Lycanus

cool

wait, we have info on the very rare boosts?

If you have one guy looking out for clones, you can usually drop him in under a minute, I've noticed.

This isn't the new direction for the game, it's the direction for a small percentage of content.

Not the entire game.

The rest of the game has the same sort of missions we've always had. Look at tip missions, those are all rather straightforward missions the only thing different about them is their story.

Incarnate content, even when we get to the tenth slot, is likely not to even reach 1% of the total available content.

We're still likely to get more tip missions, hopefully more scanner missions, I'd like to see some revamped classic missions too..

my only real problem with the Incarnate stuff is that it makes the likelihood that Dark Astoria, Boomtown, Terra Volta, Perez Park and Eden will continue to be overlooked for revamping a la Faultline and Rikti War Zone

Indeed, if you don't like the content of the intro-arch, don't play it, because the implication is that the rest of the content coming out of that will be modeled the same.

This sort of reminds me of a law in Texas that changed the way kids could get into advanced classes.

First it pretty much said you couldn't call them honors classes. Then it said any kid could get into it without testing to see if they met an advanced level of ability.

This was all well and good until the students started complaining that the content was too hard and, instead of pulling their kids out and putting them in normal classes, the parents would complain and eventually, instead of small classes of hard pushing, serious students, we have over-crowded honors classes filled with kids that want the weighted scores (a B in an AP/AP-Prep class is worth more than the same B in a regular class) to put them higher up in the ranks, or kids that want to hang out with their friends, and only about one kid in five that actually wants what the honors/AP classes are supposed to provide.

The situation is analogous.

Incarnate content is not supposed to be the same as the rest of the content. It is supposed to be more difficult and require new ways of THINKING more than higher power levels.

In fact, the real attraction for me and the people that the Incarnate system is aimed at is not the powers but the unconventional tactics that are necessary to win.

The powers are like experience and levels: an interesting side effect of a cool story and tough challenge.

yes, the most tedious two hours I ever spent (speaking as a solo-er who periodically forgets the game is running behind his writing projects)

Please no.

Don't we have enough out there where the challenge of a mission has been gelded?

I mean, look at Infernal. Compared to that mission's former difficulty, with infinite spawns, it is now little more than a joke.

I haven't even seen the infamous CoT portal room that used to be such a chore in years.

Trapdoor is fine the way it is...

On missions that strongly advise you to bring friends, I have no issue with some players not being able to solo it.

Still, I need to try it out with my dark/elec fender now that she's fifty (first need to give her an offensive build, current one is heavily built toward team support, usually when I play her I only use my elec when everything else is recharging, or for Tesla...)

Exactly.

Yes, you(JB) pay your fees to play the game. But so do I, and so do a few thousand other people. I pay just as much as you do, therefore my voice in wanting more challenge is worth the same as your voice who doesn't want challenge.

You're acting like the guy who says he should be able to talk all he wants in the movie theater because he paid his seven dollars.

Well, the rest of the people paid their seven dollars so they should be able to have quiet.

Worse than that, this is more like a case of the Pot calling the Tree black.

He's using a term the definition of which is a player who wants lots of power for no challenge to describe players that want challenge.

Johnny Butane is a munchkin and what he wants is a munchkin's paradise.

His idea of the tanker is the Hulk, the Thing and so on, which is all well and good except for the fact that such characters are in NO way balanced. Fictional characters are generally much more capable than equivalent roleplaying characters.

I believe that change happened in beta.

Eli, the lieutenant, the senator's daughter are all younger than their earlier franchise counterparts, Colonel Young is younger than his command officer equivalents

Rush is a bit older, but he definitely qualifies as edgier

The shakiness of the camera is especially odd given that shaky cameras are meant to represent amateur filming in order to add a dose of realism and tension.

Given that the cameras used in the story are floating camera balls, there should be no reason for them to shake at all.

I can't watch SGU without thinking of SG-1's episode 200 and the "younger, edgier" SG-1 skit. It really doesn't feel like the same franchise.

And I agree on Sanctuary, originally fridays on SyFy were rather easy, click the channel and let it run all night. Now I have to turn it off or put a disk on and remember to turn it back before 2 hours have passed

No, what, I'm saying is that they don't need a new mechanic.

