Mazey

The items in the packs aren't food, they're entertainment.
Food almost never comes exclusively in packs with other items but, as I say, these are not food. There are many examples of entertainment products coming in exclusive bundles, sometimes they're deterministic bundles and other times they're random. The closest example being trading card games.

Now I'd guess that your shopping list, like most people's, consists primarily of food and other necessities. So, no, you're not particularly lucky to have not come across things on your list coming in random packs, but that doesn't change the point that was being made in the slightest.

No, not necessarily.
Super packs purchasers are not a dichotomy between people who will buy X lots of the packs no matter what and people who won't buy any at all.

There are people who will buy some anyway, but would be encouraged to buy extra if there are exclusives items in the packs as well.

Arcanaville put it better than me in the thread on the beta forums:

Only because, in the example you gave, the guy only wanted that one item.
If someone came into the shop wanting any of the items, such a system would be good fun and a nice saving.

Agreed, I can't really believe there'd be any other outcome than increased profits from allowing this. Sure, it's possible to use HOs without the invention licence, but allowing premium players one way to use the boosters without anything extra is just more likely to make them see the maximum potential of their powers and so be more likely to buy the invention licence, not less, plus they'll have spent money on the boosters along the way.

Well, a whole tray of large dual insps only costs 200 points now.

Yep. If I twist your words as much as you twisted mine, that's absolutely correct.

The problems of real gambling are caused by the potential of gaining the money back. It seems like a good thing, but that's pretty much where the problems come from.
These packs don't have that potential, and so don't have those problems. That's a good thing.

They still, however, have the fun of gambling.
Paying money for fun, seems completely normal and appropriate to me.

Yes, buying these packs would be an absolutely awful business decision. Good job I won't be trying to run a business off of them.

I'm not refusing to look at it. I like it.

Gambling is fun! Why else do you think people get so easily addicted to it?
Yes, gambling using real money, for real money, is usually a very bad idea, and I never do that, but the actual act is still fun.
These packs, however, avoid the bad pitfalls of normal gambling, by not offering real money as a return. Making them a simple case of spending money for fun (and items in a game). What else do you spend your disposable income on?

Now, if you don't find gambling to be fun, then you're in the minority and these packs are not for you. That doesn't make them bad. Just something you don't like.

"But these packs have items in them that I want and can't get anywhere else!"

Oh well, sucks to be you then.
These packs need to have exclusive items though, otherwise they'd be less fun for the people who do enjoy them. Why should your enjoyment take priority over other users'?

That's only a good argument is there's no possibility of new things being released or discounts being offered. I've got points sitting around because I'm waiting for Staff Melee and the Super Packs and the things I don't have yet aren't worth the price they're charging to me without discount.

They're natives to the dimension who take refuge in the Primal Earth bases and outposts.

You get points at the beginning of a month. So if you're getting your points right after you pay for a month, that's precisely what is meant to be happening.

That's incorrect. There are native human refugees in the shard.

Basically yes.
Although it's not the case that you get points for each calendar month, you get the points for each month you subscribe at the start of the subscription period.

So if a completely new player subscribed as a VIP on 14th January, he would get his 400 points right away on the 14th. If he then did not renew his subscription. He wouldn't get any more points in February as he had already got his points for the Jan/Feb period and wasn't renewing for the Feb/Mar period.

As such, if you don't renew your subscription, you probably won't get any points at the end of February.

Given that your account is due to expire in the middle of the month, you could e-mail support and query as to why you get your points at the end of a month rather than when your renewal goes through. I suspect you may have used a 15 day time-card, or something similar, off-putting your dates by half a month.

I believe you get the badge just for having the token. You don't get any more badges after you've got enough to complete tier 8 of the rewards, which might be your problem.
At that point the only veteran badges left for you are the ones you get for each full year subscribed.

That's always been there. Just go to the robotic arm chest options and one of them has a robotic right arm and normal left.

As for abandoned concepts:

I've got a MA/SR scrapper named Flick Kick, I like the costume, but it's completely lacking a concept beyond kicking things.

I've got an AR blaster called Robotic Manic (I think) who was made before Villains even existed. The idea was that I wanted a crazy robot, but I could only make a hero. So his story so that he still have enough logic circuits left to see that if he wanted to shoot people and get away with it, he should just go after villains.

As was discussed earlier in this thread, everyone who was due their points later in the month got their points early in October. This was sorted out in November.

Therefore, you're due your points on the 30th of every month. You got them early in October, on the 13th, and you haven't gotten them this month yet because it isn't the 30th yet.

The Defender AT enhancements are the same.
Basically the enhancements are designed to be slotted in an ATs main damage powers, as Defenders and Tankers are the only two ATs with their main damage in their secondaries, they are the only two whose AT enhancements get slotted in their secondaries.

Not at all. Each pack has a guaranteed rare or very rare, but beyond that, anything goes. It's possible VRs are limited in number, but I've seen no reason to assume that.

