Big_Lunk_NA

On killing sprees: Our SG is based around a company, so the sponsored heroes and their actions are a major concern to the company.
Any stepping out of line is first taken to a tribunal to see if their actions were justified, and whether further action should be taken.
If they've "gone rogue", we'd make an effort to bring them down ourselves.
It will be dealt with IC as far as possible.


On healers and mediports:
sometimes they need to be fudged around for the sake fo dramatic effect. If we didnt, then things will get stale fast.
I heard from a friend recently that the similar Clone concept in fallen earth had resulted in the creation of the "magic cure bullet", where any problem, from life threatening injury, to a hangover, would be cured by kurtcobaining yourself. Things became very static.

I've always considered mediports to be a last minute thing, so unless theyre about to die, it wont trigger. So you can be 99% up to the point of death, and you wont be ported out, allowing major injuries to be sustained, and dealt with in whatever the way the plot requires, without them being scooped up and dumped in a hospital bed.
Mediports, like all teleporters, can be interfered with canonicaly, so it can be fudged if someone does need to die.

Healers i've seen both good and bad. Good would be someone who actualy asks OOC before running into something and starts screaming about how they can click their heels and fix everything, even bob's herpes.

A recent incident with a friend and an over enthusiastic healer went like this:
(friend had an "accident" that caused her to lose an arm. arm was replaced with prosphetic in hospital. This happed some time ago, and had time to heal up)
"I'm a healer! I can fix her arm!"
"She's been to a doctor already, we don't need the help, thank you."
"No, im a healer healer!"
"Take your new age crystal crap and shove it up your ****."

I know people are proud of their character's powers, but please, check with people before you run off on your florence nightingale bit, it may just annoy them.

Hi, im a former EU player

The EU is unfortunatly a minority market, one which could no longer support the brighton offices.
The EU server populations aren't exactly low, some of the US servers have comparable numbers, its just theres more of them.
Sure, a server list merge would be nice, but wont likely fix population problems on your servers, in fact it will make them worse, as people move to the higher populated few US servers.
A more likely outcome will be the account transfer that was given to the Korean players when it was decided their population wouldnt support the game.

Box sets in the EU would also have been nice, but there is a major logistics issue here. Europe is not one country, nor does it have just one language. Shipping things from one side of the states to the other is far easier, and cheaper, than shipping it to, and through, the EU. Then theres the language localisation to think of.

"so advertise the game more!" i hear.
Again, advertising costs, and would have to be done in multiple languages, depending on which countries the advertising runs. Advertising in just english would restrict the advertising to the UK and ireland, which are only part of the player base.
Lets estimate the advertising draws an extra 20% of players to the EU... will that 20% pay off in the long run for advertising? taking note that this is for the area that could no longer support the localised office to handle the advertising in the first place.

NCsoft doesn't ignore the UE, they just had to move your support in with the US support to cut costs, so now you're standing in line with a lot more people, so things arent as direct as they were back when bridger and co were around.
You're now X% of the total player base, not 100% of the EU, so your attention should be around the same as any other X%

That being said, i hope that whatever issue it is that is currently plagueing the EU folks, is dealt with soon

Checked the US Patents and trademarks database, only 3 entries for City of Heroes 2

serial number 85004613
serial number 85004611
serial number 85004608

All submitted by NCSoft, april 1st. these are the only records on there for that trademark.
Magazine had failed to research.

Uni-Con is a RPSG based around a multinational corperation which has recently opened a branch in the United states.

Along with their normal employees, they run a funding scheme offering support to heroes, which is now recruiting. This is the non-business side to the supergroup.




If you're interested in joining Uni-Con, under the S.A.F.E scheme, you can contact me (@Big Lunk) or Zack Lanning (@Zack Lanning) with OOC questions, or IC about the above pamphlet, and we'll see if we're the right group for you.

