Triumphant

Color me fascinated and intrigued. 😎 *joins* EDIT: Or not. Apparently the link has expired. 😝 EDIT THE SECOND: Aaaaand... now it's working. Nevermind. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, I don't think a Sentinel is going to get you there, for the type of sniping we're talking about. Not that I don't like Sentinels: I love them, actually. Play them more than maybe any other AT. They just don't make good long-range snipers, is all.

I mean, honestly, all joking aside, I would be satisfied with this. There are things I would "like" to see in the game, certain changes implemented that I think would make for a more enjoyable play experience. But I can and will continue to enjoy the game in its present from for years (or however long it continues to exist) to come.

It's really fun to make these kinds of characters but this specific gimmick is more a hindrance than a help on lots of indoor maps (caves, apartments, etc.), because tight rooms, corners, and narrow confines only allow you to put some much distance between yourself and the target. I find too frustrating for standard play but, on the right maps, it's a hoot!

Well, I don't ordinarily agree with griping about player performance on PUGs but, in this case, it was a Master of run and the guy leading wasn't up to the task. I totally get why you would find it frustrating.

In real life, I've lived in both the East Kansas City Metro and North Minneapolis. Talos is clean, friendo. Trust me. 😄

I'm far from an expert because I don't play a lot of dominators and I have only rarely tried assault rifle primary and ninja secondary. Generally speaking though, Dominators will have a lot more toys to play with, while being somewhat more brittle. The Sentinel will be less versatile and more pure damage focused, with a bit more ability to survive. I have a lot more experience playing Sentinels and I'm just better at running that AT, so that would be my choice. Skilled Dominator players could give you many reasons (very good reasons, I'm sure) for picking the other option. My suspicion is that Dominators are the better class (at the very least, the more versatile class), I just tend to personally favor Sentinels because I lack the player skill to effectively leverage the Dominator's many abilities to best effect.

I use a savage/sr brute for s/l farming. Not optimal, of course. But he does well enough for my purposes (typically rake in 8 to 12 million inf per run of Boom Box Tunnel Farm, which I consider to be adequate for my needs).

This movie is gonna be so epic. I can't wait! 😁

Maybe you read the post, but it absolutely was not until after you appended the laughing emoji to the post. And yeah, it was literally about 3 seconds (maybe less) as I saw it pop up not seconds after I hit reply on my own post. That's simple fact. I know, because I observed it in real time. I was trying to have a nuanced conversation about a complex, emotionally-charged topic. Doing that requires more than a soundbite, and I'm sorry that you couldn't be bothered to take the time to consider a different point of view before you reacted to the post with contempt. But look, I've said what I had to say on the subject, so I'll show myself out the conversation now.

Sharknado Man/Woman could be a hoot to play. 🦈 😁👍

@PeregineFalcon I see that responded with a laughing emote approximately 3 seconds after I posted my reply, which means you didn't actually bother to read it. This is disappointing, but not unexpected. So it goes.

I”ll try to lend a little clarity here. This is what I think is happening and where the disconnect is: Star Wars, in its original form (I’m talking about the original trilogy from the 70’s and 80’s here; the one that many of us, including myself, cut our teeth on when we were kids) is a product of its time. It’s a traditional, Campbellian hero's journey, about a young man discovering that he’s the heir to a great heroic legacy, then going off to perform said heroic deeds. In this story, we have 1 female protagonist (Leia), 1 black protagonist (Lando- at least for the last two movies) and everyone else is a straight, white guy. This is not uncommon for entertainment media of that era (and still not terribly uncommon now though, of course, that is rapidly changing- as indeed it should, IMO). Most of the Star Wars fans who were cultivated during this era were (like myself) boys and young men. The original Star Wars trilogy really was an adventure story written mostly for boys and men that was mostly about the adventures of boys and men (this is not a criticism; I love the original Star Wars Trilogy and will always love it. When I tell people it’s white male-oriented entertainment, that’s just a fact. Again, this is typical of entertainment media of the time we grew up in.) So, a very large portion of the Star Wars fan base is composed of these straight, young, white men and boys that grew up watching the stuff. No great surprise here, I think. That is as it may be. But here’s the thing: Some of the fan base (a much smaller subset, I think) are women, queer people, and people of color that also love the franchise, for all of the same reasons that us straight white guys love it (high adventure, quippy dialogue, booming orchestral tracks, and dazzling special effects). But, just like we straight white guys (again, understand- I am one of the straight white guys), women, queer people, and people of color would like to see other human beings like themselves represented in the fictional universe that they love. So, what Leslye Headland and others mean when they say that “It’s not for you”, is that the show is not really written specifically to appeal to the (admittedly huge) part of the fan base that is composed of straight, white men. This is a story set in the Star Wars universe that is meant to provide a space where fans who are women, queer, and people of color can enjoy a show about protagonists that represent people just like them. And that’s okay. There should be a space for stories set in the franchise that are not mainly about straight white guys. We (meaning myself and other straight white guys) did not think there was anything wrong with having just one female protagonist, one black protagonist, and no queer protagonists in the OT. It was pretty much just about the white guys, and that was fine by us. But the problem is, now that we have a show that inverts that dynamic, all of us straight white guys are *blanking* our pants over it. Now, I don’t think this is conscious. What I mean by that, is I don’t think most straight, white men who are fans of the franchise are actively trying to be sexist/racist. But subconsciously, I think they’re having a sexist/racist knee-jerk reaction to the inversion of the straight/white coded entertainment that is familiar and comfortable to them. It actually reminds me of an anecdote from the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She related a story about how she confided to some person that was interviewing her that, one day, she would like to see a Supreme Court comprised of all-women judges. The person interviewing her was shocked and scandalized by this. Isn’t that a sexist position, Judge Ginsberg? To which she replied (quite fairly, I think), that up until very recently in history, the Supreme Court had always been composed entirely of men, and the men seemed to be perfectly okay with that. Why shouldn’t women get the same treatment? Of course, she was really just trying to make a point here: And that is that the unconscious (or overt- but many times I think it’s unconscious, because we men take our male-dominated world for granted and don’t often pause to think about it- or what it would feel like to live in a world as something other than the straight, white men that we are) hypocrisy of male thinking. The reason Headland and others are upset is not because the fans are angry about this (they expected some of that, of course. This fan base is made up largely of straight, white guys, after all), but that they are being verbally savaged like dogs (one video by a guy I saw literally compared Headland, physically, to a Pug dog. Why is this sort of petty, mean, and demeaning personal attack relevant to any criticism of the media itself, as a story or art form?) The answer is, it’s not. It’s a cruel, sexist attack on a female showrunner, by an outraged white guy that feels like his personal space is threatened. That kind of thing is NOT okay and yes, of course Headland and other women (and queer, and brown) people pouring their creative hearts out into the show are angered by it (as, IMO, they should be).

