Dr_Mechano

Ok finally got on US test and...I do believe Prof Radburn was pulling out collective leg, I saw none of the new emination point tech when creating a new character for the blast sets and there was no popup to confirm that the new mender contact was in Oroborous, looking around Oroborous I couldn't find him, even checked the little islands.

For me it's pretty much the perfect MMO.

I can RP (the Union RP community is what keeps me pinned here sometimes), I can min/max characters should I feel like it (working on a perma-PA illusion/Rad, IO'd up my Invuln/SS tanker, my Traps/Pistols defender and my Arachnos Widow).

There is a lot of versatility in both builds and costumes. In the big gorilla fantasy MMO, my character in high level raid gear would look like every other character in high level raid gear of the same race, here I can create a character I want and 'gear' doesn't affect my appearance.

I can go solo or do team-based stuff and there is no 'you will raid for the rest of your life in a boring gear grind' element to it.

I've yet to find an MMO which delivers the same level of sheer stoofs as CoH.

Unfortunately I can't seem to get on US test despite having a US account, could any of the other US peeps giefs more info?

tried to log in but get the message:

No response from this server, please try a different server or try again later

well it appears to download and apply the same patch on EU test (both the pre-download and the patch applied were 189 meg)

Edit: will report back whether issue 19 is actually available though.

woot snagged me one!

The original Night of the Living Dead is pretty much THE creator of Zombies as we known them today, anything prior to that focused on the more traditional Voodoo Zombie.

Personally I feel a remake of Dawn of the Dead is pretty needless.

Dawn of the Dead was a product of its time, the entire movie thanks to the spread of Zombie culture has now become something absorbed by cultural Osmosis. Heck look at Dead Rising, they had to slap a 'not affiliated with Dawn of the Dead by George A Romero' tag onto the box (though I'm not sure whether that was for legal reasons or not).

Though I wouldn't mind knowing what the large number of faults you see in it are Ironik, though I admit the movie isn't perfect or to everyones tastes (a lot of people don't like the slow build up and large character development that goes on but that doesn't mean you turn it into a trashy Action movie like the remake did, with an additional 5 characters that are so blatently there to be killed off for more gore).

George A Romero himself actually hated the remake but then he doesn't like the new 'fast zombies'. He much prefers the slow but overwhelmingly outnumbering Zombies that most people associate when you say Zombie.

Still it could have been worse...what about that truly, truly terrible remake of Day of the Dead.

During that movie me and my friends just pictured George A Romero popping out correcting the things wrong with the movie and single handedly quelling the Zombie Apocalypse ("Zombies can't walk on the ceiling, that's just stupid" "Nor do their heads explode when you set them on fire, so stop that and continue through the flames if you please.")

Alright sure, there were some fights in the 'big gorilla of MMOs that had threat reset moves, you know what happened, they just threw in more tanks to deal with it.

All that requires to void is simple positioning, the healers would often stand at the back with the ranged DPS so that whenever the threat got reset there would be a ton of melee tanks and DPSers inbetween them and the boss and Ranged DPS could and would out-threat healers incredibly quickly. Infact most Ranged and Melee DPS have to throttle their own DPS to make sure the tank remains top of the threat list.

Also quite a few of the DPS classes had a way of dumping threat onto the Main Tank (Misdirection etc.) whereas we have...erm...nothing like that in CoH since it's not built around the entire mechanic of threat!

Face it, the way threat is used in other MMOs is a completely alien way to CoH and trying to shoehorn it in there now just doesn't make sense.

Remember there is also Paragon Unleashed.

I don't use it that much but it does allow for discussion.

I think everyone has pretty much agreed the 'no videogames' rule is about as stupid as it gets 'no competing MMOs' that's fine and perfectably understandable.

It's even weirder that you can't mention NCsofts own MMOs, they own City of Heroes for gods sake and we can't mention, by name, a product released by the same company, that is just completely idiotic.

To take from the awesome example above, it would be like a Guitar forum for the fans of Gibson guitars only being able to talk about one model of guitar that Gibson released and not being allowed to talk about any other model.

Mod08 you are responsible for these rulings as in we were told you drafted them up, perhaps you can see that this particular rule is kind of foolish?

