Lothic

Bingo!

As I predicted the next couple of Vet awards turned out to be somewhat trivial from a software development point of view because I suspect the Devs are knee-deep into their work for the Going Rogue expansion. We probably won't see a "complex" Vet award again until some time after GR goes live.

Sure I would have liked to have seen more from these, but at least I can understand why it likely didn't happen.

In addition to using it for teams back when the Shards were first introduced I also used it for my Fire Imps.
But the very few times it was useful for those things wasn't worth keeping the power in general for me.

Because of my contracting job I work a few months of every year in one of the few places left on earth that does not have ready access to the Internet - a US naval ship. While at sea we do have access to satellite based email and such but because the bandwidth is strictly controlled by the Navy the idea of trying to play a MMO out there is impossible on many levels. Obviously that puts a crimp on my badging exploits. I've actually been amazingly lucky not to have missed any event badges so far.

Still I've managed to finish off most of the Day Jobs on most of several dozen alts. I created a little spreadsheet to track their progress and will probably be done with all of them within a few more months despite missing literally weeks worth of being able to rotate alts around. I have a few retired 50s which only need a couple more Day Jobs at this point. Ironically my main badger needs more than that because I still actively play her but she'll still be done long before GR or future Issues add any new ones. It's been an interesting challenge.

I know there will probably be villain-only players out there who won't like my thoughts on this matter but I suspect the only way the Devs will ever make these costume items available to villains at this point will be for those villains to crossover (at least temporarily) to the blueside once Going Rogue happens. I realize that's a pretty lazy way for the Devs to handle this situation, but all things being equal that'll probably be the way the Devs "answer" this long-running desire.

Congrats on finishing them.

Of course some cheeky person could mention that villains always had an advantage over heroes with this because the redside had a few more "double-earning" spots than blueside had before they were nerfed. It was pretty much a guarantee that there would be villains finishing before heroes. Of course as we all know the Devs hate the blueside.

Anyway let's not forget that Going Rogue and/or future Issues might add new Day Job badges as well so I wouldn't assume we'd ever be totally "done" with them in any event.

Not sure if I detected a faint whiff of sarcasm with this or not so I'll make it clear that there's of course plenty of other things in the world (and even this game) to worry about than a PvP badge that's effectively been broken for over 3 years now.

But in the narrow scope of "what badge in this game is most overdue to be worked on to make it better than the way it is now" I would easily rank Power Liberator / Master Thief at the top of the current list. I just wanted to re-stress the point that since late 2006 (when the badge was first introduced and quickly mishandled) there have been dozens of other badges completely removed or significantly altered. Why has Power Liberator / Master Thief been ignored? The whole CoP/IoP/base raiding situation was easily one of the most spectacular development failures our Devs have ever had with this game. It's unfortunate that our Devs have thus far continued to compound that failure by not adequately addressing leftover side-effects of it like this badge.

Power Liberator / Master Thief should have either been removed from the game or had its requirements altered YEARS ago.
Many people have it now only via an exploit because the Devs couldn't completely remove the broken unintended IoPs from the game.
Many people paid real money to server hop to get it and we all know how Posi hates the idea of "paying for badges".
It's just wrong on multiple levels.

Yes, this is not really -that- big of a deal in the greater scheme of things.
But it remains one of the ugliest warts on the overall badge system.
Maybe like other things that were lacking for years the Devs will eventually address this too.

The case for giving us a new way to get the Power Liberator / Master Thief badge has never been stronger.

To begin with there is already the precedent of a badge whose had its requirements completely changed. The Fusion Generator Plans SG badge originally was earned for a set amount of time SG members spent in PvP zones. Now it’s earned by an SG getting 750 kills in PvP in SG mode. Then of course you have the Isolator/Jail Bird badges which have been "liberated" from being trapped in the tutorial zones and are now earnable by anyone who wants them. Last but certainly not least let's not forget all of the badges (Issue 16 anyone?) which had their requirements majorly altered to allow them to be more easily earned. Practically dozens of badges have either been significantly altered (or even removed) from the game so there's no longer any justification NOT to fix this one last problematic badge.

