Techwright

It's a group like that which makes me want to completely clear the city hall plaza as well as the inside of city hall. It probably wouldn't take long.

This was a gut punch, the second this year. Bob Newhart was the first. I hope Dick Van Dyke will not make a third. While Darth Vader will always be his signature role, and Mufasa probably his second one, I'm much more fond of his appearances in two baseball films, Field of Dreams and The Sandlot, as well as his Admiral Greer character in the Tom Clancy movies. In fact, I just re-watched The Hunt For Red October a few days back. Looking over his achievements, it seems he narrated a documentary about Lincoln back in 1992. I shall have to find this.

While I see your point, that kind of falls back on the late person themselves when setting up their estate. While admittedly someone who died before the advent of CGI and AI would have no idea how technology might bring them back so vividly, they likely still would know/understand that their photo likeness and possibly voice recordings could be used for marketing purposes long after they're gone. It would make sense to pick executors of the estate who will hold to that person's vision regardless of personal feelings. The trickier part is to prepare the estate to carry on for multiple generations of executors making sure that none act in their own interests, but in the interests of the deceased. JRR Tolkien is such an example, I think, though not as an actor. His son, Christopher, tightly guarded his father's estate, and was angered when New Line Cinema took the films in a path he felt did not adhere to his father's wishes. He even stated that it would not happen again. However, with Christopher's death, the new generation clearly has wealth on their minds and has opened his iconic writings up to all those wishing to slap an official "Middle Earth" label on anything, whether it measures up or not. I've not read JRR's will and testament, but I suspect it didn't tightly regulate his intentions. While it could be reasonably said that someone past could not have planned their estate for CGI and AI, they would have had the chance for stating how their image and voice were to be used. After all, those sorts of things were in use for printed and radio advertisements back to the 1920s.

Usually start anew due to a combination of sudden concept inspiration and funding availability. That generally gives me one or two characters to work with, and I'll stay with them until they've unlocked Incarnate/Hybrid and all incarnate slots have at least one Tier 4 created for them. Meanwhile, my banking mule has been crafting and selling to fund the next character(s). I'm actually at an unusual spot at the moment as I had several inspirational concepts in short order, and stretched funding to get them into the game. So I've been juggling 6 or 7 somewhat underfunded, and recently decided to focus on one of them to give time for INF recovery. That one just hit 50 an hour ago, so I'll be maxing out his Incarnate stuff and may play him longer or switch to one or more of my 50s to help in the INF recovery before tackling the rest of those in process.

Very similar, but not identical, to costume items I suggested back in July:

Narcissus finds the Mirror of Shallot?

They're trying to solo it, but this is clearly league material.

I'll have to give this some thought but one possibility that springs to mind is the ultimate carnivore, Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation, shopping in the hunting department of the Outdoor Man sporting goods store in Last Man Standing. This feels like a natural comedic moment though I have no idea how it would play out.

Hear, hear! This is as good a moment as any to remind players that if they can't get to donate for the game's maintenance, they can still do a great thing by donating to the Wiki's costs of operation.

Are you on one of the lower population servers? Because that has definitely not been my experience on Excelsior. I'm constantly hampered by one or more chuckleheads who come in guns blazing, unwilling to team, and just continually wipe out trolls regardless of their potential for Supa Trolls. I've even deliberately logged in during the late, late hours when the North American population is largely asleep, thinking that will give me freedom, but nope, goofballs still show to play wild west gunslingers. That's interesting. I never realized there was a different effect between locations. Though not exactly a bug, this sounds like a problem needing reporting. By any chance have you done so, or are aware of such from others?

Don't forget to look at yourself in the mirror and say "You rock!" Oh...wait...

