Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Neuronia

This.
There are much glossier and likely better games out there, but good community service, constant (though somewhat muted these days) dev outreach and the player community itself have made this my only constantly subbed MMO to date.

Originally Posted by SuperOz

Thanks.

It helped a lot that my early interest in comics developed into an appreciation of film and then film history; a lot of people born in the last forty years wouldn't have even seen the old Republic movie serials, but I was not only lucky enough to track them down, but also actually watch them on my local community television station, including the original Captain Marvel serials, and even a jetpack-style hero in a sub-par one called 'G-Men'.

I always found it interesting that the 1950's had the longest standing influence in comics, right up until DC did their first Crisis series in 1983. But the art influence still had a distinctive Retro Sci-Fi look to it. It's only really been since comic book movies (and arguably as late as the first X-Men film) that the looks of the characters adapted to the cultural influences around it; just look at the last Batman film before the current Nolan trilogy and it's deeply clinging to decades-old looks.

I rather suspect that we'll come full circle and comic book characters will go back to simplistic designs; the recent Tron sequel was all about art deco design with neons and sleek lines which are taken right from the 1930's and 50's.


S.

Originally Posted by dugfromthearth

I'm sorry, I missed the meeting where PL'ing was defined.

Originally Posted by Aurora_Girl

See, I see these things thusly:

"Doesn't kill, but blasts into an alternate dimension:" of what? Dinosaurs? Parasitic alien bacteria? Is there oxygen? They still might (and odds are good that they do) die.

Evil. Still murder.

I guess it just boils down to my OOC worldview and philosophy on life. I don't understand being mean. I've never been intentionally mean to anyone, ever, because I don't understand how that thinking operates. Selfish? Sure. Lazy? Absolutely, but never mean, or angry, or really confrontational at all. I identify more with heroes, and, frankly, as far as this game is concerned, villains to me are things that get in the way of my heroing.

DISCLAIMER: Yes I know this is a personal feeling for me, and hardly anyone thinks this way. I don't begrudge you your darker thoughts and inclinations, but they are as foreign to me as Sanskrit and this argument will never have a conclusion.

Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon

Everyone has deadlines, sure. My point is that I'm not entirely sure that the writers really are separate from the mission designers, and that gets into my other point about the budget. I get the impression that at Paragon there's not a lot of people wearing a great many hats. Just look at the response every time we bring up all the known typos. Lore checking, spell checking, et al all get left by the wayside and there's not enough money to bring in additional staff that can help out there.

And its a whole 'nother can of worms to go from simple AE writing to SSAs and world design.

Originally Posted by Hit Streak

No matter the guest, we always start the show off talking about the latest City of Heroes related news.

Originally Posted by Kirsten

Again, all valid arguments, but... if these parts were included in the game, they would still be referenced in the code like any other part, just a few kilobytes in the costume data. It would just be a costume part like any other.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

All of this is not to pick an argument, Rian, so much as to point out that we, as a community, will never be able to agree on what makes the game good and what makes it bad.

Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast

All this thread "proves" to me is that "good" names are truly in the eye of the user... I seen a lot of suggested and available names that I consider to be very good in this thread.

Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight

Has anyone with the iOS client that set some servers to watch for received any notifications? I think I might have found a bug that would cause the pushes to not go through (because the app seems to be registering with the wrong APN server!). Either way, a fix for the issue should be finding its way down in the next few days!



Shh! Fix't

I think I'm going to have to rework part of the Android app as well... it seems that, at the very least, Android 2.3 doesn't support the necessary extensions to render the gradient in the background (although 4.0 renders it like total crap with horrible banding, as you can see in the screenshots!).

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

You're kind of sweeping the problem under the rug by stating that it will always exist. Crime will always exist, but we don't stop trying to fight it, just to pull a random example out of a hat. You can never have complete consistency and so no-one should expect it, but that doesn't mean we should give up on trying to have a consistent story or a consistent tone. Even if it doesn't work all the time, it should still work at least some of the time.

The fact of the matter is a good story isn't good because every part in it is good. In fact, it isn't good even because most or half or even some of it is good. A good story is good because it makes us care about it enough that we're able to overlook the bad parts of it, and indeed accept them as part of what makes the story good. For instance, I HATED cave levels in old games, which means I pretty much hated the original Tomb Raider. I liked Tomb Raider 2, but hated the two Tibet levels initially. However, the game was so good that I ended up not minding Tibet so much, and eventually learned to appreciate the thematic I disliked as simply part of a good game, whether the part itself was good or bad.

This is why people like me can flip-flop about the entire game so easily, from really really liking it to wondering why I'm still subscribed. City of Heroes is not a game without its flaws, and the story is really on of the most flawed aspects of it. But the story is also made up of extraordinarily good ideas, even as part of newer content despite how much I've bashed it. Even if those ideas aren't exactly told very well, having them is still good enough for me to overlook the poor execution. The real problem with "consistency" arises when you create a new story which is not only bad, but actually ruins a story which was previously good. The Dr. Khan TF is a good example. It's a bad TF, it's one of the game's WORST stories by far, and it serves to utterly castrate any potential coolness Reichsman might have had when he was still just a concept. Before, when the 5th Column was still "gone," we had fun times imagining what it would be like if Reichsman woke up and took control of it. Seeing it in action ruined that plot, any potential future plots on the subject may have had and pretty much buried the 5th Column entirely since its one remaining named character isn't interesting.

