Arcanaville

That's not the same thing. Its one thing for the store to allow you to buy something you already have. Its another thing for the store to allow you to attempt to apply a code to an account where it won't do anything at all, without any warning or notice, and without user interface feedback of some kind. Its yet another thing when the store actually applies the code to the account when it won't do anything, expending the code in the process. The first is unfortunate, but not always avoidable. The second is generally recognized as poor computer interface implementation. The third is generally recognized as poor system design altogether.

In other words, its a flaw, necessarily.

No matter how "abnormal" the activity, its always dangerous to assert that "normal people don't do it." The chances are high that you're mistaken.

Its fair game to say "I don't think this is how most women walk." Its (hopefully unintentionally) insulting to say "no normal person walks that way." Its like saying "no real-life woman dressed their characters scantily." In trying to express the fact that many real-life men dress their characters scantily, you can be unintentionally denegrating.

Ok: it is a bit exaggerated. But I think its more sexy than skanky. I don't think heroine plus sexy automatically equals super ******.

The problem you're handwaving away (displayed names are no longer unambiguous) is a problem I would consider an absolute deal-breaker. I have no problem with the current way CoH implements name space. I don't like, but can tolerate how CO implements name space. What you are suggesting above is something that if either dev team implemented I would publicly call their sanity into question.

In fact, I think that's so bad of an idea that I'm confident even if a dev on either team thought it was a good idea and tried to implement it, the idea would eventually be killed by someone in the loop. Either a designer would veto it, or a publisher would shelve it, or a programmer would conveniently forget to code it. Its that level of bad.

When I priced the parts, my system ended up being about the same price overall. The trivial amount I would have saved buying each component separately ultimately wasn't worth it in my opinion.

There was a time when you could save 50% or even more by assembling your own PC, but for most price/performance points those days are gone. You can still save between 10% and 25% at times, but its usually only worth it if you are really interested in assembling your own system and troubleshooting any problems that might arise.

I do think if you are or are interested in one day being in the IT field, its worth it to attempt to assemble your own computer at least once or twice. Its less about saving money and more about getting educated about the issues involved. It can't hurt to know what every part in your computer does.


I am curious to know, however, what you were specifically thinking of. It sounds like either you have a way to assemble something like the XPS 8000 listed above for about $300, or conversely you have a way to assemble a computer for about $600 that has double the performance (and I'm assuming you were not factoring in a monitor in that price point). I'd be interested to see the system spec either way.

But you're saying that because someone describes a game first in conventional MMO terms in a marketing setting that automatically means it was designed that way, and that's not true.

Imagine the most innovative MMO you can possibly conceive of. Now imagine a marketing person describing that game to the public. If he or she starts by saying "check out these cool innovative features" there would be absolutely no context for anyone to care. Because first you have to explain "innovative features of what."

To put it another way. If I was given unlimited resources and time to make the most innovative MMO I could conceive of, and I had access to state of the art technology to deploy it on, *I* would probably describe that game *first* in terms of all the elements of the game that were foundationally similar to other MMOs, and *then* contrast that with all of the new features the game had that were different (and hopefully superior) to current MMOs. I find it interesting that you'd have written me off in the first fifteen seconds of my description, especially because even knowing that, I wouldn't change the way I would describe my game.

For me, the best way to describe even an innovative game is to say "its a game like this, but with these advances." Without that point of reference, it would be hard to appreciate the improvements.

Maybe its less that you care about mentioning MMO foundational concepts, and more that its the specific ones the person mentioned that you don't like. That's a completely different issue.

FYI I just got my new Dell last week (finally: although the delay was not on this PC but the one I ordered prior which had out of stock issues with some parts) which is similar to this PC (I boosted the RAM, CPU and disk):

XPS 8000
Core I7-860 2.8 Ghz
8 GB RAM
1 TB HD
Windows 7 Ultimate
ATI 4350

So far, I'm liking it. It certainly kicks my old system to the curb (which was an Athlon x2). I got it with the ATI 4350 because I intended to upgrade the card later anyway, but I hadn't made up my mind at the time I put in the order. I'm going to use it as my backup card once I upgrade.

Fun fact: I can actually launch City of Heroes under VMware on this system (with VMware 7) although I only get 5 frames per second (at about 1200x800). I think I could get more if I turned down the detail sliders, but bringing up the options menu seems to freeze the game client. Oh well.

Turning up every single detail to maximum (except of course AA due to ATI) I'm getting about 15-20 frames per second natively under Win7, the limiting factor being that 4350 card (my CPU usage barely moves and of course I'm not swapping).

