Zed-F

Re: Respecing Might based on Test Server notes Even better when I'm running Dynamode's Eye of the Storm with Blade Beyond the Veil, and they open up on her Invulnerable armoured body to the tune of 0 on her and 100+ per shot on them.

Re: Microtransaction Store Pricing seems to be a contentious issue... from what I've read, it's an ask 10 people, get 11 different opinions sort of deal. I personally think the retcons are priced about double what they are worth but am content with the other values; other people seem to think even that is too much. I'm not about to get worked up about it though; I'll just pay for those things I think are reasonably priced if I want them, and ignore the rest. Ultimately that meant I bought 4 more character slots and may someday consider picking up the extra account-wide costume slots but am otherwise planning to mostly ignore the store.

Re: There's A New Sheriff In Town Certainly Soulbarb's Soulsight and a few questions would be adequate for her to determine the nature of the situation; the emphasis on communication is to ensure the GM and the player both agree on the nature of the situation. For it to be really appropriate for Soulbarb to act as a long-term mentor, the person in question would probably have to be over the age of majority, or at least close enough that they could reasonably be responsible for themselves. Soulbarb has no particular interest in being a substitute parent for someone else's child. She does, on the other hand, have sufficient connections to be able to get the child invited to the local equivalent of PS-238, where they have people more suited to the education of superpowered youth. Most likely, the end result would be that Soulbarb teaches the kid a couple life lessons while she gets the ball rolling on that score, and by the time the story arc has come to a conclusion, the paperwork to get the kid enrolled will have been completed and someone else will be able to take over -- likely to Soulbarb's relief, as unless this is coming quite late in her career, she isn't ready to be a parent yet and doesn't view herself as role-model material.

Re: Back from the Dead...with a friend I've actually plotted out Soulbarb's necessary death as part of her character development, but the forces of light intervene to make sure it's a very brief state of affairs. By the time of Soulbarb's death, she'll have access to tons of mystic power, both on her own account and from knowing several powerful people in the Mystic World. If mystic senses cannot spot it, then it's not mystic, it's someone using technology to mimic it -- i.e. it's a trick. Figure out who might have known or been able to find out about her death and resurrection (her return is not really public knowledge, and she'll have adopted a new identity), figure out which of them might be capable of such a trick and/or have motive for one, and the hunt is on. In Sylph's case, she's got less reason to be dead, but coming back from the dead when you've got a Greek god or two in your corner is probably not stretching things too much. In the case of some funky shadow-guy chasing her down, though, she won't really have a clue what to do about it. She'll probably turn to Dionysius's local avatar for help, though he may direct her to Athena's.

Re: There's A New Sheriff In Town

Re: A Gift? Soulbarb: Doesn't really do the whole 'patrol' thing. Soulbarb generally prefers to keep a low profile, and her usual modus operandi when it comes to finding out what's going on around the city is to probe her network of contacts for interesting information. Currently the only person who knows where she is and who might be able to put a Christmas present where she could be reasonably expected to find it, is her boyfriend Nocturne. While he's another heroic type, and not normally a huge joker, she wouldn't put sounding a (false) alarm as a Christmas prank past him. Nevertheless, she's not sufficiently trusting to assume that out of hand, and will scrutinize the package as carefully as she is able to (with her Soulsight and whatever magical or mundane techniques are reasonably available) before considering opening it. Sylph: Doesn't have a regular rogues gallery per se, so if anyone is doing this it's likely either her boyfriend Psyche Out (her girlfriend Magnesia isn't the type to do this) or it's a trap. Of course Sylph, being the trusting sort, will assume it's the former (or perhaps a secret admirer, how exciting!), and open it.

Re: Cryptic to develop Neverwinter Nights MMO? Really? It certainly seemed like you were saying something about the quality of DDO. Casual gamers are even more likely to impulse buy than more discriminating hardcore gamers. This makes them an even better fit for the microtransaction model. Again, see iTunes.

Re: Cryptic to develop Neverwinter Nights MMO? Ars Technica is a news organization that specializes in technology trends, particularly for the game industry. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/10/ddo-free-to-play.ars and some commentary: http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2009/10/benefits-of-freedom.html That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could find more if I went looking. The plain fact is, whatever you think of the quality of the game, DDO's switch to their current business model is just a sound business decision. Whether you personally don't like the game or not, enough people DO like the game and that business model to make it a perfectly viable business enterprise. So trying to use the business model switch as an argument to suggest how poor the game is just demonstrates how ill-informed you are about the business of MMOs. I would go so far as to say that nearly every subscription-only MMO other than WOW would have their business case improved by going to DDO's subscription-or-microtransaction model. I don't really care about DDO itself. But I'm tired of always having to contend with subscription fees, so I hope DDO continues to exceed expectations, in order to encourage more developers to adopt a similar model.

