Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Bubbawheat

I remember seeing a patch note a while back, possibly in the beta boards, saying that the average wait time no longer counts 0 wait times into the average. But then, I imagine that didn't exactly work correctly. Also, you have to remember that it also does not count people that wait in the queue for over an hour and then leave the queue. It only counts people that wait to get into the queue and eventually get in.

Originally Posted by Garielle

Like you Chad, I too once believed that CoH was not originally designed with PvP in mind, but there is evidence that it was. This video is a very early video of the game. I believe the voice you hear is, in fact, Jack as he mentions that the "patriotic hero" (Statesman) is him in-game. During the video he discusses the arena, tournaments, etc.

It sounds like, though could be wrong, this was when Cryptic was shopping the game to NC Soft. It's an interesting watch and shows just how much of the original concept was changed before the game was even launched. For example, combat is much faster paced, with enemies constantly running at you from various directions.

Take a look.

I am no fan of Jack, but if this is him speaking in the video, I think we can dispel the rumor that he was opposed to PvP from the start.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I would have it do different things for different primaries, based on their theme.

Whatever it is, it should have some amount of soft-control or actual control. Because movement slow alone wouldn't prevent chain mez. One of the things shooting while mezzed should allow a blaster to do is at least attempt to prevent more mezzes from landing. That requires interfering with the enemy's ability to either shoot at you or affect you (i.e. prevent attacks from firing, or debuffing either tohit or effect strength to prevent attacks from landing or dealing their normal effect).

Originally Posted by Shubbie

Wasnt just a seperate problem that showed up last night, needed to rant.

Originally Posted by SlickRiptide

We've never been told what the point of the rule is. Presumably it was handed down from NCSoft Legal or as policy from the big corporate wigs in Korea. As Sam has intimated, there was a time when the mods were quite lenient, then one day they weren't any more. That coincided with the game devs pulling back and hardly posting any more, compared to how they had been very open and involved with the players prior to whetever "event" it was that brought down the proverbial curtain.

Technically speaking, simply not mentioning a game's name is not enough to keep you safe, speaking from experience. The most draconian mods follow the rule to the letter - no discussion at all about any game whatsoever. I've even been modded in the past for talking about NCSoft's other games.

As for Arcana, I don't know how often she gets modded but I know that she does get modded as draconically as anyone else. If this thread has survived this long it might mean that our new Assistant Community Manager just hasn't caught on yet to how hard he's supposed to be wielding the Ban Hammer. Heh.

I'd rather think that it means that they're loosening up a bit, but I suppose that we'll see.



That pretty much sums up my views on the subject of banning game industry discussion.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

/tangent

Ooh Shivans. Now there's a temp power I would buy on the Paragon Market. I loathe stepping into PvP zones for any reason.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

That's a shame cuz we love it when you talk dirty.

Originally Posted by Ukaserex

I think Tony has brought forward some things to ponder in an eloquent matter. Others have also made some solid points.

I think that our player base is a broad spectrum, a diverse group. Different ages, different socio-economic factors, etc.
The only way I think to assess how people will react to any given change is to look at similar changes in the past and see how things went.
Let's take a look at the iTrials. When BAF, Lambda and Keyes came out, I think it's safe to say that most preferred to do BAF. Why? For me, it's because it was fairly straightforward. There weren't many hoops to jump through to get the reward, unlike keyes - which initially, was an exercise in jumping around avoiding green death rays and a lot of repetition.

With a diverse playerbase that includes 6 year olds playing on their father's right side and single mothers that have asserted control over the account because their child has out grown the game, or no longer finds it fun for some reason and unemployed people who have a lot more free time than they'd like, answering the question is going to be different.

I'm thrilled for the solo path, because when I'm sort of tired and grumpy, I don't have to herd the cats. What an appropriate description that is sometimes! On my server, it would seem if I want to do an iTrial, or team,
I have to look through the global list and see who's solo and would like to come along. Invariable this will be 1 to 4, leaving me with having to fill the rest.
Because zone story arcs and tip missions don't have any greater significant reward at the end when teamed as opposed to solo, there is nothing that motivates me to put up with the recruiting delay.

