Lothic

Again to answer your questions all that I will say is that you need to look at things from the Devs' point of view.

If the marketing guy saw that the Super Packs were selling well the ONLY thing he/she would care about is that the company was doing something right for them to make money. The "distinction" you're trying to draw here is only something that a player might care about - the Devs couldn't care less. What does it matter to Paragon Studios if people are buying them because they like the generic random mechanic of the packs or because they feel obligated to in order to get something exclusive? Either way people are buying them.

To use a real world example car companies these days usually try to throw in all sorts of extra features into their cars like rear view cameras, built-in GPS, satellite radio and so on to make them distinctive in the marketplace. When a customer comes in to buy they might be motivated to buy for all sorts of reasons. For all the dealer knows maybe the ONLY reason a customer ends up buying his/her car was that it had a feature that couldn't be found anywhere else. Same goes for this game's Super Packs.

The Super Packs of this game offer an array of features any one of which might motivate someone to buy them. Some people might like the ATOs, others the costume items, still other might only want to chase the Wolf. Some of these things you can get via other methods, some of them you can't. Your quaint idea that one of these various features (the costume set) has no place being an exclusive is flawed because for a certain subset of people that might turn out to be the only reason they'd buy the packs. Sure a given player X might find that "annoying" for whatever reason, but again from the the Devs' point of view all they'll care about is that they sold a Super Pack to player X for SOME reason regardless of what that reason was positive or negative. Paragon Studios can't force anyone to buy anything. What excuse do you really have to complain if you decide to buy something even if you for some reason don't like WHY you are buying it? You vote with your money - either stick to your guns and don't buy the packs or buy them with a smile on your face.

Basically the company is going to make more money off of selling his new costume set via super packs than they ever would via direct sales. It worked for Wizards of the Coast - it'll work for Paragon Studios as well. The people who hate Collectible Card Games don't buy them and WotC still laughs all the way to the bank. *shrugs*

Yeah I haven't gotten one as a drop yet but I've seen a couple of people report that they got them during several BAF/Keyes runs I've made in the last few days. Apparently they went "live" on Tuesday along with the Super Packs.

They might just be limited to iTrial drops at the moment. I suspect we'll see them in the new I22 Dark Astoria as well.

Yeah I understand what AmazingMOO is saying about how artistically speaking wider shoulders make women appear more masculine. But the minimum settings this game allows make them look somehow borderline physically deformed or at the very least unnatural somehow.

What this means that no matter what kind of female character I'm trying to make (unless she's suppose to be less than 10 years old or over 100) I will always set her shoulder slider upward to be at least as wide as her hips. It's the only way they look "normal" to me.

Well if you're looking for "holy ****" style storytelling the likes of which were in the Walking Dead comic then I could have told you that a Walking Dead TV show on AMC was going to fail for you from the begining.

I've read enough of the comic to realize that there are plenty things they will never be able to translate directly over to a basic cable TV show. Maybe if HBO or Showtime had gotten this show there would have been a better chance for it to not only be able to do the "extreme" stuff but they might have had more money to make the entire plot/casting better in general.

So all things considered I take it for what it's worth: a basic cable TV show that's doing its best despite its inherent production limitations.

That's because you haven't bothered to look at it through Dev-tinted glasses.

From their point of view dealing with a relatively small up-tick in short-term player angst is worth the money they are making from this. They're looking at the big picture here - they honestly don't care that much about individual players. I know that sounds brutally harsh but it's completely realistic and logical from their point of view.

Exclusivity of the costume items in the Super Packs is the very quality that makes them good sellers.
It may be counter-intuitive to some, but it is what it is. *shrugs*

I think Arcanaville's main idea here was that for every "angered player" out there there's going to be another player who's going to buy dozens or even hundreds of packs. I suspect very few of the "angered players" are actually going to quit playing entirely over this issue, and the few who do will eventually be replaced or mitigated by the revenue generated by the Super Packs.

Couple this to the fact that just about everyone is managing to get the entire Elemental Costume set parts within the first 10-12 packs means that in the long run almost no one will stay "bothered" by this.

Well let's put it this way: Wizards of the Coast has been a very successful gaming company for the last 20 years based on this generic "collectible card game" model. My simplistic guess is that if it worked for them it'll work out for Paragon Studios too.