Place defense and resistance into the same power. That's a partial dodge mechanic. Which is why I said partial dodge mechanics would look a lot like a Shield Defense user

For instance, placing one power with about 20% defense and 20% resistance

correct the mathematical formula might be a bit different, but essentially you have defense (which prevents an attack entirely) and resistance (which reduces damage)

a partial dodging mechanic is just one connected to the other.

sounds fine to me, I just would like to be able to pull up a list of what's in the base without having to go through every bin...my static team uses communal salvage for the most part, heck, even if its in personal storage if someone asks for it and we don't need it we turn it over, so you could say that we've gone the reverse and made all the personal salvage into group salvage.

agreed, but mechanically, it's still another name for resistance

I've done similar in HERO system, buying a decent level of defense and then purchasing a force field defined as "parries and dodges" for a martial artist.

ideally, SR should have been built as a layered defense with moderate resist and heavy defense, pretty much the opposite of Invulnerability.

Where Invulnerability has defense described as tough hide, SR would have resistance described as last minute dodges.

Granted, a scrapper doesn't need as firm a defense as a tank, they don't need to slog or wade as much as skirmish and harass.

But, a Reflexes tanker built toward high defense and moderate resist would be interesting. Granted, that would look a lot like a Shield user.

Most likely, but still would be fun.

I also wish the vehicles in the War Zone would actually shoot.

There are some things about Champions Online that I like (even though it was overall rather aggravating), and the ability to fight dinosaurs, wolves, and tanks is among those. Granted, the war zone vehicles would be on our side. But I'd like to have my characters fight a main battle tank.

The Sky Raiders skiffs are cool, but there could always be more of that.

This I wouldn't mind for the simple fact that it would be funny to watch a truck slam into a behemoth and it would be a very fun superheroish thing to do. Also, the added complexity to fighting in the streets would be interesting.

If cars did do damage, like they do in Freedom Force, then you would more often find me street sweeping so that I could play aggro pinball in traffic and watch the baddies getting bounced off different cars. Heck, if they added damage and KB then might be given a more substantial object within the map.

Then we could ride the cars and shoot or fight from the top of a moving truck or on a moving speed boat.

That would be awesome, especially if your in a fight with a tsoo martial artist and KB him into traffic and watch him torn apart by environment (moving traffic) or simply KB him into a tree and turn to fight his comrades while he has to catch up.

Yeah, fighting from car-top to car-top on a busy street would be great.

I find it interesting that you think I'm showing off my public school and local university education and seem to consider me somewhere between the picky, fastidious clerk and the self-important intellectual.

Of course, I think my only comment on education was the mention was of the basic freshman rhetoric class required by most universities and the fact that I was a teacher. Everything else was related to discussion of my profession not my education. Anybody who makes the language their profession is likely to be similarly precise at need. It is not a matter of fancy education. It is a matter of use.

I am able to cook, for example, I know how to run most of the positions available in a restaurant by nature of long hours working in restaurants. However, it is not my profession and it hasn't been my job for some years, as such I am not going to be as skilled as I could be. However, I deal with writing and analysis of language on a day-by-day basis. Naturally this produces a higher level of skill with the language based on an education that is available to the average person who pays attention in high school.

Your comment is, of course, a clear exaggeration of the voice I have adopted here. This is another tactic which can be effective but has its weaknesses. Namely, it suggests that you have no real argument against any points made but have either taken offense or felt that your pride won't allow you to back down.

I am curious as to what you will do with this comment. I've provided a fair amount of fuel for you to target. I must admit that while there isn't much need for this discussion, I enjoy seeing what sort of amusing thing you might respond with next.

I don't need a thesaurus.

^_^

Truthfully, most of these terms are from my line of work, which happens to be the English language. Previously teacher, currently freelance writer for commission, articles, gaming, ghostwriting and the like.

Basically, how to make yourself understood and to give the desired impression is my trade. I prefer to keep things unemotional, dry and technical when I am analyzing the language of a piece of writing. I generally only use the particular voice you describe above in such cases.

It is rather boring for a story.

As to the formatting. Indentations are usually impractical to use on forums such as these, in addition, such analysis is best made with short, unambiguous sentences. As such, there is a lot of skipping of lines. Regardless of how it looks, it is the most effective formatting for being clearly understood.

Now, if you want to find something more like a conversational tone with me, look above to the post relating to my Champions PnP experience. It was written without much regard for grammar or even effectiveness for story, that's basically just me ranting. For my story writing check the link in my signature.

Also, no, posting like the above is not the only way to get your views across. It is not even a particularly good way to really get a view across, it has a terrible lack of voice. For getting personal views across, it is best to fall somewhere between that and the already referenced post wherein I am ranting. Emotional content is rather important to a persuasive piece.

I was not writing to be persuasive, however. I was merely analyzing, which does not require emotional content and, in fact, is better served with a complete lack of emotion.