CodeJunkie

Absolutely. They want us to shut up. Don't.

Love it.

Very nice.

I have a question regarding this. Do these stack or is it "use it or lose it"? I would imagine it is the later.

no problem.

It uses a combination actually. I believe for Video it uses OpenGL but for everything else it uses DirectX.

It's one of the reasons they could not not port it to run natively under OSX (Unix) and had to wrap the game for OSX in a Windows emulator.

EDIT: OpenGL is for video only. For audio OpenAL exists....not sure what exists currently as an open input device library.

Ha, I was going to say this. It was Microsoft and they still do it. Each version of Windows amounts to essentially a point release of bug fixes and you're lucky if any of the bugs get fixed. Then they redesign the interface by moving things around and obfuscating what was once easy to use so as to create the illusion of new features all the while introducing more bugs. Windows has not changed too much at all since it was first created (the switch to NT was a big change) and strangely enough requires more resources (and cooling hardware) with each revision.

I'd say it's very, very unlikely to happen here, but other companies have done and still do nasty things like this.

EDIT: PC Gamers are getting screwed over bad by MS right now with DirectX 10/11. You cannot use it unless you buy Windows 7 even though there is no technical reason why it cannot run in Windows XP. They have simply hard coded exceptions in the installers that prevent you from installing it. The same has been done with newer versions of their other software like SQL Server and its tools. Even though (if you still have them) you can use say the SQL 2000 tools on any version of the databases the newer tools are hard coded to not let you connect to certain versions of databases, forcing you to upgrade. They realized at some point that they could get away with this and did it.

This. Basically the entire game would have to rebalanced to take much longer to progress so as to not allow such an allowance for free players to be exploited. In the long run it's not worth the trouble and effort.

*Does the same.*

I started debating this, but Arcanaville has much more stamina when it comes to debating things like this.

You are correct, it has never been an option. It was Champions Online which offered a lifetime sub and apparently still does. STO does as well (or did?).

DDO went F2P because they could not retain subscribers. They are now solely focused on maintaining the game via micro transactions, so "successful" is really only relative to the goal at hand. Have they been successful? Yes, however it does not fit the goal of PS, which is gain more subscribers, not cater to non-subscribers. That is why they are attempting to make VIP (subscriber) access a no-brainer.

Not likely to happen. The whole point of the perks that VIPs get (including the 400pp/month) is to entice Freems and Preems to subscribe to the game. Why would you expect that as a non-paying player you should also have the capability of getting other content for free by earning points towards such things? That defeats the purpose of the system, which is designed to make money, not give people a free game to play. Nothing is truly free.

Basically the new hybrid model is designed to say "hey, you don't want to pony up $15 a month...ok...well, you could at least spend a few bucks here and there to help us release new stuff, instead of being a complete free loader."

Awesome, I asked this question in the other thread. Thanks for clearing up this concern.

I could get behind this. There is no reason any one should be allowed to respec like this and not have to start over.

Yeah, I just realized what you were talking about last night. I got my tier 3 alpha slot finally and was looking at the requirements for the tier 4 thinking "oh I just need to get the second tier 3 before I can get the tier 4"...nope. You have to start all the way over which makes no sense.

No progression tree works like that. It makes sense to have to get both tier 3s to get to tier 4, but not to start all the way over. If this doesn't change there will have to be a LOT more content to do in order for me to attempt tier 4s.

Haha, exactly. The system we have here is nothing compared to what exists in other games. I played Vanguard for a little bit and loved it, but couldn't get my wife into it. In that game in order to craft, and it sounds like it might be similar to WoW (never played Wow) you have to mine minerals or chop wood and then go through all the processes of smelting, leather working, black smithing and what not...lots of work.

So yeah, CoX is fairly simple.

I've always had an issue with this in general, both with the inventions and now the incarnate system. The names of the components that go into making things appear to be random and whatever the programmer or copywriter thought would be a cool name. There is no rhyme or reason to the components needed for stuff. I think the major reason for this was because focus for such things was placed on disbursing the salvage among the level ranges and ensuring certain ones would be more rare than others to create an economy, as well as preventing farming of salvage. The logical aspect of such things was never considered at all.

In any descent sword and sorcery RPG, whether it's an MMO or not and it has crafting, the crafting will typically make sense. For example to make arrows, you need wood for the flights, feathers for the fletching and metal, bone or stone for the tips and depending on the realism factor something to attach the components together. The proper tools are usually required as well.

It is entirely possible, however, that the devs felt that components didn't matter as much as the end result since a lot of what goes into our characters in this game is left up to player imagination.

This was bugging me as well. I kept having to go back and forth between the two screen to determine what was what. Other than that though the system was not hard to figure out at all. The explanations in the release notes made it sound overly complex, but it really isn't.

The color chart should be the standard one in use:

common = white
uncommon = yellow
rare = orange
very rare = purple

So at a glance you can know how many and what tier of component you need. Then when the reward table pops up you can quick glance at the components needed and pick the right one. Course by the time something like this happens we'll have all mastered the system...haha.

I ran these new trials for the first time last night and that's how the raid was run. Ran one BAF and two Lambas...all successful. Was some fun stuff.

This is a small workaround until they change how all iXP is doled out and if they don't then it will probably be the standard tactic from here on out.

This leads me to believe that they will get rid of shards at some point. What will more than likely happen is everything will start to drop threads instead of shards and any shards you have left you can convert them to threads. Seeing as how there are so many gates to use the new components we may not see a third set of currency when the next slots come out.