Not bad for $1150: I can run my old PC as a VMware session in this machine at the same time I use it natively without noticing the extra load - I basically moved most of my data to the new PC, then did a VMware import on what was left of my old system so I wouldn't have to worry about programs that wouldn't run under Win7 and I didn't have to mess around with reinstalling everything under XP mode for now. In fact, at one point I had City of Heroes running natively under Win7 while it was also running under VMware so I could compare the two (its too bad opengl isn't accelerated under VMware).

Anything is possible. However, if you're willing to speculate anything without foundation, then you can say absolutely nothing except "anything is possible." Such a position is always uninteresting to discuss: its always first presumed, then immediately discarded in any discussion involving more than one person.

"What origin is Superman" is supposed to be parsed to "Given the definition of Origin in City of Heroes, and given all the knowledge we have about the character of Superman, what CoH origin is most consistent with the character of Superman?" And I've never seen a credible case made for that answer to be anything but Natural.

The poster I was replying to did not count "Mind Control" as a natural control powerset.

I think there's massive room for innovation in the gaming space in general and in the MMO space in particular. But I will say that even if you were given unlimited resources to make a game, there is still the valid game design rule of thumb that says don't reinvent the wheel. If you want to improve gaming, you can't leave the players themselves behind. There's something to be said for offering your players familiar touchstones so they do not need to start completely from scratch in terms of figuring out what your game is about.

I guess what I'm saying is that you should innovate somewhere, but its probably not a good thing to innovate everywhere. And whether CrimeCraft is a good game or a bad game, the fact that they start describing it in terms of reference points to other MMOs is not an intrinsicly bad thing.

Why I'm not totally comfortable with it (although I understand the point you're making) is that it seems to unavoidably make all origins effectively an offshoot of the magical one. The only way to posit a supernatural foundation to all of the five origins that is *not* magical is to write a much more restricted definition for "magical" than originally intended, just to leave room for a supernatural-but-not-magical Super-Origin.

I'm not comfortable with saying, in effect, that superheroic science is normal Science changed by Magic to follow different rules, and superheroic mutation is Mutation changed by Magic to follow different rules, and superheroic technology is Technology changed by Magic to follow different rules, etc.

My guess is that this "origin of origins" was mostly intended to be a justification for powerset proliferation, and at the moment is intended to obey the MST3k Mantra. However, my personal opinion is that by trying to come up with an actual explanation for this, instead of hand-waving it away, the writers forfeited the right to use that defense, ala midichlorines (The Force obeys the MST3k Mantra; midichlorines can be dissected and freely ridiculed).

In my opinion, if you're not going to make a bullet-proof explanation, you're much better off appealing to the Rule of Cool.

I'd be willing to take this suggestion more seriously if you can provide a definition for a "natural control powerset."

Furthermore, your definition of a "natural scrapper secondary" appears to be "anything that isn't 'blatantly super'" which means you're specifically asking not just for more "natural" scrapper secondaries but rather for scrapper secondaries that cannot be easily conceptualized as "natural" by your definition. That isn't asking for more of something, but asking for less of something, and such suggestions tend to attract an extremely dim view, probably with some justification.

I'm responding to Sam's interpretation that Positron's antimatter generating abilities are the result of a mutation. My own personal opinion is that its the result of a scientific accident, and thus Keyes' ability to generate antimatter is itself a science-origin ability. But the ability to control it and harness it to become a superhero is a technological ability. The point was that the interpretation of how he gets the ability to generate antimatter doesn't have to be the same as the interpretation of what his core superheroic abilities are.

In the Origins of Power arc Positron characterizes his abilities as an innate ability (generating antimatter) coupled with technology, and suggests that in general technology-origin superheroes aren't just normal guys packing machinery, but something deeper involving an innate ability (even if that is, perhaps, the superhuman ability to use technology) meshed with technology in some non-trivial way.

This perspective is a necessary element of the Origins of Power theory that all superhuman ability has a fundamental aspect to it (a canon theory I'm personally not fully comfortable with myself).

Given the way I pick character names, I am probably not typical, but my own personal experience is that finding names has not gotten any easier or harder in the five years I've been playing the game. The probability that a name I enter will be free seems to have remained relatively constant.

It seems the VG pets are spawned at 10 second intervals, but last for 15 seconds each (except the last one which lasts for 10 seconds). So the pseudopets seem to overlap 50% of the time.

