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Quote:That's a fair point, re: Desdemona. Rolled my eyes at my first look at her hard enough to dislodge a contact lens.I dont know. I've seen plenty of half dressed characters running around in COX, many with the usual cat ears and tails. This wasa rated teen game and seen many characters push that limit with some costumes where it seems some people's kids play. With all the big boobs here in this game and ERP and etc, B&S is no worse, nor better in that regards. I mean ever since Desdemona came out and been plastered over plenty if COX artwork with her buttcheeks hanging out. Not sure how that is family wholesome.
I suppose my biggest objection* to the B&S female characters is the character model itself: the basic anatomical framework is just absurd, even more ridiculous than the proportions available in CoH. Well, that and the ridiculous walking animations and such... It's kind of a given that any game with an extensive costume selection is going to have "tart-o-rama" possibilities. It's kind of a given for the market.
*And "objection" is really too strong a word...to each their own. Besides, it gives me something to make snarky remarks about. Gotta have that. -
Quote:Some of the combat looked interesting to me, too. I'd prefer a much more realistic martial arts game, but for something in the fantasy context, the over-the-top, arcade style stuff makes sense.And what is it? To this player it looked like a fun MMO with things people asked for here. Like grappling. Throws.
Quote:Hypersexualized? Yes. But again, nothing I didn't see in CoH (and I saw less a lot more in CoH than I've seen in Aion or B&S)
I should point out that I'm doing my best to assess Blade & Soul without letting my unhappiness with NCSoft color my perception. I'm probably failing in that to some degree. I think I'd still be somewhat aghast at how the female characters are in B&S if the whole CoH closure had never happened...but I'm fallible. -
Quote:I was just making a bit of a joke (rather obviously, I thought), but please don't presume to tell me what I have and haven't looked into. I have in fact taken a look at the majority of Blade & Soul information available in the West, including dozens of videos, including character creation and gameplay. I "bothered" to look at plenty, thanks.By cue, I meant put in a bit of an asian flare. I'd hope for a good mix of a western meets asian style. I think that would give the game more of a mass appeal to all regions.
You see the artwork and think that's the game. You see the fan videos and think that's the game.
What you never bothered to look at (by the sounds of it anyways) is they have outfits that cover up the whole body.
(...)
Or if you meant the body type? Well, you really havent bothered to look into the games and see you can make characters who aren't barbies!
I stand by my characterizations of Blade & Soul (here and elsewhere). I particularly stand by my description of the female character models, some of the costume options, and animations as absurdly hypersexualized. Some of the female walking animations would embarrass a stripper. I suspect someone's already worked up a tutorial on how to configure the controls to play with one hand...
Hey to each their own...but let's not try to pretend this game is something it's not, m'kay? -
Quote:As long as that cue is "never, ever make anything remotely like the shameless fanservice softcore of Blade & Soul, even with a Sharpie on the back of an envelope on your lunch hour," then I wholeheartedly agree.To take a cue from Aion and Blade & Souls character creators!
Take a cue from those games art styles!
And as you say, art is entirely subjective, so YMMV (and clearly, it does!). -
Quote:It's interesting to me how difficult it seems to be for game designers to avoid the Holy trinity. And it's perhaps even more so that CoH managed to (mostly) do so, despite having "locked" AT types. Even The Secret World, with a very open character creation and progression system gives rise to the dread trinity (the more-difficult content tends to be done almost exclusively by 5-man teams consisting of 1 "tanker" deck, one "healer" deck and three characters set up for DPS). I think the Holy Trinity is less something built in to most games than it is something that naturally arises...because it's effective.2 - No holy trinity required. Want to run a team composed entirely of melee dps? Go for it. All crowd control? Rawr.
I can put together a team composed of almost anything and be successful in this game - I don't have to wait for a healer before my team can go and stomp faces.
