Wing_Leader
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Posts
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Quote:You might as well call your virtual Barbie dolls avatars because that is precisely what they are. The word avatar isn't slang, it isn't a codeword used by members of a subculture to identify each other, and it is neither casual nor formal. It is simply a word with an accepted meaning amongst those who spend a lot of time--sometimes professionally--talking and writing about virtual worlds (of which MMOs are a type). It is even written into judicial commentary, making it de facto "legal speak" in some contexts.Originally Posted by Aggelakis
I don't call my virtual Barbie dolls "avatars" because in my mind, and for reasons I have no idea where it came from, "avatar" is a lot more formal a word than what I would apply to a virtual Barbie doll. The internet is casual, and for some reason - to me - "avatar" is not a casual word.
edit: I also want to point out that I said "pretentious", not "pompous". There is a slight but distinct difference between the words, which you should know if you really are a word nerd.
In order for that word, or users of that word, to be pretentious, they would have to be pretending to be something other than what they are. In what way is someone pretentious in using the word avatar? If they are using the word correctly, they aren't being pretentious they are merely being articulate.
And for the record, I wasn't responding to any of your posts; I apologize if you feel dragged into this. Someone else used the word pompous and I was responding to him. -
Quote:I have nothing against AE per se. And, in fact, I am a proponent of the idea of user-created content. I would support efforts to encourage the devs to weave AE story arcs in with the canon somehow. But I think it needs to be taken much further than that, otherwise it just sort of feels like a little sub-game within the larger game.Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
to discount AE to me smells far to much of the anti AE attitude Ive seen hurt COX since AE release. sure it is used to farm, so is alot of main content at one time or another. but the fact is we are really the only MMO that has infinite content. if anything it would be great to see a more collaberative effort of virtue lore rpers try and create more AE arcs working with game lore, and try to get enough positive ratings to encourage the devs use them as official canon and a way to take the game in a new direction evolved by the people living in its virtual world.
I have the same problem with the "battlegrounds" PvP systems in WoW. They have absolutely zero impact on the game world outside of them, and in effect they are nothing more than sporting events where nothing is actually at stake with regards to the larger narrative of Azeroth. To me, it is a total waste of time except as a practice grounds for...well...nothing meaningful. There is no world PvP in that game anymore, so training for battlegrounds PvP is only useful for battlegrounds PvP, which makes it its own little insular world unconnected to anything else going on.
I don't want to have to do all the work of making the game world feel immersive. I don't want to have to imagine for myself how the narrative strands weave together and create a dramatic tapestry. That's the job of the devs (akin to the job of the GM in a tabletop game). My actions contribute to the greater narrative, sure, and in that sense I am part of the creative act, but I want to be an actor in the (interactive) plot, not its writer or director. This isn't a failure of imagination, but a declaration of the role I wish to take as a consumer of game content and a participant in an interactive virtual world created by someone else. -
Quote:But since AE stories don't interact with the standard content, there is no way for them to be part of the canon. A carefully crafted story could easily be contradicted by the content in the next major studio update. At best, custom story arcs fit "between the cracks" of the larger canon, but never have any impact on it, or take place in "another dimension entirely", making them feel rather irrelevant, at least to me.Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
To be fair your very wrong. COX has AE and that lets you always go do your own custom story arcs.
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Quote:I will happily oblige. CoX is the best MMO I've ever played, and I've played quite a number of them.Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
And I am here to remind you that, warts and all, City of Heroes is still THE BEST FRACKING GAME ON THE PLANET.
And possibly the universe.
So you better recognize.
However, given how little I think of all the other MMOs out there, the above praise might not mean as much as it seems. My disatisfaction is with the MMO format in general, and it just happens to be CoX that takes the brunt of my venting because it is what I am playing right now. But in truth, I can't really blame Paragon Studios for delivering (maintaining?) an MMO that feels like it was designed ten years ago because, well, it was. So ultimately, whenever I b*tch and moan about something I don't like about CoX, I'm actually b*tching and moaning about the dismal state of MMO design in 2012. I don't really think CoX could ever deploy my more advanced ideas without utterly breaking; but that doesn't stop me from wishing (fantasizing?) that it could.
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Quote:We could, but I presume that the moment Marauder elects to engage the league in person he becomes a target of opportunity. An opportunity too good to pass up as far as Prometheus is concerned.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
But anyway, if our aim is to destroy the weapons caches at the Lambda facility, and we do so, why do we have to fight Marauder afterwards? Why don't we all just fly over the wall and escape?
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Gods Don't Form Leagues
Let's face it, most gods don't need to be on teams with 23 other gods to feel, well, "godlike". Gods are usually solo badasses, and as Incarnates we feel this way when playing the normal content, but not so much in the iTrials, which exist solely to give Incarnates an appropriate sandbox in which to "play god." Oh the irony.