Also I will point out the 'get the squishy healer/buffer/debuffer' only ever happens in the big MMO (Wickedly Online Weirdos) if the Tank doesn't keep their threat up or suddenly goes 'smoosh!', most good Tanks will have a truly MASSIVE threat lead and the DPS classes really have to go all out in order to push past it.

There are I believe two encounters in that MMO where the Aggro is actually designed to be more like the Players (in both cases it is to mirror a PvP team fight but in a PvE enviroment) and even then the crowd control elements are used to lockdown an enemy attacking the healer (traps, stuns etc.)

I honestly can't think of an MMO where in PvE the designated Tanking class can't cause mobs to stick to them like glue and has many tools at their disposal to pull it off.

Actually it has already been stated that Player Incarnates are a different from Statesman/Recluse Incarnates and that the story arc to unlock said Incarnate slot will explain the difference.

So while none of my characters are a God or empowered by Godlike beings they can become Incarnates of an ideal or natural characters simply find new, inner strength they never realised they had, unlocking their true potential if you will.

Actually what I will say.

Big Budget releases that are non-console ports for the PC are becoming rarer and companies seem to thinking that its just not worth it (the complete lack of a PC version of Red Dead Redemption for example, Rockstar going on record saying that after all the problems with the PC version of GTA IV that they're not even going to bother).

So, you ask, where is all the money to be made these days?

Take a scroll up, look at Minecraft, one guy programming in his spare time has made almost 2 million US dollars (about 1.5 million English Pounds). World of Goo, a small team has made a lot of money.

Eversion HD Steam sales have made the guy a nice chunk of change.

There isn't money in the big releases there IS money in the indie scene, you just have to be damn good to break into it.

Steam is seen as (and probably is) the big Indie enabler, The Ball is getting all sorts of stories written about it, where is it available? Steam!

Steam combines the cheapness of the Indie games with upfront adverts to encourage impulse buys.

Hmm...

Actually I believe NCsoft may be kind of wary about approaching the F2P with 'optional extras' thing.

Why?

The two games that NCsoft have done previous that used the traditional form of F2P before were shut down recently because they just weren't raking in the money, so they've already tried it (right down to the NCsoft Coins) and it failed miserably. I imagine that would leave them a little dubious of trying it with one of their more successful (in the west) MMOs.


I will say this though, I think the current Booster Packs (not Super Boosters) are probably a trial run to see if the is a market to switch to the traditional F2P model and that the game can support itself by releasing one of those every month with less content than the Super Boosters.

The Party Pack, I imagine, probably didn't do too well (out of about 20 people, I know of 2 that bought it, compared to say the Super booster packs, which every one of them bought) but the Origins Pack looks like they realised most people couldn't give a fig about emotes BUT they do care about costumes.

I will say this OP.

You do need to do more research.

You didn't know that NCsoft had already torpedoed the EU section of the business thus there simply isn't anything to support EUwise, all the EU money goes directly to the American branch of NCsoft, since that is where all the staff are (including the support staff), that kind of shoots down you're whole 'buy your regional copy, support your region, if you don't you're a moron!' arguement.

Second of all as has been mentioned, the length of the tube isn't really a big issue, the actual infrastructure in place in the country the data is coming too and from is the big Issue, Germany just seems to have a really convoluted system which makes the EU servers more wonky for UK residents.

Thirdly, some of us here have both EU and US accounts, while I don't really play my US account that much it is mostly for the US exclusive stuff that goes on (the new pack is up on US test only for example, as if often the way and Closed Beta with regards Issues is often for US account holders only, Going Rogue was the odd one in that both US and EU account holders got into it).

Apparently the key problem is located in Germany, I can't remember why but back when we had our own forums people looked at the problem using nettrace etc. Everything ran fine for UK residents right up until the data entered Germany, then something went wonky for them.

Interesting fact!

Latency is actually BETTER for most of the EU players on US servers because the German infastructure where the servers are housed is downright TERRIBLE, the data has to go through so many hoops it is unbelievable, most non-German players actually have a better time on the US servers.

