Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Quote:We're likely working off different definitions of "obsolete," then. I'm not a native speaker, so my first encounter with the word was a Dexter's Lab episode where Dexter built himself a computer which proceeded to take over his lab, proclaiming: "X is obsolete, and all obsolete matter must be destroyed." in relation to everything and anything Dexter had built, including Dexter himself and even Dee Dee, who eventually broke the robot by insisting "Well, if you sound like Dexter and act like Dexter then you muuust be Dexter! See you later Dexter!" causing the Robot to insist that "Dexter is obsolete and must be destroyed!" at which point his own drones destroyed him.Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Obsolescence doesn't imply that anything should be done about the obsoleted content, unless it's a world-wide change that is designed to make the entire world relevant again. Otherwise, I'm perfectly fine with leaving the legacy content to the legacy players. I'm one of them, myself, after all and like you I'm not keen on seeing stuff I've grown attached to be destroyed in the name of questionable "progress".
Huh... Tangent.
Anyway, I don't have a problem with obsolete content, myself. I'm both a creature of habit and a creature of simplicity, if you can believe that, and I rather enjoy the uniformity and predictability of old content, rather minding the random-seeming nature of newer missions. As I've said before, an "organic" seeming world is great when you're first being introduced to it, but if you're going to go through a game over and over again like I have for the last eight years, then the type of gameplay which can become a "habit" and a "routine" is superior. I like to problem-solve occasionally, but if I'll be playing for hours and hours, I'd rather play something that doesn't tax me with new experiences too often. To me, it's easiest to reach a state of flow by something that I feel I'm in complete control of by virtue of being able to predict it.
New content is finally starting to get there by remembering to actually include gameplay along with the story and cutscenes, but honestly... I still wouldn't trust the developers to "rebuild" it all any more so than I'd trust them to make a literal City of Heroes 2. I worry what "lessons" they've learned and how those will reflect on the redone content. Jack Emmert left NCsoft claiming to have learned many lessons, yet he seems to have learned exactly the wrong ones. I've seen "City of Heroes" done right once before and wasn't exactly blown away. At this point, I'd rather not fix what ain't broke, because exactly what constitutes "improvement" isn't something I'm willing to take on blind faith.
Sure. I have no problem with that. I still own decade old games that people didn't like even when they were new, so I've no problem playing "condemned" content. In general, I don't try to have any sort of control over other players' habits. Don't mind them farming Wolves or farming the Architect or farming Winter Lords or whatever's the latest and fastest at the time. I care about what I get to experience. If that means putting a sticker on old content and taking it out of circulation, then so be it, so long as I can play it. In fact, I'd really like to see the old Faultline as an Echo. That place was pointless, but it was ten times as visually impressive as new Faultline. I thought the deep cracks and the AMAZINGLY huge dam wall were some of the best sights in the game.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
No need to disappear it entirely, just deemphasize it and slap on a warning label. -
Quote:With all due respect, Zwill, the bugs I posted here the previous time are bugs I've been reporting via all channels available to me, and doing so repeatedly, over something like three or four years and nothing ever happens to them. The first time I ever saw a person of authority so much as acknowledge they even existed is when I put them in this thread directly.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Please make sure that you're posting your bug reports in the appropriate forum so that the QA group can find them in their nightly scrubs.
I get that you don't want this to turn into a banana phone line to QA, but it's hard to resist including bugs in a thread that has the eyes of the right person when those bugs haven't been touched in years.
Yes, I know the jet pack isn't one of those, but the FF bubbles and Poison Trap are. I first saw them in 2009 at some point and I've been reporting them since. They're still bugged. -
Quote:Not necessarily. Raids are one thing, but progress through the Incarnate system has also been opened up via more traditional story arcs, as well, and those could be alternated to have a more villainous theme. In a way, it's fitting that the large, coordinated, "for the greater good" events are hero-centric since that always seems to be the dividing line between heroes and villains when they come together: Heroes band together out of a common goal, villains band together out of necessity and end up betraying each other and losing. It makes sense they'd do well in smaller-scale, more personally-motivated tasks.Originally Posted by Ogi
We've crossed the event horizon of raid content so there's no getting away now. Redside doesn't have the numbers to have their own trials and they're pissed off at always being the hero.
In short, so long as we're giving Incarnate rewards for story arcs, there ought to be some that are villain-only. -
Quote:This, too. For a while there, the story direction and the actual technical quality of the writing was in tailspin and actually in danger of alienating me on the game entirely. Amateurish writing, terrible proof-reading and the mistaken belief that character deaths are the same as drama nearly ran what used to be a respectable fictional universe into the ground.Originally Posted by Xanatos
Story direction, implementation, and the quality of the writing.
Luckily, this has been a lot less prominent in recent times. I don't know if someone got replaced, someone learned to spell or someone finally got the hint, but the I22 and I23 content has been a massive improvement on the frightening decay of I19-I21.
I don't think I can quite the game's "story" as being something that is worse now. It got VERY bad at one point, but it's improved a lot now, to where it's pretty much on par with the better examples of the game's past. I guess we dodged a bullet on that one. -
Quote:Don't want to fight for the greater good? But thou must! The really sad thing here is that a lot of these situations can be resolved, at least partially, by explaining around them. Yes, our mission structure is set and I can see how there wasn't enough time and resources to make two separate paths. Let's say we're trying to work with what we have. You know your arc is heroic but you need to make it look like it's working for villains, too. So you need to HIDE IT!Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Lemme go back to Heather Townshend's arc starter. When first speaking with redside characters, you are presented with the following dialogue options:
"Relax, I'm here to help you out and play nice."
