Darkonne
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Posts
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Joined
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Congrats, Liquid and Fatare! It's nice to hear some good news around here just now. :-)
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In case you're still reading, War Witch, I just wanted to join the thanks for all your hard work on this game. I met you briefly at a PAX East meet & greet a few years back, and it was obvious how much you adored your job. And while I didn't agree with all your decisions, I think that enthusiasm really served you well. You guys made a great game, and you should be proud of all the work you put into it.
I'm really sorry to see the game come to such a sudden end, but I'm glad I got to enjoy it for many years. My best wishes to you and the devs, and thanks so much for all the fun!
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Quote:My friends and I were contemplating this at dinner tonight. We theorized that perhaps NCSoft is having unexpected cash flow problems just when the CoH license was due for renewal. So the corporate suits decided to shut down Paragon ASAP and channel the money into another project (say, GW2).Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In that case, the amount would be negotiable in the contract because both sides do not know what the value of the content will be in five years. But in this case, I personally would not have signed the contract without a right to renew at a specified cost. The value of the original game engine cannot rise, separate from inflation.
It's entirely speculative, but of the theories we've got it seems like the best fit.
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Quote:Hey, a silver lining! I'll interrupt my new routine of staring blankly at the monitor and babbling sentences that end in "?!?" for that!Originally Posted by Positron
I can vouch for that really being Chris (BAB) and Floyd (Castle).
We're at lunch now. I'll post more later but I am sharing your thoughts with the team.
If we still have forum access next week the writers and I will do an "ask us anything" about CoH lore. And we mean ANYTHING lore related. If we not know it we'll make it up on the spot.
Seriously though, Posi, I want to thank you and the rest of the devs (past and present). I know I've bashed some of the work you guys did over the years, but I really did enjoy the heck out of this game. Please give my best wishes to the team.
If you guys ever need an endorsement from some random guy on the internet you'll probably have no way to contact in the first place, well, it's yours.
Heh. Ain't that the truth.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Edit: and apparently I've suspended my "read the entire thread before posting" rule. Oh well, school's out anyway.
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There is some possibility I'll be free Saturday evening at GenCon. If so, I'll certainly stop by and say hi (assuming there's still room for me!). You've all been warned!
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Quote:Or I could just accept that most of the enhancements aren't recyclable and save myself the real life money. That seems like a vastly better deal than either of the alternatives.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Fine. If a one time expense of $80 bucks for 4 trays is too expensive for you, I'm sure NCSoft will have no problem taking the $110 bucks per character per build it will cost you to completely strip each level 50 character of it's enhancements.
Cuz that's who these trays are targeted for. The players who compulsively respec characters for whatever reason, (A Power has been changed, or a new power set's been released, deleting a character) and they absolutely have to strip off all the enhancements.
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Quote:What he said. I don't see why you would want to not make money selling the hat to the rest of the people who desire it.Originally Posted by Xzero45
Please, change. No one likes having costume items getting offered once, only to have them taken away for a whole year, or even forever. No one. I dare you to find me someone who actually likes that and prefers it over having the option year round.
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Quote:I disagree. Forcing people to use the market to get the freebie makes a certain amount of sense, since it does encourage you to interact with the market at all. Given how atrocious the interface is, the market can use all the encouragement it can get.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Is there any particular reason they don't just automagically GIVE it to everyone without forcing them to log in and check the market?
Obviously.
Ditto for the time limit- it's not arbitrary. It's long enough to give the vast majority of interested players an opportunity to log in and claim it, short enough to be meaningful.
It isn't perfect for everyone, but then nothing short of the aformentioned automagic gifting would be.
I see no similar benefit to limiting the time frame of that interaction to an arbitrary 24 hour window.
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Quote:Is there any particular reason this freebie NEEDS to be limited to 24 hours? The devs clearly have the tech to keep us from picking it up multiple times, so why not leave it up for a couple days or even the whole week? They could still kick the promotion off on Friday (for some arbitrary definition of Friday), but I don't see why the sale needs to last only 24 hours.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
From what I understand it is Friday in the UK the entire time the promotion is running.
If they change it to meet your individual criteria for the hours it will likely inconvenience someone else.