Mind you, one difference in TSW is that any character can play any role, at least once they're "matured" in terms of having large portions of the ability wheel covered and have leveled up a broad selection of skills. You can build and save multiple decks and switch from a DPS deck to a Healing deck (for example) with a couple of clicks. Not in combat...but at any time the character's not in combat mode. It's fun... -
Or at the very least, these obsessive pinheads could quit threadjacking every discussion with their tiresome spew...
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Quote:Yep...far, far fewer of them in Egypt and Transylvania (post-launch content...). Not sure I've seen any in the latter, in fact. Just poking my nose in there at this point, though...It seems that the devs at TSW are saying that the inclusion of solo only instances was a mistake.
Been enjoying TSW immensely, despite it performing very poorly on my three-yer-old machine. -
Blocking? I consider it essential (1 lvl40 and a couple getting close, FWIW). There are several Block options that even cause not-inconsiderable damage to the attacker. Even more of them recharge your blue bar. For every character I've made, blocking is an integral part of their combat tactics.
In any case, I've unsubbed again, since as with my initial foray into Champs (beta + six months after launch), the game just doesn't "grab" me. It's by no means a bad game, and I actually prefer the combat system to CoH, but for me it just lacks that hard-to-define "something" that makes me want to play. I have a couple months or so left on the 3-month I bought...and I will probably only log in a handful of times.
TSW seems to be my new home... -
Quote:Yeah, that was the thing with Fallen Earth: significant problems with the game just don't get fixed for months on end. It was a problem when the game was completely independent under Icarus (although not as bad), and it's worse under Gamers First (where the staff dedicated to the game is literally just a handful of people).Well, Fallen Earth is a no-go for me. I'm having a problem with the game not being able to find the correct graphics card. It's been a known issue since January this year, and nothing has been done about it yet. I'm glad it's a F2P, as I'm deleting it now.
Just prior to selling to G1, the game was working well. The bug count was fairly low and the performance had gotten quite good. But after G1 bought the game, there was a need to migrate to G1's very different server architecture, and that migration wasn't done well at all. All the old perfomance issues (lag, rubberbanding, map geometry issues, and more) returned with a vengeance. At the time I unsubbed (played from Open Beta up to about a year or so into Live), the ongoing and unfixed performance issues had gotten to the point where they were ruining immersion and making playing the game a chore, not a joy.
And that's a damn shame. Second only to The Secret World, Fallen Earth was the most immersive MMO I've ever played. They just flat nailed the post-apocalypse vibe. In addition, the game had the best combat system I've ever played in an MMO, hands down. Just prior to the G1 change, when the game was at its performance peak, Icarus managed to grab what I consider the Holy Grail in MMO combat systems: a functional reticule (FPS/TPS) targeting system. Real targeting in an MMO, not tab-to-target and target lock...I was one happy Dollhouse, I'll tell ya.Now I've been forced back to traditional MMO combat systems...and I haz a sad.
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Quote:Nope...because it's not "just sitting there." It's being dissolved. That means that whatever value NCSoft assigns to it (and will stand up to tax auditing...more on that in a sec) will make its way onto their balance sheets as a capital loss. This, along with their Q2 losses, can offset the very significant capital gains that they'll see from the GW2 launch, etc.Why would they decline any offer?
An offer of $50 is $50 more than the IP/game is going to make them just sitting there.
That valuation? It will without question be higher than any realistic offer they may have received for the CoH IP (low seven figures range at best). Corporations get away with shenanigans like overvaluing non-tangible assets for capital loss purposes all the time. They've probably valued all the Paragon City assets they're dissolving somewhere in the $5-6 million range (speculation on my part, please understand...). Not a chance in hell they received an offer anywhere near that.
Quote:The fact is, they probably weren't seriously entertaining any offers.
But in the end, this is a cold-blooded bottom line decision...and for all that I hate it, I understand it. Half a million or (maybe) a million...or five million or so in tax offsets? No competent executive would fail to choose the latter. -
A civilian lets an Outcast have her purse so she can come to your rescue.
