battlewraith

That's exactly how the industry is working. People who are underpayed to begin with are losing their jobs. Or transitioning to some other profession that offers some degree of stability. https://archive.vn/5iN1u The notion that they can just bounce on to another project project headed by producers B-Z is maybe true if they can afford to move to another state or country and most likely work for less. People do stupid things all the time. Things that lead to disastrous outcomes for themselves, their families, and their communities. You want to munch popcorn over it, you do you. I'm not going to gloat over other people's sufferings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_film_directors Michael Bay is #4 on the list. If Michael Bay thinks he's making good movies, and he's basing that on earnings, then he's probably more credible than people posting in this thread. Or, you have to say that box office doesn't really reflect quality. Or that what constitutes a good movie is largely subjective and different audiences have different perspectives.

Yeah it's Shadenfreude. It's understandable, but it's a bad look. Generally speaking, if we accept the premise that greedy incompetent people are ruining the media we love (ignoring any subjective component to that assessment), it's important to remember that the people calling the shots are not ruining themselves. Rich powerful people don't suffer the consequences; maybe they'll go sulk on their yachts. The people that will suffer are the workers. Artists, animators, gaffers, costumers, lighting people, crew that build sets and props and so on. They will be looking for another job and continuing to struggle to make ends meet. So no, I don't revel in some studios miss-steps. I don't crave the financial disaster of failed movies or games. I continue to support the things that I want to see and don't worry about the rest.

I understand your opinions. They are bad, for reasons I've already explained. But you keep popping back up and regurgitating them. 1. "the developers intend..." Which developers? Something like the illusion set goes back to 2004, at which point it behaved differently than it does now. And the game didn't have sets, incarnates, etc. This is you stating what you want by speaking on behalf of the development cycle of the game. The gist of it is this--coh gives you different boxes of tools to mix and match to suit your personal playstyle. That is the core strength of the game. The point of this thread is that one particular tool is poorly coded and should be adjusted. Your counter is to look at the balancing of the set as a whole and assume that it is being played a certain way. Build diversity and options are more important than your assumptions. 2. "Any improvement OF ANY KIND". This is obviously false, they could improve the aesthetics of the thing for example. Make it customizable. And again you seem to be assuming that the suicidal nature of the phantasm is intentional. It's meant to die so that its dps is balanced with respect to the set as a whole. This is a post hoc rationalization that could be baselessly applied to any poorly implemented power. 3. "However, you are wrong. The onus is not on me. The onus is on YOU to back up your positive claim that Illusion has an issue that will be addressed by improving the Phantasm." Try to listen. I am not making a positive claim that illusion has an issue. That is YOUR framing of the issue. Your dogmatic insistence that the issue be filtered through your assumptions. I'm just concerned with the behavior of the pet and whether is fun to use or not. I think the dps increase about which you're complaining, assuming it materialized, would be negligible. Laughable.

Yeah I think that’s a dynamic that goes on here. People complain about a thing they don’t like. If that doesn’t satisfy, they point to bad box office. If pointing to bad box office doesn’t satisfy, they complain about the industry. The thing is, bad box office doesn’t mean a film is bad or the studio necessarily did anything wrong. Especially for films that are ahead of their time and come to be appreciated later.

I suspect for both myself and the OP, this is a QOL issue. The pet is annoying to use and causes problems. You are insisting that this is a balance issue, out of what appears to be a dogma that any change must be a balance issue that involves a consideration of the balancing between different sets. I don’t agree with your framework, and I think the onus is on you too establish that a more reasonably behaved Phantasm will somehow significantly improve the set as a whole with regards to how people are doing with controllers in general. I think that would only be the case if the developers intended to pet to die a lot and be unmanageable.

Sure let’s hear it. Let’s hear your pointers that are going to take my ill toons to the next level. Also provide some context for where this wisdom is appropriate—solo/teams/low level/post 50/SOs/incarnates/Hard Mode/pvp/ what exactly?

This has been brought up before, but you keep pointing to the strength of the illusion set in comparison to other controller sets. This thread was about phantasm. You have yet to make, imo, any case for the fact that giving phantasm better ai or changing it's knockback would do anything to make it more or less OP. If anything, there's been some indication that phantasm is skippable. Replace it with a better pet from an epic pool or take those slots and invest in an aoe that you can proc out. I recently did an ill/sonic dom and a dark/ff controller. The controller is way better at dealing with large groups.

You've been repeating that ad nauseam in this thread and it misses the point, again. It is a top performer at some niche things. It is not a powerhouse at everything and it doesn't particularly stand out in teams these days when you're burning down large groups quickly and don't particularly need PA to tank for you.

It's not a crime but it's entirely subjective speculation about how big players in an industry are conducting their business. Based on whether you approve of the quality of certain films, whether you feel their budget was warranted, etc. I suspect the head honchos at Disney, or any large company, expect to have periods where they face reduced profits and they course correct. It might simply be the case that people are tired of superhero films. Or there are external issues at play that are affecting production--writer's strikes, actors aging out or passing away, etc. But the notion that other studios, with different budgets/goals/business models/etc. have periodic successes and that means Marvel studios have some sinister dysfunction at play is just silly.

Maybe the ones I grew up with were made for kids. There have been general audience movies made since then, I even saw one in the theater when I lived there. I don't think that anyone is arguing that huge hits haven't been made on modest budgets. The thing that doesn't follow, or at least hasn't been established, is that studios therefore should not invest heavily in big budget movies.

