Dollhouse
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Posts
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Quote:I would argue that the difference is that Apple's downturn is recent and very probably temporary (according to most analysts). NCSoft's drop has been both steeper and longer-lasting. It's leveled off a bit in the last week or so, but the prognosis isn't good. GW2 is showing some signs of poor player retention. I fully expect Blade In Hole, er...Blade & Soul to bomb badly in the western market. I predict that NCSoft will contract into being once again an almost exclusively regional player in the gaming market.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Well in that case Apple did it wrong by releasing the iPad Mini, the iPhone 5, refreshing the Mac lines.....
Only saying this because Apple's stock has dropped since the release of the iPhone 5 and all of these things, so Apple have been doing it all wrong?
What's more, I think they know it. That "realignment of company focus" line wasn't (just) corporate PR bilge. GW2's release and the Western port of B&S were set in motion some time ago, with so much spent on them that recouping as much as possible is critical. But I don't expect any more serious moves in the Western gaming market from NCSoft. -
Can't say I rolled one after Stalkers were introduced...but I sure loved a couple of mine.
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Quote:Yeah, I got to the point where I deleted most everything that dropped unless I was literally right on top of a vendor (or it was something I thought someone would want).Originally Posted by Ogi
Even on characters I wasn't sending outside resources to I never bothered to do that and once the character had a couple million inf the only time I'd do anything with my enhancement bar at all was to clear space for enhancements I wanted from vendors or crafting.
Making a pitiful amount of extra inf wasn't worth the hassle of finding a vendor let alone the "right" vendor. And don't get me started on people that would "have" to go hit the vendor to sell enhancements while doing missions. People buying them after catastrophic enhancement failure was bad enough (generic IOs exist for a reason people).
There is, however, that wide "middle period" in leveling where SOs are better than generic IOs. For the more important powers on a given character, I considered it worth it keeping their SOs "in the green." -
I never paid much attention to origin, frankly...at least once the character was rolled up and their backstory had gelled. It had an influence on concept, but more of a reactive one than active (that is, once I had the character concept down, it decided which in-game origin fit best).
Beyond that, the only time I paid attention to origin was when they were in need of Enhancements. Earlier on, I paid attention to the origin of "vendor trash" Enhancement drops so I could make sure to sell them at the higher-paying store. Once my pool of characters had plenty of inf, though, it wasn't worth the time: I just sold them at the nearest vendor.
Honestly, even for a roleplayer like me, origin never really mattered much. -
Quote:Except it is different, in degree if not in kind, in terms of overall sexualization of female avatars. It's like the difference between going 75 in a 65...and going 120 in that same 65 zone. Sure, they're both speeding...but there's a difference. A quantitative difference, not a categorical one, to be sure, but a difference nevertheless.Originally Posted by BrandX
If all the game offered was the lingerie outfits, yeah, I could see the hate for the game based on that. But it's not. So it's not really any different than CoH.
For the third time, let me make it clear I don't object to any of this...I'm just ridiculing it. That is a good example of a categorical difference, not a quantitative one.
It rubs the shiny on its skin...Quote:Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Do we get the option to enable/disable the skin wax? -
1. A toss-up between Defenders and Stalkers. For much of my CoH career, I was known as something of a Dark/Dark Defender specialist, and near the end that extended to Dark/Dark Controllers. I also definitely made Stalkers something of a second specialty, particularly ones designed to "stick around and scrap."
2. Probably my favorite single character, however, is a WP/DB Tanker, of all things. Mirka is the character that best represents to me what it feels like to be a hero. "First in, last out, and if you want to get to them, you have to go through me. Bring your 'A' game..."
3. It took me years to warm up to controllers, despite teaming with more than a few who were absolutely game-changing additions to any team they were on. Finally made something of a novelty character (a Luna Lovegood tribute, of all things), with powersets chosen solely for thematic reasons and no consideration of effectiveness. Turned out to be among the most effective characters I ever made (and there were literally hundreds...). I was hooked...and had to listen to the smug "told you so" comments from some of the players of those game-changing controllers mentioned above. =P
As an aside, I never really warmed up to Masterminds. Only one ever got past level 30. Not bothered by the relative complexity (some of my fave powerset combinations are complicated to play)...just never really enjoyed playing them. -
Quote:Originally Posted by GreenFIame
Look Mom Whores!!!, Really this is trying to replace our Coh and with half of there Content giving too us, while Coh always gave us full Content per Issue!.
Actually, those costumes (which I should point out BrandX kinda cherry-picked...more on that in a sec) are not objectionable, IMO. She quite correctluy points out that it's very possible to make a female character in that game that doesn't look like a streetwalker.
However...