I find it interesting to see Tudyk in such an unrepentantly evil mode. As to the insurance biz, and Tudyk's character, I got a powerful vibe as a real-life event over at the Mouse House a few days back sounded a lot like what happened to poor Joe in the script. (Disney backed down when public pressure hit a boiling point. I'm just pointing out the similarity. Let us not get into the politics of it.) As to our game, let me just clarify by saying I wasn't necessarily looking to install an insurance company in the game so much as I was wondering if we could somehow incorporate the non-powered experience into the game at some points. We have, for example, an Atlas Park mission where we take over a reporter and guide her to a meeting with a member of the Skulls. That mission, despite the dialog has absolutely no threat, but I'm wondering if we might have the occasional mission where we have to take control of a citizen and guide them to safety with the building collapsing around them. That sort of thing.

I never saw the NBC one-season show. This quirky comedy got me wonder how such a concept could be incorporated into the game. From the video's description: The original "Powerless" pilot was shown and acclaimed at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con and later discarded by NBC, that changed the whole series plot for the other 12 episodes of the first (and only) season. The show was originally created by Ben Queen, that quit the job after creative conflicts with NBC. "Powerless" is the first sitcom set in the DC Comics universe. Vanessa Hudgens stars as Emily Locke, who works at an insurance company who specialize in superhero-related claims. When her kindly boss is killed in – you guessed it – a superhero battle, Emily is none to happy to meet his replacement, Del Heller (Alan Tudyk). Coldhearted and exploitive, every move Del makes infuriates Emily, who begins to push back hard.

A bit more info regarding Skeleton Crew. I especially like the pun in the name of the ship's droid first officer.

Time travel is the actual means to get to Cimerora. Spoiler comment: As to whether they are a Lost Worlds group...hmm...I personally don't think so, though I'm sure there are reasonable counterpoints to be made. Lost Worlds genre material tends to focus on cities, civilizations, and environments that are in the same time period as the book's "civilized" societies, but so secluded as to be unknown to them, and lacking in parallel development. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series has some of these, such as a Roman city still functioning as it has for the last 2000 years (if I recall correctly as its been decades since I read the books). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger series began with an environmental lost word, a journey to a plateau with living dinosaurs previously unknown to the Victorian world in the book titled (specifically enough) The Lost World. A modern counterpart might be the 1995 movie The Last of the Dogmen in which a tracker and a professor stumble across a secret, walled-in valley, previously unobserved, where a tribe of Native Americans have been living in the same manner as their ancestors for the past few hundred years. There's no time travel involved, just a singular entrance and a wall of rugged hills to hide a valley and thereby the tribe, arresting their potential for development. One counterpoint to be made would be the Sid & Marty Krofft 1970s production Land of the Lost, which many see as part of the Lost Worlds group. In it, only the entrance to the land is in the modern world. The show calls the travel devices encountered "time doorways" but that is misleading. As Wikipedia notes; Though the term "time doorway" is used throughout the series, Land of the Lost is not meant to portray an era in Earth's history, but rather an enigmatic zone whose place and time are unknown. Indeed, within the first few minutes of the pilot, the Marshall family father tells his children that he spotted three moons in the sky.

I appreciate the request for courtesy in dealing with this. That said, I'm not certain there's much that can be done. I don't know if anyone has ever submitted it as a suggestion for the development team, but I've long felt there's a need for a team/league leader override: a command the leader can activate that flashes a central message on the individual player's screen: "READ YOUR TEAM/LEAGUE CHATS!" Something that cannot be hidden or ignored. Barring that it seems you only have a couple of choices: Have a significant portion of the team place their avatars in the face of the offending player's avatar and jump up and down, or something until the player realizes they are trying to communicate. This is not very practical, and may actually put the team in some danger for failure. Have the leader issue a 3-strike warning on team/league chat that refusing to pay attention on said chat will result in dismissal from the team. Then fulfill it if those warnings go ignored. I'd personally follow up with an in-game email to the player explaining why they were cut from the team. You must remember, short of a sudden malfunction of the UI chat box (which I admittedly have never heard of) the player themselves has made a deliberate decision to either close their chat box, or ignore what's going on within it. They do not get a berth on a team/league without initiating some form of chat, demonstrating their ability to work in chat sessions. Even on those occasions where buddies ask to join a team/league, the one who is speaking up for both should be able to communicate with his/her colleague. It really is in the player's hands as to how this plays out, including consequences for their actions/inactions. I'd also like to note that its not just new players who have done this. I've been on many BAFs where players get so into combat that they fail to pay attention to chat. I suppose it is possible that they may also not like what's playing out in the chat. Not everyone likes corny jokes or innuendo conversations, and that might lead to a few chat turn-offs.

