Greycat

From information on casting and shooting, some of this is getting rearranged. It sounds like Caemlyn is going to be in season 2, for instance. They've got Elayne cast. IIRC, Brandon Sanderson (who picked up and finished the series) basically said "consider it another turning of the wheel." So, similarities, but not word for word. Which is good, because a lot of this would be *really* hard to do on screen and would absolutely kill the series. And yes, looking at other things, there are definite changes for various reasons. They're not doing the "Ageless" look because CGIing that on *every* Aes Sedai would have gotten prohibitively expensive. Even just the "main" characters. I like how they're doing the One Power - and the Taint on the male half of it - but it doesn't show the "elements" of it, or even really a "weave." (Like Aviendha "picking it apart" later, or having them in "knots.") Some of it (like "we don't know which of the five is the dragon!") is purely for TV and audiences not invested in the books yet. (And some would have been rough to try to make look good on a streaming service... wolves rescuing Perrin, the whole looonnnggg wwaaaalllk to Tar Valon for Mat and Rand - which despite some interesting side adventures would have just slowed the series down for a viewing audience.) Regardless, I never expected this to be a "watch along while reading the book" show. I was curious how they'd adapt it. So far, while I have quibbles here and there, as "another turning of the wheel," as long as they do the characters justice... so far I'm enjoying it.

Vahzichat.

I *want* to say this was tried at some point and it broke things. I do know of one time, thanks to a bug, this allowed a Peacebringer to one shot Hamidon on live. (No. Not kidding. Might even have been back in SO days.) While amusing, that sort of thing would be *bad* for the game. Besides, between incarnate buffs and set bonuses, things are already "past ED." Set bonuses don't get touched by ED and already allow capping and perma-ing of *so* much stuff it's silly.

No. From your comment, you most certainly did *not* read it anywhere near enough to "disagree" with it. Perhaps you saw the word prestige in the subject and stopped there. If you *had* read it, you'd see at least half of it is dealing with the SG search window and improving it and the way SGs self-describe and self-select, to make looking for and connecting with SGs better. Know how I know you didn't read it? Which is the *old* prestige, which I specifically point out as being useless (and have a history of describing as such.) While, if you actually DO read past the first word in the title, you'll see a wider array of things for a SG to describe itself as - none of which has to do with "pride in the supergroup" or "numbers on a screen people are only going to farm for." Unless you'd like to describe how people farm for a button that lists the group as, say, an RP focused group? Or farm for showing an SG passcode in the group listing? Or farm for being able to resize the window itself? You'll also note, where I do mention showing activity, the suggestions go for things over time and percentage of the group actually involved in it. So, no. While I don't mind an honest disagreement? Yours is not. Your comment indicates "I saw prestige named, I hate prestige so I'm going to say I disagree." Hint: *I don't like prestige either.* Which you'd be able to tell if you'd read... the second paragraph.

So, you didn't read it. Good to know.

I happen to be on a PB right now. Level 5. Nothing slotted. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what sort of threat these were versus what I was thinking of. Me, vs an even con Skull quantum gunner. (Obviously fighting something higher will do more, but as a baseline here...) Solo, so no inherent boosts. All my energy resist comes from an unslotted Incandescence, which you have to have by default. 11.25%. Initially I had a defense booster - cheap mitigation - which brought me up to 18....something percent. (Maybe 18.5.) It took 12 shots, of which 2 or 3 missed, to get me into the red. Mind you, I'm just *standing* here waiting for him to shoot me. (My only other mitigation? Unslotted essence boost on auto, so there is a heal there.) Now, by this time the gunner would be dead - I have more attacks than him, and with the defense booster keeping me from getting knocked down there's no way even with the RNG hating me that he'd get that many shots off with me fighting back. So I dropped the booster. It *and* the survival amplifier. (for the +max HP.) Stunned twice... for about half a second. Out of six shots which got me down into the red. Sound awful? (This one was the only test where he actually *hit* me six times in a row.) Well, in the time for him to take two shots, I managed to cycle through *my* attacks and kill him. And I only have Gleaming Bolt and Blast, with one prestige enhancement each in them. And then essence boost kicked in and gave me a nice heal. So, *cheap* boosters (especially if you get them at level 1 or 2) seriously cut down any sort of threat. Even ignoring them, though... like I said, unslotted level 5 doing nothing but standing there and it still took multiple shots to get me down into the red... and I killed him off in a few seconds with two basic attacks, not even counting P2W (which the KB from Nemesis staff would prevent him attacking for even longer.) Doing things like... basic inspiration usage and slotting *something* would cut it down even more. (Next mission - with my boosters back - a +1 Q gunner hit me twice... for about 10% total before he died.) So. Threat? Sure. "Very real threat?" Ehhhhhh... The stun just doesn't last long, about long enough to notice it says "stunned" before it drops. A Skull boss with a hold is a bigger threat, frankly.