IIRC, they have to enable and disable this manually anyway, so your suggestion would be that someone from Paragon Studios (possibly either Ghost Falcon or Alpha Wolf) should have to stay up extra late on two consecutive days just to make things more convenient for you rather than doing it doing their working hours?
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I have a Ninja/Poison MM I play from time to time. I love the character concept, but I the actual gameplay frustrating: I am extremely reliant on my halfwitted flunkies to do anything, and their bumbling gets old rather quickly. It's a bit like trying to cook while wearing boxing gloves, I suspect.
Quote:Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
So bad is this problem in Lambda, that I actually ended up deleting my baby Beast MM over it. Too many times the league is sitting at the main door, waiting for it to be time to acid the portals shut when all of a sudden, golly gee look! All of someone's Beasts, lead by that most annoying Direwolf [and does that thing ever SHUT UP, and here I was thinking Demons were bad...!].... when all the Beast pets break lose and make for Marauder as if they were so many arrows speeding to a bulls-eye. And suddenly its on, whether we are ready or not. Nice.
The MM in question always says they're trying to heel, but the pets are ignoring him or her. Is this true? I dont know, and have little inclination to find out. I'm not getting another MM to 50 only to find they cant participate in half the end-game content anyways: as it is My MMs have yet to run LAM, TPN, Keyes or MoM - I may be crazy, but stupid I am not. The people I see dragging MMs through these trials almost never make a decent fist of it and end up causing tons of trouble.
I always unsummon my pets for the warehouse run on Lambda; actually, I usually unsummon them when we start the turret sweep, and I don't resummon them until we're ready to charge Marauder. Which is annoying, since I didn't take any of the attacks (I just use Veteran powers when soloing). Still, being largely useless is much better than being far worse than useless. :-/
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Quote:This seems to sum it up for me.Originally Posted by afocks
What I have now :-
What I will get :-
or
Where is the "Neither, please stop wasting dev time" option?
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Quote:I see no reason we must accept any decision made by the devs as sacrosanct; if we think a change, even an exploit fix, makes the game worse, it's our duty to say so and start a debate. There's no guarantee the devs will agree with us, of course, but they should certainly listen to our reasons before dismissing us.Originally Posted by TonyV
I do not have, and never will have, any sympathy at all for people who gripe because an obvious exploit is fixed. I don't care how much of what you think is a "slog" that it lets you bypass.
It's like everything else in the game. You want access to the reward? Then quitchyerbellyachin' and do the mission.
Consider when the devs wanted to fix the "bug" that let us outlevel the mail boxes, cars and vault doors in Mayhem missions. Technically, that was an exploit. But many players thought it gave us a sense of growing more powerful, and made the missions a lot more fun. I'm glad the devs agreed and decided not to fix it.
Personally, I think it's a terrible mistake to lock Cimerora behind the Midnighter arc, because it really gets tedious on your 10th character - and I say that as someone who LIKED Montague's arc!
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Quote:I'm sorry, but I cannot believe Statesman would assume he was completely invulnerable to a trap meant specifically for him. We've seen Statesman get captured, KOed and de-powered too often for that to fly.Originally Posted by Issen
However, if Statesman did indeed know that there was a trap in place, he had NO way of knowing what sort of trap it was. Remember, not only was Wade utilizing a second power-stealing obelisk, which only the PLAYER (and NOT the characters) know existed in the first place, he was using a long-lost ritual that Sister Arlia used against both Imperious and Romulus, a ritual NO-ONE knew existed until this SSA.
Statesman likely had every reason to believe Wade thought he had an ace up his sleeve. But honestly, even given the number of times Statesman has been captured or sealed (all of which were only temporary) none of them resulted in the loss of his power or immortality. So if Statesman knew (which is a distinct possibility, he's a centuries-old hero, he shouldn't NOT know), there was no reason for him to believe that Wade's trap would work, only that Wade would -think- his trap would work.
It would be one thing if Statesman was expecting a different sort of trap, or if he fell victim to trap-within-a-trap sort of deal, but Statesman clearly had no plan for any trap more cunning than Darrin owning a .22 revolver.
