Lothic

Clearly you hate the things that the game currently "forces" you to do to get these costume items.
That's fine - you're free to have your own opinion on that.

But all I see with the suggestion to make these things available via A-merits it yet ANOTHER restriction on them: You have to be a certain alignment to have A-merits to begin with. As the classic line goes: "Two wrongs don't make a right."

If the Devs ever provide any other way to get these things they should be via a way that is open to everyone regardless of AT or alignment (such as regular Merits or INF).

Yes things like the witch hat and the plain epaulets were technically restricted to certain ATs (hero ATs specifically) but now I18/GR has removed that restriction by allowing villains to crossover and earn those items as well.

I'm not strictly against the idea of making costume items that require you to earn certain badges be made available via other methods (INF, recipes, etc.) but I'm not sure I'd make those alternate methods themselves restricted to having to be a certain alignment to buy them. If they ever offered things that strictly required A-merits to buy then what happens to those items if you get them THEN switch alignments? Would you lose them because you needed A-merits to have them in the first place?

Ultimately I think it's far better to minimize the "must use A-merits as the main/only way to get a costume item" concept as much as possible.

Weird that they would bother to spend any time to change how that worked. I would've figured that since they more or less gave up on the water "experiment" that they'd just leave what they did with that little pool alone as a footnote of sorts. Maybe the changes they made for Ultra mode affected how that unique bit of code worked. *shrugs*

One time (and one time only) I had a situation where I had just completed 5 alignment missions for the day which filled a character's alignment progress bar to 10 completed missions. I assumed I was going to have to wait until the next day before I got the morality Tip mission because my 5 fame slots were filled. Turned out I played a little more with the character and suddenly got the morality Tip mission drop even though I had the 5 fame points racked up.

Ironically I didn't bother to see if I could run it instantly (effectively running a 6th Tip for the day?) because I wanted to stay that current alignment long enough to earn the badge for staying a given alignment for a solid 7 days first. I don't know if that was a fluke or if it was working as intended because it was the morality Tip mission and not just a "standard" Tip mission. Either way the game did let me earn a total of 6 Tips in one day (even if I didn't try to run them all in that one day).

Do you have the slightest clue as to why things like this don't work now the way the did "back in the day"? Once you realize the Devs did what they did to FIX the game you'll see why they'll never go out of their way to consciously break it again. Think about it a little more and you'll understand why your suggestion will never happen as you've described.

So just because you, a player, don't like BAB's stance on the whole underwater zone thing you think he ought to be let go from the design team? If having an underwater zone is really -that- important to you there's always that other game ready and waiting for you right now.

I don't have a problem with a designer who has a strong opinion about the fate of his game. There are things the Devs of this game have done that I thought were very good and there are other things I think they could have done better. But clearly the future of this game does NOT hinge on whether or not this game ever gets an underwater zone or not.

I strongly suspect that if BAB wanted to have an underwater zone that he and the other Devs could create one and that it'd be done well. Their competency as designers is not really in question here. This basically boils down to an artistic choice that you apparently don't agree with. That's fine, but please don't think there's actually enough desire from the playerbase for the Devs to consider BAB's stance on the underwater thing to be game-threatening.

An underwater zone would be nice to have here, but I think many people could easily live without one. *shrugs*

Heh, you're right. I never bothered to look too closely at her outfit before but you can definitely make out the outline of where that mesh covers up to her neck and shoulders. It's the same type of "modesty" covering you see used by skaters and ballroom dancers' outfits. Knowing that it makes the censorship of this video by Sesame Street seem all the more silly. Oh well...

I'm not discounting your valid point. On the other hand I think I19 will give everyone more options to choose from. There has been a mention that more Tip missions are being added to the game. I suspect this'll be a more likely "answer" for you than the Devs changing the limit from 3 to 5 Tips.

The real "trick" of the Alignment Merit system has nothing to do with saving up 20 or 30 A-merits to buy specific recipes. Sure you could do that if you wanted. But the real key seems to be using the A-merits to roll for rare recipes to craft and sell.

For example with one A-merit you can get 5 random rare level 50 recipes. I've done this many times and can always yield (after crafting them) at least 40-50 million INF as a MINIMUM when I sell them on the market. I often net over a 100 million per A-merit roll.

Yes it costs several millions of INF to craft the recipes and it can even cost 20 million INF if you choose to buy your A-merits instead of earn them doing alignment missions. But when I mentioned my net 1.5 billion gain that was -after- all of my crafting costs were factored in and I did all that in just roughly a month of fairly casual effort.

You've got to be willing to look past the costs of doing this and see the longer term goal where you will ultimately make far more INF than you spend.

Well even the Bible didn't talk about Jesus much between the ages of 12 and 30.
Maybe Smallville should have taken the hint... j/k

I know I don't expect everyone to re-read through this thread, especially for anything I wrote in it. But I already mentioned that I've seen several first season episodes of this show and that was enough for me.

Admittedly my "ammunition" is pretty old but it's not non-existent. If this show somehow managed to get better between now and then then all I can say is that it's a shame it didn't start out worthwhile to begin with.

Yes, I was basically agreeing with you.
You didn't really have "point out" that I quoted you by you requoting me that I was agreeing with you.
Confused yet?

I agree people who "hate" on a show they're still watching is pretty hypocritical and weird.
I keep myself morally pure by hating(?) on this show -without- watching it.
As I implied before I haven't seen 5 solid minutes of Smallville in like 9+ years.

Yeah you're probably right. The main point I was trying to make is that even though there are people out there who are willing to "bend" the limits of this game doesn't mean the game has to cater to those people. Until the game is "designed" for post level 20 characters in Praetoria there's no pressing need to give characters like that all the bells and whistles.