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Quote:Excellent post! I grabbed three months of CO when the NCSoft announcement came down (I was in the CO beta and played for six months after launch, too). I won't be re-subbing after that, as the game still doesn't "grab" me, but I also take issue with the claim that the combat system is poor. For me, it's easily the best part of the game. Dynamic, with nice graphics, good "flow," and a nice pace and feel to it. I use a "target center of screen" set-up, with a reticule, as that comes closest to the actual real-time reticule (FPS-style) targeting I prefer in games.(snipped some very good and useful info for space considerations)
So far, it seems like my new home is The Secret World. I'm really enjoying it, even though my current machine really struggles with playing it. When I can build a new gaming box, that will probably seal the deal. Of course, I'd been following that game's development for years, as it's setting and such are basically the game of my dreams.
TSW is nothing short of brilliantly written. The atmosphere is incredibly immersive and the focus on story succeeds because of this - truly good writing makes a story focus work (should be obvious, but so many games have story lines that read like really bad fanfic). Cutscenes are miles beyond any other MMO I've seen. The game's a dream for roleplayers, basically.
I'm not a huge fan of TSW's combat system, but I also realize a big part of that dissatisfaction lies in the stuttering and glitching that results from the game being a bit much for my machine. I doubt I'll ever love it (tab targeting, indifferent animations, long-ish activation times for some abilities...), but a faster framerate will make it a lot better.
Lots more to say about TSW...but this post is already well into tl;dr territory! -
Quote:Correct. If they're outside a certain radius around their spawn point (don't know exactly what that distance is), they won't proximity aggro on anyone but the person who got their aggro in the first place. The only non-deliberate way to aggro them would be to fire off an AoE during a fight with something else.Not really. When mobs get pulled out of their natural habitat, they are focused on that person who pulled them - if that person dies or gets away, they start running back to where they were pulled from. Unless someone attacks them first, they won't aggro on anyone until they're back where they came from, no matter how close another player might be.
Related story: My team of three (all of us CoH refugees, as it happens) had someone train four Rift Martyrs on us out back of the Overlook Motel in Savage Coast a couple nights ago. Which we proceeded to curbstomp with our QL4 (pretty much appropriate to starting that zone) or so builds... The guy even commented in Say (Local), "You guys are good." That made me smile, so I didn't even report him!I think he was just bored...
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Quite possibly the most potent character I've ever created in the game (out of c. 200 or so...) is Luna Faraday, a "weaponized Praetorian Clockwork Home Companion," and an Elec Melee/Ninjitsu Stalker. She's about as close as I ever come to min/max'ing a character: multiple purple sets, T4 in every Incarnate slot, and so forth. Solo'd about a dozen AVs (comparatively easy, I realize, post-Incarnate, but never using Shivans or Warburg nukes...), MSTF badge, and all that. A fully self-buffed Lightening Rod out of Hide is a beautiful, terrible thing to behold...
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As I mentioned in another thread, the worst thing for me is when I log on to character selection to my home server (or, these days, to Beta, where I've been doing virtually all my playing). Top of the list is a character called Mirka, a WP/DB tanker. Mirka's been through it all, and while I can't say she never gets knocked to the ground, it doesn't happen very damn often...and she always gets back up again. I'm a roleplayer, and that character's core "shtick" is that she she never, ever gives up and embraces the Tanker ideal of "first in, last out."
Now, when I log in, because she's at the top of the character list she's staring at me and seeming to say "I can't beat this. I can't even fight it. Please...help me." And then I start tearing up...like I bloody well am right now.
So I haven't been logging in a lot for the past week or so... -
I Beta tested TSW from fairly early on, but elected not to play at launch. Not because I generally disliked the game (although I think the combat system blows), but because the game runs poorly on my three-year-old lappy (which plays CoH, GW1, and other games quite well). So poorly that for an immersion junkie RPvP player like me, the incredible potential of the game went unrealized. Hard to get into it with a framerate that seldom reaches double figures...