"I'll be playing the role of The Hero today."
Trouble is our writers are terrible at hiding the underlying game mechanic limitations, and have on several occasions attempted to "lampshade" them with satire, like the infamous "Yeah, yeah, for the greater good, like always!" joke disaster. Hanging a lamp shade on it in the belief that it's still better than just having the bare bulb sticking out of the wall only serves to bring attention to the problem. It is neither an excuse nor a justification, and only really works if your story is strong enough to survive that particular bit of discontinuity. By making jokes about how horrid the imbalance is, all you're doing is making people hurt by the imbalance angry for nothing while people not hurt by it have no reason to care either way. It's a very simple rule of game design that if YOU create the problem, then YOU don't get to poke fun at it unless you solve it, because the people you created the problem for will not appreciate it.
This really doesn't do much to solve the cardinal problem of co-op content, though - you can't have heroes doing villain content. A villain can do a heroic mission and still remain a villain without morality ever coming into it. A hero can't really do a villainous mission and remain a hero because it only takes one real transgression to fall from grace. This more or less mandates that co-op content be hero-centric and eventually work towards some kind of greater good goal.
Which is why co-op content is a MISTAKE. Yes, it's easier to make. Yes, it impacts more people. Yes, it costs less. It costs even less to do nothing at all ever again, but just because it costs less doesn't make it a good decision. It is functionally impossible to make co-op content that works for both heroes and villains that doesn't hurt one, the other or usually both. More than that, it's becoming quite tiresome to have the result of every new content ever be "the world is destroyed" and to have people's justification be "save the world (for myself)" every single time. Even if we ignore the heroic slant to this, that plot thread itself is beyond old now. I like saving the world as much as the next guy, but can we stop tossing cosmic disasters at it for five minutes and focus on a plot which DOESN'T require a coalition of heroes and villains to go beat up some dude somewhere?
Even if we admit that Praetoria and villain-side are going to be dead and not part of the game, the "band together to save the world" plot is old even for the heroes it ought to be most applicable to. The Dark Watcher's mission to "Save the world" is actually pretty good, it's well set up and it deserves all the fanfare. But we can't have an invasion that forces us to band together every other week, lest we have to resort to bringing in the Nexus and have Wade Barret be the Well's champion all of a sudden.
Not every plot needs to threaten to destroy the world and not every plot needs to require people of divergent moralities to band together and fight it. It was funny the first couple of times, but now it's just old... And yet we're gearing up for ANOTHER invasion. What is that, like, the fourth or fifth? We had the Rikti invade... Twice. We had the Soldiers of Rularuu invade. We had the Praetorians invade. We had Axis Amerika invade. Now we're waiting for the Battalion to invade. Enough with the invasion angle, please. -
Quote:Hmm... OK, that's disappointing, but I can see that. OK, then could you please ask them to at least do something with that gradient cube that attaches the plate to the back? It looks like it's bugged because it doesn't really have any detail to it, just a basic gradient. I can see how realigning the jet pack might be problematic, but if we can at least get that thing to look like a support strut, I'd be satisfied.Originally Posted by Dink
Samuel_Tow and Unknown_User: I just asked the Character Artists that worked on the Mecha Suit and the Olympian Guard Boots and they are "Working as Designed".
*edit*
And thank you for getting back to us so promptly. Very appreciated. -
Quote:"Nerf herders" is one of those terms like "fanboys" and "vocal minority" that start off meaning nothing and proceed to mean even less each time you use them.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
It needed some "minor" adjustments in a few areas, not to be nerf herded into the hot mess it is currently by admittedly agenda driven forumites. That is disgusting.
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Quote:I used to have a level 50 Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster, myself. She was easily the safest of all my Blasters because she ended fights before they became dangerous. All my other Blasters, and I have a 50 AR/Dev/Mun and a 50 Energy/Energy/Force, excelled at dragging fights out longer until Gunslingers woke up from a hold and more enemies had more chances to get a lucky shot on me, thus they tended to die and get in a bad way a lot more often.Originally Posted by Abysmalyxia
Well, consider the nature of Fire Manipulation... and I got a 50 Fire/Fire blaster here.. I got an idea of what I'm talking about.
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Quote:What amazes me is Matt Miller seems to be going back on very legitimate fears he himself has expressed in the past, in regards to overstretching the studio's resources. In relation to "end game," for instance, he has been very clear that there's no real point to adding 10 more levels when it'll take the studio months to create content for them and players would blow through it in a week, if not in a day. This isn't just about end game, though, because the same applies to adding a whole new "side" to the game. When they added villains, they essentially doubled their workload by making their game "wider," and the stress this put on the studio was IMMEDIATELY obvious. It was clear even from the word go that they Cryptic Studios simply couldn't work on both sides at the same time, so they took to alternating between sides with each Issue... For a couple of Issues from 6 to 8. Then I 9 brought Inventions to "everybody," then I10 brought the Rikti War Zone as co-op content and it's been co-op pretty much ever since.Originally Posted by Dante
I think you've pinpointed the problem right there. I'm still amazed that the Devs introduced four new moralities with Going Rogue (Vigilante, Rogue, Loyalist and Resistance) and then failed to incorporate their perspectives into future content. That just seems incredibly short sighted.
