Lothic

I'm not "technophobic" at all and I made no implication of that either. I'm simply stressing the word "expanding" because that denotes the critical concept of this discussion.

While it would be nice if we could collectively wave a magic wand and restructure our society based on non-wasteful paradigms that follow reasonable rates of growth and development we sadly live in the "real" world which operates a bit more primally and opportunistically. It's not easy to drop thousands (if not millions) of years of evolutional-based thinking just because we think we've outgrown all of that as of last week.

I actually sincerely hope we get to some kind of Star Trek like utopia at some point and the sooner the better. But until something very radically changes we are far more likely going to be justifying the huge effort to reach another solar system based on the "wasteful viral" model before we go based on the "happy-shiny Star Trek" model.

Think about what I said before you dismiss it out of hand.

When I said if we are to advance as an "expanding technology-based species" pretty much makes the assumption if we are going to continue living wastefully as we have in what you call the Modern Age (a.k.a. the age of oil-based civilization). Obviously if things change for the better and we stop wasting our natural resources then we could perhaps Reach for the Stars for the purposes of scientific curiosity as opposed to the single-minded need for resources to survive.

But even before the Age of Oil, and really even before the Age of Agriculture, we humans for most of our several hundred thousand year H. Sapiens history lived nomadic lives, constantly moving around to follow the herds for food or moving on when the local food ran out. As I implied referencing the "Matrix virus" concept was a bit cheesy, but it actually does characterize much of human history with a relatively easy-to-understand concept.

Unlocking costumes has never really bothered me much because we already can't wear absolutely anything we want anyway. The game does not provide for infinite costumes choices and never will. So if we can't have absolutely ANYTHING we want at character creation already what does it matter that we can only choose from 99% percent of what's available in the game at level 1? If I CAN have 99% of everything the game allows for at level 1 then whining about that last 1% is effectively pointless.

If you've decided that your character concept somehow absolutely relies on one of the very few costume unlocks then you either go unlock it or rethink your character. I can think of millions of character concepts I'll NEVER be able to make because the items don't exist in ANY form in this game but you don't see me people like me harping on that much do you?

I really wish people would get over hating on the unlockables.
You don't have to like them but they aren't going to go away after being in the game for years now.
Please either go unlock these things (like I did years ago) or stop complaining about something that will never change.

P.S. I've never argued that there SHOULD be costume unlockables in this game, but I understand why they do make for effective MMO rewards from a game design point of view. I'm sorry they bother you so much - I hardly ever think about them except when I'm responding to posts like yours. Let's just say on the grand list of "Top Things Wrong" with this game I'd rate costume unlocks pretty much at the bottom of the list. *shrugs*

It's a small suggestion, but one that I've seen made several times over the years for this game. I remember playing old single-player PC-based RPGs that had this kind of feature available 15-20 years ago. Why this could not be an option for this game has always puzzled me.

I think it's pretty clear that Hollywood ran out of seriously new ideas maybe as much as 20 years ago. At this point they ought to just openly admit that they'll systematically remake every movie ever made on like a 50 year repeating cycle. Sadly I think they'll get away with that whether they admit to it or not.

I realize it's a tad bit cheesy to reference the Matrix movies but that one scene where Agent Smith is telling Morpheus that he's figured out that human beings are really more like viruses than mammals actually does make a lot of sense. We do in fact have a history of spreading around and using up all the natural resources of a place before having to move on to somewhere else.

Sadly I suspect if we are to last as an expanding technology-based species for much longer than say another thousand years at this point our long term survival will probably depend on our ability to reach and exploit other Earth-like planets like this one.

Obviously the people who make Sesame Street are adults so they are going to do things offscreen that appeal to them at the workplace whenever they can. As I said earlier in this thread I trust that the onscreen content of this show will always be appropriate for kids and that there will be nothing "obvious" that could be harmful to them.

I think adults sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are media references which adults will interpret one way that kids will take completely differently. Your average 4 year old has no concept of who Katy Perry is or anything she's done in the rest of her "professional" career. The fact that you as an adult might not like her or don't approve of what she wears really has no bearing on what she can do on a kid's show to entertain kids.

Perhaps even though the banning of Perry's video on Sesame Street was ultimately stupid perhaps we can be thankful for it on another level because at least it did prompt a relatively funny skit on SNL.

Yeah the not earning Prestige thing can be annoying if Prestige is still important to you. But for me I find it very crummy to lose the SG mode for another reason: you lose access the costume color changes that SG mode allows.

I got used to using the editable SG mode colors as a means to "trick out" having 10 different costume appearances, not just 5. I'd gladly give up the ability to earn Prestige as long as SG mode still worked enough to use the color options as any alignment.

Losing access to the SG mode for SG costume colors just renews my long time wish that this game would let us have more than just 5 standard costume slots.

I got it a few weeks ago on my main hero-turned-villain badge character running one of the Ouro arcs that had Legacy Chain in the first mission. I didn't notice it taking any longer than I expected it to given the number of Lts I was seeing in that mission. *shrugs*

Yeah it'd be nice if the Devs finally decided Gladiator badges were "real" badges and gave them proper progress bars. But then again once they are earned it doesn't really matter all that much.

I agree this kind of thing can be annoying when it does happen. Unfortunately the current zone cap is set as compromise between allowing the most number of players together in the same place versus the general server lag all of those players must endure. They'll never be able to completely eliminate the chance that what happened to you couldn't happen again even if they did tweak the zone cap any higher.