And its more than just a recruiting delay -there's an incredible amount of "wife aggro", "baby aggro", "gotta put the kid to bed", "roommate tried to commit suicide", etc. On some teams, a teammate sitting out for a minute is not that big of a deal. Other times, because of bad team composition, a tank can make a bad team pretty good. Sadly, not much can be done about recruiting delay, except maybe have the contact assemble all members of the team to the first mission door, but nifty as that would be, it doesn't solve the problem.

We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. There is no greater obstacle to teaming in this game than the player. We each have our goals for our characters. If there's "nothing in it" for our character to make us "feel" like teaming at that time, then there's not gonna be any teaming at that time.
For most (definitely not all players) forced teaming would be like summer camp. You wouldn't want to go, but once you got there and got in a routine and made some friends, you'd have some fun. Probably more fun than if you stayed home. (solo) However, there are always a few who are mal-adapted and just can't team up. Bad/old computers, physical maladies which inhibit game play in the typical manner, mental deficiencies, etc. are all reasons for some people not teaming. If it were forced, those people would likely become frustrated and quit.

Originally Posted by xyzor

but i don't like the sound the stick makes when it hits the kitten! It should be more of a swoooosh...thwack, than a whooosh-smack...

Originally Posted by ogi

locked leagues/teams or leagues/teams above the minimum size to start the trial should either not be counted in the timer or should have their own timer separate from the actual pug timer.

Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell

I ran into this last night:

Now, the average wait time for every single trial being exactly the same, while possible, is ludicrously unlikely, especially given that one of these is the brand-new shiny one that everyone's running right now.

But the average wait time for the first available trial actually being longer than every single one of those individual wait times is flat-out mathematically impossible. Does someone want to take another crack at explaining how these times are supposedly accurate?

(My guess? 6 minutes is an accurate figure, "5 minutes" is what the system spits out when it doesn't have a clue.)

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I have a big problem with "MMO Basics," actually. A while ago, I saw an up-and-coming MMO marketed, more or less, as "has crafting, gear, market, PvP." Um, what game is that? "Doesn't matter. It has crafting, gear, market, PvP. It's an MMO. What else matters?" This, to me, is anathema, and is probably the most prominent source of the creative bankruptcy of the modern MMO scene. You have essentially two types of MMOs. You have WoW, and you have dozens of MMOs trying to be WoW. And that makes for a hideously boring, uninspired gaming environment.

I cannot tell you how sick I am whenever I see a new MMO coming out with the same god damn interface that WoW had back in 2005. I see a Warhammer 40 000 game advertised, but it has a WoW three-branch skill tree. I see a Warhammer Vanilla game advertised and it looks exactly like WoW. I see a gang-based game, a space shooer, an ancient Chinese games, and they're all remakes of the same one game, which itself is a remake of about half a dozen others, just done with more money.

When City of Heroes first came out, it had no loot, it had no raids, it didn't have dozens of currencies and so forth. And many of us were here because of it. Because we didn't want a game that's about these things. Because we didn't want the one and only one type of other MMO on the market. That's why I'm so leery of accepting "MMO basics" any more, because the kind of MMO basics that are usually accepted are exactly the things I hate. Raids are an MMO basic, and I hate the very concept of them. Loot is an MMO basic, and I never wanted any of it. Crafting is an MMO basic and I felt City of Heroes was better without it. Time sinks, death penalties, gear decay, money sinks and so forth are MMO basics, but I don't want any of them.

I get that certain conveniences are to be expected and their lack expected to be a problem. But the LAST thing I want to do is hold an MMO developer to some kind of colouring book MMO template, because I've seen all the template-made MMOs out there, and I'm not impressed.

Originally Posted by DreadShinobi

Even if they are going to add more ATOs, they should still be account bound.

Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane

Which is valid. The devs said in a Ustream that more ATO sets would come out some day and they were learning towards not having them be exclusive with the existing sets, so you could have multiple ATO sets slotted.

But until then, being able to convert Catalysts into Enhancement Converters, Reward Merits or Empyrean Merits or something would still be welcome.


.

