Megajoule

As others have noted, that's some other AT with a really fancy costume-change emote (or five).

From which it easily follows that First Ward is what remains of Shelbyville.

"Just remember what ol' Han Solo does when the hyperdrive's busted and asteroids are all around and an Imperial cruiser's on your tail. Yeah, ol' Han Solo just looks that princess straight in the eye and he says, 'Never tell me the odds.'"


You need to add the legendary Harryhausen to the list of big names on the original Clash. The FX don't hold up so well in this era of CGI, but for the time they were his masterwork.
(also, Judi Bowker is very nice on the eyes. )

My Vigilantes and Rogues are the way they are because of concept; they have the alignments I feel they should have. Being able to travel between Paragon and the Isles is secondary; being able to get credit for tips is a distant third at best.

If I want to grind A-merits, I get one of my "pure" characters - usually a hero, just because I have more of them, but in these days of merged markets and global mail it matters hardly at all - and run tip missions. Most days/weeks I don't even bother; I have other things to do with my time. If I log in and that's what my friends are doing, I'll pick a character doing the same kind of tips or one that meshes well with, or strikes interesting sparks off of, the characters they're playing. If the tips happen to be vigilante or rogue (usually because they're changing alignment on an alt), oh well; I'll still be making inf, (regular) merits, and/or experience... and most importantly, I'll be playing a game I enjoy with my friends.

I don't log in every day on every character, making sure to run my five tips and on to the next. (I tried doing that for the Incarnate trials, just two per day for one or two characters, and it was exhausting and not very fun; I'm done with it now.) I don't gripe that I'm wasting my time not doing the right kind of tips, or that I'm getting small-m merits which require 20 million inf to convert to big-M Merits. IMO, either the game is worth playing for its own sake and/or the people you play it with, or it's not. If it isn't for you, then I'm sincerely sorry.

There's always going to be conflicts and compromises between concept and efficiency, between maximum reward and staying true to yourself. My choices probably aren't the same as yours. But I implore you to make some, acknowledge them, and accept that you can't have it both ways.

Also, they summon ambushes.
(Every 30 seconds.)

There's an icon IN the new Atlas, by the hospital. I'm amazed this still isn't considered sufficient.

No time to argue!

Hell, STO players complain constantly about having to pay a monthly sub and all of the really cool stuff winding up in the cash shop. If you want an example of "double-dipping", that's a much better one, IMO.

Perhaps you could have gotten that stuff taken care of before it was time-critical, on the evening when you were supposed to get together with your friends, rather than trusting that it would all work out perfectly.
Planning ahead. Wacky idea, I know.

The problem in such cases is that the game's plot is advancing along two time axes - real world time, and character level. And the first of those is held back by (or, as some would say, grinding up against) the design goals for a persistent world, in which old content needs to remain accessible and "current" even to new players/characters. But it can't, not if the context around it does, without becoming inconsistent (see again, Agent McQueen telling you to stop the Rikti from invading again... like, uh, they have). And yes, I'm aware that, ironically, this is a problem shared by the actual comics - where time advances but the characters have to stay the same, sometimes requiring their entire pasts to be rewritten or at least redated (e.g. Superman's first appearance, Captain America's thawing out, or the war that Tony Stark was wounded in).

It's difficult if not impossible to have a consistent, coherent world when parts of it are moving forward and other parts are standing still. It'll tear itself apart or, if the anchors are strong enough, grind to a halt.

Edit: GG, I was referring to the way that, at the current spawn rate in Atlas, defeated gang members are immediately replaced by new arrivals, in some cases before the body of the first has hit the ground. (This tends to lead to defeat by attrition for lowbies, as the spawn's aggregate health and damage output never goes down but your own health and endurance do.) It's like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.

I sympathize (see other recent posts by me), but the art team is not the writing team is not the coding team etc.

Addendum: as Bill (and maybe others) hints at, it's not so much the big picture that's messed up as the details - the annoying, "oops we forgot to change that" little details. The things that the actual comic companies have editors for, and I admit that even so, they still mess up sometimes.

