StratoNexus

This makes me sad. It will make me mad if Respecs/Merits are handled that way. As long as the stuff we currently get under the Vet system is not altered, I do not really think I can be too upset that future rewards may be handled differently.

The fact that the consumables are one shot per account items is annoying, but considering the other stuff we can get (not the least of which are 150 extra PPs/month), I do not feel like I can complain much. I want to say the new system feels like it is giving us less, because everything in the old system was account wide. But that would be closing my eyes to everything else the new system is granting and focusing just on this one specific type of reward which will have less impact than it might have had under the old system.

I agree. I want a term that only discusses that they draw aggro as I already included Damage as part of their role.

Decoy is good, but a bit too pansy for my liking. Melee Crowd Control might work, it is a bit wordy and I was trying to avoid the word control for clarity. Aggro Control is decent, but has 2 drawbacks; first it contains the word control and second I am not sure Aggro works as well for people new to gaming in general. Spearhead might work, but I am not sure the reference is clear enough, plus it lacks the connotation of maintaining aggro.

So far I think I like Spearhead the best.

Actually, I was trying to keep the range/melee distinction out of the Roles section. Melee and Ranged are not Roles, they are relative locations and a description for power ranges.

It is all moot anyway, since it seems the devs have already taken care of this concern for Freedom launch and will have made their own choices about phrasing and how to communicate the AT roles for new and old players alike.

Agreed. Sorry OP, if you were regularly getting 15 threads a trial, you were just massively lucky in the past. Are you sure you were not thinking of totals after converting a few Astral Merits? I normally get 4 to 8 threads on a Lambda, even with killing a lot of baddies.

I am pretty sure that is what a good trailer does. I loathe trailers that show you all the good stuff and leave nothing for the actual product to show me.

I got all pacified and was throwing myself into wholly believing this, then I saw someone talking about Enhancement Unslotters and Vouchers instead of Certificates (and I understand that those vouchers could have been from the store, while the Paragon Rewards may be account wide).

So once again, I hope the devs could clarify. When you choose the option to get Unslotters or Boosters, does each character gain them or do you just get them once per account? What about rewards like respecs, are they still for each and every character (including ones not yet made) or are they one per account?

That was one thing I didn't love either, but I did not want to use the term Tank, since it could be confusing and I had already spent too much time on something that would just be for demonstration purposes. I do think it conveys the needed information, especially for a new person trying to figure out what the various ATs can do.

Protector, Aggro control, enemy engager were all terms I considered and passed by. I am sure there is a better word or phrase, but it is just not coming into my head.

To be technical, Burn for scrappers does not have a Fear effect. However, NPC AI does have a thing about standing inside damage patches. Enemies do not flee instantly like they used to and some even stay (I guess you can overcome the flee AI by generating enough hate sans taunt effect sometimes). That being said, the taunt effects Brutes have are helpful at reducing scatter from Burn (I usually use Burn at the end of my chain, so it gets full value from PS and many things die when I activate it, before they could even choose to flee).

They last much longer and in fact it is pretty easy to get them fully stacked. Granted, my Diamagnetics are generally on AoE focused characters, so for me I am debuffing entire spawns to-hit. Is it useful vs. AVs? Nope. Both the -to-hit and -regen are resisted so much they are irrelevant. But against regular spawns, the -to-hit is very useful and the -regen is more useful than people realize (but keep in mind, this Interface is primarily for mitigation, the small added offense is just a side bonus, if you want to add offense, you choose Reactive).

Regen does not actually work by granting X number of HPs every second, but rather grants a base amount of our health every X seconds. Regen buffs and debuffs change the time interval rather than the amount of health gained. A small debuff in HP/sec could translate into a significant gap between health ticks, which can make regen debuffing more useful vs. Lts. and bosses than may first appear.