As others have said, it will be interesting to see if the new DA content will restore the sense of our characters being the stars of their own comic books, rather than being just indistinct soldiers in a platoon heading out to fight the war against Praetoria.
In Praise of Roleplaying
On a side note, I want to mention an interesting RP scene I saw being played out on Virtue a couple of weeks back. I was in the RWZ and a handful of characters, of all levels, were sitting in that "briefing room" and talking about the Battalion and all sorts of connected game lore. In fine RP fashion they made it feel real and immediate, like they were preparing for an important strike somewhere. They may have been doing this just to kill time, or to add their own context to an upcoming door mission, or who knows what, but it was really fun to sit and watch from the sidelines. I mean, it felt more real than anything going on in the iTrails.
The sad part about all this is that the game doesn't provide any means for players to go out and address the storyline in their own way. A team can't go out to another dimension and try to learn more about The Battalion. They can't go and cut the head off Arachnos as a pre-war precaution by leading a massive strike against the Rogue Isles. Or whatever. Instead we are left with only doing the missions pre-written for us and merely pretending to deal with the thousand other important things conntected in some way to The Coming Storm.
MMOs may be pretty fun today, but we've only barely scratched the surface of what could be done with this game format if truly creative minds got to work on exploiting the notion of "virtual world" for all it's worth. -
Quote:Which kind of leaves open the question as to why Marauder didn't simply have those weapons caches (or rather the pacification grenades inside them) quietly disposed of. Or are we expected to believe that he isn't keenly aware of every single piece of munitions stored at the facility he is in charge of? And if Tyrant is so concerned with Marauder getting "out of control," why then permit Praetor Berry to give him a super serum that boosts his power even further? And if, as some have boasted, Marauder is defeatable without grenades, why would Tyrant bother with having them made? Marauder hardly represents a potential "problem" Tyrant couldn't solve on his own.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The Pacification grenades were made on Tyrant's orders to have a way of taking down Marauder if he got out of control...
Those grenades just don't make much sense to me. -
Quote:Some hours after responding, I began to fear I had misinterpreted you in this very manner. Apologies!Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Holy incorrect leap there, Wing_Leader!
Hehe, I do absolutely understand what you are talking about, but please, spare the "tragic" commentary, because I only said that my usage of it seems to have dropped off... And believe me, after I typed that I realized I'd have to remedy that... Still, I did not say that I stopped using it and I certainly didn't stop due to any peer pressure.
Nor do I. But any populist attitude that would accuse someone who uses a word like avatar of being pompous is a symptom of anti-intellectualism. My dislike of the slang term toon may be a symptom of intellectual elitism, but I'd rather be guilty of that than the opposite. If anything, I'm pompous not for knowing "big words" and using them whenever I can, but for actively avoiding and discouraging slang (or worse, incomprehensible grammar and malapropisms) in contexts that push my buttons.Quote:Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
However, I do not see having the choice of character, toon and avatar as anti-intellectualism.
And while I understand a healthy skepticism towards "trying too hard to appear all grown up," I don't think that applies to a desire to prevent the undermining of whatever little credibility video games have gained in recent years, as an acceptible adult pasttime, by slang that tends to reinforce the wider social prejudices.
And before someone, again, asks why we should care about that credibility, they should look into the ocean of legal questions MMOs and virtual worlds have opened up, and think long and hard about how the broader social view of these things shapes the laws that govern them. MMOs have ceased to be frivolous pasttimes "just for kids" for many years, but the rest of the world, which scratches its collective heads wondering why anyone would spend so much time "playing with toons", doesn't realize that. For anyone who doesn't think any of this is important, I recommend an absolutely fascinating book, which you can read for free as a PDF, called "Virtual Justice" by Greg Lastowka (it was my favorite read of 2010, and I liked it so much I read it again last year). -
Quote:Lambda Sector is Cole's IDF training facility. The "story" is that your league is being directed to "sabotage" it in order to hinder Cole's invasion plans. Though it isn't made clear before you start, the sabotage in this case takes the form of running around the interior of the facility and destroying Containment Chambers and Weapons Caches. In order to gain access to the interior, however, you must (a) defeat spawns of IDF "guarding" the road surrounding Lambda, the interior training yard, and optionally the defense turrets ringing the entire facility, and then (b) defeat the "response" robot that guards access to the elevators inside.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
What's the general story behind the LAM anyway? What are we supposed to be doing nesides going in to beat up Marauder?
The sabotage phase is ostensibly the one and only true objective of the raid, represented by the simple act of destroying Containment Chambers and Weapons Caches. However, knowing what the final act really looks like, the devs cleverly appended an ancillary benefit to the destruction of these MacGuffins. You get "molecular acids" (acids) and "pacification grenades" ('nades) temp powers that are helpful in the stage that follows.