Every once in a while, we get a "Bring back prestige" thread - new or necro'd. The reason tends to boil down to "I want a big number to show how cool my SG is." (There are occasional add ons to it to "earn" things for SGs, but (A) I don't like that idea and (B) we don't need another currency, quite frankly.) The thing is, that number is meaningless. The "Top 100 SGs?" Shows how much prestige was made of converted INF when that was active. And that doesn't tell you a blasted thing. It could be a really active SG. Or it could be someone AFK farming 24/7. You can't tell. And, back in the day (when Prestige was free below... what, 20, 25, and needed for base building,) having SGs just invite people, then kick them out once the prestige earnings dropped (since it'd cut into your INF) wasn't unheard of... and not the sort of behaviour I'd think should be encouraged. SGs themselves are ... mostly fine. I think the ranking system needs to be more fine-grained and to have permissions revisited, useless ones tossed out, etc. I'm not touching that here, though. Final opening note. This would be fairly extensive and revamping several things - touching on SG creation and description as well as ranking. I don't expect this to really be implemented because it *would* be a lot of work. I'd like to see some of it (like some changes in the listings to make them useful,) but overall this is mostly - eh, a thought experiment, a wish list, a "way to give something more useful than the old prestige to rank an SG." First, the SG finder / top 100 window. Yes, the one that cuts off descriptions. And names. This hot mess, if I remember to put the screenshot in. You can resize it, somewhat, vertically. You can't resize it horizontally. It cuts off long SG names, currently just alphabatizes them, and you can't read longish descriptions. (Though you can hover over.) It is, in short, useless. You get three columns - Name (can be resized slightly,) Prestige (can't be resized,) and Description (can be slightly resized.) You can search by SG name, but only SG name. And that's ... *it.* How entirely useless is that? This window needs love. This window needs options. (And those options are going to tie into SG creation and the description window.) First, make it resizeable. Wider, move the corners, the works. Second, make the columns completley resizeable - and selectable. We're going to have more options here. Third, put some options that the SG can select (and the user can sort by.) The name should be clickable to go to an info page for more information on the searcher side. (Can be disabled by the SG.) The user can search by, and the SG can enable/disable/designate: - Visible/Invisible. Obviously not a search option, but if the SG absolutely doesn't want to be listed, they should have the option. - Open/Closed. Are they taking anyone, or not taking requests to join? - Flags for RP, PVP, "Setting" (things like, say, parks, city streets - things that aren't really SGs, but places to meet or RP or whatnot.) - Maybe public/private. (For instance, I wouldn't want my 'alt container' listed, but my RP SG, absolutely.) - Base passcode! Both listing it, having it visible, and possibly choices to "Visible public/coalition/SG only." - Contact - Defaults to whoever has the big red star, can be "all leaders" or specific rank (or some sort of flag in the SG) as well. - Description - expandable, also shows te whole thing on hovering over (current one does this for the description but not name.) - Remove "top 100 supergroups" and just make it a search window. The search window For this, sure, you can search by name if you want. But it should also use those flags. Want a SG that PVPs? Select the PVP flag. Searching for a nice out of the way park or a forgotten temple deep in the jungle for a setting? Use the setting flag, and so forth. And then if you want to rank them? Let's make that useful. Now, yes, these still have some issues and/or can be skewed a bit, but I think a lot of the skewing would actually even out a bit... plus having the rest of the information available should help the searcher decide. A lot of this should be activity based. Let's say you want to see actual membership. Some ratio of "Characters / Accounts / On in *time period* (set to,say, week, last 30 days, last 90 days, last 6 mo) - if you want a busy SG, one guy with 30 alts in an SG with two other people who don't show up, well, that's not really "active." Maybe a "stability" or "growth" ranking - number of characters and/or accounts added or lost over some time period. If you see it stable, it's probably pretty established. Growing - or losing a bunch of people - could influence your decision. How about activities. Time active in PVP zones and arena for how many accounts over time. Does it seem to run WSTs, raids, etc. frequently or not. These would be a little tougher, both to come up with and to track. Why would these be useful or better than prestige? Prestige, as I've said before, counts nothing but INF (or alternative-to-inf.) One guy farming with SG mode on (another issue with prestige...) can make a SG a lot of prestige, but that doesn't tell you how good or bad of a fit the SG is... or even how busy it is. Having some searchable parameters - both simple on off flags (PVP on/off, RP on/off) and seeing some sort of activity indicator (is it PVP because the leader likes to but nobody else does? It wouldn't show that much activity, then) would be far more useful - and if you put your parameters in and tell it to show you the "top 10/20/50/100" that match your parameters... Well, now you have something actually useful to you. Plus we have an SG search window that's actually helpful and descriptive (and a passcode phonebook that doesn't require someone to know to put it on a forum or wiki, AND lets members see it!) Like I said. A lot of work, on a lot of different areas. Much of this would be simple flags, and I'm reasonably sure is information that can be looked up now (so no new tracking systems really needed.) And no, I don't actually expect this to be implemented... Though I'd certainly like a more useful SG search window, if nothing else.