To be specific, when I originally suggested the idea back in Issue 10, I said to add mag 6 Hold, Stun, Sleep, and Fear protection that lasted 10 seconds to Aim and Build Up (I think I included Fear, but I may not have) and allow both powers to be used when mezzed. I suggested the same effect to be added to Full Auto (I know I was thinking about reducing the duration to 8 seconds, but I do not remember if that made it into my original suggestion). I suggested adding mag 3 Mez protection against Hold, Stun, and Sleep to Targeting Drone (I believe it was just those 3 for Drone). Dual Pistols did not exist at the time, but I'd likely add the effect to HoB, perhaps have it last 15 seconds.

There are times I wish Castle's blaster thread had not been purged.

Blasters, as an AT, were only altered twice. Defiance, more HPs, and the higher damage cap all came at the same time. One could argue that the debt reduction in I12 was primarily made to help blaster leveling, I know I believe that to be true (and I am not bothered by that, debt adjustment of some kind was actually quite a popular player suggestion in the thread Castle had made to discuss the blaster AT). A lot of players I encounter do not really seem to be bothered by the occasional blaster death and I think the debt reduction did have an impact on the level of frustration from defeat.

What you call a problem, I call the huge benefit Empathy can bring.

True, but I was never able to buy as much as I wanted. I am perfectly fine with them offering these options for sale, but to some people that difference matters.

On that note, does anyone know if using that vet reward after 50 does anything? I never remember to use it while leveling.

Having been killed by MIs while playing scrappers, I can assure you that MIs are not solely reliant on their mezzing to win (although I have been killed on scrappers due to getting mezzed, since they can stack so much, I have also been killed by MIs even without getting mezzed). This is also true on my blaster with Clarion. Even with Diamagnetic stacking some modest to hit debuff, I do not think I'd face an MI without an inspire or two. That being said, I doubt I have actually tried to take one on without inspires (and considering I run at x5 or 6, I normally play in less than ideal circumstances to try running into spawns without an inspire or 3 running).

Indeed, a fact I never disputed. I only claim that what they decided in 2002 is not necessarily wholly relevant in 2011. That is not to say the decisions made back then should not be acknowledged, but nor are they iron-clad foundations to frame our discussions on.

I see you asked me another absurd question as well. I guess I have to ask one back. Exactly where does it say that everything the devs have ever said will remain true and inviolate forever?

You seem to believe:
1) Stuff the devs did at game release is inviolate and is allowed to be used as evidence that things they did at game release should never and will never be revisited.

2) Anything they revisited and changed after (sometimes long after) game release is not a relevant example that point 1 in untrue.

3) The fact that vast amounts of employee turnover has occurred since game release also fails to invalidate point 1.

4) The fact that the entire game is under new management and has had a large infusion of capital and resources also fails to invalidate point 1.

5) The fact that the studio creating the game has had a major organizational restructuring as well some obvious philosophical changes does not invalidate point 1.

6) The fact that the game is making a huge change in its business model as well as the method of releasing new content fails to invalidate point 1.

I am starting to believe as long as Forbin_Project needs point 1 to be true, no evidence against point 1 is valid (until Forbin_Project needs point 1 to be untrue, then Point 1 will be invalid).

Who is asking them to? Is there a point to this statement or are you just being ornery? The Suggestion and Ideas forum is a place where players can, "Have an idea or suggestion? Talk about them here!" Forbin_Project does not constantly have to waste his time telling every Tom, Dick, and Harry that they should not talk about suggestions and ideas in this forum because the Devs are never going to do it anyway, or do you?

Which is not necessarily bad. I very much like that a lot of the blaster inherent just works. I am not sure how well the shoot while mezzed thing saves blaster lives, but I do know I think it adds a level of fun to the AT (and I am glad the +damage mechanic just functions from attacking). I frequently kill a guy, sometimes even two while mezzed thanks to it. Will it save my life while soloing when facing a very dangerous opponent? No. But it will allow me to still play while teamed and I get hit by a mez, but most of the really dangerous stuff is hitting a tanker, or I am buffed so that I can survive but we do not have mez protection, or the enemies are debuffed to not be very dangerous. The ability to do something, anything, is actually a fun mechanic.