And there are countless additional examples... -
Quote:Better graphics also put a greater demand on the physics engine. CoH may not have the best graphics out there (although the team did wonders with a comparatively limited set of graphical resources), but the basic character movement and physics is still unmatched in the MMO genre. Characters in CoH move with the smoothness and responsiveness to physics you usually only see in shooters. CoH is unmatched (among MMOs) for what I call "kinetic immersion," the sense of being a character moving in real, three-dimensional space with actual laws of physics in play. Sure, the characters are doing "impossible" things, physically...but that's because they're superheroes. Not because the game engine itself is such a poor model...Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Also, all the better graphics do is put an even bigger demand on the art team, making the game way more expensive, and therefore way harder to break even.
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Quote:Best MMO PvP I ever encountered was in Fallen Earth. For one thing, Fallen Earth had one of my personal MMO Holy Grails: real reticule targeting. That alone would have made the PvP head and shoulders above any tab-to-target MMO's PvP. But the icing on the cake was a remarkably helpful and non-d-baggish PvP community. It's as if they knew it was a small community in a small game, and they really didn't need to be chasing anyone off by being jackwagons.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
I have trouble understanding why PvP is popular in MMO's at all. After playing numerous ones, and seeing the same strategies used over and over in all of them, and analyzing how it all works, there seems to be no type of PvP game that is less based in skill (with a bunch of maxed out characters, it all boils down to the dice rolls, which is akin to gambling). But at the same time, there is also no type of game that has MORE ego problems and flame wars.
Loved that wonderful, immersive game just as much as a PvP'er as I did as an RP'er (RPvP...we exist!). Alas, the game's ongoing and almost never fixed technical problems eventually drove me out, but FE will always have a warm place in my heart...a game from a tiny little studio that did so very much right. -
Quote:Not. Even. Close.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Just like the CoX female walk
The difference between the two is remarkably like the difference between the average runway walk (CoH) and a stripper making her way to the pole (B&S).
Er...so I hear...
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Quote:Re: B&S - The combat looks like it could be fun, I'll give it that. Not remotely enough to overcome all the things about the game I'm either indifferent to or actively dislike, but they seem to have done a good job with the motion physics, etc.Originally Posted by SinergyX_EU
i've been following trailers for quite a while, if you take away the common 'anti asian anime character' hate, i still believe it might be decent.
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Quote:Thanks, Angel! I don't have any truly active characters on Virtue (despite being an "if I'm logged on, I'm in-character" roleplayer), but like I said, I have transfers to burn. I'll decide who I want for the Long Goodbye and move them over there as soon as I have a game-capable computer. A bit touch-and-go on it arriving on time, but I should be okay. I'm already on Arcadia in TSW. See you there!Originally Posted by Angry_Angel
My sincere apology about the flyer not showing. Moved it. Should show now. After my TSW dungeon, I'll also write up complete details in case it breaks again.
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Quote:I have to agree. The very little we've heard from NCSoft on this has been nothing but typical corporate PR fluff. At worst, it's an insult to one's intelligence, but spiteful? Nah.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
tell you the truth, only seen a couple of announcements from them that either told the reason or was vague depending on who is it is asked.
I personally did not feel there was anything in those messages from ncsoft that were spiful or the definition of spite: a malicious, usually petty, desire to harm, annoy, frustrate, or humiliate another person; bitter ill will ; malice. -
Quote:Agreed. I was a loyal player for pretty much the run of the game (subscribed two weeks after launch when a couple friends talked me into trying an MMO...formerly exclusively a shooter player and tabletop RP type). I still had my complaints about certain things...and wasn't shy about voicing them.Originally Posted by BrandX
I think companies in general are cheap about hiring anyone
That said, I'm not sure any of the forum posters thought the game was perfect. I think the forum posters all had their own ideas on what should be priority.
Agreed here, too. The PL'ing never really had any direct effect on me. The people I regularly play with never ran any of the farms. We essentially never PUG'd in MA or looked for people we didn't know to add to our teams (unless we had reason to believe they'd enjoy a RP-oriented run). Basically the XP farming aspect of MA remained separate from our use of that system. We got to enjoy good missions, a few of which were written by a best-selling author (great story on those...go figure!). I loved MA.Quote:From a RP perspective, I think MA was a great thing. From a player perspective, I think MA was a waste of resources.
But was it a good use of finite resources for Paragon Studios? That's definitely open to debate. -
Quote:Precisely...and software developers are notoriously bad about doing this sort of code documentation. Moreover, software companies are notoriously cheap about hiring a specialist (software technical writer) to perform this critical task. The result: slow progress on certain kinds of bug fixes and horrible code bloat.Originally Posted by Starsman
Documentation is not about keeping a diary... its about keeping and updating a single featureset "bible" where everyone can go and look at what can do what, and list every single potential problem (that you likely dont even know about until some one brings up X or Y.)
