Dr_MechanoEU

The main thing they need to do is make sure that gamers as a whole see the Freedom thing in a positive light, not just on Massively or PC gamer...the word needs to be out there, everywhere, it needs to be challenging the preconceptions of why subscription games go Free to Play.

Switching from Subscriber to Free to play (as I've said elsewhere it IS free to play and I wish they would stop trying to really obviously use marketting spin to try to make it sound otherwise, LOTRO is considered 'Free to play' by the gaming populous at large yet has basically the same model as CoH:Freedom does) is seen as a desperation move by the gaming population at large, a move to try and grab as much money from people as they can in a short space of time or lose everything.

Sorry but it is, every single MMO that has done this kind of move has done so purely out of desperation,

The reason for this...the big gorilla in the room is still subscription based and anyone switching from Subscription to F2P is seen as 'not being able to keep up''

Now don't get me wrong, CoH is basically the big Gorilla in the room for Superhero MMOs. . So CoH has that advantage.

I'm odd in that if CoH wasn't long for this MMO world, I'd rather CoH had an abrupt but dignified death rather than some prolonged half-life existence as a nickle and dimeing MMO where it just sullies it's own name and eventually peters out.

That is rather selfish of me, I admit, there are obviously people that would be out of a job if such a thing happened but there's nothing worse than seeing something you love become something you despise.

oh and Dooooom(tm).

Jesus that post was depressing...I'm sure someone will post a picture of kittens or something to cheer everyone up.

What I'd probably do is stick it in the standard Menu (you know that has costume selection, opening up the options menu etc.) in the same manner as Spiral Knights (where you scroll down through various options and the 'buy energy' is merely the bottom one).

I will point that the 3 new zones, 1-20 content, costumes (with Alpha and Omega being an additional paid for benefit if you pre-ordered), side switching were all part of the paid expansion which was...£20 in English money.

So if we're getting a boxed Expansions worth of content plus the boosters you're looking at what..an additional £50.

So looking at an additional £4 (roughly) every month ontop of your sub price, which equates to just under 1 booster packs worth of goods every month.

Still while I'm not as pessimistic as I was (if the powersets ARE 400 points as others have suggested while cosmetic stuff remains the 'buy points to get' it seems to balance out...still not happy about that situation though, considering 1 vet power costs 400 points was used as an example, it seems unlikely), I still think its a poor way to do things.

VIPs should get powersets free, make the Freeks and Premiums pay for them instead if you want the cash for them would be my personal take on what they should do.

As a means of choosing an AT and getting it on the opposite side (like making a Brute, running it through Praetoria, choosing heroside)...there is no point to it now since the new tutorials will allow you to do the same much quicker or heck, right from the start since you will be able to skip the tutorials and just click the hero or villain option.

The moment they do start charging VIP users for powersets (yes I know Going Rogue was required for Dual Pistols etc. but that was a full on boxed expansion, not some ingame cash store) is probably the time I will beg my leave of the game.

Simply because that is very definitely something we got free before hand. I honestly don't mind fluff items like costumes or temp powers but actual powersets is kind of where I draw the line.

It was mentioned that using your 'monthly stipend of Paragon Points' that one of the options to spend it on would be Powersets. Since only VIPs get that stipend I'm assuming that it's something that has to be bought for everyone, not just Premium players.

Yes hopefully someone will come in here and clear it up.

Also looks like that yes, unlike before Freedom where all new powersets were free to subscribers, VIPs will have to pay for them with points now apart from Time Dilation, which is free.

In that case, definitely two weeks, it's had a month of open beta (which is what test is normally used for instead of the beta server which is normally used for closed beta testing). So give it two weeks and it'll be live since there's nothing much really left to test.

It's going up on the training room this week iirc.

So give it...hmm...two weeks?

Ohh a clock chest detail....


That would be tempting.

Not so much Doom as...well I think it will split the playerbase.

Free to play games and Free to play gamers do have something of a reputation, since the game is free most assume they'll have a 'why give a [censored] attitude' thats quite pervasive.

I wouldn't be surprised if you saw half of the current player base go "Screw this noise, going VIP to avoid the F2P griefers" and the other half going "I'll stay, they're not going to be all that bad.."

Bah you Americans!

It's the British comedian Eddie Izzard.

Very funny comedian thank you very much.

Yup, the entire thing was purely non-skit and focused on the review.

As I said in the thread I started, he's gotten quite good at putting skit stuff at the end of his videos and I watch all the way to final part of the credits, lo and behold, no skit/plot stuff in the entire video.

I enjoyed the review and boy does Miller have a serious Hardon for Batman. felt sorry for McFarlane.

That's it though, I love his reviews, I'm not even into comic books and I watch them because he's entertaining, it's just his plot arc stuff I don't particularly care for.

Nostaglia Chick actually did completely turn me off her shows with the whole Dark Nella thing, I stopped watching because I found it boring and trite. I noticed that even the Nostalgia critic took a potshot at her because of it through one of his reviews (where he makes a joke about 'Dark Rob').

I begun watching Vangelus stuff recently and I was honestly impressed, not only does he go into great detail about things that matter to figure collectors (poseability, the overall quality of the figure itself, general display options) but he'll provide some backstory to the figure as well.

