Luminara

I would've expected someone who's been playing on this server for almost six years to have figured out that buying a (significantly) less expensive recipe, such as Experienced Marksman, and using a few converters was waaaaaaaaaaaaay smarter than trying to buy a specific recipe. But I also would've expected someone who's been here for that length of time to know where to make market-related posts. So I suppose you're right, human.

Listen on, listen on. This is the truth of it - enhancing leads to killing, and killing gets to leveling, and that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now, busted up and everyone talking about proc nerfs! But we've learned! By the dust of 'em all, Atlas Park's learned. Now, when players get to fighting, it happens here. And it finishes here! Two toons enter, one toon leaves. And now... I've got two toons! Two toons, with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, costume contest here!

... The man directing this has never directed anything but comedies. Do NOT give him more ideas.

I have one. It's... the damage is great, and it's eminently survivable due to the endurance drain basically shutting everything down in the first few seconds, but draining causes enemies to run sooner than any other trigger (in my experience). You'll need the AoE Immob.

A rogue wouldn't have tried to negotiate a peaceful solution before resorting to overwhelming force.

In the interest of science, I logged into my Bane, set the difficulty to x8, emptied my inspiration tray completely, and went into a mission to discern how quickly it would refill. It took me 27 seconds to fill half of the slots. We can extrapolate that it would take less than 60 seconds to completely fill the tray. Solo. Now divide that by 8 to reflect the frequency of drops on a full team, because you get drop rolls when your teammates defeat foes. That would equate to a full tray of inspirations used every ~7.5 seconds. And that's not even remotely as fast as it would actually be, since I was only collecting those inspirations, not using them, and testing on a character with comparatively poor AoE potential. I expect that something on the order of 5 seconds would be far more common.

Have you seen those posts with people yelling, "Barrier Barrier Barrier everything's too easy and it's boring and my <support archetype> is useless and and Judgement Judgement Judgement everything's too easy and everything dies too fast and my <damage dealer archetype> is useless and RRRRRAAAAAAAHHHHH!"? This would extend that all the way down to level 1. Everyone would have the equivalent of Limitless Radial Freem, all of the time.

Players aren't restricted from entering costume contests unless they have those costume options. If they are, that's the player running the contest's choice, not a consequence of the game's design, and it should be taken up with that player, not brought to the development team to resolve. Brand new characters are made every week for @Laucianna's weekly costume contest. They're frequently winning those contests without any of the bells and whistles you're claiming are mandatory. You're not being unfairly restricted by a purchasing requirement, you're restricting yourself and blaming the game. And you have yet to explain why you should be handed what those other players worked to acquire. Even if they power-leveled their characters to 50, they still invested time into them. You're not asking for parity, you're asking for a way to sidestep having to make the same investment they did and take a prize they might've earned. You're saying that you shouldn't have to meet the same requirements they met, and throwing out specious justifications for it. This is, in essence, like insisting that you should be allowed to "participate" in a marathon by being chauffeured from the starting line to the finish line. Nope. Get those legs moving.

If inspirations were inconsequential, players wouldn't have bothered to create complex collections of rotating binds to consume them without going to the effort of stretching their fingers to the Function keys. If inspirations weren't very useful or strong, players wouldn't be cramming their e-mail with them. There's already too little oversight in how inspirations are used, and abused, the game doesn't need to make it even more convenient.

Considering how much inspirations already skew gameplay, I don't think this is a good idea.

THEY WERE IN THE POOL!

I was actually thinking about that this morning. I wondered if I'd misclassified him. Serenity (the episode) - he shelters two (seemingly) helpless fugitives from the Alliance, does his utmost to spare the lawman's life The Train Job - he gives the medicine back to the townsfolk instead of delivering it to Niska Bushwacked - takes in the survivor of the Reaver attack Shindig - stands up for Inara's honor, doesn't kill Wing Safe - secures medical assistance for Book (despite his loathing for religion), rescues the Tams Our Mrs. Reynolds - helps the townsfolk for next to nothing, shows compassion to Yosaffbrig when he believes she was wronged, resists her advances (well, until she was naked... and... articulate), tells Jayne not to shoot anything but the electrodes, doesn't kill Yosaffbrig Out of Gas - willing to sacrifice his life to save the lives of his crew Ariel - goes back for his crew, almost spaces Jayne for selling out the Tams (who he's risking everything to keep hidden from the Alliance) War Stories - sells the medicine (stolen in Ariel) to people who need it, at a cut price Trash - doesn't kill Yosaffbrig again, stops her from killing others, doesn't kill Yosaffbrig again Heart of Gold - defends the brothel without expectation of compensation Serenity (the film) - takes the Tams back under his protection despite his altercation with Simon and concerns about River, rescues Inara from the assassin, goes to Miranda to help River, spares the assassin, waves the entire verse the truth about the Alliance's activities on Miranda (would've been worth an absolute fortune as blackmail material) Mal's a vigilante. He aims to misbehave, but he does kindnesses for folk, and he willingly foregoes profit if it hurts them. Jayne's a rogue, which is one of the things that made their interactions so interesting (and promised significant character development in the future that wasn't (as evidenced by his troubled heart after the events of Jaynestown)).

WAIT! No, sorry, that last one is from @Snarky's high school yearbook. Sorry, I'll go get the brain bleach.

Why should anyone even be allowed to compete in costume contests if they're getting all of the purchasable costume options for free? Other people pay for the costume options you want for free, aren't they more entitled to the prizes than someone who put 0 inf* into their costumes? Also, why would there need to be a special game mode for players to get an auto-50... to compete in costume contests? Why do you need to be level 50 to compete in a costume contest? Is there actual fighting between participants? Are we now holding costume contest deathmatches or costume contest pudding wrestling shows? This makes about as much sense as tits on a fish.

All that crap cons grey to them.

Well, all of this was explained to him several months ago, so... And we know he read the explanations, because... So... yeah.

PEBCAK.

The entire game, plus launcher, can be installed to an external drive. I have it on a USB-C 1TB SSD. And Windows allows folder redirects. I've pointed my Documents, Downloads, Pictures and Videos folders to the same SSD. I ain't losin' nothin' now... unless my cabin is sucked into another universe. Or @Snarky tries to perform basic file operations on my laptop... that would probably be more catastrophic.

Other games have much more restricted character development. They can do that because they tightly control how powerful any class can be at any given level, how strong the gear is, who can use the gear, how much gear the character can have at a time, any and all special bonus effects from the gear, et cetera. The people developing those games can create content with extremely specific expectations, based on the limited, controlled character development they've allowed, and have a significant degree of assurance that it will be palatable based on the limitations they've imposed in character development. Co* has 98 gear slots and 34 gear categories, compounded by 15 classes, each with its own gear category, and the only controls over character development are being locked into a single primary and secondary, not being allowed to access more than four power pools, and only one *PP. You can't have gear checks in a game with this much gear and this little control over character development, not without completely overhauling it from the ground up. It's was deliberately designed not to have gear checks. It's not those other games, it never was and never can be.

They're lateral progression. They were designed and implemented as ways players could make their characters better, without raising the level cap. They were never intended to replace other systems, such as SOs, but to supplement them. As such, they're neither pointless nor superfluous. They were made to do something, and they do exactly what they were meant to do.

IBT@Snarky.

Sunlight. Firewood. Hugs and kisses from the cat colony. Saw a titmouse. Happiness.