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Quote:Yes, this. I never made a Beast Mastery MM (or more than one MM of any kind, actually... the AT never appealed to me), but I did make a Dark Controller that I leveled to full Incarnate status. And while I loved how effective her Umbral Beast was, I invariably dismissed it when not in combat because it would not SHUT THE HELL UP.Originally Posted by Rabid_M
What I REALLY wanted was animations/emotes for the pets, so I could tell them to sit, or lie down, or SHUT THE HELL UP!!
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Quote:Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
You're not following... It's simple, you see...
Saying such negative things about a large group of people is okay when you're a minority that calls some other majority a minority in order to belittle them in hopes that their own minority will be praised as the majority, or at least seen as the martyred souls that were tortured by the majority that is the minority of people you don't like.
It's easier than finding out who's on first.
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Quote:This is also one thing (out of many) that I love about The Secret World: gear may be critical to performance, but it doesn't lock down one's appearance. Any weapon or magical focus (which are visible) can be re-skinned. Talismans and signets don't show. And clothing has no effect on stats. Bliss.Originally Posted by Kurrent
Decoupling costume parts and in-game stats, which CoX got exactly right. I shouldn't feel forced to wear an item which is totally wrong for a character just because it provides the best stats.
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Quote:/this...but I'm willing to forgive him for that "turning into the Hulk" remark. Hall of Flame stuff right there...Originally Posted by JKedan
Just out of curiosity, how is this any better?
Seriously. You complain incessantly about the troll yet don't have the personal accountability to not feed him. To the contrary, you do everything in your power to keep egging him on by replying to him, often two or three times in minutes, and then create a thread guaranteed to give him another thread to respond to when he creates another account. -
...and so I face...the final curtain.
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Image is broken, so I'm not sure what server this is on. Test, hopefully (although I think I have a transfer to burn...). In any case, I'll be there...and then bring Irys "StraightRed" Cavendish to Kingsmouth (Arcadia?).
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Quote:Yep...a fully Incarnated (or close to it) character pretty much had to peg the difficulty in order to be in any real danger in non-Incarnate content. And an imbalanced team (one with Incarnates and non-Incarnates) had real trouble finding the difficulty sweet spot where the Incarnates were challenged at least a little but the non-Incarnates weren't either constantly faceplanting or feeling like leeches.Originally Posted by Ogi
The post Alpha/shard Incarnate system. Pretty much turned the game dynamics on its head. Raiding, grinding, not friendly to alts and bled into the non-Incarnate game whether the rest of the team liked or not. Nothing says homogenization like rolling destinies and judgements.
And yeah, the iTrials turned into a horrible raid grind. It was particularly bad for RP-oriented players like me (not all of us RP'ers just hang out in the D and gab, y'know! ). The pace of many of the trials was such that there was no time to post in-character dialogue and so forth, even if the League was amenable to it, because of the mission timers and such. Run, run, run through everything. Rinse. Repeat. Until your eyes glazed over with boredom or you brought yourself up short thinking, 'why am I doing this?'
I consider the Incarnate system to be the single worst misstep the devs made. Not game-breaking for me, by a long shot: I had exactly one fairly brief period unsubbed in over eight years. But I'd have preferred it never existed... -
Quote:I don't get this one, either...Originally Posted by BrandX
Okay. I really didn't see the new changes coming for Blasters as destroying any concept. What exactly did I miss on those changes?
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Quote:Or like a stripper heading over to the pole...Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
I also attributed much of the design to the classic superhero look. Though I would've preferred to make it possible to make girls that are smaller in one place and bigger in another, at least it's easily possible to make a character who is modest.
You can't even go for a hike in B&S without it looking like a catwalk at a fashion show.
Fredericks of Hollywood: for all your adventuring gear needs. -
Quote:No argument at all...my point is that B&S takes it much, much further...and any perusal of the available videos and stills makes apparent. And again, I'm not in any way objecting to any of that. There's a market for that sort of thing, and game designers respond to the market, like any business.Originally Posted by Xzero45
CoH was pretty awful when it came to the female model, yo. The lowest you could slide the chest slider for females is a C cup, and you have the ability to make them absolutely enormous. The waist is, by default, unnaturally tiny, and only near the largest setting does it look pretty normal. The female walk animation makes your character look like they're walking down a runway at all times, and the run animation isn't much better. And lets not forget that entire stretch of time where, in every new costume pack we got on the market, the men would get coats, vests, etc. while the women's only option were revealing corsets and collars.
This game was made by horndog men and it shows.