Even if I stretch my disbelief hard enough to accept that, it just makes his death pathetic because it sure looks like States could have been killed by any schmuck who bothered to plan ahead. Statesman is THE powerhouse of the CoH universe; if he goes down without a fight because someone found a magic scroll of Statesman-slaying, it makes the whole universe look inept.
Statesman, and we, deserved better.
Umm. I knew Batman. Batman was a friend of mine. Darrin Wade is no Batman. :-pQuote:Originally Posted by RosaQuartz
It's pretty much the whole "Who would win in a fight, Superman or Batman" argument. The answer almost always comes to "Superman, unless Batman had enough time to plan, set a trap, choose the place of the battle, yadda yadda".
Wade had 10 years to plan, set a trap, and chose the place of battle. The end. Looking forward to how the rest of the story plays out.
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Quote:Statesman's been the single most powerful and famous person on the planet for nearly 80 years. In all that time, we're supposed to believe that no one ever tried to fridge someone close to him? I get that he's usually invulnerable, but there are clearly limits to that invulnerability and we know he's encountered a few of them before.Originally Posted by Nericus
Statesman's daughter, his baby girl, the apple of his eye, etc etc. had just been killed by Wade. It would be normal for Statesman to go stomping after Wade and be more then just a bit angry at the man and thus get careless.
Statesman is supposed to be an experienced, powerful hero - the best of the best; however poorly that's been conveyed in the game, that's his designated role. If the devs want to kill him off, he at least deserves a good death. Instead, he goes down like a rank newbie.
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Quote:It's been a while since I read Holmes, but wasn't Irene's death mentioned in Watson's setup narration? That narration is set well after the story itself, which could leave a large gap before her implied demise. Plenty of time to meet Holmes again.Originally Posted by Innovator
And I paraphrase...
Her death isn't a certainty but it's the way to bet; I think any attempt for Conan Doyle to have used her in a subsequent story (other than a reference to the past adventure) would be not very credible.
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Quote:I'm suddenly reminded of the old "War's End" adventure that wrapped up the Torg storyline. [shudder]Originally Posted by GadgetDon
Well, played the hero side arc. Hated it.
First of all, my biggest complain in so many of these arcs is that we've gone from "You are the hero" to "You are a bystander". Nothing my player does even pretends to make any difference. This one took it to its nadir. You visit under a bar, find a clue that basically says "hey, search this other place" - then a big fight between named heroes and villains that served no purpose. The looking through what appears to be Praetorian sewers but really under the Rogue Isles. Meaningless fights including some named villains helped by named heroes, three clues about what Wade is doing. Then the last one - you fight through some normal foes, see the cutscene where everything happens and you can do nothing to affect it, then some fights that change nothing, all the bad guys get away. Not even any minor plots spoiled, not even a hair of less-than-total victory in the arc. Bad guys win. Period. Completely.
And even if it hadn't been an arc with my character made completely impotent and sidelined - Statesman deserved better. Look at the big stories of heroes dying. They die making a difference. Sacrificing themselves for the greater good. They make a choice that what they accomplish by dying is more important than continuing to live. Breakneck, in the comic and in the Ouroboros arc, shows us how a hero dies. Statesman falls into a trap that Fusionette would have foreseen and is murdered to steal his power. These feels less like the end of Primal Earths' greatest hero and more like a middle finger to Jack Emmett.
Though thinking about it, the Gaunt Man was at least a credible villain. Darrin Wade, not so much. :-(
EDIT:
What the hell?! The devs make a huge deal about killing Statesman, but they can't actually remove him from the game for half a year?Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
By the way, there's a new Intrepid Informer post here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...63#post4075263
In it, Positron confirms that Statesman will continue to be used as the face of the game, and that the content changes caused by his death will be done in Issue 23 later this year, including the STF being given out by someone else.
I guess whoever is pulling the strings at NC Soft hates corners.
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Quote:No, I got that. I just think the fundamental difference between abundant and scarce resources make BH a different situation rather than an extreme case.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That I don't recognize the extreme nature of Bug Hunter, when I selected it specifically for its extreme nature, because that's precisely what you always select when you want to disprove an absolute statement which doesn't admit exceptions.
