Doctor Roswell

You can't skip cutscenes for the same reason you can't pause the game: not everyone will do so at the same time.

Anyway, I like them for what they are, but they get a little old after a while. I'd like to see more of them, but much shorter ones. Sitting through Mother Mayhem and Siege and Nightstar AGAIN wouldn't be such a pain if it didn't make you spend such a long time watching instead of playing. But a cutscene is a great way to make sure everyone actually SEES the lead-up to an important event, as opposed to the way so many tip missions do it, giving you a wall of text to read and then having an enemy attack you before you finish.

So, I suggest lots of short cutscenes instead of a few long ones, and if they want to disable battle cries during those cutscenes so people can't get cute with it, that'd be fine by me.

I've long been in the "free up the names, if CoV/Going Rogue and 20+ issues of content weren't enough to entice them back it's probably because they're never coming back" camp. And yes, I've made the "keeping your thousands of paying customers happy should probably trump the off-chance that six or seven people tops might come back after five years of inactivity" argument, too. I still believe it, but at this point, it's pretty much a lost cause. The devs weren't willing to do it more than twice when the game was subscription-only. Now that it's free? It's just not happening, period.

The really sad thing to me is that, with the game now free, what they're probably seeing isn't old players returning in droves so much as new players signing up for the first time. And those new players' very first experience with the game is going to be being forced to settle on their twenty-fifth random stab at a name they sort of like okay, because the first two-dozen names they tried, including all the ones they really wanted, were unavailable. A lot of people are going to have been frustrated for twenty minutes before they ever load up Galaxy City for the first time. Not the way to attract new customers.

But yeah, dead horse. Beating it isn't going to do any good, even if giving it a nice hard kick every once in a while when someone else drags it out does make me feel a little better.

I wonder if there'd be a way to make "name purge tokens" available on the Paragon Market? Making it a direct money-maker instead of a hypothetical one might open up the possibility a little.

No, in this case "VIP" just means "VIP."

Sometimes they do a closed beta with invited people only allowed in, but that's not what they're doing right now.

If it were a closed beta, this thread likely would have already been deleted and the OP kicked out of the beta for discussing it on the public forums like this. But since it's open to anyone with a VIP account, there's no problem.

Never say never.

That said, I'm very unlikely to ever make an Assault Rifle character -- it's just not my "thing." To a point, I'm starting to feel that way about every single Blaster secondary, too, except Energy Manipulation. That one's just way too much fun. But nowadays, if I want a ranged damage-dealer, corruptor secondaries make that a much more attractive AT to me than blaster.

I wanted -- badly -- to like Kinetics, but every time I've played one, I've found myself more frustrated than entertained. An ally heal that can miss? I'd rather not have one -- at least then when teammates' health runs low I can explain that "this powerset doesn't do that" like I do with Trick Arrows. When I hit a heal, I want it to heal someone, dammit. And the attitude some people cop if you let Speed Boost drop for even a second... the set's just not for me. At all. It's really too bad, too, because Repel is one of the simplest cheap thrills in the game for me, even if it's numerically a "bad power."

No "Dark whatever" powerset is likely to ever hold my interest. Maybe Dark Miasma on the right corruptor, but every time I've tried the set, I just... wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing with it. I keep thinking, "why does everyone keep talking about how awesome this is?" Plus, again, the heal can miss; Thanks but no thanks. And the melee sets... I guess I'm just not the darkity-dark-dark type.

Oh, and barring major changes in the future, the Presence pool. So much I want to do with it, so little I actually can do with it.

This has been suggested many times. I'm in favor of it every time.

Considering how much time we spend looking at our characters' backs instead of their fronts, it seems like a no-brainer.

/signed.

It's not really a problem, it just seems... rude. You don't just stand around in a traffic lane or in front of something people need to access and expect them to go around, even if going around is a fairly simple matter. It's like standing around in an aisle in the grocery store talking to a friend; even if there's plenty of room to get around you, it's still kind of selfish to expect everyone else to alter their path to wherever they're trying to get because you're in their way.

Like I said, it's not that big a deal, but there are places to form up for trials that are right nearby and just as convenient, that would also be more considerate to the people doing anything except trials. There's exactly one reason I can think of to form up in the hangar rather than in front of Lady Grey, but that's one more than I can think of to form up in front of Lady Grey instead of in the hangar.

Typically, any new market items -- including SSAs -- go live around midnight on Monday evening/Tuesday morning, Pacific time (because Paragon Studios is based in California). Sometimes a few minutes after, but not long.

Yes, the "setup - sunglasses - lame pun" guy on CSI: Miami is David Caruso. The red-haired dude who used to be on NYPD Blue. (Grissom is the one from the original series that takes place in Vegas, though he's since been replaced by Lawrence Fishburne, and the New York one has a not-at-all-legless Gary Sinese.)

Back on topic, I'm loving the non-energy sword for my volcano-themed Titan Weapons brute. The purgatory sword worked okay for him, but the "magma sword" looks awesome... as long as I turn my graphics up to at least "recommended."

