Coyotedancer

And here's where differences of opinion come in... While I liked the idea of the DA "solo path" and still use it to this day, I found the live dev's pacing for it an absolute joke. We'd asked for a viable solo path and the time gates they included when they created one were just silly. I suspect they thought they had to do that... Had to make it absolutely, ridiculously slow and so as unattractive an option as possible... Because they were still trying to force as many people as they could into the "Grinding End-game Raids just like Warcraft is the New Hotness!"-plan for the game. (I remember Posi being a little flabbergasted that we even WANTED a solo Incarnate path, and got the distinct feeling that they only gave us what they did grudgingly-) So, I would call the original Incarnate Solo Path an excellent example of what *NOT* to do as an alternate way to attain something rather than an example to be emulated. What would I consider more acceptable? The current alternatives for unlocking our Alpha slots are a better model to look at, I think. Playing through the game as usual to get the iXP to unlock that slot might take a couple of days, depending on what you're doing, but it's business-as-usual and not so slow that it's frustrating. Or you can choose to do Ramiel's arc instead. which is much faster... but involves having to beat up some goons who aren't necessarily easy targets for every character out there.

Agreeing with Grey and Pizza on the combo system. My favorite back in the live days was a DB/WP Stalker named Grey Kestrel...I very occasionally used Sweep or Weaken, but for the most part just didn't find that I needed the combos with her. Otherwise, I found nothing wrong with Sweeping or Thousand Cuts, either. So, I'd have to say leave the set well enough alone.

A tiki of cultists

@Mediocretes and I have both been running into something strange lately... We'll click a mission door and get the loading screen as usual, but the map loading bar never moves and after a minute or so we get kicked. In his case it typically crashes the client back to desktop and generates an error report. Mine sends me back to the game log-in screen like being map-servered, though there are never "lost connection to mapserver" messages associated with this, nor are any error reports apparently generated in my case. It's been hitting both of us and seems independent of zone, level or character. I don't think it's our net connection, either, since it never hits us both at the same time. I've had it happen twice so far this afternoon in less than half an hour of play on Tesamun in Dark Astoria. (We're both on PCs, running Win10, build 19041, if that matters. We're both loading with Tequila. )

A good point. The people who are Very Concerned about power creep would likely have some objections to new slots.

You may want to look at the time stamps for VT's post and the one you quoted, Solar... Unless you're reading the thread backwards it's pretty obvious that they posted their summary AFTER that. Personally, I'm done talking to you about this. I suggest you just ignore list me if you're going to continue to have objections to every single post I make.

I'd have no issue with that either. An extra enhancement slot isn't going to impact a character concept the same way locked costume bits did.

You might want to go back and re-read Naraka's post on the subject...

As I already said, when it comes to other things... badges, accolades, temp powers and what-have-you... Sure. Have at it. I have no issue with those being locked out at all. It's just locking out costume options that I see issues with.

I think it's mostly a matter of those in the "against it" camp (myself included-) seeing the suggestion of locking out new costume parts as just a perpetuation of the same old problem/situation/annoying circumstance. For me, it was annoying not to have an aura back in the day.... For someone else, it may well be just as annoying now not to have access to New Item X , which will get locked behind Some Content Y or getting Badge Z that they can't do until the character hits level 30.

And apparently I'm some sort of terrible, entitled bully because I'd have liked my Oranbegan characters to have their glowing eyes way back when... Truly, the root of all evil. 😝

I stayed because there were OTHER parts of the game that I enjoyed. 'Same as anyone else. Likely the same reason you stay now. You are also, again, reading a lot more into what I posted than was actually said. You're making the assumption that I want the game to be a cakewalk and have something against added challenge. That isn't the case. But hey... jerk that knee if it makes you feel better.