Besides outright mistakes and things that have been broken by changes to the game since - like McQueen's arc - there's the more subjective issue of things which some writer obviously thought was a great idea, but which fails my disbelief test. My go-to for this one is the official backstory for Architect Entertainment:

"Lord Recluse's favorite Mad Scientist and EvilCo, I mean, Crey have teamed up to create something that is not at all sinister! These VR entertainment centers work by uploading people to a virtual world that would never be turned into a deathtrap or brainwashing mechanism, even though the company literature acknowledges that the technology gives them read-write access to customers' brains!"
"Wow, that sounds awesome! I'm gonna go down to the nearest one and stick my head in the datastream right now! What could possibly go wrong?"

Are you kidding me? I'll say it once more: either whoever came up with this is ******* stupid, or they think that I am, or expect me to play my character(s) as if they are.

The result of stuff like this is that I can't ever ask or hope for more lore without being afraid they're going to serve up something incredibly awful that I'll just end up having to ignore anyway.

1. A world needs history. (Preferably history that makes sense.) So if you're trying to create a world that you can tell stories in, that people believe in and can find a place in it for their characters, yes. If you just want a gameboard to play on, I don't think there's much explanation or backstory needed for an 8x8 grid, except for chess scholars interested in the game's development over time. But my characters aren't just pawns.

2. Fundamentally, as in irreparably? No. The necessities of a persistent world (and the desire for new players to be able to experience old content) and the practical limitations of the dev team when it comes to consistently and comprehensively updating that old content and moving the storyline forward often cause problems, but I believe they can be overcome. It may require more attention and people-hours than Paragon Studios is willing to budget, however.

3. It's a very mixed bag. Parts of the advancing storyline no longer match up with legacy content - Crey, Malta, Nemesis, Oroborous, the true nature of the Rikti et al are an open secret (and lower-level but later-added arcs often treat them as such), the second Rikti invasion that Agent McQueen wants us to stop is already in full swing, parts of the city are demolished by Praetorian attacks during task forces and just fine as soon as you finish. Many meta-game issues that may not really require an explanation (power proliferation, the origin of powers, mission architect) have gotten ones that many players consider unsatisfactory or just stupid. That said, recent issues have also brought some very good writing that goes far beyond what we had back in the single-digits.

4. As someone else noted, we had plenty of issues when the meta-plot didn't move forward significantly, and yet none of the inconsistencies added by previous issues were addressed. Frustrated outbursts aside, I don't think it's realistic at this point - with the plot now moving full speed ahead - to expect any resources to be allocated in this area. The devs of this game (like most others) have almost always preferred adding new content to fixing what's wrong with the old.

It should also be noted that in nature, colors like bright pink and purple (in animals) are signs of "I am SO ******* poisonous you do not even want to be in the same ZIP CODE, let alone mess with me. Try to eat me, touch me or stand downwind of me and YOU WILL DIE. I don't need drab colors to hide; you need to see me so you can STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY."

Speaking of sponsorship:
We all know of Chris Pike, of course, but I've also heard it suggested in some fandom circles that Ambassador Spock met with the Admiralty behind closed doors, established his credentials, informed them of a few delicate matters they might want to investigate and deal with sooner rather than later and a few others they should avoid entirely, and (shall we say) strongly encouraged them to leave Jim Kirk in his current posting.

Anyone else click this while thinking of the Super Secret Out of Combat Skill System from back in the day?

If it's (some) Khelds that need help, then fix Khelds (without breaking the rest of the game to do it).

I'm not sure they really do, however. (Need help, that is.) Between Inherent Fitness, IOs, and letting Stamina et al carry over to all forms, it's (IMO) tons easier now to play now than it used to be. Pity they're still so overshadowed by the genuinely epic Arachnos ATs.

As you said yourself, Standard Code Rant applies.
An option exists now which requires no additional coding or developer time: delete, reroll.
(Heck, now that we can save costumes, you don't even have to go through setting that up again.)