Originally Posted by Biowraith

Just have it temporarily append "(Impostor)" to one of their names, chosen at random.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

It really should be cross-server, to get the most out of the system.
Letting people enter from missions maps is a good first step, but it still needs more to make it work properly.

Originally Posted by Agent White

Have played into the story arc a fair bit more. I really really like all the arcs so far, they're varied, they tie together with so many different ongoing threads (Reichsman, Cimerora, The Praetorian invasion) It's a real pleasure seeing the story advancing at such a steady clip and with so many different pots stirring together. This is something you can't really do in a trial since they're so singularly focused, whereas here with the arcs you can add nuance and detail and some decent exposition.

I do have a couple nitpicks though. First and foremost, it's really lazy to keep saying 'a supergroup'. A supergroup went into Dark Astoria, no one knows what happened to the supergroup, oh the supergroup was all killed. Who was the supergroup? They had a name. Just saying 'supergroup' is the equivalent of saying "placeholder name" because no one would repeatedly say that. They'd be something like "The Lost Falcons" or "The Shining Stars" etc. obviously you don't really want to kill off any established characters with it, but I really just wanted to hear a name, or even SEE someone from the supergroup getting offed. instead it's just causally referred to then just as casually dropped, serving no real purpose except "mot and his forces were able to drop a whole supergroup".

Second, I'm pretty tired of the 'Of Vengeance' groups now. They're a pretty one trick pony that don't really run on any kind of worthwhile logic. I mean for Dark Astoria it's fine, but I'd like this to be about one of the last times we see anything 'of Vengeance'. Talons, Knives, Carnival, etc. It's the same trick played in both First Ward and Dark Astoria. They're not that interesting, they're not that unique, they don't really make enough sense. They just feel like a filler bad guy that can fit into places that it wouldn't make sense to use some of the other groups. And they have absolutely no depth whatsoever, they're pretty much just a big evil force 'just because'. And we 'decimated' them how many times over DA's arc? I think about 3 altogether, which was just 2 too many for a group that has no actual characters. They don't have personality, they're simply cardboard cut outs.

Lesse, other I22 stuff. I played around with my 35 plant/Fire dominator. The changes to the giant fly trap are -extremely- noticeable. He's still a bit flimsy, but nothing near what he was. Just wandering from spawn to spawn I'd usually see him take a few hits and hang around half health most of the mission unless there was a prolonged break, like a glowy hunt or something. Running around doing RWZ arcs he seemed to hang around a lot longer, had to resummon him once the whole play session, rather than mission to mission as I was doing before. The regen is -extremely- noticeable now, you can see his health just jumping up and he's topped up pretty quick.

Oh and the DA repeatables, I just have to say again what a joke 2 threads is for a 20 hour cooldown reward. I think I've taken it just once, the rest of the time I've been nabbing the reward merits and super inspirations, which have no cool down. Really can't wait for them to up this to something half worthwhile.

Originally Posted by UberGuy

That's your opinion of what a "game for us to play" should be, and I dare say, its an unusual one at best. There are quite a few people on this forum who take exception to story telling that limits their own characters by assuming their motives, goals, origin of power or personality. However, I don't think I have ever before seen anyone denounce the devs for telling a story at all.

I would not want to play the game you want to play nearly as much.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Personal story missions in the 1-20 GR content would have been epic.

Originally Posted by SuperOz

The majority of play I've had in that other game has been with groups. And here's the thing: outside of this game...I can't think of too many others that have the overabundance of 'quick' gathering tools that this one has. And that's fine, there's a lot of tools that enable that, but I think as the Trial experience has shown, people found their own way to group when the tool appeared to be broken, and embraced that policy enough to continue with it when the tool was fixed.


S.

Originally Posted by Cyber_naut

Nice trailer but I think it's bugged - it's got several scenes with staff melee in it.

Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba

I'm still surprised that no one has come in with a replacement method. Weren't we once able to change the default load screens?

Originally Posted by InfamousBrad

Dude, calm down with the gay panic. Nobody is going to think that you're gay just because your game's splash screen has a picture of guy in tights and a dance belt, shot from a low angle. Sometimes a superhero is just a superhero. Your male privilege is still intact.