Let me explain my objections in practical terms... Maybe you'll be closer to "getting it" after that. I remember all too well my first Oranbegan characters not being able to have their glowing eyes.... something they really needed at the time to pull off the idea I was going for, since the player-usable armor pieces wouldn't come along until the faction rework years later... Because some nitwit in the old dev crew apparently thought that it was just a GRAND idea to put an entire classification of costume details... auras in that case... behind a level-gated mission. And not even a lowbie mission at that! It annoyed me then, and remembering it still annoys me now. I also remember not being able to make an Amazon character look the way I wanted her to from the start because the Roman armor pieces I needed to use were locked behind being high enough level to get to the zone and finish an ITF. It was enough to make me abandon the idea of making the character, since I had no desire to play Olivia-the-Generic-Hero-Scrapper for 35 levels waiting to be deemed "worthy" of having the armor the concept called for. So... no. I'm never going to like the idea of locked and limited costume parts. I've personally been bitten by it in the past and would prefer not to repeat the experience.

A bunny of DUST

You're two ahead of me. I read them all the time. I don't think I've ever directly commented about a bio to that character's owner.

I still say costume parts shouldn't be locked, rather it's behind level-based missions like the old cape and aura system, or completion of specific tasks. Badges, temp powers and accolades? Sure. Why not. But not costume items. In a game so heavily based on character customization, that's just *annoying*.

Yep. This has been going on forever.... It's why I ended up having two versions of my main. One with her original Rogue alignment and the other a blue side native. It gets really old really fast when you're constantly being kicked from teams. <_<

Only International men? What about our domestic ones? They ought not be left out, I'm thinking.... 😆

Just so. 🧐

Or we could just not worry and wibble about what the tophats-and-monocles crowd is going to do, and actually let the "little people" enjoy a discount on something for a few weeks.... Because the truth is, no matter WHAT the rest of the game population is up to, the marketeers are still going to keep on making bank in some fashion. Rather they make 100 billion from buying up discounted Winter packs or spend the same three weeks making a 80 billion flipping IOs, they're still going to be out there turning a profit and when you get to that level of wealth, 20 billion here or there is pocket change.

* wanders in with a small silver box, decorated with a bright blue ribbon and bow * * hands it to Bahir the Not-a-Kheldian-But-Built-as-a-Peacebringer human-only/perma-lightform "photonic Sentinel" heliomancer * * grins and says "Here you go, dude. Three more Enhancement slots. Have fun." * (Yeah. There were some annoying compromises made in that build. Three more slots? That would have addressed the issue nicely.)

"Back in the day" I actually had three that I called my Mains... Grey Kestrel the DB Stalker, Palrah the DB Tank and Nemissary the DarkityDarkDark Defender. I had a pile of other alts, but those three? They were special. The favorites. The ones I loved the most. Enough to have Leyla make me plushies of them when the game died. Enough to reproduce them in resin ABJD form. I played those three more than all of the others in my crew combined. That said? I've never re-built them here. I have their names, and I've considered doing it more times than I can count, but I've waffled over actually doing it. Even rather or not I really WANT to try to recreate them. I still don't know the answer to that.

That was my solution, too. When I needed more storage space, I split my one big, generalist SG full o' magi into four more specialized ones and coalitioned them together. The second base is about half done now. I'll build the other two when and if I need them.

The reflections belong to Uuralur the Mirror, keeper of the Garden of Memories... He's one of the aspects of Rularuu that we never actually get to meet in the TFs or Shard missions. The Shard's human survivors are duplicates of primal folks who were made at the same time the dimension itself was. As for Nem, he has a big Shard base, and a definite presence there... But I'm not sure its ever detailed where his portal to the Rikti home world is/was.

I read bios all the time, too.... Some of them are great fun in spite of the text box. My own tend to be pretty pedestrian. All of my characters have them... typically in the form of about a paragraph of dialogue from the character, sometimes followed by another paragraph of 3rd person description or OOC roleplay notes... but I wouldn't call any of them brilliant. As a writer? I'm a pretty good editor. 😝