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TheOtherTed

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Everything posted by TheOtherTed

  1. For my money, a young Jay Leno is a likelier model.
  2. That'd be a pretty deep dive to find a model - about 50 years into the past from the founding of the animated franchise. Though given one of his most recurring roles, I guess it wouldn't be impossible...
  3. This conductor doesn't get kidney stones. He gets Infinity Stones.* Antonín Dvořák - Symphony 9 * With all respect and admiration for the guy...
  4. Honestly, I feel like "Doctor Who" is the only show that can (and has) jumped sharks on the regular and get away with it. Whole-person regeneration has its perks...
  5. Nope, not taking the bait. I'm already deeply embroiled in an internet debate about whether a hot dog is a sandwich; I don't have time for this Whovian nonsense. ...though now that I've eaten breakfast, I'm wondering if there could be a secret Doctor / Buffy cross-over in which Xander dies in an alternate reality...
  6. Never played Auto Assault. By the time it came out, my Car Wars / Autoduel days were long over. Tried Wildstar, appreciated its artistic direction, had some fun, but then abruptly stopped playing it after a week. At the time I didn't really know why - I just "stalled out" whenever I opened the log-in screen. Now, though, I realized that it didn't offer anything more than an Animaniacs take (not even a proper Looney Tunes take) on World of Warcraft, and I'd simply hit neural MMO fatigue.
  7. ...274 days later... "X is for Xander, who never existed." That should give the Whovians something to argue about. However, it would force the W line to rhyme with "ted." Which, you know, I wouldn't be entirely unhappy about.
  8. Going by his portrait, Wellington seems like he'd be a cuddler.
  9. Movement - 3.5 / 5 across the board. Even with layer cake caves and Council maps - which I complain about anyway, because, hey, what else you gonna do? Leading task forces/raids - About a "nah bruh" out of 5. Character builds - One eyeroll out of 5 wrt Mids; 3+ out of 5 wrt puzzling out the build's strengths or weaknesses as I play. Badging - "Meh" out of 5, but I somehow manage to stumble across badges that fit my characters really well. Key binds - All the eyerolls out of 5. If I find that I need more than a couple of non-RP key binds for a game, then it's not my game. In-game knowledge - 2.5-ish out of 5 for anything that isn't lore. Somewhere in the negative numbers for lore-related stuff. I tend to really suck at lore in any game. I'll throw in another category: Tactical awareness, 4/5. If I'm on your team and I say "inc" or "patrol" or something similar, brace yourselves and check your six. If I'm a controller and I suddenly stop using my secondary, it's because the fight's getting out of control. If I'm zipping around in a fight like a maniac, it's probably to draw aggro from people who aren't prepared for it. I'm like Tunnel Rat, but not quite as hot jittery. ...show off.
  10. Honestly, I just signed up for the older Star Trek series (mainly TOS, TNG, and DS9, plus the even-numbered OG cast movies). Twilight Zone was a happy little accident. My Dad I I watched it back when it was still in syndication on UHF channels, so there's nostalgia there, but I'm finding it to be a surprisingly decent lesson in story-telling as well. With only half an hour per episode and a presentation that's more firmly based in the writing than in the cinematics, the sorts of things writers talk about (e.g. plot beats, characterization, story structure, scene design, etc.) are very present and very tangible (IMO). And since the episodes are basically written like radio plays, I find I can often listen to an episode while keeping visual attention elsewhere without missing much. That said, it's an old, old series now, and Serling's brand of progressivism may not be at all apparent to younger viewers. I'm wondering if his mode of progressivism could even find an audience today. Anyway, to answer the question of whether P+ is worth it, I'll likely drop it once I've had my fill of TZ and given Picard S3 a look-see. Got hot dates lined up with Game of Thrones, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, and maybe, just maybe, the Penguin miniseries. Some day, Star Trek will call for my attention again, and I'll hop back to P+ for a quickie.
  11. Apologies if this has been mentioned, but I'd like to see asymmetric tattoos for the Yakuza chest pieces, i.e., have a tattoo on just one upper arm (with or without the back tattoo). On a related note but probably much more difficult, I'd like to see Yakuza tattoo options for "gloves." If they don't already exist, that is - I didn't do a very thorough search.
  12. Just remember, if you're going the "Heroic Trio" route, you'd best be prepared to fight in stiletto heels. So I went with Pistols / Nin, and the phase 1 playtest felt better than previous attempts. Not sure why - could be the venue (I'm fighting ghouls and cops instead of snakes - sooo many snakes...), or it could be the character's outfit (the "alternate reality" of Praetoria helps me be more open to costume options that I wouldn't give a second look at in Atlas Park or the Isles). My only regret so far is that there are no Yakuza tattoo options for gloves (that I could see), and that the Yakuza chest options don't allow asymmetry - you have to tattoo both upper arms, or pick something else.
  13. Cool - didn't even see the table option myself (and probably wouldn't have connected the dots if I did). Also, PSA, I wouldn't advise playing that song in your head while driving.
  14. So there I am, slowly binge-watching the original Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus, when out of nowhere I see a surprisingly good review of Picard S3 from, of all people, TheCriticalDrinker. Got my attention in the way that only happens when your best frenemy turns a complete about-face on some issue, something you came to grudgingly accept because, when he's right, he's right. Will likely start watching it after the first season of Twilight Zone, but wouldn't mind hearing some spoiler-free reactions of you fine folk.