And I'll even offer up myself for anecdotal evidence for this line of thinking. I bought 96 packs on Tuesday. While I had fun getting all the ATOs and catalysts and what-not I'll honestly admit that I really wanted the silly Black Wolf Pet at least as much as any of the rest of it. Sadly I did not get it.

While I was busy -not- getting the Wolf I bought each of my 96 packs in four lots of 24 each, one lot at a time. Now if by some miracle I had gotten the Black Wolf in the first or second set of 24 I think I can also readily admit that I probably would've stopped there. In effect that cursed Wolf basically "motivated" me to get another 48 packs just on the chance I might get it.

I've since sold off many of the extra ATOs I got for billions of Influence so it's not like I didn't benefit from the extra packs I bought. But I'll freely congratulate Paragon Studios' business savvy for providing a situation that got me to give them an extra $30. I don't believe their decision to keep the Elemental costume set "exclusive" to the packs will hurt them in the least.

Eh, most people here are pretty quick to make the blanket implication that "the comic did it this way so that necessarily means what the TV show did was bad". Again I think each of of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.

I suppose I just have a hard time glossing the strengths of the TV show by saying the comic was "better" the same way that I'm not willing to gloss over the shortcomings of the comic by labeling the TV show as "bad". Frankly for me I've had moments where I've either been reading the comic or watching the TV show and said to myself "why am I wasting my time with this book/show?" But somehow they both keep doing different things that keep me interested in both. *shrugs*

I was trying to make the point that a good TV show in general CAN do this.
The debatable point here is whether the Walking Dead TV show in particular is actually living up to that potential.

For the record I can easily see and accept the failures and missteps of the TV show. I'm just not willing to automatically proclaim that the comic was sheer quintessential perfection by comparison - it had plenty of its own problems.

I can see how people who are familiar with both the comic and the TV show could like one set of characters over the other.

But I think the reason the TV show is having a harder time "juggling" its characters and keeping them all relevant is that is doesn't have the luxury of just tossing out a random panel or two and being done with it like the comic book can. The comic can get away with throwing a few words at each character and keeping most of them relevant because the medium practically dictates a very terse and glossed-over handling of events regardless. On the other hand the TV show has the dual-edged sword of being able to provide more detail to the characters so it becomes very obvious when they -don't- use that capability very well via keeping them all busy and relevant story-wise.

Basically it boils down to the differences between what you can do in a comic book versus a TV show. I still firmly believe both media have their own strengths and weaknesses. Sure the TV show has done some fairly off-the-wall things (like the Lori car crash plotline seems to be) but the amount of detail and character development you can get from the TV show blows the all-too-often simplistic and unevenly paced comic away. Sometimes the comic will dwell on trivial stuff for pages and the devote like one panel to game-changing plot developments.

Perhaps if you're too invested with the way one of them works then you may never be able to fully accept the other. *shrugs*

I won't debate the "lack of fire" opinion because I think that kind of thing just boils down to an individual viewer's opinion. But what if this new group (two members of which Rick just killed) provide enough of a threat to motivate -everyone- to leave the farm?

Considering that I22 has been in open beta for almost 2 months and the current Spring Fling event ends on February 27th this news of a DXP scheduled for March 16-19 makes it that much more promising that I22 will hit by March 6th or 13th so that everyone will be able to DXP their new characters.

Never let it be said that you don't have an interesting sense of humor.

Congrats on getting MoKeyes. Extra congrats if you got Avoids the Green Stuff and Loves a Challenge during the same run. It's usually hard enough to get leagues to concentrate on either of those individually much less at the same time.

Yeah it's starting to get fairly annoying that they haven't figured out some kind of solution to that annual veteran badge problem yet. I'll be hitting my 8th in April so I'll probably be joining everyone else who hasn't gotten one yet. I understand it's not a super-top priority as far as bugs go, but the longer they wait the more people it's going to affect.

I think it was purposefully meant to show us is that this new group is what -any- group would devolve into if you let people like Shane be in charge. I made the point earlier in the season that Shane represents a sort of dark-side version of Rick. Without Rick's sense of humanity and justice all you'd have is the more primitive, amoral mindset of Shane.

Once Hershel accepted and admitted that he had been wrong about the Walkers it united Hershel and Rick with a common bond. It was no longer Rick's group versus Hershel's group - it became Rick AND Hershel against the rest of the world. We see Rick as being something special, a "uniter", as opposed to people like Shane and these outsiders who have adopted a more cutthroat lawless outlook.