I'm honestly beginning to wonder if I preferred the content when there were only 15 people working on the title...
Matt Miller was there. He has to have seen what this splitting the game and splitting the player base does to development resources. With this in mind, I honestly do not get how Praetorian Earth got greenlit in the first place, when it adds a THIRD game for the studio to design for. This is a single studio now designing content for three games, essentially, so of course they can't keep up. But instead of alternating, they simply try to make content for everybody and in the process manage to not make it really fit anybody at all.
Villains feel like heroes, heroes feel like villains and Praetorians feel forgotten. This isn't working, guys. You do good work, but you're tying your shoelaces together by trying to make so many things at once. If you can't work all three angles simultaneously, alternate. We dealt just fine with "half-Issues" being all about Incarnates and regular Issues being about the rest of the game. I'm sure "heroes" will complain if there were a whole issue devoted to just villain content, but you can't please all the people all the time. Matt Miller of all people should know this, because he pretty much coined the phrase, at least around these forums. You can't please all the people all the time, and trying to do so ends up pleasing nobody most of the time.
Seriously, alternate. We'll survive. -
Quote:Dink, if you're looking at weirdly aligned back items, could you please look at the Mecha Armour jet pack for non-armoured tops, please? It seems to be positioned way too far backwards and only connected to the back by a low-quality cube that I don't think is intended to be visible. Look:Originally Posted by Dink
Fireheart: Sending it off to QA, tested it on my machine, same thing, wow, very old assets also.
It looks like the jet pack is hovering too far back and exposing a non-shaded, simple gradient shape that I think is supposed to be entirely buried inside the back. It also makes it strange that the pack has this ice flat backing that just hangs so far back.
I realise this may be so it fits the Armoured torso better since that's where the Mecha Armour chest is, but is it not possible to vary the distance of the pack from the back based on what torso is being used? Back Alley Brawler did this for Shield Defence, where how far the shield is offset from the hand depends on the model of the glove used so it sits on top of Large Robotic gloves without clipping into them while still sitting flush against bare hands. Is it possible to do something like this with the Mecha Armour backpack so it sits more flush with the back on a tights costume? You already did such a marvellous job with the Retro Sci-Fi jet packs and how well they sit against the back. Can something be done with this one, too?
And yes, I do have a costume file to demonstrate this, as well:
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0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_GLOVE.GEO/GEO_Larm*_ImperialDefense_02 Texture1 !X_ImperialDefense_Glove_02 Texture2 !Glove_ImperialDefense_02_Mask DisplayName P3937616722 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName RoboticArm2 Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_BOOT.GEO/GEO_LlegR_ImperialDefense_02 Texture1 !X_ImperialDefense_Boot_02 Texture2 !Boot_V_ImperialDefense_02_Mask DisplayName P2104750136 RegionName "Lower Body" BodySetName Tight Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_BELT.GEO/GEO_Belt_Cyborg_01 Texture1 !X_Cyborg_Gloves Texture2 none DisplayName P177456852 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName RoboticArm2 Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry Hitech Texture1 HiTech_Helmet_01a Texture2 HiTech_Helmet_01b DisplayName P3020775162 RegionName Head BodySetName Helmets Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_EYES.GEO/GEO_Eyes_Gas_Mask_Goggles_03 Texture1 !X_Eyes_Gas_Mask_03 Texture2 !Eyes_V_Science_Goggle_03_Mask DisplayName P2793026233 RegionName Head BodySetName Helmets Color1 115, 115, 115 Color2 212, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_EMBLEM.GEO/GEO_Emblem_Clockwork_01 Texture1 !X_Clockwork_Emblem_01 Texture2 !Emblem_V_Clockwork_01_Mask DisplayName P2281134661 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName RoboticArm2 Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_SPADR.GEO/GEO_SpadR_ImperialDefense_03 Texture1 !X_ImperialDefense_SpadR_02 Texture2 !Spadr_ImperialDefense_02_Mask DisplayName P772741860 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName RoboticArm2 Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Fx costumes/backpacks/mecha_01/male_backpack_mecha_01b.fx Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none DisplayName P213071247 RegionName Capes BodySetName "Back Packs" Color1 255, 253, 0 Color2 59, 59, 59 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Fx weapons/custom_pulserifle/male_pulserifle_vanguardreddingrifle02.fx Geometry none Texture1 !x_customweapon_pulserifle_vanguard02 Texture2 none DisplayName P2098554993 RegionName Weapons BodySetName Weapons Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 115, 115, 115 Color4 255, 253, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry V_MALE_NECK.GEO/GEO_Neck_Gas_Mask_Breather_02 Texture1 !X_Eyes_Gas_Mask_01B Texture2 !Eyes_V_Science_Goggle_01_Mask DisplayName P2371314042 RegionName Head BodySetName Helmets Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Geometry Robotic_Both_03 Texture1 robotic_clean Texture2 none DisplayName P1364522116 RegionName "Upper Body" BodySetName RoboticArm2 Color1 59, 59, 59 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx costumes/celestialarmor/celestial_aura_eyes_male.fx Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none DisplayName P3636920680 RegionName Special BodySetName Celestial Color1 212, 0, 0 Color2 255, 253, 0 Color3 115, 115, 115 Color4 255, 253, 0 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Fx none Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Geometry none Texture1 none Texture2 none DisplayName P546439883 RegionName "Lower Body" BodySetName Tight Color1 31, 31, 31 Color2 227, 227, 227 Color3 31, 31, 31 Color4 227, 227, 227 } CostumePart "" { Color1 0, 0, 0 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } CostumePart "" { Color1 0, 0, 0 Color2 0, 0, 0 Color3 0, 0, 0 Color4 0, 0, 0 } } -
Quote:Depending on what kind of transformations you want, putting the attacks and the transformations in different powersets might be problematic. See, if you want to change into a wolf, or a Titan-style robot or into a lower-body-less ghost, then you're changing into a completely different character model rig which doesn't really have animations for the attacks you're referring to. The only real way to solve this is to tie transformations and attacks into the same powerset. This way, you ensure that a transformation only ever has to worry about using a very specific, very small set of animations, which is workable.Originally Posted by TheGrouch
The powers wouldn't be like a whole new set of powers that you inherit like the Kheldians, your attacking and other offensive powers would be your secondary power set.