  15. Just saw this on another forum and I refuse, I REFUSE, to be the only one to suffer. Herbie Hancock - Rockit
  16. Approximately 77.325% true. However, my attempts to launch a Pistols character in the past have always felt unsatisfying, in spite of the animations. Maybe I'll dig around for some guide to the set that isn't filled to the brim with Mids-type builds. That said, if I go Pistols (and I kind of want to, at this point), what secondary Blaster set (besides Devices) would synergize well with it and still stay in the "highly trained human in street clothes" thing? Doesn't necessarily have to be a strictly "natural" set. On Live, for example, I ran an natural Archery / EM character and justified the energy pom-poms as contact gauntlets powered by a Rikti battery. In other words, one item of conveniently explanatory and not-too-far-out-there super-tech isn't out of the question. However, I draw the line at the "not magical because its aliens / mutants / cosmic energy" sort of thing. Also, thanks to everyone who has posted so far. I can feel this taking shape and, hopefully, I'll burp something out pretty soon.
  17. Aw, jeez, you know, why'd you have to say that? 🤢 Point taken about the difference in AR and Pistols vibe, though - none of those rifle models could be called "subtle." The question is, can Pistols hold a candle to AR in terms of damage output and/or utility? If not, I may reconsider my original intent and run with one of the sleeker sci-fi looking AR models. One of twin characters inspired by Melinda May from S.H.I.E.L.D. and the cheesier than cheese Hong Kong movie "The Heroic Trio." I've got the melee side covered with MA/Ninjutsu, but still haven't figured out the ranged counterpart. Both are "street level" Naturals. The original intent was to have them start in The Zig and eventually go "hero" (or at least not completely irredeemable). That said, I'm now thinking of starting the Blaster in Praetoria as the alternate world counterpart to the already existing Scrapper.
  18. I have a character concept (former enforcer from the western part of the Pacific Rim (the region, not the movie)) that could use either set, but I can't quite decide between them for the dumbest of reasons: Style. Pistols has it in spades, but AR seems a bit deficient in that area (though the relatively long range snipe does add significant coolness factor). Conversely, AR seems to deliver significantly more damage than Pistols, but I could be convinced that this is just my imagination. In either case, I'd pair it with Martial Combat or Ninja Training. I haven't given NT a fair shake, really, so I'm leaning in that direction. Seems like the combo could have some "professional" coolness to it (i.e., an air of always-prepared, no-nonsense competence), but I can't deny lure of Pistols/MC. That said, I already have MC on my Archer, and I have this dumb thing about repeating powersets among my characters. Anyway, starting to ramble. Would appreciate any feedback wrt style or damage while I go take my pills.
  19. Finally found the right theme music for my not-exactly-a-hero Lee Three: Side question - is there a way to place inserted elements next to each other?
  20. Post-script: I agree with you, @Solarverse, that things like IOs, Architect, and DFB made the game too easy and, in the case of the latter two, did a terrible job of introducing people to game mechanics. Even seeing the "hospital" in The Hollows for the first time made me leave the zone in frustration (although I've visited it frequently in HC for nostalgia's sake). However, I still need to be convinced that the challenge you seek, the "order" that you apparently need, is unattainable even in the game's current form.
  21. Ad hominem detected and processed appropriately. From your very first post, my default hypothesis was that you were seeing the old game through Solarverse-colored glasses. As of yet, you have offered nothing to make me doubt that hypothesis. There's a present for you; you have a fixed goalpost around which to stake your own. That isn't a quaternity - a quaternity is an assemblage of 4 components (usually with religious implications, but that's neither here nor there). What you provided is a statement about the potential effects of higher difficulty on player behavior. That is something completely different. In fact, I explicitly acknowledged it earlier; I'll repeat it here, in case you missed it. Note that the "gelling" I refer to has little to do with the makeup of the team, and far more to do with the spontaneous actions of the individual players. They stepped up their game, just as you say, but usually only did so after a very chaotic "The spit got real" moment. The team composition was usually pretty random, and therefore couldn't always be described as a "trinity" or "quaternity" or any other -ity. More often than not, the team was willing to bump up the difficulty afterwards. I acknolwedge that much of this is anecdotal, but it was a pattern that I consistently observed. Interesting that you call that order. I call it boring. That's not to say I didn't strive for some sort of team composition, but I had my own "color wheel" of ATs which allowed for a lot of oddball combinations. Or sometims I went with a team of 8 from 1 AT just to see what happened. Granted, I'm working with old memory now, but I don't recall a team composition that couldn't step up and deliver when the going got tough. Again, that says more about the players than about team composition. Please note, though, that I also said this: Later in the game, when it was supposedly easier, my experience is that many people felt the need to complain whenever anything went wrong, and as far as I could determine from their mode of talking (or berating or complaining), it was because someone (never the speaker, of course) wasn't doing their assigned job. We're talking easy mode stuff here; default difficulty or lower. To their credit, those people would step up for that mission, but as soon as the mission ended, at least one would bail with some choice parting words, which in turn led others to bail with hard feelings against the people who had already left. No words could convince them to stick together, and I had no doubt that they would repeat the cycle with their next team. That "gelling" had apparently disappeared in the wake of the most holy trinity. TL:DR version - all this talk of trinity or quaternity or game design here means much less than the attitudes of people who play it. That's my alternate hypothesis - another fixed goalpost for anyone to dance around if they so choose.
  22. As I've said, you're describing a quaternity (which has 4 components), not a trinity (which only has three), and yes, I will happily pick nits about this. In addition, you have yet to show that your quaternity guarantees a level of gameplay that cannot be achieved by, say, 8 Repeat Offenders or any other non-quaternity selection of ATs.
  23. I have no recollection of your specific definition of the trinity. I suspect I'm not alone. I have to assume that you're shifting goalposts unless and until you can supply evidence that your definition is the standard definition.
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