Is this a sign that Big Game will be donning a full tiger suit, not just the pants, and becoming a claws scrapper?

During daytime/afternoon/early evening, its possible to find as many people online as there are at peak time on union.
Later evening and night, the number gets a lot higher.

if you are an RPer, virtue has the added bonus of probably having as many RPers as Union has players.

whether you choose to stay with defiant/union, or join those who have already made the jump, i'm sure the US will welcome you with open arms as they have the rest of us.

Congrats, Petey!

Never liked vodkas.
But good whiskey on the other hand...

During the winter i drink whiskey, neat. I usualy keep a bottle of Grouse around. If you can get a good batch of Penderyn, it's lovely, with a smokey orange aftertaste, but it's a single malt, so a bit hit or miss on whether its a good year.

Summer, i drink Pernod, plenty of ice, and lemon.
It was a bottle of pernod (on top of drinking a bottle of scotch) that sent me blind over new years a couple of years ago.

Grog from brown rum is another good summer drink, and just prooves to me that pirates were not as hard as they say they are.

what was formerly highest settings would now be (if i get this right)
shadow mode: Stencil
enviroment reflection: off
watter effecs: medium or high (although new reflections may mean this is higher than old settings)
Ambient occlusion: Off

along with any other settings you previosly used (world detail %, FSAA etc)

wake up? what are you doing sleeping after a binge? Never go to sleep drunk.
Ride it out, keep drinking till you're sober again. <waves bottle of scotch>

I started on the US, changed to EU, played there for god knows how long, started to hate the community, switched back to the US last year after a fair bit of dithering trying to find some other game worth playing and RPing in.

I had to remake my main (now have 4 lvl50s, including copies of my main and second, 2 fresh concepts, and working on a 5th)
I lost my influence (i now have more inf on both red and blue than i ever had on my other account)
I lost my friends list (granted most of them had left before i had, but i dragged a friend with me, and have some new friends now)
I lost my vet rewards (although that recent fix they did that knocked the numbers up for some accounts means i kinda got them all back)

switching has been completely possitive for me. Results may vary of course.

Strangely, my new vet times equal roughly what would happen if you added all my vet rewards from my old EU account to my US account, so i'm happy enough.
Best bug of 2010, i reccon

Done, and good luck with the dissertation.

I would like to add that looking back over my personal 20 years of gaming, although video game violence is more prolific now, the severity of the violence, and adult content atleast in western video games, decreased as gaming became more mainstream, and graphics improved.
Possibly due to coming under greater scrutiny, and possibly due to text being more accepted by censors, and flashing pink blocks just being humurous rather than sexy.

Update to the graphics engine to allow particles and other physics: check
Update to the power system to allow customisation that wasn't possible origionaly: check
Update to the graphics engine to something closer to current game standards: check.

Major coding changes and map overhaul (removing the sticky out bits on walls) to allow QoL changes to a travel power: Cant see it happening soon, but Paragon studios may find a work around that can be slotted into the current engine. theyre good like that.

Completely reanimated alternatives to all poweranimations to allow alternate animations for all powersets so some people can make an animal skeletoned hero: cant see it happening, more likely to see animal NPCs way before that, as they are locked to powers.
(anyone remember Cryptic promosing "animal" heroes for the other game? whenever you attacked, you stopped animating like an animal until it went passive. Even in a new engine, it means twice the animation work per power.)

Making a new combat engine to remove rooting and redraw, or make other changes to how combat works: A lot of people like combat as it is, it's better than some games, worse than a few, major gameplay changes will alienate a lot of players.
Also, rooting is for balance reasons, and weapon redraw has been improved in newer sets from what i hear, and some powers seem to have been getting alternate animations to avoid forcing redraw (brawl for example).


Is there any other reasons to make cox2 that i missed? because from what i can see, theyre either constantly improving their game to iron out those engine limitations, or changes that require a brand new engine are just QoL things that wont justify the time and money to remake the game.