By splitting attacks and transformations between two sets, you run into two problems. Firstly, each transformation has to have animations for ALL the attacks of the entire AT, which is a very sizable task. Secondly, you put a cascading cost on adding new transformations and new attack sets. Every time an attack set is created, a version of it has to exist for all transformations of the entire AT, and every time a new transformation is added, it has to account for all attacks the AT has access to. After you give the set a good five or six primaries and about as many secondaries, the opportunity cost of creating new ones becomes untenable.
You NEED to somehow wrap attacks in with the transformations themselves. You can do this in several ways:
Firstly, you can just make a primary that has, say, three transformations and six attacks for a total of ten powers. Each attack would have the same basic structure (single-target, medium damage, etc.) in all of the forms, but would also include stat modifiers to itself that would activate and swap around in the various forms. That's relatively easy to do since it's what Titan Weapons does, but it leaves little room for a decent attack chain.
Secondly, you can do it like Kheldians do it and have special attacks that only work for a specific form and never work outside of it, but that can't be slotted individually. Instead, they inherit whatever slots you've given the unifying form. For instance, if you turn into a Wolf, you activate four new attacks - a bite, a linge, a howl and a self speed burst. To enhance these attacks, you enhance your wolf form, but can't mess with the powers directly. Done and done.
Lastly, you could actually "cheat" and have each attack animate as a momentary transformation, but otherwise act like a regular attack. For instance, an "animal shifter" might have a "wolf bite" where be flash-transforms into a wolf, bites, then flash-transforms back into his humanoid self. He might have a "lion's roar" where he flash-transforms into a lion, roars, then flash-transforms back. It's doable, and the funny thing is... You don't actually need a new AT for this. In fact, you could make this into a "weapon" set with a draw animation that handles the transformation, and which then persists until the character leaves the power activation sequence. It's possible, but might be unwieldy. -
Quote:Here's my take on this: When I hear about changes to an AT coming down the line, I immediately put all characters of that AT on hold and pause any changes to their builds that I may be making until I see what the changes bring. The idea behind this practice is I want to see what's coming to see if I can't make a change I suspect I might be able to in order to take advantage of them. Once the changes come and I realise that the advantage I was trying to build for isn't workable for my character, I proceed with these changes in a whole other direction, or may indeed abandon or reroll the character entirely.Originally Posted by Demobot
Wait... So you currently have Snipe in your build, you don't want to go through the effort of changing your build to take advantage of the snipe change, yet you will go through the effort of changing your build to get rid of snipe entirely?
To me, this is a situation where a person hears "something"s happening with Snipes and prepares to build for whatever change is coming that makes them worth keeping. Seeing that the change is unreachable for this character's build, this person decides to finally give up on Snipes altogether and stop trying to make them work.
I would be tempted to do the same if I heard Mastermind personal attacks were getting improved in I24, only to realise that they improve, say, only when you're on a team of four or more. Not only will this make the change completely worthless for me, but it might make me go out of my way to take Mastermind personal attacks out of all my Masterminds because... Well, anyone who's played a Mastermind knows this - Mastermind personal attacks are garbage and not worth the power picks and slots they require to own. The only reason I keep them is because it's very BORING to do nothing as a Mastermind but hit binds, and because I secretly hope that they may one day be worth using again. If the only change I'm ever likely to see to them in my lifetime is worthless, that just tells me to stop trying and drop the powers entirely.
In short: Don't underestimate how people's hopes of a terrible power being improved can turn into disappointment powerful enough to go to great lengths to get rid of the power and stop trying to make it work. -
Quote:Because you make the kind of sweeping generalisation that really gets under my skin, and you couple that with the glee of seeing "heroes" slighted. I know what you're getting at, but I really, REALLY dislike that approach to the problem. It doesn't solve problems, it just hurts feelings. I know "good deal of forumgoers" did this a few times, I don't disagree. But turn tour ire against the attitude, not against "heroes" because I too play heroes and I too would be pissed off if "heroes" got burned. Please, let's not cut off our nose to spite our face. Making the situation worse does not help. It just makes the situation worse. What we want to achieve is get more people to play and appreciate villains, not fewer people to play heroes and thus the game period.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Why on EARTH would you think I've lumped you in with the same crowd who tell folks like me to "just don't run it in character", especially after we've agreed on so many different points? You CANNOT deny that, when villains get any exclusive treatment, a good deal of forumgoers get very, very angry about it. The SSA was the perfect example.
