Father Xmas

We are shaped by media. That includes books, movies, TV and games.

For me I noticed an up tick in warrior women around the time of Aliens and Terminator 2. On TV it was Buffy and Dark Angel. So late 80s, early 90s in movies, 5 or so years later on TV. This of course skips over Red Sonja and Heavy Metal's Taarna and Valkyries of lore.

In this game for me, gender of my characters had more to do with costume parts or lore than traditional melee Vs support roles. For costumes I skew more toward Ironman than Spiderman. During the pre-CoV years I think I have only two characters that wore spandex out of the dozen or so I rolled, both female, one is a MA scrapper (2nd character I ever created). And that's because it fit the look I was going for (one to look fox like, the other modeled after an Anime character).

The one thing I do notice is race. I would end up making a robot, an alien, a wolfman or a lizardman before I ever thought about making a character who wasn't white or Asian. I thought that was an interesting blind spot in my thought process of rolling a character. I eventually did create one (Grav/Rad Defender) but he's languishing at Level 14 or so for many years now.

CoH for Level 20-30 we have Talos, Independence Port, Tera Volta, Striga, last half of Faultline, first half of Croatoa. The amount of content is simply staggering.

CoV for Level 20-30 we have Sharkhead, 1/3rd of Nerva Archipeligo and a nibble of St. Martial. Of course CoV introduced the concept of the newspaper mission as a way to get additional missions outside of arcs, giving the player a choice in the matter. This was later ported to CoH so they can get hero versions of the mayhem missions (that show off destructible environments and PhysX) villains got by doing newspaper missions.

CoV also added cut scenes, which is a way to convey some back story by halting the game so you can read the critter's dialog before mowing through them, it does break up the flow. It's just another minor annoyance to add to the CoV pile.

Now I'll admit that my exposure to CoV has been minimum and a lot of my opinions about it's feel comes from playing it during Issue 6 and 7. I only have one character in the low 30's and that's it. Haven't even gotten the Television yet as a contact.

CoV has a the dirty and/or claustrophobic feeling to the place coupled with larger mobs and smaller level oriented "neighborhoods" that makes Rogue Isles a more hostile environment to travel around in. Probably why I spend 90% of my time in Paragon.

Paragon Dance Party was essentially the last room found on most warehouse maps with laser lights and a couple of pieces of furniture. More of a moving rave feel than a permanent place.

Pocket D didn't have the Tiki Room, the access to the Ski resort and the monkey fight club weren't there.

Always research writing and literature so you can work at getting "Library at Alexandria" wonder first.

As for canceled during their first season but curious to see where it went.

Threshold
Surface
Defying Gravity
Journeyman
The Middleman
Earth 2
Firefly

Tell me about it. One night my father somehow accidentally make every file extention in his account associated to notepad. Shortcuts, executables, photos, everything. It was easier to simply create a new account for him than fix the old one.

CoV was the 2nd attempt at writing the game, Praetoria the third. Each took lessons learned from the previous while designing it.

CoV has clean distinct story arcs. CoH has story arcs but they may be buried among a plethora of unrelated missions. CoV has fewer "go kill 10 rats" or "go visit these 5 spots" missions. However in terms of shear number of missions, CoH simply has a ton more. Missions in CoV also are better written. However their was a much longer delay before Level 41-50 missions became available in CoV (7 months Vs 2 months in CoH).

CoV zones remind me more of old European cities, with short narrow streets that don't meet at nice right angles (not fun for superspeeders). CoH is more open, has a less claustrophobic feeling to it. CoV has a more dynamic environment, more trash randomly blowing about, seagulls flying in the skies. CoV's architecture is also more intricate. Less different sized boxes and more unique, complex buildings. The added polygon count make CoV slower when it first came out. You could have an acceptable framerate in CoH but CoV knocks 20% off. It also pushed the realistic minimum hardware requirements up. I would imagine that for some the decrease in performance in CoV was enough to dissuade them from playing there until they got a better rig.

CoV mob critters count fell somewhere between normal and hazard zone densities from CoH. Combine that with the narrow streets and compactness of the zones you could easily turn the corner on the way to a mission and find yourself in a world of hurt.

And all these differences still don't address the basic issue of being your own villain instead of being just another participate in Lord Recluse's Darwinian experiment to find the chosen ones. I'll reiterate what others have said, you feel like a minion or lackey and less like your own (wo)man.

I didn't chime in earlier because there is no way to guarantee what he's asking for. There is a whole lot of "your mileage may vary" with this game.

History.

CoH was one of the first games to use PhysX but it was with an early program interface from Ageia (original owners of PhysX). Ageia later changed it but still supported the interface the game used.

Then nVidia bought Ageia and only supported the newer interface.

Curse of being the early adopter.

I chalk this up in the same category as bringing home munchies and a 6-pack of adult beverage, settle into my chair, turn on the TV to watch the game and find out that the cable is out or worse, only that channel. Best laid plans ...

Hardware crap happens. I spent 3 hours trying to install my parents new DSL modem and getting it to work with their router. Worked plugged in directly to PC, not to router. Eventually it worked itself out but damn was I annoyed and frustrated. Upside I got free pizza.

Weakest so for was the Moby Dick variant.

Also Lion-o gets all the ladies.

The one episode that really turned me against Janeway was the episode where the holodeck malfunctioned and the characters set in 19th century England/Ireland thought the crew were Fey and Janeway was their Queen. She really should have embraced that whole fantasy element but instead told them, computer generated characters, "the truth".

This wasn't a case of Star Fleet regulation or non-interference directive, it's your entertainment. At least Picard embraced his holodeck persona.

I'm betting that the cape in action scenes will be entirely CGI.

As God is my witness I thought hamsters could fly.

According to the current announcement thread some of the servers are acting up again.

There wasn't any venue in Oakland or San Jose that could hold it and was available? Those cities are a whole lot closer than LA.

This episode probably had the best dialog after "The Doctor's Wife".

Did I miss any jokes in reference to the Eddie Murphy "Meet Dave" movie, since I never saw that.

Hopefully you can access this thread.

Once you get the first reward in a tier, that tier's benefits unlock. It's a permanent thing when you aren't VIP.

ParagonWiki version if you can't read the Beta board. Additional links at the bottom will lead you to the perks from each tier.

Well, that may be the case when they are installing new hardware.

Well a long time ago SyFy was the channel of old canceled SciFi-ish/Fantasy series. But that was a long time ago.

The problem with a Ouroboros style TV network is if they show an episode a day from a somewhat successful series, that's about a season a month. Then what, repeat? For a quickly canceled series it's two weeks. You simply run out of material within a year or two at most and repeat runs would draw less and less viewers. Less viewers, aka ratings, will eventually lead to the same broadening we see on other networks with cheap to make reality shows.

I wished that knockback would happen on the finishing blow if excessive damage was done, assuming the power used either had knockback or could be slotted for it.

Just imagine defeated critters being scattered left and right as a raged up Brute or a Scrapper in lock mode plunges into a crowd.

The one thing that always bothered me is that the Doctor always seems to be younger than his previous regeneration.

Who knows how far this could go.

Can we let him curse again ... please.

What, like the markets aren't inflating due to all the purple recipe farming at 50. At least before incarnates hit.