ChaosExMachina
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Posts
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Quote:That can't be the only reason as fixing that sounds not particularly complicated.Originally Posted by minago
The Trial was taken offline due to a game-breaking exploit.
The exploit enabled any member of the SG running the trial to run a delivery mission or "fedex" type mission and upon clicking the end contact, the mission would not complete but the character and team would still receive the mission completion bonus. This resulted in several people clicking their way from level 1 to level 50 in a matter of hours, and also allowed the accumulation of large amounts of prestige and influence for various SGs and players afterward the zone was taken down for due to obvious exploitation.
work for AE began shortly after the incident. -
Quote:He also had a volcano base with uniformed henchmen and booby traps, which is like JUST THE KIND OF THING WE'RE TALKING ABOUT.Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Your avatar represents camp, my friend. He died because he was wearing a cape.
That is the very essence of camp.
Hmm, perhaps this could be a sig.Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The Rogue Isles isn't a realistic dictatorship
I want to play a frickin' super villain, the kind that does not exist and could not exist outside of fiction. How's "Flamboyant" work for you? "Stylized"? "Iconic"? "Outrageous"? "Camp?" I don't want to pretend to be an enforcer of a dictatorship - I believe it has been demonstrated that the game as it exists now is capable of supporting this paradigm to a much greater extent than it currently does, and I would like to see that trend continue in future content and in edits to existing content, if existing content is to be revisited at all. I really don't think I can make it much clearer than that.
Maybe it could have some things about villainy rather than vile, and support for the more archetypes - overlords, misguided anti-villains, anything but enforcers.
How could most of this subject be summarized into a sig? -
Quote:Those are good arcs, but those are not the arcs that are being referenced here.Originally Posted by Venture
To borrow from Chandler, if the game can be as good as "O, Wretched Man!" or "The Hammer of the World", or even "only" as good as "Kurh'Rekt Revenge" or "Iron Widow", then it can be even better. Nor is it in any way, shape or form necessary to embrace bad writing for the sake of enjoyable gameplay; the above arcs play just as well as anything else in the game.
Camp does not necessarily mean bad writing. It can mean a lot of things, and in this case it means the clone army super laser volcano fortress villainy. Such things have been used even by the likes of Pixar. -
Electrohawk, what is that avatar?
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An island relatively near St. Martial.
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Quote:It would make sense with some SGs, and why not leave it up to the owner what makes sense?Originally Posted by Ironblade
But having people on both sides of the law in the same group makes zero sense. As for the chat, serious SG/VGs don't use it. They have their own global channel, which works cross-faction and cross-server. Also across multiple SGs on the same server, which many groups have.
Most large SGs are already present in both, including RP SGs.
There's also a limit of 10 channels, meaning that SG channels have to compete with other types of channels, and you can only join so many SGs. Open SGs would be a far more elegant solution.
As for the rest of it... let's just see how GR works. I'd really REALLY like to be surprised with more rogue options than it sounds like there are so far. Maybe there will be, for example, rogue story arcs in Paragon and a way to access markets while cross teamed. -
Quote:Exactly. Arachnos has too much of the real world, banal, vile evil, rather than comic book fun camp villainy. I absolutely HATE banal evil, but like camp evil.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
A key theme of 1984 was the banality of evil. Villains may be evil, but banal they are not.
Real world awful boring villainy: police state, militarism, suppression of artists and intellectuals.
Comic book villainy: Minions in stylish themed outfits, clone army, zeppelins, death rays.
There's also the fact that anarchofascist is even more nonsensical than communazi, and there is a constant indecision about which Arachnos is. Sometimes they are anarchist who openly promote whatever happens to be evil, while other times they're fascists who use propaganda to try to make themselves sound like the good guys. Neither is particularly effective.
Going back to the idea of classes of villain, there are generally these types:
Henchmen, Overlords, Misguided Antivillains, and Psychos
Each can be serious or camp or balanced.
Arachnos only works remotely well with henchmen or psychos, though not particularly well with either, and only dark non-camp ones at that. It's written to work with an archetype (agent of evil government) that's very rare in any comic book style setting. Usually such agents are either generic rather than themed major characters, or another supervillain archetype that simply works with them. -
This single thing would get me to create a soldier VEAT.
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Quote:Honestly, why does that matter?
There is still that whole ranged advantage though, adding Hover to an AT like that makes them an almost un-killable(read: Hovercrab) machine who can solo most EB/AVs with little to no effort.
At some point you have to prioritize player fun over fear of somebody possibly deciding to do something with too little effort, especially if:
1. It wouldn't be a farm issue because the described method is not fast and there are no major rewards for soloing EB/AV.
2. People can already do it with less effort by having IOs or even powerset combos.
Every mob can attack you, they just can't melee you, so it would not be that much of an advantage if the AT had appropriate stats.