I don't like prestige, period. I don't like the current implementation (granted, disabled) where it's basically just an INF counter. It doesn't show how active an SG is (past the first few members,) and one person AFK farming can inflate the number - in other words, it's meaningless. If there were any sort of "Non user defined SG rating system" ... well, it'd have to be a number of systems, frankly. Something showing membership, activities, etc. that would be sifted, folded, spindled and mutilated into some sort of ranking. ... actually, this may need to be a separate post, because what I'm thinking of could get complicated.

If you click the "I" up on the nav bar next to the mission objectives, you'll see the contact dialog, actually. That said, I think SuggestorK's more on point - dumping it in the team channel would be the wrong place for it, but having a channel for it (or having it show up if in your souveniers, or an "assisted souveniers" or something) would be nice.

I'd say this would have to be on a case by case basis. For instance, some of the ones you use (early on) to "test against" the clockwork? They're prototypes, makes sense they may not be quite as accurate - or damaging, given their design assumptions. Something like the Lost Curing Wand? Absolutely drop the recharge on that. You get no XP for the Lost you cure, and sitting there waiting for it to recharge is nothing but wasting time getting the mission over with.

"Does it count if it's the deli downstairs?" - Cat. "The burrito place up the hill from the Warehouse. They are fast, and make very good food... I am so used to calling it the burrito place, I need to find the name again." - Ishku

Well, BBotE is tied specifically to gadzul oil. Was supposed to be a backstory for a full Epic AT (which would be the BBotE.) Personally I'd like to see that line developed into more, even though we'd likely not get an EAT out of it - just a nice, solid "in the shadows" group and series of arcs, though the TF would still be an interesting introduction to them or something.

I suspect it'd be harder than you think. I *don't* think those are static images. Why? Do this experiment. Find a character with two noticably different looks. (Or just roll one and make two really different looks - free tailoring before level 10 after all.) Go look at your personal info (ID used to do this.) You'll see one look. Change costumes - look again. You'll see it changes to match. I don't think what you see for NPCs is static, but grabbing the image the same way. Which lets things like AE use the NPCs we make - it'd be the same back end. (When we had the old "hero ID cards," it did the same thing.)

I've yet to have anyone complain about getting one, on sale or off. There are still plenty of folks who don't even realize they exist.

Funny thing is, I *have* the map open by default. Upper left corner. I just didn't *look* at it. 🙂

Not looking at it from a market standpoint, but from a "fun" standpoint... making these (or an alternate these) account bound would be horrible. While I pick up (and open!) quite a few, I also love dropping them on people at costume contests, middle of MSRs (or as part of a dropship bounty) and the like... which means they'd have to be tradeable.

Cranial flatulance on my part. Went from memory... to the wrong side of the pond, since there hasn't really been a reason to go in there for years :)

Not sure. I just tried to get in with a hero, and got a "you cannot enter." Maybe a side effect of winter, then? *shrugs*

1. This is not "back on live." This is homecoming. 2. Fort Trident/The Crucible has nothing in it. There's really nothing special to it. There's no longer a vendor you turn hero/villain merits in to for things like recipes. That was removed. (Heck, Fort Trident was removed. Just had to go doublecheck my memory - took a level 50 hero, went to go into it, "you cannot enter.") 3. No, you do not get hero or villain merits for doing a morality mission any more. You get 40 merits, even for hero or villain. If the HCWiki says this - which is a copy of PWiki, for updating - then someone hasn't updated the entry. I'll give you before and after shots of a hero running "One good spider," a Hero-alignment mission. You'll notice no hero merits awarded - just 40 regular reward merits, like any other alignment. This is *literally* as of a few minutes before posting this.

Power pools were already "loosened up." You no longer have to take Hover or Air Superiority to get Fly, for instance, and get THAT pick earlier. It's already stupidly easy to make ridiculously overpowered, overprotected, perma-everything'd characters. It doesn't need to be any easier. MIght as well ask for your T1 to be a button that kills everything short of AVs/GMs in one press for 1000 yards around you. AVs and GMs would take two presses.

I'm ... not sure what you're seeing. Old information, maybe, from when they were earned (I don't even recall how right off the top of my head) to turn in for stuff at the Cauldron and Fort... whatever. Now, thy're just holders for 50 reward merits at a time. You don't earn them. You go to a merit vendor and pick "Convert." Doesn't care what your alignment is. (See image. Character is, was, and always has been pure blue. Option to convert to and from is there - and just did one of each for this shot.)

Still think this is just a gorgeous environment, generally bare though it is...

Uhhhhh.... no. Just ... no.

Well. "Altaholic" does not mean "No or few 50s." Going to start with - I made a bit of a guide back on live. The Altaholic's guide to getting to 50. You may get some ideas there. Short form for me, currently, would be one or more of these - - I like the character as a *character.* - RP keeps me playing one or two characters consistently. (Finally have Cat Grey over VL100.) - I have "projects" like "One of each x to 50." - And sometimes it's just something that clicks. They're not the only things, but they've been the most helpful.

I'm going to point you at the HC wiki, with *the game's definition of a story arc.* Since I'm talking about the game. I'm obviously using the game's definition. So. For instance. Praetoria has an overarching storyline the player goes through. That story *line* is made up of several story *arcs.* Does that clarify things?