Villain-side does get the short end of the stick, but that's not the fault of the people who play heroes any more so than Tankers not getting attention is the fault of people who play Brutes. Glorifying hurting people who peruse the content you see as at fault just ends up hurting innocent people who just happen to enjoy that content with no ill will towards the content you like. I certainly don't enjoy it when, say, Defenders fail to get anything new for a while because "Haha! Now you know how my Masterminds feel!" I really, really want to simply approach this problem from a constructive, positive direction.
Oh, the "heroes are more popular" angle has always been ********. I'm not saying they aren't - they are - but it's a vicious circle. Heroes are more popular so they get more content so they get more popular so they get more content, etc. Unless you happen to be a struggling developer who has to cut corners like the studio did back when it was down to 15 people, there's really no excuse to abandon the less popular and focus on just what's being run more. Of course people will keep playing heroes when the majority of content is on the hero-side and hero-slanted when it's shared. Duh.Quote:Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Also, to the folks who keep telling me that the devs will "cater to the majority of the players," I have an idea for you. Now, I may not be an economic specialist, and I may not know much about marketing, but why not cater to your ENTIRE PLAYERBASE, not just MOST of it? The majority doesn't pay a different monthly fee from the minority. It's not like villains are paying 5 bucks a month instead of 15 bucks and deserve a low prioritization.
A smart studio takes unpopular content and improves it to make it popular, rather than just tossing it in the bin and pretending it doesn't exist. A smart studio also plans ahead and does not construct three separate paths of progression when it clearly struggles to support even one. A smart studio does not toss base raids, PvP, arenas, gladiators, hazard zones and villains into a black hole and focus on just the small subsection of what it can support.
Villains need more content that's villain-specific and unavailable to heroes. Period. And when I say "content" I don't mean an arc or two spanning six missions between them. I mean a whole new zone, I mean a number of new Task Forces, I mean entire new storylines that tie into the fabric of the broader story. I mean serious content additions. Yes, I mean a whole Issue of nothing but villain content. Because as it is right now, the side needs this to catch up. -
Quote:The physics from the old Agea PhysX card in general have gone tits up, if you'll pardon my English. Someone did something to them to "improve" them for Issue 20, and thus broke them almost completely. Nothing has been done to fix them since, or at the very least nothing has been announce or is noticeable in their broken behaviour.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Knockback. Or, rather, the ragdoll physics as a result of knockback. As in, it's still broken. Which might be nice when certain enemies effectively get perma-held because the broken ragdoll means they cannot physically stand up and resume hitting you, but it's hard to take things seriously when mobs are basically imploding in on their own skeleton. It's also REALLY annoying when it happens to your mastermind pets.
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Quote:Except that's a massive dismissal towards those of us who've been insisting that this is bad for YEARS. The only reason you don't see more people complain that co-op content sucks for villains is because people gave up on talking about it since nothing ever comes of it. I was right at the forefront of this nonsense when it came to the Rikti War Zone, for instance. "Don't like it? You should have joined Longbow." says Levantera, and I'm tempted to slap her across the mouth and remind her that I tend to shoot Longbow on a daily basis as a matter of course. In character, of course. And then the story turns around and makes us buddy-buddy with Longbow because Sefu, for as honourable as that guy is, seems to be all too forgiving of the guy carrying around the badge "Villain" for killing 1000 Longbow agents.Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
ONE step towards the other side of the game and people lose their ****, but years catering to heroes? "Just don't run it in character."
Please, dampen your sweeping generalisations because they're rather irritating for those of us who've been bringing the problem of villains being shoehorned into hero content for years. OF COURSE we're going to complain if the same happened to heroes. If it's bad for villains, it's bad for heroes and I fail to see what's to "love" about people being pissed off, unless you subscribe to the same trite notion that players can be split into "heroes" and "villains." OF COURSE I'm going to get pissed off if my heroes get screwed over the same way my villains are, but I'm sure you "loving" that will make it all the better.
If you want to be constructive, help fix the problem rather than trying to perpetuate it so that the game can suck for everyone equally. Please, it's been seven years and I'm getting tired that tired old "us vs. them" mentality that never had a reason to exist in the first place. You feel slighted. I get it and I do appreciate it. But is that any reason to snark at people who are on your side? -
Quote:No, no, I get what you mean. I'm just compelled to comment on this phrasing whenever I see it. Blame Bad Influence for using it literally too much of the time. *edit* And I was joking, as well. Just couldn't think of a good way to get that across.Originally Posted by Slaunyeh
Do I really have to explain the joke? C'mon Sam, you're better than that.
That's why I only spent a couple of sentences on it, though. The rest of my post is what I wanted to focus on, mostly. -
Quote:Which is why I'm exaggerating and boasting, yes. I know Water Blast is popular, but I can't accept that it's THAT much more popular than everything else without some reason to believe that.Originally Posted by TyrantMikey
It is generally unwise to speak for the vast majority of the population if you do not have numbers to back up your claims.
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Quote:Actually, you're players. I should hope you're not actual villains. Or should I fear for my life right about now?Originally Posted by Slaunyeh
You forget, we're villains.