I suppose the question is whether there was an abused advertising budget. Firefall (game not band) was on track to eventually be a successful game back in 2011 and was having an extended beta test. However, much of the budget was diverted for ridiculous things like an expensive custom bus and role players in very professional costumes (including John Cena). All supposedly as advertising techniques, but it was 1- well beyond the advertising budget, 2- dipping heavily into the development budget, and without a completed game. I do admit the beta was, from 2011 to 2013 pretty awesome, but only had a handful of zones, and some zones had been shut down for retooling. This advertising fiasco destroyed the company, the game was sold, then slowly destroyed. Just an example, but Concord may have had similar failures.

Thanks for the feedback @WanderingAries. Regarding the comment on the controls, did the game feel like it was actually designed for another system and the PS5 was just quickly inserted?

Never heard of it, and I've viewed 3720 titles according to Steam, including a host of titles that at one point were "coming soon". Judging from similar comments, that's part of their problem, I think. Which is weird because I've lost count as to how many low-budget-for-advertising indie games have been pushed before me. Anthem can breath a little easier now, with such a contender taking the heat for short durations.

This is the first I've heard of Whisper. Is there a demostrated comparison with Respeecher? As to why, I'd have to know if Whisper is pure AI or an AI to modulate an actor's voice to sound like another actor. If pure AI, the challenge is to get the AI to know both subtlety and creativity. The best voice actors have these skills, and I suspect no AI for a while will be completely able match or exceed both. I could be wrong, though, I admit.

Yes, but since we know that they know, we should be able to enhance our psi powers and overcome the dampening. Unless they know that we know that they know, you know?

The answer lies in Crimson's arc. If anyone wants to spoil it for themselves, then...

There's a thought...pay an actor's estate to create great movies with his/her likeness and avoid his/her toxic meltdowns. I look forward to the next Rex Harrison musical. 😁 Responding to what you've mentioned in the spoiler box: Keep in mind, this is all in today's costs and standards. Alien: Romulus is a 2024 film. Rogue One is a 2016 film. An 8 year difference. In CGI terms that's probably 2.5 generations, assuming something similar to Moore's Law. Of course the 2024 movie CGI is going to look better. Extending that thought, we should look beyond today. CGI has greatly advanced in the last decade. A.I. may speed this. Just like computer technology, this increase is going to always cost more on the cutting edge, but less on the well-established end. Sharknado 2030 is going to be a lot more realistic and scarier than the previous version, while still being budget friendly for SyFy. (I just made up an example. No need to get worried.) At some point, possibly sooner rather than later, we're going to cross that point where a CGI character is indistinguishable from the real thing, and then...we'll have Running Man. (j/k...I hope.) ...we'll have a situation where "perfection", if I can call it that, is very costly, but in a few years, it becomes more affordable since CGI will find new things to push the horizon. Eventually, it will be affordable to have "perfection". That's the point everyone needs to look towards right now and come up with the best balance of rules, guidelines, permissions, and artistic freedom.

Why does the Team Transport only transport a percentage of the 8-person team on first try and not the full team? At first glance, one would think inclusion of the entire team would be design 101, but perhaps there's a code reason? Why do the enhancement storage tables in bases flip-flop the listings of items if one is pulling several of one type out of them for use? I've lost track of the number of times I click on a wrong item because the table re-sorts the order. Insert your "Why does [X] in the game do [Y] here.

I'm actually rather surprised at the Malta Titans resistance level due to their, um, shall we say "unique" nature.