Contrast this against the concept of Ascension as seen in Dark Astoria and explained by Papa Smurf. I HATE Prometheus both as a character and as a plot device, and I REALLY dislike the Well of the Furies as a concept, but Ascendants are such a powerful idea, such a strong story seed, that I'm really perfectly fine with the Well serving as the catalyst and Prometheus serving as the contact. Not only has the good idea that is Ascendants made me accept the bad ideas that were Prometheus and the Well, but it has made me actually see them in a positive light. As concepts, they're bad. As means to a much better end... They're actually pretty good. Not only that, but the concept of Ascendants also serve to humanize both of the others. The Well goes from an god-modding all-powerful entity that is the end-all be-all of power into just one source of power, thus putting its drive to empower and control into perspective. Prometheus goes from an always-right overpowered smug god into a very powerful being caught in a situation that's becoming bigger than he is. It's putting an arrogant person used to bossing people around in a situation where he's out of his depth, forcing him to balance between playing big dog and dealing with the reality of being in over his head. And I LOVE it!

Paragon Studios writers have historically had a tendency to write in a vacuum, considering only the context that's directly relevant to the story they're writing and rarely the way it impacts the broader world in general. I mean no disrespect when I say that that's tantamount to writing fanfiction, in the crucial aspect that fans don't control the fictional universe and their stories can't impact canon. Fans don't have to worry about continuity, and our writers are writing like fans by disregarding continuity and only focusing on the here and now. This is what tanked Reichsman and this is what's turned Praetoria into bipolar land. Is it a deep and complex latticework of interwoven grey moralities or a grotesque black-and-white goatee evil universe? It depends on which story you run, and that really ends up making neither angle work very well. In fact, at times I wonder if our writers even have the pedantic knowledge of lore some of our players enjoy and that they simply don't know they're trodding over established canon when they have the Malta Group try for "minimal involvement" in a situation best suited for a commando squad, just as an example.

Consistency can't be absolute, but it should still be a main objective.

Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei

The proc needed to be adjusted.

Having said that it is comical to see a self professed nerfherder talk about balance. That is the cats meow.

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

Fire's really good. If you feel like DOTs are bad, though, it's not the set for you.

Originally Posted by Garent

I'm worried about the same thing. My main group already has an issue with +4X8 enemies dying too quickly.

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

To try to give a constructive response to the OP:

The posters you seem to be focusing on all have a fairly common problem with the writing in general, from which flows most of their vitriol. Viridian alluded to it in his post when he mentioned trying to accommodate requests into the larger narrative the writing staff is trying to tell.

These posters just don't like the overall story much. They don't like Praetoria at all, or what it represents, they don't like how the Incarnate lore has played out so far, and a lot of them never liked the old lore either, like Statesman's origin, how the Phalanx operates, how the Rogue Isles is written, etc.

There might be a shining example of good writing in a mission or two, or maybe an entire arc, but you'll find that because they don't really like the Lore, there is little a new story can do to please them if it's flowing from the lore that they despise. If AE were utilized more, you'd probably never see these players playing regular content.

The Writers have chosen a path, and for the most part they have to stick with it. This means these posters will probably never be happy with the writing again, even if a majority of the player base loves it. The writing won't ever resonate for them, and they'll find more wrong with it than right. That's life, and not necessarily a bad thing. There will always be players in any game that are gritting their teeth as they play, but the negatives they see don't keep them from playing. That fact speaks to how good the rest of the game is.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

I think that the ".5" Issues were mostly there to help build up the selection of Trials while the Incarnate system was new and needed more than a couple of Trials.

Originally Posted by Obitus

Look, Aura, I'm really not interested in making an emotional argument about whether or not we can trust the developers to be truthful. To say that the devs are lying is a personal attack, and one I'd never make.

It is, however, demonstrably and irrefutably true that what the developers say isn't always synonymous with what the developers do. Or perhaps more accurately, what the players assume from developer statements doesn't always turn out to reflect what the developers ultimately do. Plans change, and statements can be misinterpreted (or miscommunicated).

The snipe change buffs single-target damage. Full stop. You cannot argue that a major buff to a high-damage single-target attack isn't designed to be a buff to single-target damage. It's questionable whether the developers even could change snipes such that they're more fun without also buffing the relevant builds' single-target-damage capability. And that's part of the problem with the quirkiness of the new snipe mechanics; if players are to view fast snipe as a worthwhile reward for the inconvenience required to make use of it, then the buff to snipes must represent a non-trivial mechanical boost to performance, which means that future balance evaluations must take the snipe (quirky conditionals and all) into account.

I suppose the devs could add to snipes something wholly different from damage to make them more appealing -- perhaps an area-of-effect control to go along the same thematic lines as the fear that is (or used to be) attached to Assassin's Strike -- but it is undeniable that the currently proposed snipe buff boosts single-target damage.

Whether the snipe buff ultimately turns out to be the only single-target-damage buff to the relevant sets is an open question, and a different question. But please, can we lay to rest the absurd canard that the design of fast snipes is purely to increase "fun," and that therefore the obvious design implications of the change have absolutely no relevance?

Originally Posted by Obitus

You are, of course, entitled to build and play your characters as you prefer. I wouldn't try to tell you you're wrong about something that's entirely subjective; hell, I won't be taking the snipe on at least one of my snipe-capable characters either.

But the tier 3 attack and the snipe aren't mutually exclusive options. We cannot, for the purpose of evaluating balance, pretend that the newly ranged-boosted tier 3s replace (or render moot) fast snipes, because many builds can and will make good use of both.

Another way to look at it is that the developers have effectively given snipe-capable builds (uneven) access to what is potentially a second, supplemental tier 3 attack power.

Originally Posted by Mad Grim

Time really does not need a rez, it is one of the best powersets in the game.