The following is an absolutely true account:

Back in the early '90s, when I was in junior high school, my family got a new puppy. One day I awoke to find it had gotten into my backpack while everyone was asleep and destroyed a few things, including two classes' worth of assignments due that morning.

Even though I was able to recover a few shredded remnants to bring in as a means of backing up my story, my parents had to call the school and speak to the teachers personally to let them now I was telling the truth about why I didn't have those assignments ready to turn in.

Because, you see, "my dog ate my homework" is such a classic lame excuse that people assume it's a lie, even when it's not.

Given how quickly one can level up from 49 to 50 (one day for me on the brute I got to 50 the other day, and I wasn't even trying that hard -- I'm sure it could have happened in half that time if I'd really pushed it), I take issue with the assumption that this "wouldn't be worth the effort to farm," unless the reward were one or two regular ol' reward merits or, if the reward were something more substantial, the earning of such rewards were placed on a timer like the one for alignment/Empyrian merits.

I do kind of like the idea of the level-up inspiration burst if nothing else... actually, let me amend that:

I do kind of like the idea of the level-up inspiration burst and nothing else.

Cognitive is lots of fun, too.

I have to agree with everyone else on this one. Officially, there's no difference between the servers (aside from Exalted being VIP-only and two being in languages other than English). The differences are in the communities themselves, and that's sort of... hard to boil down into a couple of sentences. It's also different depending on who you ask.

Seriously, go ask about Freedom in Virtue's Help channel and see what kind of venom surges forth. Certainly nothing a Freedom player is going to want used to identify his server to potential new players, I can promise you that. I imagine you'd get a similar response asking about Virtue in Freedom's Help channel (though there'd be a decidedly different tone to the abuse).

Besides that, some of the servers' "reputations" are meaningless for these purposes. Is it Pinnacle that's the "drunk server"? I can never remember, but whichever it is, that's because, years ago, people noticed it was usually the last one to come back up after downtime. How is that joking "reputation" in any way helpful to a new player? And Liberty and Triumph are "friendly"? Shouldn't they all be? I've found Virtue, Victory and Infinity pretty friendly, myself. Labeling one or two as "friendly" sort of implies that the others aren't.

Do I really expect anything to come of this? No. But I figure it couldn't hurt to ask.

On most servers, incarnate trials form up in Pocket D. Because it's easy to get to, there are no enemies to worry about, and most importantly, it's a co-op zone accessible by both heroes and villains.

On Virtue, Pocket D gets used for, um... other things. So we form up inside the Vanguard base in the Rikti War Zone, for the same reasons.

The thing is, we always form up right in front of the Lady Grey -- a task force contact. That means we're also right in front of a trainer (and therefore tailor) and a vendor. Basically, we're blocking, or at least hindering, access to a lot of resources when twenty or thirty of us all stand in that spot talking in Local and spamming Destiny powers and letting our demons and robots and fire imps run wild. It's inconsiderate to non-incarnates and the people who just want to buy a few enhancements or level up. Besides that, it's also a "choke point" that anyone traveling to either Paragon or the Isles has to pass through on their way from the War Zone, and vice versa, which means having to run right through all of that.

There's a room in the back, a sort of a lecture hall with stadium seating surrounding the sunken central area, through a tunnel sitting right between the portals to the Rogue Isles and Paragon, that would work just as well for forming up incarnate trials. And the only "resource" in that room is a single storyarc contact, so it sees a lot less traffic from people not looking for trials. Any chance I could talk people into forming up there instead? Sort of make that the incarnate trial "staging area" instead of Lady Grey's front porch?

(Alternately, there's the "hangar" area where the base portal is that would also get us out of the way and maybe be a little easier to find.)

My supergroup has never made me feel obligated to come help them out. I don't think I'd want to be in an SG that insisted I drop what I'm already doing just because they say so.

That said, I have occasionally dropped out of teams doing missions that ended up taking a lot longer than expected because I had already committed to doing something with SG-mates at a scheduled time. But that's more of an "I told my friends I'd be there, so I'm going to be there" thing than the boss snapping his fingers and me zipping off to do his bidding. I at least try to give a few minutes' notice or wait until in-between missions if I know I have to be at a planned supergroup function.

I usually ask SG or coalition members first when I'm looking for a team. But once I'm on one? If I leave, it's because I wanted or needed to, not because my SG leader said "quit and do this with us instead" (though I'll admit sometimes it's a little of both).

As for whether I've used the SG as an excuse for leaving a team, no, I never have. I've found that generally, unless it's a task force or something, "hey, that's it for me, thanks for the team everyone" is more than enough "excuse" than the average PUG wants or needs. If I'm quitting mid-mission (which I never do if I can help it, but, hey, sometimes things happen that can't be avoided), I might go into a little more detail: "Sorry, guys, something came up. Gotta go, thanks for the team!" Thanking people usually goes a long way toward not making them feel like they're being ditched.