Megajoule

By the way, it's "Aerobatics".

I wouldn't. I'm not competent to do so.
The more I see, the more I suspect the current set of devs aren't either.
Better to chuck it and just go with "random, but completely fair."

Par for the course with this particular poster.

Signed. Like others, I thought it was distributed.
All the more annoying since my characters usually end up going toe-to-toe with Siege and/or Nightstar, which I took pride in.

I don't know if this will actually help, since as I've said before, it's not really a mechanical issue but a writing-focus issue, but... if you want to increase your chances of being Mr. Indispensable, play a Rad. (Or a Dark, or other debuffer, but Rad's the one I have the most experience with.)

It's not so much that a Rad renders the rest of the group irrelevant; rather, their absence renders the rest of the group irrelevant in several cases, most of them involving opponents built on the "giant bag of HP" model. I still remember my experience of years ago, when we had a raid-size group in Skyway beating on Babbage for over ten minutes to absolutely no effect, until I left and swapped in my Rad, whereupon he dropped within two. More recently (as in, a couple of months back), I was in a Barracuda SF that failed at the end because we had no one of the appropriate ATs to get the temporary debuffing power, nor any of their own. We hammered at the sheer cliff of Reichsman for the better part of half an hour before finally giving up. So I know that, for non-Incarnate content at least, it still holds true.

but you don't understand, they earned that ball.
(and the bonus that goes with it.)

Sometimes, Sam (and I really do mean this in the nicest possible way), I think you should just stick to single-player games. That way you always get to be The Guy, without it being at anyone else's expense. This game/genre is never going to satisfy that need/desire of yours the way that kind can, because it has to allow for all those other people.

*shrug* It sometimes bugs me that the new power icons (for Walk, Ninja Run, etc) aren't quite in the same style, line weight, etc as the ones from launch, 7 years ago... but what can you do? They may not even have access to the art assets needed to recreate them properly - just screenshots, like the rest of us.

A redname would probably make a very careful post about how some people have some "concerns", but urging them to give the system a chance to work itself out, and maybe say a few more things. And then ten other people would jump on the post and say "no, you're wrong" (don't know what you're talking about, etc), with various justifications, about half of which would boil down to "because you're wrong."

My guess is that the old UI system was pitched entirely, and the "Classic" option is the closest that they can get the new system, whatever it is (without lots more work).

That said, as a stick-in-the-mud with a late 2004 join date, I'd like to have something even closer to what we had, please.

I think one issue is that some people are confusing power levels with spotlight time. One can want the latter without necessarily wanting to be "uber" and not face any challenges.

The best example I can think of from the source material is Batman. By all accounts, he's "merely" a mortal man with a driving obsession, the training resulting from that, and a considerable private fortune to buy gadgets with. Almost all of his teammates out-power him on a simple brute-force level. But even when he's not pulling Crazy Prepared stunts or power-judo, note that he still gets as much spotlight time as the rest of them - maybe even more.

Some people get into games like this, or the single-person version thereof, not necessarily because they want to juggle planets but because they want to be The Star, or on The Star Team. It's not a power fantasy so much as an importance fantasy. They want to be in the spotlight, alone or sharing it with a few. In an army, or a massive crossover, they're lost in the crowd - and that doesn't satisfy. It can't, because you can't have the efforts of 16+ people hang on whether or not That Guy shows up to save the day and receive the thanks of everyone who would have surely failed without their unique contribution.

Try this image:
A bunch of boys all awkwardly "hanging out" near the wall of a school dance, waiting for one of their number to be the first to get up the nerve and ask a girl, or better yet, be asked by one.

Oh. Reading comprehension fail.
Therefore, no. That's just stupid (and "imba", to use language the OP may prefer).

Isn't there also one Omega slot at the top?
If so, it's balanced.

Keep the screen, ditch/speed up the animation.

Look, Venture, GG just knows what she knows, okay?! And no amount of "facts" or "logic" is going to change her mind!

Because you can't have true freedom of choice in a computer-moderated game, in which everything has to be pre-coded.

Present six options and I guarantee you someone will come up with a seventh, and complain that it's not allowed. And so on. It never ends. The only question is where you draw the line of diminishing returns.

Against my better judgment, I'm wading into this trash-heap of a thread again (and avoiding the biggest, smelliest part of it).

Sam, I believe that the depth you desire cannot be reasonably/practically achieved in a game of this scope. The choices are kept simple (where there even is a choice) because they have to apply to tens of thousands of people. This is not one-on-one roleplaying with a human GM who can listen to your reasons for your character's actions and give you a personalized response. It's not even a single-player "RPG" with deep conversational trees, the options of which will inevitably miss some possibilities and desired choices.

The game is too big to care why you did or didn't do something. I don't really care. The only person to whom it really matters is you, so I suggest you do what I do when the one-size-fits-all game design, NPC monologue, etc doesn't match up with my personal vision for a character: adapt or ignore it. Write your own story. Use some imagination and fill in the gaps and make it fit for you. Don't rely on the staff writers to spoon feed you or personally engage you, because they can't. There's not enough of them and wayyyy too many of us.

so you're saying the lurkers support you in game.

Yup, definitely a Burke-class DDG. Good eye, and thanks to everyone who responded.

IMO, Sam, the problem is that you want to be a completely free moral agent, charting your own course and helping/bending knee to no one except as it suits you. "I'm the Protagonist and I do whatever I want." And this multi-player game fails to satisfy you because it's not (and probably can't be) constructed like that. It's not the kind of power fantasy you want.

Hm. Destroyer or cruiser, you think?

Huh, didn't see this thread before.

As I've said on others, though, I'm only going for Incarnate on a few of my characters - the ones whose concept includes having or seeking great power. Most are "merely" super-beings, and at least three are just determined, trained, well-equipped mortal men.