Lothic

I'm not against the idea of having personal Prestige oriented badges.
As I implied I would probably have them almost instantly if they were introduced.

But there's a reason why the Devs, after repeated suggestions for badges like these, seem unwilling to bend in this case. Until they decide to rethink their position on more Prestige badges the idea seems pretty moot to me. *shrugs*

I'm actually toying around with the idea that the entire Zombie Apocalypse thing is a dream Rick's having while he's in his coma.
That would actually explain pretty much all the plot holes and logical inconsistencies this show ever generates.

Well we've already talked about a hypothetical fire escape but I didn't think about the possibility of the "mystery helicopter" picking him up. That would put a fun spin on things.

Yes I agree that having a badge for this would probably motivate more people to attempt to attack them.
I think that's precisely why there ISN'T a badge for them.

For whatever reason the Devs (apparently) want to do everything they can to DE-motivate people from trying. They refuse to allow a badge for it and the only significant modifications to them (i.e. the protection from Slow debuffs) have been to make them HARDER to kill, not easier.

It seems silly the Devs want it this way, but it is what it is. *shrugs*

Like most things it's just a matter of how quickly you want it. There's nothing wrong with getting a badge like this "painlessly" if you don't want it quickly or want to save a few million Influence.

I on the other hand spent about a week grinding through 10,000 crafts and got Fabricator on my badging character finished many years ago now. At the time it cost me something like 20 million Influence just to have it done pretty much ASAP. Since then I've made so many billions buying and selling things on the market the fact that I effectively "paid" for that badge to have it ASAP is more or less immaterial to me.

As always YMMV...

Especially when you get killed anyway and come back as a zombie with superpowers.
That's not going to do the rest of us any good at all.

Well like I said if a power like Hot Feet was only supposed to work while on the ground I could see restricting its activation to having to be on the ground. But I've been using it for years while Hovering so either the flavor text is wrong (like that never happens ) or it's a bug they haven't bothered fixing for years.

Maybe they always "intended" for it to work while on the ground but didn't want to deal with having it shut off any time a character so much as "bunny-hop" jumps into the air. Regardless of the intentions I'll continue to use it how I like even if I have to keep putting up with the activation annoyance.

P.S. Having to summon a "floating" Vet Pet on the ground makes no sense regardless.

I agree that most of these things would be better if they were "fixed". On the other hand I've lived with these things for so many years that I've long since adapted to or worked around most of them for the most part.

Out of all of these your "The Ouroboros portal can only be summoned while on the ground" is the one that annoys me the most, but not because of that particular power. I find it annoying that you have to be on the ground to summon Vet Pets and Hot Feet. Hot Feet really bothers me because once it's started you can Fly/Hover with it on and use it that way perfectly fine. If that power was ONLY supposed to work while grounded I could see limiting its activation to being on the ground as well. But why do I have to land in order to start a power I use 95% of the time while Hovering?

OK, take the zombies out of the equation then. Replace the zombies trying to get through that door to eat Merle with an angry/hungry grizzly bear or Bengal tiger. Now rethink how Merle would have reacted "realistically" to a REAL LIFE threat to his life.

I tend to think the whole "cutting the hand off" scenario was dumb as well, but as Devil's Advocate I can think of an answer for your point about needing a tourniquet: he could've used the same belt he used to fish for the saw in the first place. He could have wrapped that around his arm before he started cutting.

Of course one could argue if he was rational enough to think about applying a tourniquet to himself he might have been rational enough to cut something other than one of his own body parts.

Yes it would've been cool if this was a planned mini-series with a specific known ending. The "problem" is that this show got a second season "green-lit" for it almost as soon (IIRC) as the first episode aired. Now it supposedly will have free reign to sputter on until it has a good chance to "jump the shark" and get dumb.

I honestly don't know that much about the comic book this show is based on. I do know it has had a bunch of issues (70 or more?) so the TV show can continue to follow the comic story for a while. Still I think the longer it runs the more likely it'll diverge from what's been established in the comic and fall apart.

This show's concept would have made for a perfect mini-series.
Now we'll probably never know what it could have been.

Yeah I'm honestly losing some interest in this show already due to some of the "hollowness" of the characters we've seen. I'll definitely watch the rest of the season (since there's only 3 more shows) but I'm starting to wonder how long into the second season I'm going to be able to tolerate it. I really don't care to see "reality TV show" styled bickering with a few zombies thrown in for flavor every episode.

I thought about this too. I suppose if Merle was thinking "rationally" and had some time to weigh the alternatives it'd make more sense for him to saw his thumb off and slip out of the cuff that way. After all a thumbless hand has to be better than having no hand at all.

Ultimately I think the makers of the show/story just wanted to have something like this be a "OMG!" shock thing. I still think, given all the alternatives, cutting something other than the hand/thumb/wrist would've been the more realistic option even given the threat of the zombies.

I've actually already given up having this show follow the "normal" expectations for what its zombies can or can't do. I'm willing to assume these zombies will end up doing all sorts of things they "shouldn't" be able to do.

