actual running storyline through several Tips, even though that can come out as rather mixed up if you get the Tips dropping in the wrong order - but it's still a big step up stroy-wise form the Radio missions.

In the build up to the launch of GR, Ghost Falcon and other devs were constantly emphasizing the RPG part of the side switing system - they kept talking about your "character's journey", rather than pointing out the actual gameplay aspects of being able to acces content from both sides of the game.

And then there are the Incarnate Trials, where rather than just adding alittle "?" button in the LFG window to get a a quick run-down of what each Trail is about, and then just leaving it up to palyers to use the nav window to follow the required objectives, they've actually gone out of their way to make sure everyone is able to follow the story, by adding "voice over" chat bubbles by Prometheus to brief everyone on the situation, and then adding cutscenes to each Trial to further reinforce the story elements - both of which remove one of the frequent problems of TFs and arcs where only the leader sees all the text.

They also cut out the Alpha slot from GR to give them time to add more lore-based content to it, including Ramiel's arc to unlock it rather than just buying it with merits as was the case in the GR beta - they actually cut one of the planned major features of GR just to add more story anmd gameplay depth to it.
And for the Incarnate components for the Alpha slot, they didn't make them random drops - they made sure they tied them to lore-related TFs.

And then there's the current meta-story of Tyrant and the Well of the Furies, and the multiverse-wide threat they're carrying - again, the devs are taking care to make sure that there are lore and story reasons tied to each step on the Incarnate path, rather than just offering a generic route to unlocking the new slots and powers.

Just because someone reads a book and doesn't like it, that doesn't automatically mean that the author has written a bad story.

It depends on what you mean by "major feature". For I19, the new TFs were mentioned in the overview but the two story arcs for levels 20-30 were not.

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

We are people who crave entertainment, so yes.

Sure - fire away

I can imagine quite a lot, and what's in AE doesn't even come close to that.

I'd have preferred a map editor over a creature editor, at first. I want to make missions where heroes save people from falling buildings or wrecked vehicles; or traverse through a jungle, but the 3 outdoor maps with trees don't even come close (part of the maze of Perez Park with the green mists would do, though).

Instead we get a tool to make missions with the same maps and objectives as the rest of the game. This is okay, but I wanted a lot more mission location options, not bigger badder boss options.

The Devs still could improve AE, but I doubt they will. Perhaps the new base editor could be the same as the AE map editor, or at least very similar but with different options. Hah! ... as if either will ever happen.

If you can do it without linking to or referencing TV Tropes I'll give you a dollar.

I think you'll win that bet.

I'll put up $20 and let him use any TV Trope except 'Mary Sue.'

Guess that shows what they can do when they really care to do it. Does that by any chance filter down to Pools and Epics, too?

*edit*
And before the collective weight of the forums jump on my back for "derailing," this is relevant to the topic of recolourable Incarnate powers. One of the major limitations, as we have been told, is that the power customization US doesn't support Pool and Epic powers, and only supports powers we are GUARANTEED to have access to, those being all our primaries and all our secondaries. If this, and whatever other complications have been solved for the Incarnate system, does it not make sense to ask for the natural extension of that?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.