I actually suspect what happened to you doesn't actually happen often enough to enough players for the Devs to invest the time and resources it'd take to make the situation that much better. Unless you can afford to donate brand new server hardware to NCsoft I think this will always be a possibility.

I think much of the "nerdrage" over this comes mostly from the careless and shortsighted way Lucas himself talks about what he's done with his movies over the years.

I actually don't mind if he thinks he's making "improvements" to things because today's technology will allow him to do things he couldn't do 20 or 30 years ago. But when he talks about it he makes it sound like the old version of movie X, Y or Z is utter crap compared to his new shiny version. His strange apparent hatred for his own prior work comes off as silly when you recall it was the "old crappy" versions of his movies that got him to where he is today.

Sure a new version -might- be better in some ways and it's certainly different, but by stressing the idea that we the fans should effectively pretend the original version never existed in favor of the new version I think he basically oversteps his credibility. He seems to have no concept of the idea that the new version of movie X, Y or Z can coexist with the old and that they can both stand together and have different subsets of fans for different reasons.

Oddly he seems to have no respect for his own prior work as the foundation of his success. I understand that when he's promoting a new version of a movie he wants to have everyone come out to see it. I just think he'd do much better to hype the new version of the movies as positive products in their own right rather than as an opportunity to openly attack his prior works as if they were merely "rough drafts" or somesuch. I simply don't think he has to actively tear down the old versions to make his new versions seem better - I think they can stand on their own.

I don't really care if he literally does think his original movies are crap rough drafts.
I just think he wouldn't piss as many people off if he didn't publicly stress that point of view too much.

Well since they say this new planet is 3x or 4x as massive as Earth if a human-like critter did evolve there they'd be used to a much higher gravity environment than Earth's. My guess is if they were to come to Earth at the very least they could hop around pretty high the same way we can when we go to the Moon. Maybe not exactly Super Jump, but certainly more super than us.

And once Star Wars has been digitized (if it hasn't been already) they'll be able to reverse engineer stereoscopic frames for it as well. Remember when the "artwork" for Avatar was first created it only existed as single images much like the original frame footage of the Star Wars masters. Those art images were processed to create the stereoscopic effect in Avatar much like the frame stills will be used for Star Wars.

I agree that the step-by-step process it took to make Avatar a finished 3D product was different than what it'll take for Star Wars because the "initial" source comes from different media. But once you get these things to the "digital" media form they can be processed in basically the same way to generate the final product.

Admittedly I don't expect Star Wars to look exactly like Avatar.
But I highly doubt it's going to look "bad" no matter how it turns out.

Saying that Avatar was "filmed" in 3D is a bit misleading considering that an overwhelming percentage of it was CGI.

I'll agree that Avatar was conceived from Day One with 3D in mind so it did have that over Star Wars. But all of the footage of Star Wars either has been or will be digitized for this 3D conversion and they'll process it to take advantage of the current technology as much as possible.

Thankfully there will be no scenes of Darth Vader "purposefully" lunging his light saber towards the audience or anything else which typically makes the use of 3D stupid and annoying. From that point of view revamping Star Wars for 3D might actually turn out to be relatively acceptable because the only 3D effects we'll notice should be mostly subtle and non-cheesy.

Clearly 3D Star Wars is going to happen whether we wanted it or not.
It's just ironic to realize it could work well precisely because it was NOT originally filmed for it.

Exo-suits in hospitals will likely happen eventually. We'll probably first see ruggedized "robotic wheelchair-like" machines that'll be able to pick up injured people and independently transport them in combat/crisis situations. Clearly once those kinds of robots exist they'll be used in other related situations like in hospitals.

At least while GL is alive at any rate.
That was the point I was making with my earlier posts in this thread.

Sure Star Wars is Lucas' baby.
I'm just saying most serious artists have the good enough sense to know when their "babies" are done and stop tinkering with them. *shrugs*

Whatever works.

I just feel sorry for the people who apparently waste "serious" time waiting for Tips to drop. By the time I have the first one and go start running it I get the rest of the Tips I need for the day just from what comes inside the subsequent Tip missions.

YMMV.

I'd agree that the standard metric the Devs use to determine the Merit reward value of a TF/SF/Trial probably doesn't fit here because of the uniqueness of needing more players involved than the standard "8 person team" model. Seems you pretty much need 24 people (with fairly specific builds) to do this trial reliably, and the relative difficulty of rounding up 24 people to get this going should be factored in.

Well they've developed a pattern (intentional or not) of "unofficially leaking" things like this that end up in booster packs for a long time now. It's been happening for a lot longer than just the most recent emote party pack.

I'm still having a hard time deciding if the Devs are being clever on purpose by slipping these things out as guerrilla-style beta tests of new features or if their code management is simply so poor that these things just ooze out into the live baseline beyond their control. I suppose as long as they continue to look like accidental code leaks they can maintain a certain level of "plausible deniability" about them.

The drop ratios between the various types of HOs and SHOs have been grossly out of wack for years now. I've basically given up hope that these will ever get fixed.

We even had a forum debate with the red names on this long ago and we inexplicably could not convince them of badness of the situation. They kept defending themselves by saying "the drop rates for all HOs are random". True they are technically "random" but clearly they are not UNIFORMLY random across all types. You just have to look your current price disparity between Centrioles and Microfilaments to prove that.

That's why I can be both -not- against this idea and also think it's not a very useful idea at the same time.