BurningFist_EU

I do hope the title doesn't count to the limit. -5 points for me if it does.

Who needs Word when there's http://www.wordcounttool.com/

And mine, bang on 800 words too.

With all the ways to improve our characters through XP "smoothing", IOs, plentiful respecs and the upcoming offline character rewards, are there any plans to increase the challenge of the game by improving mob AI or such? Because CoX is getting rather too easy these days, IMO.

Nice idea Mr Wuffles, a bit of love for the writers in an ocean of artists

800 words is a good challenge too, it's easy to go large when you get in the flow. Keeping within a strict word count is a lot trickier.

If I get time I'll cook something up, but I've got two stories on the backburner already (one of which being the third and final part of my Nucleopatra backstory) and work is getting a little mental at the moment with having to run both the warehouse and despatch department on my own until the end of August.

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In the scenario I envisage every peace loving Rikti has been killed. All that remains is the Rikti who want to wipe out out, every single last one is dedicated to wiping out humanity. They know it's not our fault, but they want us gone anyway. They won't ever stop, won't quit, won't give in. If we don't wipe them out humanity is doomed.

So is it then not heroic to defend yourself, save humanity? Or is it better to die?

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Would it be heroic to fight a war of extermination to save us from extermination? No, I don't think it would. It would be heroic to target their capability to exterminate us while respecting the sanctity of life, even that of our enemies.

Even if we did fight a war of extermination there'd be tipping point beyond which they wouldn't have the capability to threaten us. To carry on wiping out the Rikti past that point would strip us of any moral high ground.

What would be cool is if the hero missions revolved around targeting their technology and command structures, while the villain missions were less sensitively targetted. Heroic missions could be like all those men-on-a-mission stories like "The Heroes of Telemark" and "The Guns of Navarone", whereas the villains could indulge in base terrorism.

Of course I can't see NCsoft making content that could in any way be interpreted as promoting terrorism by letting players play terrorist type missions. That sort of thing would get Jack Thompson a full pardon

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But since when is it ok to call players of CoV "sick and disgusting" ??


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I never said that.

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But GG, it is fun. You just haven't tried it yet. It isn't sick and disguisting - the contacts who give their villains it are.

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And so are the Villains who accept them.

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You might want to read what you actually write then.....

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My Villains could accurately be described as sick and disgusting, I don't know about anyone else's.

Yeah Peter Themari is a pretty bad sort. The Pyriss storyline is particularly evil/tragic.

Here's Act 2 and a link to the slightly revised Act 1. I kinda had to change the mummy and Cleo's "passenger" from Nucleopatra to a different character called Salinah-Het for reasons that will become apparent in Act 3 - Future Shock.

Act 1 - A Meeting of Minds
Cleo Brown uncovers a Family plutonium smuggling racket - and picks up a hitchhiker.
Act 2 - Consequences
A mysterious bomb attack on the Crescent leads Cleo on a desperate chase across the city to find the perpetrators.

That is very, very nice. Thanks for sharing

The video is here if you're interested.

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I'd love to have an MA/Dual Pistols Scrapper.

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So what you want is a Dual Pistol/MA Blaster with some more hitpoints? It boggles the mind.

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Not really, I want a character who's a strong martial artist with guns as a back up, not the other way round. But if they gave us DP/MA Blasters and no Scrapper option I'd take it. I play all my Blasters like Scrappers anyway

Jumping way, way, way ahead of the gun, I'd love to have an MA/Dual Pistols Scrapper. It'd probably be awfully gimped as a straight Scrapper but I've got a character in mind that would suit it down to the ground.

Plus it would look awesome in play

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it

I know what you mean about there needing to be more about them meeting, I thought the same thing when I read it back first time. There's definitely more to be told but it didn't really fit in that story and I didn't want to make it much longer anyway. Once I've figured how expose more and think up a story to go with it I'll post it. There's definitely another story or two in this.

Oh yeah, and the Family guys in the sewer all died of radiation, I was alluding to it when Halloran tells Cleo that they had to take the bodies up to Terra Volta instead of the morgue. The ones in the yard above ground were the ones that Cleo "left laying around". As for Cleo herself, she's pretty much radiation proof now

It's an easy trap to fall into though, as a writer you know everything that happens but you don't always want to spell it out too obviously for the reader, and sometimes things don't come out as clearly as you'd hoped. There's a few more niggles I have with it so I'll come back to it for some rewriting when I've done the next story.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback, it's always appreciated.

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EDIT: Forum is already hosted at USA, so data is already available and the law is broken.

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Besides which there's no reason why NCSoft Europe and NCSoft Europe couldn't have a list of cleared-for-access forum accounts which can be used by to grant access to a shared forum. Game account data wouldn't enter into it as the list would only be indirectly derived from it.

I suspect forum access is managed this way anyway (without the sharing) given that you can be banned from the forum while your game account is still running.

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Black Cat Bone by Laika

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That's a great song.

Anyway, Fist's theme would have to be the theme from the Once Upon A Time In China movies. The video also presents a compelling case for Wet Towel Scrappers in CoH.

Nucleopatra's theme is Curtis Mayfield's Future Shock, the choice of any superpowered ancient Egyptian queen trapped in a 1970s blaxploitation movie.

For some reason I thought Barrington Harvey was Back Alley Brawler's real name.

It's a story, it's all writing and I'm not gonna post it here because forums suck for reading on, so here's a link to a web version: Nucleopatra: Origin

And not before time. I remember suggesting that during CoV beta.

So how are the NaNoWriMos coming on?

I've had to concede defeat before even starting this time due to other pressures but if I get the opportunity I wouldn't mind knocking up a something shorter with one of the ideas I've been playing with.

Also, I've been tinkering with last year's entry and am coming round to the idea of rewriting the wonky bits and finishing it off, especially as the new Orouboros stuff in Issue 11 gives me a spookily perfect way to tie it deeper into the CoX universe.

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i couldnt think of anything more boring than typing up novels :S

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You've clearly never been to Goole.

Damn, I haven't even signed up yet, I've had too much on over the past couple of weeks to prepare or anything. It's been so on top I didn't even realise November had started yet :/

That's a great pic

Doubtless this has been said before but the biggest obstacle to getting PvE players into PvP is that they don't stand a chance against Formula 1 PvP builds in the hands of skilled PvPers. I know there are plenty of PvPer who will help new PvPers with their build and tactics but the fact of it is that many PvEers don't want to change their build for something they'll only play for a change from their main game.

Perhaps a system that could analyse your build for PvP-centric powers, slotting, IOs etc and assign a con that reflects your build's PvP viability would help? There could be some sort of league system in play that rewards (and penalises) players depending on the league their kill belonged to.

I can't see on-death buffs helping the situtation simply because they'll be exploited from day one. Offering better rewards for PvP wouldn't be much of a draw for PvEers either as it'll be dedicated PvPers who'll be winning them more often than not.

I'm up for it again. Last year I didn't decide to join up until 1st November and launched into it with no plan or storyline in mind. Consequently I came unstuck in week 3 with a couple of plot holes that I couldn't figure out how to resolve and realising that my main villain wasn't right for the way it was going. This time I'm gonna be a bit more prepared.

Not sure what I'll do though yet. I've got three ideas at the mo, one is a CoH based one, another is a Lovecraft inspired thing and the other is a sci-fi story, but I've not settled on which one to do yet.