Captain_Photon

Especially since any character can build one.

I've always thought it'd be nice if Interrupt Reduction enhancements actually reduced the wind-up, rather than just making more of it uninterruptible. Apart from that, good to go.

And finish that zone. Theoretically.

You know what else is hilarious if you have Trip Mines? Try this sometime in one of the co-op areas: lay a huge minefield, and then get your Gravity Controller teammate to Wormhole the bad guys into it. It requires a very specific kind of teammate, but it's way more fun than toe bombing.

I love Proton Volley - that is one of the classic sound effects of science fiction - but it's too damn slow. Actually, a lot of the Rad Blast attacks are like that. I'm not just talking about PV's interrupt/lead time, all snipes have that, but even when it fires it takes forever. It feels like I'm constantly getting the last shot in on someone my teammates killed while PV or Neutron Bomb or Cosmic Burst or especially Electron Haze was busy animating. Maybe it's just my imagination (I'm sure one of the Number Slaves will be along to tell me how many milliseconds it takes each power to fire, and how that compares with, say, Energy Blast), but I always feel like I'm late to the party when I play my Rad Blast characters.

That'd be sort of the opposite of what Coke did, though. To follow the Coke example, Paragon would have to completely revise the game, so that after the morning maint one Monday everyone logged in to discover that, say, it'd become a co-op first-person shooter, but not tell anyone they were doing it ahead of time and leave all the loading and splash screens the same. After all, New Coke only became New Coke after the big uproar over the changeover; the original plan was to just change the soda and leave the packaging the same. So only after the forum server literally exploded from everyone going "hey, what the?" would they call it New City of Heroes, and within a few weeks City of Heroes Classic servers would've opened with the original game on them. Except it wouldn't quite be the original game, in a way that no one could quite properly define, because they'd have started making it with corn syrup and... oh dear, I seem to have lost the thread of my argument somewhat.

So. Um. ... They shouldn't change City of Heroes into a first-person shooter. That wouldn't... be good. Thank you. Goodnight and good luck.

A lot of SGs have private Ventrilo servers set up for their members' use. Personally, I don't see the point, but there are quite a few out there. One sees their members recruiting in Broadcast and Request all the time, at least in the lower-level zones on Virtue.

Also: There are very few things quite as satisfying as bringing down a fleeing foe with Sniper Rifle. Perfect sound effect, perfect lead time, perfect ragdoll flop; priceless.

Incorrect.

If I wanted to be challenged I'd take up some difficult but ultimately rewarding hobby, like blacksmithing or sculpture. Since the only reward for playing a game is fun, and constantly getting my face isn't any, I'm not particularly enamored of the "MOAR CHALLENGE!" crowd. Quite often they end up ruining an excellent game for others with their constant cries that it's not hard enough.

Anyway, the way Bill framed his suggestion, you can still enjoy your h4rdk0r3 7hr1llz without annoying the rest of us, simply by leaving the lower difficulty levels alone and adding this (which is not, inherently, a bad idea - rare for this forum) to the higher ones. So relax.

Just to be realistic for a moment, I suspect it's somewhere far, far above the amount of money even an MMO with a few million subscribers pulls down. I mean, look at the recent goings-on in the financial and insurance sectors.

Obviously that wouldn't work with the Vahzilok, or in any mission that happens on a sewer map.

Sure, I'll speculate: Disk space is neither infinite nor free. If everybody could ignore every possible permutation of "asdfjkl", there wouldn't be any room on the servers for our costumes or what powers we have.

It's a reactivation weekend; the download server's probably getting hammered.

I don't think a monocle would work with Statesman's goofy half-helmet thing. (Seriously, will someone either find him the rest of the helmet or convince him to just wear a mask? Or even to just not bother? I mean, it's not like the guy has a secret identity any more.)

Like my Warshade! He's a very distinguished chap.

Yeah, it'd be a lot simpler to just let us go "No... no... no... aha!" Besides, those algorithms intended to try and zero in on what the user likes and go get more of the same never work right. For instance, My TiVo's suggestion box is constantly full of complete rubbish that just happens to have similar tags to things I like, largely because whoever's responsible for tagging shows over there is apparently some kind of halfwit.

People sometimes think they're playing EVE 2, but then they remember that they're just using TurboTax.

(rimshot!)

Speaking of organizations that have always needed to be told, "Good lord, grow up."

Nice. "Please sir, may we have some more?"

I'm pretty sure I did the classic hobo clown one year, and I know I was a pirate another year, but my most triumphant Halloween was when I was six. I was the Big Fig. My costume was glorious and I knew the song-and-dance routine by heart. I was a huge hit. I was still working on that candy haul circa Thanksgiving (which, for our foreign readers, I should note is on the last Thursday in November in the US).

I'm not sure whether the guys at Paragon are sweating it - I'd rather they didn't, since I personally think their energies should be focused entirely on the job at hand, namely making City of Heroes the best game they can make it, without fear or favor. Unrealistically idealistic, I suspect, but that's the way I've always felt about products in a competitive market - that the people developing the product shouldn't think about the competition, but only about the absolute quality of their own work. Let the marketing people worry about the competition.

That said, I do expect NCsoft to keep an eye on what's going on in the market at large. That's a tightrope act, though. I don't particularly like the idea of marketing dictating what the game is. To me - and again, I accept that this may be unworkably pollyanna of me, but I can't help how I feel - their job is to draw attention to the fact that the developers are doing their aforementioned best, not try to control what they're doing.

So, yeah. In a perfect world, the developers make the best game they can and the publisher makes sure people know it's the best, and then nature takes its course and all is well. Here in the real world, it's probably a lot messier than that, but on both sides of that coin it's a business I don't really know anything about. I could come up with suggestions to marketing until the cows come home - how about "free stuff if you switch" offers, like the satellite TV providers do? - but they'd be based on what are essentially just guesses as to how these things work, which I submit is not the best foundation.

Ah, well, there's your problem - there was probably nobody else in there to hear you.

I think the Help channel is? But using that for just general blabber is bad form, if nothing else. It might help if we knew what you were trying to accomplish with your all-points message. For example, if it was just to say HELLO FELLOW GAMERS, there's not really any appropriate place to do that across an entire server.