Yeah it's an outlier. Japan has produced a ton of Godzilla movies, how many were hits here? If it's that simple, we should see a bunch of smash hits coming down from that studio right?

So what are you proposing? Why does it matter how a movie studio spends its money? If you're coming at this issue as a capitalist, its pretty straightforward. If you don't like some company's product don't buy it. Invest your money in products and studios that produce the things you like. The thing is, if other people like the things you don't and are willing to pay money for it--them's the breaks. All the complaining about what the studios are putting out is just that...complaining. That's the system, it doesn't center around what any particular fan wants. It also keeps a lot of people employed, even if they are working on a colossal bomb of a movie. If you're coming at this from another political perspective, that the entire structure of the industry is corrupt in the sense that a political system isa corrupt--sweet baby Jesus, stupid Marvel movies are near the bottom of the list of things you should be concerned with.

It's very common for tv series, especially shows like Angel or Buffy, to have a musical episode. Usually there is some plot contrivance that explains why everyone is singing their lines. I've seen it on a lot of different shows and this, I think, is the vibe they were going for with that segment. I'm not particularly into it, but that segment was not that long and honestly in a universe with superheroes, gods, monsters and powers--that's exactly where you would find this sort of thing. Comic books are not hard scifi and the genre is a catchall for anything the writers think is cool. The goofy fun parts of that movie were not the problem. The problem was when it took itself seriously as a Marvel we-have-to-save-the-world narrative.

Bringing back the old gang makes sense though. That's part of what makes Hollywood what it is--the star system. Throwing bags of money at RJD to get him to come back for some role that makes absolutely no sense will still probably bring in an audience. That is probably going to work at least for one movie. As for them being all over the place--look at the source material. The comics are all over the place. These characters exist in a fragmented, heavily retconned nerdscape where significant features of the narrative can change whenever a new writer comes on board to put their spin on something. So the comics love multiverse narratives because it allows them throw crap against the wall and see what works, while dismissing the stuff that doesn't as some alternate version of the character. I think that is deeply ingrained in Marvel comics and the film studios buy into it in order to appeal to comics geeks and offer a rationale for why they bring Loki back from the dead or have RDJ play Doom or whatever.

Iron Man 1 was good because it introduced us to RDJ as Stark, but otherwise was pretty unmemorable. Iron Man 3 was actually bad. Thor 1 was ok. Thor 2 was almost completely forgettable. Captain America 1 was decent. Winter Soldier was good. Guardians of the Galaxy and Antman were good. Age of Ultron was forgettable. I'm not saying that the ones that were forgettable were bad movies, but I suspect that they were new and novel--so people remember them as being better than they actually were.

I remember some being good, but there was quite a bit of crap as well. I think I've seen most of them, and with a few exceptions it's hard to remember what even happened in several of them. So I don't personally see some big falling off in quality. I think people in general are just tired of superhero flicks and different fandoms tend to get pissy when they don't like what the studios are focusing on.

Oh snap! The British have been giving Disney tax incentives to film there!

If you're going to be popping inspirations like tic-tacs, you could build however you want. Same thing if you're expecting to be on a team that will be buffing your dmg and/or defenses. I build for survivability in a solo +4/+8 so I typically invest in def. The damage I leave on the table doesn't matter in the team content I do. Occasionally it's helpful if an AV gets pissed off at my squishy and part of the team is dead or distracted. Generally speaking if you're teamed with people that have invested in their builds one way or another, it doesn't matter at all.

Lol yes the specifics of how Disney can manage to turn out crap films and not suffer a horrible fate is approaching the level of a deep state conspiracy theory. Also the corrective can typically be summed up as "just do the things that I like and you will make a ton of money!" hahahaha. I would not have even remembered this movie was a thing except for this thread.

Wikipedia on Toys R US: While originally considered a category killer,[1] the rise of mass merchants and online retailers cost Toys "R" Us its share of the toy market. The company was further hampered by a significant debt load, the result of a leveraged buyout organized by private equity firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and real estate firm Vornado.[2] The company filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and 2018, closing all of its stores in the US, UK, and Australia, with the last US stores closing in 2021. Operations in other international markets such as Asia and Africa were less affected, but chains in Canada, parts of Europe and Asia were eventually sold to third parties. In August 2021, WHP Global announced that Toys "R" Us would be opening over 400 stores within Macy's starting in 2022.[3] The flagship store is located in New Jersey at the American Dream shopping and entertainment complex.[4][5][6] A second flagship store was opened inside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, in November 2023.[7]

The spectacle of this film not flopping hard enough to satisfy some people is amusing.

I would never want to be the same as you, and I think you're perpetuating this and steering it towards me personally, probably to get the thread locked. If your characterization of me above were true--I post a tiny fraction of what you do. Just in terms of volume of posts it doesn't matter. If what I am describing as a dynamic here is true, then people with that attitude have turned a lot of people off to this section, and probably the forums in general.

Yeah you've lost the thread here. Maybe reread from the beginning and try to reflect.

Lol you're back! That was quick. All you're doing is popping in and misrepresenting my posts and missing the point. Again. It's almost like there's a pattern. Also, still waiting on your answer for the question I asked earlier homie.