Lothic

Forbin_Project's summary is good. But Controller powersets provide different -numbers- of pets depending on the powers. For instance Fire Control's 1 pet summon power provides 3 Fire Imps.

Regardless of the total number of pets involved the key thing to remember is that pets are NOT the primary thing Controllers are based on and never were. The Mastermind is this game's main "pet class". Controller pets are at best fire-and-forget secondary support to Controllers. They are often glorified cannon fodder that let Controllers concentrate on crowd control while their pets act as aggro absorbers.

Controllers are balanced because their pets play second fiddle to crowd control. Sadly I think people who mostly play MMs have a hard time understanding the dynamic of that kind of balance.

I agree, at least about typical network-based American TV at any rate.

I'm old enough to have actually watched the original BSG when it first aired in 1978. I always remembered the exciting scene at the beginning of the pilot episode where the Cylons first attacked Caprica and got the ball rolling.

Of course the new BSG changed things a bit by basing itself on a second Cylon war years after the first Cylon attack. But as soon as I first heard about the Caprica series it made perfect sense to me that its very last scene of its very last episode had already been written: it would pretty much have to be a recreation of that tragic first Cylon attack we first saw in 1978. That's the way Caprica should have been "connected" to the other parts of the story we've already seen.

As a prequel Caprica already had definite boundaries. We all knew where the story would end up. We all knew the net effect of the show was going to be to tell us how the Cylons managed to get started in the first place. This show pretty much had to be a finite mini-series skillfully crafted to get us to the only conclusion that was going to make any sense to the overall continuity.

Sadly that apparently didn't happen.

This whole Incarnate thing will be an interesting new part of the game as far my character backgrounds go. Some of my level 50s (the Magic/Natural/Mutant ones mostly) will likely incorporate the connotations of becoming a "demigod/avatar" of higher powers into their RP while others (the more Science/Tech ones) will probably just rationalize that it represents "Eureka!" styled improvements/upgrades to their powers.

Ultimately I'm not just going to assume all my level 50s have simply become "gods" in Ghostbuster Gozer sense.
Each of them will react and adapt to it in different ways depending on what works for their concepts.

This suggestion has cropped up countless times since CoV launched.
Thank the gods the Devs have NEVER shown any interest in doing this.

It's very obvious that the only way Controllers would be able to gain manual control over their pets would be to sacrifice crowd-control capability. Controllers (when played correctly) are almost god-like already - a Controller who also had MM-like control over their pets would be grossly overpowered in this game.

If you want to play an AT that can manually control their pets you play an MM.
If you want to play an AT which are the kings and queens of crowd-control you play a Controller.
This game will never allow the core strengths of two different ATs to be combined into one package.
I can only hope people will understand that and stop wishing for something that will never happen.

Yep the experimental "puzzle pieces" you mentioned are often bigger and/or appear unrealistic compared to biologically correct body proportions. But clearly the goal is to scale the hardware down to work well within typical human shapes and sizes and they are getting impressively close to that already.

I'll bet they could make an android/gynoid today that would move and appear very realistic as long as you were willing to let it be scaled up to like 10 feet tall. The current state of technology requires that much body volume to pack in all the required hardware, batteries and whatnot. Given enough time they'll be able to miniaturize those components down to petite Japanese J-pop singer sized without having to compromise anything.

This would not be the first time a Redname believed something contrary to the way the game actually works. I'm not saying that as a knock against anyone per se - I'm just pointing out that there are so many details to this game that not everyone (including the Rednames) are going to know everything 100% correctly.

Since it was confirmed these two badges have two different /settitle numbers the game is definitely going to treat them separately. Sadly that means there's really no expectation they would auto-switch the way all the other "one badge with two names" do. It seems apparent that the Devs specifically wanted these new badges to be manually "toggleable" like this.

I suppose the real question remains as to what the Devs were thinking when they implemented this.
Is this a "beta test" for future toggleable badges or was this just some kind of weird one-time fluke?

This was basically the point I was trying to make: What an "evil doctor/scientist" means to different people can equate to pretty much any AT/Powerset you want. There is no "best" choice out there.

I think it comes down to what -you- think the "ultimate diabolical doctor/scientist" means to you. Everybody has their own opinion of what this kind of character would be like. I don't think there could ever be a "best" one to choose from because everyone has a different idea of what the "best" means to them. It's a totally subjective choice.

That's why I find it easier to have a character concept in my head first and then find a way to express that in the game. I'm not really sure you can just pick a single AT/powerset combo out of thin air and say that's the only type of "ultimate diabolical doctor/scientist" you can have.

So the question I'd put to you is what kind of "ultimate diabolical doctor/scientist" do you want to make? By answering that question you'll know what kind of AT/powerset to use. You already suggested a Ele/Dark Troller as your idea of this character type, but since you can't have that right now why not pick something close to that?

Well that "one-liner" fit with the "I'm older than X" theme.
I never promised it would be able to stand up to too much temporal analysis.

So that means you're older than Al Gore?
Sorry, I couldn't resist myself with that.

I'm just looking forward to telling my accountant that money spent on a MMO can now be considered an "investment".
I wonder if I'll have to pay capital gains on that.

And you're suggesting that as long a CoH DOESN'T become a F2P game then "wasting 8 months of life" as you put it would be OK?
I think you have more to worry about than the fate of the payment structure of this game...

Oh I'm well aware there's no substantial evidence to support the idea that I20 will be the introduction of "F2P CoH". But since people here are already hyping up the conspiracy theory that CoH is going to become F2P any day now I thought I'd have some fun throwing some wood on that fire.

Things like this happen in "real life" all the time. There are several toll roads near where I live that were built like 30+ years ago. They were sold to the public on the idea that they would need to be toll roads for like 10 years or so to pay them off. Everybody knows those roads were technically paid for decades ago yet they still charge tolls to use them.

I stand corrected. I didn't look into these badges enough to know that they had two separate /settitle numbers. From that point of view the game really is treating these as two separate badges as opposed to one badge with two alignment-based names.

So if we are in fact dealing with a new "set" of badges like the Katie TF badges then why on Earth would the Devs decide to make this "set" of badges only contain 2 badges which (based on my own personal misunderstanding) behave very closely to the "one badge with two names" model? It makes very little sense to have this be a unique badging situation when it's not really unique enough justify setting it up like this in the first place. It almost seems like a needless complication just for complication's sake.

I see no reasonable reason why these badges could not have just been cast in the "one badge with two names" scheme just like hundreds of others are. *shrugs*

This is what I suspected would happen. I was just about to test this myself with an alignment switch tonight.

It's interesting the Devs decided to do this with this badge. Clearly the Arriviste/Trusting badge is the same badge which simply has a hero name and a villain name. But unlike the hundreds of other badges in the game which have two names this is the first badge I'm aware of that does not automatically switch names when you switch alignments.

I'm not really sure why the Devs decided this one badge was going to behave like this when none of the others do. I'm not necessarily against the idea of a badge working this way. I just wonder why the Devs chose THIS badge to work like this, especially since it's going to be UNCHANGEABLE for the vast majority of every year. If the Devs wanted us to have badges that we had to manually change when we changed alignments I really don't think making one of those badges an event badge was a terribly good idea.

Oh well...

As I said these things are a matter of concern. A -reasonable- amount of concern...

Obviously this game (at least in its present form) will not last forever. At some point it'll either shutdown or evolve into something like "CoH2" or somesuch. I hope it lasts for as long as it can but if it spends its last days under some kind of F2P model that'll hardly be the end of the world.

Some could argue it's already had a great run as is.
Anything more at this point is very much just icing on the cake.