Well maybe my choice of the word "fantastic" was a bit much. What I really meant to say was that if story was willing to establish Merle being "extreme/panicked/insane" enough to cut his own hand off I don't see it out of character for him to think he could jump across to another building.

The Devs (IIRC it was Positron specifically) said they didn't want to create a badge for the Rikti drop ships because they never intended those ships to be killable to begin with. Obviously it's generally known that with a good group of people working on it those ships can in fact be killed. I myself have been involved with bringing 6 or 7 of them down once they went Live (I don't count the ones I helped kill during the beta because they were much easier to kill during the beta).

While I usually like any idea for adding new badges to the game I can actually almost accept the Devs' reasoning on this one. It does take a serious effort from lots of people to take one down, more effort than is really reasonable. Then again once there are a bunch of Incarnates flying around taking down a Rikti drop ship might be seen to be more within the realm of "realistically doable" by the Devs.

We probably won't ever get "Influence converted to Prestige" badges for the same reason we never got "Personal Prestige" count badges. The Devs don't seem to consider Prestige a thing that individual characters can "benefit" from in the form of badges.

Besides based on how relatively easy it now is to earn (then burn) 2 billion INF I kind of think getting badges for that would be a bit of an overkill. I don't play the market as seriously as some people do, but if I made it a priority I could probably earn (then burn) 2 billion INF within a couple of weeks, if that long.

Heck I think there should be a badge for completing ALL Red and Blue Ouroboros arcs.
My main badging character has already done that.

Yeah I'm not really much into "pre-congrats-ing" myself or others for badges they haven't earned yet either.

But considering that Primal Earth badgers will have access to not only all the new I19 Explore badges on the Red and Blue sides but the Praetorian Explores as well it's very reasonable to assume there will be people sporting 1,100+ badges within a few hours of I19 going live. Grabbing all the Explore badges will be relatively easy, but besides that I fully assume it'll only take a few days for the most OCD people to get most of the other non-Explore ones.

The zombies had the run of the entire building except the roof. I am well aware that fire escapes don't typically allow for ground access to go up for security reasons. But they could have reasonably gone half-way up the building inside then get on the hypothetical fire escape to get to the top.

Still given that the show already went as far as to have Merle cut his own hand off I don't think it'd be too "fantastic" for them to have him jump to a slightly lower adjacent roof-top.

It's pretty clear Merle went a bit loopy to cut his own hand off instead of the chain of the cuffs or bar that they were connected to. Sure I guess you could argue his hand would be quicker to cut than those other things but really I think it was mostly just a choice to add a bit of shock to the scene.

The real problem I have is that apparently Merle found another way to get off the roof that the zombies didn't find to get up to him. If there was a "fire escape" why didn't the zombies use it to get to him? I guess what we'll learn is that he did something really stupid like jump over to another building without killing himself. My guess for him is that he'll die anyway (probably next episode) but he'll die saving his brother or some-such that'll be tragically/ironically heroic.

Well I think we'll find out both Shane and Laurie have equal reason to feel pretty bad about what they did. I figure we'll learn that Shane has probably had a thing for Laurie for years and while he did respect the relationship Rick and Laurie had pre-zombies I think he took advantage of the situation and too quickly assumed Rick was dead to gain the "family" he always wanted/envied. I think we'll see a falling out between Rick and Shane pretty soon. Also I have little sympathy for Laurie because even if she truly believed Rick was dead she didn't really have to start "throwing it" to Shane that soon, even if it had been several months.

If you think about it these three characters are playing out a variation of the King Arthur (Rick), Guinevere (Laurie) and Lancelot (Shane) love-triangle relationship.

Yeah Shane over-reacted with him, but I think he was blowing off steam over the whole "Rick being alive" situation.

I would actually argue it the other way around: Unless you have a time machine you may never get some of the anniversary badges. Time travel is probably outside the purview of what the Devs of this game can achieve. On the other hand they actually do have CONTROL over how they award Bug Hunter or more generally how they would choose to reward players for finding game-breaking bugs.

I would submit that since the Devs actually have CONTROL over Bug Hunter yet choose to continue to allow it to work the way it does alone makes it a "worse" situation than missing anniversary badges. The Devs can't change the passage of time, but they COULD reform how Bug Hunter works.

While your anecdote is a tragic one and could have even been the result of a bugged spawn situation I seriously think it needs to be put in the perspective of what it was: an amazingly rare and unique scenario which was so unlikely it's hardly worth worrying about reoccurring.

I've played this game teamed for literally thousands of hours over the years, many times with Kheldians. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever seen a void/quant/cyst in an ambush and I can't recall one ever happening next to an AV. Basically I feel very safe in declaring what happened to you in this case was so exceedingly remote that while it likely sucked at the time it's the kind of thing you're going to look back on and find humorous in the long run. I know I would.

Basically I have no problem with a "random element" like voids/quants/cysts in this game. A good 99% of this game is almost trivially too easy to play - anything that makes us have to pay attention and play smart every once in a while can only be seen as a good thing as far as I'm concerned. *shrugs*

I half-way figured the Devs wanted to wait at least until I20 hits before "Voyager/No Road Not Taken" would be possible regardless.