It is even sometimes fun while solo, even if it does not turn very many tides. It is nice that even when mezzed I can look at what I am facing and choose to save a breakfree, because, as you say, I don't really need to be operating at full against a more limited problem (of course, that brings into play the point that I can use that BF later, when the situation is really dangerous; inspiration management is more important at standard difficulty levels, where inspirations do not rain from the heavens).

Sigh. Such a sad tangent we have gone down together. You took exception to my examples of things that so many people thought would never happen and yet did happen. Apparently, this thing that is not ever going to happen is different enough in your mind as to make those other things that were never going to happen not similar enough. Fine, we diagree. You asked me for a quote. I asked you for one. Neither of us are capable of producing that quote, which is of course why we both challenged each other with the absurd request (my challenge was to demonstrate that your request was absurd, but so many failed to realize that and seemed to take the request as real).

Then I got annoyed that you suggested I was ignoring points made by others, when I am actually CONCEDING those points. I never argued against the fact that this would be difficult and time consuming. NO ONE HAS. I completely agree. Why is it so difficult for you to grasp that? I am not dismissing or ignoring what others are saying, I am agreeing with their points. My only disagreement is that I do not think those points mean we should just shut up and not even think about or discuss the idea. I think the concept is well worth exploring in theory, at the least. Despite the truth that the idea would be difficult to work out and likely time-consuming to implement, I think it is interesting to discuss and has many positives,

Then Techbot Alpha suggested that if I were trying to disprove something you said (and I am not actually clear on what it is I am trying to disprove, perhaps the idea that the current devs have thoroughly investigated this concept and discarded it as unworkable), that it was up to me to find proof you were mistaken. He actually stated a principle that is fundamentally wrong when he said:
In order to demonstrate how ridiculous his principle was, I made a statement. One which could very well be false, but is actually quite difficult to disprove. No definitive statement by a dev existed at the time of my statement (and none exists at the time of this post either). If I really cared, I could even make a strong circumstantial case in support of that statement. But the statement itself was never the point. The point was simply that the burden of proof is more often on a person making a claim than it is on a person challenging a claim. And ironically, Techbot Alpha seems to agree since after I made that statement he said:
So when I ask you for proof that the devs have looked at this concept significantly more recently than 2 years before launch, I am being unreasonable. When I make a statement without any proof, I am being unreasonable. When you make a statement without any proof, you are being reasonable.

I am going to go drool in the corner now while I think of more problems and benefits of a more freeform system of character creation than we currently have (and I think the current system already is massively freeform).

I read that. I am pretty sure I understand it. I am pretty sure it does not answer my questions.

When you spend a token are the new Paragon Rewards granted to all characters you have, including ones you have not made yet?

The Vet Rewards all were, it is not clear if some of the new rewards will be.

They really should redo all the descriptions come Freedom. Blasters are not heroes, corruptors are not villains. The villain descriptions have the extra "role" descriptor, the Hit Point descriptor is not useful information for a new person, and the style of the descriptions are different (the villains use "You will" or "You are" but the heroes say "He can" or "he does"). Some sample new descriptions follow.

Tanker
The Tanker is an irresistible force combined with an immovable object. This Archetype can withstand the attacks of large groups of foes while still inflicting good damage.

Tankers are not totally invulnerable, but their skills allow the other Archetypes to play their parts, too. Tankers are effective hand to hand combatants and through attacking and drawing enemy attacks upon themselves they are an asset to any group. They primarily engage enemies in melee and through various methods keep many threats focused on themselves, instead of allies.

Tankers proudly stand in the front lines of battle in order to protect their comrades and punish any enemies.

• Roles: Meat-shield, Damage
• Damage Mitigation: Very High
• Damage: Medium
• Support: High
• Primary Power Category - Defense
• Secondary Power Category - Melee

Blaster
The Blaster is an offensive juggernaut. Whether up close or afar, he can deal out tremendous amounts of damage.