I hope that perhaps eventually the CoP Trial can be dusted off and reworked into something that can be salvaged. I have suggested for years to have that content reworked into something not PvP oriented so the Devs can side-step the original problems they had getting that to work. In any case now that we live with a game that's gone so far as to significantly alter huge numbers of badges which had been untouched for years there's no longer any excuse about maintaining the "status quo" of any badge in this game, especially a broken one like Power Liberator / Master Thief. The badge was never designed to be a "one time only" event badge yet through unfortunate events that's exactly what it became. It was only "legally" earnable for roughly one week back in 2006 and ironically many people who have it now got it by exploiting the fact that the Devs couldn't remove all of the IoPs from the game like they intended to and "server hopped" their characters around to other servers just to farm for it. That's an extremely sad legacy for any badge to have in this game.

P.S. And while they're at it the Devs could give the Rescuer, Clothes Horse, Fashionable and Ostentatious badges their own badge artwork too. It's only been -years- since they've been naked like that.

While I think their version of "Betty Page as a demon summoner" is fine I agree that a miniskirt might have made her look a tiny bit better. Who knows...

Then again I'm a little biased about my thoughts on her anyway because a "demon summoner turned good" was really the core character concept I developed for my original main character almost 6 years ago. Obviously Demon Summoning didn't exist then so I had to settle for a Fire Controller with Imps, but it's still fun for me to imagine that the Devs literally stole my character background and copied it for Des.

So much of what was hinted at in the August 2008 marketing survey has come to pass that barring any other actual info I'm willing to assume that the "global enhancement slots" concept still has a reasonable chance of happening in some form or fashion in GR.

Obviously there's no guarantee of that, but I do think that whatever we end up getting for any new post-50 content will more likely be something like that rather than any kind of level cap increase. New content does -not- require an arbitrary number like that to get bigger.

It's possible the Dev artists responsible for the GR demons might have looked at a reference like that for inspiration. But my guess is that for a game like this they are going to end up looking more or less however the Devs end up making them look designed specifically for this game. Besides I doubt there's really "one right way" to draw a demon.

I was not trying to make the case that "illegal things are not illegal". I was just making the point that keyboards like the G15 will not allow such illegal things to be accomplished in the first place. The /bind system in this game already prevents EULA breaking activities. A keyboard like the G15 will not allow you to do anything "sneakier" than a standard keyboard because all a G15 gives you is more keys to attach binds to.

Botting is illegal and it can be accomplished with either a standard keyboard or one like the G15. Therefore there is no legitimate reason to suggest that using a specific piece of hardware like the G15 should be restricted or "illegal" for a MMO just on principle.

In this case I think you are being a bit overly-paranoid. How could a MMO prohibit you from using a commerically available keyboard from Logitech? I'm quite sure there is nothing the G15 keyboard will let you do that ordinary /binds and /macros couldn't accomplish with a standard keyboard. The G15 simply gives you more keys to work with.

People have been able to make elaborate multi-function /binds for years now. If there was anything "illegal" spelled out in the guides like Kheldarn referenced they would have been deleted from the forum years ago. *shrugs*

Actually by now it's almost certain to launch on February 2nd. Back when Champions Online slipped its launch date they annouced it a few months prior to that happening. My guess with only roughly 4 weeks to go they are too close now to stop it from happening.

Now do I believe STO will be fully "ready" to play by February 2nd? No, not really.
But they will launch it then whether it's completely ready or not.

The fact that Jay's position on this topic appears to be vague or unclear is quite enough reason to press the critical nature of my comments. As a Dev he would be free to explain this situation and/or correct my assumptions whenever he chooses. I would welcome a direct answer at any time.

I respect Jay, but I'm not going to give any Dev the automatic "benefit of the doubt" just because. I am his customer, not his friend.

I'm not against the concept of having more travel power options in Booster Packs. But Swinging is one that looks really stupid in that "other" game anyway. I wouldn't want to see that exact power copied here even if it were "feasible". So far I'm happy enough with this game stealing CO's Acrobatics and calling it Ninja Run.

But yeah as far as other future Booster Packs that bring us more GOOD LOOKING costumes, powers, emotes and so on I have no problem with it.

I'm all for this game allowing for any Unicode character in character names. But I probably would never use them myself because as you point out it would make people being able to invite me to teams or chat with me that much harder. This consideration among others is probably exactly why the Devs DON'T allow it.