BrandX

Originally Posted by Ironik

No offense, but I don't buy that. Well, okay, for CoV, I get it, but not for GR. At that point everyone already knew that having a separate area and faction was bad for the playerbase. And GR came out -- what? -- five years after CoV? And by then the population had diminished to the point where it was obvious that further segregation would be a terrible idea. Going Rogue was simply a retread of all the mistakes made with CoV, albeit in a much more attractive package.

CoV also had the problem of not actually feeling villainous and making everyone a minion, thus putting the story on rails and straitjacketing player creativity... which is what we saw with GR, too. With the added weirdness that we got to choose a faction, yet that choice meant absolutely nothing. We still had to beat up our own kind to maintain the fiction-within-a-fiction that we were "undercover." Yet another dumb story element used to explain game mechanics.

Originally Posted by Brillig

If it were that great, that successful and that profitable, it wouldn't have been shut down.

Originally Posted by Zemblanity

Well, it makes sense, <Br> + X. Who'd want to play a normal person in a force sensitive world? Even in this game, I tend to avoid the Natural origin like the plague ^_^

Originally Posted by Dollhouse

Precisely...and software developers are notoriously bad about doing this sort of code documentation. Moreover, software companies are notoriously cheap about hiring a specialist (software technical writer) to perform this critical task. The result: slow progress on certain kinds of bug fixes and horrible code bloat.

Originally Posted by Dollhouse

This is also one thing (out of many) that I love about The Secret World: gear may be critical to performance, but it doesn't lock down one's appearance. Any weapon or magical focus (which are visible) can be re-skinned. Talismans and signets don't show. And clothing has no effect on stats. Bliss.

Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake

well, first thing is that metaphor isn't quite on. in your example, you purchased a game with an established setting and, with no stated mandate from the players, introduced elements that are not native to the setting, just because you wanted to. What we have seen in several threads is that people state their dislike of something that several players, usually including myself, do want in the game, because of a very narrow definition of what the super heroic genre actually encompasses. in contrast, there are, and I have references lots of examples of, western comics drawing certain cultural touchstones from eastern, particularly Japanese culture. wolverine's time in japan, the foot clan from tmnt, samurai from the justice league, most of the stuff drawn by adam warren, silver samurai, marvel's various manga/ anime side stories, the teen titans tv series the ninja girl from sin city, Its a part of the genre, so when people say "no thanks" or more accurately, when people tell me my ideas dont belong in the game and should be disregarded outright because the only true superhero is a four color spandex clad anachronism, then yes, people are going to take their dismissal personally. And i'm failing to see where you are going with the borg comment as anything substantial, the borg destroy and alter what they assimilate, expanding the game's aesthetic options to allow for a greater representation of different types of superheros destroys what exactly? does fighting alongside a player in a hamkama somehow invalidate your capacity to control what your character does or looks like?
which asian mmos are you talking about? there are cheap ones like 9 dragons and sort of conquer online, but by and large the market is primarily western fantasy(guild wars,tera, rift, eq1&2, wow, lotro, vanguard, dark age of camelot, age of conan, even final fantasy 11&14) with maybe some smidgens of eastern content in the case of wow, final fantasy, and conan and the original guild wars. beyond that there is sci fi(star wars tor, phantasy star online 2, sto and that intensely boring space one who'se name I cant rememberEDIT:eve online, thats it,) and some modern horror with tsw, but a asian themed mmo with a real budget? not seeing them. even aion and lineage are more culturally filtered interpretation of western fantasy, rather than explicitly asian in setting or theme. furthermore, you even state yourself that comics have become more inclusive since the 40's, so have bathrooms and drinking fountains, I'd say the ability to include a broader number of culturally iconic themes has helped comics grow into a stronger medium. The batman of the past didnt look half as intimidating as the current one with multiple eastern and western unarmed fighting styles to draw from, he is more black belt than utility belt. Besides, have you ever heard of manga? its quite popular these days, comics are more than just one thing.I dont think anyone is saying western "culture" cant stand on its own, what we are and have been saying is that superheroes have evolved, and to ask the developers to artificially retard the number of representations that players have the option of using in the form of some nostalgia is regressive thinking. western culture itsself is more inclusive of influences from all over these days. Within reasonable driving distance I can go to a korean Tang soo do school and a african-influenced capoeria school after snacking on a peroghi and while listening to j-pop music, American culture IS assimilating culture, and that is something comics are representing more and more. superheroes are not analogous to cowboys, one is set in the modern times and one is set int he distant , locked past, though games like rizing zan and movies like shanghai noon, do give some precedence. the scope of the argument sis so exaggerated as to be absurd. Diversity is about including others in, not excluding you out. The fact that we had the natural pack or the imperial dynasty pack never prevented you from having a large number of tights patterns available if you so chose. it only meant that people who liked spandex and those who didnt both had something to enjoy.

look, lets get to the meat of it, what do you think doesnt belong exactly? eastern martial arts? katanas? power armor? psychics? martial arts influenced costume choices? Cat girls? Giant robots? ninjas(or more accurately, western movie portrayed ninja, in anime and such, ninja often behave quite differently) Once you break it down, those scary foreign influnces are already a part of the genre already. so whats the breaking point for you?

