Lothic

/continually signed since around May 2004...

If I had to guess I would imagine that the GR closed beta will start around February 1st because that's right around the time Star Trek Online is going to go live. Think about it...

Yeah the Devs had to make sure all the gender references switched (including badges) when they added that feature to the game. You could tell that was going to be the case based on the patch notes at the time. When it was first being "beta-ed" some of the badges DIDN'T switch gender and those had to be fixed.

I think as Master-Blade implied this is the kind of question we can't really answer yet because we know virtually nothing about how the whole badge thing is going to play out when Going Rogue happens. I have some general ideas about what I plan to do about it, but until I know exactly what the pros and cons are of switching sides it's kind of hard to say with absolute certainty. There is no guarantee that characters who started on either side will ever be 100% "equal" in this regard.

Even though we've only had serious news about side switching in the last year or so the Devs have been hinting at giving it to us almost from the beginning, even before CoV was finished. This is the main reason why I was never too serious about having a villain badger - I took a gamble that eventually, in some far off future, we'd get the chance to switch sides in some form or fashion. I'm obviously looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

Ironically my original main's background story was of a villain that turned good. Of course back in April 2004 CoV didn't even exist much less side switching so Going Rogue is kind of a "why didn't that happen 6 years ago" thing for me. Now I'm stuck with a hero AT for that character when it would have made more sense for her to have been a villain AT turned hero.

As for others I've got a few that'll go for RP reasons and others that'll likely go for badging reasons. My final determination of who goes will be based on the exact details. For instance until I know how SGs are going to work there are some alts that I may or may not end up switching. Hopefully all that will work out reasonably well.

I'm not quite as far along as some other people here are. Ironically one of my "semi-retired non-badging" alts will probably be done with all of them before my main badgers are. I decided long ago I'd never let these badges ever force me to -not- play with my main characters whenever I wanted to so I haven't been too hyper about it.

Regardless I expect my alts will be done with all the currently obtainable ones well before I17 and/or Going Rogue introduces the possibility of any new ones so that's good enough for me.

P.S. My badge sig totals are out of date by several months now. I plan to update them eventually but being on a naval vessel with restricted net access will tend to do that to me from time to time. Oh well.

I can see your point, especially in an organized PvP type situation where teammates need to rely on every visual cue they can get to quickly react to the combat situation.

But beyond that I think we all need to accept that a "cost" of power customization is the slightly uncertain world we now live in. Yes it's mildly disconcerting that I can't instantly tell exactly what powers are flying around like I used to be able to. But I will gladly accept that to have the "realism" of powers being any color. Frankly it was always a bit "unrealistic" to have everyone's Radiant Aura be green (for example) regardless of the origin or mechanics of a power.

So while I agree with you that power customization does come with this minor downside I would not go so far as to encourage people to deny themselves in the least. I suppose it would be nice if people followed your suggestion, but I'm not going expect it or be upset if they don't.

I for one never assumed a Walk power would ever become the most widely used "travel" power. I don't think even the people who have been suggesting we have the ability to walk in this game for years ever assumed they would use it 100% of the time themselves.

The Walk power is serving the exact purpose it was designed to serve: as a QoL improvement for those people who wanted it. I sometimes use it when the situation makes sense for it, which mostly means during RP and/or non-combat situations. It's quite obvious not everyone's going to use it all of the time and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will never use it. That fact doesn't make its existence in this game a failure of some sort. One can almost think of it like a special emote that does a bit more than a standard emote, like the costume change emotes. I wouldn't consider a specific emote a waste of time even if I don't use it myself. *shrugs*

Basically the Walk power fills a small gap in movement abilities that made sense to be filled to provide a bit of realism to the game. That's all - nothing more or less. For what it's worth I am obviously glad it finally happened.

No worries. The Devs only started giving them to us about a year ago even though they had been suggested for years.

Have fun.

There are currently something like 15 costume change emotes so far and the Devs seem intent on adding more.

Adding Origin inspired ones is a good idea but they should not be limited to only be usable by specific Origins. It would be unfair to existing characters to be denied access to something like that. All characters should have an opportunity to be able to use any emote like that.

Ever since the Vet system started I've gotten most of mine within a day or so of when they were expected. But I've had a couple that I've had to petition for because they were late. I've never figured out a pattern with what made those "broken" versus the other ones. I pay for this game annually so at least I know whatever's going on doesn't seem to be related to monthly account payment issues.

Basically I just keep an eye one it and hope that it doesn't break each time. I wish it were more reliable, but it looks like we may just have to put up with it being randomly flakey with some people. *shrugs*

Not sure if a mention of the CoP was literally on the CoV box, but I'm pretty sure the mention of "base raiding PvP" was, and based on the original intentions the CoP was a key part of that collasped house of cards.

For the record I've firmly been in the "dust off the CoP and rework it for PvE" camp for years now. Surely some of that content could be retooled into something worthwhile without having to recreate something new 100% from scratch.

Also as a badger I'm in the "rework the Power Liberator / Master Thief badge into something that can be earned now" camp. The fact that the Devs let that badge remain in the game in its present unearnable form (especially in the light of removing dozens of less broken Architect badges) is an unfortunate legacy to say the least.