Dev Chat Highlights, August 10: Time Manipulation and Powers Q and A with Synapse

They did suggest I apply for a powers team job once, but I'd have to move to California (probably along the same lines that they suggested to Doc Aeon to apply: no guarantee, but I suspect I would have had some nice recommendations if I did). They have good people on the powers team now anyway and I'm probably more useful to them on the outside.

And yeah, I can be a lot more critical, a lot more informative, and a lot more dissecting as an outsider than the devs can really be. Ghost Falcon and Positron can always disavow any knowledge of my actions.

Also, I cannot be a stealth Paragon employee because they have a policy that bars developers from commenting on the game anonymously. Technically, I believe I could comment on parts of the game I had nothing to do with anonymously although that is frowned upon, so given what I tend to comment on its possible I'm a Paragon employee, but only if I was the receptionist or the artist that makes the beep sound effect when you try to use a power that is recharging.

Not to mention the probably pay cut you'd have to take.

Let's just say Paragon Studios is well aware of my past and present view of their collective arithmetical deftness. I doubt they're going to let me post that particular critique for a mere million dollars.

In any case, if you're giving Paragon Studios a million bucks, that wouldn't be the most entertaining story you could ask them to let me tell. Heh, heh, heh.

You don't even get like a free account out of the gig: all the devs pay for their normal non-dev accounts. I think someone said once some devs, Ghost Falcon maybe, multibox out of their own pockets. Now that's standing behind your product.

Although, perhaps "standing behind" is not exactly how everyone would describe Ghost Falcon's playstyle, given I hear he's a marketeer as well.

We should probably get back to talking about Synapse, given this is his dev chat and all, but unfortunately I don't have all that much dirt on Synapse. Going to have to rectify that.

I believe her quote in my sig speaks for herself.

--NT

From a Community Manager's POV, Community members such as Arcanaville are priceless .

I would settle for the million, though.

I think a truly gold glow look would be awesome, but even the ouroboros portal looks more yellow.

The teaser video and screenshot(the one I've seen) seem to imply a default green/white coloring for Time Manipulation powers.

I'm not a fan of green, plus it doesn't scream "Time" to me, but white or purple are good looks in my opinion. I actually was expecting white and/or purple as the defaults considering the nature of time and the implications of those colors.

Anyway, I just want plenty of color customization for this set, maybe a few alternate animations if they're feeling generous.


Note:
I'm definitely pretty happy with the powers and what they do so far. I've moved on to the visuals.
I can't wait to play it.

This is pretty sig-worthy - maybe it should be added to the in game set description for time manipulation :-).

After having a small chance to play with TM in beta I have to agree with Arcanaville - its an amazing soloing support set that might actually get me to seriously play a defender for the first time in, like, 6 years. The combo of enemy targetted debuffs, placeable debuff field and pbaoe debuff toggle means all your eggs are not in one basket like radiation, where a single mez basically leaves you defenseless until your incredibly long recharging toggles come back up (yes - its only 8 seconds, but even 4-5 seconds with no defenses is a death sentence in a solo fight for a squishy).

Bleaahh, the video AND the screenies? Hadn't seen the video. I was hoping they might have been displaying non-default colors, but it was a slim hope.

There are a lot of preexisting temporally-themed characters who will be disappointed by this. "Time is gold!" seems to be a popular conclusion among players, myself included.

If this has already been mentioned elsewhere I must have missed it. Can someone provide a link or more info?

I can think of two ways to interpret that statement and I'm not sure which is correct.

Then I hope they don't do that. For me, the massive damage of a good blaster nuke is a major portion of the fun of playing a blaster.

Please don't nerf the nukes.

Really? Are you sure? Cuz I heard something similar about adding/supporting existing stuff in game that hasnt been touched in some time.

Base content?
Alternate Animations?
Customizable Weapons?
Additional Ancillary Power Pools? (granted villains just got this, but where are the additions of new powersets that have been added?)

You don't know the half of it.

In case you haven't found anything yet...
Access To Cool Features Thread!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

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Mmmmm, I wonder what was Synapse is going to talk about. :P

By the way, I tested Stalker's Epic powers again and only Blaze mastery can critical (Fire Ball has 100% critical!). The other three Weapon, Body and Darkness cannot critical at all.

I can see the text "Critical" too.

Wow... oh my god! That's great.

Thread going about this in the Blaster forums. Nukes in their current form are rather weak, either lowering their recharge and getting them to be more like other crashless nukes is the way to go, or upping their damage to match up with their recharge and crash. Either way, it'd be an improvement from what the nukes are now. But it's being discussed plenty there already.

I had not. Thanks for the link.