In comparison to the other Archetypes, the Blaster is the most damaging to the enemy. With potent attacks that cover a wide area, they can often eliminate many lesser enemies quickly. But the Blaster is quite fragile; this Archetype has relatively little ability to avoid enemy retaliation. Situational awareness is their best method of survival, but they do have some helpful, if limited, means to control foes.

Blasters must be on their guard before getting into combat; while their immense power can overcome most foes, alone they are quite vulnerable. The Blaster can turn the tide of a conflict, but they need their allies to help them succeed.

• Roles: Damage
• Damage Mitigation: Low
• Damage: Very High
• Support: Low
• Primary Power Category - Ranged
• Secondary Power Category - Melee/Utility

Corruptor
The Corruptor is a superb range attacker who can weaken foes and embolden allies with a wide variety of powers.

They have potent debuffs to cripple enemies and solid buffs to enhance the abilities of teammates, making them quite valuable to group. Dealing good damage from a safer distance, the Corruptor can unleash impressive blasts.

Fortunately, Corruptors have Scourge, a special ability that allows them to deal a critical final blow to already weakened enemies. As an enemy’s health drops, their chances for a critical strike dramatically increase, making the Corruptor a deadly foe.

• Roles: Buff/Debuff, Damage
• Damage Mitigation: Medium
• Damage: Medium
• Support: High
• Primary Power Category - Ranged
• Secondary Power Category - Buff/Debuff

Brute
Brutes are made to fight and revel in hand-to-hand combat.

With strong offensive Power Sets designed to inflict punishment and impressive defenses to take it, they're the best there is in a straight melee fight. Protracted battles only make them more fierce and their attacks gain power because of it. They can draw the attention of enemies, which can be an aid to less durable teammates as well as fuel for their attacks.

They build up Fury as they attack and are attacked, multiplying their base damage potential dramatically. This unique combination of powers makes their strategy one of speed and aggression.

• Roles: Damage, Meat-shield
• Damage Mitigation: High
• Damage: High
• Support: Medium
• Primary Power Category - Melee
• Secondary Power Category - Defense

Scrapper
No lone enemy wants to cross paths with a Scrapper - because odds are that only the Scrapper is going to walk away.

Ferocity and skill make the Scrapper a master of hand to hand combat. Alone or with allies, they will seek out those who oppose them and bring them down. While not as effective as Brutes or Tankers at drawing enemy attacks, they can assist in keeping enemies off less durable allies.

The Scrapper is resilient, only Tankers and Brutes can withstand more damage. They have impressive attacks and on top of that the ability to inflict random critical attacks, which can deliver devastating damage to enemies.

• Roles: Damage, Meat-shield
• Damage Mitigation: High
• Damage: High
• Support: Low
• Primary Power Category - Melee
• Secondary Power Category - Defense

I think you missed my point, while amazingly getting my point at the same time.

Apparently, I do not need facts to support my statement. Someone told me, "if you want to disprove someones statement, it falls on the disprovee to provide said evidence."

I disagree. I think his intent is that he wants to play brutes, but he just doesn't realize it (actually, I am pretty sure he does play brutes, so he likely gets it on some level).

He frequently says he does not value the extra mitigation tankers get.
He frequently says the damage level of brutes is more iconic of the type of comic characters he prefers.
I say he should realize the Brute AT is made for him. Just because he does not value the way the tanker AT is created does not mean it is valueless, since many others like tankers as they are.

Every leader is allowed to kick people for whatever reason they want. I firmly believe that. If dancing in the cutscene irks you and you have the star, kick all you want.

I have never failed a trial because of cut scene shenanigans. I can understand not wanting to risk anything, but frankly, if you finish collecting the acids, and there are 5 minutes left, and the grenades are at 7 or more, dance away, IMO. You are free to disagree, I am free to love posing in the cutscene. Everyone wins (until you kick me, of course, then I lose, but thems the breaks).

Fortunately for me, I have never seen anything but amusement at cutscene dancing on the servers I play on, so I have lucked out and not had a leader who kicked for that reason.