The fight at the end with Marauder occurs, not because that is the league's goal, but because once you breach the interior and start your "sabotage" run, he decides to get directly involved in stopping you. A timer counts down to his arrival, and you get rewarded with extra time (delaying him) with each Containment Chamber/Weapons Cache pair your league destroys (the logic of that is not clear to me though). Finally, after either the timer expires or you've destroyed all the chambers and caches available (10 of each), Marauder appears on the scene to drive the league away. Only at this point does it become clear that defeating him is necessary for trial success, even though engaging him at all was never described as one of the raid's objectives (or was it and I just missed it?) -
Quote:Thanks! That was helpful.Originally Posted by Hopeling
On a Brute, it does 55.05 damage. With 3 damage SOs, that's 107.3 damage. With 3 damage SOs and 50 fury, that's 162.4 damage.
On a Scrapper, it hits for 82.58. With 3 damage SOs, that's 161 damage. Averaging in the crit damage gives us 177.1.
It definitely confirms my notion of Brutes as "better defenses than Scrappers, better damage than Tankers", a sort of in-between AT. Based on your example above, I'm actually even more impressed (than I was before) that a Brute can come as close to Scrapper damage as it does. I'll gladly trade the small damage advantage Scrappers have for the small defense and taunt advantage(s) of the Brute. I don't expect anyone else to feel the same way though. -
Quote:I find that rather tragic, actually. You (normally) like a word that has come to be accepted in academic, legal, and scientific circles as a general term for a virtual character (or whatever serves to give the player agency in a virtual online world), and it falls into disuse by you because "people" think it is pompous. This is, to my mind, a clear example of the anti-intellectualism I alluded to elsewhere. The prevailing social climate seems to be that If you don't cozy up to the lowest common denominator (slang), and instead choose to put your intellect and education to (public) use, you are a pompous ***. Sad, sad, sad.Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
I've always most liked avatars (although, that seems to have dropped off in usage for me). And it is exceedingly funny to me that multiple people have mentioned the use of "avatar" as seeming too pompous.
So, by some people's estimations, I am too pompous and, by others, I am too simplistic! -
Quote:Which would be odd since it so recently became a tier 5 Incarnate power that only Praetorian citizens have.Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
what I got from that is they are nerfing rock
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Quote:Could you elaborate?Originally Posted by Hopeling
This is only true if you have no damage buffs, damage set bonuses, or damage enhancements.
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Quote:Because it is the closest thing we have to the preferred mechanism in which any new character would be allowed to start the game at the same level as the highest level character on an account, bypassing the low level grind completely. Leveling Pacts are sort of a weak version of this. You play one character and another one gets leveling progress without having to repeat all that effort. Why not take this to its logical conclusion? If necessary, make it a VIP-only feature, though I don't think that would be necessary since I believe such a feature would improve player retention, not compromise it.Originally Posted by Hopeling
Yes, but why do you want to share progress with offline toons?
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Quote:And from a narrative point of view it dramatically demonstrates how even super high technology is not safe from the forces of hyper-evolved super organics. Having DE "lichen" overtake and control a piece of IDF super tech is an epic restatement of Ian Malcom's Law that "Life finds a way."Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's under the control of the DE, and the lichen links it to them.
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Quote:The thing is, we are all part of the general public in one way or another. We all came from it before coalescing into little tribes of nerds with specific hobbies. Adult MMO players bring years/decades of cultural baggage with them, including the general sense that cartoons are primarily for kids. The point isn't that the general public is right or wrong about this in its details, but that their general perspective nevertheless informs the slang that arises even from the minds/mouths/fingers of people who hesitate (or refuse) to acknowledge their own membership in (and intimate connection to) the greater social construct known as "the general public." You may not want to accept it, but every time we say "toon" when we refer to our characters (and I've been guilty of doing it just to fit in), we reinforce the juvenile aspects of the medium and dismantle its potential to resonate with our more mature selves. By using "toon", you only confirm (and perpetuate) the kiddie feel of MMOs in general, and CoX in particular, in the minds of the very general public that will spawn new players or new MMO designers.Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Who of us cares one iota what the general public thinks??
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A 50% Fury bar is a doubling of damage on every attack, which is statistically better than criticals that happen less than 100% of the time. 50% Fury doesn't take long to reach and it stays at 50% or higher for quite a while, especially if you don't have a lot of downtime between mobs. The Incarnate trials are perhaps the best example of an environment where Fury really shines.