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Quote:Wait, what's the rest of my confusion?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Actually, I'm doing neither of those things, which is part of your confusion.
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Quote:You're not railing against "if I have it there's no problem with the requirements." You're railing against "if I have one badge there's no problem with the requirements of each and every badge in the game."Originally Posted by Arcanaville
No, what I'm saying, which is an a priori true statement, is if the argument "if I have it there's no problem with the requirements" is true, its true regardless of the requirements of the badge because the actual argument says its blind to the requirements of the badge.
This is supposed to be a brain-dead straight forward true statement.
You clearly see the two as identical, but I don't.
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Quote:No, I'm saying that you seem to be savaging a strawman. You're the one insisting that an argument based on non-zero-sum badges must be equally applicable to a zero-sum badge in order to be valid.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
So you're saying Bug Hunter would be an exception to the rule that possession implies reasonable requirements, because its requirements make it an exception.
What the exception is, is irrelevant. That is what I said. The only way you could be in disagreement with me is if you feel you personally are the singular arbiter of what a valid exception to that rule is.
The fact that exceptions can exist mean its valid to discuss whether the requirements of other badges, while different, constitute valid exceptions to that rule, which also makes the rule itself essentially offer no guidance for discussion purposes.
I disagree. The argument cannot be properly applied to Bug Hunter because, unlike other badges, the number of "Bug Hunter" badges available does not automatically scale up to the number of characters created in CoH. Your ability to get Bug Hunter not only isn't an indication that I could do the same, it's actively preventing me from doing so.
Frankly, I think you're wasting your time trying to prove the argument is invalid when all that's necessary is to dismiss it as unconvincing. If that makes me the "singular" arbiter of valid exceptions, so be it; I'm sure the internet can stand one more person with a chip on their shoulder.
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Quote:I don't know, it seems to me that there's a meaningful difference between Bug Hunter and other badges; Bug Hunter can be exhausted. There are, at any given time, only a fixed number of bugs sufficiently egregious to merit BH if discovered. Each character who receives Bug Hunter effectively denies it to another character. That's not the case with any other badge (AFAIK), since they're available in limitless supply. Players may or may not be able to get those badges, but they aren't competing over them.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you believe that, then you believe the "if I can you can" argument is invalid which is my actual point. If you believe the "if I can you can" argument is valid, you've offered no reason why it shouldn't apply to all badges, and the argument itself specifies no exceptions or objective criteria for exceptions.
How a badge is awarded is irrelevant to the assertion that "if I can get it you can get it" because the actual words say the fact that I can get it by itself proves anyone else can. If I actually believed that, I wouldn't comment on whether the mechanics of a particular badge that people have already been awarded are reasonable. I don't. But if the fact that other players have been awarded the badge is both necessary and sufficient to prove a badge's requirements are perfectly fine, then it would be hypocritical to invent ad hoc exceptions to that rule that favor dismissing other people's objections while preserving one's own.
Now, I despise the "if I can get [X], everything is fine!" argument. I even dislike the "If I can't get [X], something is wrong!" argument. But I do think Bug Hunter is sufficiently different that considering it a separate class of badge does not necessarily make the argument hypocritical.
I'd still consider it a very weak argument, though.
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Quote:While I do agree with Arcanaville in general, I am a bit conflicted. I'm in the unusual position that I actively want to avoid getting the "Master of" badges on my characters; unfortunately, there's no way to turn down or delete the badges. When the requirements are simple enough (Apex comes to mind), it becomes very difficult to make any run a non-Master one.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I have been increasingly concerned about a specific issue with some of the recent trial badges. Its one thing to ask a single player to perform some degenerate behavior to get a badge, whether its killing thousands of monkeys for no reason or whatever. If you really want the badge, you'll complain about it but you'll do it. Its another thing to make badges that require teams, like completing Positron's task force.
Combining the two is problematic because you have to ask an entire team to do something unrelated to the primary task. Even the old school Master badges asked teams to at least do something that didn't interfere with running the task force: don't die. You can ask someone to not die, please.