Also the EU players did buy their copies...you know what happened.

The EU side of NCsoft got shutdown...completely, the Brighton offices were gutted leaving only the marketting people (One man and his dog for CoH marketting in the EU...and we haven't seen the man in some time) who spend most of their time pushing Guild Wars 2. All the support staff were laid off and EU support is done from the US now, yes even the German and French support staff are based in the US.

There are no local support staff to keep in employ because they've already gone!

Also most F2P games offer both subscription AND F2P. If CoH did this it would basically mean that the subscribers would get given a decent chunk 'NCsoft Bucks' every month and could spend them on the optional extras (aka booster packs) that came out (normally works to the equivilent of $10 worth of 'NCsoft bucks' judging by other games) while the F2P guys would have to shell out for the booster packs with cold hard cash.

I do agree that F2P generally does bring in a usually crappy crowd though.

Steam is DRM?!

I thought it was a way for PC games and various Indie games (like Eversion) to slowly clog up my hard drive with fun?

Steam is the good way to do a digital download service, for the crap way please see Games for Windows Live...I've honestly not seen a more half-hearted attempt at trying to beat Steam at its own game..well...ever...

Remember people the Christmas sales will be coming around soon, prepare to make like bandits on their insane price cuts!

Why I'm waiting on buying Fallout out: New Vegas, you know it's going to be in the Christmas sale at a 75% price cut.

And yeah...those figures completely ignore Steam sales figures and consider Fallout:NV is a steam requiring game...that seems kind of stupid.

Well it isn't Dark Passage because that mentions the face of the main character is never seen, in the film I saw you get a shot of the PI looking in the mirror and seeing his 'reflection' so it looks like it was Lady in the Lake.

Now to see if I can pick that up on DVD!

If people haven't seen it, I do suggest checking it out.

Edit: Oh and thanks you two

Ok saw a black and white film Noir movie recently and unfortunately came in after the title, this was on my crappy non-digital (and non-cable/sky) enabled TV, so I couldn't just go and check the title.

I REALLY enjoyed it, thought it was awesome, if purely for the fact that the entire film is shot from the POV of the private eye, basically a FPS in a Film Noir style (perhaps the first of its kind to use it for the whole film, I've not seen a film do that before).

The plot was good, I enjoyed the characters and loved the story but I have no idea of the name!

So can you guys help me out?

With me it isn't a so much 'don't touch my classic' as 'atleast try to do it justice!'.

I get that America is incredibly conservative when it comes to these things, just the age rating difference on the DVDs alone (American RHPS release is rated equivilent to an 18 whereas here in Blighty it is a 15) shows there is a difference in views.

I accepted that, yes, there were going to have to be some changes made to RHPS for a more mainstream and younger American audience.

I love the fact that the Glee version is causing a whole new audience to seek out the original I honestly felt the version of Sweet Transvestite in it was just a touch too Pop for my personal tastes, I felt it lacked the boombastic feel it has in the original but then you really can't match Tim Curry when it comes down to that but the Glee version was definitely an A for Effort, C for delivery in my books.

Despite what you say Marcian things DO get replaced in the public mind, to most joe public Assault on Precient 13 is just another action movie and they know nothing of the original version which was much less action, much more character developement and as a result much more tense in atmosphere. It made the whole action scene at the end a much bigger payoff.

Take a look at the Dawn of the Dead remake, one which John A. Romero has officially disowned (and went with supporting Shaun of the Dead instead), the original was once again, more character driven (there were only 4 main characters, compared to the 8 or 9 in the remake) had a good story, some really great moments. The remake bunged in extra characters purely to kill them off for more action scenes.

However Dawn of the Dead is one of the few ones where the public does know of the original and will actively seek it out. To your average schmo who wants tits and action will decry it as plodding and dull because there isn't enough 'tits and guns' (if you dislike it for more legitimate reasons, fair play though).

There is also the problem of (insert redneck voice here) 'I don't watch movies to read!' that will never watch a really good foreign original if a crappy English version is available which doesn't help matters when trying to promote the much better original. Some are kind of odd like REC and Quarantine where they're pretty much shot for shot but there does seem to be something lacking about the English remake.