Re: Abilities Discussion That would be pretty OP compared to the other shield lingers if that were the case. Unless the linger effect from laser knight is very minor, or otherwise restricted in some way.

Re: Cryptic to develop Neverwinter Nights MMO? Actually I don't care about DDO one way or another... but I follow a few blog sites that are reporting on how DDO's relaunch is doing, and from what I've read the financials are encouraging for Turbine. It's not just number of players that are going up, it's revenue. But go ahead and spout off all you like, it's no real skin off my nose.

Re: No Missions Left to Complete? Note that Cryptic's plyer profiles that the application mines from are buggy and will sometimes display missions that you have in fact done, as not yet completed. As such there could easily be some missions that the app says you haven't done, that you have in fact done.

Re: Children of the COrn My PC Dynamode is a 10-year old, doesn't she count?

Re: Cryptic to develop Neverwinter Nights MMO? I didn't miss your point, I just thought it's a very poor way to go about making it. The fact that the game is doing much better under the microtransaction model is telling, though. It's not just that microtransactions are proving to be a superior business model for a MMO that has to compete with a lot of other bigger, newer, and/or shinier MMOs. It's also that a much greater percentage of people trying the game now enjoy playing it, as compared to when it was first launched. Of course the game has had several years to mature, so it stands to reason that it would be better... and it still isn't for everyone.

Re: Abilities Discussion You do start to get more advantages once you get to higher character levels. At a certain point you stop getting new talent picks and start getting advantage picks instead.

Re: Escapist reviews CO. Some parts of the game are a bit more Silver-Age-Silliness than others, but it's definitely Silver Age in tone. If you were going in expecting a more Bronze Age feel, as apparently the reviewer was, you're going to be a bit disappointed in that aspect. That said, I'd expect upcoming expansions to look at adding a helping or two of darker-and-grittier to the mix.

Re: Disappointment It's time to let the Cloudcuckoolander trapise off into his own little universe without us, methinks. Nothing is going to convince him that his fantasy world isn't real at this point. Say hi to the men in white coats for us when they come to take you away, antiklaus!

Re: Disappointment You, because your arguments are neither based in logic nor responsive to it. You just keep articulating the same rather irrelevant complaint over and over. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. Nice try. Incidentally, your surmise about my age is incorrect. Bzzt, sorry, try again player 1! Why should I? They never claimed there would be. That is the point that consistently eludes you. Instead you've manufactured in your head some statement or implication by Cryptic, suggesting that they would use the PnP rules directly, that was simply never made. In fact, if you'd followed the game's development at all, Cryptic was very explict about NOT basing the game on the PnP rules, but simply using them as inspiration and adopting the setting. It's patently obvious to everyone, including Cryptic, that it would be pointless to try to make a MMO game that used the PnP rules. These are completely different beasts and it'd be absurd to try to marry them that closely together. So why would you continue to insist that Cryptic implied the equivalent of 'the sky is red' when they in fact came right out and said 'the sky is blue?' If I choose to suggest you're trolling, it's to give you the benefit of the doubt... because otherwise you really are that dense.

Re: Cryptic to develop Neverwinter Nights MMO? And by all accounts having a spectacularly successful re-launch in that model. If you want to rag against DDO on the basis of its strengths and weaknesses as a game, fine, but I think dragging in the payment model is pretty disingenuous. In fact, moving from a subscription-based revenue stream to a microtransaction-based revenue stream is only good business sense in today's MMO business climate. There are only so many subscription dollars to go around, and WoW has too big a share of them; microtransactions taps into a considerably larger total pot of consumer money. While microtransactions has gotten a bum rap from a number of shoddily-developed games that were produced several years ago, the industry as a whole would be a lot better off if more A-list games went this direction.

Re: Crafting Cryptic seems to be making more of a priority of it than most. http://www.champions-online.com/mashon/start http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?p=1222550#post1222550

Re: Disappointment Archermoo, there comes a point where it's time to stop feeding the trolls.

Re: Disappointment

Re: List Your CO Heroes! Isn't Johnny Hercules one of the Blood Moon undead heroes-turned-villains?

Re: Do you play CO as an MMO? Not everyone plays the game for the same reasons. Demanding that others play the game your way is pure selfishness. Sorry, but it's the truth.

Re: Ash for Blood Moon Don't think Killer Instinct is going to help you much on that build; you have limited DEX, EGO, and munitions powers to proc it with. Now if it's just there for flavour, that's another matter.

Re: List Your CO Heroes! I think what you are looking for is an emblem (not an insignia, which comes in a frame). However it's only available on certain kinds of costume pieces, whereas insignia are more generally available on different costume pieces. That said, I'm not 100% certain there isn't a circle around the L in the emblem or something. Can't check right now since I'm not at my game computer. I just know emblems are more like 'painted on' whereas insignia actually project from your costume a bit.