But Master of Keyes? That requires volunteer bunnies to hop around avoiding patches, an activity that isn't strictly necessary to complete the trial. And it requires a league to deliberately shoot at the thing you're not supposed to shoot at for the sole purpose of taking more damage for no reason. Master of Underground requires asking an entire league to give up an additional half hour of their lives creeping through tunnels and shooting at bombs instead of just setting them off and getting to the end of the trial.
When badging was something you could either do solo or do with a team where the badge requirements were nominally parallel with doing well at the team task in general, badging was at worst an extra activity that wasn't antagonistic to the rest of the game. But badges like Preservation Specialist put badgers in actual conflict with other players: others have to suffer for you to get that badge, and unnecessarily if they are not badgers. Master of Lambda has similar silly requirements that require asking an entire league to do something stupid just so the badgers can get the badge.
I think that's a problem. The devs need to institute a cardinal rule on badges: badges that require teams will not require degenerate behavior from the league. Badges that can be acquired solo can ask the players to do anything the devs wants, but badges that require teams should never require badges to force non-badgers to do blatantly unproductive things.
While I certainly sympathize with the badgers, I'd prefer it if the Master badges required at least one dedicated run to unlock. It certainly doesn't need to be a degenerate activity, just something that a league would have to go out of its way to do. The BAF setup seems like a good model to me: Keep 'Em Separated requires a clearly sub-optimal strategy, but it's not a deliberately self-destructive strategy. Meanwhile, the other badges can be picked up over the course of a few normal (or very-slightly-different) runs.
That's the model I'd prefer the devs used going forward.
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Quote:Some people just like having things. Besides, badges also grant titles and can grant other game effects (e.g. Accolade powers or conversation options). It's true that selling badges directly devalues their use as a status symbol or career memento. Then again, restricting certain costumes (by in-game activity or money cost) penalizes the related character concepts, and that's considered acceptable.Originally Posted by Bosstone
See, I don't understand this. If a badge does not exist, then there is no need to collect it. And I've seen the hate the badging community lets forth when a new set of difficult badges are released; it makes the hate for the Super Packs look like mild indifference. Couple that with what seems to be general opposition to gambling with real-world money, and you'd have some intensely infuriated people firebombing the forums. Selling badges, whether directly or in Super Packs, would not make people happy.
What satisfaction would you get out of them anyway? The value of a badge is in the earning; if you could buy one, what value does it have except increasing the badge counter by one?
Moreover, they can sell badges indirectly, too. The devs could offer badges for purchasing milestones - as they already do with the Paragon Rewards system. They could also add new content or game mechanics that have badges associated with them. Presumably the SSas will have a badge at some point, and it would be simple enough to add a badge for Catalyzing an ATO.
The question is if players who want those badges would be willing to pay enough for them that PS can make a profit on creating them. The whole point of Freedom was to do that. It's become routine with Costumes and powersets. It's being done with much less regularity (and quality, sadly) with story arcs, too. But so far it hasn't happened much with badges, and it's not clear to me that badges "must" be different.
Every player cares more about some aspects of the game than others, so if we're going the free to play route, I think it makes sense to offer products for everyone. Now I still despise the lottery angle, but either way the point is to let us pay for what's most important to us.
Just my opinion, of course.
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Quote:I was thinking of new, exclusive badges, but selling Accolades as an alternate way to get them is a fantastic idea. As much as I love the Portable Workbench, I'm never going through that work again.Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
That's a shame, I'd pay for account wide Accolades.
I doubt I'm the only one.
I watched a guy in one of the larger freedom global channels repeatedly offer 100 million per mayhem mission exploration badge.
100 million each.
30 minutes after he started broadcasting, no one had yet taken him up on his offer.
(I'd vastly prefer they be sold directly and not in packs, but that's a separate issue.)
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Quote:Also every badge associated with Going Rogue...Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Well, there's also the VIP/Destined One and Pocket D VIP badges, which require you to purchase specific game versions either to start or upgrade your account with...
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EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to single out badges here. I could also point out there are no story arcs in the packs. My point is just that if you're going to ask the playerbase to pay extra, it doesn't seem fair to single out only a few types of gamer.
Being the poor capitalist that I am, I'm uncomfortable asking some diehard fashionistas to subsidize my gameplay.
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