Taunt is also incredibly valuable in the iTrials, even if as a Brute you don't intend to tank as a full time job. Just being able to contribute to mob management (not the same as aggro management) is amazingly useful. I had taken Taunt out of my Brute build at one point but then put it back once I started her Incarnate career. The ability to draw Warworks away from Keyes reactor terminals, or to draw Void Storms to Penelope in the MoM trial, or to draw IDF away from broadcaster terminals in TPN is so valuable that it makes Brutes twice as useful in iTrials as Scrappers IMO. In all other content, it is probably a wash, though the higher HP and higher softcaps still make the Brute edge out the Scrapper for me. -
Quote:I admit that my data is anecdotal in nature. However, I have been on all the trials numerous times and the whole "there's always one" thing has happened every time except maybe four (out of 60 or 70). Since everyone is so familiar with this I figure everyone else sees it with the same regularity, which means we can add their data to the back-of-the-napkin estimate. 99% may be a bit of an exaggeration, but even if I'm off by a little, I am still extremely suspicious that there is nearly always one and only one person holding up the zoning of the league. Occam's Razor suggests to me that the simpler answer is that it is merely a matter of how the server updates the count as seen by the client while it instantiates the trial.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Well, first of all I question the accuracy with which you can claim statistical consistency between 24 and 16 players without data. What we can assert is that happens very frequently. Do you actually have anything you can point to which proves it is really equally likely to meaningful precision with 16 players and 24?
I think there are other correlations which you are not considering. If there is a person who plays trials frequently on your server, who is also frequently tabbed out looking at Facebook while waiting for trials to finish forming, that person can become a statistically significant signal in your data.
I think a far more enlightening thing to consider is what happens when the league leader doesn't queue the event until checks in. Normally, in my experience, it it starts right away. -
Quote:Yes, cartoons have become more than simply kid's stuff, but that has not changed the overall perception of them in American culture. Simply being "more than" is not enough to erase many decades of calcified perception. The adult-oriented cartoons that we're all aware of are still significantly outnumbered by the animated content produced for children. The exceptions do not get to become the rule just because they are well known exceptions.Originally Posted by 80sBaby
The best part is that he's using Roger Rabbit as his go-to example. A movie almost 30 years old. Since that time cartoons have clearly become more than simply "kid's stuff." I mean we have animated movies being nominated for Best Film Academy Awards, prime-time cartoons (Family Guy, Simpsons, Cleveland Show, etc) which are certainly NOT for children, nostaligic cartons coming back for the older fans and that's not even getting into anime.
And, again, aren't video games and comics considered for children by the vast majority of people who don't play/read them? Who cares what they think?
And yes, video games and comics are indeed considered for children by the vast majority of people who don't play/read them. But I believe they are considered a children's pasttime even by many of the adults who do play/read them just the same. Just because they participate as adults doesn't mean they think of the activity as any less juvenile, or are any less prone to apply juvenile-sounding terminology. -
Quote:This strikes me as true only in a superficial way, ignoring decades of cultural history behind both "cartoons" and superhero comics.Originally Posted by DarkGob
...but comics are basically cartoons...
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Quote:I apologize for being so dim, but I don't quite understand what you mean by killing your ability to swap skin textures underneath costume/armor pieces.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Easy example - if you replace the old "painted-on clothes" with actual textures, you kill my ability to swap my skin texture underneath them.
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Quote:I didn't realize it was ever a "thing". How odd.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Is that still a "thing"? I thought people generally got over that brand of silliness years ago.
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Quote:Maybe. But I still want to hear a redname weigh in on this because, as I said, the near-100% frequency of it much more strongly suggests something system-oriented, not player-oriented. Especially since it seems to happen with the same frequency whether it is 15 out of 16 or 23 out of 24, and statistically speaking, that shouldn't be the case if it just random human behavior.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
It's the people not the game.
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Quote:Except that to the best of my knowledge, in the entire history of superhero comic books prior to the MMO age, characters were never called toons by readers, fans, writers, artists, or editors. If you're going to extrapolate from a cultural antecedant prior to Everquest, then "it makes sense" only if you think of this game as having children's cartoons as its foundation, not superhero comic books.Originally Posted by DarkGob
And to me, it makes sense, especially in this game, whose entire foundation is superhero comic books.
I think the juvenile-sounding "toon" better fits the "just for kids" conceptual template that video games subconsciously conform to in the minds of even its most ardent players, and largely because CoX probably looks and feels to them like an interactive children's cartoon, not a virtual superhero comic book (which quite a lot of players have probably read very few of anyway).
Edit: Didn't see Tyger42's post above prior to writing mine...we seem to be thinking along the same lines here. -
Before leaving the game for a few years some time ago, I had one main for team play and one main for solo play, but I never really truly loved either one of them. So I never had a "main" in the same sense that most hardcore players had.
That changed once Street Justice was released. I now have a StJ/WP Brute that is my main and I don't care to play any of my other characters anymore. I took this character from level 1 on the day StJ was released all the way to multiple (well, two) tier 4 Incarnate powers per slot before the end of the year. And I still don't tire of playing this character. It is my main in every sense of the word, and I really couldn't be happier about it!