The final bit of irony to this whole thing is that gg, the voice that launched the whole argument's one character that she has across all the servers is a MARTIAL ARTS/regen scrapper. based, as she said in the past, on herself since she studied kung-fu...so the voice for excluding eastern influences from the game based her character on someone using one of a large number of CHINESE martial arts. ya know?

Originally Posted by Next_Spirit

If it's not coh, the void will never be filled.

Originally Posted by Snow Globe

There comes a point where you have to say "Just go away." I've got to that point with NCsoft. I'm positive that players will find other games and employees will find other work (okay, given the attitude of some NCsoft employees, some won't) and life will go on without NCsoft. It is an overrated company, and a lot of its practices hindered development here.

NCsoft is paving the way to making itself go out of business, at least in North America. I will neither help it nor hinder its progress to oblivion.

Originally Posted by newchemicals

I agree with Golden Girl *faints*

j/k

Well we shall see if CoH does in fact rise from the ashes or stay buried. Personally, I would like my game back.

Originally Posted by UnSub

So in order to stop NCsoft killing any more gaming communities, you want them to kill off ALL of their gaming communities by going out of business?

Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast

I don't play any other MMO but would never wish for people to become unemployed or for fans of another game to lose their game. Seems silly/petty/cruel to wish financial hardship and/or sadness on complete strangers because you don't like a company they are associated with.

Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast

Yes because disgruntled EX employees always make a great reference for how good a company is. I would rather work at a job where I hated the company..than not have a job.

So yeah when I see people saying they hope X-Game shuts down...reminds me how petty people truly can be to wish that on other people; employees and gamers.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

But at the time NCsoft was less evil than it is today - CoH was being neglected by Cryptic, and NCsoft came along with a dumper tuck full of cash and asked the devs what they wanted to spend it on.

Originally Posted by CannonballJack

I've been wondering if maybe this was NCSoft's rationale.

From all of the numbers and arguments I've seen tossed around, it seems like City of Heroes was profitable, but not very, and was gradually shrinking. It doesn't seem likely that it was actually losing money, or even that it was just one bad month away from it, but it's pretty clear (mostly from all of the research Father Xmas has done) that it wasn't growing, either. Still, if it was providing a reliable profit, what kind of reasonable businessperson would shut it down, especially with the dead loss of three months of uncompensated maintenance costs tacked on? That's just throwing money away.

Paragon wasn't growing, though. If NCSoft lacked confidence in the Secret Project, then cutting it would leave Paragon as a branch of the business that would, at best, turn in a gradually-diminishing profit year after year: Profit without growth. To a certain kind of business philosophy, that's a liability rather than a flawed asset.

So could that be the reason NCSoft pulled the plug on Paragon? It seems goofy, but I can picture some of the MBA-types I've known arguing for it.

Originally Posted by Ogi

Snipes are time bomb, err, awful and are automatic skip powers? I got nothing.

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

Well I won't dispute that I have disdain for how this game was managed. It isn't like I made a secret of the fact. I also really hated seeing people lead on by their hopes. I have always felt that was a very horrible form of manipulation.

But I liked playing the game. It was a recreation I could share with my wife and something we could still do that both of us enjoyed. We had even divided what we did with our toons. It reminded us of when we were first starting out so many years ago.

What killed me, was simply put the game got to be like eating ice cream when you had a rotting tooth. You might love the ice cream but you never knew when a spoonful was going to leave you writhing in agony.

The "FIX" for blasters was a perfect recent example. After 8 fricking years finally blasters were getting improved. IMPROVED MY Fing aunt Fanny. No No moving blaster's stats up a little so they are in line with all the other ATs is too simple. The devs have to show how brilliant they are and DESTROY EVERYONE'S concept for their blaster.

Hats off.

Originally Posted by Snow Globe

I look forward to the day when Aion, Lineage II, or Guild Wars 2 will be the largest "active" MMO shut down.

No, I'm not bitter.

Originally Posted by Xzero45

CoH was pretty awful when it came to the female model, yo. The lowest you could slide the chest slider for females is a C cup, and you have the ability to make them absolutely enormous. The waist is, by default, unnaturally tiny, and only near the largest setting does it look pretty normal. The female walk animation makes your character look like they're walking down a runway at all times, and the run animation isn't much better. And lets not forget that entire stretch of time where, in every new costume pack we got on the market, the men would get coats, vests, etc. while the women's only option were revealing corsets and collars.

This game was made by horndog men and it shows.