I do agree with villains needing more villain-specific content wholeheartedly. I feel some of their existing zones can use more colour, but literally and metaphorically in terms of theme. I believe they need a whole new zone just to themselves. I believe the Rogue Isles side needs to feature more prominently in international, interplanetary and inter-dimensional conflicts. And while I do believe villains need more "villainy," I want to be very clear that I my definition of the word is not entirely abstract.
When I say I want more "villainy," I'm not asking for more torture porn, more angsty drama or more war crimes. There are certain aspects of what makes a villain a villain that I don't feel have any place in a game to begin with. See Dr. Light in Identity Crisis for reference. When I ask for more "villainy," I'm referring to the glamorous side of evil - the minions, the death rays, the prestige, the money, the imposing personality, the opportunity to put everyone over and get what you want, the power to force your way into your goal and so forth. I want the kind of villainy that makes villains cool and less the kind that makes villains despicable.
Why bring this up? Because Villain alignment missions are exactly the kind of villainy I DON'T care for in the slightest. It's dirty, sticky and unpleasant. Yes, Golden Girl would say that that's the point, that crime doesn't pay and you SHOULD leave playing a villain feeling bad and dirty and not having had fun. But that's the whole problem City of Villains suffered from the word go - it's designed to be unpleasant to play because whoever wrote the original content apparently couldn't fathom that otherwise good-natured people might enjoy playing a villain. The original Villain content, therefore, is written such that it's outwardly unpleasant for most and only really attractive as "catharsis" for satiating really unpleasant urges.
Now contrast this against Dean McArthur or Bane Spider Ruben or even Vincent Ross. They're still villain content, yes, and they're most decidedly evil, but they're written in such a way as to make the player feel important, proud satisfied at the end. It's evil painted in a glamorous light, and it's just fun. It's not, like the new Mercy Island, content that's designed to make you feel ashamed for having played it. The Dean/Ruben type of evil is what I really want more of, it's the kind of evil that paints my villain as a bigshot dangerous person who succeeds and doesn't get put over. Self-interested, self-serving villains that can't be stopped is what I feel the game needs more of. -
Quote:Well, in that case, you're a mean doo-doo head. Glad you don't care about what I say.Originally Posted by TheGrouch
I don't give a **** what any one says, I just want a Shapeshifter archetype.
However, you have to realise that when suggesting a new AT, there are certain things that you need to cover in order for your idea to have any sort of worth to the development team. You need to define the basic abilities of your AT - is this a shapeshifter that only turns into one other thing? Does that only happen some of the time, is it for a limited period? Does that shapeshifter turn into multiple forms? Why would a person want to actually use the forms?
"A Shapeshifter archetype" already exists, and it's called a Kheldian. Both Peacebringers and Warshades can shapeshift into two forms besides their human form. If you're suggesting an AT that's like an existing AT, you need to specify how it's different and why you feel it needs to be its own AT. You're already given a pretty solid base in Kheldians, so you really ought to go play one, figure out how they work and come back to explain where you want to differ from them.
Years ago, I made an AT suggestion to Castle directly, and one of the first questions he asked me was "OK, but what role would this AT have on a team?" The long and short of it is a powers designer will not simply go ahead and expend inordinate amounts of time designing a whole new AT with what amounts to entirely new powersets, then saddle the art team with making graphics for them, unless there's some specific purpose such an AT can fill - unless there's a reason to make it, essentially. And stuffing your fingers in your ears, going "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I JUST WANT MY STUFF!" is not reason enough to go through all that work.
Ideas are cheap. If you think the developers would never have thought of making a shapeshifter AT until you told them so, then you're wrong, especially since others have suggested this before you and done a much better job. So you don't care about comments from your peers. I can see that. But you seem to forget that even if you don't care to convince us specifically, you still need to make a convincing argument for the development team. Last I checked, they weren't taking requests, so if you want your suggestion implemented, you need to convince them that they really are better off implementing it. Childishly insisting with no argument will do you no good. -
Quote:And thousands of people use a variety of sets to depict a power that protects you by biological means. Regeneration, Willpower, Invulnerability... I've used Super Reflexes for this, even.Originally Posted by Wolf_Reign
But that does not disclude the fact that water blasting is now a real thing. Think about it. Hundreds of people use other sets to mimmick water blast.
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Quote:Dillo is a purpose-designed meme, so I'm not surprised he'd be popular. I've seen about as much talk about him as about "Freem!" which is about "not much" for both. It's also low-level content that everyone's likely to have run, on the side where most people play. Seriously speaking, there used to be a time when people's favourite character was Vivacious Verandi, but I don't know if anyone still plays that content any more.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I'm not making an argument about the popularity of Twinshot compared to other methods of leveling, I'm saying that people love the characters from that storyline, Dillo in particular, and aren't shy about expressing their affection in chat.
Honestly, after the initial fad of saying "Hoorb!" subsided, I've barely heard anyone bring it up. To me, it's the "Kill Skuls!" of recent times - it's funny for a while, but it hardly depicts a clear favourite. To me, memes are a bit of a "cheap" way to get exposure for something. Because at the end of the day, all your base are belong to us.