Hm... sounds like you're maybe looking for something like Medusa of the Inhumans (or, possibly just Crystal Gayle, if we're going for a real-world analog). Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to find anything that will work for hair like that. Would be cool, though. 👍

Buddy, all I can say to that, is that your experience and my experience on this particular thing are diametric opposites. 🤷‍♂️

Sure. That's fair enough.

My answer to the first bit would be: Then don't make the effect translucent. Make it an effect that actually simulates what you're doing (i.e. sneaking). If that can't be done, then allow me to turn off effects for the power. My way gives everyone the choice of whether or not to use the bad effect that doesn't actually represent what it's supposed to represent. Leaving the power as it is presently, forces me to use this clumsy representation of stealth when I would rather just enjoy looking at all the details of my costume. I think part of the problem here is you are trying to advocate for the game to be simulationist when, really, it just does a very bad job of doing that. Hand-wringing over accurate visual representation of stealth effects is a bit silly, when the mobs don't react at all when you are standing 25 feet away, in direct line of sight, in a well-lighted area, blowing up another group of mobs with grenades, energy blasts, and other apocalyptically loud, flashy effects. I don't care about simulationism that much myself (I only made my argument about the translucency effect being a poor representation of stealth because you are arguing that it be locked in this way, because it is needed for that purpose. I'm really just interested in the players individual freedom to choose what effects to activate for their personal characters power sets. What you do with your own character is your business. Keep all your effects turned on. Go crazy. It's none of my business- just like what I choose for my own costume and visual powerset effects is none of your business). As to the postscript in your edit: When has the visual cue from activating your stealth power ever caused anyone on a team to follow the team leader in any respect? If you mostly play with PUGs, you can kiss that fantasy goodbye, regardless of what visual effects are active on your powerset. If you play with a group of buddies that you know and they are tuned into your playstyle, then you probably don't need that kind of help (but again, if you do- by all means, choose to retain the power effect. I don't want to force you to do anything. I just want the freedom to make a different choice).

It's not about becoming translucent, either. That would be the intangibility or phasing power. When Batman sneaks, when spiderman sneaks, when Black Panther sneaks, there is no "special effect". They just hide and move quietly. Some of us would like the option for no effect while sneaking, just like the examples I provided above. That's all. The rest of you can still become translucent whenever you sneak around (for whatever oddball reason you'd like to make up for that happening).

I tend to agree with you that most of the Epic Powers aren't all that Epic (I think I may have even made a post about this, somewhere in the dim, dark past). There are a few gems in there, but nothing that truly screams EPIC. And you know what, I don't even think I mind so much that the powers aren't epic. What bothers me, is that they're called Epic when, well... they're mostly mediocre. They should be called, "Additional" powers. Or some such. Or, yeah- you could actually make them epic. Sure. Why not? 😝

Well, sure. And I'm certain that people find my own stances on certain topics equally ridiculous, at times. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing. There's nothing wrong with healthy debate. So long as it doesn't devolve into outright petty meanness and indiscriminate insults, it's all good. Forums exist for the free exchange of ideas and I would not want that to change. Also, just for the record, I want to be very clear: The fact that I disagree with any of you on any particular subject, does NOT mean that I personally dislike you. When I respond to a particular post on these forums, it's because I have definite strong opinions about THAT topic. Topics where players are trying to advocate for a particular position that forces other players to play the game a certain way are an exception to this, of course. I take that very personally (as indeed, IMO, I should).

I'm an American who plays frequently at what would be peak times for Europeans. I tried Reunion for a while (even have 1 lvl 50 and a pretty cool base built there). The player base was warm and friendly, but I found that the number of players (particularly RP'ers) are actually greater on Everlasting, and so I've pretty much moved back there, as this is where the bulk of my characters and/or bases are (though I do still pop onto Reunion every great once in a while, just to wonder around my spiffy base and take my lvl 50 Sent for a spin).

I don't disagree, it would be nice (we're all at least a little curious, aren't we?) although I can imagine why they might be reluctant to do that, given that whatever they are working on, people will probably gripe loudly because they will feel that they are working on the wrong things, or doing it the wrong way, or not working fast enough, etc. As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. 😝

I may find your stance on stealth effects a bit silly, but I agree with you on this one, Ghost. This is a public forum. You have a right to reply to any forum post and participate in any topic, as a member of this forum, as long as you abide by the forum rules.

People that equate cosmetic option with a cost, as though it's some kind of game balancing factor. Hilarious. 😄