From what I know, it's quite possible to get 5 VRs in a pack, just very unlikely.

That chance is per card, not per pack.

It's still not good, but it's 5 times better than you're making out.

Looks pretty much like I expected.
A few comments though:

2 catalysis in 3 packs? Lol, good job they're going to let those drop from incarnate content.

If you're after the enhancements, this is pretty good. 3/4 of the packs have one, and if you don't get one, you'll probably get some reward merits which you can save up to get one, and if you get ones you don't like (which is pretty likely, you can sell them and use the inf to buy the ones you do want.

On the issue of merits, the amount for each rarity is about half of what it should be. It should be 50, 100, 150, 200. Not 25, 50, 75, 100.
Looks like they're kind of the booby prize of each rarity, especially the very rares. But as booby prizes go, they're not awful.

Costume pieces are clearly far too rare. $30 worth of packs and you've only gotten just over half the set. That's no good.

All the other things are pretty much just nice bonuses.

So, to sum up the categories most people will fall into:

If you want "loot"/inf, but nothing else, these packs are somewhat borderline. You'll probably get something you want, or can sell for something you want, but the end result might not be worth 80 points to you.

If you want "loot"/inf, and quite like the idea of little bonuses along with it. These packs are definitely for you. You'll easily get your value out of them. Just don't go too crazy.

If you want costume parts, and nothing else, avoid these packs like the plague. They're not worth it at all. The costume parts should be seen as nothing but little bonuses like everything else. Do not let yourself get into the mind set of "Ooo, I'll just collect the whole set then stop."

I think any other view points can pretty much be constructed from those three examples.

Sounds exactly like a comic book story to me.

You're absolutely right, I was generalising far to far.

What I mean is that having a consistent world built beforehand really really helps with avoiding plot-holes and other writing pitfalls. This is especially true when you have a writing team, rather than just a single writer.

Claiming it was absolutely true was absurd of me.

That's a bad analogy.
It would be more like a spoiler was mentioned, your friend complained somewhat, and then someone responded to him, and then most of the group got dragged into the new conversation.
Would you tell the whole group to shut up and get back on topic then? When they all clearly want to discuss the new one?

Yeah, if a friend just started ranting, and everyone else was just staring at them. Then you tell them to stop. But that's not what happen here. Here, everyone else joined in too. Sometimes conversations evolve abruptly, that doesn't make the change less justified.

So it's the second post by the same person that makes it a "thread jack" then? Or is it the quantity of posts total that does it. If several off topic posts were made, but never by the same person twice, would that be a "thread jack"? In that case who's responsibility would it be to make the new thread?

What about posts that talk about the new topic, but include a paragraph on the old topic at the end, do those avoid being labelled as "thread jacking"?

What about your own post just there? That's your second post in a row on the subject of thread jacking that doesn't even have a token paragraph discussing the original topic. Surely you're thread jacking now?
And you can't claim that it's okay because you're discussing the original topic in a meta way, because the discussion of spoilers has exactly the same claim.

Which is where consideration comes in.
You consider that other people may have a more extreme view of a spoiler than you, so you warn ahead even if you don't think it's necessary. That's what being considerate is.

Starting an entirely new thread, and adding a warning before a post you were going to make anyway, are entirely different levels of effort.

No, I can't be bothered to make a whole new thread, making sure to bring in all the key points from the old one when it's quite likely to be futile anyway if everyone just keeps posting about it in this thread anyway.
I can be bothered to warn about spoilers however.

So's the KKK's.

Well obviously they don't. That doesn't change the fact that it is nice to.

No. I don't want to.

The main issue with the CoH lore is that it's never been created in its entirety, with all the facts kept together for the writers to refer to. It's created bit by bit with information just completely left out.
It's quite possible that the Midnighters used the Malleus Mundi to created the shadow shard, but I find it likely that no-ones ever actually decided how they did it. They just didn't write that bit.
And that's not good story-telling, all good stories build an entirely consistent world first and then write the story in the world. That's why the Lord of the Rings was so good, and why the Elder Scrolls games can have such an immersive world, while many NPCs with-in it can seem lacking. The world's been written beforehand, but the NPCs' own stories get written by whoever comes along.

No it isn't.
Conversations evolve, when a subject starts it often ends up raising other issues, and some of those issue are often ones that can only come up in existing threads.
When you're having a conversation with your friends, do you shout them down any time the subject strays, with a cry of "No, we weren't talking about that, try and stay on topic guys!"?

And on that, where exactly does "thread jacking" begin, who makes the first "inconsiderate" comment? You've clearly just made a post that has as much relation to the original topic as the discussion on spoilers. Does that make you a "thread jacker"? Or does that title fall to me for responding to you? Or are two posts okay, but further ones are wrong?

If the original subject is interesting enough, then it will likely continue along side the "jacking" and if it doesn't then everything there was to say on it has likely been said.
If you two are so keen on the original subject, why don't you make some posts about it, rather than complaining no-one else is? Or have you exhausted your opinions on that subject already?