As a former big figure collector (I have everything ranging from Resident evil figure (my favorite being the Alexia Ashford figure), Clive Barkers Twisted souls, a very large number of Godzilla figures including the small 25th anniversery set going down to complete Gashapon collections of Sonic and Mario..unfortunately it became a wee bit too expensive as my cash resources nolonger have that teenage freedom) I find him to be a great person to watch.

Another example would be the Happy Videogame Nerd. He openly admits to being Inspired by AVGN (so the cries of 'copy cat' are kind of null and void, he admits he's copying but with his own spin on it) and I really enjoy his enthusiasm that comes across in his reviews not to mention they're actually pretty well researched.

Go here to see what you've missed

((sounds fair, unfortunately I've had other stuff crop up which meant I really didn't have either the will or the inclination to post in this thread...wont go into it but yeah...))

I've noticed that the reviewers that tend to be big outside of TGWTG, Cinema Snob and Spoony especially, who have people who watch their stuff from their own website (and the TGWTG site is actually a week or so behind their main website updates) tend to be less inclined to do this stuff as do the smaller names on the website (since they know their audience goes there for what they do best, like Nash and MasakoX).

Infact Welshy (the editor of the TGWTG) recently put up his video to part 1 of Scream 3 retrospective, he had a 3 minute intro to it which had some plotline in it. One person (who was admittedly rather rude about it but still) mentioned they found the 3 minute segment at the start really boring.

Welshy responded saying that he agreed, infact that it was originally longer and that he had cut it down as best he could, however since the entire scream series retrospective is best watch in one sitting, it had to stay in there.

I wouldn't be surprised if Welshy wasn't begining to be an influence on other reviewers

See I really like programs like Game Overthinker or Extra Credit but then I also like stuff like Unskippable but as mentioned before, Unskippable is a program that's based purely around the comedy and not a review in anyway.

Spoony, if he has plot related stuff (which actually only really occured thanks to Linkara...huh...pattern sense tingling) or his skits are short, sharp and to the point, rarely lasting more than a couple of minutes at most. Plus the dude is just genuinely funny, go watch his Lets Play of SWAT 4, sure it has its down moments but there are still good funny moments in it.

My next bugbear is something which affects a LOT of more amateur reviewers and one big reviewer. Fake emotion.

The Nerd and the Critic can make you believe they honestly hate something so much thanks to the bile and venom they spew (remember people, seperate the character from the person, for an example of this go watch a Commentary by Doug and Rob on a Nostalgia critic episode), sure it's a bit over the top sometimes but you do get the feeling that there is some genuine hatred in there.

All too many amateur reviewers will try to copy this style and it comes across as 'grr I'm really angry...grrr' all the flailing, none of the emotion. The biggest reviewer to do this, who I'm honestly surprised doesn't get called out on it more, is Film Brain, his anger just seems so...false...

Now I know it's not just the fact he's British, while we Brits tend to do more seething, biting sarcasm than outblown rage, we can do rage, however we're probably bad at doing coherent rage, we're more likely to just go into a massive long list of swear words puncuated by whatever it is that's made us that angry.

Officer Katze looked around, the invasion was finished as quickly as it had started.

"This was a foolhardy endevor, rest assured next time, we shall be better prepared..."

Reaching down and touching a button on her belt buckle she shimmered and then vanished into a portal, the chain snapping off, left dangling limply around the crazed mans arm.

This has become something of a bugbear of mine when watching internet reviewers.

Skits or more importantly skits involving plot arcs.

Now the fact that his more skit based stuff is actually given its own completely seperate sections on his website is one of the reasons why I like the Cinema Snob. He will have the occasional comedy skit thrown in but they're usually fairly short and punchy, just like they should be. So 80's Dan, Kung Tai Ted and the like are completely seperate and there if I fancy watching that stuff.

It's my main bugbear with Linkara, I enjoy his work but I don't care about the overarcing plotlines that he's begun to focus on, especially if they interupt the main review. He has become better at this recently, consigning them to short segments either after the credits have rolled or just before.

I honestly got sick of sitting through 5-6 minutes of plot exposition for him then to get to meat of the review proper. I don't really care about your overarching plots, they're not the reason I watch your show. It got the point where I was regularly skipping ahead just to get to the review.

I admit this is a very personal bugbear and many others probably enjoy his plot line stuff but to me, personally, I find it kind of dull.

So peoples, what would your personal bugbear be with internet reviewers?

See my only exposure to Leifield/Liefield has been through the internet, I'm not a big comic book reader and what I was reading when I was small was the homegrown British goodness of 2000AD so the only exposure I had to the American comic book industy were the animated series.

Now I was fortunate enough to grow up during the time when animated series based on comic books was GOOD (that isn't to say they aren't now, I mean the Justice League/Justice League Unlimited and even more recently Avengers: Earth's mightiest heroes are both series I've grown to enjoy but had long since gone past the age they were aimed at) and kept me interested.

It wasn't until I was much older that I learnt of Liefield, which means my views are negatively coloured because practically EVERYTHING I hear about his artwork (but apparently not the man himself, who is, for all intense purposes quite nice to chat to so I've heard) is that, compared to a lot of other comicbook artists or even people on Deviant Art, it's bloody terrible.

I'm Dr Mechano and this has been your tangent for today.

I thank you.