See also travel supression as an example of putting a fear of a person doing something easily (but not with any efficiency to speak of) over fun. -
Quote:Thank you. This is another reason the Do It Yourself Laser Moon Base arc is a great example of how to write a villain arc. Not only does it build you up, but it is a form of total camp villainy.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I know they suck, and I know that's not a good thing to have in your game. This is why I'm advocating for less vile, less disgusting evil and more comic-booky, more iconic villainy. Less poisoning children and abusing school teachers, more taking over the world and building death rays. Less selling people to slavers and butchers, more robbing banks and stealing ancient power. If anything, disgusting evil is a drawback to the game, because it creates exactly those kinds of reservations - that evil CAN'T win, SHOULDN'T win and that even when it does, the player MUST hate himself for it.
I talked about how I want "misguided morality" or redeeming qualities, which is what every good antivillain has, but also important is the ability to do silly things like that. That's not what everybody wants, but where is the option to do things like build ridiculous plot devices that will bring you TOTAL POWER even though it makes no sense that they would?
Otherwise, if you win, you just win at being a jerk, which is not what I want. Whoever actually wrote that Phipps dreck disturbs me as a person, to be honest.
This is actually another way that the i17 arc is good. An army of clones is like the pinnacle of camp villainous goals. -
Masterminds. Versatility is a big deal to me.
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Quote:I'm getting increasingly skeptical about GR because its titular feature is coming pre-nerfed into near meaninglessness.Originally Posted by Frosticus
It goes doubly for the dollar amount. The pop spike from CoV wasn't really that large to begin with. The dollar spike was, but GR will be puny compared to it. If for no other reason than they are spreading the surge out with pre-purchasing many months in advance. But there are other reasons too.
Using the sub to cross locations requires you to drop any quests.
You still can't make a factionless SG, which is an utterly terrible decision. SGs are an important tool to build social connections that keep people around, and using the titular feature will require you to switch SGs or at least join a sister group that has a different chat domain.
There will be no advantages of the system for balancing PVP zone populations, that is being a rogue or vigilante is irrelevant to PVP zones.
It's sounding like you will not be able to get, say, hero quests as a rogue.
Not being able to use markets will limit how effective your cross trips can be.
These things could combine to turn it into simply a novelty or a way to get teams.
It's also been so anticipated that users' expectations may be impossible to satisfy.
I'm firmly of the creativity camp myself, but it's hard to guess how much of a factor this will be.Quote:Originally Posted by Olantern
Similarly, and, to me, much more troublingly, people are likely to switch to a decent MMO based on a recognized superhero property.
The biggest draw to new player will be making story choices, but the rest of it is, again, kind of insular. They've no reason to be interested in an alternate universe of some unknown game, or whatever incarnates are.Quote:Originally Posted by Olantern
This is one of my pet theories, too. In this connection, it's important to keep the way the game has been marketed in mind. As the Black Pebble thread strongly implied, the target population is the group of current subscribers, not potential new players. Put another way, the game is in retention mode, not expansion mode. This means that the population to which the game is being presented is getting progressively more and more blase about the product and thus harder and harder to please.
What they should do is avoid the mistakes of Arachnos and go wholly into distinguishing themselves from the new competition by offering creative independence. That is again what the expansion is about and it would be wise to emphasize it as much as possible.
I think that the openness of the incarnate system (which should be nothing but a code name) will actually have greater importance than it may sound like it would. They have to be the open alternative to DCUO. If the licensed game actually provides more creative freedom, there will be nothing to market. -
Quote:I can't tell you if that is what they're thinking. It's simply a guess that is consistent with most of what has been said about similar subjects.Originally Posted by Rodoan
I like your whole discussion ChaosExMachina, but am only pointing to these comments. Assuming the role of village idiot (its only a role, people), I ask: Is this really what Paragon Studios is thinking? Because it sounds cyclical and self-defeating.
"No significant PVP", so...
PVP players tend to go elsewhere, so...
there'll be no significant fix to PVP because "there isn't enough of a userbase"
Potential PVP players won't stay because (wrap back to first line)
seems to me, if the above loop is acurate, then the answer is to break the loop and take Ray's path in Field of Dreams: if Paragon Studios builds it, they will come. -
Easily the best arc in the whole game is the Dean/Leonard series. The story is just OK, but the quality of the writing, and fun and cool and wow factor, are over the top.
It accomplishes quite a lot of what many have been asking fot from villain arcs.
Somebody deserves another of those gift baskets.
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I have yet to hear of one person who likes the lackeyism.
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Quote:So, you're admitting that those arcs have bad writing?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But not every red side mission is like that either
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I have used the stay command, with passive, to get them to stop, and as soon as I turn it to defensive they run right back. Does the stay command actually do anything beyond what goto does?
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Quote:This is pretty much the summary of it.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Right now, though, it requires more manipulation of the interface to achieve the same ends. That's one of the most fundamental no-no's of interface design.
They obeyed one other rule of interface design (avoid horizontal scrollbars), but I think in this case it's an exception. The way it's oriented, with the search at the top, makes for an interface with far more available horizontal space.