With all the totally unguarded supplies that would be littered across the country-side I think a roaming band of raiders (whatever their size) trying to infiltrate and destroy groups like Rick's for supplies would be an absolute waste of time and effort. This isn't like Mad Max where you have one group guarding the only supply of gas in the desert. If "slick-philly and live-action Carl" want supplies they can go anywhere for them without fighting.

Now it's always possible they might be after something else like live human slaves for sex or labor. But the fact that it's only been a few months since the ZA happened makes something like that highly unlikely. If the setting of this story was like 20 or 30 years after the ZA then I could believe enough time had passed for organized bands of live raiders to be scouring the land to find any last live people to enslave for their attempts to rebuild a power-base. But since it's only been a few months I don't think enough time has passed for any nomadic raiding party to be organized enough to want to do anything but avoid confrontation and just survive.

Basically "slick-philly and live-action Carl" as scouts for a wandering group of slavers from out-of-state makes no sense so soon after the ZA.

But it might make a lot more sense if they turn out to be scouts for an established group of people who already have a permanent base nearby (i.e. the Governer's group). Then even after very short time they might be willing and able to send out scouts to the surrounding areas to see if other people are encamped near their base.

I guess what I'm saying is that if this doesn't turn out to be the introduction to the TV show's version of the Governer's group then it's going to seem highly "coincidental" (read totally contrived) that an organized group of travelling raiders from supposedly up north managed to find themselves all the way down in Georgia right on top of Rick's group in a matter of a few post-ZA months.

I'd guess this kind of thing happens on most every server. I've seen plenty of Keyes badge attempts fail on Virtue due to one person not paying attention. Heck, I've even seen people outright griefing these attempts by running long distances to jump into the green or actively popping a door on one of the bunkers when they thought no one was watching them.

I guess the only saving grace to Keyes is that with an experienced league you can blow through the non-badge parts of it fairly quickly. Gives you the chance to try it 2 or 3 times in a row relatively reasonably.

FYI good news for me is that I finally finished MoKeyes on my main badger just a few days ago!
Good luck to everyone still trying for it.

If you want to imply that these Joe-sixpack "scouts" have managed to become a post-apocalyptic version of SEAL Team 6 in just a couple of months of random raiding go right ahead. I simply think you may be over-thinking their role/abilities in this scenario. My guess is that when we see the next episode we're both going to be a little wrong in our assumptions of what's going on here.

Yeah and then have that 4-5 person group try to play that game against a "camp" that might have dozens of people who are just as likely to blow them away as to exhibit any "humanity" that they might be able to prey upon.

I'm not going to say your scenario isn't possible, but I'm not going to think it's very likely either. Much like the "bullet into 6 fragments" thing this has to potential to not add up story-wise if it's not handled well. I guess we'll see.

There's a quick split-second during the preview where we see Rick look back into the interior of the bar and we see the bodies of the two guys still lying where they fell. Apparently there was no time (or effort if there was time) to do anything with the bodies at that point. That's why I'd be more willing to assume the events that occur during the preview must happen within minutes (or even seconds) of Rick shooting them. That's the only way this would make some semblence of sense.

Ultimately I don't quite buy the idea that a large force standing just outside the bar would send two guys in under the pretense that they are alone just to trick Rick and company to walk outside and instantly be confronted by the group. Seems too risky for the large group to rely on chance that Rick would just semi-randomly do to what they wanted and not just kill the scouts anyway. If the large group already knew they were in there then why hide their mass of numbers outside? Again I'm just hoping it'll all be adquately explained.

For what it's worth thanks. I still wish I could trade away my dozens of unused Costume Tokens to other people.

Well like I said earlier (in another thread I think) at least you did it in the right order and didn't actually pay for 700+ packs to get it.

Since most of my characters are already fully Purple/PvP IOd I actually don't care that much about the ATIOs. I'll probably use them eventually but they're not a priority for me. I also don't think I'll be using much of the Elemental Costume set. Most of it just doesn't quite fit with most of my characters.

Ironically enough the Black Wolf is probably one of the main things I'd like from these packs. To each their own I guess.

Yep I figure for every person who gets the Black Wolf in the first dozen or so packs there'll be another person who has to open 200+ packs to get it and thus Universal Karma will be preserved.

Well the only way that would work is if what we saw in the preview is literally the first few seconds of what we see of Rick and company in the next episode. I'm willing to give it the chance to make sense at that point.