I just started the free three-day trial a couple days ago, largely to see if there had been enough tweaks to make the game enjoyable. Mostly, there haven't, and it will probably take a machine upgrade to make the game worth spending money on.
I'm planning to do that as soon as I can afford it, and TSW is one of the reasons. The aforementioned craptastic combat system aside, this game has a lot going for it. The writing is as good as it gets in video games, the cutscenes are superbly voice-acted, the atmosphere is immersive and distinct, and it's a roleplayer's dream in many ways. The setting is pretty much the game I've always wanted (CoH has held me for over eight years because of it's many huge pluses...but I'm actually not at all a fan of teh comic superhero genre...odd, no?).
Look for Irys "StraightRed" Cavendish on Arcadia. And pay no attention to those Templars or Dragons...two insipid sides of the same coin of naivete'. -
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Quote:Targeting really is a "to each their own" sort of thing, but I much, MUCH prefer reticule targeting (like in FPS/TPS games). It's uncommon in MMOs, and I've always been willing to tolerate targeting systems I don't like as much (tab- or click-to-target) in order to get all the thngs about MMOs I love. But there are a few MMOs that have dynamic reticule targeting (Fallen Earth, for example) or which allow a reasonable facsimile (CO, if you know how to set up the HUD that way).You hate tab-to-target? Is that compared to a superior alternative?
I like it and am usually dismayed by games that don't provide it, so I'm genuinely surprised to see that listed, and curious about it.
(Note that I do click-to-target as well, but I extensively and reflexively use tab to target things in front of my character, either as a way to line up an attack or sometimes to get "close" for more fine-grained targeting via click.)
I'm an "RPvP" player (yes, we exist!), and my reticule preference is strongest in PvP, but I prefer it for PvE, too. -
Along with several things already named (like the cake room...):
Power animation "rooting."
Tab-to-target (not CoX's issue alone, but I hate it in any game).
That the cake is a lie.
Even including things others have mentioned, it's a pretty darn short list. This game stands as the example to other developers of "how its done" in an MMO. -
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Quote:B2P ("buy to play")It's an F2P model with an up-front fee. What does that make it?
It's a good model, and may well be the way forward, even for top-tier titles (if GW2 is any indication). GW1 has worked out well, with an up front cost and then only very large, campaign-level updates requiring purchase (other updates are free, and download from the patcher like a subscription game). The cash shop stuff is pretty much just utility and vanity items. -
Quote:It's more politely than I'd have stated much the same thing ("Grow the ***** up!"). The OP's post was way, way out of line.Ouch. Don't think the OP deserved that. Granted he is adovcating illegal activitiy that may harm other people's liveihoods (to I guess join those already damaged), bu tto tell him to grow up may be just a bit much.
Even without the advocacy of illegal activity, it was still silly. "Revenge?" For making what they believe to be a necessary business decision? I think it was the wrong decision, but then again, I don't know the details. Given that CoX was at least somewhat profitable, I'd be fairly certain this decision was made more for tax offset purposes, not simple balance sheet calculations. That's how corporations work: cold, hard mathematics. They're not out to "get" us or anything like that. It's just a matter of bottom line.
Avoid NCSoft's products if you feel you can't count on them not to shutter a game you decide to commit to (that's what I'm doing). But "revenge?" Don't be an idiot. -
Yeah, just...yeah.
The "top of the roster" character that appears when I select my main server (Pinnacle) on login is Mirka, my dauntless little Will/DB tanker. She's got a modest little rep with the Pinn community (particularly the Roleplay Congress folk) as being fearless and unstoppable. Nothing makes her hesitate for even an instant...she wades right in.
Now when I log in, she's staring back at me...and I swear it's like she's afraid. It's like she's saying, "I faced it all without blinking. Nemesis, Recluse, Reichsmann, Cole, the Hamidon...you name it. Now and then, they knocked me down, but every single time, I got back up again...and with the help of friends, I beat them. I can't beat this. I can't even fight it. Please...help me."
Ah, sh*t...crying again.