"A choice" doesn't refer to a situation that offers equal options to everybody, not in this case. It refers to a situation that offers at least one option for everybody. I know full well that you don't like legacy content, and that's fine. I wouldn't dream of forcing you to play it. But why are you so intent on making me not play the content I want to play? Especially since I would quite literally pay actual money to play this. I am dead serious.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
When the "choice" is between something of modern vintage- anything of modern vintage, incorporating the past 8 years of institutional experience in what makes good content, or the sort of absolutely tedious, embarrassing garbage exemplified by the legacy early game....that's not really a choice.
Goat, you're speaking with a guy who doesn't like Batman as a basic concept and whose TV viewing consists of 99% documentaries. I watch the Viasat Explorer, Viasat History, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, the National Geographic Channel, Crime and Investigation and Zone Reality, and I don't watch anything else unless someone specifically comes and tells me there's something good on another of the channels. Occasionally I'll watch WWE Raw or Smackdown when I catch those airing, but it's incredibly rare that this happens since they air on channels I don't normally watch.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Or rather, it's a choice in the same way as the freedom to watch Nolan's The Dark Knight or an industrial training film on the proper method of sharpening pencils.
More specifically, I would most certainly watch that episode of "How It's Made" that describes the process for manufacturing pencils, which I've already seen, over the Dark Knight, which I have no intention of seeing. Nor do I have any intention of watching The Dark Knight Returns nor whatever they're calling the next one with Bane. I barely got to play Arkham Asylum a good two years after it came out, and it took me this long because it has Batman in it. In the end, it's not a bad game, but it's not exactly a great game because it has Batman in it. I can't bring myself to play Arkham City both because I'm tired of scavenger hunt sandboxes and because it has Batman in it. I'm not interested in Batman. I never was. The only reason I like Batman Forever is because Jim Carey as the Riddler and Tomme Lee Jones as Two-Face steal the show completely, and because... Well, fluorescent paint thug fights in dark alleyways. I like me some glow-in-the-dark costume designs.
Yeah, David Nakayama held the same view about legacy costume pieces, and that didn't come across well with players. You may find this "garbage" to be bad for the game, but I don't appreciate content I like being taken out because you think I'm better off playing what you like instead of playing what I like. Hide it from new players if you absolutely must, but this is content I paid for when I purchased City of Heroes all those many moons ago. I don't react well to having content I paid for removed from the game because someone else doesn't like it.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
We're never going to reach any accord here- garbage is garbage, and the game is better off without it. It gives a bad account of itself and reflects badly on CoH. It would be a terrible thing for a brand new player to download the game, have a great time making a character, then log in and run ANY of the junk I ran way back in 2004.
Because I can't possibly get tired of that? It's one, single mission that plays out the same every single time. And I'm not tired of "mission content," I'm tired of dialogues that intrude on my gameplay, I'm tired of unnecessary scripting and excessive ambushes, I'm tired of whole instances of nothing but one spawn to fight in them, I'm tired of enemies phasing into reality only AFTER I've accomplished a previous objective, requiring me to backtrack, I'm tired of cutsenes and all that sort of thing. But that's not "mission content." For many years, the game did just fine by having simple missions with simple objectives that budgeted their narrative at the beginning, end and clues.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
If you're tired of the mission content, hop on the DIB/DFB bullet train- that's what it's there for.
That's still "mission content," and that's the kind of mission content I want to play more of. This content exists, but you're arguing that I shouldn't be able to run it, so that you can later argue that my tastes are aberrant and we can't make content for everybody so we can't make content for me. The content exists already, and I'm perfectly happy to play through it time and time again. I'll never get tired of Kings Row or Skyway City, and I refuse to lose something I like over your Jack Emmert vision of what the game should be about. No offence.
Yes, except I'm not making the argument you seem to think I'm making. I like the newest mission design because it most closely resembles the oldest mission design of the ones I've seen. What our writers have learned is how to write like Jack Emmert and Matt Miller did back in 2004. Only in that case, those guys wrote like this because they had no choice - the mission structure mandated it. Now that we have much greater mission writing tools, I was forced to sit through several Issues of the writers going berserk and employing every gimmick in the book till I was sick to my stomack of running new missions. Most of what they've learned is to tone it down and design missions like they used to be designed - with gameplay in mind first and foremost, and a story that doesn't try to usurp that, but instead seeks to give context to the gameplay.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
You make my argument for me Sam- yes, the creatives have learned a TON over the years. That's why the old content doesn't reflect well on the game and should be either paved over or routed around.
I've described SSA1.7 as the least horrible of the SSA1s, because it is. Of all of the overbooked, overengineered, gimmick-ridden nonsense that is the SSA1, SSA1.7 is easily the least botched because for that, the mission designers simply stopped trying so damn hard and gave us basic, simple missions that we actually got to play through, as opposed to the "sit back and watch our scripts play out" attitude of the previous six. With SSA1.7, they finally realised we actually wanted to, you know, play the actual game, so they let us, and that's what makes the story least bad. It's still pretty bad because it's attached to the SSA1 and its text is horribly ridden with typos, but it's not that bad. With SSA2.1 not attached to a horrible story and offering abundant gameplay, it's almost like I'm back to 2004, except for the occasional "all talk" mission. And considering the arc is otherwise pretty good, those aren't that bad, especially since they allow all the talking to be condensed into a couple of specific instances, as opposed to strewn about the story so I'm tripping over it every five minutes.
