BellaStrega

Actually, I am claiming that what you have identified as a lack of depth may not be a lack of depth. Also, rather frequently, what appears to be "depth" in some games turns out to mostly be a maze of twisty passages, many of which lead to DOOM and a few of which lead to good character builds. So you either design a game where people have enough options to hang themselves or you try to make the options balanced enough so that players have a harder time hanging themselves. The latter? Better game.

I don't know about you, but I've always felt that reality > theory. In the real world, with IOs and without IOs, before IOs, I've seen players perform at different levels even when they're on what should be equivalent characters because some people are better at playing the game than others. Things like IOs and incarnate powers can shrink the gap, but the gap still exists. Everyone doesn't perform to exactly the same level, even if you give two players identical characters.

Could you be more precise? I just made a character last night and I could access all available options. What's causing trouble for you?

No, "correlation is not causation" is always a true statement. You're essentially picking two separate bits of information and claiming that one caused the other, but you really don't know. It's always easy to claim one's personal peeves causes games to burn out, but it's not a very logical or factual argument. If you want to establish true causation, you need to go beyond "these two things happened in the same place and possibly at the same time" because that is not an argument.

No, I've seen real players with significant performance gaps for whatever reason. The ability to design bots that can achieve some things in-game does not reflect a lack of real performance gaps due to skill.

Correlation is not causation. Also, one of the MMOs I was thinking of when I said that was World of Warcraft, which had a fairly long growth cycle before it started shrinking.

The more you post, the less understandable I find the position you're arguing from, and that even counts your attempts to argue a point with me that had nothing to do with what I posted.

This is a slippery slope.

Well, aside from how using them involves holding them in your fists, and using them in a punching sort of way rather than a slicing and stabbing with a dagger sort of way.

It's entirely possible to say "I do not want sharp-edged or pointy fist weapons" without having to exclude an entire category of fist weapons from being fist weapons.

But claws are fist weapons.

Fist weapons in TSW are claws. You don't fight unarmed - every skill has an associated weapon type.

You should give the Inquisitor a go. I loved the Sith Warrior storyline, but the Sith Inquisitor was even more entertaining.

Currently it's $30 for three months and remains so for as long as you continue to pay for the subscription.

I found Serpent Lantern pretty soloable. It was also repetitive in a "halfway to the original Positron TF" way, but definitely soloable.

As for myself, I've been playing a lot of CO. My global there is the same as here (@BellaStrega). There are mission bugs in several missions that are pretty frustrating, but they can be bypassed via GM or in some cases teaming.

I don't really have any issues with the graphics or the character appearances.

Ah. The setting is not really mundane, as it is constantly inhabited by zombies, undead vikings, deep ones, spectres, wraiths, animated scarecrows, animated bits of landscape, giant moth-looking creatures that are inspired by and based on byakhee, and the first major arc you deal with involves a rather famous sword and a rather famous being.

The Cthulhu-looking thing (more like a Star Spawn-looking thing) is not what it appears to be, but fighting it is pretty cool.

I do understand what you're saying, now, though. I actually like superimposing the fantastic, supernatural, and supernaturally horrific over the modern world, so I think we definitely differ.



It only took me a few days of play to get through the two basic trees. The advanced (outer ring) trees tend to be permutations on the basic trees, providing more flexibility and overall power. It takes longer to unlock those trees, at least the first time around, but APs come pretty fast and you can usually unlock outer wheel 1-3 skills every few hours, and it should only take a few days to finish unlocking one of the outer wheel categories. I've been playing for about three weeks, and splitting that time with Champions Online, and my main has three inner wheel skill categories unlocked and many outer wheel skills for all three weapons as well. I hit a point where my dual pistols skill wasn't really achieving much, switched to assault rifle, and got the inner wheel unlocked in a few hours.

Attacks are categorized in various ways (burst, focus, etc) so that you can build around the few attacks you choose and get the most out of them. Many skills are similar, but categorized differently, which allows for a different build focus and different synergies. Also, many skills are designed to exploit certain status effects (there are only four kinds), and you can build around inflicting and exploiting those effects.

They also start off with some magical effects. Hammer, for example, gives you an attack that will hit pretty much everything directly in front of you fairly hard, and has a sort of fiery effect related to it. Some skills are more dramatic than others, though. Melee tends to have more interesting effects than firearms, and magic of course always has magical effects. Firearms tend to look more mundane, although you can get some useful magical effects from the skills.