It's also entirely impossible to do some things you could do with the other interface, like clicking items with the right button for info. I just tried to buy a temp power, and it was impossible without buying to tell which of the 3 corresponded to which level.
I say that it has enough potential not to be reverted, but seriously needs work. -
Honestly this is not much of a surprise. Reasons:
1. No significant endgame
2. No significant PVP
3. The trial experience is just terrible. You only get to play the 14 most annoying levels in the game, and get almost no communication tools that don't require veteran knowledge or better than average (read: idiot) resourcefulness to discover. The best communication tool trials can use is help channel. If the trial user is smart enough to try that channel, they are immediately presented with a chat bug, and even a computer savvy person would not take that error message as a clue that they should wade through the command list to find /hc. If somebody sends you a PM, there is no reply command even though such a command could not be used by spammers. You don't get travel powers, among the more unique features, until the end, unless, again, you already know how to get temp powers.
4. The community is better than most MMO communities, but, possibly related to #3, has issues with being quite insular. Some people like to ridicule others for bringing up common topics, using terms from other games, not knowing some info, etc. ESPECIALLY since I14. Around that release some dev or mod made a post about how lots of new people were starting to join, and suggested that the community treat them well. Of course, since then there are people who think any newbie is a DIRTY SPOITER, and many more who take great offense to a 50 who doesn't know what X is. As if the newbie deserves to be insulted because they took the most advantageous teams available to them.
5. There hasn't been much in the way of "things to do" since i12 2 years ago. Systems are more important than content, but the systems that have been added are more about customizing how you do things. The standouts since then are are power customization, which is a far bigger success than I imagined it could be, and manages to completely dominate the miniscule power customization in CO, and AE, which adds lots of content but got a mostly wrong reputation as farmland, making it hard to get teams. These are major features that add value, but not particularly different ways of doing things like i9 or i11 did. After i9, i10, i11, and i12 beefed up the game in under a year, far more than it has been since, there is a strong sense that GR is make or break.
6. Ridiculously repetetive gameplay with walls of the same enemies in the same maps. This is kind of related to #1, because farming money is basically what the endgame is.
7. There was a need to clean up hero content, especially low levels.
Devs used I17 to address 7, and GR deals with 1, 5, and possibly 6 depending upon how it works.
3 could be dealt with easily and it's amazing to me that it hasn't been. Just add /reply, let trials do just a little more (level 25 is an ideal get a taste level as it is just after SOs, but before tier 9s), and fix help chat, which is a case of the chat tab simply using a different chat command.
4 is something that the players have to do. Don't be tolerant of such behavior.
2 is probably going to be an issue that won't be addressed without so many resources that they won't do because there isn't enough of a PVP userbase. It has to go way beyond balancing powers and even mechanics and into incentives, venues, etc. -
What would marketing have to say about this?
Not that they often have anything to say whatsoever. :P -
Actually, considering it uses energy, it would be, except that the RMTers use even more.
I've got 2 more of these to sell. Neonman, what is your global? -
Quote:It's not just with windowed mode. Fullscreen does it too.Originally Posted by Kheldarn
From Avatea's Live Known Issues - April 29th, 2010 post:
I HATE that it's because I run in Windowed mode. I HATE running anything but movies in full screen mode. Always have, always will.
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Quote:Until GR introduces Praetoria where it isn't.Originally Posted by Venture
Asking that we not have to deal with Contacts like Darla Mavis, never mind Hard Case, is one thing, but the simple fact of the matter is that this game is predicated on the players performing tasks at the behest of NPCs. Either limit your character conceptions accordingly, which frankly is not all that hard, or accept that this game doesn't deliver what you want and move on.
GR has player choice in arcs, and the ability to be proactive. Either accept that, or move on.
Again, what we are asking for is THERE NOW. The "it can't be done" crowd has already been beaten at this debate.
Unfortunately a forum purge deleted my topic where I sggested Storm MMs and got flamed for such a ridiculous idea, or I would probably sig it with the way people around here get hostile to suggestions. -
This is exactly what should be done to stop spammers. It's a much better solution than blocking emails from people you don't know, which is purely a recipient-driven method and makes email useless.
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Here is an example.
I was just fighting Nemesis minions. Nemesis is stronger than Arachnos. He has the highest level of plot armor and plot weaponry ever. He tells the laws of physics to STFU as he builds steam powered automatons that somehow fool everybody. Nemesis minions are absurdly loyal for no apparent reason. The whole Rikti plot involves Nemesis and there are hints that say everything is or isn't a Nemesis plot.
However, I find Nemesis to be a cool villain, and hate Arachnos. Admittedly some of it is that Nemesis has much better theming. However, equally important is that at no point do you get told that you'd better do something to score points with Nemesis, or that somebody did something that is forbidden by Nemesis so they're enemies, or that if you can just defeat Nemesis you will get the honor of working for him to get a badge called servant of Nemesis, or that serving his minions is the only way to get epic powers.