Blue_Mourning

A lot of interesting commentary on the thread. I know we're not supposed to go to larger cultural context, but I feel that it needs to be said anyway.

This is a video game and I guess it could be argued that the primary audience for most things we consider video games (MMO's, Xbox/PS3 games etc, so disregarding things like Farmville and the weird Google Earth game my sister likes to play) to be targeted primarily at men. I might be wrong in that - and CoH certainly has a huge community of women (which is nothing short of awesome). I have worked in various ways in the film industry, and have taken a boat load of classes about film theory; one of the big terms that was spoken about was the "male gaze" - essentially it means this: most directors, writers and producers are overwhelmingly men in the field of Hollywood, and so their portrayal of women is generally seen as only viewed through the eyes of men. Any time a woman is sexualized or objectified it is then considered to be the product primarily of that male gaze. Interestingly enough the primary consumer of television and movies are women - I can't remember the actual statistical breakdowns but it is substantial. So while women are objectified through men's eyes, the primary consumer of that objectification (disregarding the adult film industry, which would necessarily be a bad argument to make) aren't men. It's women. And it's women who give the tacit approval for most of those objectifications (whether it's sexuality or the dumb blonde, or the Bond girl of the moment running around boobs-a-shaking[speaking of which I just watched Thunderball - Claudine Auger is very pleasing to the eye). What's most interesting is that the objectification of women is an easy target, but if you watch, say, the Bond films, there is very little argument that can be made that Bond is not also hyper sexualized. Also related - how often does Brad Pitt have his shirt off in Troy while apparently oiled up? How often was Robert Downey Jr. sexualized in Iron Man? For some reason we tend to ignore those objectifications when it's targeted towards men, but if it's toxic for women, it's just as toxic for men. Or do you not think that men tend to adhere to some weird male machismo stereotype that's pervasive? Certainly this game does.

Ultimately though, I think it does come down to there should be more options to play different looking characters in this game. And maybe this game is necessarily a bad place to look since it's playing off the comic book genre where everyone, including the men, are hyper sexualized and caricatured. Or do you think that if a man walked around in skin tight clothes in Real life they would possibly ever look that good?

EDIT: I guess my bigger point is this: I don't think objectification is bad. Were I a woman (or a gay man) I would certainly appreciate Brad Pitt without his shirt in Troy. I certainly enjoyed watching Claudine Auger in Thunderball (and Monica Bellucci in everything and anything). Objectification is bad though when that's all there is. I think that that is Sam's bigger point - sexual objectification of women in character creator options tends to overwhelm many other options for women. I would argue though that the same is true for the male models, we just don't necessarily see it as readily because male sexualization is, for one reason or another, not considered a bad thing.

I've said this before, and I'll likely say this again, but writing doesn't mean just what's written in the text dumps. The story isn't read in an MMO, it's experienced by the player doing actions. Much of the older content is literally dumped on you by walls of text, to the point where you go and do a door mission and every piece of reasoning is told to you in clue boxes, massive text dumps in contact talk and little blurbs upon entering and exiting. Much of the tmie it would be boring to simply sit there and read it, because frankly when i want to sit and read I don't go to video games, I go to books written by awesome people.

Orson Scott Card wrote a video game called Advent Rising, which had an interesting story, but almost every piece of important story architecture took place in non-interactive cut scenes to the point where it felt superfluous. Beyond the technical aspects of the game being poor, this was what made the game, for me, ultimately uninteresting. It felt like I was being told the game rather than playing the game, and when I go to the game, much of it feels the same.

I find a lot of the older content, especially things like WWR, and a lot of the content in the 30's and 40's, all of the old TF's (Posi - Numi, Shard TF's) feel like "told" stories. The stories might be interesting and the text dumps well written, but ultimately I find them unengaging and uninteresting. Say what you will about Roy Cooling and the like but the storytelling there keeps the story moving forwards, and keeps the player involved. Same thing with the Leviathan arc villainside. It actuallyfeels like you're doing something, which simply never feels that way with older arcs.

I live and work a stone's throw away for New York City, but at the time I was in Amherst, MA at college. New York has always been a part of my life, and even if I was lucky enough to not have lost anyone that day personally, I know people who lost, and I know people who know people who lost that day.

It's ten years after, and I stand by our soldiers who do a job that I'm not willing to do. I stand by those in Washington and Pennsylvania because they're too often an afterthought on the day of remembrance. I stand by my fellow New Yorkers, both those born and those to emmigrated here afterwards from all over the country and all over the world.

We should never forget them, and all those who made a sacrifice that day, and all those who were martyred that day (not the terrorists, just so we're clear, but their victims). It's ten years later, and while I can't speak for those who died, and I can't speak for those who lost, i can speak for myself when I say that their legacy should not be the deaths of thousands. When we remember tomorrow, we should remember not how they died, but try to make a concerted effort to remember how they lived, and try to make a concerted effort towards the betterment of our world and our country.

The thing is, save for a few select things, most of the things the Devs have said that they're looking into have been either fixed or changed. If you put the things on one hand that they haven't changed or fixed and put the rest of the things on another that they have you should be absolutely staggered.

Things that haven't changed that need it/or fixed: PvP, Base Raids, Bases, Stalkers, Shadow Shard

Things that they've looked into and changed: Stalkers, Blasters, Dominators, Defenders (solo damage buff), Side switching, Power Customization, Weapon Customization, Redraw (on some sets), CoP (even if I don't like it), Market Merge, Huge numbers of QoL issues, Inherent Stamina, Bruising on Tankers (minor, but it was a bone that the Tanks had been asking for in some form for a while), Server List Merge

There are some long standing issues, but the long standing issues do tend to get looked at, even if they don't get solved - PvP was actually looked at and changed (even if it was for the worse). Bases need love, and Stalkers need....something, but even Stalkers are on both lists for a reason - they've gotten an over haul even if it didn't completely fix the issue (since the issue appears to be systemic and conceptual, and therefore not easy to fix). When the devs declare they're going to look at something in the past few years they actually have a pretty good track record for being up front about stuff. It sometimes takes a while, but it does happen. I think claiming that you don't believe them when they say they're just looking at it is a bit ridiculous. Should you get excited? Probably not. But they're using non-specific language because that's how they talk, and that's how they're required to talk and if they're smart, that's how they have to talk. I wouldn't trust the dev team that speaks in absolutes because there's almost no way you can deliver on absolutes, until you absolutely know you can.

The devs have said that they're looking into it. I think they've at least brought themselves enough time to look into it without claiming that they're not going to try to make a fix.