Eh, no worries. I'm not trying to be all "Get in there and play now!" But I think that based on what you've said it might be a better experience than you might be expecting. Not positive on that, however.

Gorram jury duty.

I've been called so many times I am somewhat gun shy about registering to vote.

I do not know what you mean by bland, so I can't really address that directly. It is not what I would call bland. It is also not really much like Call of Cthulhu, although it is definitely influenced by it, or at least by the Cthulhu mythos.

As far as the skill wheel thing, I don't get what your complaint is. You can unlock the inner skills fairly quickly and then get to the outer sets.

This is irrefutable logic.

All I can advise is "eschew obfuscation."

But this is not the same thing as enjoyment, nor does preferring to play this way in a relatively casual environment mean that your playstyle is objective or unbiased. By definition, your preference must be biased and subjective, as it is strictly determined from your point of view and what you enjoy doing. It does not matter if you can quantify what you enjoy because the enjoyment itself is something derived from personal bias.

This has no bearing on whether something is logical, reasonable, or has a point, nor does it mean - as I noted above - that your preferences are any more logical or unbiased than anyone else's. Basing it on math just means you enjoy doing the math and the rewards for doing the math. Basing it on which powersets perform the best after you've spent billions of influence just shows what you like and prefer to play vs. what you do not.

There's also no particular point in trying to establish one objective, logical, unbiased way to do things vs. subjective, illogical, biased ways to do things. If you fail to acknowledge your own personal bias, it means you're just falling victim to confirmation bias, possibly over and over again.

As if anyone needs permission to play the way they want? That's not the point. The point is that you're factually incorrect about other playstyles not making sense. They make sense, they have a point, they're logical, and they're reasonable. They're just different from how you choose to play.

The problem isn't whether or not you're really condescending. I already agree that you're not being condescending. The problem is that you're calling people irrational because they do not play like you do.

Actually, its the developers' responsibility for designing the powersets and game mechanics as they did.

But, that's beside the point: Every combination that is not the "best" combination is not an underperforming combination. Some do underperform, but the performance metric that matters is not the "best possible performance in the entire game" but rather "performance that is sufficient to function in the game." A character that can do iTrials, task forces, not suffer excessive defeats, and solo reasonably well is not underperforming for that player - although statistics may indicate that particular AT/powerset combination is underperforming. It could also be argued that the strongest performing powersets are actually overperforming and should be brought in line with the powersets that fit closer to the devs' intentions for gameplay. That is, where the performance bar should be set is mostly subjective. For you, it's the maximum possible. For others, it may not be set so high.

If you insist that your metric for fun is the only objective metric for fun, people will continue to take your statements as condescending and possibly insulting.

That isn't what you said. What you said was that how you play the game is objective and logical and that Hopeling's playstyle was subjective and unprovable by logic and reason, making it unreasonable and pointless by nature. You also said that by comparison, your approach to the game can be explained and understood in a reasonable manner. You also said "I have to say that if we're attempting to establish which of our approaches makes sense and which doesn't, it has to be advantage: me."

I don't think you're being condescending here. I think you're simply not looking at this from any perspective but your own. This is a common human failing, and one that frequently happens on gaming forums.

Your premise is unreasonable and illogical, however. That is the assumption that the only reasonable method through which you can determine whether a playstyle is worthwhile is through whether it has the highest possible performance. This is not a falsifiable claim, and is highly subjective. In this case, the subjectivity is in terms of your criteria for what you find enjoyable. You naturally perceive this as logical and reasonable because it is a motivation you find understandable. Which is not surprising, given that it is your motivation.

Other motivations are just as rational, logical, understandable, or reasonable. They may not rely on a strictly empirical degree of performance as you seem to prefer, but not everyone is fixated on or enjoys such things, and not enjoying those things is just as rational as enjoying them.

Why? It seems more dependent on how far you travel than on the energy expended to get there.

The proposal introduced here is the Alcubierre warp drive with a modification that means significantly less energy is required to achieve FTL travel.

Technically, the ship's velocity would be zero, thus collisions of this nature would not be an issue.

What surprises me is that no one has mentioned this.