Condescending sarcasm noted and appreciated.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
As with the Skyway zone itself, I don't think anything needs to be eliminated as long as players are consciously steered onto the modern, fun expressway that soars over the disreputable shantytown of legacy content. -
Quote:And I bet you're wrong. Water Blast got hyped to all hell here on the forums with the other two slipping under the radar. I didn't even know what Bio Armour looked like until yesterday, and the only reason I saw it was on suggestion from a friend of mine. Turns out it's amazing! Even when I still played Blasters, Water Blast never interested me. Bio Armour, on the other hand, is stacking armour done right, and indeed Stone Armour done right, at least from a visual standpoint. I've been a staunch defender of Stone Armour's stacking shield graphics, but having seen Bio Armour, that's simply a superior design.Originally Posted by Wolf_Reign
I bet you when you get a vote, more people will want water blast over the other 2.
I've not even seen Nature Affinity yet. I've heard nothing about what it does, either. I didn't even know it existed until a couple of days when someone mentioned it off-hand. I meant to check it out yesterday, but I simply forgot. -
Quote:I am, yes. One thing I absolutely do not want to see from a Shapeshifter AT is each form coming with its own set of powers that have to be enhanced individually. Instead, I want a Shapeshifter AT that comes with the standard set of 9 powers that simply change stats and possibly unenhanceable secondary effects with the different forms.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
He's not talking about the trays. I believe Sam is talking about how Kheldians have far too many powers and we have a finite number of slots to assign to our builds so one way or another we end up either gimping powers or not using the Archetype to it's fullest potential because we have to skip a form or two.
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That's kind of what I mean - sometimes, options kind of like what I want may exist, but I'd either be vastly misappropriating quite expensive enhancements or altering the conditions. And that's not to devalue what you're saying - that's a VERY impressive list you've put in there. Even if it's not exact, it's a HELL of a lot closer than what I expected would be there.
My point, though, is that even at the best of times, you're still running against what specific packages the game offers. Even if we ignore set bonuses entirely, being able to make the exact combinations of enhancements that I want and being able to use the same combination repeatedly would be a lot more straightforward to do. I'm sure it wouldn't be as good as Sets with Set bonuses, sure, but I've never used sets in Diablo or its clones and would always opt for the simpler gear.
Generally speaking, I take all the powers from my primary and secondary, I get them to 50 using SOs and Commons and I then slot them with Uncommon Sets. As luck would have it, only a SINGLE Uncommon set exists for each category at level 50. I could probably do more, but I've tried and my enthusiasm didn't last. From the looks of it, I'll be picking pretty much the same Incarnate powers on all my characters, too, with only very rare exceptions. They're almost all melee, anyway. That's more or less what "package" customization does to me - I find a single package that works and then just stick to it. -
Quote:Even if these aren't lost to forum purges, it's been so long that sourcing red name posts is a pain in the *** that I'm not going to go through. I can tell you for a fact that we peladed with BABs to allow Walk to be used in Power Suppression situations since, theoretically, it hurt nothing to have the power active then. If we're not using any movement-boosting powers anyway, we may as well walk. This was added as a deliberate change at one point, and to the best of my knowledge should still be the case in places where the power suppression field never failed, such as the Praetorian Trading House.Originally Posted by Elf_Sniper
Hmm, I suppose my reply could be taken that way. No, I'm not implying that Sam is lying, but would like to see the basis for his statement that I am wrong. If there is such, I'll gladly admit that I am wrong on this point. No hard feelings on my part, it would not be the first time I was proven wrong... and probably not be the last.
As for actual evidence, City of Data provides. Pick any power at random. Let's say Blaster -> Archery -> Snap Shot since it's the first alphabetically. Check the power's listing and you'll note where it says "Modes disallowed: Disable_All." In other words, this power cannot be used whenever the character enters a Disable_All state, such as when dead. Let's take another power, and we'll shoot for a more complex one this time: Peacebringer -> Luminous Blast -> Gleaming Bolt. This one says "Modes disallowed: Peacebringer_Blaster_Mode, Peacebringer_Tanker_Mode, Disable_All." What this means is you can't use this power when you're dead, essentially, or when you're in the "tanker mode" which White Dwarf sets you to, or when you're in the "blaster mode" which Bright Nova puts you in.
Now let's look at Walk itself, here titled as Inherent -> Walk. Check what disables this power and you'll find "Modes disallowed: Disable_Walk." This should tell you two things. First, this power is intentionally NOT tagged to disable from the mode which is designed to disable all powers, hence instances where all powers are disabled should not affect Walk. Second, Walk is intended to only ever suppress under specific conditions, to the point where it has its own mode named after it that a character has to be placed in for Walk to suppress. In short, Walk is intended to suppress only and solely when the game calls for walk to be suppressed specifically and should not suppress when broad-range power suppression is used.
This is, obviously, only circumstantial evidence. However, if you take my word that I have seen Christopher "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce, art lead of the studio at the time, make this change on player request, then it's very strong circumstantial evidence. Considering the only reason Walk even exists is that BABs made it on his own free time without being paid for it just because people kept asking for it, tagging the power to not suppress in the Praetorian Trading House and in the Architect by player request would be the natural thing to do when it's evidently not that complex.
Why the power broke is that something about the Architect suppression field broke and it disabled entirely, and then someone else had to fix it long after BABs had left. Since he was the only reason Walk even exists, it's pretty easy to see how someone either didn't know to make sure Walk still worked, or otherwise considered it too low of a priority.