• And that's worked out so well for them every time they've done it.
• And of course Microsoft is the perfect company to use as an example of fixing all the bugs in the product before asking for more money from its customers.

If enough players think its ugly, it will also have a negative effect on CoX subscriptions, even though that effect might be much more difficult to measure directly.

Being a mutant made him an antimatter generator. But being a technical wizard made him a superhero. In this case, Matt decided that the origin of "Positron's" abilities was technology. The origin of Raymond Keyes' powers was mutation, but those are not the core abilities of the superhero known as Positron. That's a reasonable interpretation given the limitations of the origin system.

That's an interesting perspective. Suppose Krypton had a yellow sun instead of a red one, and as a result all Kryptonians had superpowers. Superman would still be powered by an external source: our sun. But he would be no different than any other Kryptonian back home. Would he still be science origin because he would need an "external source" for his powers?

Suppose human beings photosynthesized light. Would they be disqualified from being "natural" simply because they were powered by an external source of energy? Conversely, are you saying you would automatically disqualify something from being "science origin" if it didn't involve an external effect?

I guess that makes Castle that fifth guy on the Monster House build team that was always goofing off on camera.

Regardless of forum debate to the contrary (and to be honest, I don't recall seeing any serious debate on this subject on the open forums), if you believe Superman's powers derive from his natural physiology as a Kryptonian, then the best match for origin given the definitions of the game's origins is Natural. In City of Heroes, players are allowed to use whatever interpretations they wish to select their origin, since backstory is a completely free and unregulated option. But the devs have signaled their own interpretations with the Kheldians. Peacebringers are alien energy beings that get their abilities from being energy beings as their natural state. Their origin is not optional: its Natural. By contrast, Warshades are also locked to an origin: they are Science (because Warshades are reformed Nictus which are themselves Kheldians that used science to alter their form).

Its possible to patent anything you can get past the patent examiners. But you're not supposed to be able to patent pure software without specific associated hardware as part of the overall invention.

For someone with my background, the legal loophole of claiming a general purpose computer running specific software is "a completely different machine" is galling. If the Supreme Court had anyone on it with any technical background at all, they would know patent attorneys were metaphorically giving them the finger.

Actually, if the content was designed to support it being able to at least occasionally cross sides is something that I think opens a lot of opportunities for tying the two sides of the game together.

I wouldn't be opposed, say, to making a CoV-side mission "burn down building in Steel Canyon" that literally sent you to a hero-side Steel Canyon instance and had you initiate one of SC's building arson events (which then the heros would have to react to). That sort of thing is something that I think there are lots of opportunities to do that would be considered overall improvements to CoX gameplay.

If my magic 8-ball is correct, NinjaRun should offer the following buffs:

Scale 0.25 Jump Height (+450% at level one, +695% at level 50)
Scale 0.55 Jump Speed (+110% / +136.95%)
Scale 0.40 Run Speed (+100% / +140%)
+10 Movement Control (static)
+2 Movement Friction (static)

It should stack with any buff, but I believe the toggle itself is exclusive to:

Walk
Super Jump
Combat Jumping
Super Speed
Low-G/Zero-G Pack
Rooted
Granite Armor


Haven't had a chance to confirm all of those directly yet in-game, though.

No. All that game balance requires is for the average amount of time necessary to employ the tactics you're describing to neutralize enough of the AoE advantage that what remains is a reasonable benefit for the amount of skill being employed.

I should also point out that AoE KB doesn't have to have 100% chance to take effect: for example in Explosive Blast its only 50%. Probabilistic knockback cannot be used in quite the same absolute manner for crowd control.

On the subject of knockdown mitigation, there's two things: one critters cannot be knocked down while they are getting up (they can be knocked back, but they cannot be forced to replay the rooted getting-up animation until they complete the one they are playing), so there are serious timing and recharge issues associated with trying to use AoE attacks to attempt perma-KB. Two: I previously mentioned that I would separate knockdown and knockback effects specifically to separate mitigation and movement, so in my version of these mechanics AoEs would have scattering knockback, but not necessarily consistent knockdown.

In terms of damage, what you're describing is not as efficient as you're suggesting it would be, especially with radial dispersion. It would be like trying to herd with bonfire: possible, but unlikely to be efficient relative to alternatives. At least not in my judgement based on my experience, which in the case of knockback is sizeable. In terms of mitigation what you're describing would be a problem if knockback and knockdown were linked, which is why I would unlink them.

Splendid: that's how the forums do it also.